Part 2 (1/2)
I trust that I am as religious as another--but my family was always moderate there. In matters political the world's as hot as ever--but there, too, it is my instinct to ca' canny. But if you talk of trade”--he tapped his snuff-box--”I will match you, Glenfernie! If there's wrong, pay it back! Hold to your principles! But do it cannily. Smile when there's smart, and get your own again by being supple. In the end you'll demand--and get--a higher interest. Prosper at your enemy's cost, and take repayment for your hurt sugared and spiced!”
”I'll not do it so!” said Glenfernie. ”But I would take my stand at the crag's edge and cry to Grierson of Lagg, 'You or I go down!'”
Mr. Touris brushed the snuff from his ruffles. ”It's a great century!
We're growing enlightened.”
With a movement of her fingers Mrs. Jardine helped to roll from her lap a ball of rosy wool. ”Mr. Jardine, will you give me that? Had you heard that Abercrombie's cows were lifted?”
”Aye, I heard. What is it, Holdfast?”
Both dogs had raised their heads.
”Bran is outside,” said Strickland.
As he spoke the door opened and there came in a youth of seventeen, tall and well-built, with clothing that testified to an encounter alike with brier and bog. The hound Bran followed him. He blinked at the lights and the fire, then with a gesture of deprecation crossed the hall to the stairway. His mother spoke after him.
”Davie will set you something to eat.”
He answered, ”I do not want anything,” then, five steps up, paused and turned his head. ”I stopped at White Farm, and they gave me supper.”
He was gone, running up the stairs, and Bran with him.
The laird of Glenfernie shaded his eyes and looked at the fire. Mrs.
Jardine, working upon the gold streak in a tulip, held her needle suspended and sat for a moment with unseeing gaze, then resumed the bright wreath. The tutor began to think again of Mother Binning, and, following this, of the stepping-stones at White Farm, and Elspeth and Gilian Barrow balanced above the stream of gold. Mr. Touris put up his snuff-box.
”That's a fine youth! I should say that he took after you, Glenfernie.
But it's hard to tell whom the young take after!”
CHAPTER III
The school-room at Glenfernie gave upon the hill's steepest, most craglike face. A door opened on a hand's-breadth of level turf across from which rose the broken and ruined wall that once had surrounded the keep. Ivy overgrew this; below a wide and ragged breach a pine had set its roots in the hillside. Its top rose bushy above the stones.
Beyond the opening, one saw from the school-room, as through a window, field and stream and moor, hill and dale. The school-room had been some old storehouse or office. It was stone walled and floored, with three small windows and a fireplace. Now it contained a long table with a bench and three or four chairs, a desk and shelves for books.
One door opened upon the little green and the wall; a second gave access to a courtyard and the rear of the new house.
Here on a sunny, still August forenoon Strickland and the three Jardines went through the educational routine. The ages of the pupils were not sufficiently near together to allow of a ma.s.sed instruction.
The three made three cla.s.ses. Jamie and Alice worked in the school-room, under Strickland's eye. But Alexander had or took a wider freedom. It was his wont to prepare his task much where he pleased, coming to the room for recitation or for colloquy upon this or that aspect of knowledge and the attainment thereof. The irregularity mattered the less as the eldest Jardine combined with a pa.s.sion for personal liberty and out of doors a pa.s.sion for knowledge. Moreover, he liked and trusted Strickland. He would go far, but not far enough to strain the tutor's patience. His father and mother and all about Glenfernie knew his way and in a measure acquiesced. He had managed to obtain for himself range. Young as he was, his indrawing, outpus.h.i.+ng force was considerable, and was on the way, Strickland thought, to increase in power. The tutor had for this pupil a mixed feeling. The one constant in it was interest. He was to him like a deep lake, clear enough to see that there was something at the bottom that cast conflicting lights and hints of shape. It might be a lump of gold, or a coil of roots which would send up a water-lily, or it might be something different. He had a feeling that the depths themselves hardly knew. Or there might be two things of two natures down there in the lake....
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.