Aline induced Mrs. Bal to telegraph Barrie, "Await my messenger"; nevertheless the girl was greatly surprised to see Mrs. West. She had vaguely thought that Barbara might send one of the red-headed maids, to take her back to Glasgow.
Of course Basil must have known, but he had not told. Since Somerled and the MacDonalds came, he had kept to himself with his writing as an excuse. Now Barrie realized that certainly he had been expecting his sister; yet he had not gone to meet her with his car. Perhaps there had not been time: or perhaps he had an inspiration, and could not tear himself from work, even for a few hours.
When Aline arrived at Ballachulish, Barrie and Somerled and Margaret MacDonald were walking together by the side of fair Loch Leven. Barrie wore a white dress and no hat. The late afternoon sun was dazzling on her hair, and as Somerled looked at her, across Miss MacDonald (it was like Margaret to walk between them), there was an expression on his face which made Aline feel capable of desperate things. A child like Barrie to win him away from her so easily! There was something wrong about the world. Aline yearned to right it, and live happily ever after. She had travelled all night by train, and had been hours in a motor-car, never once noticing the scenery; and instead of being enchanted with Connel Ferry had regarded the crossing as a vexatious delay. Some of the most beautiful scenes in Scotland had passed before her eyes between Oban and Ballachulish; but if she thought of such things at all, she thought that even a romantic writer couldn't be expected to notice irrelevant trifles like nature, when bound up heart and soul in her own private romance.
Somerled wondered how he could possibly have found her face interesting. He did not know which of her two smiles had less genuine human nature in it, the sad one or the gay one. And he wondered for the first time if Basil didn't write the best part of their books.
"I've come in a great hurry on an important mission from Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald to Barrie," she explained to Somerled rather than to the girl, as she got stiffly out of the motor-car. She was almost pathetically anxious not to produce the impression that this frantic journey had been undertaken on Ian's account. If she failed, she would put George Vanneck out of his long misery by marrying him. She would even say that they had been secretly engaged for some time. Anything rather than Somerled should suspect the truth. But she was going to try hard not to fail.
"I'll see Basil presently," she said when Barrie asked if they oughtn't to let him know. It occurred to Somerled that Aline did not want to meet her brother before strangers. "Let me just get rid of this hired motor-car--and then I must fulfil my mission before doing anything else. Basil and I will have plenty of time together. I've finished my visit to Mrs. Bal. Dear child, may I have a little talk with you in your own room, and give you your Barbara's message?"
Barrie was eager, yet frightened. She could hardly wait to hear what was her mother's verdict on the Plan; but it seemed ominous that she was to learn it through Aline. Nothing good had come to her so far through Mrs. West.
Barrie's room was small, and looked over a dovecote. The doves were mourning a good deal more than was reasonable considering that their griefs must have happened generations ago. Their continuous cooing rasped Aline's nerves. How would it be best to begin? She had planned it out a dozen times in the train, and a dozen times more in the car: but a few doves and a disturbance in an unseen family of chickens were enough to put everything out of her head. Suddenly she began to cry. That was not a part of her design; but no inspiration could have been more useful. The pretty, serene mask of her smooth face wrinkled up pitifully, and made her seem real and human. Barrie's heart warmed to her for the first time.
"Oh, Mrs. West, what is it?" she exclaimed. "Nothing has happened to moth--to Barbara?"
Nothing that happened to any one except herself could have drawn tears from Aline West, but Barrie did not know that.
"I am so--horribly unhappy!" wailed Aline, hiding her distorted face in her hands. There was no time to fumble for a handkerchief.
"Is there anything I can do?" Barrie asked.
"There is--everything!" Aline choked. She began to realize from the girl's agitated voice that the accident of her own tears had been providential. "But you won't do it when you know."
"I will, indeed--if I can," Barrie warmly protested.
"You have taken Ian away from me," Aline sobbed. "He was mine till you came. I worshipped him, and he loved me. He loves me still, but we quarrelled--about you. I was jealous--I confess. You are so young. I'm--thirty. He said he cared nothing for you in that way--that you were only a child; but he'd promised you to take you to Edinburgh and be a sort of guardian, and nothing would induce him to break his word. I was foolish--I tried to make it a test with him. I said if he loved me he would tell you he'd changed his mind, that he couldn't take you. But he wouldn't be persuaded, and so we quarrelled. Everything has been wrong between us since. He is so proud and hard! And my heart is breaking."
"I am sorry--very sorry," Barrie answered in a queer, level voice, without any expression in it. "Did you come here to tell me this?"
"No, oh, no," Aline said quickly. "I came from your mother. I was to tell you that she's going to marry Mr. Bennett, and that she hopes still that you may make up your mind to accept my brother who loves you so much, before Mr. Bennett comes back from America. He's going in a day or two--for a few weeks. You know, it is so awkward for Barbara. If he should find out that--little secret she's kept from him! He's rather a strange man. He can be hard. She's afraid of him. She couldn't come to you herself, and she dares not have you back because Mr. Bennett is still there, and if he sees you--but you understand, don't you? I offered to come. We are great friends, she and I. But--I wanted to come for myself too. Ian is so terribly obstinate. He made up his mind that you needed his help, and that he'd stand by you whatever happened. It is his boast that he's never broken his word, nor failed any one. Even his love for me wouldn't make him give up--and he won't give you up while he thinks you are alone and needing a friend. See what he has done for you! He has gone and fetched these MacDonalds. I knew something had happened because his chauffeur was wired for, to meet him somewhere, but it was a blow to hear from Barbara that he'd followed you. She showed me your telegram. I almost lost hope then, that anything could ever come right between Ian and me. But when she asked me to see you, I thought--it seemed just possible, if I could make you understand----"
"Please tell me," Barrie said, still in that strange, dry voice, unlike hers, and very old sounding for a young girl, "please tell me exactly what you thought I might do--when you'd made me understand?"
"I thought you might feel that the only way to free Ian Somerled from his supposed duty would be to marry some one else quickly. You know he blames Barbara; but if you had a husband, you wouldn't need a guardian any more. Then, if I asked him to forgive me--and I would ask him, for I've no pride left!--he might come back. I believe he'd be glad to come back, for we loved each other dearly before you parted us!"
"That is true," said Barrie; "if I marry some one else he will be--released. I didn't know what trouble I was making for him."
"No, you didn't know, of course, for he couldn't tell you," Aline agreed. "But now you do know. Oh, the only way, if Ian is to be made happy again in spite of himself, is for you to marry Basil. Think how happy you will make him too! And Barbara. Every one will be happy, and all through you."
"I'll see Basil and talk to him," said Barrie.
"You will? You little angel! But I must see him first and prepare him. Are you going to do what we all want? Even Ian wants it at heart, though he doesn't know it yet, for it would be such a relief for him to feel you were all right, and he--could go back to--old times."
"I'd marry Basil to-morrow, if I could," Barrie replied.
"Perhaps you can," Aline said, radiant, drying her tears.
Basil persuaded himself that he would have been less than man if he refused to accept his happiness, even though he could have wished it to come to him spontaneously. But nothing, as Aline anxiously reminded him, can be ideal in this world. And it wasn't as if it were certain that Somerled would have married the girl if they had been let alone.
"We shall never know now what he would have done," she said, "and I for one don't want to know. I want to know only what he will do. Even if he has been a little--infatuated, why, you told me yourself that hearts are often caught in the rebound. I shall try so hard."
"But you are going away with us!" Basil said quickly. "You must."
"Oh, I will. I wouldn't trust you alone--to keep Barrie. But afterward I shall write him a letter. Such a letter! Of course, we've all three quite decided now" (it was she, and Basil reluctantly, who had decided) "merely to tell him that we're obliged to take Barrie back to her mother; that Mrs. Bal would hear of nothing else. And it won't be a lie, because as soon as you're married, you will take her to see Barbara. Morgan Bennett will be gone, so Mrs. Bal won't mind--much. Have you decided where the wedding is to be?"
"Gretna Green," Basil answered with such prompt decision that Aline was surprised.
"Why Gretna Green? It's such a long way," she objected, impatient for the afterward, which was to be her reward. "I thought one place was as good as another in Scotland nowadays, and that----"
"I've a special reason for wanting to be married to Barrie at Gretna Green," said Basil, almost fiercely. "For one thing, she's told me that it used to be a dream of hers. For another----"
"For another?"
"No matter. Only a fancy of mine--to rub out the recollection of something I don't like. Of course, if Barrie objects--but I hope she won't."
Barrie did not object in words. Only her heart rebelled. But her one great wish was to put her heart to sleep. And nothing else mattered. Nothing else must matter now.
