CHAPTER XII
HE REVIEWS HIS MARRIAGE, AND IS PUT TO THE TEST
It was the first week in June; for a fortnight John Granger had been amarried man. He was now removed a sufficiently just distance from hisbachelor-hood to be able to estimate the value of the change whichthis new step had wrought in his career.
Its true worth to him had been that it had converted him from aLondoner in Keewatin into a man of the Northland. This might mean,though it need not, that he had retrograded to a lower type; at allevents it meant that he was robbed of his excuse for consideringhimself an exile, bearing himself rebelliously toward his environment,and being unhappy. By joining himself to Peggy by the rites of theRoman Church, he had made an irrevocable choice, had slammed the doorof opportunity and return to civilisation in his own face, and hadadopted as his country a land where no one has any use for money orfor time, and where nothing could ever again be of very muchimportance. He had not realised all that a fortnight ago when, at thebidding of the Jesuit, he had made this girl his wife; but since hehad lived in her company he had come to realise. Mercifully there isno situation, however bad, which may not develop the peculiar virtuewhereby it can be endured. He had learnt his virtue by observingPeggy, an Indian virtue at that--stolidity. In a great lonelyterritory, where men say good-bye to one another for twelve months ata stretch, and sometimes forever, they arrive at a philosophy of lifewhich consists in waiting very patiently and unambitiously for thenext thing which the good God may send. To attain this sort ofquietness a man must be quite hopeless, for so long as he hopes he isliable to disappointment. Also he must live each day as though it werehis first, for to remember things past is to court regret. He mustpermit himself to know none of the extremes of emotion, either of joyor of sadness; to this end he must consider himself as a non-partisanin life, a careless spectator before whose eyes the groping shadowspass. The traffic of words is a labour, and a more frequent cause ofmisunderstanding than of interpretation--therefore it is wiser, ifpeace be desired, to keep always silent. Where a gesture will do thework of a word, let a gesture suffice.
All this Granger had learnt during the fortnight which he had livedwith his wife; in watching her, he had studied to forego his formerturbulence of mind as a thing most foolish, and had determined to sinkdown into the dull acceptance of a destiny against which it wasprofitless to contend--a kind of resigned contentment. If he was to behanged to-morrow for Strangeways' death, that was no reason why heshould disturb himself to-day; if that was to happen, it would come topass in any case,--nothing that he might do or say could prevent it.The momentary pain of dying is usually much less intense than thehours of cowardly suffering which men bring upon themselves byprevising the anguish of their last departure, so he told himself. Soto-day he sat outside his store in the sunshine and smoked his pipe,the freest and silentest man in all Keewatin, and, he would have hadhimself believe, the most stably contented.
That night, when he had left Pere Antoine and had gone to consult thedead man at the bend, had been the turning-point in his frenzy. Itseemed to him, as he looked back, to have happened long ago when hewas little more than a child, at a time before his enlightenment, whenhe had supposed very foolishly that he was of importance to God and tohis fellow-men. Now he had come to know that he was of no importanceeven to himself. He blew out a cloud of smoke and watched it vanish inthe air; in other days he would have smiled, but it was not worth theeffort now. The relation of that whiff of tobacco-smoke to theunplumbed space, throughout which it would be dispersed, was about thesame as that of his present existence to the rest of the world.
When, having said good-bye to Strangeways, he had followed the Manwith the Dead Soul back to the store, he had made up his mind to theinevitable, and had been prepared to greet Peggy with a certaindisplay of joy. Before ever he could put his thought into action, hisintention had been repelled. As he had drawn nearer to the crazywooden pier which ran out from Murder Point, he had seen the shadowyshapes of the trapper and his daughter, bending down, unloading theircanoe, moving slowly hither and thither through the night. As he hadcome up, he had hailed them. To his call Beorn had made no reply, hadonly turned his head and nodded, while Peggy, stooping over a pile offurs, had thrown him the customary salutation of the Cree Indian tothe white man, used both on arrival and departure, "Watchee"--which isa corruption of "What cheer." No other words of greeting had passedbetween them, and he, when he had landed, had set to work at once tohelp them with their unlading. When that was finished and the furs hadbeen carried up to the store, they had raised their tent, kindledtheir fire, brewed their black tea, cooked their bacon, and gone torest. Granger had so far intruded on their reserve as to ask them tospend the night in his store, but his invitation had been ungraciouslyrefused with a shake of the head.
Next day Pere Antoine had married them, after which he had departed,promising, however, to return before the summer was out. Granger hadsaid nothing more to him either concerning Spurling or the death ofStrangeways, except to insist that the warrant for the arrest,together with the letters and locket which had been found, should beleft with himself; nevertheless, he had been well aware that thesethings were largely responsible for the hurry of the priest'sdeparture. At first he had not been surprised at the silence of Peggy,for he had grown accustomed to the shy modesty of women who areIndian-bred. The women of Keewatin accept it as their fate that theyare born to be subservient to men--to be their burden-bearers. But atthe end of a few days, when her demeanour had shown no sign of change,he had become a little curious. In the early part of the year thewhite blood that was in her had been more manifest, and because of itshe had been proud. When she had insisted that he should marry her, ifhe would live with her, the reason she had given him for her demandhad been _because her blood was white_. Since then she had journeyedinto the winter-wilderness with the menfolk of her family, like anyother Indian or half-breed girl, and in the primeval solitariness ofthe land the red blood of her mother had asserted itself; the hand ofher native deity had been laid upon her mouth, staying her flow ofwords, the shyness of the forest-gods had entered into her eyes, andthe Lord God of Women had stooped her shoulders, causing her to carryher head less bravely, binding the hereditary burden of the red womanupon her back. She had unlearned in those few months all the conceitsof self-respect which she had been taught in the school at Winnipeg,and had reverted to the ancient type from which she was sprung,--theriver Indian. Granger, as he watched her, guessed all this, for hadnot he himself been parted from his old traditions?--and he had notknown Keewatin till he was a grown man. Well, these people had livedthere longer than he had! They should know what was best suited totheir circumstance, he told himself; and so, without questioning orcombatting their social methods, he resigned himself to accept theirmodes of life.
It was a strange wedding that he had had--very different from the kindhe had planned for himself in the heat of his passion, when he was ayounger man. And this was a strange woman whom he must call hiswife--one who worked for him tirelessly with her head and hands, butwho appeared to crave for none of his affection, and with whom hecould have not a moment's conversation; the exchange of a fewmonosyllables and signs in the course of a day seemed to be the mostthat he might expect. Yet, because of her meekness and faithfulness,and her ready willingness to serve, he was conscious of a growingprotective quality of love for her. If he could prevent himself fromadopting her reticence, he promised himself that he would gather herwhole heart into his own by and by.
He did not as yet realise that the mere fact that he could feel thustowards her, when no speech had passed between them, was an indicationthat she was communicating herself in a more vigorous and sincererlanguage than that of words. This difference between them, that heexpected her to use her lips to explain her personality, and that she,far from imagining that she was silent, believed herself to be in herdeeds most eloquent, was one of the few traits remaining to him of thestreet-born man.
As an example of their reserv
edness was the fact that, though Eyelids,Peggy's brother, had set out on the winter hunt and had not returned,no explanation of his delay had been forthcoming, nor had Grangersummoned up the energy to inquire for himself. On their first arrivalhe had felt distinctly curious as to his whereabouts. Had he comeacross traces of Spurling and gone in pursuit of him? Had he heardfrom some stray Indian that Spurling was an outlaw, with a price uponhis head? Had Beorn, having found that his cache at the ForbiddenRiver had been broken into, dispatched his son to follow up the thiefand exact revenge? Or was Spurling dead, and had Eyelids killed him,for which reason he was afraid to come back?
For the first few days after his marriage these questions and answershad been continually running through his head; but since he had learntthe lesson that nothing was of much importance, he had almost ceasedto care. Why should he trouble to inquire? If he did, he might get noreply; and if he was answered, the probability was that his only gainwould be something fresh to worry about. The unreturning of Eyelidswas one small detail of the total unreality, the dream which he hadonce taken so seriously, which in former times he had called life; andof that dream the arrival and flight of Spurling were the nightmare.No one of all these happenings had ever been--they were unactual: andthe chances were that even he himself was no reality.
Beorn Ericsen, the Man with the Dead Soul as he was called, was afitting tutor to a pupil of this philosophy. Compared with him, hisdaughter was a whirlwind of words; the lesson of silence, which shetaught by her behaviour, she had first learnt from her father on thewinter trail--in the presence of his stern taciturnity she appeared agarrulous amateur.
Whence he had originally come, no one had ever persuaded him to tell.On his first arrival in the district, which was reported to have takenplace nearly forty years ago, for the first two years he was said tohave conducted himself more or less like a normal man. At that time hemust have been near mid-life, for he was now well past seventy tojudge by his appearance. Even then, on his first coming, something hadhappened, which he did not care to talk about, which made him glad ofthe dreary seclusion of Keewatin. It had been generally supposed thathe was badly wanted by Justice, for having shot his man in a borderhold-up, or for deeds of violence in some kindred escapade.
At any rate, he had set about his living in Keewatin in earnest, asthough he had determined to stay there. Having attached himself to theHudson Bay Company, he soon proved himself to be an expert trapper,and a man who, for his reckless courage, was to be valued. Promotionseemed certain for him and, despite the fact that he had joined theCompany late in life, the likelihood of his attaining a factorship inthe end was not improbable. It was then, after he had won theconfidence of his employers, that he had taken that journey to theNorth, through an unexplored country, from which he had come backdazed and dreary-eyed, so that it seemed as though he must have metwith some dire calamity in the winter desolation, one from which fewmen would have escaped alive, which had robbed him of his reason. Whenthey had asked him where he had journeyed, "Far, far," was all hewould reply. And when, hoping to satisfy their curiosity by a lessdirect method, they had questioned him, "What did you see up there?""Blackness--it was dark," was the most that he would answer them.
Because of these answers there were some who supposed that, emulatingThomas Simpson, he had penetrated into the Arctic Circle and had gazedupon the frozen quiet of an undiscovered ocean. He had wrested fromGod the secret which He was anxious to withhold, they said, and God invengeance had condemned him to be always silent. But the Indiansexplained his condition more readily, speaking in whispers about himaround camp-fires among themselves. The last place at which he hadbeen seen by anyone on that journey was at the mouth of the ForbiddenRiver, along whose banks it was commonly believed stretched thevillages and homes of manitous, and souls of the departed. The Creesasserted that this was not the first man who, to their knowledge, hadwandered up that river and had thus returned. Some few of theirboldest hunters had from time to time set out and, roving furtherafield than their brethren, had likewise trespassed all unaware withinthe confines of the spirit-land. So they said that Beorn had been tothe Land of Shadows, and that, by reason of his surpassing strength,he had contrived to escape; but that he had left his soul behind himthere, and it was only his body which had come back.
From that day he had been known as _The Man with the Dead Soul_.Gradually, as the years went by, the deathly vacancy had gone out ofhis eyes, but he had remained a man separated from living men. Herarely spoke, but from the first his peculiarities had made nodifference to his expertness as a trapper--he was more skilful, whiteman though he was, than many of the Crees themselves. All the strengthwhich should have been spent upon his soul seemed to have gone topreserving the perfection of his body. For a man of his years, he wassurprisingly vigorous and erect--no labour could tire him. This, saidthe Indians, was the usual sign of bodies which lived on when theirsouls were dead. He was much feared, and his influence in the districtwas great; in gaining him as a partisan, Granger had achieved atriumph over Robert Pilgrim, and had improved his status among thenative trappers more than could have been possible by any other singleact.
Beorn was reverenced as a kind of minor deity; no wish of his, howeversilently expressed, was ever denied by an Indian. When he had chosenPeggy's mother to be his wife, it had been done merely by the raisingof his hand. Straightway the girl's father had driven herpanic-stricken forth from his camp, compelling her to go to thisstrange bridegroom, lest a curse should fall upon his tribe. To her,if absence of cruelty is kindness, he had been uniformly kind. Love isnot necessary to an Indian marriage, so she had not been too unhappy.At Peggy's birth, having first borne him a son, she had died. Thelittle girl had been brought up and cared for by the silent man; theshy tenderness she expressed for him went far to prove that she, atleast, had discovered something more vital within him than could beexpected to reside in the body of a man whose soul was dead. Hissending of her to the school in Winnipeg had shown that he was not soforgetful as he seemed to be of the outside world which he had left.This last act had come as a great surprise to all who knew him; butthey had contrived to retain their old opinion of him by assertingthat this was the doing of Pere Antoine.
Only on rare occasions had Beorn let any of his secrets out; when hegot drunk he recovered his power of speech, or, as the Indians said,for a little space his soul returned. This had happened less and lessfrequently of recent years. It was well remembered by old-timers atGod's Voice how once, in the early morning in Bachelors' Hall, at theend of a night's carousal, when the trappers and traders from thedistant outposts had made their yearly pilgrimage to the fort bringingin their twelve months' catch of furs, Beorn, under the influence ofrum, had risen uninvited, and, to the consternation of his intoxicatedcompanions, had trolled forth a verse from a fighting mining ballad.As well might the statue of Lord Nelson climb down from its monumentin Trafalgar Square and, with the voice of a living man, commence toaddress a London crowd. The verse which he sang ran as follows; to thefew who were aware, it solved the mystery of an important portion ofhis hidden early history:
"The Ophir on the Comstock Was rich as bread and honey; The Gould and Curry, farther south, Was raking out the money; The Savage and the others Had machinery all complete, When in came the Groshes And nipped all our feet."
When he had completed the verse, he had slowly gazed round and caughtthe look of amaze which had dawned in the countenances of his drunkenassociates. He had come to himself and grown sober. Suddenly anexpression of intense fear and hatred had shot into his eyes; withoutsaying another word, he had turned his back on the company and goneout into the early morning, floated his canoe, and fled as one who waspursued for his life. That verse had explained many of Beorn'seccentricities to one of those who had heard it, and he had told therest. Its singing had meant that, sometime in the early sixties, Beornhad taken part in the gold-rush to the Comstock, and had worked andprospected in the Nevada mines.
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p; This was his solitary glaring indiscretion in all the course of hisforty years spent in Keewatin. Though he had had many opportunitiessince then to repeat the event when under the influence of liquor, hehad allowed nothing more of any importance to escape his lips. He hadnever spent much time at God's Voice, only turning up at the end ofhis hunt to dispose of his catch of furs, after which he would vanishinto the wilderness again. He avoided on every occasion and wasrestless in the company of men. Very rarely was he encountered on hishunting-trips by any of the Indians or trappers. When once he had setout, he was not seen again until he returned of his own choice. Thefew times that he had been met, he was far to the northward, aboutthe point where the Last Chance and Forbidden Rivers join, whence theyflow on together till they tumble their crowded waters into thefreedom of the Hudson Bay. Because it was always in this locality thathe had been met, a rumour got abroad that, when his body was notdwelling among living men, it journeyed up the Forbidden River, toreunite with his exiled soul in the habitations of the dead.
Granger had listened to all these reports from time to time, but hehad paid small heed to them; he was certain in his own mind that,should he live solitarily in Keewatin for forty years, as Beorn haddone, a similar web of legend would be woven about himself. The man'sconduct was to him self-explanatory; in his early manhood he hadcommitted some passionate wrong, and had fled into the wilderness toescape the penalty, only to find that the executioner was there beforehim--the Silence, and that the enduring of loneliness was a more cruelpunishment than any that an earthly judge could have measured out. Theboat was one and the same which carried Beorn, Spurling, and himself.He promised himself that, by and by, as in the case of Peggy, he wouldbreak through Beorn's silence, get to know the man, plunge deep downtill he held his heart in his hand.
So he sat outside his store in the June sunlight, oblivious of himselfand the passage of Time, lifted high above the strife, andimpartially, like an ancient deity, reviewed the lives of men.
On the boarded floor of the shack he could hear the moccasined feet ofPeggy moving busily to and fro, as she prepared the meal. They hadnetted some white-fish over night, so their larder was freshlysupplied. On the edge of the pier, which ran out from the Point,Beorn sat, mending one of his traps. Along the top of the roof percheda row of whisky-jacks, most impertinent of birds, who, when a man hascarried his food almost to his mouth, will flash down, light on hishand, and, before he knows that they have arrived, filch away themorsel. Somewhere across the river a whippoorwill kept on uttering itsplaintive cry, as it were Beorn's lost soul come back, pleadinginsistently for permission to take up its residence in his body onceagain. And over against the farther bank a brood of yellow ducklingsswam in and out among the rushes, hidden behind which their motherwatched and waited. The noon came on apace, the shadows shortened, andeverything grew silent; over forest and river a restful stillnesssettled down. If the Last Chance would always look like that it wouldbe almost habitable. Had it been placed in any country where therewere men, it would be considered beautiful just now. Ah, well, afterhe had been married a few years, he would have his children runninghither and thither, laughing and chattering, about the Point; then itwould be in his own choice to make of his environment what he liked.Gazing whimsically forward to such a time he could conceive that, werehe given the opportunity to return to civilisation, by some curiousturn of the wheel of fortune, he might prefer to stay; that such anopportunity might be possible, it would first be necessary that heshould have been acquitted from all suspicion concerning the death ofStrangeways.
It was easy to be optimistic on such a day; there was a cleanness ofyouth about the appearance of this newly awakened world which reactedon the watcher's mind.
Peggy had come out from the shack and was seated on the threshold;even she was conscious of a certain elation, for she was humming toherself one of those endless, tuneless, barbaric Indian airs whichonly take on the pretence of music when they are assisted by thestamping of many feet, and the clapping of many hands. When Grangerturned his head in her direction, she lowered her eyes, and hersinging ceased. He had not meant that she should do that; he wasmerely wondering whether she was really a pretty girl and whether, ifhe were to take her back with him to England, she would be seen asbeautiful by London eyes. London eyes! What had they ever seen thatwas essentially beautiful and free? They could judge of the latestfashion in hats, and of the proper size of the laced-in waist; butwhat had they ever seen of the naked, sinuous grace of the human bodyas God made it and had meant that it should be seen? Of nakedness andsimplicity, and all things genuine, the civilised man had been taughtto be ashamed. No, no, to-day, in the sunshine, he felt sure that hewould not return to the insincerity, artificiality, and theblinkered-eyes of the town, were he given his choice. He wanted tobreathe cleanness, and to see God's hand at work, and to be _a man_;in London, or any other city, individuality and all these things wouldbe denied. He could be very happy now, he believed; now that he wasnot lonely any longer, because he had a wife. He wished that he couldfind a language in which to tell her these things. But he feared tospeak; he knew that as yet, just returned from the winter-trail, shewould not understand.
While he had been thinking, she had slowly raised her eyes; she wasnot looking at him, but northeast, down-river, toward the bend.Turning suddenly, he caught the direction of her gaze. Glancing downto the pier, he discovered that Beorn's eyes were also turned thatway. What were they waiting for? What were they anticipating? Was itthe return of Eyelids that made them so expectant? During the pastfourteen days he had often caught them thus waiting and gazing, asthough stoically prepared for news of whatever kind. He suspected thatthey had some secret which they were not willing to share withhim--this would account to an extent for Peggy's reticence. But whatsecrets of importance could they have, dwelling as they did on theLast Chance? Probably Eyelids' delay was only a matter of traps andfurs which had been cached. Then, as he watched Peggy, he saw a lookpartly of fear, partly of bewilderment, spread over her face. Sheglanced down to her father; he was still gazing in the same direction,towards the bend, and she, seeing him rise to his feet and wave hishand, following his example, also rose up and waved. Granger was onhis feet immediately, that so he might see more clearly; turning hiseyes down-river, he watched steadfastly in the direction in which thefather and daughter gazed. He saw nothing that was not customary; itseemed to him that he must have looked too late.
"What is it, Peggy?" he broke out.
She swung round slowly, giving herself time to make her faceexpressionless; it was evident that she had forgotten his presence inher excitement.
"Nothing," she said, and turning about, passed into the darkness ofthe house.
Granger did not like it. When there are only three of you, one of whomis your wife, to whom you have been married only a fortnight, it isnot pleasant to be the one left out. He had thought at first that theymight be on the lookout for York boats, which might soon be expectedto pass by on their way from the House of the Crooked Creek to God'sVoice. But one does not wave his hand to a York boat which is not yetin sight. It seemed certain to him now that Eyelids was in thevicinity, signalling to them secret information, which they were eagerto keep from himself. Had they stumbled across the grave ofStrangeways, and wondered what it meant? A grave more or less inKeewatin does not usually trouble a living man; nevertheless, he oughtto have told them about it and have explained about Spurling. He wouldtell them his secret presently, and get them to tell him theirs inexchange. In the meanwhile, he would watch the bend.
There was no sound of footsteps in the shack. Turning his head veryslowly, so that it could hardly be seen to turn, he could perceive theshadow of Peggy out of the tail of his eye from where he sat; she wasstanding behind the window, a little way back from the panes so thathe might not discover her, and she was also watching. If this systemof spying were to go on for long, there would soon be an end to hisdreams of freedom and marital peace at Murder Point. Already he wasinclined to revi
se his opinion as to what he would do, were he giventhe opportunity for escape to a becitied and more populous land. Themore he thought about it, the more certain he became that he wouldchoose to escape. A half-breed girl who was almost pure Indian in hermanners--and Peggy seemed that to him now--could never be a fittingcompanion for an educated white man. He'd been something more than afool to marry her. The entire business was a farce, from start tofinish; and then he remembered that nearly every farce ends insomeone's tragedy.
He was interrupted in his bitterness by a shout from up-river. Whilethey had been all engaged in watching the northeast, a swift canoe,carrying two men, had stolen in from the west. It was approaching thepier; before he had time to get down, its occupants had landed andwere shaking hands with Beorn effusively, emitting low, hoarse criesof "Watchee. Watchee."
As he descended the mound, he scanned their travelling outfit, that hemight guess their errand. They carried no cargo, nor was their canoethe broad-built, slate-coloured conveyance of the Hudson Bay Company;it was birch-bark, constructed for speed, and carried in the bow aminiature sail. They must be the bearers of a letter, or of importantverbal tidings.
He shook hands with them in silence, nor did he ask them at once todeliver to him their message, well knowing from unhappy experiencethat to attempt to hurry an Indian is to cause him to delay. Instead,he set about doing them favours, that so they might be the morewilling to oblige him. He led the way up to his store and, displayingto them his wares, told them to choose themselves each a present.There were gaudy shawls, beflowered muslin dress-lengths, rifles,watches, clocks, suits of clothing and city head-gear, probablymisfits or the refuse of a bankrupt's stock which Wrath had boughtcheap, all of them long since out of date; there were even battereddolls and children's toys lying about mixed up with canned goods andgroceries--a miscellaneous array. Arranged along one wall were all theimplements of the trapper's trade and the articles of common use,such as kettles, pans, enamel cups and plates, coils of rope, etc.With the inborn thriftlessness of the Indian, at the articles ofessential worth they only glanced, after which they turned aside fromthem. Not until an hour had passed did one of the men make up his mindto take a top-hat for his present, broad-brimmed and dusty, from offwhich most of the silk was worn--a relic, perhaps, of the outsiderespectability with which one of the Winnipeg partners had been wontto clothe himself years since, when he went to church and still hadhopes that one day he might live to see himself an honest man. But thesecond visitor could find nothing that met with his approval; now thathis companion was owner of the top-hat, he felt that of all things,sacks of flour, rifles, sails, knives, that was the one and onlypresent which he would have chosen. Granger was losing patience,though he did not dare to show it. There were so many tidings whichthat letter, if letter it was, might contain--news concerningSpurling, Strangeways, his mother, Mordaunt. To cut his suspense shortby a few minutes he was willing to pay almost any price. Still theIndian procrastinated and seemed to be more and more inclined tobecome obstinate and offended. Transgressing the usual rule of atrading-store, he had seated himself on a pile of nets and wasstriking a match to light his pipe.
Granger gazed round his stock in desperation, endeavouring to discoversomething, whatever its value, which would be acceptable.
A sudden inspiration came to him. Reaching up to a shelf, he took downan oblong box, about nine inches in length, adjusted several parts ofit on the inside, wound it up with a key which was in the back, andset it on the counter. A whirring, coughing noise was heard, as thougha creature hidden inside was clearing its throat to prevent itselffrom choking; after a few seconds of this, a voice, so thin andwhispering that it seemed impossible that it should ever have comefrom a person who owned a chest, commenced to sing with an atrociousperversion of the vowels,
"Sife in the h'arms of Jesus, Sife on 'is gentle breast, There by 'is love o'ershadowed Sweetly my soul shall rest."
He cut it short at the end of one verse, for he could endure no moreof that--the tears were in his eyes. Ugly as the dialect was in itselfand often as it had revolted him in former days, there was somethinghauntingly pathetic about it when combined with religion, and sung inKeewatin by that weakling voice; the London voice, shut up in themildewed box, was an exile like himself. When he was a child, he hadheard his mother sing those words, and that was at a time when hebelieved in the faith which they expressed. For him there was now noovershadowing God--only a careless, and perhaps unconscious, tyrant.
But he had accomplished his purpose, for the Indian was won over andbeaming with pleasure. Gramo-phones had not been long introduced intothe district as articles of trade; as yet only the chiefs and mostsuccessful trappers could purchase them. To own one was equivalent tokeeping a butler in civilisation. Seeing the greed in the man's eyes,he told him that he could have it so soon as he had declared hisbusiness and delivered his message.
This promise caused the oracle to work. Diving his hand beneath hisshirt, the Indian drew forth a pouch which was slung about his neck,and, opening it, produced from it a letter. Then snatching up hisplay-thing, he and his companion, proud in his top-hat, went outsideto build their fire, and to make their camp, leaving the trader tohimself.
Granger rose up and made fast the door behind them, so that he mightbe undisturbed. Now that he held within his hand the solution to theproblem of their visit, he was willing to postpone the fullerknowledge lest it should make him sad. Sitting himself down on theedge of the counter he drew forth his pipe and filled it slowly; andwhen that was done, still more slowly commenced searching for a match,found it at last and kindled the tobacco. He looked at the address; itwas in Wrath's handwriting, but the envelope bore no stamp--it hadevidently been sent up by him in haste over the entire six hundred andeighty miles by private carrier. That meant that the news wasimportant, for such means of transit were expensive. Breaking theseal, he found a letter enclosed, which had been addressed to him incare of Wrath; it also was unstamped, but it bore in the left-handcorner the name of his mother's firm of London solicitors. About itwas folded a note from Wrath himself, which read:
DEAR GRANGER,
The enclosed letter arrived here by yesterday's mail. It was accompanied by a letter to myself from some London lawyers, urging me to deliver it into your hands in the quickest possible time, regardless of expense. Carrying out my instructions, I am sending it up to you by private messengers; heaven knows how long it would take to get to you, were I to send it any other way. Of course I shall dock the cost of its transit from your salary, which means that if you don't have a good year's trade, I sha'n't have much to pay you.
Yours, CHARLES E. WRATH.
His mother's lawyers! That meant that his mother had relented, and wasanxious to have him home again. His heart leapt at the thought--andthen he remembered that there were Peggy and the death of Strangewaysas obstacles to his return.
He undid the wrapping of the lawyer's letter and, as he read, theblood went from his face. It was to tell him, in formal language, thathis mother was dead, and that, if he would fulfil certain conditions,he was to become heir to the property which she had left. The estatewas valued at fifteen thousand pounds. The conditions were, that hewas to return to England within four months from the writing of thisletter, and take up his permanent residence there. If for any reasonhe should be unwilling or unable to agree to these terms, the moneywas to be divided among certain charities which his mother had namedin her will. That was all. So the chance for which he had waited hadcome at last, and he was unable to take it--and his mother was dead!
He sat very still and motionless. The flies drummed against thepanes--they also were captives. Outside, across the river, thewhippoorwill continued to cry, demanding entrance into Beorn's bodybecause it was his soul. Peggy came to the door, tried to open it,rattled the latch and announced that the meal was ready: he took nonotice of her, and presently she went away.
For hours he sat like aman of stone, making no pretence at thinking; of one fact only was heaware, that with both hands, for the want of a little patience, he hadthrown away all his chances of return. He was lost--lost--lost.
As the hours dragged by the flies grew tired of trying to escape, andthe whippoorwill of calling; the whole world fell silent. He wishedthat the darkness might come, so that he might hide himself; but inJune time, on the Last Chance River, it is never utterly night. Whenthe sun has sunk from the sky the sunset lingers, gradually workinground toward the dawn; through the summer months, as if to make amendsfor the long dark winter days, it always leaves a little torch ofpromise burning somewhere along the horizon. The perpetual brightnessof the world outside seemed to jeer him; it was as careless in its wayas the winter had been of the solitariness of his soul.
But at last the shadows lengthened in the store, and through thedusty, cobwebbed window he could see that the sky had grown indigo andgrey. So his mother was dead, and he would never look on her again.They had not understood one another, and now, with whatever longing hemight desire it, he could never explain. He had abandoned her for thesake of his father's quest, that he might seek out El Dorado--and thiswas the wage of his sacrifice, thirty, perhaps forty long years oflife at Murder Point, shared in the company of a squaw, a hurriedburial one day, and an unnoticed grave.
He could not accept the conditions set forth in the lawyer's letterand return to London in the two months which remained--there were theMounted Police to prevent him, and there was Peggy. He had chosen hisown path in life, and he must follow it without complaint to thebitter end. He tried to think himself back into the opinion of themorning, when he had fancied that he preferred the Last Chance Riverto any other place. He could not think that now; he knew that it wasno more than a consoling lie. Then he ceased to think and grew drowsy.
He was aroused by the faint and far-away sound of singing. The duskhad gathered and it must be nearing midnight. He was stiff fromsitting so long in a cramped position; he rose to his feet and rubbedhis eyes. The window was ruddy with the shifting light of the Indians'camp-fire; occasionally, when the flame shot up, its brightness stoleacross the ceiling and illumined the walls of the store. He listened;the tune that was sung seemed to him familiar and puzzled him, for hewas not fully awake. Drifting through the stillness of the northerntwilight, at an hour when even the beasts of the forests held theirbreath because of God's nearness and His solemnity, there reached hisears the vulgar strutting tones of a music-hall singer's voice:
"As I walked through Leicester Square With my most magnificent air, You should hear the girls declare 'Why, he's a millionaire;' And they turn around and sigh, And they wink the other eye, 'He's the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo.'"
The coarse suggestiveness of the words, the cheap passions which theyimplied, the leer and pomposity with which they had been uttered bythe comedian, the unhealthy, narrow-chested, pavement-bred audienceby which the effort had been greeted with applause, the totaluncleanness and unnaturalness of city-life, came vividly home to him.
He did not stop to reason, or to trace his repugnance to itssource--to his native hostility to the impurity and strengthlessnessof multitudes of creatures who arrogantly boast that they arecivilised--he was too angry for that. He was only conscious that avain and impertinent echo of the town had, by his instrumentality,found its way into and vilified the secret refuge of God's austerity.Tearing back the bolts from the storehouse door and lifting the latch,he rushed out into the cool half-light.
Half-way between himself and the pier he saw the Indians' camp-fire,with four figures squatting round, two of which were Peggy's andBeorn's. Running down the descent, he burst into their midst, seizedthe offending gramophone and crushed it down with his heel into theflames. His foot was scorched, but he did not care for that. When hiswork was accomplished, turning savagely upon his spectators he said,"I'll teach you to offend God's silence," and strode away, leavingthem staring after him through the shadows, terrified and amazed.Suddenly he returned; there was a gentler look upon his face. Going upto where Peggy sat, he took her by the hand, and, without a word, ledher out of the circle of firelight towards the shack.
Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin Page 12