Chapter 22

The laird of Glenfernie, rising from the great chair by the table, moved to the window of the room that had been his father's and mother's, the room where both had died. He remembered the wild night of snow and wind in which his father had left the body. Now it was August, and the light golden upon the grass and the pilgrim cedar. Alexander walked slowly, with a great stick under his hand. Old Bran was dead, but a young Bran stretched himself, wagged his tail, and looked beseechingly at the master.

"I'll let you out," said the latter, "but I am a prisoner; I cannot let myself out!"

He moved haltingly to the door, opened it, and the dog ran forth. Glenfernie returned to the window. "Prisoner." The word brought to his strongly visualizing mind prisoners and prisons through all Britain this summer--shackled prisoners, dark prisons, scaffolds.... He leaned his head against the window-frame.

"O God that my father and my grandfather served--God of old times--of Israel in Egypt! I think that I would release them all if I could--_all but one! Not him!_" He looked at the cedar. "Who was he, in truth, who planted that, perhaps for a remembrance? And he, and all men, had and have some one deep wrong that shall not be brooked!"

He stood in a brown study until there was a tap at the door. "Come in!"

Alice entered, bearing before her a bowl of flowers of all fair hues and shapes. She herself was like a bright, strong, winsome flower. "To make your room look bonny!" she said, and placed the bowl upon the table. To do so she pushed aside the books. "What a withered, snuff-brown lot! Won't you be glad when you are back in the keep with all the books?"

Glenfernie, wrapped in a brown gown, came with his stick back to the great chair before the books. "Bonny--they are bonny!" he said and touched the flowers. "I've set a week from to-day to be dressed and out of this and back to the keep. Another week, and I shall ride Black Alan."

"Ah," said Alice. "You mustn't determine that you can do it all yourself! There will be the doctor and the wound!"

Alexander took her hands and held them. "You are a fine philosopher! Where is Strickland?"

"Helping Aunt Grizel with accounts. Do you want him?"

"When you go. But not for a long while if you will stay."

Alice regarded him with her mother's shrewdness. "Oh, Glenfernie, for all you've traveled and are so learned, it's not me nor Mr. Strickland, but the moon now that you're wanting! I don't know what your moon is, but it's the moon!"

Alexander laughed. "And is not the moon a beautiful thing?"

"The books say that it is cold and almost dead, wrinkled and ashen. But I've got to go," said Alice, "and I'll send you Mr. Strickland."

Strickland came presently. "You look much stronger this morning, Glenfernie. I'm glad of that! Shall I read to you, or write?"

"Read, I think. My eyes dazzle still when I try. Some strong old thing--the Plutarch there. Read the _Brutus_."

Strickland read. He thought that now Alexander listened, and that now he had traveled afar. The minutes passed. The flowers smelled sweetly, murmuring sounds came in the open windows. Bran scratched at the door and was admitted. Far off, Alice's voice was heard singing. Strickland read on. The laird of Glenfernie was not at Rome, in the Capitol, by Pompey's statue. He walked with Elspeth Barrow the feathery green glen.

Davie appeared in the door. "A letter, sir, come post." He brought it to Glenfernie's outstretched hand.

"From Edinburgh--from Jamie," said the latter.

Strickland laid down his book and moved to the window. Standing there, his eyes upon the great cedar, massive and tall as though it would build a tower to heaven, his mind left Brutus, Cæsar, and Cassius, and played somewhat idly over the British Isles. He was recalled by an exclamation, not loud, but so intense and fierce that it startled like a meteor of the night. He turned. Glenfernie sat still in his great chair, but his features were changed, his mouth working, his eyes shooting light. Strickland advanced toward him.

"Not bad news of Jamie!"

"Not of Jamie! From Jamie." He thrust the letter under the other's eyes. "Read--read it out!"

Strickland read aloud.

"Here is authoritative news. Ian Rullock, after lying two months in the tolbooth, has escaped. A gaoler connived, it is supposed, else it would seem impossible. Galbraith tells me he would certainly have been hanged in September. It is thought that he got to Leith and on board a ship. Three cleared that day--for Rotterdam, for Lisbon, and Virginia."

Alexander took the letter again. "That is all of that import." Strickland once more felt astonishment. Glenfernie's tone was quiet, almost matter-of-fact. The blood had ebbed from his face; he sat there collected, a great quiet on the heels of storm. It was impossible not to admire the power that could with such swiftness exercise control. Strickland hesitated. He wished to speak, but did not know how far he might with wisdom. The laird forestalled him.

"Sit down! This is to be talked over, for again my course of life alters."

Strickland took his chair. He leaned his arm upon the table, his chin upon his hand. He did not look directly at the man opposite, but at the bowl of flowers between them.

"When a man has had joy and lost it, what does he do?" Glenfernie's voice was almost contemplative.

"One man one thing, and one another," said Strickland. "After his nature."

"No. All go seeking it in the teeth of death and horror. That's universal! Joy must be sought. But it may not wear the old face; it may wear another."

"I suppose that true joy has one face."

"When one platonizes--perhaps! I keep to-day to earth, to the cave. Do you know," said Alexander, "why I sit here wounded?"

"Of outward facts I do not know any more than is, I think, pretty generally known through this countryside."

"As--?"

Strickland looked still at the bowl of flowers. "It is known, I think, that you loved Elspeth Barrow and would have wedded her. And that, while you were from home, the man who called himself, and was called by you, your nearest friend, stepped before you--made love to her, betrayed her--and left her to bear the shame.... I myself know that he kept you in ignorance, and that, away from here, he let you still write to him in friendship and answered in that tone.... All know that she drowned herself because of him, and that you knew naught until you yourself entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her body and carried her home.... After that you left the country to find and fight Ian Rullock. Folk know, too, that he evaded you then. You returned. Then came this insurrection, and news that he was in Scotland with the Pretender. You joined the King's forces. Then, after Culloden, you found the false friend in hiding, in the mountains. The two of you fought, and, as is often the way, the injurer seemed again to win. You were dangerously wounded. He fled. Soldiers upon his track found you lying in your blood. You were carried to Inverness. Dickson and I went to you, brought you at last home. In the mean time came news that the man you fought had been taken by the soldiers. I suppose that we have all had visions of him, in prison, expecting to suffer with other conspirators."

"Yes, I have had visions ... outward facts!... Do you know the inner, northern ocean, where sleep all the wrecks?"

"As I have watched you since you were a boy, it is improbable that I should not have some divining power. In Inverness, too, while you were fevered, you talked and talked.... You have walked with Tragedy, felt her net and her strong whip." Strickland lifted his eyes from the bowl, pushed back his chair a little, and looked full at the laird of Glenfernie. "What then? Rise, Glenfernie, and leave her behind! And if you do not now, it will soon be hard for you to do so! Remember, too, that I watched your father--"

"After I find Ian Rullock in Holland or Lisbon or America--"

Strickland made a movement of deep concern. "You have met and fought this man. Do you mean so to nourish vengeance--"

"I mean so to aid and vindicate distressed Justice."

"Is it the way?"

"I think that it is the way."

Strickland was silent, seeing the uselessness. Glenfernie was one to whom conviction must come from within. A stillness held in the room, broken by the laird in the voice that was growing like his father's. "Nothing lacks now but strength, and I am gaining that--will gain it the faster now! Travel--travel!... All my travel was preparatory to this."

"Do you mean," asked Strickland, "to kill him when you find him?"

"I like your directness. But I do not know--I do not know!... I mean to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me--when he turns his head ever to see me!"

The other sighed sharply. He thought to himself, "Oh, mind, thy abysses!"

Indeed, Glenfernie looked at this moment stronger. He folded Jamie's letter and put it by. He drew the bowl of flowers to him and picked forth a rose. "A week--two at most--and I shall be wholly recovered!" His voice had fiber, decision, even a kind of cheer.

Strickland thought, "It is his fancied remedy, at which he snatches!"

Glenfernie continued: "We'll set to work to-morrow upon long arrangements! With you to manage here, I will not be missed." Without waiting for the morrow he took quill and paper and began to figure.

Strickland watched him. At last he said, "Will you go at once in three ships to Holland, Portugal, and America?"

"Has the onlooker room for irony, while to me it looks so simple? I shall ship first to the likeliest land.... In ten days--in two weeks at most--to Edinburgh--"

Strickland left him figuring and, rising, went to the window. He saw the great cedar, and in mind the pilgrim who planted it there. All the pilgrims--all the crusaders--all the men in Plutarch; the long frieze of them, the full ocean of them ... all the self-search, dressed as search of another. "I, too, I doubt not--I, too!" Buried scenes in his own life rose before Strickland. Behind him scratched Glenfernie's pen, sounded Glenfernie's voice:

"I am going to see presently if I can walk as far as the keep. In two or three days I shall ride. There are things that I shall know when I get to Edinburgh. He would take, if he could, the ship that would land him at the door of France."