The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today

by Maud Howard Peterson

  *VI.*

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

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

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

  If Trevelyan exhausted the old retainer, he tired himself too, and atnight he would drop, almost too weary to take off his hunting boots, andgo to sleep, and sleep heavily, dreamlessly, as he had not done forweeks.

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

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

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

  One day he ordered out the hounds and rode across country until thefields and trees and fences became blurred together by the touch oftwilight. He returned mud stained and mortally weary and stalked intothe dining room and over to the sideboard, where he locked his tablewines. He took out a decanter and hunted around for a glass, andcarried both into the library, and sat down. Then he poured some of thewine and swallowed it at a mouthful. He filled the glass again anddrank the liquor leisurely, lounging back in his chair with a sigh ofcontent. After all, he declared, there was nothing like a bracer when achap 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 himand went to sleep. When he awoke it was quite dark, and he sat still,staring through the uncurtained window into the night, and conscious ofa delicious languor. Then as his faculties became more acute and theold spectre returned to haunt him, he instinctively stretched forth hishand in the blackness and fumbled for the decanter and the glass. Hedrunk deeply once, twice, three times—and when he raised the glass forthe fourth time his hand shook and there was an odd rushing sound in hishead.

  Suddenly he sat forward in his chair, pushed the glass and decanter fromhim roughly and flung out his arms across the table. The odd rushingsound subsided, and he became aware that the wine was dripping from thetable 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 asa child and listen to the beating sea below. Once the sea had sung tohim of undiscovered lands, whose shores it touched, bearing the messageback to him; it had sung of wealth and fame gained by the sword—it wasby the sword always—and it had beaten and beaten, and sung of all thathe would one day like to be; and of what some day he would be andachieve. Once it had sung of love—of its mystery and the essence of itslife—

  Now—

  He would crawl to the edge of the crag and peer over into the whitefoam, 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 foamnow. What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the foam!

  "_What right had he to look for a woman’s face in thefoam?_"]

  And the song of the sea was the song of death and dishonor. He mightclimb 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 notchange its tunes back to the old ones; he could not control it, and itwent on, rolling out its fierce, deep music of dishonor.

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

  He had wandered into the gallery once or twice. The faces on thecanvases, grown indistinct with the years, seemed to look back at himwithout recognition that he was of their race and line. What claim hadthey on him or he on them? The men had been brave and the women fair—sothe history and traditions of the house had said, even if the stiffpainted figures and the severe painted faces often said otherwise—themen had always been in the front wherever they were needed for thedefense of Scotland and her rights, and later they had defended Englandtoo. If they had not fought for her with the sword, they had withtongue or pen—if they had not been soldiers, they had been powers in thegovernment or in the pulpit. Even the solemn-faced preacher near thebig window at the furthest end of the gallery, when eloquence hadfailed, had left the old kirk to strike a blow for King Charlie. Thewomen, too, had been brave—brave in the sacrifice of beauty and wealthfor the upholding of Scottish rights, and the renouncing of husbands andlovers 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 sunstruck it in the morning, was the picture of his mother. It had beentaken of her in the first years of her marriage, soon after he had beenborn. 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 fromthe portrait. She had gloried in the traditions of her race; she hadbeen proud—justly—of her line. He thanked God she was dead—that hemight remember her as the portrait had painted her to be—on the floodtide of her love and her beauty and her strength.

  There was the picture of his father, in his full regimentals. He hadbeen years older than his wife, but how they had loved each other; howproud they had been of each other’s race, and how proud they had been ofhim. He was glad that his father was traveling in the Far East and hadnot seen him or demanded explanations since his return. He would havebeen obliged to meet the questionings with silence. It was better so.

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

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

  There was a long stretch of empty wall space next to the portrait of hisfather, and his father had once laughingly told him that his portraitshould hang there, painted in uniform, when he had left Woolwich and wonhis 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 heco
uld get off from duty or was not with Cary. He had come here often inthat winter when Cary was away in France. And he had planned hisportrait hanging so, in uniform, with hers near his—even as his mother’swas near his father’s. And sometimes when the sun had gone and thedarkness had crept in, the shadows had taken other forms—the forms ofchildren—who would troop up and take their places on the empty spaceswaiting for them on the wall.

  He had dreamed of her—-of Cary—as a strong passionate nature dreams ofits best beloved. He had fancied her in a hundred different guises—atthe head of his table, moving around the house, as its mistress, talkingto old Mactier and his tenantry, as the master’s wife; he had dreamed ofher, after he and she had lived together alone for a period of ineffablebliss, as the mother of his children; strong sons and fair daughters,that would reflect her sweetness and his strength—the completion oftheir love. He had dreamed of the time when the house would ring withtheir voices, and then of the days when the house had lapsed intosilence again, when learning love’s mystery they had gone to homes oftheir own; when he and she would live on in a love that time could notchange, nor age wither; how later she would lay him in the tomb of hisancestors, and later still they would put her close beside him and hispeople. He had never dreamed of her dying first, or of his life withouther.

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

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

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

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

  But Scotland had not answered him.