by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE TRAIL TO THE SEA
Sec. 1
One astonishing afternoon in January a man came out of the wilderness toLonely Hut. He was a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down theGreen River and across the Height of Land to Sea Lake. He arrived in asort of shy silence, and squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow,"he said, "and little fur."
After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten and drunk, hispurpose in coming thawed out. He explained he had just come on to themto see how they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he had a lineof traps, about a hundred and twenty miles in length. The nearest trapin his path before he turned northward over the divide was a good fortymiles down the river. He had come on from there. Just to have a look.His name, he said, was Louis Napoleon Partington. He had carried a bigpack, a rifle and a dead marten,--they lay beside him--and out of hisshapeless mass of caribou skins and woolen clothing and wrappings,peeped a genial, oily, brown face, very dirty, with a strand ofblue-black hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly smile,and little, squeezed-up eyes.
Conversation developed. There had been doubts of his linguistic range atfirst, but he had an understanding expression, and his English seemedguttural rather than really bad.
He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's leg; was shown it, andfelt it; he interpolated thick and whistling noises to show howcompletely he followed their explanations, and then suddenly he began aspeech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem but the dam of a greatreservoir of mixed and partly incomprehensible English. He complimentedMarjorie so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as to produce apause when he had done. "Yes," he said, and nodded to button up thewhole. He sucked his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Traffordspoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said.
("I thought, perhaps----" whispered Louis Napoleon.)
"Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with you. Why not? We can geta sledge over the snow now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge--like_this_. See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's oldarrangement into view. "We shall bring all the stuff we can down withus, grub, blankets--not the tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot ofthe heavy gear."
"You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon.
"I _said_ leave the tent."
"And you'd have to leave ... some of those tins."
"Nearly all of them."
"And the ammunition, there;--except just a little."
"Just enough for the journey down."
"Perhaps a gun?"
"No, not a gun. Though, after all,--well, we'd return one of the guns.Give it you to bring back here."
"Bring back here?"
"If you liked."
For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently silent. When he spoke hisvoice was guttural with emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully andpaused, and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you leave willbe mine? Eh?"
Trafford said that was the idea.
Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face preserved its Indian calm.
"I will take you right to Hammond's," he said, "Where they have dogs.And then I can come back here...."
Sec. 2
They had talked out nearly every particular of their return before theyslept that night; they yarned away three hours over the first generousmeal that any one of them had eaten for many weeks. Louis Napoleonstayed in the hut as a matter of course, and reposed with snores andchoking upon Marjorie's sledge and within a yard of her. It struck heras she lay awake and listened that the housemaids in Sussex Square wouldhave thought things a little congested for a lady's bedroom, and thenshe reflected that after all it wasn't much worse than a crowdedcarriage in an all-night train from Switzerland. She tried to count howmany people there had been in that compartment, and failed. How stuffythat had been--the smell of cheese and all! And with that, after a dreamthat she was whaling and had harpooned a particularly short-winded whaleshe fell very peacefully into oblivion.
Next day was spent in the careful preparation of the two sledges. Theyintended to take a full provision for six weeks, although they reckonedthat with good weather they ought to be down at Hammond's in four.
The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon would not look at thesledges or packing. Instead he held a kind of religious service whichconsisted partly in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily oldNew Testament he produced, a selected passage from the book ofCorinthians, and partly in moaning rather than singing several hymns. Hewas rather disappointed that they did not join in with him. In theafternoon he heated some water, went into the tent with it and it wouldappear partially washed his face. In the evening, after they had supped,he discussed religion, being curious by this time about their beliefsand procedure.
He spread his mental and spiritual equipment before them very artlessly.Their isolation and their immense concentration on each other had madethem sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the brokenEnglish and the queer tangential starts into new topics of this dirtymongrel creature with the keenest appreciation of its quality. It wasinconsistent, miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It was astouching as the medley in the pocket of a dead schoolboy. He wassuperstitious and sceptical and sensual and spiritual, and very, veryearnest. The things he believed, even if they were just beliefs aboutthe weather or drying venison or filling pipes, he believed withemotion. He flushed as he told them. For all his intellectual muddlethey felt he knew how to live honestly and die if need be very finely.
He was more than a little distressed at their apparent ignorance of thetruths of revealed religion as it is taught in the Moravian schools uponthe coast, and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more carefuland infinitely more sincere religious teaching than either Trafford orMarjorie. For a time the missionary spirit inspired him, and then hequite forgot his solicitude for their conversion in a number ofincreasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen, illustrating atfirst the extreme dangers of any departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism,but presently becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty oflife. Thence he branched off to the general topic of life upon the coastand the relative advantages of "planter" and fisherman.
And then with a kindling eye he spoke of women, and how that some day hewould marry. His voice softened, and he addressed himself moreparticularly to Marjorie. He didn't so much introduce the topic of thelady as allow the destined young woman suddenly to pervade hisdiscourse. She was, it seemed, a servant, an Esquimaux girl at theMoravian Mission station at Manivikovik. He had been plighted to her fornine years. He described a gramophone he had purchased down at PortDupre and brought back to her three hundred miles up the coast--itseemed to Marjorie an odd gift for an Esquimaux maiden--and he gave hisviews upon its mechanism. He said God was with the man who invented thegramophone "truly." They would have found one a very great relief to thetediums of their sojourn at Lonely Hut. The gramophone he had given hisbetrothed possessed records of the Rev. Capel Gumm's preaching and ofMadame Melba's singing, a revival hymn called "Sowing the Seed," and acomic song--they could not make out his pronunciation of the title--thatmade you die with laughter. "It goes gobble, gobble, gobble," he said,with a solemn appreciative reflection of those distant joys.
"It's good to be jolly at times," he said with his bright eyes scanningMarjorie's face a little doubtfully, as if such ideas were better leftfor week-day expression.
Sec. 3
Their return was a very different journey from the toilsome ascent ofthe summer. An immense abundance of snow masked the world, snow thatmade them regret acutely they had not equipped themselves with ski. Withski and a good circulation, a man may go about Labrador in winter, sixtimes more easily than by the canoes and slow trudging of summer travel.As it was they were glad of their Canadian snow shoes. One needs onlyshelters after the Alpine Club hut fashion, and all that vast solitarycountry would be open in the wintertime. Its shortest day is no shorterthan the shortest day in
Cumberland or Dublin.
This is no place to tell of the beauty and wonder of snow and ice, thesoft contours of gentle slopes, the rippling of fine snow under a steadywind, the long shadow ridges of shining powder on the lee of trees andstones and rocks, the delicate wind streaks over broad surfaces like themarks of a chisel in marble, the crests and cornices, the vividbrightness of edges in the sun, the glowing yellowish light on sunlitsurfaces, the long blue shadows, the flush of sunset and sunrise and thepallid unearthly desolation of snow beneath the moon. Nor need thebroken snow in woods and amidst tumbled stony slopes be described, northe vast soft overhanging crests on every outstanding rock beside theicebound river, nor the huge stalactites and stalagmites of green-blueice below the cliffs, nor trees burdened and broken by frost and snow,nor snow upon ice, nor the blue pools at mid-day upon the surface of theice-stream. Across the smooth wind-swept ice of the open tarns theywould find a growth of ice flowers, six-rayed and complicated, moreabundant and more beautiful than the Alpine summer flowers.
But the wind was very bitter, and the sun had scarcely passed its zenithbefore the thought of fuel and shelter came back into their minds.
As they approached Partington's tilt, at the point where his trappingground turned out of the Green River gorge, he became greatly obsessedby the thought of his traps. He began to talk of all that he might findin them, all he hoped to find, and the "dallars" that might ensue. Theyslept the third night, Marjorie within and the two men under the lee ofthe little cabin, and Partington was up and away before dawn to a traptowards the ridge. He had infected Marjorie and Trafford with asympathetic keenness, but when they saw his killing of a marten that wasstill alive in its trap, they suddenly conceived a distaste fortrapping.
They insisted they must witness no more. They would wait while he wentto a trap....
"Think what he's doing!" said Trafford, as they sat together under thelee of a rock waiting for him. "We imagined this was a free,simple-souled man leading an unsophisticated life on the very edge ofhumanity, and really he is as much a dependant of your woman's world,Marjorie, as any sweated seamstress in a Marylebone slum. Lord! how farthose pretty wasteful hands of women reach! All these poor broken andstarving beasts he finds and slaughters are, from the point of view ofour world, just furs. Furs! Poor little snarling unfortunates! Theirpelts will be dressed and prepared because women who have never dreamtof this bleak wilderness desire them. They will get at last into RegentStreet shops, and Bond Street shops, and shops in Fifth Avenue and inParis and Berlin, they will make delightful deep muffs, with scent andlittle bags and powder puffs and all sorts of things tucked away inside,and long wraps for tall women, and jolly little frames of soft fur forpretty faces, and dainty coats and rugs for expensive little babies inKensington Gardens."...
"I wonder," reflected Marjorie, "if I could buy one perhaps. As amemento."
He looked at her with eyes of quiet amusement.
"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't mean to! The old Eve!"
"The old Adam is with her," said Trafford. "He's wanting to give ither.... We don't cease to be human, Madge, you know, because we've gotan idea now of just where we are. I wonder, which would you like? I daresay we could arrange it."
"No," said Marjorie, and thought. "It would be jolly," she said. "Allthe same, you know--and just to show you--I'm not going to let you buyme that fur."
"I'd like to," said Trafford.
"No," said Marjorie, with a decision that was almost fierce. "I mean it.I've got more to do than you in the way of reforming. It's just becausealways I've let my life be made up of such little things that I mustn't.Indeed I mustn't. Don't make things hard for me."
He looked at her for a moment. "Very well," he said. "But I'd have likedto."...
"You're right," he added, five seconds later.
"Oh! I'm right."
Sec. 4
One day Louis Napoleon sent them on along the trail while he went up themountain to a trap among the trees. He rejoined them--not as his customwas, shouting inaudible conversation for the last hundred yards or so,but in silence. They wondered at that, and at the one clumsy gesturethat flourished something darkly grey at them. What had happenedto the man? Whatever he had caught he was hugging it as onehugs a cat, and stroking it. "Ugh!" he said deeply, drawing near. "Oh!"A solemn joy irradiated his face, and almost religious ecstasy foundexpression.
He had got a silver fox, a beautifully marked silver fox, the best luckof Labrador! One goes for years without one, in hope, and when it comes,it pays the trapper's debts, it clears his life--for years!
They tried poor inadequate congratulation....
As they sat about the fire that night a silence came upon LouisNapoleon. It was manifest that his mind was preoccupied. He got up,walked about, inspected the miracle of fur that had happened to him,returned, regarded them. "'M'm," he said, and stroked his chin with hisforefinger. A certain diffidence and yet a certain dignity of assurancemingled in his manner. It wasn't so much a doubt of his own correctnessas of some possible ignorance of the finer shades on their part thatmight embarrass him. He coughed a curt preface, and intimated he had arequest to make. Behind the Indian calm of his face glowed tremendousfeeling, like the light of a foundry furnace shining through chinks inthe door. He spoke in a small flat voice, exercising great self-control.His wish, he said, in view of all that had happened, was a littlething.... This was nearly a perfect day for him, and one thing onlyremained.... "Well," he said, and hung. "Well," said Trafford. Heplunged. Just simply this. Would they give him the brandy bottle and lethim get drunk? Mr. Grenfell was a good man, a very good man, but he hadmade brandy dear--dear beyond the reach of common men altogether--alongthe coast....
He explained, dear bundle of clothes and dirt! that he was alwaysperfectly respectable when he was drunk.
Sec. 5
It seemed strange to Trafford that now that Marjorie was going home, awild impatience to see her children should possess her. So long as ithad been probable that they would stay out their year in Labrador, thatseparation had seemed mainly a sentimental trouble; now at times it waslike an animal craving. She would talk of them for hours at a stretch,and when she was not talking he could see her eyes fixed ahead, and knewthat she was anticipating a meeting. And for the first time it seemedthe idea of possible misadventure troubled her....
They reached Hammond's in one and twenty days from Lonely Hut, threedays they had been forced to camp because of a blizzard, and threebecause Louis Napoleon was rigidly Sabbatarian. They parted from himreluctantly, and the next day Hammond's produced its dogs, twelve stoutbut extremely hungry dogs, and sent the Traffords on to the Green Riverpulp-mills, where there were good beds and a copious supply of hotwater. Thence they went to Manivikovik, and thence the new Marconistation sent their inquiries home, inquiries that were answered next daywith matter-of-fact brevity: "Everyone well, love from all."
When the operator hurried with that to Marjorie she received itoff-handedly, glanced at it carelessly, asked him to smoke, remarkedthat wireless telegraphy was a wonderful thing, and then, in the midstof some unfinished commonplace about the temperature, broke down andwept wildly and uncontrollably....
Sec. 6
Then came the long, wonderful ride southward day after day along thecoast to Port Dupre, a ride from headland to headland across the frozenbays behind long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt and yelpedas they ran. Sometimes over the land the brutes shirked and loitered andcalled for the whip; they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; butacross the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill the komaticchased their waving tails. The sledges swayed and leapt depressions, andshot athwart icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and wrapped totheir noses, had all the sensations then of hunting an unknown quarrybehind a pack of wolves. The snow blazed under the sun, out to seabeyond the ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air theybreathed as a sort of joyous hunger.
One day their teams insisted upon racing.
Marj
orie's team was the heavier, her driver more skillful, and hersledge the lighter, and she led in that wild chase from start to finish,but ever and again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almostlevel. Once, as he came alongside, she heard him laughing joyously.
"Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old donkey cart?"
Her team yawed away, and as he swept near again, behind his pack ofwhimpering, straining, furious dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know,that old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and green they metoverhead! You know! When you and I had our first talk together! In thelane. It wasn't so fast as this, eh?"...
Sec. 7
At Port Dupre they stayed ten days--days that Marjorie could only maketolerable by knitting absurd garments for the children (her knitting wasatrocious), and then one afternoon they heard the gun of the _Grenfell_,the new winter steamer from St. John's, signalling as it came in throughthe fog, very slowly, from that great wasteful world of men and womenbeyond the seaward grey.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been silentlyrepaired. Words with variable spelling have been retained. The followingspelling and typographical emendations have been made:
p. 22: broken text "were they living and moving realities" was completed to "were they living and moving realities when those others were at home again?" p. 34: protruberant replaced with protuberant ("large protuberant") p. 38: pay replaced with play ("what the play was") p. 40: Majorie replaced with Marjorie ("Marjorie loved singing") p. 40: feut replaced with felt ("that he felt") p. 60: tete-a-tete replaced with tete-a-tete ("silent tete-a-tete") p. 70: foundamental replaced with fundamental ("three fundamental things") p. 76: fina replaced with final ("working for her final") p. 88: challenege replaced with challenge ("challenge inattentive auditors") p. 92: presumbly replaced with presumably ("presumably Billy's") p. 115: ino replaced with into ("into the air") p. 141: himse_f replaced with himself ("ask himself") p. 147: contradication replaced with contradiction ("any sort of contradiction") p. 167: calcalculated replaced with calculated ("indeed calculated") p. 223: hestitated replaced with hesitated ("She hesitated") p. 230: intriques replaced with intrigues ("culminations and intrigues") p. 242: America replaced with American ("American minor poet") p. 265: acquiscent replaced with acquiescent ("by no means acquiescent") p. 313: It's replaced with Its ("Its end was the Agenda Club") p. 316: regime replaced with regime ("the new regime") p. 341: number of section 15 replaced with 16 p. 342: gestulated replaced with gesticulated ("Solomonson gesticulated") p. 342: The paragraphs starting with: "It was all" and "You said good-bye" were merged p. 346: The paragraphs starting with: "They aren't arranged" and "They'd get everything" were merged p. 349: devine replaced with divine ("by right divine of genius") p. 368: presumptious replaced with presumptuous ("extremely presumptuous") p. 376: mispelling replaced with misspelling ("as much misspelling as") p. 376: The replaced with They ("They gave dinners") p. 378: The replaced with They ("They could play") p. 395: Docter replaced with Doctor ("Doctor Codger") p. 396: authoritive replaced with authoritative ("authoritative imagine") p. 399: shuldered replaced with shouldered ("As he shouldered") p. 403: wet replaced with went ("Trafford's eyes went from") p. 405: subthe replaced with subtle ("skilful, subtle appreciation") p. 426: fine replaced with find ("find God") p. 427: chidren replaced with children ("of having children at all") p. 441: serere replaced with serene ("brightly serene") p. 442: tundura replaced with tundra ("wide stretches of tundra") p. 457: rucksac replaced with rucksack ("chunks of dry paper, the rucksack") p. 481: realties replaced with realities ("expression of the realities") p. 485: the duplicate phrase "He stared at her" was removed p. 493: think replaced with thing ("salvation is a collective thing") p. 504: realty replaced with reality ("of sense and reality") p. 509: greal replaced with great ("a great lump") p. 512: caluclated replaced with calculated ("now they calculated") p. 515: travellel replaced with travelled ("I had travelled") p. 518: gutteral replaced with guttural ("seemed guttural") p. 520: gutteral replaced with guttural ("his voice was guttural") p. 524: slaughers replaced with slaughters ("he finds and slaughters")