Foes Part 22

Gilian, walking home from the town, was overtaken on the moor by Robin Greenlaw.

"Where is Elspeth?"

"We are making our winter dresses. She would not leave her sewing."

The cousins walked upon the moor path together. Gilian was fairer and more strongly made than Elspeth. They walked in silence; then said Robin:

"You're the old Gilian, but I'm sure I miss the old Elspeth!"

"I think, myself, she's gone visiting! I rack and rack my brains to find what grief could have come to Elspeth. She will not help me."

"Gilian, could it be that, after all, her heart is set on the laird?"

"Did you know about that?"

"In part I guessed, watching them together. And then I saw how Glenfernie oldened in a night. Then, being with my uncle one day, he let drop a word that I followed up. I led him on and he told me.

Glenfernie acted like a true man."

"If there's one thing of which I'm sure it is that she hardly thinks of him from Sunday to Sunday. She thinks then for a little because she sees him in kirk--but that pa.s.ses, too!"

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know. I don't know of anybody else. Maybe no outer thing has anything to do with it. Sometimes we just have drumlie, dreary seasons and we do not know why.... She loves the spring. Maybe when spring comes she'll be Elspeth once more!"

"I hope so," said Greenlaw. "Spring makes all the world bonny again."

That was in November. On Christmas Eve Elspeth Barrow drowned herself in the Kelpie's Pool.

CHAPTER XVII

There had been three hours of light on Christmas Day when Robin Greenlaw appeared at Glenfernie House and would see the laird.

"He's in his ain room in the keep," said Davie, and went with the message.

Alexander came down the stair and out into the flagged court. The weather had been unwontedly clement, melting the earlier snows, letting the brown earth forth again for one look about her. To-day there was pale sunlight. Greenlaw sat his big gray. The laird came to him.

"Get down, man, and come in for Christmas cheer!"

"Send Davie away," said Greenlaw.

Alexander's gray eyes glanced. "You're bringing something that is not Christmas cheer!--Davie, tell Dandie Saunderson to saddle Black Alan at once.--Now, Robin!"

"Yesterday," said Greenlaw, "Elspeth Barrow vanished from White Farm.

They wanted to send Christmas fare to old Skene the cotter. She said she would take a basket there, and so she went away, down the stream--about ten of the morning they think it was. It was not for hours that they grew at all anxious. She's never come back. She did not go to Skene's. We can hear no word of her from any. Her grandfather and I and the men at White Farm looked for her through the night. This morning there's an alarm sent up and down the dale."

"What harm could happen--"

"She might have strayed into some lonely place--fallen--hurt herself.

There were gipsies seen the other day over by Windyedge. Or she might have walked on and on upon what road she took, and somehow none chanced to notice her. I am going now to ride the Edinburgh way."

"Have you gone up the glen?"

"That was tried this morning at first light. But that is just opposite to Skene's and the way she certainly took at first. She would have to turn and go about through the woods, or White Farm would see her." His voice had a haunting note of fear and trouble.

Glenfernie caught it. "She was not out of health nor unhappy?"

"She is changed from the old Elspeth. When you ask her if she is unhappy she says that she is not.... I do not know. Something is wrong. With the others, I am seeking about as though I expected each moment to see her sitting or standing by the roadside. But I do not expect to see her. I do not know what I expect. We have sent to Windyedge to apprehend those gipsies."

"Let me speak one moment to Mr. Strickland to send the men forth and go himself. Then I am ready."

On Black Alan he rode with Robin down the hill and through the wood and upon the White Farm way. The earth was mainly bare of snow, but frozen hard. The hoofs rang out but left no print. The air hung still, light and dry; the sun, far in the south, sent slanting, pale-gold beams. The two men made little speech as they rode. They pa.s.sed men and youths, single figures and cl.u.s.ters.

"Ony news, Littlefarm? We've been--or we're going--seeking here, or here--"

A woman stopped them. "It was thae gipsies, sirs! I had a dream about them, five nights syne! A lintwhite was flying by them, and they gave chase. Either it's that or she made away with herself! I had a dream that might be read that way, too."

When they came to White Farm it was to find there only Jenny and Menie and Merran.

"Somebody maun stay to keep the house warm gin the la.s.sie come stumbling hame, cauld and hungry and half doited! Eh, Glenfernie, ye that are a learned man and know the warld, gie us help!"

"I am going up the glen," said Alexander to Greenlaw. "I do not know why, but I think it should be tried again. And I know it, root and branch. I am going afoot. I will leave Black Alan here."

They wasted no time. He went, while Robin Greenlaw on his gray took the opposed direction. Looking back, he saw the great fire that Jenny kept, dancing through the open door and in the pane of the window.

Then the trees and the winding of the path shut it away, shut away house and field and all token of human life.

He moved swiftly to the mouth of the glen, but then more slowly. The trees soared bare, the water rushed with a hoa.r.s.e sound, snow lay in clefts. So well he knew the place! There was no spot where foot might have climbed, no ledge nor opening where form might lay, huddled or outstretched, that lacked his searching eye or hand. Here was the pebbly cape with the thorn-tree where in May he had come upon Elspeth, sitting by the water, singing.... Farther on he turned into that smaller, that fairy glen, bending like an arm from the main pa.s.s. Here was the oak beneath which they had sat, against which she had leaned.

It wrapt him from himself, this place. He stood, and s.p.a.ce around seemed filled with forms just beyond visibility. What were they? He did not know, but they seemed to breathe against his heart, to whisper.... He searched this place well, but there were only the winter banks and trees, the little burn, the invisible presences. Back in the deep glen a hawk sailed overhead, across the stripe of pale-blue sky. Alexander went on by the stream and the projecting rock and the twisted roots. There was no sound other than the loud voice of the water, talking only of its return to the sea. When he came to the cave he pushed aside the masking growth and entered. Dark and barren here, with the ashes of an old fire! For one moment, as it were distinctly, he saw Ian. He stood so clear in the mind's eye that it seemed that one intense effort might have set him bodily in the cavern. But the central strength let the image go. Alexander moved the ashes of the fire with his foot, shuddered in the place of cold and shadow, and, stooping, went out of the cave and on upon his search for Elspeth Barrow.

He sought the glen through, and at last, at the head, he came to Mother Binning's cot. Her fire was burning; she was standing in the door looking toward him.

"Eh, Glenfernie! is there news of the la.s.sie?"

"None. You've got the sight. Can you not _see_?"

"It's gane from me! When it gaes I'm just like ony bird with a broken wing."

"If you cannot see, what do you think?"

"I dinna want to think and I dinna want to say. Whaur be ye gaeing now?"

"On over the moor and down by the Kelpie's Pool."

"Gae on then. I'll watch for ye coming back."

He went on. Something strange had him, drawing him. He came out from the band of trees upon the swelling open moor, bare and brown save where the snow laced it. Gold filtered over it; a pale sky arched above; it was wide, still, and awful--a desert. He saw the light run down and glint upon the pool. Searchers had ridden across this moor also, he had been told. He went down at once to the pool and stood by the kelpie willow. He was not thinking, he was not keenly feeling. He seemed to stand in open, endless, formless s.p.a.ce, and in unfenced time. A clump of dry reeds rose by his knee, and upon the other side of these he noticed that a stone had been lifted from its bed. He stooped, and in the reeds he found an inch-long fragment of ribbon--of a snood.