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Janet Aldridge - "The Meadow Brook Girls by the Sea"

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Mary Johnston - Foes

M >> Mary Johnston >> Foes




Alexander Jardine, large and strong of frame, with a countenance
massive and thoughtful for so young a man, bronzed, with well-turned
features, gazed steadily into the red hollows where the light played,
withdrew and played again. Strickland tried to read, but the sense of
the other's presence affected him, came between his mind and the page.
Involuntarily he began to occupy himself with Alexander and to picture
his life away from Glenfernie, away, too, from Edinburgh and Scotland.
It was now six years since, definitely, he had given up the law,
throwing himself, as it were, on the laird's mercy both for long and
wide travel, and for life among books other than those indicated for
advocates. The laird had let him go his gait--the laird with Mrs.
Jardine a little before him. The Jardine fortune was not a great one,
but there was enough for an heir who showed no inclination to live and
to travel _en prince_, who in certain ways was nearer the ascetic
than the spendthrift.... Before Strickland's mind, strolling dreamily,
came pictures of far back, of years ago, of long since. A by-wind had
brought to the tutor then certain curious bits of knowledge.
Alexander, a student in Edinburgh, had lived for some time upon half
of his allowance in order to accommodate Ian Rullock with the other
half, the latter being in a crisis of quarrel with his uncle, who,
when he quarreled, used always, where he could, the money screw.
Strickland had listened to his Edinburgh informant, but had never
divulged the news given. No more had he told another bit, floated to
him again by that ancient Edinburgh friend and gossip, who had young
cousins at college and listened to their talk. It pertained to a time
a little before that of the shared income. This time it had been
shared blood. Strickland, sitting with his book in the quiet room, saw
in imagination the students' chambers in Edinburgh, and the little
throng of very young men, flushed with wine and with youth, making
friendships, and talking of friendships made, and dubbing Alexander
Damon and Ian Pythias. Then more wine and a bravura passage. Damon and
Pythias opening each a vein with some convenient dagger, smearing into
the wound some drops of the other's blood, and going home each with a
tourniquet above the right wrist.... Well, that was years ago--and
youth loved such passages!

Alexander, by the fire, stooped to put back a coal that had fallen
upon the oak boards, then sank again into his reverie. Strickland read
a paragraph without any especial comprehension, after which he found
himself again by the stream of Alexander's life. That friendship with
Ian Rullock utterly held, he believed. Well, Ian Rullock, too, seemed
somehow a great personage. Very different from Alexander, and yet
somehow large to match.... Where had Alexander been after
Edinburgh--where had he not been? Very often Ian was with him, but
sometimes and for months he would seem to have been alone. Glenfernie
might receive letters from Germany, from Italy or Egypt, or from
further yet to the east. He had been alone this year, for Ian was now
the King's man and with his regiment, Strickland supposed, wherever
that might be. Alexander had written from Buda-Pesth, from Erfurt,
from Amsterdam, from London. Now he sat here at Glenfernie, looking
into the fire. Strickland, who liked books of travel, wondered what he
saw of old cities, grave or gay, of ruined temples, sphinxes,
monuments, grass-grown battle-fields, and ships at sea, storied lands,
peoples, individual men and women. He had wayfared long; he must have
had many an adventure. He had been from childhood a learner. His touch
upon a book spoke of adeptship in that world.... Well, here he was,
and what would he do now, when he was laird? Strickland lost himself
in speculation. Little or naught had ever been in Alexander's letters
about women.

The white ash fell, the clock ticked, the wind went around the house
with a faint, banshee crying. The figure by the fire rested there,
silent, still, and brooding. Strickland observed with some wonder its
power of long, concentrated thinking. It sat there, not visibly
tense, seemingly relaxed, yet as evidently looking into some place of
inner motion, wider and swifter than that of the night world about it.
Strickland tried to read. The clock hand moved toward midnight.

The laird spoke from the great bed. "Alexander--"

"I am here, father." Alexander rose and went to the sick man's side.
"You slept finely! And here we have food for you, and drops to give
you strength--"

The laird swallowed the drops and a spoonful or two of broth. "There.
Now I want to talk. Aye, I am strong enough. I feel stronger. I am
strong. It hurts me more to check me. Is that the wind blowing?"

"Yes. It is a wild night."

"It is singing. I could almost pick out the words. Alexander, there's
a quarrel I have with Touris of Black Hill. I have no wish to make it
up. He did me a wrong and is a sinner in many ways. But his sister is
different. If you see her tell her that I aye liked her."

"Would it make you happier to be reconciled to Mr. Touris?"

"No, it would not! You were never a canting one, Alexander! Let that
be. Anger is anger, and it's weakness to gainsay it! That is," said
the laird, "when it's just--and this is just. Alexander, my bonny
man--"

"I'm here, father."

"I've been lying here, gaeing up and down in my thoughts, a bairn
again with my grandmither, gaeing up and down the braes and by the
glen. I want to say somewhat to you. When you see an adder set your
heel upon it! When a wolf goes by take your firelock and after him!
When a denier and a cheat is near you tell the world as much and help
to set the snare! Where there are betrayers and persecutors hunt the
wild plant shall make a cup like their ain!" He fell to coughing,
coughing more and more violently.

Strickland rose and came to the bedside, and the two watchers gave him
water and wine to drink, and would have had him, when the fit was
over, cease from all speech. He shook them off.

"Alexander, ye're like me. Ye're mair like me than any think! Where ye
find your Grierson of Lagg, clench with him--clench--Alexander!"

He coughed, lifting himself in their arms. A blood-vessel broke.
Tibbie Ross, answering the calling, hurried in. "Gude with us! it's
the end!" Mrs. Grizel came, wrapped in a great flowered bed-gown. In a
few minutes all was over. Strickland and Alexander laid him straight
that had been the laird.




CHAPTER IX


The month was May. The laird of Glenfernie, who had walked to the
Kelpie's Pool, now came down the glen. Mother Binning was yet in her
cot, though an older woman now and somewhat broken.

"Oh aye, my bonny man! All things die and all things live. To and fro
gaes the shuttle!"

Glenfernie sat on the door-stone. She took all the news he could
bring, and had her own questions to put.

"How's the house and all in it?"

"Well."

"Ye've got a bonny sister! Whom will she marry? There's Abercrombie
and Fleming and Ferguson."

"I do not know. The one she likes the best."

"And when will ye be marrying yourself?"

"I am not going to marry, Mother. I would marry Wisdom, if I could!"

"Hoot! she stays single! Do ye love the hunt of Wisdom so?"

"Aye, I do. But it's a long, long chase--and to tell you the truth, at
times I think she's just a wraith! And at times I am lazy and would
just sit in the sun and be a fool."

"Like to-day?"

"Like to-day. And so," said Alexander, rising, "as I feel that way,
I'll e'en be going on!"

"I'm thinking that maist of the wise have inner tokens by which they
ken the fule. I was ne'er afraid of folly," said Mother Binning. "It's
good growing stuff!"

Glenfernie laughed and left her and the drone of her wheel. A clucking
hen and her brood, the cot and its ash-tree, sank from sight. A little
longer and he reached the middle glen where the banks approached and
the full stream rushed with a manifold sound. Here was the curtain of
brier masking the cave that he had shared with Ian. He drew it aside
and entered. So much smaller was the place than it had seemed in
boyhood! Twice since they came to be men had he been here with Ian,
and they had smiled over their cavern, but felt for it a tenderness.
In a corner lay the fagots that, the last time, they had gathered with
laughter and left here against outlaws' needs. Ian! He pictured Ian
with his soldiers.

Outside the cavern, the air came about him like a cloud of fragrance.
As he went down the glen, into its softer sweeps, this increased, as
did the song of birds. The primrose was strewn about in disks of pale
gold, the white thorn lifted great bouquets, the bluebell touched the
heart. A lark sang in the sky, linnet and cuckoo at hand, in the wood
at the top of the glen cooed the doves. The water rippled by the
leaning birches, the wild bees went from flower to flower. The sky was
all sapphire, the air a perfumed ocean. So beautiful rang the spring
that it was like a bell in the heart, in the blood. The laird of
Glenfernie, coming to a great natural chair of sun-warmed rock, sat
down to listen. All was of a sweetness, poignant, intense. But in the
very act of recognizing this, there came upon him an old mood of
melancholy, an inner mist and chill, a gray languor and wanting. The
very bourgeoning and blossoming about him seemed to draw light from
him, not give light. "I brought the Kelpie's Pool back with me," he
thought. He shut his eyes, leaning his head against the stone, at last
with a sideward movement burying it in his folded arms. "More
life--more! What was a great current goes sluggish and landbound.
Where again is the open sea--the more--the boundless? Where
again--where again?"

He sat for an hour by the wild, singing stream. It drenched him, the
loved place and the sweet season, with its thousand store of beauties.
Its infinite number of touches brought at last response. The vague
crying and longing of nature hushed before a present lullaby. At last
he rose and went on with the calling stream.

The narrow path, set about with living green, with the spangly
flowers, and between the branches fragments of the blue lift as clear
as glass, led down the glen, widening now to hill and dale. Softening
and widening, the world laughed in May. The stream grew broad and
tranquil, with grassy shores overhung by green boughs. Here and there
the bank extended into the flood a little grassy cape edged with
violets. Alexander, following the spiral of the path, came upon the
view of such a spot as this. It lay just before him, a little below
his road. The stream washed its fairy beach. From the new grass rose
a blooming thorn-tree; beneath this knelt a girl and, resting upon her
hands, looked at her face in the water.

The laird of Glenfernie stood still. A drooping birch hid him; his
step had been upon moss and was not heard. The face and form upon the
bank, the face in the water, showed no consciousness of any human
neighbor. The face was that of a woman of perhaps twenty-four. The
hair was brown, the eyes brown. The head was beautifully placed on a
round, smooth throat. With a wide forehead, with great width between
the eyes, the face tapered to a small round chin. The mouth and under
the eyes smiled in a thousand different ways. The beauty that was
there was subtle, not discoverable by every one.--The girl settled
back upon the grass beneath the thorn-tree. She was very near
Glenfernie; he could see the rise and fall of her bosom beneath her
blue print gown. It was Elspeth Barrow--he knew her now, though he had
not seen her for a long time. She sat still, her brown eyes raised to
building birds in the thorn-tree. Then she began herself to sing,
clear and sweet.

"A lad and a lass met ower the brae;
They blushed rose-red, but they said nae word--
The woodbine fair and the milk-white slae:--
And frae one to the other gaed a silver bird,
A silver bird.

"A man set his Wish all odds before,
With sword, with pen, and with gold he stirred
Till the Wish and he met on a conquered shore,
And frae one to the other gaed an ebon bird,
An ebon bird.

"God looked on a man and said: ''Tis time!
The broken mends, clear flows the blurred.
You and I are two worlds that rhyme!'
And frae one to the other gaed a golden bird,
A golden bird."

She sang it through, then sat entirely still against the stem of the
thorn, while about her lips played that faint, unapproachable,
glamouring smile. Her hands touched the grass to either side her body;
her slender, blue-clad figure, the all of her, smote him like some
god's line of poetry.

There was in the laird of Glenfernie's nature an empty palace. It had
been built through ages and every wind of pleasure and pain had blown
about it. Then it had slowly come about that the winds of pain had
increased upon the winds of pleasure. The mind closed the door of the
palace and the nature inclined to turn from it. It was there, but a
sea mist hid it, and a tall thorn-hedge, and a web stretched across
its idle gates. It had hardly come, in this life, into Glenfernie's
waking mind that it was there at all.

Now with a suddenness every door clanged open. The mist parted, the
thorn-wood sank, the web was torn. The palace stood, shining like
home, and it was he who was afar, in the mist and the wood, and the
web of idleness and oblivion in shreds about him. Set in the
throne-room, upon the throne, he saw the queen.

His mood, that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance
had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche,
the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the
dike. Now what had reached being must take its course.

He felt that so fatally that he did not think of resistance....
Elspeth, upon the grassy cape, beneath the blooming thorn, heard steps
down the glen path, and turned her eyes to see the young laird moving
between the birch stems. Now he was level with the holding; now he
spoke to her, lifting his hat. She answered, with the smile beneath
her eyes:

"Aye, Glenfernie, it's a braw day!"

"May I come into the fairy country and sit awhile and visit?"

"Aye." She welcomed him to a hillock of green rising from the water's
edge. "It _is_ fairyland, and these are the broad seas around, and I
know if I came here by night I should find the Good People before me!"
She looked at him with friendliness, half shy, half frank. "It is the
best of weather for wandering."

"Are you fond of that, too? Do you go up and down alone?"

"By my lee-lane when Gilian's not here. She's in Aberdeen now, where
live our mother's folk."

"I have not seen you for years."

"I mind the last time. Your mother lay ill. One evening at sunset Mr.
Ian Rullock and you came to White Farm."

"It must have been after sunset. It must have been dark."

"Back of that you and he came from Edinburgh one time. We were down by
the wishing-green, Robin Greenlaw and Gilian and I and three or four
other lads and lassies. Do you remember? Mr. Rullock would have us
dance, and we all took hands--you, too--and went around the ash-tree
as though it were a May-pole. We changed hands, one with another, and
danced upon the green. Then you and he got upon your horses and rode
away. He was riding the white mare Fatima. But oh," said Elspeth,
"then came grandfather, who had seen us from the reaped field, and he
blamed us sair and put no to our playing! He gave word to the
minister, and Sunday the sermon dealt with the ill women of Scripture.
Back of that--"

"Back of that--"

"There was the day the two of you would go to the Kelpie's Pool."
Elspeth's eyes enlarged and darkened. "The next morn we heard--Jock
Binning told us--that Mr. Ian had nearly drowned."

"Almost ten years ago. Once--twice--thrice in ten years. How idly were
they spent, those years!"

"Oh," cried Elspeth, "they say that you have been to world's end and
have gotten great learning!"

"One comes home from all that to find world's end and great learning."

Elspeth leaned from him, back against the thorn-tree. She looked
somewhat disquietedly, somewhat questioningly, at this new laird.
Glenfernie, in his turn, laid upon himself both hands of control. He
thought:

"Do not peril all--do not peril all--with haste and frightening!"

He sat upon the green hillock and talked of country news. She met him
with this and that ... White Farm affairs, Littlefarm.

"Robin," said Alexander, "manages so well that he'll grow wealthy!"

"Oh no! He manages well, but he'll never grow wealthy outside! But
inside he has great riches."

_"Does she love him, then?"_ It poured fear into his heart. A magician
with a sword--with a great, evil, written-upon creese like that
hanging at Black Hill--was here before the palace.

"Do you love him?" asked Alexander, and asked it with so straight a
simplicity that Elspeth Barrow took no offense.

She looked at him, and those strange smiles played about her lips.
"Robin is a fairy man," she said. "He has ower little of struggle save
with his rhymes," and left him to make what he could of that.

"She is heart-free," he thought, but still he feared and boded.

Elspeth rose from the grass, stepped from beneath the blooming tree.
"I must be going. It wears toward noon."

Together they left the flower-set cape. The laird of Glenfernie looked
back upon it.

"_Heaven sent a sample down._ You come here when you wish? You walk
about with the spring and summer days?"

"Aye, when my work's done. Gilian and I love the greenwood."

He gave her the narrow path, but kept beside her on stone and dead
leaves and mossy root. Though he was so large of frame, he moved with
a practised, habitual ease, as far as might be from any savor of
clumsiness. He had magnetism, and to-day he drew like a planet in
glow. Now he looked at the woman beside him, and now he looked
straight ahead with kindled eyes.

Elspeth walked with slightly quickened breath, with knitted brows. The
laird of Glenfernie was above her in station, though go to the
ancestors and blood was equal enough! It carried appeal to a young
woman's vanity, to be walking so, to feel that the laird liked well
enough to be where he was. She liked him, too. Glenfernie House was
talked of, talked of, by village and farm and cot, talked of, talked
of, year by year--all the Jardines, their virtues and their vices,
what they said and what they did. She had heard, ever since she was a
bairn, that continual comment, like a little prattling burn running
winter and summer through the dale. So she knew much that was true of
Alexander Jardine, but likewise entertained a sufficient amount of
misapprehension and romancing. Out of it all came, however, for the
dale, and for the women at White Farm who listened to the burn's
voice, a sense of trustworthiness. Elspeth, walking by Glenfernie,
felt kindness for him. If, also, there ran a tremor of feeling that it
was very fair to be Elspeth Barrow and walking so, she was young and
it was natural. But beyond that was a sense, vague, unexplained to
herself, but disturbing. There was feeling in him that was not in her.
She was aware of it as she might be aware of a gathering storm, though
the brain received as yet no clear message. She felt, struggling with
that diffused kindness and young vanity, something like discomfort and
fear. So her mood was complex enough, unharmonized, parted between
opposing currents. She was a riddle to herself.

But Glenfernie walked in a great simplicity of faeryland or heaven.
She did not love Robin Greenlaw; she was not so young a lass, with a
rose in her cheek for every one; she was come so far without mating
because she had snow in her heart! The palace gleamed, the palace
shone. All the music of earth--of the world--poured through. The sun
had drunk up the mist, time had eaten the thorn-wood, the spider at
the gate had vanished into chaos and old night.




CHAPTER X


The cows and sheep and work-horses, the dogs, the barn-yard fowls, the
very hives of bees at White Farm, seemed to know well enough that it
was the Sabbath. The flowers knew it that edged the kitchen garden,
the cherry-tree knew it by the southern wall. The sunshine knew it,
wearing its calm Sunday best. Sights and sounds attuned themselves.

The White Farm family was home from kirk. Jenny Barrow and Elspeth put
away hood and wide hat of straw, slipped from and shook out and folded
on the shelf Sunday gowns and kerchiefs. Then each donned a clean
print and a less fine kerchief and came forth to direct and aid the
two cotter lasses who served at White Farm. These by now had off their
kirk things, but they marked Sunday still by keeping shoes and
stockings. Menie and Merran, Elspeth and Jenny, set the
yesterday-prepared dinner cold upon the table, drew the ale, and
placed chairs and stools. Two men, Thomas and Willy, father and son,
who drove the plow, sowed and reaped, for White Farm, came from the
barn. They were yet Sunday-clad, with very clean, shining faces. "Call
father, Elspeth!" directed Jenny, and set on the table a honeycomb.

Elspeth went without the door. Before the house grew a great fir-tree
that had a bench built around it. Here, in fine weather, in rest hours
and on Sunday, might be looked for Jarvis Barrow. It was his habit to
take the far side of the tree, with the trunk between him and the
house. So there spread before him the running river, the dale and
moor, and at last the piled hills. Here he sat, leaning hands upon a
great stick shaped like a crook, his Bible open upon his knees. It was
a great book, large of print, read over in every part, but opening
most easily among the prophets. No cry, no denunciation, no longing,
no judgment from Isaiah to Malachi, but was known to the elder of the
kirk. Now he sat here, in his Sunday dress, with the Bible. At a
little distance, on the round bench, sat Robin Greenlaw. The old man
read sternly, concentratedly on; the young one looked at the purple
mountain-heads. Elspeth came around the tree.

"Grandfather, dinner is ready.--Robin! we didn't know that you were
here--"

"I went the way around to speak with the laird. Then I thought, 'I
will eat at White Farm--'"

"You're welcome!--Grandfather, let me take the Book."

"No," said the old man, and bore it himself withindoors. Spare and
unbent of frame, threescore and ten and five, and able yet at the
plow-stilts, rigid of will, servant to the darker Calvinism, starving
where he might human pride and human affections, and yet with much of
both to starve, he moved and spoke with slow authority, looked a
patriarch and ruled his holding. When presently he came to table in
the clean, sanded room with the sunlight on the wall and floor, and
when, standing, he said the long, the earnest grace, it might have
been taken that here, in the Scotch farm-house, was at least a minor
prophet. The grace was long, a true wrestling in prayer. Ended, a
decent pause was made, then all took place, Jarvis Barrow and his
daughter and granddaughter, Robin Greenlaw, Thomas and Willy, Menie
and Merran. The cold meat, the bread, and other food were passed from
hand to hand, the ale poured. The Sunday hush, the Sunday voices,
continued to hold. Jarvis Barrow would have no laughter and idle
clashes at his table on the Lord's day. Menie and Merran and Willy
kept a stolid air, with only now and then a sidelong half-smile or
nudging request for this or that. Elspeth ate little, sat with her
brown eyes fixed out of the window. Robin Greenlaw ate heartily
enough, but he had an air distrait, and once or twice he frowned. But
Jenny Barrow could not long keep still and incurious, even upon the
Sabbath day.

"Eh, Robin, what was your crack with the laird?"

"He wants to buy Warlock for James Jardine. He's got his ensign's
commission to go fight the French."

"Eh, he'll be a bonny lad on Warlock! I thought you wadna sell him?"

"I'll sell to Glenfernie."

The farmer spoke from the head of the table. "I'll na hae talk, Robin,
of buying and selling on the day! It clinks like the money-changers
and sellers of doves."

Thomas, his helper, raised his head from a plate of cold mutton.
"Glenfernie was na at kirk. He's na the kirkkeeper his father was. Na,
na!"

"Na," said the farmer. "Bairns dinna walk nowadays in parents' ways."

Willy had a bit of news he would fain get in. "Nae doot Glenfernie's
brave, but he wadna be a sodger, either! I was gaeing alang wi' the
yowes, and there was he and Drummielaw riding and gabbing. Sae there
cam on a skirling and jumping wind and rain, and we a' gat under a
tree, the yowes and the dogs and Glenfernie and Drummielaw and me.
Then we changed gude day and they went on gabbing. And 'Nae,' says
Glenfernie, 'I am nae lawyer and I am nae sodger. Jamie wad be the
last, but brithers may love and yet be thinking far apairt. The best
friend I hae in the warld is a sodger, but I'm thinking I hae lost the
knack o' fechting. When you lose the taste you lose the knack.'"

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