Mary Johnston - Foes

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Books by

Mary Johnston

Foes
Sir Mortimer

Harper & Brothers, New York
[Established 1817]

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FOES

A Novel

by

MARY JOHNSTON

Author of
"To Have and to Hold" "Audrey" "Lewis Rand"
"Sir Mortimer" "The Long Roll"

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London

1918

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

Said Mother Binning: "Whiles I spin and whiles I dream. A bonny day
like this I look."

English Strickland, tutor at Glenfernie House, looked, too, at the
feathery glen, vivid in June sunshine. The ash-tree before Mother
Binning's cot overhung a pool of the little river. Below, the water
brawled and leaped from ledge to ledge, but here at the head of the
glen it ran smooth and still. A rose-bush grew by the door and a hen
and her chicks crossed in the sun. English Strickland, who had been
fishing, sat on the door-stone and talked to Mother Binning, sitting
within with her wheel beside her.

"What is it, Mother, to have the second sight?"

"It's to see behind the here and now. Why're ye asking?"

"I wish I could buy it or slave for it!" said Strickland. "Over and
over again I really need to see behind the here and now!"

"Aye. It's needed mair really than folk think. It's no' to be had by
buying nor slaving. How are the laird and the leddy?"

"Why, well. Tell me," said Strickland, "some of the things you've
seen with second sight."

"It taks inner ears for inner things."

"How do you know I haven't them?"

"Maybe 'tis so. Ye're liked well enough."

Mother Binning looked at the dappling water and the June trees and the
bright blue sky. It was a day to loosen tongue.

"I'll tell you ane thing I saw. It's mair than twenty years since
James Stewart, that was son of him who fled, wad get Scotland and
England again intil his hand. So the laddie came frae overseas, and
made stir and trouble enough, I tell ye!... Now I'll show you what I
saw, I that was a young woman then, and washing my wean's claes in the
water there. The month was September, and the year seventeen fifteen.
Mind you, nane hereabouts knew yet of thae goings-on!... I sat back on
my heels, with Jock's sark in my hand, and a lav'rock was singing, and
whiles I listened the pool grew still. And first it was blue glass
under blue sky, and I sat caught. And then it was curled cloud or
milk, and then it was nae color at all. And then I _saw_, and 'twas as
though what I saw was around me. There was a town nane like
Glenfernie, and a country of mountains, and a water no' like this one.
There pressed a thrang of folk, and they were Hieland men and Lowland
men, but mair Hieland than Lowland, and there were chiefs and
chieftains and Lowland lords, and there were pipers. I heard naught,
but it was as though bright shadows were around me. There was a height
like a Good People's mount, and a braw fine-clad lord speaking and
reading frae a paper, and by him a surpliced man to gie a prayer, and
there was a banner pole, and it went up high, and it had a gowd ball
atop. The braw lord stopped speaking, and all the Hielandmen and
Lowlandmen drew and held up and brandished their claymores and swords.
The flash ran around like the levin. I kenned that they shouted, all
thae gay shadows! I saw the pipers' cheeks fill with wind, and the
bags of the pipes fill. Then ane drew on a fine silken rope, and up
the pole there went a braw silken banner, and it sailed out in the
wind. And there was mair shouting and brandishing. But what think ye
might next befall? That gowden ball, gowden like the sun before it
drops, that topped the pole, it fell! I marked it fall, and the heads
dodge, and it rolled upon the ground.... And then all went out like a
candle that you blaw upon. I was kneeling by the water, and Jock's
sark in my hand, and the lav'rock singing, and that was all."

"I have heard tell of that," said Strickland. "It was near Braemar."

"And that's mony a lang league frae here! Sax days, and we had news of
the rising, with the gathering at Braemar. And said he wha told us,
'The gilt ball fell frae the standard pole, and there's nane to think
that a good omen!' But I _saw_ it," said Mother Binning. She turned
her wheel, a woman not yet old and with a large, tranquil comeliness.
"What I see makes fine company!"

Strickland plucked a rose and smelled it. "This country is fuller of
such things than is England that I come from."

"Aye. It's a grand country." She continued to spin. The tutor looked
at the sun. It was time to be going if he wished another hour with the
stream. He took up his rod and book and rose from the door-step.
Mother Binning glanced aside from her wheel.

"How gaes things with the lad at the House?"

"Alexander or James?"

"The one ye call Alexander."

"That is his name."

"I think that he's had ithers. That's a lad of mony lives!"

Strickland, halting by the rose-bush, looked at Mother Binning. "I
suppose we call it 'wisdom' when two feel alike. Now that's just what
I feel about Alexander Jardine! It's just feeling without
rationality."

"Eh?"

"There isn't any reason in it."

"I dinna know about 'reason.' There's _being_ in it."

The tutor made as if to speak further, then, with a shake of his head,
thought better of it. Thirty-five years old, he had been a tutor since
he was twenty, dwelling, in all, in four or five more or less
considerable houses and families. Experience, adding itself to innate
good sense, had made him slow to discuss idiosyncrasies of patrons or
pupils. Strong perplexity or strong feeling might sometimes drive him,
but ordinarily he kept a rein on speech. Now he looked around him.

"What high summer, lovely weather!"

"Oh aye! It's bonny. Will ye be gaeing, since ye have na mair to say?"

English Strickland laughed and said good-by to Mother Binning and
went. The ash-tree, the hazels that fringed the water, a point of
mossy rock, hid the cot. The drone of the wheel no longer reached his
ears. It was as though all that had sunk into the earth. Here was only
the deep, the green, and lonely glen. He found a pool that invited,
cast, and awaited the speckled victim. In the morning he had had fair
luck, but now nothing.... The water showed no more diamonds, the lower
slopes of the converging hills grew a deep and slumbrous green. Above
was the gold, shoulder and crest powdered with it, unearthly,
uplifted. Strickland ceased his fishing. The light moved slowly
upward; the trees, the crag-heads, melted into heaven; while the lower
glen lay in lengths of shadow, in jade and amethyst. A whispering
breeze sprang up, cool as the water sliding by. Strickland put up his
fisherman's gear and moved homeward, down the stream.

He had a very considerable way to go. The glen path, narrow and rough,
went up and down, still following the water. Hazel and birch, oak and
pine, overhung and darkened it. Bosses of rock thrust themselves
forward, patched with lichen and moss, seamed and fringed with fern
and heath. Roots of trees, huge and twisted, spread and clutched like
guardian serpents. In places where rock had fallen the earth seemed to
gape. In the shadow it looked a gnome world--a gnome or a dragon
world. Then upon ledge or bank showed bells or disks or petaled suns
of June flowers, rose and golden, white and azure, while overhead was
heard the evening song of birds alike calm and merry, and through a
cleft in the hills poured the ruddy, comfortable sun.

The walls declined in height, sloped farther back. The path grew
broader; the water no longer fell roaring, but ran sedately between
pebbled beaches. The scene grew wider, the mouth of the glen was
reached. He came out into a sunset world of dale and moor and
mountain-heads afar. There were fields of grain, and blue waving
feathers from chimneys of cottage and farm-house. In the distance
showed a village, one street climbing a hill, and atop a church with a
spire piercing the clear east. The stream widened, flowing thin over a
pebbly bed. The sun was not yet down. It painted a glory in the west
and set lanes and streets of gold over the hills and made the little
river like Pactolus. Strickland approached a farm-house, prosperous
and venerable, mended and neat. Thatched, long, white, and low, behind
it barns and outbuildings, it stood tree-guarded, amid fields of young
corn. Beyond it swelled a long moorside; in front slipped the still
stream.

There were stepping-stones across the stream. Two young girls, coming
toward the house, had set foot upon these. Strickland, halting in the
shadow of hazels and young aspens, watched them as they crossed. Their
step was free and light; they came with a kind of hardy grace,
elastic, poised, and very young, homeward from some visit on this
holiday. The tutor knew them to be Elspeth and Gilian Barrow,
granddaughters of Jarvis Barrow of White Farm. The elder might have
been fifteen, the younger thirteen years. They wore their holiday
dresses. Elspeth had a green silken snood, and Gilian a blue. Elspeth
sang as she stepped from stone to stone:

"But I will get a bonny boat,
And I will sail the sea,
For I maun gang to Love Gregor,
Since he canna come hame to me--"

They did not see Strickland where he stood by the hazels. He let them
go by, watching them with a quiet pleasure. They took the
upward-running lane. Hawthorns in bloom hid them; they were gone like
young deer. Strickland, crossing the stream, went his own way.

The country became more open, with, at this hour, a dreamlike depth
and hush. Down went the sun, but a glow held and wrapped the earth in
hues of faery. When he had walked a mile and more he saw before him
Glenfernie House. In the modern and used moiety seventy years old, in
the ancient keep and ruin of a tower three hundred, it crowned--the
ancient and the latter-day--a craggy hill set with dark woods, and
behind it came up like a wonder lantern, like a bubble of pearl, the
full moon.

CHAPTER II

The tutor, in his own room, put down his fisherman's rod and bag. The
chamber was a small one, set high up, with two deep windows tying the
interior to the yet rosy west and the clearer, paler south. Strickland
stood a moment, then went out at door and down three steps and along a
passageway to two doors, one closed, the other open. He tapped upon
the latter.

"James!"

A boy of fourteen, tall and fair, with a flushed, merry face, crossed
the room and opened the door more widely. "Oh, aye, Mr. Strickland,
I'm in!"

"Is Alexander?"

"Not yet. I haven't seen him. I was at the village with Dandie
Saunderson."

"Do you know what he did with himself?"

"Not precisely."

"I see. Well, it's nearly supper-time."

Back in his own quarters, the tutor made such changes as were needed,
and finally stood forth in a comely suit of brown, with silver-buckled
shoes, stock and cravat of fine cambric, and a tie-wig. Midway in his
toilet he stopped to light two candles. These showed, in the smallest
of mirrors, set of wig and cravat, and between the two a thoughtful,
cheerful, rather handsome countenance.

He had left the door ajar so that he might hear, if he presently
returned, his eldest pupil. But he heard only James go clattering down
the passage and the stair. Strickland, blowing out his candles, left
his room to the prolonged June twilight and the climbing moon.

The stairway down, from landing to landing, lay in shadow, but as he
approached the hall he caught the firelight. The laird had a London
guest who might find a chill in June nights so near the north. The
blazing wood showed forth the chief Glenfernie gathering-place, wide
and deep, with a great chimneypiece and walls of black oak, and hung
thereon some old pieces of armor and old weapons. There was a table
spread for supper, and a servant went about with a long
candle-lighter, lighting candles. A collie and a hound lay upon the
hearth. Between them stood Mrs. Jardine, a tall, fair woman of forty
and more, with gray eyes, strong nose, and humorous mouth.

"Light them all, Davie! It'll be dark then by London houses."

Davie showed an old servant's familiarity. "He wasna sae grand when he
left auld Scotland thirty years since! I'm thinking he might remember
when he had nae candles ava in his auld hoose."

"Well, he'll have candles enough in his new hall."

Davie lit the last candle. "They say that he is sinfu' rich!"

"Rich enough to buy Black Hill," said Mrs. Jardine, and turned to the
fire. The tutor joined her there. He had for her liking and
admiration, and she for him almost a motherly affection. Now she
smiled as he came up.

"Did you have good fishing?"

"Only fair."

"Mr. Jardine and Mr. Touris have just returned. They rode to Black
Hill. Have you seen Alexander?"

"No. I asked Jamie--"

"So did I. But he could not tell."

"He may have gone over the moor and been belated. Bran is with him."

"Yes.... He's a solitary one, with a thousand in himself!"

"You're the second woman," remarked Strickland, "who's said that
to-day," and told her of Mother Binning.

Mrs. Jardine pushed back a fallen ember with the toe of her shoe. "I
don't know whether she sees or only thinks she sees. Some do the tane
and some do the tither. Here's the laird."

Two men entered together--a large man and a small man. The first,
great of height and girth, was plainly dressed; the last, seeming
slighter by contrast than he actually was, wore fine cloth, silken
hose, gold buckles to his shoes, and a full wig. The first had a
massive, somewhat saturnine countenance, the last a shrewd, narrow
one. The first had a long stride and a wide reach from thumb to little
finger, the last a short step and a cupped hand. William Jardine,
laird of Glenfernie, led the way to the fire.

"The ford was swollen. Mr. Touris got a little wet and chilled."

"Ah, the fire is good!" said Mr. Touris. "They do not burn wood like
this in London!"

"You will burn it at Black Hill. I hope that you like it better and
better?"

"It has possibilities, ma'am. Undoubtedly," said Mr. Touris, the Scots
adventurer for fortune, set up as merchant-trader in London, making
his fortune by "interloping" voyages to India, but now shareholder and
part and lot of the East India Company--"undoubtedly the place has
possibilities." He warmed his hands. "Well, it would taste good to
come back to Scotland--!" His words might have been finished out, "and
laird it, rich and influential, where once I went forth, cadet of a
good family, but poorer than a church mouse!"

Mrs. Jardine made a murmur of hope that he _would_ come back to
Scotland. But the laird looked with a kind of large gloom at the
reflection of fire and candle in battered breastplate and morion and
crossed pikes.

Supper was brought in by two maids, Eppie and Phemie, and with them
came old Lauchlinson, the butler. Mrs. Jardine placed herself behind
the silver urn, and Mr. Touris was given the seat nearest the fire.
The boy James appeared, and with him the daughter of the house, Alice,
a girl of twelve, bonny and merry.

"Where is Alexander?" asked the laird.

Strickland answered. "He is not in yet, sir. I fancy that he walked to
the far moor. Bran is with him."

"He's a wanderer!" said the laird. "But he ought to keep hours."

"That's a fine youth!" quoth Mr. Touris, drinking tea. "I marked him
yesterday, casting the bar. Very strong--a powerful frame like yours,
Glenfernie! When is he going to college?"

"This coming year. I have kept him by me late," said the laird,
broodingly. "I like my bairns at home."

"Aye, but the young will not stay as they used to! They will be
voyaging," said the guest. "They build outlandish craft and forthfare,
no matter what you cry to them!" His voice had a mordant note. "I
know. I've got one myself--a nephew, not a son. But I am his guardian
and he's in my house, and it is the same. If I buy Black Hill,
Glenfernie, I hope that your son and my nephew may be friends. They're
about of an age."

The listening Jamie spoke from beyond Strickland. "What's your
nephew's name, sir?"

"Ian. Ian Rullock. His father's mother was a Highland lady, near
kinswoman to Gordon of Huntley." Mr. Touris was again speaking to his
host. "As a laddie, before his father's death (his mother, my sister,
died at his birth), he was much with those troublous northern kin. His
father took him, too, in England, here and there among the Tory crowd.
But I've had him since he was twelve and am carrying him on in the
straight Whig path."

"And in the true Presbyterian religion?"

"Why, as to that," said Mr. Touris, "his father was of the Church
Episcopal in Scotland. I trust that we are all Christians,
Glenfernie!"

The laird made a dissenting sound. "I kenned," he said, and his voice
held a grating gibe, "that you had left the Kirk."

Mr. Archibald Touris sipped his tea. "I did not leave it so far,
Glenfernie, that I cannot return! In England, for business reasons, I
found it wiser to live as lived the most that I served. Naaman was
permitted to bow himself in the house of Rimmon."

"You are not Naaman," answered the laird. "Moreover, I hold that
Naaman sinned!"

Mrs. Jardine would make a diversion. "Mr. Jardine, will you have sugar
to your tea? Mr. Strickland says the great pine is blown down, this
side the glen. The _Mercury_ brings us news of the great world, Mr.
Touris, but I dare say you can give us more?"

"The chief news, ma'am, is that we want war with Spain and Walpole
won't give it to us. But we'll have it--British trade must have it or
lower her colors to the Dons! France, too--"

Supper went on, with abundant and good food and drink. The laird sat
silent. Strickland gave Mrs. Jardine yeoman aid. Jamie and Alice now
listened to the elders, now in an undertone discoursed their own
affairs. Mr. Touris talked, large trader talk, sprinkled with terms of
commerce and Indian policy. Supper over, all rose. The table was
cleared, wine and glasses brought and set upon it, between the
candles. The young folk vanished. Bright as was the night, the air
carried an edge. Mr. Touris, standing by the fire, warmed himself and
took snuff. Strickland, who had left the hall, returned and placed her
embroidery frame for Mrs. Jardine.

"Is Alexander in yet?"

"Not yet."

She began to work in cross-stitch upon a wreath of tulips and roses.
The tutor took his book and withdrew to the table and the candles
thereon. The laird came and dropped his great form upon the settle. He
held silence a few moments, then began to speak.

"I am fifty years old. I was a bairn just talking and toddling about
the year the Stewart fled and King William came to England. My father
had Campbell blood in him and was a friend of Argyle's. The estate of
Glenfernie was not to him then, but his uncle held it and had an heir
of his body. My father was poor save in stanchness to the liberties of
Kirk and kingdom. My mother was a minister's daughter, and she and her
father and mother were among the persecuted for the sake of the true
Reformed and Covenanted Church of Scotland. My mother had a burn in
her cheek. It was put there, when she was a young lass, by order of
Grierson of Lagg. She was set among those to be sold into the
plantations in America. A kinsman who had power lifted her from that
bog, but much she suffered before she was freed.... When I was little
and sat upon her knee I would put my forefinger in that mark. 'It's a
seal, laddie,' she would say. 'Sealed to Christ and His true Kirk!'
But when I was bigger I only wanted to meet Grierson of Lagg, and
grieved that he was dead and gone and that Satan, not I, had the
handling of him. My grandfather and mother.... My grandfather was
among the outed ministers in Galloway. Thrust from his church and his
parish, he preached upon the moors--yea, to juniper and whin-bush and
the whaups that flew and nested! Then the persecuted men, women and
bairns, gathered there, and he preached to them. Aye, and he was at
Bothwell Bridge. Claverhouse's men took him, and he lay for some
months in the Edinburgh tolbooth, and then by Council and justiciary
was condemned to be hanged. And so he was hanged at the cross of
Edinburgh. And what he said before he died was '_With what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you_' ... My grandmother, for hearing
preaching in the fields and for sheltering the distressed for the
Covenant's sake, was sent with other godly women to the Bass Rock.
There in cold and heat, in hunger and sickness, she bided for two
years. When at last they let her body forth her mind was found to be
broken.... My father and mother married and lived, until Glenfernie
came to him, at Windygarth. I was born at Windygarth. My grandmother
lived with us. I was twelve years old before she went from earth. It
was all her pleasure to be forth from the house--any house, for she
called them all prisons. So I was sent to ramble with her. Out of
doors, with the harmless things of earth, she was wise enough--and
good company. The old of this countryside remember us, going here and
there.... I used to think, 'If I had been living then, I would not
have let those things happen!' And I dreamed of taking coin, and of
dropping the same coin into the hands that gave.... And so, the other
having served your turn, Touris, you will change back to the true
Kirk?"

Mr. Touris handled his snuff-box, considered the chasing upon the
gold lid. "Those were sore happenings, Glenfernie, but they're past! I
make no wonder that, being you, you feel as you do. But the world's in
a mood, if I may say it, not to take so hardly religious differences.
I trust that I am as religious as another--but my family was always
moderate there. In matters political the world's as hot as ever--but
there, too, it is my instinct to ca' canny. But if you talk of
trade"--he tapped his snuff-box--"I will match you, Glenfernie! If
there's wrong, pay it back! Hold to your principles! But do it
cannily. Smile when there's smart, and get your own again by being
supple. In the end you'll demand--and get--a higher interest. Prosper
at your enemy's cost, and take repayment for your hurt sugared and
spiced!"

"I'll not do it so!" said Glenfernie. "But I would take my stand at
the crag's edge and cry to Grierson of Lagg, 'You or I go down!'"

Mr. Touris brushed the snuff from his ruffles. "It's a great century!
We're growing enlightened."

With a movement of her fingers Mrs. Jardine helped to roll from her
lap a ball of rosy wool. "Mr. Jardine, will you give me that? Had you
heard that Abercrombie's cows were lifted?"

"Aye, I heard. What is it, Holdfast?"

Both dogs had raised their heads.

"Bran is outside," said Strickland.

As he spoke the door opened and there came in a youth of seventeen,
tall and well-built, with clothing that testified to an encounter
alike with brier and bog. The hound Bran followed him. He blinked at
the lights and the fire, then with a gesture of deprecation crossed
the hall to the stairway. His mother spoke after him.

"Davie will set you something to eat."

He answered, "I do not want anything," then, five steps up, paused and
turned his head. "I stopped at White Farm, and they gave me supper."
He was gone, running up the stairs, and Bran with him.

The laird of Glenfernie shaded his eyes and looked at the fire. Mrs.
Jardine, working upon the gold streak in a tulip, held her needle
suspended and sat for a moment with unseeing gaze, then resumed the
bright wreath. The tutor began to think again of Mother Binning, and,
following this, of the stepping-stones at White Farm, and Elspeth and
Gilian Barrow balanced above the stream of gold. Mr. Touris put up his
snuff-box.

"That's a fine youth! I should say that he took after you, Glenfernie.
But it's hard to tell whom the young take after!"

CHAPTER III

The school-room at Glenfernie gave upon the hill's steepest, most
craglike face. A door opened on a hand's-breadth of level turf across
from which rose the broken and ruined wall that once had surrounded
the keep. Ivy overgrew this; below a wide and ragged breach a pine had
set its roots in the hillside. Its top rose bushy above the stones.
Beyond the opening, one saw from the school-room, as through a window,
field and stream and moor, hill and dale. The school-room had been
some old storehouse or office. It was stone walled and floored, with
three small windows and a fireplace. Now it contained a long table
with a bench and three or four chairs, a desk and shelves for books.
One door opened upon the little green and the wall; a second gave
access to a courtyard and the rear of the new house.

Here on a sunny, still August forenoon Strickland and the three
Jardines went through the educational routine. The ages of the pupils
were not sufficiently near together to allow of a massed instruction.
The three made three classes. Jamie and Alice worked in the
school-room, under Strickland's eye. But Alexander had or took a wider
freedom. It was his wont to prepare his task much where he pleased,
coming to the room for recitation or for colloquy upon this or that
aspect of knowledge and the attainment thereof. The irregularity
mattered the less as the eldest Jardine combined with a passion for
personal liberty and out of doors a passion for knowledge. Moreover,
he liked and trusted Strickland. He would go far, but not far enough
to strain the tutor's patience. His father and mother and all about
Glenfernie knew his way and in a measure acquiesced. He had managed to
obtain for himself range. Young as he was, his indrawing, outpushing
force was considerable, and was on the way, Strickland thought, to
increase in power. The tutor had for this pupil a mixed feeling. The
one constant in it was interest. He was to him like a deep lake, clear
enough to see that there was something at the bottom that cast
conflicting lights and hints of shape. It might be a lump of gold, or
a coil of roots which would send up a water-lily, or it might be
something different. He had a feeling that the depths themselves
hardly knew. Or there might be two things of two natures down there in
the lake....

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