if he were a king, to the girl who watched him; all the mystery of his
early days, the unexplained self-denial and indifference to luxury,
seemed at this moment more incomprehensible than ever. The dark little
room, the unequal companionship with the wife who slept by the fire, the
friendship of his heart with a few imperial books, and the traditions of
a high ancestry made evident in the noble careers and present standing
of his sons, were enough to touch any imagination. And Mary Hamilton,
from her early childhood, had found him the best and wisest man she
knew. He had set the humblest Berwick children their copies, and taught
them to read and spell, and shared his St. Augustine and Homer and
Horace with those few who could claim the right. She stood beside him
now in her day of trouble; she turned, with a look of deep love on her
face, and kissed him on the brow. Whatever the cause had been, he had
taken upon himself the harsh penalty of exile.
"Dear friend, I must be gone," said Mary, with beautiful womanliness and
dignity. "You have helped me again who have never failed me; do not
forget me in these days, and let us pray for Roger Wallingford, that he
may be steadfast. Good-by, dear master."
Then, a minute later, the old man heard the horse's quick feet go away
down the hill.
It was twilight in the room. "I believe she will love the boy,"
whispered the old schoolmaster to himself. "I thought the captain might
wake her heart with all his gallantry. The springs of love are living
in her heart, but 't is winter still,--'t is winter still! Love frights
at first more than it can delight; 't will fright my little lady ere it
comes!"
The heavy book slipped unheeded to the floor again. The tired old woman
slept on by the dying fire, and Master Sullivan was lost in his lonely
thoughts, until Hope came again to his side, bright shining in a dream.
*XVIII*
*OH HAD I WIST!----*
"You need not go into a desert and fast, a crowd is often more lonely
than a wilderness and small things harder to do than great."
The ship had run between Belle Isle and the low curving shores of
Quiberon. The land was in sight all along by St. Nazaire, where they
could see the gray-green of winter fields, and the dotted fruit trees
about the farmhouses, and bits of bushy woodland. Out of the waste of
waters the swift way-wise little Ranger came heading safely in at the
mouth of the Loire. She ran among all the shoals and sand banks by
Paimboeuf, and past the shipyards of the river shores, until she came to
harbor and let her anchor go.
There was something homelike about being in a river. At first sight the
Loire wore a look of recent settlement, rather than of the approach to a
city already famous in old Roman times; the shifting sand dunes and the
empty flats, the poor scattered handfuls of houses and the works of
shipbuilding, all wore a temporary look. These shiftless, primitive
contrivances of men sparsely strewed a not too solid-looking shore, and
the newcomers could see little of the inland country behind it. It was
a strange contrast to their own river below Portsmouth, where gray
ledges ribbed the earth and bolted it down into an unchangeable
permanence of outline. The heights and hollows of the seaward points of
Newcastle and the Kittery shore stood plain before his mind's eye as
Wallingford came on deck, and these strange banks of the Loire seemed
only to mask reality and confuse his vision. Farther up the stream they
could see the gray walls of Nantes itself, high over the water, with the
huge towered cathedral, and the lesser bulk of the castle topping all
the roofs. It was a mild day, with little air moving.
Dickson came along the deck, looking much displeased. That morning he
had received the attention of being kicked down the companion way by the
captain, and nothing could soften such an event, not even the suggestion
from his conscience that he had well deserved the insult. It seemed
more and more, to those who were nearest him, as if Dickson were at
heart the general enemy of mankind,--jealous and bitter toward those who
stood above him, and scornful of his inferiors. He loved to defeat the
hopes of other people, to throw discredit upon sincerity; like some
swift-creeping thing that brings needless discomfort everywhere, and
dismay, and an impartial sting. He was not clever enough to be a maker
of large schemes, but rather destructive, crafty, and evil-minded,--a
disturber of the plans of others. All this was in his face; a fixed
habit of smiling only added to his mean appearance. What was worst of
all, being a great maker of promises, he was not without influence, and
had his following.
The fresh air from the land, the frosty smell of the fields, made
Wallingford feel the more despondent. The certainty had now come to his
mind that Paul Jones would never have consented to his gaining the
commission of lieutenant, would never have brought him, so untried and
untrained, to sea, but for jealousy, and to hinder his being at Mary
Hamilton's side. This was the keenest hurt to his pride; the thought had
stabbed him like a knife. Again he made a desperate plunge into the sea
of his disasters, and was unconscious even of the man who was near by,
watching him. He was for the moment blind and deaf to all reality, as
he stood looking along the water toward the Breton town.
"All ready to go ashore, sir?" asked Dickson, behind him, in an
ingratiating tone; but Wallingford gave an impatient shrug of his
shoulders.
"'T is not so wintry here as the shore must look at home," continued
Dickson. "Damn that coxcomb on the quarter-deck! he 's more than the
devil himself could stand for company!"
Wallingford, instead of agreeing in his present disaffection, turned
about, and stood fronting the speaker. He looked Dickson straight in the
eye, as if daring him to speak again, whereat Dickson remained silent.
The lieutenant stood like a prince.
"I see that I intrude," said the other, rallying his self-consequence.
"You have even less obligation to Captain Paul Jones than you may
think," he continued, dropping his voice and playing his last trump. "I
overheard, by accident, some talk of his on the terrace with a certain
young lady whom your high loftiness might not allow me to mention. He
called you a cursed young spy and a Tory, and she implored him to
protect you. She said you was her old playmate, and that she wanted you
got out o' the way o' trouble. He had his arm round her, and he said he
might be ruined by you; he cursed you up hill and down, while she was
a-pleadin'. 'Twas all for her sake, and your mother's bein' brought
into distress"--
Dickson spoke rapidly, and edged a step or two away; but his shoulder
was clutched as if a panther's teeth had it instead of a man's hand.
"I'll kill you if you give me another word!" said Roger Wallingford.
"If I knew you told the whole truth, I should be just as ready to drop
you overboard."
"I have told the truth," said Dickson.
"I know you are n't above eavesdropping," answered Wallingford, with
contempt. "If you desire to know what I think of your sneaking on the
outside of a man's house where you have been denied entrance, I am
willing to tell you. I heard you were there that night."
"You were outside yourself, to keep me company, and I'm as good a
gentleman as Jack Hamilton," protested Dickson. "He went the rounds of
the farms with a shoemaker's kit, in the start of his high fortunes."
"Mr. Hamilton would mend a shoe as honestly in his young poverty as he
would sit in council now. So he has come to be a rich merchant and a
trusted man." There was something in Wallingford's calm manner that had
power to fire even Dickson's cold and sluggish blood.
"I take no insults from you, Mr. Lieutenant!" he exclaimed, in a black
rage, and passed along the deck to escape further conversation.
There had been men of the crew within hearing. Dickson had said what he
wished to say, and a moment later he was thinking no less highly of
himself than ever. He would yet compass the downfall of the two men
whom he hated. He had already set them well on their way to compass the
downfall of each other. It made a man chuckle with savage joy to think
of looking on at the game.
Wallingford went below again, and set himself to some work in his own
cabin. Character and the habit of self-possession could carry a man
through many trying instances, but life now seemed in a worse confusion
than before. This was impossible to bear; he brushed his papers to the
floor with a sweep of his arm. His heart was as heavy as lead within
him. Alas, he had seen the ring! "Perhaps--perhaps"--he said next
moment to himself--"she might do even that, if she loved a man; she
could think of nothing then but that I must be got away to sea!"
"Poor little girl! O God, how I love her!" and he bent his head
sorrowfully, while an agony of grief and dismay mastered him. He had
never yet been put to such awful misery of mind.
"'T is my great trial that has come upon me," he said humbly. "I'll
stick to my duty,--'tis all that I can do,--and Heaven help me to bear
the rest. Thank God, I have my duty to the ship!"
*XIX*
*THE BEST-LAID PLANS*
"Artists have come to study from these marbles ... Boys have flung
stones against the sculptured and unmindful devils."
As soon as the Ranger was at Nantes, and the formalities of the port
could be left in the hands of his officers, Captain Paul Jones set forth
in haste toward Paris to deliver his despatches. He was only sixty
hours upon the road, passing over the country as if he saw it from a
balloon, and at last had the supreme disappointment of finding that his
proud errand was forestalled. He had driven himself and his ship for
nothing; the news of Burgoyne's surrender had been carried by a
messenger from Boston, on a fast-sailing French vessel, and placed in
the hands of the Commissioners a few hours before his own arrival. It
was understood some time before, between the Marine Committee of the
colonies and Captain Paul Jones, that he was to take command of the fine
frigate L'Indien, which was then building in Amsterdam; but he received
no felicitations now for his rapid voyage, and found no delightful
accumulations of important work, and was by no means acknowledged as the
chief and captain of a great enterprise. As the Ranger had come into
harbor like any ordinary vessel from the high seas, unheralded and
without greeting, so Paul Jones now found himself of no public
consequence or interest in Paris. What was to be done must all be done
by himself. The Commissioners had their hands full of other affairs,
and the captain stood in the position of a man who brought news to deaf
ears. They listened to his eager talk and well-matured plans with some
wonder, and even a forced attention, as if he were but an interruption,
and not a leader for any enterprise they had in hand. To him, it had
almost seemed as if his great projects were already accomplished.
It was in every way a most difficult situation. The ownership of the
Indien frigate had been carefully concealed. Paul Jones himself had
furnished the plans for her, and the Commissioners in France had made
contracts under other signatures for her building in the neutral port of
Amsterdam. It was indispensable that the secret of her destiny should
be kept from England; but at the moment when she was ready to be put
into commission, and Paul Jones was on the sea, with the full
expectation of finding his ship ready when he came to France, some one
in the secret had betrayed it, and the British officials at Amsterdam
spoke openly to the government of the Netherlands, and demanded that the
frigate should be detained for breach of neutrality, she being destined
for an American ship of war. There was nothing to be done. The
Commissioners had made some efforts to hold the frigate, but in the end
France had come forward and stood their friend by buying her, and at a
good price. This had happened only a few days before, so Captain Paul
Jones must hear the sorry tale when he came to Paris and saw the three
American Commissioners.
He stood before them, a sea-tanned and weary little hero, with his eyes
flashing fire. One of the three Commissioners, Arthur Lee, could not
meet his aggrieved and angry looks. To be sure, the money was in hand
again, and they could buy another ship; but the Indien, the Indien was
irrecoverable.
"If I had been there, gentlemen," cried Paul Jones, with a mighty oath,
"nothing would have held me long in port! I'd have sailed her across
dry ground, but I'd have got her safe to sea! She was ours in the sight
of Heaven, and all the nations in the world could not prevent me!"
Mr. Franklin looked on with approval at so noble and forgivable a rage;
the others wore a wearied and disgusted look, and Mr. Arthur Lee set
himself to the careful mending of a pen. It was a sorry hour for good
men; and without getting any definite promise, and having bestowed many
unavailing reproaches, at last Paul Jones could only fling himself out
of Paris again, and in black despair post back to the Ranger at Nantes.
He had the solitary comfort, before he left, of a friendly and
compassionate interview granted by Mr. Franklin, who, over-burdened
though he was, and much vexed by a younger man's accusations, had yet
the largeness of mind to see things from the captain's side. There was
nothing for it but patience, until affairs should take a turn, as the
Commissioner most patiently explained.
All the captain's high hopes and ceaseless industry in regard to his own
plans were scattered like straws in the wind. He must set his mind now
to the present possibilities. Worst of all, he had made an enemy in his
quick mistrust and scorn of Mr. Arthur Lee, a man who would block many
another plan, and hinder him in the end as a great sea captain and hero
had never been worse hindered since the world began.
Dickson stood on the deck of the Ranger, by the gangway, when the
captain came aboard, fatigued and disappointed; it might be that some
creature of Lee's sending had already spoken with Dickson and prepared
him for what was to come. He made a most handsome salutation, however,
and Lieutenant Simpson, hoping for news of his own promotion, stepped
forward with an honest welcome.
"Gentlemen, I have much to tell you, and of an unwelcome sort," said the
captain, with unusual dignity of bearing. "There is one blessing: our
defeat of Burgoyne has brought us France for an ally. I hoped for good
news as regards ourselves, but we have been betrayed by an enemy; we
have lost the frigate which I have had a hand in building, and of whose
command I was altogether certain for more than a year past. We must now
wait for further orders here, and refit the Ranger, and presently get to
sea with her instead. I own that it is a great disappointment to us
all."
Dickson wore no look of surprise; he was too full of triumph.
Lieutenant Simpson was crestfallen. The other officers and men who were
near enough to hear looked angry and disturbed. They had been persuaded
that they must be rid of the captain before they could follow their own
purposes. 'Twas a strange and piteous condition of things aboard the
Ranger, and an example of what the poison of lies and a narrow-minded
jealousy can do to set honest minds awry. And Paul Jones had himself to
thank for much ill will: he had a quick temper, and a savage way of
speaking to his fellows. The one thing he could not bear was perfidy,
and a bland and double disposition in a man seemed at once to deserve
the tread of his angry heel.
The captain was hardly to be seen for a day or two after his return,
except in occasional forays of fault-finding. Wallingford was
successful in keeping out of his way; the great fact that all his own
best hopes had been destroyed dulled him even to feelings of resentment.
While suffering his great dismay he could almost forget the cause whence
it came, and even pitied, for other reasons, the man who had worn the
ring. The first stroke of a bullet only benumbs; the fierceness of pain
comes later. Again and again he stood before Mary Hamilton, and lived
over the night when he had stood at the window and dared to meet her
beautiful angry eyes; again and again he reviewed those gentler moments
by the river, when her eyes were full of their old affection, though her
words were stern. He had won her plain promise that some day, having
served their country, he might return to her side, and clung to that
promise like a last hope.
It already seemed a year since the night when Wallingford and the
captain had dined together. The steward had interrupted them just as
the lieutenant sprung to his feet.
"Must we say good-night, then?" said Paul Jones, protesting. "As for
me, I ought to be at my papers. Send me William Earl to write for me,"
he told the steward. "Thank you for your good company, Mr. Wallingford.
I hope we may have many such evenings together."
Yet he had looked after his guest with a sense that something had gone
wrong at this last moment, though the steward had found them hand in
hand.
The sight of the ring among his possessions, that day when he made ready
for the journey to Paris, had given him a moment of deep happiness; he
had placed it on his finger, with a certain affectionate vanity. Yet it
was a token of confidence, and in some sense a reward. He had been
unjust in the beginning to the young lieutenant; he had now come to like
and to trust him more than any other man on board the ship. In the
exciting days that had followed, rings, and lieutenants, and even so
lovely a friend and lady as Miss Mary Hamilton had been forgotten.
Yet at most unexpected moments Paul Jones did remember her, and his
heart longed for the moment when they should meet once more, and he
might plead his cause. "L'absence diminue les petits amours et augmente
les grandes, comuie le vent qui eteint les bougies et rallume la feu."
The captain at once began to hasten the work of refitting the Ranger for
sea. He gave no explanations; he was more surly in temper, and
strangely uncompanionable. Now that they could no longer admire his
seamanship in a quick voyage, the sailors rated him for the ship's
idleness and their long detention in port. This was not what they had
signed for. Dickson now and then let fall a word which showed that he
had means of information that were altogether his own; he was often on
shore, and seemed free with his money. Lieutenant Wallingford and the
surgeon, with some of the other officers, became familiar with the
amusements of Nantes; but the lieutenant was observed by every one to be
downhearted and inclined to solitary walks, and by night he kept his
cabin alone, with no inclination toward company. He had been friendly
with every one in the early part of the voyage, like a man who has no
fear of risking a kind word. The surgeon, after making unwonted efforts
to gain his old neighbor's confidence, ignored him with the rest, until
he should come to himself again.
This added to the constraint and discomfort on board the Ranger. She
was crowded with men eager enough for action, and yet kept in idleness
under a needlessly strict discipline. Simpson, the senior lieutenant,
willingly received the complaints of officers and crew, and Dickson's
ceaseless insistence that Simpson was their rightful leader began to
have its desired effect.
*XX*
*NOW ARE WE FRIENDS AGAIN?*
"My altar holds a constant flame."
Some dreary days, and even weeks, passed by, and one evening Wallingford
passed the captain's cabin on his way to his own. It had lately been
rough, windy weather in the harbor, but that night the Ranger was on an
even keel, and as steady as if she were a well-built house on shore.
The door was open. "Is that you, Mr. Wallingford? Come in, will you?"
The captain gave his invitation the air of a command.
Wallingford obeyed, but stood reluctant before his superior.
"I thought afterward that you had gone off in something of a flurry,
that night we dined together, and you have avoided any conversation with
me since my return from Paris. I don't like your looks now. Has
anything come between us? Do you repent your confidence?"
"No, I do not repent it," said the lieutenant slowly.
"Something has touched your happiness. Come, out with it! We were like
brothers then. The steward caught us hand in hand; it is long since I
have had so happy an evening. I am grateful for such friendship as you
showed me, when we were together that night. God knows I have felt the
lack of friendship these many days past. Come, sir, what's your
grievance with me?"
"It is nothing that I should tell you. You must excuse me, sir."
The captain looked at him steadily. "Had I some part in it? Then you
are unjust not to speak."
There was great kindness, and even solicitude, in Paul Jones's tone.
Wallingford was moved. It was easier to find fault with the captain
when his eyes were not upon one; they had great power over a man.
"Come, my dear fellow," he said again, "speak to me with frankness; you
have no sincerer friend than I."
"It was the sight of the ring on your finger, then. I do not think you
meant to taunt me, but to see it was enough to rob me of my hope, sir:
that was all."
The captain colored and looked distressed; then he covered his eyes,
with an impatient gesture. He had not a guilty air, or even an air of
provocation; it struck Wallingford at the moment that he wore no look,
either, of triumphant happiness, such as befitted the accepted lover of
Mary Hamilton.
"You knew the ring?" asked the captain, looking up, after some moments
of perplexing silence.
"I have always known it," answered Roger Wallingford; "we were very old
friends. Of late I had been gathering hope, and now, sir, it seems that
I must wish another man the joy I lived but to gain."
"Sit ye down," said the captain. "I thought once that I might gather
hope, too. No man could wish for greater happiness on earth than the
love of such a lady: we are agreed to that."
Then he was silent again. The beauty of Mary Hamilton seemed once more
before his eyes, as if the dim-lighted cabin and the close-set timbers
of the ship were all away, and he stood again on the terrace above the
river with the pleading girl. She had promised that she would set a
star in the sky for him; he should go back, one day, and lay his
victories at her feet. How could a man tell if she really loved this
young Wallingford? In the natural jealousy of that last moment when
they were together, he had felt a fierce delight in bringing Wallingford
away; she was far too good for him,--or for any man, when one came to
that! Yet he had come himself to love the boy. If, through much
suffering, the captain had not stood, that day, at the very height of
his own character, with the endeavor to summon all his powers for a new
effort, the scale at this moment would have turned.
"My dear lad, she is not mine," he said frankly. "God knows I wish it
might be otherwise! You forget I am a sailor." He laughed a little,
and then grew serious. "'T is her ring, indeed, and she gave it me, but
't was a gift of friendship. See, I can kiss it on my finger with you
looking on, and pray God aloud to bless the lovely giver. 'T will hold
me to my best, and all the saints know how I stand in need of such a
talisman!"
"You do not mean it, sir?" faltered Roger. "Can you mean that"--
"Now are we friends again? Yes, I mean it! Let us be friends,
Wallingford. No, no, there need be nothing said. I own that I have had
my hopes, but Miss Hamilton gave me no promise. If you go home before
me, or without me, as well may happen, you shall carry back the ring.
Ah no, for 't is my charm against despair!" he said. "I am sore vexed;
I am too often the prey of my vulgar temper, but God knows I am sore
vexed. Let us be friends. I must have some honest man believe in me,
among these tricksters." The captain now bent to his writing, as if he
could trust himself to say no more, and waved the lieutenant to be gone.
"God help me, and I 'll win her yet!" he cried next moment, when he was
alone again, and lifted his face as if Heaven must listen to the vow.
"Women like her are blessed with wondrous deep affections rather than
quick passion," he said again softly. "'T is heaven itself within a
heart like that, but Love is yet asleep."
The lights of Nantes and the lanterns of the shipping were all mirrored
in the Loire, that night; there was a soft noise of the river current
about the ship. The stars shone thick in the sky; they were not looking
down on so happy a lover the world over as Roger Wallingford. He stood
by the mainmast in the cold night air, the sudden turn of things
bewildering his brain, his strong young heart beating but unsteadily.
Alas, it was weeks ago that a single, stiffly phrased letter had gone
home to his mother, and Mary's own letter was at the bottom of the sea.
There was a swift homeward-bound brig just weighing anchor that had
ventured to sea in spite of foes, and taken all the letters from the
Ranger, and now it might be weeks before he could write again. Oh,
distance, distance! how cruel are the long miles of sea that separate
those who love, and long to be together!