There was no luggage in the other car, so I guessed that they were trying it, to see whether they might like to hire it for their trip. And, in spite of Mr. Norman being so kind and different from his sister, I couldn't help hoping that they might begin with another part of Scotland from ours.
I kept on thinking of them as we wound through the traffic, though dear Mrs. James continued to talk in an approving way, suited to my intelligence, about Carlisle, and what a wonderful place it was, and how proud we ought to be of it. How wide and well-built the new streets were, and how interesting the old ones! How good for the complexion were the winds that blew from the great moorland spaces beyond the town! I hadn't thought much about all that myself, but certainly Carlisle is romantic as a city, because in history you see how it has always been a solid bulwark of the English, against which tides of invasion dashed themselves in vain—a sort of watch-tower, whence England gazed out across the border where danger lay in wait. I can't help turning my mind to the romantic side of things, though it may be silly; but, after all, it's just as real as the other side. Both are there, and you can choose which you like to have for your own, as I said to Mr. Somerled.
By and by we came to the Cathedral. I had to confess that I'd never been in, but I didn't mention Grandma's prejudice against cathedrals. I'd never pined to see the inside as I should if the outside were tall and graceful and gray, instead of dumpy and red—an ochre-red colour which is interesting only when the sun shines on it, or when wet and sparkling with rain, in the midst of its lovely old trees. I almost gasped with joy and surprise, however, when we entered, for the interior is wonderful. It is as if the builders had had in mind an allegory about a plain body and a glorious soul.
Who would have thought that Mr. Somerled would remember so much history of this northern country, after living, since he grew up, in America, and making fame and fortune there? Mrs. James thinks that he even talks like an American. She is a good judge, because more than half the customers of her curiosity shop are Americans, and they chat with her about all sorts of things. She reads her husband's history books, in order to give him an agreeable surprise when he comes back, and the knowledge she picks up is money in her pocket, because she can pour out floods of information upon inquiring tourists. When she's kindly told them all about the Romans in general and the Augustan Legion in particular, and the Museum, and William Rufus's Castle; about the Cathedral having been robbed of most of its nave to rebuild the city walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak out of her shop without buying something.
I loved the immense simplicity of that Norman nave, with its huge crumpled arches crushed into curving waves by the long-ago collapse of the foundations and the strain of centuries on the masonry. It was a startling contrast to go from the Norman part into the choir, all a mass of carving and decoration, with its vast east window of jewel-like thirteenth-century glass, which Mr. Somerled pronounced finer even than the windows of York and Gloucester cathedrals.
It seems that, although he hasn't been in Scotland since he left seventeen years ago (vowing never to return until something or other happened), he has been in England several times meanwhile, and travelled all over Europe. He pretended that he wasn't at all excited about crossing the border after these many years' exile, but when I cried out that I couldn't believe him so commonplace and dull, he opened his eyes wide, as surprised as if I'd boxed his ears. Mrs. James whispered that I had been rude; and when I stopped to think, I realized how unlike Mrs. West I had been. She is so gracious and complimentary to Mr. Somerled, never saying anything she thinks he might dislike. But he heard Mrs. James's whisper and said, "You must let her alone, please, my Lady Chaperon, because I have a sort of idea she is going to dig me up by the roots, and hang me up to air, and altogether do me a lot of good in the end."
They both knew much more about the Cathedral than I did, but even I knew something, because there was a book of father's which I had read. So, when they'd explained that the beautiful pink columns and the painted oak screens looked new because Cromwell's men whitewashed everything when they stabled horses in the Cathedral, and the white wasn't scraped off till comparatively lately, long after the Cathedral was a prison in 1745, I told them something they hadn't learned, or had forgotten. I was proud to have a story about Bruce coming to Carlisle to take his oath of allegiance, before the great repentance, and hating the Cathedral ever afterward.
Even the Castle doesn't look as splendid from outside as it really is. It's like an enormous box, a good deal battered and patched, containing a kingdom's treasures. But of course I didn't know about the treasures until I had been in.
I had set my heart on seeing the place, because, as I said to Mr. Somerled, I may never come back to Carlisle once I begin to live with mother and go about with her. It was a blow to be told at the entrance gate where the public enters (and where there ought to be a moat, but isn't) that the Castle was closed for repairs. Even a grown-up man like Mr. Somerled, who has seen everything, looked disappointed; but I suppose he couldn't fight his way in against the power of England; and we should have turned ignominiously away if it hadn't been for Mrs. James. "You are surely not aware," said she in the aristocratic, long-worded way she has when she thinks of living up to the doctor (and when she isn't in earshot of Grandma) "of the distinguished identity of this gentleman. This"—with a wave of her tiny hand—"is the great portrait painter, Somerled. I will not introduce him as 'Mr.,' for he is as far above that designation as Shakespeare."
The poor wretch who had refused us was flabbergasted. "Excuse me a minute, mum!" he muttered, and darted off to return with a young officer before "the Great Somerled" had time to remonstrate. But, instead of devoting undivided attention to the celebrity who must be appeased, the officer looked at me, and we recognized each other. His face changed, and I know mine did, because my cheeks felt as if some one had pinched them. No wonder, because this had been my ideal for almost a year, before I saw the photographs in shop windows of Robert Loraine, and I had dreamed several times that I was engaged to him, with a gorgeous diamond ring, and afterward that I was his widow in one of those sweet Marie Stuart caps. It almost seemed as if he might see the cap in my eyes, so I hurried to look down, and appear as calm as if I had never met him in the street when out walking with Heppie. Once I dropped my handkerchief, like ladies in books (only I did it on purpose, which they never do if heroines, not villainesses), and he ran after us and picked it up. That was, of course, the only time he ever spoke; but, though I have cared not only for Robert Loraine but Henry Ainley since, I should have known his voice anywhere. It was disappointing not to thrill; but to be honest, I must admit that the voice sounded meaningless now, compared with that of the Knight. Nevertheless, he was saying kind things, offering to be our guide over the Castle and show us curiosities that the "ordinary public" is not allowed to see.