The Great Anvil

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 360, 22 May 1928, Page 5

The Great Anvil

Rowan Glen,

CHAPTER I. “Adversity is the Anvil on which Souls are beaten into Shape.” “Only thirty-six hours more, and we’ll be home. Home! Sountis pretty good, doesn’t it* Felton?” “Yes —but particularly to you. Nowadays my home is a room in my club. Till I knew you I’d always been of the opinion that the bachelor had the best of things, but I’m not just so sure of that as I was. It must be rather fine to be going back to the son of welcome that will be waiting for you.” Harvey Carruthers nodded, and a smile came slowly to soften the lines on his sun and wind-tanned face. His Srey eyes, half-closed and dreamtouched. looked out across the green and white sea, through which the R-M.S. Sartene was pounding gallantly toward England. The liner's voyage from Cape Town, where Carruthers had boarded her had been a fair-weather one and lacking in any outstanding incident. But for Carruthers and for Felton it had held the formation of a friend--Bhip which was destined to grow in strength, and to affect in the closest Possible way the lives of both. Of the two, Carruthers at thirtyeifcht was the older by some five years, a mining expert by profession, he had spent many years abroad, but though it had been much the same w ith Felton, the latter had been a confessed drone in humanity’s hive — a m oneyed wanderer and, by instinct, a sun-worshipper. As he hitched his deck-chair Uearer to the taffrail and arranged himself more comfortably, he glanced at the man beside him, noting once hgain the big. strongly-builded frame an d the clean-shaven, well-formed ace, with its firm jaw and intellectu-Uly-shapec head. Your wife and mother won’t be at the docks to meet you?” he asked, orgetful that he had already put the Question. Carruthers shook his head. my homecoming will be in the . at^ re of a surprise, and I’m rather glad, i thought I might have to stop nT 3t Canaries for a bit, and bough I could have cabled from there, th * didn’t. I suppose that Here's a boyish streak in me some- » it 6 Anyhow, I wanted to a bt in on them unannounced.” turned then, and his rather tired

Author of "The Best G• ft of All,” “ The Bishop's Masquerade,” <ic., &c I eyes were lighted by some inner torch. “You and I have got to know each I other pretty well, Felton,” he went ! on, “but I don’t think I’ve ever told 1 you just what that little home in Susj sex means to me, nor just how gratet'ul 1 am to the fates that made this last commission of mine so suecessi ful.” “I shouldn’t thank the fates too j generously,” Felton returned good- : humouredly. “It seems to me that I your main bringers of success were skill —and thundering hard work. You won’t need to leave England again in search of money.” Carruthers looked reflectively at the bowl of the pipe he was filling. “No,” he said, ”1 haven’t made a pile, but things have gone well. For my sell, I don’t care a toss about money, but I’ll be able to do things for Mary and for my mother now that. I couldn’t manage before .... There’s only one thing that troubles me.” “And that?” There was a long pause before Carruthers answered. Then: “It seems almost disloyal to them both to say it, but I’ve had the feeling that those two women who represent my world have never quite understood each other; have never quite realised that though I love them both, each love is, so to speak, a thing by itself.” His right hand, which was resting on the chair-arm, gripped so tightly that the veins were distended. “A minute or two ago you talked about a bachelor having the best of things,” he said. “Take it from me, Felton, that that’s a myth. Oh! 1 know that as yet I haven’t had much experience of marriage, but the man who loves a woman as I love my wife, and who is loved by her, has made a success of things —no matter if he hasn’t a penny to his name. “Often and often out yonder I found myself wondering whether it could really be true tjiat Mary was actually mine, and that she; was waiting for me back at home. You see, she’s very beautiful and just a girl still. I used to joke with her about it sometimes, and say that she’d had tremendous pluck to marry a man 15 years older than herself. But she laughed at me, and said that the younger men bored her. “Well, she should have known, for there were plenty who tried for her before I came along. There was one

in particular—but that doesn’t matter. She and J had only six months together, Felton, when I had to leave on this African job. It’ll be like having a honeymoon all over again to be back with her. ”1 want you to meet her some day. She’ll like you, I know, and I know, too, that when you see her you’ll forgive me all my rhapsodising; for having spoken as though I were a youngster busy with his first love affair, instead of a married man who’s drawing towards middle-age.” “You haven’t bored me, if that’s what you mean,” Felton remarked pushing his chair back and rising, “Perhaps you’ve made me a little hit envious, but that may be all to the good. And now, don’t let’s forget, that we promised to meet Mac Nair af noon. He’d never forgive us if we left the Sartene without having seen those beloved engines of his.” Making their way to the chief engineer’s cabin, they found that very capable Scot waiting for them. “Morning, gentlemen,” he said, as he picked up his gold-laced cap. “You’re ready to go down and have a squint at my beauties, then?” “We’ve been looking forward to it,” Felton answered 'glibly. And Car ruthers said: “You know how I feel about engines, Mac Nair. Show me anything in that line, and I’m like a kid with a new toy.” Down they went into the great en-gine-rooms of the liner, and there tragedy waited; a tragedy which was destined to alter the whole course of Harvey Carruthers’s life. What happened can be told in a paragraph. A boiler, at whose defectiveness not even Mac Nair himself had guessed, burst, and when the resultant chaos had stilled, a man was carried tenderly on deck; a man who, with all the enthusiasm of a great love in his heart, had been stretching forward to the moment when his arms would go out to his girl-wife, and to the mother whose hero and god he was. The extent of his injuries was not known at the time. All that the ship’s doctor could tell Basil Felton was that Carruthers would necessar-

ily be taken to hospital just so soon as Tilbury was reached. “1 can keep him going along till then,” the doctor said; “at least, I think that I can. It’s his eyes that I fear for most.” Felton, who had been badly hurt in the left arm, put a hand up and wiped the sweat from his brow. “My God!” he exclaimed lowly. “I almost wish that the thing had happened to me instead of to him.” “Don’t talk that way,” he was told. “You should be mighty glad that you got off as you did. Don’t forget that you’ll be fit for nothing for the next week or two. When you get to town you’ll have to lie up—and worry about no one save yourself.” Carruthers had been in hospital for some days before he could talk coherently, and before the memory oC those seconds of hell which he had j known on the Sartene returned to him. But there came an hour at last when he was able to give certain directions; was able to ask that a message be sent to his wife and to his mother at the address which he gave. “It’s best and kindest that they should have the truth before they see me,” he said. “You’ll have to tell them just how much of a crock I am, and that I’m blind. You’ll put it as gently as you can, I know. Tell them that they’re not to worry and that I’m going along all right, and that they mustn’t come to town till you give them leave.” The letter was sent, and less than 24 hours later an answer came; a letter which had been penned falteringly by Carruthers’s mother; a letter warm in every shakily-written line with the breath of a great devotion. It was read to the sufferer, and his hands clenched about the coverlet when he heard one of its paragraphs. “And now, my dear boy,” this paragraph ran, “it’s because I know how brave you are, that—even when you’re so ill—l must tell you to be prepared for bad news about Mary. You should get this note to-night, and to-morrow morning I’ll come to the hospital. Try to bear up, Harvey dear, and ” But the blinded man heard nothing more. “Bad news about Mary,” he repeated in a sort of cracking whisper. “Oh. well, I—l understand.” What they could do to comfort him they did, but that night Carruthers’s soul wandered in the depths. CHAPTER 11. As she journeyed Londonwards, the woman who had tended her son through his childhood and boyhood; who had loved him with a love almost idolatrous through every year of his life, knew an agony which tilted j shrewdly at her sanity. There had been no possible means of letting Harvey know that the wife whom he adored, and whom he had placed always on a shining pinnacle

as someone above and beyond the frailties of human kind, had, weeks earlier, left the home to which he was returning—and had left it in company with another man. Had Harvey returned to England safe and well, it might have been with something of jealous satisfaction that this 60-year-old mother of his would have told him of the mistake that he had made. But that tawdry triumph had been swept away before a flood of pity and protective love. When she had written that letter to the hospital she had, of set purpose, warned her son that there was bad news for him concerning the girl whom he worshipped. Kathleen Carruthers knew that to hear that Mary was dead would be a blow a hundred times less crushing ; than to hear that she had been unfaithful. Dead to Harvey, Mary undoubtedly was, so his mother argued; dead to him she must be for all time. But

if a kindly lie were told to him, he could love Mary still, and from that love could draw comfort. Thus she might remain that shining, beautiful figure, endowed, by him who adored her, with all those virtues and gentle ways which he reverenced, and before whose beauty he had bowed. To tell him the truth; to tell him that, during the months when he had been absent, Mary had permitted Arthur Welland to pay court to her and had. in a weak moment, run away with him —that woula be to drive her son from bodily torture to a madness that might spell death. And so it came about that when the old woman sat by the bedside of her blinded son, she told him in a broken whispering that Mary and he would never meet again. Both of her hands were holding one of his, but he withdrew his now and held it pressed against his mouth. The perspiration ran from amidst his still thick hair, and down to the bandage about his eyes. “I was—ready, mother,” he told her. “Your letter last night pre-

pared me, and I’ve had all the hours ; between to realise that it would have , been better for me if things had finished in the liner's engine-room.” He heard her sharp breathing, and on the instant gave her his hand again. “Forgive me,” he said. “I hadn’t meant to say that.” . “I’m still here,” she whispered. “Oh! my boy—my boy!” She waited w*ith him till the sister-in-charge whispered to her gently that, she must go. “I’ll come back to-morrow,” she comforted him, “and every day after that. I brought my things with me, you see, and I’ll be staying in a little hotel quite near.” Day by day she sat with him, but they did not talk of the past, and for this Kathleen Carruthers gave mute thanks. As her son grew stronger she j spoke to him of the future, and explained the arrangements which she had made. “The doctors say that you’ll able | to leave hospital quite soon now,” she j told him one afternoon, when the early I summer sunshine was streaming

through the big windows and falling ! with gentle warmth on Carruthers s face. “I’m as active as ever I was, Harvey, and the hours that I've had to spend away from you haven’t been wasted. If all goes well, then early next week I’ll be able to take you home.” She saw him wince, and momentarily her eyes filled. “I hope you’ll think that I did right, dear,” she went on, “but I’ve taken a little house in a small town in Hereifo’*dshire. It’s a pleasant place, and ll’ve had all our furniture 'oved there. ! Everything is ready for us. and when we leave London we ll start life all over again, you and I.” She saw his head move in a sort of satisfied nod. (To be continued.»