The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today

by Maud Howard Peterson

  *VII.*

  After awhile the surgeon turned from the window, came back to Trevelyanand stooping over him, listened to his breathing, and felt his pulse.Then he went away.

  Trevelyan lifted his head slowly and looked about him. The room wasdeserted and he sat up in bed again, grasping its sides. It was as ifeverything was slipping away from him, and the agony in his brain hadcrept down to his feet, engulfing and making as nothing the throbbing inhis shoulder, or the heat of the growing fever.

  He stared at the shadows cast by the flickering lamp on the wallopposite. The vision of the trooper’s ghastly face had faded for thetime, but intenser visions appeared and shifted and reappeared again.First there came the shadow face of his mother, who had been dead foryears, and then that of his father—his father who had led that charge atInkerman. The face seemed turned away. Then there came the face of theaunt who had mothered him so long, and then the shadowy forms halteredas the fever grew and the wall became a glowing blank. Later a faceappeared, Stewart’s, against the fiery glow. It looked like a deadface—like the dead, ghastly face of the trooper; and then there cameCary’s face. It haunted him in a hundred different guises. It came tohim as the child-face, as he had known it years ago down at the seacoast fort; and it faded and came again as the face touched with time’smaturity, as he had seen it when she first came to England; it shiftedagain and reappeared as it had been that day of the storm, when he andshe had been housed in the old Scottish home together, and thetenderness and the fear were on it; it came again to him as he had seenit last before the receding transport and the oncoming mist had stolenit away from him. And it came once more as he had never seenit—horror-stricken, wide-eyed, and pale—as he _would_ see it, when shelooked at him again, knowing the truth.

  "Allegiance—which is absolute." So she had written, and so she wouldsay to him. And he had betrayed his allegiance, and he had lied, and hehad turned coward, and had sent Stewart off to die!

  His fingers gripped at the edges of the bed and he stared fascinated atthat face of Cary on the wall—Cary as he had never seen her. It remainedfixed. It would _not_ fade.

  She had known life’s truths better than he. Honor, after all, was atangible thing—as tangible as the devouring agony in his brain. And hehad lost his honor—

  She had written that a man moulds himself into the perfect and complete,or he breaks the clay with his own hands, and he had not believed heruntil now, when the clay lay broken.

  It had been coming to this all these months, and he had gone on blindly.Cary had tried to save him by that letter; John had tried to save him,and had come out to this accursed hole to serve him, because he had beena coward and had written for him—not strong enough to serve himself—andhe had sent John off to meet the death that he himself deserved. No, hewas not worthy of such a death. Death would glorify John. It wouldhave redeemed him.

  The irrevocable past that had gone from his keeping haunted himghost-like through the night watches, as did the agony of the future. Ifthere were but a chance—the shadow of a chance—of winning back the lasthours!

  If that face would only fade!

  And he had thought himself so strong, and he and death had looked eachin the face of the other so often!

  And the long line of pictures on the wall began again, fading andreappearing, but the face of Cary did not fade.

  After awhile the personality of the face lost itself and it became tohim but the symbol of that high living, toward the attainment of whichhe had failed, falling in the dust.

  His stiff fingers relaxed on the sides of the bed, and he sank back witha thud like a dead weight. The dead trooper could not have fallen moreheavily.

  The wound in his shoulder was only a flesh hurt—he had been careful ofthat—he remembered with a grim, awful self-accusation. If it only _had_gone deeper than he had planned. Before the thought had died he wassearching for his handkerchief and when he had found it he began to knotit feverishly and pull it around his throat—sudden strength coming tohis hands. Then, with an oath, he jerked at the linen band and flung itfrom him to the hospital floor, where it lay—a spot of white in thedarkness. The power to move deserted him, and his arms hung over thesides of the bed—limp and motionless.

  And then, remembering Stewart, the agony in his brain increased.

  He fancied Stewart starting out on the mission, silent, with the silencethat comes with the realization of danger—grave with the gravity of itsacceptance—the test of courage. Stewart had never been guided by theheedless, passionate impulses that had possessed him, Trevelyan, all hislife; but he had held high the standards of life for a man, and he hadlived up to the standards.

  Trevelyan fancied he saw him riding into the thickness of the blackshadows.

  He might do it, and come back from the jaws of death. If a man could doit, he would, but was it humanly possible?

  Trevelyan beat his hands against his face. No; no man could do it! TheStation would wait for Stewart, and wait and wait, and Stewart would notcome. They would go to look for him and they would bring him back tohim, Trevelyan—dead. But he would not look like the trooper. Thevision on the wall had been a mistake.

  Long ago, the night that Stewart had saved Cary as a child, by hisvigil; he, Trevelyan, had crept into the room where they had carriedhim, and he was sleeping, exhausted. The peace, born of a greatsacrifice and a purpose accomplished, had rested on the boy’s face. Thepeace of it came back to Trevelyan, a gift from that dead year.

  When they brought Stewart home to the Station he would look so.

  And the minutes turned to hours and the fever increased, and laterTrevelyan sank into a doze. The surgeons came in now and again andadministered medicines of which he was only dimly conscious, and thefever and the drowsiness grew, and the long night wore away.

  In the early dawn he was awakened by the feeling that someone waslooking steadily at him. His eyes, free from the fever that had gone,met those of the assistant surgeon.

  Before the full consciousness of the night’s agony had come back, theyoung surgeon spoke.

  "Stewart has returned," he said, quietly, "but he’s been badly hurt andhe wants you. If you feel strong enough—"

  Trevelyan sprang to the floor. He was trembling with excitement and theweakness left by the fever.

  "Thank God, he’s safe—" and then as he looked more closely in theassistant’s face, "He isn’t hurt seriously—" his voice trailed off.

  The assistant got Trevelyan’s slippers and threw a blanket over him anddrew his arm through his, giving him support. It seemed strange to besupporting Trevelyan.

  "I’m afraid he is," he said. "He did the job all right and reportedlike the soldier he is. McCann’s game, too, and not hurt. Stewart—"The assistant was killing time.

  Trevelyan wiped the moisture from his face.

  "Yes?"

  Vaughan looked straight ahead of him, to avoid meeting Trevelyan’s eyes.

  "Mackenzie is with him," he said, slowly. "He’s doing everything onearth, but the wound’s in the back, and there—isn’t the ghost of achance—and, he’s sent for you."