Foes Part 8

"The day's getting late and it's growing cold. However, if you want to--"

Ian did not greatly want to. But if Alexander could be so indifferent, he could be determined and ardent. "What's a little mirk and cold? I want to say I've swum in it." He began to unb.u.t.ton his waistcoat.

They stripped, left their clothes in the stone's keeping, and ran down the moorside. The light played over their bodies, unblemished, smooth, and healthfully colored, clean-lined and rightly spare. They had beautiful postures and movements when they stood, when they ran; a youthful and austere grace as of Spartan youth plunging down to the icy Eurotas. The earth around lay as stripped as they; the naked, ineffable blue ether held them as it did all things; the wandering air broke against them in invisible surf. They ran down the long slope of the moor, parted the reeds, and dived to meet their own reflections.

The water was most truly deep and cold. They struck out, they swam to the middle of the pool, they turned upon their backs and looked up to the blue zenith, then, turning again, with strong arm strokes they sent the wave over each other. They rounded the pool under the twisted willows, beside the shaking reeds; they swam across and across.

Alexander looked at the sun that was deep in the western quarter.

"Time to be out and going!" He swam to the edge of the pool, but before he should draw himself out stopped to look up at a willow above him, the one that he thought he might, in the mist, have taken for the kelpie's daughter. It was of a height that, seen at a little distance, might even a tall woman. It put out two broken, shortened branches like arms.... He lost himself in the study of possibilities, balanced among the reeds that sighed around. He could not decide, so at last he shook himself from that consideration, and, pus.h.i.+ng into shallow water, stepped from the pool. He had taken a few steps up the moor ere with suddenness he felt that Ian was not with him. He turned. Ian was yet out in the middle ring of the tarn. The light struck upon his head. Then he dived under--or seemed to dive under. He was long in coming up; and when he did so it was in the same place and his backward-drawn face had a strangeness.

"Ian!"

Ian sank again.

"He's crampit!" Alexander flashed like a thrown brand down the way he had mounted and across the strip of weeds, and in again to the steel-dark water. "I'm coming!" He gained to his fellow, caught him ere he sank the third time.

Dragged from the Kelpie's Pool, Ian lay upon the moor. Alexander, bringing with haste the clothes from the stone above, knelt beside him, rubbed and kneaded the life into him. He opened his eyes.

"Alexander--!"

Alexander rubbed with vigor. "I'm here. Eh, lad, but you gave me a fright!"

In another five minutes he sat up. "I'm--I'm all right now. Let's get our things on and go."

They dressed, Alexander helping Ian. The blood came slowly back into the latter's cheek; he walked, but he s.h.i.+vered yet.

"Let's go get Mother Binning's coffee!" said Alexander. "Come, I'll put my arm about you so." They went thus up the moor and across, and then down to the trees, the stream, and the glen. "There's the smoke from her chimney! You may have both cups and lie by the fire till you're warm. Mercy me! how lonely the cave would have been if you had drowned!"

They got down to the flowing water.

"I'm all right now!" said Ian. He released himself, but before he did so he turned in Alexander's arm, put his own arm around the other's neck, and kissed him. "You saved my life. Let's be friends forever!"

"That's what we are," said Alexander, "friends forever."

"You've proved it to me; one day I'll prove it to you!"

"We don't need proofs. We just know that we like each other, and that's all there is about it!"

"Yes, it's that way," said Ian, and so they came to Mother Binning's cot, the fire, and the coffee.

CHAPTER VII

Upon a quiet, gray December afternoon, nine years and more from the June day when he had fished in the glen and Mother Binning had told him of her vision of the Jacobite gathering at Braemar, English Strickland, walking for exercise to the village and back, found himself overtaken by Mr. M'Nab, the minister who in his white manse dwelt by the white kirk on the top of the windy hill. This was, by every earthly canon, a good man, but a stern and unsupple. He had not been long in this parish, and he was sweeping with a strong, new besom. The old minister, to his mind, had been Erastian and lax, weak in doctrine and in discipline of the fold. Mr. M'Nab meant not to be weak. He loathed sin and would compel the sinner also to loathe it.

Now he came up, tall and darkly clad, and in his Calvinistic hand his Bible.

"Gude day, sir!"

"Good day, Mr. M'Nab!" The two went on side by side. The day was very still, the sky an even gray, snow being prepared. "You saw the laird?"

"Aye. He's verra low."

"He'll not recover I think. It's been a slow failing for two years--ever since Mrs. Jardine's death."

"She was dead before I came to this kirk. But once, when I was a young man, I stayed awhile in these parts. I remember her."

"She was the best of women."

"So they said. But she had not that grip upon religion that the laird has!"

"Maybe not."

Mr. M'Nab directed his glance upon the Glenfernie tutor. He did not think that this Englishman, either, had much grip upon religion. He determined, at the first opportunity, to call his attention to that fact and to strive to teach his fingers how to clasp. He had a craving thirst for the saving of souls, and to draw one whole from Laodicea was next best to lifting from Babylon. But to-day the laird and his spiritual concerns had the field.

"He comes, by the mother's side, at least, of G.o.dly stock. His mother's father was martyred for the faith in the auld persecuting time. His grandmother wearied her mind away in prison. His mother suffered much when she was a la.s.sie."

"It's small wonder that he has nursed bitterness," said Strickland.

"He must have drunk in terror and hate with her milk.... He conquered the terror."

"_'Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.'_--What else should his heart do but burn with a righteous wrath?"

Strickland sighed, looking at the quiet gray hills and the vast, still web of cloud above. "It's come to be a withering fire, hunting fuel everywhere! I remember when he held it in bounds, even when for a time it seemed to die out. But of late years it has got the better of him.

At last, I think, it is devouring himself."

M'Nab made a dissenting sound. "He has got the implicit belief in G.o.d that I see sair lack of elsewhere! He holds fast to G.o.d."

"Aye. The G.o.d who slays the Amalekites."

M'Nab turned his wintry glance upon him. "And is not that G.o.d?"

The other looked at the hill and at the vast, quiet, gray field of cloud. "Perhaps!... Let's talk of something else. I am too tired to argue. I sat up with him last night."

The minister would have preferred to continue to discuss the character of Deity. He turned heavily. "I was in company, not long ago, with some gentlemen who were wondering why you stayed on at Glenfernie House. They said that you had good offers elsewhere--much better than with a Scots laird."

"I promised Mrs. Jardine that I would stay."

"While the laird lived?"

"No, not just that--though I think that she would have liked me to do so. But so long as the laird would keep Jamie with him at home."

"What will he do now--Jamie?"

"He has set his heart on the army. He's strong of body, with a kind of big, happy-go-luckiness--"

A horseman came up behind them. It proved to be Robin Greenlaw, of Littlefarm. He checked his gray and exchanged greetings with the minister and the tutor. "How does the laird find himself the day?" he asked Strickland.

"No better, I think, Mr. Greenlaw."