The revolver was loaded. I didn’t know it—it went off." Trevelyan’s
big frame began to sway a little. "I came to report, sir. If I could
have it dressed, I’d be able to go. Of course, I expect to go. You
won’t—"
The Colonel signaled for his orderly.
"My respects to Dr. Mackenzie, and will he come over at once."
Then to Trevelyan:
"It’s a most unfortunate affair, but it would be murder to allow you to
undertake the trip. I’ll hear the details later."
"But, sir—"
"Don’t question my orders, Lieutenant," interrupted the Colonel,
briefly.
"Flesh wound," Mackenzie said.
Later, when the dressing was done and Trevelyan was in the hospital, the
surgeon looked down at him curiously. "Odd," he said, "that shot! I
don’t understand how—"
Trevelyan turned his drawn face to the surgeon’s, meeting his eyes
squarely.
"Confound you! You don’t think I shot myself on purpose, do you?"
Mackenzie sat down on the edge of the bed, and rubbed his chin.
"Oh—of course, not," he said slowly.
An hour later he and Vaughan, the assistant surgeon, returned.
"Well, there goes the best officer in the service to his death," the
younger man was saying, as he entered, and then as he met Trevelyan’s
wide, questioning eyes, he broke off.
"Who’s that?" asked Trevelyan, sharply.
"Your substitute."
Trevelyan picked at the sheet.
"Who did the old man send—Pearson?"
"Pearson! Not on your life! Stewart, of course."
Trevelyan stopped picking at the sheet. He rose with an effort and sat
up in bed, supporting himself on his elbows and leaning forward.
"He has gone?"
The assistant standing at the foot of the bed nodded. Trevelyan sat
rigid.
"And I was never told! And he’s gone without coming to me!" he said,
hoarsely.
"He spoke about it, but he said he wouldn’t disturb you—" the assistant
broke off.
Suddenly, Trevelyan flung up his arms.
"God! Why couldn’t I have gone! I wouldn’t have been a loss to
anyone—God!" he choked, and fell back, his face buried in the pillow.
The assistant left the room and the surgeon went to the window. Once or
twice he glanced at the great, motionless figure on the bed.
"Jove! that’s genuine enough! Guess I must have been mistaken about the
shot!"
*VII.*
After awhile the surgeon turned from the window, came back to Trevelyan
and stooping over him, listened to his breathing, and felt his pulse.
Then he went away.
Trevelyan lifted his head slowly and looked about him. The room was
deserted and he sat up in bed again, grasping its sides. It was as if
everything was slipping away from him, and the agony in his brain had
crept down to his feet, engulfing and making as nothing the throbbing in
his shoulder, or the heat of the growing fever.
He stared at the shadows cast by the flickering lamp on the wall
opposite. The vision of the trooper’s ghastly face had faded for the
time, but intenser visions appeared and shifted and reappeared again.
First there came the shadow face of his mother, who had been dead for
years, and then that of his father—his father who had led that charge at
Inkerman. The face seemed turned away. Then there came the face of the
aunt who had mothered him so long, and then the shadowy forms haltered
as the fever grew and the wall became a glowing blank. Later a face
appeared, Stewart’s, against the fiery glow. It looked like a dead
face—like the dead, ghastly face of the trooper; and then there came
Cary’s face. It haunted him in a hundred different guises. It came to
him as the child-face, as he had known it years ago down at the sea
coast fort; and it faded and came again as the face touched with time’s
maturity, as he had seen it when she first came to England; it shifted
again and reappeared as it had been that day of the storm, when he and
she had been housed in the old Scottish home together, and the
tenderness and the fear were on it; it came again to him as he had seen
it last before the receding transport and the oncoming mist had stolen
it away from him. And it came once more as he had never seen
it—horror-stricken, wide-eyed, and pale—as he _would_ see it, when she
looked at him again, knowing the truth.
"Allegiance—which is absolute." So she had written, and so she would
say to him. And he had betrayed his allegiance, and he had lied, and he
had turned coward, and had sent Stewart off to die!
His fingers gripped at the edges of the bed and he stared fascinated at
that face of Cary on the wall—Cary as he had never seen her. It remained
fixed. It would _not_ fade.
She had known life’s truths better than he. Honor, after all, was a
tangible thing—as tangible as the devouring agony in his brain. And he
had lost his honor—
She had written that a man moulds himself into the perfect and complete,
or he breaks the clay with his own hands, and he had not believed her
until now, when the clay lay broken.
It had been coming to this all these months, and he had gone on blindly.
Cary had tried to save him by that letter; John had tried to save him,
and had come out to this accursed hole to serve him, because he had been
a coward and had written for him—not strong enough to serve himself—and
he had sent John off to meet the death that he himself deserved. No, he
was not worthy of such a death. Death would glorify John. It would
have redeemed him.
The irrevocable past that had gone from his keeping haunted him
ghost-like through the night watches, as did the agony of the future. If
there were but a chance—the shadow of a chance—of winning back the last
hours!
If that face would only fade!
And he had thought himself so strong, and he and death had looked each
in the face of the other so often!
And the long line of pictures on the wall began again, fading and
reappearing, but the face of Cary did not fade.
After awhile the personality of the face lost itself and it became to
him but the symbol of that high living, toward the attainment of which
he had failed, falling in the dust.
His stiff fingers relaxed on the sides of the bed, and he sank back with
a thud like a dead weight. The dead trooper could not have fallen more
heavily.
The wound in his shoulder was only a flesh hurt—he had been careful of
that—he remembered with a grim, awful self-accusation. If it only _had_
gone deeper than he had planned. Before the thought had died he was
searching for his handkerchief and when he had found it he began to knot
it feverishly and pull it around his throat—sudden strength coming to
his hands. Then, with an oath, he jerked at the linen band and flung it
from him to the hospital floor, where it lay—a spot of white in the
darkness. The power to move deserted him, and his arms hung over the
sides of the bed—limp and motionless.
And then, remembering Stewart, the agony in his brain increased.
He fancied Stewart starting out on the mission, silent, with the silence
that comes with the realization of danger—grave with the gravity of its
acceptance—the test of courage. Stewart had never been guided by the
heedless, passionate impulses that had possessed him, Trevelyan, all his
life; but he had held high the standards of life for a man, and he had
lived up to the standards.
Trevelyan fancied he saw him riding into the thickness of the black
shadows.
He might do it, and come back from the jaws of death. If a man could do
it, he would, but was it humanly possible?
Trevelyan beat his hands against his face. No; no man could do it! The
Station would wait for Stewart, and wait and wait, and Stewart would not
come. They would go to look for him and they would bring him back to
him, Trevelyan—dead. But he would not look like the trooper. The
vision on the wall had been a mistake.
Long ago, the night that Stewart had saved Cary as a child, by his
vigil; he, Trevelyan, had crept into the room where they had carried
him, and he was sleeping, exhausted. The peace, born of a great
sacrifice and a purpose accomplished, had rested on the boy’s face. The
peace of it came back to Trevelyan, a gift from that dead year.
When they brought Stewart home to the Station he would look so.
And the minutes turned to hours and the fever increased, and later
Trevelyan sank into a doze. The surgeons came in now and again and
administered medicines of which he was only dimly conscious, and the
fever and the drowsiness grew, and the long night wore away.
In the early dawn he was awakened by the feeling that someone was
looking steadily at him. His eyes, free from the fever that had gone,
met those of the assistant surgeon.
Before the full consciousness of the night’s agony had come back, the
young surgeon spoke.
"Stewart has returned," he said, quietly, "but he’s been badly hurt and
he wants you. If you feel strong enough—"
Trevelyan sprang to the floor. He was trembling with excitement and the
weakness left by the fever.
"Thank God, he’s safe—" and then as he looked more closely in the
assistant’s face, "He isn’t hurt seriously—" his voice trailed off.
The assistant got Trevelyan’s slippers and threw a blanket over him and
drew his arm through his, giving him support. It seemed strange to be
supporting Trevelyan.
"I’m afraid he is," he said. "He did the job all right and reported
like the soldier he is. McCann’s game, too, and not hurt. Stewart—"
The assistant was killing time.
Trevelyan wiped the moisture from his face.
"Yes?"
Vaughan looked straight ahead of him, to avoid meeting Trevelyan’s eyes.
"Mackenzie is with him," he said, slowly. "He’s doing everything on
earth, but the wound’s in the back, and there—isn’t the ghost of a
chance—and, he’s sent for you."
*VIII.*
The assistant walked slowly, adapting himself to Trevelyan’s halting
steps, and he braced his arm against the weight Trevelyan had thrown
upon it. He did not speak again, and Trevelyan did not question him
further.
Trevelyan’s big frame reeled across the threshold, when, after what
seemed to him an interminable time, the assistant led him into the room
where Stewart lay. He caught himself up immediately, however, and
stared at the group around the bed. The Colonel was there and one of
the older officers, and Mackenzie was leaning over something long and
still that lay stretched on the bed. The dead weight suddenly increased
on Vaughan’s arm and he winced with the pain. The two officers near the
foot of the bed turned at the shuffling footsteps and Mackenzie looked
up for an instant. Then he went back to feeling Stewart’s pulse, and
without glancing around again, spoke quietly to his assistant.
"The other syringe—this doesn’t work just right."
The assistant went away and returned with the syringe. Trevelyan was
left standing alone in the middle of the room. No one noticed him. He
waited until the hypodermic stimulant had been administered and
Mackenzie had straightened himself from his stooping position over the
bed. Then he came forward, and pushed his way past the Colonel and the
officer and Vaughan and Mackenzie, and leaned over the bed.
"John," he said.
The head turned on the pillow slowly, and Stewart looked up at him. He
made an almost imperceptible motion of recognition with his head.
"You sent for me?"
"Yes," Stewart said, weakly.
Trevelyan remained motionless, and no one spoke. The Colonel, at the
foot of the bed, stirred a little.
Stewart’s hot hands drew the covering up between his fingers and crushed
it with a sudden strength, born of a terrible agony. He turned his eyes
to Mackenzie.
"If you could get me more on my side—that’s better."
Mackenzie leaned over him.
"Don’t try to talk to Trevelyan just yet," he suggested.
"I must. If you’d all leave us for a little—"
"You won’t wait?"
Stewart looked straight into Mackenzie’s eyes.
"There’s no waiting; there’s no ’yet’—is there?" he asked.
Mackenzie stared at the covering on the bed.
"You’re pretty sick," he said, very slowly, and he tried to say
something else, but the words refused to come.
He turned and went out of the room and Vaughan and the officers followed
him.
Trevelyan still remained motionless.
"Have they gone?" Stewart asked, looking up at him, "I can’t turn my
head to see."
"They’ve gone," said Trevelyan.
"Then sit down on the edge of the bed—carefully, if you can; jars hurt.
I’ve a good deal to say and the time’s short—Mackenzie will be back
before long."
"You want to give me messages?"
"No," said Stewart, "It’s about yourself. Why were you afraid?"
The lump in Trevelyan’s throat broke, and something of the old strength
came back then.
"It was Cary," he said, hoarsely.
"I thought so. It was a risky thing to have tried, though—that
shooting. It might have gone deeper, or someone else might have seen
you."
"You—saw—me—then?"
[Illustration: "_You—saw—me—then?_"]
Stewart nodded. Speaking was exquisite torture.
"Do you realize what you’ve done—that you’ve broken your life—"
Trevelyan sat motionless on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on a
point of the pillow. The agony of the night before had been as nothing
to this.
"You were an officer and you were afraid of danger—you! And you were
coward enough to be willing to send another man to his death—" the young
engineer broke off, breathing with labor. "You were willing to let me
die. Did you think that would make it easier to win Cary?"
Then Trevelyan spoke.
"It’s all true," he said, speaking so slowly that each word fell upon
the deathly stillness in the room, like the slow thud of earth upon a
coffin, "It’s—all—true——but that! I was afraid and I was all you say,
coward enough to let another man die or suffer as you are suffering now;
and I’ve dishonored the Service and I’ve broken my life, but before God,
I didn’t know that you’d be sent in my place. As for Cary—"
"For Cary," said Stewart, "and for your father and my mother you’re to
swear to me to hold your tongue over this business. It’s like you to go
and blurt the whole thing out, but you’re to swear you won’t open your
lips on the subject—ever; and you’re to resign your commission in the
Service as soon as it’s possible without exciting suspicion."
Trevelyan drew back; his throat pulsing. There was the old, odd
throbbing in his head, and the dimness of vision, too. After awhile the
mist passed.
"God! man, but you’re hard!"
"I’m kind to the home people, and I’m just with you—am I not?"
"Yes; oh, yes; but to bear it in silence—never to be able to meet one of
the men of the mess without the dead haunting shadow of it on me; to
leave the Service—that’s the worst of all—never to be able to fight for
England again as a soldier, or redeem myself—as a man!"
He rose from the bed and went over to the opposite wall, flinging his
bent arm against it and leaning forward, his face hid. Stewart watched
him from the bed, his eyes reflecting a great pity. If Trevelyan knew
half of what his judgment cost him! If Trevelyan only knew how gladly
he was dying in his stead! If only Trevelyan knew that he was more kind
than cruel!
Through the window, into the absolute quiet of the room, came the
hurrying of feet and the neighing of horses. The Colonel was sending
out a squad of armed men to strike to the heart of the native trouble.
Somewhere in the distance a bugler was playing.
Trevelyan turned, his back to the wall, his arms flung out.
"Isn’t there any other way?"
Stewart struggled to a reclining position, supporting himself on one
arm, and he summoned all his love and all his mercy.
"You injured me," he said. "Mackenzie says I can’t pull through the
day—but if I should, I’m injured for life. I have a right to judge you.
There is no other way."
The music of the bugle rose, and swelled, and then melted away.
Trevelyan came back to the bed—passive!
"I’ll swear anything you ask."
Then a little later:
"Am I to tell Cary?"
"You are to tell Cary or not, as you want to," said Stewart, looking at
him curiously.
"Is there nothing I can say to Cary for you—when—when I—get back to
England?"
Stewart shook his head. The weakness he had fought against so long came
back, as did the agony.
"Nothing; but that I thought of her—of them all. Can you reach that
water? Ah!"
Trevelyan flung himself down by the bed.
"You shan’t slip off this way!" he said, tensely, the pain of his own
crushed life disappearing before the thought of Stewart’s ebbing one.
Stewart did not hear him.
"Call Mackenzie," he said, shortly, "Call Mackenzie—quick!"
*IX.*
Outside the hurrying and the tramping and the neighing of the horses
increased and intensified the silence inside where Stewart lay
unconscious, Mackenzie and Vaughan and Trevelyan working over him.
Later in the morning the fighting squad departed, and over the Station
fell a stillness as great as that which brooded over the hospital.
After a desperate struggle they brought Stewart to, and then Mackenzie,
happening to glance at Trevelyan, saw that the dressing had slipped from
his shoulder and that his shirt was stained.
He got him into an adjoining room and redressed the shoulder and
insisted on his lying down, in spite of Trevelyan’s entreaties to get
back to Stewart.
"Everything in the world is being done for him. Keep quiet."
"Keep quiet, while his life’s slipping away!" cried Trevelyan, fiercely,
"Not while there’s a breath left in my own body. I’ll pull him through
or I’ll die!"
"You’ll lie still, just where you are," ordered Mackenzie. "He’s
holding his own just now. He’ll need all the strength he’s got, and
yours, and all he can get—later. I’ll call you."
Trevelyan slept for two hours—heavily, exhaustively; then Mackenzie woke
him.
"Come," he said, briefly, "Stewart’s worse."
Trevelyan sat up on the lounge and flung back his head; through his
being thrilled the old lost defiance; the old lost strength. He went
into Stewart’s room and sat down by the bed.
The long hours crept away and the still shadows of night gathered, and
through the hours and the shadows Mackenzie and Trevelyan watched.
Stewart continued to sink.
At midnight, Mackenzie went over to the window, turning his back on the
bed and Trevelyan.
There was no hope—but Trevelyan wouldn’t believe it! Stewart was dying,
and Trevelyan obstinately refused to relinquish the fight. Trevelyan
didn’t know when he was beaten. And Mackenzie, grown prematurely gray in
the service of life against death, wondered all over again why human
strength is so weak when waged against the great, mute Force of the
world.
Trevelyan sat rigid; and he gathered all the strength of his life and
his love; and that imperishable part that had been crushed by his crime,
but not destroyed, and turned them to the conquering of this hour, and
that grim Presence that was drawing nearer.
He had ceased to think of himself and the future for the first time
since he had fallen. If it ever once occurred to him, he regarded it
vaguely and indifferently. To-morrow, he would wake up to the living
death that lay before him, but for the present, he had no thought beyond
the still, motionless form stretched on the bed. He concentrated all
his passion, all his will strength, and massed them together, as a
breastwork, around Stewart’s ebbing life.
The grasp of the hand that was clasping his grew weaker.
Trevelyan did not think to call Mackenzie. He had forgotten he was over
there by the window; that they three, Stewart and Death and he,
Trevelyan, were not alone together. He forced stimulant between
Stewart’s blue lips. And then he went in search of Stewart’s ebbing
life, as a swimmer goes down into the depths to bring forth a living
man, drowning.
Once the chill of the Shadowy Presence touched him, through the growing
chill of Stewart’s fingers; and he rubbed them, beating back into the
icy veins the heat of his nature, and by and by the Shadowy Presence
sullenly drew back, and back, and _back_.
After a time, Mackenzie, aroused by the oppressive stillness, turned.
He hesitated, and then came to the bed and leaned over Stewart’s relaxed
form. Stewart’s face was turned up to his, drawn and thin and pinched,
in the light of the failing lamp, but he was breathing regularly.
Mackenzie touched one of his hands. It was moist and warm. And then,
dumbly, he turned to Trevelyan.
Trevelyan still sat by the bed, rigid; and his eyes looked back at
Mackenzie—dull and spiritless, and his fingers were cold, with the chill
of the depths.
Mackenzie touched him on the arm.
Trevelyan struggled to his feet.
"If you could give me a bracer. I’m a bit gone off—"
*X.*
Trevelyan’s hurt shoulder healed rapidly, and two weeks later, Mackenzie
discharged him, and he reported for duty again.
"The row’s all over, I hear," he said later, to the little subaltern.
The little subaltern nodded ruefully.
"Yes, and holy smoke, didn’t the chicken-hearted things run when they
caught sight of us. We gave it to ’em hot, though! Guess they’ll let
off their funny business for a time, and—" the little subaltern grew
suddenly sober, "Of course, you’ve heard about Pearson and Bennett and
the men?"
Trevelyan nodded.
"Yes," he said, and the little subaltern never knew how gladly Trevelyan
would lay down his life if he could have Pearson’s or Bennett’s
chance—or the chance of the men.
Trevelyan went down the long piazza to his own quarters.
He had been in the hospital having his shoulder dressed and caring for
Stewart, who was still ill; when they had brought Pearson and Bennett
and the men back to the Station.
And through all the years of his life he would never have Pearson’s or
Bennett’s chance, or the chance of Pearson’s or Bennett’s burial. He
would die as other men died, who had failed in life; he would never be
brought back from the front; he would never fall defending the Service
and England.
* * * * *
A month later he filed his resignation papers, preparatory to having
them endorsed and sent to the War Office.
The Colonel was in a fighting humor when the matter was brought up to
him next day! The son of Trevelyan of Inkerman fame! And he sent for
Trevelyan and talked to him of his duty to the Service, and the Queen,
and the colonial policy of England, and a good deal more; but Trevelyan
was firm. The Colonel grew apoplectic; still, Trevelyan was unmoved.
Then, the Colonel, who had never lost a battle in his life, retreated
ungraciously, trying to think of some reason why the order should not be
endorsed and—failed. He had inquired into the shoulder affair, but that
was explained by the little subaltern, who testified that he had seen
and spoken to Trevelyan the moment before the shot. Trevelyan had been
all eagerness to go. He had not paid any attention to the report,
thinking some of the men were probably practicing at target. The
Colonel had gone over that matter carefully. Then, in spite of the
injury, Trevelyan had offered to undertake the survey—the Colonel could
not get around that—even though he was not fit. Trevelyan might have
been unpopular in the regiment, but he had always done his duty as an
officer of the Service. And so the Colonel wrathfully saw the
application go off on the next mail to England.
And then Trevelyan waited; waited as a man waits for the warrant that is
to close his lease on life; and, as though to make the most of the time
remaining, when he was not on duty, or with Stewart in the hospital, he
was with the younger officers of the mess. They grew, then, to know a
new phase in his character. He no longer closed the door of his
quarters on them; it was Trevelyan’s room to which they flocked; it was
Trevelyan who joked them and teased them and smoked with them, and who
played tennis with the garrison girls, and drank tea with the officers’
wives; it was Trevelyan, with his great strength and courage, who shared
their pastimes and helped to kill the long, inactive days that had
settled back over the Station like a pall. Even the little subaltern
ceased to dress up regardless in white linen and go and drink tea with
Jessica Q, and became Trevelyan’s shadow instead.
Weeks later the official acceptance of the resignation came. It was
handed to him at mess. He glanced at it indifferently and laid it to
one side. Later, he left. He did not join the crowd that evening. He
went back to his own quarters and closed the door and drew to the
covering at the window, and he sat down in the dark and fought it out
alone.
Two hours after he went over to the hospital to make his nightly inquiry
for Stewart.
Stewart had had a bad day, they told him. It was a case for time.
He did not go in to see Stewart that night.