Glenfernie,—I am going northward. There will be a month spent at monseigneur's villa upon the Lake of Como. Then France again.—Ian Rullock.
Glenfernie,—I am going northward. There will be a month spent at monseigneur's villa upon the Lake of Como. Then France again.—Ian Rullock.
Alexander laid the paper upon the table before him, and now he stared at it, and now he gazed at space beyond, and where he gazed seemed dark and empty. It was deep night when finally he dipped quill into ink and wrote:
Ian Rullock,—Stay or go as you will! I do not follow you now as I did before. I come to see the crudeness, the barrenness, of that. But within—oh, are you not my enemy still? I ask Justice that, and what can she do but echo back my words? "Within" is a universe.—Alexander Jardine.
Ian Rullock,—Stay or go as you will! I do not follow you now as I did before. I come to see the crudeness, the barrenness, of that. But within—oh, are you not my enemy still? I ask Justice that, and what can she do but echo back my words? "Within" is a universe.—Alexander Jardine.
Five days later he knew that Ian with the Frenchman in whose company he was had departed Rome. On that morning he went again without the city and lay among the grasses. But the sky to-day was closed, and all dead Rome that had been proud or violent or a lover of self seemed to move around him multitudinous. He fought the shapes down, but the sea in storm then turned sluggish, dead and weary.... What was he going to do? Scotland? Was he going back to Scotland? The glen, the moor, White Farm and the kirk, Black Hill and his own house—all seemed cold and without tint, gray, small, and withered, and yet oppressive. All that would be importunate, officious. He cried out, "O my God, I want healing!" For a long time helay there still, then, rising, went wandering by arches and broken columns, choked doorways, graved slabs sunken in fairy jungles. Into his mind came a journey years before when he had just brushed a desert. The East, the Out-of-Europe, called to him now.
Ian guided the boat to the water steps. Above, over the wall, streamed roses, a great, soundless fall of them, reflected, mass and color, in the lake. Above the roses sprang deep trees, shade behind shade, and here sang nightingales. Facing him sat the Milanese song-bird, the singer Antonia Castinelli. She had the throat of the nightingale and the beauty of the velvety open rose.
"Why land?" she said. "Why climb the steps to the chatter in the villa?"
"Why indeed?"
"They are not singing! They are talking. There is deep, sweet shadow around that point."
The boat turned glidingly. Now it was under tall rock, parapeted with trees.
"Let Giovanni have the boat. Come and sit beside me! You are too far away for singing together."
Old Giovanni at the helm, boatman upon this lake since youth, used long since to murmuring words, to touching hands, stayed brown and wrinkled and silent and unspeculative as a walnut. Perhaps his mind was sunk in his own stone hut behind vine leaves. The two under the rose-and-white-fringed canopy leaned toward each other.
"Tell me of your strange, foreign land! Have you roses there—roses—roses? And nightingales that sing out your heart under the moon?"
"I will tell you of the heather, the lark, and the mavis."
She listened. "Oh, it does not taste as tastes this lake! Give me pain! Tell me of women you have loved.... Oh, hear! The nightingales stop singing."
"Do you ever listen to the silence?"
"Of course ... when a friend dies—or I go to Mass—and sometimes when I am singing very passionately. But this lake—"
She began to sing. The contralto throbbed, painted, told, brought delight and melancholy. He sat with his hand loosened from hers, his eyes upon the lake's blue-green depths. At last she stopped.
"Oh—h!... Let us go back to the talking shore and the chattering villa! Somebody else is singing—somebody or something! I hear silence—I hear it in the silence.... Some things I can sing against, and some things I can't."
They went underneath the wall of roses. Her arm, sleeved as with mist, touched his; her low, wide brow and great liquid eyes were at his shoulder, at his breast. "O foreigner—and yet not at all foreign! Tell me your English words for roses—walls of roses—and music that never ceases in the night—and pleasing, pleasing, pleasing love!"
The boat came to the water steps. The two left it, climbing between flowers. Down to them came a wave of laughter and hand-clapping.
"Celestina recites—but I do not think she doesit so well!... That is my window—see, where the roses mount!"
The company, flowing forth, caught them upon the terrace. "Lo, the truants!"
But that night, instead of climbing where the roses climbed, he took a boat from the number moored by the steps and rowed himself across the lake to a piece of shore, bare of houses, lifting by steep slope and crag into the mountain masses. He fastened the boat and climbed here. The moon was round, the night merely a paler day. He went up among low trees and bushes until he came to naked rock. He climbed here as far as he might, found some manner of platform, and threw himself down, below him the lake, around him the mountains.
He lay still until the expended energy was replaced. At last the mind moved and, apprentice-bound to feeling, began again a hot and heavy and bitter work, laid aside at times and then renewed. It was upon the vindication to himself of Ian Rullock.
It was made to work hard.... Its old task used to be to keep asleep upon the subject. But now for a considerable time this had been its task. Old feeling, old egoism, awakened up and down, drove it hard! It had to make bricks without straw. It had to fetch and carry from the ends of the earth.
Emotion, when it must rest, provided for it a dull place of listlessness and discontent. But the taskmaster now would have it up at all hours, fashioning reasons and justifications. The soonest found straw in the fields lay in the faults of others—of the worldin general and Alexander Jardine in particular. Feeling got its anodyne in gloating over these. It had the pounce of a panther for such a bitter berry, such a weed, such a shameful form. It did not always gloat, but it always held up and said,Who could be weaker here—more open to question?It made constant, sore comparison.
The lake gleamed below him, the herded mountains slept in a gray silver light. How many were the faults of the laird of Glenfernie! Faults! He looked at the dark old plains of the moon. That was a light word! He saw Alexander pitted and scarred.
Pride! That had always been in the core of Glenfernie. That has been his old fortress, walled and moated against trespass. Pride so high that it was careless—that its possessor could seem peaceable and humble.... But find the quick and touch it—and you saw! What was his was his. What he deemed to be his, whether it was so or not! Touch him there and out jumped jealousy, hate, and implacableness—and all the time one had been thinking of him as a kind of seer!
Ian turned upon the rock above Como. And Glenfernie was ignorant! The seer had seen very little, after all. His touch had not been precisely permeative when it came to the world, Ian Rullock. If liking meant understanding, there had not been much understanding—which left liking but a word. If liking was a degree of love, where then had been love, where the friend at all? After all, and all the time, Glenfernie's notion of friendship was a sieve. The notion that he had held up as though it were the North Star!
The world, Ian Rullock, could not be so contemned....
He felt with heat and pain the truth of that. It was a wrong that Glenfernie should not understand! The world, Ian Rullock, might be incomplete, imperfect—might have taken, more than once, wrong turns, left its path, so to speak, in the heavens. But what of the world, Alexander Jardine? Had it no memories? He brooded over what these memories might be—must be; he tried to taste and handle that other's faults in time and space. But he could not plunge into Alexander's depths of wrath. As he could not, he made himself contemptuous of all that—of Old Steadfast's power of reaction!
A star shot across the moon-filled night, so large a meteor that it made light even against that silver. A mass within Ian made a slow turn, with effort, with thrilling, changed its inclination. He saw that disdain, that it was shallow and streaked with ebony. He moved with a kind of groan. "Was there—is there—wickedness?... What, O God, is wickedness?"
He pressed the rock with his hand—sat up. The old taskmaster, alarmed, gathered his forces. "I say that it is just that—pride, vengefulness, hard misunderstanding!"
A voice within him answered. "Even so, is it not still yourself?"
He stared after the meteor track. There was a conception here that he had not dreamed of.
It seemed best to keep still upon the rock. He sat in inner wonder. There was a sense of purity,of a fresh coolness not physical, of awe. He was in presence of something comprehensive, immortal.
"Is it myself? Then let it pour out and make of naught the old poison of myself!"
The perception could not hold. It flagged and sank, echoing down into the caves. He sat still and felt the old taskmaster stir. But this time he found strength to resist. There resulted, not the divine novelty and largeness of that one moment, but a kind of dim and bare desert waste of wide extent. And as it ate up all width, so it seemed timeless. Across this, like a person, unheralded, came and went two lines from "Richard III"
Clarence is come—false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.
Clarence is come—false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.
It went and left awareness of the desert. "False—fleeting—perjured...."
He saw himself as in mirrors.
The desert ached and became a place of thorns and briers and bewilderment. Then rose, like Antæus, the taskmaster. "And what of all that—if I like life so?"
Sense of the villa and the roses and the nightingales in the coverts—sense of wide, mobile sweeps and flowing currents inwashing, indrawing, pleasure-crafts great and small—desire and desire for desire—lust for sweetness, lust for salt—the rose to be plucked, the grapes to be eaten—and all for self, all for Ian....
He started up from the rock above Como, and turned to descend to the boat. That within him that set itself to make thin cloud of the taskmasterpulled him back as by the hair of the head and cast him down upon the rocky floor.
He lay still, half upon his face buried in the bend of his arm. He felt misery.
"My soul is sick—a beggar—like to become an outcast!"
How long he lay here now he did not know. The nadir of night was passed, but there was cold and voidness, an abyss. He felt as one fallen from a great height long ago. "There is no help here! Let me only go to an eternal sleep—"
A wind began. In the east the sky grew whiter than elsewhere. There came a sword-blow from an unseen hand, ripping and tearing veils.Elspeth—Elspeth Barrow!
In a bitterness as of myrrh he came into touch with cleanness, purity, wholeness. Henceforth there was invisible light. Its first action was not to show him scorchingly the night of Egypt, but with the quietness of the whitening east to bring a larger understanding of Elspeth.
The caravan, having spent three days in a town the edge of the desert, set forth in the afternoon. The caravan was a considerable one. Three hundred camels, more than a hundred asses, went heavily laden. Twenty men rode excellent horses; ten, poorer steeds; the company of others mounted with the merchandise or, staff in hand, strode beside. In safe stretches occurred a long stringing out, with lagging at the rear; in stretches where robber bands or other dangers might be apprehended things became compact. Besides traders and their employ, there rode or walked a handful of chance folk who had occasion for the desert or for places beyond it. These paid some much, some little, but all something for the advantage of this convoy. The traders did not look to lose, whoever went with them. Altogether, several hundred men journeyed in company.
The elected chief of the caravan was a tall Arab, Zeyn al-Din. Twelve of the camels were his; he was a merchant of spices, of wrought stuff, girdles, and gems—a man of forty, bold and with scope. He rode a fine horse and kept usually at the head of the caravan. But now and again he went up and down, seeing to things. Then there was talking,loud or low, between the head man and units of the march.
Starting from its home city, this caravan had been for two days in good spirits. Then had become to creep in disaster, not excessive, but persistent. One thing and another befell, and at last a stealing sickness, none knew what, attacking both beast and man. They had made the town at the edge of the desert. Physicians were found and rest taken. Recuperation and trading proceeded amicably together. The day of departure wheeling round, the noontide prayer was made with an especial fervor and attention. Then from thecaravanseraiforth stepped the camels.
The sun descending, the caravan threw a giant shadow upon the sand. Ridge and wave of sterile earth broke it, confused it, made it an unintelligible, ragged, moving, and monstrous shade. The sun was red and huge. As it lowered to the desert rim Zeyn al-Din gave the order for the seven-hour halt. The orb touched the sand; prayer carpets were spread.
Night of stars unnumbered, the ineffable tent, arched the desert. The caravan, a small thing in the world, lay at rest. The meal was over. Here was coolness after heat, repose after toil. The fires that had been kindled from scrub and waste lessened, died away. Zeyn al-Din appointed the guards for the night, went himself the rounds.
Where one of the fires had burned he found certain of those men who were not merchants nor servants of merchants, yet traveled with the caravan. Here were Hassan the Scribe, and Ali the Wanderer,and the dervish Abdallah, and others. Here was the big Christian from some outlandish far-away country, who had dwelt for the better part of a year in the city whence the caravan started, who had money and a wish to reach the city toward which the caravan journeyed. In the first city he had become, it seemed, well liked by Yusuf the Physician, that was the man that Zeyn al-Din most admired in life. It was Yusuf who had recommended the Christian to Zeyn, who did not like infidel sojourners with caravans. Zeyn himself was liberal and did not so much mind, but he had had experience with troubles created along the way and in the column itself. The more ignorant or the stiffer sort thought it unpleasing to Allah. But Zeyn al-Din would do anything really that Yusuf the Physician wanted. So in the end the big Christian came along. Zeyn, interpreting fealty to Yusuf to mean care in some measure for this infidel's well-being, began at once with a few minutes' riding each day beside him. These insensibly expanded to more than a few. He presently liked the infidel. "He is a man!" said Zeyn and that was the praise that he considered highest. The big Christian rode strongly a strong horse; he did not fret over small troubles nor apparently fear great ones; he did not say, "This is my way," and infer that it was better than others; he liked the red camel, the white, and the brown. "Who dances with the sand is not stifled," said Zeyn.
Now he found the Christian with Hassan, listening at ease, stretched upon the sand, to Ali the Wanderer. The head man, welcomed, listened, too,to Ali bringing his story to a close. "That is good, Ali the Wanderer! Just where grows the tree from which one gathers that fruit?"
"It can't be told unless you already know," said Ali.
"Allah my refuge! Then I would not be asking you!" answered Zeyn. "I should have shaken the tree and gathered the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, and been off with them!"
"You did not hear what was said. Ibn the Happy found that they could not be taken from the tree. He had tried what you propose. He broke off a great number and ran away with them. But they turned to black dust in his bosom. He put them all down, and when he looked back he saw them still shining on the tree."
"What did Ibn the Happy do?"
"He climbed into the tree and lived there."
In the distance jackals were barking. "I like nothing better than listening to stories," said Zeyn al-Din. "But, Allah! Just now there are more important things to do! Yusuf the Red, I name you watcher here until moonrise. Then waken Melec, who already sleeps there!"
His eyes touched in passing the big Christian. "Oh yes, you would be a good watcher," thought Zeyn. "But there's a folly in this caravan! Wait till good fortune has a steadier foot!"
But good fortune continued a wavering, evanishing thing. Deep in the night, from behind a stiffened wave of earth, rose and dashed a mounted band of Bedouin robbers. Yusuf the Red and other watchers had and gave some warning. Zeyn al-Din's voice was presently heard like a trumpet. The caravan repelled the robbers. But five of its number were lost, some camels and mules driven off. The Bedouins departing with wild cries, there were left confusion and bewailing, slowly straightening, slowly sinking. The caravan, with a pang, recognized that ill luck was a traveler with it.
The dead received burial; the wounded were looked to, at last hoisted, groaning, upon the camels, among the merchandise. Unrested, bemoaning loss, the trading company made their morning start three hours behind the set time. For stars in the sky, there was the yellow light and the sun at a bound, strewing heat. In the mêlée the robbers had thrust lance or knife into several of the water-skins. Yet there was, it was held, provision enough. The caravan went on. At midday the Bedouins returned, reinforced. Zeyn al-Din and his mustered force beat them off. No loss of goods or life, but much of time! The caravan went on, that with laden beasts must move at best much like a tortoise. That night the rest was shortened. Two hours after midnight and the strings of camels were moving again, the asses and mules so monstrously misshapen with bales of goods, the horses and horsemen and those afoot. At dawn, not these Bedouins, but another roving band, harassed them. Time was running like water from a cracked pitcher.
This day they cleared the robber bands. There spread before them, around them, clean desert. Then returned that sickness.
"O Zeyn al-Din, what could we expect who travel with him who denies Allah?"
The stricken caravan crept under the blaze across the red waste. Camels fell and died. Their burdens were lifted from them and added to the packs of others; their bodies were left to light and heat and moving air.... It grew that an enchantment seemed to hold the feet of the caravan. Evils came upon them, sickness of men and beasts. And now it was seen that there was indeed little water.
"O Zeyn al-Din, rid us of this infidel!"
"The infidel is in you!" answered Zeyn al-Din. "Much speaking makes for thirst and impedes motion. Let us cross this desert."
"O Zeyn al-Din, if you be no right head man we shall choose another!"
"Choose!" said Zeyn al-Din, and went to the head of a camel who would not rise from the sand.
Ill luck clung and clung. Twelve hours and there began to be cabals. These grew to factions. The larger of these swallowed the small fry, swelled and mounted, took the shape of practically the whole caravan. "Zeyn al-Din, if you do not harken to us it will be the worse for you! Drive away the Christian dog!"
"Abu al-Salam, are you the chief, or I?—Now, companions, listen! These are the reasons in nature for our troubles—"
But no! It was the noon halt. The desert swam in light and silence. The great majority of the traders and their company undertook to play divining, judging, determining Allah. The big Christian stood over against them and looked at them, his arms folded.
"It is no such great matter!... Very good then! What do you want me to do?"
"Turn your head and your eyes from us, and go to what fate Allah parcels out to you!"
There arose a buzzing. "Better we slay him here and now! So Allah will know our side!"
Zeyn al-Din stepped forth. "This is the friend of my friend and I am pledged. Slay, and you will have two to slay! O Allah! what a thing it is to stare at the west when the riders are in the east!"
"Zeyn al-Din, we have chosen for head man Abu al-Salam."
"Allah with you! I should say you had chosen well. I have twelve camels," said Zeyn al-Din. "I make another caravan! Mansur, Omar, and Melec, draw you forth my camels and mules!"
With a weaker man there might have been interference, stoppage. But Zeyn's mass and force acquired clear space for his own movements. He made his caravan. He had with him so many men. Three of these stood by him; the others cowered into the great caravan, into the shadow of Abu al-Salam.
Zeyn threw a withering look. "Oh, precious is the skin!"
The big infidel came to him. "Zeyn al-Din, I do not want all this peril for me. I have ridden away alone before to-day. Now I shall go in that direction, and I shall find a garden."
"Perhaps we shall find it," said Zeyn. "Does any other go with my caravan?"
It seemed that Ali the Wanderer went, and the dervish Abdallah.... There was more ado, but atlast the caravan parted.... The great one, the long string of beads, drew with slow toil across the waste, along the old track. The very small one, the tiny string of beads, departed at right angles. Space grew between them. The dervish Abdallah turned upon his camel.
"It seems that we part. But, O Allah! around 'We part' is drawn 'We are together!'"
Zeyn al-Din made a gesture of assent. "O I shall meet in bazaars Abu al-Salam! 'Ha! Zeyn al-Din!'—'Ha! Abu al-Salam!'"
The sun sank lower. The vastly larger caravan drew away, drew away, over the desert rim. Between the two was now a sea of desert waves. Where the great string of camels, the asses, the riders, the men could be seen, all were like little figures cut from dark paper, drawn by some invisible finger, slowly, slowly across a wide floor. Before long there were only dots, far in the distance. Around Zeyn al-Din's caravan swept a great solitude.
"Halt!" said Zeyn. "Now they observe us no longer, and this is what we do!"
All the merchant lading was taken from the camels. The bales of wealth strewed the sand. "Wealth is a comfortable garment," said Zeyn, "but life is a richer yet! That which gathers wealth is wealth. Now we shall go thrice as fast as Abu al-Salam!"
"Far over there," said Ali the Wanderer, and nodded his head toward the quarter, "is the small oasis called the Garland."
"I have heard of it, though I have not beenthere," answered Zeyn. "Well, we shall not rest to-night; we shall ride!"
They rode in the desert beneath the stars, going fast, camels and horses, unencumbered by bales and packs unwieldy and heavy. But there were guarded, as though they were a train of the costliest merchandise, the shrunken water-skins....
The laird of Glenfernie, riding in silence by Zeyn al-Din, whom he had thanked once with emphasis, and then had accepted as he himself was accepted, looked now at the desert and now at the stars and now at past things. A year and more—he had been a year and more in the East. If you had it in you to grow, the East was good growing-ground.... He looked toward the stars beneath which lay Scotland.
The night passed. The yellow dawn came up, the sun and the heat of day. And they must still press on.... At last the horses could not do that. At eve they shot the horses, having no water for them. They went on upon camels. Great suffering came upon them. They went stoically, the Arabs and the Scot. The eternal waste, the sand, the arrows of the sun.... The most of the camels died. Day and night and morn, and, almost dead themselves, the men saw upon the verge the palms of the desert oasis called the Garland.
Seven men dwelt seven days in the Garland. Uninhabited it stood, a spring, date-palms, lesser verdure, a few birds and small beasts and winged insects. It was an emerald set in ashy gold.
The dervish Abdallah sat in contemplation under a palm. Ali the Wanderer lay and dreamed. Zeynal-Din and his men, Mansur, Omar, and Melec, were as active as time and place admitted. The camels tasted rich repose. Day went by in dry light, in a pleasant rustling and waving of palm fronds. Night sprang in starshine, wonderful soft lamps orbed in a blue vault. Presently was born and grew a white moon.
Alexander Jardine, standing at the edge of the emerald, watched it. He could not sleep. The first nights in the Garland he with the others had slept profoundly. But now there was recuperation, strength again. Around swept the circle of the desert. Above him he saw Canopus.
He ceased to look directly at the moon, or the desert, or Canopus. He stretched himself upon the clear sand and was back in the inner vast that searched for the upper vast. Since the grasses of the Campagna there had been a long search, and his bark had encountered many a wind, head winds and favoring winds, and had beaten from coast to coast.
"O God, for the open, divine sea and Wisdom the compass—"
He lay beneath the palm; he put his arm over his eyes. For an hour he had been whelmed in an old sense, bitter and stately, of the woe, the broken knowledge, the ailing and the pain of the world. All the world.... That other caravan, where was it?... Where were all caravans? And all the bewilderment and all the false hopes and all the fool's paradises. All the crying in the night. Children....
Little by little he recognized that he was seeing it as panorama.... None saw a panorama until onewas out of the plane of its components—out of the immediate plane. Gotten out as all must get out, by the struggling Thought, which, the thing done, uses its eyes....
He looked at his past. He did not beat his breast nor cry out in repentance, but he saw with a kind of wonder the plains of darkness. Oh, the deserts, and the slow-moving caravans in them!
He lay very still beneath the palm. All the world....All.
"All is myself."
"Ian? Myself—myself—myself!"
He heard a step upon the sand—the putting by of a branch. The Sufi Abdallah stood beside him. Alexander made a movement.
"Lie still," said the other, "I will sit here, for sweet is the night." He took his place, white-robed, a gleaming upon the sand. Silent almost always, it was nothing that he should sit silent now, quiet, moveless, gone away apparently among the stars.
The moments dropped, each a larger round. Glenfernie moved, sat up.
"I've felt you and your calm in our caravaning. Let me see if my Arabic will carry me here!—What have you that I have not and that I long for?"
"I have nought that you have not."
"But you see the having, and I do not."
"You are beginning to see."
The wind breathed in the oasis palms. The earth turned, seeking the sun for her every chamber, the earth made pilgrimage around the sun, eying point after point of that excellence, the earth journeyed with the sun, held by the invisible cords.
"I wish new sight—I wish new touch—I wish comprehension!"
"You are beginning to have it."
"I have more than I had.... Yes, I know it—"
"There is birth.... Then comes the joy of birth. At last comes the knowledge of why there is joy. Strive to be fully born."
"And if I were so—?"
"Then life alters and there is strong embrace."
A great stillness lay upon the oasis and the desert around. Men and beasts were sleeping, only these two waking, just here, just now. After a moment the dervish spoke again. "The holder-back is the sense of disunity. Sit fast and gather yourself to yourself.... Then will you find how large is your brood!"
He rose, stood a moment above Glenfernie, then went away. The man whom he left sat on, struck from within by fresh shafts. Perception now came in this way, with inner beam. How huge was the landscape that it lighted up!... Alexander sat still. He bent his head—there was a sense, extending to the physical, of a broken shell, of escape, freedom.... He found that he was weeping. He lay upon the sand, and the tears came as they might from a young boy. When they were past, when he lifted himself again, the morning star was in the sky.
Strickland, in the deep summer glen, saw before him the feather of smoke from Mother Binning's cot. The singing stream ran clearly, the sky arched blue above. The air held calm and fine, filled as it were with golden points. He met a white hen and her brood, he heard the slow drone of Mother Binning's wheel. She sat in the doorway, an old wise wife, active still.
"Eh, mon, and it's you!—Wish, and afttimes ye'll get!" She pushed her wheel aside. "I've had a feeling a' the day!"
Strickland leaned against her ash-tree. "It's high summer, Mother—one of the poised, blissful days."
"Aye. I've a feeling.... Hae ye ony news at the House?"
"Alice sings beautifully this summer. Jamie is marrying down in England—beauty and worth he says, and they say."
"Miss Alice doesna marry?"
"She's not the marrying kind, she says."
"Eh, then! She's bonny and gude, juist the same! Did ye come by White Farm?"
"Yes. Jarvis Barrow fails. He sits under his fir-tree, with his Bible beside him and his eyes on the hills. Littlefarm manages now for White Farm."
"Robin's sunny and keen. But he aye irked Jarvis with his profane sangs." She drew out the adjective with a humorous downward drag of her lip.
Strickland smiled. "The old man's softer now. You see that by the places at which his Bible opens."
"Oh aye! We're journeyers—rock and tree and Kelpie's Pool with the rest of us."
She seemed to catch her own speech and look at it. "That's a word I hae been wanting the morn!—The Kelpie's Pool, with the moor sae green and purple around it." She sat bent forward, her wrinkled hands in her lap, her eyes, rather wide, fixed upon the ash-tree.
"We have not heard from the laird," said Strickland, "this long time."
"The laird—now there! What ye want further comes when the mind strains and then waits! I see in one ring the day and Glenfernie and yonder water. Wherever the laird be, he thinks to-day of Scotland."
"I wish that he would think to returning," said Strickland. He had been leaning against the doorpost. Now he straightened himself. "I will go on as far as the pool."
Mother Binning loosed her hands. "Did ye have that thought when ye left hame?"
"No, I believe not."
"Gae on, then! The day's bonny, and the Lord's gude has a wide ring!"
Strickland walking on, left the stream and the glen head. Now he was upon the moor. It dipped and rose like a Titan wave of a Titan sea. Its long, long unbroken crest, clean line against cleanspace, brought a sense of quiet, distance, might. Here solitude was at home. Now Strickland moved, and now he stood and watched the quiet. Turning at last a shoulder of the moor, he saw at some distance below him the pool, like a small mirror. He descended toward it, without noise over the springy earth.
A horse appeared between him and the water. Strickland felt a most involuntary startling and thrill—then half laughed to think that he had feared that he saw the water-steed, the kelpie. The horse was fastened to a stake that once had been the bole of an ancient willow. It grazed around—somewhere would be a master.... Presently Strickland's eye found the latter—a man lying upon the moorside, just above the water. Again with a shock and thrill—though not like the first—it came to him who it was.
The laird of Glenfernie lay very still, his eyes upon the Kelpie's Pool. His old tutor, long his friend, quiet and stanch, gazed unseen. When he had moved a few feet an outcropping of rock hid his form, but his eyes could still dwell upon the pool and the man its visitor. He turned to go away, then he stood still.
"What if he means a closer going yet?" Strickland settled back against the rock. "He would loose his horse first—he would not leave it fastened here. If he does that then I will go down to him."
Glenfernie lay still. There was no wind to-day. The reeds stood straight, the willow leaves slept, the water stayed like dusky glass. The air, pure and light, hung at rest in the ether. Minutes wentby, an hour. He might, Strickland thought, have lain there a long time. At last he sat up, rose, began to walk around the pool. He went around it thrice. Then again he sat down, his arms upon his knees, watching the dusk water. He did not go nor sit like one overwrought or frenzied or despairing. His great frame, his bearing, the air of him, had quietude, but not listlessness; there seemed at once calm and intensity as of a still center that had flung off the storm. Time flowed. Thought Strickland:
"He is as far as I am from death in that water. I'll cease to spy."
He moved away, moss and ling muffling step, gained and dipped behind the shoulder of the moor. The horse grazed on. The laird sat still, his arms upon his knees, his head a little lifted, his eyes crossing the Kelpie's Pool to the wave-line against the sky.
Strickland went to where the moor path ran by the outermost trees of the glen head. Here he sat down beneath an oak and waited. Another hour passed; then he heard the horse's hoofs. He rose and met Glenfernie home-returning.
"It is good to see you, Strickland!"
"I found you yonder by the Kelpie's Pool. Then I came here and waited."
"I have spent hours there.... They were not unhappy. They were not at all unhappy."
They moved together along the moor track, the horse following.
"I am glad and glad again that you have come—"
"I have been coming a good while. But there were preventions."
"We have heard nothing direct for almost a year."
"Then my letters did not reach you. I wrote, but knew that they might not. There is the smoke from Mother Binning's cot." He stood still to watch the mounting feather. "I remember when first I saw that, a six-year-old, climbing the glen with my father, carried on his shoulder when I was tired. I thought it was a hut in a fairy-tale.... So it is!"
To Strickland the remarkable thing lay in the lack of strain, the simplicity and fullness. Glenfernie was unfeignedly glad to see him, glad to see home shapes and colors. The blue feather among the trees had simply pleased him as it could not please a heart fastened to rage and sorrow. The stream of memories that it had beckoned—many others, it must be, besides that of the six-year-old's visit—seemed to have washed itself clear, to have disintegrated, dissolved venom and stinging. Strickland, pondering even while he talked, found the word he wanted: "Comprehensiveness.... He always tended to that."
Said Glenfernie, "I've had another birth, Strickland, and all things are the same and yet not the same." He gave it as an explanation, but then left it. They were going the moorland way to Glenfernie House. He was looking from side to side, recovering old landscape in sweep and in detail. Bit by bit, as they came to it, Strickland gave him the country news. At last there was the house before them, among the firs and oaks, topping the crag. They came into the wood at the base of thehill. The stream—the trees—above, the broken, ancient wall, the roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep. The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure sky. Alexander stood and gazed.
"The keep. The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room. Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read 'The Cranes of Ibycus'?"
"I remember."
"Life within life, and sky above sky!—I hear Bran!"
They mounted the hill. It seemed to run before them that the laird had come home. Bran and Davie and the men and maids and Alice, a bonny woman, and Mrs. Grizel, very little withered, exclaimed and ran. Tibbie Ross was there that day, and Black Alan neighed from his stall. Even the waving trees—even the flowers in the garden—Home, and its taste and fragrance—its dear, close emanations....
That evening at supper Mrs. Grizel made a remark. She leaned back in her chair and looked at Glenfernie. "I never thought you like your mother before! Oh aye! there's your father, too, and a kind of grand man he was, for all that he saw things dark. But will you look, Mr. Strickland, and see Margaret—"
Much later, from his own room, Strickland, gazing forth, saw light in the keep. Alexander would be sitting there among the books and every ancient memorial. Strickland felt a touch of doubt andapprehension. Suppose that to-morrow should find not this Alexander, at once old and new, but only the Alexander who had ridden from Glenfernie, who had shipped to Lisbon, nearly three years ago? To-day's deep satisfaction only a dream! Strickland shook off the fear.
"He breathed lasting growth.... O Christ! the help for all in winged men!"
He turned to his bed. Lying awake he went in imagination to the desert, to the Eastern places, that in few words the laird had painted.
And in the morning he found still the old-new Alexander. He saw that the new had always been in the old, the oak in the acorn.... There was a great, sane naturalness in the alteration, in the advance. Strickland caught glimpses of larger orders.
"I will make thee ruler over many things."
The day was deep and bright. The laird fell at once into the old routine. For none at Glenfernie was there restlessness; there was only ache gone, and a feeling of fulfilling. Mrs. Grizel pattered to and fro. Alice sang like a lark, gathering pansy seed from her garden. Phemie and Eppie sang. The men whistled at their work. Davie discoursed to himself. But Tibbie Ross was wild to get away early and to the village with the news. By the foot of the hill she began to meet wayfarers.
"Oh, aye, this is the real weather! Did ye know—"
Alexander did not leave home that day. In their old work-room he listened to Strickland's account of his stewardship.
"Strickland, I love you!" he said, when it was all given.
He wrote to Jamie; he sat in the garden seat built against the garden wall and watched Alice as she moved from plant to plant.
"You do not say much," thought Alice, "but I like you—I like you—I like you!"
In the afternoon Strickland met him coming from the little green beyond the school-room.
"I have been out through the wall, under the old pine. I seemed to hold many things in the palm of the hand.... I believe that you know what it is to make essences."
After bedtime Strickland saw again the light in the keep. But he had ceased to fear. "Oh All-Being, how rich and stately and various and surprising you are!" In the morning, outside in the court, he found Black Alan saddled.
"The laird will be riding to Black Hill," said Tam Dickson.
Mr. Archibald Touris put out a wrinkled hand to his wine-glass. "You have been in warm countries. I envy you! I wish that I could get warm."
"Black Hill is looking finely. All the young trees—"
"Yes. I took pride in planting.—But what for—what for—what for?" He shivered. "Glenfernie, please close that window!"
Alexander, coming back, stood above the master of Black Hill. "Will you tell me, sir, where Ian is now?"
Mr. Touris twitched back a little in his chair. "Don't you know? I thought perhaps that you did."
"I ceased to follow him two years ago. I dived into the East, and I have been long where you do not hear from the West."
The other fingered his wine-glass. "Well, I haven't heard myself, for quite a while.... You would think that he might come back to England now. But he can't. Doubtless he would never wish to come again to Black Hill. But England, now.... But they are ferocious yet against every head great and small of the attempt. And I am toldthere are aggravating circumstances. He had worn the King's coat. He was among the plotters and instigators. He broke prison. Impossible to show mercy!" Mr. Touris twitched again. "That's a phrase like a gravestone! If the Almighty uses it, then of course he can't be Almighty.... Well, the moral is that none named Ian Rullock can come again to Scotland or England."
"Have you knowledge that he wishes to do so?"
Mr. Touris moved again. "I don't know.... I told you that we hadn't heard. But—"
He stopped and sat staring into his wine-glass. Alexander read on as by starlight: "But I did hear—through old channels. And there is danger of his trying to return."
The master of Black Hill put the wine to his lips. "And so you have been everywhere?"
"No. But in places where I had not been before."
"The East India has ways of gathering information. Through Goodworth I can get at a good deal when I want to.... There is Wotherspoon, also. I am practically certain that Ian is in France."
"When did he write?"
"Alison has a letter maybe twice a year. One's overdue now."
"How does he write?"
"They are very short. He doesn't touch on old things—except, perhaps, back into boyhood. She likes to get them. When you see her, don't speak of anything save his staying in France, as he ought to." He dragged toward him a jar of snuff. "There are informers and seekers out everywhere. Do you remember a man in Edinburgh named Gleig?"
"Yes."
"Well, he's one of them. And for some reason he has a personal enmity toward Ian. So, you see—"
He lapsed into silence, a small, aging, chilly, wrinkled, troubled man. Then with suddenness a wintry red crept into his cheek, a brightness into his eyes. "You've changed so, Glenfernie, you've cheated me! You are his foe yourself. Perhaps even—"
"Perhaps even—?"
The other gave a shriveled response to the smile. "No. I certainly did not mean that." He took his head in his hands and sighed. "What a world it is! As I go down the hill I wish sometimes that I had Alison's eyes.... Well, tell me about yourself."
"The one thing that I want to tell you just now, Black Hill, is that I am not any longer bloodhound at the heels of Ian. What was done is done. Let us go on to better things. So at last will be unknit what was done."
Black Hill both seemed and did not seem to pay attention. The man who sat before him was big and straight and gave forth warmth and light. He needed warmth and light; he needed a big tree to lean against. He vaguely hoped that Glenfernie was home to stay. He rubbed his hands and drank more wine.
"No one has known for a long time where you were.... Goodworth has an agent in Paris who says that Ian tried once to find out that."
"To find out where I was?"
"Yes."
Alexander gazed out of window, beyond the terrace and the old trees to the long hill, purple with heath, sunny and clear atop.
A servant came to the door. "Mrs. Alison has returned, sir."
Glenfernie rose. "I will go find her then.—I will ride over often if I may."
"I wish you would!" said Black Hill. "I was sorry about that quarrel with your father."
The old laird's son walked down the matted corridor. The drawing-room door stood open; he saw one panel of the tall screen covered with pagodas, palms, and macaws. Further on was the room, clean and fragrant, known as Mrs. Alison's room. This door, too, was wide. He stood by his old friend. They put hands into hands; eyes met, eyes held in a long look.
She said, "O God, I praise Thee!"
They sat within the garden door, on one side the clear, still room, on the other the green and growing things, the great tree loved by birds. The place was like a cloister. He stayed with her an hour, and in all that time there was not a great deal said with the outer tongue. But each grew more happy, deeper and stronger.
He talked to her of the Roman Campagna, of the East and the desert....
As the hour closed he spoke directly of Ian. "That is myself now, as Elspeth is myself now. I falter, I fail, but I go on to profounder Oneness."
"Christ is born, then he grows up."
"May I see Ian's last letters?"
She put them in his hands. "They are veryshort. They speak almost always of external things."
He read, then sat musing, his eyes upon the tree. "This last one—You answered that it was not known where I was?"
"Yes. But he says here at the last, 'I feel it somewhere that he is on his way to Scotland.'"
"I'll have to think it out."
"Every letter is objective like this. But for all that, I divine, in the dark, a ferment.... As you see, we have not heard for months."
The laird of Glenfernie rode at last from Black Hill. It was afternoon, white drifts of clouds in the sky, light and shadow moving upon field and moor and distant, framing mountains. He rode by Littlefarm and he called at the house gate for Robin Greenlaw. It seemed that the latter was away in White Farm fields. The laird might meet him riding home. A mile farther on he saw the gray horse crossing the stream.
Glenfernie and Greenlaw, meeting, left each the saddle, went near to embracing, sat at last by a stone wall in the late sunshine, and felt a tide of liking, stronger, not weaker, than that of old days.
"You are looking after White Farm?"
"Yes. The old man fails. Jenny has become a cripple. Gilian and I are the rulers."
"Or servers?"
"It amounts to the same.... Gilian has a splendid soul."
"The poems, Robin. Do you make them yet?"
"Oh yes! Now and then. All this helps.... And you, Glenfernie, I could make a poem of you!"
The laird laughed. "I suppose you could of all men.... Gilian and you do not marry?"
"We are not the marrying kind. But I shouldn't love beauty inside if I didn't love Gilian.... I see that something big has come to you, Glenfernie, and made itself at home. You'll be wanting it taken as a matter of course, and I take it that way.... No matter what you have seen, is not this vale fair?"
"Fair as fair! Loved because of child and boy and man.... Robin, something beyond all years as we count them can be put into moments.... A moment can be as sizable as a sun."
"I believe it. We are all treading toward the land of wonders."
When he parted from Robin it was nearly sunset. He did not mean to stop to-day at White Farm, but he turned Black Alan in that direction. He would ride by the house and the shining stream with the stepping-stones. Coming beneath the bank thick with willow and aspen, he checked the horse and sat looking at the long, low house. It held there in a sunset stillness, a sunset glory, a dream of dawn. He dismounted, left the horse, and climbed to the strip of green before the place. None seemed about, all seemed within. Here was the fir-tree with the bench around—so old a tree, watching life so long!... Now he saw that Jarvis Barrow sat here. But the old man was asleep. He sat with closed eyes, and his Bible was under his hand. Beside him, tall and fair, wide-browed, gray-eyed, stood Gilian. Her head was turned toward the fringed bank; when she saw Alexander she put herfinger against her lips. He made a gesture of understanding and went no nearer. For a moment he stood regarding all, then drew back into shadow of willow and aspen, descended the bank, and, mounting Black Alan, rode home through the purple light.
The countryside, the village—the Jardine Arms—Mrs. Macmurdo in her shop to all who entered—talked of the laird's homecoming. "He's a strange sort!"
"Some do say he's been to America and found a gold-mine."
"Na! He's just been journeying around in himself."
"I am na spekalative. He's contentit, and sae am I. It's a mair natural warld than ye think."
"Three year syne when he went away, he lookit like ane o' thae figures o' tragedy—"
"Aweel, then, he's swallowed himself and digested it."
"I ca' it fair miracle! The Lord touched him in the night."
"Do ye haud that he'll gang to kirk the morn?"
"I dinna precisely ken. He micht, and he micht not."
He went, entering with Mrs. Grizel, Alice, and Strickland, sitting in the House pew. How many kirks he thought of, sitting there—what cathedrals, chapels; what rude, earnest places; what temples, mosques, caves, ancient groves; what fanes; what worshiped gods! One, one! Temple and image,worshiped and worshiper. Self helping self. "O my Self, daily and deeply help myself!"
The little white stone building—the earnest, strenuous, narrow man in the pulpit, the Scots congregation—old, old, familiar, with an inner odor not unpungent, not unliked! Life Everlasting—Everlasting Life....
"That ye may have life and have it more abundantly."
White Farm sat in the White Farm place. Jarvis Barrow was there. But he did not sit erect as of yore; he leaned upon his staff. Jenny was missed. Lame now, she stayed at home and watched the passing, and talked to herself or talked to others. Gilian sat beside the old man. Behind were Menie and Merran, Thomas and Willy. Glenfernie's eyes dwelt quietly upon Jarvis and his granddaughter. When he willed he could see Elspeth beside Gilian.
The prayers, the sermon, the hymns.... All through the world-body the straining toward the larger thing, the enveloping Person! As he sat there he felt blood-warmth, touch, with every foot that sought hold, with every hand that reached. He saw the backward-falling, and he saw that they did not fall forever, that they caught and held and climbed again. He saw that because he had done that, time and time again done that.
Mr. M'Nab preached a courageous, if harsh, sermon. The old words of commination! They were not empty—but in among them, fine as ether, now ran a gloss.... The sermon ended, the final psalm was sung.