The House of Glenfernie and the House of Touris became friends. A
round of country festivities, capped by a great party at Black Hill,
wrought bonds of acquaintanceship for and with the Scots family
returned after long abode in England. Archibald Touris spent money
with a cautious freedom. He set a table and poured a wine better by
half than might be found elsewhere. He kept good horses and good dogs.
Laborers who worked for him praised him; he proved a not ungenerous
landlord. Where he recognized obligations he met them punctually. He
had large merchant virtues, no less than the accompanying limitations.
He returned to the Church of Scotland.
The laird of Glenfernie and the laird of Black Hill found
constitutional impediments to their being more friendly than need be.
Each was polite to the other to a certain point, then the one glowered
and the other scoffed. It ended in a painstaking keeping of distance
between them, a task which, when they were in company, fell often to
Mrs. Jardine. She did it with tact, with a twist of her large,
humorous mouth toward Strickland if he were by. Admirable as she was,
it was curious to see the difference between her method, if method
there were, and that of Mrs. Alison. The latter showed no effort, but
where she was there fell harmony. William Jardine liked her, liked to
be in the room with her. His great frame and her slight one, his
rough, massive, somewhat unshaped personality and her exquisite
clearness contrasted finely enough. Her brother, who understood her
very little, yet had for her an odd, appealing affection, strange in
one who had so positively settled what was life and the needs of life.
It was his habit to speak of her as though she were more helplessly
dependent even than other women. But at times there might be seen who
was more truly the dependent.
August passed into September, September into brown October. Alexander
and Ian were almost continually in company. The attraction between
them was so great that it appeared as though it must stretch backward
into some unknown seam of time. If they had differences, these
apparently only served in themselves to keep them revolving the one
about the other. They might almost quarrel, but never enough to drag
their two orbs apart, breaking and rending from the common center. The
sun might go down upon a kind of wrath, but it rose on hearts with the
difference forgotten. Their very unlikenesses pricked each on to seek
himself in the other.
They were going to Edinburgh after Christmas, to be students there, to
grow to be men. Here at home, upon the eve of their going, rein upon
them was slackened. They would so soon be independent of home
discipline that that independence was to a degree already allowed.
Black Hill did not often question Ian's comings and goings, nor
Glenfernie Alexander's. The school-room saw the latter some part of
each morning. For the rest of the day he might be almost anywhere with
Ian, at Glenfernie, or at Black Hill, or on the road between, or in
the country roundabout.
William Jardine, chancing to be one day at Black Hill, watched from
Mrs. Alison's parlor the two going down the avenue, the dogs at their
heels. "It's a fair David and Jonathan business!"
"David needed Jonathan, and Jonathan David."
"Had Jonathan lived, ma'am, and the two come to conflict about the
kingdom, what then, and where would have flown the friendship?"
"It would have flown on high, I suppose, and waited for them until
they had grown wings to mount to it."
"Oh," said the laird, "you're one I can follow only a little way!"
Ian and Alexander felt only that the earth about them was bright and
warm.
On a brown-and-gold day the two found themselves in the village of
Glenfernie. Ian had spent the night with Alexander--for some reason
there was school holiday--the two were now abroad early in the day.
The village sent its one street, its few poor lanes, up a bare
hillside to the church atop. Poor and rude enough, it had yet to-day
its cheerful air. High voices called, flaxen-haired children pottered
about, a mill-wheel creaked at the foot of the hill, iron clanged in
the smithy a little higher, the drovers' rough laughter burst from the
tavern midway, and at the height the kirk was seeing a wedding. The
air had a tang of cooled wine, the sky was blue.
Ian and Alexander, coming over the hill, reached the kirk in time to
see emerge the married pair with their kin and friends. The two stood
with a rabble of children and boys beneath the yew-trees by the gate.
The yellow-haired bride in her finery, the yellow-haired groom in his,
the dressed and festive following, stepped from the kirkyard to some
waiting carts and horses. The most mounted and took place, the
procession put itself into motion with clatter and laughter. The
children and boys ran after to where the road dipped over the hill. A
cluster of village folk turned the long, descending street. In passing
they spoke to Alexander and Ian.
"Who was married?--Jock Wilson and Janet Macraw, o' Langmuir."
The two lounged against the kirkyard wall, beneath the yews.
"_Marry!_ That's a strange, terrible, useless word to me!"
"I don't know...."
"Yes, it is!... Ian, do you ever think that you've lived before?"
"I don't know. I'm living now!"
"Well, I think that we all lived before. I think that the same things
happen again--"
"Well, let them--some of them!" said Ian. "Come along, if we're going
through the glen."
They left the kirkyard for the village street. Here they sauntered,
friends with the whole. They looked in at the tavern upon the drovers,
they watched the blacksmith and his helper. The red iron rang, the
sparks flew. At the foot of the hill flowed the stream and stood the
mill. The wheel turned, the water diamonds dropped in sheets. Their
busy, idle day took them on; they were now in bare, heathy country
with the breathing, winey air. Presently White Farm could be seen
among aspens, and beyond it the wooded mouth of the glen. Some one,
whistling, turned an elbow of the hill and caught up with the two. It
proved to be one several years their senior, a young man in the
holiday dress of a prosperous farmer. He whistled clearly an old
border air and walked without dragging or clumsiness. Coming up, he
ceased his whistling.
"Good day, the both of ye!"
"It's Robin Greenlaw," said Alexander, "from Littlefarm.--You've been
to the wedding, Robin?"
"Aye. Janet's some kind of a cousin. It's a braw day for a wedding!
You've got with you the new laird's nephew?--And how are you liking
Black Hill?"
"I like it."
"I suppose you miss grandeurs abune what ye've got there. I have a
liking myself," said Greenlaw, "for grandeurs, though we've none at
all at Littlefarm! That is to say, none that's just obvious. Are you
going to White Farm?"
Alexander answered: "I've a message from my father for Mr. Barrow. But
after that we're going through the glen. Will you come along?"
"I would," said Greenlaw, seriously, "if I had not on my best. But I
know how you, Alexander Jardine, take the devil's counsel about
setting foot in places bad for good clothes! So I'll give myself the
pleasure some other time. And so good day!" He turned into a path that
took him presently out of sight and sound.
"He's a fine one!" said Alexander. "I like him."
"Who is he?"
"White Farm's great-nephew. Littlefarm was parted from White Farm.
It's over yonder where you see the water shining."
"He's free-mannered enough!"
"That's you and England! He's got as good a pedigree as any, and a
notion of what's a man, besides. He's been to Glasgow to school, too.
I like folk like that."
"I like them as well as you!" said Ian. "That is, with reservations of
them I cannot like. I'm Scots, too."
Alexander laughed. They came down to the water and the stepping-stones
before White Farm. The house faced them, long and low, white among
trees from which the leaves were falling. Alexander and Ian crossed
upon the stones, and beyond the fringing hazels the dogs came to meet
them.
Jarvis Barrow had all the appearance of a figure from that Old
Testament in which he was learned. He might have been a prophet's
right-hand man, he might have been the prophet himself. He stood, at
sixty-five, lean and strong, gray-haired, but with decrepitude far
away. Elder of the kirk, sternly religious, able at his own affairs,
he read his Bible and prospered in his earthly living. Now he listened
to the laird's message, nodding his head, but saying little. His staff
was in his hand; he was on his way to kirk session; tell the laird
that the account was correct. He stood without his door as though he
waited for the youths to give good day and depart. Alexander had made
a movement in this direction when from beyond Jarvis Barrow came a
woman's voice. It belonged to Jenny Barrow, the farmer's unmarried
daughter, who kept house for him.
"Father, do you gae on, and let the young gentlemen bide a wee and
rest their banes and tell a puir woman wha never gaes onywhere the
news!"
"Then do ye sit awhile, laddies, with the womenfolk," said Jarvis
Barrow. "But give me pardon if I go, for I canna keep the kirk
waiting."
He was gone, staff and gray plaid and a collie with him. Jenny, his
daughter, appeared in the door.
"Come in, Mr. Alexander, and you, too, sir, and have a crack with us!
We're in the dairy-room, Elspeth and Gilian and me."
She was a woman of forty, raw-boned but not unhandsome, good-natured,
capable, too, but with more heart than head. It was a saying with her
that she had brains enough for kirk on the Sabbath and a warm house
the week round. Everybody knew Jenny Barrow and liked well enough
bread of her baking.
The room to which she led Ian and Alexander had its floor level with
the turf without the open door. The sun flooded it. There came from
within the sound, up and down, of a churn, and a voice singing:
"O laddie, will ye gie to me
A ribbon for my fairing?"