The laird of Glenfernie was away to Edinburgh on Black Alan, Tam
Dickson with him on Whitefoot. Ian Rullock riding Fatima, behind him a
Black Hill groom on an iron-gray, came over the moor to the head of
the glen. Ian checked the mare. Behind him rolled the moor, with the
hollow where lay, water in a deep jade cup, the Kelpie's Pool. Before
him struck down the green feathered cleft, opening out at last into
the vale. He could see the water there, and a silver gleam that was
White Farm. He sat for a minute, pondering whether he should ride back
the way he had come or, giving Fatima to Peter Lindsay, walk through
the glen. He looked at his watch, looked, too, at a heap of clouds
along the western horizon. The gleam in the vale at last decided him.
He left the saddle.
"Take Fatima around to White Farm, Lindsay. I'll walk through the
glen." His thought was, "I might as well see what like is Alexander's
inamorata!" It was true that he had seen her quite long ago, but time
had overlaid the image, or perhaps he had never paid especial note.
Peter Lindsay stooped to catch the reins that the other tossed him.
"There's weather in thae clouds, sir!"
"Not before night, I think. They're moving very slowly."
Lindsay turned with the horses. Ian, light of step, resilient,
"magnificent," turned from the purple moor into the shade of birches.
A few moments and he was near the cot of Mother Binning. A cock
crowed, a feather of blue smoke went up from her peat fire.
He came to her door, meaning to stay but for a good-natured five
minutes of gossip. She had lived here forever, set in the picture with
ash-tree and boulder. But when he came to the door he found sitting
with her, in the checkered space behind the opening, Glenfernie's
inamorata.
Now he remembered her.... He wondered if he had truly ever forgotten
her.
When he had received his welcome he sat down upon the door-step. He
could have touched Elspeth's skirt. When she lowered her eyes they
rested upon his gold-brown head, upon his hand in a little pool of
light.
"Eh, laddie!" said Mother Binning, "but ye grow mair braw each time ye
come!"
Elspeth thought him braw. The wishing-green where they danced, hand in
hand!... Now she knew--now she knew--why her heart had lain so cold
and still--for months, for years, cold and still! That was what hearts
did until the sun came.... Definitely, in this hour, for her now, upon
this stretch of the mortal path, Ian became the sun.
Ian sat daffing, talking. The old woman listened, her wheel idle; the
young woman listened. The young woman, sitting half in shadow, half in
light, put up her hand and drew farther over her face the brim of her
wide hat of country weave. She wished to hide her eyes, her lips. She
sat there pale, and through her ran in fine, innumerable waves human
passion and longing, wild courage and trembling humility.
The sunlight that flooded the door-stone and patched the cottage floor
began to lessen and withdraw. Low and distant there sounded a roll of
thunder. Jock Binning came upon his crutches from the bench by the
stream where he made a fishing-net.
"A tempest's daundering up!"
Elspeth rose. "I must go home--I must get home before it comes!"
"If ye'll bide, lassie, it may go by."
"No, I cannot." She had brought to Mother Binning a basket heaped with
bloomy plums. She took it up and set it on the table. "I'll get the
basket when next I come. Now I must go! Hark, there's the thunder
again!"
Ian had risen also. "I will go with you. Yes! It was my purpose to
walk through to White Farm. I sent Fatima around with Peter Lindsay."
As they passed 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 passed the cave a little way and were in mid-glen. It was
dusk in this narrow pass. 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
passion 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 analyze 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 circumstances 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,
glasslike, 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 glassy 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.