Part 36 (1/2)
”Why don't you, too, see Mrs. James off?” suggested Aline. ”You've been great friends. She ought to be complimented. And you might take her some flowers. That would please Barrie, who is now wors.h.i.+pping Ian as a tin saint on wheels because he has found Mrs. James's husband and offered to finance him to success. You ought to do _something_.”
I thought this a good idea, and on the top of it had one of my own, which I didn't mention to Aline, lest it should fail. Not only did I buy flowers, the prettiest and most expensive I could find (worthy of Barrie or Mrs. Bal), but a box of sweets, another of Scotch shortbread, a few cairngorm brooches, and amethyst and silver thistles picked up at random, and a copy of Aline's and my last book which I found (well displayed) on the station book-stall. When Aline sees only one copy she will not buy it, as she thinks it a pity the book should disappear from public view; but this was an occasion of importance, and I didn't hesitate to pluck the last fruit from the bough.
When Mrs. James, Barrie, and Somerled arrived (Vedder being left in charge of the car) there was I waiting, laden with offerings. I stuck to the party till the end, waving my farewell as the train slowly moved out, and then I summoned up courage (or impudence, depending on the point of view) to ask if Somerled would take me back. ”I walked here,” I said, ”so as to do my little shopping for Mrs. James, and I came so fast I've hardly got my breath back.”
I was prepared for some excuse to keep me out of the car; but I wronged Somerled. If any one looked disappointed it was Barrie, not he. He said, ”Certainly; with pleasure,” and there was nothing in his voice to contradict the courtesy of his words.
Thus, with surprising ease, I robbed him of the five minutes alone with Barrie which he had planned. And though she sat in front with him--as she had come, perhaps--and I was alone in my glory behind, they could have no private conversation.
When I went up to bid Aline good-bye (we were starting soon for Linlithgow and Stirling), I told her of my small triumph; but it gave her no great pleasure.
”How do we know what he said to the girl going to the train?” she asked suspiciously. ”If there's anything up, it's certain that James woman is in it. I'm sure she's warned Ian against you and me as well as Mrs. Bal.
She's as shrewd as a gimlet in her own funny way. You've remarked that yourself. And she wors.h.i.+ps Ian, and thinks Barrie a little angel abandoned in a wicked world. So if Ian wanted to talk, he wouldn't mind Mrs. James. You'd better keep your eyes open this week, and notice whether the girl seems dreamy and absent-minded, as if she expected something to happen--something they may have arranged between them this morning.”
I a.s.sured Aline that I needed no urging to keep my eyes on Barrie. She then told me for the second time that she intended joining our party as soon as Somerled left Edinburgh to follow us, as--she thought--he surely would. ”He wouldn't have gone a step while that girl was here with Mrs.
Bal,” she exclaimed, almost fiercely, ”but in spite of all he's said about seeing old landmarks and looking up old friends, he'll be off after you when you've taken Barrie away. Anyhow, I'm going to see something of him while he's here if I can, for we are friends! He's supposed to have forgiven me, and he can't refuse to come and cheer up the invalid. I shall do the very best I can for myself--and when I find he means to be off I shall mention casually, as a kind of coincidence, that I'm going too, the same day, to join you; that you've wired or something, and that Maud Vanneck and her husband have accepted an invitation from Morgan Bennett to visit his sister, at that Round House Mrs. Bal talked of. Perhaps Ian will offer to take me with him. I do hope so. But I can't ask.”
As a matter of fact, poor Aline had racked her brains how to dispose of the married Vannecks when she should be ready to take her place in Blunderbore. As for George, she wished to keep and play with him, of course, partly for her own amus.e.m.e.nt, partly for the moral effect upon Somerled; but she didn't want to offend his brother and sister-in-law.
Still, they had to be got rid of eventually, as Blunderbore, with all the faults of Noah's ark, has not the ark's accommodation for man and beast. It was a happy thought to angle for an invitation, through Mrs.
Bal, for a few days at the Round House, as Maud Vanneck particularly desired to see ”Scottish life in a private family”; and it didn't occur to her that a shooting-lodge hired by an American millionaire would not be the ideal way of accomplis.h.i.+ng her object.
Mrs. Bal was not out of her room when we were ready to start, at eleven, so I did not see her again; but the plainest, oldest, and carrotiest of the three red-headed maids primly accompanied Barrie to the hotel door with hand-luggage. By this time Blunderbore was puffing heavily in feigned eagerness to be off, and Salomon, its owner and chauffeur, shabby and sulky as usual, was giving the car a few last oily caresses which should have been bestowed long ago in the privacy of the garage.
Have I forgotten to mention in these rambling notes that Somerled's Vedder regards our Salomon with a silent yet plainly visible contempt, akin to nausea? Whenever they happen to be thrown together for a few minutes I see the smart-liveried Vedder criticizing with his mysterious eyes the mean features of the weedy Salomon; his weak face with the curious, splay mouth that falls far apart in speaking, almost as if the jaw were broken; his old cloth cap, and his thin, short figure loosely wrapped in a long, linen dust coat. Neither Aline nor I have had the courage to remonstrate with Salomon on his get up, but when Vedder regards him I burn with the desire to discharge the creature and his car, despite our contract for a month.
Barrie and I being on the spot, we could have got off, if the Vannecks--invariably late--had not been missing. In desperation I dashed into the hotel to look for them, and returned to find Somerled deep in conversation with Barrie, who was in the car. I had left her standing in the hotel doorway, with Mrs. Bal's maid: so Somerled in some way must have caused that maid to disappear, and had then forestalled me by helping Barrie into my car, tucking her comfortably in with the prettier of my two rugs.
I was just in time to hear him say ”we shall meet”--but where and when the meeting was to be, I did not know. That was the last of him for the moment, however, as I had secured the two Vannecks, and we lumbered off along the good, clear road to Linlithgow. Now it was ”up to me” to make my running with Barrie.
I like driving, though in traffic I am secretly nervous; but as Blunderbore provides no convenient perch for the chauffeur, and as Salomon trusts no man except himself, he took the wheel, and I was free to sit behind with my three guests.
I'd been wondering what Barrie's mood would be, for I felt in my bones that she was coming with us much against her will. She had not wanted to leave Edinburgh, and I was sure that she could only have resigned herself to doing so with Somerled and his Gray Dragon. I asked myself whether she guessed, or whether Mrs. James had put it into her head, that Aline and I had combined against what the girl no doubt believed to be her ”interests.” I thought it not improbable that she would openly show her distaste for the trip. As we went on, however, I began to realize that Barrie had changed subtly in the days since meeting her mother. She seemed suddenly to have grown up, to have become a woman.
Was it the heart-breaking disappointment Mrs. Bal's reception had given her? Or was it the five proposals of marriage flung at her head by those mad young men who were now--thank goodness!--being left behind us, to ”dree their own wierds?” Or was it something quite different--something which she and the heather moon alone knew?
In any case, she was quiet, even dignified in her youthful way, very polite and agreeable to the Vannecks and to me. I might have flattered myself that she was happy enough, and glad of my society, if I hadn't reflected that to sulk visibly would have been to blame Mrs. Bal.
Already I knew that loyalty was one of Barrie's everyday virtues.
Barbara could do no wrong!
While the road (though good, and historic every step of the way) remained unalluring to the eye, we chatted about Edinburgh, Barrie rejoicing in having seen as much as she had before leaving the town. She had browsed a little among the thrilling shops of Princes Street. With one eye, so to speak, c.o.c.ked up at the towering Castle Rock, with the other she had scanned the gardens, Scott's monument, and everything else worth seeing; then, with a sudden pounce, she had concentrated her gaze on immense plate gla.s.s windows displaying Scottish jewellery, Scottish books, Scottish cakes, and (to her) irrelevant Scottish tartans. Even without need of them, their witching attraction had hypnotized her to buy many of these things.
”I don't know exactly what I shall do with them,” she said; ”but I'm glad I've got them all, and I wish I had more!”
It was Mrs. James who had been with her in her triumphal progress through Princes Street; but it was I who had escorted her the whole wonderful, sordid, glorious, pitiful length of the old High Street, the Royal Mile of gorgeous ghosts. I had been there to see her face as she caught glimpses of dark wynds where long ago men had fought to the death and helped make history, where now colourful yet faded rags hang like ancient banners, from iron frames, giving a fantastic likeness to side streets of Naples: I had pointed out to her the stones which marked the place where famous ones had murdered or been murdered, or had sought sanctuary from murder. I had taken her all over the house of John Knox.
Together we had admired the oak carving in the room where he ate his simple meals; and together we looked from the little window whence he had poured his burning floods of eloquence upon the heads of the crowd below. In the curiosity shop downstairs I had bought her a silver Heart of Midlothian. She had stared into the rich dark shadows whence start out, spirit-like, faces of old oil pictures, faces of old clocks, faces of old marble busts; and she had been so charmed by the soft voice of the young saleswoman, whose flute-like tones would lure gold from a miser's pocket, that she would have collected half the things in the shop if she had had the money. I wanted to give her bits of old jewellery and miniatures of Queen Mary and Prince Charlie which she fancied, but she would accept only the silver Heart of Midlothian, which cost no more than a few s.h.i.+llings; and to-day, as I took her away from Edinburgh, she was not wearing the little ornament, as I had hoped she might.
As the road grew prettier, we tore our thoughts away from Edinburgh, and gave them to the highway illumined by history. At least, Barrie gave hers, while I lent as many of mine as I could spare from her. And I had to keep my wits about me, if I were to live up to the regulation of Know-All I'd evidently attained in her eyes.
In Linlithgow we expected to see at once the famous palace where Queen Mary was born, but nothing was visible in what the French would call the _place_, except the Town House, a new statue, and a graceful copy of an old fountain. We had to turn up an unpromising side street to find at last a beautiful little gateway between dumpy octagonal towers, such as the old masters loved to put in the background of their pictures.