"
Mr. Touris sighed heavily. "I don't know what is the matter with the
world.... One does one's best, but all goes wrong. All kinds of hopes
and plans.... When I look back to when I was a young man, I
wonder.... I set myself an aim in life, to lift me and mine from
poverty. I saved for it, denied for it, was faithful. It came about
and it's ashes in my mouth! Yet I took it as a trust, and was
faithful. What does the Bible say, 'Vanity of vanities'? But I say
that the world's made wrong."
Glenfernie left him at last, wrinkled and shrunken and shriveled, cold
on a summer day, plying himself with wine, a serving-man mending the
fire upon the hearth. Alexander went to Mrs. Alison's parlor. He found
her deep chair placed in the garden without, and she herself sitting
there, a book in hand, but not read, her form very still, her eyes
upon a shaft of light that was making vivid a row of flowers. The book
dropped beside her on the grass; she rose quickly. The last time they
had met was before Culloden, before Prestonpans.
She came to him. "You're well, Alexander! Thanks be! Sit down, my
dear, sit down!" She would have made him take her chair, but he
laughed and brought one for himself from the room. "I bless my
ancestors for a physical body that will not keep wounds!"
She sank into her chair again and sat in silence, gazing at him.
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