University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
NOBLESSE OBLIGÉ.

Brent's stupor lasted many days. Life had
been strained to its utmost. Body, brain, heart,
all had had exhausting taxes to pay. The realm
must rest.

While his mind slept, Nature was gently renewing
him. Quiet is cure to an untainted life.
There was no old fever of discontent in his
brain. He had regrets, but no remorses. Others
had harmed him; his life had been a sad
one; he had never harmed himself. The thoughts
and images tangled in his brain, the “stuff that
dreams are made of,” were of happy omen. No
Stygian fancies made his trance unrest. Life did
not struggle for recovery that it might plunge
again into base or foul pursuits, or the scuffles
of selfishness. A man whose life is for others is
safe from selfish disappointment when he is commanded
to stand aside and be naught for a
time.

I knew the images that hovered about my
sleeping friend's mind, for I knew the thoughts

that were the comrades of his waking life. His
memory was crowded full of sights and sounds
of beauty, and those thoughts that are the emanations
of fair visions and sweet tones, and dwell
unuttered poetry in the soul. I knew how, long
ago in childhood, he had made Nature friend,
and found his earliest comrades among flowers
and birds. I knew, for he had been my teacher,
how, when youth first looked widely forth for visions
of the Infinite, he had learned to comprehend,
day after day, night after night, the large
delight of heaven; whether the busy heaven,
when the golden sun makes our sky blue above
us, and reveals on earth the facts that we must
deal with and by which we must be taught our
laws, or the quiet heaven of night, with its
starry tokens of grander fruition, when we shall
live for grander days. Sky and clouds, sun and
stars, brooks and rivers, forests and hills, waves
and winds, — these had received him to their
sweet companionship, as his mind could gradually
grasp the larger conceptions of beauty.
And so, when his time came to perceive the
higher significance of Art, as man's rudimentary
efforts toward creations diviner and more orderly
than those of earth, he had gone to Art with the
unerring eye and interpreting love of a fresh
soul, schooled by Nature only, blind to Art's
baser fancies, and hospitable to its holier dreams.
No ugly visions could visit the uncontrolled hours
of a brain so stored. His trance was peace.

More than peace; for as I watched his quiet
face, I knew that his spirit was conscious of a
spiritual presence, and Love was hovering over
him, a healing element.

At last he waked. He threw volition into the
scale of recovery. He was well in a trice.

Captain Ruby and Doctor Pathie were disposed
to growl at the rapidity of Brent's cure.

“I have half a mind to turn military despot,
and arrest you,” said Ruby. “A pair of muffs,
even, would be welcome in the winter at Laramie.
You have made a wretched bungle of it,
Pathie. Why did n't you mend your man deliberately,
a muscle a week, a nerve a month, and
so make it a six months' job?”

“He took the matter out of my hands, and
mended himself. There 's cool, patient, determined
vitality in him, enough to set up a legion,
or father a race. Which is it, Mr. Wade, words
to say or duties to do, that has made him condense
his being on recovery?”

“Both, I believe. He is mature now, and
wants, no doubt, to be at his business of saying
and doing.”

“And loving,” said Ruby.

“Ay,” said Pathie. “That has had more to
do with it. I hope he will overtake and win, for

I love the boy. I keep my oldish heart pretty
well locked against strangers; but there is a
warm cell in it, and in that cell he has, sleeping
and waking, made himself a home.”

“Ah, Doctor,” said Ruby, “you and I, for
want of women to love, have to content ourselves
with poetic rovers like Brent. He and Biddulph
were balls, operas, champagne on tap, new novels,
flirtations, and cigars to me last winter.”

We were smoking our pipes on the veranda
one warm November day, when this conversation
happened.

I had not quite forgotten the Barrownight, as
Jake Shamberlain pronounced him, nor quite
forgotten, in grave cares, my fancy that his stay
in Utah was for Miss Clitheroe's sake.

I was hardly surprised when, that very evening,
a bronzed traveller, face many shades darker
than hair and beard, rode up to the post with a
Delaware Indian, and was hailed by Ruby as
Biddulph.

“We were talking of you not an hour ago,”
said Ruby, greeting him. “Wishing you would
come to make last winter's party complete.
Brent is here, wounded.”

“Has he a lady with him?” said the new-comer.
His voice and manner were manly and
frank, — a chivalrous fellow, one of us, one of
the comradry of knights errant.

“Mr. Wade will give an account of her.”

“Come in to Brent,” said I, “and we will talk
matters over.”

Ruby, model host, cleared the way for a parley
whose interest he divined.

“I will see after your horses. Don't lose your
appetite for supper. We have potatoes!”

“Potatoes!!” cried Biddulph. “Not I!”

“Yes, and flapjacks and molasses, ready in
half an hour.”

“Flapjacks and molasses! Potatoes and flapjacks!
— Yes, and molasses!” Biddulph again
exclaimed. “Jewel of a Ruby! This is the
Ossa on Pelion of gourmandise. How under-done
and overdone all the banquets of civilization
seem! I charge thee, Ruby, when the potatoes
and the flapjacks and molasses are ready,
that thou peal a jubilee upon the bell. Now,
Mr. Wade, let me see this wounded friend, and
hear and tell.”

The two gentlemen met with cordiality.
Brent, I believe, had never identified Miss Clitheroe
with the lady Biddulph fled from, and
I had never mentioned my suspicions.

“Not one word, John!” said the Briton,
“until I know what you have done with Ellen
Clitheroe. Is she safe?”

Brent comprehended the Baronet's heart and
mind at the word. The other, I think, saw as

plainly on Brent's face that he was a lover,
and perhaps the more fortunate one. These two
loyal men drew closer at this, as wholly loyal
souls will do, for all the pang of knowing that
one has loved and lost.

Brent told our story in brief.

“I divined that you were one of the pair who
had started on the rescue. I could not mistake
you, man and horse and dress, from the Mormon's
description.”

“You saw Sizzum, then?”

“I saw his dead body.”

“What? Dead!” A sense of relief, that the
world had one temper the less, passed through
our minds.

“Yes, shot dead, just where the Wasatch
Mountains open, and there is that wonderful
view of Salt Lake City. His Nemesis met him
there. I heard the shot fired, as I was riding
out to meet the train, and saw him fall!”

“Who shot him, of the many that had a
right?”

“As mild a mannered man as ever shuddered
at the crack of an egg-shell.”

“Vendetta for woman-stealing?”

“Wife-stealing. The man was a poor music-teacher,
with a pretty spouse in Quincy, Illinois.
He had told me his own story, without proclaiming
his purpose, though I conjectured it. The

pretty spouse grew tired of poverty and five children.
She went off with Sizzum. The music-master
hired himself to a drover, named Armstrong,
and plodded out to Utah. When he got
there, he found Sizzum gone. He turned hunter.
I met him in the mountains, a crack shot.
He waited his time, ambushed the train, and shot
Sizzum dead, as he first caught sight of the
Valley.”

“A thought of poetry in his justice. What
then?”

“I could see him creeping away among the
rocks, while the Mormons were getting their
rifles. They opened fire, a hundred of them.
Ring, ping! the balls tapped all about him. He
was just clear, just springing over a little ridge
of shelter, when a shot struck him. He flung
out his arms in an attitude of imprecation, and
fell over the rocks. Dead, and doubly dead from
the fall.”

“Our two evil forces are erased from the
world, Wade,” said Brent.

“May it be good omen for coming difficulties!
But how did you learn of the events at Fort
Bridger?” I asked the Baronet.

“The Lancashire people in the train all took
an interest in the Clitheroes. They knew from
Sizzum what happened when he followed you,
and your purpose to give chase. I knew John

Brent well enough to believe that he would
achieve the rescue. Happy fellow! I forgive
you, John; hard it is, but I forgive you for stepping
in before me. I was waiting there in Utah
to do what I could for my old love and my old
friend. I should like to have had a bullet in my
arm in the cause; but the result is good, whether
I gain or lose.”

“I never thought of you, Biron. In fact, from
the moment I saw her, I thought of no one
else.”

“Yes; that is her power. We were old neighbors
in Lancashire. My father bought the old
Hall after Mr. Clitheroe's disasters. The disappearance
and the mysterious reappearance of
the old gentleman and his beautiful daughter
were the romance of the region. No one knew
where they had been. My father was dead. My
mother tried to befriend them. But the old gentleman
was soured and disappointed. He could
not forgive us for inhabiting the old mansion of
his happier days. God knows how gladly I would
have reinstated him there. But she could not
love me; so I came away, and we looked up Luggernel
Springs and the Alley together, John, to
give you a chance to snatch my destiny away
from me.”

Brent, in his weakness, had no answer to
make, except to give his hand to this gentle rival.

“How did you learn of their Mormon error?”
I asked.

“My mother wrote me. She loves Miss Clitheroe
like a daughter. She pities the father. His
wife was her friend. A genial, lovable man he
was, she says, until, after his losses, people whom
he had aided turned and accused him of recklessness
and dishonesty, — a charge as false and
cruel as could be made. My mother wrote, told
me of Sizzum's success in Clitheroe, and of our
friends' departure. She ordered me, on my
obedience, never to come back to England until
I could tell her that Ellen was safe out of Sizzum's
power. She had gone to hear him preach,
and abhorred him. I received her letter after we
had parted, John, and I camped with Jake Shamberlain,
waiting for the train. What I could
have done, I do not know; but my life was Miss
Clitheroe's.”

How easy his chivalry seemed to this noble
fellow! “Noblesse obligé”; but the obligation
was no burden.

“You are a stanch friend, Biron,” said Brent.
“She may need you yet.”

“Yes,” said he; “Christian England is a savage,
cruel as any of these brutes she has encountered
here, to a beautiful girl with a helpless,
crazy father. When can you travel, John?”

“Nearly a month I have been here fighting

death and grasping at life. Give me two days
more to find a horse and ride about a little, and
we are off.”

“Armstrong, fine old fellow, left the sorrel for
you,” I said. “He is in racing trim now.”

“Capital!” said Brent. “One Armstrong is
a brave weight on the true side of the balance,
against an army of pioneers who have gone barbarous.”

“I have something to show you, John,” said
Biddulph. “See here. I bought this of a Mormon.
He had very likely stolen it from Mr.
Clitheroe's wagon. It was the only relic I could
get of them.”

The very drawing of Clitheroe Hall its former
owner had wished to show me at Fort Bridger.
An able sketch of a thoroughly English house.
If England were sunk in the sea, and its whole
history perished, English life, society, and manners
could be reconstructed from the inspection
of such a drawing, as a geologist recalls an æon
from a trilobite. I did not wonder that it had
been heart-breaking to quit the shelter of that
grand old roof. I fixed the picture in my mind.
The time came when that remembrance was
precious.

“Now, Biddulph!” called Ruby, “supper
waits. Potatoes! Flapjacks and molasses!”

“They shall be a part of me instantly.”