a tall and ancient figure with the manners of a prince. He bent to kiss
the hand of his guest, and looked at her silently before he spoke, with
an unconscious eagerness of affection equal to her own.
"A thousand welcomes!" he said at last. "I should have seen you coming;
you have had no one to serve you. I was on the Sabine farm with Horace;
't is far enough away!" he added, with a smile.
"I like to fasten my horse myself," answered Mary. "'T is best I should;
he makes it a point of honor then to stand still and wait for me, and
resents a stranger's hand, being young and impatient."
Mary looked bright and smiling; she threw back her close green hood, and
her face bloomed out of it like a flower, as she stood before the
gallant, frail old man. "There was a terrible little bean stack that
came up the hill beside us," she went on, as if to amuse him, "and I
heard a voice out of it, and saw two steady feet that I knew to be Mrs.
Sullivan's; but my black Duke was pleased to be frightened out of his
wits, and so we have all parted on bad terms, this dark day."
"She will shine upon you like a May morning when she comes in, then!"
said Master Sullivan. "She 's in a huge toil the day, with sure news of
a great storm that's coming. 'Stay a while,' I begged her, 'stay a
while, my dear; the wind is in a fury, and to-morrow'"--
"An' to-morrow indeed!" cried the master's wife, bursting in at the
door, half a wild brownie and half a tame enough grandmotherly old soul.
"An' to-morrow! I 've heard nothing but to-morrow from ye all my life
long, an' here 's the hand of winter upon us again, an' thank God all me
poor little crops is under cover, an' no praise to yourself."
The old man held out his slender hand; she did not take it, but her face
began to shine with affection.
"Thank God, 't is yourself, Miss Mary Hamilton, my dear!" she exclaimed,
dropping a curtsy. "My old gentleman here has been sorrowing for a
sight of your fair face these many days. 'T is in December like this we
do be sighing after the May. I don't know, have ye brought any news yet
from the ship?"
"Oh no, not yet," said Mary. "No, there is no news yet from the
Ranger."
"I have had good dreams of her, then," announced the old creature with
triumph. "Listen: there 's quarrels amongst 'em, but they 'll come safe
to shore, with gold in everybody's two hands."
She crossed the room, and drew her lesser wheel close to her knee and
began to spin busily.
*XVII*
*THE REMNANT OF ANOTHER TIME*
"Simple and true I share with all
The treasures of a kindly mind;
And in my cottage, poor and small,
The great a welcome find.
"I vex not Gods, nor patron friend,
For larger gifts or ampler store;
My modest Sabine farm can lend
All that I want, and more."
They sat in silence,--it was pleasure enough to be together,--and Mary
knew that she must wait until Master Sullivan himself made opportunity
for speaking of the things which filled her heart.
"Have I ever told you that my father was a friend, in his young days, of
Christopher Milton, brother to the great poet, but opposite in
politics?" he asked, as if this were the one important fact to be made
clear. "A Stuart partisan, a violent Churchman, and a most hot-headed
Tory," and the old master laughed with sincere amusement, as Mary looked
up, eager to hear more.
"Voltaire, too, had just such a contradiction of a brother, credulous
and full of superstitions,--a perfect Jansenist of those days. Yes, I
was reading Horace when you came, but for very homesickness; he can make
a man forget all his own affairs, such are his polite hospitalities of
the mind! These dark autumn days mind me every year of Paris, when they
come, as April weather makes me weep for childhood and the tears and
smiles of Ireland."
"The old days in your College Louis-le-Grand," Mary prompted him, in the
moment's silence. "Those are your Paris days I love the best."
"Oh, the men I have known!" he answered. "I can sit here in my chair
and watch them all go by again down the narrow streets. I have seen the
Abbe de Chateauneuf pass, with his inseparable copy of Racine sticking
out of his pocket; I often hid from him, too, in the shadow of an
archway, with a young boy, his pupil and my own schoolfellow, who had
run away from his tasks. He was four years younger than I. _Le petit
Arouet_ we called him then, who proves now to be the very great
Voltaire! Ah, 't was an idle flock of us that ranged the old cloisters
in cap and gown; 't was the best blood in France! I have seen the
illustrious Duke de Boufflers handsomely flogged for shooting peas at
dull old Lejay, the professor. (We were the same age, Monsieur de
Boufflers and I; we were great friends, and often flogged in company for
our deviltries.) He was a colonel of the French army in that moment,
and bore the title of Governor of Flanders; but on the day of the
pea-shooting they flogged him so that I cried out at the sight, and
turned to the wall, sick at heart. As for him, he sobbed all night
afterward, and caught his breath in misery next morning while we read
our Epictetus from the same book. We knelt together before the high
altar and vowed to kill Lejay by dagger or poison before the month's
end. 'T was a good vow, but well broken."
The old man laughed again, and made a gay French gesture. Mary laughed
with him, and they had a fine moment together.
"You were not always like that,--you must have learned your lessons; it
was not all idleness," Mary protested, to lead him on.
"The old fathers taught us with all their power to gain some skill in
the use of words," reflected the master soberly. "Yes, and I learned to
fence, too, at the college. A student of Louis-le-Grand could always
speak like a gentleman, but we had to play with our words; 't was the
most important of all our science. 'Les sottises, toujours les
sottises,'" grumbled the old man. "Yes, they made a high profession
then of talking nonsense, though France was whipped at Blenheim and lost
the great fight at Malplaquet. They could laugh at the ruined convent of
Port Royal and the distresses of saintly souls, but they taught us to
talk nonsense, and to dress with elegance, and to be agreeable to
ladies. The end is not yet; the throne of France will shake, some day,
until heads fall in the dust like fruit that nobody stoops to gather."
The master fell a-whispering to himself, as if he had forgotten that he
had a listener.
"I saw some signs of it, too. I knew there, when I was a lad, Le
Tellier, the King's confessor, who was the true ruler of France. I rode
to St. Denis myself, the day of the old King's funeral, and it was like
a fair: people were singing and drinking in the booths, and no one all
along the way but had his gibe at Le Tellier, whose day was over, thank
God! Ah, but I was a gay lad then; I knew no country but France, and I
cannot but love her yet; I was only a Frenchman of my gay and reckless
time. There was saving grace for me, and I passed it by; for I knew the
great Fenelon, and God forgive my sins, but I have been his poor
parishioner from those days to these. I knew his nephew, the Abbe de
Beaumont, and I rode with him in the holidays to Cambrai,--a tiresome
journey; but we were young, and we stayed in the good archbishop's
house, and heard him preach and say mass. He was the best of Christians:
I might have been a worse man but for that noble saint. Yes, I have
seen the face of the great Fenelon," and Master Sullivan bent his head
and blessed himself. The unconscious habit of his youth served best to
express the reverence which lay deep in his aged heart.
"I think now, as I look back on those far days, that my good archbishop
was the greatest prince and saint of them all, my dear child," said the
old teacher, looking up gently from his reverie into Mary Hamilton's
face.
"You belong to another world, mon maitre," said the girl affectionately.
"How much you could teach us, if we were but fit to learn!"
The old man gave an impatient fling of his hand.
"I am past eighty years old, my darling," he answered. "God knows I
have not been fit to learn of the best of men, else I might now be one
of the wisest of mankind. I have lived in the great days of France, but
I tell you plain, I have lived in none that are fuller of the seeds of
greatness than these. I live now in my sons, and our Irish veins are
full of soldier's blood. 'T is Tir-nan-Og here,--the country of the
young. My boys have their mother's energy, thank God! As for me, my
little school is more alive than I. There is always a bright child in
every flock, for whose furthering a man may well spend himself. 'T is a
long look back; the light of life shone bright with me in its beginning,
but the oil in the old lamp is burning low. My forbears were all
short-lived, but the rest of their brief days are added to the length of
mine."
"'T is not every man has made so many others fit to take their part in
life," said Mary. "Think of your own sons, master!"
"Ay, my sons," said the old man, pleased to the heart, "and they have
their mother's beauty and energy to couple with their sad old father's
gift of dreams. The princes of Beare and Bantry are cousins to the
Banshee, and she whispers me many things. I sometimes fear that my son
John, the general, has too much prudence. The Whisperer and Prudence
are not of kin."
There was a new silence then; and when Master Sullivan spoke again, it
was with a sharp, questioning look in his eyes.
"What said your little admiral at parting? I heard that he was fretted
with the poor outfitting of his ship, and sailed away with scant thanks
to the authorities. Prudence cannot deal with such a man as that. What
of our boy Roger? How fares the poor mother since she lost him out of
her sight? 'T was anxious news they brought me of his going; when my
first pride had blazed down, you might have seen an old man's tears."
Mary looked up; she flushed and made as if she would speak, but remained
silent.
"You 'll never make soldier or sailor of him, boy or man; the Lord meant
him for a country gentleman," said the master warningly; and at this
moment all Mary's hopes of reassurance fell to the ground.
"My son John is a soldier born," he continued coldly; "he could tell you
where the troops were placed in every battle, from old Troy down to the
siege of Louisburg."
Mary began to speak, and again something ailed her throat. She turned
and looked toward the fireside, where the old housemother was knitting
now, and humming a strange old Irish tune to herself; she had left them
to themselves as much as if she were miles away.
"Incipit vita nova," said the master under his breath, and went on as if
he were unobservant of Mary's startled look.
"Captain Paul Jones is a man of the world, and Wallingford is a country
gentleman of the best sort," he continued; "they may not understand each
other at these close quarters. I mind me of pushing adventurers in my
old days who came from the back corner of nowhere, and yet knew the
worst and the best of Paris. How they would wink at their fellows when
some noble boy came to see the world, from one of the poor and proud
chateaux of Brittany or the far south!"
"Roger is college-bred, and you have called him your own best scholar of
these later days," insisted Mary, with a touch of indignation. "With
such kindred in Boston, and the company of his father's friends from
childhood, he is not so new to the world."
"Ecce Deus fortior me qui veniens dominabitur mihi," the old man
repeated softly, as if he were saying a short prayer; then glanced again
at the girl's beautiful young face and pleading eyes. "Well, the
gallant lads have sailed!" he exclaimed, with delighted eagerness, and
no apparent concern for his listener's opinion. "They'll be in good
season, too, in spite of all delays. What say the loud Patriots now,
who are so full of fighting, and yet find good excuse for staying at
home? They are an evil-minded chorus! but the young man Wallingford
will serve them for a text no more. His father was a man of parts, of
the same type as Washington himself, an I mistake not that great leader,
though never put to the proof by so high a summonsing of opportunity.
Our Roger is born out of his father's clear brain rather than his fiery
heart. I see in him the growing scholarliness and quiet authority of
the judge's best days upon the bench, not the strong soldier of the
Indian wars. And there is something in the boy that holds by the past;
he may be a persuaded Patriot, but a Tory ghost of a conscience plucks
him by the sleeve. He does not lack greatness of soul, but I doubt if he
does any great things except to stand honestly in his place, a scholar
and a gentleman; and that is enough."
Mary listened, with her eyes fixed upon Master Sullivan's face.
"God bless the poor lads, every one! We must send our prayers after
them. Wallingford will fall upon evil days; 't will try him in blood
and bone when they suspect him, as they surely will. God help an old
ruin like me! If I were there, and but a younger man!" and the master
clenched the arms of his chair, while something Mary never had seen
before flashed in his eyes.
"I have seen much fighting in my time," he said the next moment to Mary,
falling to a gentler mood. "My mind is often with those lads on the
ship." And the startled girl smiled back at him expectantly.
"I am glad when I think that now Roger will see France again, as a grown
man. He will remember many things I have told him. I wish that I might
have seen him ere he went away so suddenly. Wherever he is, he has good
thoughts in his head; he always loved his Latin, and can even stumble
through the orchard ground and smell the trodden thyme with old
Theocritus. I wish I had been there at your parting feast. 'T was a
glory to the house's mistress, and that merchant prince, the good master
of the river."
"Peggy has another opinion of me. 'Go you an' deck the tables, an it
please you, child,' she says, 'an' leave me to give my orders;' but we
hold some grave consultations for all that," insisted Mary modestly.
"She is very stern on feast days with us all, is Peggy."
"Lenient in the main," urged Master Sullivan, smiling. "She found
convoy for a basket of her best wares only yesterday, with a message
that she had cooked too much for Portsmouth gentlemen, guests who failed
in their visit. Margery and I feasted in high hall together. There was
a grand bottle of claret."
"My brother chose it himself from the cellar," said Mary, much pleased,
but still there was a look of trouble in her eyes.
"You will give him my thanks, and say that it made a young French
gallant of me for a pleasant hour. The only fault I found was that I
had not its giver to drink share and share with me. Margery, my wife,
heard tales from me which had not vexed the air these fifty years, and,
being as warm as a lady abbess with such good cheer, she fell asleep in
the middle of the best tale, over her worsted knitting! 'Sure,' she
waked to tell me, 'if these be true, 't was time you were snatched out
of France like a brand from the burning, and got the likes o' poor me to
straighten ye!'" and the old man looked at Mary, with a twinkle in his
eyes.
"They said you danced all night with the little captain, and that he
spoke his love on the terrace in the sight of more than one of the
company," said the master gayly. "'T is another heart you 've broke, I
suppose, and sent him sad away. Or was it his uniform that won ye?"
They both laughed, but Mary blushed, and wished she were away herself.
"I have no right to ask what passed between ye," he said then, with
grave sweetness that won her back to him. "I find him a man of great
power. He has the thoughts and manners of a gentleman, and now he goes
to face his opportunity," added the old Irish rebel.
"'Tis said everywhere that your great captain is an earl's son," said
Margery unexpectedly, from the fireside. But Master Sullivan slowly
shook his head. The old wife was impatient of contradiction at the best
of times, and now launched forth into an argument. He treated her, in
these late days, as if she were a princess; but 't was a trying moment
to him now, and luckily the old volume of Horace fell from his lap to
the floor.
Mary picked it up quickly, and old Margery's withered cheeks flushed
crimson at this reminder of the sad day when she had thrown one of his
few dear books to the flames, in furious revenge for what she thought
his willful idleness and indifference to their poverty, and her
children's needs. "_Himself cried_," she always mourned in passionate
remorse, when anything reminded her of that black day. She fancied even
yet, when she saw the master stand before his little bookshelf, that he
was missing the lost volume. "_Himself cried_," she muttered new, and
was silent; and the old man saw her lips moving, and gave her one of
those looks of touching affection that had kept her for fifty years his
happy slave.
"He is a bold adventurer, your little captain," he went on, "but a man
of very marked qualities."
"I believe that he will prove a great captain," said Mary.
"Yes, he is all that; I have seen much of men," and the master turned to
look out of the window, far down the winter fields.
"His heart is set upon the future of our country," said Mary, with
eagerness. "He speaks with eloquence of our wrongs. He agrees 't is
the hindering of our own natural development, and the forbidding of our
industries in the past, that has brought all these troubles; not any
present tyranny or special taxes, as some insist. He speaks like a New
Englander, one of ourselves, and he has new ideas; I heard him say that
every village should govern itself, and our government be solely for
those necessities common to all, and this would do away with tyranny.
He was very angry when Major Haggens laughed and pounded the table, and
said that our villages must keep to the same laws, and not vex one
another."
"Your captain has been reading that new writer, Monsieur Rousseau," said
the master sagaciously, and with much interest. "Rousseau is something
of a genius. My son James brought me his book from Boston, and I sat up
all night to read it. Yes, he is a genius at his best, but at his worst
no greater fool ever sneaked or flaunted along a French road. 'T is
like the old donkey in Skibbereen, that was a lion by night with his
bold braying, and when the sun shone hung his head and cried to
everybody, '_Don't beat me!_' I pray God that no pupil of mine makes
the mistake of these people, who can see no difference between the
church of their own day and Christianity itself. My old Voltaire has
been his master, this Rousseau. There have been few greater men in the
world than le petit Arouet, but 't was a bit of a rascal, too! My son
James and I have threshed these subjects lately, until the flails came
too near our own heads. I have seen more of the world than he, but my
son James always held the opinions of a gentleman."
"These subjects are far too large for me," Mary acknowledged humbly.
"'T is only that our opinions are too small for the subjects,--even mine
and those of my son James," said Master Sullivan, smiling; "yet every
man who puts his whole heart into them helps to bring the light a little
nearer. Your captain is a good French scholar; we had some good talk
together, and I learned to honor the man. I hope he will be friendly to
our lad at sea, and be large-hearted in such a case. I have much pity
for the Loyalists, now I am an old man that was a hot enough rebel in my
youth. They have many true reasons on their side for not breaking with
England, and they cling to sentiment, the best of them, without which
life is but a strange machine. Yet they have taken the wrong side; they
will find it out to their sorrow. You had much to do with Roger's
going, my child; 't was a brave thing to start him in the right road,
but I could wish he and his mother had been a sorrowing pair of that
eleven hundred who went out of Boston with the English troops. They
would have been among their fellows then, and those who were
like-minded. God help me for this faint-heartedness!"
To this moment had the long talk come; to this clear-spoken anxiety had
Mary Hamilton herself led the way. She could not part from so wise a
friend until he spoke his mind, and now she stood piteous and dismayed
before his searching look. It was not that the old man did not know how
hard his words had been.
"I could not bear that he should be disloyal to the country that gave
him birth, and every low soul be given the right to sneer at him. And
the mob was ready to burn his mother's house; the terror and danger
would have been her death," said Mary. "All this you know."
"The boy has talked much with me this summer," answered the
schoolmaster, "and he put me questions which I, a rebel, and the son of
rebels against England, could not answer him. I am an exile here, with
my birthright gone, my place among men left empty, because I did not
think as he thinks now when I was young, and yet I could not answer him.
'I could as soon forsake my mother in her gathering age as forsake
England now,' he told me, one day in the summer. He stood on this floor
before me, where you stand now, and looked every inch a man. Now he has
changed his mind; now he puts to sea in an American man-of-war, with
those to whom the gentle arts of piracy are not unknown, and he must
fain be of their company who go to make England suffer. He has done
this only that he may win your heart."
The master's blue eyes were black and blazing with excitement, and Mary
fronted him.
"You cannot think him a rascal!" she cried. "You must believe that his
very nature has changed. It has changed, and he may fight with a heavy
heart, but he has come to think our quarrel just. I should break my own
heart did I not think this true. Has he not sworn his oath? Then you
must not blame him; you must blame me if all this course was wrong. I
did push him forward to the step. God help me, master, I could not bear
we should be ashamed of him. You do not mean that 't were better he had
fled with the Loyalists, and thrown his duty down?"
She fell to her knees beside the old man's chair, and her hot forehead
was touching his thin hand. He laid his right hand on her head then as
if in blessing, but he did not speak.
At last he made her rise, and they stood side by side in the room.
"We must not share this anxious hour with Margery," he told her gently.
"Go away, dear child, while she still sleeps. I did not know the sword
of war had struck your heart so deep. You must wait for much time to
pass now; you must have patience and must hear bad news. They will call
Roger Wallingford a spy, and he may even flinch when the moment of trial
comes. I do not think he will flinch; 't is the woe of his own soul
that I sorrow for; there is that in him which forbids the traitor's act.
Yet either way life looks to him but treacherous. The thought of his
love shines like a single star above the two roads, and that alone can
succor him. Forgive the hardness of my thoughts, yes, and keep you
close to his poor mother with all patience. If the boy gets into
trouble, I have still some ancient friendships that will serve him, for
my sake, in England. God grant me now to live until the ship comes
back! I trust the man he sails with, but he has his own ends to serve.
I fear he is of the _Brevipennes_, the short-winged; they can run better
for what wings they have, but they cannot win to fly clear of the
earth."
"I could tell you many a tale now that I have shut close in my heart
from every one for more than sixty years," said Master Sullivan slowly,
with an impulse of love and pity that he could not forbid. "I was a
poor scholar in some things, in my young days, but I made sure of one
lesson that was learnt through pain. The best friends of a human soul
are Courage and her sister Patience!"