"You"ll have money from your father"s brooch. Now--will you trust me and come to Mrs. Keeling"s house, as your grandmother bows to her?"
"I"d rather go to a hotel, thank you."
"Nonsense. You can"t go alone to a hotel."
"Why?"
"It wouldn"t be proper for Miss MacDonald of Dhrum."
"Now you talk like Grandma!"
"I talk common sense. I"ll lend you no money to spend in a hotel."
"Then take me to Mrs. West," the girl said, as she might have said, "Take me to the scaffold."
Somerled laughed with amus.e.m.e.nt and triumph. He was astonishingly interested in his adventure, astonishingly pleased at the prospect of continuing it. Surely this girl was unique! He believed in comparatively few things, but he believed in her: for not to do so would have been indeed ungrateful, as she was ready to prove her implicit belief in him.
"A daughter of Mrs. Bal!" he said to himself as he led Mrs. Bal"s daughter to his motor-car.
Poor Barrie would have believed in almost any man who owned a motor.
IV
Aline West and her brother, Basil Norman, were walking slowly up and down the garden path in front of the old-fashioned manor farmhouse lent to them for ten days by an admiring friend. They were waiting for Somerled, who had expressed a desire not to be met at the station; and listening for the teuf-teuf of motors along the distant road prevented Mrs. West from attending to her brother"s suggestions. He had had an inspiration for the new novel they were planning together, and was explaining it eagerly, for Basil was a born story-teller. Only, he had never found time for story-telling until lately. He was tremendously happy in his new way of life, although only a terrible illness which had closed others paths of success had opened this door for him. It did not matter in the least that Aline got the credit. Not only was he glad that she should have praise, but he was convinced that it ought to be hers.
If she had not thought of asking him to try his hand at helping her four years ago, when the incentive to live seemed gone, he might have been driven to put himself out of the way. It was to her, therefore, that he owed everything; and though success as an author had never come to Aline until after the first book they wrote together, that, to Basil Norman"s mind, was no more than a coincidence, and he had never ceased to feel that she was generous in letting his name appear with hers on their t.i.tle pages.
"I wonder if anything can have happened to him!" Aline murmured.
"Which, d.i.c.k or Claud?" her brother asked, puzzled. d.i.c.k was to be their hero, Claud the villain. Basil had been engaged in outlining the two characters for his sister"s approval.
"No. Ian Somerled," she explained almost crossly, though her voice was sweet, because it was never otherwise than sweet. "Either the train"s late or----"
"I"d have met him with pleasure," Basil reminded her.
"It would be _fatal_ to do anything he didn"t wish," she answered. "He"s a man who knows exactly what he wants, and hates to have people go against his directions in the smallest things."
Norman looked at her rather anxiously through the soft summer darkness that was hardly darkness. She was walking beside him with her hands clasped behind her back and her head bent. He thought her extremely pretty, and wondered if Somerled thought so too. But he wished that she did not care quite so much what Somerled thought. And he was not sure whether she were right about what Somerled liked.
"I wonder if we understand Somerled?" he asked, as if he were questioning himself aloud. "After all, we don"t know him very well."
"I do," Aline said. "I know him like a book. He"s bored to death with everything nearly. Only I--we--haven"t bored him yet. And we must take care not to."
"You could never bore anybody," Basil a.s.sured her loyally. "But--I wish you"d tell me something honestly, old girl."
"Not if you call me that!" She laughed a little. "It wouldn"t matter if I were twenty-five instead of--never mind! I don"t want people to think, when they hear you, "Many a true word spoken in jest.""
"Somerled"s older than you are, anyhow," Basil consoled her.
"I should think so--ages! Don"t forget, dear, I"m only just thirty. I don"t look more, do I--truly?"
"Not a day over twenty-eight."
She was disappointed that he did not say less. She had been twenty-nine for years, and had just begun, for a change, to state frankly that she was thirty. She had never been able to forgive Basil for being younger than she, but she could trust him not to advertise his advantage. He really was a dear! She hated herself for being jealous of him sometimes.
There were things he could do, there were thoughts that came to him as easily as homing birds, which were with her only a pretence: but she pretended eagerly, sincerely, even with prayer. She really yearned to be at heart all that she tried to make Somerled and other people believe her to be. And if she tried hard to be genuine all through, surely in time----
"What I want you to tell me is," Basil was going on, "are you in l--how much do you really care about this man?"
""This man?"" she repeated. "How serious that sounds; like "Do you take this man for better, for worse?" Well, I confess that I _should_, if he asked me."
"Then you must be in love," her brother concluded. "Because you don"t need his money. We make as many thousands as we used to make hundreds; and it"s all yours, really, or ought to be."
She was ashamed of not contradicting him, yet she did not contradict.
She could not bear to put in words what in her heart she knew to be the truth: that their success was due to Basil, the dreamer of dreams; that her little smartnesses and pretty trivialities could never have carried them to the place where they now stood together. The worst part of her wanted Basil to think, wanted every one to think, that she was the important partner, that she was actually _all_ in the partnership. And it was too miserably easy to produce this impression. Basil was so una.s.suming, thought so poorly of himself, realized so little how she leaned upon him in their work, admired her so loyally!
"Ian Somerled is more of a man than any other man I ever met," she said.
"I like him for his strength and for his indifference. Everything about him appeals to me--even his money; for making it in the way he did was one expression of his power. Just because they say he"ll never marry, I want----"
"I can understand how a woman may feel about him," Basil said gently, when she suddenly broke off.
"I thought I was perfectly happy the day he asked us to tour Scotland with him in his car; and when he promised to spend a few days with us here, after he"d got through his business in London," Aline went on, "it was like _honey_ to hear him say that he didn"t want to come if any one else was to be here. He"d enjoy it only with you and me alone. But ever since I saw him I"ve been worrying until I"m quite wretched."
"Worrying about what?"
"Whether he _suspects_ anything."
"Why, what is there to suspect?"
"Then _you_ don"t? I"m glad, for you"re both men. If you don"t suspect, why should he?"
"You"ll have to tell me what you"re driving at. I shan"t have an easy minute till you do--and that means I can"t write. You know I won"t give you away."
"A woman wouldn"t need telling. That"s why I like men! You never guessed, then, that I"ve been doing it all? I was the power behind the throne. I made him invite us, and----"
"The deuce you did! Why, I heard him ask you. It was on board ship, and----"
"And before he asked, unless you were deaf, you heard me say I couldn"t work up any enthusiasm about the next book we"d promised our publisher to write because we"d sold our last car and hadn"t time to make up our minds about a new one, and we had no friends to give us good "tips"
about the country. It was then he asked me what country we wanted to write about, and I said Scotland."
"Well, yes, I suppose I heard you say all that, now you remind me of it.
But it wasn"t hinting, because you didn"t know he was going to Scotland for his rest cure."
"Oh, yes, I did. I read it in the New York _Sun_ before we sailed. And when I said we"d accept his invitation if he"d accept ours, Mrs. Keeling hadn"t offered me this house."
"You said she had."