“She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron,”
she said. “It was but a crisis of the
nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands
to see you.”
Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision
of a tall figure, which issued with extreme rapidity
from the library door, and went up the stairs, much
like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But
the figure lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated,
and apparently moved forward on tiptoe. Grayson
went into the library and sniffed at the unmistakable
odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window,
he went and stood before a great portrait of old Anthony
Cardew. Tears stood in the old man’s eyes,
but there was a faint smile on his lips. He
saw the endless procession of life. First, love.
Then, out of love, life. Then death. Grayson
was old, but he had lived to see young love in the
Cardew house. Out of love, life. He addressed
a little speech to the picture.
“Wherever you are, sir,” he said, “you
needn’t worry any more. The line will
carry on, sir. The line will carry on.”
Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt
beside the couch, and gathered Lily close in his arms.
Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many
changes. It saw, slowly emerging from the chaos
of war, new nations, like children, taking their first
feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born
at full term might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly
delivered, and making a valiant but losing fight for
life. It saw that war is never good, but always
evil; that war takes everything and gives nothing,
save that sometimes a man may lose the whole world
and gain his own soul.
It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into
the vast democracy of heaven, and Louis Akers passed
through the Traitors’ Gate of eternity to be
judged and perhaps reprieved. For a man is many
men, good and bad, and the Judge of the Tower of Heaven
is a just Judge.
It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the
Russian, Ross, bland, cunning and eternally plotting,
in New England under another name. And Mr. Hendricks
ordering a new suit for the day of taking office.
And Doctor Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums
on Annabelle, against a football game, and taking
a pretty nurse to see it.
It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young
man in the Eagle Pharmacy, a young man who did not
smoke a pipe, and allowed no visitors in the back
room. And it saw Willy Cameron in the laboratory
of the reopened Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead
of grains and drams, and learning to touch any piece
of metal in the mill with a moistened fore-finger
before he sat down upon it.
* * *
* *
But it saw more than that.
