Foes Part 31

"He can be friends now with none. He sees in each one a partisan--his own or Ian's." She did not detain him, but when he rose to say good-by helped him to say it without delay.

He went, and she paced her garden, thinking of Ian who had done so great wrong, and Alexander who cried, "My enemy!" She stayed in the garden an hour, and then she turned and went to play piquet with the lonely, shriveled man, her brother.

CHAPTER XXIV

Two days after this Glenfernie rode to White Farm. Jenny Barrow met him with exclamations.

"Oh, Mr. Alexander! Oh, Glenfernie! And they say that you are amaist as weel as ever--but to me you look twelve years older! Eh, and this warld has brought gray into _my_ hair! Father's gane to kirk session, and Gilian's awa'."

He sat down beside her. Her hands went on paring apples, while her eyes and tongue were busy elsewhere.

"They say you're gaeing to travel."

"Yes. I'm starting very soon."

"It's na _said oot_--but a kind of whisper's been gaeing around." She hesitated, then, "Are you gaeing after him, Glenfernie?"

"Yes."

Jenny put down her knife and apple. She drew a long breath, so that her bosom heaved under her striped gown. A bright color came into her cheeks. She laughed. "Aweel, I wadna spare him if I were you!"

He sat with her longer than he had done with Mrs. Alison. He felt nearer to her. He could be friends with her, while he moved from the other as from a bloodless wraith. Here breathed freely all the strong vindications! He sat, sincere and strong, and sincere and strong was the countrywoman beside him.

"Oh aye!" said Jenny. "He's a villain, and I wad gie him all that he gave of villainy!"

"That is right," said Alexander, "to look at it simply!" He felt that those were his friends who felt in this as did he.

On the moor, riding homeward, he saw before him Jarvis Barrow.

Dismounting, he met the old man beside a cairn, placed there so long ago that there was only an elfin story for the deeds it commemorated.

"Gude day, Glenfernie! So that Hieland traitor did not slay ye?"

"No."

Jarvis Barrow, white-headed, strong-featured, far yet, it seemed, from incapacitating old age, took his seat upon a great stone loosened from the ma.s.s. He leaned upon his staff; his collie lay at his feet. "Many wad say a lang time, with the healing in it of lang time, since a fause lover sang in the ear of my granddaughter, in the glen there!"

"Aye, many would say it."

"I say 'a fause lover.' But the ane to whom she truly listened is an aulder serpent than he ... wae to her!"

"No, no!"

"But I say 'aye!' I am na weak! She that worked evil and looseness, harlotry, strife, and shame, shall she na have her hire? As, Sunday by Sunday, I wad ha' set her in kirk, before the congregation, for the stern rebuking of her sin, so, mak no doubt, the Lord pursues her now!

Aye, He shakes His wrath before her eyes! Wherever she turns she sees 'Fornicatress' writ in flames!"

"No!"

"But aye!"

"Where she was mistaken--where, maybe, she was wilfully blind--she must learn. Not the learning better, but the old mistake until it is lost in knowledge, will clothe itself in suffering! But that is but a part of her! If there is error within, there is also Michael within to make it of naught! She releases herself. It is horrible to me to see you angered against her, for you do not discriminate--and you are your Michael, but not hers!"

"Adam is speaking--still the woman's lover! I'm not for contending with you. She tore my heart working folly in my house, and an ill example, and for herself condemnation!"

"Leave her alone! She has had great unhappiness!" He moved the small stones of the cairn with his fingers. "I am going away from Glenfernie."

"Aye. It was in mind that ye would! You and he were great friends."

"The greater foes now."

"I gie ye full understanding there!"

"With my father, those he hated were beyond his touch. So he walked among shadows only. But to me this world is a not unknown wood where roves, alive and insolent, my utter enemy! I can touch him and I will touch him!"

"Not you, but the Lord Wha abides not evil!... How sune will ye be gaeing, Glenfernie?"

"As soon as I can ride far. As soon as everything is in order here. I know that I am going, but I do not know if I am returning."

"I haud na with dueling. It's un-Christian. But mony's the ancient gude man that Jehovah used for sword! Aye, and approved the sword that he used--calling him faithful servant and man after His heart! I am na judging."

From the moor Glenfernie rode through the village. Folk spoke to him, looked after him; children about the doors called to others, "It's tha laird on Black Alan!" Old and young women, distaff or pan or pot or pitcher in hand, turned head, gazed, spoke to themselves or to one another. The Jardine Arms looked out of doors. "He's unco like tha auld laird!" Auld w.i.l.l.y, that was over a hundred, raised a piping voice, "Did ye young things remember Gawin Elliot that was his great-grandfather ye'd be saying, 'Ye might think it was Gawin Elliot that was hangit!'" Mrs. Macmurdo came to her shop door. "Eh, the laird, wi' all the straw of all that's past alight in his heart!"

Alexander answered the "good days," but he did not draw rein. He rode slowly up the steep village street and over the bare waste bit of hill until here was the manse, with the kirk beyond it. Coming out of the manse gate was the minister. Glenfernie checked his mare. All around spread a bare and lonely hilltop. The manse and the kirk and the minister's figure b.u.t.tressed each the others with a grim strength. The wind swept around them and around Glenfernie.

Mr. M'Nab, standing beside the laird, spoke earnestly. "We rejoice, Glenfernie, that you are about once more! There is the making in you of a grand man, like your father. It would have been down-spiriting if that son of Belial had again triumphed in mischief. The weak would have found it so."

"What is triumph?"

"Ye may well ask that! And yet," said M'Nab, "I know. It is the warm-feeling cloak that Good when it hath been naked wraps around it, seeing the spoiler spoiled and the wicked fallen into the pit that he digged!"

"Aye, the naked Good."

The minister looked afar, a dark glow and energy in his thin face.

"They are in prison, and the scaffolds groan--they who would out with the Kirk and a Protestant king and in with the French and popery!"

"Your general wrong," said Glenfernie, "barbed and feathered also for a Scots minister's own inmost nerve! And is not my wrong general likewise? Who hates and punishes falsity, though it were found in his own self, acts for the common good!"

"Aye!" said the minister. "But there must be a.s.surance that G.o.d calls you and that you hate the sin and not the sinner!"

"Who a.s.sures the a.s.surances? Still it is I!"

Glenfernie rode on. Mr. M'Nab looked after him with a darkling brow.

"That was heathenish--!"

Alexander pa.s.sed kirk and kirkyard. He went home and sat in the room in the keep, under his hand paper upon which he made figures, diagrams, words, and sentences. When the next day came he did not ride, but walked. He walked over the hills, with the kirk spire before him lifting toward a vast, blue serenity. Presently he came in sight of the kirkyard, its gravestones and yew-trees. He had met few persons upon the road, and here on the hilltop held to-day a balmy silence and solitude. As he approached the gate, to which there mounted five ancient, rounded steps of stone, he saw sitting on one of these a woman with a basket of flowers. Nearer still, he found that it was Gilian Barrow.