Chapter VII: Part 7

The blacks, with their heads turned homeward, made good progress over the road—too good, Stewart thought, and once he sharply bade Sandy draw them in. Then as if ashamed of his impatience he inquired as to Sandy’s daughter, who had been ill. Sandy answered the question briefly, realizing that talking came amiss to-day, and then gave his attention to checking the rapid pace of the blacks, who were eager to get home.

The morning sun beat down upon them, but it seemed to Stewart that he was turned to ice and that he would never feel any warmth again. The station lay five miles or more beyond the point of home, and when he repassed the slope of heather and the old kirk road where the bracken grew, he turned his eyes away. It seemed to him he could never look upon or touch either the bracken or the heather again.

And the old road! Once they used to travel it together; they had traveled it in their earliest babyhood and again that dark night when Trevelyan had been brought from Argyll to make his home with them—a little, lonely, motherless lad of ten. They had crossed the old bridge so often; they had crossed it together that last time—_the last time_—and he had never known! He held on fast to the back of the seat in front, and moved his head a little—restlessly—as though it hurt. Henceforth there would be no more "togethers."

Sandy cleared his throat.

"There’s naething wrong, I hope, sir?" he asked a little timidly, but unable to bear the silence longer.

There was no answer. They were passing the heather slope and speech was not. And then Sandy, with an instinct not unusual in his race turned half around and blurted out:

"’Tis bad news ye’ve had from India, sir?"

Stewart looked past Sandy to the big fir that marked the boundary line of home, and nodded; and then he suddenly dropped his eyes and ran his finger, shaking as though with palsy, along the patent leather strip that bound back the corduroy of the seat.

"Mr. Trevelyan’s ill," asserted Sandy, unwilling to acknowledge the thought that came to him and which he knew was true. "You’re going to bring him back to Aberdeen—" Sandy hesitated.

Stewart looked away.

"Mr. Trevelyan will not come back to Aberdeen, Sandy—" he broke off.

The blacks trotted briskly over the road and the warm sunshine rested on the meadows and brightened everything but the big dark fir ahead. Somewhere in the copse near by a bird was singing.

The long home avenue was deserted except for McGuire, who was carefully clipping in his precise way the border of the walks, and McGuire leaned upon his shears, wondering why the young master had passed him with no sign of greeting.

There was no one else around. The house stood big and still in the sunshine, and the deserted terraces sloped away—like a vast piece of greenest velvet. Some of the windows were open, and from one of the upstairs casements a white curtain was fluttering in the breeze. It was his mother’s room. A restful quietness brooded over everything.

There was no one in the hall, flanked with its weapons and armor and paintings, and no sound from the breakfast room. Breakfast, he supposed, was long over. He had had none himself, but he was not conscious of the lack.

Someone was coming down the stairs. Stewart paused, a sudden heat replacing the chill that had possessed him until now. The sound came nearer and he recognized the halting step of Trevelyan’s father—Trevelyan’s father, who still bore that scar from Inkerman.

*XX.*

Trevelyan’s father stopped when he reached the foot of the stairs.

"Why, hello, boy, when did you get back? Thought you were in London for a fortnight."

"I thought so, too, sir, but you see, I—"

"Ho-ho, that’s it, is it?" His uncle laughed. "Well, I can’t blame you. She isn’t here, though—out with Maggie for a walk." He looked up quizzically into his nephew’s face, and then he looked away abruptly. Robert, too, loved the girl.

"Is she?" asked Stewart absently, and he turned toward the library, conscious that in the morning it was deserted, and that he could tell him there without fear of interruption. "The fact is, sir—"

Trevelyan’s father stopped short and looked his nephew over.

"What is it? What’s the trouble?" he asked concisely.

"Who—with me, sir? Nonsense; I’m all right."

"Was it Sir Archibald or that bit of diplomatic work?" The old man smiled grimly.

"Sir Archibald! I’m dismissed from his books long ago, sir. The diplomatic work promises well. By the way, have you heard the latest from Essex—" He sat down easily on the arm of a big leather chair and lounged across it; his face in shadow—. "It’s reported that Davidson is going to raise that dead and buried claim again."

"’A fool and his money—’" said the old officer, and sat down.

"Where’s the Little Madre?"

"Out listening to Margie’s woes. If her rheumatism don’t carry her off soon I’ll be inclined to do the job myself. Your mother is turning into her slave!" said his uncle testily.

"Margie’s rheumatism isn’t any worse than Ann Grafton’s stiff knee or Sam’s lame back," replied Stewart, swinging one foot against the side of the chair. "Mother always has been at the mercy of the tenants."

How was he to begin, he wondered.

He mechanically commenced to pull off his gloves.

"See here, John—" he glanced up quickly at Trevelyan’s father sitting in a black walnut chair carved a hundred years ago, his face shining out weather-beaten and grim from the dark background, and his voice more decided than Stewart had ever heard it—"Why did Robert leave the army?"

A glove dropped and lay at Stewart’s feet unnoticed. He moved restlessly.

"Why shouldn’t he? He had served his sub-lieutenancy. He got his commission—"

"To resign it. Exactly! Why?"

"He never liked the Army, sir; it was always the Navy with him from the first—"

"Is he with the Navy now?" The old officer tapped the floor impatiently with his heavy stick. "Why is he in India doing an orderly’s work instead of in the line?"

"Did you ever know Robert to stick to anything very long, sir?"

"Only one," said the old Briton shortly, and he thought of Cary. "You haven’t answered me."

Stewart rose, and his tone was final.

"Indeed, sir, it is not for me to say."

Trevelyan’s father clasped his hands over the knob of his stick, rested his chin on them and looked up at Stewart from under his shaggy brows—curiously.

"Well—well, since you won’t, you won’t, I suppose! I’ll have to wait until Robert comes back—"

Stewart wheeled abruptly and went over to the east window.

"After all, the boy is his own master," Trevelyan’s father said. "He’s whimsical and headstrong, too—" he broke off—"Everything was all straight, though—his getting out, I mean?" The deep eyes peered anxiously from the old officer’s weather-beaten face.

Stewart remained at the window, looking at the stretch of lawn. For the first time since his interview at the Secretary’s, his voice was broken.

"You need not be ashamed of Rob."

The old Briton drew a deep breath and he laughed a little—"After all, nothing else matters! I was sure of it!" and then again, "I—was—sure—of—it!"

Stewart began mechanically to count the number of rose bushes at the end of the terrace, and he made a great effort to steady his voice.

"By the way, this last idea of Robert’s—this cholera business—is a risky thing. Do you ever feel anxious, sir?"

"The boy’s foolhardy, but he’s got sense—" the Briton frowned.

"But even sense sometimes——"

The room was still. A bit of summer sunlight sifted through the oriel window. From the distance crept in the murmur of water breaking on the sand. McGuire was busy at the rose bushes near the terrace and the decided "click" of his shears and the soft music of the sea, were the only sounds that broke the quiet of the room.

"_John!_"

Trevelyan’s father rose and stood rigid by the old carved chair. Young Stewart turned and leaned against the woodwork. He grew afraid and trembled. He could not look upon that face.

"_Robert!_ That is why you have come back?"

He nodded.

The sunlight still sifted through the windows and played fitfully around the walnut carvings of the room and touched for a brief moment a bronze paper weight of the Dying Gaul. Someone standing in the open casement window at the south, stirred a little, and then Cary came swiftly down the length of the long room. A bit of heather from the armful she had gathered on the slope slipped from the bunch. The rest she threw upon the table as she passed it, and it lay there—its first, faint pink shining out against the black walnut. She went and stood by Trevelyan’s father, resting her hand upon his arm, and she looked up into his face.

"I left Maggie—I came ahead—I overheard—" she began disjointedly, "Robert—the cholera—Robert—?" and then as neither of the men spoke, she cried, "Oh, sir, indeed it may be a mistake—sometimes, you know the names—"

Trevelyan’s father looked down at the girl, and into her eyes full of unshed tears, and on the small white hand on his arm he placed his own—the one that had held the sabre at Inkerman. It was an old hand, thin and vividly veined, and it trembled.

"The report was signed by Mackenzie," said Stewart at last.

"There is some mistake—there _must_ be—the letters—" cried Cary.

"We will have to wait for the letters, child." Trevelyan’s father turned away.

Stewart came up to her.

"It was at the India Office yesterday—the Secretary—after all—" he broke off.

She looked from one to the other, but she still stood by Trevelyan’s father. Suddenly she sat down in the high backed chair he had occupied, clinging to his hand, her eyes on his face. Stewart went back to the window.

"But think what he did——"

Trevelyan’s father looked down at her again and his face twitched.

"He was always a brave laddie," he said, and his face was wet with tears.

Cary raised the hand she was holding and pressed it to her cheek, and she held it there—brown and thin and heavily veined—against the delicate texture, and caressed it in the way that women have.

"He was a great soul. I always knew it! I—always—knew—it—" she told them brokenly.

"He was a Briton," said the old officer of the Empire. "I didn’t always understand him—I blamed him for doing an orderly’s work. I’m proud of him—but if it had been anything but the cholera—I saw it once myself in Bombay; I ran away from it—" he raised his head, "anything but _that_! But—I’m proud of him!"

Stewart still stood by the oriel window leaning against his arm flung over his head, and he was crying—hardly and bitterly as a man cries. The stillness of the outside world increased. The sun crept into the corner of the room.

"I can’t quite take it in—" said the old man slowly, looking past the girl to a far-off field of thistle and staring at the purplish bloom. "It’s hard to think of Robert—gone!"

And then:

"I can’t think of the rest—the details—" he clenched his hands fiercely, "the pain—the thirst—" and his eyes came back to Cary. "There! There! There’s something about it all that we can’t understand, I fancy, but there is the honor—that thing which does not perish with the using!"

He turned abruptly, and when Cary, half fearful for him, would have followed, he motioned her away, and went out alone on the back terrace.

Stewart had not moved from the window, and Cary went and stood beside him, gravely looking out at the sunlight shifting on the lawn. She did not say anything, but as though conscious that they were alone, he spoke, his face still hidden on his arm.

"I did it," he said at last in a broken voice of confession. "I _did_ think to help him best by making him get away from the old crowd and the regiment—but it was because I thought of the Service, too—and I judged _him_——!"

She waited, and she did not speak, but she slipped one of her hands into the pocket of his tweed coat and held on to it.

"I broke his life—he loved _me_ better than that—" he began.

"Do you call a life that ended _so_—broken?"

He raised his face from his arm and looked at her.

"No—no—I didn’t mean that—but think of my judging him! All last night it came back to me—I thought I was going stark mad." And he brushed away the tears clumsily.

"It all hurts _so_! But, by and by—" she looked straight out of the oriel window, and she spoke disjointedly, and somehow she thought of western Scotland, and his sword. "I knew when we got those letters from Argyll—when I got my letter—Rob wasn’t coming back to us."

Stewart drew her to him.

"Oh! Cary, tell me that it doesn’t mean to you all—all that it might have done! Lassie—tell me——"

She smiled a little.

"You are foolish," she told him. "You know I love you," and then looking into his eyes—"It is only you."

He hid his mouth against the soft coil of her hair.

"Last night, I was almost jealous of the dead," he whispered, "and then when I passed the heather fields to-day—and the bracken—" his voice broke.

"I know," she said simply. "It is always the bracken and the heather—and Rob—isn’t it?"

From the south window the sun poured into the room and lighted up the heavy carvings of black walnut. The bit of heather still lay upon the floor and withered there. A silent linnet perched itself upon the window sill.

Somewhere from beyond the turn in the wooded drive, Maggie was coming home, singing:

"Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules,
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these!"

A man’s heavy halting step came from the back terrace. In the stillness they could hear him mount the stairs.

"But of all the world’s great heroes—
There’s none that—"

Somewhere upstairs a door closed.

* * * * * * * *

_*Selections from*_

*LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY’S*

_*List of Books*_

*D’ri and I*

A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second
War with the British; being
the Memoirs of Colonel
Ramon Bell, U.S.A.

By IRVING BACHELLER, author of "Eben Holden." With six illustrations by F. C. YOHN. 12mo, cloth, rough edges, gilt top, decorated cover, $1.50

Following the marvellous success of "Eben Holden," Mr. Bacheller gives to the public another stirring and delightful story of the North Country he loves so well. It is a tale of the days when the French _emigrés_, fleeing from the Reign of Terror, built their chateaux and mansions in the northern counties of New York; the days when England tried issue again with the young republic, and when Darius Olin, "quaint, rugged, wise, and truthful," with young Ramon Bell, two types of the men who have helped to make America, rode into the Lake Champlain region to adventure, love, and danger. It is a rare story of Yankee valor, Yankee humor, and Yankee pluck.

Eben Holden

A Tale of the North Country

By IRVING BACHELLER. Bound in red silk cloth, decorative cover, gilt top, rough edges. Size, 5x7¾. Price, $1.50

The most popular book in America.

Within eight months after publication it had reached its two hundred and fiftieth thousand. The most American of recent novels, it has indeed been hailed as the long looked for "American novel."

William Dean Howells _says of it_: "I have read ’Eben Holden’ with a great joy in its truth and freshness. You have got into your book a kind of life not in literature before, and you have got it there simply and frankly. It is ’as pure as water and as good as bread.’"

Edmund Clarence Stedman _says of it_: "It is a forest-scented, fresh-aired, bracing, and wholly American story of country and town life."

When the Land was Young

Being the True Romance of Mistress Antoinette
Huguenin and Captain Jack Middleton

By EMILY LAFAYETTE McLAWS. Bound in green cloth, illustrated cover, gilt top, rough edges. Seven drawings by Will Crawford. Size, 5x7¾. Price, $1.50

Among the entertaining romances that are based upon the colonial days of American history this novel will take rank as one of the most notable. It is picturesque in location, environment, and action; charming in detail and motive; dramatic in method; virile in characteristics; and altogether absorbing in plot and surprises. The hero, Captain Middleton, of Charleston in the Carolinas, is a real man; the heroine, Antoinette Huguenin, a beauty of King Louis’ Court, is one of the most attractive figures in romance; while Lumulgee, the great war chief of the Choctaws, and Sir Henry Morgan, the Buccaneer Knight and terror of the Spanish Main, divide the honors with hero and heroine. The time was full of border wars between the Spaniards of Florida and the English colonists, and against this historical background Miss McLaws has thrown a story that is absorbing, dramatic, and brilliant.

A Carolina Cavalier

A Romance of the Carolinas

By GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

Bound in red silk cloth, Illustrated cover, gilt top, rough edges. Six drawings by C. D. Williams. Size, 5 x 7¾. Price $1.50

A strong, delightful romance of Revolutionary days, most characteristic of its vigorous author, George Cary Eggleston. The story is founded on absolute happenings and certain old papers of the historic Rutledges of Carolina. As a love story, it is sweet and true; and as a patriotic novel it is grand and inspiring. The historic setting, and the fact that it is distinctively and enthusiastically American, have combined to win instant success for the book.

Louisville Courier Journal: "A fine story of adventure, teeming with life and aglow with color."

Cleveland World: "There is action, plot, and fire. Love and valor and loyalty play a part that enhances one’s respect for human nature."

Baltimore Sun: "The story is full of movement. It is replete with adventure. It is saturated with love."

J. Devlin—Boss

A Romance of American Politics

By FRANCIS CHURCHILL WILLIAMS. 12mo, $1.50

This is a story of the typical figure in the shaping of American life. "Jimmy," shrewd, strong, resourceful, clean-hearted, is vital; and the double love story which is woven about him gives an absolutely true and near view of the American boss. The revelations of political intrigue—from the governing of a ward to the upsetting of the most sensational Presidential Convention which this country has seen—are, as sketched in this romance, of intense interest; the scenes and characters in them are almost photographic. But above all of these stands Jimmy himself, unscrupulous as a politician, honorable as a man—Jimmy, the playmate, the counselor, and the lover of the winsome, clear-eyed Kate, the stanch friend of herself and of her son—Jimmy, with a straight word always for those who are true to him, a helping hand for all who need it, and a philosophy which is irresistible.

A Princess of the Hills

A Story of Italy

By MRS. BURTON HARRISON. Bound in Green Cloth, Decorative Cover, Gilt Top, Rough Edges. Four Drawings by ORSON LOWELL. Size, 7¾ x 5. $1.50.

Mrs. Burton Harrison is a charming story-teller. Unlike her other novels, "A Princess of the Hills" is not a romance of New York society, nor of Colonial times, but is a story of Italian life. An American tourist retreats from a broken engagement at Venice to that section of the North Italian Alps known as the Dolomites. Here he encounters a daughter of the soil, the last of a noble race, but now a humble peasant girl,—a real princess of the hills. The complications of the situation; the aroused interest of the American; the rival lovers, English, American, and Italian; the fierceness of the feud this love engenders; the struggle for possession and its unexpected outcome and denouement,—are told with masterly skill and with an interest that remains unflagging to the end.

The Kidnapped Millionaires

A Story of Wall Street and Mexico

By FREDERICK U. ADAMS. 12mo, cloth, $1.50

One of the most timely and startling stories of the day. A plan to form a great Newspaper Trust, evolved in the brain of an enterprising special correspondent, leads to the kidnapping of certain leading Metropolitan millionaires and marooning them luxuriously on a Mexican headland; the results—the panic in Wall Street, the search for the kidnapped millionaires, their discovery and rescue are the chief motives of the story, which has to do also with trusts, syndicates, newspaper methods, and all the great monetary problems and financial methods of the day. The story is full of adventure, full of humor, and full of action and surprises, while the romance that develops in its progress is altogether charming and delightful.

The Famous Pepper Books

By MARGARET SIDNEY

The Adventures of Joel Pepper

Bound in green cloth, decorative cover. Thirteen drawings by Sears Gallagher. Size, 5 x 7¾. Price, $1.50

As all the world knows, the Peppers grew up long ago, but some of the deeds of Joel are not recorded in the Pepper books, and hence this new one.

The Stories Polly Pepper Told

One volume, 12mo. Illustrated by Jessie McDermott and Etheldred B. Barry, $1.50

A charming "addenda" to the famous "Five Little Pepper Stories."

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew

12mo, illustrated, $1.50

"A genuine child classic."

Five Little Peppers Midway

12mo, illustrated, $1.50

"Every page is full of sunshine."—_Detroit Free Press_.

Five Little Peppers Grown Up

12mo, fully illustrated, cloth, $1.50

Phronsie Pepper

Illustrated by Jessie McDermott. 12mo, cloth, $1.50

This closing book of the now world-famous series of the "Five Little Pepper Books" has been enthusiastically welcomed by all the boys and girls of America to whom the Five Little Peppers have been dear ever since they first appeared in the "Little Brown House."

Lothrop Publishing Company - - Boston