Foes Part 15

"There were duties now to be taken up. I could not stay away all nor most nor much of the time. I saw that. But I could study here, and once in a while run somewhere over the earth.... But now I would stay in this dale till I die! Unless you were with me--the two of us going to see the sights of the earth, and then returning home--going and returning--going and returning--and both a great sweetness--"

"Oh!" breathed Elspeth. She put her hands again over her eyes, and she saw, unrolling, a great fair life _if_--_if_--She rose to her feet.

"Let us go! It grows late. They'll miss me."

They came into the glen and so went down with the stream to the open land and to White Farm.

"Where hae you been?" asked Jenny. "Here was father hame frae the shearing with his eyes blurred, speiring for you to read to him!"

"I was walking by the glen and the laird came down through, so we made here together. Where is grandfather?"

"He wadna sit waiting. He's gane to walk on the muir. Will ye na bide, Glenfernie?"

But the laird would not stay. It was wearing toward sunset. Menie, withindoors, called Jenny. The latter turned away. Glenfernie spoke to Elspeth.

"If I find your grandfather on the moor I shall speak of this that is between us. Do not look so troubled! 'If' or 'if not' it is better to tell. So you will not be plagued. And, anyhow, it is the wise folks'

road."

Back came Jenny. "Has he gane? I had for him a ta.s.s of wine and a bit of cake."

The moor lay like a stiffened billow of the sea, green with purple glints. The clear western sky was ruddy gold, the sun's great ball approaching the horizon. But when it dipped the short June night would know little dark in this northern land. The air struck most fresh and pure. Glenfernie came presently upon the old farmer, found him seated upon a bit of bank, his gray plaid about him, his crook-like stick planted before him, his eyes upon the western sea of glory. The younger man stopped beside him, settled down upon the bank, and gazed with the elder into the ocean of colored air.

"Ae gowden floor as though it were gla.s.s," said Jarvis Barrow. "Ae gowden floor and ae river named of Life, pa.s.sing the greatness of Orinoco or Amazon. And the tree of life for the healing of the nations. And a' the trees that ever leafed or flowered, ta'en together, but ae withered twig to that!"

Glenfernie gazed with him. "I do not doubt that there will come a day when we'll walk over the plains of the sun--the flesh of our body then as gauze, moved at will where we please and swift as thought--inner and outer motion keeping time with the beat and rhythm of that _where we are_--"

"The young do not speak the auld tongue."

"Tongues alter with the rest."

Silence fell while the sun reddened, going nearer to the mountain brow. The young man and the old, the farmer and the laird, sat still.

The air struck more freshly, stronger, coming from the sea. Far off a horn was blown, a dog barked.

"Will ye be hame now for gude, Glenfernie? Lairds should bide in their ain houses if the land is to have any gude of them."

"I wish to stay, White Farm, the greatest part of the year round. I want to speak to you very seriously. Think back a moment to my father and mother, and to my forebears farther back yet. As they had faults, and yet had a longing to do the right and struggled toward it over thick and thin, so I believe I may say of myself. That is, I struggle toward it," said Alexander, "though I'm not so sure of the thick and thin."

"Your mither wasna your father's kind. She had always her smile to the side and her j.a.pes, and she looked to the warld. Not that she didna mean to do weel in it! She did. But I couldna just see clear the seal in her forehead."

"That was because you did not look close enough," said Alexander. "It was there."

"I didna mind your uphawding your mither. Aweel, what did ye have to say?"

The laird turned full to him. "White Farm, you were once a young man.

You loved and married. So do I love, so would I marry! The woman I love does not yet love me, but she has, I think, some liking.--I bide in hope. I would speak to you about it, as is right."

"Wha is she?"

"Your granddaughter Elspeth."

Silence, while the shadows of the trees in the vale below grew longer and longer. Then said White Farm:

"She isna what they call your equal in station. And she has nae tocher or as good as nane."

"For the last I have enough for us both. For the first the springs of Barrow and Jardine, back in Time's mountains, are much the same.

Scotland's not the country to bother overmuch if the one stream goes, in a certain place, through a good farm, and the other by a not over-rich laird's house."

"Are ye Whig and Kirk like your father?"

"I am Whig--until something more to the dawn than that comes up. For the Kirk ... I will tell truth and say that I have my inner differences. But they do not lean toward Pope or prelate.... I am Christian, where Christ is taken very universally--the higher Self, the mounting Wisdom of us all.... Some high things you and I may view differently, but I believe that there are high things."

"And seek them?"

"And seek them."

"You always had the air to me," vouchsafed White Farm, "of one wha hunted gowd elsewhaur than in the earthly mine." He looked at the red west, and drew his plaid about him, and took firmer clutch upon his staff. "But the la.s.sie does not love you?"

"My trust is that she may come to do so."

The elder got to his feet. Alexander rose also.

"It's coming night! Ye will be gaeing on over the muir to the House?"

"Yes. Then, sir, I may come to White Farm, or meet her when I may, and have my chance?"

"Aye. If so be I hear nae great thing against ye. If so be ye're reasonable. If so be that in no way do ye try to hurt the la.s.sie."

"I'll be reasonable," said the laird of Glenfernie. "And I'd not hurt Elspeth if I could!" His face shone, his voice was a deep and happy music. He was so bound, so at the feet of Elspeth, that he could not but believe in joy and fortune. The sun had dipped; the land lay dusk, but the sky was a rose. There was a skimming of swallows overhead, a singing of the wind in the ling. He walked with White Farm to the foot of the moor, then said good night and turned toward his own house.

CHAPTER XII

Two days later Alexander rode to Black Hill. There had been in the night a storm with thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Huge, ragged banks of clouds yet hung sullen in the air, though with lakes of blue between and shafts of sun. The road was wet and shone. Now Black Alan must pick his way, and now there held long stretches of easy going.

The old laird's quarrel with Mr. Archibald Touris was not the young laird's. The old laird's liking for Mrs. Alison was strongly the young laird's. Glenfernie, in the months since his father's death, had ridden often enough to Black Hill. Now as he journeyed, together with the summer and melody of his thoughts Elspeth-toward, he was holding with himself a cogitation upon the subject of Ian and Ian's last letter. He rode easily a powerful steed, needing to be strong for so strongly built a horseman. His riding-dress was blue; he wore his own hair, unpowdered and gathered in a ribbon beneath a three-cornered hat. There was perplexity and trouble, too, in the Ian complex, but for all that he rode with the color and sparkle of happiness in his face. In his gray eyes light played to great depths.

Black Hill appeared before him, the dark pine and crag of the hill itself, and below that the house with its far-stretching, well-planted policy. He pa.s.sed the gates, rode under the green elm boughs of the avenue, and was presently before the porch of the house. A man presented himself to take Black Alan.

"Aye, sir, there's company. Mr. Touris and Mrs. Alison are with them in the gardens."

Glenfernie went there, pa.s.sing by a terrace walk around the house.

Going under the windows of the room that was yet Ian's when he came home. Ian still in his mind, he recovered strongly the look of that room the day Ian had taken him there, in boyhood, when they first met.

Out of that vividness started a nucleus more vivid yet--the picture in the book-closet of the city of refuge, and the silver goblet drawn from the hidden shelf of the aumry. The recaptured moment lost shape and color, returned to the infinite past. He turned the corner of the house and came into the gardens that Mr. Touris had had laid out after the French style.

Here by the fountain he discovered the retired merchant, and with him a guest, an old trade connection, now a power in the East India Company. The laird of Black Hill, a little more withered, a little more stooped than of old, but still fluent, caustic, and with now and then to the surface a vague, cold froth of insincerity, made up much to this magnate of commerce. He stood on his own heath, or by his own fountain, but his neck had in it a deferential crook. Lacs--rupees-- factories--rajahs--ships--cottons--the words fell like the tinkle of a golden fountain. Listening to these two stood, with his hands behind his back, Mr. Wotherspoon, Black Hill's lawyer and man of business down from Edinburgh. At a little distance Mrs. Alison showed her roses to the wife of the East India man and to a kinsman, Mr. Munro Touris, from Inverness way.

Mr. Touris addressed himself with his careful smile to Alexander.

"Good day, Glenfernie! This, Mr. Goodworth, is a good neighbor of mine, Mr. Jardine of Glenfernie. Alexander, Mr. Goodworth is art and part of the East India. You have met Mr. Wotherspoon before, I think?