The anchor had been cast, and the good ship, panting, lay at rest. The bugle note had followed the departing tender with wistful strains of "Auld Lang Syne," and the emancipated passengers were pouring out upon old England's hospitable soil. The happy crowd, catching already the contagion of English jollity, swayed about the landing stage, then flowed in separate streams into the Customs pen; for this is the first tug of the tether, just when all who have escaped the sea think they are safe at last. Out through the fingers of the stern inspectors flowed the crowd in still thinner streams, till all this community of the deep is scattered to the winds.
Swift-hurrying, they go their separate ways, and the happy little bubble has burst and vanished, as its successors, now forming on the bosom of the deep, will burst and vanish too. What friendships, what ardent loves, what molten vows, ocean born, have begun to languish on the wharf at Liverpool, like sunfish separated from their native wave!
Michael Blake hailed a hansom and drove to the North-Western. As he passed through the turbid streets, dense loneliness settled about him like a fog. This was old England, this the land which exiles across the sea in their fondness call the "old country."
But he could not free himself from the thought that, when he left it, youth's sun was burning bright; and now more than the early afternoon was gone.
"The evening too will pass, as the afternoon has passed," he said to himself, "only more quickly." And he glanced at the descending sun, God's metaphor of warning, the recurring epitome of life. His lips moved to speak a text, the native instinct strong therefor. They had meant to say "the night cometh"; but some one interfered and he said to himself: "The night is far spent—the day is at hand," for, after all, the setting sun has morning in its heart.
He dismissed the cab, and entering the hotel, made some enquiry about the trains for the North. He could not start North before midnight. The evening was fine, and he walked out. St. George's Hall arrested him with its elaborate grandeur. What beauty, what chastity, what becoming signs of civic wealth! When he came to its massive steps he cast his eyes upon them, and behold, they were dripping with poverty! The victims of want in mid-career were there, and drooping age, unequally yoked with poverty, and frowzy women with ribald face; and chief among them all, little children, some blear-eyed, some pallid with want, some with the legacy of sores—for they had been shapen in iniquity.
But all alike—and herein was the anguish of it—all alike were bent on play, and persisted pitifully in the cruel farce. The little bare feet pattered up and down the steps—but the steps were stone.
Michael Blake thought of his adopted home across the sea and its green fields and tree-graced meadows. Then he thought of the far Western plains, vast beyond human fancy, waiting and calling for the tired feet of all who spend weary lives in the old land, playing on stone steps, while wealth and grandeur smile above them. In a few minutes he turned away, for the folk of his country are not accustomed to the sight of hungry children; and a woman under drink is something that many of their eldest have never seen at all.
The sound of martial music, and the voice of cheering thousands, fell upon his ear. He moved towards it. Soon the surging procession broke upon him. "Who are these?" he asked, "these fellows in Khaki?" They had their rifles in their hands, and some were slightly lame, and some had the signs of wounds—and all had the rich stain of battle on them. "Art thou only a stranger?" he is asked in turn, "and knowest not the things that are come to pass? These are they who have come out of Paardeburg, homeward bound by way of the ancestral home, and the tide of British love and gratitude wafts them on their course."
He is soon caught in the swelling throng, his own head bare, his own voice blending in the Imperial hosannah. He catches a familiar face among the soldiers; he hears the strain of the "Maple Leaf" mingling with the mighty bass of the Mother Anthem. He beholds the Union Jack, enriched with the Canadian emblem. Gazing on the battered few, he sees the survivors of the battle, and he knows that the unreturning feet rest in the soil they have won to freedom; Canadian lads were these who have insisted with dying lips that Britains never shall be slaves. His adopted land has given of its choicest blood to swell the sacred tide that for centuries hath laved the shores of liberty.