Mary Johnston - Foes

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Strickland set Alice to translating a French fable, and Jamie to
reconsidering a neglected page of ancient history. Looking through the
west window, he saw that Alexander had taken his geometry out through
the great rent in the wall. Book and student perched beneath the
pine-tree, in a crook made by rock and brown root, overhanging the
autumn world. Strickland at his own desk dipped quill into ink-well
and continued a letter to a friend in England. The minutes went by.
From the courtyard came a subdued, cheerful household clack and
murmur, voices of men and maids, with once Mrs. Jardine's genial,
vigorous tones, and once the laird's deep bell note, calling to his
dogs. On the western side fell only the sough of the breeze in the
pine.

Jamie ceased the clocklike motion of his body to and fro over the
difficult lesson. "I never understood just what were the Erinnys,
sir?"

"The Erinnys?" Strickland laid down the pen and turned in his chair.
"I'll have to think a moment, to get it straight for you, Jamie....
The Erinnys are the Fates as avengers. They are the vengeance-demanding
part of ourselves objectified, supernaturalized, and named. Of old,
where injury was done, the Erinnys were at hand to pull the roof down
upon the head of the injurer. Their office was to provide unerringly
sword for sword, bitter cup for bitter cup. They never forgot, they
always avenged, though sometimes they took years to do it. They
esteemed themselves, and were esteemed, essential to the moral order.
They are the dark and bitter extreme of justice, given power by the
imagination.... Do you think that you know the chapter now?"

Jamie achieved his recitation, and then was set to mathematics. The
tutor's quill drove on across the page. He looked up.

"Mr. Touris has come to Black Hill?"

Jamie and Alice worshiped interruptions.

"He has twenty carriers bringing fine things all the time--"

"Mother is going to take me when she goes to see Mrs. Alison, his
sister--"

"He is going to spend money and make friends--"

"Mother says Mrs. Alison was most bonny when she was young, but
England may have spoiled her--"

"The minister told the laird that Mr. Touris put fifty pounds in the
plate--"

Strickland held up his hand, and the scholars, sighing, returned to
work. _Buzz, buzz!_ went the bees outside the window. The sun climbed
high. Alexander shut his geometry and came through the break in the
wall and across the span of green to the school-room.

"That's done, Mr. Strickland."

Strickland looked at the paper that his eldest pupil put before him.
"Yes, that is correct. Do you want, this morning, to take up the
reading?"

"I had as well, I suppose."

"If you go to Edinburgh--if you do as your father wishes and apply
yourself to the law--you will need to read well and to speak well. You
do not do badly, but not well enough. So, let's begin!" He put out his
hand and drew from the bookshelf a volume bearing the title, _The
Treasury of Orators_. "Try what you please."

Alexander took the book and moved to the unoccupied window. Here he
half sat, half stood, the morning light flowing in upon him. He opened
the volume and read, with a questioning inflection, the title beneath
his eyes, "'The Cranes of Ibycus'?"

"Yes," assented Strickland. "That is a short, graphic thing."

Alexander read:

"Ibycus, who sang of love, material and divine, in Rhegium
and in Samos, would wander forth in the world and make his
lyre sound now by the sea and now in the mountain.
Wheresoever he went he was clad in the favor of all who
loved song. He became a wandering minstrel-poet. The
shepherd loved him, and the fisher; the trader and the
mechanic sighed when he sang; the soldier and the king felt
him at their hearts. The old returned in their thoughts to
youth, young men and maidens trembled in heavenly sound and
light. You would think that all the world loved Ibycus.

"Corinth, the jeweled city, planned her chariot-races and
her festival of song. The strong, the star-eyed young men,
traveled to Corinth from mainland and from island, and those
inner athletes and starry ones, the poets, traveled. Great
feasting was to be in Corinth, and contests of strength and
flights of song, and in the theater, representation of gods
and men. Ibycus, the wandering poet, would go to Corinth,
there perhaps to receive a crown.

"Ibycus, loved of all who love song, traveled alone, but not
alone. Yet shepherds, or women with their pitchers at the
spring, saw but a poet with a staff and a lyre. Now he was
found upon the highroad, and now the country paths drew him,
and the solemn woods where men most easily find God. And so
he approached Corinth.

"The day was calm and bright, with a lofty, blue, and
stainless sky. The heart of Ibycus grew warm, and there
seemed a brighter light within the light cast by the sun.
Flower and plant and tree and all living things seemed to
him to be glistening and singing, and to have for him, as he
for them, a loving friendship. And, looking up to the sky,
he saw, drawn out stringwise, a flight of cranes, addressed
to Egypt. And between his heart and them ran, like a
rippling path that the sun sends across the sea, a stream of
good-will and understanding. They seemed a part of himself,
winged in the blue heaven, and aware of the part of him that
trod earth, that was entering the grave and shadowy wood
that neighbored Corinth.

"The cranes vanished from overhead, the sky arched without
stain. Ibycus, the sacred poet, with his staff and his lyre,
went on into the wood. Now the light faded and there was
green gloom, like the depths of Father Sea.

"Now robbers lay masked in the wood--"

Jamie and Alice sat very still, listening. Strickland kept his eyes
on the reading youth.

"Now robbers lay masked in the wood--violent men and
treacherous, watching for the unwary, to take from them
goods and, if they resisted, life. In a dark place they lay
in wait, and from thence they sprang upon Ibycus. 'What hast
thou? Part it from thyself and leave it with us!'

"Ibycus, who could sing of the wars of the Greeks and the
Trojans no less well than of the joys of young love, made
stand, held close to him his lyre, but raised on high his
staff of oak. Then from behind one struck him with a keen
knife, and he sank, and lay in his blood. The place was the
edge of a glade, where the trees thinned away and the sky
might be seen overhead. And now, across the blue heaven,
came a second line of the south-ward-going cranes. They flew
low, they flapped their wings, and the wood heard their
crying. Then Ibycus the poet raised his arms to his brothers
the birds. 'Ye cranes, flying between earth and heaven,
avenge shed blood, as is right!'

"Hoarse screamed the cranes flying overhead. Ibycus the poet
closed his eyes, pressed his lips to Mother Earth, and died.
The cranes screamed again, circling the wood, then in a long
line sailed southward through the blue air until they might
neither be heard nor seen. The robbers stared after them.
They laughed, but without mirth. Then, stooping to the body
of Ibycus, they would have rifled it when, hearing a sudden
sound of men's voices entering the wood, they took violent
fright and fled."

Strickland looked still at the reader. Alexander had straightened
himself. He was speaking rather than reading. His voice had
intensities and shadows. His brows had drawn together, his eyes
glowed, and he stood with nostrils somewhat distended. The emotion
that he plainly showed seemed to gather about the injury done and the
appeal of Ibycus. The earlier Ibycus had not seemed greatly to
interest him. Strickland was used to stormy youth, to its passional
moments, sudden glows, burnings, sympathies, defiances, lurid shows of
effects with the causes largely unapparent. It was his trade to know
youth, and he had a psychologist's interest. He said now to himself,
"There is something in his character that connects itself with, that
responds to, the idea of vengeance." There came into his memory the
laird's talk, the evening of Mr. Touris's visit, in June. Glenfernie,
who would have wrestled with Grierson of Lagg at the edge of the pit;
Glenfernie's mother and father, who might have had much the same
feeling; their forebears beyond them with like sensations toward the
Griersons of their day.... The long line of them--the long line of
mankind--injured and injurers....

"Travelers through the wood, whose voices the robbers heard,
found Ibycus the poet lying upon the ground, ravished of
life. It chanced that he had been known of them, known and
loved. Great mourning arose, and vain search for them who
had done this wrong. But those strong, wicked ones were
gone, fled from their haunts, fled from the wood afar to
Corinth, for the god Pan had thrown against them a pine
cone. So the travelers took the body of Ibycus and bore it
with them to Corinth.

"A poet had been slain upon the threshold of the house of
song. Sacred blood had spattered the white robes of a queen
dressed for jubilee. Evil unreturned to its doers must
darken the sunshine of the famous days. Corinth uttered a
cry of lamentation and wrath. 'Where are the ill-doers, the
spillers of blood, that we may spill their blood and avenge
Ibycus, showing the gods that we are their helpers?' But
those robbers and murderers might not be found. And the body
of Ibycus was consumed upon a funeral pyre.

"The festival hours went by in Corinth. And now began to
fill the amphitheater where might find room a host for
number like the acorns of Dodona. The throng was huge, the
sound that it made like the shock of ocean. Around, tier
above tier, swept the rows, and for roof there was the blue
and sunny air. Then the voice of the sea hushed, for now
entered the many-numbered chorus. Slow-circling, it sang of
mighty Fate: '_For every word shall have its echo, and every
deed shall see its face. The word shall say, "Is it my
echo?" and the deed shall say, "Is it my face?"_'--

"The chorus passes, singing. The voices die, there falls a
silence, sent as it were from inner space. The open sky is
above the amphitheater. And now there comes, from north to
south, sailing that sea above, high, but not so high that
their shape is indistinguishable, a long flight of cranes.
Heads move, eyes are raised, but none know why that interest
is so keen, so still. Then from out the throng rises, struck
with forgetfulness of gathered Corinth and of its own
reasons for being dumb as is the stone, a man's voice, and
the fear that Pan gives ran yet around in that voice. 'See,
brother, see! The cranes of Ibycus!'

"'Ibycus!' The crowd about those men pressed in upon them.
'What do you know of Ibycus?' And great Pan drove them to
show in their faces what they knew. So Corinth took--"

Alexander Jardine shut the book and, leaving the window, dropped it
upon the table. His hand shook, his face was convulsed. "I've read as
far as needs be. Those things strike me like hammers!" With suddenness
he turned and was gone.

Strickland was aware that he might not return that day to the
school-room, perhaps not to the house. He went out of the west door
and across the grassy space to the gap in the wall, through which he
disappeared. Beyond was the rough descent to wood and stream.

Jamie spoke: "He's a queer body! He says he thinks that he lived a
long time ago, and then a shorter time ago, and then now. He says that
some days he sees it all come up in a kind of dark desert."

Alice put in her word, "Mother says he's many in one, and that the
many and one don't yet recognize each other."

"Your mother is a wise woman," said the tutor. "Let me see how the
work goes."

The pine-tree, outside the wall, overhung a rude natural stairway of
stony ledge and outcropping root with patches of moss and heath. Down
this went Alexander into a cool dimness of fir and oak and birch,
watered by a little stream. He kneeled by this, he cooled face and
hands in the water, then flung himself beneath a tree and, burying his
head in his arms, lay still. The waves within subsided, sank to a
long, deep swell, then from that to quiet. The door that wind and tide
had beaten open shut again. Alexander lay without thinking, without
overmuch feeling. At last, turning, he opened his eyes upon the
tree-tops and the August sky. The door was shut upon tales of injury
and revenge. Between boy and man, he lay in a yearning stillness,
colors and sounds and dim poetic strains his ministers of grace. This
lasted for a time, then he rose, first to a sitting posture, then to
his feet. Crows flew through the wood; he had a glimpse of yellow
fields and purple heath. He set forth upon one of the long rambles
which were a prized part of life.

An hour or so later he stopped at a cotter's, some miles from home. An
old man and a woman gave him an oat cake and a drink of home-brewed.
He was fond of folk like these--at home with them and they with him.
There was no need to make talk, but he sat and looked at the marigolds
while the woman moved about and the old man wove rushes into mats.
From here he took to the hills and walked awhile with a shepherd
numbering his sheep. Finally, in mid-afternoon, he found himself upon
a heath, bare of trees, lifted and purple.

He sat down amid the warm bloom; he lay down. Within was youth's blind
tumult and longing, a passioning for he knew not what. "I wish that
there were great things in my life. I wish that I were a discoverer,
sailing like Columbus. I wish that I had a friend--"

He fell into a day-dream, lapped there in warm purple waves, hearing
the bees' interminable murmur. He faced, across a narrow vale, an
abrupt, curiously shaped hill, dark with outstanding granite and with
fir-trees. Where at the eastern end it broke away, where at its base
the vale widened, shone among the lively green of elms turrets and
chimneys of a large house. "Black Hill--Black Hill--Black Hill...."

A youth of about his own age came up the path from the vale.
Alexander, lying amid the heath, caught at some distance the whole
figure, but as he approached lost him. Then, near at hand, the head
rose above the brow of the ridge. It was a handsome head, with a cap
and feather, with gold-brown hair lightly clustering, and a
countenance of spirit and daring with something subtle rubbed in.
Head, shoulders, a supple figure, not so tall nor so largely made as
was Glenfernie's heir, all came upon the purple hilltop.

CHAPTER IV

Alexander raised himself from his couch in the heather.

"Good day!" said the new-comer.

"Good day!"

The youth stood beside him. "I am Ian Rullock."

"I am Alexander Jardine."

"Of Glenfernie?"

"Aye, you've got it."

"Then we're the neighbors that are to be friends."

"If we are to be we are to be.... I want a friend.... I don't know if
you're the one that is to answer."

The other dropped beside him upon the heath. "I saw you walking along
the hilltop. So when you did not come on I thought I'd climb and meet
you. This is a lonely, miserable country!"

Alexander was moved to defend. "There are more miserable! It's got its
points."

"I don't see them. I want London!"

"That's Babylon.--It's your own country. You're evening it with
England!"

"No, I'm not. But you can't deny that it's poor."

"There's one of its sons, named Touris, that is not poor!"

Rullock rose upon one knee. "The wise man gets rich and the fool
stays poor. Do you want to be friends or do you want to fight?"

Alexander clasped his hands behind his head and lay back upon the
earth. "No, I do not want to fight--not now! I wouldn't fight you,
anyhow, for standing up for one to whom you're beholden."

Silence fell between them, each having eyes upon the other. Something
drew each to each, something repelled each from each. It was a
question, between those forces, which would gain. Alexander did not
feel strange with Ian, nor Ian with Alexander. It was as though they
had met before. But how they had met and why, and where and when, and
what that meeting had entailed and meant, was hidden from their gaze.
The attractive increased over the repellent. Ian spoke.

"There's none down there but my uncle and his sister, my aunt. Come on
down and let me show you the place."

"I do not care if I do." He rose, and the two went along the hilltop
and down the path.

Ian was the readier in talk. "I am going soon to Edinburgh--to
college."

"I'm going, too. The first of the year. I am going to try if I can
stand the law."

"I want to be a soldier."

"I don't know what I want.... I want to journey--and journey--and
journey ... with a book along."

"Do you like books?"

"Aye, fine!"

"I like them right well. Are there any pretty girls around here?"

"I don't know. I don't like girls."

"I like them at times, in their places. You must wrestle bravely,
you're so strong in the shoulder and long in the arm!"

"You're not so big, but you look strong yourself."

Each measured the other with his eyes. Friendship was already here. It
was as though hand had fitted into glove.

"What is your dog named?"

"Hector."

"Mine's Bran. You come to Glenfernie to-morrow and I'll show you a
place that's all mine. It's the room in the old keep. I've books there
and apples and nuts and curiosities. There's a big fireplace, and my
father's let me build a furnace besides, and I've kettles and
crucibles and pans and vials--"

"What for?"

Alexander paused and gazed at Ian, then gave into his keeping the
great secret. "Alchemy. I'm trying to change lead into gold."

Ian thrilled. "I'll come! I'll ride over. I've a beautiful mare."

"It's not eight miles--"

"I'll come. We're just in at Black Hill, you see, and I've had no time
to make a place like that! But I'll show you my room. Here's the park
gate."

They walked up an avenue overarched by elms, to a house old but not so
old, once half-ruinous, but now mended and being mended, enlarged, and
decorated, the aim a spacious place alike venerable and modern.
Workmen yet swarmed about it. The whole presented a busy, cheerful
aspect--a gracious one, also, for under a monster elm before the
terrace was found the master and owner, Mr. Archibald Touris. He
greeted the youths with a manner meant to exhibit the expansive heart
of a country gentleman.

"You've found each other out, have you? Why, you look born to be
friends! That's as it should be.--And what, Alexander, do you think of
Black Hill?"

"It looks finely a rich man's place, sir."

Mr. Touris laughed at his country bluntness, but did not take the
tribute amiss. "Not so rich--not so mighty rich. But enough, enough!
If Ian here behaves himself he'll have enough!" A master workman
called him away. He went with a large wave of the hand. "Make yourself
at home, Alexander! Take him, Ian, to see your aunt Alison." He was
gone with the workman.

"I'll take you there presently," said Ian. "I'm fond of Aunt
Alison--you'll like her, too--but she'll keep. Let's go see my mare
Fatima, and then my room."

Fatima was a most beautiful young, snowy Arabian. Alexander sighed
with delight when they led her out from her stable and she walked
about with Ian beside her, and when presently Ian mounted she curveted
and caracoled. Ian and she suited each other. Indefinably, there was
about him, too, something Eastern. The two went to and fro, the mare's
hoofs striking music from the flags. Behind them ran a gray range of
buildings overtopped by bushy willows. Alexander sat on a stone bench,
hugged his knees, and felt true love for the sight. Ian had come to
him like a gift from the blue.

Ian dismounted, and they watched Fatima disappear into her stall.
"Come now and see the house."

The house was large and cumbered with furniture too much and too rich
for the Scotch countryside. Ian's room had a great, rich bed and a
dressing-table that drew from Alexander a whistle, contemplative and
scornful. But there were other matters besides luxury of couch and
toilet. Slung against the wall appeared a fine carbine, the pistols
and sword of Ian's father, and a wonderful long, twisted, and
damascened knife or dirk--creese, Ian called it--that had come in some
trading-ship of his uncle's. And he had books in a small closet room,
and a picture that the two stood before.

"Where did you get it?"

"There was an Italian who owed my uncle a debt. He had no money, so he
gave him this. He said that it was painted a long time ago and that it
was very fine."

"What is it?"

"It is a Bible piece. This is a city of refuge. This is a sinner
fleeing to it, and here behind him is the avenger of blood. You can't
see, it is so dark. There!" He drew the window-curtain quite aside. A
flood of light came in and washed the picture.

"I see. What is it doing here?"

"I don't know. I liked it. I suppose Aunt Alison thought it might hang
here."

"I like to see pictures in my mind. But things like that poison me!
Let's see the rest of the house."

They went again through Ian's room. Coming to a fine carved ambry, he
hesitated, then stood still. "I'm going to show you something else! I
show it to you because I trust you. It's like your telling me about
your making gold out of lead." He opened a door of the ambry, pulled
out a drawer, and, pressing some spring, revealed a narrow, secret
shelf. His hand went into the dimness and came out bearing a silver
goblet. This he set carefully upon a neighboring table, and looked at
Alexander somewhat aslant out of long, golden-brown eyes.

"It's a bonny goblet," said Alexander. "Why do you keep it like that?"

Ian looked around him. "Years and years ago my father, who is dead
now, was in France. There was a banquet at Saint-Germain. _A very
great person_ gave it and was in presence himself. All the gentlemen
his guests drank a toast for which the finest wine was poured in
especial goblets. Afterward each was given for a token the cup from
which he drank.... Before he died my father gave me this. But of
course I have to keep it secret. My uncle and all the world around
here are Whigs!"

"James Stewart!" quoth Alexander. "Humph!"

"Remember that you have not seen it," said Ian, "and that I never said
aught to you but _King George, King George!_" With that he restored
the goblet to the secret shelf, put back the drawer, and shut the
ambry door. "Friends trust one another in little and big.--Now let's
go see Aunt Alison."

They went in silence along a corridor where every footfall was subdued
in India matting. Alexander spoke once:

"I feel all through me that we're friends. But you're a terrible fool
there!"

"I am not," said Ian. His voice carried the truth of his own feeling.
"I am like my father and mother and the chieftains my kin, and I have
been with certain kings ever since there were kings. Others think
otherwise, but I've got my rights!"

With that they came to the open door of a room. A voice spoke from
within:

"Ian!"

Ian crossed the threshold. "May we come in, Aunt Alison? It's
Alexander Jardine of Glenfernie."

A tall, three-leaved screen pictured with pagodas, palms, and macaws
stood between the door and the rest of the room. "Come, of course!"
said the voice behind this.

Passing the last pagoda edge, the two entered a white-paneled parlor
where a lady in dove-gray muslin overlooked the unpacking of fine
china. She turned in the great chair where she sat. "I am truly glad
to see Alexander Jardine!" When he went up to her she took his two
hands in hers. "I remember your mother and how fine a lassie she was!
Good mind and good heart--"

"We've heard of you, too," answered Alexander. He looked at her in
frank admiration, _Eh, but you're bonny!_ written in his gaze.

Mrs. Alison, as they called her, was something more than bonny. She
had loveliness. More than that, she breathed a cleanliness of spirit,
a lucid peace, a fibered self-mastery passing into light. Alexander
did not analyze his feeling for her, but it was presently one of great
liking. Now she sat in her great chair while the maids went on with
the unpacking, and questioned him about Glenfernie and all the family
and life there. She was slight, not tall, with hair prematurely
white, needing no powder. She sat and talked with her hand upon Ian.
While she talked she glanced from the one youth to the other. At last
she said:

"Alexander Jardine, I love Ian dearly. He needs and will need
love--great love. If you are going to be friends, remember that love
is bottomless.--And now go, the two of you, for the day is getting
on."

They passed again the macaw-and-pagoda screen and left the paneled
room. The August light struck slant and gold. The two quitted the
house and crossed the terrace into the avenue without again
encountering the master of the place.

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