This never was a story. I wrote things down, to please myself, just as they happened. But now that the end of the heather moon has come, I must write of its last days. I think by and by I shall send all this to Mrs. James, in California, otherwise she will never understand how everything came about; and besides, if it hadn't been for her the end would have been very different.
This part will have to be a sort of confession. When I began to write, I used not to say much about my feelings, even when I was sure of them, which was seldom; but I see now that I fell in love with my knight the minute I saw him first. I must have been fascinated, or it would not have occurred to me to choose him as the man to buy my brooch. I might have spoken to some one else. By the time we started on our trip and got as far as Gretna Green, I worshipped him. That is why I was so happy. I never troubled then about what the end would be. I just gave myself up to being happy, and it seemed as if such happiness must last forever. I used to wonder why I wasn't more impatient to get to Edinburgh and see my mother--the one thing I started out to do. But it was because I'd fallen in love with my knight, and he was already more important for me than any one else in the world, more important even than Barbara.
Soon I began to suspect what was happening; and in Edinburgh I was quite, quite sure. But I wasn't any longer perfectly happy. There were clouds over the heather moon--that sweet, kind moon which I used to say was the best of the year for falling in love.
I stopped writing then, for if I had written it would have had to be all about my feelings. The world was full of them. They were like gulls wheeling round a lighthouse lamp; and my heart was the lamp.
I thought, in Edinburgh, that my knight didn't care for me as I did for him. He kept away, and let other men go with me everywhere. Now I understand why, but then it made me miserable, for I knew he was the One Man, and always would be. A girl who had once loved him could never look at any one else. There were other things too that made me sad. Nobody wanted me. People were always planning how to send me away: but the heather moon shone in spite of all, and each evening when she came up, out of the mysterious places where she hides, she seemed to say: "Courage. Have faith in me. Don't lose hope, and I'll show you yet where to find the rainbow key." So I wouldn't lose hope; and I felt rewarded when my knight asked me to write to him, and promised that by and by I should see him again.
Then a letter came, and though I couldn't think why he had gone back to Carlisle to call on Grandma, I felt it must be for a reason connected with me; and that was cheering--just to know that I was in his mind. About London--when he went there afterward--I wasn't so sure. But it was the happiest day in my life when he suddenly appeared at Ballachulish. He came just in time, it seemed, to save me as he had saved me before. I could hardly keep from showing how I adored him. As he had come such a long way and had done so much for my sake, I thought that perhaps after all he did care, though it seemed too wonderful to be true. Now and then, while we were waiting to hear what Barbara would say about the invitation to Dhrum, there was a look in his eyes that made me feel the heather moon had been my true friend. He was changed, too, not hard and cynical as he used to be, but kind and gentle to every one, as if he had begun to see what a beautiful place the world can be.
This made it worse when Mrs. West came, and explained that all he had done for me was for duty, not for love: that he loved her, and I had spoiled everything for them both. Mrs. West said that he would stick to his duty at all costs, until I was actually married, so I was glad then, instead of sorry as I had been before, that Basil wanted me. I saw that she was right, and the sooner it was over the better. But I didn't dare think about the future. I just went on blindly, and did what Basil and Mrs. West told me to do. Nothing seemed to matter except to show my knight that after all my selfishness and thoughtlessness and conceit I had freed him.
I would rather have been married anywhere than at Gretna Green, but Basil had set his heart on that place.
We told my knight that Barbara was making me go away at once with Mrs. West and Basil; or rather, I let them explain. I couldn't. I was afraid I should break down, and he would see how wretched I was. It was all I could do to say "good-bye." It nearly killed me to see the hurt, surprised look on his face. Even now I can hardly write of that.
Basil had found out about the marriage laws. We had been in Scotland for three weeks, and all we had to do, if we wanted to be married in a hurry, was to declare before two witnesses who knew us both, that we took each other as husband and wife. We could have done it just as well at Ballachulish if Basil hadn't been determined it should be Gretna Green; but afterward I thought that he, or perhaps Mrs. West, had felt it would be better to have the wedding far away from my knight, who called himself my guardian, and might consider it his duty to object.
Mrs. West was to be one of the witnesses, and, as Barbara couldn't leave the man she was engaged to, the very last day before he sailed, Basil thought we had better have Salomon the chauffeur for the second witness. Mr. George Vanneck might have come on from Glasgow, but I heard Mrs. West say to Basil, when he suggested telegraphing, "I don't want to see him just now, and especially at the time of a wedding. He might be unreasonable."
As we needed Salomon, we went all the way in the car, instead of taking the train from Oban, which would have saved us a few hours.
When we got to Gretna Green it was evening, but the daylight lingered still. In the south it would already have been gone. There was a pale dusk mingling with the moonshine, and I couldn't help remembering the mysterious light in Sweetheart Abbey, on my first night of Scotland and the heather moon. I remembered my dream, too, the dream of the locked ebony and silver box, which could be opened only by the key of the rainbow. It nearly broke my heart to think of these things, and I wished it would break, so that I might die instead of marrying Basil: for if I were dead I should be safely out of everybody's way, just the same as being married.
Basil asked me where it was that we had gone through the ceremony for the photographs, but before I had time to answer, the car brought us to the house, and he recognized it from the biograph pictures. He told Salomon to stop, and leaving Mrs. West and me in the car, he got out to talk with the man of the house. Up till that moment I had been dully wishing it were all over, and had been actually in a hurry; but suddenly I felt as if I couldn't bear being married, and should have to run away. I longed and almost prayed for something--anything--to happen which would put off the wedding until another day. If an earthquake had wrecked the house I should have been delighted. But nothing did happen. Mrs. West talked cheeringly to me while Basil was gone, saying how happy I should be all the rest of my life, and what a lovely honeymoon her brother was planning. "I shall go away and leave you to your two selves," she said; and though I'm afraid I almost hated her, still I longed to cry out, "Oh, don't go away!"
In a few minutes Basil came back, looking excited and rather happy, yet there was that curiously pitiful, apologetic expression in his eyes which had been in them always lately, as if he were ashamed and sorry about something.
"It's all right," he explained. "The man tells me we can be married here, and it's not too late. He says a good many people come even nowadays, simply for the romance of having their wedding at Gretna Green." Then Basil gave his hand to me, to help me down from the car. I felt very weak, and almost sick. How different from the day when my knight and I had dashed up to this door in the old-fashioned chaise, and played the game of being married at the anvil! How my heart beat as he held me for an instant in his arms! I ought to have known then that I was in love with him. Now, it was as if my heart were dying, for it felt cold and heavy as lead, as I told myself that after this it would be wrong to call Mr. Somerled "my knight," or even to think of him at all, since to think was to love.
Mrs. West got down from the car too, and took off her veil. Basil explained to Salomon what it would be necessary for him to do, and how he must leave his motor for a few minutes.
My knees trembled so that I could scarcely walk. Basil noticed it, and insisted on my taking his arm. "It's because she has been sitting still in the car so long," Mrs. West said to him hastily. "I am often like that after a day's motoring."
"You're awfully pale," said Basil, staring at me anxiously. "You won't faint or anything, will you?"
"Oh, no," I said. "I am quite well." I tried to speak naturally, but my voice sounded as if it were some one else's, miles away. And for a minute, after entering the little room that looked so familiar, I was afraid that I might cry or be somehow stupid.
"Now," said Basil, "all we have to do is to state before these witnesses that we take one another in marriage. Isn't that it?" he asked, turning to the old man, who in the costume brought by the photographers, had performed the ceremony over me and my knight.
"Yes, sir, that is all there is to it," he replied; but as he spoke he was peering curiously at me. "That's all there is to what we call an irregular marriage in Scotland, such as this is going to be. When I say 'irregular,' you mustn't think anything wrong. It's as legal as the kind with banns. If you want to register your marriage, sir, you must make application to the sheriff of the county; but it's just as binding and legal without."
"That is what I understood," said Basil. "But, of course, I shall have it registered. Are you ready, Barrie?"
"Excuse me the liberty, sir," broke in the old man, "but I think this will be the young leddy who was done for the Cinema? I know her by her hair. I'm not so sure, though, that I recognize you, sir, or----"
"No, no, it wasn't I. That was her guardian," Basil returned hurriedly. "Now, Barrie, if you're ready----"
"Yes, I'm ready----" I began. I found that I could speak only in a whisper. Or perhaps it was the whirr of a passing motor outside which drowned my voice.
"Well then, come, dearest child, and stand here by me. Give me your hand----Is anything the matter?"
I forgot to answer, the sound of that car out there was so like the well-remembered purr of the Gray Dragon. But I seemed always to be hearing a kind of undertone of Dragon music. Often I had turned my head as we came from Oban, to see if some car gaining on us from behind were the Gray Dragon. It never was; and this would not be. But it was not passing after all. It was stopping near the house--as near as Blunderbore would allow.
"Is anything the matter?" I heard the words more clearly the second time he spoke.
"No," I said. "There is nothing----"
He took my hand, which was hanging by my side, for I had forgotten to give it when he asked. His felt very hot to the touch, so mine must have been cold. He pressed it warmly, and his eyes called to mine. There was no light in the room, for it was not needed yet, and I could see that his face was white. I wished above all things to pull my hand away from him.
"I, Basil, take thee, Barribel----" he began formally.
"I forbid this marriage. It mustn't go on," said a voice at the door. It sounded like the voice of my knight: but everything was so dream-like and unreal that I thought the voice was part of the unreality. It could not be his.
But it was. He came forward, covered with dust from head to foot, as if he had been driving far and fast.
"Barribel MacDonald is already my wife," he said.
He took my hand away from Basil, who was so astounded that for an instant he did not resist. But in another second a flood of rage seemed to sweep over him, giving him strength and presence of mind.
"That's not true, and you know it!" he exclaimed, while Mrs. West stood still as a statue, looking suddenly years older than before. "Barrie, come to me."
But my knight would not let me go. He grasped my hand so tightly that it hurt. I felt as if my fingers would break in his, and for just that moment I was deliriously happy, until I remembered, with a sharp pain like an icicle in my heart, that he loved Mrs. West.
"It is true," he said. "We went through the marriage ceremony here, three weeks ago, she and I, as this man will tell you. I am a Scot, and I claim her as my wife by the law of Scotland, unless she will swear to me now, before God, that she loves you and wants you for her husband. If she can swear that, I will take steps to release her. What do you say, Barrie?"
"I--I like Basil very much," I stammered. "I was willing--I am willing--to marry him."
"I didn't ask if you liked, but if you loved, him. Do you?"
"I--I want to marry him," I exclaimed, strength flowing into me as I thought of Mrs. West. "Don't be afraid, Mr. Somerled. I've troubled you enough. Even if we really are married, I would rather die than hold you. I know everything--how it was about me you quarrelled with her. But I've spoiled only a few weeks of your life. I won't spoil the rest. It is she who ought to be your wife, not I."
"Who has said that to you?" he asked.
"It is her own idea!" Mrs. West cried.
"Then it is a very foolish idea," said he. "Mrs. West and I never had it. If you love Basil Norman, Barrie, I won't stand in your way. But if you don't love him, by heaven he shan't take you from me."
"There's no question of taking her from you. She doesn't belong to you," Basil flung back at him. "For a marriage to be legal one of the persons concerned must have lived in Scotland for twenty-one days----"
"I lived in Scotland seventeen years."
"But not directly before that foolish business here----"
"I have never been without a holding in Scotland. Dunelin Castle has been mine by lease for years. Now it's mine by right of ownership. Whether our marriage was legal or not will have to be settled by Scottish Law before the girl can marry any one else, and I shall fight in the courts for my rights if you dispute them."
"Are you going to throw me over, Barrie?" Basil asked.
"You shall not put it to her like that!" said my knight. "Barrie, you haven't answered my question. Do you love him?"
"No," I faltered. I could not lie.
"Do you love me?"
"You're cruel to ask me that, when you----"
"When you ought to have seen long ago, that I was at your feet, that I was mad for you, that you were my one thought. I tried not to be a brute as well as a fool, so I stood aside and gave all the other men who were younger, and perhaps worthier, their chance. If you had loved anybody else I'd have let you alone. But I don't think one of those men made good. Do you love me, Barrie? Answer me now, as if we were alone together?"
"Yes," I whispered.
He caught me in his arms, and kissed me on the mouth, holding me close against his breast.
"Then," he said, "I am your husband. Are you my wife? I ask you before these witnesses, who know us both."
"I am your wife," I repeated after him.
"This time," he exclaimed, "we are safely married, and not all the world can part us now."
Basil and Aline went away before we did. Aline said she was going to Glasgow, to tell Barbara how I had treated them, and to see the man she was engaged to marry: that it was all a mistake, if not a deliberate falsehood on my part, about her thinking Ian cared for her. Basil went with her, not saying anything at all, except:
"Good-bye, Barrie. Some day perhaps you'll understand and forgive me. I always had a presentiment that I shouldn't be able to bring it off at the last; that Somerled would cut in and snatch you away from me."
Ian suggested taking me to Carlisle, only eight miles away, to stay with Grandma until we could have a more conventional wedding. But when I said, "Aren't we really and truly married, then?" in a frightened voice, he said, "Of course we are, my darling child--married as fast as if by book and bell. Nothing can part us. I shall never let you go out of my sight for five minutes after this--unless you want to go."
"But I don't," I said. And a sudden thought came to me. I told him I wished he would take me to Sweetheart Abbey. If it had been appropriate to spend the first night of the heather moon there, as Mrs. James had said, it would be still more appropriate to spend the first night of the honeymoon.
We bade the old man of the house good-bye and he shook hands with us both. Ian gave him something which made him exclaim, "I thank you kindly, indeed, sir! And I must say, if you'll excuse the liberty, I never wanted the other gentleman to get her, sir. I felt in my bones there was something wrong, so I kept on asking questions to delay the thing. If I hadn't done that, it would all have been fixed up before you came along."
"If it had been, I should have taken her away from him, anyhow," said Ian, "because she was my wife, and she couldn't have been his."
"Not exactly your wife, sir," the old man tried to explain, taking him literally. "But----"
"If not in law she was in heart, and she was meant for me from the beginning of time," said Ian.
Then we went out to the dear Gray Dragon, which was white with dust, and so was dear Vedder.
"It's all right," Ian said to the stolid-looking fellow; and Vedder answered, "Hurrah to heaven, sir!" which was a very queer expression, but I liked it, and loved him for it. Basil used to say that chauffeurs are a strange new race of men, but I think they are splendid. I hoped that Ian would double Vedder's wages, and afterward he did.
We drove fast to Sweetheart Abbey, with the heather moon in the east, a sweet, pale, thin-cheeked moon, past her prime of youth, but more beautiful and kind than ever. As we flew along the empty road, the Gray Dragon purring with joy in our joy, rabbits ran ahead of us, like tiny messengers impatient to tell the good news of what had happened. Our big, white headlight turned them into bouncing, gray balls, and there were dozens of them, tearing along just in front of us sometimes, but we would not have killed or hurt one for its weight in gold.
Ian took for us at the inn the very rooms he had taken before for Mrs. James and me; and in his arms, with no lamplight but the heather moon smiling through the window at us, I told him about my dream of his bringing me the locked ebony and silver box, which could be opened only with the rainbow key.
"It was a true dream, my darling," he said. "My heart was locked up in a box for many years, and nobody but you could have opened it, for you are you, and you have the key of the rainbow in your little hands. Never will the box be locked again. Now my heart doesn't need, doesn't want a box, because it is forever in your keeping."
There, at Sweetheart Abbey, in the little inn where I first began to ask myself if Ian were not the One Man beside whom all others were shadows, we told each other things and explained things that had seemed mysterious.
I told him how I had worshipped him from the beginning, and couldn't help going on to care more and more, though I feared that he liked Mrs. West, and thought of me only as a child. "But I wasn't a child," I said. "From the first minute I loved you I was a woman."
"You must have been a baby, or you would never have thought for a second that I or any man could remember Mrs. West's existence when you were there," he said scornfully. But as he was holding me very tightly in his arms, the scorn did not hurt. "How you could believe her, when she told you that what I did for you was from duty, I can't conceive. If you were the heroine of one of Basil's novels there might be some excuse for you. Heroines of stories always believe any wild thing the villain or villainess chooses to tell them, but a real girl, with brains and eyes and at least some common sense----"
"Do you think when you're in love your common sense can stay on top?" I asked. "It seemed too good to be true that you could love me, and she was far more fascinating than I! And you knew and liked her first, and had asked her to take a long motor trip with you: and it was true that you quarrelled about me. Looking back it all seemed so natural, especially remembering how you kept away from me and schemed--actually schemed--to have me go about with other men, why shouldn't I believe a woman much older than I, when she cried as she told me the story? Why, at this very place, after you'd been so heavenly to me in the Abbey, you were horrid next day, almost cross: and so you were often. You hurt my feelings a dozen times a day, and every other man I saw was kinder."
"Because they weren't fighting a great fight with themselves, as I was," he said, holding me a little more closely, if possible. "They, the selfish chaps, were letting themselves go. I was saying to myself, 'Perhaps I'm too old and hard for her. I'm the first man she's ever known. I must give her a chance to see and talk with others. For her own sake, I mustn't yield to temptation and try to snatch her away from the rest. Norman must have his chance. Douglas must have his chance. The American boys must have theirs----' and by Jove, you seemed to like giving it to them! You nearly drove me out of my mind."
"I thought you were being bored with me."
"You darling, adorable little idiot, as if a man could be bored with you!"
"I didn't know."
"Well, you know now. I was nearly mad in Edinburgh, but I stuck to my principles. I wanted to be sure one way or the other. But Norman had no gratitude. He used your mother to help him against me----"
"That was Mrs. West, I think, who used her."
"Don't defend the fellow. It was both of them. They--and James sending for his wife--drove me into a corner. But I wasn't going to be swept off the board without a struggle. I meant from the beginning to fight for you, if I saw a gleam of interest in your eyes for me, and sometimes I thought I did see it. But thanks to Mrs. Bal MacDonald, they'd got you in their clutches, those two. It suddenly occurred to me when I lost Mrs. James, to go and get your grandmother--bring her by force if she wouldn't come. I knew she had a sneaking kindness for me, as a MacDonald man. There was a queer bond of sympathy between us, which we'd both felt when we met. All our worst faults are alike. I dashed off to Carlisle--quickest way, by train, and threw myself on the old lady's mercy--told her everything. She was a trump, though perhaps her desire to help was as much a wish to thwart her daughter-in-law as anything else. She was too rheumatic to come with me in the car. I suppose it was a wild scheme! But she herself suggested my going to London to invite the MacDonalds. She thought, if I offered inducements--and she was right. It was an inspiration on her part."
"But," I broke in, "isn't it glorious not to have chaperons at all?"
He didn't answer in words. Yet he made me understand in a far more emphatic and satisfactory way, that he agreed.
"You can imagine what I felt when you coolly went off from Ballachulish with Norman and his sister," Ian went on. "Then I did think it was all up--that I had been a fool for my hopes and my pains, till dear old Vedder hummed and hawed and apologized for taking a liberty, and mentioned that Salomon had boasted he was going to get his 'party' to Gretna Green in the shortest time on record. 'It's a plot!' I said to myself, as Mrs. James had warned me. And five minutes later Vedder and I and the Gray Dragon were off at a pace--well, I'm afraid we exceeded the legal limit most of the way; but the gods looked after us."
"And so did the heather moon!" I added.
Now we are at Dhrum, our own dear purple island set in a sea of gold; but first we went back to Carlisle and visited Grandma; and to please her and Ian, I consented to be married all over again, in church, with a special license and everything such as the conventional bride does, though it seemed treacherous to that happy moment at Gretna Green, which was like heaven after the valley of death. Grandma was wonderful to Ian, and very nearly nice to me. Not an unkind word did she say of Barbara, and she didn't even refer to my running away.
"You have had the sense to choose a real man, and the good fortune to win him. I'd hardly have thought it of you. A MacDonald too!" she remarked. And I almost loved her. Mrs. Muir made us a wedding cake, which she insisted on our taking away, in a large tin box: and when we left Hillard House, Heppie's nose was pinker than I ever saw it, which is saying a good deal.
Aline West was married to Mr. George Vanneck the very day we started from Carlisle for Dhrum. We saw an account of the wedding in the paper. It was at Glasgow; and she was going to a lovely place called St. Fillans for her honeymoon. Basil gave her away, and was to return immediately after to Canada, "on business."
It is like a dream to be living in the vast, turreted gray castle of our ancestors, looking out over an endless sea, and to be the mistress of such a house--I, little Barrie MacDonald, the princess rescued from a glass retort. But it is a true dream. Ian says that he won me by a kind of fraud, as the first Somerled won his Pictish princess; because we weren't really married by that game we played with the photograph people at Gretna Green. Only, he made up his mind even then, that if the wrong man ever got a hold upon me, he would use the episode to frighten him away. How thankful I am that it happened! If it hadn't, perhaps I should have missed my happiness: but Ian says no, he would have snatched me from Basil somehow, if not in one way, then in another. Poor Basil, I can afford to remember him with forgiveness, and even a kind of tenderness now! I think he always hated himself in his heart for doing what he did. But tragedy came so near for a few hours that sometimes, if Ian is separated from me for a moment, we have to rush to find each other, and say "It's true--after all!"
At Dunelin Castle there are all the things I used to wish for: MacDonald tartan on the walls and floors of many rooms; and torn, faded MacDonald banners hanging in the dimness high up on the stone walls of the great dining-hall--where we never dine. Pipers pipe us away in the morning, and the skirl of the pipes mingles with the crying of gulls and the boom of the sea in a thrilling way. The old servants look as if they had never been born and could never die. They are delightfully superstitious and quaint, and not one of them would kill a spider. Neither would I, for the matter of that! I suppose it's my MacDonald blood and my love of Bruce. You ought to see the elaborate precautions that are taken to get rid of a spider in Dunelin Castle without insulting or hurting its feelings!
Ian always wears the kilt; and if I hadn't loved him as much as I possibly could before, I should have fallen in love with him all over again the day I saw him in it first. He is painting my portrait in the Gretna Green costume; and when we are tired, we take long walks together, I in a short tweed, with my hair down my back, Ian in the kilt. Our favourite tramp is to a mysterious, hidden lake, surrounded with rugged black mountains like petrified guardian-dragons watching a treasure. This wild, mountain walled lake is called the "Heart of Dhrum," and Ian says it is no more wild or savage or dark with clouds than his heart used to be every day when he was giving other men their chance with me. He says, too, that if the lady who used to be imprisoned in a fearful dungeon under the dining-hall at Dunelin, and fed only with salt beef, had been Aline West it would have served her right. He would have given her no sympathy, but a great deal of salt and very little beef. But of course he does not mean that. His heart overflows with kindness for all humanity nowadays, and it never was hard really. He finds the world a glorious place with very few faults; but he says it is I who have taught him this lesson, and that I should be able to make a skeleton-ghost, condemned to clank chains in an underground prison through eternity, see his fate in a rose-coloured light. I love him to say foolish things. And I love him when he says nothing at all, but only looks at me.
He has taught me to dance the Highland fling. I do it with my hair down, while the pipers pipe; and Ian cries Hoo! and Ha! and claps his hands, as we dance, like the true Highlander he is. He was splendid in the Games Week; for he could do the great jumps and "put" the stones as well as the best of the Skye men who came over to compete with the men of Dhrum. And here at Dunelin, where we danced reels till morning, on the night of the ball we gave, he danced everybody else down--except me.
This castle, which my fierce ancestors built nearly a thousand years ago, is a fairy castle for me and for Ian. It is all our own now, to have and to hold, because he has bought it, so it will belong to a MacDonald while it and the world lasts--I pray. We shall go to live in America, where I hope Barbara may let me see her sometimes; but we shall have this fairy island of purple and gold to come back to always, the hidden home of our hearts.
I used to ask myself, when the heather moon vanished behind a mountain or into the sea, in what secret place she lurked while she hid from the world? Now I know that the purple island of Dhrum is her fastness, and that because she loved us she brought us safely here, together.
I wonder sometimes if Basil will ever write his romance of our journeyings and adventures under the heather moon--months or years from now, when he has forgotten to be sad, and is only pleasantly romantic, as when I knew him first? Ian says he will never write it, because if he did, he would have to be the villain; and no man ever yet made himself the villain of his own book. Perhaps that is true. But I do not think there ought to be a real villain in a story about a rainbow key and a heather moon.
