as he retraced his steps to his dark bungalow, but it might be months
before Stewart could bear the journey, and Stewart would not hear of his
waiting. Perhaps, it was because Stewart was not strong enough to bear
the sight of Trevelyan’s face, with its imprint of despair; it might
have been he fancied something of the despair would lift when Trevelyan
was once again in Scotland. At any rate, he had ordered Trevelyan home
and Trevelyan had planned to leave—alone.
The next day he dismantled his quarters and made his preparations. He
packed his uniforms and his helmets and his sword, and sent them home—to
Scotland, to Mactier’s care.
In the morning he put on civilian’s clothes and left the Station.
* * * * *
The stretch of distant land grew clearer with each throb of the ship
engine’s heart.
The long voyage was over and Trevelyan was coming back to England.
And he had betrayed his allegiance to England because he had loved! * *
*
He leaned over the ship’s rail and looked idly at the whirling foam,
that beat an angry protest at its birth against the ship’s great side,
and then grew less and lost itself in the deep waters of the Channel.
Had he loved Cary? he questioned. Had he not mistaken the baser passion
for the diviner love that alone is built on honor?
She had told him to mould himself into the divine and he had broken the
clay instead.
His eyes rested somberly on the long green line of land. All his honor
and allegiance, with which he had broken faith, came back to him and
filled him with unspeakable emotion.
He would stoop and he would gather up the broken pieces and remould them
for the service of England.
_End of Book Two._
*BOOK THREE*
*THE
POTTER’S TOUCH*
*BOOK THREE*
*THE POTTER’S TOUCH*
*I.*
The long months had swelled into two years and more before Trevelyan
came home—to England and to Cary.
Cary and the Captain had spent one winter in Palestine and on the Nile,
and the summers in travel. When the Captain mildly suggested Italy or a
return to America on the dawning of the second winter, Cary shook her
head and begged for London and the old lodgings. Cary, for some reason
never spoke of going home now. And so the Captain took her back to
London, and Cary seemed to enjoy the great familiar city, better than
all the sights and novelties of Egypt and the Holy Land.
The weekly gift of violets or of roses began again with her return to
England. Now and then, letters came from John, but they were not
frequent, and were, to Cary’s critical judgment, unsatisfactory. Of
course, she was glad to hear of the life of the Station, and what the
men and officers did to pass the off-duty time; and how the army women
spent the days in India, and how they all kept cool—or tried to. It was
kind of John, too, to think to tell her all the details, and the account
of their hunting trip and the "man-eater" Trevelyan had killed,—Cary
wondered if the skin was for her—and what their quarters looked like,
but somehow Cary wanted more. She wasn’t quite sure what she did want;
perhaps she told herself it was some more definite mention of Trevelyan.
Trevelyan never wrote.
She thought of Trevelyan often, and in the silences of the night she
would sometimes recall the blackness and the thunder of that Scottish
storm, and the terror of the hour without its charm would come back to
her and she would cower among her white pillows and shut, very fast, her
eyes.
In the fall the Camerons had asked her to a house party but for some
reason she herself could not define, she sent regrets. The Camerons’
place was so near his home! She wondered if it were because he would
not be there, or if she would be afraid when she saw his home again.
When Trevelyan came back—
But she was lonelier in the late afternoon when the Captain had gone to
walk, than at any part of the day, and she would sit with idle hands
folded in her lap and look at the silent little tea-kettle on the
tea-table; or rise and watch the sunset, quite alone. She wasn’t ever
afraid then, she was only unutterably lonely! Perhaps when Trevelyan
came back—
And then Trevelyan did come back. She heard it from the Captain one
afternoon, and it was then the Captain told her, gently, of the delayed
accounts of Stewart’s and Trevelyan’s part in the native struggle.
There were no details regarding them; it was only known certainly, that
both Stewart and Trevelyan had been hurt; that Stewart was still ill at
the Station, and that Trevelyan had sent in a resignation. His return
was expected. They would have to wait.
They waited; and Cary grew older in the waiting.
Little by little details were added to the story, and she would go
around to the Stewarts’ and talk it over with John’s mother and John’s
sister, and women-like they would try to fit the ill-formed pieces
together.
Then she would go back slowly to the lodgings.
She had waited so long for Trevelyan to come home, and she had thought
to welcome him in promotion; she had dreamed that some day Trevelyan
would do something great for the Service and for England; she had
believed it, and now—Trevelyan was coming home—resigned; and all her
dreams and all her faith had not been worth while.
*II.*
Trevelyan had landed. The Captain saw it in the morning paper and read
the item out to Cary. The ship had gotten in a day before it had been
looked for.
Cary pushed back her untasted cup of coffee, and she remained in doors
all day, unconsciously listening for his footfall on the stairs, and
when night came without bringing him, she laughed at herself for
fancying that he would come direct to her.
It was three days before he did come and she met him on the stairs. She
was about to do some delayed shopping, and as she was going down, she
met him coming up. She turned and they went back to the quiet little
sitting room together, and she ran over to the window impetuously and
flung back the curtains.
"Come here," she said, gaily, "I can scarcely believe it is you,
yourself! Come here, and let me see your Indian tan!"
He smiled a little, obeying her, but he did not meet her eyes.
_Could_ he ever tell her? he wondered.
"Why you haven’t got half the tan I expected! You’re not chocolate at
all!" she said like a grieved child.
He forgot the haunting shadow for a moment and he laughed genuinely.
"I’m sorry I don’t please you."
"You don’t please me at all," Cary pouted. "You’re not chocolate, and
you haven’t returned a captain, and you’re not in uniform with a medal
on your breast, and what is worse than everything, you’ve grown
chicken-hearted and turned your back on the Service and run away."
He winced.
"And you’re as solemn as a funeral, and you haven’t told me you’re glad
to see me, and—you don’t please me at all!"
"That’s a nice greeting for a chap!"
"Well—you deserve it!" Cary retorted; then she brightened up, "And you
really got hurt? Did it come just ’within a shade of a vital spot,’
like it always does in the story books?"
"I got a scratch."
"Good boy! How did it happen? You must sit down and tell me all about
it. Was it one of those horrid natives?"
Trevelyan sat down near the window in the deep shadow of the curtains.
He put his hand to his head and pressed it there tightly for a moment.
"No," he said, "It wasn’t one of the natives. It was my own revolver."
"What?"
Trevelyan faltered.
"Must you hear the story to-day? Won’t you wait? It’s so long since
I’ve seen you—"
If this brief hour could only be his, unspoiled, to remember!
"Don’t be aggravating," said Cary, "I’m interested, and I want to hear."
She could not have told why a dull weight should suddenly have laid
itself upon her.
Trevelyan sat silent.
"First," he said presently, playing with the tassel of the curtain cord,
"first, let me tell you about John."
She flushed. She had forgotten John in the dread that lay upon her.
"Yes, please tell me about John. Is he coming home soon?"
"When he is able to bear the journey—and I believe a little before. He
is sick for a sight of England." Trevelyan let the last words fall
slowly. He had thought to add "of you."
After a moment he went on.
"I had a long talk with Mackenzie—the surgeon, you know—before I left.
He says the wound hurt something in the back and went clear through to
the lung. He’ll have to get out of the Service."
Cary rose quickly. She went over to the piano and stood there pressing
her hands against the top and hiding her face on them.
"It’s too cruel," she moaned, "both you fellows—out of the Service!
_It’s too cruel!_"
Trevelyan knit and unknit his fingers, and was silent.
"He’ll be all right—in time," he said slowly, with a dim idea of giving
her comfort, "but he just won’t be physically strong enough again for
the army."
"And you’ve resigned!"
Trevelyan still sat in the shadows cast by the curtains. He was massing
all his courage and his strength against his love.
"Cary!" She raised her head from her arms, and she shivered at the tone
of his voice, without knowing why. "Cary, if you’ll come over here—I’ll
tell you why—" he broke off.
She obeyed him mechanically.
"Sit down."
She did as he bade her.
"Shall I light the lamp?" she faltered. "The days are short and—and it’s
dark—"
"No, not yet. Sit here where I can see your face by the fire. There!
Like that!"
And then he began on the cause and the details of the native trouble.
She moved restlessly. She did not understand the technicalities very
well, and the odd dread and oppression would not lift. She was
conscious that Trevelyan’s voice filled the room, but she scarcely
heeded his words. And then he told her of Stewart and something of what
Stewart had tried to do for him, and grew eloquent over it, and she
forgot herself and the dread in listening to him. Even on the day of
the storm in Scotland, when he had told her the stories of his
childhood, he had not been as eloquent as this. Then he halted. After a
while he resumed. He did not pause again, but went on rapidly with the
old resoluteness born afresh, now that he had once begun. He continued
steadily, mercilessly, leading up to the heart of it as he would have
aimed at and hit the bull’s eye at target practice with an unerring
hand.
"And the Colonel ordered me to make the survey. It meant danger and
probable death, and—I was afraid. I shot myself to prevent going. I
lied about it. I said the revolver had gone off. He sent John."
He leaned forward, grim with the grimness of despair, and the moisture
came out on his face and his throbbing throat, but she did not see his
face, she only heard the words that fell heavily on the silence.
She rose to her feet; he could see her, in the beauty of her height,
silhouetted against the bright firelight. Her breast was rising and
falling quickly with emotion.
"I don’t believe it," she cried. "There is nothing that will make me
believe it! Why, you’re not afraid of anything! You to turn coward!"
She paused, waiting for his denial, and remained standing.
He rose too; came from out of the shadows and sat down in the Captain’s
big chair by the fire, where she could see and read his face.
"I was afraid," he repeated.
It was as if he knew no other word.
She went over to him and dropped down by the chair, and looked up at
him.
"Tell me that it isn’t true," she said. "If you tell me that it isn’t
true, I’ll believe you against the world."
"It is true," he said.
The girl pressed the palms of her hands against her cheeks and drew them
slowly down, away from her face.
Suddenly she rose to her feet and leant over, looking steadily into his
face.
The shadowy spaces at the ends of the room grew and came to meet each
other.
She looked down into his face searchingly and in silence, and he met her
look as a brave man meets death—squarely. Her hand dropped from his
shoulder and fell at her side lifelessly. She shrank away.
"Good God," she whispered.
She went over into the shadows, to the window and stood looking out,
motionless. It seemed to her that she could never look at him again.
"John saw me," said Trevelyan, over by the fire, "and he swore me to
keep quiet about it—except to you; he left that to me to decide—he made
me swear to resign. I wasn’t fit to serve England."
He spoke without emotion and briefly, stating facts.
After awhile he went over to her in an uncertain manner. She shrank
closer to the window.
"Don’t come near me," she said in a low voice.
He went back and sat down by the fire. The minutes passed.
"If you would say something to me,—" he began, looking toward her.
She came out of the shadows into the firelight.
"There _is_ nothing to say," she said, and her face looked then like the
face on the hospital wall.
"I know it," he answered.
She covered her face with her hands, and turned quickly and fell down by
a chair, burying her face in its cushions, and sobbing as though to
break her heart.
Trevelyan did not move to go to her; he did not even look at her as she
was crying there over his lost honor. Honor was so much to her. He had
always known it. Perhaps it was for that he had first loved her.
After awhile she moved and leaned one elbow on the seat of her chair,
her cheek in her hand. She turned her face, looking into his.
"I—I didn’t mean to be cruel," she said, and her voice caught in sobs as
she spoke. "I was—selfish. I—was only thinking of—myself. Of—of how
I’d trusted you, and—and that! But oh, I’m—so sorry for—you. I—" she
broke off, impatiently brushing the tears away with her hand.
Trevelyan stared into the fire.
"Don’t talk that way," he said slowly, "I can bear anything but—that!"
"What—what made you—afraid?"
He left the big chair by the fire and came over to where she was sitting
on the floor, and looked down at her.
"I was afraid I should never see you again," he said. "I—" and he put
out his hand as though to touch her hair, "I wish—well I wish, I had
known there was something besides you in the world!"
She said nothing.
"What are you going to do now?" she asked after awhile.
"I don’t know," he said slowly, "_I—don’t—know!_"
He turned abruptly and picked up his coat and hat. He did not offer to
shake hands in parting. Cary had used to help him on with his coat and
shake hands, but Cary did not move to-night. He walked over to the
door, turning to look back at her.
"Good night," he said, in a matter of fact way, "Good-bye."
Cary sat motionless and she looked up at him dumbly.
"Good-bye," he repeated.
"Good-bye," she said slowly.
Trevelyan took the night train home—to Scotland and to old Mactier.
Perhaps up there, he would learn "what he was going to do now."
Cary sat motionless, in the shadows, by the big chair. After awhile she
crept over to the dead fire and stared at the white ashes. It seemed to
her that all her faith was dead.
*III.*
After Trevelyan had come and gone, each day seemed to Cary like the one
before; and they all stretched out, crushed and dead and lifeless, as a
string of pearls from which the luster has disappeared.
After awhile there were rumors that Stewart was coming home; that
Stewart was making a desperate effort to come home—to England. London
was agog—Stewart’s part of London. Everyone by this time had gotten a
pretty clear idea of affairs, and because Stewart had come up to what
they had expected of him, and had faced danger and death like the
soldier he was, and had generally conducted himself like a
gentleman,—London was pleased. London, like a woman, derived
satisfaction in saying, "I always knew it. I told you so."
Little by little the excitement penetrated Cary’s inertia. After all,
it was not quite fair that because one man had broken her faith and his
honor, she should judge all men by him. John had not failed her.
Perhaps John would pull things straight again for her, and make her see
life as she ought.
The warm days of early spring came—the English spring and the sunshine,
and there was no need any longer for a fire on the hearth, and every day
brought the ship nearer, and every fair breeze helped to bring him into
port quicker—John, coming back, sick and wounded for life, from battle.
After all, she had forgotten that part of it—his part; and his burden
that was heavier than her own, and Trevelyan’s burden, that was heavier
than all.
After awhile she brought a pity, wholly womanly and half divine, out of
the ashes that had seemed so dead, and on the awful truth of these men’s
lives, broken by the failure of one, she built the mercy that is
stronger than justice, and the faith that is stronger than doubt.
Something, though, remained in the ashes, dead, never to be rekindled,
and woman-like she used to cry a little over the dead part of it; not
because she could not relight it, but because it was so dead.
She grew into a woman in those weeks lapsing between Trevelyan’s call
and Stewart’s return—gradually, as clay is moulded in the hands of a
potter, who cuts it on his wheel, to give to it the finer tracings and
the smoothness of completion.
And every day and every fair breeze brought Stewart nearer, and Cary
turned from the ashes to the sunsets again. Fires would go out, even
with careful tending, but the sunsets were God’s, Cary told herself,
and, therefore, eternal.
*IV.*
Malcolm Stewart went down to Southampton to meet the ship and bring John
back to London.
"No excitement," the doctor had said, and so he had gone alone.
Now that young Stewart had really accomplished the task of getting back
to England, his false strength deserted him and he became weaker than
before. The two men, the sturdy father and the wasted son, made the
journey to town, John being carried to and from the railway carriages.
For a moment, when he reached London, and the carriage was turning into
Grosvenor Square, he rallied a little and insisted on getting out of the
carriage himself, and walking up the steps, leaning heavily on his
father’s arm.
"We won’t frighten the Little Madre," he had said.
The tall, womanly figure of the Little Madre. who had been standing by
the window for the last hour, appeared at the door, silently holding out
her arms.
After awhile they got him up to his own room and to bed, and all day the
Little Madre sat by him, tending to his few wants. Once he fell asleep,
and when he awoke the room was full of flowers.
"What is it?" he asked his mother feebly, "Where did they come from?"
"From friends," she said, rising and moving from one great bunch to
another. "The white and pink roses are from Cousin Kenneth’s wife," and
so she went on. "The heather and the bracken came without a name. I
think they must be from Rob—don’t you?"
She paused, turning to him questioningly. Stewart swallowed.
"Probably," he said, in a low voice.
"The Camerons sent the lilies, and those red roses are from the old
Major of the Department—you should read the card," she smiled proudly,
coming back to his bed.
He smiled at her eagerness, and laid the card down.
"That’s pretty nice, isn’t it?" he asked.
And then he looked up at her.
"But the violets?" he asked slowly. "Who left the violets?"
"The violets are from Cary," she replied, meeting his look.
A slow flush mounted over his pale face.
"Please bring them here."
She did so, holding them close to his face that he might smell of them
before she put the little vase on the table by him. He took them out of
the water, feebly, and laid them on the bed.
"Everyone is awfully kind," he said, "and I don’t deserve the fuss.
Have—many inquired—to-day?"
"All my visiting list," she replied, laughingly, "and a good many more
besides. Why the officers—" she paused, shaking her head.
"Has—Cary called?" he asked, looking hard at the foot board of the bed.
"Yes, and left the flowers herself. You are to see her—" she broke off,
anxiously watching the haggard face that he turned quickly to her own.
"When?"
"In three or four days—if you are stronger. She shall be the first."
His mother leaned over him, stroking his hair from his forehead. He met
her eyes gravely.
The late sunlight sifted through the drawn curtains and touched the
flowers; their exquisite odor crept through the stillness of the room as
the sweet memory of an old song steals through the silent chambers of
the heart.
"I love her," he said simply. "I have loved her always," he said, still
looking into her eyes.
She smiled.
"I have known it always," she answered.
But the four days lengthened into four weeks before he saw Cary. That
night the half healed wound reopened, and he had a sinking spell.
The next morning before the news had had time to become generally known,
Trevelyan mysteriously appeared at the house on Grosvenor Square, and
went straight to Stewart’s room.
"You go and lie down," he said briefly to his aunt, who had been up all
night, "I guess I ought to know how to take care of him. I did it once
before in India. I won’t leave you until I’ve pulled him through."
And then Trevelyan and Death fought it out again, and Trevelyan beat
back the Shadowy Presence in the great still London house, as he had
done weeks before in the government hospital in India. He hardly left
the sick room, and he seemed scarcely ever to sleep. He would sit for
hours at a time, his finger on Stewart’s pulse; quieting his ravings and
forcing back the fever by the might of his own will.
Except in the dim sick room where Stewart lived again in delirium the
night of the perilous ride, over the great Grosvenor Square house rested
the hush of grave sickness and impending death. The servant stationed
at the door, guarded against the possible ringing of the muffled bell,
and answered inquiries, and received the cards left, and the offerings
of flowers. None ever reached Stewart’s darkened room except the small
bunch of violets that came daily, and which his mother would bring up
and place on the table by his bed, hoping in woman-fashion that the
perfume might attract and hold his wandering faculties, or arouse him
from the stupor into which he would fall from time to time; but it never
did. If she had ever dreamed of the exquisite torture the flowers and
their scent were to Trevelyan, she would have placed them with the
others down stairs, but Trevelyan never told, and she never knew the
moments in which the perfume seemed to drive him mad.
Once she suggested getting a professional nurse to relieve him, but
catching sight of Trevelyan’s face she had stopped short.
"There! Forgive me," she said. "It is not that I don’t trust you, or
am ungrateful or believe that anyone else could do so well, but I am
afraid for you."
"I’m all right," Trevelyan had answered shortly.
"You are unselfish; you are only thinking of us and of John. You are
always thinking and doing for John."
"Don’t!" he interrupted, and through the dimness of the room she could
see that his face quivered, and she wondered.
"I could not get along without you," she went on. "None of us could,
and it has been you who have pulled him through so far."
She looked toward the long, motionless figure on the bed.
"I shall pull him through to-night and to-morrow, and to-morrow again,
and next week—until he is out of danger," said Trevleyan.
That was the day the two doctors had given Stewart up.
The crisis came and passed, and Stewart lived.
When the thralldom and the stupor of the fever had partly lifted, and
before Stewart came to himself, Trevelyan left and went back to Scotland
and to old Mactier, nor could anyone persuade him to remain.
Days later, when Stewart was sitting up, he saw Cary for the first time.
"There is some one waiting outside whom you will be glad to see," his
mother had said.
"It is Cary? You are going to let me see Cary?" he cried.
"If you will be good and not talk," she answered, leaving the door ajar.
Stewart turned his face to the door, pressing his long, thin fingers
resting on his knee, close together.
She came in carrying a bunch of violets, and stood by his chair, looking
down at him. He looked up at her, and it seemed to him that she was
beautiful, and her voice the sweetest he had ever heard.
"I have waited and wanted so to give you these myself," she said, "and
you have frightened us all so."
She spoke with the simplicity of a little girl, but there was a quality
in her voice that Stewart had not heard before, and he knew that Cary
had become a woman.
He clung to her hand in parting with that pathetic bodily weakness that
makes a man, in illness, like a child.
"Don’t go yet," he pleaded, "You’ve been here such a little while. Oh,
_please_ don’t go!"
She patted his hand.
"I will come again," she said, and on her way to the door, she kept
looking back at him and smiling. He sat motionless until her light
footstep was lost in the distance, and all day he sat quiet, scarcely
speaking, dreaming of her.
The next day he waited, expecting her, but she did not come; nor the
next.