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.
