Part 29 (1/2)
”One man one thing, and one another,” said Strickland. ”After his nature.”
”No. All go seeking it in the teeth of death and horror. That's universal! Joy must be sought. But it may not wear the old face; it may wear another.”
”I suppose that true joy has one face.”
”When one platonizes--perhaps! I keep to-day to earth, to the cave. Do you know,” said Alexander, ”why I sit here wounded?”
”Of outward facts I do not know any more than is, I think, pretty generally known through this countryside.”
”As--?”
Strickland looked still at the bowl of flowers. ”It is known, I think, that you loved Elspeth Barrow and would have wedded her. And that, while you were from home, the man who called himself, and was called by you, your nearest friend, stepped before you--made love to her, betrayed her--and left her to bear the shame.... I myself know that he kept you in ignorance, and that, away from here, he let you still write to him in friends.h.i.+p and answered in that tone.... All know that she drowned herself because of him, and that you knew naught until you yourself entered the Kelpie's Pool and found her body and carried her home.... After that you left the country to find and fight Ian Rullock. Folk know, too, that he evaded you then. You returned. Then came this insurrection, and news that he was in Scotland with the Pretender. You joined the King's forces. Then, after Culloden, you found the false friend in hiding, in the mountains. The two of you fought, and, as is often the way, the injurer seemed again to win. You were dangerously wounded. He fled. Soldiers upon his track found you lying in your blood. You were carried to Inverness. d.i.c.kson and I went to you, brought you at last home. In the mean time came news that the man you fought had been taken by the soldiers. I suppose that we have all had visions of him, in prison, expecting to suffer with other conspirators.”
”Yes, I have had visions ... outward facts!... Do you know the inner, northern ocean, where sleep all the wrecks?”
”As I have watched you since you were a boy, it is improbable that I should not have some divining power. In Inverness, too, while you were fevered, you talked and talked.... You have walked with Tragedy, felt her net and her strong whip.” Strickland lifted his eyes from the bowl, pushed back his chair a little, and looked full at the laird of Glenfernie. ”What then? Rise, Glenfernie, and leave her behind! And if you do not now, it will soon be hard for you to do so! Remember, too, that I watched your father--”
”After I find Ian Rullock in Holland or Lisbon or America--”
Strickland made a movement of deep concern. ”You have met and fought this man. Do you mean so to nourish vengeance--”
”I mean so to aid and vindicate distressed Justice.”
”Is it the way?”
”I think that it is the way.”
Strickland was silent, seeing the uselessness. Glenfernie was one to whom conviction must come from within. A stillness held in the room, broken by the laird in the voice that was growing like his father's.
”Nothing lacks now but strength, and I am gaining that--will gain it the faster now! Travel--travel!... All my travel was preparatory to this.”
”Do you mean,” asked Strickland, ”to kill him when you find him?”
”I like your directness. But I do not know--I do not know!... I mean to be his following fiend. To have him ever feel me--when he turns his head ever to see me!”
The other sighed sharply. He thought to himself, ”Oh, mind, thy abysses!”
Indeed, Glenfernie looked at this moment stronger. He folded Jamie's letter and put it by. He drew the bowl of flowers to him and picked forth a rose. ”A week--two at most--and I shall be wholly recovered!”
His voice had fiber, decision, even a kind of cheer.
Strickland thought, ”It is his fancied remedy, at which he s.n.a.t.c.hes!”
Glenfernie continued: ”We'll set to work to-morrow upon long arrangements! With you to manage here, I will not be missed.” Without waiting for the morrow he took quill and paper and began to figure.
Strickland watched him. At last he said, ”Will you go at once in three s.h.i.+ps to Holland, Portugal, and America?”
”Has the onlooker room for irony, while to me it looks so simple? I shall s.h.i.+p first to the likeliest land.... In ten days--in two weeks at most--to Edinburgh--”