The Men Who Wrought

by Ridgwell Cullum

He communicated his feelings on the matter to Vita, who saw in his ideas the inspiration which he would never have admitted.

"If it should be that he has escaped those dreadful guns," she said, her hands clasped in an effort to steady herself, "Dorby is the place he will make for—the Old Mill Cove. Oh, my dear, my dear, can you not see what would happen if he arrived with no one there to caution him? He would make for Redwithy. He would come straight to me. And Von Salzinger would be ready for him. You will go? You will help him for my sake? Ah, thank you," as the man nodded his silent reassurance. "Meanwhile I will return home at once that I may be ready for every eventuality—and Von Salzinger. I will let you know any development."

So it came about that Ruxton found himself at Dorby Towers once more, in deep consultation with his father, who, with steady twinkling eyes, listened and advised with all the shrewd, calm wisdom of his clear commercial brain.

Nearly the whole of the next day was spent by Ruxton upon the cliffs, where, with powerful glasses, he searched the calm surface of the treacherous grey waters of the North Sea. His search remained unrewarded, but he was indefatigable. His watch was kept up with the aid of a confidential man of his father's to relieve him, and when evening came he decided that a night watch must follow the day. He had carefully calculated the time from the date and hour of the Baltic firing, and, in the light of the experience of his own journey to Borga, he calculated that if the Prince had actually escaped, and was making for Dorby, he would reach the coast some time during the next twelve hours.

From three o'clock in the afternoon until darkness set in he had rested, leaving his assistant on guard. Then he set out alone to keep his night vigil.

His way took him across the wild moorland in the direction of the black remains of the old mill, and, in setting out, he remembered that night which now seemed so far back in his memory, when, out of the darkness, he had heard those tones he had now come to love so well. This time, however, his dinner coat and thin shoes had been abandoned in favor of a heavy tweed ulster and thick shooting boots. For the autumn night was bitter with a light breeze from the northeast, and a great silvery moon, and the cold diamonds of a starlit sky, suggested that the speeding hours were likely to bring with them many degrees of frost before he could return to the warmth of his bed.

His direction gave him no trouble. Every foot of the moorland cliff was familiar to him with the instinct bred through childish years of association. Then there was the great, heavy moon yielding a light by which it would almost have been possible to read.

So he strode on towards his goal, the blackened skeleton, which marked the old dishonest times of battles fought out against authority. With the detachment of youth his thoughts had been left free to wander from the purpose of his journey. A deep concentration had completed every detail of the work that lay before him. And so the resiliency of his brain had caused a rebound to those wonderful thoughts which claimed his every human sensation.

He was thinking of Vita. His mental faculties had visualized once more the perfections which were hers, and those with which this love of his endowed her. His big heart was stirred to its very depths with the memory of her final, wistful appeal. He felt that if human effort could serve her, that effort, the whole of it that was in him, was at her service. He felt that all quite suddenly a great new power had been vouchsafed him, a power to do, to act, and to think—all for the woman who had inspired in him this wonderful, wonderful feeling of love.

Nothing, no task, no labor, however great, was too arduous for him to accomplish. More, it was a happiness, such as never in his life he had known, to be privileged with the task of contributing to her happiness.