The Heather-Moon Part 35

That night--oh, my prophetic soul!--Morgan Bennett saw Barrie at the theatre, and looked at her through his opera-gla.s.ses almost as often as he looked at Mrs. Bal in her gay, exciting comedy-drama, "The Nelly Affair." The play had been written for the actress and suited her exactly. In fact its whole success was made by her magnetic personality, her beauty, and her dresses. She scarcely left the stage, and had something to do or say every minute, yet I noticed that she found opportunities to observe where Bennett's eyes were straying. As for Barrie, she saw nothing, heard nothing, thought of nothing, but her mother, glorious Barbara, who for this evening was Nelly Blake, a girl of eighteen, seeming not a day older. Barrie, in a white dress, with her hair in two long braids (Mrs. Bal thought she was too young to wear it done up), sat among us in an ecstasy. Was ever any one so beautiful, so clever, so altogether marvellous as darling Barbara? This was as it should be; and we who knew the girl, knowing that she had never before seen a play, nor the inside of a theatre, thought her pathetic; but Morgan Bennett, who did not know her, merely thought her pretty and wondered how he could get to know her. The very flash of his opera-gla.s.ses was interested and eager; and when I proudly took the girl behind the scenes to compliment Mrs. Bal after the first act, I was far from surprised to see Bennett appear almost immediately in the same mystic region. Barrie and I were with Barbara in a little room which she intended to use as a boudoir for the week of her engagement; and when an employe of the theatre announced Mr. Bennett, she looked annoyed. For an instant she hesitated visibly; but as he was probably aware that she had visitors, there was no good excuse for sending him away. Part of Mrs.

Bal's success with men consists in knowing what kind of snubs they will meekly endure from a lovely spoiled woman, what kind they neither forget nor forgive. She sent word to Mr. Bennett that he might come in.

He accepted the invitation promptly, and Barbara, with quick presence of mind, introduced him to her little "sister Barribel."

"Barribel! That's a pretty name," he said, shaking hands with Barrie, his eyes on her face. "Miss Barribel Ballantree, I suppose."

"You may suppose so!" returned Mrs. Bal, laughing.

"I saw this young lady sitting out in front," he went on, instead of congratulating the actress at once on the success of the first act, which had "gone" splendidly with the large audience. "I said to myself there must be a relationship between you two: and I was wondering."

"Well, you needn't bother to wonder any more," broke in Mrs. Bal, very gay but slightly shrill. "I must have spoken to you about Barrie?"

"'Barrie' is what you call her?" said he, smiling at the girl. "That's a very nice pet name, and suits her, somehow. You surely never spoke of your sister to me. I shouldn't have forgotten." He added the last words with a look intended as a compliment for Barrie; and any woman wishing to monopolize his attention exclusively might have been pardoned for thinking that he had looked at her more than often enough in the circ.u.mstances. In his big way he is attractive, to certain types of women, very attractive indeed, and I could understand that his millions might not be his only charm for Mrs. Bal. He has eyes which can be fierce as an eagle's; the strong, almost cruel jaw of the predestined millionaire who will mount to success at any cost; a pleasure-loving mouth, and--when he is pleased--a boyish smile. When he is severely displeased, I shouldn't care to be there to see him, especially if he were displeased with me. But I suspect Mrs. Bal to be one of those women who could not love a man unless she were afraid of him. In that may have lain the secret of Somerled's former fascination for her, if it existed.

"If I've forgotten to mention Barrie, it's because I'm always talking about _you_, when we're together," Mrs. Bal excused herself with dainty impertinence of the sort Bennett will stand from her. "If it isn't about you, it's about your motors--or some affair of yours."

"I thought you, and _your_ affairs were generally the subject of our conversations," retorted the big man, still looking more at the young girl than at the woman. "Miss Ballantree is your affair----"

"She has only just become so," Barbara hurried to explain. "Her grandmother, who thoroughly disapproves of me and all actresses, has kept the child shut up in a moated grange all her life. It's a wonder I didn't forget her existence! She _had_ begun to seem like a sort of dream-sister, until she suddenly dropped in on me yesterday, and announced that she'd run away from home. I'm simply enchanted to have the darling with me, for my own sake, or I should be if I hadn't such a beautiful, unselfish nature that I find I worry myself into fits about her when she's out of my sight. To-night I couldn't half act, because I was thinking about her all the time, and wondering what on earth I could do to make her happy. I foresee I shan't be able to study or rehea.r.s.e or anything, while she's getting into mischief in a big hotel. I shall send her away though to-morrow, for a few days, with some _very_ dear friends of hers, who will give her a good time until I settle down and feel at home with this new play--in which, by the way, you don't seem to take the _slightest_ interest. You haven't said a word about it, or how it went, or how I acted."

"You know better than that----" Bennett was beginning when Barrie (to whom, despite his size, he was a figure of no importance) broke in without being aware that he was speaking.

"Oh, Barbara, you won't make me go _to-morrow_; You promised----"

"If she promised, we must make her stick to her promise," said Bennett, forgiving the interruption, and perhaps willing to tease Mrs. Bal.

The beautiful Barbara, however, had gathered together her scattered wits, and was too wise to show that she was being teased. "I know, I meant to keep you with me this Edinburgh week anyhow," she answered the girl. "But, sweetest, you won't want to hold me to the promise, no matter what Mr. Bennett or any one else says, if I tell you that I'm worrying over your being here? I don't feel it's the right thing for you. And it's certain Grandma will change her will if she hears you're living with me. It's a miracle I didn't dry up in my part to-night from sheer anxiety and absent-mindedness. You'd hate me to _fail_ through you, dear one, I know."

"Oh, yes--anything but that," Barrie exclaimed, tears in her eyes.

Alas, if only some other name than that of M. P. Bennett had added itself to her list of admirers, all might have been well for Barrie with sister Barbara, at least for a little while! As it was, the girl's fate was sealed. So much the better for me: yet my fool of a heart ached for her disappointment, instead of leaping for joy at my own good luck.

Mrs. Bal looked at the girl with an odd expression on her charming face, painted for the stage. There was compunction, if not remorse, in the big brown eyes, but there was no relenting. She liked Barrie and enjoyed her childish adoration, but she loved herself, and she wanted to "land"

Morgan Bennett. The girl would have to be sacrificed; still, those rising tears gave Barbara pain to see. She would really have been glad to make Barrie happy, if the creature's youth and beauty had not been an hourly peril for her.

"Don't look so disconsolate, dear," she said. "You're going to have a glorious time. And if wet eyelashes are a compliment to me, they're just the opposite to Mr. Norman."

"Is it Mr. Norman the novelist?" Bennett wanted to know.

"Yes. And he's going to let Barrie help him with a story--or else he's putting her into one, I'm not quite sure which."

Barbara threw him this bit of information with a sweetly casual air, but it was one of the cleverest things she ever did, on the stage or off.

Somehow, with a smile that flashed over us all with a special meaning for each--affection for Barrie, a benediction for me, and a secret understanding for Bennett--she contrived to convey to him the idea that her little sister was already bespoken. No use his being led away by rosebud innocence! It was engaged, and if he were wise he would be true to his love for the full-blown rose.

"Just think, pet, what an honour to be taken about by such famous people as Basil Norman and Aline West," she went on, "and to have them for your best friends. You'd have had a horrid dull time with them gone, for I should have had to leave you alone a lot. And next week, when they bring you back to me at Glasgow, your future will be all beautifully arranged."

"But Mrs. West isn't well enough to go to-morrow----" Barrie pleaded.

"No. But Mrs. Vanneck will chaperon you for a few days. You ought to be frightfully happy, seeing Scotland with those you love while your poor Barbara works for her daily bread. And now you must go out in front again with Mr. Norman, if you don't want to miss the beginning of the second act. Mr. Bennett has seen it, so he can stop with me five minutes if he likes, till my call."

Barrie had been at rehearsal, and would no doubt have been quite willing to miss any part of the play not graced by Mrs. Bal's presence on the stage; but short as was the time since she made her mother's acquaintance, she had learned to know the lady well enough to realize when she was not wanted. She went with me like a lamb resigned to the slaughter; and so, I was sure, would she start with us next day. But just here, I think, is the place to write down what had meanwhile happened to Mrs. James. If it hadn't been for that happening, perhaps we should not, after all, have s.n.a.t.c.hed the girl away so easily from Somerled. And the funny thing was--for it had its funny side, as even he must have seen--the funny thing was, that all was his own fault. When he planned that wonderful surprise for Mrs. James, he little thought it would be the means of stealing his trump card from him. Generous he may be, and is, I must admit; but it's not likely that he would have been unselfish enough to put himself in a hole for Mrs. James's happiness, especially as he could have got just as much credit from Barrie by waiting a few weeks--say, until the end of the "heather moon."

To have brought in the "surprise" in its proper order, I should have worked it into my notes between our sight-seeing expedition in the afternoon, and the theatre in the evening, for it was common property by that time. We all knew (from Mrs. James, not from himself), what a n.o.ble, magnificent, wonderful, glorious, altogether pluperfect fellow Somerled was, to have interested himself in her behalf, and to have given her such happiness as all her friends had thought her mad to dream of through the dreary years.

Always, it seems, she believed that her husband, who disappeared seventeen years ago, was alive, and only waiting for success to crown his ambitions, before returning to her. Everybody else thought he had drowned himself, because of some professional trouble. But Mrs. James's faith has been the great romance of her life; and Barrie (or the little woman herself, I don't know which) told Somerled the story the day they left Carlisle in his car. Some details caught his attention, and made him wonder if Mrs. James's instinct were not more right than other people's reason.

When Somerled went to America as a boy, he travelled in the steerage. On board the same ship was a man calling himself James Richard, a man of something over thirty, in whom Somerled became interested. They made friends, though they gave each other no intimate confidences; and James Richard made one or two remarks which suggested that he had been a doctor. Evidently he was a man of culture, interested in many things, including chemistry and Scottish history. After landing in New York the two met occasionally by appointment, and the older man spoke of an invention which, if he could get the help of some millionaire to perfect it, ought to make his fame and fortune, and revolutionize anaesthetics; but Somerled had thought little of this at the time. So many men he met in those days had queer fads by means of which they hoped to achieve glory. Soon, even before he himself reached success, Somerled and James Richard drifted apart. The rising artist forgot the ship-acquaintance with whom, owing to the difference in their ages and interests, he had never had more than casual acquaintance. It was not until he heard the story of Mrs. James's husband, the clever doctor who loved Scottish history and had invented a new anaesthetic just before disappearing seventeen years ago, that he remembered his shipmate, James Richard.

Then he recalled his appearance; and the descriptions tallied. A scar on the forehead was a distinguishing mark with the man supposed to have drowned himself and the man who had travelled to America in the steerage. Somerled cabled at once to New York, instructing a firm of private detectives to trace James Richard, an Englishman, probably a doctor, who had landed in New York from a certain ship on a certain date.

The first reply was not very encouraging. The man had left New York many years ago, and no one knew where he had gone. But the next cablegram brought news that James Richard, or some one answering to the name and description had been tracked to Chicago. There he had practised as a doctor with some success, but had fallen seriously ill, had given up his business, and had again disappeared. The detective "on the job" was going to Colorado to look for him, as the climate of that state had been recommended to Richard by a fellow pract.i.tioner.

On the Monday morning after our arrival in Edinburgh, a third message had come. This announced that the doctor had left Colorado and gone to California, where he was now living at Riverside, with a rising practice; but that he was considered a "crank," because he constantly besieged rich men to start a laboratory in which to work out his theories. Two or three had half promised their help, but for some reason or other the financial schemes had fallen through. Still the man never appeared to lose hope. Having received this news, Somerled wired direct to the doctor, offering him as much money as he needed, if, before anything further was settled, he would come over to Scotland and reveal himself to his wife.

Up to this time, Somerled had said nothing to Mrs. James, except that he hoped to give her a pleasant surprise; and told her even this only because she planned to go back to Carlisle, now that Barrie was with her mother. Naturally Somerled had several important reasons for wishing the little woman to stay; but the one, he alleged, was his desire to see what she thought of the "surprise" when it came.

He, of course, must have had visions of keeping this useful queen of spades up his sleeve, that he might be ready to trump one of our knavish tricks with her, at any moment; but the G.o.ds fought against him for once. Just before theatre-time, arrived a long cablegram from James Richard, alias Richard James. He thanked Somerled enthusiastically (Mrs.

James showed the message to me, and to every one of us), accepted his loan, believing that eventually it could be repaid, and was more than happy to hear news of his wife, whom he had left only for her own good, because at that tune he considered himself disgraced and ruined. He had intended suicide, but the thought of his invention had changed his mind and plans at the last moment. He had gone to the new world to find what the old had denied him, and after a hundred disappointments he was to be rewarded, through Somerled. He asked now for nothing better than to return, but only for long enough to see his wife, and take her back to California with him. To his deep regret, however, he could not start at once, as he had broken his leg and would not be able to travel for several weeks at least. Would she come to him as soon as she could settle her affairs?

I imagine Somerled must have been sorely tempted not to show this message, for it would rob him of Mrs. James and leave him where he had been after his quarrel with Aline, minus a chaperon for Barrie, if he could contrive to s.n.a.t.c.h the girl from Mrs. Bal. But he had said too much about the "surprise" to suppress developments now. Besides, it would have been almost inhuman to delay the meeting of the husband and wife, so long parted. Neither would have forgiven him if he had coolly kept them apart for his own convenience; but so grateful, so adoring to her hero was Mrs. James, that if "the doctor" had not been ill and needing her, I think of her own free will she would have offered to stop in Edinburgh for a few days to "see what happened." As it was, there was no question of her staying. She and Somerled arranged that she should leave for Carlisle by the first train possible in the morning. At home she was to settle her few affairs temporarily, and catch a quick ship for New York, whence she would hurry on to California.

Somerled gave her advice for the journey (and perhaps something more substantial), but he must have seen that, though virtue might be its own reward, he was unlikely to get any other. Mrs. Bal had lent Barrie to us, and without a woman to aid and abet him, it seemed to me that he was powerless. Such chaperons as Mrs. James don't grow on blackberry bushes even in Scotland, where blackberries, if not gooseberries, are the best in the world. Somerled had done for himself.

Oh, there was no doubt of it this time! Not only had we, in the game of chess we were quietly playing with him, got his little white queen in check; we had swept her off the board.

Happenings began thick and fast the morning after.

The first thing I heard was, from Aline, that at the theatre last night (probably just after she sent us away) Mrs. Bal had told Morgan Bennett in so many words that Barrie was practically engaged to me. After a week's trip in my society it was to be expected that she would arrive in Glasgow to ask her elder sister's blessing.

This, Aline thought, necessitated our getting off at once, lest Bennett should contrive to meet the girl alone somehow, and question her. If he did this, the "fat would be in the fire" for Mrs. Bal, and perhaps for me too.

"The sooner the better," said I; for I was impatient to spirit the girl away from Somerled, and turn her thoughts from him to me. If I prayed to the heather moon for help, I felt that I ought to succeed; for the man who can have a girl of eighteen to himself (not counting a few chaperons lying about loose) in a motor-car for a week, pa.s.sing through the loveliest country in the world, and can't make her forget for his sake some other fellow she's known only a few hours longer, must be a born duffer. This I dinned into my consciousness.

It was to be my first real chance with Barrie; and though never in my life before have I made serious love to any flesh-and-blood girl, I've made so much with my pen to the most difficult and diverse heroines, that I had a certain belief in my own powers, once they had free play.

The second thing that happened this morning of happenings, however, was a slight setback, just enough of a setback to let me see that the heather moon is a G.o.ddess who exacts more wooing from her votaries than I had given. Or else, that she has her favourites, and is more ready to look with a kindly eye on a man born to the heather than one who comes from afar to write it up.

Barrie, it appeared, had had a "scene" with Barbara. She had insisted with tears and (according to Mrs. Bal) stampings of foot, that she _would_ go to the Waverley station with Mrs. James and see her off for Carlisle.

Mrs. James was to be taken to the train by Somerled, in his car; and as no one but Barrie had been invited, this meant that the girl would return with him alone. To be sure, it would not take five minutes for the Gray Dragon to slip from the Waverley end of Princes Street back to the Caledonian. On the other hand, it was evident that Mrs. James must have a special reason for choosing the Waverley station, when she could just as well have gone from our own; and Aline and I could see only one.

Somerled wanted to s.n.a.t.c.h five minutes alone with Barrie; and he was not the man to waste a single one of the five. The question was, what use did he intend to make of his time? None of us could guess, for Somerled is a puzzle too hard to read. Not even Aline (who was so nervous that, figuratively speaking, she started at every sound in the enemy's camp) believed that Somerled would try to run away with the girl. I soothed her by saying that I thought it very doubtful whether Somerled would ask the girl to marry him, even if everything were in his favour. I still tried to believe that in his opinion she was too young and had seen too little of life to settle down as a married woman. He might be in love with her--to me it was beginning to seem impossible that a man could know her and not be in love--but with a strong, self-controlled man of Somerled's calibre, falling in love and marrying need not be the same thing.

Mrs. Bal, after the "scene" (in which she too, apparently, played a stormy part) had angrily consented to give Barrie her own way, but only on the girl's threat to decline making the trip with us, if thwarted.

Something in Barrie's eyes had warned the lady not to go too far, and on her promise to return directly Mrs. James had gone, Mrs. Bal sulkily waived her objections.