Foes Part 17

"Oh, I know why I made exclamation! Just the old, dull earthy surprise! Wait for me a moment, Alexander." She put her hands before her eyes, then, dropping them, sat with her gaze upon the great tree shot through with light from the clearing sky. "I see her now. At first I could not disentangle her and Gilian, for they were always together. I have not seen them often--just three or four times to remember, perhaps. But in April I chanced for some reason to go to White Farm.... I see her now! Yes, she has beauty, though it would not strike many with the edge of the sword.... Yes, I see--about the mouth and the eyes and the set of the head. It's subtle--it's like some pictures I remember in Italy. And intelligence is there. Enchantment ... the more real, perhaps, for not being the most obvious.... So you are enchained, witched, held by the great sorceress!... Elspeth is only one of her little names--her great name is just love--love between man and woman.... Oh yes, the whole of the sweetness is distilled into one honey-drop--the whole giant thing is shortened into one image--the whole heaven and earth slip silkenly into one banner, and you would die for it! You see, my dear," said Mrs. Alison, who had never married, "I loved one who died. I know."

Glenfernie took her hand and kissed it. "Nothing is loss to you--nothing! For me, I am more darkly made. So I hope to G.o.d I'll not lose Elspeth!"

Her tears, that were hardly of grief, dropped upon his bent head. "Eh, my laddie! the old love is there in the midst of the wide love. But the larger controls.... Well, enough of that! And do you mean that you have asked Elspeth to marry you--and that she does not know her own heart?"

They talked, sitting before the fragrant garden, in the little room that was tranquil, blissful, and recluse. At last he rose.

"I must go."

They went out through the garden to the wicket that parted her demesne from the formal, wide pleasure-sweeps. He stopped for a moment under the great tree.

"In a fortnight or so I must go to Edinburgh to see Renwick about that land. And it is in my mind to travel from there to London for a few weeks. There are two or three persons whom I know who could put a stout shoulder to the wheel of Jamie's prospects. Word of mouth is better with them than would be letters. Jamie is at Windsor. I could take him with me here or there--give him, doubtless, a little help."

"You are a world-man," said his friend, "which is quite different from a worldly man! Come or go as you will, still all is your garden that you cultivate.... Now you are thinking again of Elspeth!"

"Perhaps if for a month or two I plague her not, then when I come again she may have a greater knowledge of herself. Perhaps it is more generous to be absent for a time--"

"I see that you will not doubt--that you cannot doubt--that in the end she loves you!"

"Is it arrogance, self-love, and ignorance if I think that? Or is it knowledge? I think it, and I cannot and will not else!"

They came to the wicket, and stood there a moment ere going on by the terrace to the front of the house. The day was now clear and vivid, soft and bright. The birds sang in a long ecstasy, the flowers bloomed as though all life must be put into June, the droning bees went about with the steadiest preoccupation. Alexander looked about him.

"The earth is drunk with sweetness, and I see now how great joy is sib to great pain!" He shook himself. "Come back to earth and daylight, Alexander Jardine!" He put a hand, large, strong, and shapely, over Mrs. Alison's slender ivory one. "She, too, has long fingers, though her hand is brown. But it is an artist hand--a picture hand--a thoughtful hand."

Mrs. Alison laughed, but her eyes were tender over him. "Oh, man! what a great forest--what an ever-rising song--is this same thing you're feeling! And so old--and so fire-new!" They walked along the terrace to the porch. "They're bringing you Black Alan to ride away upon. But you'll come again as soon as Ian's here?"

"Yes, of course. You may be a.s.sured that if he is free of that Stewart coil--or if he is in it only so deep that he may yet free himself--I shall say all that I can to keep him free or to urge him forth. Not for much would I see Ian take ship in that attempt!"

"No!... I have been reading the Book of Daniel. Do you know what Ian is like to me? He is like some great lord--a prince or governor--in the court maybe of Belshazzar, or Darius the Mede, or Cyrus the Persian--in that hot and stately land of golden images and old rivers and the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer and all kinds of music. He must serve his tyrant--and yet Daniel, kneeling in his house, in his chamber, with the windows open toward Jerusalem, might hear a cry to hold his name in his prayers....

What strange thoughts we have of ourselves, and of those nearest and dearest!"

"Mr. Wotherspoon says that he is fifteenth-century Italian. You have both done a proper bit of characterization! But I," said Alexander, "I know another great territory of Ian."

"I know that, Glenfernie! And so do I know other good realms of Ian.

Yet that was what I thought when I read Daniel. And I had the thought, too, that those old people were capable of great friendships."

Black Alan was waiting. Glenfernie mounted, said good-by again; the green boughs of the elm-trees took him and his steed.

CHAPTER XIII

Ian forestalled Alexander, riding to Glenfernie House the morning after his arrival at Black Hill. "Let us go," he said, "where we can talk at ease! The old, alchemical room?"

They crossed the gra.s.s-grown court to the keep, entered and went up the broken stair to the stone-walled chamber that took up the second floor, that looked out of loophole windows north, south, east, and west. The day was high summer, bright and hot. Strong light and less strong light came in beams from the four quarters and made in the large place a conflict of light and shadow. The fireplace was great enough for Gog and Magog to have warmed themselves thereby. Around, in an orderly litter, yet stood on table or bench or shelf many of the matters that Alexander had gathered there in his boyhood. In one corner was the furnace that when he was sixteen his father had let him build. More recent was the oaken table in the middle of the room, two deep chairs, and shelves with many books. After the warmth of the sun the place presented a grave, cool, brown harbor.

The two, entering, had each an arm over the other's shoulder. Where they were known their friendship was famed. Youth and manhood, they had been together when it was possible. When it was not so the thought of each outtraveled separation. Their differences, their varied colors of being, seemed but to bind them closer. They entered this room like David and Jonathan.

Ian also was tall, but not so largely made as was the other. Lithe, embrowned, with gold-bronze hair and eyes, knit of a piece, moving as by one undulation, there was something in him not like the Scot, something foreign, exotic. Sometimes Alexander called him "Saracen"--a finding of the imagination that dated from old days upon the moor above the Kelpie's Pool when they read together the _Faery Queen_. The other day, at Black Hill, this ancient fancy had played through Alexander's mind while Mr. Wotherspoon talked of Italy, and Mrs.

Alison of Babylonish lords.... The point was that he relished Paynim knight and Renaissance n.o.ble and prince of Babylon. Let Ian seem or be all that, and richer yet! Still there would be Ian, outside of all circles drawn.

In the room that he called the "alchemical," Ian, disengaging himself, turned and put both hands on Alexander's shoulders. "Thou Old Steadfast!" he cried. "G.o.d knows how glad I am to see thee!"

Alexander laughed. "Not more glad than I am at the sight of you!

What's the tidings?"

"What should they be? I am tired of being King George's soldier!"

"So that you are tired of being any little king of this earth's soldier!"

"Why, I think I am--"

"Kings 'over the water' included, Ian?"

"Kings without kingdoms? Well," said Ian, "they don't amount to much, do they?"

"They do not." The two moved together to the table and the chairs by it. "You are free of them, Ian?"

"What is it to be free of them?"

"Well, to be plain, out of the Stewart cark and moil! Pretender, Chevalier de St. George, or uncrowned king--let it drift away like the dead leaf it is!"

"A dead leaf. Is it a dead leaf?... I wonder!... But you are usually right, old Steadfast!"

"I see that you will not tell me plainly."

"Are you so anxious? There is nothing to be anxious about."

"Nothing.... What is 'nothing'?"

Ian drummed upon the table and whistled "Lillibullero."

"Something--nothing. Nothing--something! Old Steadfast, you are a sight for sair een! They say you make the best of lairds! Every cotter sings of just ways!"

"My father was a good laird. I would not shatter the tradition. Come with me to Edinburgh and London, on that journey I wrote you of!"

"No. I want to sink into the summer green and not raise my head from some old poetry book! I have been marching and countermarching until I am tired. As for what you have in your mind, don't fash yourself about it! I will say that, at the moment, I think it _is_ a dead leaf.... Of course, should the Pope's staff unexpectedly begin to bud and flower--! But it mayn't--indeed, it only looks at present smooth and polished and dead.... I left the army because, naturally, I didn't want to be there in case--just in case--the staff budded. Heigho! It is the truth. You need not look troubled," said Ian.

His friend must rest with that. He did so, and put that matter aside.

At any rate, things stood there better than he had feared. "I shall be gone a month or two. But you'll still be here when I come home?"

"As far as I know I'll be here through the summer. I have no plans....

If the leaf remains dry and dead, what should you say to taking ship at Leith in September for Holland? Amsterdam--then Antwerp--then the Rhine. We might see the great Frederick--push farther and look at the Queen of Hungary."

"No, I may not. I look to be a home-staying laird."

They sat with the table between them, and the light from the four sides of the room rippled and crossed over them. Books were on the table, folios and volumes in less.