So this was the garden where that strange flower of girlhood had budded and blossomed. All at once Barrie, in her quaintness, became a readable riddle to Somerled.
The two gates in the high wall were kept bolted, but there was a jangling bell for each, the gate for visitors (it was almost supererogatory), and the gate for tradesmen and servants. An elderly and sullenly astonished woman opened the visitors' gate for Somerled, and made of her lean form a barrier lest he should try to pass. But she being narrowly built, on somewhat Gothic lines, and the gateway being broad, Somerled saw past the flying buttresses of her skirts into the background. And it was this background that explained in a flash why the girl knew less of life than a bird which has learned to use its wings; also the reason why she could never return to waste her young years behind the garden wall of Hillard House. The thought came into Somerled's mind that it would be interesting to show her the world she had never seen, not only between Carlisle and Edinburgh, but over the hills and far away, as far as the purple island of Dhrum, set in its sunset frame of ocean gold--or even farther. That could not be, of course, but the picture was pleasant.
He had prepared himself to be ingratiating; but he realized that ingratiation was not a successful line to pursue with dragons. Instead of inquiring politely if Mrs. MacDonald were at home, he said bluntly, "I wish to see Mrs. MacDonald; I have business with her--not my business, but hers. And you may tell her I am not The MacDonald of Dhrum, but a MacDonald from Dhrum, a very different thing."
He knew well that the name of Somerled would be no "Open Sesame" to this door, and he rather enjoyed the knowledge. It was clear at once that he had used the right key. Perhaps no other would have served a stranger. Anna Case was not a Scotswoman, but the name of MacDonald was respected within these gates, no matter who bore it, and this dark man, with the blue eyes that went through you like bright steel blades, didn't look like one who would claim what he had no right to claim. She bade him follow her into the house, which he did; into the hall; and so to a drearier drawing-room than he had ever entered. There had perhaps been some as gray and grim on his island of Dhrum; but in those days he had known nothing of drawing-rooms.
This was not even early Victorian. It was mid-Victorian, and rubbing and brushing had given the ugly furniture no time to mellow. He sat down on a horsehair-covered sofa which had two worked worsted cushions, each stiffly upright in its corner. One represented a dog's head, the other a bunch of white and yellow flowers with a cold background of steel beads. On the walls hung a few steel engravings; a meeting of Covenanters; portraits of unco' guid worthies with sidewhiskers or beards; and some tortured stags pursued or caught by hounds.
"Terrible!" he groaned in spirit. "Who'd suppose that such things existed nowadays?"
He might appropriately have made much the same criticism of the old woman who at that instant opened the door and came in, sturdily, in spite of her limp and the stout stick grasped in a knuckly hand. But as their eyes met--hers like thick glass panes behind which a burning fire could be dimly seen--something in her grim spirit spoke to something as grim and uncompromising far down his nature. To his own surprise he felt awaking in himself a queer impulse of sympathy for the redoubtable Grandma. Perhaps, reluctantly, she felt the same for him. But she looked him in the face, keenly and unblinkingly. "Well, sir," she said, in a deep voice almost like a man's, and amazingly young and vital, "well, sir, I do not recognize you, though you have gained entrance to my house by claiming the name of MacDonald."
"That is true," replied Ian, who had risen at her coming. "It's the first time I've claimed the name for many years, though it is mine and was my father's before me."
"Who was your father?" the old woman catechized him. "What kin to Duncan, my dead husband's half-brother?"
"No kin except by clan ties. You wouldn't have heard of us. My father was a crofter. His name was David."
"I well remember that man," said Mrs. MacDonald, "and his wife too when I lived with my husband on the island in my youth. Let me see--Mary her name was. They were God-fearing folk, and didn't wear any such grand clothes as you do, not even for their Sunday best."
"I paint people's portraits, you see, and have to live in cities," explained Ian calmly, though he had grown lazy as he grew rich and had not painted. "My clothes suit my trade and way of life better than my father's would, I think; though, as for my brains, my father's hat would have been too big for them."
"I dare say you are right about the brains. You are that youth who went off to America under the name of Somerled," Mrs. MacDonald severely remarked. "I have read of you in the newspapers; but I never approved of you, sir. It's not man's work, to my mind, smearing canvas with paint, and encouraging silly women to be vain of their faces."
"My portraits aren't considered to have that effect," returned Somerled; "rather the contrary, in some cases. And I'm sorry you don't approve of me, because that makes a bad opening for what I've come to say. However, it can't be helped. I know Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald slightly; met her in America----"
"If you think an acquaintance with that woman will recommend you to me, sir, you are mightily mistaken," was the answer he got.
"I mention it to make you understand why, when I met her daughter last night, I felt it my duty to do what I could, being of the same name and not quite a stranger to the family."
"Oh, you felt it your duty! Then you're the person mentioned in a letter I received from a certain Mrs. West, according to herself a writer of books. I do not read her sort of books, and never heard of her. 'Motor novels' indeed! What worse than nonsense! Little enough sense fools must have to buy them! If you have come from this Mrs. West, you can tell her from me, as she has made her bed she may lie in it. She has not taken under her roof my granddaughter, but the daughter of Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald, the play actress. I did my best for the girl, striving to bring her up to be a good and modest woman, despite the bad blood of the mother who broke my son's heart and killed him, who did what she could, and has been doing what she could in the years since, to disgrace our house. I might have known I should strive in vain, and I did know at heart. Vanity and extravagance and fondness of pleasure were Barbara Ballantree's undoing. I preserved her daughter from those dangers, and gave her a religious education. Levity was sternly rebuked in her. She had no young acquaintances to teach her foolishness, or tell her of her mother's sin. She was allowed no money to fritter away on vanities, no silly novels to read, such as those your friends write, no frivolous pursuits which could distract her mind from duty--yet she is her mother over again, and, like her mother, runs away from my house by stealth, in the dead of night."
"It wasn't ten o'clock when I met her in the railway station," Somerled defended the absent. "She was then not very stealthily seeking a train for London, where she expected to find her mother. Mrs. West has written you, I know, and told you everything that happened. For my part, I've called to speak of a plan I have in mind for your granddaughter. The telegram you sent Mrs. West seemed----"
"The telegram I sent Mrs. West? I've sent no telegram to her nor any one. I don't send telegrams."
"Indeed?" stammered Somerled, taken aback. "I understood--Mrs. West believed the telegram to be from you----"
"Nothing of the kind. She couldn't have believed it," Mrs. MacDonald shut him up mercilessly. "She must have been 'romancing,' as I suppose she would call it. I should call it lying."
Remembering Aline's words, Somerled also was frankly inclined to call it lying--on the part of the young woman or the old. He would gladly have blamed the elder, but reason rebelled. Whatever Mrs. MacDonald's faults might be, she did not seem to be one who would deliberately tell a lie.
"But why should Mrs. West?" Somerled asked himself, calling up the pretty smile, the soft blue eyes of his friend. He had been inclined to believe her true. He had liked her very much, more than he liked most women, and had wondered if he might not learn to like her still better in time. The women he saw oftenest were mostly nervous, exacting, self-centred creatures, craving constant flattery. Aline was none of these things. She had many charms, and he had seen few defects; but a motive for falseness in the matter of the telegram would suggest itself to his intelligence. He tried to shut the door in its insinuating, conceited grin.
"There must be a mistake--somewhere," he mumbled.
"Not here, anyhow," retorted the old lady.
"After all, it's apart from the question in hand. But perhaps my plans for your granddaughter don't interest you?"
"Not particularly. Still, you may as well tell them. I see you want to."
"And I see"--Somerled squandered a smile, but only because it came spontaneously--"I see that you want to hear them, because," he dared to go on with a flash of his keen eyes into hers, "you do care what becomes of Miss MacDonald. If you had not got Mrs. West's letter, you would have had no sleep last night. As it is, knowing your granddaughter has fallen into safe hands, you can comfortably disclaim anxiety."
"You seem to fancy yourself a mind-reader, my good sir," returned Mrs. MacDonald at her haughtiest, or what Barrie would have called her "snortiest." "Think what you like. It is nothing to me, and thinking costs naught. As for the hands she has fallen into, what do I know of them? They may be black with sin for all I can tell. No doubt Barbara Ballantree's daughter would be just as ready to accept help from such hands."
"As a painter, I try to keep mine clean," said Somerled. "I tell you that in earnest, not in joke, because for the present I've constituted myself your granddaughter's guardian. My plan is to take her in my motor-car to Edinburgh, where I shall deliver her safely to Mrs. Bal--Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald. In the car will be Mrs. West and her brother, Basil Norman. Have you anything to say against the plan? If you have, kindly speak now."
"If I did speak, would it prevent your doing what you've made up your mind to do?"
"Perhaps not, unless your reasons appealed to my judgment," Somerled admitted.
"You're no prevaricator, anyhow."
"I don't come of prevaricating stock."
"You don't, if you're David MacDonald's son. He was a humble, God-respecting man. But you have no humble air. You hold your crest high."
Somerled was minded to be impudent and say that in that case he must get his hair cut; but he refrained. "The atmosphere of this house does not conduce to humility, madam," he answered instead--and always as they talked the two looked one another straight and full in the face.
"H'm!" the old woman grunted. Yet there was something vaguely resembling a twinkle in the glass-gray eyes, a gleam which Barrie and few others now living had ever seen; for not more than one or two of her fellow-beings had ever had the slightest idea how to manage Mrs. MacDonald, née Ann (scorning an "e") Hillard.
"Go on your motor trip, then, so far as I care," said she, a permission which from her was well-nigh a blessing. "It will probably end in a smash-up before Edinburgh."
"I think not," said Somerled. "I drive myself, and I know how to drive rather well."
"I was not referring to physical results."
"So I presumed. Nor was I," he retorted.
If she found the reply enigmatical she did not say so.
They had not sat down during the conversation. Now, Somerled took a step toward the door. "I'm obliged to you for receiving me, madam," he said as a prelude to departure.
"I received you on the strength of your name," she reminded him.
"Which I don't intend to disgrace in your eyes."
"Why in my eyes? They will not long be looking your way."
"I think they will, as long as I'm in charge of your granddaughter. That's what I mean."
"I do not thank you for the assurance. Except that when she's twenty-one I shall make over certain money of my son's to her, I have washed my hands of the girl."
"I haven't. That's not the kind of washing to make them clean."
"You reproach me, sir!" She glared at him.
"Not at all, madam. Even if I would venture, there's no need, for I think your bark is worse than your bite."
Again she almost twinkled at the wretch's daring. There was excitement in it, which she had not experienced since early married days. Then she had had to do with another MacDonald, and even a Hillard could without disgrace afford to be mastered by a MacDonald of Dhrum.
"When I've put your granddaughter into more suitable guardianship than mine," Somerled went on quickly, "I'll write and tell you."
"Suitable guardianship! It will be some time before I get that letter."
"I thank you for the compliment."
"It was not one."
"You're not to blame if I choose to take it as such."
"I am not to blame in any way in this matter."
"There I'm no judge. It's my own actions I must look after." And again he smiled.
"I advise you to be careful, sir, between Barbara Ballantree and Barribel MacDonald. I wish you joy of them both."
"And what of Aline West?" The question whispered itself in Somerled's ears.
But Mrs. MacDonald knew nothing of Aline West. And Somerled was beginning to think that, for all the boasted sagacity of experience, he knew not much more.
"Thank you for your kind wishes," he said non-committally. "And now I will wish you a good day."
He put out his hand, and, to her own intense surprise when she thought of it afterward, Mrs. MacDonald gave hers. Over the prominent knuckles the old skin lay soft and loose. The grim woman was vaguely pathetic to Somerled in his youth and strength and full tide of success. The touch of the would-be iron hand in the velvet glove of faded age made him conscious of his vast advantage over her. He went away filled with hope, and a curious new joy of life, which was partly the excitement of battle.
"The heather moon!" he found himself saying, as he passed out of the ill-kept, once lovely garden where Barrie had often dreamed. Perhaps the thought came then because here and there a patch of heather glorified the weeds, or perhaps because Barrie's dreams still empurpled their birthplace.
