THE HOUSE OF WOE
Isla sprang forward and knelt down in a silence that could be felt. The
old man lay slightly on his side, and Rosmead, as he too knelt down, saw
at once that all was over.
Isla's white face and terrified eyes turned to him in swift appeal.
"Will you take your horse and ride quickly for Dr. Blair? I left him at
the keeper's house at Rofallion. Any of them here will tell you where it
is. And even if he is gone from there the people will know what
direction he took."
Rosmead rose to his feet, and on his face was a great and sad
gentleness.
"I will go if you wish, my dear, but it is useless. He is dead."
Isla sprang up, and her eyes flashed.
"Dead! How dare you say that? He can't be dead--it is impossible. He
was quite well this morning--better than he has been for years. I told
Dr. Blair so when he wished to come and see him this very morning. Oh,
if only I had let him come!"
Her hand on the shabby old bell-pull sent a hundred echoes through the
house and brought Diarmid, shaking and apprehensive, to the door.
Isla turned to him sharply.
"Come, Diarmid. The General has had a fit--or something. Help to lift
him up, and carry him to his room. Will you, Mr. Rosmead? Oh, thank
you very much. Then if you will ride for the doctor it will be the
greatest service you can render."
As they would have addressed themselves to their task she stooped and
tried to release the sheet of paper from the fingers that held it like a
vice. But the effort was useless. As she knelt there she was able to
read the address on the one side, and, on the other, which she turned
with a shaking finger, the signature of Colonel Martindale.
Then she knew what had happened.
She left the room and flew up the stairs to see that the bed was ready,
and, as she heard Margaret Maclaren clucking to her handful of poultry
at the kitchen door, she wondered how all the work and business of their
little world could go on as before, while her life was over.
The bed was straight and the fair linen sheet turned back when Rosmead
and the serving-man appeared with their burden. Even then Isla noted
the extreme gentleness and power displayed by Rosmead, and from that
moment he seemed, as it were, to take over her case and to legislate for
her.
They laid the poor old General on his bed, and Rosmead very gently drew
the lids over the staring eyes that seemed to have a great horror in
them.
"Oh, go for the doctor--go quickly, for God's sake!" cried Isla--"or it
will be too late."
"It is too late now," he said.
And, stepping to the toilet-table, he lifted the General's small
shaving-glass that had been carried through many a campaign and laid it
against his lips. There was not the faintest sign of a misty breath on
it.
"It is the infallible sign, my dear. God help and comfort you! I will
send your woman to you and then go after the doctor. It will be well
that he should be here even if he can do nothing."
Isla, now almost convinced that her father was indeed dead, did not cry.
But Rosmead never forgot the despair of her face. She bent over the
prostrate figure and once more essayed to remove the letter from the
gripping fingers.
Rosmead stepped forward to help her and, after a small effort, he
succeeded in releasing it. She smoothed it out, folded it, and put it
inside the bosom of her gown. Her face seemed to harden then till it
became set like marble.
"I will never forgive Malcolm Mackinnon this!" she said under her
breath, "never while I live."
Rosmead, guessing some tragedy beneath, decently turned away and went
down to get his horse from the stable. As he left the house the keeper
appeared, having been instructed by Isla to call for some soup for his
wife.
"The doctor, sir? Yess, he iss at my hoose whatefer. At least his
bicycle iss there, and he iss calling at another hoose not far away. I
can bring him?--yess, inside of ten minutes. I hope there iss nothing
wrong at Creagh whatefer?"
"General Mackinnon has had a seizure of some kind," answered Rosmead.
"Can you go as quickly on your feet as I on my horse?"
"Quicker. Forby, there iss no need," answered the man, and he was off
like lightning across the moor.
But in less than ten minutes' time he was back to say that the doctor
had gone and that nobody knew the way he had taken.
Then Rosmead ascended the stairs once more, to find that they were
standing about helplessly, wringing their hands, while Isla, with the
desolation of death on her face, was looking out of the window.
He motioned the servants from the room, and went up to her, gently
touching her arm.
"My dear," he said, and she did not even notice how he once more
addressed her. "I am afraid we have missed the doctor. I will get him
for you soon, but meanwhile I want you to grasp the fact that, even if
he were here at this moment, there is nothing to be done. I have some
knowledge of such things, and I have seen many die. It is all over,
and, save for the pain to you, we ought to be glad that he suffers no
more."
"Suffer!" she cried shrilly. "You don't know--no one will ever know
what he suffered just then."
Unconsciously her hand touched the fold of her blouse where the letter
lay. "He had a shock--yes, and it was the one thing to avoid. Oh, I
have watched him all these years so that nothing came near him! But I
was powerless against this evil thing that killed him at the last!"
Rosmead made no answer, understanding that she was distraught and spoke
freely of that which her normal self would not have so much as mentioned
in his presence.
His one concern was to get her out of the room, so that the last sad
offices might be done and Mackinnon of Achree composed in the dignity of
his last sleep. He managed it at last, for even with all his gentleness
he was masterful. Then with his own hands he helped, guiding the
tearful, but anxious and willing servants so that in a short time the
death-chamber was prepared, the fair linen ready, and all done decently
as it ought to be.
When he got down to the library Isla was sitting by the table, with her
elbows on it, staring into space. The expression on her face hurt him.
It was not woebegone, nor yet was it grief-stricken. It was only hard
like the nether millstone. He understood that he had come within touch
of the tragedy of these broken lives, but not an atom of curiosity
stirred in him. His only concern was for her.
She looked round with a little shivering breath, and her lips essayed to
move.
"I too seem to be stricken! I wish only one thing at this moment, Mr.
Rosmead--that I could be lying dead beside my father."
"Yes, yes, I understand. I was only fifteen when my father
died--through a gun accident that might have been averted, and I
remember the horror of it yet. But yours was an old man and full of
years and honours. You should see him now! He reminds me of the shock
of corn fully ripe. You must think of how he was beloved in all the
glens, and how, after his long service, he has received his crown from
the King."
He spoke quite simply, and the hardness on Isla's face slightly relaxed.
"How kind you are! I shall never forget it!"
"I have done nothing that the merest stranger might not have done
better," he made answer. "What I feel now is that I dare not leave you
here alone. If you could send some one down to Lochearn--or if you know
where your brother is I will find him for you. It is imperative that
you should not be left here alone."
"I don't know where he is, and he shall not come in here!" she cried a
little wildly. "You don't understand! Nobody understands except me,
but he must not come in here."
Rosmead did not know what to say, for tragedy was in the air.
"Come," he said gently, laying a slightly compelling hand on her arm.
"Let me take you upstairs. It will do you good. He looks so beautiful
and so gloriously at rest. If only you will let your mind dwell on
that, half the bitterness will be gone--on that and on the fact of your
long and beautiful devotion to him, which has been the wonder of all the
glens."
Rosmead hardly knew himself, and certainly those who knew only one side
of Peter Rosmead would have been amazed to hear him now.
Isla obeyed him without the smallest demur, and when she entered the
room with the drawn blinds, and looked at the still figure on the bed
with the majesty of death on the noble face her tears began to flow.
And for that Rosmead thanked God.
She was like a little child in his hands then, begging him not to leave
her; and his tenderness, his forethought, his encompassing care were
like those of a kind elder brother.
But that came to an end with the sudden, swift arrival of some fresh
person at the door and with the sound of Malcolm's loud--somewhat
aggressive--voice, calling his sister by name.
Rosmead stood aside while she walked steadily from the room, and he very
heartily wished that it were possible for him to escape by some back
staircase. He had no desire to witness what he felt must come.
Isla sped swiftly down the stairs, and on the downmost step she paused
and pointed an accusing finger at her brother.
"Murderer!" she said. "Don't come a step farther. You have no right in
this house, which you have destroyed!"
Malcolm looked thunder-struck, and the sight of Rosmead a few steps
higher up the stair did not help to lessen the mystery.
"Why, what has happened, and why is Mr. Rosmead here? What is it?" he
demanded peremptorily.
Rosmead hastened past them and went out by the door without a word. He
knew that the time had come for him to go--that with what now passed in
the Lodge of Creagh between the brother and sister no stranger might
intermeddle. But he left the woman whom he had learned to love--left
her with a pang.
Rosmead was no fool, and he guessed that the letter that had been in the
General's dead hand must, in some way, have concerned his son, and that,
whatever news it contained, it was the shock of it that had killed him.
This also Isla knew, and Malcolm would have to answer to his sister, to
his own conscience, and to his Maker for his sin.
Rosmead's heart was heavy as he took his horse from the queer little
stable of Creagh, and, mounting, rode slowly down Glenogle. The mystery
of life, its awful suffering--so much of it preventible--oppressed his
healthy mind like a nightmare. And always it was the innocent and the
good who had to bear the full brunt.
As he rode through the clear beauty of the summer morning he took a vow
that he would do what he could to make up to Isla Mackinnon--that if she
would permit him he would devote his whole life to making her happy, to
effacing the memory of the bitterness that her young life had known.
Only he must not be in too much haste, because the quick pride of her
would resent any assumption of right on his part. Isla must be slowly
and laboriously wooed. But how well worth the winning! Rosmead's
outlook upon life had undergone a swift change, and now it was bounded
east, west, north, and south, by the deep quiet eyes and the beautiful
face of one woman.
The love that had come to him late would be the great passion of his
life--a passion such as few men know. He had kept himself singularly
pure and wholly detached from women. His capacity for affection had
never been dissipated by lighter loves. He brought a virgin heart to
lay at the feet of the woman he loved. And, in spite of the sorrow and
the woe to which he had been a witness, life promised fair to Peter
Rosmead that summer morning as he rode through Glenogle and watched the
sheen of the sun upon hill and water and heard the birds singing their
heart out in the crystal clearness of the upper air.
He would go to America and attend with a single mind to his business
there, leaving the dear woman in peace. Then, when he returned at
Christmas, he would see. His heart would tell him then whether it was
time to speak. Few misgivings were his. He believed that Isla
Mackinnon was the woman that God had given to him and that she had been
kept for him through all the years of his strenuous young manhood, and
that for her dear sake he had been able to live without blame and
without reproach.
For that, above all else, he gave God thanks in his heart.
Meanwhile, in the Lodge on the edge of the Moor of Creagh the storm rose
and raged. Malcolm, a little stupefied, kept demanding what had
happened.
"He is dead!" cried Isla, in the shrill, hard tone that had no kinship
with that of her usually sweet low voice. "And the thing that killed him
was the letter from India--Colonel Martindale's version of the story."
"Give it to me!" said Malcolm, with an air almost of menace as he
stepped to her side.
"No, I will not," she answered clearly. "It is not yours. It was
father's, and now it is mine. To think that after all our watching, it
should have fallen into his hands at last!"
Malcolm, very white and haggard now, moved with a step that was very
unsteady into the library, Isla following, for it suddenly dawned upon
her that it was unseemly to wrangle there within a step of the chamber
of death.
"Tell me what has happened," he said hoarsely. "Surely you will not deny
me the right to know."
"There it very little to tell," said Isla drearily. "I went out early,
and before going to meet David Bain, I went to the keeper's house at
Rofallion to ask for Mrs. Dugid. Then while I was waiting at the gate
for David Mr. Rosmead came up."
"And David had delivered the letters, I suppose, while you were at
Rofallion?"
"Yes, of course, and father opened that one, and, though he might have
looked at a dozen others without comprehending their meaning, he knew
the meaning of that one at once," she said.
And her face set again like the nether millstone.
She had no pity for Malcolm, she did not even in that moment of awful
bitterness give him credit for one spark of decent feeling. She hardly
observed that he was trembling like an aspen and that his face had grown
haggard about the mouth, like that of an old man.
"Isla, I want that letter. I must have it," he said in a low voice.
She heard him as she heard him not, and his tone became more desperate.
"Did you read it, Isla?"
"No."
"Will you read it?"
"No."
"Then give it to me."
"Oh, what does it matter? The fire is the place for it--the very heart
of it, where it will be consumed quickly, now that it has done its
deadly work," she said drearily "Do you understand what has happened,
Malcolm? Our father is dead, and it is you who have killed him, just as
surely as if you had put a bullet into him."
"For God's sake, hold your tongue, Isla! You would drive a man to the
edge of despair."
"What about me?" she cried in a kind of frenzy, throwing her
self-control to the winds. "It is all of self you speak. Don't you
understand that it is a martyrdom and nothing else that I have suffered
in the last five--no, in the last ten years, ever since I was able to
know the meaning of the things that happened? Through you our souls,
our hearts, and sometimes our bodies have been starved in Achree, and
the old place has been suffered to sink into the dust, and has finally
passed into the hands of strangers. All this would not have mattered if
only you had been good and brave and a little like what you ought to
have been. We could have borne poverty with a smile. But it was your
misdeeds, your squandering of Achree that poisoned existence for him
until slowly his mind gave way. And I had to stand by and see it and be
glad of it, because in that way he suffered less. But I suffered more.
If there is a God in heaven He must judge this day between you and me,
Malcolm Mackinnon."
"For God's sake Isla, hold your tongue!" he repeated, but his voice
sounded weak and almost faint.
He was no coward in some directions, but the look on his sister's face
was awful to see and her words seared themselves upon his brain. He had
no idea until now of the red-hot fires of passion glowing beneath her
quiet exterior. But now he knew, and the revelation never afterwards
passed from his remembrance.
"I must speak just this once, for we are going to part, Malcolm; now the
last bond between us is snapped. I will never forgive you. You broke my
father's heart, and mine is in the dust, where it will lie till the end.
I hope that you are very proud of your work."
He turned away with a deep groan and covered his face with his hands.
"Now you are the Laird of Achree," she continued, "and there is none to
hinder you from making its devastation complete. As for me, I will pass
away from Glenogle and never come near it any more."
He turned to her then, and his eyes looked for a moment as hers
sometimes had done, full of a most wistful appeal.
"Hold hard, Isla! Don't you think I've had enough? I don't want to
justify myself. I admit that the letter gave the shock, and that is
punishment enough for me. Don't rub it in. Far less has sent a man to
the lower-most hell."
She did not seem to comprehend the words--or even to hear them.
She appeared suddenly to be possessed by a new idea, and, undoing the
pearl button of her blouse, she drew forth the letter and held it out.
"Take it. There is no use for me to keep it. I don't want to read it.
It is yours."
She opened the door, passed him by, and went, bare-headed, into the
drowsy sunshine, and a lark in the clear blue of the sky seemed suddenly
to mock her with his wealth of full-throated song. She walked blindly,
yet her feet guided her away to the great spaces of the Moor of Creagh,
where she could be alone under the clear canopy of heaven and where the
messengers of the Unseen were free to comfort her.
Malcolm, still shaky and trembling, looked about with the air of a man
who does not know which way to turn. Then he sat him down and braced
himself for the effort of reading the letter which had fallen like the
crack of doom upon the old man's heart.
It was such a letter as one true friend might write to another,
carefully worded so that it would not inflict any unnecessary pain. It
was a letter which had cost its writer several sleepless nights--a
letter of duty and friendship for a man whom he had never met, but whose
name was still honoured in the service that he had adorned.
Had the Colonel known of the old man's state of health that letter would
never have been written. But it told the truth--the whole truth,
without varnish or embroidery, in the simple language which is all that
a soldier has at his command.
Malcolm Mackinnon set his teeth as he read it, and surely in that awful
moment he expiated part at least of his many sins.
After what seemed a long, long time he picked himself up heavily,
crushed the letter in his hand, and threw it into the fire, where he
watched it caught by a greedy flame and consumed to the uttermost edge.
Then he left the room, passed by, unseeing, the doddering Diarmid in the
hall, and slowly mounted the narrow stairs.
He did not pause or falter at the door of the chamber of death, but
opened it swiftly, closed it again, and walked to the side of the bed.
There, for a moment, he stood in silence. Then Diarmid, listening
below, heard a cry which he never forgot. It was that of a soul in an
anguish which cannot be uttered.
"Forgive!" was the only word that fell brokenly from his lips as he
knelt, sobbing by the bed, and laid his aching and throbbing head on the
snow-white gloss of the coverlet.
The dead answered not, nor made any sign. But the peace upon the
beautiful old face was that of one who has passed over, and who
understands.