Foes Part 41

Strickland, and see Margaret--"

Much later, from his own room, Strickland, gazing forth, saw light in the keep. Alexander would be sitting there among the books and every ancient memorial. Strickland felt a touch of doubt and apprehension.

Suppose that to-morrow should find not this Alexander, at once old and new, but only the Alexander who had ridden from Glenfernie, who had shipped to Lisbon, nearly three years ago? To-day's deep satisfaction only a dream! Strickland shook off the fear.

"He breathed lasting growth.... O Christ! the help for all in winged men!"

He turned to his bed. Lying awake he went in imagination to the desert, to the Eastern places, that in few words the laird had painted.

And in the morning he found still the old-new Alexander. He saw that the new had always been in the old, the oak in the acorn.... There was a great, sane naturalness in the alteration, in the advance.

Strickland caught glimpses of larger orders.

"_I will make thee ruler over many things._"

The day was deep and bright. The laird fell at once into the old routine. For none at Glenfernie was there restlessness; there was only ache gone, and a feeling of fulfilling. Mrs. Grizel pattered to and fro. Alice sang like a lark, gathering pansy seed from her garden.

Phemie and Eppie sang. The men whistled at their work. Davie discoursed to himself. But Tibbie Ross was wild to get away early and to the village with the news. By the foot of the hill she began to meet wayfarers.

"Oh, aye, this is the real weather! Did ye know--"

Alexander did not leave home that day. In their old work-room he listened to Strickland's account of his stewardship.

"Strickland, I love you!" he said, when it was all given.

He wrote to Jamie; he sat in the garden seat built against the garden wall and watched Alice as she moved from plant to plant.

"You do not say much," thought Alice, "but I like you--I like you--I like you!"

In the afternoon Strickland met him coming from the little green beyond the school-room.

"I have been out through the wall, under the old pine. I seemed to hold many things in the palm of the hand.... I believe that you know what it is to make essences."

After bedtime Strickland saw again the light in the keep. But he had ceased to fear. "Oh All-Being, how rich and stately and various and surprising you are!" In the morning, outside in the court, he found Black Alan saddled.

"The laird will be riding to Black Hill," said Tam d.i.c.kson.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

Mr. Archibald Touris put out a wrinkled hand to his wine-gla.s.s. "You have been in warm countries. I envy you! I wish that I could get warm."

"Black Hill is looking finely. All the young trees--"

"Yes. I took pride in planting.--But what for--what for--what for?" He shivered. "Glenfernie, please close that window!"

Alexander, coming back, stood above the master of Black Hill. "Will you tell me, sir, where Ian is now?"

Mr. Touris twitched back a little in his chair. "Don't you know? I thought perhaps that you did."

"I ceased to follow him two years ago. I dived into the East, and I have been long where you do not hear from the West."

The other fingered his wine-gla.s.s. "Well, I haven't heard myself, for quite a while.... You would think that he might come back to England now. But he can't. Doubtless he would never wish to come again to Black Hill. But England, now.... But they are ferocious yet against every head great and small of the attempt. And I am told there are aggravating circ.u.mstances. He had worn the King's coat. He was among the plotters and instigators. He broke prison. Impossible to show mercy!" Mr. Touris twitched again. "That's a phrase like a gravestone!

If the Almighty uses it, then of course he can't be Almighty.... Well, the moral is that none named Ian Rullock can come again to Scotland or England."

"Have you knowledge that he wishes to do so?"

Mr. Touris moved again. "I don't know.... I told you that we hadn't heard. But--"

He stopped and sat staring into his wine-gla.s.s. Alexander read on as by starlight: "_But I did hear--through old channels. And there is danger of his trying to return._"

The master of Black Hill put the wine to his lips. "And so you have been everywhere?"

"No. But in places where I had not been before."

"The East India has ways of gathering information. Through Goodworth I can get at a good deal when I want to.... There is Wotherspoon, also.

I am practically certain that Ian is in France."

"When did he write?"

"Alison has a letter maybe twice a year. One's overdue now."

"How does he write?"

"They are very short. He doesn't touch on old things--except, perhaps, back into boyhood. She likes to get them. When you see her, don't speak of anything save his staying in France, as he ought to." He dragged toward him a jar of snuff. "There are informers and seekers out everywhere. Do you remember a man in Edinburgh named Gleig?"

"Yes."

"Well, he's one of them. And for some reason he has a personal enmity toward Ian. So, you see--"

He lapsed into silence, a small, aging, chilly, wrinkled, troubled man. Then with suddenness a wintry red crept into his cheek, a brightness into his eyes. "You've changed so, Glenfernie, you've cheated me! You are his foe yourself. Perhaps even--"

"Perhaps even--?"

The other gave a shriveled response to the smile. "No. I certainly did not mean that." He took his head in his hands and sighed. "What a world it is! As I go down the hill I wish sometimes that I had Alison's eyes.... Well, tell me about yourself."

"The one thing that I want to tell you just now, Black Hill, is that I am not any longer bloodhound at the heels of Ian. What was done is done. Let us go on to better things. So at last will be unknit what was done."

Black Hill both seemed and did not seem to pay attention. The man who sat before him was big and straight and gave forth warmth and light.

He needed warmth and light; he needed a big tree to lean against. He vaguely hoped that Glenfernie was home to stay. He rubbed his hands and drank more wine.

"No one has known for a long time where you were.... Goodworth has an agent in Paris who says that Ian tried once to find out that."

"To find out where I was?"

"Yes."

Alexander gazed out of window, beyond the terrace and the old trees to the long hill, purple with heath, sunny and clear atop.