THE OLD AND THE NEW
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.