Part 19 (1/2)
As they pa.s.sed the ash-tree there was lightning, but yet the heavens showed great lakes of blue, and a broken sunlight lay upon the path.
”There's time enough! We need not go too fast. The path is rough for that.”
They walked in silence, now side by side, now, where the way was narrow, one before the other. The blue clouded over, there sprang a wind. The trees bent and shook, the deep glen grew gray and dark.
That wind died and there was a breathless stillness, heated and heavy.
Each heard the other's breathing as they walked.
”Let us go more quickly! We have a long way.”
”Will you go back to Mother Binning's?”
”That, too, is far.”
They had pa.s.sed the cave a little way and were in mid-glen. It was dusk in this narrow pa.s.s. The trees hung, shadows in a brooding twilight; between the close-set pillars of the hills the sky showed slate-hued, with pallid feathers of cloud driven across. Lightning tore it, the thunder was loud, the trees upon the hilltops began to move. Some raindrops fell, large, slow, and warm. The lightning ran again, blindingly bright; the ensuing thunderclap seemed to shake the rock. As it died, the cataract sound of the wind was heard among the ranked trees. The drops came faster, came fast.
”It's no use!” cried Ian. ”You'll be drenched and blinded! There's danger, too, in these tall trees. Come back to the cave and take shelter!”
He turned. She followed him, breathless, liking the storm--so that no bolt struck him. In every nerve, in every vein, she felt life rouse itself. It was like day to old night, summer to one born in winter, a pa.s.sion of revival where she had not known that there was anything to revive. The past was as it were not, the future was as it were not; all things poured into a tremendous present. It was proper that there should be storm without, if within was to be this enormous, aching, happy tumult that was pain indeed, but pain that one would not spare!
Ian parted the swinging briers. They entered the cavern. If it was dim outside in the glen, it was dimmer here. Then the lightning flashed and all was lit. It vanished, the light from the air in conflict with itself. All was dark--then the flash again! The rain now fell in a torrent.
”At least it is dry here! There is wood, but I have no way to make fire.”
”I am not cold.”
”Sit here, upon this ledge. Alexander and I cleared it and widened it.”
She sat down. When he spoke of Alexander she thought of Alexander, without unkindness, without comparing, without compunction, a thought colorless and simple, as of one whom she had known and liked a long time ago. Indeed, it might be said that she had little here with which to reproach herself. She had been honest--had not said ”Take!” where she could not fulfil.... And now the laird of Glenfernie was like a form met long ago--long ago! It seemed so long and far away that she could not even think of him as suffering. As she might leave a fugitive memory, so she turned her mind from him.
Ian thought of Alexander ... but he looked, by the lightning's lamp, at the woman opposite.
She was not the first that he had desired, but he desired now with unwonted strength. He did not know why--he did not a.n.a.lyze himself nor the situation--but all the others seemed gathered up in her. She was fair to him, desirable!... He thirsted, quite with the mortal honesty of an Arab, day and night and day again without drink in the desert, and the oasis palms seen at last on the horizon. In his self-direction thitherward he was as candid, one-pointed, and ruthless as the Arab might be. He had no deliberate thought of harm to the woman before him--as little as the Arab would have of hurting the well whose cool wave seemed to like the lip touch. Perhaps he as little stopped to reason as would have done the Arab. Perhaps he had no thought of deeply injuring a friend. If there were two desert-traversers, or more than two, making for the well, friends.h.i.+p would not hold one back, push another forward. Race!--and if the well was but to one, then let fate and Allah approve the swiftest! Under such circ.u.mstances would not Alexander outdo him if he might? He was willing to believe so.
Glenfernie said himself that the girl did not know if she cared for him. If, then, the well was not for him, anyway?... _Where was the wrong?_ Now Ian believed in his own power and easy might and pleasantness and, on the whole, goodness--believed, too, in the love of Alexander for him, love that he had tried before, and it held. _And if he made love to Elspeth Barrow need old Steadfast ever know it?_ And, finally, and perhaps, unacknowledged to himself, from the first, he turned to that cabinet of his heart where was the vial made of pride, that held the drop of malice. The storm continued. They looked through the portcullis made by the briers upon a world of rain. The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled; in here was the castle hold, dim and safe. They were as alone as in a fairy-tale, as alone as though around the cave beat an ocean that boat had never crossed.
They sat near each other; once or twice Ian, rising, moved to and fro in the cave, or at the opening looked into the turmoil without. When he did this her eyes followed him. Each, in every fiber, had consciousness of the other. They were as conscious of each other as lion and lioness in a desert cave.
They talked, but they did not talk much. What they said was trite enough. Underneath was the potent language, wave meeting wave with shock and thrill and exultation. These would not come, here and now, to outer utterance. But sooner or later they would come. Each knew that--though not always does one acknowledge what is known.
When they spoke it was chiefly of weather and of country people....
The lightning blazed less frequently, thunder subdued itself. For a time the rain fell thick and leaden, but after an hour it thinned and grew silver. Presently it wholly stopped.
”This storm is over,” said Ian.
Elspeth rose from the ledge of stone. He drew aside the dripping curtain of leaf and stem, and she stepped forth from the cave, and he followed. The clouds were breaking, the birds were singing. The day of creation could not have seen the glen more lucent and fragrant. When, soon, they came to its lower reaches, with White Farm before them, they saw overhead a rainbow.
The day of the storm and the cave was over, but with no outward word their inner selves had covenanted to meet again. They met in the leafy glen. It was easy for her to find an errand to Mother Binning's, or, even, in the long summer afternoons, to wander forth from White Farm unquestioned. As for him, he came over the moor, avoided the cot at the glen head, and plunged down the steep hillside below. Once they met Jock Binning in the glen. After that they chose for their trysting-place that green hidden arm that once she and the laird of Glenfernie had entered.