Chapter VIII: Book II: According to Barrie (4)

Several ideas presented themselves with a bow: a wish to be happy: but that wasn't "concrete" enough, as Sir S. would say. A wish to be very rich and able to do anything in the world I might like to do; but being rich sounds so fat and uninteresting--or else bald-headed; for nearly all the photographs in picture papers of desperately rich people are one or the other, or both. At last I began to be nervous, for if Sir S. or Mrs. James (who was close by) should speak before I'd given my wish to the new moon, she'd be unable to grant it, even with the best intentions. That is a well-known fact in connection with wishing by the moon. I have it on the authority of both Mrs. Muir and Heppie. Being in a hurry, I grew confused, and so could think of nothing more important than to wish for my knight never to forget me in future, wherever he may be. And just as I'd finished, he said, "Well? What did you wish?"

Of course I couldn't tell him such a wish as that; but, luckily, you must never let anybody know what you've wished by a moon or a star, if you want the wish to come true.

I explained this to Sir S., and he said, as far as he was concerned, it didn't matter, for he hadn't wished after all. "Oh, what a waste of the heather moon!" I cried, for it really seemed too bad. But he answered that the only thing he particularly wished for just then was a thing which wasn't fair to wish, on account of the 'other party concerned.' I laughed, and said if he had _wished_ to wish, he had wished, in spite of himself, and the heather moon had heard; because that's the business of any well-trained new moon, and the heather moon is the best-trained of the year. "'The other party concerned' must just take the risk," I said. "And very likely 'twill be the best thing for him, her, or it in the end."

"I daren't hope that," said he, looking up at the silver sickle as earnestly as if we weren't talking nonsense.

"Don't you think the heather moon knows best?" I reproached him. But he did not answer, and only hummed under his breath, as we walked to the waiting car:

"How far, how far to Gretna?
It's years and years away--
And coach-and-four shall nevermore
Fling dust across the day."

All the way along the shadowy, switchback road from Dumfries going to Sweetheart Abbey (I like to write the name, it is so pretty and old-fashioned) we had glimpses of the moon scattering silver through the tree branches as she fell down the west. I thought the soft white curve like a baby's arm, rounded at the elbow; and it waved us good-night over the heather-clad mound of Criffel, as a baby might wave over the fat shoulder of a big nurse dressed in purple. It is _cheek_ of Criffel to call itself a mountain, and of course it wouldn't dare to if there were other real mountains within twenty-five miles.

When I made this remark Mrs. James asked me where, in my sequestered life, I had got hold of such an unladylike word as "cheek," but I told her I must have been born knowing it, as there was never a time in my memory when I didn't. Also Mr. Douglas had used it several times in Carlisle Castle.

"Haven't you forgotten him yet?" asked Sir S.

"It would be silly to forget, and have to make his acquaintance over again at Edinburgh," I said. "He asked me particularly to think of him during our trip whenever I should see the Douglas Heart. Now I have just seen it at Lincluden."

"Douglas Heart indeed! Douglas cheek!" I heard Sir S. mutter.

There is one part of that road between Dumfries and Sweetheart Abbey I shall never forget: the view from Whinny Hill--a sudden view springing from behind trees, as if a green curtain had been pulled back from a picture. In this picture there were the silver Nith, and purple Criffel of course (which always tries to get itself noticed wherever you turn), a great forty-foot monument put up to commemorate Waterloo; and again the red triangle of Caerlaverock glowing on the green shore of the Solway Firth.

I suppose the people who were shy of seeming sentimental insisted on calling Sweetheart Abbey New Abbey. I can imagine Sir S. voting for the change, because I fancy that he would endure torture rather than be thought sentimental. He describes a place or a thing or a person glowingly, then hurries to cap his description with a few joking or even ironical words, lest he should be suspected of romance or enthusiasm.

The village is called New Abbey too, so it is safe to mention that to the driest person. It was just beginning to be evening, an evening softly gray as doves' wings folding down, when our Dragon sidled toward an inn it saw, quite a nice little inn, where Sir S. announced that we would stop the night. Before going in, however, he took us to look at a queer bas-relief built into the wall of a whitewashed cottage on the left side of the road. It showed three ladies industriously rowing a boat across the ferry--pious dames who brought all the stones from Caerlaverock, on the other side of the Solway, to build the Abbey.

"Rock of the Lark" is a delightful name, but Sweetheart Abbey is prettier, and the reason of the name is the prettiest part. Only I wish that the devoted Devorgilla who built the Abbey of Dolce Cor to be a big sacred box for the heart of her husband had had a worthier object of worship than the king, John Balliol. All the history I have ever read makes him out to be a weak and cowardly and rather treacherous person; but, as Sir S. said, "Mirabeau judged by the people and Mirabeau judged by his friends were two men"; and I suppose John must have put himself out to be charming to Devorgilla, or she wouldn't have wandered about with his heart in an ebony box inlaid with silver, and insisted on having it on the table in front of her when she ate her dinner. That was one way of keeping her husband's heart during her whole lifetime--and even after death, for of course she had it buried with her. It must have been glad of a little rest by that time, the poor heart, for it had so much travelling to do. I suppose it even went as far as Oxford when Devorgilla founded Balliol College.

The last shaft of the sun was turned off the rose-coloured ruin and the secluded valley where the cross-shaped Abbey hides from the world; and the moon was gone, too, swept away like a tiny boat on a wave of sunset. Still, it was full daylight, and Sir S. announced that he had a plan. This plan was for us to go (as soon as we'd seen our rooms, which he had engaged by telegram) and get permission to enter the Abbey by twilight, when no one else was there.

The little gray inn of the town looked no bigger than a good-sized private house, but it was the very first hotel of my life, and I regarded it as an Epoch, with a capital E. That point of view was upheld later by the heavenly scones and honey they gave us--heather honey, gold as the heather moon. And we had cool, clean rooms, suitable for the dreaming of sweet dreams. _My_ dreams there seemed very important.

The great Somerled can of course get anything he wants to ask for if he chooses to reveal himself--anyhow, in Scotland; because already I am beginning to learn that even the smallest or humblest Scottish peasant knows all that's worth knowing, not only of the past but of the present, and has heard of all the celebrities. Maybe there might be miniature places in England, America, Germany, or France where the poor and uneducated would know nothing of Somerled the painter and millionaire. But in Scotland, apparently, though there are many poor, there are no uneducated persons. Those to whom his being a painter would mean nothing would be interested in his money. Those who didn't care for his millions of dollars would have read about his painting: and all would value him because he belongs to Scotland.

As soon as our luggage was in our rooms and dinner ordered, Sir Somerled inquired if we were ready for the Abbey; but Mrs. James mildly asked if we would mind going without her. She had begun to realize that she was tired, and would like to rest. She could go by herself to the Abbey early in the morning before starting time. I felt that I ought to mind more than I did, but I couldn't help liking to be with Sir S. alone. It seemed like the night of our first meeting; for some one had always been with us, more or less, ever since. It was only a short stroll through the village, not enough to call a walk. A dear little lady who lives in a nice cottage close to the ruin opened the iron gate, but she did not go in with us, because it was time for her supper. She had a photograph done from one of the great Somerled's most famous pictures, and if he had been a long she could not have been more polite.

At first, the inside of the shell-like Abbey with the beautiful name was a disappointment. The green grass was encumbered with tasteless graves and flat modern stones which looked as if they had lain down there without permission.

We wandered about rather forlornly for a while, until we found Devorgilla's thirteenth-century tomb. Sir S. told me her history, and waked the sad old place to living interest. I seemed to see the ever-loving lady, followed by her chosen maidens carrying the heart in its ebony and silver box. And together we made up a theory, that of every event _something_ reminiscent lingers on the spot where it happened. If only our eyes were different, we should be able, wherever we went, to see filmy, mysterious pictures painted on air--fadeless, moving photographs of all the people and all the deeds which have made up the world's history.

This set us talking of our own pictures, which we are leaving behind us as we go through life; and I couldn't help thinking how he and I, in accordance with this idea, will for ever and ever go on being "married" at Gretna Green. I laughed at the thought, and he asked me why, so I told him.

"When you're marrying your real wife, years from now maybe, and have forgotten my existence, that scene will still be enacting itself," I said, "not only on the films the photograph men took, but on air films. Doesn't it frighten you?" I asked.

"Doesn't it frighten you?" he echoed. "Because you will marry. I never shall."

"How do you know?" I catechized him.

"If I can't have the wife I want, I'll have none."

"Perhaps you can have the one you want if you ask her nicely."

"I don't intend to ask. I'm not the right one for her."

"You might let her decide that!" I nobly said, for Mrs. West may be the woman. "I do hope, if men ever love me, they'll tell me so."

"No fear! They will." He laughed more loudly than I have heard him laugh.

"But the right one mayn't, if he thinks as you do."

"He won't. He'll be thinking only of himself. But look here, my girl, be sure you _do_ take the right one when you marry; for if in my opinion you're likely to make a big mistake when the time comes, I may be tempted to put a spoke in the fellow's wheel."

"Please do!" I laughed.

"You think I'm joking," he said, watching me in a way he has, between narrowed lids, his eyes almost black in the twilight. "And so I am to a certain extent. Yet I might forbid the banns, perhaps--if I chose."

"But how?"

"Haven't you any idea?"

"Not half a one."

"Then I won't tell. It would only worry you--for nothing. Marry in peace, when your Prince comes, and I'll send you my blessing--from far away."

"I don't like to think of your being far away," I said. "Let's not talk of it. For you are my only friend--except Mrs. James. And you're so different."

"I thank Heaven!" he said. "And I thank her for wanting a rest. Good as she is, three would be a crowd in Sweetheart Abbey."

Speaking of her made me think of the time. We had promised Mrs. James to go back in half an hour for dinner! Already more than half an hour had slipped away as we made our air-film photographs to haunt Sweetheart Abbey with all its other ghosts.

The twilight was changing to a light more mysterious, and as we looked at each other through the opal haze I felt strangely that we were changing too. It was as if our realities were less real than the shadow pictures which were to live on here together forever--as if our bodies, which would go away and separate, to live different lives far away from one another, would not be _us_ any more.

I could not have imagined so wonderful a light as that which illuminated the great rose-window and filled the vast broken shell of the Abbey. It was as if the day had been poured out of a cup, and night was being slowly poured in--the dove-gray night of dreams. It was pale, yet not bright like the light of dawn. It was more like a light glimmering over a sheet of water, a light made of the water itself. Almost I expected to see the Heart rise up in the ebony and silver box, and the box opening.

"You look like a young seeress," my Knight said. "What is it that you see with your great eyes gazing through the dusk?"

"I see--a heart," I answered. "I think I see a heart."

"That is very intelligent of you," he said, in a changed tone. "Come, child, it's time I took you home."

"Is there the ghost of a heart floating here?" I asked, wishing to linger. But he took my hand and drew me toward the gate.

"To me," he said dryly, "it appears to be a real heart--almost too real for comfort."

We walked back to the inn, and he was uninterestingly commonplace all the way. He talked about dinner, and buying petrol for the car, and told me dull facts about tiresome things called carburettors. It would have been a horrid anticlimax, spoiling all the romance of Sweetheart Abbey, if he had not changed later on. But he did change. There was a little piano in the sitting-room they gave us, and Mrs. James began drumming out a few Scotch airs, warbling the words in a high, thin voice rather like that of an intelligent insect. There was one tune I knew, and I couldn't resist joining in. At the end Sir S. applauded.

"What a pity her grandmamma wouldn't let her take lessons, as I once ventured to suggest!" said Mrs. James. "She has a true ear, and a sweet voice wonderfully like her mother's, which I quite well remember. But Mrs. MacDonald had the idea that music lessons would lead to vanity. Don't you think, sir" (she often slips in a respectful "sir"), "that her voice would repay instruction?"

"I do," pronounced the great Somerled.

"I'm sure _you_ sing," went on Mrs. James. "I flatter myself I can always tell by people's faces."

"Like Barrie, I never had lessons," he said. "But I suppose we Highlanders are born with music in our blood."

"Then you do sing?" she persisted.

"Only to please myself. Not that it does!"

"Will you sing to please us?"

"It wouldn't please you."

"Barrie, _you_ ask."

"The Princess commands!" I said, not expecting him to humour my impudence, but he did, by going at once to the piano. It had lisped and stammered awkwardly for Mrs. James, but it obeyed him as if the keys were mesmerized. He played a prelude, and then sang "Annie Laurie," in a soft, mellow voice, so low that people outside the room could hardly have heard. It seemed as if there must really be an "Annie Laurie" in his life. Surely a man could not sing like that, and look like that in singing, unless he called up the face of some woman he loved. I wondered if he thought of Mrs. West, who is so very pretty, and rather like the description of "Annie Laurie." His eyes looked far away as he sang, through the wall--oh, yes, I'm sure they could see through the wall at that moment--perhaps as far as "Maxwellton Braes"; perhaps still farther, searching for Mrs. West wherever she might be.

I don't know how it would make one feel if such a man with such a voice looked into one's eyes and sang a song of love. I'm afraid it might make one rather foolish. But it was only at the wall that Sir S. stared until he began a very different song--the lament of a Highlander who would nevermore see his island home nor the love of his youth. It was a heart-breaking song; and though his voice was pitched so low it was almost like singing in a whisper, there was a strange, vibrating power in it, as there is in the strings of a violin touched but lightly by the bow. Sir S. transferred his attention from the wall to me as he sang this sad old ballad, and I could not look away, because there was the same compelling power in his eyes as in his voice. No doubt it was only of the song he thought, not of me at all, really; yet I could not shake off the haunting impression of the look, and it made me dream of him all night. I saw him standing beside me in the strange, pale twilight of Sweetheart Abbey. And in his hand was a box of ebony, inlaid with silver, which he held out. But when I took the box it was locked, and he had no key. "Only the key of the rainbow will open this box," he said. And then I woke up, feeling somehow as if the dream were of importance, and I must try to find out why.

VII

Next morning when I saw Sir S. I felt confused and vaguely ashamed, as if something had happened. But, of course, nothing had happened, nothing at all. I kept on reminding myself of that until I was at ease again. And his manner helped me to realize how silly I was, for almost he seemed to go out of his way to put on the commonplace air I had disliked. It was as if he wrapped himself up in a big, rough coat, smelling of tobacco smoke, and rather old and shabby, with the collar well turned up.

We started early, long before eight, and Mrs. James remarked, while we were dressing--calling out from her room to mine through the open door--that there was more credit for Sir S. than for us in liking an early start. Many men as successful and flattered and rich as he, she said, would have grown luxurious in their tastes, and lazy. They would loathe getting up at six, and staying in tiny hotels, and fussing about to help their chauffeurs when anything went wrong with their cars. They would hate so much having to pack bags and look after themselves that they would find it impossible to enjoy travelling without a valet; but here was this man, used to every luxury, and able to command it, putting himself to trouble of all sorts and even enduring hardships as cheerfully as a "little bank clerk out for a holiday with his sister and aunt."

I agreed with her, and I suppose bank clerks are as interesting a class as any; but I'm glad Sir S. is not one. And it is more fun being his princess than his sister. Mrs. James may be his aunt if she likes. I wouldn't be it for all his millions.

He asked her again if she would like to try the front seat, but she politely refused, and then, with his rough-coat, turned-up-collar-air, he invited me to take it. Something deep down in me, like a little live creature whispering, told me to make him turn down that collar and throw off that rough coat. It did seem such a _waste_, to have him wearing his commonplace airs while we travelled through the most adorable country we had seen yet. I wanted him and me and the scenery all to be romantic together, and so I told him at last. "But if I'm determined to keep on the safe side of romance?" he said.

"If you've decided to be dull and disagreeable," I threatened, "I shan't give you the 'rainbow key' when I find it. I'll hand it over to somebody else."

"Will you?" he said. "Be sure the somebody else deserves it, then."

This annoyed me. Because I'm looking for the rainbow key for _him_, not somebody else. "At present I don't happen to know anybody else I'd care to give it to," I remarked.

"Ay," said he, "there's the rub. You know so few. But it will be different when the princess has a dozen knights all in the competition."

"Perhaps other knights won't notice that I'm a princess."

"Judging from what I've observed, I think they'll be quick to notice that."

"Well, it remains to be seen."

"Just so. It remains to be seen." His voice sounded sad or bored, so I tried to be tactful for once, like Mrs. West, and changed the subject.

This was the road which Carlyle thought the most beautiful in the kingdom. Going to Mainsriddle and Dalbeattie we skimmed through dark, haunted-looking woods, to sudden glimpses of far-down yellow sands and floating forms of mountains. The tide was running out or running in, veining the floor of gold with misty blue traceries, and making bright pools like bits of broken glass. The trees along our way were a procession of benevolent giants holding green umbrellas over our heads, because they mistook us for expected royalties; and on the smooth white surface of the road they had scattered shadows like torn black Spanish lace. Criffel followed us everywhere, trying jealously to keep us from noticing that the noble mountains of Cumberland were still watching us out of sight, across the Solway Firth. And indeed, Criffel, with some small brother hills he had to-day collected, like the hasty gathering of a clan, did manage to destroy the effect of distance so far as he and his brethren were concerned. He and all the rest, no matter how far off, pushed themselves into the foreground by means of their colour, so violent a purple that it struck at the eyes, and vibrated in the ears like rich wild notes of an organ rolling over the uplands of Scotland. Only the sands and the sea looked distant, though really they were near; and I worried about the groups of cattle gossiping so pleasantly together about their cuds and calves. They had a placid air of ignoring such large facts of life as incoming tides, and could never have read what happened to Mary and her cows on the sands of Dee, a resort only less fashionable in the cattle world than their own.

Lights on sky and sands, seen through the netting of tree branches, were like sweet bursts of laughter in the forests; and the glory of the heather was a wordless song in praise of Scotland. Yet in these flying Galloway landscapes there was an impression of the mystic and melancholy, which reminded Sir S. of "The Twilight of the Gods": strange purple rocks jutting out into water coldly bright as a sheet of mercury, and desolate islands remote and haunted as the place where Gunter and his sister lived in the opera. We seemed to be travelling through vast, lonely places, though it was but a part of Galloway, and all Scotland is but small--just large enough to give an eyeful of beauty always.

When we came to the sparkling granite town of Dalbeattie (a miniature Aberdeen, Sir S. called it) instead of going straight on toward Kirkcudbright we turned westward to see the great stronghold of the Black Douglases. It was no more than seven easy miles to Castle Douglas, a little modern town all laid out in rectangles. Sailing straight through, we came out on the edge of Carlingwark Loch, which rings a few green islets with silver; and taking a side road we were close to the river Dee. There, on a cushion of an island, only big enough to hold it, rose the great ruin of Thrieve Castle, the home of the proud and magnificent Douglases. Once boats must have carried the knights and ladies back and forth between the mainland and the fourteenth-century fastness of old Archibald the Grim. But now I saw a line of half-submerged stepping-stones, the only way of crossing in these days when there is no fighting or feasting at Thrieve, and no "tassel" dangling from the knoblike "hanging stone" over the great gate.

"Workers of high-handed outrage!
Making King and people grieve,
O the lawless Lords of Galloway!
O the bloody towers of Thrieve!"

Sir S. quoted as we stared up at the giant keep, seventy feet high, with its tremendous walls. "They were a terrible power in the land, that family, at their greatest, when they lorded it over Galloway and Annandale, and owned Touraine and Longueville in France, and used to ride out with a retinue of a thousand picked horsemen."

"That nice soldier yesterday--Mr. Douglas at Carlisle--thinks they were a _charming_ family," said I. "He has an old proverb something like this:

"So many, so good as of Douglases have been
Of one surname in Scotland never yet was seen."

and he told me a great deal about the Douglas Heart."

"He would!" mumbled Sir S. "There were good hearts and bad hearts among them, but all were great hearts in the old days; anyhow, I'm not surprised that Crockett got inspiration from this place when he used to play here, coming over from Castle Douglas, where he was at school. He must have had his head buzzing with story plots when he'd climbed up inside the walls and crawled out to sit astride of the hanging stone. I'll warrant he saw Maclellan beheaded in the courtyard while Sir Patrick Gray, the King's messenger, supped with Douglas; and heard Mons Meg fire off the first granite cannon-ball, that shot away the hand of the Countess as she held a wine-glass up, drinking confusion to her enemies. No wonder little boy Crockett got absent-minded one day, when he dropped his watch instead of a pebble in wanting to test the time the stone would take to fall."

The next bit of Crockett-lore I heard was at Auchencairn in the deep, indented bay we'd reached by turning south for the coast again. There, it seemed, we were in the heart of Crockettland, for Hestan Island is the Rathan Island of the "Raiders." All round was sweet, welcoming country, low mountains and rippling meadows, where it seemed that the Douglas soldiers had laid their glittering helmets down in long straight ranks on a carpet of cloth o' gold. Over these fields of garnered wheat came a breeze from the sea, with a tang of salt like a tonic mixture, and there was a murmurous sound on the air, a message from the tide.

There were hundreds of historic things to see, in every direction, if we had had time for all: traces of the Attecott Picts; Pict forts and tombs, castles of the Middle Ages; robber caves; Convenanters' monuments; and at Balcarry, near Auchencairn, the landing-place of the smuggler Yawkins, who was Scott's "Dirk Hatteraick." But we had only five days for everything before the Great Day--which will be coming so soon now. From Auchencairn we turned inland to a rolling country where the Gray Dragon would be down one hill and halfway up another before he knew what had happened. At Dundrennan--"Hill of the Thorn Bushes"--he had his first mishap; but after the surprise of thinking a bomb had exploded, I was glad he'd seized just that opportunity of bursting a tire, because it gave us more time for the Abbey than we should have given ourselves.

While the chauffeur made the dragon's toilet, patching up a fat white foot as he might have doctored the pad of an elephant, we wandered about, and finally decided to lunch in a secluded corner of the twelfth-century ruins.

Mrs. James and I set out our picnic-table, a folding thing that Sir S. carries in the car, and we counted on having the place to ourselves. Tourists though we are, we scorn other tourists. But it seems incredible that such as they can scorn us. We talked about Queen Mary and of her last meal within those walls, and it felt sacrilegious to laugh and joke where she had been so sad. We pictured her, young and beautiful, taking leave of the loyal men who had begged her in vain not to trust Elizabeth; and we could fancy the town turning out to see her vessel set sail--a very different town it would have been then from the charming little place it is to-day, with its low white cottages half covered with flowers, the spotless walls as clean as damask tablecloths, and all so gay and bright to the eye that grim Dundrennan Abbey in its midst is like a skull fallen in a rose-garden.

"Ah," sighed Mrs. James, shaking her head, with a jam puff in her hand, "if the Queen had listened to Maxwell she might have lived in safety to be an old woman!"

"True, she might have kept her head," Sir S. agreed, comfortably cutting himself a piece of plum cake; "but if she'd taken Maxwell's advice, instead of sailing from Port Mary, never to see Scotland again, wouldn't the whole civilized world miss its best-loved heroine of romance? No other woman since history began has so captured the hearts of men, and made herself so adored through the centuries, in spite of all her faults, or because of them. Mary Stuart and Napoleon Bonaparte are the two figures in history of whom no one ever tires of talking or reading."

"Still, we must be sad at Dundrennan, where her last night in Scotland was spent," Mrs. James mildly persisted, having eaten her puff while Sir S. argued. "I wonder if Michael Scott the magician, who lived here (he comes into the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," you know), had prophetic visions of Queen Mary and her fate? I should think so, for he had the secret of all sorts of spells. The people of the neighbourhood believed that he'd locked up the plague in an underground room of the Abbey, and for years they dared not excavate for fear the demon should leap out and ravage the country. They used to think they could hear a rustling----"

At that instant we heard one ourselves; a distinct rustling fell upon our ears, and made us turn round with a start. The plague we feared was tourists; but if it had been Michael Scott's demon, with a scarlet body and a green head, I should have liked it better than Mrs. West's pale purple coat and motoring bonnet. I don't know how Sir S. felt about the surprise, but that was _my_ feeling, though I was glad to see her brother. I find him the nicest thing about Mrs. West.

"Who would have thought of running against you?" she exclaimed, as Sir S. jumped up from the table and shook hands as cordially as if there had never been that mysterious row. "We've come from Port Mary, where Basil sentimentalized over the stone Queen Mary stood on to get into her ship. We haven't the patience to make our notes before luncheon! We're _so_ hungry, and there's such a lot to write about King David--_do_ you think he built the Abbey, or was it Fergus, Lord of Galloway?--and all this architecture which interests Basil even when he's starving! We've brought our own sandwiches--we won't bother you----"

Of course Sir S. and Mrs. James both protested that having them was a pleasure, not a bother. As for me, I remembered that little girls should be seen and not heard, so I said nothing, and ate the nicest cake for fear Mrs. West might get it. Sir S. gave his place at the table and his folding-chair to Mrs. West, and finished his luncheon, standing up, with Mr. Norman. After all, Mrs. West didn't seem to be hungry. She ate scarcely anything, and when Sir S. asked her to have some ice-cold white wine from the refrigerator basket, she said with a soft, sad smile, "'I drink to thee only with mine eyes.'" Then, suddenly, hers filled with tears, so they were liquid enough for a good long drink! She looked down again quickly, with a blush which gave her complexion a peach-like bloom; and Sir S. made haste to question Mr. Norman about the hired car. But I could see that he was embarrassed and distressed, and wondered more than ever what their quarrel was about. Sir S. wouldn't listen to me the first day, when I said it was my fault, and I oughtn't to go in his car. I'd almost forgotten that, it seemed so long ago; but I remembered when I saw the tears in her eyes, and heard the strained sound in his voice. Even Mr. Norman didn't look happy. Mrs. James was the only one not affected. She ate her luncheon with a good appetite, which the sorrows of neither Mrs. West nor Queen Mary could take away from her.

When we had finished, Mrs. West asked Sir S. in a gentle hesitating way if he would mind explaining to her the beautiful Gothic doorway at the south side of the church. It was such a chance to find a great authority on architecture, like him, upon the very spot, for she and Basil were so ignorant, they always feared to make mistakes in their notes. Sir S. went like a lamb led by a chain of roses, but apparently Mr. Norman didn't feel the same need of expert advice. He stopped with Mrs. James and me, and helped us clear the table. When we'd packed everything up, he offered to take the basket to the car; and, as the others hadn't come back, I went with him, carrying the folding-chairs, which were not much heavier than three feathers.

"Have you remembered my advice?" he inquired. "Have you begun to write?"

"Yes, a little," I said. "What about your book?"

He shrugged his shoulders, looking melancholy.

"Won't the plot come right?" I asked.

"No. Nothing comes right."

"What a pity!"

"Yes, it's a pity. But I can't help it."

"Can't Mrs. West help?"

"She's not in the mood. Not that it's all her fault. Probably it's just as much mine. We're getting on each other's nerves--and that's new to us. There won't be a book. There can't be a book as things are."

"Yet you're going on with your trip?"

"Oh, yes, we're going on with our trip. Aline wouldn't give that up."

"If it hadn't been for me," I said, "it would have been all right for you both. I feel a _beast_! I've spoiled everything."

"You're a witch, and you've bewitched us. Yes! That's what you have done."

"Thanks for your polite way of putting it," said I. "'Witch' is a nicer epithet than 'beast.' I wish--I almost wish--I'd never seen any of you!"

"I don't," said he. "And I don't believe Somerled does. To go back to the time when we didn't know that the witch-child existed would be going back from electricity to candles."

"You have a pretty way of poking fun at me," I laughed. "But I suppose you mean I've given you all a shock. Well, you'll soon be rid of me. Three days more, and the end! But I do wish I knew how to mend matters and make you and your sister happy again, at once."

"I could tell you how," he said quickly.

"Do, then! You've just time, if you hurry up before the others come."

He looked round, and there were Mrs. James and Mrs. West walking toward us with Sir S. They were very near.

He hesitated, and his face grew red. "Will you promise not to be angry?" he almost whispered.

"I promise! Tell me."

"If you want to make everything come right for everybody in a minute, you must turn your attention entirely to me."

"What good would that do?" I asked stupidly.

"It would do me all the good in the world, because, as I told you, you've bewitched me. It would do my sister good because--well, because she's particularly anxious for you to like me. And it would do Somerled good because--it might teach him his own mind--bring him to his senses."

"I don't understand one word you're talking about!" I broke out.

"It doesn't so much matter what you understand as what you do. Dear little Miss MacDonald, will you try and be very, very kind to me, for--everybody's sake?"

"Of course," said I. "But you must call me Barrie."

"Thank you! That's one step. Will you call me Basil?"

"If you like," I answered. "Basil and Barrie! Don't they sound nice together?"

Just then the others came up and heard what I said, which made me feel foolish, as they'd missed the first part. But Mrs. West beamed at me. I had been thinking that Basil Norman was the sort of man I should love to have for a brother, but Mrs. West as a sister I could _not_ stand!

"Basil and Barrie _look_ nice together too, don't they, Mr. Somerled?" she remarked.

"Very," said he dryly. And the next thing I knew was that she was sitting beside him on the front seat, and I was tucked in beside Mrs. James, with Basil Norman opposite. Their motor, it seemed, was not behaving well, and Aline was nervous, so Sir S. had suggested, as we were all going on to Ayr, that they should come with us for the rest of the day.

I felt rather dazed about everything, and I'm afraid made a hash of the scenery in my mind, until I had calmed down. I remember that we swept through Kirkcudbright, which was named for St. Cuthbert because his bones were once in the church. They were taking them on somewhere else, but I don't know why. Basil told us all about it; but it sounded so odd to hear him talking instructively of saints and Covenanters and martyrs, and "the torch of religion being first lighted in Galloway," after he had been begging me in a very different voice to "be nice to him," that it muddled up my intelligence. I liked the town because it was pretty, with graceful spires and lovely, ivied ruins; but I didn't care much about the saints, or even about the last Lord Selkirk, for whom they put up a Celtic cross in the Kirkcudbright market place; and I couldn't be bothered pronouncing Kirkcudbright correctly. Of course it's done in the last way you think it possibly could be, like all other Scottish names! I brightened up a little at the story of Paul Jones at St. Mary's Isle, because pirates are always nice, and he was classic. Besides, it was amusing of him to fail to kidnap Lord Selkirk and steal a silver teapot instead. To please Benjamin Franklin he gave the teapot back, so he didn't get much out of that adventure!

I remember too that there were hills on the way to Gatehouse of Fleet, hills which turned their backs and reared on their hind legs as we saw them in the distance; but always they knelt meekly in front of the Gray Dragon, as if he beat them to their knees. They were not so accommodating to the hired car which followed. Something was the matter with its internal economy. It grunted and groaned and emitted evil-smelling fumes because it couldn't digest its petrol. Basil named the creature Old Blunderbore, but said he would not dare to call it so before its chauffeur-owner, who glared behind his goggles when it was blamed for anything.

Gatehouse of Fleet looked, according to Basil, like places in Holland, because sailing ships were apparently moving through fields, and masts mixing themselves up with tree branches. Suddenly we had plunged into Scott country, sandwiched in with Crockett, for Gatehouse is the "Kippletingan" of "Guy Mannering." There was a sweet, sad smell of the sea; and I heard Mrs. West ask Sir S. if it didn't remind him of "that last night on the ship, when we told each other things?"

About this time, I think it must have been, we began to see so many old castles dotted about the landscape that at last we almost ceased to notice them. It must have been nice living in one of those box-like fortress castles in old days, when all your friends had them too; so jolly and self-contained. And, as a matter of course, when you built one you had a few dungeons put in, just as one has plenty of bathrooms now in a big house. If you were of a dramatic turn of mind, you placed your dungeons mostly under your dining-hall, so you could hear the starving prisoners groan while you feasted comfortably. We passed several dear little towns, too, which I should like to have for toys, to keep in boxes when not playing with them. On most of the houses were charming chimney-pots of different colours, exactly like immense chessmen, set out ready for a game. All the men in these towns looked almost ill with intelligence. Most of the girls were very pretty, with little coquettish features contradicted by saintly expressions, and even the dogs appeared well educated and intellectual.

At Newton-Stewart a change came over the houses, but not the people or animals. I felt that the smallest child would know more about books than I did; and there was hardly a nondescript face to be seen. All could be classified in historic Scottish types. But the whitewashed, thatched cottages in the suburbs would have looked Irish if they had not been too preternaturally clean. In the streets of Newton-Stewart there was not so much as a stray stick or bit of paper. It looked to me a deeply religious place, and Basil said perhaps it was trying to be worthy of St. Ninian, who first brought Christianity to Scotland. He was a native of the Solway shore, but went to Rome, where they liked him very much and made him a bishop. Then he felt impelled to convert his own people, so he sailed from France and landed at the island of Whithorn, which is now an excursion place from Newton-Stewart. That sounds irreverent, but, after all, an excursion is only a kind of pilgrimage; and even if people are catching fish or eating them, they can be pleased to be at the one place in Scotland where Christianity has gone on without interruption by Vikings or others for fifteen hundred years.

Then, besides, Newton-Stewart has a monument of Samuel Rutherford to live up to. And they ought to have one of his namesake, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, who has done so much for Galloway.

It was in honour of his "Raiders" that we took the longest way to Ayr. Some of the best things in that book happened near Loch Trool, so we wanted to see Loch Trool. Bruce was there too; but this was a Crockett tour. We should have gone perhaps, even if the run had been dull, for it's only thirteen miles from Newton-Stewart, paradise of fishermen, to the hidden lake; but the thirteen miles turned out to be a panorama of beauty. Sir S. was surprised by its loveliness, though he knew by heart Burns's poem, "The Banks of the Cree." We did not come at once to the river; but from House o' Hill (delicious name!) we plunged into a wild, forgotten paradise. The road lay under an arbour of trees like an emerald tunnel, with a break here and there in the green wall to show a blue shimmer of mountains and hills in the distance. We seemed to have slipped into the hole leading to fairyland and pulled the hole in after us; but I knew I was not going to enjoy getting there as much as if my gray bonnet and coat had been on the front seat instead of Mrs. West's purple beauties. It was suddenly that we came into sight and sound of the river, and so deep was the stillness that we might have strayed into the haunt of a sleeping nymph. Nothing moved but the rushing brown water, and there was no sound, when we stopped to listen, but its joyous song and the humming of bees in bracken and heather.

Basil can "make believe" more easily and less stiffly than Sir S., because he is an author, and used to stringing whimsies together. He and I "pretended" that the bees were a fairy band, playing to a hidden audience in a theatre roofed with the silver sheen of arching ferns. Wafts of perfume came to us, cooled in woodsy dells, or warmed on sunshiny banks of flowers; but not a soul could be seen anywhere, nor a house. We knew that this was an inhabited world only by the wires stretched across the river for the sending of letters and parcels.

Sunset-time had not nearly come yet, but already a silver slit was torn in the blue of the sky; and for the second time the heather moon was smiling its bright semicircular smile, as if to say, "Make the most of me, Barrie, _your_ time is short!" Yet how could I make the most of her when I could see only my knight's back, with a purple shoulder as close to his as possible, and the heather moon was _ours_?

Suddenly Basil said, "Oh, there's your heather moon! I thought of you yesterday after it rose until it set, and wondered what you were doing. I do believe this _is_ different from other moons. Don't you see, young as it is, how it has power to change the yellow of the sunlight, seeming to alloy it with silver?"

I did see, but thought I must have fancied the effect, until he saw it too. (We often think and see and say the same things, which is nice, but not so exciting as the society of a man who thinks different things and makes you argue.) The silver pouring down from that small crescent seemed to sift through the strong golden light in a separate and distinct radiance. It shimmered on the sea of waving hills and billowing mountains that opened out before us, as if sprinkling a glitter of sequins over the vivid green and amber and purple. Wherever there was shadow this pale glimmer painted it with ethereal colours, like the backs of rainbow fish moving under water. I might have jumped out of the car and found the rainbow key, but nobody wanted it now!

"Just as that young, young moon has power to shine through the strong afternoon sunlight, so a girl may all in a moment throw her influence over a group of people older and more experienced than herself," said Basil, smiling at me, and then at Mrs. James, as if he didn't mind her hearing the flowery compliment.

"I don't know any such girl in real life," said I; "but you might work her up for your book."

"I shall have to put her in, if the book's to be written," said he.

By and by we came to the lake, or, rather, far above it; and Sir S. stopped the car to let us get out and look down. The water was a clear green with glints of purple, as if beds of heather grew underneath. There were jagged, bare rocks, and rocks whose shoulders were half covered as if with torn coats of faded brocade, dim silver of lichen, and pale pink of wild flowers. I hoped that Sir S. might join me for a look at the heather moon lying deep in the lake like a broken bracelet, but he didn't come. He looked at me very kindly from a distance, not coldly, yet not warmly, and he stayed with Mrs. West.

It was Basil who told me about Robert Bruce and his men hiding here, and rolling huge stones on the heads of the English soldiers who marched along the bank of the lake in search of the "outlaws." It seemed as if nothing terrible could have happened in so sweet a wilderness; but that was not the only horror. There were other wild deeds in history, and in the story of the "Raiders," memories of hunts for Covenanters, and great killings. But now all is peace, and I should have thought Loch Trool forgotten by the world if, in a dell of birch, rowan, hazel trees, and great pines like green umbrellas, I had not spied a roof.

Sir S. said it was the roof of Lord Galloway's shooting-lodge, loved by its owner because it was "out of tourist zone." So much the worse for tourists! So much the better for Lord Galloway!

I should hate to think of the road to Loch Trool smoking with motor dust. Of course our own Gray Dragon's pure dust is a different matter!

As we ran out of Crockett land into Ayrshire we came into Wallace land; for every foot of Scotland is taken up twice over by something or somebody wonderful. There isn't an inch left for new history-makers. If we could see those "emanations" Sir S. talks of--those ghost pictures--as far as the eye could reach we should see men marching, splendid men and women, too, who have made the world shine with their deeds, processions coming from every direction, out of the dim beginning of things up to the present day.

After the wildness of Loch Trool we had a country of plenteousness and peace. Basil said it was like a Surrey set down by the sea, so I suppose Surrey has big trees and flowery hedges and rolling downs, purple with heather. But surely no heather can be as purple as Scottish heather?

The sands of Girvan seemed to float like a golden scarf on the blue sea, and the town looked a romantic, mediæval place till we shot into it. Then we were disillusioned as to its age; but Ailsa Craig was noble in the distance, and a few members of the gull colony had flapped over to give town dwellers and visitors a sad serenade. "Gulls, golfers, and geologists all love Girvan," Basil said.

"Have you put that down in your notebook?" I inquired.

"Not in those words. But I jotted down something about this town in advance from authorities I've looked up. I generally keep two books going: one in which I put the things I want to see, and ideas for plots sometimes tangled up with a sort of diary; and another book of thoughts about places I have already seen--thoughts I can weave into a story in one way or another."

"You haven't once written in either of your books to-day!" I accused him.

"No. I told you I'd given up note-taking for the present. I'm all at sea. But just now it's a beautiful if not very calm sea."

"When it quiets down you'll begin again," I consoled him. "How I should love to see a real, live author's notebook! It would be so _useful_ to know how you manage to--to----"

"Record impressions," Mrs. James helped me out.

Smiling, Basil took from a breast-pocket a small green morocco volume with a pencil slipped into a loop. Compared to Mrs. West's pretty book, his was a shabby thing; but it smelt of good cigarettes.

"I'm afraid this will disillusion you," he said, "if you expect something interesting. I simply make notes of things I want to see, or jot down thoughts to recall pictures to my mind. Reading over one's notebook is like glancing over a lot of kodak films. Sometimes one sticks in a lot of nonsense."