Within two days Richard Bissant lay beside his brother, the Admiral, close beneath a yellow birch that rose in the highest field, a living monument, a landmark to ships below in the river. He had taught Miles to believe that the natural body is raised a spiritual body, and that this corruptible must put on incorruption. And though the grave, cut in frozen earth, and ringed about with shapeless banks of snow, seemed in those bleak surroundings to gain more than a brief victory, yet the survivor, feeling his sorrow as a man, could still dispute it like a man.
One thing, in this time of perplexity, appeared beyond mistake; and that was Tony’s unwonted and unflagging kindness. Silent in his moccasins, like a sea-gaited Indian, he had come and gone about the house, bringing armfuls of firewood, helping Ella, tending the tower lamps. It was he who ran all errands to Kilmarnock, and shoveled the broad path from their door to the birch tree on the hill. Not only his activity, but his silence and retirement, had shown a right spirit, touched honestly. Miles, recalling his former thoughts, saw them as unjust. After all, the sailor, like the man who was now become a memory, had only kept his own counsel. “And I blamed him for that!” thought Miles, with remorse.
And yet Tony’s presence was none the less disquieting. It had vexed and humbled, however needlessly, the closing days of a most honorable life; and Miles, though wishing to keep the man’s friendship, rebelled at thought of using him for profit. Right or wrong, it was very strongly in his mind that Tony must either leave or come to an explanation; for since that conference in the sick-room, the sailor’s standing, the whole arrangement, became more and more false and intolerable.
Other questions cropped up in their altered household,—questions of the past and the future, jostling in a mind still dazed. And it was these which, two nights after the burial on the hill, kept the young man restless. He lay revolving vague plans, resolutions, regrets, till at last, foregoing all hope of sleep, he rose, dressed in the dark, and stole downstairs to the little front room which had been his grandfather’s “library.” A puddle of ruby coals still glowed in the fireplace; but before sitting down by these, he turned toward the gray square of the windows, and stood looking out through a wide, cosmic starlight, faint and deceptive, but dimly intensified by frosty air and the whiteness of snow. Without speech or language, the heart of the darkness strengthened the heart of youth, as above the silent valley night unto night showed knowledge.
Stillness without grew almost palpable, through stillness within. The house lay drowned in sleep. But suddenly Miles heard a thin, brushing sound upon the landing above, the squeak of a board, and the dry rasp of a hand sliding down the banister-rail. Some one descended with extreme caution, and then, below the row of pegs in the dark corridor, struggled into a jacket, with subdued fluttering of heavy cloth. The front door slowly creaked, and, letting chill air flood the room, as slowly creaked again.
It lacked two hours before time for inspection; and besides, whoever went to the towers would carry a lantern. Miles watched. A dark, thick-set blur moved out under the starlight and disappeared between the two hackmatack pillars. Tony the sailor was up and about his affairs.
Angry and determined, Miles crept along the passage, drew on his reefer as silently as the other had done, and slipped outdoors into the freezing darkness.
