Foes Part 12

"Are you fond of that, too? Do you go up and down alone?"

"By my lee-lane when Gilian's not here. She's in Aberdeen now, where live our mother's folk."

"I have not seen you for years."

"I mind the last time. Your mother lay ill. One evening at sunset Mr.

Ian Rullock and you came to White Farm."

"It must have been after sunset. It must have been dark."

"Back of that you and he came from Edinburgh one time. We were down by the wishing-green, Robin Greenlaw and Gilian and I and three or four other lads and la.s.sies. Do you remember? Mr. Rullock would have us dance, and we all took hands--you, too--and went around the ash-tree as though it were a May-pole. We changed hands, one with another, and danced upon the green. Then you and he got upon your horses and rode away. He was riding the white mare Fatima. But oh," said Elspeth, "then came grandfather, who had seen us from the reaped field, and he blamed us sair and put no to our playing! He gave word to the minister, and Sunday the sermon dealt with the ill women of Scripture.

Back of that--"

"Back of that--"

"There was the day the two of you would go to the Kelpie's Pool."

Elspeth's eyes enlarged and darkened. "The next morn we heard--Jock Binning told us--that Mr. Ian had nearly drowned."

"Almost ten years ago. Once--twice--thrice in ten years. How idly were they spent, those years!"

"Oh," cried Elspeth, "they say that you have been to world's end and have gotten great learning!"

"One comes home from all that to find world's end and great learning."

Elspeth leaned from him, back against the thorn-tree. She looked somewhat disquietedly, somewhat questioningly, at this new laird.

Glenfernie, in his turn, laid upon himself both hands of control. He thought:

"Do not peril all--do not peril all--with haste and frightening!"

He sat upon the green hillock and talked of country news. She met him with this and that ... White Farm affairs, Littlefarm.

"Robin," said Alexander, "manages so well that he'll grow wealthy!"

"Oh no! He manages well, but he'll never grow wealthy outside! But inside he has great riches."

_"Does she love him, then?"_ It poured fear into his heart. A magician with a sword--with a great, evil, written-upon creese like that hanging at Black Hill--was here before the palace.

"Do you love him?" asked Alexander, and asked it with so straight a simplicity that Elspeth Barrow took no offense.

She looked at him, and those strange smiles played about her lips.

"Robin is a fairy man," she said. "He has ower little of struggle save with his rhymes," and left him to make what he could of that.

"She is heart-free," he thought, but still he feared and boded.

Elspeth rose from the gra.s.s, stepped from beneath the blooming tree.

"I must be going. It wears toward noon."

Together they left the flower-set cape. The laird of Glenfernie looked back upon it.

"_Heaven sent a sample down._ You come here when you wish? You walk about with the spring and summer days?"

"Aye, when my work's done. Gilian and I love the greenwood."

He gave her the narrow path, but kept beside her on stone and dead leaves and mossy root. Though he was so large of frame, he moved with a practised, habitual ease, as far as might be from any savor of clumsiness. He had magnetism, and to-day he drew like a planet in glow. Now he looked at the woman beside him, and now he looked straight ahead with kindled eyes.

Elspeth walked with slightly quickened breath, with knitted brows. The laird of Glenfernie was above her in station, though go to the ancestors and blood was equal enough! It carried appeal to a young woman's vanity, to be walking so, to feel that the laird liked well enough to be where he was. She liked him, too. Glenfernie House was talked of, talked of, by village and farm and cot, talked of, talked of, year by year--all the Jardines, their virtues and their vices, what they said and what they did. She had heard, ever since she was a bairn, that continual comment, like a little prattling burn running winter and summer through the dale. So she knew much that was true of Alexander Jardine, but likewise entertained a sufficient amount of misapprehension and romancing. Out of it all came, however, for the dale, and for the women at White Farm who listened to the burn's voice, a sense of trustworthiness. Elspeth, walking by Glenfernie, felt kindness for him. If, also, there ran a tremor of feeling that it was very fair to be Elspeth Barrow and walking so, she was young and it was natural. But beyond that was a sense, vague, unexplained to herself, but disturbing. There was feeling in him that was not in her.

She was aware of it as she might be aware of a gathering storm, though the brain received as yet no clear message. She felt, struggling with that diffused kindness and young vanity, something like discomfort and fear. So her mood was complex enough, unharmonized, parted between opposing currents. She was a riddle to herself.

But Glenfernie walked in a great simplicity of faeryland or heaven.

She did not love Robin Greenlaw; she was not so young a la.s.s, with a rose in her cheek for every one; she was come so far without mating because she had snow in her heart! The palace gleamed, the palace shone. All the music of earth--of the world--poured through. The sun had drunk up the mist, time had eaten the thorn-wood, the spider at the gate had vanished into chaos and old night.

CHAPTER X

The cows and sheep and work-horses, the dogs, the barn-yard fowls, the very hives of bees at White Farm, seemed to know well enough that it was the Sabbath. The flowers knew it that edged the kitchen garden, the cherry-tree knew it by the southern wall. The sunshine knew it, wearing its calm Sunday best. Sights and sounds attuned themselves.

The White Farm family was home from kirk. Jenny Barrow and Elspeth put away hood and wide hat of straw, slipped from and shook out and folded on the shelf Sunday gowns and kerchiefs. Then each donned a clean print and a less fine kerchief and came forth to direct and aid the two cotter la.s.ses who served at White Farm. These by now had off their kirk things, but they marked Sunday still by keeping shoes and stockings. Menie and Merran, Elspeth and Jenny, set the yesterday-prepared dinner cold upon the table, drew the ale, and placed chairs and stools. Two men, Thomas and w.i.l.l.y, father and son, who drove the plow, sowed and reaped, for White Farm, came from the barn. They were yet Sunday-clad, with very clean, shining faces. "Call father, Elspeth!" directed Jenny, and set on the table a honeycomb.

Elspeth went without the door. Before the house grew a great fir-tree that had a bench built around it. Here, in fine weather, in rest hours and on Sunday, might be looked for Jarvis Barrow. It was his habit to take the far side of the tree, with the trunk between him and the house. So there spread before him the running river, the dale and moor, and at last the piled hills. Here he sat, leaning hands upon a great stick shaped like a crook, his Bible open upon his knees. It was a great book, large of print, read over in every part, but opening most easily among the prophets. No cry, no denunciation, no longing, no judgment from Isaiah to Malachi, but was known to the elder of the kirk. Now he sat here, in his Sunday dress, with the Bible. At a little distance, on the round bench, sat Robin Greenlaw. The old man read sternly, concentratedly on; the young one looked at the purple mountain-heads. Elspeth came around the tree.

"Grandfather, dinner is ready.--Robin! we didn't know that you were here--"

"I went the way around to speak with the laird. Then I thought, 'I will eat at White Farm--'"

"You're welcome!--Grandfather, let me take the Book."

"No," said the old man, and bore it himself withindoors. Spare and unbent of frame, threescore and ten and five, and able yet at the plow-stilts, rigid of will, servant to the darker Calvinism, starving where he might human pride and human affections, and yet with much of both to starve, he moved and spoke with slow authority, looked a patriarch and ruled his holding. When presently he came to table in the clean, sanded room with the sunlight on the wall and floor, and when, standing, he said the long, the earnest grace, it might have been taken that here, in the Scotch farm-house, was at least a minor prophet. The grace was long, a true wrestling in prayer. Ended, a decent pause was made, then all took place, Jarvis Barrow and his daughter and granddaughter, Robin Greenlaw, Thomas and w.i.l.l.y, Menie and Merran. The cold meat, the bread, and other food were pa.s.sed from hand to hand, the ale poured. The Sunday hush, the Sunday voices, continued to hold. Jarvis Barrow would have no laughter and idle clashes at his table on the Lord's day. Menie and Merran and w.i.l.l.y kept a stolid air, with only now and then a sidelong half-smile or nudging request for this or that. Elspeth ate little, sat with her brown eyes fixed out of the window. Robin Greenlaw ate heartily enough, but he had an air distrait, and once or twice he frowned. But Jenny Barrow could not long keep still and incurious, even upon the Sabbath day.

"Eh, Robin, what was your crack with the laird?"

"He wants to buy Warlock for James Jardine. He's got his ensign's commission to go fight the French."

"Eh, he'll be a bonny lad on Warlock! I thought you wadna sell him?"

"I'll sell to Glenfernie."

The farmer spoke from the head of the table. "I'll na hae talk, Robin, of buying and selling on the day! It clinks like the money-changers and sellers of doves."

Thomas, his helper, raised his head from a plate of cold mutton.

"Glenfernie was na at kirk. He's na the kirkkeeper his father was. Na, na!"

"Na," said the farmer. "Bairns dinna walk nowadays in parents' ways."

w.i.l.l.y had a bit of news he would fain get in. "Nae doot Glenfernie's brave, but he wadna be a sodger, either! I was gaeing alang wi' the yowes, and there was he and Drummielaw riding and gabbing. Sae there cam on a skirling and jumping wind and rain, and we a' gat under a tree, the yowes and the dogs and Glenfernie and Drummielaw and me.

Then we changed gude day and they went on gabbing. And 'Nae,' says Glenfernie, 'I am nae lawyer and I am nae sodger. Jamie wad be the last, but brithers may love and yet be thinking far apairt. The best friend I hae in the warld is a sodger, but I'm thinking I hae lost the knack o' fechting. When you lose the taste you lose the knack.'"