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."