THE COUNCIL
The house, as they plunged down the last hill at midnight, showed
orange squares above and below,--the windows in both stories, lighted
as for some rare festivity. The sight was unfamiliar and daunting.
So, when the door opened, was the strange new dignity with which Ella
admitted him and answered his unspoken question.
“Asleep; restin’ quiet. Cap’n What’s-name here’ll take Quinn’s hoss
home. Come get your supper, and then straight to bed.”
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He obeyed, as in a dream. In whispers, by the yellow lamplight, she
forced him to eat and drink; then led the way upstairs. As they
tiptoed past, the door of the sick-room stood ajar. Miles peeped in.
A shawl curtained the bed from lamp and firelight, but even in deep
shadow the sleeper’s face wore a sinister mask of alteration.
“To bed now,” whispered the servant. “I’m settin’ up, Miles.” She
touched his shoulder gently. “Come. To-morrow’ll do.”
He lay down, fully dressed, and ready for misfortune. Dozing through
the dark hours, he roused, from time to time, at an imaginary summons.
Weariness conquered, however, and when he woke Ella stood watching,
from beside a window flooded with sunshine.
“He wants to see ye, after breakfast,” she said quietly. “Doctor’s
come and gone again. I wouldn’t wake ye, poor dear. No noos. No change,
either way.”
Again, using a forgotten title of childhood, she compelled him to sit
at table: “You must keep up, little Cap’n. Can’t have two sick men.”
That new, quiet authority of hers remained a strange comfort, even as
he mounted the stairs.
His grandfather lay sunken among pillows, his eyes closed, his features
pale, gaunt, profoundly calm. Of suffering, of life itself, no more
trace appeared than in a carven effigy of patience. Then quite suddenly
his eyes opened, roved about the room in feeble search, and, resting on
Miles, lighted dully.
“Ah, the boy! Come sit by me.” He whispered hoarsely, and with slow
effort. “I’ve got my orders, haven’t I? Not long, my boy, not so very
long now.”
To hear their dread thus put roundly into words, aloud, from the man’s
own lips, seemed at first a tragic impropriety.
“Oh, grandfather, no!” Miles faltered, without conviction.
“Yes.” The old man smiled strangely, placidly. “I knew it. Only a bad
cold to start with. I could shake that off--” He stirred impatiently,
as if to prove his words, then sank back in resignation. “Heart too
weak. I overheard the doctor.”
Somehow, for the first time in his life, Miles felt that his
grandfather’s frown was rather habitual than unkindly.
“Well, it’s no great matter, Miles.” The voice continued, halting and
broken, sometimes clear, sometimes a whisper. “So long as you came
time enough--all right. Now I want to make my confession. Don’t you be
too hard on me.”
Crabbed age and youth had lived together, and lived happily, under
fixed conditions of authority and deference; and now the old man’s
words, or rather something of anxiety in his look, appeared to reverse
all their common habits, to set their life-long attitude topsy-turvy.
A judge, severe and just, present above the young man’s daily acts,
swaying his blindest motives, had imperceptibly become an unknown
strength and necessity. To have this strength suddenly fail, this
judgment submit to his own, gave Miles a forlorn sense of uncertainty,
of loneliness. Independence, that stern, hard-won privilege, was now
granted him without warning, thrust violently into his heart. And the
same hand which planted this new gift plucked up thoughts and feelings
rooted in his childhood.
“It’s this sailor, Florio,” said the old man. “He’s been very heavy
on my conscience. He lied to me, but I could use it, and so I lied
in turn--to you--perhaps the whole neighborhood--At my age--It’s all
disgraceful!”
He paused, and, resting, seemed to cast about for words.
“I’ve been very hard with you. Yes--heavy load, tight rein. I was--was
afraid you might slip away. And I want you to start well--to go far.
You must be something better than a book-worm, like me--a broken-down
surveyor of land. Eh? Yes, better than your father Godfrey, or
Christopher; yes, or my brother George, the Admiral himself. Perhaps.
Look to it.”
A fit of coughing interrupted him.
“No, sit there. I must talk, anyway,” he continued weakly. “Stand by.
Paupers and poorhouses--I’ve always talked those at you, haven’t I?
Why, boy? Because I was a miser. We kept lighthouse--for money. That
doesn’t matter; but the worst is--” A faint flush had stolen into his
hollow cheeks. “The worst is, I even kept this half-breed fellow--God
knows who he may be; he’s no friend of Christopher’s--I saw that in
the first week, but I took his money. Hard--but I hated--oh yes,
disgusting--a shame!”
With a stifled, inarticulate sound, the speaker paused, and closed his
eyes for a time, then bent them on Miles in a timid appeal.
“Miser, that’s the word. But--I was saving everything, good and
bad--saving for the fund, for your start. I taught you as far as I
could. Now promise me you’ll go farther. Out--away from here--the
world--study--work. There’s enough for a year, perhaps two. All
yours--black and white--my box. You must use it well--came hard. Say
you’re not ashamed of me!”
The distance between age and youth, the mist of self, the vague screen
dividing their daily lives, were annihilated. In sudden wisdom and
contrition, Miles bent his head beside this man whom he had never known
before.
“Ashamed?” he cried, dimly measuring the sacrifice. “Ashamed? Oh,
grandfather!”
“Come, come, then!” Something of the testy, hard old voice returned for
the instant. “Come, then, it’s all right. What did the old preacher
say, that they burned? ‘It’s given to no man to choose the time or
manner of his death.’ Not a case of Nunc Dimittis, I’m not allowed to
see it through. What of that? At least--Call the thing unfinished--a
man cut down in hot blood--doesn’t feel it--Only, you must start. Your
half begins. I want you--take it all. I never could use fine words!--Go
find what you’re good for.”
Miles nodded, but could not speak. Shame and wonder contended in him,
at thought of his own blindness all these years: he had considered his
grandfather as a grim, silent man, preoccupied with gloomy fear of the
future. Revelation had come: the spent runner now resolutely passed on
the torch, and Miles trembled at his unworthiness to receive it from
such hands.
“One thing more,” continued the old man, stirring uneasily. “What was
this Ella said, t’other day, about sweethearts, or some nonsense? Did
she mean--Is there--”
“I--I don’t know,” stammered Miles. The challenge had struck him hot
and cold. The more sincerely he faced it, the more this question
deepened into a yawning pit of subtleties. “Honestly--I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” His grandfather eyed him almost angrily. “What sort of
answer is that? See here, I can’t have--At your age--You must promise
me--”
A violent cough seized him, and left him shaken and breathless. For a
long time he rested, as if asleep. And when at last he spoke again, a
smile of serene humor, of high forbearance and security, lighted the
sunken eyes.
“You promise nothing, boy. If I had promised my father--I’m an old
fool. We’ve agreed to the main thing, already. It’s all right. You’re a
man. Give me the--that nasty dose, there.”
He sank back, as though he had reserved all his forces for their
interview, and now lay exhausted. The ticking of a clock, the flutter
of the fire, accompanied that labored breathing through slow and
sorrowful hours. The watcher must have dozed; for of a sudden, the
shadows of the hackmatack boughs quivered easterly along the floor.
The afternoon was already closing. Ella sat, with folded hands, by the
hearth.
Time again dragged by, till the sleeper moved. Without seeming to wake,
he whispered:--
“I can’t remember. Bring me the book.”
A Bible lay on the table; but as though he heard Miles lift it, he
shook his head.
“I’ve read that. I know it. The other--below--the black book.”
Ella nodded, stole from the room, and returned with the old man’s
volume of the poets.
“How does it go? Read to me, Miles. ‘Even so is time’--You know it.”
Miles found the page, and with an unsteady voice obeyed.
“‘Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But--’”
The old man stopped him, with a sign of content, and took up the lines,
whispering:--
“‘But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!’”
He lay very still; but when, after a time, Ella would have offered him
something in a glass, he put her hand feebly aside. Miles could not
hear their words, except, “If every one was faithful as you--” and the
woman’s reply, “I’ll never leave him till he sends me away.” She rose,
and, crossing to the window, where a row of geraniums glowed in the
sunset, stood picking blindly at the dead leaves.
He continued to speak, but neither audibly nor with the living. From
time to time they caught the name of George, Godfrey, or Christopher.
His eyes remained closed; but his face turned slightly, now and then,
with the air of one who clearly saw and heard the persons in a ghostly
conference. As day drooped into night, the seen fused with the unseen.
And it was in a mystical twilight that he turned toward Miles, at
last, with a look of grave relief, which told that the council had
reached some fortunate conclusion. The lips barely moved, and indeed
the eyes made their effort needless.
“I’m satisfied, my boy.”
The only praise he had ever given, it was beyond all value.
The woman lighted a lamp behind the shawl; then stood beside Miles,
waiting. Nothing moved in the room, except twin shadows of the andirons
fluttering on the wall, alert and capricious as a pair of fencers. In
the passage Tony the sailor had paused silently, like a man drawn by
strange impulse to the edge of a forbidden circle.
Something approached, arrived, and culminated. The counterpane stirred.
It was as though a broad and soothing wave had lifted the prostrate
figure slightly, and passed, bearing away the spirit in one gentle,
mighty undulation.
The servant was the first to speak.
“He was a good man,” she whispered. “It’s over now. He was a good man.”
* * * * *
Within two days Richard Bissant lay beside his brother, the Admiral,
close beneath a yellow birch that rose in the highest field, a living
monument, a landmark to ships below in the river. He had taught Miles
to believe that the natural body is raised a spiritual body, and that
this corruptible must put on incorruption. And though the grave, cut
in frozen earth, and ringed about with shapeless banks of snow, seemed
in those bleak surroundings to gain more than a brief victory, yet the
survivor, feeling his sorrow as a man, could still dispute it like a
man.
One thing, in this time of perplexity, appeared beyond mistake; and
that was Tony’s unwonted and unflagging kindness. Silent in his
moccasins, like a sea-gaited Indian, he had come and gone about the
house, bringing armfuls of firewood, helping Ella, tending the tower
lamps. It was he who ran all errands to Kilmarnock, and shoveled the
broad path from their door to the birch tree on the hill. Not only his
activity, but his silence and retirement, had shown a right spirit,
touched honestly. Miles, recalling his former thoughts, saw them as
unjust. After all, the sailor, like the man who was now become a
memory, had only kept his own counsel. “And I blamed him for that!”
thought Miles, with remorse.
And yet Tony’s presence was none the less disquieting. It had vexed and
humbled, however needlessly, the closing days of a most honorable life;
and Miles, though wishing to keep the man’s friendship, rebelled at
thought of using him for profit. Right or wrong, it was very strongly
in his mind that Tony must either leave or come to an explanation; for
since that conference in the sick-room, the sailor’s standing, the
whole arrangement, became more and more false and intolerable.
Other questions cropped up in their altered household,--questions of
the past and the future, jostling in a mind still dazed. And it was
these which, two nights after the burial on the hill, kept the young
man restless. He lay revolving vague plans, resolutions, regrets,
till at last, foregoing all hope of sleep, he rose, dressed in the
dark, and stole downstairs to the little front room which had been his
grandfather’s “library.” A puddle of ruby coals still glowed in the
fireplace; but before sitting down by these, he turned toward the gray
square of the windows, and stood looking out through a wide, cosmic
starlight, faint and deceptive, but dimly intensified by frosty air and
the whiteness of snow. Without speech or language, the heart of the
darkness strengthened the heart of youth, as above the silent valley
night unto night showed knowledge.
Stillness without grew almost palpable, through stillness within. The
house lay drowned in sleep. But suddenly Miles heard a thin, brushing
sound upon the landing above, the squeak of a board, and the dry rasp
of a hand sliding down the banister-rail. Some one descended with
extreme caution, and then, below the row of pegs in the dark corridor,
struggled into a jacket, with subdued fluttering of heavy cloth. The
front door slowly creaked, and, letting chill air flood the room, as
slowly creaked again.
It lacked two hours before time for inspection; and besides, whoever
went to the towers would carry a lantern. Miles watched. A dark,
thick-set blur moved out under the starlight and disappeared between
the two hackmatack pillars. Tony the sailor was up and about his
affairs.
Angry and determined, Miles crept along the passage, drew on his reefer
as silently as the other had done, and slipped outdoors into the
freezing darkness.
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