his time reading it; or a dread of hearing from any of the old mess. At
any rate, he hesitated before opening it, even when he had disposed of
the rest of the mail.
He read it after awhile, and then he raised his head and looked hard at
the group of trees near the house.
And so Mackenzie had been transferred to a distant regiment soon after
he, Trevelyan, had resigned. There were a good many pages given to the
description of the new Station and the new set of officers and men, that
Trevelyan skipped over hastily. It was only the last part that had
struck him suddenly, like a heavy blow in the face, and that made him,
after awhile, pick up the letter and re-read the part.
"We had a cholera scare this season, but we managed to strangle it, so
that it never became more than local, but it kept Clarke—he’s my
assistant, and a good chap he is—and me, on the jump for a time. The
natives won’t look out for the water, and I don’t believe the entire
medical and military force of the United Kingdom combined would be able
to make them do so! And of course it’s damnation in this special spot
where there is more or less cholera every year. I sometimes feel
inclined to say if they’re such fools let them drink and bathe and drown
themselves in the water, for they’re not worth saving. But you see,
unless the scourge is stamped out among them it goes on spreading and
threatens the barracks. We can’t spare one of our dandy men. We need
’em all in the Service—every last mother’s son of ’em, bless their stout
old British hearts!
"You saw a case or two at the old Station, and you know something of
what it means. But you haven’t any idea of an army surgeon’s dread of an
epidemic—that is a surgeon who has been through the cholera mill. I
know, for I’ve spent most of my term in India, and years ago I was in
the midst of a howling time of it—men dropping off by the score! I
never want to go through such a thing again. The horror of it is enough
to last a man a good deal longer than his natural life—and the chaps who
helped me! Well, most of the men who could—and they were brave men,
too—took to heels, and the handful that buckled to, to nurse, kept
getting sick from fatigue and the vile water—and then when the men
died—the fires—
"There, you know it, I suppose, or you’ve heard of it before. No one
_knows_ it, until one’s been through it.
"The natives were pretty good on the whole a few months ago and so we
stamped it out then. Jove! some of them were sick, though—sicker than
the sickest dog you ever saw—. There was one fellow—he was worth
saving—and I never worked so hard over a man in my life, except Stewart
when he was hurt at the old Station. He died, though. All the while I
kept thinking of that time with Stewart, and how you brought him back
from death. I’ve never understood that, and I never learned anything
like it in my _Materia Médica_. It was kind of uncanny, but it did the
work. I wondered if you could have done something for that fellow. I
couldn’t. He was a Scotchman, by the way, of the rank and file."
Here the letter stopped. On a fresh sheet was a postscript.
"Just came across this in my desk—two months old. I must have thought I
had sent it and didn’t. Guess I’ll let it go though. Now that the
immediate cholera scare is over the natives are playing the dickens
again with the water—as they always do. It begins to look like trouble.
When the spring rains come it’ll play the devil with the Service this
time. Well!"
Trevelyan put down the letter. There was an odd fullness in his throat.
He got up and began to walk to and fro. Once he stopped and kicked at
the gravel of the drive with his heel. The odd fullness in his throat
grew, and it seemed to him as though an invisible force was impelling
him to India.
Then he gripped at his self-control, and quieted his throbbing brain by
his will. There should be no impetuous passion to lead him wrongly
here. He would weigh the risks; he would force himself to think of all
it meant—of all the horror of the details—the horrors that were
unspeakable, almost unthinkable. He had seen something of them when he
was at the Station. Whatever his decision there should be no regrets.
All day he wandered around the place—preoccupied. He did not touch his
lunch, and he scarcely touched his dinner.
In the evening he went into the great library and thought it out—alone.
Had the dreams come to this? Was this the answer?
_Was it the answer?_
He sat rigid and mute questioning the silence, but the silence gave back
no answer.
Outside the stars appeared one by one, only to hide themselves behind
the mist that slowly had arisen, and the cold chill of midnight crept in
through the closed windows. The fire on the hearth faded from its
steady glow of gold to the red of the dying embers, and the student lamp
on the table flickered and went out. And still Trevelyan sat rigid and
mute, with his wide eyes questioning the silence.
By and by the silence became alive, and was peopled with the visions of
his thoughts. He remembered what those cholera cases were, he had seen
in India—the unutterableness of it all—and there swept over him not so
much the abhorrence of death as of its manifestation. After all, was it
not wholly the close contact with the disease itself he shrank from?
Death——
Why, death was not so bad.
And Trevelyan’s tense features relaxed a little.
After all, he would not go to court death. He had lived through that
desire and conquered it the night he had lain wounded by his own hand in
the military hospital. Foolhardiness was not courage, so he had told
himself then, and so he believed now.
Then, it was not likely that he would catch the plague and die. He had
always laughed at disease; he who had never been ill; and had not
Mackenzie lived through one of the worst epidemics on record—this
promised to be mild, as compared to it. It was not so much the fear of
death and disease, but was he willing to accept both if they came?
The old passionate love of life he had felt years ago when a boy,
fighting the storm and the sea and death, shot through him and thrilled
him from his throbbing head to his feet. He rose and flung out his arms
and bent them backwards and forwards. He could feel the flow of the
blood and the _life_ that was there.
Then he thought of Mackenzie’s letter and he pictured the oncoming of
the cholera, and Mackenzie and his little band fighting the scourge
unaided. What was the strength of his life for if not to serve these;
if not to serve the men who served England! Might he not so serve
England, too, and help to save, perhaps, the lives of those who fought
in her defense and for her honor?
It would be service, but it would not be the service he had dreamed of
as a child, and striven for as a boy and a youth. He had thought to
serve with the sword, and perhaps—so he had dreamed—meet death in a
charge like the charge his father had made. His blood had thrilled at
the thought of the rally, and the command he would send down the line!
Trevelyan fumbled in the dark for his chair, and sat down.
It would never be that. If he should die serving Mackenzie and England
what he had done would die with him. He might be mentioned in the
Reports, but Reports—
Well; why not? What had he done for England that England should
remember him? He had only served England in dishonor.
"When the men died—the fires—"
It would not even mean that he could be brought back here—to Scotland,
to his crags and sea—to rest in the old vault. That last dream would
have to fade even as the other dreams had faded.
He might not serve England gloriously; he might help the Service only
indirectly, but would not the service and the help be there? Might he
not so pick up the broken pieces?
Still the silence gave back no answer.
The wan gray dawn stole in through the lifting mist and found him
wide-eyed and sleepless still.
After awhile he rose again and stretched his stiff legs and went down
the hall to the front door and opened it. The chill of the early dawn
struck him and he shivered. He walked down to the sea and stood there,
looking out over the gray, cold waste of waters, and then he climbed to
the eyrie, and looked out over the waters again. They seemed colder and
grayer than before, and from force of habit he crawled to the ledge and
leaned over. The _swish_, s-w-i-s-h, of the breakers below reached him,
and through the faint mist he could see the white foam. The toss of the
spray touched his face in friendly greeting as it had done so often—so
often before.
The faintest touch of shell-like pink crept into the gray sky and
deepened, and was reflected on the sea, and still Trevelyan lingered.
The old passionate strength of the boy-child came back to him then, as
he hung, listening to the beat of the sea. The self-assurance had gone
from the courage, and had been crushed beyond restoration when he had
broken the clay; but the courage was there—born afresh—unyielding and
enduring and deep as the sea.
He rose to his feet and he flung out his arms toward the sea as he had
done when he had beaten it and the storm and death, in Cary’s home, as a
child; but he said nothing, for the odd fullness in his throat. Let
death come so, his heart cried. Death, even when it strikes, does not
always conquer, and Death was not all.
Then he climbed down and went back to the house, and up-stairs and flung
himself on his bed.
The sea had answered his questionings.
_Thus_ would he serve the Service.
*VIII.*
It was late in the forenoon when Trevelyan awoke. He lay still awhile
listening to the beat of the sea on the crags. The music of the waters
had been his reveille since a child, when he had used to get up with the
break of the day. The old triumphant note that had been missing in the
sea’s song so long was in it to-day. He did not define it, but he was
acutely conscious of its presence, and it haunted him while dressing and
all during his lonely breakfast.
Then he went up-stairs and got his Gladstone and rummaged through his
bureau drawers and closets, preparing for a short journey. Later, he
sent for Mactier.
The old man came at once and stood in the doorway respectful and silent,
watching his master pack.
"Is that you, Mactier? Well, I’m off again. I’m going to run over to
Mr. John’s. I’ll be back day after to-morrow or the next—sure."
Mactier twirled his cap around and around with his hands, and looked
down at it hard.
"Ay, sir."
"I’ll come right back from there," Trevelyan went on, sorting collars,
as he spoke, "and then I’ll go over the accounts with you and see what
the tenants want. I’m going back to India as soon as I can get there."
Mactier’s stoic Scotch features showed no surprise.
"Ay, sir," he said again, in a low voice, "’Tis what I’ve expected this
lang time."
Trevelyan looked up from his packing, amused.
"You have—have you?"
"Is it the army, sir?" asked Mactier, doubtfully.
Trevelyan sat back on his heels.
"No," he said, briefly, not meeting Mactier’s eyes, "it’s the cholera."
The cap Mactier had been twirling dropped suddenly from his hand and he
came a step forward. The long years in which Trevelyan had grown to be
a man faded from Mactier’s consciousness; the big retired officer of the
Queen’s service, was a boy again—the boy whom he had flung across his
shoulder when he was wounded and brought home through the darkness of
that long moorland night.
"Not the cholera, laddie! O, not the cholera!"
"That’s just what it’s going to be," said Trevelyan, wheeling around
suddenly on his heel. "Where in thunder is that shirt?"
The old impetuous decision brought Mactier back to his surroundings at
once. He was again the old retainer with the respectful manner and the
stoic Scotch face. He stooped and picked from the floor the shirt that
had fallen from the bed.
"Here it is, sir," he said.
"That’s it. Thanks." Trevelyan gave the shirt a shake and laid it in
the Gladstone. "I’m just going to look around out there—you know I never
could stay long in one place at a time, Mactier—and perhaps help the
soldiers a little. I’ll be back before you know it!"
Mactier continued to hand him slowly one by one the articles on the bed,
which Trevelyan put into the Gladstone. The old man was silent.
Trevelyan closed the Gladstone with a snap and looked up, a quizzical
smile in his eyes.
"You’re not afraid I’m going to get the cholera and die—are you?"
Mactier looked down at him adoringly.
"Ay, sir, I fear just that."
Trevelyan laughed.
"Nonsense! Nothing has ever killed me yet." He rose and pushed the
Gladstone to one side with his foot. "When I get back from Aberdeen,
we’ll fix everything up for the year. If anything goes wrong or you want
any advice, you can refer to Mr. Granger as usual. He’ll come up from
Edinburgh if necessary."
"Veera gude, sir."
"I guess that’s about all for the present. You’d better tell James to
have the trap around in plenty of time to get me to that afternoon
train."
Trevelyan reached the Stewarts’ the next morning. They were not
expecting him, and the little country station was deserted. He hired a
carriage and a man, and was driven the seven miles that lay between him
and the house. He looked out over the long stretch of familiar road with
indifferent eyes, and the liveryman who had known him ever since the
year his aunt had brought him to Aberdeen county, when his mother had
died, wondered at his silence. Trevelyan’s heart throbs kept time to
the revolving of the carriage wheels.
"We are taking you to her," they cried again and again—maddeningly.
"You are to see her again," they cried, and his heart was in his throat
as the carriage turned in at the big twisted iron gates.
He caught sight of her a long distance off, and before the noise of the
approaching wheels had attracted attention. She was a little apart from
the group that was gathered on the side piazza Malcolm Stewart had added
years ago to the rambling old house. She was seated on a step, her big
shade hat covered with wild flowers, lying at her feet, and adding a
touch of color to the pale effect of her gray dress. Her hands were
resting in her lap and she was looking off absent-mindedly toward the
stretch of sunlit beach.
Mrs. Stewart was reading aloud, now and then putting out her hand to
stroke John’s, that rested on the arm of the big garden chair drawn
close to hers. He was looking steadily up at the white clouds sailing
overhead and smiling to himself—not listening to the reading. Tom
Cameron was teasing Maggie’s collie because he did not dare tease
Maggie.
And all about the group the noonday sun of autumn lay as warm and bright
as it might have done in summer.
It was Maggie who first heard the carriage and who caught sight of its
approach around the curve in the long drive. She scrambled to her feet,
and gathering up her skirts tore down the steps and drive to meet it,
Tom Cameron at her heels and the collie bringing up the rear.
"It’s Rob," she shouted, breathlessly, and tripped suddenly and lay
sprawling on the ground, the collie barking frantically and whirling
around her in the dust of the gravel.
Trevelyan flung the reins to the liveryman and jumped down.
"Hello, Maggie," he cried, picking her up before Cameron could reach
her. "Hello, Tom! There, don’t bark yourself mad, Bruce! Hello,
everybody!"
They gathered around him, and his aunt kissed him affectionately.
"You’re a good boy," she said, the charm of a rare smile lighting up her
eyes. "But why did you not wire you were coming so that we could have
met you? Your boxes are coming later?"
"Thought I’d surprise you all. Here’s my box now." He motioned to the
liveryman, who was lifting his Gladstone out of the trap.
"_That?_" said Maggie scornfully.
Trevelyan laughed, conscious the while that Cary was coming toward him.
"It’s good to see you again," she said simply, putting her hand in his
and looking straight into his eyes, "But I said you wouldn’t come!"
"Did you?" he asked, forgetting the group around him as he looked at
her. "Why?"
She smiled slowly.
"Oh, I hardly know. I suppose because I thought you wouldn’t leave home
and your old crags and your big thunder storms. We’re so much quieter
here."
Trevelyan turned sharply and beat his big hand softly against John’s
shoulder.
"How are you, old man?" he asked, not raising his eyes from his own
hand.
"Fine. I’m getting on my feet again. I drive myself now, and ride a
little and walk."
"Good. Hello, Maggie—going on breaking Tom’s heart?" he pulled
disrespectfully at one of Maggie’s stray curls, while Cameron fumed
inwardly.
Maggie nodded cheerfully and beckoned Cameron to come and wipe the dust
from her dress with his handkerchief.
They bore Trevelyan back with them to the piazza, and Mrs. Stewart sent
for some lunch, which he ate out there in the midst of them. Stewart
flung himself back in his big garden chair a little distance away and
shaded his eyes with his hand, studying Trevelyan’s face. There was
something in it he could not understand and it haunted him. He
continued to watch it all the morning, and when Trevelyan was playing
tennis with Cameron. And later his eyes would wander from Trevelyan to
Cary, sitting over with his sister at the tea table. He noticed with a
great pain at his heart that Cary was watching Trevelyan too, and that
there rested over her face an expression that he, who had studied her
every mood, had never seen before, and he wondered suddenly if he had
been a fool—living in a fool’s paradise of late. Perhaps it was
Trevelyan after all—perhaps—
Perhaps, too, the light that had sometimes crept shyly into her eyes
during these last days—as shyly as a sunbeam creeps into gray wells of
beauty—had not dawned for him. And all their walks upon the beach; and
all their drives together; and all their watching of the rising moon had
been nothing to her after all. And they had been _his_ life!
All night he lay awake, suffering dumbly, not knowing that Trevelyan in
the adjoining room lay stretched across the bed, his face buried in the
pillow, wondering passionately how he was to say "good-bye" to her
to-morrow—without her knowing! Without her knowing!
*IX.*
At dawn Trevelyan got up and waited at the window for the sunrise. By
and by he could hear the servants moving below stairs. The long minutes
passed. From a turn in the drive he could see Martin returning with the
mail that had come in late the night before. He watched him curiously
as he paused to speak with McGuire, the gardener, and he wondered in an
indifferent sort of way what he was saying that caused the latter to
suddenly grow so excited. He rose and went down stairs, meeting Martin
at the door.
"Anything the matter?"
Martin jerked off his cap awkwardly, and handed him the mail and the
papers.
"It’s them Gordon ’Ighlanders, sir," he said. "If you’ll look at the
paper—"
Trevelyan opened the sheet.
Martin watched him from a respectful distance. He saw Trevelyan crush
the paper suddenly in his hand and turn sharply on his heel, and go into
the library and close the door. "I thought that there would stir Master
Robert up," he muttered. "Law! that was awful fine, an’ won’t Betty
stare an’ hollow!"
An hour later the family assembled in the breakfast room.
"Where is Robert?" asked Mrs. Stewart, sitting down.
John shook his head.
"His room’s empty. Must be taking a walk. What has become of the
morning paper?"
Trevelyan appeared suddenly in the doorway. He held the paper in his
hand, and his face was as white as the sheet. His uncle rose hastily.
"Great heavens, boy! What’s the matter?"
"_Matter?_" Trevelyan’s voice rang out excitedly. "Read that!"
Half a dozen hands reached out for the paper. Trevelyan snatched it
hungrily back.
"Let me read it to you! It’s the Gordon Highlanders." Trevelyan’s
words stumbled over each other. "They’ve assaulted the Dargai Hill!
The Gurkhas, Dorsets and Derbys couldn’t take it! Then General Kempster
ordered the Gordon Highlanders and the Third Sikhs to reinforce the
fighting line. The pipers played the ’Cock of the North,’ and then the
mixed troops—the Highlanders and the Dorsets and Gurkhas and Derbys and
Sikhs swept across! God! Look at the list of the dead!"
Trevelyan tossed the paper to John and turned away and leaned against
the sideboard, his elbows on it, his head in his hands.
Young Stewart caught the paper and sat down at the table and spread it
out in front of him with nervous fingers, and began to read, the rest
gathering around him. The Highlanders of Aberdeen!
The breakfast stood untouched, growing colder every minute, but no one
thought of it.
Young Stewart’s voice got husky now and then, and when he was half way
through the sheet, he pushed it over to Cameron and rose.
"I guess you’d better finish it," he said.
It was hard to forget that if it had not been for that India transfer,
he would have been with the Highlanders!
Trevelyan came forward suddenly, and leaned over Cary’s chair.
"Isn’t it splendid," he said. "That’s the way we Scotch fight—" he
broke off abruptly, recoiling before the consciousness that he had not
fought so.
"It’s grand," cried the American girl, her breath coming quickly.
The elder Stewart looked up for a moment from the paper he was reading
over Cameron’s shoulder.
"You ought to have been there, Robert! That’s just your kind of work!"
"I wish to God I had!"
Mrs. Stewart crossed the room and went over to where John was sitting at
the furthest end of the table, his chin in his hand. She sat down by
him and leaned forward to speak to him.
"I know it’s hard," she said, "but think how I would have felt!"
Stewart drew outlines on the cloth with the breakfast knife he had
picked up.
"We won’t talk of it," he answered, and he turned his face away.
His mother said nothing, and by and by she rose and went back to the
group. Something in her face as she came up to them attracted Trevelyan
and he stopped short in his excited talk and looked toward the solitary
figure at the end of the table. His grasp suddenly relaxed on Cary’s
chair and he went up to Stewart and sat down on the arm of his chair and
gripped hard at his shoulder.
"I’m a brute," he said in a low voice, and he kept his grip on Stewart’s
arm, and it was he who by and by led the others to calm down and eat
their breakfast after some sort of a fashion.
He was to leave at midnight, and he had come especially to see Cary, but
he scarcely saw her throughout the length of the long day. After that he
devoted himself to Stewart, forcing him to think and speak of other
things besides the great excitement of the hour. He laughed with him;
he talked to him, and they went over their boyhood again. It was as it
had once been between them, before they had grown to men. Once in the
twilight Trevelyan spoke of Cary.
"Things are all going to pull straight between you," he said.
But Stewart, remembering the look on Cary’s face, when she had been
watching Trevelyan the day before, shook his head.
It was not until Trevelyan went to dress for dinner that he realized
that the real hardness of the task lay undone. He would leave at
midnight, and only God knew when he would come to Aberdeen again—and God
was silent. To-night would mean "good-bye."
After dinner he went up to Cary as she was sitting at the piano in the
music room.
"Won’t you come for a walk on the beach?"
She looked up, flushed, and her hands fell back upon the keys
discordantly.
"Why—I don’t know. Isn’t it too cold?"
"It isn’t cold," he said, picking up a white cashmere shawl and flinging
it across her bare shoulders. "Come."
A tone in his voice caught and held her wavering and turned it to
decision. She rose.
They passed Stewart in the hall, on his way to the music room, his flute
in his hand.
"We’re going down to the shore for a little while," said Trevelyan,
pausing before moving on.
Stewart nodded.
"Oh, all right. Don’t get cold, Cary."
And he went on to the deserted music room.
Trevelyan led her down the little path to the beach. He talked in a
matter of fact way on indifferent subjects, as though to set her at her
ease. He smiled grimly to the darkness.
"She’s afraid I’ll forget myself," he kept thinking.
They came from out of the strip of woods and its shadows to the beach,
stretching away on either hand in the distance, and sloping ahead of
them into the sea that kissed it and then receded, holding it at arm’s
length before it embraced it again, as a lover does his sweetheart. The
slow creeping up and retreating of the waters came faintly and
soothingly to their ears. Far off a faint light appeared in the
heavens, marking the rising moon. The burden of the day and the
excitement of the battle crept off and were lost in the shadows.