Part 24 (2/2)

”I think it would have been cleverer and more attractive of her if she had turned animals into men,” said I.

”That's what _my_ heroine can do,” Basil explained. ”She's a kind of miniature baby Circe, for her red hair and general get up, and her curious power of upsetting people and their plans from the first minute they see her. But--my heroine wouldn't and couldn't turn her victims into beasts. She makes them want to transform themselves into something very extra special in the way of manliness.”

”Why do you call her _your_ heroine with an emphasis?” I wanted to know.

”Isn't she your sister's heroine, too?”

”No. My sister doesn't see her as a heroine for a novel. And that's why I say the book we started out to write won't materialize. No author can write a story he or she doesn't take a strong interest in.”

”That's where my writing is easier,” I said. ”I just put down all the things exactly as they happen, and as I see and think about them. So there's no heroine--and no hero--and no story.”

”Yes, that is simpler,” he agreed. ”That's the way the Great Author writes His book. Only all His characters are heroes and heroines in the stories of their own lives.”

As we talked, the moon went down in the west. The sky was a pale lilac, like a great concave mirror reflecting the heather. Then it darkened to a deeper purple, and made my thoughts feel like pansies, as they blossomed in my mind. We fell into silence. But Mrs. James said afterward that was because we were hungry and didn't realize what was the matter with us. Perhaps she was right, but it didn't seem so prosaic at the time.

As the car brought us near the town of Ayr (which, with its lights coming out, reddened the purple mirror) it was too dark to see details clearly. But, driving slowly, we were aware of a thing that loomed out of the quiet landscape and seemed strangely foreign to it, as if we were motoring in Greece or Italy, not Scotland. It was a great cla.s.sic temple, rising on the banks of a stream that laughed and called to us through the twilight.

”Can it be somebody's tomb?” I asked. But there was no cemetery, only a garden, and close by a camel-backed bridge that crossed the surging river.

”It must be the Burns monument,” said Basil. ”I've never been here, but I've studied up the place and looked at maps till I can see them with my eyes shut. This is the right place for the monument, with a museum, and some garden statues of Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnnie, which we'll have to visit by daylight to-morrow. I hope you're going to invite me to sight-see with you?”

”It's not for me to invite any one.”

”Look as if you want to, and it's done.”

”Oh, I'll do that!” I promised.

VIII

We stopped at a big railway-hotel when we came into Ayr. Basil and Mrs.

West took rooms there too, because it was the best in town, and Mrs.

West always wants the very best--except when she's depressed by bad notices of her books!

It was late, and she was so faint with hunger that she begged us not to dress, but to go to dinner in ten minutes. We agreed; but when we'd hurriedly washed our hands and faces and a.s.sembled at the rendezvous, there was no Mrs. West. Basil was the only one who didn't look surprised. Ten more minutes pa.s.sed, perhaps, giving us time to think how hungry we were too, and then the lady appeared. She hadn't exactly dressed, but she had done something to herself which made her look fresh and lovely and elaborate, in contrast to Mrs. James and me.

”Dear people!” she exclaimed, ”I'm so sorry if I've kept you waiting, but I simply couldn't find a _thing_; and the more haste, the less speed, you know. Mr. Somerled, you've been here before in your pre-American days. Do, like an angel-man, show me the way to the dining-room. I can never get used to going in late, with a lot of people staring. Basil will take care of Barrie and Mrs. James.”

I felt as if I should go mad and bite something if she were to cultivate the habit of calling me ”Barrie”; but as I'd invited both her brother and Sir S. to do so, and Mrs. James had never called me anything else, I couldn't very well make Mrs. West the one exception.

A good many of the hotel guests had finished dinner by that time, but twenty or thirty were still at their tables in the big dining-room, which seemed to me absolutely palatial after my ”gla.s.s retort.”

Evidently we were well in the thick of ”tourist zone” again, judging by the look of the people, for most of them had the air of having travelled half round the world in powerful and luxurious motor-cars. You could see they weren't ”local”--with four exceptions, our nearest neighbours. I thought they were pets; but Mrs. West stared in that pale-eyed way I noticed women have when they wish to express superiority or contempt.

All four of the pets were old--two very old, two elderly. The first pair wore bonnets which they must have had for years, things that perched irrelevantly on the tops of their heads, and looked entirely extraneous.

The second two had something more or less of the hat tribe, and Sir S.

said this was because their elders considered them girls, and granted them the right to be frivolous in order to attract the opposite s.e.x.

Mrs. West was sure that such headgear couldn't be got for love or money except in small remote Scottish towns. ”Might come from Thrums,” said Sir S. I'd never heard of Thrums, and Basil explained that it was a famous place in a novel, written by a man of my name, Barrie. ”The real place is Kerrimuir,” he went on, and promised to give me the book.

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