It grew that Ian was telling stories of cities--of London and of
Paris, for he had been there, and of Rome, for he had been there. He
had seen kings and queens, he had seen the Pope--
"Lord save us!" ejaculated Jenny Barrow.
He leaned against the dairy wall and the sun fell over him, and he
looked something finer and more golden than often came that way. Young
Gilian at the churn stood with parted lips, the long dasher still in
her hands. This was as good as stories of elves, pixies, fays, men of
peace and all! Elspeth let the milk-pans be and sat beside them on the
long bench, and, with hands folded in her lap, looked with brown eyes
many a league away. Neither Elspeth nor Gilian was without book
learning. Behind them and before them were long visits to scholar
kindred in a city in the north and fit schooling there. London and
Paris and Rome.... Foreign lands and the great world. And this was a
glittering young eagle that had sailed and seen!
Alexander gazed with delight upon Ian spreading triumphant wings. This
was his friend. There was nothing finer than continuously to come upon
praiseworthiness in your friend!
"And a beautiful lady came by who was the king's favorite--"
"Gude guide us! The limmer!"
"And she was walking on rose-colored velvet and her slippers had
diamonds worked in them. Snow was on the ground outside and poor folk
were freezing, but she carried over each arm a garland of roses as
though it were June--"
Jenny Barrow raised her hands. "She'll sit yet in the cauld blast, in
the sinner's shift!"
"And after a time there walked in the king, and the courtiers behind
him like the tail of a peacock--"
They had a happy hour in the White Farm dairy. At last Jenny and the
girls set for the two cold meat and bannocks and ale. And still at
table Ian was the shining one. The sun was at noon and so was his
mood.
"You're fey!" said Alexander, at last.
"Na, na!" spoke Jenny. "But, oh, he's the bonny lad!"
The dinner was eaten. It was time to be going.
"Shut your book of stories!" said Alexander. "We're for the Kelpie's
Pool, and that's not just a step from here!"
Elspeth raised her brown eyes. "Why will you go to the Kelpie's Pool?
That's a drear water!"
"I want to show it to him. He's never seen it."
"It's drear!" said Elspeth. "A drear, wanrestfu' place!"
But Ian and Alexander must go. The aunt and nieces accompanied them to
the door, stood and watched them forth, down the bank and into the
path that ran to the glen. Looking back, the youths saw them
there--Elspeth and Gilian and their aunt Jenny. Then the aspens came
between and hid them and the white house and all.
"They're bonny lasses!" said Ian.
"Aye. They're so."
"But, oh, man! you should see Miss Delafield of Tower Place in
Surrey!"
"Is she so bonny?"
"She's more than bonny. She's beautiful and high-born and an heiress.
When I'm a colonel of dragoons--"
"Are you going to be a colonel of dragoons?"
"Something like that. You talk of thinking that you were this and that
in the past. Well, I was a fighting-man!"
"We're all fighting-men. It's only what we fight and how."
"Well, say that I had been a chief, and they lifted me on their
shields and called me king, the very next day I should have made her
queen!"
"You think like a ballad. And, oh, man, you talk mickle of the
lasses!"
Ian looked at him with long, narrow, dark-gold eyes. "They're found in
ballads," he said.
Alexander just paused in his stride. "Humph! that's true!..."
They entered the glen. The stream began to brawl; on either hand the
hills closed in, towering high. Some of the trees were bare, but to
most yet clung the red-brown or the gold-brown dress. The pines showed
hard, green, and dead in the shadow; in the sunlight, fine,
green-gold, and alive. The fallen leaves, moved by foot or by breeze,
made a light, dry, talking sound. The white birch stems clustered and
leaned; patches of bright-green moss ran between the drifts of leaves.
The sides of the hills came close together, grew fearfully steep.
Crags appeared, and fern-crowded fissures and roots of trees like
knots of frozen serpents. The glen narrowed and deepened; the water
sang with a loud, rough voice.
Alexander loved this place. He had known it in childhood, often
straying this way with the laird, or with Sandy the shepherd, or Davie
from the house. When he was older he began to come alone. Soon he came
often alone, learned every stick and stone and contour, effect of
light and streak of gloom. As idle or as purposeful as the wind, he
knew the glen from top to bottom. He knew the voice of the stream and
the straining clutch of the roots over the broken crag. He had lain on
all the beds of leaf and moss, and talked with every creeping or
flying or running thing. Sometimes he read a book here, sometimes he
pictured the world, or built fantastic stages, and among fantastic
others acted himself a fantastic part. Sometimes with a blind turning
within he looked for himself. He had his own thoughts of God here, of
God and the Kirk and the devil. Often, too, he neither read, dreamed,
nor thought. He might lie an hour, still, passive, receptive. The
trees and the clouds, crag life, bird life, and flower life, life of
water, earth, and air, came inside. He was so used to his own silence
in the glen that when he walked through it with others he kept it
still. Slightly taciturn everywhere, he was actively so here. The path
narrowing, he and Ian must go in single file. Leading, Alexander
traveled in silence, and Ian, behind, not familiar with the place,
must mind his steps, and so fell silent, too. Here and there, now and
then, Alexander halted. These were recesses, or it might be projecting
platforms of rock, that he liked. Below, the stream made still pools,
or moved in eddies, or leaped with an innumerable hurrying noise from
level to level. Or again there held a reach of quiet water, and the
glen-sides were soft with weeping birch, and there showed a wider arch
of still blue sky. Alexander stood and looked. Ian, behind him, was
glad of the pause. The place dizzied him who for years had been away
from hill and mountain, pass and torrent. Yet he would by no means
tell Alexander so. He would keep up with him.
There was a mile of this glen, and now the going was worse and now it
was better. Three-fourths of the way through they came to an opening
in the rock, over which, from a shelf above, fell a curtain of brier.
"See!" said Alexander, and, parting the stems, showed a veritable
cavern. "Come in--sit down! The Kelpie's Pool is out of the glen, but
they say that there's a bogle wons here, too."
They sat down upon the rocky floor strewn with dead leaves. Through
the dropped curtain they saw the world brokenly; the light in the cave
was sunken and dim, the air cold. Ian drew his shoulders together.
"Here's a grand place for robbers, wraiths, or dragons!"
"Robbers, wraiths, or dragons, or just quiet dead leaves and
ourselves. Look here--!" He showed a heap of short fagots in a corner.
"I put these here the last time I came." Dragging them into the middle
of the rock chamber, he swept up with them the dead leaves, then took
from a great pouch that he carried on his rambles a box with flint and
steel. He struck a spark upon dry moss and in a moment had a fire. "Is
not that beautiful?"
The smoke mounted to the top of the cavern, curled there or passed out
into the glen through the briers that dropped like a portcullis. The
fagots crackled in the flame, the light danced, the warmth was
pleasant. So was the sense of adventure and of _solitude à deux_. They
stretched themselves beside the flame. Alexander produced from his
pouch four small red-cheeked apples. They ate and talked, with between
their words silences of deep content. They were two comrade hunters of
long ago, cavemen who had dispossessed bear or wolf, who might
presently with a sharpened bone and some red pigment draw bison and
deer in procession upon the cave wall.--They were skin-clad hillmen,
shag-haired, with strange, rude weapons, in hiding here after hard
fighting with a disciplined, conquering foe who had swords and shining
breastplates and crested helmets.--They were fellow-soldiers of that
conquering tide, Romans of a band that kept the Wall, proud, with talk
of camps and Cæsars.--They were knights of Arthur's table sent by
Merlin on some magic quest.--They were Crusaders, and this cavern an
Eastern, desert cave.--They were men who rose with Wallace, must hide
in caves from Edward Longshanks.--They were outlaws.--They were
wizards--good wizards who caused flowers to bloom in winter for the
unhappy, and made gold here for those who must be ransomed, and fed
themselves with secret bread. The fire roared--they were happy, Ian
and Alexander.
At last the fagots were burned out. The half-murk that at first was
mystery and enchantment began to put on somberness and melancholy.
They rose from the rocky floor and extinguished the brands with their
feet. But now they had this cavern in common and must arrange it for
their next coming. Going outside, they gathered dead and fallen wood,
broke it into right lengths, and, carrying it within, heaped it in the
corner. With a bough of pine they swept the floor, then, leaving the
treasure hold, dropped the curtain of brier in place. They were not so
old but that there was yet the young boy in them; he hugged himself
over this cave of Robin Hood and swart magician. But now they left it
and went on whistling through the glen:
Gie ye give ane, then I'll give twa,
For sae the store increases!
The sides of the glen fell back, grew lower. The leap of the water was
not so marked; there were long pools of quiet. Their path had been a
mounting one; they were now on higher earth, near the plateau or
watershed that marked the top of the glen. The bright sky arched
overhead, the sun shone strongly, the air moved in currents without
violence.
"You see where that smoke comes up between trees? That's Mother
Binning's cot."
"Who's she?"
"She's a wise auld wife. She's a scryer. That's her ash-tree."
Their path brought them by the hut and its bit of garden. Jock
Binning, that was Mother Binning's crippled son, sat fishing in the
stream. Mother Binning had been working in the garden, but when she
saw the figures on the path below she took her distaff and sat on the
bench in the sun. When they came by she raised her voice.
"Mr. Alexander, how are the laird and the leddy?"
"They're very well, Mother."
"Ye'll be gaeing sune to Edinburgh? Wha may be this laddie?"
"It is Ian Rullock, of Black Hill."
"Sae the baith o' ye are gaeing to Edinburgh? Will ye be friends
there?"
"That we will!"
"Hech, sirs!" Mother Binning drew a thread from her distaff. The two
were about to travel on when she stopped them again with a gesture.
"Dinna mak sic haste! There's time enough behind us, and time enough
before us. And it's a strange warld, and a large, and an auld! Sit ye
and crack a bit with an auld wife by the road."
But they had dallied at White Farm and in the cave, and Alexander was
in haste.
"We cannot stop now, Mother. We're bound for the Kelpie's Pool."
"And why do ye gae there? That's a drear, wanrestfu' place!" said
Mother Binning.
"Ian has not seen it yet. I want to show it to him."
Mother Binning turned her distaff slowly. "Eh, then, if ye maun gae,
gae!... We're a' ane! There's the kelpie pool for a'."
"We'll stop a bit on the way back," said Alexander. He spoke in a
wheedling, kindly voice, for he and Mother Binning were good friends.
"Do that then," she said. "I hae a hansel o' coffee by me. I'll mak
twa cups, for I'll warrant that ye'll baith need it!"
The air was indeed growing colder when the two came at last upon the
moor that ran down to the Kelpie's Pool. Furze and moss and ling, a
wild country stretched around without trees or house or moving form.
The bare sunshine took on a remote, a cool and foreign, aspect. The
small singing of the wind in whin and heather came from a thin, eery
world. Down below them they saw the dark little tarn, the Kelpie's
Pool. It was very clear, but dark, with a bottom of peat. Around it
grew rushes and a few low willows. The two sat upon an outcropping of
stone and gazed down upon it.
"It's a gey lonely place," said Alexander. "Now I like it as well or
better than I do the cave, and now I would leave it far behind me!"
"I like the cave best. This is a creepy place."
"Once I let myself out at Glenfernie without any knowing and came here
by night."
Ian felt emulation. "Oh, I would do that, too, if there was any need!
Did you see anything?"
"Do you mean the kelpie?"
"Yes."
"No. I saw something--once. But that time I wanted to see how the
stars looked in the water."
Ian looked at the water, that lay like a round mirror, and then to the
vast shell of the sky above. He, too, had love of beauty--a more
sensuous love than Alexander's, but love. This shared perception made
one of the bonds between them.
"It was as still--much stiller than it is to-day! The air was clear
and the night dark and grand. I looked down, and there was the
Northern Crown, clasp and all."
Ian in imagination saw it, too. They sat, chin on knees, upon the
moorside above the Kelpie's Pool. The water was faintly crisped, the
reeds and willow boughs just stirred.
"But the kelpie--did you ever see that?"
"Sometimes it is seen as a water-horse, sometimes as a demon. I never
saw anything like that but once. I never told any one about it. It may
have been just one of those willows, after all. But I thought I saw a
woman."
"Go on!"
"There was a great mist that day and it was hard to see. Sometimes you
could not see--it was just rolling waves of gray. So I stumbled down,
and I was in the rushes before I knew that I had come to them. It was
spring and the pool was full, and the water plashed and came over my
foot. It was like something holding my ankles.... And then I saw
her--if it was not the willow. She was like a fair woman with dark
hair unsnooded. She looked at me as though she would mock me, and I
thought she laughed--and then the mist rolled down and over, and I
could not see the hills nor the water nor scarce the reeds I was in.
So I lifted my feet from the sucking water and got away.... I do not
know if it was the kelpie's daughter or the willow--but if it was the
willow it could look like a human--or an unhuman--body!"
Ian gazed at the pool. He had many advantages over Alexander, he knew,
but the latter had this curious daring. He did more things with
himself and of himself than did he, Ian. There was that in Ian that
did not like this, that was jealous of being surpassed. And there was
that in Ian that would not directly display this feeling, that would
provide it, indeed, with all kinds of masks, but would, with
certainty, act from that spurring, though intricate enough might be
the path between the stimulus and the act.
"It is deep?"
"Aye. Almost bottomless, you would think, and cold as winter."
"Let us go swimming."
"The day's getting late and it's growing cold. However, if you want
to--"
Ian did not greatly want to. But if Alexander could be so indifferent,
he could be determined and ardent. "What's a little mirk and cold? I
want to say I've swum in it." He began to unbutton his waistcoat.
They stripped, left their clothes in the stone's keeping, and ran down
the moorside. The light played over their bodies, unblemished, smooth,
and healthfully colored, clean-lined and rightly spare. They had
beautiful postures and movements when they stood, when they ran; a
youthful and austere grace as of Spartan youth plunging down to the
icy Eurotas. The earth around lay as stripped as they; the naked,
ineffable blue ether held them as it did all things; the wandering air
broke against them in invisible surf. They ran down the long slope of
the moor, parted the reeds, and dived to meet their own reflections.
The water was most truly deep and cold. They struck out, they swam to
the middle of the pool, they turned upon their backs and looked up to
the blue zenith, then, turning again, with strong arm strokes they
sent the wave over each other. They rounded the pool under the twisted
willows, beside the shaking reeds; they swam across and across.
Alexander looked at the sun that was deep in the western quarter.
"Time to be out and going!" He swam to the edge of the pool, but
before he should draw himself out stopped to look up at a willow above
him, the one that he thought he might, in the mist, have taken for the
kelpie's daughter. It was of a height that, seen at a little distance,
might even a tall woman. It put out two broken, shortened branches
like arms.... He lost himself in the study of possibilities, balanced
among the reeds that sighed around. He could not decide, so at last he
shook himself from that consideration, and, pushing into shallow
water, stepped from the pool. He had taken a few steps up the moor ere
with suddenness he felt that Ian was not with him. He turned. Ian was
yet out in the middle ring of the tarn. The light struck upon his
head. Then he dived under--or seemed to dive under. He was long in
coming up; and when he did so it was in the same place and his
backward-drawn face had a strangeness.
"Ian!"
Ian sank again.
"He's crampit!" Alexander flashed like a thrown brand down the way he
had mounted and across the strip of weeds, and in again to the
steel-dark water. "I'm coming!" He gained to his fellow, caught him
ere he sank the third time.
Dragged from the Kelpie's Pool, Ian lay upon the moor. Alexander,
bringing with haste the clothes from the stone above, knelt beside
him, rubbed and kneaded the life into him. He opened his eyes.
"Alexander--!"
Alexander rubbed with vigor. "I'm here. Eh, lad, but you gave me a
fright!"
In another five minutes he sat up. "I'm--I'm all right now. Let's get
our things on and go."
They dressed, Alexander helping Ian. The blood came slowly back into
the latter's cheek; he walked, but he shivered yet.
"Let's go get Mother Binning's coffee!" said Alexander. "Come, I'll
put my arm about you so." They went thus up the moor and across, and
then down to the trees, the stream, and the glen. "There's the smoke
from her chimney! You may have both cups and lie by the fire till
you're warm. Mercy me! how lonely the cave would have been if you had
drowned!"
They got down to the flowing water.
"I'm all right now!" said Ian. He released himself, but before he did
so he turned in Alexander's arm, put his own arm around the other's
neck, and kissed him. "You saved my life. Let's be friends forever!"
"That's what we are," said Alexander, "friends forever."
"You've proved it to me; one day I'll prove it to you!"
"We don't need proofs. We just know that we like each other, and
that's all there is about it!"
"Yes, it's that way," said Ian, and so they came to Mother Binning's
cot, the fire, and the coffee.