Chapter X: 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.