At the fall of evening, while yet faint grey light marked the western sky and the snow had only just begun to fall, many men went into the yards for water. This, in the shape of ice, they conveyed to the prisons, and each party in turn broke a portion from their frozen conduits and fled back shivering into the fetid warmth of the great buildings. The guards and the guarded alike shrank from the open air, and in that hour before the storm, a hundred men might have climbed out of the prison with no eye to mark their going. But the weather made escape suicide; the north wind and the snow were the gaolers of Dartmoor for many a day henceforth.
Separating themselves from the throng, Commodore Miller and his companions departed one by one and presently assembled behind the angle of an empty cachot. From here they approached the inner wall, and, while the blood was still warm in them, set about their task. The square and solid shape of James Knapps came first, Sam Cuffee leapt to his shoulders, Stark followed, and then came Burnham, while the Commodore next worked his way up the living ladder; and the light and weakly person of Caleb Carberry brought up the rear. Once the warning bells jangled, but the wind swept the sound away, and no turnkey heard them. The darkness began to close in quickly, while far above ruddy splashes of light blazed like fierce eyes from the squat windows of the prison.
The difficulty of the ascension was quickly tackled and mastered. With Knapps centred the chief strain, but despite his weight the man proved nimble enough, and though he bruised both Cuffee and Stark not a little as he clambered over them, soon Jimmy reached the top. Then the negro, full of muffled regrets at his clumsy feet and hands, also went aloft, and within three minutes of the start the whole six had safely passed the inner wall. Descent from this was easy, for steps rose upon the outer side of it and communicated with the sentry-boxes along the top. Now snow fell upon them in great solitary flakes, and they got a glimpse of inky cloud-banks swallowing the Moor to windward; then they hurried down into the great fosse beneath them, crossed it and prepared to scale the outer wall.
Up they went, though more slowly than before, for the cold began to touch them. Soon they crowded in a row aloft like forlorn birds; then they felt the full force of the wind, and stood aghast at the grim desolation spread beneath.
"Get to earth, lads, while we can use our hands," shouted Miller. "Once free, we'll speak a word or two as we move south. When we are down, each man must determine for himself his course of action. We can either follow the wall round to the main entrance and give ourselves up to the guard again, or we can turn our faces to the night and trust in God."
No man answered, but the living ladder was formed, and Knapps, taking a firm grip of the wall, lowered himself half over. Cuffee slipped down and held the sailor's ankles, and the others, one by one, thus lowered themselves to the ground. Then Knapps, hanging to the full extent of his reach, let go, and those on the ground stood by to break his fall.
Now, face to face with night and tempest, the character of each among that little throng appeared, stripped bare by circumstance.
Cuffee was the first to speak. He already wept and whined, as the wind cut him to the bone, and the snow sweeping horizontally over the heath stung through his rags.
"For de lub ob Gard, sars, I'se go back afore I've froze into one lump ob black ice! Oh, gemmen, we run quick, else we nebber run no more!"
"The chances of life are small," said Miller, "and no man will think the worse of another if he turns to the gates. The storm promises to be terrific, and though we might have reached Lovey Lee's cottage in weather still and clear, 'tis but a forlorn hope now. We are to hold on until we strike young plantations of larch and beech. These we leave on our left, and then keep south-east. 'Tis seeking a needle in a bottle of hay, and failure must mean death. Let no man start in ignorance."
"For God's sake be moving, sir," pleaded Burnham. "Whatever happens, we must get abreast of the main gates. Then those who will may go to the Moor. We shall freeze here while we stand. For my part I return. Life is sweet."
"An' me too," said Carberry. "I'm fearsome of this weather. My lungs will fail me in a mile. 'Tain't no manner of use killing myself for nought. I wants ter see the gate again. T'other side the wall's only prison, but this side's death."
"I'se with you, Marse Burnham and Marse Carberry," chattered Cuffee. "My legs is gwine so funny, like as if dey belonged to some udder gemman."
"It's suicide, Stark," said Burnham, as they bent forward and followed the wall. The wind now shrieked past them, and the snow began to change its character. It had been very thick and heavy, and the Moor was already an inch deep under it; but the flakes ceased to fall, and dwindled into an icy dust that stabbed like a rain of needles. Darkness increased; only by the wall upon their right hands did they know their road.
"My cheek him froze hard!" cried the negro. "Oh, my poor mammy!"
Stark, with his head down, spoke to Miller.
"What do you do, sir?" he asked. "I'm going to make a fight for it; but dare you?"
"I'll come, lad, on one condition: that you do not stay a single step for me. 'Tis each for himself. My life matters to no man. And I take it into my hands with all reverence for the Giver. If I die, I die a free man."
"'Tis so with me," answered the younger; "none will mourn me, for sorrow of heirs is only laughter under a mask. But we'll win, not lose. And 'tis victory either way, whether we live or die."
There remained James Knapps, and now Stark asked him his purpose.
"Waal, I reyther guess I'll hold on," he answered. "I ain't frightened of snow and never stopped hum nights when I could go out. I was a trapper in the Rockies once. This weather is old company, and no man kin tell what's behind sich a smother. Death or life, 'tis no great odds to me; so I'm for going ahead."
"I hope it don't displeasure you us turning back," panted Caleb Carberry to Stark; "but I'm very wishful ter get home again some day. I've got a wife and family in Vermont——"
"Then you'd be a knave to hold on," said the other. "I've got nothing in Vermont but a good solid chunk of the State itself. The beavers won't miss me, nor yet the maple trees, nor yet my cousins, I'll swear."
When the glare from a great lamp above the main entrance was seen across the snow, three men huddled together in an empty sentry-box near the gates, and three struck strongly forward into the south-east. They held a steady course, and walked in Indian file, with the storm on their left sides.
Sam Cuffee sobbed and screamed.
"Poor tings, dey got der marching orders! I nebber see Marse Stark any more. I wish I born dead!"
"Shut your mouth, you black scorpion," said Burnham savagely. His heart was with his friends, and now he smarted to think that he had turned. If they lived, they would never respect him more. So he believed. He had always entertained a lively jealousy where Stark was concerned. He knew that his messmate was a better man than himself and, eaten by envy, could not pardon his superiority. Now in his heart there sprang a base and fleeting hope that Stark had departed to die.
"I'se no scorpion," answered Cuffee. "I'se only berry dam miserable nigger, sar."
"Be silent! Do you want the men in the guardhouse to hear us? We're to give Commodore Miller as much law as we dare without getting ourselves frostbitten. Then we can ring the bell and sneak back to kennel—like the hounds we are."
"To the cachot," said Carberry. "I kinder guess we'll sleep on granite to-night. Snow's softer and warmer, after all's said. But if we sleep here, you bet we shan't wake no more."
"They'll have a pretty down on us now," answered Burnham. "We were fools not to go and die with the others."
"De cachot—wid de snow coming in to bury us froo de naked windows! Oh, I wish I dead and in hell—it warm dar. I no care for twenty million debbils so long as dey take me into de warm place."
"You'll be warm enough to-morrow. They'll flog us for this when we refuse to say anything about the others," returned William Burnham.
"Flogging's better'n dying. Durn the silly monkeys—they might just as well have cut their throats as go," declared Carberry. "I dare say every doodle of 'em's dead by now. Miller's a loss to the country for sartain."
In silence they waited another minute; then Burnham addressed Sam Cuffee.
"Ring the great bell, nigger; I can't lift my hand to it."
Soon the three were back again within the prison walls, and as Carberry had expected, a cachot opened frozen jaws for them. Untold misery they endured, although a soldier at his own risk fetched them a bundle of straw to spread between their bodies and the stones. Commandant Cottrell himself directed the punishment.
"As for the others," he said, "we are well quit of the troublesome rascals. They'll be out of further mischief before dawn. Nothing could live in this, for Satan and all his angels are loose to-night."
Now through the bursting heart of that great storm the American prisoners struggled on their way. None spoke; for all believed that death strode beside them and came closer with each savage thrust of the northern wind. About them the snow already lay in a heavy carpet and upon the Moor, in gorges and old, deep ravines, an icy dust was piling into drifts that would only vanish with the suns of April. The gale blew with gigantic but irregular outbursts, so that it seemed as if fingers invisible on cruel hands stretched out of the night to tear their garments off them. The spirit of the storm escaped from its icy chambers, swept chill around them, and each breath they drew cut sharp to their lungs as the men panted onward.
South of Prince Town roll high and open heaths, whereon, under the tremendous impetus of the tempest, the snow was swept horizontally. It fell, only to be gathered up again and launched forward in writhing wisps and veils. Along these level heights Commodore Miller, Stark, and Knapps made their way; then when each heart sank low and every sanguine pulse was nearly frozen, they touched the skirts of the young plantations at Tor Royal and hoped again. Half a mile distant the hospitality of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt had been at their command, and the knight had gladly closed stout doors between the wanderers and death; but of the establishment within these snow-bound young forests they knew nothing. Their thought was the cabin of Lovey Lee, concerning the position of which she had made them clear; and now they held on to the end of the wood, then turned a compass-point southward and faced the Moor again.
Cecil Stark at length spoke, and shouted into the Commodore's ear.
"We're on the right road. We may pull through after all."
"Save your breath and keep together," answered the older man. "I have some fight in me yet."
"And you, Jimmy?"
"I wish I was ter prison."
"Blame yourself that you're not," panted Stark.
"I duz," answered the sailor. "I s'pose there's no grizzly bars snooking around these parts? I thought I squinted something back away."
"No; but there are stone crosses; and one stands nigh Lovey Lee's. Hit that and we're saved."
"Miss it and—but no use to wherrit. 'Tis a very good end. I knew a chap as slept hisself out of life very comfortable on such a night. Narry a pang; and I found him in the morning froze to the marrow, and smiling about it, like he was a statue in church. Better than a bagonet in your belly, anyhow."
"Drop that talk, bo'sun. We'll win yet!"
They fought on silently, but the pace became slower as their force abated and the snow increased. Now they felt the full strength of the wind, and nature instinctively made them turn and edge away from it.
"Hold to your left, lads, or we are done for!" cried Miller. "Keep the wind on the port bow."
"Be damned if I kin suffer it against my cheek any more," answered Knapps. "My ear and jaw are just frozen and my left eye's bunged up with ice."
Twice more Stark addressed the sailor, but received no answer. Then, turning again, he found one shadow beside him instead of two.
"Is that you, Stark?"
"Ay, sir."
"Where's Knapps?"
"I'm afraid he's lost, sir. He would hold off a point. Had I sought him, I must have lost you."
"Shout—shout with all your might. We may save him yet."
They lifted their voices, but the piping of them was gulfed in the roar of the wind. The ice poured out of the darkness, and, despite the snow-blink, an awful circumambient gloom hid all things from their eyes. Only the wan upthrown illumination at their feet told of the snow beneath.
"I implore you to be moving, sir. Right or wrong, we must hold on now," cried Stark, for he saw that his companion seemed to hesitate.
"Knapps may be right. Can we have got too far east? However, 'tis all one. Blessed sleep's ahead, my poor boy. 'Tis good to die in the great Hand of God and not behind stone walls."
"Don't speak of dying, Commodore. Get closer; take my arm and husband your strength as you may."
Stark closed up on the other's left hand between his friend and the weather; but Miller appreciated the action and fought against it.
"You shall not do this for me. I'm tougher, older, better seasoned!"
"For love of life, speak no more," Stark answered. "Hold close. We may save each other."
Now arm in arm, or sometimes hand in hand, but never apart, they battled through a dread hour of agony. Often they fell and bruised themselves upon ice and granite; often they dropped headlong into some snow-hidden rift; then surmounting it, they struggled on again, half blind, half strangled. Despite their tremendous exertions, no warmth to fight the wind, no heat of blood could either generate. They froze as they fought and their progress became very slow. They grew conscious of sloping land and passed where hills of stone rose to the right, while the storm, from lower levels, leapt upwards as it seemed out of some dark crater on the left of them. They had missed Siward's Cross by miles and now wandered under Fox Tor above the Mire. Each yearned to lie down and end it; and each knew that a longing to yield was in the heart of the other. For a moment they stood in deep snow where great rocks towered and broke the wind. Then Commodore Miller addressed Stark, and his dreamy, placid utterance sounded strange in the fury of the hour. Shouts and a frenzy of fear or of energy had better, chimed with the free and fearful forces of the air; but the American spoke like a spirit and looked upon these material phenomena of night and tempest as one already above their influences and beyond their power.
"'Tis a great thought that you and I are bigger than this weather. A man's soul can steer through the worst storm ever loosed against earth—steer a straight course and fear no evil of earth or sea. This dust of us will soon be ice, my lad. We shall sink into this frozen wilderness as rain falls on a river; but we ourselves——"
"Hope on, hope on," gasped the younger man. "We'll fight the British weather as we've fought the British ships. There's a shot in the locker yet!"
They crawled forward, and Stark, himself failing slowly, well knew that the increasing weight upon his arm must soon bring him to earth with his friend. Miller was nearly spent. He began to speak fitfully, but rambled in his speech, and discussed men and matters beyond his companion's knowledge. For ten minutes they pressed on, but advanced little more than two hundred yards in the time. Snow still fell, though less heavily, and it seemed to Stark that the wind abated a trifle, but he could not be sure, for sensation was almost dead. His legs felt nothing, even when he struck them against the stones. They had followed a wide slope of the land, and now stood in the very shadow of death where Childe the Hunter's ruined cenotaph had risen, and where legend pointed to the sportsman's place of passing even on such a night, and in such an hour.
There was a sudden rent in the snow-clouds at this moment, for out of heaven burst a blast so awful that it tore the inky curtains of the storm, swept the air clear along its hurricane ways and brought a fleeting glimmer of light to earth. In the black chasm opened on high reeled suns, and the flames of bygone ages flashed into the eyes of dying men. Then those silvery star-fires were swallowed up again, and the tempest, shrieking like a fury, tumbled its pall over them to lift it no more. Yet in that blast another light than those of the indifferent universe had touched upon Cecil Stark's fainting eyes. Dear as the smile of a friend, as the sound of a voice, as the hand of a man stretched to save, he had marked a ruddy flash from one little window high aloft on the western face of Fox Tor Farm. Like a lighthouse lamp it hung above the chaos. It flashed serene and steadfast; then the blizzard thundered down again, and it vanished behind the snow.
"All's over, old fellow," said Jonathan Miller. "I'm done for—fought and lost, and glad to go. My heart's stopping. Go on—good-bye."
"Look, man, look! Right ahead! Ah! 'tis blotted again; but I saw it clear enough—lifted above us—a light."
"I shall see it too—held out of Heaven to guide us. God is kind. The road's always clear to Him."
"Be of good cheer yet! 'Twas an earthly light I saw—ruddy and heart-warming! Don't—don't—give up the fight when we're so near—one effort more—one——"
For answer the other's hand relaxed, and he fell suddenly face downwards.
Stark instantly bent to raise his friend, but he could not. Himself he dropped to his knees; then, with a great struggle, stood again upon his freezing feet.
"Go, lad—go," said the fallen man. "By stopping you slay us both. Hold on to the light if you can. Speed—speed! Death is alongside now—ready to board——"
Stark knew the truth of this, and, striving in vain to note some mark that should indicate where Miller lay, he turned whence the light had shone.
"Trust me then. I'll get back in time! Don't sleep—keep shouting—keep shouting. We'll save you yet!"
Stark spoke cheerily as though already in the company of other men; but his hope perished as he turned and saw his friend a silent spot in the darkness—already half obliterated by snow. A sob rose in the man's throat, and he felt a tear like a spark of fire upon his cheek.
"The end of him—the cruel, bitter end of a great sailor and a good man. God's curse on those that murdered him!"
The cry came thickly and the shrieking wind carried it away. Stark staggered against the hill, sometimes upon his feet, sometimes on his knees. The light gleamed fitfully and directed him across the storm. Now it vanished behind curtains of snow; now it broke through once more, placid of flame and mellow of hue. Higher it towered and higher, until it seemed to the wanderer immediately above him. But even as he looked up to it, the sailor fell into a little rivulet and struggled with fresh bruises on to the further bank. A steep slope still subtended the space between himself and the shining window. The light beckoned him forward and forces unseen denied any further advance. He could stand no longer, but grovelled on yard by yard. Then a wall buried in the snow, raised a barrier, mountainous to his feebleness, and he remained motionless beneath it for a full minute. Peace was there and delicious silence. The snow warmed him; the coverlet crept up and up. It was pulled over his breast, neck, head, by gentle hands. He remembered his mother and her cradle-songs in his childhood. "'Tis the great Mother tucking me up," he thought. For a moment, as it seemed, the glow of health and vigour drove his blood along. Life was kissing him and saying 'good-bye.' His eyes shut; all present things began to sink away out of his mind. He smiled indifferently and, turning back along the pathway of consciousness, retraced his life's short road and passed its memories in final review. He remembered the defeat of theMarbleheadand felt the sharp grief of failure. He saw the 'Stars and Stripes' flutter down, as the dying see their last sun sink; and that darkest emotion of his days reawakened now, mercifully held force enough to shatter the snow-trance. He opened his eyes, found an impulse of restored energy from his short respite, saw the light clear and sharp above, and surmounted the stone wall, but fell prone upon the other side. Then, with a sort of savage thankfulness that the last stage in the long fight was come, he rolled and crawled thirty yards more, and reached within twenty feet of Fox Tor Farm.
Powerless to lift a finger more, he lay there, stared at the light and blinked his eyes to keep the snow out of them, that the image of that shining window might remain clear. Its radiance would brighten his end, and the idea strangely comforted him. His wits reeled again; he prayed a wild prayer: he began to long for life with all his might, and the desire towards it poured in a frantic torrent over him. A signal set within his eyes by man smiled upon him, but he could not reach it. Thrice he shouted to Miller to follow him; to shout for his own salvation did not strike his mind; and whilst he cried aloud for the third time, the storm, that had increased to sweep the snow clear of one bright window, lulled, and for a moment drew a long, sobbing breath, ere it shrieked again. In that oasis of silence the man poured out his last cry to his friend; but only the raving voices from above answered it, for Miller had long passed beyond sense.
And yet, behind the granite of the farm were wakeful ears. Aloft Grace Malherb lay sleepless, while she watched a great heap of snow gather upon her bedroom hearth. The taper that was leading Stark to salvation beamed steadfastly to him; to Grace, under her blankets, it staggered and reeled and guttered, and fought strange draughts that crept through unknown chinks and crannies. Then, the hour being eleven, there fell that awful simultaneous suspiration of breath in the yelling throats of the storm. A mysterious silence touched the night and in the moment of it a human cry—wild and faint—reached the girl's straining ear. No other heard it, for though Malherb walked below, uneasy before the onset of this hurricane, his dwelling lay between him and the lost man, while for the rest all that household slept in peace.
Now did Death huddle close over Cecil Stark, hide him, muffle his speech, and steal his senses one by one; yet with his last throb of consciousness the sailor shouted on to Miller, and before his voice stilled and his life was in the act to close, Grace Malherb had reached her father where he walked and told her news. He showed much doubt, yet lost not a moment, and the last weak cry of the man in the snow saluted Beer and Malherb as they crept round the southern front of the farm with a lantern.
"Miller! Miller! Mil——!"
Then they heard no more, but guided by the voice, struggled across the snow to it and fell over a fellow-creature.
Battered, bleeding, apparently lifeless, Beer and his master discovered Cecil Stark; and they picked him up and thanked God and carried him into Fox Tor Farm.
For two days the great blizzard continued, and Cecil Stark remained more or less unconscious. Sometimes he recovered sufficiently to speak, and his friend's name was upon his tongue when he did so; but the sick man could neither frame a coherent sentence, nor make his desires understood to any listener. At length, however, he began to mend, and Maurice Malherb, who held himself something of a physician, pronounced that the lad was out of danger. For this happy circumstance he took all credit to himself, but Grace declared that she it was who had saved the wanderer's life. As yet she had not seen him. Her mother and Dinah Beer ministered to him during his unconsciousness, obeyed the master in every particular, and, with most assiduous care, steadily nursed Cecil Stark back into life after he had said farewell to it.
The American prisoner's return to intelligent speech brought no small annoyance for his host. Stark's clothes were bought from a Jew pedlar, and had not betrayed him; but he made all clear as soon as he was able to do so; and Mr. Malherb, stamping into the parlour after his first conversation with the invalid, announced a discovery with considerable wrath. As yet no news of the outer world had reached Fox Tor Farm. It lay separated from all things by impenetrable barriers and drifts of snow.
"An American! A wretched prisoner who broke out of Prince Town on the night of the storm. One Cecil Stark, by a vile coincidence. Doubtless that rascal who came so near to braining Grace in the summer. Himself and other blackguards climbed over the walls, for our sentries had been moved and wrapped in cotton wool, I suppose, to keep the weakly fools from freezing! Once in the teeth of the storm, three of the six prisoners turned tail and went back as fast as their legs would carry them. Three held on. One—a common sailor—was soon lost; two—this lad and another officer—struggled to within a hundred yards of my mansion. Then the elder fell to rise no more, and the boy, with a last effort, reached us. The rest you know. Thanks to Grace and to me, he will regain his worthless life, and not lose a finger."
"But the other poor souls—how monstrous sad to think that one perished almost at our doorstep! I pray you despatch Beer, Woodman, and the rest instantly, dear Maurice," cried Mrs. Malherb.
"Am I a stone?" he answered. "Already the men and dogs are seeking this unfortunate creature. But he is far beyond all help. It may be that we shall not find him before the melting of the snows."
Mr. Malherb hastened off, and Annabel, taking Grace with her, went to see their guest. Young Lee had been appointed night nurse to the sufferer, and now John met Grace and her mother as they arrived.
"Mr. Stark is sitting up," he said. "He finds himself too weak to rise, but he awaits you very eagerly. I hear him mumbling a speech that shall express his deep regret for all the care he has given here."
"He shall say no such things," declared Mrs. Malherb; yet, before she could prevent it, Stark began upon the theme at his heart.
"Forgive me, madam, for this terrible trouble that I have brought into your home. I had better far have died outside it. Yet I bless you that I still live. To sharp ears and generous courage and wonderful skill I owe my salvation, and 'tis beyond human power ever to thank you for such goodness. Samaritans indeed have you been to me. You have given me back my life."
"Then I pray you to set a better value on it, Master Stark," said Annabel, "for truly you rated it but low to venture it on such a hazard."
"It shall be precious henceforth. When I grow desperate I will consider the price of skill and trouble with which you and your husband have redeemed it."
"And my daughter, sir; your best thanks are due to her, for 'twas she who heard your cry in the night."
Grace, gazing down, saw a strong, young face, with wild black hair, a powerful neck, square jaw, and clean, firm mouth. Stark's countenance was very thin, and the grey eyes that burnt out of it appeared dim and weary. Their lids kept falling upon them. But now into his face came a flush. He had not yet looked at Grace Malherb, nor did he do so now.
"God bless your daughter, madam. And have they found him—my friend—the Commodore? 'Twas to him I shouted, and forgot that the cry might reach any other listener."
"I fear you must not hope——"
"No, no. I only trust that he may be found—his dust. Oh, God of Mystery! to think that I led my friend directly to your very gates and lost him then because my senses were sealed up. Mayhap one word had saved him! And such a sailor as any nation might take glory in! He lies there, frozen to death; while I bide here alive, with angels to tend my good-for-nothing body."
"He's gone to greater and better work, young sir," said Annabel.
"There's no greater or better work on earth or in Heaven, madam, than to fight for one's country," he answered wearily.
"And is not Heaven the Country of us all? What nobler task than to fight for that? You shall find there—not Frenchmen, nor Englishmen, nor Americans—but only happy souls at rest."
"Your land has killed a great man," he said.
"Alas, sir! Of what nation on earth can less be confessed? The conqueror's path is often over noble corpses. You are young and our terrible solitudes have not yet tamed you. We shall see you again to-morrow. Meantime John Lee and Mrs. Beer are at your beck and call by night and day. And accept my earnest and prayerful thanksgiving that you are spared to do worthy work in the world."
"And mine too, Mr. Stark," said Grace.
Then, for the first time, he lifted his eyes to her face and recognised her. Thereupon his slight colour faded away, and he seemed like to faint. Instead, he braced himself, sat up, regarded her with deep emotion and spoke.
"I remember you! You have paid me good for evil, indeed. I——"
But here his fortitude failed him, his spirit was shaken in its present feeble state, and he turned his face away to the wall. Annabel hastened her daughter out of the room and followed her immediately.
"The poor young man is reduced to the utmost weakness," she presently told her husband. "He must have all the strong and sustaining fare that we can bestow upon him to restore his masculine serenity. 'Twas he whose chisel nearly destroyed dear Gracie, and when he saw her and thought upon it, he hid his face to weep. 'Twas a pitiful sight—happily only seen by women."
"Death came so nigh that it robbed him of manhood—if Americans have manhood—yet just missed to grasp at his life. We must restore him to health and to prison as quickly as may be. There is wine in my cellar—an elixir beyond reach of any now, for none remains in the market. He shall be free of it. Yet I hate to think that even in the name of humanity we have suffered an American to cross this threshold."
"Our country's enemy, father, not ours," said Grace.
"And since when were my country's enemies not mine, chit?" he asked.
"Yet you praised Monsieur Marliac, who is on parole at Ashburton, for his riding in that noble run before the ill weather."
"His riding, yes; not him. He happens to be a marvellous fine horseman with British resource and courage. Some Englishman doubtless taught him. Have done with that. When this boy returned to consciousness, my first demand upon him was that he should give me his parole. Needless to say, he instantly agreed to do so."
The baying of a hound, the shrill barking of two terriers, and the murmur of men's voices came through the window. Other sounds there were not, for the snow had long muffled up the earth and made its frozen surface dumb. Glancing out of the casement, Malherb saw the sight that he awaited, bade Grace and her mother retire, then solemnly went forth uncovered to meet the dead.
An hour before, Thomas Putt, with Beer, Harvey Woodman and Mark Bickford, had tramped out of doors to seek the body of Cecil Stark's companion. The snow no longer fell; the sky was clear, yet lacked colour; the wind, sunk from its sustained fury, now uttered gigantic but irregular sighs and slept between them. When it blew, snow-wreaths puffed aloft in little spirals, and deep white snow-banks slipped and cracked. Like streams of ink the rivers wound beneath, and every rush and briar beside them bent under its proper weight of snow. The glare of the earth upthrown made Mr. Putt's eyes smart. A bitter, steely cold still held the Moor, and every man was wrapped up in such thick garments as he possessed. Mr. Beer wore one of his wife's shawls wrapped round his ears, while each labourer had fashioned himself haybands to protect his legs. They held their task vain, but hoped that the dogs might do what they could not. The hound—a mastiff—rejoicing in its liberation, bellowed and plunged dewlap deep in the snow, while the terriers tumbled and rollicked after it until only their wagging tail-stumps were visible.
Richard Beer growled at the evil times and speculated where the farm field-walls might lie under this universal carpet.
"Us might so soon seek a storm-foundered sheep or steer as a man," declared Putt. "I'll be tissicked up wi' brownkitty again to-night, an' nobody to care a cuss whether my breathing be hard or easy."
"Never seed any man wi' so poor a spirit as you," answered Bickford. "Once you get cold to the bone an' you haven't the pluck of a louse."
"I'm a poor tool when I'm cold, an' I know it," admitted Putt. "Now us be all getting our death for nought. If there was a live party lost 'twould be differ'nt—even though he was an enemy of the nation. But this here chap's been food for foxes these many days."
"'Twas a great sign of the love o' freedom said to be born in 'em, that they Yankees would rather take to the open on such a night than bide any more pent in that den of Frenchmen and prison evil," mused Beer.
"I'm the last to blame 'em," declared Woodman.
"They'm too blown up as a nation, however," added Beer. "'Twas a very unhandsome thing to get in holds with us just when we had our hands full wi' Boney."
"I reckon these chaps had to do what they were told, like us," declared Mark Bickford. "They'm sailor men, so I hear, an' 'tis no use cussing 'em same as master do. They be only earning their living. A sailor have got to do what he'm bid, like any other warrior."
"God's word! but he makes my blood boil, no matter how cold the weather be—master, I mean. I wouldn't speak to a dog like he speaks to me. The manhood in me will blaze out some day," declared Putt.
"Then you'll get turned off," said Mr. Woodman.
"'Tis very well for you; though Lord He knows how you can stand the mouth-speech you suffer from him in his rash moments," retorted Putt.
"I stand it, like a donkey eats dachells:[*] I be built to. My family's always had a marvellous power of putting up with hard words from our betters. Not from smaller men, mind you, nor yet from our equals; but what's simple impidence an' sauce not to be borne from the common sort, be just greatness of mind in the bettermost. They don't mean nothing. 'Tis only the haughty blood in 'em."
[*]Dachells: Thistles.
"'Tis just their haughty blood that these here American chaps won't sit down under no more," declared Mr. Beer. "There's no bettermost among them, so I'm told. A man have got to work his way to the top. He can't be born up top; though how it answers to have no gentlefolks, I ban't witty enough to guess."
Malherb's great mastiff presently, by skill or accident, discovered the thing that these men sought. Beside Childe's desolated cenotaph the hound stopped, lifted up its head and bayed. Then it began to dig, and the terriers, yelping loudly, rushed to aid it. The men with their shovels made quick work, and the corpse of Jonathan Miller lay revealed. Neither physical agony nor mental grief clouded his features. His eyes were shut; his countenance appeared placid under the gentle snow-slumber that had led him through the Valley of the Shadow. All perceived that they stood before one who had been their superior. Thomas Putt touched his hat to the corpse. Beer dragged a bottle from his pocket, then, appreciating the futility of troubling the dead, prepared to put it away again with a sorrowful oath.
But Bickford proposed another course.
"He can't drink, poor hero, but us can. If you've brought brandy, gi' me a drop, for I'm in a proper case for it. My feet be just conkerbils of ice beneath me."
Therefore they all drank, and Woodman spoke as his turn came for the bottle.
"Here's to the gen'leman," said he, "an' may he be out of trouble for evermore."
"An' here's to his wife an' family," added Beer, wiping the mouth of the bottle with his sleeve before he put it to his lips. "You may be pretty sartain he's left a wife an' half a dozen, for men in new countries allus get a quiver full, according to the wonnerful wisdom of the Lord."
"An' I'll drink to the sexton," said Bickford, "because the ground's froze two feet, an' the digging of this carpse's grave be going to fetch out a proper sweat on some man."
"You take his honour's heels, will 'e, Woodman? An' walk first. Me an' Putt will hold each a shoulder. You gather up the tools, Bickford, an' keep back they dogs. Look at thicky baggering hound! He knows he've done a clever thing an' wants the world to know it."
So they returned and cast their features into a solemn mould at the direction of Richard Beer.
"Us can't be axed to feel no more than the proper sorrow of man for man," he explained, "but death's death; an' it might be you or me as was going feet first an' shoulder high, but for the goodness of God an' us being Englishmen."
"The poor soul's feet would make a merry-andrew sober," said Woodman. "What he's suffered only him an' his Maker will ever know."
"They'll be cured again afore his honour wants 'em," answered Richard Beer. "He'll rise so well as ever he was at the Trump, along with the best man amongst us."
That night a coffin was built and the dead American's remains laid with reverence therein. A few papers and a watch were found in Miller's pockets, and Malherb, making a packet of them, handed all to the prisoner on parole. Then, two days afterwards, when the weather was bright and the temperature had a little risen, Stark found himself strong enough to rise and creep about and reach the grave that had been dug for his friend.
Maurice Malherb selected a resting-place upon his own domain; and to Bickford himself the task of sinking six feet into the frozen soil was allotted. Thus within the bosom of Dartmoor, as many of his countrymen before him, a good and wise son of America was laid to rest; but his compatriots' dust mouldered under the prison walls; the sailor slept on the central waste. And still his pall is the solemn-moving and purple shadow of the clouds in summer, and in winter the unstained snow; still his knell is sounded in the musical echo of sheep-bells, or the cry of birds by night. The life and activity of Fox Tor Farm have vanished into the eternal past, and graves widely scattered hold those who buried Miller then; but none sleep so grand, so solitary as he in his forgotten tomb under the heather. A repulsed civilisation has retreated before the severity of the land, before the far-flung granite, hungry peat and rough greeting of winter winds and storms; but these forces, harsh to living man, are the patient watchers beside his grave; this earth and stone he cannot tame, yet they open their hearts to him at the last.
The American was present as chief mourner at his friend's interment; while Maurice Malherb read the funeral service, and at his order all the human life of the farm assembled beside the grave. Stark, now restored to strength, exhibited no trace of emotion during the ceremony, and at the completion of it he limped homeward with Mrs. Malherb and her daughter. This he did by direct command.
"Your health and the weather do not permit me to allow you to follow your wish," his host said curtly; "but I shall be proxy for you in my own person."
Therefore Maurice Malherb waited beside the grave alone until Putt and Bickford had completely filled it up.
In the restless eyes of Cecil Stark there seemed reflected the hunger, ignorance and hope of a new-born nation, together with the spirit of its genius and the solemn magnitude of its destiny. He stood for young America; he typified that majestic land over which the first silver of day had broken, whose transcendent future, sung by the Sons of the Morning, already filled with music a thrilling dawn. Dayspring had touched her eastern shores and now, sweeping over her virgin bosom, warmed the heart that beat there. It advanced with the speed of light, and promised soon to illuminate her spirit, even as the sun himself diurnally swept her being from ocean to ocean; then passed beyond her Golden Gate, that he might dip in the Pacific and behold the horizons of the East.
Against this lad's single heart and sanguine ardour now stood the stern figure of Maurice Malherb; and he was not the best type of Englishman to discuss with youthful America the questions of that hour. Yet the master stood for more than British conservatism and prejudice. He represented glorious traditions and a significant past. Wise and tolerant exposition of their differences had made Stark the man's friend; rational argument and some allowance for the point of view had impressed this young heir of the future and warmed a heart already full of personal gratitude; but Malherb adopted an unwise position. Calm discussion never distinguished his methods; to find in the welfare and advancement of humanity at large a common ground for nations, was no ambition of his. He did not point backward to history and invite Cecil Stark to claim his glorious birthright in the story of the Anglo-Saxon race—a course reasonable enough one hundred years ago, before the American family became hybrid. He did not indicate his guest's just right, title and share in British story and glory; he did not remind Stark that he was the fellow in blood of Drake and Raleigh, of Shakespeare and Milton; but he denounced all Americans as traitors to their fatherland, spoke of the Revolution, not of the Wars of Independence, and blamed the New World with a rabid bitterness that indicated his class-attitude and justified America more thoroughly than any power of rhetoric or oratory could have done.
Sometimes they agreed to differ, and dropped the subject without heat; more often Malherb broke off with an oath and cursed the weather for still keeping an enemy of England beneath his roof. And yet, despite his flagrant passions and narrow sympathy, he won Cecil Stark, as he won many others, by some magic of character that rose superior to his temper and persistent pride.
Once the American summed the situation in a biting phrase, that stuck with his country's foe long after the speaker had forgotten it. They sat over their wine after dinner, and the lad spoke with pride of the part that a kinsman had played in the capture of the British General Burgoyne.
"Small credit to him," declared Malherb. "Burgoyne? The man was better at making rubbishy pieces for the playhouse than leading an army."
"But those matters that fell out after—they sum the difference—the fundamental differences of ideas between the respective countries, Mr. Malherb," said the sailor. "Simplicity—childish simplicity, if you like—is our keynote, and we shall never depart from it back into old-world pomp. When Burgoyne, clad in a magnificent uniform covered with gold lace, surrendered up his sword, he found the conqueror wearing an old blanket for a cloak and a cotton cap stuck over one ear. There was the type of monarchy triumphed over by a despised but an inspired race. Afterwards Congress, in a sudden fit of reckless generosity, presented General Stark with two ells of blue and one of yellow cloth to make him a conqueror's coat, and six shirts of Dutch linen to wear under it withal! But my father well remembered the general complaining when he received his nation's gift that the cambric for his cuffs was not provided!"
"What argument do you reap from beggarly poverty, sir?"
"Why, sir, who are you to flout it? The beggars won! The beggars had the genius on their side. Your country calls for millions on millions to grease the old, creaking wheels of its social and constitutional machinery before they will turn at all; America's unique simplicity only places a single sentinel at the President's door."
"Our failure was an accident of men, not of system," declared Malherb. "Fortune favoured a wicked cause as not seldom happens. You had Washington—a man as great as a fallen angel; we—well, it is idle to name names to-day. But it may be permitted to allude to the Howes, who sacrificed to fraternal affection the vital trust imposed upon them. It is granted that we fought ill and taught you what to avoid; it is even allowed that the scholar became as skilled as the master. Your experience, courage and discipline are British; your treachery and red-skin morality are your own. However, the last word is not yet spoken. There are yet a great many Tories in America."
"Of whom I am one," declared Cecil Stark. "Those who pretend to read the future," he continued, "see two great tendencies amongst us—one towards democracy, t'other towards aristocracy. The nation may become vulgar, or it may become noble; but it must become great. None can say more of our future than that by all laws of revealed religion and human history, it should be glorious so long as our aims are pure. To foretell that calls for no prophet."
"What religion sanctions the revolt of a child from its parent? You were not of age. You had no right to think for yourselves."
"The old British fallacy," answered Stark. "Freedom of thought can be denied to none. Deny all other freedom, if you will. But freedom of thought is an immortal fact."
"And duty to your betters is also an immortal fact. Your nation—so to call it—has disgraced itself at the opening of its history. It has begun its separate existence in its father's blood. For what prosperity and blessing shall the country seek that blots the first page of its history with such a crime?"
"A revolt against ignorance, oppression, greed and dishonesty is no crime. Your Parliament had become a hell of narrow-minded, cold-hearted, cynical devils, and to spurn them was a glorious achievement in itself, and the first step upon our path. Slaves do not lift their eyes to the stars and play a worthy part in the history of the world."
"Yet those of us who visited and reported upon you before this war, told no great tale of progress."
"No; they told lies. They were dishonest rascals and did more harm than enough by their falsehoods. You'll regret their deliberate mendacity in the time to come; you'll lament the bitterness of many broad-sheets when the weeds sown in your heads bear fruit in your children's hearts. Pull them out while you can, if you are wise, sir. 'Tis a mad policy to leave them there. Our destiny is sure as the daylight; dark clouds hang over yours. You are old, we are young, yet, when an American is on your lips, your error is that of youth, for you are always hasty and intolerant when you speak of us. It was no unnatural revolt of child against parent, but the noble self-assertion of a growing man, whose liberty, dignity and honour were threatened by a tyrant. We were of your heart's blood; us you might have buckled to you with bonds impossible save between those of one race and one mother. But you spurned us; our welfare was of no account; our power to fill your coffers was everything. You treated us damnably by the hands of base politicians, who lacked common intelligence and foresight. And you have your reward."
"This is the parrot talk of your people, and your trashy scribblers. Public opinion governs America as it must every republic; and what is the public opinion of a nation of rebels worth? You are poisoned by the circumstances of your birth. You have built your stronghold on lawlessness; you spread false reports into your backwoods and mountain fastnesses, your pioneers will never know the thing their leaders did. There is no purity in your public mind; every prejudice against England is fostered until it festers. You are rotten at the roots, and time must prove it."
"I do not think so," answered Stark calmly. "We are a very dispassionate people, Mr. Malherb, and of most unbiassed judgments. We would have listened to Burke; his sublime voice was unheeded amidst the chorus of your ignoble leaders. It pleases you, and those who think as you do, to impute to us a hot-headed and fanatic attitude in our dealings with this nation; but you have driven us into a corner and made us fight for our lives and liberties. Were we to be to England what our black people are to us? God forbid! We are unprejudiced. Prejudice is a wasting disease of old countries; you shall not find it among the infantile ailments of a young state."
"And will you crow as loudly of the justice of this present shameful war, Mr. Stark? Will you dare hold America innocent of a sinister object at this moment? This quarrel scraped on false pretences, while we have France upon our hands—what casuistry can justify that?"
"I deem it unfortunate, not unnatural. You have taught us to hate you, not to love you. There's no hatred worse than that of kin."
"Or of madmen, for what in sober sanity they should most love and cherish. You're a mad people, and America at this day is sunk to be the sink and lunatic asylum of the earth."
Stark flushed, then sighed.
"I hope you'll live to mourn the folly of such an utterance, dear sir. And for your estimate of us, take mine of you: Great Britain is becoming America's volume of reference—no more; and soon enough at the gait she is ganging, she will be altogether behind the van of progress."
"Not yet. We're writing history somewhat quickly. You at Prince Town should know that!"
"The war's not over."
"Why, I think it is—all but the terms of peace. I wish I had the making of 'em."
"Our turn will come. No country can conquer Time. A wise man has said that nations crumble by the process of their own up-massing, like sand in an hour-glass. The fall of every great power is a natural corollary of its rise—as death must follow life. It is not of vital importance to America whether England does her justice now; but it is of vital and eternal importance to England whether she does. We are separated, but the gulf in space matters nothing; it is the gulf in thought that counts. There will come a day when your country will curse those who might have bridged that gulf and helped united England and America to rule the round world. Now it is too late—successive generations will drift further apart, until the bonds that unite us are base and of utility alone. And God, Who judges Nations, as He judges souls, will know how to measure blame when the day of reckoning comes and the awful charge of setting back the world's welfare is read at Doom."
It was this boyish utterance that made Malherb reflect and shadowed his dogmatic certainties. But for a moment only was he silent. Then he rated Stark's ardour and mourned his hopeless ignorance.
They drank their wine and joined the ladies. Before Mrs. Malherb and Grace, politics were not spoken, and intercourse between Stark, his hostess and her daughter was of the friendliest description. The women dispelled his mournful horror of life, brightened existence, and made it a good, desirable, hopeful thing again. They much softened the bitterness of his outlook and appealed to the generosity and gentleness of his nature. To them he spoke of his circumstances, since they showed a lively and ingenuous interest concerning them. He told how that he was an orphan, that he had an uncle of great wealth and importance in his native state of Vermont, and that he was heir to Allen Stark's lands and moneys. He described his youth beside Lake Champlain; he explained his pleasures and ambitions, the customs of his country and the social life of his order.
Cecil Stark's home interested Grace; the people in it attracted her mother. He told them of the Green Mountains and declared that his native land had something in common with their own wild Dartmoor.
"Our great hills gather the water in their moss beds even as do yours," he said. "Problems like these of the Moor on a larger scale occupy the Vermont settlers. The intervales are a boon to us—low, fertile lands about the rivers. Great floods overrun them in spring and make them rich. But there is a wide difference in other ways. We fight with forests, you with naked wastes. We fell trees that the earth may receive the sun again and grow warm and sweet; you plant them to shelter your lands and homesteads. We hope in time to better our climate, make it more equal and moderate and lessen the awful snows of winter."
"Then your hills are clothed, not naked as ours?" inquired Mrs. Malherb.
"The Green Mountains are covered with aged forests of dwarf evergreens; pine, spruce and hemlock, that spring above stone and moss and winter grass," replied the sailor. "They rise green into the blue sky; their great gorges and valleys are full of blue, mysterious shadows; falling waters glimmer upon their sides and make music there in summer and thunder in winter time."
"We have our Wistman's Wood," said Grace; "but no forests now; and no lakes such as the glorious sheets of water that you tell us of."
"The rivers leap down to them. My earliest childhood's memory is a little boat on Champlain. Even then my small soul longed for the greater sea. Other children would not believe in it. I always did."
Stark told Grace of the natural things her soul loved.
"The brown beaver of North Vermont is a wonder of wonders," he declared. "'Tis the most social of living things. It regulates and governs its ideal republic in a manner so marvellous, that I think a beaver had been the best image for our banner and emblem of our hopes. A pure and perfect constitution obtains amongst 'em. Such harmony men will never know, but must always covet."
He told of their dams and lodges, their arts of safety, their home life. He added many startling facts believed a hundred years ago concerning the beaver, but discredited to-day.
Malherb shook his head.
"You are too eager to flaunt the superiority of even your brute beasts," he said. "You will praise the Red Indians next."
"They have their virtues, sir. Perhaps the man of America has learned from them something of that passionate love of freedom that inspires him. At least Vermont's history is glorious in that respect. We played a notable part before an evasive and temporising Congress. We preserved our independence. We declined to sacrifice our rights, either to the intrigues of our neighbours, or the threats of our supreme tribunal. We challenged the impartial world in 1779, and refused once and for all to submit our sacred liberties to the arbitrament of man. Vermont existed independently of the thirteen United States, and was not accountable to them for the Creator's gift of freedom. We spent our best blood and treasure fighting for it. Were we to give up all at our neighbour's bidding? Were we to hold a great frontier for the States and be rewarded with slavery? We had rather have cast in our lot with Canada—we had even rather have made terms with England than bend under the yoke of New York."
"A lifelong misfortune for you that you did not," answered the farmer.
"No, no. The sequel justified all. To turn to England to settle the rights of man in the Colonies would have been an insane act in those days. Your Government was not then competent to approach such a question as the rights of man."
"No politics, gentlemen," said Annabel; whereupon Cecil Stark begged for pardon, and with sufficient tact turned to matters of more personal interest. He told of sheep and the success attending their breeding in Vermont.
"A wether of three years will weigh one hundred and twenty pounds with us, and yield you three or four pounds of wool," he said. Then he discussed flax—a crop at that time grown also upon Dartmoor—and he fascinated Grace with a description of the maple sugar manufacture, of the precious juice flowing from ancient trees, and of the gorgeous pageant of the maples when Autumn's breath touched their foliage and lighted their aboriginal forests with scarlet and purple and flaming gold.
At other times the lad awakened sorrow in sympathetic hearts by his descriptions of the War Prison and the pitiful life there. But he did not guess the secret pain he thus occasioned; he did not know that Annabel Malherb often sighed when she looked into the wintry Moor. Soon a journey to Prince Town would be again possible, and Maurice Malherb much desired it. Neither did the American imagine that Grace suffered dire unrest at this period; nor dream that her maiden happiness slowly foundered in a sea of new sensations, mostly miserable. Yet such was the simple case. Sometimes she shook herself out of these amazing and unprecedented trances with a blushing face and beating heart. Then to the night she would cry softly, "I love John Lee—I love dear John!" But why the fact needed this nocturnal declaration oft repeated, and what antithesis of ideas called it forth under the darkness, Grace Malherb as yet imperfectly perceived.
Within the space of ten short days Cecil Stark was turned from supreme indifference concerning life or death to the contrary emotion. Existence for him had become endowed with a lively charm, and if Grace Malherb's heart fluttered in secret, the sailor's also now beat less steadily, and played him pranks at her approach. He found in the maiden all that love asks, and more by much than ever he had seen in any other woman. Here did beauty, spirit, force of soul, music of voice and graciousness of mien all merge in one lovely girl; and Stark very rightly and properly went down like a man before the irresistible. Now greedily he counted the hours and prayed that the snow might endure. He hated the red sun that daily crept above Cater's Beam and sank where Prince Town lay, for it touched the drifts and changed their character. The expanses of white glittered and settled down, while from their bowels snow-water eternally trickled until the rivers roared, and black, boiling streams, all splashed with yellow spume, thundered from each great hill. Now sunlit streaks and spots of stone, heath and bog broke the huge whiteness of the mountains, and Stark's glimpse of Paradise was nearly over. Each morning at the breakfast-hour he waited in fear for Maurice Malherb to pronounce sentence of departure; each day he breathed again to find a few hours were still left to him.
Grace Malherb proved such a listener as sailors love. She had not imbibed many of her father's prejudices, and was too full of the delight of life on one side, its personal problems and puzzles on the other, to concern herself with politics or abstract ideas touching the welfare of nations. Cecil Stark did what Grace's father was powerless to do, and wakened in her an active interest concerning war. She listened attentively while he rose to the occasion and, inspired by her advertance, painted with all an earnest lad's enthusiasm the cause for which he fought. She watched from under lowered lids, and while he fancied that her heart must throb to the cannon's roar or the crash of falling spars, she was either comparing his powerful face with the more delicate and more classic features of her lover, or contrasting the fire of the fighting man with the dreamy disposition of John Lee. But John Lee would presently be a fighting man also.
Little basenesses crept into the soul of poor Grace under this ordeal. By night she wept bitterly at herself and marvelled to behold her own meanness. She found herself secretly thankful that Cecil Stark knew nothing of her engagement; then, heartily ashamed, she probed this instinct, and imagined that it must be caused by the American's superiority of position and of rank. In reality she erred and the truth was far different; but this the girl had not as yet discovered. Her misery was extreme, and she blamed herself bitterly when she reflected how much of her thoughts the American prisoner already owned. Indeed, all other concerns swept headlong into a remote, unimportant past. And it was so with the man; for his first love now lighted life with wild, unrestful glory. Of the maiden's heart, indeed, he knew nothing, but, impelled to do so by a vague hope as to the future, he had made a clean breast of his own affairs and dwelt egotistically upon them. Not seldom Mr. Peter Norcot's former assertion clouded those moments in which Stark had sense to pause and reflect, yet the other's name was never mentioned by Grace, and he began presently to hope that the wish was father to Peter's thought and declaration. There seemed no evidence that Miss Malherb's future was already determined.
The sailor's ambitions Grace admired with enthusiasm; his splendid future, his prospective flocks and herds, lands and homesteads beside the Champlain, attracted her less keenly. But more topics than one made the girl's eyes sparkle as he spoke of them.
"You are such a Diana that you'd love Vermont," Cecil once said. "Our folks, however, hunt for business rather than sport. We had moose, deer, bears, foxes and wolves once, and peltry was the great business of the trappers and pioneers. Even yet our furs fetch near two thousand pounds every year; but the beasts are being killed faster than Nature can restore them. They will soon vanish."
"We had wolves here, too. I think the last was killed in Tudor times. 'Twas an obligation under the old local laws that the folk should slay them. Now we have little but foxes; and a good, red Moor fox is the best in England."
"I never hunted, though I can ride sailor-fashion. Now I should like to see you in the saddle, Mistress Grace!"
"Of course you hunt in the English way, if you have respectable hound-fearing foxes?" she asked, ignoring his desire concerning herself.
"Yes; many amongst us stick stoutly to New England ways, which, indeed, are the same as old England ways for that matter. But in states of society such as ours, the conditions make for change. We are deeply interested in education and enterprise; we marry early; we advocate equality of rights, because that is natural where all men have the same interests. But equality of power we never pretend to. The idea is nonsensical; Nature herself shows that. Men are unequal in power and capacity—so are all other animals. We are, I think, both economical and hospitable. We resent control of religion, and hold liberty of thought in that matter vital. We have an elastic mind in affairs of government, and don't attempt to bind posterity to our forms in your English fashion. In England men are full of opinions and empty of information. We let opinions go hang and never tire of learning. We keep fluid; we respect human life very much. Instead of a hundred and sixty capital crimes, as there are in Great Britain, we have but nine sins in Vermont for which a man is punished by death. We marry early——"
"You said that before."
"Did I? Well—it's interesting."
"So it is."
"But I bore you to distraction—I am sure that I must do so, Miss Malherb."
"Very far from it, Mr. Stark. You interest one and all of us. It is marvellous to me how you tell each amongst us the sort of things most likely to attract him, or her. You have made every man your friend; and every woman too."
She dimly guessed his meaning when he dwelt so much upon himself, and told of his honoured family, and of his future as the survivor of the race.
Throughout the severe weather it was impossible for John Lee to see more than a passing glimpse of his lady. The hardship of this specially touched Grace's heart, and not seldom, after intimate chatter with the American, she purposely sought disconsolate John that she might cheer his loneliness and longing. But in the vital matter of the guest, young Lee suffered less than would have been supposed. Jealousy was no part of his nature. He rejoiced heartily that Grace should have company so interesting during the tedious days after the storm. In common with Beer, Woodman and the rest, John appreciated Cecil Stark, and found his own sentiments echo the sailor's on many subjects. The labourers often discussed their visitor, admired the frank, friendly spirit in which he came amongst them at their work, and regretted the fact that he must soon return to prison.
Once in a morning hour Grace played her piano to the guest, and upon opening a music-book, the ghost of a sprig of white heather, now turned brown, tumbled out of it. Mr. Peter Norcot had presented this trophy, and placed it to mark a song of Herrick's, with Purcell's accompaniment.
Now Stark noted the flower.
"You like it not, I see," he said, for memory suddenly clouded the singer's eyes.
"Dead heath," she answered; "and for me I vow that it never lived. A gentleman placed it there because the song pleased him."
"I'd give the world to know who 'twas, Miss Malherb."
"You shall hear for nothing. There is no secret. The name will not be new to you, I think; Mr. Peter Norcot."
Stark's face fell, and the recollection of many things crowded down bleakly upon him.
"He's a good man—a great-hearted, generous spirit," he declared.
Grace did not answer.
"I have been blind lately," he continued. "My wits went wandering in the blizzard and have never returned. It has pleased me to forget Mr. Norcot too long. What might have been, Miss Malherb! He won parole for us out of his own pure goodness and love of humanity. But meantime we had tried to escape and failed. A mad world! And but for that Jonathan Miller might still be living. The man's name must be blessed by every American that hears it—Norcot's, I mean."
Still Grace made no reply.
"Such a gentleman must be above possibility of error in such a vital thing as he confided to me," pursued Cecil gloomily. "I ought to have faced the fact sooner and not let my fool thoughts—— So you are going to marry him, Miss Malherb?"
"Never, Mr. Stark."
"He told me so—truly he believed it."
"He is wrong. He is a most worthy person, and he very seldom makes a mistake. But he is wrong for once when he says that, or thinks it—wildly, utterly, hopelessly wrong."
"You do not love him?"
"My father does. He desires that I should wed him."
"But surely——?"
"'Surely I could do no better,' you were going to say?"
"Indeed, no. Surely your father's first thought is your future happiness?"
"My future—not my future happiness. You see, one's parents have got over our young delusions about people being happy. Fathers and mothers forget that love matters. They hold it as we hold the fleeting wretchedness of a toothache. They don't even pity us. Yet my father was a grand lover, for my mother has told me so; but he has forgotten."
"You honour me to divulge these sacred things about yourself. Poor Norcot—and yet—in a sense—in truth from my whole heart and soul, I mean. But how is this to the point? To sum up, you don't love him?"
"That is exactly what I strive day and night to make clear to everybody."
"Would it be beyond the limits of courtesy to breathe a question on so great a subject? Yet I seem to know the answer. It must be so. It sinks like lead into me; you love somebody else, Miss Malherb?"
"Heyday! And if I do, why should you be miserable, Mr. Stark? I love my mother, sir, and my father, and—and all who love me—excepting only Mr. Norcot. I love him too—the Bible bids me love him; but I don't like Him. The Bible is too wise to order the impossible. It does not tell us to like anybody."
"Listen, if I may—at least——"
"Do you hear the river in flood? It is like the sound of an angry sea by night."
"I hear it well enough. The snows are melting, and my happiness with them. Oh, if I dared—before I left you! If I had a pinch of my country's courage!"
"You do not lack for that, else you would never have seen Dartmoor."
"That was the chance of defeat. But real bravery—— There's such a madness here raging in me—such a hurricane that——"
"Oh, dearie me! Even such nonsense does Mr. Peter Norcot talk!"
"And so you answer him. Yet your eyes are gentler than your tongue. I'll speak—I care not. I'm only a sailor swept here by chance. Fate—at least Providence, I mean—to be plain, I love you! I love you so dearly that I'd—but not until I'm no longer a prisoner. After the war—could you listen then? I—oh, my heart and my life, say I may come back again after the war!"
The lightning progress of this business burnt poor Grace like fire. She gasped as he spoke. Her senses reeled. She had not strength to draw from him the hand that he had clasped and now passionately kissed. He was down upon his knees beside her, and she saw his great chest rise and fall, she felt his eyes pierce to her heart and read the truth there. Now she understood her mistake. This was love, and all the past only a ghostly phantom and mockery of it. She longed to give herself up to him. She felt that he offered her life, that his voice woke the soul that had slept until now within her. Then she blushed at the baseness of her thoughts and spoke with levity to hide the first mighty joy and the first master-sorrow that her heart had ached over.