Foes Part 19

As they pa.s.sed the ash-tree there was lightning, but yet the heavens showed great lakes of blue, and a broken sunlight lay upon the path.

"There's time enough! We need not go too fast. The path is rough for that."

They walked in silence, now side by side, now, where the way was narrow, one before the other. The blue clouded over, there sprang a wind. The trees bent and shook, the deep glen grew gray and dark.

That wind died and there was a breathless stillness, heated and heavy.

Each heard the other's breathing as they walked.

"Let us go more quickly! We have a long way."

"Will you go back to Mother Binning's?"

"That, too, is far."

They had pa.s.sed the cave a little way and were in mid-glen. It was dusk in this narrow pa.s.s. The trees hung, shadows in a brooding twilight; between the close-set pillars of the hills the sky showed slate-hued, with pallid feathers of cloud driven across. Lightning tore it, the thunder was loud, the trees upon the hilltops began to move. Some raindrops fell, large, slow, and warm. The lightning ran again, blindingly bright; the ensuing thunderclap seemed to shake the rock. As it died, the cataract sound of the wind was heard among the ranked trees. The drops came faster, came fast.

"It's no use!" cried Ian. "You'll be drenched and blinded! There's danger, too, in these tall trees. Come back to the cave and take shelter!"

He turned. She followed him, breathless, liking the storm--so that no bolt struck him. In every nerve, in every vein, she felt life rouse itself. It was like day to old night, summer to one born in winter, a pa.s.sion of revival where she had not known that there was anything to revive. The past was as it were not, the future was as it were not; all things poured into a tremendous present. It was proper that there should be storm without, if within was to be this enormous, aching, happy tumult that was pain indeed, but pain that one would not spare!

Ian parted the swinging briers. They entered the cavern. If it was dim outside in the glen, it was dimmer here. Then the lightning flashed and all was lit. It vanished, the light from the air in conflict with itself. All was dark--then the flash again! The rain now fell in a torrent.

"At least it is dry here! There is wood, but I have no way to make fire."

"I am not cold."

"Sit here, upon this ledge. Alexander and I cleared it and widened it."

She sat down. When he spoke of Alexander she thought of Alexander, without unkindness, without comparing, without compunction, a thought colorless and simple, as of one whom she had known and liked a long time ago. Indeed, it might be said that she had little here with which to reproach herself. She had been honest--had not said "Take!" where she could not fulfil.... And now the laird of Glenfernie was like a form met long ago--long ago! It seemed so long and far away that she could not even think of him as suffering. As she might leave a fugitive memory, so she turned her mind from him.

Ian thought of Alexander ... but he looked, by the lightning's lamp, at the woman opposite.

She was not the first that he had desired, but he desired now with unwonted strength. He did not know why--he did not a.n.a.lyze himself nor the situation--but all the others seemed gathered up in her. She was fair to him, desirable!... He thirsted, quite with the mortal honesty of an Arab, day and night and day again without drink in the desert, and the oasis palms seen at last on the horizon. In his self-direction thitherward he was as candid, one-pointed, and ruthless as the Arab might be. He had no deliberate thought of harm to the woman before him--as little as the Arab would have of hurting the well whose cool wave seemed to like the lip touch. Perhaps he as little stopped to reason as would have done the Arab. Perhaps he had no thought of deeply injuring a friend. If there were two desert-traversers, or more than two, making for the well, friendship would not hold one back, push another forward. Race!--and if the well was but to one, then let fate and Allah approve the swiftest! Under such circ.u.mstances would not Alexander outdo him if he might? He was willing to believe so.

Glenfernie said himself that the girl did not know if she cared for him. If, then, the well was not for him, anyway?... _Where was the wrong?_ Now Ian believed in his own power and easy might and pleasantness and, on the whole, goodness--believed, too, in the love of Alexander for him, love that he had tried before, and it held. _And if he made love to Elspeth Barrow need old Steadfast ever know it?_ And, finally, and perhaps, unacknowledged to himself, from the first, he turned to that cabinet of his heart where was the vial made of pride, that held the drop of malice. The storm continued. They looked through the portcullis made by the briers upon a world of rain. The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled; in here was the castle hold, dim and safe. They were as alone as in a fairy-tale, as alone as though around the cave beat an ocean that boat had never crossed.

They sat near each other; once or twice Ian, rising, moved to and fro in the cave, or at the opening looked into the turmoil without. When he did this her eyes followed him. Each, in every fiber, had consciousness of the other. They were as conscious of each other as lion and lioness in a desert cave.

They talked, but they did not talk much. What they said was trite enough. Underneath was the potent language, wave meeting wave with shock and thrill and exultation. These would not come, here and now, to outer utterance. But sooner or later they would come. Each knew that--though not always does one acknowledge what is known.

When they spoke it was chiefly of weather and of country people....

The lightning blazed less frequently, thunder subdued itself. For a time the rain fell thick and leaden, but after an hour it thinned and grew silver. Presently it wholly stopped.

"This storm is over," said Ian.

Elspeth rose from the ledge of stone. He drew aside the dripping curtain of leaf and stem, and she stepped forth from the cave, and he followed. The clouds were breaking, the birds were singing. The day of creation could not have seen the glen more lucent and fragrant. When, soon, they came to its lower reaches, with White Farm before them, they saw overhead a rainbow.

The day of the storm and the cave was over, but with no outward word their inner selves had covenanted to meet again. They met in the leafy glen. It was easy for her to find an errand to Mother Binning's, or, even, in the long summer afternoons, to wander forth from White Farm unquestioned. As for him, he came over the moor, avoided the cot at the glen head, and plunged down the steep hillside below. Once they met Jock Binning in the glen. After that they chose for their trysting-place that green hidden arm that once she and the laird of Glenfernie had entered.

Elspeth did not think in those days; she loved. She moved as one who is moved; she was drawn as by the cords of the sun. The Ancient One, the Sphinx, had her fast. The reflection of a greater thing claimed her and taught her, held her like a bayadere in a temple court.

As for Ian, he also held that he loved. He was the Arab bound for the well for which he thirsted, single-minded as to that, and without much present consciousness of tarnish or sin.... But what might arise in his mind when his thirst was quenched? Ian did not care, in these blissful days, to think of that.

He had come on the day of the storm, the cave, and the rainbow to a fatal place in his very long life. He was upon very still, deep water, gla.s.slike, with only vague threads and tremors to show what might issue in resistless currents. He had been in such a place, in his planetary life, over and over and over again. This concatenation had formed it, or that concatenation; the surrounding phenomena varied, but essentially it was always the same, like a dream place. The question was, would he turn his boat, or raft, or whatever was beneath him, or his own stroke as swimmer, and escape from this gla.s.sy place whose currents were yet but tendrils? He could do it; it was the Valley of Decision.... But so often, in all those lives whose bitter and sweet were distilled into this one, he had not done it. It had grown much easier not to do it. Sometimes it had been illusory love, sometimes ambition, sometimes towering pride and self-seeking, sometimes mere indolent unreadiness, dreamy self-will. On he had gone out of the lower end of the Valley of Decision, where the tendrils became arms of giants and decisions might no longer be made.

CHAPTER XV

The laird of Glenfernie stayed longer from home than, riding away, he had expected to do. It was the latter half of August when he and Black Alan, Tam d.i.c.kson and Whitefoot, came up the winding road to Glenfernie door. Phemie it was, at the clothes-lines, who noted them on the lowest spiral, who turned and ran and informed the household.

"The laird's coming! The laird's coming!" Men and women and dogs began to stir.

Strickland, looking from the window of his own high room, saw the riders in and out of the bronzing woods. Descending, he joined Mrs.

Grizel upon the wide stone step without the hall door. Davie was in waiting, and a stable-boy or two came at a run.

"Two months!" said Mrs. Grizel. "But it used to be six months, a year, two years, and more! He grows a home body, as lairds ought to be!"

Alexander dismounted at the door, took her in his arms and kissed her twice, shook hands with Strickland, greeted Davie and the men. "How good it is to get home! I've pined like a lost bairn. And none of you look older--Aunt Grizel hasn't a single white hair!"

"Go along with you, laddie!" said Aunt Grizel. "You haven't been so long away!"

The sun was half-way down the western quarter. He changed his riding-clothes, and they set food for him in the hall. He ate, and Davie drew the cloth and brought wine and gla.s.ses. Some matter or other called Mrs. Grizel away, but Strickland stayed and drank wine with him.

Questions and answers had been exchanged. Glenfernie gave in detail reasons for his lengthened stay. There had been a business postponement and complication--in London Jamie's affairs; again, in Edinburgh, insistence of kindred with whom Alice was blooming, "growing a fine lady, too!" and at the last a sudden and for a while dangerous sickness of Tam d.i.c.kson's that had kept them a week at an inn a dozen miles this side of Edinburgh.

"Each time I started up sprang a stout hedge! But they're all down now and here I am!" He raised his wine-gla.s.s. "To home, and the sweetness thereof!" said Alexander.

"I am glad to see you back," said Strickland, and meant it.

The late sunlight streamed through the open door. Bran, the old hound, basked in it; it wiped the rust from the ancient weapons on the wall and wrote hieroglyphics in among them; it made glow the wine in the gla.s.s. Alexander turned in his chair.

"It's near sunset.... Now what, just, did you hear about Ian Rullock's going?"

"We supposed that he would be here through the autumn--certainly until after your return. Then, three days ago, comes Peter Lindsay with the note for you, and word that he was gone. Lindsay thought that he had received letters from great people and had gone to them for a visit."

Alexander spread the missive that had been given him upon the table.

"It's short!" He held it so that Strickland might read:

GLENFERNIE,--Perhaps the leaf is not yet wholly sere.

Be that as it may be, I'm leaving Black Hill for a time.

IAN RULLOCK.

"That's a puzzling billet!" said Alexander. "'_Glenfernie_--_Ian Rullock!_'"