Ian forestalled Alexander, riding to Glenfernie House the morning after his arrival at Black Hill. "Let us go," he said, "where we can talk at ease! The old, alchemical room?"
They crossed the grass-grown court to the keep, entered and went up the broken stair to the stone-walled chamber that took up the second floor, that looked out of loophole windows north, south, east, and west. The day was high summer, bright and hot. Strong light and less strong light came in beams from the four quarters and made in the large place a conflict of light and shadow. The fireplace was great enough for Gog and Magog to have warmed themselves thereby. Around, in an orderly litter, yet stood on table or bench or shelf many of the matters that Alexander had gathered there in his boyhood. In one corner was the furnace that when he was sixteen his father had let him build. More recent was the oaken table in the middle of the room, two deep chairs, and shelves with many books. After the warmth of the sun the place presented a grave, cool, brown harbor.
The two, entering, had each an arm over the other's shoulder. Where they were known their friendship was famed. Youth and manhood, theyhad been together when it was possible. When it was not so the thought of each outtraveled separation. Their differences, their varied colors of being, seemed but to bind them closer. They entered this room like David and Jonathan.
Ian also was tall, but not so largely made as was the other. Lithe, embrowned, with gold-bronze hair and eyes, knit of a piece, moving as by one undulation, there was something in him not like the Scot, something foreign, exotic. Sometimes Alexander called him "Saracen"—a finding of the imagination that dated from old days upon the moor above the Kelpie's Pool when they read together theFaery Queen. The other day, at Black Hill, this ancient fancy had played through Alexander's mind while Mr. Wotherspoon talked of Italy, and Mrs. Alison of Babylonish lords.... The point was that he relished Paynim knight and Renaissance noble and prince of Babylon. Let Ian seem or be all that, and richer yet! Still there would be Ian, outside of all circles drawn.
In the room that he called the "alchemical," Ian, disengaging himself, turned and put both hands on Alexander's shoulders. "Thou Old Steadfast!" he cried. "God knows how glad I am to see thee!"
Alexander laughed. "Not more glad than I am at the sight of you! What's the tidings?"
"What should they be? I am tired of being King George's soldier!"
"So that you are tired of being any little king of this earth's soldier!"
"Why, I think I am—"
"Kings 'over the water' included, Ian?"
"Kings without kingdoms? Well," said Ian, "they don't amount to much, do they?"
"They do not." The two moved together to the table and the chairs by it. "You are free of them, Ian?"
"What is it to be free of them?"
"Well, to be plain, out of the Stewart cark and moil! Pretender, Chevalier de St. George, or uncrowned king—let it drift away like the dead leaf it is!"
"A dead leaf. Is it a dead leaf?... I wonder!... But you are usually right, old Steadfast!"
"I see that you will not tell me plainly."
"Are you so anxious? There is nothing to be anxious about."
"Nothing.... What is 'nothing'?"
Ian drummed upon the table and whistled "Lillibullero." "Something—nothing. Nothing—something! Old Steadfast, you are a sight for sair een! They say you make the best of lairds! Every cotter sings of just ways!"
"My father was a good laird. I would not shatter the tradition. Come with me to Edinburgh and London, on that journey I wrote you of!"
"No. I want to sink into the summer green and not raise my head from some old poetry book! I have been marching and countermarching until I am tired. As for what you have in your mind, don't fash yourself about it! I will say that, at the moment, I think itisa dead leaf.... Of course, should the Pope's staff unexpectedly begin to bud and flower—! But it mayn't—indeed, it only looks at present smooth and polished and dead.... I leftthe army because, naturally, I didn't want to be there in case—just in case—the staff budded. Heigho! It is the truth. You need not look troubled," said Ian.
His friend must rest with that. He did so, and put that matter aside. At any rate, things stood there better than he had feared. "I shall be gone a month or two. But you'll still be here when I come home?"
"As far as I know I'll be here through the summer. I have no plans.... If the leaf remains dry and dead, what should you say to taking ship at Leith in September for Holland? Amsterdam—then Antwerp—then the Rhine. We might see the great Frederick—push farther and look at the Queen of Hungary."
"No, I may not. I look to be a home-staying laird."
They sat with the table between them, and the light from the four sides of the room rippled and crossed over them. Books were on the table, folios and volumes in less.
"The home-staying laird—the full scholar—at last the writer—the master ... it is a good fortune!"
As Ian spoke he stretched his arms, he leaned back in his chair and regarded the room, the fireplace, the little furnace, and the shelves ranged with the quaint, makeshift apparatuses of boyhood. He looked at the green boughs without the loophole windows and at the crossing lights and shadows, and the brown books upon the brown table, and at last, under somewhat lowered lids, at Alexander. What moved in the bottom of his mind it would behard to say. He thought that he loved the man sitting over against him, and so, surely, to some great amount he did. But somewhere, in the thousand valleys behind them, he had stayed in an inn of malice and had carried hence poison in a vial as small as a single cell. What suddenly made that past to burn and set it in the present it were hard to say. A spark perhaps of envy or of jealousy, or a movement of contempt for Alexander's "fortune." But he looked at his friend with half-closed eyes, and under the sea of consciousness crawled, half-blind, half-asleep, a willingness for Glenfernie to find some thorn in life. The wish did not come to consciousness. It was far down. He thought of himself as steel true to Alexander. And in a moment the old love drew again. He put out his hands across the board. "When are we going to see Mother Binning and to light the fire in the cave?... There are not many like you, Alexander! I'm glad to get back."
"I'm glad to have you back, old sworn-fellow, old Saracen!"
They clasped hands. Gray eyes and brown eyes with gold flecks met in a gaze that was as steady with the one as with the other. It was Alexander who first loosened handclasp.
They talked of affairs, particular and general, of Ian's late proceedings and the lairdship of Alexander, of men and places that they knew away from this countryside. Ian watched the other as they talked. Whatever there was that had moved, down there in the abyss, was asleep again.
"Old Steadfast, you are ruddy and joyous! Howlong since I was here, in the winter? Four months? Well, you've changed. What is it?... Is it love? Are you in love?"
"If I am—" Glenfernie rose and paced the room. Coming to one of the narrow windows, he stood and looked out and down upon bank and brae and wood and field and moor. He returned to the table. "I'll tell you about it."
He told. Ian sat and listened. The light played about him, shook gold dots and lines over his green coat, over his hands, his faintly smiling face, his head held straight and high. He was so well to look at, so "magnificent"! Alexander spoke with the eloquence of a possessing passion, and Ian listened and felt himself to be the sympathizing friend. Even the profound, unreasonable, unhumorous idealism of old Steadfast had its quaint, Utopian appeal. He was going to marry the farmer's granddaughter, though he might, undoubtedly, marry better.... Ian listened, questioned, summed up:
"I have always been the worldly-wise one! Is there any use in my talking now of worldly wisdom?"
"No use at all."
"Then I won't!... Old Alexander the Great, are you happy?"
"If she gives me her love."
Ian dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "Oh, I think she'll give it, dear simpleton!" He looked at Glenfernie now with genial affection. "Well, on the whole, and balancing one thing against another, I think that I want you to be happy!"
Alexander laughed at that minification. "Andmy happiness is big enough—or if I get it it will be big enough—not in the least to disturb our friendship country, Ian!"
"I'll believe that, too. Our relations are old and rooted."
"Old and rooted."
"So I wish you joy.... And I remember when you thought you would not marry!"
"Oh—memories! I'm sweeping them away! I'm beginning again!... I hold fast the memory of friendship. I hold fast the memory that somehow, in this form or that, I must have loved her from the beginning of things!" He rose and moved about the room. Going to the fireplace, he leaned his forehead against the stone and looked down at the laid, not kindled, wood. He turned and came back to Ian. "The world seems to me all good."
Ian laughed at him, half in raillery, but half in a flood of kindness. If what had stirred had been ancient betrayal, alive and vital one knew not when, now again it was dead, dead. He rose, he put his arm again about Alexander's shoulder. "Glenfernie! Glenfernie! you're in deep! Well, I hope the world will stay heaven, e'en for your sake!"
They left the old room with its hauntings of a boy's search for gold, with, back of that, who might know what hauntings of ancient times and fortress doings, violences and agonies, subduings, revivings, cark and care and light struggling through, dark nights and waited-for dawns! They went down the stair and out of the keep. Late June flamed around them.
Ian stayed another hour or two ere he rode backto Black Hill. With Glenfernie he went over Glenfernie House, the known, familiar rooms. They went to the school-room together and out through the breach in the old castle wall, and sat among the pine roots, and looked down through leafy tree-tops to the glint of water. When, in the sun-washed house and narrow garden and grassy court, they came upon men and women they stopped and spoke, and all was friendly and merry as it should be in a land of good folk. Ian had his crack with Davie, with Eppie and Phemie and old Lauchlinson and others. They sat for a few minutes with Mrs. Grizel where, in a most housewifely corner, she measured currants and bargained with pickers of cherries. Strickland they came upon in the book-room. With the Jardines and this gentleman the sense of employed and employee had long ago passed into a larger inclusion. He and the young laird talked and worked together as members of one family. Now there was some converse among the three, and then the two left Strickland in the cool, dusky room. Outside the house June flamed again. For a while they paced up and down under the trees in the narrow garden atop the craggy height. Then Ian mounted Fatima, who all these years was kept for him at Black Hill.
"You'll come over to-morrow?"
"Yes."
Glenfernie watched him down the steep-descending, winding road, and thought of many roads that, good company, he and Ian had traveled together.
This was the middle of the day. In the afternoon he walked to White Farm.... It was sunsetwhen he turned his face homeward. He looked back and saw Elspeth at the stepping-stones, in a clear flame of golden sky and golden water. She had seemed kind; he walked on air, his hand in Hope's. Hope had well-nigh the look of Assurance. He was going away because it was promised and arranged for and he must go. But he was coming again—he was coming again.
A golden moon rose through the clear east. He was in no hurry to reach Glenfernie House. The aching, panting bliss that he felt, the energy compressed, held back, straining at the leash, wanted night and isolation. So it could better dream of day and the clasp of that other that with him would make one. Now he walked and now stood, his eyes upon the mounting orb or the greater stars that it could not dim, and now he stretched himself in the summer heath. At last, not far from midnight, he came to that face of Glenfernie Hill below the old wall, to the home stream and the bit of thick wood where once, in boyhood, he had lain with covered face under the trees and little by little had put from his mind "The Cranes of Ibycus." The moonlight was all broken here. Shafts of black and white lay inextricably crossed and mingled. Alexander passed through the little wood and climbed, with the secure step of old habit, the steep, rough path to the pine without the wall, there stooped and came through the broken wall to the moon-silvered court, and so to the door left open for him.
The laird of Glenfernie was away to Edinburgh on Black Alan, Tam Dickson with him on Whitefoot. Ian Rullock riding Fatima, behind him a Black Hill groom on an iron-gray, came over the moor to the head of the glen. Ian checked the mare. Behind him rolled the moor, with the hollow where lay, water in a deep jade cup, the Kelpie's Pool. Before him struck down the green feathered cleft, opening out at last into the vale. He could see the water there, and a silver gleam that was White Farm. He sat for a minute, pondering whether he should ride back the way he had come or, giving Fatima to Peter Lindsay, walk through the glen. He looked at his watch, looked, too, at a heap of clouds along the western horizon. The gleam in the vale at last decided him. He left the saddle.
"Take Fatima around to White Farm, Lindsay. I'll walk through the glen." His thought was, "I might as well see what like is Alexander's inamorata!" It was true that he had seen her quite long ago, but time had overlaid the image, or perhaps he had never paid especial note.
Peter Lindsay stooped to catch the reins that the other tossed him. "There's weather in thae clouds, sir!"
"Not before night, I think. They're moving very slowly."
Lindsay turned with the horses. Ian, light of step, resilient, "magnificent," turned from the purple moor into the shade of birches. A few moments and he was near the cot of Mother Binning. A cock crowed, a feather of blue smoke went up from her peat fire.
He came to her door, meaning to stay but for a good-natured five minutes of gossip. She had lived here forever, set in the picture with ash-tree and boulder. But when he came to the door he found sitting with her, in the checkered space behind the opening, Glenfernie's inamorata.
Now he remembered her.... He wondered if he had truly ever forgotten her.
When he had received his welcome he sat down upon the door-step. He could have touched Elspeth's skirt. When she lowered her eyes they rested upon his gold-brown head, upon his hand in a little pool of light.
"Eh, laddie!" said Mother Binning, "but ye grow mair braw each time ye come!"
Elspeth thought him braw. The wishing-green where they danced, hand in hand!... Now she knew—now she knew—why her heart had lain so cold and still—for months, for years, cold and still! That was what hearts did until the sun came.... Definitely, in this hour, for her now, upon this stretch of the mortal path, Ian became the sun.
Ian sat daffing, talking. The old woman listened, her wheel idle; the young woman listened. The young woman, sitting half in shadow, half in light,put up her hand and drew farther over her face the brim of her wide hat of country weave. She wished to hide her eyes, her lips. She sat there pale, and through her ran in fine, innumerable waves human passion and longing, wild courage and trembling humility.
The sunlight that flooded the door-stone and patched the cottage floor began to lessen and withdraw. Low and distant there sounded a roll of thunder. Jock Binning came upon his crutches from the bench by the stream where he made a fishing-net.
"A tempest's daundering up!"
Elspeth rose. "I must go home—I must get home before it comes!"
"If ye'll bide, lassie, it may go by."
"No, I cannot." She had brought to Mother Binning a basket heaped with bloomy plums. She took it up and set it on the table. "I'll get the basket when next I come. Now I must go! Hark, there's the thunder again!"
Ian had risen also. "I will go with you. Yes! It was my purpose to walk through to White Farm. I sent Fatima around with Peter Lindsay."
As they passed the ash-tree there was lightning, but yet the heavens showed great lakes of blue, and a broken sunlight lay upon the path.
"There's time enough! We need not go too fast. The path is rough for that."
They walked in silence, now side by side, now, where the way was narrow, one before the other. The blue clouded over, there sprang a wind. The trees bent and shook, the deep glen grew gray anddark. That wind died and there was a breathless stillness, heated and heavy. Each heard the other's breathing as they walked.
"Let us go more quickly! We have a long way."
"Will you go back to Mother Binning's?"
"That, too, is far."
They had passed the cave a little way and were in mid-glen. It was dusk in this narrow pass. The trees hung, shadows in a brooding twilight; between the close-set pillars of the hills the sky showed slate-hued, with pallid feathers of cloud driven across. Lightning tore it, the thunder was loud, the trees upon the hilltops began to move. Some raindrops fell, large, slow, and warm. The lightning ran again, blindingly bright; the ensuing thunderclap seemed to shake the rock. As it died, the cataract sound of the wind was heard among the ranked trees. The drops came faster, came fast.
"It's no use!" cried Ian. "You'll be drenched and blinded! There's danger, too, in these tall trees. Come back to the cave and take shelter!"
He turned. She followed him, breathless, liking the storm—so that no bolt struck him. In every nerve, in every vein, she felt life rouse itself. It was like day to old night, summer to one born in winter, a passion of revival where she had not known that there was anything to revive. The past was as it were not, the future was as it were not; all things poured into a tremendous present. It was proper that there should be storm without, if within was to be this enormous, aching, happy tumult that was pain indeed, but pain that one would not spare!
Ian parted the swinging briers. They entered the cavern. If it was dim outside in the glen, it was dimmer here. Then the lightning flashed and all was lit. It vanished, the light from the air in conflict with itself. All was dark—then the flash again! The rain now fell in a torrent.
"At least it is dry here! There is wood, but I have no way to make fire."
"I am not cold."
"Sit here, upon this ledge. Alexander and I cleared it and widened it."
She sat down. When he spoke of Alexander she thought of Alexander, without unkindness, without comparing, without compunction, a thought colorless and simple, as of one whom she had known and liked a long time ago. Indeed, it might be said that she had little here with which to reproach herself. She had been honest—had not said "Take!" where she could not fulfil.... And now the laird of Glenfernie was like a form met long ago—long ago! It seemed so long and far away that she could not even think of him as suffering. As she might leave a fugitive memory, so she turned her mind from him.
Ian thought of Alexander ... but he looked, by the lightning's lamp, at the woman opposite.
She was not the first that he had desired, but he desired now with unwonted strength. He did not know why—he did not analyze himself nor the situation—but all the others seemed gathered up in her. She was fair to him, desirable!... He thirsted, quite with the mortal honesty of an Arab, day and night and day again without drink in thedesert, and the oasis palms seen at last on the horizon. In his self-direction thitherward he was as candid, one-pointed, and ruthless as the Arab might be. He had no deliberate thought of harm to the woman before him—as little as the Arab would have of hurting the well whose cool wave seemed to like the lip touch. Perhaps he as little stopped to reason as would have done the Arab. Perhaps he had no thought of deeply injuring a friend. If there were two desert-traversers, or more than two, making for the well, friendship would not hold one back, push another forward. Race!—and if the well was but to one, then let fate and Allah approve the swiftest! Under such circumstances would not Alexander outdo him if he might? He was willing to believe so. Glenfernie said himself that the girl did not know if she cared for him. If, then, the well was not for him, anyway?...Where was the wrong?Now Ian believed in his own power and easy might and pleasantness and, on the whole, goodness—believed, too, in the love of Alexander for him, love that he had tried before, and it held.And if he made love to Elspeth Barrow need old Steadfast ever know it?And, finally, and perhaps, unacknowledged to himself, from the first, he turned to that cabinet of his heart where was the vial made of pride, that held the drop of malice. The storm continued. They looked through the portcullis made by the briers upon a world of rain. The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled; in here was the castle hold, dim and safe. They were as alone as in a fairy-tale, as alone as though around the cave beat an ocean that boat had never crossed.
They sat near each other; once or twice Ian, rising, moved to and fro in the cave, or at the opening looked into the turmoil without. When he did this her eyes followed him. Each, in every fiber, had consciousness of the other. They were as conscious of each other as lion and lioness in a desert cave.
They talked, but they did not talk much. What they said was trite enough. Underneath was the potent language, wave meeting wave with shock and thrill and exultation. These would not come, here and now, to outer utterance. But sooner or later they would come. Each knew that—though not always does one acknowledge what is known.
When they spoke it was chiefly of weather and of country people....
The lightning blazed less frequently, thunder subdued itself. For a time the rain fell thick and leaden, but after an hour it thinned and grew silver. Presently it wholly stopped.
"This storm is over," said Ian.
Elspeth rose from the ledge of stone. He drew aside the dripping curtain of leaf and stem, and she stepped forth from the cave, and he followed. The clouds were breaking, the birds were singing. The day of creation could not have seen the glen more lucent and fragrant. When, soon, they came to its lower reaches, with White Farm before them, they saw overhead a rainbow.
The day of the storm and the cave was over, but with no outward word their inner selves had covenanted to meet again. They met in the leafy glen. It was easy for her to find an errand to MotherBinning's, or, even, in the long summer afternoons, to wander forth from White Farm unquestioned. As for him, he came over the moor, avoided the cot at the glen head, and plunged down the steep hillside below. Once they met Jock Binning in the glen. After that they chose for their trysting-place that green hidden arm that once she and the laird of Glenfernie had entered.
Elspeth did not think in those days; she loved. She moved as one who is moved; she was drawn as by the cords of the sun. The Ancient One, the Sphinx, had her fast. The reflection of a greater thing claimed her and taught her, held her like a bayadere in a temple court.
As for Ian, he also held that he loved. He was the Arab bound for the well for which he thirsted, single-minded as to that, and without much present consciousness of tarnish or sin.... But what might arise in his mind when his thirst was quenched? Ian did not care, in these blissful days, to think of that.
He had come on the day of the storm, the cave, and the rainbow to a fatal place in his very long life. He was upon very still, deep water, glasslike, with only vague threads and tremors to show what might issue in resistless currents. He had been in such a place, in his planetary life, over and over and over again. This concatenation had formed it, or that concatenation; the surrounding phenomena varied, but essentially it was always the same, like a dream place. The question was, would he turn his boat, or raft, or whatever was beneath him, or his own stroke as swimmer, and escape from thisglassy place whose currents were yet but tendrils? He could do it; it was the Valley of Decision.... But so often, in all those lives whose bitter and sweet were distilled into this one, he had not done it. It had grown much easier not to do it. Sometimes it had been illusory love, sometimes ambition, sometimes towering pride and self-seeking, sometimes mere indolent unreadiness, dreamy self-will. On he had gone out of the lower end of the Valley of Decision, where the tendrils became arms of giants and decisions might no longer be made.
The laird of Glenfernie stayed longer from home than, riding away, he had expected to do. It was the latter half of August when he and Black Alan, Tam Dickson and Whitefoot, came up the winding road to Glenfernie door. Phemie it was, at the clothes-lines, who noted them on the lowest spiral, who turned and ran and informed the household. "The laird's coming! The laird's coming!" Men and women and dogs began to stir.
Strickland, looking from the window of his own high room, saw the riders in and out of the bronzing woods. Descending, he joined Mrs. Grizel upon the wide stone step without the hall door. Davie was in waiting, and a stable-boy or two came at a run.
"Two months!" said Mrs. Grizel. "But it used to be six months, a year, two years, and more! He grows a home body, as lairds ought to be!"
Alexander dismounted at the door, took her in his arms and kissed her twice, shook hands with Strickland, greeted Davie and the men. "How good it is to get home! I've pined like a lost bairn. And none of you look older—Aunt Grizel hasn't a single white hair!"
"Go along with you, laddie!" said Aunt Grizel. "You haven't been so long away!"
The sun was half-way down the western quarter. He changed his riding-clothes, and they set food for him in the hall. He ate, and Davie drew the cloth and brought wine and glasses. Some matter or other called Mrs. Grizel away, but Strickland stayed and drank wine with him.
Questions and answers had been exchanged. Glenfernie gave in detail reasons for his lengthened stay. There had been a business postponement and complication—in London Jamie's affairs; again, in Edinburgh, insistence of kindred with whom Alice was blooming, "growing a fine lady, too!" and at the last a sudden and for a while dangerous sickness of Tam Dickson's that had kept them a week at an inn a dozen miles this side of Edinburgh.
"Each time I started up sprang a stout hedge! But they're all down now and here I am!" He raised his wine-glass. "To home, and the sweetness thereof!" said Alexander.
"I am glad to see you back," said Strickland, and meant it.
The late sunlight streamed through the open door. Bran, the old hound, basked in it; it wiped the rust from the ancient weapons on the wall and wrote hieroglyphics in among them; it made glow the wine in the glass. Alexander turned in his chair.
"It's near sunset.... Now what, just, did you hear about Ian Rullock's going?"
"We supposed that he would be here through the autumn—certainly until after your return. Then, three days ago, comes Peter Lindsay with the note for you, and word that he was gone. Lindsaythought that he had received letters from great people and had gone to them for a visit."
Alexander spread the missive that had been given him upon the table. "It's short!" He held it so that Strickland might read:
Glenfernie,—Perhaps the leaf is not yet wholly sere. Be that as it may be, I'm leaving Black Hill for a time.Ian Rullock.
Glenfernie,—Perhaps the leaf is not yet wholly sere. Be that as it may be, I'm leaving Black Hill for a time.
Ian Rullock.
"That's a puzzling billet!" said Alexander. "'Glenfernie—Ian Rullock!'"
"What does he mean by the leaf not dead?"
"That was a figure of speech used between us in regard to a certain thing.... Well, he also has moods! It is my trust that he has not answered to some one's piping that the leaf's not dead! That is the likeliest thing—that he answered and has gone. I'll ride to Black Hill to-morrow." The sun set, twilight passed, candles were lighted. "Have you seen any from White Farm?"
"I walked there from Littlefarm with Robin Greenlaw. Jarvis Barrow was reading Leviticus, looking like a listener in the Plain of Sinai. They expected Gilian home from Aberdeen. They say the harvest everywhere is good."
Alexander asked no further and presently they parted for the night. The laird of Glenfernie looked from his chamber window, and he looked toward White Farm. It was dark, clear night, and all the autumn stars shone like worlds of hope.
The next morning he mounted his horse and went off to Black Hill. He would get this matter of Ian straight. It was early when he rode, and he cameto Black Hill to find Mr. Touris and his sister yet at the breakfast-table. Mrs. Alison, who might have been up hours, sat over against a dour-looking master of the house who sipped his tea and crumbled his toast and had few good words for anything. But he was glad and said that he was glad to see Glenfernie.
"Now, maybe, we'll have some light on Ian's doings!"
"I came for light to you, sir."
"Do you mean that he hasn't written you?"
"Only a line that I found waiting for me. It says, simply, that he leaves Black Hill for a while."
"Well, you won't get light from me! My light's darkness. The women found in his room a memorandum of ships and two addresses, one a house in Amsterdam, and one, if you please, in Paris—Faubourg Saint-Germain!"
"Do you mean that he left without explanation or good-by?"
Mrs. Alison spoke. "No, Archibald does not mean that. One evening Ian outdid himself in bonniness and golden talk. Then as we took our candles he told us that the wander-fever had him and that he would be riding to Edinburgh. Archibald protested, but he daffed it by. So the next day he went, and he may be in Edinburgh. It would seem nothing, if these Highland chiefs were not his kin and if there wasn't this round and round rumor of the Pretender and the French army! There may be nothing—he may be riding back almost to-morrow!"
But Mr. Touris would not shake the black dog fromhis shoulders. "He'll bring trouble yet—was born the sort to do it!"
Alexander defended him.
"Oh, you're his friend—sworn for thick and thin! As for Alison, she'd find a good word for the fiend from hell!—not that my sister's son is anything of that," said the Scotchman. "But he'll bring trouble to warm, canny, king-and-kirk-abiding folk! He's an Indian macaw in a dove-cote."
They rose from table. Out on the terrace they walked up and down in the soft, bright morning light. Mr. Touris seemed to wish company; he clung to Glenfernie until the latter must mount his horse and ride home. Only for a moment did Alexander and Mrs. Alison have speech together.
"When will you be seeing Elspeth?"
"I hope this afternoon."
"May joy come to you, Alexander!"
"I want it to come. I want it to come."
He and Black Alan journeyed home. As he rode he thought now and again of Ian, perhaps in Edinburgh according to his word of mouth, but perhaps, despite that word, on board some ship that should place him in the Low Countries, from which he might travel into France and to Paris and that group of Jacobites humming like a byke of bees around a prince, the heir of all the Stewarts. He thought with old affection and old concern. Whatever Ian did—intrigued with Jacobite interest or held aloof like a sensible man—yet was he Ian with the old appeal.Take me or leave me—me and my dusky gold!Alexander drew a deep breath, shook his shoulders, raised his head. "Let my friend be as he is!"
He ceased to think of Ian and turned to the oncoming afternoon—the afternoon rainbow-hued, coming on to the sound of music.
Again in his own house, he and Strickland worked an hour or more upon estate business. That over and dinner past, he went to the room in the keep. When the hour struck three he passed out of the opening in the old wall, clambered down the bank, and, going through the wood, took his way to White Farm.
Just one foreground wish in his mind was granted. There was an orchard strip by White Farm, and here, beneath a red-apple tree, he found Elspeth alone. She was perfectly direct with him.
"Willy told us that you were home. I thought you might come now to White Farm. I was watching. I wanted to speak to you where none was by. Let us cross the burn and walk in the fields."
The fields were reaped, lay in tawny stubble. The path ran by this and by a lichened stone wall. Overhead, swallows were skimming. Heath and bracken, rolled the colored hills. The air swam cool and golden, with a smell of the harvest earth.
"Elspeth, I stayed away years and years and years, and I stayed away not one hour!"
She stopped; she stood with her back to the wall. The farm-house had sunk from sight, the sun was westering, the fields lay dim gold and solitary. She had over her head a silken scarf, the ends of which she drew together and held with one brown, slender hand against her breast. She wore a dark gown; he saw her bosom rise and fall.
"I watched for you to tell you that this must notgo on any longer. I came to my mind when you were gone, Mr. Alexander—I came to my mind! I think that you are braw and noble, but in the way of loving, as love is between man and woman, I have none for you—I have none for you!"
The sun appeared to dip, the fields to darken. Pain came to Glenfernie, wildering and blinding. He stood silent.
"I might have known before you went—I might have known from that first meeting, in May, in the glen! But I was a fool, and vague, and willing, I suppose, to put tip of tongue to a land of sweetness! If, mistaken myself, I helped you to mistake, I am bitter sorry and I ask your forgiveness! But the thing, Glenfernie, the thing stands! It's for us to part."
He stared at her dumbly. In every line of her, in every tone of her, there was finality. He was tenacious of purpose, capable of long-sustained and patient effort, but he seemed to know that, for this life, purpose and effort here might as well be laid aside. The knowledge wrapped him, quiet, gray, and utter. He put his hands to his brow; he moved a few steps to and fro; he came to the wall and leaned against it. It seemed to him that he regarded the clay-cold corpse of his life.
"O the world!" cried Elspeth. "When we are little it seems so little! If you suffer, I am sorry."
"Present suffering may be faced if there's light behind."
"There's not this light, Glenfernie.... O world! if there is some other light—"
"And time will do naught for me, Elspeth?"
"No. Time will do naught for you. It is over! And the day goes down and the world spins on."
They stood apart, without speaking, under their hands the heaped stones of the wall. The swallows skimmed; a tinkling of sheep-bells was heard; the stubble and the moor beyond the fields lay in gold, in sunken green and violet; the hilltops met the sky in a line long, clean, remote, and still. Elspeth spoke.
"I am going now, back home. Let's say good-by here, each wishing the other some good in, or maybe out of, this carefu' world!"
"You, also, are unhappy. Why?"
"I am not! Do I seem so? I am sorry for unhappiness—that is all! Of course we grow older," said Elspeth, "older and wiser. But you nor no one must think that I am unhappy! For I am not." She put out her hands to him. "Let us say good-by!"
"Is it so? Is it so?"
"Never make doubt of that! I want you to see that it is clean snapped—clean gone!"
She gave him her hands. They lay in his grasp untrembling, filled with a gathered strength. He wrung them, bowed his head upon them, let them go. They fell at her sides; then she raised them, drew the scarf over her head and, holding it as before, turned and went away up the path between the yellow stubble and the wall. She walked quickly, dark clad; she was gone like a bird into a wood, like a branch of autumn leaves when the sea fog rolls in.
The laird of Glenfernie turned to his ancient house on the craggy hill.... That night he madehim a fire in his old loved room in the keep. He sat beside it; he lighted candles and opened books, and now and then he sat so still before them that he may have thought that he read. But the books slipped away, and the candles guttered down, and the fire went out. At last, in the thick darkness, he spread his arms upon the table and bowed his head in them, and his frame shook with a man's slow weeping.
The bright autumn sank into November, November winds and mists into a muffled, gray-roofed, white-floored December. And still the laird of Glenfernie lived with the work of the estate and, when that was done, and when the long, lonely, rambling daily walk or ride was over, with books. The room in the keep had now many books. He sat among them, and he built his fire higher, and his candles burned into late night. Whether he read or did not read, he stayed among them and drew what restless comfort he might. Strickland, from his own high room, waking in the night, saw the loophole slit of light.
He felt concern. The change that had come to his old pupil was marked enough. Strickland's mind dwelt on the old laird. Was that the personality, not of one, but of two, of the whole line, perhaps, developing all the time, step by step with what seemed the plastic, otherwise, free time of youth, appearing always in due season, when its hour struck? Would Alexander, with minor differences, repeat his father? How of the mother? Would the father drown the mother? In the enormous all-one, the huge blend, what would arrive? Out of all fathers and mothers, out of all causes?
It could not be said that Alexander was surly. Nor, if the weather was dark with him, that he tried to shake his darkness into others' skies. Nor that he meanly succumbed to the weight, whatever it was, that bore upon him. He did his work, and achieved at least the show of equanimity. Strickland wondered. What was it that had happened? It never occurred to him that it had happened here in this dale. But in all that life of Alexander's in the wider world there must needs have been relationships of lands established. Somewhere, something had happened to overcloud his day, to uncover ancestral resemblances, possibilities. Something, somewhere, and he had had news of it this autumn.... It happened that Strickland had never seen Glenfernie with Elspeth Barrow.
Mrs. Grizel was not observant. So that her nephew came to breakfast, dinner, and supper, so that he was not averse to casual speech of household interests, so that he seemed to keep his health, so that he gave her now and then words and a kiss of affection, she was willing to believe that persons addicted to books and the company of themselves had a right to stillness and gravity. Alice stayed in Edinburgh; Jamie soldiered it in Flanders. Strickland wrote and computed for and with the laird, then watched him forth, a solitary figure, by the fir-trees, by the leafless trees, and down the circling road into the winter country. Or he saw firelight in the keep and knew that Alexander walked to and fro, to and fro, or sat bowed over a book. Late at night, waking, he saw that Glenfernie still watched.
It was not Ian Rullock nor anything to do with him that had helped on this sharp alteration, this turn into some Cimmerian stretch of the mind's or the emotions' vast landscape. If Strickland had at first wondered if this might be the case, the thought vanished. Glenfernie, free to speak of Ian, spoke freely, with the relief of there, at least, a sunny day. It somewhat amazed and disquieted, even while it touched, the older man of quiet passions and even ways, the old strength of this friendship. Glenfernie seemed to brood with a mother-passion over Ian. To an extent here he confided in Strickland. The latter knew of the worry about Jacobite plots and the drawing of Ian into that vortex—Ian known now to be in Paris, writing thence twice or thrice during this autumn and early winter, letters that came to Glenfernie's hand by unusual channels, smacking all of them of Jacobite or High Tory transmissals. Strickland did not see these letters. Of them Alexander said only that Ian wrote as usual, except that he made no reference to sere leaves turning green or a dead staff budding.
In the room with only the loophole windows, by the firelight, Alexander read over again the second of these letters. "So you have loved and lost, old Steadfast? Let it not grieve you too much!" And that was all of that. And it pleased Alexander that it was all. Ian was too wise to touch and finger the heart. Ian, Ian, rich and deep and himself almost! Ten thousand Ian recollections pressed in upon Alexander. Let Ian, an he would, go a-lusting after old dynasties! Yet was he Ian! In thesemonths it was Ian memories that chiefly gave Alexander comfort.
They gave beyond what, at this time, Mrs. Alison could give. At considerable intervals he went to Black Hill. But his old friend lived in a rare, upland air, and he could not yet find rest in her clime. She saw that.
"It's for after a while, isn't it, Alexander? Oh, after a while you'll see that it is the breathing, living air! But do not feel now that you are in duty bound to come here. Wait until you feel like coming, and never think that I'll be hurt—"
"I am a marsh thing," he said. "I feel dull and still and cold, and over me is a heavy atmosphere filled with motes. Forgive me and let me come to you farther on and higher up."
He went back to the gray crag, Glenfernie House and the room in the keep, the fire and his books, and a brooding traveling over the past, and, like a pool of gold in a long arctic night, the image, nested and warm, of Ian. Love was lost, but there stayed the ancient, ancient friend.
Two weeks before Christmas Alice came home, bright as a rose. She talked of a thousand events, large and small. Glenfernie listened, smiled, asked questions, praised her, and said it was good to have brightness in the house.
"Aye, it is!" she answered. "How grave and old you and Mr. Strickland and the books and the hall and Bran look!"
"It's heigho! for Jamie, isn't it?" asked Alexander. "Winter makes us look old. Wait till springtime!"
That evening she waylaid Strickland. "What is the matter with Alexander?"
"I don't know."
"He looks five years older. He looks as though he had been through wars."
"Perhaps he has. I don't know what it is," said Strickland, soberly.
"Do you think," said Alice—"do you think he could have had—oh, somewhere out in the world!—a love-affair, and it ended badly? She died, or there was a rival, or something like that, and he has just heard of it?"
"You have been reading novels," said Strickland. "And yet—!"
That night, seeing from his own window the light in the keep, he turned to his bed with the thought of the havoc of love. Lying there with open eyes he saw in procession Unhappy Love. He lay long awake, but at last he turned and addressed himself to sleep. "He's a strong climber! Whatever it is, maybe he'll climb out of it."
But in the keep, Alexander, sitting by the fire with lowered head and hanging hands, saw not the time when he would climb out of it....
He went no more to White Farm. He went, though not every Sunday, to kirk and sat with his aunt and with Strickland in the laird's boxlike, curtained pew. Mr. M'Nab preached of original sin and ineffable condemnation, and of the few, the very, very few, saved as by fire. He saw Jarvis Barrow sitting motionless, sternly agreeing, and beyond him Jenny Barrow and then Elspeth and Gilian. Out of kirk, in the kirkyard, he gave themgood day. He studied to keep strangeness out of his manner; an onlooker would note only a somewhat silent, preoccupied laird. He might be pondering the sermon. Mr. M'Nab's sermons were calculated to arouse alarm and concern—or, in the case of the justified, stern triumph—in the human breast. White Farm made no quarrel with the laird for that quietude and withdrawing. In the autumn he had told Jarvis Barrow of that hour with Elspeth in the stubble-field. The old man listened, then, "They are strange warks, women!" he said, and almost immediately went on to speak of other things. There seemed no sympathy and no regret for the earthly happening. But he liked to debate with the laird election and the perseverance of the saints.
Jenny Barrow, only, could not be held from exclamation over Glenfernie's defection. "Why does he na come as he used to? Wha's done aught to him or said a word to gie offense?" She talked to Menie and Merran since Elspeth and Gilian gave her notice that they were wearied of the subject. Perhaps Jenny's concern with it kept her from the perception that not Glenfernie only was changing or had changed. Elspeth—! But Elspeth had been always a dreamer, rather silent, a listener rather than a speaker. Jenny did not look around corners; the overt sufficed for a bustling, good-natured life. Gilian's arrival, moreover, made for a diversion of attention. By the time novelty subsided again into every day an altered Elspeth had so fitted into the frame of life that Jenny was unaware of alteration.
But Gilian was not Jenny.
Each of Jarvis Barrow's granddaughters had her own small bedroom. Three nights after Gilian's home-coming she came, when the candles were out, into Elspeth's room. It was September and, for the season, warm. A great round moon poured its light into the little room. Elspeth was seated upon her bed. Her hair was loosened and fell over her white gown. Her feet were under her; she sat like an Eastern carving, still in the moonlight.
"Elspeth!"
Elspeth took a moment to come back to White Farm. "What is it, Gilian?"
Gilian moved to the window and sat in it. She had not undressed. The moon silvered her, too. "What has happened, Elspeth?"
"Naught. What should happen?"
"It's no use telling me that.—We've been away from each other almost a year. I know that I've changed, grown, in that time, and it's natural that you should do the same. But it's something besides that!"
Elspeth laughed and her laughter was like a little, cold, mirthless chime of silver bells. "You're fanciful, Gilian!... We're no longer lassies; we're women! So the colors of things get a little different—that's all!"
"Don't you love me, Elspeth?"
"Yes, I love you. What has that to do with it?"
"Has it not? Has love naught to do with it? Love at all—all love?"
Elspeth parted her long dark hair into two waves, drew it before her, and began to braid it, sitting still, her limbs under her, upon the bed. "I saw you onthe moor walking and talking with grandfather. What did he say to you?"
"You are changed and I said that you were changed. He had not noticed—he would not be like to notice! Then he told me about the laird and you."
"Yes. About the laird and me."
"You couldn't love him? They say he is a fine man."
"No, I couldn't love him. I like him. He understands. No one is to blame."
"But if it is not that, what is it—what is it, Elspeth?"
"It's naught—naught—naught, I tell you!"
"It's a strange naught that makes you like a dark lady in a ballad-book!"
Elspeth laughed again. "Didn't I say that you were fanciful? It's late and I am sleepy."
That had been while the leaves were still upon the trees. The next morning and thenceforward Elspeth seemed to make a point of cheerfulness. It passed with her aunt and the helpers in the house. Jarvis Barrow appeared to take no especial note if women laughed or sighed, so long as they lived irreproachably.
The leaves bronzed, the autumn rains came, the leaves fell, the trees stood bare, the winds began to blow, there fell the first snowflakes. Gilian, walking home from the town, was overtaken on the moor by Robin Greenlaw.
"Where is Elspeth?"
"We are making our winter dresses. She would not leave her sewing."
The cousins walked upon the moor path together. Gilian was fairer and more strongly made than Elspeth. They walked in silence; then said Robin:
"You're the old Gilian, but I'm sure I miss the old Elspeth!"
"I think, myself, she's gone visiting! I rack and rack my brains to find what grief could have come to Elspeth. She will not help me."
"Gilian, could it be that, after all, her heart is set on the laird?"
"Did you know about that?"
"In part I guessed, watching them together. And then I saw how Glenfernie oldened in a night. Then, being with my uncle one day, he let drop a word that I followed up. I led him on and he told me. Glenfernie acted like a true man."
"If there's one thing of which I'm sure it is that she hardly thinks of him from Sunday to Sunday. She thinks then for a little because she sees him in kirk—but that passes, too!"
"Then what is it?"
"I don't know. I don't know of anybody else. Maybe no outer thing has anything to do with it. Sometimes we just have drumlie, dreary seasons and we do not know why.... She loves the spring. Maybe when spring comes she'll be Elspeth once more!"
"I hope so," said Greenlaw. "Spring makes all the world bonny again."
That was in November. On Christmas Eve Elspeth Barrow drowned herself in the Kelpie's Pool.
There had been three hours of light on Christmas Day when Robin Greenlaw appeared at Glenfernie House and would see the laird.
"He's in his ain room in the keep," said Davie, and went with the message.
Alexander came down the stair and out into the flagged court. The weather had been unwontedly clement, melting the earlier snows, letting the brown earth forth again for one look about her. To-day there was pale sunlight. Greenlaw sat his big gray. The laird came to him.
"Get down, man, and come in for Christmas cheer!"
"Send Davie away," said Greenlaw.
Alexander's gray eyes glanced. "You're bringing something that is not Christmas cheer!—Davie, tell Dandie Saunderson to saddle Black Alan at once.—Now, Robin!"
"Yesterday," said Greenlaw, "Elspeth Barrow vanished from White Farm. They wanted to send Christmas fare to old Skene the cotter. She said she would take a basket there, and so she went away, down the stream—about ten of the morning they think it was. It was not for hours that they grew at all anxious. She's never come back. She didnot go to Skene's. We can hear no word of her from any. Her grandfather and I and the men at White Farm looked for her through the night. This morning there's an alarm sent up and down the dale."
"What harm could happen—"
"She might have strayed into some lonely place—fallen—hurt herself. There were gipsies seen the other day over by Windyedge. Or she might have walked on and on upon what road she took, and somehow none chanced to notice her. I am going now to ride the Edinburgh way."
"Have you gone up the glen?"
"That was tried this morning at first light. But that is just opposite to Skene's and the way she certainly took at first. She would have to turn and go about through the woods, or White Farm would see her." His voice had a haunting note of fear and trouble.
Glenfernie caught it. "She was not out of health nor unhappy?"
"She is changed from the old Elspeth. When you ask her if she is unhappy she says that she is not.... I do not know. Something is wrong. With the others, I am seeking about as though I expected each moment to see her sitting or standing by the roadside. But I do not expect to see her. I do not know what I expect. We have sent to Windyedge to apprehend those gipsies."
"Let me speak one moment to Mr. Strickland to send the men forth and go himself. Then I am ready."
On Black Alan he rode with Robin down the hill and through the wood and upon the White Farmway. The earth was mainly bare of snow, but frozen hard. The hoofs rang out but left no print. The air hung still, light and dry; the sun, far in the south, sent slanting, pale-gold beams. The two men made little speech as they rode. They passed men and youths, single figures and clusters.
"Ony news, Littlefarm? We've been—or we're going—seeking here, or here—"
A woman stopped them. "It was thae gipsies, sirs! I had a dream about them, five nights syne! A lintwhite was flying by them, and they gave chase. Either it's that or she made away with herself! I had a dream that might be read that way, too."
When they came to White Farm it was to find there only Jenny and Menie and Merran.
"Somebody maun stay to keep the house warm gin the lassie come stumbling hame, cauld and hungry and half doited! Eh, Glenfernie, ye that are a learned man and know the warld, gie us help!"
"I am going up the glen," said Alexander to Greenlaw. "I do not know why, but I think it should be tried again. And I know it, root and branch. I am going afoot. I will leave Black Alan here."
They wasted no time. He went, while Robin Greenlaw on his gray took the opposed direction. Looking back, he saw the great fire that Jenny kept, dancing through the open door and in the pane of the window. Then the trees and the winding of the path shut it away, shut away house and field and all token of human life.
He moved swiftly to the mouth of the glen, but then more slowly. The trees soared bare, the waterrushed with a hoarse sound, snow lay in clefts. So well he knew the place! There was no spot where foot might have climbed, no ledge nor opening where form might lay, huddled or outstretched, that lacked his searching eye or hand. Here was the pebbly cape with the thorn-tree where in May he had come upon Elspeth, sitting by the water, singing.... Farther on he turned into that smaller, that fairy glen, bending like an arm from the main pass. Here was the oak beneath which they had sat, against which she had leaned. It wrapt him from himself, this place. He stood, and space around seemed filled with forms just beyond visibility. What were they? He did not know, but they seemed to breathe against his heart, to whisper.... He searched this place well, but there were only the winter banks and trees, the little burn, the invisible presences. Back in the deep glen a hawk sailed overhead, across the stripe of pale-blue sky. Alexander went on by the stream and the projecting rock and the twisted roots. There was no sound other than the loud voice of the water, talking only of its return to the sea. When he came to the cave he pushed aside the masking growth and entered. Dark and barren here, with the ashes of an old fire! For one moment, as it were distinctly, he saw Ian. He stood so clear in the mind's eye that it seemed that one intense effort might have set him bodily in the cavern. But the central strength let the image go. Alexander moved the ashes of the fire with his foot, shuddered in the place of cold and shadow, and, stooping, went out of the cave and on upon his search for Elspeth Barrow.
He sought the glen through, and at last, at the head, he came to Mother Binning's cot. Her fire was burning; she was standing in the door looking toward him.
"Eh, Glenfernie! is there news of the lassie?"
"None. You've got the sight. Can you notsee?"
"It's gane from me! When it gaes I'm just like ony bird with a broken wing."
"If you cannot see, what do you think?"
"I dinna want to think and I dinna want to say. Whaur be ye gaeing now?"
"On over the moor and down by the Kelpie's Pool."
"Gae on then. I'll watch for ye coming back."
He went on. Something strange had him, drawing him. He came out from the band of trees upon the swelling open moor, bare and brown save where the snow laced it. Gold filtered over it; a pale sky arched above; it was wide, still, and awful—a desert. He saw the light run down and glint upon the pool. Searchers had ridden across this moor also, he had been told. He went down at once to the pool and stood by the kelpie willow. He was not thinking, he was not keenly feeling. He seemed to stand in open, endless, formless space, and in unfenced time. A clump of dry reeds rose by his knee, and upon the other side of these he noticed that a stone had been lifted from its bed. He stooped, and in the reeds he found an inch-long fragment of ribbon—of a snood.
He stepped back from the willow. He took off and dropped upon the moor hat and riding-coatand boots, inner coat and waistcoat. Then he entered the Kelpie's Pool. He searched it, measure by measure, and at last he found the body of Elspeth. He drew it up; he loosened and let fall the stone tied in the plaid that was wrapped around it; he bore the form out of the pool and laid it upon the bank beyond the willow. The sunlight showed the whole, the face and figure. The laird of Glenfernie, kneeling beside it, put back the long drowned hair and saw, pinned upon the bosom of the gown, the folded letter, wrapped twice in thicker paper. He took it from her and opened it. The writing was yet legible.