V
We had a bridal sort of luncheon in the car, which was shunted off the highway into a green shadowed road abandoned to summer dreams. Mrs. James and I were like the flowers of the field, and had given no thought to food, or where or how we were to get it. We supposed vaguely that when we grew hungry we should stop at some inn and eat; but Sir Somerled had a surprise in the shape of an American invention called a refrigerator basket, nickel-lined, with an ice compartment walled in with asbestos or something scientific. He said that it had been a present, and he'd promised to bring it with him on this Scottish trip, which it appears he was ordered to take as a rest cure. On the lid of the basket, in a conspicuous place, is a silver plate, saying, in beautiful old English letters, "To Ian Somerled, from his grateful model," and underneath a monogram "M. M." in the raised heart of an elaborate marguerite. As we ate ice-cold chicken, salad, and chilled wild strawberries of the north, Mrs. James began with a gay perkiness to tease Sir S. about the "grateful model," whose name must surely be Marguerite; but I put a stop to that. The hour after a wedding at Gretna Green is no tune for talk of any woman-thing except the bride; and as I may perhaps never be anybody's real bride, I insisted on my rights. This carrying on of the Gretna Green game rather scandalized good Mrs. James, but when she scolded me gently for my "childishness," Sir S. said, "Do let her be a child as long as she can. It would be well for every one of us if we kept something of our childhood all our lives. Just now I'm finding childhood gloriously contagious. I don't know how many years I've thrown off in two days' time, since this child princess commanded me to play with her."
This nipped the scolding in its bud (not that I minded it), but I'm sure dear Mrs. James still thought my bride-game had been played too long, and she switched the conversation to the real romances of Gretna Green—so breathlessly thrilling, some of them, that I was ashamed to hark back to the subject of ourselves. Not that Sir S. wouldn't make a hero for my romance. I feel that under his quiet, sometimes tired manner, there's a hidden fire, and I want to find out what he is really like, if I can. The study of such a man will be more interesting and even more mysterious than peeping through the keyhole of the garret door, into what I used to call "fairyland." Already that seems long ago.
No one would guess, who had only seen Mrs. James with Grandma, how much the little woman knows, or how nicely she can talk, and I blurted this thought out, before I stopped to reflect that it might sound rude. An hour passed like five minutes in listening to her story of the Lord Chancellor's wedding at Gretna, and Lord Westmorland's shooting of Banker Child's horse, to save his young bride from capture by her father; the tale of Robert Burns almost inveigled into marriage by a pretty girl he met on the road; and best of all the exciting history of the brave lass of Langholm, who ran through brooks and bushes to snatch her lover at the last minute from a rival he was marrying in the Blacksmith's Shop. This last anecdote had been "the doctor's" favourite. One chapter of his history was devoted entirely to the Old Glasgow Road. In it he gave three whole pages to the young man's bet and the two lassies who were ready to help him win it. "The doctor was romantic at heart," explained Mrs. James, sighing, and pausing with an ice-cold chocolate éclair in her hand. "All romance appealed to his imagination, and in his notes he gave much space to Gretna Green, from the day of Paisley, the first priest, up to the present time, when couples marry in the Blacksmith's Shop in fun and not in fear. But," she went on, anxious to impress the great Somerled, "Doctor James gave space in plenty to the serious history of the Road: the Raider episodes; the journey of Queen Mary; the march of Prince Charlie's Highlanders in charge of Cumberland's soldiers, on their way to prison at Carlisle; the tramping of many penniless Scottish geniuses seeking their fortune in London town; the visits of famous men like Scott and Dickens, and Edward Irving the preacher, who made his bride get down from her carriage on the bridge, and walk on foot into her adopted country, England."
Mrs. James always grows excited when she talks about the doctor and his unfinished history of Scotland; and though she'd known Sir S. only a day and a half, she was mesmerized into telling him secrets Grandma couldn't have dragged from her with wild horses. She even showed him Doctor James's photograph, which, in a shut-up velvet case, she had put into the handbag Sir S. gave her. "Do you, an artist, with your great knowledge of human faces and the souls behind them, believe a man with those eyes and that forehead would take his own life to escape scandal?" she appealed to him. "Wouldn't it be more natural to disappear, trusting to his wife's faith, until he had made a new career somewhere and won back the honour of his name?"
Very gravely Sir S. examined the photograph, which she had painted in water colours, rather faded now; and I looked at it, though I've seen it before. Apparently he was sincerely interested in her story, and in the picture. But then he seems interested always, in a quiet way, in what people tell him, never interrupting or talking of himself and his affairs, as Grandma does if any one comes to see her. "You are right, Mrs. James," he said. "That man is a dreamer, but not a coward. He might do strange things, but never a contemptible one."
"Oh, what a judge of character!" she breathed ecstatically. "And how sympathetic! It's wonderful, in the busy, flattered life you must have led for many years, how you've kept your kind heart and generous thought for others. But it's your artistic temperament!"
The great Somerled laughed and looked embarrassed. "My enemies say that my 'artistic temperament' has been swamped long ago by my love of money-making and getting difficult things to turn my way. I think the enemies are probably right; but you and this princess would dig up any decent qualities a man might have left, no matter how deep they were buried under rubbish."
"How do we dig them up?" I wanted to know.