She looked down in desperate appeal, and she knew her answer when she found a strange little ghost of a smile at his white lips. “But a good herder—doesn’t leave his sheep,” he told her soberly. The tone was perfectly simple, wholly sincere, utterly free from emotionalism or self-pity. Yet it thrilled and moved her to the depths of her being.
She understood. At last she knew this man who stood before her. Perhaps with this knowledge there came an understanding of the whole great race of men,—the breed that has waged war with the powers of the wilderness, who have driven back the beast and plowed the fields, established a protectorate over the wild creatures, and followed the flocks at the dusky edge of the forest. No longer was she the employer and he the servant. She was simply the woman, sick at heart with fear for the man she loved. And he was the man: one of a breed that has ever been willing to die for an ideal. To her, the sheep no longer mattered. She only knew that the wall of fire was creeping toward this man, this tall, straight-eyed companion that held her heart. Yet she knew in the depths of her own heart that she could not turn him from his resolve, that she could not make him break his trust. She had longed to find strength in him, the strength of the mountains and the pines, the basic strength that has made men the rulers of the earth, and now she had found it,—only to have it break her heart.
The captain who stayed with his ship when his children at his hearth wept for his return, the soldier in his trench for an ideal that few women, in their heart of hearts, can really understand, and this shepherd, willing to stand the test of fire to save his flocks were simply three of one breed. Nor did they greatly differ from the whole race of men from which they sprung. They were only obeying the immutable laws of their own beings. They could not break trust with themselves.
They didn’t know why. It was as blind faith as that which will make a mother—a woman useful to the earth—give her life to save her crying infant—not through love, not through a sense of duty, but just from the inexorable command of the soul. Common sense and the voice of reason go unheard: and only instinct, blind and cruel, remains. No human being would blame Hugh for leaving his flock to the terror of the flame. Yet he was a man, one of the Breed, and he had no power to disobey the promptings of his own spirit.
Yet out of her tearful eyes, Alice saw in Hugh’s stand the heaven-sent impulse that has brought the world up from the darkness. She understood old wars, the martyrdom of peoples. Vision had come to her, and throughout the world she saw men’s works and heard women’s tears. She could see the Viking, leaving the white arms of his woman and following western stars; the frontiersman, striking out from his beloved hearth to seek new dominions; the blood-stained paths of armies; the builder, stretching his bridges across roaring rivers and his railroads into uncharted lands. Through the long roll of the ages she saw the shepherd on the rugged hills, alone and wondering and full of thoughts, watching his sheep.
The man he had been—the waster and the egotist—was wholly gone now. Only the shepherd remained. Hugh saw himself as he really was,—just a pawn by which Destiny works out vast and invisible schemes of its own. His life didn’t matter here. His love for this girl beside him pulled at his heart, but the laws within him could not be disobeyed. He was only the shepherd, and here—a milling, panic-stricken band—were his sheep.
“Way round,” he ordered the dog, and the girl helped him keep the control of the animals until he had started to turn them. And just for a moment he took her hands, two little, hard brown hands that were clasped about his heart.
“Good-by, Alice,” he said quietly. “Don’t blame me for staying—and forgive me. All my life has been wasted, and now I’ve got a chance to pay the debt. You don’t know what it means——”
But yet she understood this personal reason too. His manhood was at the test; and even if he should fall, at last, victim to those hungry flames, his life would have been vindicated—beyond all the powers of Destiny to accuse him. He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them again and again.
“Maybe there won’t be time to put my petitions to the queen,” he told her soberly. “But I want you to know what they were to be. I love you, Alice. Never doubt it—never forget it. And it’s my right—to tell you at last.”