Part 24 (1/2)
”We're no worse than other men,” said Warburton, comfortably. ”We're all pretty ignorant, I take it!”
They came to a building, old and not without some lingering of strength and grace. It stood in the angle of two streets and received suns.h.i.+ne and light as well as cross-tides of sound. The Scot and the Englishman both lodged here, above a harness-maker and a worker in fine woods. They pa.s.sed into the court and to a stair that once had known a constant, worldly-rich traffic up and down. Now it was still and twilight, after the streets. Both men had affairs to put in order, business on hand. They moved now abstractedly, and when Warburton reached, upon the first landing, the door of his rooms, he turned aside from Ian with only a negligent, ”We'll sup together and say last things then.”
The Scot went on alone to the next landing and his own room. These were not his usual lodgings in Paris. Agent now of high Jacobite interests, shuttle sent from conspirers in France to chiefs in Scotland, on the eve of a departure in disguise, he had broken old nest and old relations, and was now as a stranger in a city that he knew well, and where by not a few he was known. The room that he turned into had little sign of old, well-liked occupancy; the servant who at his call entered from a smaller chamber was not the man to whom he was used, but a Highlander sent him by a Gordon then in Paris.
”I am back, Donal!” said Ian, and threw himself into a chair by the table. ”Come, give an account of your errands!”
Donal, middle-aged, faithful, dour and sagacious, and years away from loch and mountain, gave account. Horses, weapons, clothing, all correct for Dr. Robert Bonshaw and his servant, riding under high protection from Paris to Dunkirk, where a well-captained merchant-vessel stayed for them in port. Ian nodded approval.
”I'm indebted, Donal, to my cousin Gordon!”
Donal let a smile come to within a league of the surface. ”Her ainself has a wish to hear the eagle scream over Ben Nevis!”
Rullock's hand moved over a paper, checking a row of figures. ”Did you manage to get into my old lodging?”
”Aye. None there. All dusty and bare. But the woman who had the key gave me--since I said I might make a guess where to find you, sir--these letters. They came, she said, two weeks ago.” Donal laid them upon the table.
”Ah!” said Ian, ”they must have gotten through before I shut off the old pa.s.sageway.” He took them in his hand. ”There's nothing more now, Donal. Go out for your dinner.”
The man went. Ian added another column of figures, then took the letters and with them moved to a window through which streamed the sun of France. The floor was patched with gold; there was warmth as well as light. He pushed a chair into it, sat down, and opened first the packet that he knew had come from his uncle. He broke the seal and read two pages of Mr. Touris in a mood of anger. There were rumors--.
True it was that Ian had now his own fortune, had it at least until he lost it and his life together in some mad, unlawful business! But let him not look longer to be heir of Archibald Touris! Withdraw at once from ill company, political or other, and return to Scotland, or at least to England, or take the consequences! The letter bore date the first week of December. It had been long in pa.s.sing from hand to hand in a troubled, warring world. Ian Rullock, fathoms deep in the present business, held in a web made by many lines of force, both thick and thin, refolded the paper and made to put it into his pocketbook, then bethinking himself, tore it instead into small pieces and, rising, dropped these into a brazier where burned a little charcoal. He would carry nothing with his proper name upon it. Coming back to the chair in the suns.h.i.+ne, he sat for a moment with his eyes upon a gray huddle of roofs visible through the window. Then he broke the seal and unfolded the letter superscribed in Alexander's strong writing.
There were hardly six lines. And they did not tell of how discovery had been made, nor why, nor when. They said nothing of death nor life--no word of the Kelpie's Pool. They carried, tersely, a direct challenge, the ground Ian Rullock's conception of friends.h.i.+p, a conception tallying nicely with Alexander Jardine's idea of a mortal enmity. Such a fis.h.i.+ng-town, known of both, back of such a sea beach in Holland--such a tavern in this place. Meet there--wait there, the one who should reach it first for the other, and--to give all possible ground to delays of letters, travel, arrangements generally--in so late a month as April. ”Find me there, or await me there, my one-time friend, henceforth my foe! I--or Justice herself above me--would teach you certain things!”
The cartel bore date the 1st of January--later by a month than the Black Hill letter. It dropped from Ian's hand; he sat with blankness of mind in the sunlight. Presently he s.h.i.+vered slightly. He leaned his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands and sat still.
Alexander! He felt no hot straining toward meeting, toward fighting, Alexander. Perversely enough, after a year of impatient, contemptuous thought in that direction, he had lately felt liking and an ancient strong respect returning like a tide that was due. And he could not meet Alexander in April--that was impossible! No private affair could be attended to now.
... Elspeth, of whom the letter carried no word, Elspeth from whom he had not heard since in August he left that countryside, Elspeth who had agreed with him that love of man and woman was n.o.body's business but their own, Elspeth who, when he would go, had let him go with a fine pale refusal to deal in women's tears and talk of injury, who had said, indeed, that she did not repent, much bliss being worth some bale--Elspeth whom he could not be sure that he would see again, but whom at times before his eyes at night he saw.... Immediately upon his leaving Black Hill she had broken with Glenfernie. She was clear of him--the laird could reproach her with nothing!
What had happened? He had told her how, at need, a letter might be sent. But one had never come. He himself had never written. Writing was set in a p.r.i.c.kly ring of difficulties and dangers. What had happened? Strong, secret inclination toward finding least painful things for himself brought his conclusion. Sitting there in the suns.h.i.+ne, his will deceiving him, he determined that it was simply that Elspeth had at last told Glenfernie that she could not love him because she loved another. Probably--persistence being markedly a trait of Old Steadfast's--he had been after her once and again, and she had turned upon him and said much more than in prudence she should have said! So Alexander would have made his discovery and might, if he pleased, image other trysts than his own in the glen! Certainly he had done this, and then sat down and penned his challenge!
Elspeth! He was unshakably conscious that Glenfernie would tell none what Elspeth might have been provoked into giving away. Old Steadfast, there was no denying, had that knightliness. Three now knew--no more than three. If, through some mischance, there had been wider discovery, she would have written! The Black Hill letter, too, would have had somewhat there to say.
Then, behind the challenge, stood old and new relations between Ian Rullock and Alexander Jardine! It was what Glenfernie might choose to term the betrayal of friends.h.i.+p--a deep scarification of Old Steadfast's pride, a severing cut given to his too imperial confidence, poison dropped into the wells of domination, ”No!” said to too much happiness, to any surpa.s.sing of him, Ian, in happiness, ”No!”
to so much reigning!
Ian shook himself, thrust away the doubtful glimmer of a smile. That way really did lie h.e.l.l....
He came back to a larger if a much perplexed self. He could not meet Glenfernie on that sea beach, fight him there. He did not desire to kill Old Steadfast, though, as the world went, pleasure was to be had in now and then giving superiority pain. Face to face upon those sands, some blood shed and honor satisfied, Alexander would be reasonable--being by nature reasonable! Ian shook himself.
”Now he draws me like a lodestone, and now I feel Lucifer to his Michael! What old, past mountain of friends.h.i.+p and enmity has come around, full wheel?”
But it was impossible for him to go to that sea strand in Holland.
Elspeth! He wondered what she was doing this April day. Perhaps she walked in the glen. It was colder there than here, but yet the trees would be budding. He saw her face again, and all its ability to show subtle terror and subtle joy, and the glancing and the running of the stream between. Elspeth.... He loved her again as he sat there, somewhat bowed together in the sunlight, Alexander's challenge upon the floor by his foot. There came creeping to him an odd feeling of long ago having loved her--long ago and more than once, many times more than once. Name and place alone flickered. There might be something in Old Steadfast's contention that one lived of old time and all time, only there came breaking in dozing and absent-mindedness!
Elspeth--
He saw her standing by him, and it seemed as though she had a basket on her arm, and she looked as she had looked that day of the thunder-storm and the hour in the cave behind the veil of rain.