*XIX.*
The sunshine of the early summer lay heavy like a cloth of gold acrossthe rolling Scottish country, and Stewart turned away abruptly from itsbrightness and stared down at the floor of the railway carriage.
All night he had lain awake, grasping fiercely at the bit of paper thathad summoned him to the office of the Secretary for India, while hisbrain with equal fierceness refused to accept the tidings which had methim there.
He was dumbly grateful, however, for the friendship and the kindlyinterest that had led the Secretary, for his father’s sake, to send forhim, and for the time that busy man had taken, and the considerationthat had shielded him from seeing the latest cholera reports pasted upat the Office or in the columns of the press.
Some day he would thank the Secretary as he should. Just now it seemedto him his brain had become a burning blank, and that the fire was asunquenchable as it was mighty, forbidding thought. Once, twice, a dozentimes he tried to picture Trevelyan as he had known him, but Trevelyan’sface would not come. He could not recall one line of it—he could notrecall his voice—his slightest gesture; and he vaguely wondered if hewere going mad, and when the rumble of the iron wheels would cease.
He was conscious of being grateful for the stopping of the noise, whenhe descended from the carriage, in the early light of the new day, tomake his last connection with the local.
The local was late some two hours—it seemed to him twenty—and a feverishimpatience came upon him to reach home and have it over with. The newfaces around him were strange and looked at him curiously. There was alean Scotch collie that sniffed at his heels and tried to make friendswith him, and a small Scotch laddie, rosy-cheeked and freckled, whoregarded him wonderingly from a safe distance, his forefinger in hismouth. Stewart noticed it was clean; he supposed it was too early forit to be covered with the conventional coat of dirt. The boy looked alittle sleepy too. He wondered why he felt so wide awake himself. Thecollie licked at his boot. He neither encouraged nor rejected thefamiliarity. He simply ignored it. The morning sun was growing warm,and a bright patch of it touched the dress of the child. * * *
The local came around the curve and he got into the carriage,mechanically picking out his usual seat near the window. Force of habitis strong. There was a bit of rolling hillside and an old kirk down bya little stream he always looked out for.
He was alone and he was glad. The train jerked and backed a little andthen fairly started on its run. It passed the hillside and the old kirkat the foot of the slope, and the bit of water that for a moment flashedthe brightness of its sunlit surface upon his vision, and was gone. Forthe first time the landscape failed to please. Beyond the old kirk wasanother slope—a slope of heather, just putting forth its early pink; andthough he could not see it he knew that just where the old road curvedup to the kirk, the bracken grew.
Then the reaction came and his inertia broke and the burning blankbecame a sheet of memory. Trevelyan had loved the bracken and theheather so. As a laddie he had played among them and hiddenhimself—short kilts and all—beneath their bloom. Once he had gottenlost, and they had vainly searched for him, but Stewart slipping awayunnoticed, and led by unerring instinct, had found him fast asleep downthere—his head pillowed on the bracken and a faded scrap of heather inhis small moist hand. And now the bracken might bloom on, and the sunmight shine upon it by day and the stars smile down upon the heatherslope by night, and the mist rest upon it, turning it to a mysticalsheet of grayness and of silver—but Trevelyan would never walk acrossthe slope again, and Stewart leaned his head against the window andclosed his eyes.
All night the train had moved so slowly and he had dumbly longed thatthe iron wheels would hasten that he might reach home soon; and now thatthe home station in Aberdeen was nearly in sight, a sudden sicknessseized him and he prayed for a delay.
He had wired ahead for Sandy to meet him with the trap instead of thecart in which he usually came for the mail. He had sent the message toSandy instead of the family, and had bidden the Scotchman be silentabout his unexpected return from London.
It was a comfort, he reflected, that Sandy could be trusted to hold histongue. He felt he could not bear to have them meet him at the station.He could not tell them there, neither could he play a part so long—untilthey should reach home. He was trusting to that seven mile drive tocollect himself. He hoped Maggie would not come with Sandy—as shesometimes did—to get the mail, especially when Cameron was away. Well,he would trust to Cameron’s being there, and to Sandy now—
He remembered the mail and the papers would arrive with him—he was gladfor that in a dull way—if he could only reach home before the papers, hehad thought before leaving Waterloo Station.
His father was in Glasgow with Kenneth. He could not spare them. Therewould be the Little Madre to be told, and Maggie and Tom Cameron, andMactier—poor old Mactier—and Cary—he wiped the moisture from hismouth—and Trevelyan’s father lately returned from the far East—God helphim. God help them all!
The local stopped. Through the window he could see Sandy waiting forhim with the trap on the other side of the track, quieting the restlesshorses; Maggie had not come.
He got out—how he never afterwards remembered—and he stored hisGladstone safely away beneath the back seat, waited for the mail bag tobe put in, and then climbed up with a nod to the red headed Scotchmanand a "how are they all?" mechanically asked.
The old Scotchman looked at him curiously, as the child and the colliehad done, and he was distinctly annoyed at being stared at.
The blacks, with their heads turned homeward, made good progress overthe road—too good, Stewart thought, and once he sharply bade Sandy drawthem in. Then as if ashamed of his impatience he inquired as to Sandy’sdaughter, who had been ill. Sandy answered the question briefly,realizing that talking came amiss to-day, and then gave his attention tochecking 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 hewas turned to ice and that he would never feel any warmth again. Thestation lay five miles or more beyond the point of home, and when herepassed the slope of heather and the old kirk road where the brackengrew, he turned his eyes away. It seemed to him he could never lookupon or touch either the bracken or the heather again.
And the old road! Once they used to travel it together; they hadtraveled it in their earliest babyhood and again that dark night whenTrevelyan had been brought from Argyll to make his home with them—alittle, lonely, motherless lad of ten. They had crossed the old bridgeso often; they had crossed it together that last time—_the lasttime_—and he had never known! He held on fast to the back of the seatin 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, butunable to bear the silence longer.
There was no answer. They were passing the heather slope and speech wasnot. And then Sandy, with an instinct not unusual in his race turnedhalf 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 lineof home, and nodded; and then he suddenly dropped his eyes and ran hisfinger, shaking as though with palsy, along the patent leather stripthat bound back the corduroy of the seat.
"Mr. Trevelyan’s ill," asserted Sandy, unwilling to acknowledge thethought that came to him and which he knew was true. "You’re going tobring 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 onthe 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 excep
t for McGuire, who was carefullyclipping in his precise way the border of the walks, and McGuire leanedupon his shears, wondering why the young master had passed him with nosign of greeting.
There was no one else around. The house stood big and still in thesunshine, and the deserted terraces sloped away—like a vast piece ofgreenest velvet. Some of the windows were open, and from one of theupstairs casements a white curtain was fluttering in the breeze. It washis mother’s room. A restful quietness brooded over everything.
There was no one in the hall, flanked with its weapons and armor andpaintings, and no sound from the breakfast room. Breakfast, hesupposed, was long over. He had had none himself, but he was notconscious of the lack.
Someone was coming down the stairs. Stewart paused, a sudden heatreplacing the chill that had possessed him until now. The sound camenearer and he recognized the halting step of Trevelyan’sfather—Trevelyan’s father, who still bore that scar from Inkerman.
The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today Page 40
