The late John Stewart had, in his lifetime, achieved the distinction of being a model husband. He was devoted to his wife in more senses of the word than one; he was content to appear stupid so she might shine the more; content to slave at Mammon's shrine for his wife's sake. His fund of patience, of tolerance, of faith, had been infinite. It was in return for these things that his wife, as he lay in the dying moments of typhoid, whispered to him, with a tremendous suspicion that she had seemed blind to much of her fortune, "John, dear John, you musn't go, not yet. I—I—"
And though John assured her that he was going to get well, the next day found the promise broken.
Mrs. Stewart, after his death, realized all that he had been to her, all that she, except in his loving fancy, had not been to him. And brooding over such recollections she began to feel the ban of morbidness, the old rooms, the dear, familiar haunts that had once known his voice, were peopled now with sadness, and she resolved to seek escape, for a time at least, from these living voices of a silenced lip. She had some cousins in London; she determined to travel, to visit them. With her went her nearer cousin, Miss Leigh, whose whimsical, cynical sincerities she loved the while she combated them.
So, in the spring, they found themselves in London, then harboring the whirl of society at its swiftest. But that had palled on Mrs. Stewart, and she dragged Miss Leigh off for an apparently aimless tour through Wales, and the Lake district, and on up to Scotland.
September found them in St. Andrews.
Although it was one of the months that constitute the "short season" of that dear old academic village, it was easily possible to escape the crowds of golf-enthusiasts that studded the links with their glaringly colorful costumes. The old castle, the ruins of the cathedral, the legends of the historic, bloody occurrences that had taken place here for religion's sake,—all these were full of charms to these two American women, saturated, as is nearly all that Nation, with a peculiar, wistful reverence for things antique.
There were drives, too, that gave opportunities for enjoyment of the Scotch autumn scenery. Along the banks of the Tay, with the solemn Crampians showing dim in the distance.
Mrs. Stewart loved to sit in the silent coolness of the college quadrangles and dream. It seemed to her that only for such places were dreams fit companions.
One day, they were sitting together on the turf that once had marked a cathedral wall. Miss Leigh was reading; Mrs. Stewart idly watching the breakers roll up to the cliffs.
"I beg your pardon!"