great hall.
"Cary is in the study," he said to the group of men he found there,
"Hello Tom!"
"John arrived an hour after you left," said Cameron, regarding
Trevelyan’s rigid face curiously, "and when the storm came up nothing
would do but that he must come for you both in a closed carriage. I
knew you’d be safe enough—if necessary find shelter with some of the
tenant’s wives. But John—"
Trevelyan turned to old Mactier.
"You can close up the house," he said shortly.
Stewart found the girl standing in the study. He went up to her and drew
her arm through his and quietly led her down the long dark passage that
connected with the great hall. He could feel that she was trembling.
He patted her hand soothingly.
"There, there! child. It’s all right. I know!"
*V.*
Instead of returning to London from the Camerons’ place in Scotland,
Cary and the Captain went to the south of France. Just what it was that
had suddenly made Cary so persistent in her desire not to return to
England, was not known. Trevelyan, indeed fancied that he knew, when he
had finished reading Cary’s brief note telling of their change of plans
and their intended prolonged absence from England, and he cursed the
folly that had separated him from Cary in the long months that lay
ahead.
To Stewart, and indeed to the world at large, she gave the old,
threadbare excuse—the London climate. If Stewart ever suspected
otherwise, he kept it to himself.
The Captain, like Trevelyan, fancied he knew something of the cause, but
the Captain was a wise man, and he asked no more than Cary chose to
impart—which was next to nothing at all. Still Cary wanted to get away
from London and Cary was not given to whims. The climate was a
sufficiently good excuse. The fact that it was an excuse made no
difference to the Captain, and to the south of France they went.
They were gone all winter, traveling in a desultory way, since there was
no call for haste and Cary’s pleasure was the chief consideration. And
Cary delighted in the quaint old towns and grew enthusiastic again over
the trifles of life, as she had done as a child down by the sea-coast
fort, or out on the western plains. Now it was a month at Cette, on the
Gulf of Naples; then it was down to the Eastern Pyrenees, and over, and
a month in Spain, and back again to France and up to Bayonne and
Bordeaux, and then to Paris by easy stages, and then on to Calais and to
England.
There were letters from Stewart awaiting to welcome her, whenever he
knew her next stopping place, and they often enclosed notes of
introduction to people who could add either to her comfort or her
pleasure. Stewart knew the country like a book. He had toured it on
foot after his Eton days. As for London—London was duller than he had
ever known it; the fogs were unusually frequent and heavy, and he was
glad that she had escaped them. He hoped she was enjoying herself; she
must surely see such and such a thing, or take such and such a drive.
He had not taken it in years, himself, but she would tell him all about
it. He supposed she would be able to brush up his French when she
returned. By the way, when was she returning to England?
She returned to England in the late spring and in all that time
Trevelyan had not written her a line. He was at the station to meet her
though, and it was he who took possession of her while the Captain and
Stewart went to see about the luggage.
Indeed, in the weeks that followed, London observed that it was
Trevelyan who monopolized the American officer’s daughter. It was
Trevelyan who dropped in to afternoon tea with unfailing regularity, and
fought with her, and scolded her, and laughed with her, and took her
driving, or riding on the Row. His superior officer fretted and
speculated at the change in the young Engineer, until he passed him one
day with Cary.
"There’s a brilliant young chap being ruined," he said crossly to his
aide. "Served out his sub-lieutenancy finely, and has behaved this
winter like an officer and a gentleman. Now the barracks can’t hold him,
and he shirks like a weak-livered chicken. Who’s the girl?"
"An American—the daughter of a retired officer. I fancy you’ve often
seen them together—elderly man with iron gray hair; sat next to you, but
one, at the Stewarts’ dinner."
The aide broke off and looked fixedly after Trevelyan.
"Some day in danger—" he said, as if to himself.
*VI.*
Cary was drumming idly on the piano. Her attitude was the
personification of listlessness. When the Captain had spoken of it that
morning she said it was "the spring feeling in the air."
The Captain smiled as he walked down the stairs of the lodgings.
"It’s London climate—fog and rain—in the winter; and it’s London
sunshine in the spring!"
Cary continued to drum on the piano after he left. Then she let her
hands fall from the keys and looked absently about the room. She
supposed Trevelyan would drop in later or anyhow in the evening.
Trevelyan had been irreproachable since her return—since that day in
Scotland.
Presently she dashed into a popular song and sung it with a touch of the
old gleeful enthusiasm she had left behind in France. Trevelyan loathed
that song.
She broke off suddenly and twirled around on her stool. Someone was
knocking.
"Come in," she shouted, not rising, and thinking it was either Robert or
John.
The landlady entered bearing a card. Cary held out her hand for it.
"But my father is out. Please tell Captain Trevelyan—"
"But miss, the Captain asked for you."
Cary rose.
"For me?"
Then she laughed.
"Oh, you must be mistaken, but if you’ll ask Captain Trevelyan up, I’ll
explain."
She remained standing by the door of their little sitting room. She
could hear the English officer tramping slowly and heavily up the
stairs. She remembered Robert telling her of the charge his father had
led at Inkerman, and how he had gotten that wound in his hip. After
awhile she caught sight of the top of the officer’s white head. She
went forward to meet him and led him into the room and rolled up a big
leather chair.
"It’s Papa’s favorite," she said, smiling and standing with one hand
resting invitingly on the big tufted back.
The English officer smiled back from under his shaggy brows, and sank
into the great chair with a sigh of genuine comfort. Cary drew up a
chair and sat down near him.
"Papa is out," she said. "He has only just gone, too. I’m so sorry.
If you care to wait—and perhaps later let me give you a cup of tea—" she
went on with a certain charming spontaneity, "John says my tea is almost
like the tea the English girls make—" she questioned Trevelyan’s father
with her laughing eyes.
"And what does my boy say about your tea?" asked the English officer,
watching her curiously.
"Robert? Oh, Robert never says anything nice about it. He never says
nice things to me anyway," Cary pouted. "But I notice he nearly always
drinks three cups when he comes and after all I believe that counts for
a good deal—don’t you?"
"Undoubtedly—for a good deal of tea! And does he often come to drink it
with you?"
Cary laughed.
"Oh—frequently," she said vaguely.
The old British officer drew patterns on the floor with his cane and was
silent.
Cary looked at him stealthily from under her long lashes. She had only
met Trevelyan’s father when he had called formally on their coming to
England, or sometimes when he stopped by to take the Captain to drive,
and once at the Stewarts’, at dinner. He had always inspired her with a
certain awe. It might have been his lameness which Cary was wont to
regard as a badge of an honor legion, or simply his brusque manner, not
unlike his son’s, but lacking much of his son’s odd charm. She
sometimes had fancied she had seen a physical likeness between them, and
once she had caught herself wondering if the father had looked like the
son in his youth and if the son would resemble more closely the father
in age. She patted thoughtfully the arm of her chair.
"Papa will be so sorry to miss you," she began.
Trevelyan’s father leaned forward. He suddenly stopped drawing patterns
on the floor with his cane.
"I did not come to see your father," he said, "I came especially when I
knew he was out and you were in. I am calling on you." He smiled
grimly, forcing the boy’s face from his mind.
Cary stared. Then she recovered herself. "Yes?" she said politely.
The old officer sat up very straight grasping his cane, and then he led
direct to the object of his visit, as he had led direct his famous
charge into the center of the enemy’s lines, on the heights of Inkerman,
way back in ’54.
"I’ve come to see you about that boy of mine," he said bluntly.
"You mean—Robert?" asked Cary slowly, and for lack of something to say.
"He’s a good enough kind of a chap—" Cary suppressed a smile,
remembering how the old man adored him, "but he’s a bit hot-headed and
reckless, and he’s—mad over you, and—" he broke off. It seemed to him
almost as though he was disloyal to the boy.
Cary leaned forward with burning cheeks.
"And you hope he won’t do anything rash—is that it?" There was a trace
of indignation in her voice.
"Jove! no, child. I haven’t come to plead for him, but to ask you to be
careful."
"I don’t understand you," said Cary, the hot flush not fading.
"There! You must not be offended. You know the boy is the apple of my
eye, but he isn’t faultless. He has got good stuff in him if he is only
moulded right, but there would be the very devil to pay—I beg your
pardon—if he was ever thwarted in anything he’d set his stubborn mind
on."
Trevelyan’s father rose and crossed over to the window and stood there
looking out on the lengthening English twilight. His son’s face as it
had looked years ago as a baby, rose before him, but the baby had
reproachful eyes.
"He’s brave and he’s strong and he’s every inch a soldier; but a woman,
child, needs gentleness as well as strength."
The soft dim twilight crept into the room; passed the rigid form of the
old soldier at the window and stole onward to the chair in which the
girl sat motionless. The outline of her figure and the whiteness of her
half averted cheek, showed vaguely through the gloom.
After a long, long time she rose.
"Thank you," she said, and the unconscious dignity in her voice touched
the old warrior at the window strangely. "It was good of you to think
of me so kindly, even though it is not deserved and—not necessary."
After a little Trevelyan’s father turned, and came toward the shadowy
standing figure.
"I understand," he said; and then: "Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Cary, gently, but she did not offer to shake hands.
Half an hour later the Captain came in. The kettle was not singing, nor
the curtains drawn, nor his chair rolled up in its accustomed place,
with his easy slippers near by, and the red lamp was unlighted.
"Where is she? Where’s my baby?"
Cary rose from the big chair that Trevelyan’s father had occupied, and
came slowly forward.
"Here," she said, simply, her voice quiet as the deepening twilight that
surrounded her, and she rubbed her cheek up and down against the
Captain’s.
The Captain lighted the red lamp, and turned to look at her, arrested by
the vague trouble in the voice.
*VII.*
Trevelyan’s father walked slowly down the stairs and out into the long
twilight.
"For all the good I’ve done, for all I’ve saved her, or learned about
her real feelings for the boy, I might have spared myself the call. Gad!
but she has pride though, and damn me if I don’t like it! The boy
hasn’t got half bad taste anyway. Heaven bless the boy—and spare the
woman he marries!"
Then he pressed his lips together suddenly as though all had been said,
and he planted his cane very firmly on the pavement with each step,
swinging it very high when he raised it again. But he kept on thinking
of Robert, and all the memories he had ever cherished of him, assailed
him now, as though charging against the breastworks he had raised of
duty. And every memory had those reproachful eyes. He, his father, had
gone to plead with the woman he loved. What right had he to do this
thing, questioned the eyes.
The old officer walked slower.
She had told him that she thanked him, but that his call had been
unnecessary. How _dared_ she tell him so; how dared she be indifferent
to his son, or sit in judgment on him!
Yet, hadn’t she a right?
The old British officer paused on the corner and stared at the carriages
going by, beating his cane on the curb.
But he loved him, as he was, with all his faults; he loved him for his
faults; and the whole thing was hard—harder than the charge at Inkerman.
Then he began to think of Cary, and the more he thought of Cary, the
more resolved he became on the course to be pursued, and with the
strengthening resolve the reproachful eyes retreated. The boy was
ruining his life here. His career of which he had once thought so much
had become dwarfed by his love for a woman. In India—but there, he
could prove the stuff he was made of. An officer who has seen Indian
service is always a bit better than he was before, or a bit worse. He
was never quite the same again. And Cary—well, that girl was worth
saving, even if the boy was his own.
The British officer turned into Grosvenor Square, and went up the broad
steps of the house the Stewarts had rented for the past five years. He
found the older Stewart in his library, as he knew he would, absorbed in
the latest political news. The Scotchman looked up as he entered.
"Well, what do you want? I can see it is something by your face."
"Yes. I want you to use your influence with the Secretary and get
Robert transferred to the regiment that sails for India next month."
"_What?_"
Trevelyan’s father flung himself into one of the big chairs, leaned his
elbow on the edge of the table and shaded his eyes, "It could be done—I
suppose, without his knowing?"
"Why, y-e-s, but—" Stewart broke off doubtfully.
Trevelyan’s father leaned forward, still shading his eyes and staring
hard at his boots.
"I’m not much of a talker, as you know, Malcolm," he said concisely.
"And what I’ve once done for a man I don’t generally remind him of, but
at Inkerman, years ago when you were a bit of a boy lieutenant, I did
you a slight service—"
"You saved my life," said the Scotchman briefly.
"I suppose I did. Well, you are always harping on that, and a service
to me. If you will get the boy ordered off without his suspecting—" the
older Trevelyan broke off and then went on, "You’re a power in politics
and could do it better than I. Politics count three-fourths,
now-a-days, even with the army."
"I’ll do it, but may I know your reason? I always fancied you liked
having Robert stationed in England—"
Trevelyan’s father dropped the hand that was shading his eyes, with a
dull thud on the table.
"I have. But the boy’s ruining himself. He will never make even a tin
soldier at this rate. He is throwing his chance of a career to the
winds—and he don’t care. He was reprimanded a month ago for negligence
of duty, and again yesterday," the old soldier flushed, "and he don’t
care! It is not the easiest thing for a man to talk so about his flesh
and blood, but—the boy’s whole future depends on what he makes of his
life now; and I would not give a penny for what it will turn out to be,
if he is not hauled up with a sharp turn and gotten out of England. The
boy will do the Queen and the Service honor, where there is danger to be
faced and courage needed, but the idleness of barrack life—" he broke
off.
The elder Stewart nodded.
"True," he said.
"There is something else that has decided me. I went to call on the
little American this afternoon."
"Ah?"
"She’s game, and worth the best fellow born."
"Is not your Robert good enough for her?"
"No; but your John is."
There was a long silence. Somewhere outside a carriage drove into the
Square, the echo of its wheels deadened by the heavy curtains. Somewhere
in the house a door closed noisily.
"I always used to fancy I would want a Scotch lassie, for John," said
the Scotchman with a slow smile, "but lately I have not been so sure;
not—so—sure!"
Trevelyan’s father sat silent.
"Out in India," he said after a while, "there will be something for him
to do and think of besides the little American girl—" he rose, "You will
see to it then?"
The elder Stewart looked thoughtfully down at the table.
"Since you think it wisest—yes."
* * * * *
"Out in India," said Trevelyan’s father, to himself as he paused on the
steps of the Grosvenor Square house, and stared hard into the darkness,
"But, God, how I’ll miss the boy."
*VIII.*
Trevelyan had been gone a year. His orders for Indian service had been a
nine days’ wonder to London.
"Of course he will get his uncle to work him back on a home regiment or
do something on the strength of his father’s gallant action at Inkerman
and his wound." Tom Cameron had said. "Of course he won’t go."
"Of course not," London had said.
"I’ll be hanged if I’ll go," Trevelyan had exploded to Stewart, and he
spent most of his time between his father’s chambers and his uncle’s
house, relieved by frantic calls to every influential man he knew. But
the powers that could have worked in his behalf, remained passive, and
for the first time his father and uncle refused to help him. Trevelyan
wondered wildly what suddenly possessed them all, and what had become of
his own persuasiveness.
"Jove! I should think you would be pleased," his father had said,
purposely avoiding his eyes. "As a little chap you were eternally
wanting to grow up and get into active service. Here you have only been
vegetating in barrack life and now that you have the chance to win your
spurs—"
"Damn the spurs," Trevelyan had said.
"Sorry, but I can’t help you," his uncle had answered when he had made
his sixth and last desperate appeal to him. "I’ve seen the Secretary.
He says the commander of the regiment wants just such a fellow—one of
the Engineers. You can’t expect to remould the entire military force of
the United Kingdom, my boy, when you have just about finished serving
your sub-lieutenancy."
"John’s an Engineer and has seen Indian service too," Trevelyan had
suggested moodily, and the elder Stewart had remained silent.
Trevelyan continued to fight passionately against the orders until the
hour of sailing.
Cary went down with the family to see the transport off, and when
Trevelyan caught his last glimpse of her she was standing out distinctly
from the background of the faint fog that had arisen, with Stewart at
her side.
He turned his face away sharply and gripped at the ship’s rail. Then a
sudden pressure came against his throat and breast as though the
strength was being crushed from him. He swallowed hard.
For once, Fate had conquered Trevelyan.
* * * * *
He wrote to Cary just one time that year—on the voyage out—a letter that
a man does not often write more than once in his life. In it were the
passion and the love; the strength and weakness of his nature. On one
page he stripped his heart for her, that she might know its faults, and
fairly judge. On the next, he tried to vindicate his failings.
"I would be as clay in your hands," he wrote toward the close, "You
could do with me what you would. I love you more than it is generally
given to a man to love—more than an English officer should. I would
desert for you, for I love you more than England and more than my
honor—" and then there came a blot upon the page, that half covered the
last word. The letter ended as a child’s struggle ends—brokenly: and he
asked her in a few disjointed sentences to be his wife.
Weeks later when the letter was delivered, Cary was out with John. On
her return she sat far into the night to answer it, that her reply might
go back to him by the next Indian mail.
"Your love frightens me," she said in part, "and I cannot bind myself
through time and distance. If I loved you as I should—and as I _could_
love a man—I would say ’yes’—as it is, I must say ’no.’ It lies with
you if my answer ever changes. I do not demand love that would prove
disloyal to an officer’s vow of courage in the service. I do not want
such love. I am an army woman, and army women, all the world over, have
one code of allegiance—which is absolute. You cheapen me when you
suggest I would be satisfied with anything less. As for moulding you—a
man moulds himself into the perfect and complete, or he breaks the clay
with his own hands. When I marry it shall be a man whose nature is
stronger than my own. It is the way of women."
And Trevelyan had been gone a year.
*IX.*
At the end of the twelve months Stewart got a letter from Trevelyan.
He smiled a bit curiously as he tore open the travel worn flap. He
wondered what Robert had to say for himself or what he wanted. It was
the first letter he had received since Robert had been ordered to India,
but he laughed genuinely in the silence of the deserted club room, at
the opening, and characteristic words:
"This is a damnable hole! It is hot as—well I won’t swear any more—but
it is hotter than I ever imagined a place could be on the _surface_ of
the earth. We are miles from any decent civilization, and how you can
talk decently about the natives and the native regiments, staggers me!
I don’t trust ’em, and what’s more I doubt very much if they hold me in
any higher regard. But what is the good of writing so to you. You know
what Indian service is. Your station was either a good deal better than
mine, or you have a lot more back bone than I have. The first idea
making me jealous, and the last not being conducive to self-respect,
there don’t seem to be any choice! To move requires a strenuous effort.
The life is stagnation. It is a living death and the death numbness is
creeping into my veins. They tell me that the natives have not been so
quiet for years, and most of the officers and men wish they’d stir up a
bit and give them some trouble. I don’t. I don’t want trouble. I don’t
believe I could fight if I had to! Damned odd, isn’t it, when my blood
used to boil and my head throb queer, when I was a little shaver at home
and there was danger around? I guess I wasn’t cut out for the Service,
after all. Mactier would wonder— * * * I think I’m going mad. As you
may have caught on I am writing all this with a purpose; for it is only
fair for you to know what this station is, and I’m asking more than one
man ought of another, but if you’d get transferred out here— There
wouldn’t be any trouble about the technical part of it, for the
Engineers are needed bad for surveying. Your last letter said something
about your getting a commission in the Gordon Highlanders—if you could
only come here instead—I suppose I am selfish, but I can’t get a grip on
things. If—"
Stewart looked up from the letter, toward the window and the
street—seriously. Then he went over to the window and sat down in a big
chair and leaned forward, still looking out. The noise of the passing
carriages and the stir of the passing crowd crept in to meet the silence
of the empty reading room. He sat motionless, heedless alike of the
noise and the stillness. Once he thought of Cary, and his face changed
swiftly.
Then he went back to the letter and finished it, and later he re-read
it, and folded it, and put it in his vest pocket. Then he went back to
his old occupation of looking out of the window.
The crowd was no longer one big indistinct blur, and he was vaguely
conscious that he saw his mother’s carriage among the others coming down
the street. It came nearer and he could see that his sister was in it.
There was a girl sitting beside her. The girl was Cary.
* * * * *
It was a week before Stewart called again at the lodgings. Cary firmly
expected him the second day; grew bewildered as the evening of the
fourth came and went without bringing him; on the fifth grew anxious and
on the sixth wrote to him. Calling on his family just then for news was
out of the question. They had gone to Brighton for a week.
He came to her the day her letter reached him.
"I would scold you," the girl said, "if it were not for these. You
never forget my violets."
She buried her face in the purple bloom, before she fastened the bunch
on her dress.
"I have left the order with the florist," said Stewart quietly. "He
will send you the violets every week, and when they are gone, I have
told him about your roses. I am going away."
She looked up quickly from the flowers she had just fastened in her
dress.
"For long?"
"I think so—yes."
"Where are you going?"
Stewart pulled at his gloves.
"India," he said briefly.
"You have received your orders?"
"Yes. I asked for them."
Cary went up to him and pulled him by the sleeve.