Part 42 (1/2)

A servant came to the door. ”Mrs. Alison has returned, sir.”

Glenfernie rose. ”I will go find her then.--I will ride over often if I may.”

”I wish you would!” said Black Hill. ”I was sorry about that quarrel with your father.”

The old laird's son walked down the matted corridor. The drawing-room door stood open; he saw one panel of the tall screen covered with paG.o.das, palms, and macaws. Further on was the room, clean and fragrant, known as Mrs. Alison's room. This door, too, was wide. He stood by his old friend. They put hands into hands; eyes met, eyes held in a long look.

She said, ”O G.o.d, I praise Thee!”

They sat within the garden door, on one side the clear, still room, on the other the green and growing things, the great tree loved by birds.

The place was like a cloister. He stayed with her an hour, and in all that time there was not a great deal said with the outer tongue. But each grew more happy, deeper and stronger.

He talked to her of the Roman Campagna, of the East and the desert....

As the hour closed he spoke directly of Ian. ”That is myself now, as Elspeth is myself now. I falter, I fail, but I go on to profounder Oneness.”

”Christ is born, then he grows up.”

”May I see Ian's last letters?”

She put them in his hands. ”They are very short. They speak almost always of external things.”

He read, then sat musing, his eyes upon the tree. ”This last one--You answered that it was not known where I was?”

”Yes. But he says here at the last, 'I feel it somewhere that he is on his way to Scotland.'”

”I'll have to think it out.”

”Every letter is objective like this. But for all that, I divine, in the dark, a ferment.... As you see, we have not heard for months.”

The laird of Glenfernie rode at last from Black Hill. It was afternoon, white drifts of clouds in the sky, light and shadow moving upon field and moor and distant, framing mountains. He rode by Littlefarm and he called at the house gate for Robin Greenlaw. It seemed that the latter was away in White Farm fields. The laird might meet him riding home. A mile farther on he saw the gray horse crossing the stream.

Glenfernie and Greenlaw, meeting, left each the saddle, went near to embracing, sat at last by a stone wall in the late suns.h.i.+ne, and felt a tide of liking, stronger, not weaker, than that of old days.

”You are looking after White Farm?”

”Yes. The old man fails. Jenny has become a cripple. Gilian and I are the rulers.”

”Or servers?”

”It amounts to the same.... Gilian has a splendid soul.”

”The poems, Robin. Do you make them yet?”

”Oh yes! Now and then. All this helps.... And you, Glenfernie, I could make a poem of you!”

The laird laughed. ”I suppose you could of all men.... Gilian and you do not marry?”

”We are not the marrying kind. But I shouldn't love beauty inside if I didn't love Gilian.... I see that something big has come to you, Glenfernie, and made itself at home. You'll be wanting it taken as a matter of course, and I take it that way.... No matter what you have seen, is not this vale fair?”