It was a blow to Aline, a blow over the heart, and I felt it for her on mine. She managed her affairs badly next day, but I didn't blame her. I couldn't. Somerled and I had already lost our heads.
I scarcely believe Somerled was in love with the girl then; perhaps he isn't even now. He merely felt the call of youth, and a strange beauty and a stranger vitality. His life needed this call. It waked up the sleeping youth in his own heart. It set his old enthusiasms singing like birds uncaged. It made him want to be again all the things he had decided not to be. It brought back beliefs in realities that he had feared were illusions. In other words, it freed the temperamental artist and dreamer from the spoilt and successful millionaire. But he could have let the bright vision go, perhaps, and have been pleasantly contented later to remember it, if—it hadn't been for Aline. Because she wanted to part them and make him forget the girl's existence, she took the very way to throw them together. Then, when she had done her worst, she turned to me for help.
I was horribly sorry for her, and the keen hurt of my sympathy made me fear for myself. The girl had got hold of me too, of course. When I found that she was going away from us with Somerled, I felt physically sick with the sense of loss. It was as if, with Barrie gone, everything was gone. I knew that poor Aline must be suffering exactly the same dumb tortures in regard to Somerled, whom she had thought so nearly hers. And that is why, when she begged me to help—somehow, anyhow—I wasn't sure whether I promised to please her or myself.
I was able to do very little toward keeping the promise, either way, until Edinburgh. It was there, really, that Aline and I first seriously took up the rôle of villains—if we are villains. But two persons less well cut out by Nature for such parts can hardly exist. We want to be good and happy, and we want each other to be happy, and all those whom we love to be happy; but we want them to be happy with us and through us. This is where Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald comes into the plot. Without her, nothing could have happened as it is happening.
I shall never forget that first scene between the girl and her mother. I knew it would not be recorded in that poor little "book" of Barrie's, which every day she was writing and hiding. I thought that the book, which had no doubt been leading up to this scene, would probably stop short at the last sentence breathing hope of it.
Not that I have seen what she wrote. It was I who put the idea of writing into her head; but, though she didn't guess it, that was only done to give myself the right of Mentor when I still supposed we should all start gayly off together for Edinburgh from Carlisle. I suggested that she and I should "collaborate." Ha, ha! I believe "ha, ha," by the way, is an ejaculation confined entirely to thwarted villains in stageland; but if I am a villain, I'm not thwarted yet.
Aline's attack of temper, which upset everything, upset that scheme among the rest; but it seems the impulse I gave, pushed Barrie on to achieve something literary. Only, she steadily refused to let me see a line she wrote. The sole pleasure I got out of her taking my advice was in Somerled's face when I teased the girl about her "work." If he had been teaching her to sketch and paint I should have felt the same.
He is afraid of himself, because she has captured his thoughts; and afraid of her, because she's Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's daughter. When he sees her followed by a trail of young men, like a bright comet with a tail it's been busily collecting in a journey through space, he asks himself whether this is going to be Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald over again? He wonders if he dare believe in the kindness of Barrie's smiles for him, or whether his portion is no better than those she deals out gayly to the rest of us. At least, this is as I judge him, though from the first we've exchanged no confidences on the subject of "Mrs. Bal" or Barrie her daughter.
Somerled knew Mrs. Bal in America. I never made her acquaintance, but I saw her act in Montreal every night of her engagement there. I couldn't keep away—yet I didn't want to meet her. I thought perhaps if I did I should be ass enough to fall in love. That is the truth. A good many fellows of my acquaintance, and others I'd heard of, had fallen in love, and had been flirted with till the lady was sick and tired of them. After that they were very sorry for themselves. I never heard anything else against Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald, and I don't believe there's anything worse to hear, than that she's a spoiled, flattered, selfish, and self-centred beauty, who expects every man to fall down before her, and generally gets what she expects.
None of us talked much to Barrie about her mother, though at first she was continually bringing up the subject. We knew she thought of it constantly: that beneath all her joy in escape from bondage, in motoring, and in her adventures in beautiful, historic scenes, there was always that undertone—"When I meet my mother." And we too felt the strain of suspense, though in a different way—at least, Somerled and I felt it. I could see it often in the peculiar darkening of his face when anything happened to suggest the idea of the mother in the background. As for Aline, I suppose it was but natural her only interest in Mrs. Bal should be, "How will her reception of the girl affect me, if at all?"