it is not always the end of a tale when the two most familiar figures in it come to their wedding day; the business of living happily ever after is a more complicated matter than that. the work that those two are to do together must be safely launched before we can turn aside from them, knowing, more or less, how the rest of their story is to be told. clotilde and gerald radpath had chosen to go their way together, but, even for some time after they were married, they stood hesitating a little, not quite sure as to which way the appointed road was to lead.
as many people said at first, it was a pleasant thing that the name of radpath had come back to the great house on the hill. it was like to stay there also, through another generation at least, they would add, since, a year and a half later, there was a new member of the household, a sunny-hearted, sturdy young gentleman who romped and rolled upon the grass in the garden. it was a delight, besides, to see the big house finished at last, to see smooth panelling replace the rough boards, and plaster walls stand where bare timbers had been left. for the proper completing of stephen sheffield’s house, gerald had used a large part of the little fortune he had brought with him from england, realised from the sale of his small estate. there were also outlying lands to be looked to, where the fields must be turned once more into their old round of cultivation. stephen sheffield’s fortune, much confused and diminished on account of the war and of his great generosity, must be finally set in order, a task that was no small or easy one. in such occupations two years had passed away and still the great question as to just which highroad of life they were to take had not yet been settled.
they were walking in the garden one warm bright afternoon, gerald carrying his little son, whose name as any one might guess, was stephen. clotilde, with her basket and garden shears, was gathering the last of the october-blooming flowers. their talk had been of many and quite unimportant things, but for a little while they had been silent as they went, all three together, down the grassy path.
“gerald,” said clotilde at last, “there has been for days something hanging heavy on your mind. are you not nearly ready to tell me of it?”
smiling at the ease with which she read his thoughts, gerald answered:
“i am ready to speak of it now and was that moment searching for the words with which to begin. it is not an easy thing to say.”
they sat down together on the bench and gerald set young stephen on the grass where he could roll and tumble to his heart’s content.
“if you know my thoughts so well, clotilde,” he said, “you must have long seen that there is something wrong with my position here in hopewell.”
“i have known that something troubled you,” she replied, “but i had not realised that there was aught amiss in regard to our neighbours.”
yet, even as she spoke, she remembered with dismay the odd, aloof manners of many of the townspeople toward gerald. she recollected the distant courtesy toward both of them, of good souls who had always before received her with such simple friendliness. the people of hopewell were old-fashioned in their ways, they clung to many a forgotten custom and form of speech unused by the rest of the world, and with this had kept the open-hearted frankness of an earlier and simpler life. try as they might, thoughts could not be hidden and feelings concealed. and, as she thought the matter over, it seemed plainer and plainer to clotilde as it had long been clear to gerald, that their neighbours looked at him askance and did not seem to trust him.
“it is this,” gerald went on to explain, “a thing that at first i did not see myself. the people of this town like me not and wish that i were away. when we meet their eyes seem to say to me, ‘gerald radpath, you bear master simon’s name but are you of his kind? you, who fought against us in the war and have come back now that all the struggle is over, is your purpose good or bad?’”
“yes,” assented clotilde, with no attempt at argument. “yes, i have seen that too. but i had thought that time would sweep it all away when they have learned to know you better.”
“the feelings of your hard-headed puritan folk alter not so easily with time,” he returned. “no, i must show them that i care for the welfare of this country as much as they, and i have thought of a possible way. you know that roger bardwell said that the wealth of new england was to come from her traffic with the world rather than from her farms, you know that he proved his words and established a prosperous trade with england, france and spain. now all of that has been swept away by these years of war and it will take long labour to build it up again. but in that upbuilding i mean to have a share.”
clotilde did not speak quite yet; she knew that there was more to come.
“i can buy and refit one of the privateer vessels that have survived the war,” he went on. “the mistress margeret is lying in the harbour now and can easily be made ready for a journey overseas with what money i have left to spend on ship and cargo. and in her i will make the first long voyage myself. my father was a ship’s captain, i sailed with him when i was a lad and he taught me much, so that i might command a ship of my own some day.”
he did not say what pain it would be to leave her for so long, she did not whisper of how her heart stood still at the thought of his going. each one realised what the other felt, yet each knew that this was the only way and that here was gerald’s task in life.
“where will you go?” she asked at last, and waited breathless for the reply that did not come at once.
“the sailors,” he said, “have a name for the path that they steer, marked out by the sun and stars across the trackless sea. they call it the sea road and to them, in time, it becomes as familiar as the housewife’s way to market. and i am of a mind, clotilde, to break out a new sea road, and a far one, a way that our sailors have never gone before.”
“to italy?” she asked, her eyes wide with anxiety.
he shook his head.
“to africa?” no again.
“to—to—”
“to china,” he said at last.
he sat with his hands clasped between his knees and his eyes fixed upon the grass at his feet as though he could not bear to look at the terror and distress in her face.
“do you not see that i must go?” he pleaded. but still she did not answer.
to china! to that vague unknown land that the old story books and maps called cathay. had he said to the moon, it could not have seemed a more dangerous and impossible journey. it was almost exactly two hundred years since gerald’s ancestor, robin radpath, had set sail with queen elizabeth’s message to the chinese emperor and had never come back. since that time the land had grown to be only a little less strange; few were the travellers whose tales of adventures there had ever reached america. no ship from new england had gone so far; one or two, indeed, had attempted the voyage and had never been heard of again.
many were the kinds of goods, spices and ivory, coffee, tea and silk that came from that inaccessible country and from the equally mysterious east indies, but they came by way of constantinople, venice or portugal, and were transferred to english or american vessels. but to go direct, to have the little, newly-independent country of america hold out a hand to grasp at the trade that had never been attempted save by lands whose commerce was hundreds of years old! what a great idea it was, she thought, and in spite of herself thrilled with pride. how would the people of hopewell regard gerald then—after he had undertaken such a venture and carried it to a successful end.
“yes,” she said finally and with no remonstrance, “yes, i do see it. i know that you must go.”
the mistress margeret was refitted from stem to stern that winter and the cargo in bales and boxes laid away within her hold. when the early spring came, she lifted anchor, hoisted sail and swept out of hopewell harbour, her prow turned to the far horizon and the other side of the world. she sailed short handed, for, bold as were the sailors of hopewell, many of them hung back from such a venture. there were vague but terrible tales of what might happen to ships beyond the cape of good hope, tales of furious hurricanes, of reefs and shoals in vast uncharted seas, and even of sea monsters.
“let one ship go there and come back safe,” they said. “let us hear that only ordinary storms and ordinary dangers will assail us on such a voyage and that by the southern stars we can steer as straight a course as by our good dipper and north star. then we will set sail with a right good will!”
so the voyage began with only a few bold-hearted seamen on board and with gerald radpath standing at the ship’s stern, watching, as far as he could see, the brave little figure on the hillside that waved good-bye as long as loving eyes could span that ever widening distance.
“we will not make his going hard, stephen, by showing him our tears,” said clotilde, at last, as she took up her boy in her arms and made her way with slow, dragging steps back to the house.
would she ever, she wondered, stand there to watch come in the ship that now seemed sailing away for all time?
almost from the moment that the mistress margeret sank below the horizon, clotilde could see that the feeling toward gerald was beginning to change.
“your good husband, madam, heaven send that he come back safe!” were words that she used to hear often as she went about the town.
“my grandfather began his fortunes as cabin boy to good master roger bardwell,” said one of the housewives to her, “and i hope my son will sail some day with master radpath.”
and one old sailor, who had begged hard to go with gerald but had been reluctantly left behind on account of his age and feebleness, said the best thing of all.
“i told ’em, mistress, many a time, that the lad had simon radpath’s blood in him and a good spirit of his own besides, and i said he would show it yet. now the blind ones are beginning to see.”
there was but a single person who did not seem to have a higher regard for gerald now that he was gone. this was agnes twitchell, whose bridegroom husband had shipped as mate on the mistress margeret.
“we were but three months married,” she cried to clotilde, who had come to see her, but who was not allowed to enter her cottage door. “your husband took my man from me and they will never come back. you were a wicked woman to let him do so; why did you not keep him safe at home?”
“were you able to keep your husband when he thought that he must go?” clotilde asked, and agnes shook her head. “then why think you that i could keep mine either, or that i was less unhappy than you at the thought of his going? try to have courage and think of the day when they come back.”
“that will never be!” sobbed the other, and she ran inside, slamming the door when her visitor would have followed to comfort her.
the days passed so slowly that it did, indeed, seem at times as though the period of waiting would never have an end.
“nine—ten—eleven months we may be gone,” gerald had said, “and should the time lengthen to a year you are not to be afraid.”
but the year passed, spring came again and filled master simon’s garden with flowers, yet its winds blew no great merchant ship into the harbour. the roses bloomed and died, the midsummer crickets and katydids sang in the long grass, the autumn flowers opened and the maples and birches in the forest began to show their scarlet and yellow.
“he will come, he will come!” clotilde would cry fiercely to herself every day, but it had reached a point when she alone in all of hopewell believed it. a foreign sailor coming in on an english vessel brought a tale of how, all the coast of africa, a ship answering all descriptions of the mistress margeret had been seen, drifting idly with all sail set and apparently no one on board.
“just a moment we saw her in the fog,” he said, “for the mist lifted and there she was like a picture, every sail hoisted and never a living soul in sight upon her decks. i doubt not she has gone to the bottom long before now.”
yet still clotilde went on hoping. agnes twitchell wore black and openly mourned her husband as dead. she screamed after clotilde upon the street one day and, when people sought to hush her, only cried out the louder.
“her husband murdered my good man,” she shrieked, frantic in her grief. “shall i not then cry out to reproach her?”
probably the most cruel blow, however, was the one that clotilde received one summer evening as she was working among the flowers with stephen at her side. two people, talking together, passed the gate.
“that is master simon’s garden,” said one to the other, who must have been a stranger, and then the speaker added, not realising that clotilde was close enough to hear:
“it is there that the widow radpath dwells with her son.”
so that was what they called her now! clotilde’s hand closed over the branch of the rose vine that she was holding until the thorns tore her fingers, but she never noticed.
“mother, what is a widow?” asked stephen, but he never learned, for she snatched him up in her arms and burst into a passion of tears.
every day, as the weather grew colder and autumn gales swept through the dead garden, she and stephen spent long hours at the little round window of the stair-landing, looking and looking out to sea.
“why are you not watching, mother?” stephen would exclaim at times. “your eyes are shut!”
“why are you not watching, mother?”
“i was praying,” clotilde would explain, “and that is better than watching, little son.”
she had gone to sleep one windy night, listening to the heavy shutters rattling and to the threshing of the branches in the great trees outside, and had dreamed, as she always did in a storm, of high roaring waves and a good ship pounding upon cruel rocks. she awoke suddenly with the thunder of it still in her ears. but no, that noise was real, it was some one beating upon the great front door, striking frantic blows on the knocker in an effort to rouse the house.
hastily slipping on some clothes and lighting a candle which guttered and flickered as she passed down the stairs, she hurried to the door, unbarred it, and flung it open. a gust of wind and rain rushed in, extinguished the candle and fairly blew a wild dishevelled figure into her arms. by the light from the dying coals that still glowed in the big hall fireplace, clotilde was able to recognise her visitor.
“why, agnes, agnes twitchell,” she cried, “what brings you here?”
agnes twitchell it was, clad only in her nightgown with a shawl wrapped about her, with her hair flying and her teeth chattering.
“i—i came to tell you,” she began, and then broke all into wild and joyful weeping. “god forgive me for all the wrong i have done you, mistress radpath,” she cried, “there—there is a ship coming in!”
if she had more words to say, she could not speak them, for at that she broke down utterly and clung to clotilde, trembling and sobbing aloud. clotilde half carried her to the settle, blew up the fire and brought a warm cloak to wrap about her. a startled servant came down the stairs and was sent for hot water and restoratives. whenever clotilde even so much as looked toward the door, agnes screamed and wept afresh.
“do not leave me,” she begged. “it might not be true! i might have dreamed it.”
clotilde felt that it would indeed be cruel to leave the girl in the midst of such hysterical terror. only once, when she ran upstairs for more warm blankets, did she dare to stop for a moment at the small round window and look out. there through the dark, she saw the ship speeding up the harbour like a half-seen phantom, its close-reefed sails showing like pale ghosts against the headland. it might indeed have been a vision or a dream.
it seemed a long, long time before agnes was quieted. at last, however, her tense fingers relaxed, her tears ceased flowing and she leaned back in the great chair.
“yes,” she said, reading the longing in clotilde’s eyes, “go you and see if it is really so, mistress radpath. i could never bear to ask the truth myself.”
without waiting for further words, clotilde snatched up a cloak and sped out into the dark, windy garden. she stumbled and slipped many times on the wet stones of the path, but at last reached the white gate and leaned over it. up the lane from the harbour was coming a crowd of shouting people; they carried torches that tossed and flamed high in the wind. the clamour and confusion were so great, the light was so flickering and uncertain that it was not until they came near that she could make out what it was that they bore in their midst. but at last she saw; it was her husband lifted high among them, gerald radpath carried in triumph on the shoulders of the shouting men of hopewell. the mistress margeret had safely sailed the long sea road to china and back again.
they came close to where she stood and, still cheering, set their burden down. when they saw clotilde waiting, there fell a silence so complete that the familiar creaking of the hinges could be heard as gerald opened the gate. the foremost of the crowd looked once at her white face and spoke below his breath to his companions.
“come away, lads,” he said. “we have no right within there now.”
not that night nor the next day could clotilde hear the tale of gerald’s adventures for oh, what need he had of resting and being tended, how pale and utterly worn out he was! but at last he told the story, sitting under the linden tree in the warm brightness of a perfect indian summer afternoon. he told how they had met storms, had been delayed by calms and had narrowly escaped being wrecked a hundred times on account of their ignorance of the proper course, but had at last come in safety to the east india islands and to the great sea-ports of china.
“i can spend all of my declining years in telling you of the wonders we saw,” he said, “so i will not stop in my tale now or i would never come to the end.”
he related further how, on their homeward voyage, they had put in for shelter behind a little island and how two of the men, against his orders had slipped ashore to trade with the natives. when they had set forth again these two sickened with a tropical fever that spread, one by one, to all on board. there were no men to tend the sails for all lay ill, only one had strength to hold the tiller and keep the vessel from destruction, and that one was himself.
“the wind held steady,” he said, “and when i could no longer stand, i lay upon the deck, clinging still to the tiller and wondering whether we should ever come to port. the sky seemed red-hot above us and the water red-hot below, and at last i saw neither sea nor sail nor compass, nor knew whither i was steering. i saw only a cool, green garden with a linden tree and a sundial in its midst, i saw the white flowers nodding in the wind and i vow that i could smell the verbena and mignonette and hear the gurgle of the brook that runs beside the road. and i saw you come down the path, it was straight to you that the mistress margeret steered her course, for i had knowledge of nothing else.”
it was joseph twitchell, the first to recover from the fever, who finally came to his aid and carried him down to his berth where he lay delirious for days and talked of nothing but the bees among the apple blossoms and the wind stirring the poplar trees. but finally, white, thin and weak and needing the help of two companions, he had crawled up on deck once more to enjoy the cool, fresh evening air. the hot tropical wind had fallen, the southern cross that had shone so long in the sky above them had dropped below the horizon and the friendly northern stars hung serene and clear in the heavens to show them the safe way home.
gerald was still speaking when the white gate creaked as it opened to admit a visitor. many and many a person of high and low degree had come and gone that way, but this man was, perhaps, the one whose coming meant the most of all. yet he was only a common sailor, dressed in rough clothes, who shuffled his feet upon the path and fumbled with his battered hat.
“please, sir,” he said to gerald, “i came to ask if, when you sail for china again, you will take me with you.”
“but you did not wish to go before,” gerald answered.
“ay, that i know,” replied the sailor, “and i curse my folly now and would give both my eyes to have been among your crew. for the news of your safe return is running like wildfire through the country, it will be all over new england in another day, while here in hopewell there are already a hundred seafaring men ready for a new voyage. and as for the merchants, there is not one within fifty miles, which is as far as the tale has gone as yet, but is looking through his stock and setting aside the goods that he is going to venture in the new east india trade.”
“but there is only one ship that has gone and come back again,” said gerald. “has that been sufficient to convince you all?”
“it is enough,” returned the man; “that has convinced us along with an old saying that, they tell us, was first current in master simon’s time and has now begun to go round again. it is that ‘wherever a radpath goes, there it is no bad thing to follow!’”
