"I was sure she would, because she told me I had only to ask. She was dying to lend it. She wanted to be able to tell everybody that Aline West and Basil Norman lived in her house for a fortnight in August. It"s a great feather in her cap; and Ian Somerled coming to visit us here is something she"ll _never_ get over as long as she lives. I marconied her an hour after he"d said that he would come to us after London, and we"d begin our motor tour from Carlisle. "Twas only taking Time by the forelock to tell him we _had_ been invited. It _was_ bad luck poor Mrs.
Keeling being ill when she got my wire, and she really was a trump to turn out and go to a nursing home."
"Good heavens, is that what she did? I didn"t know----"
"Of course not. But you needn"t mind so dreadfully. She"s _much_ more comfortable in the nursing home with the best attention than in her own.
And, as a reward, we"ll dedicate the book to her."
Aline said this as a queen might have suggested lending her crown to a loyal servitor. Basil laughed, rather uncomfortably, and his sister looked up hastily into his face, to see if he were making fun of her.
Just then they were drawing near the open windows of the drawing-room, and the lamplight shone out so brightly through the old-fashioned embroidered lace curtains that she could see his profile. Hers too was clearly outlined as she lifted her chin anxiously.
The brother and sister were both good to look at, in ways so different that the two made a striking contrast. Aline knew that in appearance they were a romantic pair of travelling companions. Every one stared at them when they were together, for he was very tall and dark, more like an Italian or a Spaniard than an Englishman, and she was gracefully slender and fair, dressing with a subtle appreciation of herself and all her points. Aline West"s and Basil Norman"s photographs, taken together or apart, for newspapers and magazines, were extremely effective, and were considered by publishers to help the sale of their books. Norman might have sat for t.i.tian"s Portrait of a Gentleman: and there were those who thought Mrs. West not unlike Lady Hamilton. Since the first expression of this opinion in print, she had changed the fashion of her hair, and at fancy-dress b.a.l.l.s, of which she was fond, she generally appeared as the beautiful Emma. Certainly the cast of her features and the cutting of her lips faintly recalled those of Romney"s ideal; but Mrs. West"s pretty pale face had only two expressions: the one when she smiled--always the same delicate curving of the lips which lit no beam in the deep-set forget-me-not eyes; the one when she was grave and wistfully intellectual. She had a beautiful round white throat which she never hid with a high collar. Her hair was of that sun-in-a-mist gold that eventually fades almost imperceptibly into gray--if left to itself.
But in Aline"s case it was improbable that it would be left to itself.
Every morning when dressing she examined it anxiously, even fearfully, to see whether it was becoming thinner or losing its misty glints of gold. Yet she knew that her fears were likely to advance the day she dreaded, and tried to shut them out of her mind.
"Why do you laugh?" she inquired almost irritably, for she was secretly afraid always of missing something that was seen by others to be amusing. She talked constantly of a sense of humour, pitying those not blessed with it, but there were moments when she wondered bleakly if she had it herself. "Have I said anything funny?"
"Only you seem so sure that the dedication will be a panacea for every wound."
"So it will be for Mrs. Keeling."
"I thought you had the idea of dedicating it to Somerled, as he"ll be taking us through Scotland in his car."
"I had. But I feel now it would be a mistake. He couldn"t refuse, and one wouldn"t be sure he was pleased. He"s so horribly important, you know. I don"t mean in his own eyes, but in the eyes of the world; so nothing we could do for him would really confer an honour. And the reason he"s cynical and bored is because people have fussed over him so sickeningly, more and more every year, since he began to rise to what he is."
"Yet I don"t think he"s conceited."
"Not in the ordinary way. But he can"t help knowing that he"s some one in particular. He began to like us because we didn"t fuss over him, or seem to go out of our way to please him. That"s where I"ve been clever; for oh, Basil, I"d do anything short of disfiguring myself to win him."
"My poor girl!" Norman exclaimed.
She caught him up hastily. "Why do you call me "poor?" Do you think I shan"t succeed? Do you think he"ll never care?"
"You"re a far better judge than I am," her brother answered evasively.
"Women feel such things. We----"
"You feel things, too. You know you do, Basil."
"In an abstract way--not when they"re just in front of my eyes."
"He has told me a lot about himself, anyhow." Aline took up a new line of argument, out of her own thoughts. "That"s a good sign. He is so reserved with almost everybody--and he was even with me till our last evening on shipboard. I was telling him about Jim dying in India and leaving me alone there, almost a girl; and how there was no money; and how I took up writing and made a success. Then from that we drifted into talk about success in general; and he told me his whole story--much more than I"d ever heard from gossip, and a good deal of it quite different.
I took it as the greatest compliment that he should open his heart to me--and a splendid sign."
"Yes, I suppose it was both," Norman agreed; and Aline had retired too far within the rose-bower of happy memories to catch a suggestion of doubt in his voice.
"I read once in a newspaper that he"d been a bootblack in Glasgow before he emigrated," Mrs. West said, as they turned away from the house again in their walk, and set their faces toward the distant gate. "It wasn"t true. His father was a crofter on a little island somewhere near Skye. I think it"s called Dhrum. I never heard of it before; and he had to excuse my ignorance, because I"m Canadian! It seems that a branch of the MacDonald family own the whole place and are great people there--lords of the isle. His name was MacDonald too, though his family were only peasants--clan connections, or whatever they call that sort of thing. I don"t understand a bit, and I didn"t like asking him to explain. It was too delicate a subject, though he appeared to be rather proud of his origin. Scotch peasants are apparently quite different from other peasants. You"ll have to study up the differences and make lots of notes for the book. I"m no good at anything with dialect, or character sort of parts. You wouldn"t think now, though, that Ian Somerled had ever been a peasant would you? He talked a lot about his father and mother--evidently he adored them. He said they"d be miracles anywhere out of Scotland, but there were many like them there. According to him there was nothing they hadn"t read or couldn"t quote by the yard, from Burns and Scott back to Shakespeare. That was the way he was brought up, and instead of wanting him to go on crofting like themselves, they were enchanted because he drew pictures on their unpainted doors and their whitewashed walls. They saved all their pennies to have him educated as an artist, and encouraged him--quite different from peasant parents in books. One day the "meenister" called, and saw the boy"s pictures. He thought them something out of the ordinary--pictures of castles and cathedrals they were, with people going in and coming out, and portraits of friends, and historical characters. After that he took a great interest in Ian, and taught him Latin and the few other things his wonderful parents didn"t happen to know. When Ian was about thirteen or fourteen, the "meenister" tried to get help for the little MacDonald from the great MacDonald, a disagreeable, cranky old man with one daughter. They thought they owned the whole world instead of one tiny island, and the man wouldn"t do anything for the child. He simply poured contempt on "clan ties.""
"That doesn"t sound like the great folk of Scotland," said Basil, who for weeks had been reading little else but Scottish history, Scottish fiction, and Scottish poetry, in order to get himself in the right frame of mind for writing "the book." "I haven"t come across a single instance of their being purse-proud or sn.o.bbish."
"These weren"t purse-proud, because their purses had nothing in them to be proud of," Aline explained. "Their branch of the MacDonalds had lost its money and its love of Scotland. Old Duncan MacDonald was the uncle of the last lord of Dhrum, who had to go away from his island for good and let his castle to "aliens"--English people. When the nephew died later, Duncan inherited, but never lived at Dhrum. He only came there once in a while to visit the tenants who"d hired the castle from him, if they happened to be people he knew, and would "do" him well. He and his daughter were mostly in London, where they had a flat, and prided themselves on knowing no Gaelic. They took pains to show that they considered the crofter"s son a common brat, and resented the meenister"s" expecting them to do anything for his future, just because his name happened to be MacDonald, and he lived in a hut on a remote point of their island. Ian didn"t lose courage, though; and soon after the great snub he contrived to work his way somehow to Edinburgh. He wouldn"t take the money his father and mother had saved up for him, because they were old and had been ill, and needed it themselves. But he did all kinds of queer jobs, and at last walked into the studio of a celebrated artist, saying he wanted to pay for some lessons. At first the man only laughed, but when he saw Ian"s drawings, he was interested at once. He gave him lessons for nothing, and boasted of his protege to other artists. It seems that a talent for both portraiture and architecture is very rare. When Ian was sixteen he won a big prize for the design of an important building which a lot of prominent architects had been trying for. Presently it came out that he was only a boy, a boy who could do wonderful portraits, too, and everybody began taking notice of him and writing enthusiastic praise in the papers. Some interviewer falsely reported that he"d called himself a cousin of the MacDonald of Dhrum, and disagreeable Duncan denied the relationship indignantly. He spoke to some one of Ian"s father, who had just then died, as "an ignorant old hay-cutter," and the speech was repeated far and wide. You can imagine Ian Somerled forgetting an insult to his adored father! He dropped the name of MacDonald from that day, calling himself Somerled; and as he was all alone in the world--his mother was dead, too, and had never seen his success--he resolved to make a reputation in another country. Of course that was very _young_ of him. He sees that now. He crossed to New York in the steerage, and vowed he"d never set foot in Scotland again, or take back his name of MacDonald, until old Duncan not only openly claimed him as a cousin, but begged him as a personal favour to return to Scotland."
"That must have seemed like sentencing himself to perpetual banishment,"
said Basil.
"I don"t know. He appears to have had a kind of prophetic faith in his own powers of success. And he was right in every way. Duncan began to _grovel_ years ago."
In talking of Somerled, Aline had forgotten to listen for sounds of his approach. She was interested in the story she was telling--more interested than she was usually in the development of her own plots. But luckily Basil saw to the plot-making nowadays, and she hadn"t to worry.
"It"s funny," she went on, "that a man who laughs at romance should be one of the most romantic figures in the world. If you and I wrote up his story, and took him for the hero, all the critics would say "how impossible!" But critics will never believe that anything highly romantic or sensational can happen really. I don"t know _what_ their own lives must be like--or what they can think of the incidents they must see every day in the newspapers! Somerled says the only romantic thing he ever did was to annex the name of Somerled: but almost every phase of his life would make a story. Take his success in America, for instance.
He wasn"t eighteen when he landed as an immigrant, with nothing in his pocket except what was left of the architectural prize. Most of that money had gone in giving his father a few last comforts, and putting up some wonderful, extravagant sort of monuments for both his parents, which Ian designed himself. But he hadn"t been two months in New York when he won a still bigger prize, which came just as he was on the point of starving! A handful of oatmeal and an apple a day _I_ should call starvation, but he says it was grand for his health. In six years, at twenty-four, he was not only the greatest portrait-painter in America, but one of the most successful architects, an extraordinary combination which has made him _unique_ in modern times. And before he was twenty-eight came that big "coup" of his, which he calls a "mere accident that might have happened to any fool"--the buying of a site for a new town in Nevada, where he meant to build up a little city of beautiful houses, and finding a silver mine. Of course, it _wasn"t_ an "accident." It was the spirit of prophecy in him which has always carried him on to success--that, and his grit and daring and enterprise and general cleverness. Oh, Basil, if you could have heard him telling me these things that last night on the _Olympic_--leaning back in his deck-chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette (I was smoking too. I hate it; but I think he likes a woman to smoke and be a man"s pal), the moonlight shining on his face, showing his eyes half shut, and talking in his quietest way, as if he were dreaming it all over again, or speaking to himself! I hardly breathed, till he broke off suddenly and laughed in quite a shy sort of way, ashamed of being "egotistical,"
though he hadn"t praised himself at all. The flowery things I"ve said are mine. He even apologized! I felt I"d never had so great a compliment in my life. It seemed too good to be true that such a man should have opened his heart to me. But when his invitation for Scotland came, it--it set the seal of reality on the rest. Do you know, I can"t help believing he made more than he need of his business in London; that the real truth was he wanted to stay there without us, and see how much he missed me. Now he"s coming to accept _our_ invitation, a day sooner than he meant to at first. Something tells me the reason why. I shall know for sure to-night, when I see him. He didn"t want us to meet him at the station. But that was perhaps because--I couldn"t have gone very well without you, and maybe----"
"I see! I"m to make myself scarce and leave you alone in the garden!"
"Not yet, dear. Only when we hear the car actually stopping at the gate.
There"ll be plenty of time then. And if you don"t mind----"
"Of course, I don"t mind," said Basil. He felt that he was blushing under the cover of darkness, and was thankful Aline could not see. Why the blush, he could not have explained. Was it for his sister, because she was managing her love affairs with a famous man in this energetic, businesslike way, and jumping eagerly at conclusions? Or was it for himself, because he was selfish and jealous of the new interest in Aline"s life, which would--if it ended as she hoped--take her away from him and break their partnership?
He almost wished to accept the latter explanation. He would rather be disappointed in himself than think meanly--oh, ever so little meanly--of Aline.
Their partnership, begun when he was in the depths, regarding his life as practically finished, had given him the greatest happiness he had ever known. Memory flashed away at lightning speed over their travels together, their adventures. Somerled"s wife would not write novels. And deep in his heart Basil knew that Aline"s soul was not in the books, as his was. He would not acknowledge this difference between them, but he knew it was there. In old days, when Aline had written alone, she had always chosen some subject that loomed large in public interest at the moment, whether she herself cared about it or not, hoping to "come in on the wave." Just because she had not really cared her scheme of work had not given her success. So it had been with the idea of their first book written together. Aline had wanted to plan out something to do with motoring, about which every one was keen just then. She had proposed to combine business with a cure for her brother; and when she had failed to think of a "good plot on the right lines," he had made a suggestion which flashed into his head. The joy of motoring, the wonder of travel, both new to Basil, had intoxicated him. He wrote as one inspired, for the sheer love of writing and telling what he had seen and felt. And the world, catching the thrill of his joy, had shared it.
He did not say this to himself now, did not realize the truth of it, and did not even believe that he could go on writing stories and succeeding without Aline. Only, he knew that he loved his work for itself, and she did not. That the light of his life would be gone without it, whereas she would be glad to stop working and be idle as the admired wife of a celebrity and a millionaire. In this he felt a vague injustice of fate which depressed him--a rare state of mind for Basil Norman, to whom for four years the world had been a happy and magically beautiful dwelling-place.
"I hear a car now!" he exclaimed.
"It"s his!" she answered. "I heard the siren when his chauffeur sounded it going out of the garage. It"s different from any others that pa.s.s along this road. Good-bye for a little while, dear. You"re so kind to me! Wish me luck."
"I wish Somerled luck," he said, trying to laugh, as he turned and marched quickly off toward the house.
Aline quite understood. He meant that Somerled would be lucky to get her. That was nice of him, and like him, too, for Basil was as gallant and chivalrous to his sister as a lover. Yet--she was sorry that he hadn"t wished her luck in so many words.
She walked toward the gate. The car had stopped.
V
Mrs. Keeling"s place, lent to her much-admired authors, had a very pretty gate. It was approached from the garden way, through an arbour thickly hung with roses and honeysuckle. It seemed to Aline West, as she went alone to meet Somerled, that night distilled a special perfume in the dew-filled cups of the flowers, sweet as unspoken love. She felt that she was on the threshold of happiness. It was the first step that counted. If she met Somerled in the right spirit, with the right word and the right look ... in this perfumed star-dusk and stillness, when they had not seen each other for days ... and he knew she had been waiting here for him, thinking of him ... and he saw that she had put on the dress he liked so much on shipboard, the one she had worn the last night, when he told her his life-story ... might not the thing that she desired happen? She encouraged herself by saying, "Why not?" and reminding herself that she was an attractive woman. Lots of men had been in love with her--not the right ones, but that was a detail. Why not Ian Somerled? He was a man, after all, like others.
He was at the gate already ... she almost ran.
"Hail, the conquering hero!" she cried to him, laughing.
He opened the gate. But it was not he who came in. He was opening it for some one else--a woman, a girl, something tall and feminine, anyhow. It was wrapped in a cloak. It had a flat pancake on its head for a hat.
What could it be, and mean? The idea darted into Aline"s mind that there had been an accident on the way here from the station; that perhaps Somerled had nearly or quite run over this creature--or her dog--or something.
"h.e.l.lo, Mrs. West!" he answered her cheerfully. "I"ve got to you at last, and I"ve brought a visitor for the night. I"ve given my guarantee that you"ll make her welcome."