Chapter IV: Part 4

Cary and the Captain had spent one winter in Palestine and on the Nile, and the summers in travel. When the Captain mildly suggested Italy or a return to America on the dawning of the second winter, Cary shook her head and begged for London and the old lodgings. Cary, for some reason never spoke of going home now. And so the Captain took her back to London, and Cary seemed to enjoy the great familiar city, better than all the sights and novelties of Egypt and the Holy Land.

The weekly gift of violets or of roses began again with her return to England. Now and then, letters came from John, but they were not frequent, and were, to Cary’s critical judgment, unsatisfactory. Of course, she was glad to hear of the life of the Station, and what the men and officers did to pass the off-duty time; and how the army women spent the days in India, and how they all kept cool—or tried to. It was kind of John, too, to think to tell her all the details, and the account of their hunting trip and the "man-eater" Trevelyan had killed,—Cary wondered if the skin was for her—and what their quarters looked like, but somehow Cary wanted more. She wasn’t quite sure what she did want; perhaps she told herself it was some more definite mention of Trevelyan. Trevelyan never wrote.

She thought of Trevelyan often, and in the silences of the night she would sometimes recall the blackness and the thunder of that Scottish storm, and the terror of the hour without its charm would come back to her and she would cower among her white pillows and shut, very fast, her eyes.

In the fall the Camerons had asked her to a house party but for some reason she herself could not define, she sent regrets. The Camerons’ place was so near his home! She wondered if it were because he would not be there, or if she would be afraid when she saw his home again. When Trevelyan came back—

But she was lonelier in the late afternoon when the Captain had gone to walk, than at any part of the day, and she would sit with idle hands folded in her lap and look at the silent little tea-kettle on the tea-table; or rise and watch the sunset, quite alone. She wasn’t ever afraid then, she was only unutterably lonely! Perhaps when Trevelyan came back—

And then Trevelyan did come back. She heard it from the Captain one afternoon, and it was then the Captain told her, gently, of the delayed accounts of Stewart’s and Trevelyan’s part in the native struggle. There were no details regarding them; it was only known certainly, that both Stewart and Trevelyan had been hurt; that Stewart was still ill at the Station, and that Trevelyan had sent in a resignation. His return was expected. They would have to wait.

They waited; and Cary grew older in the waiting.

Little by little details were added to the story, and she would go around to the Stewarts’ and talk it over with John’s mother and John’s sister, and women-like they would try to fit the ill-formed pieces together.

Then she would go back slowly to the lodgings.

She had waited so long for Trevelyan to come home, and she had thought to welcome him in promotion; she had dreamed that some day Trevelyan would do something great for the Service and for England; she had believed it, and now—Trevelyan was coming home—resigned; and all her dreams and all her faith had not been worth while.

*II.*

Trevelyan had landed. The Captain saw it in the morning paper and read the item out to Cary. The ship had gotten in a day before it had been looked for.

Cary pushed back her untasted cup of coffee, and she remained in doors all day, unconsciously listening for his footfall on the stairs, and when night came without bringing him, she laughed at herself for fancying that he would come direct to her.

It was three days before he did come and she met him on the stairs. She was about to do some delayed shopping, and as she was going down, she met him coming up. She turned and they went back to the quiet little sitting room together, and she ran over to the window impetuously and flung back the curtains.

"Come here," she said, gaily, "I can scarcely believe it is you, yourself! Come here, and let me see your Indian tan!"

He smiled a little, obeying her, but he did not meet her eyes.

_Could_ he ever tell her? he wondered.

"Why you haven’t got half the tan I expected! You’re not chocolate at all!" she said like a grieved child.

He forgot the haunting shadow for a moment and he laughed genuinely.

"I’m sorry I don’t please you."

"You don’t please me at all," Cary pouted. "You’re not chocolate, and you haven’t returned a captain, and you’re not in uniform with a medal on your breast, and what is worse than everything, you’ve grown chicken-hearted and turned your back on the Service and run away."

He winced.

"And you’re as solemn as a funeral, and you haven’t told me you’re glad to see me, and—you don’t please me at all!"

"That’s a nice greeting for a chap!"

"Well—you deserve it!" Cary retorted; then she brightened up, "And you really got hurt? Did it come just ’within a shade of a vital spot,’ like it always does in the story books?"

"I got a scratch."

"Good boy! How did it happen? You must sit down and tell me all about it. Was it one of those horrid natives?"

Trevelyan sat down near the window in the deep shadow of the curtains. He put his hand to his head and pressed it there tightly for a moment.

"No," he said, "It wasn’t one of the natives. It was my own revolver."

"What?"

Trevelyan faltered.

"Must you hear the story to-day? Won’t you wait? It’s so long since I’ve seen you—"

If this brief hour could only be his, unspoiled, to remember!

"Don’t be aggravating," said Cary, "I’m interested, and I want to hear." She could not have told why a dull weight should suddenly have laid itself upon her.

Trevelyan sat silent.

"First," he said presently, playing with the tassel of the curtain cord, "first, let me tell you about John."

She flushed. She had forgotten John in the dread that lay upon her.

"Yes, please tell me about John. Is he coming home soon?"

"When he is able to bear the journey—and I believe a little before. He is sick for a sight of England." Trevelyan let the last words fall slowly. He had thought to add "of you."

After a moment he went on.

"I had a long talk with Mackenzie—the surgeon, you know—before I left. He says the wound hurt something in the back and went clear through to the lung. He’ll have to get out of the Service."

Cary rose quickly. She went over to the piano and stood there pressing her hands against the top and hiding her face on them.

"It’s too cruel," she moaned, "both you fellows—out of the Service! _It’s too cruel!_"

Trevelyan knit and unknit his fingers, and was silent.

"He’ll be all right—in time," he said slowly, with a dim idea of giving her comfort, "but he just won’t be physically strong enough again for the army."

"And you’ve resigned!"

Trevelyan still sat in the shadows cast by the curtains. He was massing all his courage and his strength against his love.

"Cary!" She raised her head from her arms, and she shivered at the tone of his voice, without knowing why. "Cary, if you’ll come over here—I’ll tell you why—" he broke off.

She obeyed him mechanically.

"Sit down."

She did as he bade her.

"Shall I light the lamp?" she faltered. "The days are short and—and it’s dark—"

"No, not yet. Sit here where I can see your face by the fire. There! Like that!"

And then he began on the cause and the details of the native trouble. She moved restlessly. She did not understand the technicalities very well, and the odd dread and oppression would not lift. She was conscious that Trevelyan’s voice filled the room, but she scarcely heeded his words. And then he told her of Stewart and something of what Stewart had tried to do for him, and grew eloquent over it, and she forgot herself and the dread in listening to him. Even on the day of the storm in Scotland, when he had told her the stories of his childhood, he had not been as eloquent as this. Then he halted. After a while he resumed. He did not pause again, but went on rapidly with the old resoluteness born afresh, now that he had once begun. He continued steadily, mercilessly, leading up to the heart of it as he would have aimed at and hit the bull’s eye at target practice with an unerring hand.

"And the Colonel ordered me to make the survey. It meant danger and probable death, and—I was afraid. I shot myself to prevent going. I lied about it. I said the revolver had gone off. He sent John."

He leaned forward, grim with the grimness of despair, and the moisture came out on his face and his throbbing throat, but she did not see his face, she only heard the words that fell heavily on the silence.

She rose to her feet; he could see her, in the beauty of her height, silhouetted against the bright firelight. Her breast was rising and falling quickly with emotion.

"I don’t believe it," she cried. "There is nothing that will make me believe it! Why, you’re not afraid of anything! You to turn coward!"

She paused, waiting for his denial, and remained standing.

He rose too; came from out of the shadows and sat down in the Captain’s big chair by the fire, where she could see and read his face.

"I was afraid," he repeated.

It was as if he knew no other word.

She went over to him and dropped down by the chair, and looked up at him.

"Tell me that it isn’t true," she said. "If you tell me that it isn’t true, I’ll believe you against the world."

"It is true," he said.

The girl pressed the palms of her hands against her cheeks and drew them slowly down, away from her face.

Suddenly she rose to her feet and leant over, looking steadily into his face.

The shadowy spaces at the ends of the room grew and came to meet each other.

She looked down into his face searchingly and in silence, and he met her look as a brave man meets death—squarely. Her hand dropped from his shoulder and fell at her side lifelessly. She shrank away.

"Good God," she whispered.

She went over into the shadows, to the window and stood looking out, motionless. It seemed to her that she could never look at him again.

"John saw me," said Trevelyan, over by the fire, "and he swore me to keep quiet about it—except to you; he left that to me to decide—he made me swear to resign. I wasn’t fit to serve England."

He spoke without emotion and briefly, stating facts.

After awhile he went over to her in an uncertain manner. She shrank closer to the window.

"Don’t come near me," she said in a low voice.

He went back and sat down by the fire. The minutes passed.

"If you would say something to me,—" he began, looking toward her.

She came out of the shadows into the firelight.

"There _is_ nothing to say," she said, and her face looked then like the face on the hospital wall.

"I know it," he answered.

She covered her face with her hands, and turned quickly and fell down by a chair, burying her face in its cushions, and sobbing as though to break her heart.

Trevelyan did not move to go to her; he did not even look at her as she was crying there over his lost honor. Honor was so much to her. He had always known it. Perhaps it was for that he had first loved her.

After awhile she moved and leaned one elbow on the seat of her chair, her cheek in her hand. She turned her face, looking into his.

"I—I didn’t mean to be cruel," she said, and her voice caught in sobs as she spoke. "I was—selfish. I—was only thinking of—myself. Of—of how I’d trusted you, and—and that! But oh, I’m—so sorry for—you. I—" she broke off, impatiently brushing the tears away with her hand.

Trevelyan stared into the fire.

"Don’t talk that way," he said slowly, "I can bear anything but—that!"

"What—what made you—afraid?"

He left the big chair by the fire and came over to where she was sitting on the floor, and looked down at her.

"I was afraid I should never see you again," he said. "I—" and he put out his hand as though to touch her hair, "I wish—well I wish, I had known there was something besides you in the world!"

She said nothing.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked after awhile.

"I don’t know," he said slowly, "_I—don’t—know!_"

He turned abruptly and picked up his coat and hat. He did not offer to shake hands in parting. Cary had used to help him on with his coat and shake hands, but Cary did not move to-night. He walked over to the door, turning to look back at her.

"Good night," he said, in a matter of fact way, "Good-bye."

Cary sat motionless and she looked up at him dumbly.

"Good-bye," he repeated.

"Good-bye," she said slowly.

Trevelyan took the night train home—to Scotland and to old Mactier. Perhaps up there, he would learn "what he was going to do now."

Cary sat motionless, in the shadows, by the big chair. After awhile she crept over to the dead fire and stared at the white ashes. It seemed to her that all her faith was dead.

*III.*

After Trevelyan had come and gone, each day seemed to Cary like the one before; and they all stretched out, crushed and dead and lifeless, as a string of pearls from which the luster has disappeared.

After awhile there were rumors that Stewart was coming home; that Stewart was making a desperate effort to come home—to England. London was agog—Stewart’s part of London. Everyone by this time had gotten a pretty clear idea of affairs, and because Stewart had come up to what they had expected of him, and had faced danger and death like the soldier he was, and had generally conducted himself like a gentleman,—London was pleased. London, like a woman, derived satisfaction in saying, "I always knew it. I told you so."

Little by little the excitement penetrated Cary’s inertia. After all, it was not quite fair that because one man had broken her faith and his honor, she should judge all men by him. John had not failed her. Perhaps John would pull things straight again for her, and make her see life as she ought.

The warm days of early spring came—the English spring and the sunshine, and there was no need any longer for a fire on the hearth, and every day brought the ship nearer, and every fair breeze helped to bring him into port quicker—John, coming back, sick and wounded for life, from battle.

After all, she had forgotten that part of it—his part; and his burden that was heavier than her own, and Trevelyan’s burden, that was heavier than all.

After awhile she brought a pity, wholly womanly and half divine, out of the ashes that had seemed so dead, and on the awful truth of these men’s lives, broken by the failure of one, she built the mercy that is stronger than justice, and the faith that is stronger than doubt.

Something, though, remained in the ashes, dead, never to be rekindled, and woman-like she used to cry a little over the dead part of it; not because she could not relight it, but because it was so dead.

She grew into a woman in those weeks lapsing between Trevelyan’s call and Stewart’s return—gradually, as clay is moulded in the hands of a potter, who cuts it on his wheel, to give to it the finer tracings and the smoothness of completion.

And every day and every fair breeze brought Stewart nearer, and Cary turned from the ashes to the sunsets again. Fires would go out, even with careful tending, but the sunsets were God’s, Cary told herself, and, therefore, eternal.

*IV.*

Malcolm Stewart went down to Southampton to meet the ship and bring John back to London.

"No excitement," the doctor had said, and so he had gone alone.

Now that young Stewart had really accomplished the task of getting back to England, his false strength deserted him and he became weaker than before. The two men, the sturdy father and the wasted son, made the journey to town, John being carried to and from the railway carriages.

For a moment, when he reached London, and the carriage was turning into Grosvenor Square, he rallied a little and insisted on getting out of the carriage himself, and walking up the steps, leaning heavily on his father’s arm.

"We won’t frighten the Little Madre," he had said.

The tall, womanly figure of the Little Madre. who had been standing by the window for the last hour, appeared at the door, silently holding out her arms.

After awhile they got him up to his own room and to bed, and all day the Little Madre sat by him, tending to his few wants. Once he fell asleep, and when he awoke the room was full of flowers.

"What is it?" he asked his mother feebly, "Where did they come from?"

"From friends," she said, rising and moving from one great bunch to another. "The white and pink roses are from Cousin Kenneth’s wife," and so she went on. "The heather and the bracken came without a name. I think they must be from Rob—don’t you?"

She paused, turning to him questioningly. Stewart swallowed.

"Probably," he said, in a low voice.

"The Camerons sent the lilies, and those red roses are from the old Major of the Department—you should read the card," she smiled proudly, coming back to his bed.

He smiled at her eagerness, and laid the card down.

"That’s pretty nice, isn’t it?" he asked.

And then he looked up at her.

"But the violets?" he asked slowly. "Who left the violets?"

"The violets are from Cary," she replied, meeting his look.

A slow flush mounted over his pale face.

"Please bring them here."

She did so, holding them close to his face that he might smell of them before she put the little vase on the table by him. He took them out of the water, feebly, and laid them on the bed.

"Everyone is awfully kind," he said, "and I don’t deserve the fuss. Have—many inquired—to-day?"

"All my visiting list," she replied, laughingly, "and a good many more besides. Why the officers—" she paused, shaking her head.

"Has—Cary called?" he asked, looking hard at the foot board of the bed.

"Yes, and left the flowers herself. You are to see her—" she broke off, anxiously watching the haggard face that he turned quickly to her own.

"When?"

"In three or four days—if you are stronger. She shall be the first."

His mother leaned over him, stroking his hair from his forehead. He met her eyes gravely.

The late sunlight sifted through the drawn curtains and touched the flowers; their exquisite odor crept through the stillness of the room as the sweet memory of an old song steals through the silent chambers of the heart.

"I love her," he said simply. "I have loved her always," he said, still looking into her eyes.

She smiled.

"I have known it always," she answered.

But the four days lengthened into four weeks before he saw Cary. That night the half healed wound reopened, and he had a sinking spell.

The next morning before the news had had time to become generally known, Trevelyan mysteriously appeared at the house on Grosvenor Square, and went straight to Stewart’s room.

"You go and lie down," he said briefly to his aunt, who had been up all night, "I guess I ought to know how to take care of him. I did it once before in India. I won’t leave you until I’ve pulled him through."

And then Trevelyan and Death fought it out again, and Trevelyan beat back the Shadowy Presence in the great still London house, as he had done weeks before in the government hospital in India. He hardly left the sick room, and he seemed scarcely ever to sleep. He would sit for hours at a time, his finger on Stewart’s pulse; quieting his ravings and forcing back the fever by the might of his own will.

Except in the dim sick room where Stewart lived again in delirium the night of the perilous ride, over the great Grosvenor Square house rested the hush of grave sickness and impending death. The servant stationed at the door, guarded against the possible ringing of the muffled bell, and answered inquiries, and received the cards left, and the offerings of flowers. None ever reached Stewart’s darkened room except the small bunch of violets that came daily, and which his mother would bring up and place on the table by his bed, hoping in woman-fashion that the perfume might attract and hold his wandering faculties, or arouse him from the stupor into which he would fall from time to time; but it never did. If she had ever dreamed of the exquisite torture the flowers and their scent were to Trevelyan, she would have placed them with the others down stairs, but Trevelyan never told, and she never knew the moments in which the perfume seemed to drive him mad.

Once she suggested getting a professional nurse to relieve him, but catching sight of Trevelyan’s face she had stopped short.

"There! Forgive me," she said. "It is not that I don’t trust you, or am ungrateful or believe that anyone else could do so well, but I am afraid for you."

"I’m all right," Trevelyan had answered shortly.

"You are unselfish; you are only thinking of us and of John. You are always thinking and doing for John."

"Don’t!" he interrupted, and through the dimness of the room she could see that his face quivered, and she wondered.

"I could not get along without you," she went on. "None of us could, and it has been you who have pulled him through so far."

She looked toward the long, motionless figure on the bed.

"I shall pull him through to-night and to-morrow, and to-morrow again, and next week—until he is out of danger," said Trevleyan.

That was the day the two doctors had given Stewart up.

The crisis came and passed, and Stewart lived.

When the thralldom and the stupor of the fever had partly lifted, and before Stewart came to himself, Trevelyan left and went back to Scotland and to old Mactier, nor could anyone persuade him to remain.

Days later, when Stewart was sitting up, he saw Cary for the first time.

"There is some one waiting outside whom you will be glad to see," his mother had said.

"It is Cary? You are going to let me see Cary?" he cried.

"If you will be good and not talk," she answered, leaving the door ajar.

Stewart turned his face to the door, pressing his long, thin fingers resting on his knee, close together.

She came in carrying a bunch of violets, and stood by his chair, looking down at him. He looked up at her, and it seemed to him that she was beautiful, and her voice the sweetest he had ever heard.

"I have waited and wanted so to give you these myself," she said, "and you have frightened us all so."

She spoke with the simplicity of a little girl, but there was a quality in her voice that Stewart had not heard before, and he knew that Cary had become a woman.

He clung to her hand in parting with that pathetic bodily weakness that makes a man, in illness, like a child.

"Don’t go yet," he pleaded, "You’ve been here such a little while. Oh, _please_ don’t go!"

She patted his hand.

"I will come again," she said, and on her way to the door, she kept looking back at him and smiling. He sat motionless until her light footstep was lost in the distance, and all day he sat quiet, scarcely speaking, dreaming of her.

The next day he waited, expecting her, but she did not come; nor the next.

"What’s become of Cary?" he asked on the third day of his mother. "Why don’t she come any more?"

"I suppose she thinks you’re out of danger now, and she may have other things to do."

"If that isn’t just the way of women! Coming all the time when a chap don’t know anything or anybody, and then just when he needs cheering—" he broke off, pulling viciously at the shawl over his feet.

His mother smiled, knowing better "the way of women."

But two days later, when Cary called again, she spoke to her of his loneliness.

"He gets tired of the home faces," she said, "and he isn’t strong enough yet to see the men or strangers. Perhaps if you could read aloud to him now and then——"

"Why, of course I could," said Cary, and after that she came oftener. They would carry Stewart down to his mother’s cheerful little sitting room, and there one or more of the family would gather and Cary would talk or read aloud. At such times Stewart would lean back in his chair among his pillows and remain silent, content to look at her and to listen to her voice. One day they were left alone together. He remained quiet, his eyes fixed on her. Presently she finished the chapter and turned the page.

"I think that was a pretty strong scene, don’t you?" she asked, pausing for a moment before she went on, and peering at him gravely over the top of the book.

"Yes—it was," he answered absently.

"You weren’t listening to a word of it," she exclaimed reproachfully.

He laughed.

"To tell you the truth—no. Put the wretched old thing down and talk to me."

She laid the book down as he had bidden, but she played nervously with the leaves.

"What shall I talk about?"

"Oh, anything—yourself."

"Upon my word, but you’re polite. There isn’t an earthly thing to tell about myself," she added, "And I don’t know any topic that would interest you. There’s that House of Commons speech, of course, but——"

"Then I’ll talk to you."

"Oh, you _mustn’t_!" She looked up startled, "Sir Archibald said you were not to exert yourself."

"Confound the old codger, anyway! Does he expect to keep me tongue-tied the rest of my life?"

Cary laughed.

"You’re cross to-day," she said. "You’re getting better. It’s a sure sign."

Stewart leaned forward suddenly; then he leaned back and traced an outline of a sword on the leather arm of the chair.

"Did you know," he asked her slowly, "that as far as the Service is concerned, I’m done for—that I’ll never be well enough for it again; that I’ve been injured beyond hope for the Service; that I’ve had to resign?"

"Yes," said Cary gently, looking hard at the book in her lap.

"Thirty and—done for," he said bitterly, "All the Woolwich years to count for nothing; all the study; all the ambition, all the—hope, to count for nothing!" His finger paused in tracing the outline of the sword.

"Oh, you mustn’t say that," cried Cary, "you must remember what you’ve done already—more than many older officers do in their whole lives. And then—"

He interrupted her.

"That sounds well," he said. "But life isn’t worth much to a man when he’s laid on the shelf just when he’s beginning to live— But the wasted years and the inactive life ahead!" He went on rapidly, beating the fist of one hand against the palm of the other. "Oh, think what inactivity will mean after the life I’ve been trained to, and worked for, and loved!"

She sat silent, her heart throbbing with a great pity.

"To have to think of myself—to look out for draughts like a sickly, nervous old man!" Something rose in Stewart’s throat, and he coughed. "Can’t ever command the men again! Can’t lead them to battle, or ever feel the soft earth under me, or see the stars and the night through the flap of my tent! To have to give up trying to be something, or do something—at thirty!"

He stopped short.

The book fell from Cary’s lap to the floor, and she stooped to pick it up with swimming eyes. He caught sight of her face and he leaned forward; all the anger and all the resentment gone from his voice—melted by her tears.

"Bah!" he said, "That’s just about the fate I’m fit for if I haven’t got any more grit than that! Of course I didn’t mean it, and you must try and forget it. Of course the Service is out of the question, but I _will_ make something of my life! And I’m awfully glad, too, for what I’ve had of it, and—been allowed to do. I’m glad for the Woolwich years and—and the training—and—all that! Of course it hasn’t been lost. And I’m glad I’ve done something for the Service—even in a little way, and saved—" he caught himself up suddenly.

Cary rose, her tears dried by the burning fever in her eyes. She finished the sentence.

"Saved Robert from exposure!"

He looked up quickly.

"I—I don’t understand you."

"Oh, yes, you do too," said Cary, breathing hard. "You think I don’t know all about it! I do, though!"

"How?"

"Robert told me himself."

Stewart drew a deep breath and looked away. There was a long silence in the room. After awhile she went up to the big leather chair and laid one hand on the back of it and bent her head, looking down at him.

"Johnny?"

He looked up, his firm mouth working.

"Johnny, you’re the best man that ever lived!"

"Oh, Cary!" he said, and he tried to laugh.

She nodded decidedly.

"But I know. Robert told me what you’d been to him, and—he didn’t spare himself."

Stewart stared straight ahead of him.

"Poor Rob," he said. "Poor boy!"

Cary moved off to the window and looked out, absent-mindedly, folding the edge of the curtain with her fingers.

"It’s all like a terrible dream," she said slowly, "and I keep thinking I’ll awake. It doesn’t seem possible. I keep remembering the time he saved us in that awful storm, years ago at home, and—it—doesn’t—seem—possible!"

"No, but it’s all too true," said Stewart.

Cary wheeled around, facing the room.

"And I am responsible. It was through his love for me!" she cried.

Stewart shook his head.

"You tried to help him. I tried to help him—all the fellows did, but he just let himself go. When a man like that wants something, he sweeps everything out of his way and rushes on blindly."

"Oh, but it was the love for me!" said Cary; then suddenly: "How you shielded him!"

"Do you think I did right? After all, perhaps, I wasn’t meant for the Service. If I had done all my duty—"

"I think you did right," said Cary, looking down with grave eyes at her locked fingers, and she came back into the room and sat down, "Shall I tell you why I think so?"

"Yes."

"No exposure could remedy the hurt he gave himself—to his own manhood and his own honor—" she broke off, and then went on hurriedly. "Oh, if he could only have realized what that meant—keeping his honor clean—" she broke off again, and Stewart looked away so that he might not see her face. She went on.

"The survey was made all right and so it was not the hurt to the Service it might have been, but only to himself; and your punishment in forcing him to resign was severe enough! His own remorse makes up the rest, and the two may bring him another chance." She paused.

Stewart leaned his head on his hand, his elbow on the arm of the chair, and looked fixedly off into space.

"Perhaps you’re right—I guess you are," he said, slowly. "I thought something like that at the time. It may be the saving of him. I didn’t do an officer’s whole duty, but I tried to be just. I tried to spare him and—and—" he hesitated, "those at home. I suppose another man might have told. I just held my tongue. It was an accident—my seeing. I was worried over the boy and couldn’t keep away—" he was speaking disjointedly. "I loved the Service. God! how I loved it, and I couldn’t bear that he might really harm it some time, so I made him get out. But I couldn’t disgrace him; have him court-marshaled and cashiered, or—or pay the penalty—" he broke off, and Cary rose to go.

"He is paying the penalty," she said. "He pays it with every breath he draws."

"Yes; and they tell me that twice he has nursed me and saved me, and I never knew!"

Cary looked down thoughtfully at Stewart’s thin hand resting on the arm of the chair, and Stewart looked at her and the silence grew and grew. If only he knew whether——

She looked up quickly, as though divining his thoughts, and she flushed a little.

"We will keep the secret," she said, "you and I—won’t we? And we will try and help him? Do you know, I believe he’ll take his ambition and courage and—love," the flush mounted higher, "and remould his life?" She hesitated, "Even hopeless love—" and then she broke off, turning her face away. Stewart did not speak or move.

"Then it isn’t Robert," he said to himself after she had gone, "Then—it—isn’t—Robert!"

*V.*

Weeks later, when Stewart was able, he went around to see Cary.

"It’s a dreadful pull—up those stairs," said Cary, rolling forward a chair and looking anxiously at Stewart as he stood wan and breathless, but smiling, in the doorway.

"It never used to be," he panted, sitting down.

His eyes wandered about the room.

"Jove, but it’s good to get back here! And you haven’t changed things a bit—even the Psyche in her old place! And the little tea kettle—Jove!"

He leaned back restfully.

She laughed and watched him in silence.

"I’ll miss it all like the dickens!"

She looked up quickly from the flowers she was just beginning to arrange.

"You are not going away, are you?" she asked.

He nodded and sighed.

"Home—to Scotland. The lease on the place has run out, and they think country air will brace me up a bit—so we’re going. It’ll seem queer to get back there after all these years."

"You—you’re going to give up the Grosvenor Square house?"

"Yes. I suppose, though, we’ll come back every year for the season and take a suite at the Langham or the Buckingham Gate. Father has an idea that he’ll put me through a course of politics up there, when we’re alone, and there’s nothing going on." Stewart smiled mirthlessly.

"You are thinking of going into politics, when you get strong?" asked Cary for something to say. A sudden unutterable homesickness had swept over her.

"I’m not sure—it isn’t unlikely though. I suppose that’s as good a way to serve the country as half a man can—perhaps a little better—to try and help keep one detail of the government’s work clean! Father has set his heart on the Diplomatic service for me."

"I should think you’d like that," said Cary. Talking to-day for some reason was an effort.

"I’m not sure. What are you and the Captain going to do with yourselves?"

Cary leaned against the back of a chair, tearing a stray rose leaf to pieces. She looked down at it as she spoke.

"Papa wants another tramp through the Alps. I’m not in the mood for tramping, but he’s been so good I can’t say a word. When we’ve climbed Mont Blanc again and come down, I think I’ll get Daddy to take me home. I think I’m a little mite homesick."

She turned quickly and buried her face in the roses. An odd light sprang to Stewart’s eyes.

"Haven’t you been happy in England?" he asked.

Cary lifted her head, her face dyed with the deep red of the roses.

"Happy! There’s no place like England—except America," she said. "I love every stone in England—in the United Kingdom! Months ago Daddy and I spent a July in Hertfordshire. I can see it all now; the glorious green of everything; the undulating country and the woods and the scattered old cottages, with the village in the distance and the church spire showing, and the little river and the cornfields and the poppies!" She breathed quicker. "There is only one thing sweeter I know—the old fort at home and the long beach and the sea."

She stopped, and the red of the roses faded. She went on slowly.

"Yes, I guess I’m a little bit homesick, for the beach and the sea."

"Do you remember when we were crossing I asked you to let me take you to my home in Scotland when the homesickness came?" asked Stewart. "You might come to us when the Captain is re-climbing Mont Blanc."

He paused, waiting for an answer, but Cary was silent.

"Wouldn’t you come?"

She threw the last bit of the torn leaf away and came toward him and stopped, her hands on the back of a chair, a smile creeping into her eyes.

"I might—if I was asked," she said demurely.

He laughed like a boy.

"Mother’ll see to that."

"She’ll have to," said Cary, tossing her head.

"But you’d still be homesick?"

She wrinkled up her forehead.

"Goodness, even Scotland isn’t America," she answered. "Why, I suppose I would—some!"

Stewart closed the carriage door decidedly. Then he leaned back and stared into the mirror opposite, addressing the reflection there. The odd light had come back to his eyes.

"It’s what I’ve been waiting for," he said, speaking aloud and slowly; "it’s what I’ve been waiting for all these years. She’s homesick, and she shall come home—to me."

*VI.*

To Trevelyan, up in Scotland, each day evolved itself into an eternity. There were the lonely breakfasts in the mornings; the lonely walks about the grounds, or out on the steep, bare crags; the lonely lunches; the lonely afternoons spent in wandering around the silent house; the lonelier evenings in which the unread book would drop from his hand to the floor, and he would stare absently into the shadows; the lonely wakeful nights—it was always loneliness.

Old Mactier would often pause in his morning work and look after the solitary figure and ponder and shake his head before he went back to his duties. Trevelyan sometimes used to stop by him and talk to him a little before he resumed his walk. Once he carried Mactier off to the moorlands for a week’s shooting and Mactier was actually conscious that Trevelyan seemed happier with his gun under his arm again than he had been since the day of his mysterious return.

It was Trevelyan, not Mactier, who led the hunt in those days, and the old man would press after him, sometimes stumbling with the fatigue he was too proud to acknowledge, and glorying in the prowess of the great strong figure ahead, that he had carried as a child and in whose hands he had placed the first firearms—almost before the child was strong enough to hold the weapon or could pull the trigger by himself.

If Trevelyan exhausted the old retainer, he tired himself too, and at night he would drop, almost too weary to take off his hunting boots, and go to sleep, and sleep heavily, dreamlessly, as he had not done for weeks.

It was a relief, that, to get away from the haunting shadow in his dreams; and he blessed passionately the fatigue that brought even for so brief a time, forgetfulness.

At the end of the week he and Mactier went home, and the inactivity and the loneliness and the sleeplessness grew greater than before.

There was no face of his own kind to greet him here, in Scotland; the Camerons were his nearest neighbors, and the Camerons were away—Tom in Aberdeen. There was no one to help him, even if they could, to beat back the blind despair that threatened him with mental and with moral death.

One day he ordered out the hounds and rode across country until the fields and trees and fences became blurred together by the touch of twilight. He returned mud stained and mortally weary and stalked into the dining room and over to the sideboard, where he locked his table wines. He took out a decanter and hunted around for a glass, and carried both into the library, and sat down. Then he poured some of the wine and swallowed it at a mouthful. He filled the glass again and drank the liquor leisurely, lounging back in his chair with a sigh of content. After all, he declared, there was nothing like a bracer when a chap was fagged out.

By and by, he slipped down a little in his chair and stretched his legs, still encased in their mud-stained boots, straight out in front of him and went to sleep. When he awoke it was quite dark, and he sat still, staring through the uncurtained window into the night, and conscious of a delicious languor. Then as his faculties became more acute and the old spectre returned to haunt him, he instinctively stretched forth his hand in the blackness and fumbled for the decanter and the glass. He drunk deeply once, twice, three times—and when he raised the glass for the fourth time his hand shook and there was an odd rushing sound in his head.

Suddenly he sat forward in his chair, pushed the glass and decanter from him roughly and flung out his arms across the table. The odd rushing sound subsided, and he became aware that the wine was dripping from the table to the floor, where he had overturned the decanter.

He did not refill it, and the sideboard remained unlocked—and empty.

So the days passed. He would climb up into the eyrie, as he had done as a child and listen to the beating sea below. Once the sea had sung to him of undiscovered lands, whose shores it touched, bearing the message back to him; it had sung of wealth and fame gained by the sword—it was by the sword always—and it had beaten and beaten, and sung of all that he would one day like to be; and of what some day he would be and achieve. Once it had sung of love—of its mystery and the essence of its life—

Now—

He would crawl to the edge of the crag and peer over into the white foam, holding on to the edge until the old boyish dizziness came back; but unlike in the old days, there was never a woman’s face in the foam now. What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the foam!

And the song of the sea was the song of death and dishonor. He might climb the crag to-day, and to-morrow, and every to-morrow of his life, and the song would not change. The sea was a vast organ; he could not change its tunes back to the old ones; he could not control it, and it went on, rolling out its fierce, deep music of dishonor.

And then he would leave the sea and the crags and go back into the empty house. The house was only a shade less bad; with its deserted rooms and its long gallery of dead and gone Campbells and Trevelyans.

He had wandered into the gallery once or twice. The faces on the canvases, grown indistinct with the years, seemed to look back at him without recognition that he was of their race and line. What claim had they on him or he on them? The men had been brave and the women fair—so the history and traditions of the house had said, even if the stiff painted figures and the severe painted faces often said otherwise—the men had always been in the front wherever they were needed for the defense of Scotland and her rights, and later they had defended England too. If they had not fought for her with the sword, they had with tongue or pen—if they had not been soldiers, they had been powers in the government or in the pulpit. Even the solemn-faced preacher near the big window at the furthest end of the gallery, when eloquence had failed, had left the old kirk to strike a blow for King Charlie. The women, too, had been brave—brave in the sacrifice of beauty and wealth for the upholding of Scottish rights, and the renouncing of husbands and lovers and sons for Scotland.

At the other side of the gallery hung his father’s race—the Trevelyans; and opposite the solemn-faced preacher, near to the window where the sun struck it in the morning, was the picture of his mother. It had been taken of her in the first years of her marriage, soon after he had been born. People had said that, as a child, he had held his head proudly, like hers.

The grave, smiling eyes seemed to follow him as he turned hastily from the portrait. She had gloried in the traditions of her race; she had been proud—justly—of her line. He thanked God she was dead—that he might remember her as the portrait had painted her to be—on the flood tide of her love and her beauty and her strength.

There was the picture of his father, in his full regimentals. He had been years older than his wife, but how they had loved each other; how proud they had been of each other’s race, and how proud they had been of him. He was glad that his father was traveling in the Far East and had not seen him or demanded explanations since his return. He would have been obliged to meet the questionings with silence. It was better so.

Between the two portraits hung one of himself as a child. How his father and mother had watched the growing of the portrait under the master’s brush, waiting for its completion, that it might be hung in the gallery. It had been painted the year his mother had died—a year before he went to America. The artist had taken something of the grace and alertness of the great hound that had rested at the boy’s feet and put it into the supple limbs of the boy himself. He had painted into the boy’s eyes the reflection of the gray stormy sea, and had lent them something of the gray sea’s strength.

And he had been like that as a child, with all the promise of a ripe manhood! And now that he had grown to be a man——

There was a long stretch of empty wall space next to the portrait of his father, and his father had once laughingly told him that his portrait should hang there, painted in uniform, when he had left Woolwich and won his spurs and returned after seeing service.

And he had returned from service without the uniform!

He had used to come and dream here after the Woolwich years, whenever he could get off from duty or was not with Cary. He had come here often in that winter when Cary was away in France. And he had planned his portrait hanging so, in uniform, with hers near his—even as his mother’s was near his father’s. And sometimes when the sun had gone and the darkness had crept in, the shadows had taken other forms—the forms of children—who would troop up and take their places on the empty spaces waiting for them on the wall.

He had dreamed of her—-of Cary—as a strong passionate nature dreams of its best beloved. He had fancied her in a hundred different guises—at the head of his table, moving around the house, as its mistress, talking to old Mactier and his tenantry, as the master’s wife; he had dreamed of her, after he and she had lived together alone for a period of ineffable bliss, as the mother of his children; strong sons and fair daughters, that would reflect her sweetness and his strength—the completion of their love. He had dreamed of the time when the house would ring with their voices, and then of the days when the house had lapsed into silence again, when learning love’s mystery they had gone to homes of their own; when he and she would live on in a love that time could not change, nor age wither; how later she would lay him in the tomb of his ancestors, and later still they would put her close beside him and his people. He had never dreamed of her dying first, or of his life without her.

And now, she had gone from his life, and the dreams had gone; and he had shattered the hopes with his own hand. He would never feel her in his arms, or lean down and rest the hollow of his cheek against her hair; he would never see her moving around the house, or watch her shadow as she passed. She would never rest beside him in the vault.

The house would remain silent in the years that stretched ahead, as it had remained silent in the years that lay behind. There would never be again even the dream echoes of the children’s voices. His portrait—in uniform—would never hang upon the wall; the space where he had dreamed her pictured face would look down into his living one, would be left empty; and the shadows would never take the forms of little children, and only the grim shadow-curtain of darkness would stretch across the barren wall.

And he would leave the gallery and go into the desolate library, where he and she had stood that day of the storm, and he would sit down and bow his face on the big, carved table, wondering what was the answer to the twisted riddle of his life.

He had told himself he would pick up the broken pieces and remould them for England and the Service, and he had thought to learn the answer here—at home, in Scotland, by the crags and sea.

But Scotland had not answered him.

*VII.*

Trevelyan let the hand that held Mackenzie’s letter fall between his sprawling legs.

He had been sitting on the front steps of the house when Mactier had brought him his mail and he had opened it there.

There were the papers, and a half dozen bills, a wedding invitation, two sets of reception cards, the announcement of a club meeting, and a letter from his aunt in eastern Scotland, begging him to come to them, if only for a week, and telling him that Cary was with them, and—Mackenzie’s letter.

He had laid it aside to open last. It might have been he wanted to take 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!