The Honor of the Big Snows

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE RENUNCIATION

  Jan was glad when the evening came, and was gone. Not until Jean andIowaka had said good night with Croisset and his wife, and both Cumminsand Melisse had gone to their rooms, did he find himself relieved ofthe tension under which he had struggled during all of that night'smerry-making in the cabin.

  From the first he knew that his nerves were strung by some strange andindefinable sensation that was growing within him--something which hecould hardly have explained at first, but which swiftly took form andmeaning, and oppressed him more as the hours flew by. Almost fiercelyhe strove to fight back the signs of it from his face and voice. Neverhad he played as on this night. His violin leaped with life, his voicerose high in the wild forest songs of Jean de Gravois and Croisset, hesprang aloft in the caribou dance until the tips of his fingers touchedthe log beams overhead; and yet there was none of the flush ofexcitement in his face, no joyous fire flashing from his eyes uponMelisse.

  She saw this, and wondered. A dozen times her eyes encountered his,straight and questioning, when the others were not looking. She saw inresponse only a dull, lusterless glow that was not like the Jan who hadpursued her that day on the mountain-top.

  Jan was unaware of what was lacking in him. He smiled when she gave himthese glances; deep down in him his heart trembled at the beauty of herflushed cheeks, the luster of her coiled hair, the swimming depths ofher clear eyes; but the mask of the thing at which she wondered stillremained.

  After the others had gone, Cummins sat up to smoke a pipe. When he hadfinished, he went to his room. Jan was now sleeping in a room at thecompany's store, and after a time he rose silently to take down his capand coat. He opened the outer door quietly, so as not to arouseMelisse, who had gone to bed half an hour before.

  As he was about to go out, there came a sound--a low, gentle, whisperedword.

  "Jan!"

  He turned. Melisse stood in her door. She had not undressed, and herhair was still done up in its soft coils, with the crimson bakneeshshining in it. She came to him hesitatingly, until she stood with hertwo hands upon his arm, gazing into his tense face with that samequestion in her eyes.

  "Jan, you were not pleased with me to-night," she whispered. "Tell me,why?"

  "I was pleased with you, Melisse," he replied.

  He took one of the hands that was clinging to his arm, and turned hisface to the open night. Countless stars gleamed in the sky, as they hadshone on another night fifteen years ago. From where they stood theysaw the pale flicker of the aurora, sending its shivering arrows outover the dome of the earth, with the same lonely song that it hadplayed when the woman died. Gaunt and solitary, the tall spruce loomedup against the silver glow, its thick head sighing faintly in the nightwind, as if in wailing answer to that far-away music in the skies.

  Suddenly there leaped up from Jan Thoreau's breast a breath that burstfrom his lips in a low cry.

  "Melisse, Melisse, it was just fifteen years ago that I came in throughthat forest out there, starved and dying, and played my violin whenyour mother died. You were a little baby then, and since that night youhave never pleased me more than now!"

  He dropped her hand and turned squarely to the door, to hide what heknew had come into his face. He heard a soft, heart-broken little sobbehind him, and something fell rustling upon his arm.

  "Jan, dear Jan!"

  Melisse crowded herself into his arms, her hair torn down and tumblingabout her shoulders. In her eyes there were the old pride and the oldlove, the love and pride of what seemed to Jan to be, years ago, theold, childish pleading for his comradeship, for the fun of his strongarms, the frolic of his laugh. Irresistibly they called to him, and inthe old glad way he tightened his arms about her shoulders, his eyesglowing, and life leaping back, flushed and full, into his face.

  She laughed, happy and trembling, her lips held up to him.

  "I didn't please you to-day," she whispered. "I will never do up myhair again!"

  He kissed her, and his arms dropped from her shoulders.

  "Never, never again--until you have forgotten to love me," sherepeated. "Good night, Brother Jan!"

  Across the open, through the thinned edge of the black spruce, deeperand deeper into the cold, unquivering lifelessness of the forest, Janwent from the door that closed between him and Melisse, her last wordsstill whispering in his ears, the warm touch of her hair on hischeeks--and the knowledge of what this day had meant for him swiftlysurging upon him, bringing with it a torment which racked him to thesoul.

  Fifteen years ago! He stopped and looked up, the starlight whiteninghis face. There was no change in this night from that other one of agesand ages ago. There were the same stars, like fierce eyes of pale fire,robbed of softness by the polar cold; there were the same cloudlessblue space, the same hissing flashes of the aurora leaping through itsinfinity, the same trees that had listened to his moaning prayers onthat night when he had staggered into Lac Bain.

  He went on until he came to where the beaten trail swept up and awayfrom a swamp. As vividly as if it had happened but yesterday, heremembered how he had dragged himself through this swamp, bleeding andstarving, his violin clutched to his breast, guided by the barking ofdogs, which seemed to come from a million miles away. He plunged intoit now, picking his tangled way until he stood upon a giant ridge, fromwhich he looked out through the white night into the limitless barrensto the north.

  Along the edge of those barrens he had come, daring the hundred deathsbetween hunter's cabin and Indian wigwam, starving at times, almostdying of cold, building fires to keep the wolves back, andplaying--always playing to keep up his courage, until he found Melisse.Fifteen years had passed since then, and the cumulative force of thethings that had grown out of those years had fallen upon him this day.He had felt it first when Melisse turned upon him at the foot of themountain; and after that in the cabin, in every breath he drew, inevery look that he gave her. For him she had changed for all time. Shewas no longer the little Melisse, his sister. And yet--

  He was almost saying her last words aloud:

  "Good night, Brother Jan!"

  She had come to him that day to let him kiss her, as she had come tohim a thousand times before; but he had not kissed her in the old way.It was a different love that his lips had given, and even now the hotblood surged again into his face as he thought of what he had done. Hiswas a different idea of honor from that held by men born to the ways ofpassion.

  In that which had stirred his blood, thrilling him with strange joy ashe held her in his arms, he saw more than the shadow of sin--sacrilegeagainst a thing which was more precious to him than life. Melisse cameto him still as his sister, abiding in her glorious faith in him,unaware of his temptation; while he, Jan Thoreau--

  He thrust a hand inside his coat and clutched at the papers that Jeande Gravois had read. Then he drew them forth, slowly, and held themcrumpled in his fingers, while for many minutes he stared straight outinto the gray gloom of the treeless plain.

  His eyes shifted. Searchingly they traveled up the face of the cragsbehind him. They hunted where the starlight made deep pits of gloom inthe twisting edge of the mountains. They went from rock to rock andfrom tree to tree until at last they rested upon a giant spruce whichhung out over the precipitous wall of the ridge, its thick topbeckoning and sighing to the black rocks that shot up out of the snowfive hundred feet below.

  It was a strange tree, weird and black, free of stub or bough for ahundred feet, and from far out on the barrens those who traveled theirsolitary ways east and west knew that it was a monument shaped by men.Mukee had told Jan its story. In the first autumn of the woman's lifeat Lac Bain, he and Per-ee had climbed the old spruce, lopping off itsbranches until only the black cap remained; and after that it was knownfar and wide as the "lobstick" of Cummins' wife. It was a voicelesscenotaph which signified that all the honor and love known to thewilderness people had been given to her.

  To it went Jan, the papers still h
eld in his hand. He had seen a pairof whisky-jacks storing food in the butt of the tree, two or threesummers before, and now his fingers groped for the hole. When he foundit, he thrust in the papers, crowded them down, and filled the holewith chunks of bark.

  "Always my sister--and never anything more to Jan Thoreau," he saidgently in French, as if he were speaking to a spirit in the old tree."That is the honor of these snows; it is what the great God means us tobe." The strife had gone from his voice; it rose strong and clear as hestretched his arms high up along the shorn side of the spruce, his eyesupon the silent plume that heard his oath. "I swear that Jan Thoreauwill never do wrong to the little Melisse!"

  With a face white and set in its determination, he turned slowly awayfrom the tree. Far away, from the lonely depths of the swamp, therecame the wailing howl of a wolf--a cry of hungerful savageness thatdied away in echoes of infinite sadness. It was like the howling of adog at the door of a cabin in which his master lay dead, and the soundof it swept a flood of loneliness into Jan's heart. It was thedeath-wail of his own last hope, which had gone out of him for everthat night.

  He listened, and it came again; but in the middle of it, when the long,moaning grief of the voice was rising to its full despair, there brokein a sharp interruption--a shrieking, yelping cry, such as a dog makeswhen it is suddenly struck. In another moment the forest thrilled withthe deep-throated pack-call of the wolf who has started a fresh kill.Hardly had its echoes died away when, from deeper in the swamp, therecame another cry, and still another from the mountain; and up and outof the desolation rose the calls of others of the scattered pack, inquick response to the comrade who had first found meat.

  All the cries were alike, filled with that first wailing grief, exceptthat of the swelling throat which was sending forth the call to food. Afew minutes, and another of the mournful howls changed into the fiercehunt-cry; then a second, a third, and a fourth, and the sound of thechase swept swiftly from the swamp to the mountain, up the mountain anddown into the barrens.

  "A caribou!" cried Jan softly. "A caribou, and he is going into thebarrens. There is no water, and he is lost!"

  He ran and leaned over beside the old tree, so that the great plainstretched out below him. Into the west turned the pack, the hunt-crygrowing fainter until it almost died away. Then, slowly, it grew againin volume, swinging into the north, then to the east--approachingnearer and nearer until Jan saw a dark, swiftly moving blot in thewhite gloom.

  The caribou passed by within half a rifle-shot of him; another halfrifle-shot behind followed the wolves, flung out fan-shape, their graybodies moving like specters in a half-moon cordon, and their leadersalmost abreast the caribou a dozen rods to each side.

  There was no sound now. Below him, Jan could see the pale glimmer ofice and snow, where in summer there was a small lake. Desperately thecaribou made an effort to reach this lake. The wolves drew in. Themoon-shape of their bodies shrunk until it was nearer a circle. Fromthe plain side the leading wolf closed until he was running at thecaribou's forelegs. The mountain wolf responded on the opposite side.Then came the end, quick, decisive, and without sound.

  After a few moments there came faintly the snapping of jaws and thecrunching of bones. Torn and bleeding, and yet quivering with life, thecaribou was given up to the feast.

  Jan turned away from the scene. Torn and bleeding at his own heart, hewent back to Lac Bain.