The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today

by Maud Howard Peterson

  *II.*

  Cary was singing. Trevelyan heard her before he had reached the secondflight of stairs in the lodgings. The clear contralto voice sifted downinto the dark passage as sunlight sifts into a ravine. It rose; swelledhigher and filled the entrance way. Trevelyan’s pulses kept time to itsswinging measure as he came on up the stairs, and quietly opened thedoor of the little sitting room. The measure died away. Cary finishedthe running accompaniment and rose from the piano.

  "Bravo!" cried Trevelyan from the doorway.

  "You have deserted me of late," she said, reproachfully, coming forwardto greet him.

  "Impossible! Let me explain, and all will be forgiven—" Trevelyan cuthis sentence short, "Why, hello, John, where did you come from?"

  He nodded indifferently to Stewart standing by the window, walked overto a table and began to idly turn over the pages of a book. It wasannoying always to find Stewart hanging around. The fact that Stewartwas his cousin, and had shared everything he possessed with him since hehad been a child, even down to his mother, did not count for anything inthe world, just at this juncture. Stewart’s mother was all right;indeed, she was undoubtedly the very best woman who ever lived,excepting his own mother who had been dead so long, and possibly Cary!But against Stewart himself he bore a well-founded grudge. Stewart hadbeen the one to meet Cary on the steamer and bring her and her father toLondon and help them get settled in lodgings and introduce them to hisfriends. That was bad enough, in all conscience, but then it had beenStewart, who had constituted himself a combined walking Baedeker, andunfailing friend of the American officer and his daughter. That hadbeen in those last wretched weeks before he had been graduated fromWoolwich, and Stewart, with that confounded sick leave, had takenadvantage of the opportunity offered. Even when Stewart reported forduty again, his transfer had been to a home regiment, and in the fewtimes that he, Trevelyan, had seen them before his graduation, John hadalways been with Cary, and Cary had been overflowing with their mutualexperiences. Now John had taken the Captain and herself to dine at theAlbion, in Russell Street, Covent Garden; and had pointed out thetraditional places occupied by Dickens, and Sothern, and Toole, and therest. Now, it had been a morning ride with John, on Rotten Row, whenMaggie, John’s sister, had sent around her favorite mount. Again, ithad been a trip to Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park, where, from thefamous hill, standing with John, she had looked toward the towers ofWindsor; or to the left had seen on the horizon, the bold outline of theSurrey Downs. It was John—or if John couldn’t possibly manage it—it wasJohn’s mother or John’s sister who had taken her everywhere. She hadbeen to the Derby on the Stewarts’ coach; she had been to Oxford withJohn’s sister, and met Kenneth, John’s younger brother; she had visitedStratford and seen Kenilworth, and generally "done" London almost beforehe had begun to serve his sub-lieutenancy. And if John had been unableto think of some new place to show her, he had walked with her down theStrand or through Fleet street or Cheapside, and the two of them hadretraced Dickens’s or Charles Lamb’s steps, and explored all the littleout of the way shops! That was just like John! Trevelyan detested suchthings, and Trevelyan detested them even more when John and Cary haddone them together, and he had been left out!

  That sub-lieutenancy was another thing that rankled! Stewart had servedhis, and Stewart had done good work in that "row" in India, and had evengot an honorable mention. Stewart always was a lucky dog. Trevelyanenvied Stewart that "mention" more than he envied any man in the worldanything. Cary thought so much of that "mention," and now Cary wasgoing away!

  A wild throbbing resentment against his own position in the affair;against Cary’s leaving England, rose up within him, as the sea rose upand beat against the crags at home. He did not define it, but itpossessed him, as did the memory of Cary’s face when he was away fromher.

  He let the book fall back heavily on the table and walked over andleaned his elbows on the mantel, his head in his hands, and lookedmoodily into the open fire.

  Once Cary tried to draw him into the conversation, but Trevelyan refusedto be won from the depths of his own depression, to the genialatmosphere pervading the little room, and Cary, used to his ways, lethim alone. She had looked at John and shaken her head.

  "I can’t do a thing with him to-night," it had said, but Stewart, grownwonderfully quick-witted in regard to Cary, fancied that he heard hersigh.

  Outside the daylight faded and a heavy fog crept up and fell over theThames and London like a pall. Here and there a street lamp flickeredfaintly through the mist, and the rumble of carriage wheels, heard,though unseen, reached them, and Cary lighted the big red lamp,preparatory to afternoon tea and the Captain’s return. Once she went tothe window to look for her father, pressing her face against the glass,but she could not see through the heavy, yellow mist. Trevelyan couldhear her and John talking in the window recess, although he could notdistinguish what they were saving. Once Cary laughed. The soundirritated him.

  After awhile Cary came back into the room and began to handle thetea-cups absent-mindedly. Her table was close to the fire, andTrevelyan, by turning his head, could watch the ruddy reflection playover her face. He turned back to the glowing logs.

  "Sugar?" asked Cary suggestively, a little later of Trevelyan.

  "No," said Trevelyan, moodily, "No sugar and no tea!"

  Cary shrugged her shoulders.

  "You’re impossible, to-day," she said, "Bread and butter, John?"

  After awhile Stewart prepared to leave. Trevelyan still leaned againstthe mantel, his face turned to the fire. He knew Stewart was going, buthe did not move. From the doorway he could hear Stewart’s voice callingout good-bye.

  "Good-bye," he called back, shortly.

  Cary returned to the tea table, paused and looked at Trevelyan’s back inan uncertain way. Trevelyan was acutely conscious of her nearness. Shesat down, resting her intertwined fingers on the edge of the table andlooked down at them.

  "Well?"

  Trevelyan turned at the sound of her quiet voice and faced her, stillresting one elbow on the mantel.

  "Well!" he repeated, a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "It isn’t ’well’at all! It’s as confoundedly bad as it can be! Here you’re going toleave London day after to-morrow, to be gone—"

  "Three months," said Cary.

  "Exactly!"

  "I’ll be back before you know it!"

  Trevelyan laughed bitterly.

  "You think so?" Then: "I can tell you how long two months can be! Ilearned that at Woolwich before I graduated, and after I had seen you."He stopped abruptly and beat his foot impatiently on the fender.

  "Nonsense! You’re going to be a British officer. Where’s yourbackbone?"

  "I’ve backbone enough—there’s no trouble about that!" Trevelyan laughedoddly. "I could fight all right. I could face danger. I could lead acharge into the mouth of the cannon! I’ve backbone enough!"

  He had turned to her full as he was speaking. His face was aflame withthe possibilities his words had awakened. It was transformed back intothe face of the boy who conquered the storm and the sea and death, andit was burning with a newer passion still.

  Cary’s eyes fell before the look in his and rested on her folded hands.After a little she began to trace an intricate pattern on the table withher forefinger. A weight of fear was resting on her breast.

  Trevelyan stood silent looking down at her for a moment, and then heturned sharply and went over to the window. The perfume of the violetsshe wore possessed him. The clock on the mantel struck the half hour,and a log broke noisily on the hearth. Cary looked toward him. Theoppressive fear had passed.

  "There will be a month in Switzerland! Think of it—the Alps at last!Three weeks of Paris; three more of Ireland, and two in Scotland withthe Camerons. Did you know I was going to your Scotland and to Argyll?"

  Trevelyan turned away from the window.

  "No. Since when?"


  "The Camerons asked me last week. They are to have a house party, Ithink. They asked John, too—"

  Trevelyan bit his lip.

  "Is John going?"

  "Not for the full time, but he hopes to get a three days’ leave."

  Trevelyan came back to the fire and drummed on the mantel.

  "When we were children," he said, suddenly, "down at the Fort, I used totell you about Scotland. I am glad you are to see it. You will like it!And when you watch the sea beat against the crags, and the breakerstossing their white heads, you can think of me, remembering it used tobe my home. I hope you will see a storm," Trevelyan went on, "such astorm as I used to glory in as a little chap! They don’t have suchstorms anywhere else, I think!"

  He stopped short, and looked hard at the fire.

  "The Camerons’ place is within driving distance of my home. If I canget off for a day will you let me take you there? I want you to see it,and to meet old Mactier, and go with me into the caves where I used toplay as a boy, and climb the crags, way up to their topmost peaks, andbreathe the freedom that is in the air!"

  Cary sprang up, flinging out her hands. There was an odd pulsing in herthroat.

  "Go! of course I’ll go!" she cried, and then the pulsing grew and grew,and choked her.

  At six Trevelyan left. She did not meet his eyes in parting, andTrevelyan missed her bantering voice, that usually followed him downstairs.

  "It’s Stewart," he told himself with passionate resentment, and hestumbled over the lower step and swore at the darkness.

  Cary went back into the empty room, over to the mantel and looked intothe fire, as Trevelyan had done. She could hear the echo of the closingfront door. Outside, the fog grew thicker. Inside, the red lamp threwits coloring on the crimson roses Stewart had brought that day, makingthem more glorious still, and the heat of the fire intensified the odorof the violets on the woman’s breast. Stewart had brought the violetstoo.

  Cary turned away from the fire, and moved restlessly about the room,fixing a chair here, straightening a book there, and fingering somefamiliar object. As she passed the open piano, she hesitated, put outone finger and struck a key. The sound vibrated through the quiet room,deep and full and strong. A bar of an old Scotch song rose in herthroat and broke. She closed the piano hastily. Once she leaned overthe roses.

  "Dear John," she murmured, and her hands touched for a moment theviolets on her breast.

  Then she went back to the fire, and stood wide-eyed and silent, lookinginto the heart of it. She was dimly conscious of the violets’ perfume,but it was Trevelyan’s face she saw in the flames.