Yet, even as she spoke, she remembered with dismay the odd, aloof manners of many of the townspeople toward Gerald. She recollected the distant courtesy toward both of them, of good souls who had always before received her with such simple friendliness. The people of Hopewell were old-fashioned in their ways, they clung to many a forgotten custom and form of speech unused by the rest of the world, and with this had kept the open-hearted frankness of an earlier and simpler life. Try as they might, thoughts could not be hidden and feelings concealed. And, as she thought the matter over, it seemed plainer and plainer to Clotilde as it had long been clear to Gerald, that their neighbours looked at him askance and did not seem to trust him.
“It is this,” Gerald went on to explain, “a thing that at first I did not see myself. The people of this town like me not and wish that I were away. When we meet their eyes seem to say to me, ‘Gerald Radpath, you bear Master Simon’s name but are you of his kind? You, who fought against us in the war and have come back now that all the struggle is over, is your purpose good or bad?’”
“Yes,” assented Clotilde, with no attempt at argument. “Yes, I have seen that too. But I had thought that time would sweep it all away when they have learned to know you better.”
“The feelings of your hard-headed Puritan folk alter not so easily with time,” he returned. “No, I must show them that I care for the welfare of this country as much as they, and I have thought of a possible way. You know that Roger Bardwell said that the wealth of New England was to come from her traffic with the world rather than from her farms, you know that he proved his words and established a prosperous trade with England, France and Spain. Now all of that has been swept away by these years of war and it will take long labour to build it up again. But in that upbuilding I mean to have a share.”
Clotilde did not speak quite yet; she knew that there was more to come.
“I can buy and refit one of the privateer vessels that have survived the war,” he went on. “The Mistress Margeret is lying in the harbour now and can easily be made ready for a journey overseas with what money I have left to spend on ship and cargo. And in her I will make the first long voyage myself. My father was a ship’s captain, I sailed with him when I was a lad and he taught me much, so that I might command a ship of my own some day.”
He did not say what pain it would be to leave her for so long, she did not whisper of how her heart stood still at the thought of his going. Each one realised what the other felt, yet each knew that this was the only way and that here was Gerald’s task in life.
“Where will you go?” she asked at last, and waited breathless for the reply that did not come at once.
“The sailors,” he said, “have a name for the path that they steer, marked out by the sun and stars across the trackless sea. They call it the sea road and to them, in time, it becomes as familiar as the housewife’s way to market. And I am of a mind, Clotilde, to break out a new sea road, and a far one, a way that our sailors have never gone before.”
“To Italy?” she asked, her eyes wide with anxiety.