Part 20 (2/2)
The road which leads from Dumfries to Lincluden seems like a quiet prelude to a lovely burst of music, so gentle and pretty it is. Then suddenly you come to the promontory st.i.tched on to the mainland with great silver st.i.tches of rivers, the Cluden and the Nith; and there are old earthworks, fallen into ruin, which guard the Abbey as the skeletons of watch-dogs might lie guarding a dead master. There's a mound, too, by the side of the ruined church, and it is called a Mote, which means something desperately interesting and historic, and there's a Peel-tower in ruin. Indeed, all is in ruin at Lincluden Abbey; but that makes it the sweeter and sadder. And as we came, the red of the crumbling sandstone burned in the fire of sunset like a funeral pyre heaped with roses. The melancholy, crowding trees and the delicate groups of little bushes were like mourners coming with their children to look on at the great burning.
We went into the church to see the tomb of Margaret Countess of Douglas, who was a daughter of King Robert the Third; and somehow the mutilations of the effigy made it more beautiful, causing you to see as in a blurred picture the thousand events of troublous times which had pa.s.sed over the figure, leaving it through all peacefully asleep. A daughter of a king, with the Douglas Heart to guard her, she would be too n.o.ble in her stony slumber to show that she minded losing her features and a few other trifling accessories which might spoil the looks of less important women.
When we came out, high in the sunset glory gleamed a silver sickle, reaping roses. It was the heather moon, and I cried out to Sir S. as I saw it, ”Wish--wis.h.!.+ Your first sight of the heather moon, and over our right shoulders for luck! Whatever we wish _must_ come true!”
I was so excited that I seized his hand; and he was too polite to give it back to me like a thing he didn't want. So he held it firmly in his while we both looked up to the sky, silently making our wishes. My wish was to be that my mother might love me; but I stopped and thought, ”What is the good of making such a wish, when I've only one, and I'm sure to get that one without the heather moon, as mothers all love their children.” This caution was very ”canny” and proved my Scottish blood, I couldn't help thinking, as I paused in order to select the most appropriate wish for the heather moon to grant.
Several ideas presented themselves with a bow: a wish to be happy: but that wasn't ”concrete” enough, as Sir S. would say. A wish to be very rich and able to do anything in the world I might like to do; but being rich sounds so fat and uninteresting--or else bald-headed; for nearly all the photographs in picture papers of desperately rich people are one or the other, or both. At last I began to be nervous, for if Sir S. or Mrs. James (who was close by) should speak before I'd given my wish to the new moon, she'd be unable to grant it, even with the best intentions. That is a well-known fact in connection with wis.h.i.+ng by the moon. I have it on the authority of both Mrs. Muir and Heppie. Being in a hurry, I grew confused, and so could think of nothing more important than to wish for my knight never to forget me in future, wherever he may be. And just as I'd finished, he said, ”Well? What did you wish?”
Of course I couldn't tell him such a wish as that; but, luckily, you must never let anybody know what you've wished by a moon or a star, if you want the wish to come true.
I explained this to Sir S., and he said, as far as he was concerned, it didn't matter, for he hadn't wished after all. ”Oh, what a waste of the heather moon!” I cried, for it really seemed too bad. But he answered that the only thing he particularly wished for just then was a thing which wasn't fair to wish, on account of the 'other party concerned.' I laughed, and said if he had _wished_ to wish, he had wished, in spite of himself, and the heather moon had heard; because that's the business of any well-trained new moon, and the heather moon is the best-trained of the year. ”'The other party concerned' must just take the risk,” I said.
”And very likely 'twill be the best thing for him, her, or it in the end.”
”I daren't hope that,” said he, looking up at the silver sickle as earnestly as if we weren't talking nonsense.
”Don't you think the heather moon knows best?” I reproached him. But he did not answer, and only hummed under his breath, as we walked to the waiting car:
”How far, how far to Gretna?
It's years and years away-- And coach-and-four shall nevermore Fling dust across the day.”
All the way along the shadowy, switchback road from Dumfries going to Sweetheart Abbey (I like to write the name, it is so pretty and old-fas.h.i.+oned) we had glimpses of the moon scattering silver through the tree branches as she fell down the west. I thought the soft white curve like a baby's arm, rounded at the elbow; and it waved us good-night over the heather-clad mound of Criffel, as a baby might wave over the fat shoulder of a big nurse dressed in purple. It is _cheek_ of Criffel to call itself a mountain, and of course it wouldn't dare to if there were other real mountains within twenty-five miles.
When I made this remark Mrs. James asked me where, in my sequestered life, I had got hold of such an unladylike word as ”cheek,” but I told her I must have been born knowing it, as there was never a time in my memory when I didn't. Also Mr. Douglas had used it several times in Carlisle Castle.
”Haven't you forgotten him yet?” asked Sir S.
”It would be silly to forget, and have to make his acquaintance over again at Edinburgh,” I said. ”He asked me particularly to think of him during our trip whenever I should see the Douglas Heart. Now I have just seen it at Lincluden.”
”Douglas Heart indeed! Douglas cheek!” I heard Sir S. mutter.
There is one part of that road between Dumfries and Sweetheart Abbey I shall never forget: the view from Whinny Hill--a sudden view springing from behind trees, as if a green curtain had been pulled back from a picture. In this picture there were the silver Nith, and purple Criffel of course (which always tries to get itself noticed wherever you turn), a great forty-foot monument put up to commemorate Waterloo; and again the red triangle of Caerlaverock glowing on the green sh.o.r.e of the Solway Firth.
I suppose the people who were shy of seeming sentimental insisted on calling Sweetheart Abbey New Abbey. I can imagine Sir S. voting for the change, because I fancy that he would endure torture rather than be thought sentimental. He describes a place or a thing or a person glowingly, then hurries to cap his description with a few joking or even ironical words, lest he should be suspected of romance or enthusiasm.
The village is called New Abbey too, so it is safe to mention that to the driest person. It was just beginning to be evening, an evening softly gray as doves' wings folding down, when our Dragon sidled toward an inn it saw, quite a nice little inn, where Sir S. announced that we would stop the night. Before going in, however, he took us to look at a queer bas-relief built into the wall of a whitewashed cottage on the left side of the road. It showed three ladies industriously rowing a boat across the ferry--pious dames who brought all the stones from Caerlaverock, on the other side of the Solway, to build the Abbey.
”Rock of the Lark” is a delightful name, but Sweetheart Abbey is prettier, and the reason of the name is the prettiest part. Only I wish that the devoted Devorgilla who built the Abbey of Dolce Cor to be a big sacred box for the heart of her husband had had a worthier object of wors.h.i.+p than the king, John Balliol. All the history I have ever read makes him out to be a weak and cowardly and rather treacherous person; but, as Sir S. said, ”Mirabeau judged by the people and Mirabeau judged by his friends were two men”; and I suppose John must have put himself out to be charming to Devorgilla, or she wouldn't have wandered about with his heart in an ebony box inlaid with silver, and insisted on having it on the table in front of her when she ate her dinner. That was one way of keeping her husband's heart during her whole lifetime--and even after death, for of course she had it buried with her. It must have been glad of a little rest by that time, the poor heart, for it had so much travelling to do. I suppose it even went as far as Oxford when Devorgilla founded Balliol College.
The last shaft of the sun was turned off the rose-coloured ruin and the secluded valley where the cross-shaped Abbey hides from the world; and the moon was gone, too, swept away like a tiny boat on a wave of sunset.
Still, it was full daylight, and Sir S. announced that he had a plan.
This plan was for us to go (as soon as we'd seen our rooms, which he had engaged by telegram) and get permission to enter the Abbey by twilight, when no one else was there.
The little gray inn of the town looked no bigger than a good-sized private house, but it was the very first hotel of my life, and I regarded it as an Epoch, with a capital E. That point of view was upheld later by the heavenly scones and honey they gave us--heather honey, gold as the heather moon. And we had cool, clean rooms, suitable for the dreaming of sweet dreams. _My_ dreams there seemed very important.
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