"You are mistaken in your proportions. Gold! You are to me the specter of the Kelpie's Pool!"
Silence held for a minute or two. The clouds, passing between earth and sun, made against the mountain slopes impalpable, dark, fantastic shapes. An eagle wheeled above its nest at the mountain-top. Ian spoke again. His tone had altered.
"If I do not decline remorse, I at least decline the leaden cope of it you would have me wear! There is such a thing as fair play to oneself! Two years ago come August Elspeth Barrow and I agreed to part—"
"Oh, 'agreed'—"
"Have it so! I said that we must part. She acquiesced—and that without the appeals that the stage and literature show us. Oh, doubtless I might have seen a pierced spirit, and did not, and was brute beast there! But one thing you have got to believe, and that is that neither of us knew what was to happen. Even with that, she was aware of how a letter might be sent, with good hope of reaching me. She was not a weak, ignorant girl.... I went away, and within a fortnight was deep in thatlong attempt that ends here. I became actively an agent for the Prince and his father. A hundred names and their fates were in my hands. You can fill in the multitude of activities, each seeming small in itself, but the whole preoccupying every field.... If Elspeth Barrow wrote I never received her letter. When my thought turned in that direction, it saw her well and not necessarily unhappy. Time passed. For reasons, I ceased to write home, and again for reasons I obliterated paths by which I might be reached. For months I heard nothing, as I said nothing. I was on the very eve of quitting Paris, under careful disguise, to go into Scotland. Came suddenly your challenge—and still, though I knew that to you at least our relations must have been discovered, I knew no more than that! I did not know that she was dead.... I could not stay to fight you then. I left you to brand me as you pleased in your mind."
"I had already branded you."
"Later, I saw that you had. Perhaps then I did not wonder. In September—almost a year from that Christmas Eve—I yet did not know. Then, in Edinburgh, I came upon Mr. Wotherspoon. He told me.... I had no wicked intent toward Elspeth Barrow—none according to my canon, which has been that of the natural man. We met by accident. We loved at once and deeply. She had in her an elf queen! But at last the human must have darkened and beset her. Had I known of those fears, those dangers, I might have turned homeward from France and every shining scheme...."
"Ah no, you would not—"
"... If I would not, then certainly I should have written to Jarvis Barrow and to others, acknowledging my part—"
"Perhaps you would have done that. Perhaps not. You might have found reasons of obligation for not doing so. 'Loved deeply'! You never loved her deeply! You have loved nothing deeply save yourself!"
"Perhaps. Yet I think," said Ian, "that I would have done as much as that. But Alexander Jardine, of course, would not have taken one erring step!"
"Have you done now?"
"Yes."
Glenfernie rose to his feet. He stood against the gulf of air and his great frame seemed enlarged, like the figure of the Brocken. He was like his father, the old laird, but there glowed an extremer dark anger and power. The old laird had made himself the dream-avenger of injuries adopted, not felt at first hand. The present laird knew the wounding, the searing. "All his life my father dreamed of grappling with Grierson of Lagg. My Grierson of Lagg stands before me in the guise of a false friend and lover!... What do I care for your weighing to a scruple how much the heap of wrong falls short of the uttermost? The dire wrong is there, to me the direst! Had I deep affection for you once? Now you speak to me of every treacherous morass, everyignis fatuus, past and present! The traveler through life does right to drain the bogs as they arise—put it out of their power to suck down man, woman, and child! It is not his causealone. It is the general cause. If there be a God, He approves. Draw your sword and let us fight!"
They fought. The platform of rock was smooth enough for good footing. They had no seconds, unless the shadows upon the hills and the mountain eagles answered for such. Ian was the highly trained fencer, adept of the sword. Glenfernie's knowledge was lesser, more casual. But he had his bleak wrath, a passion that did not blind nor overheat, but burned white, that set him, as it were, in a tingling, crackling arctic air, where the shadows were sharp-edged, the nerves braced and the will steel-tipped. They fought with determination and long—Ian now to save his own life, Alexander for Revenge, whose man he had become. The clash of blade against blade, the shifting of foot upon the rock floor, made the dominant sound upon the mountain-side. The birds stayed silent in the birch-trees. Self-service, pride, anger, jealousy, hatred—the inner vibrations were heavy.
The sword of Ian beat down his antagonist's guard, leaped, and gave a deep wound. Alexander's sword fell from his hand. He staggered and vision darkened. He came to his knees, then sank upon the ground. Ian bent over him. He felt his anger ebb. A kind of compunction seized him. He thought, "Are you so badly hurt, Old Steadfast?"
Alexander looked at him. His lips moved. "Lo, how the wicked prosper! But do you think that Justice will have it so?" The blood gushed; he sank back in a swoon.
On this mountain-side, some distance below the fastness, a stone, displaced by a human foot, rolleddown the slope with a clattering sound. The fugitive above heard it, thought, too, that he caught other sounds. He crossed to the nook whence he had view of the way of approach. Far down he saw the redcoats, and then, much nearer, coming out from dwarf woods, still King George's men.
Ian caught up his belt and pistols. He sheathed his sword. "They'll find you and save you, Glenfernie! I do not think that you will die!" Above him sprang the height of crag, seemingly unscalable. But he had been shown the secret, just possible stair. He mounted it. Masked by bushes, it swung around an abutment and rose by ledge and natural tunnel, perilous and dizzy, but the one way out to safety. At last, a hundred feet above the old shelter, he dipped over the crag head to a saucer-like depression walled from all redcoat view by the surmounted rock. With a feeling of triumph he plunged through small firs and heather, and, passing the mountain brow, took the way that should lead him to the next glen.
The laird of Glenfernie, rising from the great chair by the table, moved to the window of the room that had been his father's and mother's, the room where both had died. He remembered the wild night of snow and wind in which his father had left the body. Now it was August, and the light golden upon the grass and the pilgrim cedar. Alexander walked slowly, with a great stick under his hand. Old Bran was dead, but a young Bran stretched himself, wagged his tail, and looked beseechingly at the master.
"I'll let you out," said the latter, "but I am a prisoner; I cannot let myself out!"
He moved haltingly to the door, opened it, and the dog ran forth. Glenfernie returned to the window. "Prisoner." The word brought to his strongly visualizing mind prisoners and prisons through all Britain this summer—shackled prisoners, dark prisons, scaffolds.... He leaned his head against the window-frame.
"O God that my father and my grandfather served—God of old times—of Israel in Egypt! I think that I would release them all if I could—all but one! Not him!" He looked at the cedar. "Who was he, in truth, who planted that, perhapsfor a remembrance? And he, and all men, had and have some one deep wrong that shall not be brooked!"
He stood in a brown study until there was a tap at the door. "Come in!"
Alice entered, bearing before her a bowl of flowers of all fair hues and shapes. She herself was like a bright, strong, winsome flower. "To make your room look bonny!" she said, and placed the bowl upon the table. To do so she pushed aside the books. "What a withered, snuff-brown lot! Won't you be glad when you are back in the keep with all the books?"
Glenfernie, wrapped in a brown gown, came with his stick back to the great chair before the books. "Bonny—they are bonny!" he said and touched the flowers. "I've set a week from to-day to be dressed and out of this and back to the keep. Another week, and I shall ride Black Alan."
"Ah," said Alice. "You mustn't determine that you can do it all yourself! There will be the doctor and the wound!"
Alexander took her hands and held them. "You are a fine philosopher! Where is Strickland?"
"Helping Aunt Grizel with accounts. Do you want him?"
"When you go. But not for a long while if you will stay."
Alice regarded him with her mother's shrewdness. "Oh, Glenfernie, for all you've traveled and are so learned, it's not me nor Mr. Strickland, but the moon now that you're wanting! I don't know what your moon is, but it's the moon!"
Alexander laughed. "And is not the moon a beautiful thing?"
"The books say that it is cold and almost dead, wrinkled and ashen. But I've got to go," said Alice, "and I'll send you Mr. Strickland."
Strickland came presently. "You look much stronger this morning, Glenfernie. I'm glad of that! Shall I read to you, or write?"
"Read, I think. My eyes dazzle still when I try. Some strong old thing—the Plutarch there. Read theBrutus."
Strickland read. He thought that now Alexander listened, and that now he had traveled afar. The minutes passed. The flowers smelled sweetly, murmuring sounds came in the open windows. Bran scratched at the door and was admitted. Far off, Alice's voice was heard singing. Strickland read on. The laird of Glenfernie was not at Rome, in the Capitol, by Pompey's statue. He walked with Elspeth Barrow the feathery green glen.
Davie appeared in the door. "A letter, sir, come post." He brought it to Glenfernie's outstretched hand.
"From Edinburgh—from Jamie," said the latter.
Strickland laid down his book and moved to the window. Standing there, his eyes upon the great cedar, massive and tall as though it would build a tower to heaven, his mind left Brutus, Cæsar, and Cassius, and played somewhat idly over the British Isles. He was recalled by an exclamation, not loud, but so intense and fierce that it startled like a meteor of the night. He turned. Glenfernie sat still in his great chair, but his features were changed, his mouthworking, his eyes shooting light. Strickland advanced toward him.
"Not bad news of Jamie!"
"Not of Jamie! From Jamie." He thrust the letter under the other's eyes. "Read—read it out!"
Strickland read aloud.
"Here is authoritative news. Ian Rullock, after lying two months in the tolbooth, has escaped. A gaoler connived, it is supposed, else it would seem impossible. Galbraith tells me he would certainly have been hanged in September. It is thought that he got to Leith and on board a ship. Three cleared that day—for Rotterdam, for Lisbon, and Virginia."
"Here is authoritative news. Ian Rullock, after lying two months in the tolbooth, has escaped. A gaoler connived, it is supposed, else it would seem impossible. Galbraith tells me he would certainly have been hanged in September. It is thought that he got to Leith and on board a ship. Three cleared that day—for Rotterdam, for Lisbon, and Virginia."
Alexander took the letter again. "That is all of that import." Strickland once more felt astonishment. Glenfernie's tone was quiet, almost matter-of-fact. The blood had ebbed from his face; he sat there collected, a great quiet on the heels of storm. It was impossible not to admire the power that could with such swiftness exercise control. Strickland hesitated. He wished to speak, but did not know how far he might with wisdom. The laird forestalled him.
"Sit down! This is to be talked over, for again my course of life alters."
Strickland took his chair. He leaned his arm upon the table, his chin upon his hand. He did not look directly at the man opposite, but at the bowl of flowers between them.
"When a man has had joy and lost it, what does he do?" Glenfernie's voice was almost contemplative.
"One man one thing, and one another," said Strickland. "After his nature."
"No. All go seeking it in the teeth of death and horror. That's universal! Joy must be sought. But it may not wear the old face; it may wear another."
"I suppose that true joy has one face."
"When one platonizes—perhaps! I keep to-day to earth, to the cave. Do you know," said Alexander, "why I sit here wounded?"
"Of outward facts I do not know any more than is, I think, pretty generally known through this countryside."
"As—?"
Strickland looked still at the bowl of flowers. "It is known, I think, that you loved Elspeth Barrow and would have wedded her. And that, while you were from home, the man who called himself, and was called by you, your nearest friend, stepped before you—made love to her, betrayed her—and left her to bear the shame.... I myself know that he kept you in ignorance, and that, away from here, he let you still write to him in friendship and answered in that tone.... All know that she drowned herself because of him, and that you knew naught until you yourself entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her body and carried her home.... After that you left the country to find and fight Ian Rullock. Folk know, too, that he evaded you then. You returned. Then came this insurrection, and news that he was in Scotland with the Pretender. You joined the King's forces. Then, after Culloden, you found the false friend in hiding, in the mountains. The two of you fought, and, as is often the way, the injurer seemed again to win. You were dangerously wounded. He fled. Soldiers upon his track found you lying in your blood. You were carried to Inverness. Dickson and I went to you, brought you at last home. In the mean time came news that the man you fought had been taken by the soldiers. I suppose that we have all had visions of him, in prison, expecting to suffer with other conspirators."
"Yes, I have had visions ... outward facts!... Do you know the inner, northern ocean, where sleep all the wrecks?"
"As I have watched you since you were a boy, it is improbable that I should not have some divining power. In Inverness, too, while you were fevered, you talked and talked.... You have walked with Tragedy, felt her net and her strong whip." Strickland lifted his eyes from the bowl, pushed back his chair a little, and looked full at the laird of Glenfernie. "What then? Rise, Glenfernie, and leave her behind! And if you do not now, it will soon be hard for you to do so! Remember, too, that I watched your father—"
"After I find Ian Rullock in Holland or Lisbon or America—"
Strickland made a movement of deep concern. "You have met and fought this man. Do you mean so to nourish vengeance—"
"I mean so to aid and vindicate distressed Justice."
"Is it the way?"
"I think that it is the way."
Strickland was silent, seeing the uselessness. Glenfernie was one to whom conviction must come from within. A stillness held in the room, broken by the laird in the voice that was growing like his father's. "Nothing lacks now but strength, and I am gaining that—will gain it the faster now! Travel—travel!... All my travel was preparatory to this."
"Do you mean," asked Strickland, "to kill him when you find him?"
"I like your directness. But I do not know—I do not know!... I mean to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me—when he turns his head ever to see me!"
The other sighed sharply. He thought to himself, "Oh, mind, thy abysses!"
Indeed, Glenfernie looked at this moment stronger. He folded Jamie's letter and put it by. He drew the bowl of flowers to him and picked forth a rose. "A week—two at most—and I shall be wholly recovered!" His voice had fiber, decision, even a kind of cheer.
Strickland thought, "It is his fancied remedy, at which he snatches!"
Glenfernie continued: "We'll set to work to-morrow upon long arrangements! With you to manage here, I will not be missed." Without waiting for the morrow he took quill and paper and began to figure.
Strickland watched him. At last he said, "Will you go at once in three ships to Holland, Portugal, and America?"
"Has the onlooker room for irony, while to me it looks so simple? I shall ship first to the likeliestland.... In ten days—in two weeks at most—to Edinburgh—"
Strickland left him figuring and, rising, went to the window. He saw the great cedar, and in mind the pilgrim who planted it there. All the pilgrims—all the crusaders—all the men in Plutarch; the long frieze of them, the full ocean of them ... all the self-search, dressed as search of another. "I, too, I doubt not—I, too!" Buried scenes in his own life rose before Strickland. Behind him scratched Glenfernie's pen, sounded Glenfernie's voice:
"I am going to see presently if I can walk as far as the keep. In two or three days I shall ride. There are things that I shall know when I get to Edinburgh. He would take, if he could, the ship that would land him at the door of France."
Alexander rode across the moors to the glen head. Two or three solitary farers that he met gave him eager good day.
"Are ye getting sae weel, laird? I am glad o' that!"
"Good day, Mr. Jardine! I rejoice to see you recovered. Well, they hung more of them yesterday!"
"Gude day, Glenfernie! It's a bonny morn, and sweet to be living!"
At noon he looked down on the Kelpie's Pool. The air was sweet and fine, bird sounds came from the purple heather. The great blue arch of the sky smiled; even the pool, reflecting day, seemed to have forgotten cold and dread. But for Glenfernie a dull, cold, sick horror overspread the place. He and Black Alan stood still upon the moor brow. Large against the long, clean, horizon sweep, they looked the sun-bathed, stone figures of horse and man, set there long ago, guarding the moor, giving warning of the kelpie.
"None has been found to warn. There is none but the kelpie waits for.... But punish—punish!"
He and Black Alan pushed on to the head of the glen. Here was Mother Binning's cot, and here hedismounted, fastening the horse to the ash-tree. Mother Binning was outdoors, gathering herbs in her apron.
She straightened herself as he stepped toward her. "Eh, laird of Glenfernie, ye gave me a start! I thought ye came out of the ground by the ash-tree!... Wound is healed, and life runs on to another springtime?"
"Yes, it's another springtime.... I do not think that I believe in scrying, Mother Binning. But I'm where I pick up all straws with which to build me a nest! Sit down and scry for me, will you?"
"I canna scry every day, nor every noon, nor every year. What are you wanting to see, Glenfernie?"
"Oh, just my soul's desire!"
Mother Binning turned to her door. She put down the herbs, then brought a pan of water and set it down upon the door-step, and herself beside it. "It helps—onything that's still and clear! Wait till the ripple's gane, and then dinna speak to me. But gin I see onything, it will na be sae great a thing as a soul's desire."
She sat still and he stood still, leaning against the side of her house. Mother Binning sat with fixed gaze. Her lips moved. "There's the white mist. It's clearing."
"Tell me if you see a ship."
"Yes, I see it...."
"Tell me if you see its port."
"Yes, I see."
"Describe it—the houses, the country, the dress and look of the people—"
Mother Binning did so.
"That's not Holland—that would be Lisbon. Look at the ship again, Mother. Look at the sailors. Look at the passengers if there are any. Whom do you see?"
"Ah!" said Mother Binning. "There's a braw wrong-doer for you, sitting drinking Spanish wine!"
"Say his name."
"It's he that once, when you were a lad, you brought alive from the Kelpie's Pool."
"Thank you, Mother! That's what I wanted.Scrying!Who gives to whom—who gives back to whom? The underneath great I, I suppose. Left hand giving to right—and no brand-new news! All the same, other drifts concurring, I think that he fled by the Lisbon ship!"
Mother Binning pushed aside the pan of water and rubbed her hand across her eyes. She took up her bundle of herbs. "Hoot, Glenfernie! do ye think that's your soul's desire?"
Jock came limping around the house. Alexander could not now abide the sight of this cripple who had spied, and had not shot some fashion of arrow! He said good-by and loosed Black Alan from the ash-tree and rode away. He would not tread the glen. His memory recoiled from it as from some Eastern glen of serpents. He and Black Alan went over the moors. And still it was early and he had his body strength back. He rode to Littlefarm.
Robin Greenlaw was in the field, coat off in thegay, warm weather. He came to Glenfernie's side, and the latter dismounted and sat with him under a tree. Greenlaw brought a stone jug and tankard and poured ale.
The laird drank. "That's good, Robin!" He put down the tankard. "Are you still a poet?"
"If I was so once upon a time, I hope I am so still. At any rate, I still make verses. And I see poems that I can never write."
"'Never'—how long a word that is!"
Greenlaw gazed at the workers in the field. "I met Mr. Strickland the other day. He says that you will travel again."
"'Travel'—yes."
"The Jardine Arms gets it from the Edinburgh road that Ian Rullock made a daring escape."
"He had always ingenuity and a certain sort of physical bravery."
"So has Lucifer, Milton says. But he's not Lucifer."
"No. He is weak and small."
"Well, look Glenfernie! I would not waste my soul chasing him!"
"How dead are you all! You, too, Greenlaw!"
Robin flushed. "No! I hate all that he did that is vile! If all his escaping leads him to violent death, I shall not find it in me to grieve! But all the same, I would not see you narrowed to the wolf-hunter that will never make the wolf less than the wolf! I don't know. I've always thought of you as one who would serve Wisdom and show us her beauty—"
"To me this is now wisdom—this is now beauty.Poets may stay and make poetry, but I go after Ian Rullock!"
"Oh, there's poetry in that, too," said Greenlaw, "because there's nothing in which there isn't poetry! But you're choosing the kind you're not best in, or so it seems to me."
Glenfernie rode from Littlefarm homeward. But the next day he and Black Alan went to Black Hill. Here he saw Mr. Touris alone. That gentleman sat with a shrunken and shriveled look.
"Eh, Glenfernie! I am glad to see that you are yourself again! Well, my sister's son has broken prison."
"Yes, one prison."
"God knows they were all mad! But I could not wish to see him in my dreams, hanging dark from the King's gallows!"
"From the King's gallows and for old, mad, Stewart hopes? I find," said Glenfernie, "that I do not wish that, either. He would have gone for the lesser thing—and the long true, right vengeance been delayed!"
"What is that?" asked Mr. Touris, dully.
"His wrong shall be ever in his mind, and I the painter's brush to paint it there! Give me, O God, the power of genius!"
"Are you going to follow him and kill him?"
"I am going to follow him. At first I thought that I would kill him. But my mind is changing as to that."
Mr. Touris sighed heavily. "I don't know what is the matter with the world.... One does one's best, but all goes wrong. All kinds of hopes and plans.... When I look back to when I was a young man, I wonder.... I set myself an aim in life, to lift me and mine from poverty. I saved for it, denied for it, was faithful. It came about and it's ashes in my mouth! Yet I took it as a trust, and was faithful. What does the Bible say, 'Vanity of vanities'? But I say that the world's made wrong."
Glenfernie left him at last, wrinkled and shrunken and shriveled, cold on a summer day, plying himself with wine, a serving-man mending the fire upon the hearth. Alexander went to Mrs. Alison's parlor. He found her deep chair placed in the garden without, and she herself sitting there, a book in hand, but not read, her form very still, her eyes upon a shaft of light that was making vivid a row of flowers. The book dropped beside her on the grass; she rose quickly. The last time they had met was before Culloden, before Prestonpans.
She came to him. "You're well, Alexander! Thanks be! Sit down, my dear, sit down!" She would have made him take her chair, but he laughed and brought one for himself from the room. "I bless my ancestors for a physical body that will not keep wounds!"
She sank into her chair again and sat in silence, gazing at him. Her clear eyes filled with tears, but she shook them away. At last she spoke: "Oh, I see the other sort of wounds! Alexander! lay hold of the nature that will make them, too, to heal!"
"Saint Alison," he answered, "look full at what went on. Now tell me if those are wounds easy to heal. And tell me if he were not less than aman who pocketed the injury, who said to the injurer, 'Go in peace!'"
She looked at him mournfully. "Is it to pocket the injury? Will not all combine—silently, silently—to teach him at last? Less than man—man—more than man, than to-day's appearing man?... I am not wise. For yourself and the ring of your moment you may be judging inevitably, rightly.... But with what will you overcome—and in overcoming what will you overcome?"
He made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, friend, once I, too, could be metaphysical! I cannot now."
Speech failed between them. They sat with eyes upon the garden, the old tree, the August blue sky, but perhaps they hardly saw these. At last she turned. She had a slender, still youthful figure, an oval, lovely, still young face. Now there was a smile upon her lips, and in her eyes a light deep, touching, maternal.
"Go as you will, hunt him as you will, do what you will! And he, too—Ian! Ian and his sins. Grapes in the wine-press—wheat beneath the flail—ore in the ardent fire, and over all the clouds of wrath! Suffering and making to suffer—sinning and making to sin.... And yet will the dawn come, and yet will you be reconciled!"
"Not while memory holds!"
"Ah, there is so much to remember! Ian has so much and you have so much.... When the great memory comes you will see. But not now, it is apparent, not now! So go if you will and must, Alexander, with the net and the spear!"
"Did he not sin?"
"Yes."
"I also sin. But my sin does not match his! God makes use of instruments, and He shall make use of me!"
"If He 'shall,' then He shall. Let us leave talk of this. Where you go may love and light go, too—and work it out, and work it out!"
He did not stay long in her garden. All Black Hill oppressed him now. The dark crept in upon the light. She saw that it was so.
"He can be friends now with none. He sees in each one a partisan—his own or Ian's." She did not detain him, but when he rose to say good-by helped him to say it without delay.
He went, and she paced her garden, thinking of Ian who had done so great wrong, and Alexander who cried, "My enemy!" She stayed in the garden an hour, and then she turned and went to play piquet with the lonely, shriveled man, her brother.
Two days after this Glenfernie rode to White Farm. Jenny Barrow met him with exclamations.
"Oh, Mr. Alexander! Oh, Glenfernie! And they say that you are amaist as weel as ever—but to me you look twelve years older! Eh, and this warld has brought gray intomyhair! Father's gane to kirk session, and Gilian's awa'."
He sat down beside her. Her hands went on paring apples, while her eyes and tongue were busy elsewhere.
"They say you're gaeing to travel."
"Yes. I'm starting very soon."
"It's nasaid oot—but a kind of whisper's been gaeing around." She hesitated, then, "Are you gaeing after him, Glenfernie?"
"Yes."
Jenny put down her knife and apple. She drew a long breath, so that her bosom heaved under her striped gown. A bright color came into her cheeks. She laughed. "Aweel, I wadna spare him if I were you!"
He sat with her longer than he had done with Mrs. Alison. He felt nearer to her. He could be friends with her, while he moved from the other asfrom a bloodless wraith. Here breathed freely all the strong vindications! He sat, sincere and strong, and sincere and strong was the countrywoman beside him.
"Oh aye!" said Jenny. "He's a villain, and I wad gie him all that he gave of villainy!"
"That is right," said Alexander, "to look at it simply!" He felt that those were his friends who felt in this as did he.
On the moor, riding homeward, he saw before him Jarvis Barrow. Dismounting, he met the old man beside a cairn, placed there so long ago that there was only an elfin story for the deeds it commemorated.
"Gude day, Glenfernie! So that Hieland traitor did not slay ye?"
"No."
Jarvis Barrow, white-headed, strong-featured, far yet, it seemed, from incapacitating old age, took his seat upon a great stone loosened from the mass. He leaned upon his staff; his collie lay at his feet. "Many wad say a lang time, with the healing in it of lang time, since a fause lover sang in the ear of my granddaughter, in the glen there!"
"Aye, many would say it."
"I say 'a fause lover.' But the ane to whom she truly listened is an aulder serpent than he ... wae to her!"
"No, no!"
"But I say 'aye!' I am na weak! She that worked evil and looseness, harlotry, strife, and shame, shall she na have her hire? As, Sunday by Sunday, I wad ha' set her in kirk, before the congregation, for the stern rebuking of her sin, so, mak no doubt, the Lord pursues her now! Aye, He shakes His wrath before her eyes! Wherever she turns she sees 'Fornicatress' writ in flames!"
"No!"
"But aye!"
"Where she was mistaken—where, maybe, she was wilfully blind—she must learn. Not the learning better, but the old mistake until it is lost in knowledge, will clothe itself in suffering! But that is but a part of her! If there is error within, there is also Michael within to make it of naught! She releases herself. It is horrible to me to see you angered against her, for you do not discriminate—and you are your Michael, but not hers!"
"Adam is speaking—still the woman's lover! I'm not for contending with you. She tore my heart working folly in my house, and an ill example, and for herself condemnation!"
"Leave her alone! She has had great unhappiness!" He moved the small stones of the cairn with his fingers. "I am going away from Glenfernie."
"Aye. It was in mind that ye would! You and he were great friends."
"The greater foes now."
"I gie ye full understanding there!"
"With my father, those he hated were beyond his touch. So he walked among shadows only. But to me this world is a not unknown wood where roves, alive and insolent, my utter enemy! I can touch him and I will touch him!"
"Not you, but the Lord Wha abides not evil!... How sune will ye be gaeing, Glenfernie?"
"As soon as I can ride far. As soon as everything is in order here. I know that I am going, but I do not know if I am returning."
"I haud na with dueling. It's un-Christian. But mony's the ancient gude man that Jehovah used for sword! Aye, and approved the sword that he used—calling him faithful servant and man after His heart! I am na judging."
From the moor Glenfernie rode through the village. Folk spoke to him, looked after him; children about the doors called to others, "It's tha laird on Black Alan!" Old and young women, distaff or pan or pot or pitcher in hand, turned head, gazed, spoke to themselves or to one another. The Jardine Arms looked out of doors. "He's unco like tha auld laird!" Auld Willy, that was over a hundred, raised a piping voice, "Did ye young things remember Gawin Elliot that was his great-grandfather ye'd be saying, 'Ye might think it was Gawin Elliot that was hangit!'" Mrs. Macmurdo came to her shop door. "Eh, the laird, wi' all the straw of all that's past alight in his heart!"
Alexander answered the "good days," but he did not draw rein. He rode slowly up the steep village street and over the bare waste bit of hill until here was the manse, with the kirk beyond it. Coming out of the manse gate was the minister. Glenfernie checked his mare. All around spread a bare and lonely hilltop. The manse and the kirk and the minister's figure buttressed each the others with a grim strength. The wind swept around them and around Glenfernie.
Mr. M'Nab, standing beside the laird, spokeearnestly. "We rejoice, Glenfernie, that you are about once more! There is the making in you of a grand man, like your father. It would have been down-spiriting if that son of Belial had again triumphed in mischief. The weak would have found it so."
"What is triumph?"
"Ye may well ask that! And yet," said M'Nab, "I know. It is the warm-feeling cloak that Good when it hath been naked wraps around it, seeing the spoiler spoiled and the wicked fallen into the pit that he digged!"
"Aye, the naked Good."
The minister looked afar, a dark glow and energy in his thin face. "They are in prison, and the scaffolds groan—they who would out with the Kirk and a Protestant king and in with the French and popery!"
"Your general wrong," said Glenfernie, "barbed and feathered also for a Scots minister's own inmost nerve! And is not my wrong general likewise? Who hates and punishes falsity, though it were found in his own self, acts for the common good!"
"Aye!" said the minister. "But there must be assurance that God calls you and that you hate the sin and not the sinner!"
"Who assures the assurances? Still it is I!"
Glenfernie rode on. Mr. M'Nab looked after him with a darkling brow. "That was heathenish—!"
Alexander passed kirk and kirkyard. He went home and sat in the room in the keep, under his hand paper upon which he made figures, diagrams, words, and sentences. When the next day camehe did not ride, but walked. He walked over the hills, with the kirk spire before him lifting toward a vast, blue serenity. Presently he came in sight of the kirkyard, its gravestones and yew-trees. He had met few persons upon the road, and here on the hilltop held to-day a balmy silence and solitude. As he approached the gate, to which there mounted five ancient, rounded steps of stone, he saw sitting on one of these a woman with a basket of flowers. Nearer still, he found that it was Gilian Barrow.
She waited for him to come up to her. He took his place upon the steps. All around hung still and sunny space. The basket of flowers between them was heaped with marigolds, pinks, and pansies.
"For Elspeth," said Gilian.
"It is almost two years. You have ceased to grieve?"
"Ah no! But one learns how to marry grief and gladness."
"Have you learned that? That is a long lesson. But some are quicker than others or had learned much beforehand.... Where is Elspeth?"
"Oh, she is safe, Glenfernie!"
"I wanted her body safe—safe, warm, in my arms!"
"Spirit and spirit. Meet spirit with spirit!"
"No! I crave and hunger and am cold. Unless I warm myself—unless I warm myself—with anger and hatred!"
"I wish it were not so!"
"I had a friend.... I warm myself now in the hunt of a foe—in his look when he sees me!"
Gilian smote her hands together. "So Elspethwould have loved that! So the smothered God in you loves that!"
"It is the God in me that will punish him!"
"Is it—is it, Glenfernie?"
He made a wide gesture of impatience. "Cold—languid—pithless! You, Robin, Strickland, Alison Touris—"
Gilian looked at her basket of marigolds, pinks, and pansies. "That word death.... I bring these here, but Elspeth is with me everywhere! There is a riddle—there is a strange, huge mistake. She must solve it, she must make that port of all ports—and you and I must make it.... It is a hard, heroic, long adventure!"
"I speak of the pine-tree in the blast, and such as you would give me pansies! I speak of the eagle at the crag-top in the storm, and you offer butterflies!"
"Ah, then, go and kill her lover and the man who was your friend!"
Glenfernie rose from the step, in his face strong anger and denial. He stood, seeking for words, looking down upon the seated woman and her flowers. She met him with parted lips and a straight, fearless look.
"Will you take half the flowers, Glenfernie, and put them for Elspeth?"
"No. I cannot go there now!"
"I thought you would not. Now I am Elspeth. I love her. I would give her gladness—serve her. She says, 'Let him alone! Do you not know that his own weird will bring him into dark countries and light countries, and where he is to go? Is yourown tree to be made thwart and misshapen, that his may be reminded that there is rightness of growth? He is a tree—he is not a stone, nor will he become a stone. There is a law a little larger than your fretfulness that will take care of him! I like Glenfernie better when he is not a busybody!'"
Alexander stared at her in anger. "Differences where I thought to find likeness—likenesses where I thought to find differences! He deceived me, fooled me, played upon me as upon a pipe; took my own—"
"Ha!" said Gilian. "So you are going a-hunting for more reasons than one?—Elspeth, Elspeth! come out of it!—for Glenfernie, after all, avenges himself!"
Alexander, looking like his father, spoke slowly, with laboring breath. "Had one asked me, I should have said that you above all might understand. But you, too, betray!" With a sweep of his arms abroad, a gesture abrupt and desolate, he turned. He quitted the sunny bare space, the kirkyard and the woman sitting with her basket of marigolds and pansies.
But two nights later he came to this place alone.
The moon was full. It hung like a wonder lantern above the hill and the kirk; it made the kirkyard cloth of silver. The yews stood unreal, or with a delicate, other reality. It was neither warm nor cold. The moving air neither struck nor caressed, but there breathed a sense of coming and going, unhurried and unperplexed, from far away to far away. The laird of Glenfernie crossed long grass to where, for a hundred years, had been laid thedead from White Farm. There was a mound bare to the sunlight thrown from the moon. He saw the flowers that Gilian had brought.
The flowers were colorless in the moonlight—and yet they could be, and were, clothed with a hue of anger from himself. They lay before him purple-crimson. They were withered, but suddenly they had sap, life, fullness—but a distasteful, reminding life, a life in opposition! He took them and threw them away.
Now the mound rested bare. He lay down beside it. He stretched his arms over it. "Elspeth!"—and "Elspeth!"—and "Elspeth!" But Elspeth did not answer—only the cool sunlight thrown back from the moon.
Ian traveled toward a pass through the Pyrenees. Behind him stretched difficult, hazardous, slow travel—weeks of it. Behind those weeks lay the voyage to Lisbon, and from Lisbon in a second boat north to Vigo. From Vigo to this day of forested slopes and brawling streams, steadily worsening road, ruder dwellings, more primitive, impoverished folk, rolled a time of difficulties small and great, like the mountain pebbles for number. It took will and wit at strain to dissolve them all, and so make way out of Spain into France—through France—to Paris, where were friends.
Spanish travel was difficult at best—Spanish travel with scarcely any gold to travel on found the "best" quite winnowed out. Slow at all times, it grew, lacking money, to be like one of those dreams of retardation. Ian gathered and blew upon his philosophy, and took matters at last with some amusement, at times, even, with a sense of the enjoyable.
He was not quite penniless. Those who had helped in his escape from Edinburgh had provided him gold. But, his voyage paid for, he must buy at Vigo fresh apparel and a horse. When at last he rode eastward and northward he was poor enough!Food and lodging must be bought for himself and his steed. Inns and innkeepers, chance folk applied to for guidance, petty officials in perennially suspicious towns—twenty people a day stood ready to present a spectral aspect of leech and gold-sucker! He was expert in traveling, but usually he had borne a purse quite like that of Fortunatus. Now he must consider that he might presently have to sell his horse—and it was not a steed of Roland's, to bring a great price! He might be compelled to go afoot into France. He might be sufficiently blessed if the millennium did not find him yet living by his wits in Spain. It was Spanish, that prospect! Turn what? Ian asked himself. Bull-fighter—fencing-master—gipsy—or brigand? He played with the notion of fencing-master. But he would have to sell his horse to provide room and equipment, and he must turn aside to some considerable town. Brigand would be easier, in these wild forests and rock fortresses that climbed and stood upon the sky-line. Matter enough for perplexity! But the sweep of forest and mountain wall was admirable—admirable the air, the freedom from the Edinburgh prison. Except occasionally, in the midst of some intensification of annoyance, he rode and maneuvered undetected.
Past happenings might and did come across him in waves. He remembered, he regretted; he pursued a dialectic with various convenient divisions of himself. But all that would be lost for long times in the general miraculous variety of things! On the whole, going through Spain in the autumn weather, even with poverty making mouths alongside, was not a sorry business! Zest lived in pitting vigor and wit against mole hills threatening an aggregation into mountains! As for time, what was it, anyhow, to matter so much? He owned time and a wide world.
Delay and delay and delay. In one town the alcalde kept him a week, denying him the road beyond while inquiries were made as to his identity or non-identity with some famed outlaw escaping from justice. Further on, his horse fell badly lame and he stayed day after day in a miserable village, lounging under a cork-tree, learning patois. There was a girl with great black eyes. He watched her, two or three times spoke to her. But when she saw how he must haggle over the price of food and lodging she laughed, and returned to the side of a muleteer with a sash and little bells upon his hat.
All along the road fell these retardations. Then as the mountains loomed higher, the spirit of contradiction apparently grew tired and fell behind. For several days he traveled quite easily. "My Lady Fortune," asked Ian, "what is up your sleeve?"
The air stayed smiling and sweet. In a town half mountain, half plain, he made friends at the inn with Don Fernando, son of an ancient, proud, decaying house, poor as poverty. Don Fernando had been in Paris, knew by hearsay England, and had heard Scotland mentioned. Spaniard and Scot drank together. The former was drawn into almost love of Ian. Here was a help against boundless ennui! Ian and his horse, and the small mail strapped behind the saddle, finally went off with Don Fernando to spend a week in his old house onthe hillside just without the town. Here was poverty also, but yet sufficient acres to set a table and pour good wine and to make the horse forget the famine road behind him. Here were lounging and siesta, rest for body and mind, sweet "do well a very little!" Don Fernando would have kept the guest a second week and then a third.
But Ian shook his head, laughed, embraced him, promised a return of good when the great stream made it possible, and set forth upon his further travel. The horse looked sleek, almost fat. The Scot's jaded wardrobe was cleaned, mended, refreshed. Living with Don Fernando were an elder sister and an ancient cousin who had fallen in love with the big, handsome Don, traveling so oddly. These had set hand-maidens to work, with the result that Ian felt himself spruce as a newly opened pink. And Don Fernando gave him a traveling-cloak—very fine—a last year's gift, it seemed, from a grandee he had obliged. Cold weather was approaching and its warmth would be grateful. Ian's great need was for money in purse. These new friends had so little of that that he chose not to ask for a loan. After all, he could sell the cloak!
The day was fine, the country mounting as it were by stairs toward the mountains. Before him climbed a string of pack-mules. The merchant owning them and their lading traveled with a guard of stout young men. For some hours Ian had the merchant for companion and heard much of the woes of the region and the times, the miseries of travel, the cursed inns, bandits licensed and unlicensed, craft, violence, and robbery! The merchant bewailed all life and kept a hawk eye upon his treasure on the Spanish road. At last he and his guard, his mules and muleteers, turned aside into a skirting way that would bring him to a town visible at no great distance. Left alone, Ian viewed from a hilltop the roofs of this place, with a tower or two starting up like warning fingers. But his road led on through a mountain pass.
The earth itself seemed to be climbing. The mountain shapes, little and big, gathered in herds. Cliffs, ravines, the hoarse song of water, the faces of few human folk, and on these written "Mountains, mountains! Live as we can! Catch who catch can!" After a time the road was deprived of even these faces. The Scot thought of home mountains. He thought of the Highlands. Above him and at some distance to the right appeared a distribution of cliffs that reminded him of that hiding-place after Culloden. He looked to see the birchwood, the wheeling eagle. The sun was at noon. Riding in a solitude, he almost dozed in the warm light. The Highlands and the eagle wheeling above the crag.... Black Hill and Glenfernie and White Farm and Alexander.... Life generally, and all the funny little figures running full tilt, one against another....
His horse sprang violently aside, then stood trembling. Forms, some ragged, some attired with a violent picturesqueness, had started from without a fissure in the wood and from behind a huge wayside rock. Ian knew them at a glance for those brigands of whom he had heard mention and warning enough. Don Fernando had once described their practices.
Resistance was idle. He chose instead a genialpatience for his tower, and within it keen wits to keep watch. With his horse he was taken by the fierce, bedizened dozen up a gorge to so complete and secure a robber hold that Nature, when she made it, must have been in robber mood. Here were found yet others of the band, with a bedecked and mustached chief. He was aware that property, not life, answered to their desires. His horse, his fine cloak, his weapons, the small mail and its contents, with any article of his actual wearing they might fancy, and the little, little, little money within his purse—all would be taken. All in the luck! To-day to thee, to-morrow to me. What puzzled him was that evidently more was expected.
When they condescended to direct speech he could understand their language well enough. Nor did they indulge in over-brutal handling; they kept a measure and reminded him sufficiently of old England's own highwaymen. Of course, like old England's own, they would become atrocious if they thought that circumstances indicated it. But they did not seem inclined to go out of their way to be murderous or tormenting. The only sensible course was to take things good-naturedly and as all in the song! The worst that might happen would be that he must proceed to France afoot, without a penny, lacking weapons, Don Fernando's cloak—all things, in short, but the bare clothing he stood in. To make loss as small as possible there were in order suavity, coolness, even gaiety!
And still appeared the perplexing something he could not resolve. The over-fine cloak, the horse now in good condition, might have something todo with it, contrasting as they certainly did with the purse in the last stages of emaciation. And there seemed a studying of his general appearance, of his features, even. Two men in especial appeared detailed to do this. At last his ear caught the word "ransom."
Now there was nobody in Spain knowing enough or caring enough of or for Ian Rullock to entertain the idea of parting with gold pieces in order to save his life. Don Fernando might be glad to see him live, but certainly had not the gold pieces! Moreover, it presently leaked fantastically out that the bandits expected a large ransom. He began to suspect a mistake in identity. That assumption, increasing in weight, became certainty. They looked him all around, they compared notes, they regarded the fine cloak, the refreshed steed. "English, señor, English?"
"Scots. You do not understand that? Cousin to English."
"English. We had word of your traveling—with plenty of gold."
"It is a world of mistakes. I travel, but I have no gold."
"It is a usual lack of memory of the truth. We find it often. You are traveling with escort—with another of your nation, your brother, we suppose. There are servants. You are rich. For some great freak you leave all in the town down there and ride on alone. Foreigners often act like madmen. Perhaps you meant to return to the town. Perhaps to wait for them in the inn below the pass. You have not gold in your purse because there is bountiful gold just behind you. Why hurt the beautiful truth? Sancho and Pedro here were in the inn-yard last night."
Sancho's hoarse voice emerged from the generality. "It was dusk, but we saw you plainly enough, we are sure, señor! In your fine cloak, speaking English, discussing with a big tall man who rode in with you and sat down to supper with you and was of your rank and evidently, we think, your brother or close kinsman!"
The chief nodded. "It is to him that we apply for your ransom. You, señor, shall write the letter, and Sancho and Pedro shall carry it down. It will be placed, without danger to us, in your brother's hand. We have our ways.... Then, in turn, your brother shall ride forth, with a single companion, from the town, and in a clear space that we shall indicate, put the ransom beneath a certain rock, turning his horse at once and returning the way he came. If the gold is put there, as much as we ask, and according to our conditions, you shall go free as a bird, señor, though perhaps with as little luggage as a bird. If we do not receive the ransom—why, then, the life of a bird is a little thing! We shall put you to death."
Ian combated the profound mistake. What was the use? They did not expect him to speak truth, but they were convinced that they had the truth themselves. At last it came, on his part, to a titanic whimsicalness of assent. At least, assenting, he would not die in the immediate hour! Stubbornly refuse to do their bidding, and his thread of life would be cut here and now.
"All events grow to seem unintelligible masks! So why quarrel with one mask more? Pen, ink, and paper?"
All were produced.
"I must write in English?"
"That is understood, señor. Now this—and this—is what you are to write in English."
The captive made a correct guess that not more than one or two of the captors could read Spanish, and none at all English.
"Nevertheless, señor," said the chief, "you will know that if the gold is not put in that place and after that fashion that I tell you, we shall let you die, and that not easily! So we think that you will not make English mistakes any more than Spanish ones."
Ian nodded. He wrote the letter. Sancho put it in his bosom and with Pedro disappeared from the dark ravine. The situation relaxed.
"You shall eat, drink, sleep, and be entirely comfortable, señor, until they return. If they bring the gold you shall pursue your road at your pleasure even with a piece for yourself, for we are nothing if not generous! If they do not bring it, why, then, of course—!"
Ian had long been bedfellow of wild adventure. He thought that he knew the mood in which it was best met. The mood represented the grist of much subtle effort, comparing, adjustment, and readjustment. He cultivated it now. The banditti admired courage, coolness, and good humor. They had provision of food and wine, the sun still shone warm. The robber hold was set amid dark, gipsy beauty.
The sun went down, the moon came up. Ian, lying upon shaggy skins, knew well that to-morrow night—the night after at most—he might not see the sun descend, the moon arise. What then?
Alexander Jardine, sailing from Scotland, came to Lisbon a month after Ian Rullock. He knew the name of the ship that had carried the fugitive, and fortune had it that she was yet in this port, waiting for her return lading. He found the captain, learned that Ian had transhipped north to Vigo. He followed. At Vigo he picked up a further trace and began again to follow. He followed across Spain on the long road to France. He had money, horses, servants when he needed them, skill in travel, a tireless, great frame, a consuming purpose. He made mistakes in roads and rectified them; followed false clues, then turned squarely from them and obtained another leading. He squandered upon the great task of dogging Ian, facing Ian, showing Ian, again and again showing Ian, the wrong that had been done, patience, wealth of kinds, a discovering and prophetic imagination. He traveled until at last here was the earth, climbing, climbing, and before him the forested slopes, the mountain walls, the great partition between Spain and France. An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow him, for a nest had been robbed and a friendship destroyed!
As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a nobleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the way to connoisseurship, and now traveling in Spain. He journeyeden princewith his secretary and his physician,servants and pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe. This noble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be. They had been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest inn of a town set at a short distance from the mountain pass through which ran their further road. Here, at dusk, they dismounted in the inn-yard, about them a staring, commenting crowd. Presently they went to supper together. The Englishman meant to tarry a while in this town to observe certain antiquities. He might stay a week. He urged that his companion of the last few days stay as well. But the laird of Glenfernie could not.
"I have an errand, you see. I am to find something. I must go on."
"Two days, then. You say yourself that your horses need rest."
"They do.... I will stay two days."
But when morning came the secretary and the physician alone appeared at table. The nobleman lay abed with a touch of fever. The physician reported that the trouble was slight—fatigue and a chill taken. A couple of days' repose and his lordship would be himself again.
Glenfernie walked through the town. Returning to the inn, he found that the Englishman had asked for him. For an hour or two he talked or listened, sitting by the nobleman's bed. Leavinghim at last, he went below to the inn's great room, half open to the courtyard and all the come and go of the place. It was late afternoon. He sat by a table placed before the window, and the river seemed to flow by him, and now he looked at it from a rocky island, and now he looked elsewhere. The room grew ruddy from the setting sun. An inn servant entered and busied himself about the place. After him came an aged woman, half gipsy, it seemed. She approached the seat by the window. Her worn mantle, her wide sleeve, seemed to touch the deep stone sill. She was gone like a moth. Glenfernie's eye discovered a folded paper lying in the window. It had not been there five minutes earlier. Now it lay before him like a sudden outgrowth from the stone. He put out a hand and took it up. The woman was gone, the serving-man was gone. Outside flowed the river. Alexander unfolded the paper. It was addressed toSeñor Nobody. It lay upon his knee, and it was Ian's hand. His lips moved, his vision blurred. Then came steadiness and he read.
What he read was a statement, at once tense and whimsical, of the predicament of the writer. The latter, recognizing the confusion of thought among his captors, wrote because he must, but did not truly expect any aid from Señor Nobody. The writing would, however, prolong life for two days, perhaps for three. If at the end of that time ransom were not forthcoming death would forthcome. Release would follow ransom. But Señor Nobody truly could not be expected to take interest! Most conceivably the stranger's lot must remain thestranger's lot. In that case pardon for the annoyance! If, miraculously, the bearer did find Señor Nobody—if Señor Nobody read this letter—if strangers were not strangers to Señor Nobody—if gold and mercy lay alike in Señor Nobody's keeping—then so and so must be done. Followed three or four lines of explicit directions. Did all the above come about, then truly would the undersigned, living, and pursuing his journey into France, and making return to Señor Nobody when he might, rest the latter's slave! Followed the signature,Ian Rullock.
Alexander sat by the window, in the rocky island, and the Spanish river flowed by. It was dusk. Then came lights, and the English secretary and physician, with servants to lay the table and bring supper. Glenfernie ate and drank with the two men. His lordship was reported better, would doubtless be up to-morrow. The talk fell upon Greece, to which country the nobleman was, in the end, bound. Greek art, Greek literature, Greek myth. Here the secretary proved scholar and enthusiast, a liker especially of the byways of myth. He and Alexander voyaged here and there among them. "And you remember, too," said the secretary, "the Cranes of Ibycus—"
They rose at last from table. Secretary and physician must return to their patron. "I am going to hunt bed and sleep," said Glenfernie. "To-morrow, if his lordship is recovered, we'll go see that church."
In the rude, small bedchamber he found his Spanish servant. Presently he would dismiss him, butfirst, "Tell me, Gil, of the banditti in these mountains."
Gil told. The foreigner who employed him asked questions, referred intelligently from answer to answer, and at last had in hand a compact body of information. He bade Gil good night. Ways of banditti in any age or place were much the same!
The room was small, with a rude and narrow bed. There was a window, small, too, but open to the night. Pouring through this there entered a vagrant procession of sound, with, in the interstices, a silence that had its own voice. As the night deepened the procession thinned, at last died away.
When he undressed he had taken the letter to Señor Nobody and put it upon the table. Now, lying still and straight upon the bed in the dark room, there seemed a blacker darkness where it lay, four feet from him, a little above the level of his eyes. There it was, a square, a cube, of Egyptian night, hard, fierce, black, impenetrable.
For a long time he kept a fixed gaze upon it. Beyond and above it glimmered the window. The larger square at last drew his eyes. He lay another long while, very still, with the window before him. Lying so, thought at last grew quiet, hushed, subdued. Very quietly, very sweetly, like one long gone, loved in the past, returning home, there slipped into view, borne upon the stream of consciousness, an old mood of stillness, repose, dawn-light by which the underneath of things was seen. Once it had come not infrequently, then blackness and hardness had whelmed it and it came no more. He had almost forgotten the feel of it.
Presently it would go.... It did so, finding at this time a climate in which it could not long live. But it was powerfully a modifier.... Glenfernie, dropping his eyes from the window, found the square that was the letter, a square of iron gray.
A part of the night he lay still upon the narrow bed, a part he spent in slow walking up and down the narrow room, a part he stood motionless by the window. The dawn was faintly in the sky when at last he took from beneath the pillow his purse and a belt filled with gold pieces and sat down to count them over and compare the total with the figures upon a piece of paper. This done, he dressed, the light now gray around him. The letter to Señor Nobody lay yet upon the table. At last, dressed, he took it up and put it in the purse with the gold. Leaving the room, he waked his servant where he lay and gave him directions. A faint yellow light gleamed in the lowest east.
He waited an hour, then went to the room where slept the secretary and the physician. They were both up and dressing. The physician had been to his patron's room. "Yes, his lordship was better—was awake—meant after a while to rise." Glenfernie would send in a request. Something had occurred which made him very desirous to see his lordship. If he might have a few minutes—? The secretary agreed to make the inquiry, went and returned with the desired invitation. Glenfernie followed him to the nobleman's chamber and was greeted with geniality. Seated by the Englishman's bed, he made his explanation and request. He had so much gold with him—he showed the contentsof the belt and purse—and he had funds with an agent in Paris and again funds in Amsterdam. Here were letters of indication. With a total unexpectedness there had come to him in this town a call that he could not ignore. He could not explain the nature of it, but a man of honor would feel it imperative. But it would take nicely all his gold and so many pieces besides. He asked the loan of these, together with an additional amount sufficient to bring him through to Paris. Once there he could make repayment. In the mean time his personal note and word—The Englishman made no trouble at all.
"I'll take your countenance and bearing, Mr. Jardine. But I'll make condition that we do travel together, after all, as far, at least, as Tours, where I mean to stop awhile."
"I agree to that," said Glenfernie.
The secretary counted out for him the needed gold. In the narrow room in which he had slept he put this with his own in a bag. He put with it no writing. There was nothing but the bare gold. Carrying it with him, he went out to find the horses saddled and waiting. With Gil behind him, he went from the inn and out of the town. The letter to Señor Nobody had given explicit enough direction. Clear of all buildings, he drew rein and took bearings. Here was the stream, the stump of a burned mill, the mountain-going road, narrower and rougher than the way of main travel. He followed this road; the horses fell into a plodding deliberateness of pace. The sunshine streamed warm around, but there was little human life here to feel its rays.After a time there came emergence into a bare, houseless, almost treeless plain or plateau. The narrow, little-traveled road went on upon the edge of this, but a bridle-path led into and across the bareness. Alexander followed it. Before him, across the waste, sprang cliffs with forest at their feet. But the waste was wide, and in the sun they showed like nothing more than a burnished, distant wall. His path would turn before he reached them. The plain's name might have been Solitariness. It lay naked of anything more than small scattered stones and bushes. There upgrew before him the tree to which he was bound. A solitary, twisted oak it shot out of the plain, its protruding roots holding stones in their grasp. Around was shelterless and bare, but the heightening wall of cliff seemed to be watching. Alexander rode nearer, dismounted, left Gil with the two horses, and, the bag of gold in his hand, walked to the tree. Here was the stone shaped like a closed hand. He put the ransom between the stone fingers and the stone palm. There was no word with it. Señor Nobody had no name. He turned and strode back to the horses, mounted, and with Gil rode from the naked, sunny plain.