Chapter 32

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.