To Strickland the remarkable thing lay in the lack of strain, the simplicity and fullness. Glenfernie was unfeignedly glad to see him, glad to see home shapes and colors. The blue feather among the trees had simply pleased him as it could not please a heart fastened to rage and sorrow. The stream of memories that it had beckoned—many others, it must be, besides that of the six-year-old's visit—seemed to have washed itself clear, to have disintegrated, dissolved venom and stinging. Strickland, pondering even while he talked, found the word he wanted: "Comprehensiveness.... He always tended to that."
Said Glenfernie, "I've had another birth, Strickland, and all things are the same and yet not the same." He gave it as an explanation, but then left it. They were going the moorland way to Glenfernie House. He was looking from side to side, recovering old landscape in sweep and in detail. Bit by bit, as they came to it, Strickland gave him the country news. At last there was the house before them, among the firs and oaks, topping the crag. They came into the wood at the base of the hill. The stream—the trees—above, the broken, ancient wall, the roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep. The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure sky. Alexander stood and gazed.
"The keep. The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room. Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read 'The Cranes of Ibycus'?"
"I remember."
"Life within life, and sky above sky!—I hear Bran!"
They mounted the hill. It seemed to run before them that the laird had come home. Bran and Davie and the men and maids and Alice, a bonny woman, and Mrs. Grizel, very little withered, exclaimed and ran. Tibbie Ross was there that day, and Black Alan neighed from his stall. Even the waving trees—even the flowers in the garden—Home, and its taste and fragrance—its dear, close emanations....
That evening at supper Mrs. Grizel made a remark. She leaned back in her chair and looked at Glenfernie. "I never thought you like your mother before! Oh aye! there's your father, too, and a kind of grand man he was, for all that he saw things dark. But will you look, Mr. Strickland, and see Margaret—"
Much later, from his own room, Strickland, gazing forth, saw light in the keep. Alexander would be sitting there among the books and every ancient memorial. Strickland felt a touch of doubt and apprehension. Suppose that to-morrow should find not this Alexander, at once old and new, but only the Alexander who had ridden from Glenfernie, who had shipped to Lisbon, nearly three years ago? To-day's deep satisfaction only a dream! Strickland shook off the fear.
"He breathed lasting growth.... O Christ! the help for all in winged men!"