Part 34 (1/2)
”I've noticed that she takes an impish delight in thwarting him.”
”That's because he once thwarted her. She admitted as much. Or, at least she said she asked him to paint her portrait, and he did paint it. When the picture was finished, he gave it to her, and didn't even make himself a copy.”
”Well,” I replied, puzzled, ”I don't see anything in that to upset her.
Even for a beauty like Mrs. Bal it's a compliment to be painted by Somerled. And surely it was a mark of regard to make her a present of the picture, when he can get from a thousand to five thousand pounds for anything he chooses to do.”
”Oh, you _man_,” exclaimed Aline. ”And you pretend to be a student of women's characters! Of course Mrs. Bal was furious because he didn't beg to do her portrait and then make two, one for her, and one for himself.
Fancy my having to explain! And besides, there must have been more than that in the affair. She wouldn't have asked him to paint the picture if she hadn't wanted to see him often alone, and make him fall in love with her. His giving her the portrait was a kind of defiance, to show her that he didn't care _that_ for the original.”
”Oh, well, if you think so!” said I.
”Mrs. Bal thinks so. And she's enchanted to get her revenge. Not that she'd have chosen this way, because, of course, it's a sickening thing to have Ian and all these men know that she's old enough to be the mother of a grown-up daughter--and to be obliged to throw herself on their mercy to help her out of the sc.r.a.pe. She laughs and pretends it's a joke, but she simply _hates_ it. I hinted to her that if you married the girl there'd be no talk ever about Barrie being Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's daughter. That should be _forgotten_, I said, though they could correspond with each other and be good friends. Barrie would live in Canada with you, and be out of Mrs. Bal's life altogether. And I impressed it upon her that your ideal existence was a quiet country place. It was the same as telling her that she'd be _rid_ of Barrie by giving her to you. Whereas, if the girl should marry Ian, Somerled's wife would always be before the public eye, and everybody would be sure to find out all about her. Mrs. Bal caught my meaning, you may be sure; and she promised me that Barrie should go everywhere with us, or rather, with you and the Vannecks, till I can get about. Anyhow, _nowhere_ with Ian. Now, you see, I've done all I can for you.”
”And for yourself,” I was mean enough to add, for the thought of what we were doing together was not a good thought, and it brought out the worst of me.
”I haven't any one to work for my interests. _You_ have,” she retorted; and as I'd no mind for further recrimination I begged her pardon, thanked her gratefully, and proceeded to tell all that had happened in Mrs. Bal's room. It was not pleasant for Aline to hear how prompt Somerled had been in trying to relieve Mrs. Bal of her burden; but there was consolation in his disappointment.
”Do I look very horrid?” she questioned anxiously, ”or do you think I might ask him to take pity on me for a little while this afternoon, and sit here when you're all out sight-seeing?”
I rea.s.sured her, saying that her eyes looked no worse than if she'd been indulging in a ”good cry.” She decided, however, that if Somerled came she would bandage them again and continue to resemble Justice. I didn't ruffle her feelings by remarking that morally the resemblance would be a parody.
When Maud Vanneck and I went, soon after luncheon, to ask if Barrie would walk in Princes Street, with perhaps a stroll along the High Street, and on to Holyrood or the Castle, I found Mrs. James in Mrs.
Bal's sitting-room with the two Douglases and the four Americans. The mother and daughter had returned late from rehearsal, and had just finished luncheon. Mrs. Bal had a letter in her hand, which had evidently arrived with a box of orchids, probably a tribute from Bennett; and the lady's desire to get us out of the way suggested the imminent arrival of a caller worth keeping to herself.
Finally, it was arranged that we should all go out together, the Douglases a.s.suring the rest of us that they could open doors which would be shut to strangers.
”Where's Somerled?” I asked Mrs. James, in case he were condescending to lie in wait somewhere.
”When I saw him last,” she replied, ”he'd got an immense pile of foreign letters, and several cablegrams. It looked as if he'd enough to occupy him the whole afternoon. Important business I suppose; yet in spite of all, I believe he's been concerning himself with some surprise for me.
He may perhaps have news I shall like to hear when I get back. I expect he's been telling some friend about those Stuart chairs I want to sell, and thinks he's got me a buyer.”
The Douglases took us to see the _Scotsman_ building, and the secret, inner workings of a great newspaper. We descended from marble halls to vast underground regions, the lair of a monster immeasurably more powerful than the Minotaur who ramped and raved under the Palace of Crete. The roar of this modern Minotaur was as the noise of Niagara broken by stormy bursts of thunder. It stunned the intelligence; it shrivelled the organs of speech like a dried kernel rattling impotently in an old nutsh.e.l.l. It filled the world and made human happenings, such as individual lives and deaths, seem of no more importance than the snapping of thumb and finger in front of a cataract. I couldn't have lived in the tumult long and kept my wits; but we heard of an employe who, when some tooth or nail in the enormous monster smote him, could not bear to stop away long enough to complete his cure, because he was unable to bear the ”awful stillness” of the hospital. Persons of impregnable nerve-power let us deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, showing us the dragon's brood, and his terrible wife whose business it is not only to print the newspaper, but to cut its sheets, and eventually to lay them like eggs, at the rate of thousands a minute: a most appalling creature she, who so battered my brain with her accomplishments and the wild cackle she made over them, that weakly I let Barrie be s.n.a.t.c.hed from me by Donald Douglas.
In the roar and rush and riot I was incapable of caring, though vaguely I recalled the fact that I had come out with the sole object of annexing the girl's society. Vaguely too, though only vaguely, I resented the Douglas method; but I had my revenge almost before I recovered sense enough to want it. There came, I know not why or how (perhaps one of the masters decreed it, to strike our ears with the contrast), a sudden unexpected lull. It was only a comparative lull, and it lasted no more than a few seconds; but there was time enough to hear Douglas yell into Barrie's ear, ”I must have you for my own.”
The next instant he was purple through his soldier-tan. He knew the dragon and the dragon's wicked wife had betrayed him, as he took advantage of their domestic clamour to speak in a crowd as though he were alone with his love in the desert. What Barrie answered, or if she had breath to answer, none of us could guess, though all, especially the four Americans, were bursting with anxiety to know. Later, however, when we went up to the Castle (anything but the Castle, with its thousand years of history, would have been an anticlimax after that wonderful dragon cave), Donald Douglas walked meekly with his cousin, leaving Barrie to Jack Morrison. As for me, I had temporarily lost my individuality, and with that roar still echoing through my brain, vibrating through my nerves, I was glad to crawl along, talking to n.o.body, and picking up dropped or untied bits of myself as I went. For the moment, frankly I didn't care how many men proposed to Barrie, or whether she accepted them all. But afterward, it was different. It occurred to me that Jack Morrison was not only a handsome and gallant fellow, but said to be very rich, at least as rich as Somerled, and ten years younger. Aline and I might be mistaken about the girl's feelings for Ian. Very likely it was no more than a romantic sort of grat.i.tude; and though I absolved the child from the smallest taint of mercenary motive, it was almost impossible that a sleepless night had not given her some wise counsel. She was too sensitive and quick-witted a girl, I reflected, not to have seen that she could not go on living with her mother, and that it was a necessity to find a niche somewhere. All these young men saw this also, though they knew no more than the fact that they were prayed to consider Mrs. Bal an elder sister of ”Miss Ballantree,” therefore they were hastening to offer her sheltering niches, more or less desirable. In other circ.u.mstances, they would have waited a few days, long enough at least for Barrie to know which was which, and get their features and some of their characteristics ticketed with the right labels; but as it was, each saw he had no time to waste if he didn't want his friend or foe to get in ahead of him. While we were at the Castle, looking at Mons Meg (which recalled Thrieve) and the banqueting-hall of armour with its faded banners and fadeless memories; gaping at the mysterious place over the entrance door where, in a bricked-up alcove, a baby skeleton was found wrapped in cloth of gold embroidered with a royal monogram; walking through the wainscoted room where Mary of Guise died; gazing at the long mislaid crown of Bruce (”the Honours of Scotland”); seeing sweet Queen Margaret's Chapel where the Black Rood lay till it went in state down the hill to make Holyrood holy; peering at the wall-stairway down which the Douglas boys were dragged after the ”black dinner”; admiring the kilted soldiers; and drinking in the view over hill and valley and mountains, towns and nestling villages, the vast, colourful checkerboard of beautiful Mary Stuart's journeys, flights and fightings: while beholding treasures and splendours which are as the red drops of Scotland's heart's blood, man after man took his place at Barrie's side and became her cicerone. Each talked with her awhile, and after a few brief minutes allowed a change of partners, the discarded one humbly retiring to Mrs. James's side. It was really funny; or at least so it seemed until enough self-a.s.sertion came back to admit of my entering the lists. Then I promptly lost my sense of humour, and had no wish to look for it. I wanted only to look at Barrie, who was unusually flushed and bright of eye.
By this time there wasn't much left to tell her about the Castle or the Castle Rock. When I began to work off my erudition by mentioning the name of Edwin, for whom Edinburgh was named, and who made it a royal borough in the eleventh century, she said:
”Oh, Mr. Douglas's cousin, the other Douglas, told me that!”
When I related the tale of that gallant Francis who was able to lead Sir Thomas Randolph and thirty soldiers up the perilous rocks to surprise the Castle at night, having learned the way when sweethearting down in the Gra.s.s-market, Barrie confessed that she had heard the story already.
Jack Morrison had found it in some old book he had bought at the shop under John Knox's house, in the High Street. There was no use trying to work up or cla.s.sify historic thrills for her in this vast heart of Scotland; she had been given them all, with generous additional thrills from private hearts, Scottish and American.
”Has every single one of those chaps proposed to you?” I flung the question in her face. ”You might tell your Mentor.”
”Oh, not Donald Douglas's cousin!” she answered hastily. ”He's engaged to some one in the Highlands.”
”Good heavens, then all the rest _have_ done it, in a bunch!”