He did not refill it, and the sideboard remained unlocked—and empty.
So the days passed. He would climb up into the eyrie, as he had done as a child and listen to the beating sea below. Once the sea had sung to him of undiscovered lands, whose shores it touched, bearing the message back to him; it had sung of wealth and fame gained by the sword—it was by the sword always—and it had beaten and beaten, and sung of all that he would one day like to be; and of what some day he would be and achieve. Once it had sung of love—of its mystery and the essence of its life—
He would crawl to the edge of the crag and peer over into the white foam, holding on to the edge until the old boyish dizziness came back; but unlike in the old days, there was never a woman’s face in the foam now. What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the foam!
[Illustration: "_What right had he to look for a woman’s face in the foam?_"]
And the song of the sea was the song of death and dishonor. He might climb the crag to-day, and to-morrow, and every to-morrow of his life, and the song would not change. The sea was a vast organ; he could not change its tunes back to the old ones; he could not control it, and it went on, rolling out its fierce, deep music of dishonor.
And then he would leave the sea and the crags and go back into the empty house. The house was only a shade less bad; with its deserted rooms and its long gallery of dead and gone Campbells and Trevelyans.
He had wandered into the gallery once or twice. The faces on the canvases, grown indistinct with the years, seemed to look back at him without recognition that he was of their race and line. What claim had they on him or he on them? The men had been brave and the women fair—so the history and traditions of the house had said, even if the stiff painted figures and the severe painted faces often said otherwise—the men had always been in the front wherever they were needed for the defense of Scotland and her rights, and later they had defended England too. If they had not fought for her with the sword, they had with tongue or pen—if they had not been soldiers, they had been powers in the government or in the pulpit. Even the solemn-faced preacher near the big window at the furthest end of the gallery, when eloquence had failed, had left the old kirk to strike a blow for King Charlie. The women, too, had been brave—brave in the sacrifice of beauty and wealth for the upholding of Scottish rights, and the renouncing of husbands and lovers and sons for Scotland.