Foes. Mary Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ with the turf without the open door. The sun flooded it. There came from within the sound, up and down, of a churn, and a voice singing:

      "O laddie, will ye gie to me

       A ribbon for my fairing?"

CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

      It grew that Ian was telling stories of cities—of London and of Paris, for he had been there, and of Rome, for he had been there. He had seen kings and queens, he had seen the Pope—

      "Lord save us!" ejaculated Jenny Barrow.

      He leaned against the dairy wall and the sun fell over him, and he looked something finer and more golden than often came that way. Young Gilian at the churn stood with parted lips, the long dasher still in her hands. This was as good as stories of elves, pixies, fays, men of peace and all! Elspeth let the milk-pans be and sat beside them on the long bench, and, with hands folded in her lap, looked with brown eyes many a league away. Neither Elspeth nor Gilian was without book learning. Behind them and before them were long visits to scholar kindred in a city in the north and fit schooling there. London and Paris and Rome. … Foreign lands and the great world. And this was a glittering young eagle that had sailed and seen!

      Alexander gazed with delight upon Ian spreading triumphant wings. This was his friend. There was nothing finer than continuously to come upon praiseworthiness in your friend!

      "And a beautiful lady came by who was the king's favorite—"

      "Gude guide us! The limmer!"

      "And she was walking on rose-colored velvet and her slippers had diamonds worked in them. Snow was on the ground outside and poor folk were freezing, but she carried over each arm a garland of roses as though it were June—"

      Jenny Barrow raised her hands. "She'll sit yet in the cauld blast, in the sinner's shift!"

      "And after a time there walked in the king, and the courtiers behind him like the tail of a peacock—"

      They had a happy hour in the White Farm dairy. At last Jenny and the girls set for the two cold meat and bannocks and ale. And still at table Ian was the shining one. The sun was at noon and so was his mood.

      "You're fey!" said Alexander, at last.

      "Na, na!" spoke Jenny. "But, oh, he's the bonny lad!"

      The dinner was eaten. It was time to be going.

      "Shut your book of stories!" said Alexander. "We're for the Kelpie's Pool, and that's not just a step from here!"

      Elspeth raised her brown eyes. "Why will you go to the Kelpie's Pool? That's a drear water!"

      "I want to show it to him. He's never seen it."

      "It's drear!" said Elspeth. "A drear, wanrestfu' place!"

      But Ian and Alexander must go. The aunt and nieces accompanied them to the door, stood and watched them forth, down the bank and into the path that ran to the glen. Looking back, the youths saw them there—Elspeth and Gilian and their aunt Jenny. Then the aspens came between and hid them and the white house and all.

      "They're bonny lasses!" said Ian.

      "Aye. They're so."

      "But, oh, man! you should see Miss Delafield of Tower Place in Surrey!"

      "Is she so bonny?"

      "She's more than bonny. She's beautiful and high-born and an heiress. When I'm a colonel of dragoons—"

      "Are you going to be a colonel of dragoons?"

      "Something like that. You talk of thinking that you were this and that in the past. Well, I was a fighting-man!"

      "We're all fighting-men. It's only what we fight and how."

      "Well, say that I had been a chief, and they lifted me on their shields and called me king, the very next day I should have made her queen!"

      "You think like a ballad. And, oh, man, you talk mickle of the lasses!"

      Ian looked at him with long, narrow, dark-gold eyes. "They're found in ballads," he said.

      Alexander just paused in his stride. "Humph! that's true! … "

      They entered the glen. The stream began to brawl; on either hand the hills closed in, towering high. Some of the trees were bare, but to most yet clung the red-brown or the gold-brown dress. The pines showed hard, green, and dead in the shadow; in the sunlight, fine, green-gold, and alive. The fallen leaves, moved by foot or by breeze, made a light, dry, talking sound. The white birch stems clustered and leaned; patches of bright-green moss ran between the drifts of leaves. The sides of the hills came close together, grew fearfully steep. Crags appeared, and fern-crowded fissures and roots of trees like knots of frozen serpents. The glen narrowed and deepened; the water sang with a loud, rough voice.

      Alexander loved this place. He had known it in childhood, often straying this way with the laird, or with Sandy the shepherd, or Davie from the house. When he was older he began to come alone. Soon he came often alone, learned every stick and stone and contour, effect of light and streak of gloom. As idle or as purposeful as the wind, he knew the glen from top to bottom. He knew the voice of the stream and the straining clutch of the roots over the broken crag. He had lain on all the beds of leaf and moss, and talked with every creeping or flying or running thing. Sometimes he read a book here, sometimes he pictured the world, or built fantastic stages, and among fantastic others acted himself a fantastic part. Sometimes with a blind turning within he looked for himself. He had his own thoughts of God here, of God and the Kirk and the devil. Often, too, he neither read, dreamed, nor thought. He might lie an hour, still, passive, receptive. The trees and the clouds, crag life, bird life, and flower life, life of water, earth, and air, came inside. He was so used to his own silence in the glen that when he walked through it with others he kept it still. Slightly taciturn everywhere, he was actively so here. The path narrowing, he and Ian must go in single file. Leading, Alexander traveled in silence, and Ian, behind, not familiar with the place, must mind his steps, and so fell silent, too. Here and there, now and then, Alexander halted. These were recesses, or it might be projecting platforms of rock, that he liked. Below, the stream made still pools, or moved in eddies, or leaped with an innumerable hurrying noise from level to level. Or again there held a reach of quiet water, and the glen-sides were soft with weeping birch, and there showed a wider arch of still blue sky. Alexander stood and looked. Ian, behind him, was glad of the pause. The place dizzied him who for years had been away from hill and mountain, pass and torrent. Yet he would by no means tell Alexander so. He would keep up with him.

      There was a mile of this glen, and now the going was worse and now it was better. Three-fourths of the way through they came to an opening in the rock, over which, from a shelf above, fell a curtain of brier.

      "See!" said Alexander, and, parting the stems, showed a veritable cavern. "Come in—sit down! The Kelpie's Pool is out of the glen, but they say that there's a bogle wons here, too."

      They sat down upon the rocky floor strewn with dead leaves. Through the dropped curtain they saw the world brokenly; the light in the cave was sunken and dim, the СКАЧАТЬ