don’t she come any more?"
"I suppose she thinks you’re out of danger now, and she may have other
things to do."
"If that isn’t just the way of women! Coming all the time when a chap
don’t know anything or anybody, and then just when he needs cheering—"
he broke off, pulling viciously at the shawl over his feet.
His mother smiled, knowing better "the way of women."
But two days later, when Cary called again, she spoke to her of his
loneliness.
"He gets tired of the home faces," she said, "and he isn’t strong enough
yet to see the men or strangers. Perhaps if you could read aloud to him
now and then——"
"Why, of course I could," said Cary, and after that she came oftener.
They would carry Stewart down to his mother’s cheerful little sitting
room, and there one or more of the family would gather and Cary would
talk or read aloud. At such times Stewart would lean back in his chair
among his pillows and remain silent, content to look at her and to
listen to her voice. One day they were left alone together. He remained
quiet, his eyes fixed on her. Presently she finished the chapter and
turned the page.
"I think that was a pretty strong scene, don’t you?" she asked, pausing
for a moment before she went on, and peering at him gravely over the top
of the book.
"Yes—it was," he answered absently.
"You weren’t listening to a word of it," she exclaimed reproachfully.
He laughed.
"To tell you the truth—no. Put the wretched old thing down and talk to
me."
She laid the book down as he had bidden, but she played nervously with
the leaves.
"What shall I talk about?"
"Oh, anything—yourself."
"Upon my word, but you’re polite. There isn’t an earthly thing to tell
about myself," she added, "And I don’t know any topic that would
interest you. There’s that House of Commons speech, of course, but——"
"Then I’ll talk to you."
"Oh, you _mustn’t_!" She looked up startled, "Sir Archibald said you
were not to exert yourself."
"Confound the old codger, anyway! Does he expect to keep me tongue-tied
the rest of my life?"
Cary laughed.
"You’re cross to-day," she said. "You’re getting better. It’s a sure
sign."
Stewart leaned forward suddenly; then he leaned back and traced an
outline of a sword on the leather arm of the chair.
"Did you know," he asked her slowly, "that as far as the Service is
concerned, I’m done for—that I’ll never be well enough for it again;
that I’ve been injured beyond hope for the Service; that I’ve had to
resign?"
"Yes," said Cary gently, looking hard at the book in her lap.
"Thirty and—done for," he said bitterly, "All the Woolwich years to
count for nothing; all the study; all the ambition, all the—hope, to
count for nothing!" His finger paused in tracing the outline of the
sword.
"Oh, you mustn’t say that," cried Cary, "you must remember what you’ve
done already—more than many older officers do in their whole lives. And
then—"
He interrupted her.
"That sounds well," he said. "But life isn’t worth much to a man when
he’s laid on the shelf just when he’s beginning to live— But the wasted
years and the inactive life ahead!" He went on rapidly, beating the
fist of one hand against the palm of the other. "Oh, think what
inactivity will mean after the life I’ve been trained to, and worked
for, and loved!"
She sat silent, her heart throbbing with a great pity.
"To have to think of myself—to look out for draughts like a sickly,
nervous old man!" Something rose in Stewart’s throat, and he coughed.
"Can’t ever command the men again! Can’t lead them to battle, or ever
feel the soft earth under me, or see the stars and the night through the
flap of my tent! To have to give up trying to be something, or do
something—at thirty!"
He stopped short.
The book fell from Cary’s lap to the floor, and she stooped to pick it
up with swimming eyes. He caught sight of her face and he leaned
forward; all the anger and all the resentment gone from his voice—melted
by her tears.
"Bah!" he said, "That’s just about the fate I’m fit for if I haven’t got
any more grit than that! Of course I didn’t mean it, and you must try
and forget it. Of course the Service is out of the question, but I
_will_ make something of my life! And I’m awfully glad, too, for what
I’ve had of it, and—been allowed to do. I’m glad for the Woolwich years
and—and the training—and—all that! Of course it hasn’t been lost. And
I’m glad I’ve done something for the Service—even in a little way, and
saved—" he caught himself up suddenly.
Cary rose, her tears dried by the burning fever in her eyes. She
finished the sentence.
"Saved Robert from exposure!"
He looked up quickly.
"I—I don’t understand you."
"Oh, yes, you do too," said Cary, breathing hard. "You think I don’t
know all about it! I do, though!"
"How?"
"Robert told me himself."
Stewart drew a deep breath and looked away. There was a long silence in
the room. After awhile she went up to the big leather chair and laid one
hand on the back of it and bent her head, looking down at him.
"Johnny?"
He looked up, his firm mouth working.
"Johnny, you’re the best man that ever lived!"
"Oh, Cary!" he said, and he tried to laugh.
She nodded decidedly.
"But I know. Robert told me what you’d been to him, and—he didn’t spare
himself."
Stewart stared straight ahead of him.
"Poor Rob," he said. "Poor boy!"
Cary moved off to the window and looked out, absent-mindedly, folding
the edge of the curtain with her fingers.
"It’s all like a terrible dream," she said slowly, "and I keep thinking
I’ll awake. It doesn’t seem possible. I keep remembering the time he
saved us in that awful storm, years ago at home,
and—it—doesn’t—seem—possible!"
"No, but it’s all too true," said Stewart.
Cary wheeled around, facing the room.
"And I am responsible. It was through his love for me!" she cried.
Stewart shook his head.
"You tried to help him. I tried to help him—all the fellows did, but he
just let himself go. When a man like that wants something, he sweeps
everything out of his way and rushes on blindly."
"Oh, but it was the love for me!" said Cary; then suddenly: "How you
shielded him!"
"Do you think I did right? After all, perhaps, I wasn’t meant for the
Service. If I had done all my duty—"
"I think you did right," said Cary, looking down with grave eyes at her
locked fingers, and she came back into the room and sat down, "Shall I
tell you why I think so?"
"Yes."
"No exposure could remedy the hurt he gave himself—to his own manhood
and his own honor—" she broke off, and then went on hurriedly. "Oh, if
he could only have realized what that meant—keeping his honor clean—"
she broke off again, and Stewart looked away so that he might not see
her face. She went on.
"The survey was made all right and so it was not the hurt to the Service
it might have been, but only to himself; and your punishment in forcing
him to resign was severe enough! His own remorse makes up the rest, and
the two may bring him another chance." She paused.
Stewart leaned his head on his hand, his elbow on the arm of the chair,
and looked fixedly off into space.
"Perhaps you’re right—I guess you are," he said, slowly. "I thought
something like that at the time. It may be the saving of him. I didn’t
do an officer’s whole duty, but I tried to be just. I tried to spare
him and—and—" he hesitated, "those at home. I suppose another man might
have told. I just held my tongue. It was an accident—my seeing. I was
worried over the boy and couldn’t keep away—" he was speaking
disjointedly. "I loved the Service. God! how I loved it, and I
couldn’t bear that he might really harm it some time, so I made him get
out. But I couldn’t disgrace him; have him court-marshaled and
cashiered, or—or pay the penalty—" he broke off, and Cary rose to go.
"He is paying the penalty," she said. "He pays it with every breath he
draws."
"Yes; and they tell me that twice he has nursed me and saved me, and I
never knew!"
Cary looked down thoughtfully at Stewart’s thin hand resting on the arm
of the chair, and Stewart looked at her and the silence grew and grew.
If only he knew whether——
She looked up quickly, as though divining his thoughts, and she flushed
a little.
"We will keep the secret," she said, "you and I—won’t we? And we will
try and help him? Do you know, I believe he’ll take his ambition and
courage and—love," the flush mounted higher, "and remould his life?"
She hesitated, "Even hopeless love—" and then she broke off, turning her
face away. Stewart did not speak or move.
"Then it isn’t Robert," he said to himself after she had gone,
"Then—it—isn’t—Robert!"
*V.*
Weeks later, when Stewart was able, he went around to see Cary.
"It’s a dreadful pull—up those stairs," said Cary, rolling forward a
chair and looking anxiously at Stewart as he stood wan and breathless,
but smiling, in the doorway.
"It never used to be," he panted, sitting down.
His eyes wandered about the room.
"Jove, but it’s good to get back here! And you haven’t changed things a
bit—even the Psyche in her old place! And the little tea kettle—Jove!"
He leaned back restfully.
She laughed and watched him in silence.
"I’ll miss it all like the dickens!"
She looked up quickly from the flowers she was just beginning to
arrange.
"You are not going away, are you?" she asked.
He nodded and sighed.
"Home—to Scotland. The lease on the place has run out, and they think
country air will brace me up a bit—so we’re going. It’ll seem queer to
get back there after all these years."
"You—you’re going to give up the Grosvenor Square house?"
"Yes. I suppose, though, we’ll come back every year for the season and
take a suite at the Langham or the Buckingham Gate. Father has an idea
that he’ll put me through a course of politics up there, when we’re
alone, and there’s nothing going on." Stewart smiled mirthlessly.
"You are thinking of going into politics, when you get strong?" asked
Cary for something to say. A sudden unutterable homesickness had swept
over her.
"I’m not sure—it isn’t unlikely though. I suppose that’s as good a way
to serve the country as half a man can—perhaps a little better—to try
and help keep one detail of the government’s work clean! Father has set
his heart on the Diplomatic service for me."
"I should think you’d like that," said Cary. Talking to-day for some
reason was an effort.
"I’m not sure. What are you and the Captain going to do with
yourselves?"
Cary leaned against the back of a chair, tearing a stray rose leaf to
pieces. She looked down at it as she spoke.
"Papa wants another tramp through the Alps. I’m not in the mood for
tramping, but he’s been so good I can’t say a word. When we’ve climbed
Mont Blanc again and come down, I think I’ll get Daddy to take me home.
I think I’m a little mite homesick."
She turned quickly and buried her face in the roses. An odd light
sprang to Stewart’s eyes.
"Haven’t you been happy in England?" he asked.
Cary lifted her head, her face dyed with the deep red of the roses.
"Happy! There’s no place like England—except America," she said. "I
love every stone in England—in the United Kingdom! Months ago Daddy and
I spent a July in Hertfordshire. I can see it all now; the glorious
green of everything; the undulating country and the woods and the
scattered old cottages, with the village in the distance and the church
spire showing, and the little river and the cornfields and the poppies!"
She breathed quicker. "There is only one thing sweeter I know—the old
fort at home and the long beach and the sea."
She stopped, and the red of the roses faded. She went on slowly.
"Yes, I guess I’m a little bit homesick, for the beach and the sea."
"Do you remember when we were crossing I asked you to let me take you to
my home in Scotland when the homesickness came?" asked Stewart. "You
might come to us when the Captain is re-climbing Mont Blanc."
He paused, waiting for an answer, but Cary was silent.
"Wouldn’t you come?"
She threw the last bit of the torn leaf away and came toward him and
stopped, her hands on the back of a chair, a smile creeping into her
eyes.
"I might—if I was asked," she said demurely.
He laughed like a boy.
"Mother’ll see to that."
"She’ll have to," said Cary, tossing her head.
"But you’d still be homesick?"
She wrinkled up her forehead.
"Goodness, even Scotland isn’t America," she answered. "Why, I suppose
I would—some!"
Stewart closed the carriage door decidedly. Then he leaned back and
stared into the mirror opposite, addressing the reflection there. The
odd light had come back to his eyes.
"It’s what I’ve been waiting for," he said, speaking aloud and slowly;
"it’s what I’ve been waiting for all these years. She’s homesick, and
she shall come home—to me."
*VI.*
To Trevelyan, up in Scotland, each day evolved itself into an eternity.
There were the lonely breakfasts in the mornings; the lonely walks about
the grounds, or out on the steep, bare crags; the lonely lunches; the
lonely afternoons spent in wandering around the silent house; the
lonelier evenings in which the unread book would drop from his hand to
the floor, and he would stare absently into the shadows; the lonely
wakeful nights—it was always loneliness.
Old Mactier would often pause in his morning work and look after the
solitary figure and ponder and shake his head before he went back to his
duties. Trevelyan sometimes used to stop by him and talk to him a
little before he resumed his walk. Once he carried Mactier off to the
moorlands for a week’s shooting and Mactier was actually conscious that
Trevelyan seemed happier with his gun under his arm again than he had
been since the day of his mysterious return.
It was Trevelyan, not Mactier, who led the hunt in those days, and the
old man would press after him, sometimes stumbling with the fatigue he
was too proud to acknowledge, and glorying in the prowess of the great
strong figure ahead, that he had carried as a child and in whose hands
he had placed the first firearms—almost before the child was strong
enough to hold the weapon or could pull the trigger by himself.
If Trevelyan exhausted the old retainer, he tired himself too, and at
night he would drop, almost too weary to take off his hunting boots, and
go to sleep, and sleep heavily, dreamlessly, as he had not done for
weeks.
It was a relief, that, to get away from the haunting shadow in his
dreams; and he blessed passionately the fatigue that brought even for so
brief a time, forgetfulness.
At the end of the week he and Mactier went home, and the inactivity and
the loneliness and the sleeplessness grew greater than before.
There was no face of his own kind to greet him here, in Scotland; the
Camerons were his nearest neighbors, and the Camerons were away—Tom in
Aberdeen. There was no one to help him, even if they could, to beat
back the blind despair that threatened him with mental and with moral
death.
One day he ordered out the hounds and rode across country until the
fields and trees and fences became blurred together by the touch of
twilight. He returned mud stained and mortally weary and stalked into
the dining room and over to the sideboard, where he locked his table
wines. He took out a decanter and hunted around for a glass, and
carried both into the library, and sat down. Then he poured some of the
wine and swallowed it at a mouthful. He filled the glass again and
drank the liquor leisurely, lounging back in his chair with a sigh of
content. After all, he declared, there was nothing like a bracer when a
chap was fagged out.
By and by, he slipped down a little in his chair and stretched his legs,
still encased in their mud-stained boots, straight out in front of him
and went to sleep. When he awoke it was quite dark, and he sat still,
staring through the uncurtained window into the night, and conscious of
a delicious languor. Then as his faculties became more acute and the
old spectre returned to haunt him, he instinctively stretched forth his
hand in the blackness and fumbled for the decanter and the glass. He
drunk deeply once, twice, three times—and when he raised the glass for
the fourth time his hand shook and there was an odd rushing sound in his
head.
Suddenly he sat forward in his chair, pushed the glass and decanter from
him roughly and flung out his arms across the table. The odd rushing
sound subsided, and he became aware that the wine was dripping from the
table to the floor, where he had overturned the decanter.
He did not refill it, and the sideboard remained unlocked—and empty.
So the days passed. He would climb up into the eyrie, as he had done as
a child and listen to the beating sea below. Once the sea had sung to
him of undiscovered lands, whose shores it touched, bearing the message
back to him; it had sung of wealth and fame gained by the sword—it was
by the sword always—and it had beaten and beaten, and sung of all that
he would one day like to be; and of what some day he would be and
achieve. Once it had sung of love—of its mystery and the essence of its
life—
Now—
He would crawl to the edge of the crag and peer over into the white
foam, holding on to the edge until the old boyish dizziness came back;
but unlike in the old days, there was never a woman’s face in the foam
now. What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the foam!
[Illustration: "_What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the
foam?_"]
And the song of the sea was the song of death and dishonor. He might
climb the crag to-day, and to-morrow, and every to-morrow of his life,
and the song would not change. The sea was a vast organ; he could not
change its tunes back to the old ones; he could not control it, and it
went on, rolling out its fierce, deep music of dishonor.
And then he would leave the sea and the crags and go back into the empty
house. The house was only a shade less bad; with its deserted rooms and
its long gallery of dead and gone Campbells and Trevelyans.
He had wandered into the gallery once or twice. The faces on the
canvases, grown indistinct with the years, seemed to look back at him
without recognition that he was of their race and line. What claim had
they on him or he on them? The men had been brave and the women fair—so
the history and traditions of the house had said, even if the stiff
painted figures and the severe painted faces often said otherwise—the
men had always been in the front wherever they were needed for the
defense of Scotland and her rights, and later they had defended England
too. If they had not fought for her with the sword, they had with
tongue or pen—if they had not been soldiers, they had been powers in the
government or in the pulpit. Even the solemn-faced preacher near the
big window at the furthest end of the gallery, when eloquence had
failed, had left the old kirk to strike a blow for King Charlie. The
women, too, had been brave—brave in the sacrifice of beauty and wealth
for the upholding of Scottish rights, and the renouncing of husbands and
lovers and sons for Scotland.
At the other side of the gallery hung his father’s race—the Trevelyans;
and opposite the solemn-faced preacher, near to the window where the sun
struck it in the morning, was the picture of his mother. It had been
taken of her in the first years of her marriage, soon after he had been
born. People had said that, as a child, he had held his head proudly,
like hers.
The grave, smiling eyes seemed to follow him as he turned hastily from
the portrait. She had gloried in the traditions of her race; she had
been proud—justly—of her line. He thanked God she was dead—that he
might remember her as the portrait had painted her to be—on the flood
tide of her love and her beauty and her strength.
There was the picture of his father, in his full regimentals. He had
been years older than his wife, but how they had loved each other; how
proud they had been of each other’s race, and how proud they had been of
him. He was glad that his father was traveling in the Far East and had
not seen him or demanded explanations since his return. He would have
been obliged to meet the questionings with silence. It was better so.
Between the two portraits hung one of himself as a child. How his
father and mother had watched the growing of the portrait under the
master’s brush, waiting for its completion, that it might be hung in the
gallery. It had been painted the year his mother had died—a year before
he went to America. The artist had taken something of the grace and
alertness of the great hound that had rested at the boy’s feet and put
it into the supple limbs of the boy himself. He had painted into the
boy’s eyes the reflection of the gray stormy sea, and had lent them
something of the gray sea’s strength.
And he had been like that as a child, with all the promise of a ripe
manhood! And now that he had grown to be a man——
There was a long stretch of empty wall space next to the portrait of his
father, and his father had once laughingly told him that his portrait
should hang there, painted in uniform, when he had left Woolwich and won
his spurs and returned after seeing service.
And he had returned from service without the uniform!
He had used to come and dream here after the Woolwich years, whenever he
could get off from duty or was not with Cary. He had come here often in
that winter when Cary was away in France. And he had planned his
portrait hanging so, in uniform, with hers near his—even as his mother’s
was near his father’s. And sometimes when the sun had gone and the
darkness had crept in, the shadows had taken other forms—the forms of
children—who would troop up and take their places on the empty spaces
waiting for them on the wall.
He had dreamed of her—-of Cary—as a strong passionate nature dreams of
its best beloved. He had fancied her in a hundred different guises—at
the head of his table, moving around the house, as its mistress, talking
to old Mactier and his tenantry, as the master’s wife; he had dreamed of
her, after he and she had lived together alone for a period of ineffable
bliss, as the mother of his children; strong sons and fair daughters,
that would reflect her sweetness and his strength—the completion of
their love. He had dreamed of the time when the house would ring with
their voices, and then of the days when the house had lapsed into
silence again, when learning love’s mystery they had gone to homes of
their own; when he and she would live on in a love that time could not
change, nor age wither; how later she would lay him in the tomb of his
ancestors, and later still they would put her close beside him and his
people. He had never dreamed of her dying first, or of his life without
her.
And now, she had gone from his life, and the dreams had gone; and he had
shattered the hopes with his own hand. He would never feel her in his
arms, or lean down and rest the hollow of his cheek against her hair; he
would never see her moving around the house, or watch her shadow as she
passed. She would never rest beside him in the vault.
The house would remain silent in the years that stretched ahead, as it
had remained silent in the years that lay behind. There would never be
again even the dream echoes of the children’s voices. His portrait—in
uniform—would never hang upon the wall; the space where he had dreamed
her pictured face would look down into his living one, would be left
empty; and the shadows would never take the forms of little children,
and only the grim shadow-curtain of darkness would stretch across the
barren wall.
And he would leave the gallery and go into the desolate library, where
he and she had stood that day of the storm, and he would sit down and
bow his face on the big, carved table, wondering what was the answer to
the twisted riddle of his life.
He had told himself he would pick up the broken pieces and remould them
for England and the Service, and he had thought to learn the answer
here—at home, in Scotland, by the crags and sea.
But Scotland had not answered him.
*VII.*
Trevelyan let the hand that held Mackenzie’s letter fall between his
sprawling legs.
He had been sitting on the front steps of the house when Mactier had
brought him his mail and he had opened it there.
There were the papers, and a half dozen bills, a wedding invitation, two
sets of reception cards, the announcement of a club meeting, and a
letter from his aunt in eastern Scotland, begging him to come to them,
if only for a week, and telling him that Cary was with them,
and—Mackenzie’s letter.