Edward Dyson - "The Gold Stealers"

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Mr. Seaver defied censorship and conventional literary standards to bring works by rabble-rousing authors like Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller and William Burroughs to American readers.

Mary Johnston - Foes

M >> Mary Johnston >> Foes




Now he found the Christian with Hassan, listening at ease, stretched
upon the sand, to Ali the Wanderer. The head man, welcomed, listened,
too, to Ali bringing his story to a close. "That is good, Ali the
Wanderer! Just where grows the tree from which one gathers that
fruit?"

"It can't be told unless you already know," said Ali.

"Allah my refuge! Then I would not be asking you!" answered Zeyn. "I
should have shaken the tree and gathered the diamonds, rubies, and
emeralds, and been off with them!"

"You did not hear what was said. Ibn the Happy found that they could
not be taken from the tree. He had tried what you propose. He broke
off a great number and ran away with them. But they turned to black
dust in his bosom. He put them all down, and when he looked back he
saw them still shining on the tree."

"What did Ibn the Happy do?"

"He climbed into the tree and lived there."

In the distance jackals were barking. "I like nothing better than
listening to stories," said Zeyn al-Din. "But, Allah! Just now there
are more important things to do! Yusuf the Red, I name you watcher
here until moonrise. Then waken Melec, who already sleeps there!"

His eyes touched in passing the big Christian. "Oh yes, you would be a
good watcher," thought Zeyn. "But there's a folly in this caravan!
Wait till good fortune has a steadier foot!"

But good fortune continued a wavering, evanishing thing. Deep in the
night, from behind a stiffened wave of earth, rose and dashed a
mounted band of Bedouin robbers. Yusuf the Red and other watchers had
and gave some warning. Zeyn al-Din's voice was presently heard like a
trumpet. The caravan repelled the robbers. But five of its number were
lost, some camels and mules driven off. The Bedouins departing with
wild cries, there were left confusion and bewailing, slowly
straightening, slowly sinking. The caravan, with a pang, recognized
that ill luck was a traveler with it.

The dead received burial; the wounded were looked to, at last hoisted,
groaning, upon the camels, among the merchandise. Unrested, bemoaning
loss, the trading company made their morning start three hours behind
the set time. For stars in the sky, there was the yellow light and the
sun at a bound, strewing heat. In the melee the robbers had thrust
lance or knife into several of the water-skins. Yet there was, it was
held, provision enough. The caravan went on. At midday the Bedouins
returned, reinforced. Zeyn al-Din and his mustered force beat them
off. No loss of goods or life, but much of time! The caravan went on,
that with laden beasts must move at best much like a tortoise. That
night the rest was shortened. Two hours after midnight and the strings
of camels were moving again, the asses and mules so monstrously
misshapen with bales of goods, the horses and horsemen and those
afoot. At dawn, not these Bedouins, but another roving band, harassed
them. Time was running like water from a cracked pitcher.

This day they cleared the robber bands. There spread before them,
around them, clean desert. Then returned that sickness.

"_O Zeyn al-Din, what could we expect who travel with him who denies
Allah?_"

The stricken caravan crept under the blaze across the red waste.
Camels fell and died. Their burdens were lifted from them and added to
the packs of others; their bodies were left to light and heat and
moving air.... It grew that an enchantment seemed to hold the feet of
the caravan. Evils came upon them, sickness of men and beasts. And now
it was seen that there was indeed little water.

"O Zeyn al-Din, rid us of this infidel!"

"The infidel is in you!" answered Zeyn al-Din. "Much speaking makes
for thirst and impedes motion. Let us cross this desert."

"O Zeyn al-Din, if you be no right head man we shall choose another!"

"Choose!" said Zeyn al-Din, and went to the head of a camel who would
not rise from the sand.

Ill luck clung and clung. Twelve hours and there began to be cabals.
These grew to factions. The larger of these swallowed the small fry,
swelled and mounted, took the shape of practically the whole caravan.
"Zeyn al-Din, if you do not harken to us it will be the worse for you!
Drive away the Christian dog!"

"Abu al-Salam, are you the chief, or I?--Now, companions, listen!
These are the reasons in nature for our troubles--"

But no! It was the noon halt. The desert swam in light and silence.
The great majority of the traders and their company undertook to play
divining, judging, determining Allah. The big Christian stood over
against them and looked at them, his arms folded.

"It is no such great matter!... Very good then! What do you want me
to do?"

"Turn your head and your eyes from us, and go to what fate Allah
parcels out to you!"

There arose a buzzing. "Better we slay him here and now! So Allah will
know our side!"

Zeyn al-Din stepped forth. "This is the friend of my friend and I am
pledged. Slay, and you will have two to slay! O Allah! what a thing it
is to stare at the west when the riders are in the east!"

"Zeyn al-Din, we have chosen for head man Abu al-Salam."

"Allah with you! I should say you had chosen well. I have twelve
camels," said Zeyn al-Din. "I make another caravan! Mansur, Omar, and
Melec, draw you forth my camels and mules!"

With a weaker man there might have been interference, stoppage. But
Zeyn's mass and force acquired clear space for his own movements. He
made his caravan. He had with him so many men. Three of these stood by
him; the others cowered into the great caravan, into the shadow of Abu
al-Salam.

Zeyn threw a withering look. "Oh, precious is the skin!"

The big infidel came to him. "Zeyn al-Din, I do not want all this
peril for me. I have ridden away alone before to-day. Now I shall go
in that direction, and I shall find a garden."

"Perhaps we shall find it," said Zeyn. "Does any other go with my
caravan?"

It seemed that Ali the Wanderer went, and the dervish Abdallah....
There was more ado, but at last the caravan parted.... The great one,
the long string of beads, drew with slow toil across the waste, along
the old track. The very small one, the tiny string of beads, departed
at right angles. Space grew between them. The dervish Abdallah turned
upon his camel.

"It seems that we part. But, O Allah! around 'We part' is drawn 'We
are together!'"

Zeyn al-Din made a gesture of assent. "O I shall meet in bazaars Abu
al-Salam! 'Ha! Zeyn al-Din!'--'Ha! Abu al-Salam!'"

The sun sank lower. The vastly larger caravan drew away, drew away,
over the desert rim. Between the two was now a sea of desert waves.
Where the great string of camels, the asses, the riders, the men could
be seen, all were like little figures cut from dark paper, drawn by
some invisible finger, slowly, slowly across a wide floor. Before long
there were only dots, far in the distance. Around Zeyn al-Din's
caravan swept a great solitude.

"Halt!" said Zeyn. "Now they observe us no longer, and this is what we
do!"

All the merchant lading was taken from the camels. The bales of wealth
strewed the sand. "Wealth is a comfortable garment," said Zeyn, "but
life is a richer yet! That which gathers wealth is wealth. Now we
shall go thrice as fast as Abu al-Salam!"

"Far over there," said Ali the Wanderer, and nodded his head toward
the quarter, "is the small oasis called the Garland."

"I have heard of it, though I have not been there," answered Zeyn.
"Well, we shall not rest to-night; we shall ride!"

They rode in the desert beneath the stars, going fast, camels and
horses, unencumbered by bales and packs unwieldy and heavy. But there
were guarded, as though they were a train of the costliest
merchandise, the shrunken water-skins....

The laird of Glenfernie, riding in silence by Zeyn al-Din, whom he had
thanked once with emphasis, and then had accepted as he himself was
accepted, looked now at the desert and now at the stars and now at
past things. A year and more--he had been a year and more in the East.
If you had it in you to grow, the East was good growing-ground.... He
looked toward the stars beneath which lay Scotland.

The night passed. The yellow dawn came up, the sun and the heat of
day. And they must still press on.... At last the horses could not do
that. At eve they shot the horses, having no water for them. They went
on upon camels. Great suffering came upon them. They went stoically,
the Arabs and the Scot. The eternal waste, the sand, the arrows of the
sun.... The most of the camels died. Day and night and morn, and,
almost dead themselves, the men saw upon the verge the palms of the
desert oasis called the Garland.

* * * * *

Seven men dwelt seven days in the Garland. Uninhabited it stood, a
spring, date-palms, lesser verdure, a few birds and small beasts and
winged insects. It was an emerald set in ashy gold.

The dervish Abdallah sat in contemplation under a palm. Ali the
Wanderer lay and dreamed. Zeyn al-Din and his men, Mansur, Omar, and
Melec, were as active as time and place admitted. The camels tasted
rich repose. Day went by in dry light, in a pleasant rustling and
waving of palm fronds. Night sprang in starshine, wonderful soft lamps
orbed in a blue vault. Presently was born and grew a white moon.

Alexander Jardine, standing at the edge of the emerald, watched it. He
could not sleep. The first nights in the Garland he with the others
had slept profoundly. But now there was recuperation, strength again.
Around swept the circle of the desert. Above him he saw Canopus.

He ceased to look directly at the moon, or the desert, or Canopus. He
stretched himself upon the clear sand and was back in the inner vast
that searched for the upper vast. Since the grasses of the Campagna
there had been a long search, and his bark had encountered many a
wind, head winds and favoring winds, and had beaten from coast to
coast.

"O God, for the open, divine sea and Wisdom the compass--"

He lay beneath the palm; he put his arm over his eyes. For an hour he
had been whelmed in an old sense, bitter and stately, of the woe, the
broken knowledge, the ailing and the pain of the world. All the
world.... That other caravan, where was it?... Where were all
caravans? And all the bewilderment and all the false hopes and all the
fool's paradises. All the crying in the night. Children....

Little by little he recognized that he was seeing it as panorama....
None saw a panorama until one was out of the plane of its
components--out of the immediate plane. Gotten out as all must get
out, by the struggling Thought, which, the thing done, uses its
eyes....

He looked at his past. He did not beat his breast nor cry out in
repentance, but he saw with a kind of wonder the plains of darkness.
Oh, the deserts, and the slow-moving caravans in them!

He lay very still beneath the palm. All the world.... _All._

"_All is myself._"

"Ian? Myself--myself--myself!"

He heard a step upon the sand--the putting by of a branch. The Sufi
Abdallah stood beside him. Alexander made a movement.

"Lie still," said the other, "I will sit here, for sweet is the
night." He took his place, white-robed, a gleaming upon the sand.
Silent almost always, it was nothing that he should sit silent now,
quiet, moveless, gone away apparently among the stars.

The moments dropped, each a larger round. Glenfernie moved, sat up.

"I've felt you and your calm in our caravaning. Let me see if my
Arabic will carry me here!--What have you that I have not and that I
long for?"

"I have nought that you have not."

"But you see the having, and I do not."

"You are beginning to see."

The wind breathed in the oasis palms. The earth turned, seeking the
sun for her every chamber, the earth made pilgrimage around the sun,
eying point after point of that excellence, the earth journeyed with
the sun, held by the invisible cords.

"I wish new sight--I wish new touch--I wish comprehension!"

"You are beginning to have it."

"I have more than I had.... Yes, I know it--"

"There is birth.... Then comes the joy of birth. At last comes the
knowledge of why there is joy. Strive to be fully born."

"And if I were so--?"

"Then life alters and there is strong embrace."

A great stillness lay upon the oasis and the desert around. Men and
beasts were sleeping, only these two waking, just here, just now.
After a moment the dervish spoke again. "The holder-back is the sense
of disunity. Sit fast and gather yourself to yourself.... Then will
you find how large is your brood!"

He rose, stood a moment above Glenfernie, then went away. The man whom
he left sat on, struck from within by fresh shafts. Perception now
came in this way, with inner beam. How huge was the landscape that it
lighted up!... Alexander sat still. He bent his head--there was a
sense, extending to the physical, of a broken shell, of escape,
freedom.... He found that he was weeping. He lay upon the sand, and
the tears came as they might from a young boy. When they were past,
when he lifted himself again, the morning star was in the sky.




CHAPTER XXXI


Strickland, in the deep summer glen, saw before him the feather of
smoke from Mother Binning's cot. The singing stream ran clearly, the
sky arched blue above. The air held calm and fine, filled as it were
with golden points. He met a white hen and her brood, he heard the
slow drone of Mother Binning's wheel. She sat in the doorway, an old
wise wife, active still.

"Eh, mon, and it's you!--Wish, and afttimes ye'll get!" She pushed her
wheel aside. "I've had a feeling a' the day!"

Strickland leaned against her ash-tree. "It's high summer, Mother--one
of the poised, blissful days."

"Aye. I've a feeling.... Hae ye ony news at the House?"

"Alice sings beautifully this summer. Jamie is marrying down in
England--beauty and worth he says, and they say."

"Miss Alice doesna marry?"

"She's not the marrying kind, she says."

"Eh, then! She's bonny and gude, juist the same! Did ye come by White
Farm?"

"Yes. Jarvis Barrow fails. He sits under his fir-tree, with his Bible
beside him and his eyes on the hills. Littlefarm manages now for White
Farm."

"Robin's sunny and keen. But he aye irked Jarvis with his profane
sangs." She drew out the adjective with a humorous downward drag of
her lip.

Strickland smiled. "The old man's softer now. You see that by the
places at which his Bible opens."

"Oh aye! We're journeyers--rock and tree and Kelpie's Pool with the
rest of us."

She seemed to catch her own speech and look at it. "That's a word I
hae been wanting the morn!--The Kelpie's Pool, with the moor sae green
and purple around it." She sat bent forward, her wrinkled hands in her
lap, her eyes, rather wide, fixed upon the ash-tree.

"We have not heard from the laird," said Strickland, "this long time."

"The laird--now there! What ye want further comes when the mind
strains and then waits! I see in one ring the day and Glenfernie and
yonder water. Wherever the laird be, he thinks to-day of Scotland."

"I wish that he would think to returning," said Strickland. He had
been leaning against the doorpost. Now he straightened himself. "I
will go on as far as the pool."

Mother Binning loosed her hands. "Did ye have that thought when ye
left hame?"

"No, I believe not."

"Gae on, then! The day's bonny, and the Lord's gude has a wide ring!"

Strickland walking on, left the stream and the glen head. Now he was
upon the moor. It dipped and rose like a Titan wave of a Titan sea.
Its long, long unbroken crest, clean line against clean space,
brought a sense of quiet, distance, might. Here solitude was at home.
Now Strickland moved, and now he stood and watched the quiet. Turning
at last a shoulder of the moor, he saw at some distance below him the
pool, like a small mirror. He descended toward it, without noise over
the springy earth.

A horse appeared between him and the water. Strickland felt a most
involuntary startling and thrill--then half laughed to think that he
had feared that he saw the water-steed, the kelpie. The horse was
fastened to a stake that once had been the bole of an ancient willow.
It grazed around--somewhere would be a master.... Presently
Strickland's eye found the latter--a man lying upon the moorside, just
above the water. Again with a shock and thrill--though not like the
first--it came to him who it was.

The laird of Glenfernie lay very still, his eyes upon the Kelpie's
Pool. His old tutor, long his friend, quiet and stanch, gazed unseen.
When he had moved a few feet an outcropping of rock hid his form, but
his eyes could still dwell upon the pool and the man its visitor. He
turned to go away, then he stood still.

"What if he means a closer going yet?" Strickland settled back against
the rock. "He would loose his horse first--he would not leave it
fastened here. If he does that then I will go down to him."

Glenfernie lay still. There was no wind to-day. The reeds stood
straight, the willow leaves slept, the water stayed like dusky glass.
The air, pure and light, hung at rest in the ether. Minutes went by,
an hour. He might, Strickland thought, have lain there a long time. At
last he sat up, rose, began to walk around the pool. He went around it
thrice. Then again he sat down, his arms upon his knees, watching the
dusk water. He did not go nor sit like one overwrought or frenzied or
despairing. His great frame, his bearing, the air of him, had
quietude, but not listlessness; there seemed at once calm and
intensity as of a still center that had flung off the storm. Time
flowed. Thought Strickland:

"He is as far as I am from death in that water. I'll cease to spy."

He moved away, moss and ling muffling step, gained and dipped behind
the shoulder of the moor. The horse grazed on. The laird sat still,
his arms upon his knees, his head a little lifted, his eyes crossing
the Kelpie's Pool to the wave-line against the sky.

Strickland went to where the moor path ran by the outermost trees of
the glen head. Here he sat down beneath an oak and waited. Another
hour passed; then he heard the horse's hoofs. He rose and met
Glenfernie home-returning.

"It is good to see you, Strickland!"

"I found you yonder by the Kelpie's Pool. Then I came here and
waited."

"I have spent hours there.... They were not unhappy. They were not at
all unhappy."

They moved together along the moor track, the horse following.

"I am glad and glad again that you have come--"

"I have been coming a good while. But there were preventions."

"We have heard nothing direct for almost a year."

"Then my letters did not reach you. I wrote, but knew that they might
not. There is the smoke from Mother Binning's cot." He stood still to
watch the mounting feather. "I remember when first I saw that, a
six-year-old, climbing the glen with my father, carried on his
shoulder when I was tired. I thought it was a hut in a fairy-tale....
So it is!"

To Strickland the remarkable thing lay in the lack of strain, the
simplicity and fullness. Glenfernie was unfeignedly glad to see him,
glad to see home shapes and colors. The blue feather among the trees
had simply pleased him as it could not please a heart fastened to rage
and sorrow. The stream of memories that it had beckoned--many others,
it must be, besides that of the six-year-old's visit--seemed to have
washed itself clear, to have disintegrated, dissolved venom and
stinging. Strickland, pondering even while he talked, found the word
he wanted: "Comprehensiveness.... He always tended to that."

Said Glenfernie, "I've had another birth, Strickland, and all things
are the same and yet not the same." He gave it as an explanation, but
then left it. They were going the moorland way to Glenfernie House. He
was looking from side to side, recovering old landscape in sweep and
in detail. Bit by bit, as they came to it, Strickland gave him the
country news. At last there was the house before them, among the firs
and oaks, topping the crag. They came into the wood at the base of the
hill. The stream--the trees--above, the broken, ancient wall, the
roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep.
The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure
sky. Alexander stood and gazed.

"The keep. The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room.
Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read 'The Cranes
of Ibycus'?"

"I remember."

"Life within life, and sky above sky!--I hear Bran!"

* * * * *

They mounted the hill. It seemed to run before them that the laird had
come home. Bran and Davie and the men and maids and Alice, a bonny
woman, and Mrs. Grizel, very little withered, exclaimed and ran.
Tibbie Ross was there that day, and Black Alan neighed from his stall.
Even the waving trees--even the flowers in the garden--Home, and its
taste and fragrance--its dear, close emanations....

That evening at supper Mrs. Grizel made a remark. She leaned back in
her chair and looked at Glenfernie. "I never thought you like your
mother before! Oh aye! there's your father, too, and a kind of grand
man he was, for all that he saw things dark. But will you look, Mr.
Strickland, and see Margaret--"

Much later, from his own room, Strickland, gazing forth, saw light in
the keep. Alexander would be sitting there among the books and every
ancient memorial. Strickland felt a touch of doubt and apprehension.
Suppose that to-morrow should find not this Alexander, at once old and
new, but only the Alexander who had ridden from Glenfernie, who had
shipped to Lisbon, nearly three years ago? To-day's deep satisfaction
only a dream! Strickland shook off the fear.

"He breathed lasting growth.... O Christ! the help for all in winged
men!"

He turned to his bed. Lying awake he went in imagination to the
desert, to the Eastern places, that in few words the laird had
painted.

And in the morning he found still the old-new Alexander. He saw that
the new had always been in the old, the oak in the acorn.... There was
a great, sane naturalness in the alteration, in the advance.
Strickland caught glimpses of larger orders.

"_I will make thee ruler over many things._"

The day was deep and bright. The laird fell at once into the old
routine. For none at Glenfernie was there restlessness; there was only
ache gone, and a feeling of fulfilling. Mrs. Grizel pattered to and
fro. Alice sang like a lark, gathering pansy seed from her garden.
Phemie and Eppie sang. The men whistled at their work. Davie
discoursed to himself. But Tibbie Ross was wild to get away early and
to the village with the news. By the foot of the hill she began to
meet wayfarers.

"Oh, aye, this is the real weather! Did ye know--"

Alexander did not leave home that day. In their old work-room he
listened to Strickland's account of his stewardship.

"Strickland, I love you!" he said, when it was all given.

He wrote to Jamie; he sat in the garden seat built against the garden
wall and watched Alice as she moved from plant to plant.

"You do not say much," thought Alice, "but I like you--I like you--I
like you!"

In the afternoon Strickland met him coming from the little green
beyond the school-room.

"I have been out through the wall, under the old pine. I seemed to
hold many things in the palm of the hand.... I believe that you know
what it is to make essences."

After bedtime Strickland saw again the light in the keep. But he had
ceased to fear. "Oh All-Being, how rich and stately and various and
surprising you are!" In the morning, outside in the court, he found
Black Alan saddled.

"The laird will be riding to Black Hill," said Tam Dickson.




CHAPTER XXXII


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--"

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