Part 30 (2/2)
She regarded me with sudden suspicion. ”Thank you very much,” she replied primly. ”I'll take your advice and have it like that in my story, if I ever write it. What a _wonderful_ old street this is! It's full of ghosts of kings and queens, and n.o.blemen and great ladies, and soldiers and robbers, every one of them more important than the people we see.”
I couldn't tempt her back to the dangerous subject and soon I prudently ceased to try. But she had given me what I've heard described as a ”nasty jar.” Barrie MacDonald wouldn't have appealed to Basil Norman for a definition of love if she'd thought of him as a man and not a brother!
The side of me nearest my heart hated Somerled, marching on ahead, looking singularly attractive and gallant, much too interesting for a mere millionaire. And the side of me which has telephonic communication with my brain liked and approved of him, understanding how and why his personality made a strong appeal to most women. ”You've had pretty well everything you've asked life to give you so far,” I said to his back, ”but this girl isn't your kind of girl. It's my sister you ought to want.”
Suddenly, as we drew near to the crowned church of St. Giles--the old High Kirk--there came to our ears the skirling of pipes. Barrie started and stopped. Somerled glanced round quickly, his eyes keen. Would she prove her Highland blood? Would her heart beat for the pipes? That was the question in his look.
The girl was taken by surprise. We others knew what we had come for, and what to expect. She had no idea, except that she was being conducted decently to church.
At the first wail of the pipes the blood of her ancestors sprang to her face. She clasped her hands together, listening in silence to the barbaric music, her lips apart, her eyes aglow. And all this for the call of the pipes! Not yet had she caught her first glimpse of the pipers; but an instant later the tall figures came swinging proudly into sight, plaids swaying like tartan ta.s.sels, kilts moving with that wave-about-to-break rhythm given to their garments only by inspired pipers.
Even I felt a thrill as if each nerve in my body were a string drawn suddenly taut, but I was gloomily conscious that the Celtic souls of Somerled and Barrie felt more than I was capable of feeling, a mysterious something which drew the two together at this instant.
Physically, I stood between them, but I knew that my body was no obstacle to the lightning flash between their spirits.
Not a word said one of us as the goodly company of soldiers swept by in a rich-coloured cloud of their own music. But when all had disappeared into the church, Somerled and Barrie looked at each other. His eyes praised her for a braw and bonnie la.s.sie who had responded in fine style to her first-heard pipes, her first-seen kilt; yet his lips had nothing to say but, ”Well, what do you think of them?”
”Think?” echoed Barrie. ”I think it's perfectly unbelievable how any girl can ever marry a man who isn't a Highlander and has no right to the kilt!”
There was one for Somerled and one against me; but it only got my blood up. Many a girl says a certain thing, and does another when her time comes.
”If I were rich,” she went on, ”I'd live in a castle in the Highlands, and I'd have it _full_, simply _swarming_, with pipers, playing me awake in the morning and to sleep at night.”
”I should like you to see your own castle of Dunelin at Dhrum. There are plenty of pipers there. I've kept them all on, meaning them to play for me some day,” said Somerled, who had just then forgotten, I think, the existence of myself and Mrs. James, and failed to observe that in the distance all Miss Barribel MacDonald's missing young men were a.s.sembling, as if to the call of the blood--the soldier from Carlisle, who had collected a friend, and the American contingent of four.
”My own castle?” Barrie repeated.
”You know what I mean. It would be yours if you'd been a boy. As you aren't----”
”It's yours!” laughed she.
”Not by right of blood. Only by right of money.”
”Well, that's the sovereign right,” she insisted, pleased with her own pun.
Then the victims of our miniature Circe arrived in the foreground, shook hands, bandied jokes, and became the most prominent figures in the picture. For the first time I was glad to see them, nor did I bear the youths ill-will for separating me from our beneficent enchantress in the stately church with historic banners. They had separated her from Somerled as well.
After service was over, we stopped only for a look at the stones which mark in the pavement the old Heart of Midlothian, and then hurried back to the hotel, escaping the Americans, but clung to by Douglas and his cousin, another Douglas, who hospitably bade us all to visit him at all his houses. He mentioned several, dotted about in various parts of the country; but when he heard that Miss MacDonald was retiring from the party in a day or two, he ceased to press the general invitation.
There was news of Mrs. Bal at the Caledonian. A maid had arrived who thought that her mistress would not follow until the evening: Somerled asked Barrie, therefore--rather wistfully, I thought--if she would care to go out again in the afternoon. ”It will make the time pa.s.s for you,”
he added. I sympathized with him against my will. It was to be his last day of ”guardians.h.i.+p,” yet he was generous enough to invite me; and not only that, but to let me sit in the car with Barrie and Mrs. James, on the way to Arthur's Seat. After this effort, however, human nature had its way, and he kept her to himself for the rest of the afternoon. It was the first time he had done this since I fastened myself upon the party. To-day, it was evidently by deliberate intention, not accident.
It was as if he said to himself, ”These last hours shall be mine.” And I wondered if indeed he actually meant them to be last hours. For my part, I certainly meant nothing of the sort. Mrs. Bal, or no Mrs. Bal, Aline or no Aline, Book or no Book, I didn't intend to walk out of Barrie's life without trying to win a foothold in it for the future.
If I had an opinion on such matters, I should have said, up to a week ago, that I didn't approve of marriage for a girl under twenty, as she couldn't possibly know her own mind; but Barrie is the kind of exception to prove any rule. She ought to have a man to take care of her.
Before five we started back, for Mrs. James thought Barrie needed a nap.
It appeared that she hadn't slept the night before, owing to the excitement of suspense; and now ”her eyes must be bright for their first look at her mother.”
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