Part 37 (1/2)
”Why do you suppose she can't have me the first of the week?” Barrie asked piteously, when she had shown this message.
”I can't say, I'm sure,” I cautiously replied. This was literally true.
I could not say: but I could guess. And a letter from Aline which came two or three days later, confirmed my Sherlockian deductions.
”My DEAR OLD BOY” [she wrote]: ”I was so glad to get your telegram, and meant to have written at once, but waited on second thoughts to have a little more news. It is a relief to know that Ian hasn't followed that girl. Of course I feel it as much for your sake as my own, for he is a dangerous rival to any man. It _is_ odd where he can have gone; though he may turn up here again any day, as he has left his car and chauffeur. If he had wanted to be nice, he might have offered me the use of both while he was away; but I suppose he blames me for lending myself to Mrs. Bal's wishes about Barrie. Very unreasonable of him, as you have a perfect right to do what you like with the car you've hired, and if Mrs. Bal didn't want her daughter to see too much of _him_, what fault is it of mine?
”I try to amuse myself as well as I can and forget my worries, however, and Mrs. Bal and Morgan Bennett are being very nice. I don't think he's proposed yet, or she would have told me, for we're great friends; but she's pretty sure to land him before he leaves for America, as he is to do the end of her Glasgow week, for a short business trip. I expect to be asked to congratulate them the night before he sails! What a good thing for her and _every one_ that the Vannecks can stand by you longer than we planned. I think, unless you wire me that Ian has appeared upon the scene, I'll stay with Mrs. Bal for her Glasgow week, as she has invited me, and then, when the Vannecks go to the Round House, you can bring Barrie back to her mother.”
This explained Mrs. Bal's ”best of reasons.”
Days went on, and Somerled did not come to our part of the world, which was by this time the heart of the Highlands; but I felt in my bones that Barrie was hearing from him, writing to him; that she knew what I did not know, the mystery of his absence. Of course I could have found out if she were receiving letters from him, for Somerled's handwriting is unmistakable; but villain or no villain, I had to draw the line somewhere, and I drew it at spying upon her.
Aline did go to Glasgow with Mrs. Bal. She wrote to tell me how, with Morgan Bennett in his biggest motor-car, ”_much_ higher powered and smarter than poor Ian's,” she and Mrs. Bal and George Vanneck had sped away from Edinburgh on Sunday morning early, had a look at their rooms in Glasgow, and dashed on to Arrochar, where they all stopped till Monday afternoon.
”Such an exquisite road!” [said Aline]. ”You would have loved it.
High green bank on one side, with cataracts of bracken delicate as maidenhair; dark rocks, wrapped in velvet moss. Trees holding up screens of green lace between your eyes and the blue water of the loch. Pebbles white and round as pearls, or silver coins dropped by fairies in a big ”flit.” That's one of _your_ similes! Gra.s.s running down to the edge of the water, and full of bluebells. Water the colour of drowned wallflowers. I don't believe your Highland lochs can be prettier or more idyllic, though this is so close to Glasgow.
”We have had a day going through the Kyles of Bute, too--the same party: and a marvellous run along the sh.o.r.es of the Clyde to Skelmorlie. Such red rocks there, and even the sand red. There was a pink haze over everything, like a perpetual sunset. I'm not sure which was better, that, or a trip to Crinan. The dearest little place at the end of the Crinan ca.n.a.l--just a flower-draped hotel, and a sea-wall and a lighthouse, with a distant murmur of 'Corrievrechan's tortured roar,' mingled with the crying of gulls.
What a place for you and Barrie to spend your honeymoon! You see, I speak as if it were certain. Anyhow, I'm sure it all depends on yourself. _Courage, mon brave_!”
But that is exactly the quality which the villain of the piece lacks at present.
BOOK IV
WHAT BECAME OF BARRIE
I
Letter From Barrie Macdonald To Ian Somerled Macdonald
DEAR SIR KNIGHT: I was glad the morning we saw Mrs. James off that you said you'd like to hear from me, and if I needed help or comfort in any trouble I must let you know. I haven't such an excuse for writing to you now, but you did say that you wanted to hear anyway, and that you'd find out where we were going, so you could wire me your plans. Now I've had two telegrams from you, and a letter; and if they hadn't come I should have been disappointed.
I thought we might have seen you and the Gray Dragon before this, but the telegrams have made me understand. That is, I _don't_ understand, because what you tell me sounds very mysterious. Still, as you went back to Carlisle and are now in London, it is no use hoping to see the Gray Dragon's bonnet flash into sight round some complicated Highland corner.
What _could_ have taken you to call on Grandma again? I am almost dying of curiosity. You say 'perhaps you may be able to explain when we meet': but everybody is saying that to me, just now--at least, Barbara is, about not letting me go back to Glasgow till the end of her week there--so it is rather aggravating. Still, it is good to know that we may meet. I wonder when? You don't give me a hint, and it stirs up my curiosity from deeper depths to be told, as if you half expected me to guess what you mean, that 'you're in London for reinforcements.' Shall I ever know? It seems a long time since I said good-bye to you in front of the Caledonian Hotel. Not that I'm having a dull trip. I should be very dull myself if that were true, for everything is beautiful, and every one kind. It is the most wonderful luck for a girl like me, who had never seen anything in her life, suddenly to be seeing all Scotland. But I had grown rather _used_ to seeing things with you and Mrs. James, after I escaped from the 'gla.s.s retort,' and I can't accustom myself yet to being with others, and you far away--Mrs. James too, of course.
I try to console myself if I feel a tiny bit homesick, thinking how happy she is, and how wonderful everything is going to be for her and her strange, unpractical doctor. It was splendid of you to give him all that money. But wouldn't it have been fun if he could have come over, instead of her going to him? Maybe, if it had turned out so, you would be in the Highlands now.
Do you remember how I used to say that _my_ tour under the heather moon would soon be over, but you would be going on just as if we had never met? Well, it has turned out quite differently, hasn't it, for both of us? Only the heather moon is the same. But I never talk of her now that you are gone.
I don't want you to think I am ungrateful to _any one_, if I sign myself, Your rather homesick little 'princess,'
BARRIE.
P.S.--It does not seem right to have crossed over the borderline into our Highlands without you!
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER