"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 collége 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 abbé 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 fénelon, and god forgive my sins, but i have been his poor parishioner from those days to these. i knew his nephew, the abbé 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 fénelon," 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 ma?tre," 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!"
the old man's beautiful voice had a strange thrill in it. he looked as 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.
