The Leithen Stories
Page 82
‘After that Easter Sunday his body went fast downhill. I do not think he suffered much, except from weakness. His manner became gentler than ever, and his eyes used often to have the pleased look of a good child. He smiled, too, often, as if he saw the humours of life. The huskies – never a very good-tempered pack, though now they were well fed – became his friends, and one or two of the older beasts would accompany him out of doors with a ridiculous air of being a bodyguard. One cold night, I remember, one of them suddenly ensconced itself in an empty box outside the presbytery door. I can still hear L. talking to it. “I know what you’re saying, old fellow. ‘I’m a poor dog and my master’s a poor man. I’ve never had a box like this to sleep in. Please don’t turn me out.’” So there it remained – the first time I have seen a husky with ambitions to become a house dog.
‘He watched eagerly for the signs of spring. The first was the return of the snow buntings, shimmering grey flocks which had wintered in the south. These he would follow with his eyes as they fluttered over the pine woods or spread themselves like a pied shadow on the snow. Then the mountain we call Baldface suddenly shed most of its winter covering, the noise of avalanches punctuated the night, and the upper ribs were disclosed, black as ink in the daytime, but at evening flaming into the most amazing hues of rose and purple. I knew that he had been an alpinist of note, and in these moments I fancy he was recapturing some of the activities of his youth. But there was no regret in his eyes. He was giving thanks for another vision of the Glory of God.
‘The last time he was able to go abroad Monsieur Galliard and I assisted him down to the edge of the lake. There was still a broad selvedge of ice – what the Canadian French call batture – but in the middle the ice was cracking, and there were lanes of water to reflect the pale blue sky. Also the streams were being loosed from their winter stricture. One could hear them talking under their bonds, and in one or two places the force of water had cleared the boulders and made pools and cascades … A wonderful thing happened. A bull moose, very shaggy and lean, came out of the forest and stood in an open shallow at a stream’s mouth. It drank its fill and then raised its ugly head, shook it and stared into the sunset. Crystal drops fell from its mouth, and the setting sun transfigured the beast into something magical, a beneficent dragon out of a fairy tale. I shall never forget L.’ s delight. It was as if he had his last sight of the beauty of the earth, and found in it a pledge of the beauty of Paradise; though I doubt if there will be anything like a bull-moose in the Heavenly City … Three days later he died in his sleep. There was no burial, for Monsieur Galliard wished the interment to be at his old home in Quebec. The arrival of two of the R.C.M.P. made it possible to convey the body to Fort Bannerman, whence it would be easy to complete the journey by air.
‘Such is my story of the end of a true man-at-arms whose memory will always abide with me. He was not of the Church, but beyond doubt he died in grace. In his last hours he found not peace only, but beatitude. Dona aeternam quietem Domine et lux perpetua luceat ei.’
20
THE chief beauty of the Canadian spring is its air of fragility. The tints are all delicate; the sky is the palest blue, the green is faint and tender, with none of the riot of an English May. The airy distances seem infinite, for the mind compels the eye to build up other lands beyond the thin-pencilled horizons.
A man and a woman were sitting on the greening turf by the well of the Clairefontaine stream. The man wore a tweed suit of a city cut, but he had the colour and build of a countryman. The woman had taken off her hat, and a light wind was ruffling her hair. Beneath them was a flat pad of ground, and on it, commanding the sources of both the north and south-flowing rivulets, was a wooden cross which seemed to mark a grave.
The eyes of both were turned northward where the wooded hills, rising sometimes to rocky scarps, shepherded the streams to the Arctic watershed.
Galliard slowly filled a pipe. His face had filled out, and his jaw was firmer. There were now no little lines of indecision about his mouth. Also his eyes were quiet and content.
For a little the two did not speak. Their eyes followed the slender north-flowing stream. It dropped almost at once into a narrow ravine, but it was possible to mark where that ravine joined a wider valley, and where that valley clove its way into the dark tangle of forested mountains.
‘What happens away up there?’ the woman asked. ‘I should like to follow the water.’
‘It becomes a river which breaks into the lowlands and wanders through muskegs and bush until it reaches the salt. Hudson’s Bay, you know. Dull, shallow tides at first, and then the true Arctic, ice-bound for most of the year. Away beyond are the barrens, and rivers of no name, and then the Polar Sea, and the country where only the white bear and the musk ox live. And at the end a great solitude. Some day we will go there together.’
‘You don’t fear it any more?’
‘No. It has become part of me, as close to me as my skin. I love it. It is myself. You see, I have made my peace with the North, faced up to it, defied it, and so won its blessing. Consider, my dear. The most vital forces of the world are in the North, in the men of the North, but only when they have annexed it. It kills those who run away from it.’
‘I see,’ she said after a long pause. ‘I know what you mean. I think I feel it … But the Sick Heart River! Wasn’t that a queer fancy?’
Galliard laughed.
‘It was the old habit of human nature to turn to magic. Lew Frizel wanted a short cut out of his perplexities. So did I, and I came under the spell of his madness. First I came here. Then I went to the Ghost River. Then I heard Lew’s story. I was looking for magic, you see. We both had sick hearts. But it was no good. The North will always call your bluff.’
‘And Leithen? He went there, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, and brought Lew away. Leithen didn’t have a sick heart. He was facing the North with clear eyes. He would always have won out.’
‘But he died!’
‘That was victory – absolute victory … But Leithen had a fleuve de rêve also. I suppose we all have. It was this little stream. That’s why we brought his body here. It is mine, too – and yours – the place we’ll always come back to when we want comforting.’
‘Which stream?’ she asked. ‘There are two.’
‘Both. One is the gate of the North and the other’s the gate of the world.’
She faced round and looked down the green cup of the Clairefontaine. It was a pleasant pastoral scene, with none of the wildness of the other – the white group of farm buildings in the middle distance and the patches of ploughland, and far beyond a blue shimmer which was the St Lawrence.
The woman laughed happily.
‘That is the way home,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is the way home – to our home, Felicity, which please God will never again be broken. I’ve a lot of atoning to do. The rest of my life cannot be long enough to make up to you for what you have suffered.’
She stroked his hair. ‘We’ll forget all that. We’re starting afresh, you know. This is a kind of honeymoon.’
She stopped and gazed for a little at the glen, which suddenly overflowed with a burst of sunlight.
‘It is also the way to the wars,’ she said gravely.
‘Yes, I’m bound for the wars. I don’t know where my battlefront will be. In Europe, perhaps, or maybe in New York or Washington. The North hasn’t sent me back to malinger.’
‘No, of course not. But, anyhow, we’re together – we’ll always be together.’
The two by a common impulse turned their eyes to the wooden cross on the lawn of turf. Galliard rose.
‘We must hurry, my dear. The road back is none too good.’
She seemed unwilling to go.
‘I feel rather sad, don’t you? You’re leaving your captain behind.’
Galliard turned to his wife, and she saw that in his eyes which made her smile.
‘I can’t feel sad,’ he said. ‘When I thi
nk of Leithen I feel triumphant. He fought a good fight, but he hasn’t finished his course. I remember what Father Duplessis said – he knew that he would die; but he knew also that he would live.’
About the Author
JOHN BUCHAN
John Buchan (1875–1940), had a long and successful literary and public career. He was educated in Glasgow, where his father was a Free Church minister in the Gorbals, but his childhood holidays were spent in the Scottish border country.
After graduating at Glasgow University, Buchan took a scholarship to Oxford where he wrote his first two historical novels while still an undergraduate. With interests in law and journalism, he worked for the British High Commission in South Africa at the end of the Boer War. Returning to London in 1903, he eventually became a director of Thomas Nelson the publishers. Buchan worked for the Ministry of Information during the First War, and also wrote a substantial history of the conflict. He became a Tory M.P. for the Scottish Universities from 1927 to 1935, in which year he was appointed Governor-General of Canada as Lord Tweedsmuir.
Buchan took pride in the craft of storytelling and he is probably best known for his Richard Hannay thrillers, with six titles ranging from The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915, to The Island of Sheep in 1936. His other fiction includes John Burnet of Barns (1898); Prester John (1910); The Power-House (1913); Huntingtower (1922); John Macnab (1925); The Dancing Floor (1926); Witch Wood (1927); and Sick Heart River, published posthumously in 1941.
Buchan’s health had never been strong, yet he achieved an enormous literary output in the course of his life, with no fewer than 30 novels and over 60 non-fiction books, including fine biographies of Walter Scott and James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose, whom he greatly admired. His autobiography, Memory Hold-the-door, was published in the year of his death from a cerebral stroke.
Copyright
This edition first published as a Canongate Classic in 2000
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
The Power-House first published in 1913
John Macnab first published in 1925
The Dancing Floor first published in 1926
Sick Heart River first published in 1941
This digital edition first published in 2009
by Canongate Books
Copyright © The Rt Hon. Lord Tweedsmuir of Elsfield
Introduction copyright © Christopher Harvie, 2000
The publishers gratefully acknowledge general subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the Canongate Classics series and a specific grant towards the publication of this title
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 557 6
www.meetatthegate.com