happened? It
never occurred to him that it had happened here in this dale. But in
all that life of Alexander's in the wider world there must needs have
been relationships of lands established. Somewhere, something had
happened to overcloud his day, to uncover ancestral resemblances,
possibilities. Something, somewhere, and he had had news of it this
autumn.... It happened that Strickland had never seen Glenfernie with
Elspeth Barrow.
Mrs. Grizel was not observant. So that her nephew came to breakfast,
dinner, and supper, so that he was not averse to casual speech of
household interests, so that he seemed to keep his health, so that he
gave her now and then words and a kiss of affection, she was willing
to believe that persons addicted to books and the company of
themselves had a right to stillness and gravity. Alice stayed in
Edinburgh; Jamie soldiered it in Flanders. Strickland wrote and
computed for and with the laird, then watched him forth, a solitary
figure, by the fir-trees, by the leafless trees, and down the circling
road into the winter country. Or he saw firelight in the keep and knew
that Alexander walked to and fro, to and fro, or sat bowed over a
book. Late at night, waking, he saw that Glenfernie still watched.
It was not Ian Rullock nor anything to do with him that had helped on
this sharp alteration, this turn into some Cimmerian stretch of the
mind's or the emotions' vast landscape. If Strickland had at first
wondered if this might be the case, the thought vanished. Glenfernie,
free to speak of Ian, spoke freely, with the relief of there, at
least, a sunny day. It somewhat amazed and disquieted, even while it
touched, the older man of quiet passions and even ways, the old
strength of this friendship. Glenfernie seemed to brood with a
mother-passion over Ian. To an extent here he confided in Strickland.
The latter knew of the worry about Jacobite plots and the drawing of
Ian into that vortex--Ian known now to be in Paris, writing thence
twice or thrice during this autumn and early winter, letters that came
to Glenfernie's hand by unusual channels, smacking all of them of
Jacobite or High Tory transmissals. Strickland did not see these
letters. Of them Alexander said only that Ian wrote as usual, except
that he made no reference to sere leaves turning green or a dead staff
budding.
In the room with only the loophole windows, by the firelight,
Alexander read over again the second of these letters.
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