The Heather-Moon Part 9

"I've seen the name, 'Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald,'" the detestable girl went on, pushing into the room without asking permission. "She's going to 'open,' as the paper expresses it, in a new play called 'The Nelly Affair,' on Monday night at the Lyceum Theatre. Next Monday! Nearly a week from now! How can I wait--what shall I do till then?"

It was to Somerled that she appealed. She made him feel that the responsibility was his. And it was a bad moment to feel this, because of Mrs. West's telegram from Grandma. He got up from the sofa, still jingling the money in his pockets. Looking down at Aline he saw only her profile and an ear as deeply pink as coral under a loop of blond hair.

Evidently she too was feeling the situation. Good of her to take an interest! She really was good. She had asked his advice. Now he would ask hers.

"Mrs. West and I will talk over a plan I have for you," he said to the girl.

"Is it your plan--or hers?" asked Barrie anxiously.

"It will be both by the time you hear it," he answered, with a rea.s.suring smile.

Aline humoured him. "Run away and play, little girl, till the plan is cooked," she gayly cried. "Play with my brother."

Barrie backed out, feeling as if she had been half smothered with a perfumed pillow.

"Do you guess my plan?" asked Ian.

"I wonder?" Aline murmured. She could not have spoken aloud just then.

"It's this. Why shouldn't we take her with us in the car to Edinburgh?

We've lots of room."

She had known that this would come. All she had done had only hastened the catastrophe. "That poor old lady," she stammered. "I can't help sympathizing--being a little sorry for her. Isn't she, then, to be considered--after bringing up the girl?"

"You think," he said reflectively, "that she ought to be consulted?"

"Oh, I do!"

"Very well. Then I'll go and have it out with her myself."

"The telegram!" thought Mrs. West, her ears more coraline than ever.

"After all," she faltered, "perhaps it would bring about complications.

She might resort to--to something legal. Fancy if she sent the police to get back her granddaughter."

Somerled laughed and said nothing. He was not in a mood for argument.

"He won't go," Aline thought. "Thank Heaven, he hates bother."

This was true of Somerled as a rule; but his rules had exceptions.

VIII

So this was the garden where that strange flower of girlhood had budded and blossomed. All at once Barrie, in her quaintness, became a readable riddle to Somerled.

The two gates in the high wall were kept bolted, but there was a jangling bell for each, the gate for visitors (it was almost supererogatory), and the gate for tradesmen and servants. An elderly and sullenly astonished woman opened the visitors' gate for Somerled, and made of her lean form a barrier lest he should try to pa.s.s. But she being narrowly built, on somewhat Gothic lines, and the gateway being broad, Somerled saw past the flying b.u.t.tresses of her skirts into the background. And it was this background that explained in a flash why the girl knew less of life than a bird which has learned to use its wings; also the reason why she could never return to waste her young years behind the garden wall of Hillard House. The thought came into Somerled's mind that it would be interesting to show her the world she had never seen, not only between Carlisle and Edinburgh, but over the hills and far away, as far as the purple island of Dhrum, set in its sunset frame of ocean gold--or even farther. That could not be, of course, but the picture was pleasant.

He had prepared himself to be ingratiating; but he realized that ingratiation was not a successful line to pursue with dragons. Instead of inquiring politely if Mrs. MacDonald were at home, he said bluntly, "I wish to see Mrs. MacDonald; I have business with her--not my business, but hers. And you may tell her I am not The MacDonald of Dhrum, but _a_ MacDonald from Dhrum, a very different thing."

He knew well that the name of Somerled would be no "Open Sesame" to this door, and he rather enjoyed the knowledge. It was clear at once that he had used the right key. Perhaps no other would have served a stranger.

Anna Case was not a Scotswoman, but the name of MacDonald was respected within these gates, no matter who bore it, and this dark man, with the blue eyes that went through you like bright steel blades, didn't look like one who would claim what he had no right to claim. She bade him follow her into the house, which he did; into the hall; and so to a drearier drawing-room than he had ever entered. There had perhaps been some as gray and grim on his island of Dhrum; but in those days he had known nothing of drawing-rooms.

This was not even early Victorian. It was mid-Victorian, and rubbing and brushing had given the ugly furniture no time to mellow. He sat down on a horsehair-covered sofa which had two worked worsted cushions, each stiffly upright in its corner. One represented a dog's head, the other a bunch of white and yellow flowers with a cold background of steel beads.

On the walls hung a few steel engravings; a meeting of Covenanters; portraits of unco' guid worthies with sidewhiskers or beards; and some tortured stags pursued or caught by hounds.

"Terrible!" he groaned in spirit. "Who'd suppose that such things existed nowadays?"

He might appropriately have made much the same criticism of the old woman who at that instant opened the door and came in, st.u.r.dily, in spite of her limp and the stout stick grasped in a knuckly hand. But as their eyes met--hers like thick gla.s.s panes behind which a burning fire could be dimly seen--something in her grim spirit spoke to something as grim and uncompromising far down his nature. To his own surprise he felt awaking in himself a queer impulse of sympathy for the redoubtable Grandma. Perhaps, reluctantly, she felt the same for him. But she looked him in the face, keenly and unblinkingly. "Well, sir," she said, in a deep voice almost like a man's, and amazingly young and vital, "well, sir, I do not recognize you, though you have gained entrance to my house by claiming the name of MacDonald."

"That is true," replied Ian, who had risen at her coming. "It's the first time I've claimed the name for many years, though it is mine and was my father's before me."

"Who was your father?" the old woman catechized him. "What kin to Duncan, my dead husband's half-brother?"

"No kin except by clan ties. You wouldn't have heard of us. My father was a crofter. His name was David."

"I well remember that man," said Mrs. MacDonald, "and his wife too when I lived with my husband on the island in my youth. Let me see--Mary her name was. They were G.o.d-fearing folk, and didn't wear any such grand clothes as you do, not even for their Sunday best."

"I paint people's portraits, you see, and have to live in cities,"

explained Ian calmly, though he had grown lazy as he grew rich and had not painted. "My clothes suit my trade and way of life better than my father's would, I think; though, as for my brains, my father's hat would have been too big for them."

"I dare say you are right about the brains. You are that youth who went off to America under the name of Somerled," Mrs. MacDonald severely remarked. "I have read of you in the newspapers; but I never approved of you, sir. It's not man's work, to my mind, smearing canvas with paint, and encouraging silly women to be vain of their faces."

"My portraits aren't considered to have that effect," returned Somerled; "rather the contrary, in some cases. And I'm sorry you don't approve of me, because that makes a bad opening for what I've come to say. However, it can't be helped. I know Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald slightly; met her in America----"

"If you think an acquaintance with that woman will recommend you to me, sir, you are mightily mistaken," was the answer he got.

"I mention it to make you understand why, when I met her daughter last night, I felt it my duty to do what I could, being of the same name and not quite a stranger to the family."

"Oh, you felt it your duty! Then you're the person mentioned in a letter I received from a certain Mrs. West, according to herself a writer of books. I do not read her sort of books, and never heard of her. 'Motor novels' indeed! What worse than nonsense! Little enough sense fools must have to buy them! If you have come from this Mrs. West, you can tell her from me, as she has made her bed she may lie in it. She has not taken under her roof my granddaughter, but the daughter of Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald, the play actress. I did my best for the girl, striving to bring her up to be a good and modest woman, despite the bad blood of the mother who broke my son's heart and killed him, who did what she could, and has been doing what she could in the years since, to disgrace our house. I might have known I should strive in vain, and I did know at heart. Vanity and extravagance and fondness of pleasure were Barbara Ballantree's undoing. I preserved her daughter from those dangers, and gave her a religious education. Levity was sternly rebuked in her. She had no young acquaintances to teach her foolishness, or tell her of her mother's sin. She was allowed no money to fritter away on vanities, no silly novels to read, such as those your friends write, no frivolous pursuits which could distract her mind from duty--yet she is her mother over again, and, like her mother, runs away from my house by stealth, in the dead of night."

"It wasn't ten o'clock when I met her in the railway station," Somerled defended the absent. "She was then not very stealthily seeking a train for London, where she expected to find her mother. Mrs. West has written you, I know, and told you everything that happened. For my part, I've called to speak of a plan I have in mind for your granddaughter. The telegram you sent Mrs. West seemed----"

"The telegram I sent Mrs. West? I've sent no telegram to her nor any one. I don't send telegrams."

"Indeed?" stammered Somerled, taken aback. "I understood--Mrs. West believed the telegram to be from you----"

"Nothing of the kind. She couldn't have believed it," Mrs. MacDonald shut him up mercilessly. "She must have been 'romancing,' as I suppose she would call it. I should call it lying."

Remembering Aline's words, Somerled also was frankly inclined to call it lying--on the part of the young woman or the old. He would gladly have blamed the elder, but reason rebelled. Whatever Mrs. MacDonald's faults might be, she did not seem to be one who would deliberately tell a lie.

"But why should Mrs. West?" Somerled asked himself, calling up the pretty smile, the soft blue eyes of his friend. He had been inclined to believe her true. He had liked her very much, more than he liked most women, and had wondered if he might not learn to like her still better in time. The women he saw oftenest were mostly nervous, exacting, self-centred creatures, craving constant flattery. Aline was none of these things. She had many charms, and he had seen few defects; but a motive for falseness in the matter of the telegram would suggest itself to his intelligence. He tried to shut the door in its insinuating, conceited grin.

"There must be a mistake--somewhere," he mumbled.

"Not here, anyhow," retorted the old lady.