Foes Part 11

"I am here, father." Alexander rose and went to the sick man's side.

"You slept finely! And here we have food for you, and drops to give you strength--"

The laird swallowed the drops and a spoonful or two of broth. "There.

Now I want to talk. Aye, I am strong enough. I feel stronger. I am strong. It hurts me more to check me. Is that the wind blowing?"

"Yes. It is a wild night."

"It is singing. I could almost pick out the words. Alexander, there's a quarrel I have with Touris of Black Hill. I have no wish to make it up. He did me a wrong and is a sinner in many ways. But his sister is different. If you see her tell her that I aye liked her."

"Would it make you happier to be reconciled to Mr. Touris?"

"No, it would not! You were never a canting one, Alexander! Let that be. Anger is anger, and it's weakness to gainsay it! That is," said the laird, "when it's just--and this is just. Alexander, my bonny man--"

"I'm here, father."

"I've been lying here, gaeing up and down in my thoughts, a bairn again with my grandmither, gaeing up and down the braes and by the glen. I want to say somewhat to you. When you see an adder set your heel upon it! When a wolf goes by take your firelock and after him!

When a denier and a cheat is near you tell the world as much and help to set the snare! Where there are betrayers and persecutors hunt the wild plant shall make a cup like their ain!" He fell to coughing, coughing more and more violently.

Strickland rose and came to the bedside, and the two watchers gave him water and wine to drink, and would have had him, when the fit was over, cease from all speech. He shook them off.

"Alexander, ye're like me. Ye're mair like me than any think! Where ye find your Grierson of Lagg, clench with him--clench--Alexander!"

He coughed, lifting himself in their arms. A blood-vessel broke.

Tibbie Ross, answering the calling, hurried in. "Gude with us! it's the end!" Mrs. Grizel came, wrapped in a great flowered bed-gown. In a few minutes all was over. Strickland and Alexander laid him straight that had been the laird.

CHAPTER IX

The month was May. The laird of Glenfernie, who had walked to the Kelpie's Pool, now came down the glen. Mother Binning was yet in her cot, though an older woman now and somewhat broken.

"Oh aye, my bonny man! All things die and all things live. To and fro gaes the shuttle!"

Glenfernie sat on the door-stone. She took all the news he could bring, and had her own questions to put.

"How's the house and all in it?"

"Well."

"Ye've got a bonny sister! Whom will she marry? There's Abercrombie and Fleming and Ferguson."

"I do not know. The one she likes the best."

"And when will ye be marrying yourself?"

"I am not going to marry, Mother. I would marry Wisdom, if I could!"

"Hoot! she stays single! Do ye love the hunt of Wisdom so?"

"Aye, I do. But it's a long, long chase--and to tell you the truth, at times I think she's just a wraith! And at times I am lazy and would just sit in the sun and be a fool."

"Like to-day?"

"Like to-day. And so," said Alexander, rising, "as I feel that way, I'll e'en be going on!"

"I'm thinking that maist of the wise have inner tokens by which they ken the fule. I was ne'er afraid of folly," said Mother Binning. "It's good growing stuff!"

Glenfernie laughed and left her and the drone of her wheel. A clucking hen and her brood, the cot and its ash-tree, sank from sight. A little longer and he reached the middle glen where the banks approached and the full stream rushed with a manifold sound. Here was the curtain of brier masking the cave that he had shared with Ian. He drew it aside and entered. So much smaller was the place than it had seemed in boyhood! Twice since they came to be men had he been here with Ian, and they had smiled over their cavern, but felt for it a tenderness.

In a corner lay the f.a.gots that, the last time, they had gathered with laughter and left here against outlaws' needs. Ian! He pictured Ian with his soldiers.

Outside the cavern, the air came about him like a cloud of fragrance.

As he went down the glen, into its softer sweeps, this increased, as did the song of birds. The primrose was strewn about in disks of pale gold, the white thorn lifted great bouquets, the bluebell touched the heart. A lark sang in the sky, linnet and cuckoo at hand, in the wood at the top of the glen cooed the doves. The water rippled by the leaning birches, the wild bees went from flower to flower. The sky was all sapphire, the air a perfumed ocean. So beautiful rang the spring that it was like a bell in the heart, in the blood. The laird of Glenfernie, coming to a great natural chair of sun-warmed rock, sat down to listen. All was of a sweetness, poignant, intense. But in the very act of recognizing this, there came upon him an old mood of melancholy, an inner mist and chill, a gray languor and wanting. The very bourgeoning and blossoming about him seemed to draw light from him, not give light. "I brought the Kelpie's Pool back with me," he thought. He shut his eyes, leaning his head against the stone, at last with a sideward movement burying it in his folded arms. "More life--more! What was a great current goes sluggish and landbound.

Where again is the open sea--the more--the boundless? Where again--where again?"

He sat for an hour by the wild, singing stream. It drenched him, the loved place and the sweet season, with its thousand store of beauties.

Its infinite number of touches brought at last response. The vague crying and longing of nature hushed before a present lullaby. At last he rose and went on with the calling stream.

The narrow path, set about with living green, with the spangly flowers, and between the branches fragments of the blue lift as clear as gla.s.s, led down the glen, widening now to hill and dale. Softening and widening, the world laughed in May. The stream grew broad and tranquil, with gra.s.sy sh.o.r.es overhung by green boughs. Here and there the bank extended into the flood a little gra.s.sy cape edged with violets. Alexander, following the spiral of the path, came upon the view of such a spot as this. It lay just before him, a little below his road. The stream washed its fairy beach. From the new gra.s.s rose a blooming thorn-tree; beneath this knelt a girl and, resting upon her hands, looked at her face in the water.

The laird of Glenfernie stood still. A drooping birch hid him; his step had been upon moss and was not heard. The face and form upon the bank, the face in the water, showed no consciousness of any human neighbor. The face was that of a woman of perhaps twenty-four. The hair was brown, the eyes brown. The head was beautifully placed on a round, smooth throat. With a wide forehead, with great width between the eyes, the face tapered to a small round chin. The mouth and under the eyes smiled in a thousand different ways. The beauty that was there was subtle, not discoverable by every one.--The girl settled back upon the gra.s.s beneath the thorn-tree. She was very near Glenfernie; he could see the rise and fall of her bosom beneath her blue print gown. It was Elspeth Barrow--he knew her now, though he had not seen her for a long time. She sat still, her brown eyes raised to building birds in the thorn-tree. Then she began herself to sing, clear and sweet.

"A lad and a la.s.s met ower the brae; They blushed rose-red, but they said nae word-- The woodbine fair and the milk-white slae:-- And frae one to the other gaed a silver bird, A silver bird.

"A man set his Wish all odds before, With sword, with pen, and with gold he stirred Till the Wish and he met on a conquered sh.o.r.e, And frae one to the other gaed an ebon bird, An ebon bird.

"G.o.d looked on a man and said: ''Tis time!

The broken mends, clear flows the blurred.

You and I are two worlds that rhyme!'

And frae one to the other gaed a golden bird, A golden bird."

She sang it through, then sat entirely still against the stem of the thorn, while about her lips played that faint, unapproachable, glamouring smile. Her hands touched the gra.s.s to either side her body; her slender, blue-clad figure, the all of her, smote him like some G.o.d's line of poetry.

There was in the laird of Glenfernie's nature an empty palace. It had been built through ages and every wind of pleasure and pain had blown about it. Then it had slowly come about that the winds of pain had increased upon the winds of pleasure. The mind closed the door of the palace and the nature inclined to turn from it. It was there, but a sea mist hid it, and a tall thorn-hedge, and a web stretched across its idle gates. It had hardly come, in this life, into Glenfernie's waking mind that it was there at all.

Now with a suddenness every door clanged open. The mist parted, the thorn-wood sank, the web was torn. The palace stood, shining like home, and it was he who was afar, in the mist and the wood, and the web of idleness and oblivion in shreds about him. Set in the throne-room, upon the throne, he saw the queen.

His mood, that May day, had given the moment, and wide circ.u.mstance had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche, the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the dike. Now what had reached being must take its course.

He felt that so fatally that he did not think of resistance....

Elspeth, upon the gra.s.sy cape, beneath the blooming thorn, heard steps down the glen path, and turned her eyes to see the young laird moving between the birch stems. Now he was level with the holding; now he spoke to her, lifting his hat. She answered, with the smile beneath her eyes:

"Aye, Glenfernie, it's a braw day!"

"May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?"

"Aye." She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water's edge. "It _is_ fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!"

She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank. "It is the best of weather for wandering."