The glen was dressed in June, at its height of green movement and
song. Alexander and Elspeth walked there and turned aside through a
miniature pass down which flowed a stream in miniature to join the
larger flood. This cleft led them to a green hollow masked by the main
wall of the glen, a fairy place, hidden and lone. Seven times had the
two been in company since that morning of the flower-sprinkled cape
and the thorn-tree. First stood a chance meeting upon the moor,
Elspeth walking from the village with a basket upon her arm and the
laird riding home after business in the nearest considerable town. He
dismounted; he walked beside her to the stepping-stones before the
farm. The second time he went to White Farm, and she and Jenny, with
Merran to help, were laying linen to bleach upon the sun-washed
hillside. He had stayed an hour, and though he was not alone with her,
yet he might look at her, listen to her. She was not a chatterer; she
worked or stood, almost as silent as a master painter's subtle picture
stepped out of its frame, or as Pygmalion's statue-maid, flushing with
life, but as yet tongue-holden. Yet she said certain things, and they
were to him all music and wit. The third time had been by the
wishing-green. That was but for a moment, but he counted it great
gain.
"Here," she said, "was where we danced! Mr. Ian Rullock and you and
Robin and the rest of us. Don't you remember? It was evening and there
was a fleet of gold clouds in the sky. It is so near the house. I walk
here when I have a glint of time."
The fourth time, riding Black Alan, he had stopped at the door and
talked with Jarvis Barrow. He was thirsty and had asked for water, and
Jenny had called, "Elspeth, bring the laird a cup frae the well!" She
had brought it, and, taking it from her, all the romance of the world
had seemed to him to close them round, to bear them to some great and
fair and deep and passionate place. The fifth time had been the day
when he went to kirk with White Farm and listened to her voice in the
psalm. The sixth time had been again upon the moor. The seventh time
was this. He had come down through the glen as he had done before. He
had no reason to suppose that this day more than another he would find
her, but there, half a mile from White Farm, he came upon her,
standing, watching a lintwhite's nest. They walked together, and when
that little, right-angled, infant fellow of the glen opened to them
they turned and followed its bright rivulet to the green hidden
hollow.
The earth lay warm and dry, clad with short turf. They sat down
beneath an oak-tree. None would come this way; they had to themselves
a bright span of time and place. Elspeth looked at him with brown,
friendly eyes. Each time she met him her eyes grew more kind; more and
more she liked the laird. Something fluttered in her nature; like a
bird in a room with many windows and all but one closed, it turned now
this way, now that, seeking the open lattice. There was the lovely
world--which way to it? And the window that in a dream had seemed to
her to open was mayhap closed, and another that she had not noted
mayhap opening.... But Glenfernie, winged, was in that world, and now
all that he desired was that the bright bird should fly to him there.
But until to-day patience and caution and much humility had kept him
from direct speech. He knew that she had not loved, as he had done, at
once. He had set himself to win her to love him. But so great was his
passion that now he thought:
"Surely not one, but two as one, make this terrible and happy
furnace!" He thought, "I will speak now," and then delayed over the
words.
"This is a bonny, wee place!" said Elspeth. "Did you never hear the
old folks tell that your great-grandmother, that was among the
persecuted, loved it? When your father was a laddie they often used to
sit here, the two of them. They were great wanderers together."
"I never heard it," said Alexander. "Almost it seems too bright...."
They sat in silence, but the train of thought started went on with
Glenfernie:
"But perhaps she never went so far as the Kelpie's Pool."
"The Kelpie's Pool!... I do not like that place! Tell me, Glenfernie,
wonders of travel."
"What shall I tell you?"
"Tell me of the East. Tell me what like is the Sea of Galilee."
Glenfernie talked, since Elspeth bade him talk. He talked of what he
had seen and known, and that brought him, with the aid of questions
from the woman listening, to talk of himself. "I had a strange kind of
youth.... So many dim, struggling longings, dreams, aspirings!--but I
think they may be always there with youth."
"Yes, they are," said Elspeth.
"We talked of the Kelpie's Pool. Something like that was the
strangeness with me. Black rifts and whirlpools and dead tarns within
me, opening up now and again, lifted as by a trembling of the earth,
coming up from the past! Angers and broodings, and things seen in
flashes--then all gone as the lightning goes, and the mind does not
hold what was shown.... I became a man and it ceased. Sometimes I know
that in sleep or dream I have been beside a kelpie pool. But I think
the better part of me has drained them where they lay under open sky."
He laughed, put his hands over his face for a moment, then, dropping
them, whistled to the blackbirds aloft in the oak-tree.
"And now?"
"Now there is clean fire in me!" He turned to her; he drew himself
nearer over the sward. "Elspeth, Elspeth, Elspeth! do not tell me that
you do not know that I love you!"
"Love me--love me?" answered Elspeth. She rose from her earthen chair;
she moved as if to leave the place; then she stood still. "Perhaps a
part of me knew and a part did not know.... I will try to be honest,
for you are honest, Glenfernie! Yes, I knew, but I would not let
myself perceive and think and say that I knew.... And now what will I
say?"
"Say that you love me! Say that you love and will marry me!"
"I like you and I trust you, but I feel no more, Glenfernie, I feel no
more!"
"It may grow, Elspeth--"
Elspeth moved to the stem of the oak beneath which they had been
seated. She raised her arm and rested it against the bark, then laid
her forehead upon the warm molded flesh in the blue print sleeve. For
some moments she stayed so, with hidden face, unmoving against the
bole of the tree, like a relief done of old by some wonderful artist.
The laird of Glenfernie, watching her, felt, such was his passion, the
whole of earth and sky, the whole of time, draw to just this point,
hang on just her movement and her word.
"Elspeth!" he cried at last. "Elspeth!"
Elspeth turned, but she stood yet against the tree. Now both arms were
lifted; she had for a moment the appearance of one who hung upon the
tree. Her eyes were wet, tears were upon her cheek. She shook them
off, then left the oak and came a step or two toward him. "There is
something in my brain and heart that tells me what love is. When I
love I shall love hard.... I have had fancies.... But, like yours,
Glenfernie, their times are outgrown and gone by.... It's clear to
try. I like you so much! but I do not love now--and I'll not wed and
come to Glenfernie House until I do."
"'It's clear to try,' you said."
Elspeth looked at him long. "If it is there, even little and far away,
I'll try to bend my steps the way shall bring it nearer. But, oh,
Glenfernie, it may be that there is naught upon the road!"
"Will you journey to look for it? That's all I ask now. Will you
journey to look for it?"
"Yes, I may promise that. And I do not know," said Elspeth,
wonderingly, "what keeps me from thinking I'll meet it." She sat down
among the oak roots. "Let us rest a bit, and say no word, and then go
home."
The sunlight filled the hollow, the wimpling burn took the blue of the
sky, the breeze whispered among the oak leaves. The two sat and gazed
at the day, at the grass, at the little thorn-trees and hazels that
ringed the place around. They sat very still, seeking composure. She
gained it first.
"When will your sister be coming home?"
"It is not settled. Glenfernie House was sad of late years. She ought
to have the life and brightness that she's getting now."
"And will you travel no more?"
He saw as in a lightning glare that she pictured no change for him
beyond such as being laird would make. He was glad when the flash went
and he could forget what it had of destructive and desolating. He
would drag hope down from the sky above the sky of lightnings. He
spoke.
"There were duties now to be taken up. I could not stay away all nor
most nor much of the time. I saw that. But I could study here, and
once in a while run somewhere over the earth.... But now I would stay
in this dale till I die! Unless you were with me--the two of us going
to see the sights of the earth, and then returning home--going and
returning--going and returning--and both a great sweetness--"
"Oh!" breathed Elspeth. She put her hands again over her eyes, and she
saw, unrolling, a great fair life _if_--_if_--She rose to her feet.
"Let us go! It grows late. They'll miss me."
They came into the glen and so went down with the stream to the open
land and to White Farm.
"Where hae you been?" asked Jenny. "Here was father hame frae the
shearing with his eyes blurred, speiring for you to read to him!"
"I was walking by the glen and the laird came down through, so we made
here together. Where is grandfather?"
"He wadna sit waiting. He's gane to walk on the muir. Will ye na bide,
Glenfernie?"
But the laird would not stay. It was wearing toward sunset. Menie,
withindoors, called Jenny. The latter turned away. Glenfernie spoke to
Elspeth.
"If I find your grandfather on the moor I shall speak of this that is
between us. Do not look so troubled! 'If' or 'if not' it is better to
tell. So you will not be plagued. And, anyhow, it is the wise folks'
road."
Back came Jenny. "Has he gane? I had for him a tass of wine and a bit
of cake."
The moor lay like a stiffened billow of the sea, green with purple
glints. The clear western sky was ruddy gold, the sun's great ball
approaching the horizon. But when it dipped the short June night
would know little dark in this northern land. The air struck most
fresh and pure. Glenfernie came presently upon the old farmer, found
him seated upon a bit of bank, his gray plaid about him, his
crook-like stick planted before him, his eyes upon the western sea of
glory. The younger man stopped beside him, settled down upon the bank,
and gazed with the elder into the ocean of colored air.
"Ae gowden floor as though it were glass," said Jarvis Barrow. "Ae
gowden floor and ae river named of Life, passing the greatness of
Orinoco or Amazon. And the tree of life for the healing of the
nations. And a' the trees that ever leafed or flowered, ta'en
together, but ae withered twig to that!"
Glenfernie gazed with him. "I do not doubt that there will come a day
when we'll walk over the plains of the sun--the flesh of our body then
as gauze, moved at will where we please and swift as thought--inner
and outer motion keeping time with the beat and rhythm of that _where
we are_--"
"The young do not speak the auld tongue."
"Tongues alter with the rest."
Silence fell while the sun reddened, going nearer to the mountain
brow. The young man and the old, the farmer and the laird, sat still.
The air struck more freshly, stronger, coming from the sea. Far off a
horn was blown, a dog barked.
"Will ye be hame now for gude, Glenfernie? Lairds should bide in their
ain houses if the land is to have any gude of them."
"I wish to stay, White Farm, the greatest part of the year round. I
want to speak to you very seriously. Think back a moment to my father
and mother, and to my forebears farther back yet. As they had faults,
and yet had a longing to do the right and struggled toward it over
thick and thin, so I believe I may say of myself. That is, I struggle
toward it," said Alexander, "though I'm not so sure of the thick and
thin."
"Your mither wasna your father's kind. She had always her smile to the
side and her japes, and she looked to the warld. Not that she didna
mean to do weel in it! She did. But I couldna just see clear the seal
in her forehead."
"That was because you did not look close enough," said Alexander. "It
was there."
"I didna mind your uphawding your mither. Aweel, what did ye have to
say?"
The laird turned full to him. "White Farm, you were once a young man.
You loved and married. So do I love, so would I marry! The woman I
love does not yet love me, but she has, I think, some liking.--I bide
in hope. I would speak to you about it, as is right."
"Wha is she?"
"Your granddaughter Elspeth."
Silence, while the shadows of the trees in the vale below grew longer
and longer. Then said White Farm:
"She isna what they call your equal in station. And she has nae tocher
or as good as nane."
"For the last I have enough for us both. For the first the springs of
Barrow and Jardine, back in Time's mountains, are much the same.
Scotland's not the country to bother overmuch if the one stream goes,
in a certain place, through a good farm, and the other by a not
over-rich laird's house."
"Are ye Whig and Kirk like your father?"
"I am Whig--until something more to the dawn than that comes up. For
the Kirk ... I will tell truth and say that I have my inner
differences. But they do not lean toward Pope or prelate.... I am
Christian, where Christ is taken very universally--the higher Self,
the mounting Wisdom of us all.... Some high things you and I may view
differently, but I believe that there are high things."
"And seek them?"
"And seek them."
"You always had the air to me," vouchsafed White Farm, "of one wha
hunted gowd elsewhaur than in the earthly mine." He looked at the red
west, and drew his plaid about him, and took firmer clutch upon his
staff. "But the lassie does not love you?"
"My trust is that she may come to do so."
The elder got to his feet. Alexander rose also.
"It's coming night! Ye will be gaeing on over the muir to the House?"
"Yes. Then, sir, I may come to White Farm, or meet her when I may, and
have my chance?"
"Aye. If so be I hear nae great thing against ye. If so be ye're
reasonable. If so be that in no way do ye try to hurt the lassie."
"I'll be reasonable," said the laird of Glenfernie. "And I'd not hurt
Elspeth if I could!" His face shone, his voice was a deep and happy
music. He was so bound, so at the feet of Elspeth, that he could not
but believe in joy and fortune. The sun had dipped; the land lay
dusk, but the sky was a rose. There was a skimming of swallows
overhead, a singing of the wind in the ling. He walked with White Farm
to the foot of the moor, then said good night and turned toward his
own house.