"'Steps,'" said the Major. "We may be glad of that word, for it is easy for a man to take just one step to ruin or to death."
The journey to America being determined, Dr. Lindsey went back to London to prepare his business for an absence of three months. Ian was glad of his companionship, and promised to meet him in Liverpool on the 25th of July. There they would take together passage for New York. This plan was fully carried out, but of the voyage, the journeyings and their life in California there is no necessity to write. Possibly most of my readers have crossed the Atlantic, and know far more about California than I do; so that I may well leave any descriptions to their memories or imaginations. It is the humanity of my story with which we have to do.
They had been eagerly looked for at Los Angeles, and were welcomed with unbounded love and respect. Donald and his father drew aside for a moment, but what they said to each other only God knows. There is a divine silence in forgiveness. When Peter first met Christ, after his denial of Him, what did Peter say? What did Christ say? We are not told; but great wrongs can be wiped out in one tender word, though such acts in the drama of life are not translatable. It was different with Macbeth. He greeted his guests with a proud and delightful extravagance.
"You are welcome, 'Men of St. Andrews!'" he cried; "you are tenfold welcome!" And for the next five weeks he gave himself to entertaining them in every possible way. The pretty Spanish wife was shy and reticent, but her three sons spoke for her, and Donald was evidently the idol of his house and in all his surroundings prosperous and happy.
Jessy Caird, however, had failed and faded physically more than she ought to have done, so Ian was not slow to take the first opportunity of speaking confidentially to her. She was sitting just within the open door of her bungalow. Her eyes were closed, her work had fallen from her hands, and there was no book of any kind within her reach. Ian wondered at these things. Jessy doing nothing! Jessy without a book! What could be the meaning of it?
She opened her eyes as she heard his approach, and said with a smile, "You are walking like your old self, Ian, but for all that sit down by me."
"That is what I am here for. I want to talk with you, and with you only. My dear sister, you look sick—or very unhappy. Which is it?"
"Ian, I am both sick and unhappy. In the first place, I am heartbroken for my native land. I want to see once more the green, green straths of Scotland—the green straths with a haze of bluebells over them! I want the gray, soft skies and the little silvery showers that blessed both humanity and nature with constant freshness. And O Ian, I want, I want, I want the living tongue of running water! Do you mind that, in all the summers we spent in Arran, we could not go anywhere on the island and lose the happy sound of running water? Do you mind how the waters leaped from rock to rock, and thundered down the craggy glens, and then went singing and gurgling along the roadside? Ian, Ian, take me home! I want to die in my own country!"
"Die! Nonsense, Jessy! You must live for others even if you want to die. I need you. You must go back to Scotland and help me. I have told you of the great work my uncle and I are planning. We cannot do without you."
Her face brightened, there was a smile in her eyes, and she looked eagerly at Ian as he continued: