"It's the _call_ of it, Phoebe," he answered. "I get restless and there's
nothing for it but the hard work of the camp. It's lonely but it has its
compensations, for the visions come down there as they don't here. You
know how I like to be with all of you; and it's home--but the depression
gets more than I can stand at times and I must go. You understand better
than the rest, I think, and I always count on you to help me off." As he
spoke he rested his head on his hands and looked across the table into
the fire. His eyes were somber and the strong lines in his face cut deep
with a grim melancholy.
Phoebe's frank eyes softened as they looked at him. They had grown up
together, friends in something of a like fortune and she understood him
with a frank comradeship that comforted them both and went far to the
distraction of young David Kildare who, as he said, trusted Andrew but
looked for every possible surprising maneuver in the conduct of Phoebe.
And because she understood Andrew Phoebe was silent for a time, tracing
the lines on his map with a pencil.
"Then you'll have to go," she said softly at last, "but don't stay so
long again." She glanced across at the top of the major's head which
showed a rampant white lock over the edge of his book. "We miss you; and
you owe it to some of us to come back oftener from now on."
"I always will," answered Andrew, quickly catching her meaning and
smiling with a responsive tenderness in a glance at the absorbed old
gentleman around the corner of the table. "It is harder to go this time
than ever, in a way; and yet the staying's worse. I'm giving myself until
spring, though I don't know why. I--"
Just then from the drawing-room beyond there came a crash of soft chords
on the piano and David's voice rose high and sweet across the rooms. He
had gone to the piano to sing for Caroline who never tired of his negro
melodies and southern love songs. He also had a store of war ballads with
which it delighted him to tease and regale her, but to-day his mood had
been decidedly on the sentimental vein.
"I want no stars in Heaven to guide me,
I need no......................
......but, oh, the kingdom of my heart, love,
Lies within thy loving arms...."
His voice dropped a note lower and the rest of the distinctly enunciated
words failed to reach through the long rooms. Phoebe also failed to
catch a quick breath that Andrew drew as he began stacking a pile of
blue-prints into a leather case.
"David Kildare," remarked the old major as he looked up over his book,
"makes song the vehicle of expression of as many emotions in one
half-hour as the ordinary man lives through in a lifetime. Had you not
better attend to the safeguarding of Caroline Darrah's unsophistication,
Phoebe?"