Clotilde smiled, but soberly.
“That was more like seven years ago than seven days,” she answered, “and I am surely now a woman grown although I have failed somehow to reach a woman’s stature. I have wished often,” she added with a sigh, for this was a sore subject with her, “that I could have grown tall and stately like all of those of Master Simon’s kindred.”
“Whatever her age and size, she has done a woman’s work since the war began,” said Stephen. “And as for your height, my child, sigh not over that as being unlike the others. Radpaths, Bardwells and Sheffields, we are all proud to call you one of us!”
At which speech, Clotilde first dropped him a stately curtsey and then ran across the room to throw her arms about his neck.
It was a long, long time, as the Doctor had feared, before the young English officer made even enough progress on the road toward health to warrant them in hoping that he could be brought the whole of that toilsome way. Many weeks it was before his fevered mind became wholly clear, or the Doctor would permit his being questioned as to who he was and whether there was really reason for his resemblance to the portrait in the dining room. Upon the first day that he sat up, however, he put all doubts to an end by giving a full account of himself. Not only did he prove to be of Stephen’s kindred and the grandson of Amos Bardwell, but his surname was the same as Master Simon’s. His mother had married a distant kinsman of Master Simon’s and the boy’s name, therefore, was Radpath, Gerald Radpath.
“And I am as proud of my Puritan ancestor as any of you Americans can be,” he said to Stephen and Clotilde as they sat beside his bed. “I have heard from my mother all the tales of that far journey among the Indians and how his daughter and my own grandfather, Amos Bardwell, dared to stand firm at the witch trial. But my knowledge of scenes and places was vague, having come through so many hands and I never dreamed, that night when I found Mademoiselle Clotilde that the place of our meeting was the shoemaker’s cottage and that the snow-covered scene of my disaster was Master Simon’s famous garden.”
“But how could you,” burst out Clotilde, “if you were of Master Simon’s blood, draw your sword against the Colonies and maintain the unjust cause of the King?”
Stephen held up his hand in warning against the speaking of such vigorous reproaches to a man weak and ill and propped up among his pillows for the first time. But Gerald Radpath only smiled.
“You forget, Mademoiselle,” he replied, “that we also were of your kin and that you drew your swords against us. Moreover, Master Simon was as loyal a subject of Queen Elizabeth and the first King James as am I, of King George. Did not his father, Robin Radpath, die in the effort to bear the great Queen’s message to the Emperor of Cathay? And I think you do not understand,” he went on more earnestly, “that we who came over to America in the King’s army had no very real knowledge of the cause in which we were fighting. Many such as I came up from the counties far from London, heard that beyond the seas was a company of ungrateful rebels who wished to make over our Parliament’s laws to suit themselves, and so threw ourselves headlong into our country’s service. We were amazed, later, to find that we were facing a spirited people who fought for a splendid cause, one that they, and even we ourselves in the end, knew was a just one. We had little taste for our task, most of us, before much time had passed; this I tell you freely since now I lie here wounded with no great chance of fighting again before the war is over. But I tell you also that, once having sworn allegiance to the King’s service, we will not turn traitors and betray his side to the enemy. His officers will fight on until a chance comes to withdraw honourably—we are not turncoats like Andrew Shadwell.”
“You are a good lad and a loyal soldier,” said Stephen, holding out his hand to clasp his cousin’s heartily. “A brave heart is a brave heart on whichever side it stands.”