Letter From Barrie Macdonald To Ian Somerled Macdonald

Letter From Barrie Macdonald To Ian Somerled Macdonald

 DEAR SIR KNIGHT: I was glad the morning we saw Mrs. James off that
 you said you'd like to hear from me, and if I needed help or
 comfort in any trouble I must let you know. I haven't such an
 excuse for writing to you now, but you did say that you wanted to
 hear anyway, and that you'd find out where we were going, so you
 could wire me your plans. Now I've had two telegrams from you, and
 a letter; and if they hadn't come I should have been disappointed.
 I thought we might have seen you and the Gray Dragon before this,
 but the telegrams have made me understand. That is, I _don't_
 understand, because what you tell me sounds very mysterious. Still,
 as you went back to Carlisle and are now in London, it is no use
 hoping to see the Gray Dragon's bonnet flash into sight round some
 complicated Highland corner.

 What _could_ have taken you to call on Grandma again? I am almost
 dying of curiosity. You say 'perhaps you may be able to explain
 when we meet': but everybody is saying that to me, just now--at
 least, Barbara is, about not letting me go back to Glasgow till the
 end of her week there--so it is rather aggravating. Still, it is
 good to know that we may meet. I wonder when? You don't give me a
 hint, and it stirs up my curiosity from deeper depths to be told,
 as if you half expected me to guess what you mean, that 'you're in
 London for reinforcements.' Shall I ever know? It seems a long time
 since I said good-bye to you in front of the Caledonian Hotel. Not
 that I'm having a dull trip. I should be very dull myself if that
 were true, for everything is beautiful, and every one kind. It is
 the most wonderful luck for a girl like me, who had never seen
 anything in her life, suddenly to be seeing all Scotland. But I had
 grown rather _used_ to seeing things with you and Mrs. James, after
 I escaped from the 'glass retort,' and I can't accustom myself yet
 to being with others, and you far away--Mrs. James too, of course.
 I try to console myself if I feel a tiny bit homesick, thinking how
 happy she is, and how wonderful everything is going to be for her
 and her strange, unpractical doctor. It was splendid of you to give
 him all that money. But wouldn't it have been fun if he could have
 come over, instead of her going to him? Maybe, if it had turned out
 so, you would be in the Highlands now.

 Do you remember how I used to say that _my_ tour under the heather
 moon would soon be over, but you would be going on just as if we
 had never met? Well, it has turned out quite differently, hasn't
 it, for both of us? Only the heather moon is the same. But I never
 talk of her now that you are gone.

 I don't want you to think I am ungrateful to _any one_, if I sign
 myself, Your rather homesick little 'princess,'

 BARRIE.

 P.S.--It does not seem right to have crossed over the borderline
 into our Highlands without you!

LETTER FROM BARRIE TO HER MOTHER

 DEAREST,DARLING BARBARA: Can it really be that it won't
 bother you to have me write to you often and tell you everything
 interesting that happens? You see, I might think it interesting,
 and you might think it a bore. I know you are easily bored, dear,
 so I am not quite sure what I ought to write. I can only tell you
 about seeing places, because that is all we do. But they are so
 beautiful, perhaps you may like to hear. If I write about the wrong
 things, do promise that you'll speak out and tell me to stop. I
 won't let my feelings be hurt.

 Basil is trying to show me as much of Scotland as he possibly can,
 he says, before I 'get tired of him and Blunderbore.' That is a bad
 way to put it, and so I have told him, because I should be horribly
 ungrateful to tire of him. But he says he dislikes gratitude and
 thinks it an overestimated virtue.

 I suppose you have often been in Scotland before, and you are not
 Scottish yourself, so perhaps you can't quite feel as I do about
 it. Basil, who has travelled so much, says that Scotland has in
 miniature almost all the picked bits of scenery of other countries;
 but they do not _appear_ to be in miniature when you're motoring
 through them. They seem on an enormous scale; and each beauty spot
 is different from every other. You can't help remembering and
 keeping them apart in your mind, though there are so many that they
 are crowded together, all over the map. I think of the map of
 Scotland being purple, like heather, don't you? And if I have to
 live anywhere else, I shall always be homesick for this country
 now. If we are not in some fairy-like, green glen, we are in a wild
 and awesome mountain pass; or else in a blue labyrinth of lochs; or
 we come out upon endless, billowing moorlands; or suddenly we find
 ourselves on a long road like an avenue in some great private park,
 with the singing of a river in our ears.

 Poor Basil sometimes feels ashamed of Blunderbore, and certainly
 it _is_ different from travelling in Mr. Somerled's Gray Dragon.
 With the Dragon, spirits of the wind used to rush out of forests to
 meet and dash ozone in our faces. With Blunderbore, if they come at
 all, they merely spray us lazily.

 Going from Stirling to Crieff we crossed the borderline of the
 Highlands. There was a park-like world round the Bridge of Allan:
 and at Ardoch, the greatest Roman station left in Britain, lots of
 turfed banks showing still where 26,000 Romans tried to bridle the
 Northern Caledonians, the red-haired people. I'm glad they never
 quite succeeded!

 Crieff was sweet, and all round it, half hidden in woods, the most
 beautiful houses. But Basil had forgotten to wire, so we couldn't
 get into one of the nice hotels, but stayed in a very funny one.
 When Mrs. Vanneck asked for communicating rooms, the landlady said,
 'Oh, _no_, Madam, we've no such things as _that_ in _our_ house!'

 We went on to Perth early next morning, and every minute along the
 road we seemed to be passing happy people who'd come to play in
 Scotland: nice golfing girls and men, and men with guns over their
 shoulders, or followed by gillies with fishing-tackle. I wish men
 could amuse themselves, though, don't you, without killing
 creatures more beautiful and happy than themselves?

 It was such a pretty road, past Methven, where, alas! the English
 beat Bruce; and if I hadn't been grieved to find that by John
 Knox's advice all the nicest buildings had been pulled down, I
 shouldn't have felt disappointed in Perth. It is a very fine town
 anyhow, with glorious trees; and the two great bridges over the Tay
 are splendid if they _are_ made of iron. They look as if people had
 planned them especially to give all the view there could be of the
 sunset.

 Of course the 'Fair Maid's' house was the most interesting thing.
 I hope it really was hers. I don't see why not. It _is_ in the old
 glover's quarter. And the shrine with the crucifix and death's head
 and cross-bones they found hidden in the wall of her room is too
 fascinating. I could just see her praying there, so beautiful that
 all the young men of Perth were in love with her. And talking of
 the young men of Perth, Basil says the ball in the Games Week is
 supposed to be the best show of the year--such splendid men come. I
 should love to see them in the kilt, with their brown knees, like
 the pipers in Edinburgh.

 St. Andrews was our next place, and we arrived the same day, for
 we didn't stop in Perth after we had seen the sights there. I
 wonder if you have been to St. Andrews? I know so little about you
 yet, dearest. I fell in love with the place--not so much with the
 links (though they must be the most beautiful as well as the most
 famous in the world) as with that old ruined castle built on the
 dark rocks rising out of the sea. I know I shall dream of the
 awful, bottle-necked dungeon! Basil said it was the worst thing he
 had ever seen except at Loches. I hope it isn't wicked to be
 pleased that Cardinal Beaton, after he sat in his window to watch
 Wishart burn, was soon killed, and salted, and preserved in the
 same dungeon where he used to keep martyrs. The 'undergrads' of the
 University looked so attractive in their red gowns, and the girl
 students in their mortar boards! They were like scarlet birds,
 against the gray walls and gray arches of the town. But I suppose
 people in St. Andrews think even more about golf than about
 learning, don't they? There were hundreds of all ages on the
 links--so grave and eager: and at the hotels they _never_ know when
 anybody will come in to meals. There's the cemetery, too; that
 shows the importance of golf. All the 'smartest' monuments are of
 famous golfers, knitted caps and clubs and everything, neatly done
 in marble. But I wonder anybody ever contrives to die at St.
 Andrews. I never felt such delicious air!

 Crossing the ferry for Dundee was fun. It was a very big boat, and
 several other motors on it as well as ours. We sat in Blunderbore
 all the way across the wide sheet of silver that was the Tay,
 gazing up at the marvellous giant bridge, and then we spent several
 hours in Dundee, seeing the Steeple, and Queen Mary's Orchard, and
 lots of things. This was so near the Round House that I suppose the
 Vannecks would have gone if it hadn't been for me. But I am the
 stumbling block in everybody's way.

 Going on to Aberdeen, we ran along a fine coast dotted with ruined
 castles--Dunottar for one, where the Regalia was hidden once.

 We stopped at Arbroath, which Doctor Johnson admired, to see the
 great shell of an Abbey, red as dried blood; and all the old town
 is built out of it, so no wonder there isn't much left but an
 immense nave. But just think, Arbroath is Sir Walter Scott's
 'Fairport,' and I must read "The Antiquarian" again, all about the
 caves and the secret treasure found in them. As for the treasure of
 the Abbey, it is nothing less than the heart of William the Lion.
 He had it nicely buried near the high altar, as long ago as the
 twelfth century, wasn't it? But in 1810 they dug it up, found it
 had ossified, and now they simply have it lying about in a glass
 case, practically mixed up with the bones of a lady who left money
 to the Abbey (she wouldn't, if she'd known what they'd do!) and the
 singularly long thigh bones of a particularly wicked earl. It was
 an earl who married a sister of the Lion's, and, because he was
 jealous, threw her out of the window.

 We had to go through Montrose, where the great Marquis was born,
 and where Sir James Douglas set sail with the Bruce's heart (what a
 lot of hearts there were travelling about then!) and where now the
 most curiously exciting things are the Bridie Shops. I _had_ to
 know what a 'bridie' meant, so we stopped to see; but it's only a
 rolled meat pasty they love in Forfarshire; and brides are supposed
 to batten on them at their weddings. To please me, Basil would have
 made a detour to see 'Thrums,' which is really Kerriemuir, you
 know. And we should have had to pass through Forfar--the 'Witches
 Har'--and go on the road that leads to mysterious, wonderful
 Glamis. I was longing to do it, but Mrs. Vanneck wanted to arrive
 in Aberdeen in time to do some shopping! I gave up like a lamb,
 almost hating her inwardly; but afterward I felt better about it,
 for the Aberdeen shops are so nice. They sell pink pearls, out of
 Scottish rivers--perfect beauties. I bought you a brooch, and I do
 hope you'll like it. I don't know much about such things; and of
 course you have gorgeous jewellery; but this pearl is such a
 wonderful colour, like snow touched with sunrise.

 My eyes and hair were full of granite by the time we got to
 Aberdeen, because the road is made of it, and the dust sparkles
 like diamonds.

 So does Aberdeen sparkle like diamonds. I shouldn't have thought a
 city all gray like that, could be so handsome. But it is a gray
 bright and silky as the wings of doves, and in some lights pale as
 moonbeams. Sunset was beginning when we arrived, and on the houses
 and bridges and river, and even on the pavements of the broad
 streets, there was the same gray-pink sheen as on the pearl I
 bought for you.

 In the morning we went to see the University, and the Cathedral
 with its lovely rose-pink pillars, and old painted Scandinavian
 ceiling. Everything would have passed off charmingly, if Basil had
 not begun to be rather foolish and unlike himself, while he and I
 were in the Cathedral together. Fortunately, an old friend of his
 he hadn't seen for years, appeared unexpectedly at the critical
 moment, and invited us to visit him near Aboyne. I hadn't quite
 time to say 'no' to Basil definitely, and we haven't gone back to
 the subject since, so I am hoping for the best. I used to think it
 would be _heavenly_ to have a proposal, but now, I realize that it
 is much overrated.

 Your loving
 BARRIE,
 Who hopes she hasn't bored you.