Mr. Archibald Touris put out a wrinkled hand to his wine-glass. "You
have been in warm countries. I envy you! I wish that I could get
warm."
"Black Hill is looking finely. All the young trees--"
"Yes. I took pride in planting.--But what for--what for--what for?" He
shivered. "Glenfernie, please close that window!"
Alexander, coming back, stood above the master of Black Hill. "Will
you tell me, sir, where Ian is now?"
Mr. Touris twitched back a little in his chair. "Don't you know? I
thought perhaps that you did."
"I ceased to follow him two years ago. I dived into the East, and I
have been long where you do not hear from the West."
The other fingered his wine-glass. "Well, I haven't heard myself, for
quite a while.... You would think that he might come back to England
now. But he can't. Doubtless he would never wish to come again to
Black Hill. But England, now.... But they are ferocious yet against
every head great and small of the attempt. And I am told there are
aggravating circumstances. He had worn the King's coat. He was among
the plotters and instigators. He broke prison. Impossible to show
mercy!" Mr. Touris twitched again. "That's a phrase like a gravestone!
If the Almighty uses it, then of course he can't be Almighty.... Well,
the moral is that none named Ian Rullock can come again to Scotland or
England."
"Have you knowledge that he wishes to do so?"
Mr. Touris moved again. "I don't know.... I told you that we hadn't
heard. But--"
He stopped and sat staring into his wine-glass. Alexander read on as
by starlight: "_But I did hear--through old channels. And there is
danger of his trying to return._"
The master of Black Hill put the wine to his lips. "And so you have
been everywhere?"
"No. But in places where I had not been before."
"The East India has ways of gathering information. Through Goodworth I
can get at a good deal when I want to.... There is Wotherspoon, also.
I am practically certain that Ian is in France."
"When did he write?"
"Alison has a letter maybe twice a year. One's overdue now."
"How does he write?"
"They are very short. He doesn't touch on old things--except, perhaps,
back into boyhood. She likes to get them. When you see her, don't
speak of anything save his staying in France, as he ought to." He
dragged toward him a jar of snuff. "There are informers and seekers
out everywhere. Do you remember a man in Edinburgh named Gleig?"
"Yes."
"Well, he's one of them. And for some reason he has a personal enmity
toward Ian. So, you see--"
He lapsed into silence, a small, aging, chilly, wrinkled, troubled
man. Then with suddenness a wintry red crept into his cheek, a
brightness into his eyes. "You've changed so, Glenfernie, you've
cheated me! You are his foe yourself. Perhaps even--"
"Perhaps even--?"
The other gave a shriveled response to the smile. "No. I certainly did
not mean that." He took his head in his hands and sighed. "What a
world it is! As I go down the hill I wish sometimes that I had
Alison's eyes.... Well, tell me about yourself."
"The one thing that I want to tell you just now, Black Hill, is that I
am not any longer bloodhound at the heels of Ian. What was done is
done. Let us go on to better things. So at last will be unknit what
was done."
Black Hill both seemed and did not seem to pay attention. The man who
sat before him was big and straight and gave forth warmth and light.
He needed warmth and light; he needed a big tree to lean against. He
vaguely hoped that Glenfernie was home to stay. He rubbed his hands
and drank more wine.
"No one has known for a long time where you were.... Goodworth has an
agent in Paris who says that Ian tried once to find out that."
"To find out where I was?"
"Yes."
Alexander gazed out of window, beyond the terrace and the old trees
to the long hill, purple with heath, sunny and clear atop.
A servant came to the door. "Mrs. Alison has returned, sir."
Glenfernie rose. "I will go find her then.--I will ride over often if
I may."
"I wish you would!" said Black Hill. "I was sorry about that quarrel
with your father."
The old laird's son walked down the matted corridor. The drawing-room
door stood open; he saw one panel of the tall screen covered with
pagodas, palms, and macaws. Further on was the room, clean and
fragrant, known as Mrs. Alison's room. This door, too, was wide. He
stood by his old friend. They put hands into hands; eyes met, eyes
held in a long look.
She said, "O God, I praise Thee!"
They sat within the garden door, on one side the clear, still room, on
the other the green and growing things, the great tree loved by birds.
The place was like a cloister. He stayed with her an hour, and in all
that time there was not a great deal said with the outer tongue. But
each grew more happy, deeper and stronger.
He talked to her of the Roman Campagna, of the East and the desert....
As the hour closed he spoke directly of Ian. "That is myself now, as
Elspeth is myself now. I falter, I fail, but I go on to profounder
Oneness."
"Christ is born, then he grows up."
"May I see Ian's last letters?"
She put them in his hands. "They are very short. They speak almost
always of external things."
He read, then sat musing, his eyes upon the tree. "This last one--You
answered that it was not known where I was?"
"Yes. But he says here at the last, 'I feel it somewhere that he is on
his way to Scotland.'"
"I'll have to think it out."
"Every letter is objective like this. But for all that, I divine, in
the dark, a ferment.... As you see, we have not heard for months."
The laird of Glenfernie rode at last from Black Hill. It was
afternoon, white drifts of clouds in the sky, light and shadow moving
upon field and moor and distant, framing mountains. He rode by
Littlefarm and he called at the house gate for Robin Greenlaw. It
seemed that the latter was away in White Farm fields. The laird might
meet him riding home. A mile farther on he saw the gray horse crossing
the stream.
Glenfernie and Greenlaw, meeting, left each the saddle, went near to
embracing, sat at last by a stone wall in the late sunshine, and felt
a tide of liking, stronger, not weaker, than that of old days.
"You are looking after White Farm?"
"Yes. The old man fails. Jenny has become a cripple. Gilian and I are
the rulers."
"Or servers?"
"It amounts to the same.... Gilian has a splendid soul."
"The poems, Robin. Do you make them yet?"
"Oh yes! Now and then. All this helps.... And you, Glenfernie, I could
make a poem of you!"
The laird laughed. "I suppose you could of all men.... Gilian and you
do not marry?"
"We are not the marrying kind. But I shouldn't love beauty inside if I
didn't love Gilian.... I see that something big has come to you,
Glenfernie, and made itself at home. You'll be wanting it taken as a
matter of course, and I take it that way.... No matter what you have
seen, is not this vale fair?"
"Fair as fair! Loved because of child and boy and man.... Robin,
something beyond all years as we count them can be put into
moments.... A moment can be as sizable as a sun."
"I believe it. We are all treading toward the land of wonders."
When he parted from Robin it was nearly sunset. He did not mean to
stop to-day at White Farm, but he turned Black Alan in that direction.
He would ride by the house and the shining stream with the
stepping-stones. Coming beneath the bank thick with willow and aspen,
he checked the horse and sat looking at the long, low house. It held
there in a sunset stillness, a sunset glory, a dream of dawn. He
dismounted, left the horse, and climbed to the strip of green before
the place. None seemed about, all seemed within. Here was the fir-tree
with the bench around--so old a tree, watching life so long!... Now he
saw that Jarvis Barrow sat here. But the old man was asleep. He sat
with closed eyes, and his Bible was under his hand. Beside him, tall
and fair, wide-browed, gray-eyed, stood Gilian. Her head was turned
toward the fringed bank; when she saw Alexander she put her finger
against her lips. He made a gesture of understanding and went no
nearer. For a moment he stood regarding all, then drew back into
shadow of willow and aspen, descended the bank, and, mounting Black
Alan, rode home through the purple light.