Here he was, and round the corner of the wing the new Eppie stood waiting. Poor little Eppie of childhood—she was lost forever.
But all the clearness of the night concentrated, at dawn, into that vivid memory of the past where they had wandered together, sharing joy and sorrow.
That was long, long over. To-morrow was already here, and to-morrow belonged to the new Eppie.
III
AVAN spent the morning in Edinburgh, seeing an old relative, and reached Kirklands at six.
It was a cold October evening, the moors like a dark, sullenly heaving ocean and a heavy bar of sunset lying along the horizon.
The windows of the old white house mirrored the dying color, and here and there the inner light of fire and candle seemed like laughter on a grave face. With all its loneliness it was a happy-looking house; he remembered that; and in the stillness of the vast moors and the coming night it made him think of a warmly throbbing heart filling with courage and significance a desolate life.
The general came from the long oak library, book in hand, to welcome him. Gavan was almost automatically observant of physical processes and noted now the pronounced limp, the touch of garrulity—symptoms of the fine old organism’s placid disintegration. Life was leaving it unreluctantly, and the mild indifference of age made his cordiality at once warmer and more impersonal than of old.
As he led Gavan to his room, the room of boyhood, near Eppie’s, overlooking the garden and the wooded hills, he told him that Eppie and Miss Barbara were dressing and that he would have time for a talk with them before dinner at eight.