Chapter II: Part 2

"Impossible! Let me explain, and all will be forgiven—" Trevelyan cut his sentence short, "Why, hello, John, where did you come from?"

He nodded indifferently to Stewart standing by the window, walked over to a table and began to idly turn over the pages of a book. It was annoying always to find Stewart hanging around. The fact that Stewart was his cousin, and had shared everything he possessed with him since he had been a child, even down to his mother, did not count for anything in the world, just at this juncture. Stewart’s mother was all right; indeed, she was undoubtedly the very best woman who ever lived, excepting his own mother who had been dead so long, and possibly Cary! But against Stewart himself he bore a well-founded grudge. Stewart had been the one to meet Cary on the steamer and bring her and her father to London and help them get settled in lodgings and introduce them to his friends. That was bad enough, in all conscience, but then it had been Stewart, who had constituted himself a combined walking Baedeker, and unfailing friend of the American officer and his daughter. That had been in those last wretched weeks before he had been graduated from Woolwich, and Stewart, with that confounded sick leave, had taken advantage of the opportunity offered. Even when Stewart reported for duty again, his transfer had been to a home regiment, and in the few times that he, Trevelyan, had seen them before his graduation, John had always been with Cary, and Cary had been overflowing with their mutual experiences. Now John had taken the Captain and herself to dine at the Albion, in Russell Street, Covent Garden; and had pointed out the traditional places occupied by Dickens, and Sothern, and Toole, and the rest. Now, it had been a morning ride with John, on Rotten Row, when Maggie, John’s sister, had sent around her favorite mount. Again, it had been a trip to Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park, where, from the famous hill, standing with John, she had looked toward the towers of Windsor; or to the left had seen on the horizon, the bold outline of the Surrey Downs. It was John—or if John couldn’t possibly manage it—it was John’s mother or John’s sister who had taken her everywhere. She had been to the Derby on the Stewarts’ coach; she had been to Oxford with John’s sister, and met Kenneth, John’s younger brother; she had visited Stratford and seen Kenilworth, and generally "done" London almost before he had begun to serve his sub-lieutenancy. And if John had been unable to think of some new place to show her, he had walked with her down the Strand or through Fleet street or Cheapside, and the two of them had retraced Dickens’s or Charles Lamb’s steps, and explored all the little out of the way shops! That was just like John! Trevelyan detested such things, and Trevelyan detested them even more when John and Cary had done them together, and he had been left out!

That sub-lieutenancy was another thing that rankled! Stewart had served his, and Stewart had done good work in that "row" in India, and had even got an honorable mention. Stewart always was a lucky dog. Trevelyan envied Stewart that "mention" more than he envied any man in the world anything. Cary thought so much of that "mention," and now Cary was going away!

A wild throbbing resentment against his own position in the affair; against Cary’s leaving England, rose up within him, as the sea rose up and beat against the crags at home. He did not define it, but it possessed him, as did the memory of Cary’s face when he was away from her.

He let the book fall back heavily on the table and walked over and leaned his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hands, and looked moodily into the open fire.

Once Cary tried to draw him into the conversation, but Trevelyan refused to be won from the depths of his own depression, to the genial atmosphere pervading the little room, and Cary, used to his ways, let him alone. She had looked at John and shaken her head.

"I can’t do a thing with him to-night," it had said, but Stewart, grown wonderfully quick-witted in regard to Cary, fancied that he heard her sigh.

Outside the daylight faded and a heavy fog crept up and fell over the Thames and London like a pall. Here and there a street lamp flickered faintly through the mist, and the rumble of carriage wheels, heard, though unseen, reached them, and Cary lighted the big red lamp, preparatory to afternoon tea and the Captain’s return. Once she went to the window to look for her father, pressing her face against the glass, but she could not see through the heavy, yellow mist. Trevelyan could hear her and John talking in the window recess, although he could not distinguish what they were saving. Once Cary laughed. The sound irritated him.

After awhile Cary came back into the room and began to handle the tea-cups absent-mindedly. Her table was close to the fire, and Trevelyan, by turning his head, could watch the ruddy reflection play over her face. He turned back to the glowing logs.

"Sugar?" asked Cary suggestively, a little later of Trevelyan.

"No," said Trevelyan, moodily, "No sugar and no tea!"

Cary shrugged her shoulders.

"You’re impossible, to-day," she said, "Bread and butter, John?"

After awhile Stewart prepared to leave. Trevelyan still leaned against the mantel, his face turned to the fire. He knew Stewart was going, but he did not move. From the doorway he could hear Stewart’s voice calling out good-bye.

"Good-bye," he called back, shortly.

Cary returned to the tea table, paused and looked at Trevelyan’s back in an uncertain way. Trevelyan was acutely conscious of her nearness. She sat down, resting her intertwined fingers on the edge of the table and looked down at them.

"Well?"

Trevelyan turned at the sound of her quiet voice and faced her, still resting one elbow on the mantel.

"Well!" he repeated, a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "It isn’t ’well’ at all! It’s as confoundedly bad as it can be! Here you’re going to leave London day after to-morrow, to be gone—"

"Three months," said Cary.

"Exactly!"

"I’ll be back before you know it!"

Trevelyan laughed bitterly.

"You think so?" Then: "I can tell you how long two months can be! I learned that at Woolwich before I graduated, and after I had seen you." He stopped abruptly and beat his foot impatiently on the fender.

"Nonsense! You’re going to be a British officer. Where’s your backbone?"

"I’ve backbone enough—there’s no trouble about that!" Trevelyan laughed oddly. "I could fight all right. I could face danger. I could lead a charge into the mouth of the cannon! I’ve backbone enough!"

He had turned to her full as he was speaking. His face was aflame with the possibilities his words had awakened. It was transformed back into the face of the boy who conquered the storm and the sea and death, and it was burning with a newer passion still.

Cary’s eyes fell before the look in his and rested on her folded hands. After a little she began to trace an intricate pattern on the table with her forefinger. A weight of fear was resting on her breast.

Trevelyan stood silent looking down at her for a moment, and then he turned sharply and went over to the window. The perfume of the violets she wore possessed him. The clock on the mantel struck the half hour, and a log broke noisily on the hearth. Cary looked toward him. The oppressive fear had passed.

"There will be a month in Switzerland! Think of it—the Alps at last! Three weeks of Paris; three more of Ireland, and two in Scotland with the Camerons. Did you know I was going to your Scotland and to Argyll?"

Trevelyan turned away from the window.

"No. Since when?"

"The Camerons asked me last week. They are to have a house party, I think. They asked John, too—"

Trevelyan bit his lip.

"Is John going?"

"Not for the full time, but he hopes to get a three days’ leave."

Trevelyan came back to the fire and drummed on the mantel.

"When we were children," he said, suddenly, "down at the Fort, I used to tell you about Scotland. I am glad you are to see it. You will like it! And when you watch the sea beat against the crags, and the breakers tossing their white heads, you can think of me, remembering it used to be my home. I hope you will see a storm," Trevelyan went on, "such a storm as I used to glory in as a little chap! They don’t have such storms anywhere else, I think!"

He stopped short, and looked hard at the fire.

"The Camerons’ place is within driving distance of my home. If I can get off for a day will you let me take you there? I want you to see it, and to meet old Mactier, and go with me into the caves where I used to play as a boy, and climb the crags, way up to their topmost peaks, and breathe the freedom that is in the air!"

Cary sprang up, flinging out her hands. There was an odd pulsing in her throat.

"Go! of course I’ll go!" she cried, and then the pulsing grew and grew, and choked her.

At six Trevelyan left. She did not meet his eyes in parting, and Trevelyan missed her bantering voice, that usually followed him down stairs.

"It’s Stewart," he told himself with passionate resentment, and he stumbled over the lower step and swore at the darkness.

Cary went back into the empty room, over to the mantel and looked into the fire, as Trevelyan had done. She could hear the echo of the closing front door. Outside, the fog grew thicker. Inside, the red lamp threw its coloring on the crimson roses Stewart had brought that day, making them more glorious still, and the heat of the fire intensified the odor of the violets on the woman’s breast. Stewart had brought the violets too.

Cary turned away from the fire, and moved restlessly about the room, fixing a chair here, straightening a book there, and fingering some familiar object. As she passed the open piano, she hesitated, put out one finger and struck a key. The sound vibrated through the quiet room, deep and full and strong. A bar of an old Scotch song rose in her throat and broke. She closed the piano hastily. Once she leaned over the roses.

"Dear John," she murmured, and her hands touched for a moment the violets on her breast.

Then she went back to the fire, and stood wide-eyed and silent, looking into the heart of it. She was dimly conscious of the violets’ perfume, but it was Trevelyan’s face she saw in the flames.

*III.*

There was a storm chill in the air. Trevelyan readjusted the carriage robe that had slipped away from Cary, and turned up the collar of his driving coat. Now and again he glanced at Cary. The girl’s face was turned away and she was looking out over the gray crags to the grayer sea beyond. The last three months had wrought an indefinable change in her. Trevelyan had noticed it on his arrival at the Camerons’ that morning. He wondered vaguely if it had anything to do with travel and the process of "polishing" to which Cary so often banteringly referred. Well he was not going to worry over it. He had only one day and he meant to make the most of it.

He had written the Camerons he was coming, and had not even waited for an answer. He had announced his intention and it was enough. He had known Tom Cameron since they wore kilts together, and back of their friendship, his mother’s family had known the Camerons for generations. Somewhere in the history of the houses, there had been an inter-marriage. That had been the enduring seal on the intimacy. The Scotch are clannish.

It had taken him hours to reach the Camerons’. It would take him hours to return. But this one afternoon, at least, was his. After it, might come the deluge. After it—probably would come the deluge! He wasn’t feeling very sure of himself or of his own self power. After a man has been in torment for three months—

Tom Cameron’s horse knew the road well—almost as well as Trevelyan did—and kept up a steady pace, and Tom Cameron’s cart was comfortable.

John was expected that afternoon for three days. Well; Cary would not be there to welcome him. Cary would be with him. Stewart might have her—undoubtedly would have her, for those three days, but to-day—this afternoon, was his.

The Camerons, learned in the signs of the sky, had demurred at the storm chill in the air and the threatening clouds, when after an early lunch, Trevelyan and the American girl had stepped into the cart. Trevelyan, however, had no intention of having his well laid plans frustrated, and in his masterful way, had over-ruled the objections. The storm was a possibility. His return next morning at daybreak, a necessity. Let the storm come. He defied it.

Cary shivered. Trevelyan noticed it and leaned toward her.

"You are cold?"

Cary turned her eyes away from the gray crags and the gray sea. Trevelyan’s were near her own. She shook her head.

"No," she faltered. "It must be Scotland—the Scotland you told me of as a child. Once, long ago I fought you about it. If I had dreamed—if I had known—" her voice faded into the boom of the nearing surf and she turned her eyes away from Trevelyan’s, coastward again.

The music of her voice and the roar of the ocean mingled and surged over Trevelyan.

"God!" he said under his breath.

*IV.*

As Trevelyan and the girl drove up the long entrance way and neared the house, they could distinguish through the faint Scotch mist that had fallen, the outline of Mactier waiting for them at the door.

The old retainer hurried forward to welcome them.

"Ay, sir, but ’tis gude to see ye! My heart’s been sore for a sight o’ thy face this lang time!" he cried to Trevelyan.

Trevelyan jumped down from the cart.

"Hello, Mactier!" he cried. "Jove! But it’s good to see _you_ again!"

Then he turned to Cary and helped her to the ground.

"This is Mactier," he said, as one saying all that is sufficient. "Mactier, I used to tell Miss Cary about you when I was a little shaver."

"Aweel ye were ever a mindful lad o’ me!" The old man smiled.

He opened the door for them, and stood to one side to let them enter.

"’Tis a bad day ye have for seeing the old place," he said as they passed him.

"You can bring the horse around in an hour," called Trevelyan as the old man drove away.

Then Trevelyan went back to Cary. The girl was standing at the furthest end of the great hall, looking out of the window. She could hear the beat of the sea on the near-by crags and through the faint mist catch a glimpse of the water.

Mactier had opened the long-closed blinds and the light seemed concentrated around the figure of the girl. Trevelyan tore his riding gloves from his hands and bent and unbent his fingers rapidly. "If I had dreamed—if I had known—" He reached her side.

"I’m afraid it’s a gloomy day we’ve struck," he said quietly, "but I’m in hopes the mist won’t last. On clear days from here you can see the highest crag of all. It’s where I used to spend half my days, as a little shaver,—up there on the top. It was my eyrie. I used to be a robber king and a shipwrecked mariner and a Viking all rolled in one."

Trevelyan laughed, bending forward and nearer to her and looked out of the window, as though to penetrate the mist. Cary leaned against the frame of the window listening.

"When I got a bit older," Trevelyan’s voice fell heavily on the silence of the big lonely hall, "I used to climb up there—to get away from everyone, and where no one could find me; and I would hide up there, and sit by the hour, looking out at the sea and watching the white spray breaking below me. And then later I used to try and think of what love meant—what love could be—if I should ever love—"

He turned away abruptly and walked up and down the hall. After a little he came back to Cary, who had not stirred.

"And sometimes I used to dream of a woman who would some day come into my life—and I used to crawl to the edge of the crag and lean over and look into the white foam below, until I got dizzy—looking for her face. It seemed her face must be in the white foam—foolish, wasn’t it?"

Cary ran her finger along the ledge of the window.

"We all have our dreams."

Trevelyan watched her, as she turned her face again to the window. The mist outside increased and seemed to muffle the beat of the sea and all the sounds of nature, and it hung around her and softened her face into wonderful curves. He turned his eyes away from her suddenly. He could have crushed that face in his hands, bringing it up to his own—

"Mactier will be around in an hour," he said after a while in a matter of fact way, "and then I’ll drive you about the place a bit before we return. We can easily make it and be back for dinner."

"Yes?" asked Cary, absent-mindedly.

"Come! Wake up! And look around you! Isn’t this a fine old hall?" But Trevelyan’s voice lacked enthusiasm.

Cary turned and looked around her. Her dream spell had passed. The odd throbbing in her throat, she had felt long ago in London, the evening she had bidden Trevelyan good-bye, returned with triple force. A wave of color swept over the usual pallor of her skin; her eyes were shining. Cary was transformed.

"Fine?" her voice pulsed with the enthusiasm Trevelyan’s had lacked. "It’s the finest old hall in all the world! The dearest old home! Take me over it—from the top to the bottom, and show me where you and John and Tom Cameron used to play!"

Trevelyan led her from room to room; passing quickly this one, that held memories of his mother; pausing on the threshold of another, to tell the story of the Scotch boy’s playtime; to show to her the first stag’s head, shot when hunting with Mactier. Trevelyan told the story well, for he loved with all the unyielding strength of an unyielding nature, the memories his words called up. Now it was how Tom and he had slipped out of the window one night and scaled the ivy covered turret wall, that they might investigate the old cave down at the water’s edge, by the light of the waning moon. Mactier had told them strange tales of the happenings in the cave when the moon was on the wane. Again it was the day he had stumbled with his gun and the bullet had entered his thigh; how old Mactier had flung him across his shoulders, and borne him home through the darkness of the falling night. Again it was the morning his mother had died; how he had been awakened by the hurrying of many feet, and starting up in bed had found his father bending over him, calling him by name.

Never had the girl known Trevelyan to be so eloquent; never had she seen him as he was to-day. Now Trevelyan’s voice was blithe with the blitheness of glad remembered things; now it broke with feeling, or vibrated with the passion of reviving scenes long dead to life. He seemed not to be speaking of himself. He was telling her the story of an English boy, Scottish bred; of his wild escapades; of his love of freedom and unrestricted things; of his dangers and his hopes; of what he meant to be when he became a man!

And Cary, held fast by the magic of the story, felt her pulses throb; her being thrill. An unreasonable regret that she had not been a Scottish child to follow where he led, up the high crags or down into the black caves, took possession of her; and she recalled a picture of a sea churned into foam; of a boat drifting out toward the waste of ocean; and above the gray surface of the stone-hued waters, a boy’s head turned landward.

Once, in following Trevelyan from one room to another, she glanced out of the window and noticed vaguely that the heavy rain drops lay upon the glass. Later, she was conscious of the dull booming of thunder, echoing among the nearby crags and losing itself in the beat of the surf. Then a flash of vivid lightning lit up the sudden darkness that had fallen on the room.

Trevelyan rushed to the window. The thralldom of the Scotch boy’s story was upon him still.

"It’s a storm!" he cried. "It’s a storm come to welcome me!"

He turned to Cary.

"Come here!" he commanded, "where you can watch the sea and the storm fight it out together!"

She came instantly.

The darkness increased until they could not distinguish each other’s faces. The thunder came and beat itself against the crags and spent itself. Now and again they could see, by the glare of the prolonged lightning, the waters lashed into a white fury. Once, by its light, she looked at Trevelyan’s face. It was white and he was breathing deeply. He was looking seaward and seemed unconscious of her presence. Once, he flung out his hand and it touched hers. It was colder than the storm chill in the air. Once, she looked at him again, and he, turning, met her eyes. Some power as mighty as the storm held her look to his, and then above the beating of the thunder on the crags and the booming, of the surf, she heard his voice.

"Just you and I and the storm! You and I in all the world—all that the world holds!" She felt his hand upon her shoulder; she felt its coldness through her heavy dress and she shrank away from him, her voice and her words broken, with a nameless fear.

Above the storm she could hear Trevelyan laugh.

"Let you go, when I’ve got you at last! Let you go when your face has haunted me through all the days and all the nights of the long months! _Let—you—go!_"

"Oh, Robert!"

"Oh, you think I’m mad! Well, perhaps I am for love of you. You haunt me. You possess me. It was your face I dreamed of in the foam. There! don’t tremble so! I won’t hurt you, child!" The thunder drowned his voice.

"Do you dream what you are to me or could make of me? Do you know what it is to hold a man’s soul in your hands?"

The spell of his words lifted. The instinct of an unknown danger possessed her. She slipped away in the blackness toward the door. The silence grew and grew.

Gradually the darkness lifted and the thunder and the boom of the surf lessened and the lightning came at long and longer intervals. Cary became acutely conscious of every sound. Somewhere in the distance she heard voices and the echo of men’s footfalls. She kept her eyes away from Trevelyan who was standing with his back to her. Danger lay that way.

Then the spell of Trevelyan’s nearness crept over her again. She tried to fight it off, trembling. She moved a step toward him, one hand pressed close to her breast. Then she paused, arrested by a voice.

"Robert! Cary! _Cary!_"

The sound echoed down the great hall, across the still deserted rooms, to the study where they stood.

Trevelyan turned sharply.

"John!"

Cary’s hand crept from her breast to her face and she covered her eyes.

"John!"

Trevelyan crossed the space between them.

"Cary!"

The woman shrank back.

"Don’t—you frighten me!" she moaned.

Trevelyan caught her by the wrist.

"Cary! Cary! Take that back! How can love frighten? See, I love you—love you!"

She was in his arms and he was leaning over her, his mouth close to her face.

"Cary!" he whispered.

Down the long hall, through the silence of the deserted rooms, came the voice.

"Cary! Where are you? Cary!"

She wrenched herself out of Trevelyan’s arms.

"You are a coward!" she said slowly.

A wild tide of passion leaped up in Trevelyan.

"How dare you call me a coward," he said, and his lips could hardly articulate, "If you were not a woman—" he choked and his voice died away.

Cary moved nearer to the door. Once, she turned her pale face and looked at Trevelyan. Trevelyan stood rigid and mute where she had left him, the knuckles of one hand pressed to his mouth. She faltered.

"Cary! Cary! Where are you?"

She turned, her thumb and forefinger pressing her throat.

"Here!" she cried. Then, louder: "Here!"

Trevelyan passed her, and strode through the deserted rooms into the great hall.

"Cary is in the study," he said to the group of men he found there, "Hello Tom!"

"John arrived an hour after you left," said Cameron, regarding Trevelyan’s rigid face curiously, "and when the storm came up nothing would do but that he must come for you both in a closed carriage. I knew you’d be safe enough—if necessary find shelter with some of the tenant’s wives. But John—"

Trevelyan turned to old Mactier.

"You can close up the house," he said shortly.

Stewart found the girl standing in the study. He went up to her and drew her arm through his and quietly led her down the long dark passage that connected with the great hall. He could feel that she was trembling. He patted her hand soothingly.

"There, there! child. It’s all right. I know!"

*V.*

Instead of returning to London from the Camerons’ place in Scotland, Cary and the Captain went to the south of France. Just what it was that had suddenly made Cary so persistent in her desire not to return to England, was not known. Trevelyan, indeed fancied that he knew, when he had finished reading Cary’s brief note telling of their change of plans and their intended prolonged absence from England, and he cursed the folly that had separated him from Cary in the long months that lay ahead.

To Stewart, and indeed to the world at large, she gave the old, threadbare excuse—the London climate. If Stewart ever suspected otherwise, he kept it to himself.

The Captain, like Trevelyan, fancied he knew something of the cause, but the Captain was a wise man, and he asked no more than Cary chose to impart—which was next to nothing at all. Still Cary wanted to get away from London and Cary was not given to whims. The climate was a sufficiently good excuse. The fact that it was an excuse made no difference to the Captain, and to the south of France they went.

They were gone all winter, traveling in a desultory way, since there was no call for haste and Cary’s pleasure was the chief consideration. And Cary delighted in the quaint old towns and grew enthusiastic again over the trifles of life, as she had done as a child down by the sea-coast fort, or out on the western plains. Now it was a month at Cette, on the Gulf of Naples; then it was down to the Eastern Pyrenees, and over, and a month in Spain, and back again to France and up to Bayonne and Bordeaux, and then to Paris by easy stages, and then on to Calais and to England.

There were letters from Stewart awaiting to welcome her, whenever he knew her next stopping place, and they often enclosed notes of introduction to people who could add either to her comfort or her pleasure. Stewart knew the country like a book. He had toured it on foot after his Eton days. As for London—London was duller than he had ever known it; the fogs were unusually frequent and heavy, and he was glad that she had escaped them. He hoped she was enjoying herself; she must surely see such and such a thing, or take such and such a drive. He had not taken it in years, himself, but she would tell him all about it. He supposed she would be able to brush up his French when she returned. By the way, when was she returning to England?

She returned to England in the late spring and in all that time Trevelyan had not written her a line. He was at the station to meet her though, and it was he who took possession of her while the Captain and Stewart went to see about the luggage.

Indeed, in the weeks that followed, London observed that it was Trevelyan who monopolized the American officer’s daughter. It was Trevelyan who dropped in to afternoon tea with unfailing regularity, and fought with her, and scolded her, and laughed with her, and took her driving, or riding on the Row. His superior officer fretted and speculated at the change in the young Engineer, until he passed him one day with Cary.

"There’s a brilliant young chap being ruined," he said crossly to his aide. "Served out his sub-lieutenancy finely, and has behaved this winter like an officer and a gentleman. Now the barracks can’t hold him, and he shirks like a weak-livered chicken. Who’s the girl?"

"An American—the daughter of a retired officer. I fancy you’ve often seen them together—elderly man with iron gray hair; sat next to you, but one, at the Stewarts’ dinner."

The aide broke off and looked fixedly after Trevelyan.

"Some day in danger—" he said, as if to himself.

*VI.*

Cary was drumming idly on the piano. Her attitude was the personification of listlessness. When the Captain had spoken of it that morning she said it was "the spring feeling in the air."

The Captain smiled as he walked down the stairs of the lodgings.

"It’s London climate—fog and rain—in the winter; and it’s London sunshine in the spring!"

Cary continued to drum on the piano after he left. Then she let her hands fall from the keys and looked absently about the room. She supposed Trevelyan would drop in later or anyhow in the evening. Trevelyan had been irreproachable since her return—since that day in Scotland.

Presently she dashed into a popular song and sung it with a touch of the old gleeful enthusiasm she had left behind in France. Trevelyan loathed that song.

She broke off suddenly and twirled around on her stool. Someone was knocking.

"Come in," she shouted, not rising, and thinking it was either Robert or John.

The landlady entered bearing a card. Cary held out her hand for it.

"But my father is out. Please tell Captain Trevelyan—"

"But miss, the Captain asked for you."

Cary rose.

"For me?"

Then she laughed.

"Oh, you must be mistaken, but if you’ll ask Captain Trevelyan up, I’ll explain."

She remained standing by the door of their little sitting room. She could hear the English officer tramping slowly and heavily up the stairs. She remembered Robert telling her of the charge his father had led at Inkerman, and how he had gotten that wound in his hip. After awhile she caught sight of the top of the officer’s white head. She went forward to meet him and led him into the room and rolled up a big leather chair.

"It’s Papa’s favorite," she said, smiling and standing with one hand resting invitingly on the big tufted back.

The English officer smiled back from under his shaggy brows, and sank into the great chair with a sigh of genuine comfort. Cary drew up a chair and sat down near him.

"Papa is out," she said. "He has only just gone, too. I’m so sorry. If you care to wait—and perhaps later let me give you a cup of tea—" she went on with a certain charming spontaneity, "John says my tea is almost like the tea the English girls make—" she questioned Trevelyan’s father with her laughing eyes.

"And what does my boy say about your tea?" asked the English officer, watching her curiously.

"Robert? Oh, Robert never says anything nice about it. He never says nice things to me anyway," Cary pouted. "But I notice he nearly always drinks three cups when he comes and after all I believe that counts for a good deal—don’t you?"

"Undoubtedly—for a good deal of tea! And does he often come to drink it with you?"

Cary laughed.

"Oh—frequently," she said vaguely.

The old British officer drew patterns on the floor with his cane and was silent.

Cary looked at him stealthily from under her long lashes. She had only met Trevelyan’s father when he had called formally on their coming to England, or sometimes when he stopped by to take the Captain to drive, and once at the Stewarts’, at dinner. He had always inspired her with a certain awe. It might have been his lameness which Cary was wont to regard as a badge of an honor legion, or simply his brusque manner, not unlike his son’s, but lacking much of his son’s odd charm. She sometimes had fancied she had seen a physical likeness between them, and once she had caught herself wondering if the father had looked like the son in his youth and if the son would resemble more closely the father in age. She patted thoughtfully the arm of her chair.

"Papa will be so sorry to miss you," she began.

Trevelyan’s father leaned forward. He suddenly stopped drawing patterns on the floor with his cane.

"I did not come to see your father," he said, "I came especially when I knew he was out and you were in. I am calling on you." He smiled grimly, forcing the boy’s face from his mind.

Cary stared. Then she recovered herself. "Yes?" she said politely.

The old officer sat up very straight grasping his cane, and then he led direct to the object of his visit, as he had led direct his famous charge into the center of the enemy’s lines, on the heights of Inkerman, way back in ’54.

"I’ve come to see you about that boy of mine," he said bluntly.

"You mean—Robert?" asked Cary slowly, and for lack of something to say.

"He’s a good enough kind of a chap—" Cary suppressed a smile, remembering how the old man adored him, "but he’s a bit hot-headed and reckless, and he’s—mad over you, and—" he broke off. It seemed to him almost as though he was disloyal to the boy.

Cary leaned forward with burning cheeks.

"And you hope he won’t do anything rash—is that it?" There was a trace of indignation in her voice.

"Jove! no, child. I haven’t come to plead for him, but to ask you to be careful."

"I don’t understand you," said Cary, the hot flush not fading.

"There! You must not be offended. You know the boy is the apple of my eye, but he isn’t faultless. He has got good stuff in him if he is only moulded right, but there would be the very devil to pay—I beg your pardon—if he was ever thwarted in anything he’d set his stubborn mind on."

Trevelyan’s father rose and crossed over to the window and stood there looking out on the lengthening English twilight. His son’s face as it had looked years ago as a baby, rose before him, but the baby had reproachful eyes.

"He’s brave and he’s strong and he’s every inch a soldier; but a woman, child, needs gentleness as well as strength."

The soft dim twilight crept into the room; passed the rigid form of the old soldier at the window and stole onward to the chair in which the girl sat motionless. The outline of her figure and the whiteness of her half averted cheek, showed vaguely through the gloom.

After a long, long time she rose.

"Thank you," she said, and the unconscious dignity in her voice touched the old warrior at the window strangely. "It was good of you to think of me so kindly, even though it is not deserved and—not necessary."

After a little Trevelyan’s father turned, and came toward the shadowy standing figure.

"I understand," he said; and then: "Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Cary, gently, but she did not offer to shake hands.

Half an hour later the Captain came in. The kettle was not singing, nor the curtains drawn, nor his chair rolled up in its accustomed place, with his easy slippers near by, and the red lamp was unlighted.

"Where is she? Where’s my baby?"

Cary rose from the big chair that Trevelyan’s father had occupied, and came slowly forward.

"Here," she said, simply, her voice quiet as the deepening twilight that surrounded her, and she rubbed her cheek up and down against the Captain’s.

The Captain lighted the red lamp, and turned to look at her, arrested by the vague trouble in the voice.

*VII.*

Trevelyan’s father walked slowly down the stairs and out into the long twilight.

"For all the good I’ve done, for all I’ve saved her, or learned about her real feelings for the boy, I might have spared myself the call. Gad! but she has pride though, and damn me if I don’t like it! The boy hasn’t got half bad taste anyway. Heaven bless the boy—and spare the woman he marries!"

Then he pressed his lips together suddenly as though all had been said, and he planted his cane very firmly on the pavement with each step, swinging it very high when he raised it again. But he kept on thinking of Robert, and all the memories he had ever cherished of him, assailed him now, as though charging against the breastworks he had raised of duty. And every memory had those reproachful eyes. He, his father, had gone to plead with the woman he loved. What right had he to do this thing, questioned the eyes.

The old officer walked slower.

She had told him that she thanked him, but that his call had been unnecessary. How _dared_ she tell him so; how dared she be indifferent to his son, or sit in judgment on him!

Yet, hadn’t she a right?

The old British officer paused on the corner and stared at the carriages going by, beating his cane on the curb.

But he loved him, as he was, with all his faults; he loved him for his faults; and the whole thing was hard—harder than the charge at Inkerman.

Then he began to think of Cary, and the more he thought of Cary, the more resolved he became on the course to be pursued, and with the strengthening resolve the reproachful eyes retreated. The boy was ruining his life here. His career of which he had once thought so much had become dwarfed by his love for a woman. In India—but there, he could prove the stuff he was made of. An officer who has seen Indian service is always a bit better than he was before, or a bit worse. He was never quite the same again. And Cary—well, that girl was worth saving, even if the boy was his own.

The British officer turned into Grosvenor Square, and went up the broad steps of the house the Stewarts had rented for the past five years. He found the older Stewart in his library, as he knew he would, absorbed in the latest political news. The Scotchman looked up as he entered.

"Well, what do you want? I can see it is something by your face."

"Yes. I want you to use your influence with the Secretary and get Robert transferred to the regiment that sails for India next month."

"_What?_"

Trevelyan’s father flung himself into one of the big chairs, leaned his elbow on the edge of the table and shaded his eyes, "It could be done—I suppose, without his knowing?"

"Why, y-e-s, but—" Stewart broke off doubtfully.

Trevelyan’s father leaned forward, still shading his eyes and staring hard at his boots.

"I’m not much of a talker, as you know, Malcolm," he said concisely. "And what I’ve once done for a man I don’t generally remind him of, but at Inkerman, years ago when you were a bit of a boy lieutenant, I did you a slight service—"

"You saved my life," said the Scotchman briefly.

"I suppose I did. Well, you are always harping on that, and a service to me. If you will get the boy ordered off without his suspecting—" the older Trevelyan broke off and then went on, "You’re a power in politics and could do it better than I. Politics count three-fourths, now-a-days, even with the army."

"I’ll do it, but may I know your reason? I always fancied you liked having Robert stationed in England—"

Trevelyan’s father dropped the hand that was shading his eyes, with a dull thud on the table.

"I have. But the boy’s ruining himself. He will never make even a tin soldier at this rate. He is throwing his chance of a career to the winds—and he don’t care. He was reprimanded a month ago for negligence of duty, and again yesterday," the old soldier flushed, "and he don’t care! It is not the easiest thing for a man to talk so about his flesh and blood, but—the boy’s whole future depends on what he makes of his life now; and I would not give a penny for what it will turn out to be, if he is not hauled up with a sharp turn and gotten out of England. The boy will do the Queen and the Service honor, where there is danger to be faced and courage needed, but the idleness of barrack life—" he broke off.

The elder Stewart nodded.

"True," he said.

"There is something else that has decided me. I went to call on the little American this afternoon."

"Ah?"

"She’s game, and worth the best fellow born."

"Is not your Robert good enough for her?"

"No; but your John is."

There was a long silence. Somewhere outside a carriage drove into the Square, the echo of its wheels deadened by the heavy curtains. Somewhere in the house a door closed noisily.

"I always used to fancy I would want a Scotch lassie, for John," said the Scotchman with a slow smile, "but lately I have not been so sure; not—so—sure!"

Trevelyan’s father sat silent.

"Out in India," he said after a while, "there will be something for him to do and think of besides the little American girl—" he rose, "You will see to it then?"

The elder Stewart looked thoughtfully down at the table.

"Since you think it wisest—yes."

* * * * *

"Out in India," said Trevelyan’s father, to himself as he paused on the steps of the Grosvenor Square house, and stared hard into the darkness, "But, God, how I’ll miss the boy."

*VIII.*

Trevelyan had been gone a year. His orders for Indian service had been a nine days’ wonder to London.

"Of course he will get his uncle to work him back on a home regiment or do something on the strength of his father’s gallant action at Inkerman and his wound." Tom Cameron had said. "Of course he won’t go."

"Of course not," London had said.

"I’ll be hanged if I’ll go," Trevelyan had exploded to Stewart, and he spent most of his time between his father’s chambers and his uncle’s house, relieved by frantic calls to every influential man he knew. But the powers that could have worked in his behalf, remained passive, and for the first time his father and uncle refused to help him. Trevelyan wondered wildly what suddenly possessed them all, and what had become of his own persuasiveness.

"Jove! I should think you would be pleased," his father had said, purposely avoiding his eyes. "As a little chap you were eternally wanting to grow up and get into active service. Here you have only been vegetating in barrack life and now that you have the chance to win your spurs—"

"Damn the spurs," Trevelyan had said.

"Sorry, but I can’t help you," his uncle had answered when he had made his sixth and last desperate appeal to him. "I’ve seen the Secretary. He says the commander of the regiment wants just such a fellow—one of the Engineers. You can’t expect to remould the entire military force of the United Kingdom, my boy, when you have just about finished serving your sub-lieutenancy."

"John’s an Engineer and has seen Indian service too," Trevelyan had suggested moodily, and the elder Stewart had remained silent.

Trevelyan continued to fight passionately against the orders until the hour of sailing.

Cary went down with the family to see the transport off, and when Trevelyan caught his last glimpse of her she was standing out distinctly from the background of the faint fog that had arisen, with Stewart at her side.

He turned his face away sharply and gripped at the ship’s rail. Then a sudden pressure came against his throat and breast as though the strength was being crushed from him. He swallowed hard.

For once, Fate had conquered Trevelyan.

* * * * *

He wrote to Cary just one time that year—on the voyage out—a letter that a man does not often write more than once in his life. In it were the passion and the love; the strength and weakness of his nature. On one page he stripped his heart for her, that she might know its faults, and fairly judge. On the next, he tried to vindicate his failings.

"I would be as clay in your hands," he wrote toward the close, "You could do with me what you would. I love you more than it is generally given to a man to love—more than an English officer should. I would desert for you, for I love you more than England and more than my honor—" and then there came a blot upon the page, that half covered the last word. The letter ended as a child’s struggle ends—brokenly: and he asked her in a few disjointed sentences to be his wife.

Weeks later when the letter was delivered, Cary was out with John. On her return she sat far into the night to answer it, that her reply might go back to him by the next Indian mail.

"Your love frightens me," she said in part, "and I cannot bind myself through time and distance. If I loved you as I should—and as I _could_ love a man—I would say ’yes’—as it is, I must say ’no.’ It lies with you if my answer ever changes. I do not demand love that would prove disloyal to an officer’s vow of courage in the service. I do not want such love. I am an army woman, and army women, all the world over, have one code of allegiance—which is absolute. You cheapen me when you suggest I would be satisfied with anything less. As for moulding you—a man moulds himself into the perfect and complete, or he breaks the clay with his own hands. When I marry it shall be a man whose nature is stronger than my own. It is the way of women."

And Trevelyan had been gone a year.

*IX.*

At the end of the twelve months Stewart got a letter from Trevelyan.

He smiled a bit curiously as he tore open the travel worn flap. He wondered what Robert had to say for himself or what he wanted. It was the first letter he had received since Robert had been ordered to India, but he laughed genuinely in the silence of the deserted club room, at the opening, and characteristic words:

"This is a damnable hole! It is hot as—well I won’t swear any more—but it is hotter than I ever imagined a place could be on the _surface_ of the earth. We are miles from any decent civilization, and how you can talk decently about the natives and the native regiments, staggers me! I don’t trust ’em, and what’s more I doubt very much if they hold me in any higher regard. But what is the good of writing so to you. You know what Indian service is. Your station was either a good deal better than mine, or you have a lot more back bone than I have. The first idea making me jealous, and the last not being conducive to self-respect, there don’t seem to be any choice! To move requires a strenuous effort. The life is stagnation. It is a living death and the death numbness is creeping into my veins. They tell me that the natives have not been so quiet for years, and most of the officers and men wish they’d stir up a bit and give them some trouble. I don’t. I don’t want trouble. I don’t believe I could fight if I had to! Damned odd, isn’t it, when my blood used to boil and my head throb queer, when I was a little shaver at home and there was danger around? I guess I wasn’t cut out for the Service, after all. Mactier would wonder— * * * I think I’m going mad. As you may have caught on I am writing all this with a purpose; for it is only fair for you to know what this station is, and I’m asking more than one man ought of another, but if you’d get transferred out here— There wouldn’t be any trouble about the technical part of it, for the Engineers are needed bad for surveying. Your last letter said something about your getting a commission in the Gordon Highlanders—if you could only come here instead—I suppose I am selfish, but I can’t get a grip on things. If—"

Stewart looked up from the letter, toward the window and the street—seriously. Then he went over to the window and sat down in a big chair and leaned forward, still looking out. The noise of the passing carriages and the stir of the passing crowd crept in to meet the silence of the empty reading room. He sat motionless, heedless alike of the noise and the stillness. Once he thought of Cary, and his face changed swiftly.

Then he went back to the letter and finished it, and later he re-read it, and folded it, and put it in his vest pocket. Then he went back to his old occupation of looking out of the window.

The crowd was no longer one big indistinct blur, and he was vaguely conscious that he saw his mother’s carriage among the others coming down the street. It came nearer and he could see that his sister was in it. There was a girl sitting beside her. The girl was Cary.

* * * * *

It was a week before Stewart called again at the lodgings. Cary firmly expected him the second day; grew bewildered as the evening of the fourth came and went without bringing him; on the fifth grew anxious and on the sixth wrote to him. Calling on his family just then for news was out of the question. They had gone to Brighton for a week.

He came to her the day her letter reached him.

"I would scold you," the girl said, "if it were not for these. You never forget my violets."

She buried her face in the purple bloom, before she fastened the bunch on her dress.

"I have left the order with the florist," said Stewart quietly. "He will send you the violets every week, and when they are gone, I have told him about your roses. I am going away."

She looked up quickly from the flowers she had just fastened in her dress.

"For long?"

"I think so—yes."

"Where are you going?"

Stewart pulled at his gloves.

"India," he said briefly.

"You have received your orders?"

"Yes. I asked for them."

Cary went up to him and pulled him by the sleeve.

"I—don’t—quite—understand," she said. "I—is it the Highlanders?"

He shook his head.

"No, it’s Rob. He is just about mad enough to blow his brains out. I’m going to him."

"He’s sent for you?"

"He’s _asked_ me to come."

Stewart sat with her in the little room all that long afternoon, and they had tea together, and they watched the sunset from the windows together, as they had done almost every day that year. It would seem strange to drink tea alone and watch the sunset by herself, thought Cary.

"If you would sometimes write—" he suggested once.

"Of course, I will write," she retorted quickly.

When the twilight came, he left.

_End of Book One._

*BOOK TWO*

*THE BREAK
IN THE CLAY*

*BOOK TWO*

*THE BREAK IN THE CLAY*

*I.*

Trevelyan’s face was the first that greeted Stewart at his journey’s end.