Alexander rode across the moors to the glen head. Two or three
solitary farers that he met gave him eager good day.
"Are ye getting sae weel, laird? I am glad o' that!"
"Good day, Mr. Jardine! I rejoice to see you recovered. Well, they
hung more of them yesterday!"
"Gude day, Glenfernie! It's a bonny morn, and sweet to be living!"
At noon he looked down on the Kelpie's Pool. The air was sweet and
fine, bird sounds came from the purple heather. The great blue arch of
the sky smiled; even the pool, reflecting day, seemed to have
forgotten cold and dread. But for Glenfernie a dull, cold, sick horror
overspread the place. He and Black Alan stood still upon the moor
brow. Large against the long, clean, horizon sweep, they looked the
sun-bathed, stone figures of horse and man, set there long ago,
guarding the moor, giving warning of the kelpie.
"None has been found to warn. There is none but the kelpie waits
for.... But punish--punish!"
He and Black Alan pushed on to the head of the glen. Here was Mother
Binning's cot, and here he dismounted, fastening the horse to the
ash-tree. Mother Binning was outdoors, gathering herbs in her apron.
* * * * *
She straightened herself as he stepped toward her. "Eh, laird of
Glenfernie, ye gave me a start! I thought ye came out of the ground by
the ash-tree!... Wound is healed, and life runs on to another
springtime?"
"Yes, it's another springtime.... I do not think that I believe in
scrying, Mother Binning. But I'm where I pick up all straws with which
to build me a nest! Sit down and scry for me, will you?"
"I canna scry every day, nor every noon, nor every year. What are you
wanting to see, Glenfernie?"
"Oh, just my soul's desire!"
Mother Binning turned to her door. She put down the herbs, then
brought a pan of water and set it down upon the door-step, and herself
beside it. "It helps--onything that's still and clear! Wait till the
ripple's gane, and then dinna speak to me. But gin I see onything, it
will na be sae great a thing as a soul's desire."
She sat still and he stood still, leaning against the side of her
house. Mother Binning sat with fixed gaze. Her lips moved. "There's
the white mist. It's clearing."
"Tell me if you see a ship."
"Yes, I see it...."
"Tell me if you see its port."
"Yes, I see."
"Describe it--the houses, the country, the dress and look of the
people--"
Mother Binning did so.
"That's not Holland--that would be Lisbon. Look at the ship again,
Mother. Look at the sailors. Look at the passengers if there are any.
Whom do you see?"
"Ah!" said Mother Binning. "There's a braw wrong-doer for you, sitting
drinking Spanish wine!"
"Say his name."
"It's he that once, when you were a lad, you brought alive from the
Kelpie's Pool."
"Thank you, Mother! That's what I wanted. _Scrying!_ Who gives to
whom--who gives back to whom? The underneath great I, I suppose. Left
hand giving to right--and no brand-new news! All the same, other
drifts concurring, I think that he fled by the Lisbon ship!"
Mother Binning pushed aside the pan of water and rubbed her hand
across her eyes. She took up her bundle of herbs. "Hoot, Glenfernie!
do ye think that's your soul's desire?"
Jock came limping around the house. Alexander could not now abide the
sight of this cripple who had spied, and had not shot some fashion of
arrow! He said good-by and loosed Black Alan from the ash-tree and
rode away. He would not tread the glen. His memory recoiled from it as
from some Eastern glen of serpents. He and Black Alan went over the
moors. And still it was early and he had his body strength back. He
rode to Littlefarm.
Robin Greenlaw was in the field, coat off in the gay, warm weather.
He came to Glenfernie's side, and the latter dismounted and sat with
him under a tree. Greenlaw brought a stone jug and tankard and poured
ale.
The laird drank. "That's good, Robin!" He put down the tankard. "Are
you still a poet?"
"If I was so once upon a time, I hope I am so still. At any rate, I
still make verses. And I see poems that I can never write."
"'Never'--how long a word that is!"
Greenlaw gazed at the workers in the field. "I met Mr. Strickland the
other day. He says that you will travel again."
"'Travel'--yes."
"The Jardine Arms gets it from the Edinburgh road that Ian Rullock
made a daring escape."
"He had always ingenuity and a certain sort of physical bravery."
"So has Lucifer, Milton says. But he's not Lucifer."
"No. He is weak and small."
"Well, look Glenfernie! I would not waste my soul chasing him!"
"How dead are you all! You, too, Greenlaw!"
Robin flushed. "No! I hate all that he did that is vile! If all his
escaping leads him to violent death, I shall not find it in me to
grieve! But all the same, I would not see you narrowed to the
wolf-hunter that will never make the wolf less than the wolf! I don't
know. I've always thought of you as one who would serve Wisdom and
show us her beauty--"
"To me this is now wisdom--this is now beauty. Poets may stay and
make poetry, but I go after Ian Rullock!"
"Oh, there's poetry in that, too," said Greenlaw, "because there's
nothing in which there isn't poetry! But you're choosing the kind
you're not best in, or so it seems to me."
Glenfernie rode from Littlefarm homeward. But the next day he and
Black Alan went to Black Hill. Here he saw Mr. Touris alone. That
gentleman sat with a shrunken and shriveled look.
"Eh, Glenfernie! I am glad to see that you are yourself again! Well,
my sister's son has broken prison."
"Yes, one prison."
"God knows they were all mad! But I could not wish to see him in my
dreams, hanging dark from the King's gallows!"
"From the King's gallows and for old, mad, Stewart hopes? I find,"
said Glenfernie, "that I do not wish that, either. He would have gone
for the lesser thing--and the long true, right vengeance been
delayed!"
"What is that?" asked Mr. Touris, dully.
"His wrong shall be ever in his mind, and I the painter's brush to
paint it there! Give me, O God, the power of genius!"
"Are you going to follow him and kill him?"
"I am going to follow him. At first I thought that I would kill him.
But my mind is changing as to that."
Mr. Touris sighed heavily. "I don't know what is the matter with the
world.... One does one's best, but all goes wrong. All kinds of hopes
and plans.... When I look back to when I was a young man, I
wonder.... I set myself an aim in life, to lift me and mine from
poverty. I saved for it, denied for it, was faithful. It came about
and it's ashes in my mouth! Yet I took it as a trust, and was
faithful. What does the Bible say, 'Vanity of vanities'? But I say
that the world's made wrong."
Glenfernie left him at last, wrinkled and shrunken and shriveled, cold
on a summer day, plying himself with wine, a serving-man mending the
fire upon the hearth. Alexander went to Mrs. Alison's parlor. He found
her deep chair placed in the garden without, and she herself sitting
there, a book in hand, but not read, her form very still, her eyes
upon a shaft of light that was making vivid a row of flowers. The book
dropped beside her on the grass; she rose quickly. The last time they
had met was before Culloden, before Prestonpans.
She came to him. "You're well, Alexander! Thanks be! Sit down, my
dear, sit down!" She would have made him take her chair, but he
laughed and brought one for himself from the room. "I bless my
ancestors for a physical body that will not keep wounds!"
She sank into her chair again and sat in silence, gazing at him. Her
clear eyes filled with tears, but she shook them away. At last she
spoke: "Oh, I see the other sort of wounds! Alexander! lay hold of the
nature that will make them, too, to heal!"
"Saint Alison," he answered, "look full at what went on. Now tell me
if those are wounds easy to heal. And tell me if he were not less than
a man who pocketed the injury, who said to the injurer, 'Go in
peace!'"
She looked at him mournfully. "Is it to pocket the injury? Will not
all combine--silently, silently--to teach him at last? Less than
man--man--more than man, than to-day's appearing man?... I am not
wise. For yourself and the ring of your moment you may be judging
inevitably, rightly.... But with what will you overcome--and in
overcoming what will you overcome?"
He made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, friend, once I, too, could be
metaphysical! I cannot now."
Speech failed between them. They sat with eyes upon the garden, the
old tree, the August blue sky, but perhaps they hardly saw these. At
last she turned. She had a slender, still youthful figure, an oval,
lovely, still young face. Now there was a smile upon her lips, and in
her eyes a light deep, touching, maternal.
"Go as you will, hunt him as you will, do what you will! And he,
too--Ian! Ian and his sins. Grapes in the wine-press--wheat beneath
the flail--ore in the ardent fire, and over all the clouds of wrath!
Suffering and making to suffer--sinning and making to sin.... And yet
will the dawn come, and yet will you be reconciled!"
"Not while memory holds!"
"Ah, there is so much to remember! Ian has so much and you have so
much.... When the great memory comes you will see. But not now, it is
apparent, not now! So go if you will and must, Alexander, with the net
and the spear!"
"Did he not sin?"
"Yes."
"I also sin. But my sin does not match his! God makes use of
instruments, and He shall make use of me!"
"If He 'shall,' then He shall. Let us leave talk of this. Where you go
may love and light go, too--and work it out, and work it out!"
He did not stay long in her garden. All Black Hill oppressed him now.
The dark crept in upon the light. She saw that it was so.
"He can be friends now with none. He sees in each one a partisan--his
own or Ian's." She did not detain him, but when he rose to say good-by
helped him to say it without delay.
He went, and she paced her garden, thinking of Ian who had done so
great wrong, and Alexander who cried, "My enemy!" She stayed in the
garden an hour, and then she turned and went to play piquet with the
lonely, shriveled man, her brother.