The Heather-Moon 21Book 4 · Letter From Barrie Macdonald To Ian Somerled Macdonald
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Literature · Romance
The Heather-Moon 21
Book 4 · Letter From Barrie Macdonald To Ian Somerled Macdonald
WilliamsonEnglish
DEAR SIR KNIGHT: I was glad the morning we saw Mrs. James off that you said you'd like to hear from me, and if I needed help or comfort in any trouble I must let you know. I haven't such an excuse for writing to you now, but you did say that you wanted to hear anyway, and that you'd find out where we were going, so you could wire me your plans. Now I've had two telegrams from you, and a letter; and if they hadn't come I should have been disappointed. I thought we might have seen you and the Gray Dragon before this, but the telegrams have made me understand. That is, I don't understand, because what you tell me sounds very mysterious. Still, as you went back to Carlisle and are now in London, it is no use hoping to see the Gray Dragon's bonnet flash into sight round some complicated Highland corner.
What could have taken you to call on Grandma again? I am almost dying of curiosity. You say 'perhaps you may be able to explain when we meet': but everybody is saying that to me, just now--at least, Barbara is, about not letting me go back to Glasgow till the end of her week there--so it is rather aggravating. Still, it is good to know that we may meet. I wonder when? You don't give me a hint, and it stirs up my curiosity from deeper depths to be told, as if you half expected me to guess what you mean, that 'you're in London for reinforcements.' Shall I ever know? It seems a long time since I said good-bye to you in front of the Caledonian Hotel. Not that I'm having a dull trip. I should be very dull myself if that were true, for everything is beautiful, and every one kind. It is the most wonderful luck for a girl like me, who had never seen anything in her life, suddenly to be seeing all Scotland. But I had grown rather used to seeing things with you and Mrs. James, after I escaped from the 'glass retort,' and I can't accustom myself yet to being with others, and you far away--Mrs. James too, of course. I try to console myself if I feel a tiny bit homesick, thinking how happy she is, and how wonderful everything is going to be for her and her strange, unpractical doctor. It was splendid of you to give him all that money. But wouldn't it have been fun if he could have come over, instead of her going to him? Maybe, if it had turned out so, you would be in the Highlands now.
Do you remember how I used to say that my tour under the heather moon would soon be over, but you would be going on just as if we had never met? Well, it has turned out quite differently, hasn't it, for both of us? Only the heather moon is the same. But I never talk of her now that you are gone.
I don't want you to think I am ungrateful to any one, if I sign myself, Your rather homesick little 'princess,'
BARRIE.
P.S.--It does not seem right to have crossed over the borderline into our Highlands without you!
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST,DARLING BARBARA: Can it really be that it won't bother you to have me write to you often and tell you everything interesting that happens? You see, I might think it interesting, and you might think it a bore. I know you are easily bored, dear, so I am not quite sure what I ought to write. I can only tell you about seeing places, because that is all we do. But they are so beautiful, perhaps you may like to hear. If I write about the wrong things, do promise that you'll speak out and tell me to stop. I won't let my feelings be hurt.
Basil is trying to show me as much of Scotland as he possibly can, he says, before I 'get tired of him and Blunderbore.' That is a bad way to put it, and so I have told him, because I should be horribly ungrateful to tire of him. But he says he dislikes gratitude and thinks it an overestimated virtue.
I suppose you have often been in Scotland before, and you are not Scottish yourself, so perhaps you can't quite feel as I do about it. Basil, who has travelled so much, says that Scotland has in miniature almost all the picked bits of scenery of other countries; but they do not appear to be in miniature when you're motoring through them. They seem on an enormous scale; and each beauty spot is different from every other. You can't help remembering and keeping them apart in your mind, though there are so many that they are crowded together, all over the map. I think of the map of Scotland being purple, like heather, don't you? And if I have to live anywhere else, I shall always be homesick for this country now. If we are not in some fairy-like, green glen, we are in a wild and awesome mountain pass; or else in a blue labyrinth of lochs; or we come out upon endless, billowing moorlands; or suddenly we find ourselves on a long road like an avenue in some great private park, with the singing of a river in our ears.
Poor Basil sometimes feels ashamed of Blunderbore, and certainly it is different from travelling in Mr. Somerled's Gray Dragon. With the Dragon, spirits of the wind used to rush out of forests to meet and dash ozone in our faces. With Blunderbore, if they come at all, they merely spray us lazily.
Going from Stirling to Crieff we crossed the borderline of the Highlands. There was a park-like world round the Bridge of Allan: and at Ardoch, the greatest Roman station left in Britain, lots of turfed banks showing still where 26,000 Romans tried to bridle the Northern Caledonians, the red-haired people. I'm glad they never quite succeeded!
Crieff was sweet, and all round it, half hidden in woods, the most beautiful houses. But Basil had forgotten to wire, so we couldn't get into one of the nice hotels, but stayed in a very funny one. When Mrs. Vanneck asked for communicating rooms, the landlady said, 'Oh, no, Madam, we've no such things as that in our house!'
We went on to Perth early next morning, and every minute along the road we seemed to be passing happy people who'd come to play in Scotland: nice golfing girls and men, and men with guns over their shoulders, or followed by gillies with fishing-tackle. I wish men could amuse themselves, though, don't you, without killing creatures more beautiful and happy than themselves?
It was such a pretty road, past Methven, where, alas! the English beat Bruce; and if I hadn't been grieved to find that by John Knox's advice all the nicest buildings had been pulled down, I shouldn't have felt disappointed in Perth. It is a very fine town anyhow, with glorious trees; and the two great bridges over the Tay are splendid if they are made of iron. They look as if people had planned them especially to give all the view there could be of the sunset.
Of course the 'Fair Maid's' house was the most interesting thing. I hope it really was hers. I don't see why not. It is in the old glover's quarter. And the shrine with the crucifix and death's head and cross-bones they found hidden in the wall of her room is too fascinating. I could just see her praying there, so beautiful that all the young men of Perth were in love with her. And talking of the young men of Perth, Basil says the ball in the Games Week is supposed to be the best show of the year--such splendid men come. I should love to see them in the kilt, with their brown knees, like the pipers in Edinburgh.
St. Andrews was our next place, and we arrived the same day, for we didn't stop in Perth after we had seen the sights there. I wonder if you have been to St. Andrews? I know so little about you yet, dearest. I fell in love with the place--not so much with the links (though they must be the most beautiful as well as the most famous in the world) as with that old ruined castle built on the dark rocks rising out of the sea. I know I shall dream of the awful, bottle-necked dungeon! Basil said it was the worst thing he had ever seen except at Loches. I hope it isn't wicked to be pleased that Cardinal Beaton, after he sat in his window to watch Wishart burn, was soon killed, and salted, and preserved in the same dungeon where he used to keep martyrs. The 'undergrads' of the University looked so attractive in their red gowns, and the girl students in their mortar boards! They were like scarlet birds, against the gray walls and gray arches of the town. But I suppose people in St. Andrews think even more about golf than about learning, don't they? There were hundreds of all ages on the links--so grave and eager: and at the hotels they never know when anybody will come in to meals. There's the cemetery, too; that shows the importance of golf. All the 'smartest' monuments are of famous golfers, knitted caps and clubs and everything, neatly done in marble. But I wonder anybody ever contrives to die at St. Andrews. I never felt such delicious air!
Crossing the ferry for Dundee was fun. It was a very big boat, and several other motors on it as well as ours. We sat in Blunderbore all the way across the wide sheet of silver that was the Tay, gazing up at the marvellous giant bridge, and then we spent several hours in Dundee, seeing the Steeple, and Queen Mary's Orchard, and lots of things. This was so near the Round House that I suppose the Vannecks would have gone if it hadn't been for me. But I am the stumbling block in everybody's way.
Going on to Aberdeen, we ran along a fine coast dotted with ruined castles--Dunottar for one, where the Regalia was hidden once.
We stopped at Arbroath, which Doctor Johnson admired, to see the great shell of an Abbey, red as dried blood; and all the old town is built out of it, so no wonder there isn't much left but an immense nave. But just think, Arbroath is Sir Walter Scott's 'Fairport,' and I must read "The Antiquarian" again, all about the caves and the secret treasure found in them. As for the treasure of the Abbey, it is nothing less than the heart of William the Lion. He had it nicely buried near the high altar, as long ago as the twelfth century, wasn't it? But in 1810 they dug it up, found it had ossified, and now they simply have it lying about in a glass case, practically mixed up with the bones of a lady who left money to the Abbey (she wouldn't, if she'd known what they'd do!) and the singularly long thigh bones of a particularly wicked earl. It was an earl who married a sister of the Lion's, and, because he was jealous, threw her out of the window.
We had to go through Montrose, where the great Marquis was born, and where Sir James Douglas set sail with the Bruce's heart (what a lot of hearts there were travelling about then!) and where now the most curiously exciting things are the Bridie Shops. I had to know what a 'bridie' meant, so we stopped to see; but it's only a rolled meat pasty they love in Forfarshire; and brides are supposed to batten on them at their weddings. To please me, Basil would have made a detour to see 'Thrums,' which is really Kerriemuir, you know. And we should have had to pass through Forfar--the 'Witches Har'--and go on the road that leads to mysterious, wonderful Glamis. I was longing to do it, but Mrs. Vanneck wanted to arrive in Aberdeen in time to do some shopping! I gave up like a lamb, almost hating her inwardly; but afterward I felt better about it, for the Aberdeen shops are so nice. They sell pink pearls, out of Scottish rivers--perfect beauties. I bought you a brooch, and I do hope you'll like it. I don't know much about such things; and of course you have gorgeous jewellery; but this pearl is such a wonderful colour, like snow touched with sunrise.
My eyes and hair were full of granite by the time we got to Aberdeen, because the road is made of it, and the dust sparkles like diamonds.
So does Aberdeen sparkle like diamonds. I shouldn't have thought a city all gray like that, could be so handsome. But it is a gray bright and silky as the wings of doves, and in some lights pale as moonbeams. Sunset was beginning when we arrived, and on the houses and bridges and river, and even on the pavements of the broad streets, there was the same gray-pink sheen as on the pearl I bought for you.
In the morning we went to see the University, and the Cathedral with its lovely rose-pink pillars, and old painted Scandinavian ceiling. Everything would have passed off charmingly, if Basil had not begun to be rather foolish and unlike himself, while he and I were in the Cathedral together. Fortunately, an old friend of his he hadn't seen for years, appeared unexpectedly at the critical moment, and invited us to visit him near Aboyne. I hadn't quite time to say 'no' to Basil definitely, and we haven't gone back to the subject since, so I am hoping for the best. I used to think it would be heavenly to have a proposal, but now, I realize that it is much overrated.
Your loving
BARRIE,
Who hopes she hasn't bored you.
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO SOMERLED
DEAR SIR KNIGHT: I must write to tell you what a surprise I had in Aberdeen. Basil took us all to a biograph theatre--the first one I ever saw--and one set of pictures was labelled, 'A Gretna Green Wedding of the Olden Days.' How my heart beat!--and not for nothing, because, oh, Sir Knight, it was our wedding! My face never showed once, but the hair looked like mine; and your face was just like yours and nobody else's, in spite of the old-fashioned costume. Basil said out loud, 'By Jove!' and the Vannecks recognized you, and asked all sorts of questions. I had to tell them the story, but I didn't mind a bit. In fact, I think I was proud. The pictures were coloured, so perhaps that was one reason they guessed, for my hair was so red. I told Basil I always wanted to be married at Gretna Green, and now I have been. But he had the air of being rather shocked. I shouldn't have thought he was that kind of person.
Afterward, he was afraid that he had offended me; but I hadn't cared at all. However, he has been kinder than ever since, as if to make up. Walking about in the Cathedral next day, we met a delightful man, actually the Head of a Clan, who had been in Canada and had known Basil there. He invited us to visit at his place near Aboyne, on Deeside--just think, not far from where Macbeth was killed!--and of course that enchanted Mrs. Vanneck, who has an insatiable yearning to see the inside of Scottish houses. His is a beautiful house. I must tell you about it. Maybe you remember the road from Aberdeen to Aboyne, through lovely forests and mountains, and how by and by you come to Deeside, and the Grampians. The Chieftain we went to visit owns a whole mountain, and many miles of land besides; and when you arrive at his estate there are no gates to drive into. You wind on and on, along an exquisite avenue through the woods, and you would not know you were on any one's property if you hadn't been told beforehand, though it is all beautifully kept--not too smart and trim, but just right to be picturesque and romantic. There's no impression of 'This is mine, not yours. You are here only on sufferance!' Instead, the trees and hills and heather seem to say gently, 'This is a part of the world where our master lives, because it is lovely and he loves it. He makes you welcome to come and go as you will, whoever you are, as if it were your own.' Don't you think that is a charming impression? And afterward we found out that the doors of this Chieftain's house are never locked. Mostly in the summer they stand wide open all night, although he has beautiful old silver, and quantities of valuable pictures and things which have been in his family more or less ever since there was a Scotland. It is a dear old sixteenth-century house, with networks of black oak beams, and lots of quaint bow-windows that look out on lovely lawns and flower-gardens, and box or holly hedges, and yew trees cut in fantastic shapes.
We stayed one whole day and two nights. Wasn't it good of him to have us? In all the corridors there are carpets and curtains of the Chieftain's hunting tartan. I loved it. I do hope you have dogs' heads and antlers, and tartan curtains and carpets and things at your castle at Dhrum? It is yours, you know! I wonder if I shall ever see it?
I can't tell you how excited I was when the Chieftain and several other Highland men he had staying in his house-party wore the kilt to dinner. All their knees were baked to exactly the right brown; but he was the smartest of the men (though some were very young and handsome), because he, being the head of the Clan, had a green velvet coat. Poor Basil and Mr. Vanneck in their ordinary evening things looked like nothing at all. I was quite sorry for them, but so glad I hadn't to sit by one at the table, as I wanted only to talk to the kilted men. I wore that white frock you chose for me--do you remember?--and a sash of the MacDonald of Dhrum dress tartan, which I found in Aberdeen. All during dinner the pipers piped, and I was so thrilled I could scarcely eat. Afterward there was an impromptu dance in a bare, tartan-draped room, where it seemed that Macbeth could quite well have been entertained. I thought I should have to look on, of course, as I've never learned to dance; but that dear Chieftain taught me the 'Petronella,' which is very pretty and easy to pick up. It seems as if one could not help dancing to the music of the pipes; don't you find it so? Queen Mary is supposed to have introduced the Petronella to Scotland, the tallest man with the brownest knees told me; and Francis I brought it from Spain to France. It is quite a Spanish sort of dance, though Scotland has adopted it. I learned a lovely Highland schottische, too; and after I had seen others dancing the reels (ought I to say foursomes or eightsomes?) I tried those too, and got on well, everybody said. But the reel is a dance you can dance only with your own hair. Mine, which I had pinned up very neatly, came down. And one of the girls had a curl come off. Luckily she didn't seem to care. She said that accidents would happen on the best regulated heads.
I do so wonder, by the way, what a Highlander would do if he happened to be born with legs so crooked that he couldn't wear the kilt? I suppose he would have to emigrate when very young, or else stop in bed all his life.
In the morning a dignified piper named Donal played us awake, walking round and round the house. It delayed my dressing dreadfully, pausing to gaze him out of sight every time he passed under my window. I could have cried when he stopped; but he played more while we had breakfast. I sat next to an Englishman, and would you believe it, the loveliest lament got on his horrid nerves, and he said in a low voice, 'Shall I be able to live through it?' If I had been engaged to him I should have broken it off at once.
The Chieftain has a friend who is a Princess--not a little 'pretend' princess like me, but a real one with a capital 'P'--and he introduced us to her at a big garden party he was having at his place on our day there. 'They are going on to Braemar to-morrow,' he said; and she being as kind and hospitable as he, promptly invited us to lunch with her at Braemar Castle. Mrs. Vanneck was pale with joy!
We left from the Chieftain's early in the morning, and Donal played us away, on the best run Blunderbore has given us yet, through what I am sure is true Highland scenery. There are castles dotted about everywhere; and I saw my first Highland cattle--adorable little shaggy beasts with forelocks like sporans, and innocent short faces. Their eyes were so wide apart it seemed that they might be able to see round all the corners. A cherubic bull tried to charge Blunderbore, but changed his mind at the last moment owing to the persuasions of his female friends. The rough, dark brown forms somehow emphasized the beauty of the wild background, the hills painted golden and purple with bracken and heather, the mountains (for there seem always to be mountains in the distance in Scotland) looking exactly the colour of violets against the hyacinth blue of the sky. All sorts of Highland things got in our way, counting deer; and I made up rules for creatures which it would be very useful if they could be taught to obey. 'Bulls kindly requested not to charge motor-cars. No sitting down or cud-chewing allowed in the middle of roads. Deer will please, when darting across, start at least six yards ahead of motors. Chickens will keep to their own side of the road when they have chosen it three times. Rabbits not to run directly ahead of the car for more than three miles at a stretch.'
As we lumbered along with Blunderbore, each heather-dyed hill that rolled out of our way disclosed a new, or rather a very old, castle. I should think there must be as many castles in this part of the world as there are cottages. I know we saw more! except perhaps those sweet little dwellings grouped together in the charming villages of Ballater and Braemar. No wonder the King and Queen love this part of the world. Basil thought everything here quite foreign-looking: but there's always that French spirit in Scotland, isn't there? I'm sure the coffee is so good just because of that.
It was fun having luncheon at Braemar Castle, which has more turrets than you can count without knowing it well. Each room nearly has a turret, and some have two: and on the thick wooden shutters names of soldiers quartered in the Castle after Prince Charlie days are roughly carved. Of course there's a dungeon, and a secret way to the far-off village and river: and when you enter you have to wind up and up a tower stairway with here and there a little deep-set iron-barred window to give you light. I wish you could see the Princess's Persian dog, Mirzan, of the oldest race of dogs in the world: yellow-white as old ivory, tall and thin and graceful as a blowing plume. He takes strange attitudes like dogs in pictures by old masters; and you feel he can't be real. He must have stepped stealthily out from a dim tapestry hanging on one of the thick stone walls, and he will have to go back to his place beside the sleeping tapestry knight, as soon as he has finished running after the doves, who have left their dovecote and are balancing with their coral feet on the battlements, or walking in the courtyard. Seeing this castle of the Princess's makes me quite envy you having Dunelin. I should like to live in a castle. Do buy Dunelin, as you said you sometimes thought of doing, and invite me to be a humble little member of one of your big house-parties. Your deserted princess, BARRIE.
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST BARBARA: Every prospect pleases and only man is vile. At least, I don't mean vile, but upsetting. It is too bad about Basil. I don't know what to do. I hope you aren't hoping that I may fall in love with him? Something he said makes me think he believes you want it. But why should you? You don't know him and his sister so very well. They aren't old friends. Darling, if I am a bother to you--and I know I am--I'll go far away and change my name and do anything you like, except marry Basil. It isn't that I'm too young. It seems to me if I loved a man desperately I should like to marry him while I was young, so as to give him all my years, and because I should grudge the days and weeks and months lived away from him. But Basil is just like a brother. He might hold my hand all day, and I shouldn't have a single thrill, which he says is the way for a girl to find out whether she's really in love.
Everything might be so pleasant, if it weren't for this silliness. We have seen Elgin, which has the most exquisite ruined Cathedral that ever lived or died; and sweet Pluscarden Abbey not far off; and Forres, full of memories of Macbeth; and a mysterious carved shaft of sandstone called Sweno's Stone; and the hidden, secret glen of the Findhorn River, where we had to get out, and walk for miles through a gorge of the most entrancing beauty. Sometimes it was wild and grand, sometimes peaceful as a dream of fairyland. Every kind of lovely tree grew there, out of sheer, rocky walls red as coral, or pale and glistening as gray satin; and you looked far down on water brown as the brown of dogs' eyes--deep pools, and a hundred rapids and tiny cataracts filling the glen with their singing. But Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck would walk far ahead of us on the steep narrow paths, which were so slippery I had to let Basil help me, and it was most embarrassing and futile to keep refusing him all the time. He says we were meant for each other, but I know better!
You remember, don't you, dear, I didn't want to take this trip? My feeling must have been a presentiment.
At Culloden Moor I couldn't help crying a little over Prince Charlie and his brave Highlanders, for I think no other battlefield can keep its sadness and romantic pathos, and its effect upon the mind as that does. You know it's almost within sight and sound of the sea; and the voice of the wind among the pines--dark, straight ranks of pines like soldiers in mourning, standing in a bloodstained sea of heather--seemed to me like the wail of ghostly pipes playing a Highland lament. Wandering among the wavy graves and piled cairns of the different clans who gave their lives in vain for Prince Charlie, I was with Basil all alone, for those wretched Vannecks would go off by themselves, as usual, in the most marked way. He made me wipe my eyes with his handkerchief, and then folded it up to 'keep forever.' He does choose the strangest places to make love, and always contrives the minute the others go away, to bring the subject round to that. Luckily we are all four together in the car, as the chauffeur drives, but even there he looks at me, which is quite getting on my nerves. Yesterday I asked to sit in front, saying I wanted more air. It was after leaving Inverness; and I had the best of it, quite by accident. It was a horrid road, almost the only bad one we've had; full of flat holes which the chauffeur called 'pans,' and the others, in the back of the car, nearly had their spines come through the tops of their heads. Strange what a difference there is, sitting in the driver's seat! The bumping lasted all the way to Drumnadrochit, where we turned away from a long, straight loch to mount up into lovely strange country; then plunged down a steep hill to Invercannich--a charming place ringed round with lovely, mysterious-looking mountain-peaks which seem to say 'If we chose, we could tell you the secret of Glen Affric, which we are hiding.'
Isn't that an alluring name--Glen Affric? A little while ago I should have wanted immensely to see it; but now whenever any one proposes walking through a glen I always argue that it would be better not.
Last night we stopped at Strathpeffer, a gay and beautiful little cure-town, which is like a walled flower-garden set down in the midst of wild and stern Caledonia. The mountains are the walls; and heather flows round them and beats against them like a purple ocean. It is so foreign looking that it reminded Basil of Baden Baden. Now we are going on into Ross-shire, which Basil describes as a country of moorlands and great spaces where red deer live. But already we have seen deer walking quite calmly out of the forests on to our road, where they stop to gaze quizzically, without the least fear, at the car. It is almost as if they took it for a brother-animal. To-night we shall be at Loch Maree, and of course you won't get this in time to telegraph there. But perhaps you might wire to Ballachulish, where we shall be to-morrow. Do, dearest, and tell me to come back to you. In spite of all the loveliness, I can't stand this much longer, for I cannot make Basil stop without being really rude to him. You needn't keep me more than a day if it's inconvenient. I'll go anywhere afterward--except to Grandma's. Or even there, if she'll have me back!--Your loving and anxious BARRIE.
TELEGRAM TO BARRIE FROM MRS. BALLANTREE MACDONALD
If you want to please me and be very happy yourself say 'Yes' to B. N. Splendid thing for you. Could wish nothing better for your future. Do relieve my mind by writing that you have decided. Yours lovingly and hopefully,
BARBARA.
LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST: Your telegram gave me the most dreadful surprise when I arrived here at Ballachulish, and everything else seemed against me too, for there was a wire from Mr. Bennett's sister asking Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck to make their visit to her as soon as possible, at that shooting lodge you told us about. They wanted to go, and I was the only thing that prevented them. If I had an enemy trying to push me into a corner this would have seemed like his (or her) work--just as if it had been planned on purpose. But, of course, that idea is nonsense. Basil said, 'Now, if you could only care a little, and make up your mind to wait for the love, we could be married at once, because I believe it's still easy to do these things quickly in Scotland.' But I told him I didn't feel as if I could, even to please Barbara, though I liked him very much. And I began to think that, after all, I should have to go back to Carlisle and beg Grandma to take me in, when who should come teuf-teufing up to the hotel but Mr. Somerled in the darling Gray Dragon. I could have cried with joy. It was like a miracle, because, though I thought he might come along some time, I wasn't expecting him then, any more than you would expect manna to fall in 1912 just because you happened to be hungry and lost.
You will be surprised perhaps at my feeling that I was saved from Basil and Grandma simply because Mr. Somerled happened to turn up at our hotel in his motor-car. But I haven't told you all yet. He wasn't alone. He had collected Duncan MacDonald and Miss MacDonald, and he'd come to Ballachulish looking for us. I must confess to you now that I wrote to him twice or three times, which was only polite, as he'd been so kind about rescuing me before. And you hadn't forbidden me to write. One of the things I told him in a letter was about the visit to Mrs. Payne the Vannecks might be making: and it occurred to him that some such complication as this might arise. He thought if Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck wanted to go to the Round House, it would be very nice for me to join my cousins (of course the MacDonalds are my cousins) until you are ready for me to come back to you. Or else I could go and stay at Dunelin Castle at Dhrum, for they are willing to visit him there if I do. It has been let to him for years, you know. As the MacDonalds are poor he was afraid, if he didn't take the castle, they might let or even sell it to some vulgar rich person who would spoil the island he loves. Now he may buy it himself: for Duncan MacDonald has no son, and the daughter is so plain and old that she can't possibly marry. Won't it be good to have the castle still belonging to a MacDonald? And it is so romantic that it should be Ian Somerled MacDonald, whom Duncan used to despise. But perhaps you've never heard that story?
Now, both the father and daughter are sweet to 'their dear cousin,' and very kind to me--to please him, of course. Next to being with you, I'd rather go to Dhrum than do anything else in the world. Perhaps it will seem to you just the right thing, because I know how difficult it is to plan what to do with me for the rest of my life, unless I marry Basil. And maybe you wouldn't so much mind my not marrying him, if I had a proper place to stay for ever so many weeks, while you looked round?
Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck haven't gone yet, but they will be starting to-morrow morning for Dundee, and from there they will go to the Round House. I am sorry to say I shan't miss them, as I did Mrs. James. Cousin Duncan and Cousin Margaret (they have told me to call them 'Cousin') don't seem Scottish at all, and so they are rather disappointing. They live in London and don't care for Dhrum, but they appear not to dislike the idea of visiting Mr. Somerled there. I believe they have often in old times visited the people to whom they let Dunelin Castle, but only when there was a very good chef and a gay house-party. Cousin Margaret has a large, high nose, and thin hair and a thin face and body. All her personality is thin and cold, as if she couldn't care much about anything. But she does care about women getting votes, and insists on talking politics in the midst of lovely scenery. She looks so like her father, it is quite funny, and their voices are exactly alike, slow and correct and exaggeratedly English; and Scottish history bores them. They are proud of the ancestor who ratted from Prince Charlie and fought with Butcher Cumberland, so we have nothing in common. But any port in a storm!
I suppose I mustn't go away in the Gray Dragon till I hear from you? Yet surely you will say 'Yes,' as it will save you trouble, without my being obliged to marry Basil. I am sorry for him, but he will soon get over it, for he loves his writing better than anything else in the world, and presently he will go back to it and forget me. I think he likes me because I would make a new kind of heroine for one of his novels, and I'm quite willing he should have me for that.
I suppose if I go with Mr. Somerled Mrs. West will join Basil in a few days, and they will continue their tour together as if nothing had happened to interrupt it. Of course I haven't told Mr. Somerled about Basil proposing, so when he suggested my going for a short run with the Gray Dragon in memory of old times, he invited Basil too. But that was before the Vannecks had looked out trains, and decided that they couldn't get off till to-morrow. There wouldn't be comfortable room for such a crowd even in the Gray Dragon. Anyhow, Basil refused, saying he had writing to do--and I went with Mr. Somerled and the cousins to the Pass of Glencoe--you know, don't you, 'The Glen o' Weeping'?
It is only an afternoon excursion from Ballachulish, so I was sure you wouldn't object to my deciding for myself. As for Ballachulish, it is one of the most charming little places I've seen yet in Scotland, although coming here as we did from Loch Maree it would need to be beautiful indeed, not to be what you call in the theatre an 'anticlimax.' Loch Maree lies all secret and hidden among deer forests. Along the narrow, twisting road as you go, you hear the rushing sound of many rivers. Nobody had ever even dreamed of motor-cars when that road was made, so you have to travel slowly and manoeuvre whenever you meet anything if you don't want to be killed. Even as it was, we got mixed up with a big automobile loaded with fish-baskets. Our flywheel was on the ground, running helplessly round and round, screaming horribly, while both chauffeurs abused each other. Such a funny accident, and we had another, going up a very steep hill. We'd so little petrol that it ran back, as your blood does if you hold up your hand, and the motor would do nothing but groan till we found out what was the matter. Altogether it was quite an adventure going on such a road with such a weak, elderly car like Blunderbore: but it was worth it all, for Loch Maree is the beautiful birthplace of baby rainbows. As we came near, travelling a mere white seam in a carpet of purple heather stitched together with silver streams, I saw any quantity of unfinished rainbows, just waiting to be matched on to each other like bits of a puzzle. They hovered over rivulets, dancing in the sunlight; or stained with colour the rocks thickly silvered with a brocade of lichen, or else hid suddenly in the heather which, mingling with pale green bracken, made a straggling pattern of amethyst and jade for miles along the way. Oh, it was all lovely; and we stayed a night there, at an ideal inn where fishermen engage their rooms years beforehand. A dear old waiter in the Loch Maree hotel advised me in the kindest way never, never to speak of fresh herring as fish, in Scotland. I wonder why? He said, would I have fresh herrings or eggs? I said I'd have the fish. He said there was no fish, but would I try the herring? That was the way the subject came up.
We had two Highland ferries to cross, getting to Ballachulish. Strome Ferry, which was difficult and almost dangerous because there was a great storm of wind just then, and Dornie Ferry. I liked those experiences better than almost anything we have done with Blunderbore. The little ferries were so much more exciting than a huge steam ferryboat, like that on the Tay. And in the wild, lost country passing Clunie Inn, it poured with rain and wind, the gale lashing us, rocking the car like a cradle. The spattering mud made us look like hideous freckled people; and so the MacDonalds saw me first. I hope Mr. Somerled explained I wasn't like that really. We had so much arguing about Mrs. Payne's telegram and what the Vannecks should do, that we had no time to wash, and I didn't seem to care if I was never clean again. But the minute the Gray Dragon appeared I cared fearfully. I took great pains with my appearance before I started out with my new cousins, for Glencoe, and I felt so happy that it seemed the place ought to call itself the Glen o' Smiling instead of the Glen o' Weeping.
Of course, however, I lost that frivolous feeling when we were there, even though it was a joy to be back with the Gray Dragon; for the Pass of Glencoe is like the Valley of Death. It is a sad mouth wide open, roaring to the sky for vengeance, biting at the clouds with black, jagged teeth; a great mouth in a dead face wet with the tears of the weeping that can never be dried. It rained while we were there, and though rain doesn't matter to the Gray Dragon, it made the Pass more wild and grim if possible, filling it with gray, drifting ghosts: ghosts of the murdered clansmen; ghosts disappearing into dark, open doorways of rock castles, or falling on the green floor of the glen, to weep on the dim, faded purple of the sparse heather. The river into which the weeping cataracts shed their tears was black at first; but suddenly, though the rain did not stop, the sun tore a hole through a cloud, and shot a huge rainbow into the rushing water. It split into a thousand fragments, still gleaming under the clear brown flood: and I thought it was as if the MacDonald women, in trying to escape from the massacre, had dropped their poor treasures--their cairngorms and garnets and amethysts--and there the jewels had lain ever since under the water, because no one dared fish them out. But also I thought the key of the rainbow itself might be lying there; and that made me happy again in spite of the sadness of the place: for Mr. Somerled and I used to talk when we first knew each other about finding the key of the rainbow together: and I saw by the way he looked that he hadn't forgotten. It is a compliment when a man like that remembers anything a girl says, don't you think?
Now, dear Barbara, I must send off this letter at once, though I am going to telegraph at the same time, to ask if I may accept Mr. Somerled's invitation. I tell you frankly I don't know how I shall bear it if you say no. But you won't. You are too kind and sweet, and you do want me to be happy and find the key of the rainbow, don't you?
