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."
I opened the little volume, and ran my eyes down the short pages. "Carlisle, Saturday, August Something or Other. Notes for Scotch Tour," I read aloud. "Story of honeymoon. English hero--American girl. Aline wants her Canadian. I see her American. Dispute. Must decide soon. Reading up Galloway makes me want to go there. Aline says rush straight on to Ayr, and save time. Hate saving time! Worst economy. More time you spend, more you have. Must go along coast of Ayr, anyhow. Once lined with strongholds of great families. See Dunure, Crossaguel, and deuced lot of others.
"Keats visited Burns's birthplace. Wrote sonnet there. Look this up.
"Burns sought out, along banks of Ayr, places where Wallace was supposed to have hidden. Good stuff this. Wallace fought all over the place here. At Irvine, one of his earliest exploits. Kindled big fire, neighbouring village. When English soldiers marched forth to put fire out, jumped on them and killed the lot. Stuffed bodies into dungeon of castle at Irvine. Called 'Wallace Larder' after that. Nasty larders people had in those days. Read up account Douglas Larder. Compare the two. See which worse. Why not call Barns of Ayr Wallace Oven? Read up Blind Harry for picturesque story Barns of Ayr. Far as I remember, English enticed all neighbouring Scots to powwow of some sort. Wallace expected; delay on way. Scots executed on some pretext. When Wallace turned up, niece warned him. He routed up few followers, set fire to barns and burnt English, who were celebrating triumph over Wallace and his men. When get to Ayr look this up further.... Word 'Whig' comes first from Ayr. Wonder why? Look up. Also get Burns glossary. Dialect difficult. Aline won't read Burns. Fear she's going to fail in this book. Thinks only of one thing. But no matter. Courage, mon brave!
"Sunday. Had batch bad notices of last book from America. Aline gone to bed with headache as usual after bad reviews. Says we must economize. She'll forget when we start and want best suites of rooms with baths everywhere. I know that book was good. Hang notices! Understand so well what Job meant when said, 'Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!' He wanted to criticise it. Each new boil would suggest scathing epithet.
"Monday. Everything changed. Old plot exploded in thousand pieces. Mustn't be honeymoon couple. Heroine radiant young girl, eighteen, hair red as Circe's, eyes of new-born angel, comes like bombshell into hero's life. Not good simile, bombshell. Query, hero. Would she fall in love with man of B. N.'s type? I see another type more probable, but don't want that.
"August 4th. Fearful row. General upset. Don't see any book unless I write it alone. Aline says I can save situation for her. Would like only too well do what she wants, but difficult bring it off as things are. Chances in favour of other man. Temptation consent be cat's-paw. Is that fair to the lovely chestnut in the fire? Extra-ordinary that child like this can so upset us all. What is the electric attraction we can't resist? More than normal amount of radium, perhaps!"
"Well, why don't you laugh at the rattle of the dry bones?" asked Basil, as I read on, more and more puzzled.
"I haven't come to many funny things yet," said I, "except about Job. That was rather good, though I don't see how you weave such things into your books."
"Job--Job?" he repeated vaguely. Then a rush of blood went over his whole face, up to his forehead. His dreamy dark eyes looked suddenly anything but dreamy. "Good Heavens!" he gasped. "What have you got there?" and began to ransack all the pockets of his waistcoat and coat until he found the twin of the book he'd given me. "This is what I meant you to see," he said in a queer, ashamed voice.
I handed the first book back to him. He seized it and glanced from page to page, looking almost ill. By and by he came to something which seemed to scare him. As far as I could tell, it was farther toward the end than I had read.
"Would you mind showing me where you left off," he asked.
"It was where you were wondering whether your new heroine had swallowed radium or something," said I.
"Oh!" He looked relieved. "Well--I wouldn't have had you see that idiotic stuff for a good deal. But I told you, didn't I, that if the book went on I'd have to put you into it? There's a lot of silly rot there. Poetical license!"
"The thing that made the most impression on me was the part about the red hair," I said. "The description sounded so nice. Who was Circe, please? Was she Scottish? It's a name a Pictish princess might have had."
"The first Circe lived even before the Pictish princesses," Basil answered, quieting down, though he was still very flushed. "But she's had a good many descendants--one or two at least in each generation of women born in every country. Not that you--I mean the new heroine--will be one of them really."
"What did Circe do?" I hurried on.
"Do? She was an exceptionally attractive woman. She had a special kind of magnetism that nobody could resist. She amused herself by turning all the men she knew--there were quite a lot of them--into animals of different sorts."
"I think it would have been cleverer and more attractive of her if she had turned animals into men," said I.
"That's what my heroine can do," Basil explained. "She's a kind of miniature baby Circe, for her red hair and general get up, and her curious power of upsetting people and their plans from the first minute they see her. But--my heroine wouldn't and couldn't turn her victims into beasts. She makes them want to transform themselves into something very extra special in the way of manliness."
"Why do you call her your heroine with an emphasis?" I wanted to know. "Isn't she your sister's heroine, too?"
"No. My sister doesn't see her as a heroine for a novel. And that's why I say the book we started out to write won't materialize. No author can write a story he or she doesn't take a strong interest in."
"That's where my writing is easier," I said. "I just put down all the things exactly as they happen, and as I see and think about them. So there's no heroine--and no hero--and no story."
"Yes, that is simpler," he agreed. "That's the way the Great Author writes His book. Only all His characters are heroes and heroines in the stories of their own lives."
As we talked, the moon went down in the west. The sky was a pale lilac, like a great concave mirror reflecting the heather. Then it darkened to a deeper purple, and made my thoughts feel like pansies, as they blossomed in my mind. We fell into silence. But Mrs. James said afterward that was because we were hungry and didn't realize what was the matter with us. Perhaps she was right, but it didn't seem so prosaic at the time.
As the car brought us near the town of Ayr (which, with its lights coming out, reddened the purple mirror) it was too dark to see details clearly. But, driving slowly, we were aware of a thing that loomed out of the quiet landscape and seemed strangely foreign to it, as if we were motoring in Greece or Italy, not Scotland. It was a great classic temple, rising on the banks of a stream that laughed and called to us through the twilight.
"Can it be somebody's tomb?" I asked. But there was no cemetery, only a garden, and close by a camel-backed bridge that crossed the surging river.
"It must be the Burns monument," said Basil. "I've never been here, but I've studied up the place and looked at maps till I can see them with my eyes shut. This is the right place for the monument, with a museum, and some garden statues of Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnnie, which we'll have to visit by daylight to-morrow. I hope you're going to invite me to sight-see with you?"
