Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: "_It’s a storm!_" _he cried._ (See page 90.)]
_*The*_*
POTTER *_*and*_*
*_*The*_* CLAY*
A ROMANCE _of_ TODAY
_By_
MAUD HOWARD PETERSON
ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLOTTE HARDING
LOTHROP
PUBLISHING COMPANY
BOSTON
COPYRIGHT,
1901,
_By_
LOTHROP
PUBLISHING
COMPANY.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL
Published May 7, 1901.
6th Thousand, June 11, 1901.
10th Thousand, July 19, 1901.
13th Thousand, Aug. 16, 1901.
Norwood Press:
Berwick & Smith, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
M. C. P.
and
M. T. C.
WHOSE LIVES
REVEAL THE
POTTER’S TOUCH
*AUTHOR’S NOTE*
The comparatively unknown rendering of the verse from the Rubáiyát of
Omar Kháyyám, quoted on the succeeding page, is to be found in the
_first_ edition of Fitzgerald’s translation of the Persian poem.
"For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,
I watch’d the Potter thumping his wet clay:
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmur’d—’Gently, Brother, gently, pray!’"
_From the Rubáiyát._
PERMISSION to use the poem, "The Potter’s Wheel," which appears on the
next page, was granted by the owners of the English copyright of
Browning’s works through Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., London, and by the
American publishers of Browning, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
Boston.
*The
Potter’s Wheel*
Ay, note that Potter’s wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the past gone, seize to-day!"
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
_That_ was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves,
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow,
The Master’s lips aglow!
Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s
wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
So, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
_Robert Browning._
*CONTENTS*
PROLOGUE
BOOK ONE
_The clay takes shape_
BOOK TWO
_The break in the clay_
BOOK THREE
_The Potter’s touch_
*LIST *_*of*_* ILLUSTRATIONS*
*"It’s a storm!" he cried.* (_Frontispiece._)
"*You—saw—me—then?*"
"*What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the foam?*"
"*Trevelyan lay on the floor.*"
*PROLOGUE*
_*The*_* POTTER
*_*and the*_* CLAY*
_*PROLOGUE*_
The Lieutenant’s small daughter was swinging on the railing of the
drawbridge that spanned the moat.
Her companions, two boys, questioned each other with their eyes.
"She says she won’t come," said the elder in what he fondly believed to
be an undertone. "She says she won’t play—"
"I never did! So there!"
The small girl wheeled about suddenly and descended from her perch and
stamped her foot; her long, straight hair of an indefinite brown, shaken
by the tempest the boy’s words had awakened.
"No; but you won’t," said Rob, promptly.
There was an ominous silence; but instead of the tirade the anxious
watchers expected, a tear appeared on Cary’s little nose and quietly
dropped into the waters of the moat. Cary was nothing if she was not a
bundle of contradictions. Johnny shuffled nervously from one foot to
the other, but Rob grew impatient.
"Well, are you coming?" he asked after the pause in which he had vainly
waited for Cary to smile again.
"No, I’m tired. I hate walking, too," said Cary peevishly.
"’Course not—to walk," said Rob, scornfully. "We can steal Lieutenant
Burden’s boat."
"You wouldn’t dare," said Cary, but her voice was tremulous with
eagerness, and the tears she had forgotten to wipe away were still
shining on her cheeks.
"Wouldn’t I, though! Come along and see!"
Cary balanced herself carefully on one foot and considered. It wasn’t
well to let Rob think she didn’t have to be persuaded. He had been so
cross too.
"I haven’t got my sunbonnet," she began. "And I’ve forgotten the gun I
put it in."
"I’d just as lieve hunt for it," said Johnny, politely.
"That’s just like a girl! You don’t need the old thing—anyway I thought
you hated it," retorted Rob, who did not fill the role of pleader.
"’Course Mammy Amy is ’way—gone for a week to see her grandbaby. I
don’t s’pose I really need my pinafore either—_if I go_!" The
Lieutenant’s small daughter hesitated to watch the effect of the words.
Rob apparently was not to be moved, so she buried her pride and backed
up to Johnny.
"Please undo me," she said, calmly, and the older boy struggled manfully
with the holes and buttons.
"I’ll be right back—quick as a wink," and she flew over the drawbridge
back to the fort, her long hair and short dress blowing in the wind.
She hid the pinafore under her arm, and when she reached the circle of
the parade ground, she sidled up to one of the great guns captured in
the war, and surreptitiously poked the gingham roll down its mouth.
Clothes were a necessary evil, but sunbonnets and pinafores were the
worst and most evil things of all—and not to be endured when Mammy Amy
was not around, and the big show guns offered such a safe and charming
hiding place. It only needed coolness and care to accomplish the feat
without detection. Of course, a thing once buried in the heart of one
of the big guns was lost forever—which was just as well, thought Cary,
being one less to bother her—since it was one thing to force the
articles down into the big black mouths and another to extract the
sunbonnets and pinafores, even if she could have remembered which
particular gun held which particular thing—which she could never do.
She hurried back to the drawbridge, and the sentry, who adored every
inch of the "Post Baby," stood at "attention" and saluted her with a
twinkle in his eye as she passed him. Cary slowed her walk and inclined
her head graciously in greeting.
"Good evenin’, Jones," she said, innocently.
Then she rejoined the boys.
"Well, are you really ready?" said Rob, a bit crossly.
The Lieutenant’s small daughter did not deign to notice him.
"I think," she said, condescendingly, "_if I go_, I’ll go ’round by the
road way—it’s shorter."
The "road way" was a good deal longer, but it was out of the reach of
Cary’s father and the fort.
She wiped her dry eyes on one of Johnny’s handkerchiefs—Johnny always
had more than one, while Rob and herself frequently went "shares" on a
stolen or a borrowed one—and then she raced Rob to the end of the
drawbridge.
Cary’s conscience was troubling her. She told herself it was her
stomach and the lemon pie she had appropriated from the pantry shelf,
but it was undoubtedly her conscience, mingled with a fear that
papa-lieutenant or some of the other officers might loom in sight and
inquiring into the project, carry her off.
Ahead, thirteen-year old Johnny was moralizing.
"Perhaps we oughtn’t to take her—she’s so little."
"She’s seven," said Rob, "and what’s going to hurt her?" He kept his
eyes away from the over-clouding sky.
"I don’t know—" said the cautious Johnny, "but—"
"I guess we can take care of a small girl like her. You’re thirteen and
I’m eleven."
At the water edge, conscience spoke once more but was overruled when at
Johnny’s question as to the judiciousness of her going, Rob declared she
was afraid.
"I ain’t afraid, so there! Robby Trevelyan! My papa never said I
_couldn’t_ go!"
Cary majestically slipped into the stolen boat, and seated herself in
the bow. Johnny took the rudder and Rob the oars.
The boy was as much at home on the sea as he was in his bed at night.
Indeed, more so, since he hated the one and loved the other with all the
passionate strength of a coast-child’s heart. He had been born in
inland England, but had lived most of his life in western Scotland where
the great rocks rise boldly along the coast—that coast intersected by
numerous sea-lochs, bounded by hills and separated from each other by
mountainous peninsulas.
The burden of the deep sea’s song of eternal restlessness had become the
controlling passion of the boy’s life. The wild freedom of wild living
things appealed to him and fear was a word unknown. Not a nearby cliff
he had not climbed; not a nearby, darkened cave, formed by the
overhanging rocks, he had not explored. The Scottish folk forgot he was
an English lad as his skiff became a familiar feature of the western
sea-bound landscape. There was scarcely a Scottish boy of double his
age who could outstrip him in swimming, and when the hated books had
been laid to one side and the tutor had gone away for the summer months,
old Mactier, a retainer of his father’s, had taken the child in charge,
carrying him over to the moorland country and teaching him the meaning
and the use of firearms. His mother had at first protested, but
Trevelyan had only laughed. "Let the boy alone," he said, and he
gloried with old Mactier at the lad’s stocky build, firm muscles and
enduring fearlessness, knowing that in her secret heart his wife
remembered the traditions of her Scottish clan, and was glad.
Then Trevelyan’s wife had died. The home on western, rock-bound
Scotland had been closed, until the boy should grow to man’s estate and
enter on his mother’s heritage. Trevelyan sent the boy to his
sister—Johnny’s mother—living in east Scotland, and then returned to
England. The sudden loss, the still more sudden change from the wild
free life lived on the western coast to the quietness of the life lived
by the Stewarts, told upon the child. Mercifully, his healthy training
was stronger than the inroads made by childish grief, but his mind was
ill at ease and homesick. He hated the flatness of this new eastern
country—the low and shelving coast. This was not Scotland to him. It
was not the Scotland he had known. It was not Mactier’s Scotland—and
his.
His aunt was kind—overkind, her own children sometimes thought when she
sat out all their bedtime hour on the foot of Robert’s bed, instead of
theirs—but "auntie" couldn’t understand. All the three children were
kind but they couldn’t quite understand either. Johnny was undoubtedly
the best, but Johnny loved books as passionately as Rob hated them, and
would listen to his father discuss politics by the hour, if he only had
the chance. Robert loathed politics.
Then one day Johnny’s mother had a talk with her husband. It ended in
her giving up a London season and starting with Johnny and Trevelyan’s
boy, for America. A long promised visit to a life friend, who had
married a United States officer, was the excuse. It was not until years
after, when Trevelyan’s little son had grown to manhood that he knew the
real reason for that sudden ocean voyage.
The change had the desired effect. He met new people. He saw new
things. He watched new customs. He knew Cary.
But the wistfulness for Mactier was in the boy’s eyes now as he looked
over Johnny’s head in front of him, to the long stretch of low sand
country he was leaving. He pulled with long, even strokes.
Cary was talkative.
"Is this—" she waved her arms intending to designate the new sweep of
coast line and of water, "all this I mean—is it like England or
Scotland?"
"Something," said Johnny slowly. "It’s really quite like home—my home,"
he added quickly, seeing that his younger cousin had stopped rowing and
was leaning forward with hurt eyes.
Suddenly, the boy drew in his oars, resting on them and allowing the
boat to drift. "It isn’t like my home," he cried passionately; a wild
thrill of homesickness surging over him, "It isn’t like _my_
Scotland—one little bit! We have great big rocks rising out of the
water—not long beaches like this! And the sea beats and beats and
_beats_ against them—it doesn’t just lap the sand as it does here—" the
boy drew in his breath quickly, hurrying on, "And you haven’t got our
heather and our bracken, and our country isn’t flat—except the moorlands
where Mactier used to take me to hunt, and even our moors are not like
this!"
He stopped suddenly; and he buttoned and unbuttoned his pea-jacket. He
wouldn’t for the world have let Johnny see his eyes, but Johnny was
looking at Cary. The child was leaning forward with angry face.
"You’re a horrid, horrid boy!" she cried, "You haven’t a single nice
thing to say about us or our flag or—or me! You’re impolite and you’re
dreadfully rude and I’ll never play with you again!"
Trevelyan’s boy continued to button and unbutton his pea-jacket. He
didn’t care now if Johnny did see his eyes. Johnny saw them, too, and
he was frightened. One day, Rob’s eyes had had that look when their
tutor had threatened to strike him. He spoke hastily.
"Rob didn’t mean to be rude, Cary," he said; "but Rob’s home was
beautiful—a great deal more beautiful than mine, and—and even more
beautiful than your home, and so you mustn’t—"
Cary’s anger melted like a mist before the sun. She slid to the bottom
of the boat and then crept along to Rob on the rower’s seat. She pulled
at his sleeve.
"Rob—I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—really truly mean—"
Trevelyan’s boy shook away the child’s clinging fingers.
Cary drew back; her lips quivering.
"I’m cold," she said, for Cary never would have admitted that a boy
could hurt her so, "I’m cold, and—and tired. Can’t we go home, Johnny?"
"Yes," he said.
"No, we won’t," said Rob, moodily, "the oars are gone."
The oars were gone—slipped from the locks when he had drawn them in, and
in the excitement of the quarrel they had floated away. The two boys
knew that the oars were not the only things on the surface of the deep,
drifting out to sea.
Behind them a bank of storm clouds was gathering and a sudden
stone-color fell upon the face of the waters.
The clouds increased in size and swept toward them, seemingly poised
directly overhead. Then they parted and the rain fell in a great
straight sheet of water. The oarless boat tossed dangerously, and the
rain gathered in the bottom.
Cary, half rose, beside herself with terror. The storm had drenched her
to the skin, and her long, straight hair lay, matted with the wet, close
to her small head. Her wide gray eyes looked out dark against the
pallor of her skin.
"Sit down!"
It was Johnny’s voice. Mechanically, the child obeyed.
Once, years later, he so commanded her, and she yielded then as now.
She cowered in the bow and was silent. In the stern the elder boy
grasped the rudder, forcing the boat for a time in the direction of the
far-off Point. The rough ropes slipped through his hands, in spite of
effort, and tore them cruelly.
Trevelyan’s boy had crept to the bottom of the boat, the better to
balance it. The wind swept across his hair, forcing it back from his
forehead, as with a mighty hand. The joy of an unknown danger was in
his blood and the color was in his cheeks. The wild spirit of the storm
found a challenge in his eyes.
He was a being apart from the other two, and yet sharing their danger.
The freedom and the peril were as elixir to his soul, and yet he never
lost consciousness of the wind cloud in the distance; and he knew it to
be as merciless as it was strong.
"Steer for the Point," he shouted. Johnny nodded.
They neared the shore. Then the wind came upon them and churned the bay
into a white foam. It turned the frail boat around as on a pivot,
heading it for the open sea, and with the effort the ropes that held the
rudder broke.
The boys looked at each other. It was characteristic of both; it was
characteristic of their training and their birth, that the sense of
personal danger did not touch them and that it was solely for the small
girl they thought.
In the face of the older boy was a strong courage that soothed and
sustained the frightened child; but in the face of Trevelyan’s son was
defiance against the might of the storm, and the sea, and death.
He ripped open his pea-jacket; he unlaced his water-soaked boots; he
stripped to his shirt.
"Keep the boat steady," cried Trevelyan’s son, "I’m going to swim to the
Point and get help!"
The older boy caught him by the wrist.
"You’ll be drowned. I’ll go!"
Trevelyan’s son shook him off. He threw back his head.
"I’ve swum double the distance," he shouted, "Anyhow, we’ll all die
here."
He balanced himself on the rower’s seat. Then he raised his arms above
his head before he sprang. The joy of the coming struggle was in the
boy’s eyes—the joy of testing his strength against the sea’s forces.
He dived. The boat, lightened of his weight, rocked, sprang higher in
the water and then righted. From the bow came the sob of a girl-child’s
terror.
Trevelyan’s son rose, striking out for shore.
Cary and the elder boy watched him—even as they drifted seaward.
* * * * *
Trevelyan’s son was gaining. The fight had been a long one and a hard
one. The rain had lessened, but the wind and tide had carried him a
quarter of a mile below the landing he had intended to make. His
thoughts were growing disconnected. At first, he had only gloried in
his own skill; then he thought of Scotland—he could scarcely have told
why—and of old Mactier. Then he remembered Cary—and after awhile, he
wondered if he had ever drank as much salt water before.
Then the wind changed. That was a help. Once he trod water, looking out
over the face of the sea for a sign of the boat. He saw it. It was far
away and still drifting seaward, but it was upright and the coast boy
knew that unless the storm began again, it could live in spite of the
long swells that bore it outward.
His arms began to get numb, and a mist—he supposed it was the rain—got
between him and his vision. The low banks of clouds on the horizon,
too, assumed strange shapes. They looked like the gray crags at home.
Once his breath seemed to leave him and his arms grew suddenly powerless
and he sank. The emersion gave him new energy. The love of life, the
wild thrill of fearless conquest, swept right over him anew, and he
pulled for shore. After a little he raised his right arm and sounded.
The waters were up to his eyes, but he touched land. He rose and struck
out again, and again, and—again.
Then he waded in and stood upon the beach, his face turned seaward.
Trevelyan’s boy threw back his head and laughed at the waters and the
storm.
"I beat you," he shouted passionately, "_I beat you!_"
* * * * *
The Lieutenant was in his office. It had been a busy day of petty
annoyances and he was tired.
He leaned back in his chair and filled his pipe, packing it carefully.
Then he lighted a match.
Some one fumbled at the door knob in an uncertain way; hesitated, and
tried again.
"Come in!" shouted the Lieutenant. The noise hurt his nerves.
The door opened and Rob entered. His eyes looked shadowy by contrast to
the pinched paleness of his face. He walked with difficulty. His short
legs got tangled up in the long coat he had gotten from one of the men
of the rescuing party, and he stumbled over it.
The Lieutenant rose. The match burned down to his fingers and he
mechanically tossed it into the fire. Then he laid down his pipe.
The short odd figure in the long overcoat advanced to the middle of the
room, facing Cary’s father.
"Cary—" he began, and then stopped a moment and cleared his throat. It
seemed still full of salt water. "I stole Lieutenant Burden’s boat and
I took Cary and Johnny out. The storm came. I knew it was coming, but I
didn’t care, and I went. And I lost the oars and—" The salt water
feeling came back.
"Cary?" asked Cary’s father.
Trevelyan’s boy shook the long sleeves away from his hands, which he
pushed down into the great pockets of the coat, where they hunted around
for themselves. The Lieutenant was tall and Trevelyan’s boy was short,
and he had to look up a long way before he could look him full in the
face.
"She’s coming," he said, "and so’s Johnny. They both feel sort of sick,
but I’m all right, and so I’ve come here. I thought we’d better have it
over with."
"What?" asked the Lieutenant.
"Why, the thrashing! Of course, you’ll thrash me."
He came forward a step and swayed.
Cary’s father caught him as he fell and laid him on the lounge.
* * * * *
That night Cary was ill. The next day she was worse. She complained of
a sharp pain in her side and toward evening she began to breathe
heavily.
At nine, when the post surgeon came again, she was burning with fever,
and he shook his head when he listened to her lungs.
"It looks confoundedly like pneumonia," he told the Lieutenant who was
standing anxiously by Cary’s little brass bed, and he went off to look
up a nurse.
The Lieutenant bent over the child a moment after the surgeon had left,
and then he turned hastily away and lowered the lamp and shaded its
glare from Cary’s eyes. Then he went over to the window and stood
looking out. Below him stretched the yard of his quarters. It was
Cary’s playground. Beyond the garden lay the parade ground and further
off the other officers’ quarters. He could see Cary now, her long,
straight hair flying in the wind as she tore by the flagstaff to meet
him on his return from duty. Way off in the distance he could see the
dim, dark outline of the Fort’s walls, and beyond, the strip of moonlit
sea. He had used to carry Cary on his shoulders, when she was a baby,
along those walls and she had used to clap her hands at the sunlight
dancing on the water. Everything spoke to him of Cary. He turned and
went back to the bed and knelt down by it and buried his head close to
the child’s—so close that he could feel her hot breath on his cheek.
"I was a fool," he told himself, passionately, "to fancy I could care
for a little flower, but I couldn’t give her up after her mother died."
He rose presently and cautiously heightened the lamp and wrote a hurried
line on a scrap of paper.
"Cary is ill. Pneumonia. Mam’ Amy is away. Will you come?"
He signed the note and then crept down stairs and gave it to the colored
boy. The colored boy carried it across the parade ground to the house
where the English children were staying and waited, as he had been
bidden, for an answer.
The Lieutenant went back to the window. He could see the house across
the parade ground from there, and presently he saw the shadowy figure of
a woman accompanied by his colored boy passing the flagstaff.
"Heaven bless her! I knew she’d come."
He went down stairs to open the door for her and it was not until he had
closed it and turned to thank her that he saw it was not the wife of his
comrade.
"Mary was away," the exquisitely modulated English voice fell on his
overwrought nerves like a balm. "I took the liberty of opening the
note, fearing something might be wrong with your little girl after
yesterday’s terrible experience. I have come to nurse her. I know you
won’t send me away."
John’s mother threw off the long cloak she had flung over her shoulders.
"Really, Mrs. Stewart—"
"There—please don’t! I am the mother of three children—I once was the
mother of four," the English woman looked down steadily at her wedding
ring, twisting it on her finger, "I am the adopted mother of another—"
She raised her eyes, smiling gravely, "We are all alike—we women; be we
American or English. Besides if it hadn’t been for my two boys Cary
would never be ill now. Come, take me to her."
There was not a nurse to be found, and at midnight the post surgeon
returned, discouraged from a fruitless search.
A sense of order and exquisite peace seemed to permeate the child’s sick
room. It impressed him before he had crossed the threshold. A woman
was sitting by the little brass bed and he could hear her speaking
soothingly to Cary.
She turned when she heard his step and rose. He took in the situation at
a glance.
"You’re a trump," he said, concisely, and went over to the bed.
"How is she?"
"Bad—very bad! Where’s the child’s father?"
"In the next room. He cannot stand seeing her suffer."
"Humph! Shouldn’t wonder. She’s the apple of his eye. You know we
call her the ’Post Baby’—have ever since her mother died."
"How’re your young rascals?" he inquired, when he was leaving. "They
and the ’Post Baby’ here had a pretty time of it yesterday."
"God only knows what saved them."
"Well, I know. It was your two youngsters. They’re both game. The
Queen will have two good soldiers some day."
The English woman smiled.
"I left Rob in a perfect fury at the foot of his bed. He woke up when I
was getting ready to come over, and wanted to come, too. He says Cary
belongs to him. I threatened severe punishment, and—left him."
The post surgeon chuckled.
"He’ll risk that if he takes it in his head to come."
"I’m afraid he will. I left Johnny consoling him."
"The two of them called seven times this afternoon."
"I know—but I never dreamed Cary was really ill."
"Well—" The post surgeon hesitated, "I’ll be back after awhile and if
the baby’s worse, I’ll spend the night with you."
He closed the front door softly; hesitated for an instant before he
recrossed the shadowy parade ground, and starting to go on, stumbled
over a dark object on the porch.
The dark object turned out to be a boy, who rose and pulled at the
surgeon’s sleeve.
"How is she? Oh! tell me how she is!" he asked. His thin, high bred
face with the delicately chiseled features, showed out sharply in the
waning moonlight.
"Great Scott!"
"No, it’s only Johnny Stewart," said the boy, a faint flash of humor
lighting up his pale face for a moment. "I couldn’t sleep—tell me—is
she—worse?"
"She’s a pretty sick little girl," said the surgeon, amused at the
situation. "Your mother has been expecting trouble from your quarter,
but she rather looked for it from Rob."
"He’s asleep," said the boy, simply, "I sat with him until he went to
sleep, but—you know I’m the oldest, and I’m responsible for it all." He
looked up gravely, self-accusing, in the post surgeon’s weather-beaten
face.
"Well, you’re a pair of you!" said the surgeon, looking hard at the
flagstaff. "Now, what do you propose to do with yourself?"
"You couldn’t slip me in, somehow?" pleaded the boy. "I’d stay down
stairs and I’d be awfully quiet and I wouldn’t trouble a soul. There
might be errands—" he broke off, "I’d like to be near her," he said.
"Do you think you could manage it?"
The post surgeon thought he could, and the post surgeon did.
Then he started once more to cross the parade grounds.
As he passed the flagstaff and entered the shadows of the trees, a small
whirlwind struck him. The whirlwind proved to be Rob. He was only half
dressed: his shirt being open at the throat and devoid of tie. One
stocking had been forgotten in his haste and he was hatless. The
surgeon caught him by his hair and pulled him back.
Then the whirlwind developed into a small tornado.
"Let me go," he cried. "_Let me go!_"
"I’ll take you to the guard house if you don’t behave," threatened the
surgeon. "Now what in thunderation are you after?"
"Going to see Cary," said Rob, sullenly.
"You are, hey? Well, you’re not going to do anything of the kind.
You’d scare any little girl into a fit. You’re going home."
"No, I’m not," said Rob, rebelliously.
"Yes, you are."
"I’ll come out again."
"Not behind locked doors."
"Yes I will, too, through the window."
"I’ll see to the window."
"I’ll climb through the transom."
He made a dive under the surgeon’s arm. The surgeon caught him by the
seat of his small trousers.
"Where’s Johnny?"
"That’s the trouble—is it? Well, Johnny’s a different quantity from
you. Johnny’s safe enough."
"Johnny’s at Cary’s house. I know it. I’m going, too," cried the
younger boy, passionately.
"If you make a sound, I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life," said
the surgeon, in desperation, retracing his steps across the parade
ground.
"I’d scratch your eyes out if you tried to," said the boy, a flood of
crimson sweeping his face.
"Well—look out that your noise don’t kill Cary," said the surgeon.
Trevelyan’s boy caught the surgeon’s hand.
"Indeed I’ll try to be good," he said, earnestly, "if you’ll only take
me to Cary."
Mrs. Stewart opened the door.
"Here’s one boy," said the surgeon grimly, pushing Trevelyan’s son over
the threshold, "There’s another in the dining-room."
"You’re a nice one to leave a chap asleep and then sneak off. I
wouldn’t have been so mean!"
Rob blinked in the glare of the dining-room lamp, and shifted from the
stockingless leg to the covered one, "I didn’t think Johnny Stewart—"
His voice rose.
Johnny came forward.
"Stop that shouting!" he commanded, "Don’t you know Cary’s very, very
sick?"
Rob blinked again. It was a blink of astonishment. He had never seen
Johnny quite so angry before.
"’Course I know she’s sick. That’s why I’ve come." He sat down on the
extreme edge of a chair.
There was a long, long silence. Johnny sat at the big table, his chin
between his hands and looked straight ahead of him. Rob looked moodily
into the fire. Once the younger boy rose and went to the foot of the
stairs.
"What you suppose is happening up there?" he inquired when he came back.
"I don’t know."
"Suppose she’s dying?"
"Don’t!"
The elder boy turned sharply and lowered the lamp that was smoking.
The long hours crept away. By and by the lamp flickered and went out,
and the fire died down, and left only a heap of white ashes on the
hearth. Then the gray dawn crept in and after awhile the gray was
tinged with gold. Later, the sunrise gun boomed through the stillness,
to be followed by the ringing notes of the reveille.
Upstairs, the post surgeon was leaning over the little brass bed.
"I’ll spend the night," he had said briefly, on his last visit. There
were symptoms about Cary’s labored breathing and dry cough that he did
not like.
The child’s sleepless eyes and flushed face looked wan in the grayness
of the early dawn.
As the hours dragged by, Cary became more restless and her mind began to
wander.
"Don’t let him, Johnny! Don’t let him! He’ll drown! He’ll dro——" the
voice rose in a shriek and then trailed off.
The cry had reached the children below stairs. A moment later and Rob,
wide-eyed and excited, appeared at the sick-room door. He was confronted
by his old foe the post surgeon.
"Can’t come in here," said the surgeon briefly. "It—"
"Oh, but tell her I’m not drowned! Let me tell her—"
The surgeon took him by the shoulders and marched him down stairs.
"Is this the way you promise to keep still?"
The post surgeon was skilled in other arts than his own profession. He
had appealed to the boy’s honor.
Trevelyan’s son flung himself face downward on the hearth rug and lay
motionless. Johnny went to him and knelt beside him and touched him on
the arm. Something of Johnny’s childhood had vanished in the night,
never to return. He did not say anything to Rob; he just continued to
kneel beside him with his hand on his arm.
Presently Rob sat up. His wakeful night had not improved his
appearance. His shirt was a crumpled mass; his hair was disheveled, and
one of his ill-laced boots was gone.
"She shan’t die!" he cried, passionately, "I won’t let her die! I
won’t! _I won’t!_"
Johnny said nothing. Once, long ago, a little brother had died, and
Johnny still remembered how vainly he had tried to wake him. Johnny had
seen death.
Upstairs Cary tossed in her delirium.
"Johnny, don’t make me keep still! I can’t keep still any longer! The
water looks so cold—"
And so the day wore on. The dry cough stopped and the fever ran higher
and the breathing came more labored, and Cary lay wide eyed and
sleepless.
The children wandered like little ghosts through the rooms of the lower
floor. They pleaded that they might see Cary once. The post surgeon
tried an experiment.
"The child’s strength is going fast for lack of sleep," he told Mrs.
Stewart, "We’ll see what your boys can do."
He brought Rob in first, and Trevelyan’s son stood at the foot of the
bed, and was silent as they had bidden him to be; but they could see
that he trembled.
Cary’s eyes, bright with delirious fever, rested on him for a moment.
Then she started up in bed.
"It’s Rob, dear," said Rob’s aunt, bending over her.
"No, it isn’t!" cried Cary. "No—it—isn’t! Take him away; away—a-w-a-y!"
Rob let go of the brass railing and rushed impetuously to the little
girl’s side and flung himself down by the bed.
"Cary! Cary! Don’t you know me? It’s me! It’s only Rob!"
But Cary shrank back from his touch.
"I’m frightened," she moaned.
The Lieutenant came and lifted the boy and took him from the room.
Trevelyan’s son was crying passionately.
The excitement proved to be the worst possible thing for Cary. The
fever ran higher and sapped and sapped her strength and still she moaned
and cried in her delirium and still sleep did not come.
"She can’t grow much worse and stay alive," muttered the post surgeon,
"And something has got to be done."
He went down stairs in search of Johnny. He found the boy standing by
the window, his white face turned toward the sea. Rob, his passion of
tears spent, lay sleeping heavily on the lounge. The surgeon touched
the elder boy on the arm and motioned him to follow him. Outside in the
little square hall, they faced each other—the skilled man of science,
and the delicately featured English boy with the firm mouth.
"You’re going to take me to Cary?"
The surgeon nodded.
"Yes. She wouldn’t see Rob, but perhaps she’ll see you. I’ve an idea
she will. She’s been calling your name all day. If I take you to her,
will you be very quiet?"
"I’ll be very quiet," promised the little Briton, gravely.
"And we’ve got to get her to sleep. Perhaps—"
The boy’s firm mouth quivered for an instant.
"Yes," he said.
The post surgeon let him go into Cary’s room alone, and he motioned the
boy’s mother and Cary’s father away from the bed.
The boy went directly to the head of the bed and stood there looking
down at Cary. For a long while Cary did not notice him. But he waited.
The stillness of the room grew—broken only by Cary’s piteous moans.
After awhile she became conscious of the boy’s slim figure at her side,
and she turned her restless, feverish eyes to him.
Then he stroked her long straight hair timidly.
The moans ceased suddenly.
"It’s Johnny," said the boy.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of the child’s hot hands
in his.
Then the terror of the delirium fell on her again. She sat up in bed,
flinging out her arms and crying, and still the boy kept that firm
pressure on her hand. The sustaining touch won her back from the
thraldom of the fever and she threw herself into the boy’s arms and lay
there, sobbing—sobbing.
The post surgeon nodded.
"I thought so," he muttered from the doorway, and beckoned the others
into the adjoining room.
For an hour they sat there. Gradually the child’s sobs grew weaker;
after awhile they caught their echo at long intervals and by and by they
died away altogether.
The shadows of the dying day crept into the sick room and the wanness of
its departing struggle was reflected on Cary’s small, pinched face. She
still lay in the boy’s arms, quiet—spent with the effort of her
delirium. The boy sat rigidly mute, supporting her.
The day sank into evening and the post surgeon came in quietly from the
adjoining room. The boy’s eyes met his as he entered. It was his only
movement. Otherwise he might have been carved of stone. The boy’s eyes
smiled and the post surgeon retraced his steps.
"She’s sleeping. The boy holds her life in his hands. If he can only
remain motionless—"
Another hour slipped by. The post surgeon came in again. Cary was
sleeping still, her whole weight resting in the boy’s rigid arms. He was
growing white with the strain of his enforced position. The surgeon
looked down at him.
"Can you hold out?" he asked, below his breath.
The boy nodded.
The post surgeon went down stairs noiselessly to the sideboard where the
Lieutenant kept his wines.
Rob sat up as he entered.
"How’s Cary? What time is it? Where’s Johnny?"
The post surgeon went up and laid his finger on Rob’s mouth.
"Cary’s sleeping. If you wake her, you’ll kill her. Don’t speak above
a whisper."
He filled a glass with wine and turned to leave the room.
"Where’s Johnny?"
"With Cary. He put her to sleep."
Trevelyan’s boy clenched his hands convulsively.
"Johnny—with—Cary," he said, slowly, and then something choked him.
He followed the post surgeon to the foot of the stairs and watched him
until he disappeared. Then he went back to the dimly lighted, lonely
dining-room and hesitated.
Suddenly a passionate cry rose in his throat, which he smothered.
He turned and flung himself on the lounge.
"Dear God," he moaned, "Dear God, be good to a little boy. I want to
die! Quick!"
Upstairs the surgeon held the brim of the wine glass to the elder boy’s
white lips.
The enforced position had become an agony. Once, the surgeon saw the boy
bite his under lip until a drop of blood appeared. He got a pillow;
two—half a dozen and supported the boy’s stiff back.
Three more hours dragged away, and then Cary stirred and woke. Great
beads of perspiration stood out on her thin, drawn little face, but the
fever had been broken in her sleep.
The boy’s grasp suddenly relaxed and Cary sank back on the pillow.
The Lieutenant helped the boy to rise; ending, by picking him up in his
arms and carrying him from the room.
He re-entered Cary’s room by way of the hall. By the light of the early
breaking dawn, he saw something dark lying before Cary’s outer door.
He stooped over it.
It was Trevelyan’s boy.
*BOOK ONE*
*THE CLAY
TAKES SHAPE*
*BOOK ONE*
*THE CLAY TAKES SHAPE*
*I.*
The six-foot Englishman, with the military carriage and the rough tweed
cap, continued to stare at the back of the girl in the brown tailor
suit, leaning over the ship’s rail. There was something in the attitude
that recalled a child swinging on the railing of a fort’s drawbridge. He
could not have told exactly why. Perhaps it was because he so often
recalled that picture; perhaps it was because he had always held fast to
a vague hope that some day he might meet that child again.
The girl in the brown tailor suit remained motionless, her face turned
toward the Liberty that was melting into an indistinct blur. The young
Englishman came a little nearer. She had not been there when he had
come aboard. Of that he was sure. Well, he had probably missed half of
his fellow passengers while he was changing to his seafaring clothes,
and there had been a couple of letters to be written to be carried back
by the pilot. All that had taken time.
The girl turned. The last faint trace of Liberty had faded; she might
just as well admit that, and give her attention to the novelties of
ship-board life. She looked curiously down the long white deck.
Passengers were appearing every moment, clad in ulsters and soft hats;
the deck steward was hurrying to and fro adjusting steamer chairs and
wraps. The voyage had undoubtedly begun.
Suddenly the line of her vision was interrupted by a tall man in a rough
tweed cap. And then she noticed that he had snatched it from his head
and was coming toward her with both hands outstretched.
"Isn’t it—Cary?" he asked, eagerly.
The girl looked into his eyes. Somewhere in their grave depths a smile
was hidden.
"Why, it’s Johnny," she cried, delightedly.
"To be sure it’s Johnny! And what do _you_ mean by sailing under an
English flag?"
She laughed again, showing her perfect teeth.
"Isn’t it absurd? But Daddy dragged me into it."
"Which? The Cunarder or the trip?"
"Both. Where in the world have you been all this time, and oh! how’s
Rob? I declare I’ve so many questions to ask you I don’t know where to
begin."
Stewart smiled.
"You’re the same old Cary," he said, "Only a bit taller. Let me find
your chair for you. You’re not crossing alone?"
"Do you think I’d leave my father?"
"Of course not. Where is he?"
"There, forgive me. I was rude. I’m afraid I _am_ as bad as ever."
Cary sighed.
"I never said that—"
"Well, Papa’s writing a note to be carried back on the pilot. If he
does not come up soon, I’ll have to hunt him up. I’m his shadow. To
tell you a secret; I’m chaperoning him on this trip!"
"Indeed!" Stewart’s eyes were smiling.
"To be sure. Now, about yourself—"
"Your eyes say, ’What have you been doing in America that you failed to
look me up?" said Stewart.
"That is just what I was thinking, and when we were going to hunt for
you, too, when we landed! Come!"
"There isn’t much to tell," said Stewart, meeting her eyes squarely.
"There have been a good many years—uneventful ones—of a pretty steady
’grind’, and rather rigid military training at Woolwich—"
She looked up quickly.
"You are an officer? An engineer?"
He laughed, pleased.
"You know more about our English military schools than the majority of
American girls."
"You forget I am an Army woman. Go on!"
"And so I’m a member—a young one—of the Royal Engineers. I was ordered
to India, where I served out my sub-lieutenancy. I was in a bit of a
row there, and after, I took the jungle fever and got sick leave.
They’ve sent me over the Atlantic for a sea trip. I’m to be transferred
later. I was only in New York two days. That’s why I couldn’t look you
up. You see, I didn’t know if you were still at the old fort down South,
or in Texas or Montana or—any other of your big states." He was rapidly
getting off of the subject of "self." "Now, where have you been and why
didn’t you keep on writing?"
"I did write, but you wouldn’t answer—sent the letters to your home in
Scotland."
"Ah! We were traveling; the old place has been rented almost steadily
for years. They must have miscarried in the forwarding. Father has
preferred London political life, and mother wanted to be near us boys
when at school and afterwards when we became cadets—"
"How is your mother?"
"Well; thanks. She’ll be glad to see you again."
Cary looked seaward.
"I shall never forget," she said, "how she nursed me." She was silent a
moment. "How’s Rob?" she asked, presently.
"I’m inclined to think he’s less changed than any one of the three of
us. He’s fiery, fierce, affectionate, as ever, with a wonderful talent
for getting into scrapes and scrambling out of them again."
"What is he—a sailor?"
"He wanted to go in the navy—bad. Poor Rob. But my uncle had set his
heart on the army for him. You know he was a great fighter in his
day—retired on a wound that would have killed most men. He wanted him
to go to Sandhurst, but Rob kicked on that, and they compromised on
Woolwich."
"I didn’t know Rob would ever have brains enough for the Engineers."
Cary laughed and caught wildly at her hat, which the wind was trying to
tear from her head.
"Rob’s clever enough—cleverer than most men, if he’d only study. He
leaves Woolwich in a couple of months now—graduated. How he has ever
stayed there as long as he has is a marvel. Such doings!" Stewart
shook his head even as he smiled.
"I believe," he said, after a pause, "It’s for his father’s sake and my
mother’s that he has drawn the line where he has! There isn’t an
officer or an instructor who don’t like him, though. He’s as straight
as a string where honor is concerned, and as brave—Well! You know how
brave he could be as a child."
Stewart went on.
"As for the cadets—they swear by him—every last boy of them! Rob will
be wild when he hears you are in England, and will probably take ’French
leave’!" Stewart laughed again. "There! That’s the family history.
Now, what about yourself?"
The girl ran her hand thoughtfully along the railing.
"Papa was stationed at the Fort for three years after you left us.
Since then we’ve been moving from pillar to post—in regular Army
fashion. You know how it is?" She raised her eyes to Stewart and
Stewart nodded. "He was ordered to Florida and then to Arkansas and then
to Alaska—" she laughed. "He sent me to boarding school for a year but I
couldn’t stand not seeing him, and he was even worse about me. After
that he taught me himself—dear, old Daddy—he taught me everything from
calculus to colt riding. It’s been a wild kind of a life, but I’ve
missed the old Fort and the sea. None of the other places was ever much
like home—" Cary raised her eyes from the railing and looked soberly
toward the receding shore.
Stewart watched her; realizing that while she had not grown pretty she
was possessed of an indefinable magnetism.
Cary went on.
"Then Daddy got notions about me—about my lack of advantages, social
and—otherwise," Cary was laughing again. "He was retired last month and
now he’s carrying me off to Europe, to be polished. Am I such a rough
specimen?" she asked Stewart, suddenly.
He shook his head so gravely in denial that she smiled.
"There! Of course, I was only fooling! And so I’m going over to your
great, beautiful, strange Old World to be ’finished’—as if anyone could
ever be ’finished’ as long as they live! I’m to see all the celebrated
Old Masters and to visit all the old historic places and see the old
ruins—" she broke off suddenly, "I think by the time I’ve finished, I’ll
be very tired, don’t you?"
"And then?" asked Stewart.
"Why, then Daddy and I will return to America and have a little home
somewhere—I hope near the Fort where I lived as a child; close by the
sea and the capes and the beach."
They were silent a moment. Behind them was the merry hum of voices and
the rapid movement of feet hurrying to and fro, but for that moment they
were as much alone as though they were in the shadow of the old fort
wall.
"My home," said Stewart, looking out over the sea into nothingness. "My
home in eastern Scotland is like that. Some day I hope you will see it.
If you ever grow very homesick for America let me know, and I’ll try to
arrange to run up there for a day with you and mother. The long beach
will remind you of home."
"Thank you," said the girl, gently.
There was a long quiet between them, and then the young officer’s face
changed suddenly and he broke into an infectious laugh.
"Oh, the guns—_do_ you remember the guns, and the pinafores and the
sunbonnets? Weren’t you ever caught?"
The tall girl joined in with his laugh and the two—his deep and hers
low—mingled and drifted back to the passers-by who smiled
sympathetically at the sound. Cary shook her head.
"No—that is, not until long afterwards. It seems that the Department
issued orders that the big show guns should be recast, and when they
were taken away and broken up—they were found to be storehouses for a
small girl’s wardrobe! Lieutenant Burden happened to be on the spot and
the story he tells—" she broke off, still laughing.
"Was there anything left of the things?" asked the Briton, amused.
"Yes, indeed—some were pretty well preserved! And how poor old Mammy
Amy would worry over the thief who dared to steal her ’chile’s clothes!’
It’s all too funny!"
"And Mam’ Amy?"
"Dead. She followed us out to Alaska, but she died. I suppose it must
have been the climate."
Stewart’s face grew a little grave.
"Lieutenant Burden—wasn’t he the officer we stole the boat from?"
The girl nodded, smiling.
"And that row! Wasn’t that a row we had that day," he said. "Do you
remember the terrible swim Rob took and how he saved us?"
"Yes. And how you comforted me. I went to sleep—didn’t I?"
"Yes; and how ill you were afterwards! Do you know I’ve never forgiven
myself for all that. I was thirteen, and the oldest, and should have
had more horse sense."
"What children we were!" Cary sighed.
"Are you wishing the time back?"
"I hardly know—" she hesitated, "No, I suppose not."
Then:
"They told me that you saved me in that illness."
"Did they?"
"Do you believe in confessions?" he asked, with an odd smile.
Cary laughed.
"That depends. Well—what have you been doing?"
"Do you know I kissed you that day when you fell asleep in the boat—when
we were facing death together—and again when I was fighting death for
you that long night?"
"You wretch! Well, it didn’t count much then," Cary’s eyes were
twinkling, "You were thirteen and I was only seven. Rob! Imagine Rob
ever kissing me!"
Stewart laughed a little nervously.
"Look out, Rob may yet!"
"Preposterous! Don’t you remember when you said you lived in Aberdeen
and Rob in Argyll, and I innocently asked whether they were not near
together? How indignant Rob was! And then I crossly retorted that they
both began with ’a’, anyway, and—" she paused for breath, and Stewart
laughingly took up the story and finished it.
"And how Rob scornfully answered that so did ’cat’ and ’crow’! He’s
never deigned to tell me which applied to which!"
"That was Rob all over!"