Johnstone of the Border. Bindloss Harold
face; but it was not so much her beauty as her decision and confidence that Whitney liked. The girl was capable of keen enjoyment, but it must be in something that was worth doing. He was already conscious of a curious respect for Elsie Woodhouse.
Andrew called to him to lift the board and come up; and when he reached the deck he saw close ahead of them a long, hump-backed mountain that rose abruptly from a narrow strip of rolling pasture. A row of very small white houses bordered a green common behind the beach, and the tide swept, froth-streaked, down the channel in front.
"Where do we bring up?" he asked.
"In the Carsethorn gut," said Andrew. "Do you think you can find it, Elsie?"
"I'll try. Give her a foot or two of sheet."
The boat swung round a little, edging in toward the beach, and Whitney saw by the ripples that they were in shallow water. Andrew let the staysail run down, but when he stood ready with the boathook, Elsie smiled.
"Sound if you like, but you won't find bottom here," she said.
"A good shot. You have hit the mouth of the gut."
"You'll touch now," said Elsie a few minutes later; and Andrew dipped the pole, then threw it down and lowered the jib. The boat came round head to wind, and the anchor went down with a rattle of running chain.
Landing from the dinghy, they struck across the fields, and although it was autumn, Whitney wondered at the lush greenness of the grass. Close on their left hand, Criffell's lonely ridge ran up against the sky, colored purple-red, though the hollows in its curving side were filled with dark-blue shadows. The ash-trees in the hedgerows that crossed the rolling pasture obscured their view ahead, and they were crossing the last rise when Whitney stopped.
"This is worth coming a very long way to see!" he exclaimed.
A deep glen, where the light was subdued and the colors dim, cleft the mountain's northern flank, and at its mouth a cluster of white houses stood among the trees; then, on a narrow green level, bright in the sun, the old abbey shone rosy red. Ancient ash-trees and crumbling granite walls straggled about it, but the molding of the high, east window, buttress and tower, still rose in lines of beauty, worked in warm-colored stone.
Elsie gave him a quick look and he knew that she was pleased with his frank admiration. When they entered the cool, shadowy interior she acted as his guide, for Dick and Andrew stayed outside in the sun. Presently she stopped near the east end of the building, and Whitney looked back down the long rows of plinths, from which the pillars had fallen, and up into the hollow of the great ruined tower.
"It must have been a wonderful place in the old days; a jewel in the shape of a church. And I dare say if they'd searched Scotland they couldn't have found a finer setting than these rich meadows at the mountain's foot."
Elsie led him a few yards along a wall, over which a low, groined roof still hung.
"Its building was a labor of love, and perhaps that's why it never leaves one cold," she said. "I suppose you know its history?"
"I only know it's called Sweetheart Abbey."
"The Countess Devorgilla built it as a shrine for her husband's heart, which was embalmed and buried on her breast. It's a moving story, when one thinks of what she undertook. Galloway was then, for the most part, a savage waste; skilled workmen must be brought from somewhere else, perhaps from Italy or France. Then there is only granite, which could not be cut and molded, on these hills, and the soft red stone had to be carried down the Firth and across the sands. They had no mechanical transport, and you can see the size of the blocks. In spite of all this, the abbey rose and still stands, marked, I often think, by a tender, elusive beauty that's peculiar to the North."
Elsie moved back to where the sun shone down into the roofless nave, and Whitney thought he understood why she did so. Her imagination was fastidiously refined: she would not loiter talking by Devorgilla's tomb. Standing silent beside her, he waited, with a faint smile. He was not a sentimentalist trying to play up to a pretty girl; somehow, she had stirred him. He felt that she had the gift of seizing what was true in romance and missing what was false. Then, she had the strange elusive beauty of the North which she had spoken of: an ethereal tenderness that flashed out and vanished, leaving the hard rock of a character steadfast as the granite upon the Solway shore.
Elsie turned and looked east with grave, steady eyes.
"One reaches out for something that's on the other side," she said; "but perhaps when one knocks and the gate is opened, one goes through unawares – "
"You mean, that when one's eyes are opened, there may not be much difference between the land of enchantment and ours?"
"Something like that."
During the short silence that followed, Whitney looked round the great church that was still majestic in its decay.
"Well," he said, "there can't be many of us, nowadays, who'd deserve the love and labor this place must have cost."
"But there must be some," she insisted.
"It seems a big thing to claim, but I have met two or three who, so far as my judgment goes, were good enough for the kind of woman your Countess seems to have been; not clever men and in no way remarkable, until you knew them well, but you felt that, whatever happened, they'd do the square thing. One could trust them. Somehow, one man in particular stands out from the rest."
Elsie turned toward him and he saw the strange, elusive tenderness shining in her eyes. Momentary as it was, it transformed her face, and he wondered whether she approved his sentiment or knew whom he meant.
"I imagine you are a good friend," she said softly. "It must be nice to have somebody who believes in you like that."
"If the man I'm thinking of knew how he stood with me and others, it would make him embarrassed." Whitney laughed. "But that's natural. It's a hard thing to feel that you must live up to your reputation."
"I like you best when you're serious," Elsie rebuked him, though she smiled.
She took the lead he gave her and they went back to the others, engaged in careless talk. When they reached an arch that opened on a sweep of sunny grass, Andrew looked up from the stone on which he sat.
"You haven't hurried," he remarked.
"No," said Whitney. "I've been learning some more of your traditions, and they're inspiring. The people round here seem to have been great lovers as well as pretty hard fighters."
"A happy thought has struck me," Dick broke in. "It would be hot work dragging the dinghy down across a quarter of a mile of sand, and I don't feel up to carrying a heavy lunch basket. There's a hotel in the village where they'd give us something to eat, and we could stroll up the burnside afterward. It's a pretty walk."
Whitney noticed that Andrew's glance rested for a second on Elsie's face and then passed on. She made no sign, but it seemed that Andrew understood without it.
"I think not," he said; "the place would probably be full of Dumfries excursionists. It would be pleasanter on the beach."
"And I want to see the view you talked about," Whitney followed him up.
Dick broke into a resigned grin.
"Very well; but you'll drag the dinghy down yourselves."
They had to carry the boat some distance, and afterward they rowed lazily along the edge of the sand until they landed at the foot of a little glen. Here they lunched and lounged in the sun until the flood tide came softly lapping across the flats.
The breeze had fallen very light when the stream swept the Rowan east across the shoals, and Whitney, sitting on the cabin-top, watched the Galloway shore recede. The western sky was a pale saffron, against which Criffell rose, steeped in a wonderful blue. The shadows were gathering fast about the rolling ground below, but the hollow where the old red abbey stood still could be distinguished.
CHAPTER VI
ON CRIFFELL HILL
The sun burned down on the heather. Below, in the curving glen where the heath gave place to white bent-grass, a burn flashed like a silver riband