man pacing the decks.
After awhile the figure paused at the ship’s railing and leaned against
it heavily, looking out over the moonlit sea. The deep throbbing of the
mighty engines came up to him and beat and beat against his senses.
"Twice," said the Briton, slowly, speaking to the stillness of the stars
and the restlessness of the ocean, "Twice, as a boy, I kissed her, when
we fought death together. Some day, in an hour of danger, I shall kiss
her again."
*II.*
Cary was singing. Trevelyan heard her before he had reached the second
flight of stairs in the lodgings. The clear contralto voice sifted down
into the dark passage as sunlight sifts into a ravine. It rose; swelled
higher and filled the entrance way. Trevelyan’s pulses kept time to its
swinging measure as he came on up the stairs, and quietly opened the
door of the little sitting room. The measure died away. Cary finished
the running accompaniment and rose from the piano.
"Bravo!" cried Trevelyan from the doorway.
"You have deserted me of late," she said, reproachfully, coming forward
to greet him.
"Impossible! Let me explain, and all will be forgiven—" Trevelyan cut
his sentence short, "Why, hello, John, where did you come from?"
He nodded indifferently to Stewart standing by the window, walked over
to a table and began to idly turn over the pages of a book. It was
annoying always to find Stewart hanging around. The fact that Stewart
was his cousin, and had shared everything he possessed with him since he
had been a child, even down to his mother, did not count for anything in
the world, just at this juncture. Stewart’s mother was all right;
indeed, she was undoubtedly the very best woman who ever lived,
excepting his own mother who had been dead so long, and possibly Cary!
But against Stewart himself he bore a well-founded grudge. Stewart had
been the one to meet Cary on the steamer and bring her and her father to
London and help them get settled in lodgings and introduce them to his
friends. That was bad enough, in all conscience, but then it had been
Stewart, who had constituted himself a combined walking Baedeker, and
unfailing friend of the American officer and his daughter. That had
been in those last wretched weeks before he had been graduated from
Woolwich, and Stewart, with that confounded sick leave, had taken
advantage of the opportunity offered. Even when Stewart reported for
duty again, his transfer had been to a home regiment, and in the few
times that he, Trevelyan, had seen them before his graduation, John had
always been with Cary, and Cary had been overflowing with their mutual
experiences. Now John had taken the Captain and herself to dine at the
Albion, in Russell Street, Covent Garden; and had pointed out the
traditional places occupied by Dickens, and Sothern, and Toole, and the
rest. Now, it had been a morning ride with John, on Rotten Row, when
Maggie, John’s sister, had sent around her favorite mount. Again, it
had been a trip to Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park, where, from the
famous hill, standing with John, she had looked toward the towers of
Windsor; or to the left had seen on the horizon, the bold outline of the
Surrey Downs. It was John—or if John couldn’t possibly manage it—it was
John’s mother or John’s sister who had taken her everywhere. She had
been to the Derby on the Stewarts’ coach; she had been to Oxford with
John’s sister, and met Kenneth, John’s younger brother; she had visited
Stratford and seen Kenilworth, and generally "done" London almost before
he had begun to serve his sub-lieutenancy. And if John had been unable
to think of some new place to show her, he had walked with her down the
Strand or through Fleet street or Cheapside, and the two of them had
retraced Dickens’s or Charles Lamb’s steps, and explored all the little
out of the way shops! That was just like John! Trevelyan detested such
things, and Trevelyan detested them even more when John and Cary had
done them together, and he had been left out!
That sub-lieutenancy was another thing that rankled! Stewart had served
his, and Stewart had done good work in that "row" in India, and had even
got an honorable mention. Stewart always was a lucky dog. Trevelyan
envied Stewart that "mention" more than he envied any man in the world
anything. Cary thought so much of that "mention," and now Cary was
going away!
A wild throbbing resentment against his own position in the affair;
against Cary’s leaving England, rose up within him, as the sea rose up
and beat against the crags at home. He did not define it, but it
possessed him, as did the memory of Cary’s face when he was away from
her.
He let the book fall back heavily on the table and walked over and
leaned his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hands, and looked
moodily into the open fire.
Once Cary tried to draw him into the conversation, but Trevelyan refused
to be won from the depths of his own depression, to the genial
atmosphere pervading the little room, and Cary, used to his ways, let
him alone. She had looked at John and shaken her head.
"I can’t do a thing with him to-night," it had said, but Stewart, grown
wonderfully quick-witted in regard to Cary, fancied that he heard her
sigh.
Outside the daylight faded and a heavy fog crept up and fell over the
Thames and London like a pall. Here and there a street lamp flickered
faintly through the mist, and the rumble of carriage wheels, heard,
though unseen, reached them, and Cary lighted the big red lamp,
preparatory to afternoon tea and the Captain’s return. Once she went to
the window to look for her father, pressing her face against the glass,
but she could not see through the heavy, yellow mist. Trevelyan could
hear her and John talking in the window recess, although he could not
distinguish what they were saving. Once Cary laughed. The sound
irritated him.
After awhile Cary came back into the room and began to handle the
tea-cups absent-mindedly. Her table was close to the fire, and
Trevelyan, by turning his head, could watch the ruddy reflection play
over her face. He turned back to the glowing logs.
"Sugar?" asked Cary suggestively, a little later of Trevelyan.
"No," said Trevelyan, moodily, "No sugar and no tea!"
Cary shrugged her shoulders.
"You’re impossible, to-day," she said, "Bread and butter, John?"
After awhile Stewart prepared to leave. Trevelyan still leaned against
the mantel, his face turned to the fire. He knew Stewart was going, but
he did not move. From the doorway he could hear Stewart’s voice calling
out good-bye.
"Good-bye," he called back, shortly.
Cary returned to the tea table, paused and looked at Trevelyan’s back in
an uncertain way. Trevelyan was acutely conscious of her nearness. She
sat down, resting her intertwined fingers on the edge of the table and
looked down at them.
"Well?"
Trevelyan turned at the sound of her quiet voice and faced her, still
resting one elbow on the mantel.
"Well!" he repeated, a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "It isn’t ’well’
at all! It’s as confoundedly bad as it can be! Here you’re going to
leave London day after to-morrow, to be gone—"
"Three months," said Cary.
"Exactly!"
"I’ll be back before you know it!"
Trevelyan laughed bitterly.
"You think so?" Then: "I can tell you how long two months can be! I
learned that at Woolwich before I graduated, and after I had seen you."
He stopped abruptly and beat his foot impatiently on the fender.
"Nonsense! You’re going to be a British officer. Where’s your
backbone?"
"I’ve backbone enough—there’s no trouble about that!" Trevelyan laughed
oddly. "I could fight all right. I could face danger. I could lead a
charge into the mouth of the cannon! I’ve backbone enough!"
He had turned to her full as he was speaking. His face was aflame with
the possibilities his words had awakened. It was transformed back into
the face of the boy who conquered the storm and the sea and death, and
it was burning with a newer passion still.
Cary’s eyes fell before the look in his and rested on her folded hands.
After a little she began to trace an intricate pattern on the table with
her forefinger. A weight of fear was resting on her breast.
Trevelyan stood silent looking down at her for a moment, and then he
turned sharply and went over to the window. The perfume of the violets
she wore possessed him. The clock on the mantel struck the half hour,
and a log broke noisily on the hearth. Cary looked toward him. The
oppressive fear had passed.
"There will be a month in Switzerland! Think of it—the Alps at last!
Three weeks of Paris; three more of Ireland, and two in Scotland with
the Camerons. Did you know I was going to your Scotland and to Argyll?"
Trevelyan turned away from the window.
"No. Since when?"
"The Camerons asked me last week. They are to have a house party, I
think. They asked John, too—"
Trevelyan bit his lip.
"Is John going?"
"Not for the full time, but he hopes to get a three days’ leave."
Trevelyan came back to the fire and drummed on the mantel.
"When we were children," he said, suddenly, "down at the Fort, I used to
tell you about Scotland. I am glad you are to see it. You will like it!
And when you watch the sea beat against the crags, and the breakers
tossing their white heads, you can think of me, remembering it used to
be my home. I hope you will see a storm," Trevelyan went on, "such a
storm as I used to glory in as a little chap! They don’t have such
storms anywhere else, I think!"
He stopped short, and looked hard at the fire.
"The Camerons’ place is within driving distance of my home. If I can
get off for a day will you let me take you there? I want you to see it,
and to meet old Mactier, and go with me into the caves where I used to
play as a boy, and climb the crags, way up to their topmost peaks, and
breathe the freedom that is in the air!"
Cary sprang up, flinging out her hands. There was an odd pulsing in her
throat.
"Go! of course I’ll go!" she cried, and then the pulsing grew and grew,
and choked her.
At six Trevelyan left. She did not meet his eyes in parting, and
Trevelyan missed her bantering voice, that usually followed him down
stairs.
"It’s Stewart," he told himself with passionate resentment, and he
stumbled over the lower step and swore at the darkness.
Cary went back into the empty room, over to the mantel and looked into
the fire, as Trevelyan had done. She could hear the echo of the closing
front door. Outside, the fog grew thicker. Inside, the red lamp threw
its coloring on the crimson roses Stewart had brought that day, making
them more glorious still, and the heat of the fire intensified the odor
of the violets on the woman’s breast. Stewart had brought the violets
too.
Cary turned away from the fire, and moved restlessly about the room,
fixing a chair here, straightening a book there, and fingering some
familiar object. As she passed the open piano, she hesitated, put out
one finger and struck a key. The sound vibrated through the quiet room,
deep and full and strong. A bar of an old Scotch song rose in her
throat and broke. She closed the piano hastily. Once she leaned over
the roses.
"Dear John," she murmured, and her hands touched for a moment the
violets on her breast.
Then she went back to the fire, and stood wide-eyed and silent, looking
into the heart of it. She was dimly conscious of the violets’ perfume,
but it was Trevelyan’s face she saw in the flames.
*III.*
There was a storm chill in the air. Trevelyan readjusted the carriage
robe that had slipped away from Cary, and turned up the collar of his
driving coat. Now and again he glanced at Cary. The girl’s face was
turned away and she was looking out over the gray crags to the grayer
sea beyond. The last three months had wrought an indefinable change in
her. Trevelyan had noticed it on his arrival at the Camerons’ that
morning. He wondered vaguely if it had anything to do with travel and
the process of "polishing" to which Cary so often banteringly referred.
Well he was not going to worry over it. He had only one day and he
meant to make the most of it.
He had written the Camerons he was coming, and had not even waited for
an answer. He had announced his intention and it was enough. He had
known Tom Cameron since they wore kilts together, and back of their
friendship, his mother’s family had known the Camerons for generations.
Somewhere in the history of the houses, there had been an
inter-marriage. That had been the enduring seal on the intimacy. The
Scotch are clannish.
It had taken him hours to reach the Camerons’. It would take him hours
to return. But this one afternoon, at least, was his. After it, might
come the deluge. After it—probably would come the deluge! He wasn’t
feeling very sure of himself or of his own self power. After a man has
been in torment for three months—
Tom Cameron’s horse knew the road well—almost as well as Trevelyan
did—and kept up a steady pace, and Tom Cameron’s cart was comfortable.
John was expected that afternoon for three days. Well; Cary would not
be there to welcome him. Cary would be with him. Stewart might have
her—undoubtedly would have her, for those three days, but to-day—this
afternoon, was his.
The Camerons, learned in the signs of the sky, had demurred at the storm
chill in the air and the threatening clouds, when after an early lunch,
Trevelyan and the American girl had stepped into the cart. Trevelyan,
however, had no intention of having his well laid plans frustrated, and
in his masterful way, had over-ruled the objections. The storm was a
possibility. His return next morning at daybreak, a necessity. Let the
storm come. He defied it.
Cary shivered. Trevelyan noticed it and leaned toward her.
"You are cold?"
Cary turned her eyes away from the gray crags and the gray sea.
Trevelyan’s were near her own. She shook her head.
"No," she faltered. "It must be Scotland—the Scotland you told me of as
a child. Once, long ago I fought you about it. If I had dreamed—if I
had known—" her voice faded into the boom of the nearing surf and she
turned her eyes away from Trevelyan’s, coastward again.
The music of her voice and the roar of the ocean mingled and surged over
Trevelyan.
"God!" he said under his breath.
*IV.*
As Trevelyan and the girl drove up the long entrance way and neared the
house, they could distinguish through the faint Scotch mist that had
fallen, the outline of Mactier waiting for them at the door.
The old retainer hurried forward to welcome them.
"Ay, sir, but ’tis gude to see ye! My heart’s been sore for a sight o’
thy face this lang time!" he cried to Trevelyan.
Trevelyan jumped down from the cart.
"Hello, Mactier!" he cried. "Jove! But it’s good to see _you_ again!"
Then he turned to Cary and helped her to the ground.
"This is Mactier," he said, as one saying all that is sufficient.
"Mactier, I used to tell Miss Cary about you when I was a little
shaver."
"Aweel ye were ever a mindful lad o’ me!" The old man smiled.
He opened the door for them, and stood to one side to let them enter.
"’Tis a bad day ye have for seeing the old place," he said as they
passed him.
"You can bring the horse around in an hour," called Trevelyan as the old
man drove away.
Then Trevelyan went back to Cary. The girl was standing at the furthest
end of the great hall, looking out of the window. She could hear the
beat of the sea on the near-by crags and through the faint mist catch a
glimpse of the water.
Mactier had opened the long-closed blinds and the light seemed
concentrated around the figure of the girl. Trevelyan tore his riding
gloves from his hands and bent and unbent his fingers rapidly. "If I
had dreamed—if I had known—" He reached her side.
"I’m afraid it’s a gloomy day we’ve struck," he said quietly, "but I’m
in hopes the mist won’t last. On clear days from here you can see the
highest crag of all. It’s where I used to spend half my days, as a
little shaver,—up there on the top. It was my eyrie. I used to be a
robber king and a shipwrecked mariner and a Viking all rolled in one."
Trevelyan laughed, bending forward and nearer to her and looked out of
the window, as though to penetrate the mist. Cary leaned against the
frame of the window listening.
"When I got a bit older," Trevelyan’s voice fell heavily on the silence
of the big lonely hall, "I used to climb up there—to get away from
everyone, and where no one could find me; and I would hide up there, and
sit by the hour, looking out at the sea and watching the white spray
breaking below me. And then later I used to try and think of what love
meant—what love could be—if I should ever love—"
He turned away abruptly and walked up and down the hall. After a little
he came back to Cary, who had not stirred.
"And sometimes I used to dream of a woman who would some day come into
my life—and I used to crawl to the edge of the crag and lean over and
look into the white foam below, until I got dizzy—looking for her face.
It seemed her face must be in the white foam—foolish, wasn’t it?"
Cary ran her finger along the ledge of the window.
"We all have our dreams."
Trevelyan watched her, as she turned her face again to the window. The
mist outside increased and seemed to muffle the beat of the sea and all
the sounds of nature, and it hung around her and softened her face into
wonderful curves. He turned his eyes away from her suddenly. He could
have crushed that face in his hands, bringing it up to his own—
"Mactier will be around in an hour," he said after a while in a matter
of fact way, "and then I’ll drive you about the place a bit before we
return. We can easily make it and be back for dinner."
"Yes?" asked Cary, absent-mindedly.
"Come! Wake up! And look around you! Isn’t this a fine old hall?" But
Trevelyan’s voice lacked enthusiasm.
Cary turned and looked around her. Her dream spell had passed. The odd
throbbing in her throat, she had felt long ago in London, the evening
she had bidden Trevelyan good-bye, returned with triple force. A wave
of color swept over the usual pallor of her skin; her eyes were shining.
Cary was transformed.
"Fine?" her voice pulsed with the enthusiasm Trevelyan’s had lacked.
"It’s the finest old hall in all the world! The dearest old home! Take
me over it—from the top to the bottom, and show me where you and John
and Tom Cameron used to play!"
Trevelyan led her from room to room; passing quickly this one, that held
memories of his mother; pausing on the threshold of another, to tell the
story of the Scotch boy’s playtime; to show to her the first stag’s
head, shot when hunting with Mactier. Trevelyan told the story well,
for he loved with all the unyielding strength of an unyielding nature,
the memories his words called up. Now it was how Tom and he had slipped
out of the window one night and scaled the ivy covered turret wall, that
they might investigate the old cave down at the water’s edge, by the
light of the waning moon. Mactier had told them strange tales of the
happenings in the cave when the moon was on the wane. Again it was the
day he had stumbled with his gun and the bullet had entered his thigh;
how old Mactier had flung him across his shoulders, and borne him home
through the darkness of the falling night. Again it was the morning his
mother had died; how he had been awakened by the hurrying of many feet,
and starting up in bed had found his father bending over him, calling
him by name.
Never had the girl known Trevelyan to be so eloquent; never had she seen
him as he was to-day. Now Trevelyan’s voice was blithe with the
blitheness of glad remembered things; now it broke with feeling, or
vibrated with the passion of reviving scenes long dead to life. He
seemed not to be speaking of himself. He was telling her the story of
an English boy, Scottish bred; of his wild escapades; of his love of
freedom and unrestricted things; of his dangers and his hopes; of what
he meant to be when he became a man!
And Cary, held fast by the magic of the story, felt her pulses throb;
her being thrill. An unreasonable regret that she had not been a
Scottish child to follow where he led, up the high crags or down into
the black caves, took possession of her; and she recalled a picture of a
sea churned into foam; of a boat drifting out toward the waste of ocean;
and above the gray surface of the stone-hued waters, a boy’s head turned
landward.
Once, in following Trevelyan from one room to another, she glanced out
of the window and noticed vaguely that the heavy rain drops lay upon the
glass. Later, she was conscious of the dull booming of thunder, echoing
among the nearby crags and losing itself in the beat of the surf. Then
a flash of vivid lightning lit up the sudden darkness that had fallen on
the room.
Trevelyan rushed to the window. The thralldom of the Scotch boy’s story
was upon him still.
"It’s a storm!" he cried. "It’s a storm come to welcome me!"
He turned to Cary.
"Come here!" he commanded, "where you can watch the sea and the storm
fight it out together!"
She came instantly.
The darkness increased until they could not distinguish each other’s
faces. The thunder came and beat itself against the crags and spent
itself. Now and again they could see, by the glare of the prolonged
lightning, the waters lashed into a white fury. Once, by its light, she
looked at Trevelyan’s face. It was white and he was breathing deeply.
He was looking seaward and seemed unconscious of her presence. Once, he
flung out his hand and it touched hers. It was colder than the storm
chill in the air. Once, she looked at him again, and he, turning, met
her eyes. Some power as mighty as the storm held her look to his, and
then above the beating of the thunder on the crags and the booming, of
the surf, she heard his voice.
"Just you and I and the storm! You and I in all the world—all that the
world holds!" She felt his hand upon her shoulder; she felt its
coldness through her heavy dress and she shrank away from him, her voice
and her words broken, with a nameless fear.
Above the storm she could hear Trevelyan laugh.
"Let you go, when I’ve got you at last! Let you go when your face has
haunted me through all the days and all the nights of the long months!
_Let—you—go!_"
"Oh, Robert!"
"Oh, you think I’m mad! Well, perhaps I am for love of you. You haunt
me. You possess me. It was your face I dreamed of in the foam. There!
don’t tremble so! I won’t hurt you, child!" The thunder drowned his
voice.
"Do you dream what you are to me or could make of me? Do you know what
it is to hold a man’s soul in your hands?"
The spell of his words lifted. The instinct of an unknown danger
possessed her. She slipped away in the blackness toward the door. The
silence grew and grew.
Gradually the darkness lifted and the thunder and the boom of the surf
lessened and the lightning came at long and longer intervals. Cary
became acutely conscious of every sound. Somewhere in the distance she
heard voices and the echo of men’s footfalls. She kept her eyes away
from Trevelyan who was standing with his back to her. Danger lay that
way.
Then the spell of Trevelyan’s nearness crept over her again. She tried
to fight it off, trembling. She moved a step toward him, one hand
pressed close to her breast. Then she paused, arrested by a voice.
"Robert! Cary! _Cary!_"
The sound echoed down the great hall, across the still deserted rooms,
to the study where they stood.
Trevelyan turned sharply.
"John!"
Cary’s hand crept from her breast to her face and she covered her eyes.
"John!"
Trevelyan crossed the space between them.
"Cary!"
The woman shrank back.
"Don’t—you frighten me!" she moaned.
Trevelyan caught her by the wrist.
"Cary! Cary! Take that back! How can love frighten? See, I love
you—love you!"
She was in his arms and he was leaning over her, his mouth close to her
face.
"Cary!" he whispered.
Down the long hall, through the silence of the deserted rooms, came the
voice.
"Cary! Where are you? Cary!"
She wrenched herself out of Trevelyan’s arms.
"You are a coward!" she said slowly.
A wild tide of passion leaped up in Trevelyan.
"How dare you call me a coward," he said, and his lips could hardly
articulate, "If you were not a woman—" he choked and his voice died
away.
Cary moved nearer to the door. Once, she turned her pale face and
looked at Trevelyan. Trevelyan stood rigid and mute where she had left
him, the knuckles of one hand pressed to his mouth. She faltered.
"Cary! Cary! Where are you?"
She turned, her thumb and forefinger pressing her throat.
"Here!" she cried. Then, louder: "Here!"