After awhile she brought a pity, wholly womanly and half divine, out of the ashes that had seemed so dead, and on the awful truth of these men’s lives, broken by the failure of one, she built the mercy that is stronger than justice, and the faith that is stronger than doubt.
Something, though, remained in the ashes, dead, never to be rekindled, and woman-like she used to cry a little over the dead part of it; not because she could not relight it, but because it was so dead.
She grew into a woman in those weeks lapsing between Trevelyan’s call and Stewart’s return—gradually, as clay is moulded in the hands of a potter, who cuts it on his wheel, to give to it the finer tracings and the smoothness of completion.
And every day and every fair breeze brought Stewart nearer, and Cary turned from the ashes to the sunsets again. Fires would go out, even with careful tending, but the sunsets were God’s, Cary told herself, and, therefore, eternal.
Malcolm Stewart went down to Southampton to meet the ship and bring John back to London.
"No excitement," the doctor had said, and so he had gone alone.
Now that young Stewart had really accomplished the task of getting back to England, his false strength deserted him and he became weaker than before. The two men, the sturdy father and the wasted son, made the journey to town, John being carried to and from the railway carriages.
For a moment, when he reached London, and the carriage was turning into Grosvenor Square, he rallied a little and insisted on getting out of the carriage himself, and walking up the steps, leaning heavily on his father’s arm.
"We won’t frighten the Little Madre," he had said.
The tall, womanly figure of the Little Madre. who had been standing by the window for the last hour, appeared at the door, silently holding out her arms.
After awhile they got him up to his own room and to bed, and all day the Little Madre sat by him, tending to his few wants. Once he fell asleep, and when he awoke the room was full of flowers.
"What is it?" he asked his mother feebly, "Where did they come from?"
"From friends," she said, rising and moving from one great bunch to another. "The white and pink roses are from Cousin Kenneth’s wife," and so she went on. "The heather and the bracken came without a name. I think they must be from Rob—don’t you?"