Part 40 (1/2)

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Strickland, in the deep summer glen, saw before him the feather of smoke from Mother Binning's cot. The singing stream ran clearly, the sky arched blue above. The air held calm and fine, filled as it were with golden points. He met a white hen and her brood, he heard the slow drone of Mother Binning's wheel. She sat in the doorway, an old wise wife, active still.

”Eh, mon, and it's you!--Wish, and afttimes ye'll get!” She pushed her wheel aside. ”I've had a feeling a' the day!”

Strickland leaned against her ash-tree. ”It's high summer, Mother--one of the poised, blissful days.”

”Aye. I've a feeling.... Hae ye ony news at the House?”

”Alice sings beautifully this summer. Jamie is marrying down in England--beauty and worth he says, and they say.”

”Miss Alice doesna marry?”

”She's not the marrying kind, she says.”

”Eh, then! She's bonny and gude, juist the same! Did ye come by White Farm?”

”Yes. Jarvis Barrow fails. He sits under his fir-tree, with his Bible beside him and his eyes on the hills. Littlefarm manages now for White Farm.”

”Robin's sunny and keen. But he aye irked Jarvis with his profane sangs.” She drew out the adjective with a humorous downward drag of her lip.

Strickland smiled. ”The old man's softer now. You see that by the places at which his Bible opens.”

”Oh aye! We're journeyers--rock and tree and Kelpie's Pool with the rest of us.”

She seemed to catch her own speech and look at it. ”That's a word I hae been wanting the morn!--The Kelpie's Pool, with the moor sae green and purple around it.” She sat bent forward, her wrinkled hands in her lap, her eyes, rather wide, fixed upon the ash-tree.

”We have not heard from the laird,” said Strickland, ”this long time.”

”The laird--now there! What ye want further comes when the mind strains and then waits! I see in one ring the day and Glenfernie and yonder water. Wherever the laird be, he thinks to-day of Scotland.”

”I wish that he would think to returning,” said Strickland. He had been leaning against the doorpost. Now he straightened himself. ”I will go on as far as the pool.”

Mother Binning loosed her hands. ”Did ye have that thought when ye left hame?”

”No, I believe not.”

”Gae on, then! The day's bonny, and the Lord's gude has a wide ring!”

Strickland walking on, left the stream and the glen head. Now he was upon the moor. It dipped and rose like a t.i.tan wave of a t.i.tan sea.

Its long, long unbroken crest, clean line against clean s.p.a.ce, brought a sense of quiet, distance, might. Here solitude was at home.

Now Strickland moved, and now he stood and watched the quiet. Turning at last a shoulder of the moor, he saw at some distance below him the pool, like a small mirror. He descended toward it, without noise over the springy earth.

A horse appeared between him and the water. Strickland felt a most involuntary startling and thrill--then half laughed to think that he had feared that he saw the water-steed, the kelpie. The horse was fastened to a stake that once had been the bole of an ancient willow.

It grazed around--somewhere would be a master.... Presently Strickland's eye found the latter--a man lying upon the moorside, just above the water. Again with a shock and thrill--though not like the first--it came to him who it was.

The laird of Glenfernie lay very still, his eyes upon the Kelpie's Pool. His old tutor, long his friend, quiet and stanch, gazed unseen.

When he had moved a few feet an outcropping of rock hid his form, but his eyes could still dwell upon the pool and the man its visitor. He turned to go away, then he stood still.