Foes Part 16

There are Alison and Mrs. Goodworth and Munro Touris by the roses."

Glenfernie went over to the roses. Mrs. Alison, smiling upon him, presented him to Mrs. Goodworth, a dark, bright, black-eyed, talkative lady. He and Munro Touris nodded to each other. The laird of Black Hill, the India merchant, and the lawyer now joined them, and all strolled together along the very wide and straight graveled path. The talk was chiefly upheld by Black Hill and the great trader, with the lawyer putting in now and again a shrewd word, and the trader's wife making aside to Mrs. Alison an embroidery of comment. There had now been left trade in excelsis and host and guests were upon the state of the country, an unpopular war, and fall of ministers. Came in phrases compounded to meet Jacobite complications and dangers. The Pretender--the Pretender and his son--French aid--French army that might be sent to Scotland--position of defense--rumors everywhere you go--disaffected and Stewart-mad--. Munro Touris had a biting word to say upon the Highland chiefs. The lawyer talked of certain Lowland lords and gentlemen. Mr. Touris vented a bitter gibe. He had a black look in his small, sunken eyes. Alexander, reading him, knew that he thought of Ian. In a moment the whole conversation had dragged that way. Mrs. Goodworth spoke with vivacity.

"Lord, sir! I hope that your nephew, now that he wears the King's coat, has left off talking as he did when he was a boy! He showed his Highland strain with a warrant! You would have thought that he had been _out_ himself thirty years ago!"

Her husband checked her. "You have not seen him since he was sixteen.

Boys like that have wild notions of romance and devotion. They change when they're older."

The lawyer took the word. "Captain Rullock doubtless buried all that years ago. His wearing the King's coat hauds for proof."

Munro Touris had been college-mate in Edinburgh. "He watered all that gunpowder in him years ago, did he not, Glenfernie?"

"'To water gunpowder--to shut off danger.' That's a good figure of yours, Munro!" said Alexander. Munro, who had been thought dull in the old days, flushed with pleasure.

They had come to a kind of summer-house overrun with roses. Mr.

Archibald Touris stopped short and, with his back to this structure, faced the company with him, brought thus to a halt. He looked at them with a carefully composed countenance.

"I am sure, Munro, that Ian Rullock 'watered the gunpowder,' as you cleverly say. Boys, ma'am"--to Mrs. Goodworth--"are, as your husband remarks, romantic simpletons. No one takes them and their views of life seriously. Certainly not their political views! When they come men they laugh themselves. They are not boys then; they are men. Which is, as it were, the preface to what I might as well tell you. My nephew has resigned his captaincy and quitted the army. Apparently he has come to feel that soldiering is not, after all, the life he prefers. It may be that he will take to the law, or he may wander and then laird it when I am gone. Or if he is very wise--I meant to speak to you of this in private, Goodworth--he might be furnished with shares and ventures in the East India. He has great abilities."

"Well, India's the field!" said the London merchant, placidly. "If a man has the mind and the will he may make and keep and flourish and taste power--"

"Left the King's forces!" cried Munro Touris. "Why--! And will he be coming to Black Hill, sir?"

"Yes. Next week. We have," said Mr. Touris, and though he tried he could not keep the saturnine out of his voice--"we have some things to talk over."

As he spoke he moved from before the summer-house into a cross-path, and the others followed him and his Company magnate. The Edinburgh lawyer and Glenfernie found themselves together. The former lagged a step and held the younger man back with him; he dropped his voice

"I've not been three hours in the house. I've had no talk with Mr.

Touris. What's all this about? I know that you and his nephew are as close as brothers--not that brothers are always close!"

"He writes only that he is tired of martial life. He has the soldier in him, but he has much besides. That 'much besides' often steps in to change a man's profession."

"Well, I hope you'll persuade him to see the old gunpowder very damp!

I remember that, as a very young man, he talked imprudently. But he has been," said the lawyer, "far and wide since those days."

"Yes, far and wide."

Mr. Wotherspoon with a long forefinger turned a crimson rose seen in profile full toward him. "I met him--once--when I was in London a year ago. I had not seen him for years." He let the rose swing back. "He has a magnificence! Do you know I study a good deal? They say that so do you. I have an inclination toward fifteenth-century Italian. I should place him there." He spoke absently, still staring at the rose.

"A dash--not an ill dash, of course--of what you might call the Borgia ... good and evil tied into a sultry, thunderous splendor."

Glenfernie bent a keen look upon him out of gray eyes. "An enemy might describe him so, perhaps. I can see that such a one might do so."

"Ah, you're his friend!"

"Yes."

"Well," said Mr. Wotherspoon, straightening himself from the contemplation of the roses, "there's no greater thing than to have a steadfast friend!"

It seemed that an expedition had been planned, for a servant now appeared to say that coach and horses were at the door. Mr. Touris explained:

"I've engaged to show Mr. and Mrs. Goodworth our considerable town.

Mr. Wotherspoon, too, has a moment's business there. Alison will not come, but Munro Touris rides along. Will you come, too, Glenfernie?

We'll have a bit of dinner at the 'Glorious Occasion.'"

"No, thank you. I have to get home presently. But I'll stay a little and talk to Mrs. Alison, if I may."

"Ah, you may!" said Mrs. Alison.

From the porch they watched the coach and four away, with Munro Touris following on a strong and ugly bay mare. The elm boughs of the avenue hid the whole. The cloud continents and islands were dissolving into the air ocean, the sun lay in strong beams, the water drops were drying from leaf and blade. Mrs. Alison and Alexander moved through the great hall and down a corridor to a little parlor that was hers alone. They entered it. It gave, through an open door and two windows set wide, upon a small, choice garden and one wide-spreading, n.o.ble, ancient tree. Glenfernie entered as one who knew the place, but upon whom, at every coming, it struck with freshness and liking. The room itself was most simple.

"I like," said Alexander, "our spare, clean, precise Scotch parlors.

But this is to me like a fine, small prioress's room in a convent of learned saints!"

His old friend laughed. "Very little learned, very little saintly, not at all prior! Let us sit in the doorway, smell the lavender, and hear the linnets in the tree."

She took the chair he pushed forward. He sat upon the door-step at her feet.

"Concerning Ian," she said. "What do you make out of it all?"

"I make out that I hope he'll not involve himself in some French and Tory mad attempt!"

"What do his letters say?"

"They speak by indirection. Moreover, they're at present few and short.... We shall see when he comes!"

"Do you think that he will tell you all?"

Alexander's gray eyes glanced at her as earlier they had glanced at Mr. Wotherspoon. "I do not think that we keep much from each other!...

No, of course you are right! If there is anything that in honor he cannot tell, or that I--with my pledges, such as they are, in another urn--may not hear, we shall find silences. I pin my trust to there being nothing, after all!"

"The old wreath withered, and a new one better woven and more evergreen--"

"I do not know.... I said just now that Ian and I kept little from each other. In an exceeding great measure that is true. But there are huge lands in every nature where even the oldest, closest, sworn friend does not walk. It must be so. Friendship is not falsified nor betrayed by its being so."

"Not at all!" said Mrs. Alison. "True friend or lover loves that sense of the unplumbed, of the infinite, in the cared-for one. To do else would be to deny the unplumbed, the infinite, in himself, and so the matching, the equaling, the _oneing_ of love!" She leaned forward in her chair; she regarded the small, fragrant garden where every sweet and olden flower seemed to bloom. "Now let us leave Ian, and old, stanch, trusted, and trusting friendship. It is part of oneness--it will be cared for!" She turned her bright, calm gaze upon him. "What other realm have you come into, Alexander? It was plain the last time that you were here, but I did not speak of it--it is plain to-day!"

She laughed. She had a silver, sweet, and merry laugh. "My dear, there is a bloom and joy, a _vivification_ about you that may be felt ten feet away!" She looked at him with affection and now seriously. "I know, I think, the look of one who comes into spiritual treasures.

This is that and not that. It is the wilderness of lovely flowers--hardly quite the music of the spheres! It is not the mountain height, but the waving, leafy, lower slopes--and yet we pa.s.s on to the height by those slopes! Are you in love, Alexander?"

"You guess so much!" he said. "You have guessed that, too. I do not care! I am glad that the sun shines through me."

"You must be happy in your love! Who is she?"

"Elspeth Barrow, the granddaughter of Jarvis Barrow of White Farm....

You say that I must be happy in my love. The Lord of Heaven knows that I am! and yet she is not yet sure that she loves me in her turn. One might say that I had great uncertainty of bliss. But I love so strongly that I have no strength of disbelief in me!"

"Elspeth Barrow!"

"My old friend--the unworldliest, the better-worldliest soul I know--do not you join in that hue and cry about world's gear and position! To be Barrow is as good as to be Jardine. Elspeth is Elspeth."