Chapter X: Book II: According to Barrie (6)

So we went on to Selkirk on its hill overlooking Ettrick Water, and stopped just long enough to buy some of the celebrated "bannocks" for our picnic luncheon later on, and to have a glance at the statues of Sir Walter Scott and Mungo Park, the African traveller. Basil pretended to be shocked because I had never heard of him! "And you had never heard of Aline and me till you met us," he sighed, shaking his head. "I suppose you never heard of the sutors of Selkirk, either? The burly sutors who 'firmly stood' at Flodden when other 'pow'rful clans gave way'? Well, I'm glad, anyhow, that we aren't the _only_ people you'd never heard of!"

Basil seemed very happy, and kind, and _understanding_, somehow, as if he saw that something was not quite right with me, and he wanted to console me as well as he could.

Sir S. had managed very clearly about not letting us stop to look at the town of Burns's death until we'd seen the place of his birth and traced out the path of his life-story; but he couldn't contrive the same kind of trip for Sir Walter Scott's country without going over the whole road twice. Besides, he wanted us to see Melrose by moonlight, and said it would be "incomparably better than Sweetheart Abbey." But I knew it wouldn't be better for me, and I didn't quite forgive him for thinking it possible, now that we had got so mixed up with irrelevant people.

We had to go to Jedburgh first, the place farthest south; then to Dryburgh; then flashing through Melrose to Abbotsford, where Scott died as well as lived; and then back to Melrose for the night. That was his plan; and I still supposed that we were to go on somewhere else next day--Sunday--not arriving in Edinburgh till Monday. But it seems that Sir S. had made up his mind to a different programme, though he said nothing about it then.

Things happened to the boys' car on the way to Jedburgh, though the road was good, and only undulating. Basil said that, as a matter of fact, he had "ill-wished" them and their auto, and as "thoughts are things," he had created the nail on which their tire came to grief. "Somerled and I want to be the only ones," he added mysteriously. "We'll have no interlopers." Which would have made me think him rather a frivolous person, after all, if he hadn't been so well up in the lore of the road, and known so many interesting things about Jedburgh, the county town of Roxburghshire.

"If we curse a mere nail on a white velvet road-surface nowadays," said he, "think what the roads must have been like when Jedburgh had a royal castle, and kings and queens were travelling about from one of their houses to another! Think what Queen Mary must have had to endure, even bringing things down to modern times, comparatively. She stayed in Jedburgh town, in an old house in Queen Street--came for assizes, I think. Then, while she was there, bored to death, she heard that Bothwell was 'sick of a wound' at Hermitage Castle, over twenty miles distant. In an hour she was on her palfrey and off to see him, falling into a morass on the way. But she got back again that night, rather than her good subjects should say she neglected their affairs. She fell ill with fever after her exertions. What wouldn't she have given for a motor-car? But how she would have been bumped and bruised if she'd had one, though the roads were grand then compared to the state they'd fallen into after the Romans marched out of Scotland. Imagine the early kings and queens with their processions passing where we pass now; and armies returning from battle with their prisoners; and bands of pilgrims going to some sacred shrine; and robber hordes moving at night; and wild-beast shows on the way from one fair to another. Can't you see the panorama?"

I could, easily, picture after picture. But when you come to think of it, he'd mentioned nothing as curious as motors, which we take quietly for granted, just as our forefathers took the wild beasts and the robbers.

We had a glimpse of Burns's "Eden scenes on crystal Jed," though only enough to be aggravating, for Basil said there were prehistoric caves, and scenery enough to make a journey to Scotland worth while, if one came for nothing else. But people in motor-cars never seem to turn aside for anything. They go toward their destination like creatures possessed. So, although Jedburgh is supposed to be the most historic town of the Lowlands, we hardly looked at it in our haste to see the Abbey, and to rush on to other Abbeys--a dayful of Abbeys! Not that Jedburgh put itself out to attract us. It had rather a grim air as a town, as if it hadn't quite forgotten the fierce slogan of the Jedburgh men, who shouted "Jethart's here!" as they wielded the terrible Jethart axes invented by themselves. And one isn't allowed to go inside Queen Mary's house to see the tapestry her ladies worked.

I wished to think no abbey so beautiful as Sweetheart Abbey, which was my first, and seen on the first night of the heather moon; but I had to tell myself that Jedburgh was lovelier, in its garden on the river-bank. Dreaming of its own reflection, its hollow, window-eyes could see, deep down under a glass, all its own history and legends preserved forever as in a crystal casket; the story of saintly King David who built it, and of the French friars who left their own Abbey at Beauvais to people it; better still, of the wedding with the spectre guest--the marriage of little French Jolette to Alexander, the last of the Celtic kings. Perhaps, too, the window-eyes peering into the crystal could see the figure of Sir Walter Scott, seeking and finding inspiration in the Abbey's old tales.

Basil, who told me the stories, read in a book that "Jedburgh is completer than Kelso or Dryburgh, and simpler and more harmonious than Melrose," so when the four boys appeared at last in Dryburgh Abbey, having calmly missed out Jedburgh and Kelso to save time, I used the criticism as if it were original, with great effect; for by that time _we_ had made a side dash to see lovely Kelso, where Sir Walter went to the Grammar School, and met Ballantyne, who long afterward published his novels and brought about his bankruptcy. I heard also, read out from the same book, that the stone of Dryburgh was taken from the quarry that built Melrose, and that the name Dryburgh meant "Druid." Even the boys, I think, could hardly help feeling the mysterious, haunting charm of the place, which was as strange and secret as if the dark yew trees and Lebanon cedars guarding the ruins were enchanted Druid priests. There was a Druid urn, too, which looked as if it knew all the secrets of the ages, and had held sacrificial blood.

I could imagine Sir Walter Scott coming to Dryburgh again and again, and loving the hidden spot so well that he wanted to sleep his last sleep there. Such a peaceful sleep it must be with the Tweed singing out of sight, and yews old as legend to play lullabies upon their own harp-strings when the wind touches their dark, rustling sleeves.

The song of the Tweed at Abbotsford was the song of Inspiration, changing to the song of Fulfilment in the master's passing hour. Now, at Dryburgh, the river veils itself like a mourner, and its song is the Sleep Music which has in it the secret of death and of life beyond. I stood for a minute alone in front of the tomb where Sir Walter's body lies with those he loved best, in the place he loved best, and transparent green shadows like the spirits of shadow hid me from the sunlight. While I shut my eyes, I could understand the message of the song. And I knew that if my knight had been with me it would have come to him in the same way, because we are both of the land where the old, old secrets of wind and waves and rock are in the blood of the people, and sung by their bards. It is perhaps the mysterious kinship of far-off ancestry which draws me to him, and tells me that we two belong together--that others stand outside as strangers.

Just then I felt that it would have been worth the bother of being born only for the sake of that minute, if I had no other minutes worth living; and it seemed that some knowledge was coming back to me which souls forget as bodies grow up to manhood or womanhood. But suddenly Basil's voice broke the Music. "You look as if you were conjuring up the White Lady of Avenel, who will come to any one who knows how to call her, here at Dryburgh," he said. And I opened my eyes as if he had jerked me back by the arm from the days of the Druids to the era of motor-cars. And so he had--by the ear, not the arm. If Sir S. had spoken to me then it would have been different. I begin to think he is going to be the only Real Man in my world. But if I find that out, and he doesn't think me the only Real Girl, what will become of me?

After we had done what Mrs. West, in her pretty little tinkling voice, called "exhausting Dryburgh" (as if one could!) we went to Melrose, only four miles away, to leave our luggage at a nice hotel and take rooms for the night, before going on another mile and a half to Abbotsford. I little thought what a surprise I should have by and by, owing to this plan of action mapped out by Sir S.

The next thing that happened to us was seeing the many turreted house built by the "Wizard of the North," when his wish was to found a great Border family. He didn't realize then that he was founding a great school of romance and that all the world would be his family in mind and heart.

A book Basil had, said that the house was "ill-placed," but to me that seemed a dull and unimaginative criticism. Nowadays people may think a great deal about wide views from their windows; and if I ever build a house with a fairy wand, that's what I shall choose to have myself. But perhaps in Sir Walter's day the thing most sought for was a peaceful, sheltered outlook all to yourself and your family, like a secret garden of which only you had the key. Just such an outlook the Wizard had from his windows; and of course what he most wished for was to bring the singing Tweed into his secret garden, just as you coax a lovely wild bird, if you can whistle its own notes, under the trees it loves.

Perhaps if Sir Walter had not been able to look out over his flowers and hay-scented meadows to the friendly river, inspiration might have failed him in his troubles. But, you see, he had that secret garden of his soul; and when he was there it must have walled him into a region of peace where worries could do no more than knock at the door.

Wandering over the big house with Mrs. James and Basil (the boys in the background), I was glad, glad that Sir Walter had owned so many treasures, and collected so many curiosities; yet I felt an undertone of sadness even in the library (where the twenty thousand books are, given back by those decent bodies, his creditors), a sadness like that which must have pressed on his spirit, thinking of all the money he had paid for his home, and the beautiful things in it--all the money he would have to make out of his brain to clear away the debt. "When I do build my house, I shall have a gallery like this in the library," I said, thinking Basil was close behind me, as he had been; but instead, there was Sir S. standing silently by. Basil had gone into the study, or perhaps into the tiny "Speak a bit," to look at the wall-panelling taken from Queen Mary's bed at Jedburgh.

"That's just what I was thinking about my library," Sir S. answered, as if I had spoken to him.

"Haven't you got one yet?" I asked.

"Only an embryo library in a flat in New York--a rather nice flat. But a flat isn't home. And you know--you ought to know--the house of my heart is on a faraway island."

"The island of Dhrum?"

"Yes. I've just begun to realize that I never have had and never can have a real home out of the Highlands. Would you think me an interloper--you and the other grand MacDonalds--if I, the crofter's boy, should develop an ambition like Sir Walter's--oh, not so worthy or splendid, because _I'm_ neither worthy nor splendid--if I should wish to have the great house of the MacDonalds of Dhrum, not let to me for a term of years as it is now, but bought and paid for as my own?"

"Can the MacDonalds sell?"

"Yes, and will, if I'll pay his price. You see, he has no son, only a daughter; and she, having failed to bring off a match or two----"

(I didn't let my eyes twinkle, or my face do that weird thing, "break into a smile"; but Jack Morrison told me that Miss MacDonald had "set her cap at the great Somerled," and torn it off and stamped on it in rage because--this is Jack's slang--Sir S. "wasn't taking any.")

--"Having failed to bring off a match or two, has settled down into old-maidhood. She's an enthusiastic suffragette, and hates living out of London. The Mac of D. considers his club his castle, or a good deal better; and as he's the last of the line--not a male heir, no matter how distant--he can do as he likes with his ancestral stronghold. You know, I suppose, your father was born at Dunelin Castle?'

"Yes," I said. "I wish I'd been born there, instead of at Hillard House."

"So do I wish it. If you had been, I should have no hesitation in--er--in building the gallery round the library wall."

"You think you really will decide to buy the castle?" I asked breathlessly.

"Sometimes I think so. At other times I think, _Qui bono?_ I say to myself that I shall never have a home, or an incentive for settling down. But come along and look at Sir Walter's treasures before any one else appears."

"Where's Mrs. West?" I asked involuntarily.

"She's annexed your bodyguard for the moment--do you mind?--appealed to their innate love of horrors by showing them the picture of Queen Mary's head, painted an hour after her death by a brother of Margaret Cawood, her attendant. Suddenly I felt that, if Basil could spare you to me for ten minutes, I should like to be the one to show you a few things--the things I loved best when I came from Edinburgh to Abbotsford with a bit of the first money I ever earned by my brush."

I turned on him, opening my eyes wide. "Basil spare me!" I echoed scornfully. "I'm not his princess, even if you don't want me for yours."

"I do want you. But----"

"Oh, here he comes!" I whispered, shrill as a cricket. "Take me to see _your_ things, quickly."

So we ran away from Basil, and I had one of the happiest hours I have ever lived through; although the sight of Sir Walter's neat clothes in the glass case--the thick-soled boots, the broad-brimmed hat that covered his thoughts, the coat that covered his heart--brought tears to my eyes.

Next best, I liked the bit of Queen Mary's dress, the pocket-book worked by Flora MacDonald, Prince Charlie's "Quaich"--the cup with the glass bottom to guard the drinker against surprises--the ivory miniatures Sir Walter and his French bride exchanged, and the Rob Roy relics. Perhaps it is odd, but they were the very things Sir S. had remembered most affectionately. Last of all he showed me a toadstone amulet set in silver, a charm to prevent and ward off the spells of fairies. "If I could have had a thing like this to carry about with me in my motor-car," he said, "I should perhaps have been safe. But it's too late now."

He smiled at me with that whimsical yet kind smile which is the only sort he ever gives me since Mrs. West and Basil and the boys came. Before their day, there was a different look in his eyes. I can't tell what that difference was, but I liked the old look a thousand times better than the new, which makes me feel I may as well go into a convent. Not that I intend to do so!

Just then Basil came to say that his sister and the Vannecks were going, as Aline was tired; and would Sir S. tell her what time we were to see the Abbey. Basil and I were left together--quite as usual, lately. He made some rather nice poetical remarks about the house at Abbotsford: how marvellously it expressed the personality and tendency of Sir Walter's mind; and how it seemed to him that here was the true heart of Scotland embalmed in spices and laid in a shrine, just as Robert Bruce's heart lies at Melrose. I hardly listened, though, for I was wondering so much what Sir S. would have gone on to say about the amulet if Basil had let us alone a minute longer. But fairy fancies were in the air, in one form or other. As we walked up the narrow path which would bring us to the motor, Basil told me a dream he'd had the night before. "I thought," he said, "that I was a humble reincarnation of Thomas Ecildoune--Thomas the Rhymer--and that I was walking in the Rhymer's Glen--it isn't far out of this neighbourhood, you know--when a Vision in a magic motor-car came sprinting down the steep curve of a rainbow. In front of my feet, the Vision contrived to stop the car, or in another second it would have run over me. Out she stepped and announced that she was the Queen of the Fays, whom I would remember meeting before in my last incarnation, in the same place. Strange to say, she looked exactly like you--and I must add, she acted exactly as you do."

"Why, what was it she did?" I couldn't help wanting to know.

"She heartlessly vanished, just as I began to hope she might remain and become my muse. You always vanish--and generally with another man."

We both laughed, and were laughing still when we came up with Mrs. James and Mrs. Vanneck, Mrs. West and Sir S., who were ahead of us with the others.

It had to be sunset and moonlight together for Melrose Abbey, for the heather moon was still too young to be allowed by Mother Earth to sit up late, all alone in the sky. This was not the "pale moonlight" Sir Walter wrote of, and looked to for inspiration in his "Lay of the Last Minstrel," but a light of silvered rose which seemed made for love and joy. I thought, if an alchemist or magician should pour melted gold and silver together in a rose-coloured glass, and hold it up to the sun, it would give out a light like this. It might have been an elixir of life, for it gave back the Abbey's youth, and more than its youthful beauty. The bullet-shattered stone turned to blocks of pink and golden topaz, and each carving stood out clear, rimmed with sapphire shadow, as we wandered round the cruciform Gothic ruin, our feet noiseless on the faded velvet of the grass. Even in the darkest shadow there lay a ruby flush, like a glow of fire under a thick film of ash; but inside the Abbey was a soft, gray gloom, as if evening hid in the ruins waiting its time to come out. The Trinity window, the Calvary window, the window with the Crown of Thorns, and the east window in the chancel, which Sir Walter loved best, were all sketched against the sky in tracery of sepia and burnt amber, as I heard Sir S. saying to Mrs. West. And though I shouldn't have known what colours to use, because I'm not an artist, I could see that the tall stone shafts were like slender-trunked trees crowned with high clusters of branches, as in pictures of desert palms. I wondered if the men who carved the stone had travelled in the East and had seen palm trees rising from pale sand, black against a paler sky. And I wondered, too, if queer knots and fantastic holes in the gray trunks of oak had not put into men's minds the first idea of gargoyles.

Sir S. and Basil, who have been almost everywhere, agreed that they had seldom seen such marvellous detail of carving, so many whimsically planned and exquisitely carried out irregularities, or such lovely, well-preserved sandstone. That quarry which gave the material for Melrose and Dryburgh was a treasure-mine, and even the Romans knew and valued it. I was quite glad to find those two-agreeing about something, because ever since Basil joined us they have differed politely over nearly every subject that came up.

We had been deeply occupied with Michael Scott's supposed grave, and the story of the "dark magic" by which he divided into three, Eildon Hill, in whose caverns Arthur and his warriors still sleep their enchanted sleep; and so, when some strangers approached us, we didn't even look up. A very intelligent custodian, who has written a book about the Abbey, was showing us round at that moment, and telling things about Sir Ralph Evers, whom the Douglases killed for revenge, on Ancrum Moor, and all about the pillar with the "curly green capital." He had saved the Douglas Heart for the last, as the crowning glory in the history of Melrose; but when we'd done some sort of justice to everything else, he marched us into the presbytery where the Heart is buried, and where, according to his theory, it is commemorated in the carved stone tracery of the window.

A man with his back to us turned as we appeared, and I interrupted the custodian's learned discourse by crying out the name most sacred in the Abbey. "Mr. Douglas!" I exclaimed; for it was he--the Douglas soldier-man who was so kind, taking us all round the castle at Carlisle. He said we might meet at Edinburgh, as he was soon to have leave, and intended to visit relatives there, but it was a surprise coming on him in the shrine of his ancestors.

I thought, of course, his arriving at that minute was an extraordinary coincidence; but when Sir S. shook hands, and asked in a matter-of-fact tone, "How is it we meet here?" he confessed, as if half ashamed, that it wasn't exactly an accident. "You see, I often come to Melrose for a look round if I'm in Scotland on leave," he said, "and I saw in the paper yesterday that you were motoring in this neighbourhood, expecting to call at Dryburgh and Melrose before Edinburgh."

"Ah, yes--that interview Aline gave a journalist acquaintance of mine at Dumfries," I heard George Vanneck murmur to Basil, who looked rather cross.

"I arrived at the hotel just after you'd been there to leave your luggage and sign names in the visitors' book," Donald Douglas went on. "They said you were motoring over to Abbotsford, and would come back to see the Abbey later; so it occurred to me, if I strolled over about this time, we might run across each other."

"Quite so," remarked Sir S.; an expression I detest, it sounds so like filing iron, especially as he said it then. However, the soldier-man didn't appear to mind in the least that the Great Somerled was stiff and unsympathetic. He attached himself to me, as I was his only other real acquaintance, except Mrs. James, in the party; and of course, as he reminded me, we were very old friends--as old as the day we first saw each other in the street at Carlisle, years and years ago.

He seemed to know as much as the custodian about Melrose and the Douglas Heart--which was natural, as he so values everything connected with his family name. He told me all about the good Sir James Douglas: how King Robert Bruce when dying begged his friend to take his heart to the Holy Land, and bury it where he had wished to go and fight for Christendom as an expiation for killing the Red Comyn. It was as good as a chapter out of a novel to hear how the Douglas got permission from the new king to be gone seven years on his great adventure; how he heard on his way to Jerusalem that King Alfonso of Spain was fighting the Saracens at Granada, and couldn't resist offering his help, being sure that Robert Bruce would have done the same; how in battle against Osmyn, the Saracen king, he was hard pressed, and taking the casket with Brace's heart in it from over his own heart, he threw it far ahead of him in the enemy's ranks, shouting, "Pass first in fight, as thou wert ever wont. Douglas will follow thee or die!" And how he did both follow and die, but falling only when he had killed many Moslems and hewed his way through their bodies to where the heart lay.

"That's the old story of the Douglas Heart," said the soldier-man, "and there's a new story of the Douglas Heart I hope you'll let me tell you some day before long, because it's even more interesting--to me."

"Why, then, I expect it will be to me too," said I politely, "so why not tell it me now, in Melrose Abbey, the place of all places?"

He looked at me in an odd way, and said, "Yes, it _is_ the place of all places; but I'm afraid it's a little too early in the day----"

Just then Basil came up to announce that Mrs. James had sent him to fetch me, as we must return to the hotel and dress.

"Too bad!" I exclaimed. But as Sir S. was not far off I called to him, "Don't you think we may come back here again after dinner?"

"Certainly, if you like," he answered. "Although the moon will have gone."

"That doesn't matter," said I; "there will be stars. Mr. Douglas has a _new_ story of the Douglas Heart to tell me, which he thinks is even more interesting than the old, and it ought to be told in the Abbey."

When I explained this, Donald Douglas turned bright scarlet, and all three of the Vannecks burst out laughing, which I thought extremely rude and uncalled for. But Sir S. looked as solemn as a judge.

"No doubt he's right about it's being more interesting, and quite as credible," said he.

I don't know whether Mr. Douglas would have asked Mrs. James and me to walk over to the Abbey with him after dinner or not, if the weather had kept fine, but a thunder shower came up and it poured. So, although I teased him again to tell me the new story, when everybody but Mrs. James and he and I were playing bridge in our private sitting-room, he refused. "I'll wait till Edinburgh," he said, "if you'll let me see you there."

I had to explain that I didn't know where I should stay in Edinburgh, as that would depend upon my mother, to whom Mr. Somerled MacDonald was taking me.

"And Somerled himself, and the others?" he asked.

"Oh, they're going on," said I, "leaving me behind."

He looked delighted; so perhaps he had not forgiven the Vannecks for laughing.