Hector McKaye suffered that winter. He dwelt in Gethsemane, for he had incurred to his outcast son the greatest debt that one man can incur to another, and he could not publicly acknowledge the debt or hope to repay it in kind. By the time spring came his heart hunger was almost beyond control; there were times when, even against his will, he contemplated a reconciliation with Donald based on an acceptance of the latter's wife but with certain reservations. The Laird never quite got around to defining the reservation but in a vague way he felt that they should exist and that eventually Donald would come to a realization of the fact and help him define them.
Each Sunday during that period of wretchedness he saw his boy and Nan at church, although they no longer sat with Mr. Daney. From Reverend Tingley The Laird learned that Donald now had a pew of his own, and he wondered why. He knew his son had never been remotely religious and eventually he decided that, in his son's place, though he were the devil himself, he would do exactly as Donald had done. Damn a dog that carried a low head and a dead tail! It was the sign of the mongrel strain--curs always crept under the barn when beaten!
One Sunday in the latter part of May he observed that Nan came to church alone. He wondered if Donald was at home ill and a vague apprehension stabbed him; he longed to drop into step beside Nan as she left the church and ask her, but, of course, that was unthinkable. Nevertheless he wished he knew and that afternoon he spent the entire time on the terrace at The Dreamerie, searching the Sawdust Pile with his marine glasses, in the hope of seeing Donald moving about the little garden. But he did not see him, and that night his sleep was more troubled than usual.
On the following Sunday Nan was not accompanied by her husband either. The Laird decided, therefore, that Donald could not be very ill, otherwise Nan would not have left him home alone. This thought comforted him somewhat. During the week he thought frequently of telephoning up to Darrow and asking if they still had the same raftsman on the pay-roll, but his pride forbade this. So he drove up the river road one day and stopped his car among the trees on the bank of the river from the Darrow log boom. A tall, lively young fellow was leaping nimbly about on the logs, but so active was he that even at two hundred yards The Laird could not be certain this man was his son. He returned to Port Agnew more troubled and distressed than ever.
Mrs. McKaye and the girls had made three flying visits down to Port Agnew during the winter and The Laird had spent his week-ends in Seattle twice; otherwise, save for the servants, he was quite alone at The Dreamerie and this did not add to his happiness. Gradually the continued and inexplicable absence of Donald at Sunday service became an obsession with him; he could think of nothing else in his spare moments and even at times when it was imperative he should give all of his attention to important business matters, this eternal, damnable query continued to confront him. It went to bed with him and got up with him and under its steady relentless attrition he began to lose the look of robust health that set him off so well among men of his own age. His eyes took on a worried, restless gleam; he was irritable and in the mornings he frequently wore to the office the haggard appearance that speaks so accusingly of a sleepless night. He lost his appetite and in consequence he lost weight. Andrew Daney was greatly concerned about him, and one day, apropos of nothing, he demanded a bill of particulars.
"Oh, I daresay I'm getting old, Andrew," The Laird replied evasively.
"Worrying about the boy?"
It was a straight shot and old Hector was too inexpressibly weary to attempt to dodge it. He nodded sadly.
"Well, let us hope he'll come through all right, sir."
"Is he ill? What's wrong with him, Andrew? Man, I've been eating my heart out for months, wondering what it is, but you know the fix I'm in. I don't like to ask and not a soul in Port Agnew will discuss him with me."
"Why, there's nothing wrong with him that I'm aware of, sir. I spoke to Nan after services last Sunday and she read me a portion of his last letter. He was quite well at that time."
"W-wh-where is he, Andrew?"
"Somewhere in France. He's not allowed to tell."
"France? Good God, Andrew, not
France!"
"Why not, may I ask? Of course he's in France. He enlisted as a private shortly after war was declared. Dirty Dan quit his job and went with him. They went over with the Fifth Marines. Do you mean to tell me this is news to you?" he added, frankly amazed.
"I do," old Hector mumbled brokenly. "Oh, Andrew man, this is terrible, terrible. I canna stand it, man." He sat down and covered his face with his trembling old hands.
"Why can't you? You wouldn't want him to sit at home and be a slacker, would you? And you wouldn't have a son of yours wait until the draft board took him by the ear and showed him his duty, would you?"
"If he's killed I'll nae get over it." The Laird commenced to weep childishly.
"Well, better men or at least men as fine, are paying that price for citizenship, Hector McKaye."
"But his wife, man? He was married. 'Twas not expected of him--"
"I believe his wife is more or less proud of him, sir. Her people have always followed the flag in some capacity."
"But how does she exist? Andrew Daney, if you're giving her the money--"
"If I am you have no right to ask impertinent questions about it. But I'm not."
"I never knew it, I never knew it," the old man complained bitterly. "Nobody tells me anything about my own son. I'm alone; I sit in the darkness, stifling with money--oh, Andrew, Andrew, I didn't say good-by to him! I let him go in sorrow and in anger."
"You may have time to cure all that. Go down to the Sawdust Pile, take the girl to your heart like a good father should and then cable the boy. That will square things beautifully."
Even in his great distress the stubborn old head was shaken emphatically. The Laird of Port Agnew was not yet ready to surrender.
Spring lengthened into summer and summer into fall. Quail piped in the logged-over lands and wild ducks whistled down through the timber and rested on the muddy bosom of the Skookum, but for the first time in forty years The Laird's setters remained in their kennels and his fowling pieces in their leather cases. To him the wonderful red and gold of the great Northern woods had lost the old allurement and he no longer thrilled when a ship of his fleet, homeward bound, dipped her house-flag far below him. He was slowly disintegrating.
Of late he had observed that Nan no longer came to church, so he assumed she had found the task of facing her world bravely one somewhat beyond her strength. A few months before, this realization would have proved a source of savage satisfaction to him, but time and suffering were working queer changes in his point of view. Now, although he told himself it served her right, he was sensible of a small feeling of sympathy for her and a large feeling of resentment against the conditions that had brought her into conflict with the world.
"I daresay," Andrew Daney remarked to him about Christmas time, "you haven't forgotten your resolve to do something handsome for that raftsman of Darrow's who saved your life last January. You told me to remind you of him at Christmas."
"I have not forgotten the incident," old Hector answered savagely.
"I think it might be a nice thing to do if you would send word to Nan, by me, that it will please you if she will consent to have your grandchild born in the company hospital. Otherwise, I imagine she will go to a Seattle hospital, and with doctors and nurses away to the war there's a chance she may not get the best of care."
"Do as you see fit," The Laird answered. He longed to evade the issue--he realized that Daney was crowding him always, setting traps for him, driving him relentlessly toward a reconciliation that was abhorrent to him. "I have no objection. She cannot afford the expense of a Seattle hospital, I daresay, and I do not desire to oppress her."
The following day Mr. Daney reported that Nan had declined with thanks his permission to enter the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital. As a soldier's wife she would be cared for without expense in the Base Hospital at Camp Lewis, less than a day's journey distant.
The Laird actually quivered when Daney broke this news to him. He was hurt--terribly hurt--but he dared not admit it. In January he learned through Mr. Daney that he was a grandfather to a nine-pound boy and that Nan planned to call the baby Caleb, after her father. For the first time in his life then, The Laird felt a pang of jealousy. While the child could never, by any possibility, be aught to him, nevertheless he felt that in the case of a male child a certain polite deference toward the infant's paternal ancestors was always commendable. At any rate, Caleb was Yankee and hateful.
"I am the twelfth of my line to be named Hector," he said presently--and Andrew Daney with difficulty repressed a roar of maniac laughter. Instead he said soberly.
"The child's playing in hard luck as matters stand; it would be adding insult to injury to call him Hector McKaye, Thirteenth. Isn't that why you named your son Donald?"
The Laird pretended not to hear this. Having been fired on from ambush, as it were, he immediately started discussing an order for some ship timbers for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. When he retired to his own office, however, he locked the door and wept with sympathy for his son, so far away and in the shadow of death upon the occasion of the birth of his first son.