"Alexander Jardine, I love Ian dearly. He needs and will need love--great love. If you are going to be friends, remember that love is bottomless.--And now go, the two of you, for the day is getting on."

They pa.s.sed again the macaw-and-paG.o.da screen and left the paneled room. The August light struck slant and gold. The two quitted the house and crossed the terrace into the avenue without again encountering the master of the place.

"I will go with you to the top of the hill," said Ian. They climbed the ridge that was like a purple cloud. "I'll come to Glenfernie to-morrow or the next day."

"Yes, come! I'm fond of Jamie, but he's three years younger than I."

"You've got a sister?"

"Alice? She's only twelve. You come. I've been wanting somebody."

"So have I. I'm lonelier than you."

They came to the level top of the heath. The sun rode low; the shadow of the hill stretched at their feet, out over path and harvest-field.

"Good-by, then!"

"Good-by!"

Ian stood still. Alexander, homeward bound, dropped over the crest.

The earth wave hid from him Black Hill, house and all. But, looking back, he could still see Ian against the sky. Then Ian sank, too.

Alexander strode on toward Glenfernie. He went whistling, in expanded, golden spirits. Ian--and Ian--and Ian! Going through a grove of oaks, blackbirds flew overhead, among and above the branches. _The cranes of Ibycus!_ The phrase flashed into mind. "I wonder why things like that disturb me so!... I wonder if there's any bottom or top to living anyhow!... I wonder--!" He looked at the birds and at the violet evening light at play in the old wood. The phrase went out of his mind. He left the remnant of the forest and was presently upon open moor. He whistled again, loud and clear, and strode on happily.

Ian--and Ian--and Ian!

CHAPTER V

The House of Glenfernie and the House of Touris became friends. A round of country festivities, capped by a great party at Black Hill, wrought bonds of acquaintanceship for and with the Scots family returned after long abode in England. Archibald Touris spent money with a cautious freedom. He set a table and poured a wine better by half than might be found elsewhere. He kept good horses and good dogs.

Laborers who worked for him praised him; he proved a not ungenerous landlord. Where he recognized obligations he met them punctually. He had large merchant virtues, no less than the accompanying limitations.

He returned to the Church of Scotland.

The laird of Glenfernie and the laird of Black Hill found const.i.tutional impediments to their being more friendly than need be.

Each was polite to the other to a certain point, then the one glowered and the other scoffed. It ended in a painstaking keeping of distance between them, a task which, when they were in company, fell often to Mrs. Jardine. She did it with tact, with a twist of her large, humorous mouth toward Strickland if he were by. Admirable as she was, it was curious to see the difference between her method, if method there were, and that of Mrs. Alison. The latter showed no effort, but where she was there fell harmony. William Jardine liked her, liked to be in the room with her. His great frame and her slight one, his rough, ma.s.sive, somewhat unshaped personality and her exquisite clearness contrasted finely enough. Her brother, who understood her very little, yet had for her an odd, appealing affection, strange in one who had so positively settled what was life and the needs of life.

It was his habit to speak of her as though she were more helplessly dependent even than other women. But at times there might be seen who was more truly the dependent.

August pa.s.sed into September, September into brown October. Alexander and Ian were almost continually in company. The attraction between them was so great that it appeared as though it must stretch backward into some unknown seam of time. If they had differences, these apparently only served in themselves to keep them revolving the one about the other. They might almost quarrel, but never enough to drag their two orbs apart, breaking and rending from the common center. The sun might go down upon a kind of wrath, but it rose on hearts with the difference forgotten. Their very unlikenesses p.r.i.c.ked each on to seek himself in the other.

They were going to Edinburgh after Christmas, to be students there, to grow to be men. Here at home, upon the eve of their going, rein upon them was slackened. They would so soon be independent of home discipline that that independence was to a degree already allowed.

Black Hill did not often question Ian's comings and goings, nor Glenfernie Alexander's. The school-room saw the latter some part of each morning. For the rest of the day he might be almost anywhere with Ian, at Glenfernie, or at Black Hill, or on the road between, or in the country roundabout.

William Jardine, chancing to be one day at Black Hill, watched from Mrs. Alison's parlor the two going down the avenue, the dogs at their heels. "It's a fair David and Jonathan business!"

"David needed Jonathan, and Jonathan David."

"Had Jonathan lived, ma'am, and the two come to conflict about the kingdom, what then, and where would have flown the friendship?"

"It would have flown on high, I suppose, and waited for them until they had grown wings to mount to it."

"Oh," said the laird, "you're one I can follow only a little way!"

Ian and Alexander felt only that the earth about them was bright and warm.

On a brown-and-gold day the two found themselves in the village of Glenfernie. Ian had spent the night with Alexander--for some reason there was school holiday--the two were now abroad early in the day.

The village sent its one street, its few poor lanes, up a bare hillside to the church atop. Poor and rude enough, it had yet to-day its cheerful air. High voices called, flaxen-haired children pottered about, a mill-wheel creaked at the foot of the hill, iron clanged in the smithy a little higher, the drovers' rough laughter burst from the tavern midway, and at the height the kirk was seeing a wedding. The air had a tang of cooled wine, the sky was blue.

Ian and Alexander, coming over the hill, reached the kirk in time to see emerge the married pair with their kin and friends. The two stood with a rabble of children and boys beneath the yew-trees by the gate.

The yellow-haired bride in her finery, the yellow-haired groom in his, the dressed and festive following, stepped from the kirkyard to some waiting carts and horses. The most mounted and took place, the procession put itself into motion with clatter and laughter. The children and boys ran after to where the road dipped over the hill. A cl.u.s.ter of village folk turned the long, descending street. In pa.s.sing they spoke to Alexander and Ian.

"Who was married?--Jock Wilson and Janet Macraw, o' Langmuir."

The two lounged against the kirkyard wall, beneath the yews.

"_Marry!_ That's a strange, terrible, useless word to me!"

"I don't know...."

"Yes, it is!... Ian, do you ever think that you've lived before?"

"I don't know. I'm living now!"

"Well, I think that we all lived before. I think that the same things happen again--"

"Well, let them--some of them!" said Ian. "Come along, if we're going through the glen."

They left the kirkyard for the village street. Here they sauntered, friends with the whole. They looked in at the tavern upon the drovers, they watched the blacksmith and his helper. The red iron rang, the sparks flew. At the foot of the hill flowed the stream and stood the mill. The wheel turned, the water diamonds dropped in sheets. Their busy, idle day took them on; they were now in bare, heathy country with the breathing, winey air. Presently White Farm could be seen among aspens, and beyond it the wooded mouth of the glen. Some one, whistling, turned an elbow of the hill and caught up with the two. It proved to be one several years their senior, a young man in the holiday dress of a prosperous farmer. He whistled clearly an old border air and walked without dragging or clumsiness. Coming up, he ceased his whistling.

"Good day, the both of ye!"

"It's Robin Greenlaw," said Alexander, "from Littlefarm.--You've been to the wedding, Robin?"

"Aye. Janet's some kind of a cousin. It's a braw day for a wedding!

You've got with you the new laird's nephew?--And how are you liking Black Hill?"

"I like it."

"I suppose you miss grandeurs abune what ye've got there. I have a liking myself," said Greenlaw, "for grandeurs, though we've none at all at Littlefarm! That is to say, none that's just obvious. Are you going to White Farm?"

Alexander answered: "I've a message from my father for Mr. Barrow. But after that we're going through the glen. Will you come along?"

"I would," said Greenlaw, seriously, "if I had not on my best. But I know how you, Alexander Jardine, take the devil's counsel about setting foot in places bad for good clothes! So I'll give myself the pleasure some other time. And so good day!" He turned into a path that took him presently out of sight and sound.

"He's a fine one!" said Alexander. "I like him."

"Who is he?"

"White Farm's great-nephew. Littlefarm was parted from White Farm.