Jack was sitting by his own fire idly strumming on the banjo. Behind
him was his canvas "lean-to," open to the fire in front, and with a
mosquito bar hanging within. All around his little clearing pressed a
thick growth of young poplar, except in front, where the view was open
to the river, moving smoothly down, and presenting a burnished silver
reflection to the evening sky. The choice of a situation, the proper
fire, and the tidy arrangements all bespoke the experienced campaigner.
Jack took this sort of thing for granted, as men outside ride back and
forth on trolley cars, and snatch hasty meals at lunch counters.
The supper dishes being washed, it was the easeful hour of life in
camp, but Jack was not at ease. He played a few bars, and put the
banjo down. He tinkered with the fire, and swore when he only
succeeded in deadening it. He lit his pipe, and immediately allowed it
to go out again. A little demon had his limbs twitching on wires. He
continually looked and listened in the direction of the fort, and
whenever he fancied he heard a sound his heart rose and beat thickly in
his throat. At one moment he thought: "She'll come," and confidently
smiled; the next, for no reason: "She will not come," and frowned, and
bit his lip.
Finally he did hear a rustle among the trees. He sprang up with
surprised and delighted eyes, and immediately sat down again, picking
up the banjo with an off-hand air. Under the circumstances one's pet
affectation of unconcern is difficult to maintain.
It was indeed Mary. She broke into the clearing, pale and breathless,
and looked at Jack as if she was all ready to turn and fly back again.
Jack smiled and nodded as if this were the most ordinary of visits.
The smile stiffened in his face, for another followed her into the
clearing--Davy, the oldest of her brothers. For an instant Jack was
nonplussed, but he had laid it down as a rule that in his dealings with
the sex, whatever betide, a man must smile and keep his temper. So,
swallowing his disappointment as best he could, he greeted Davy as if
he had expected him too.
What Mary had been through during the last few hours may be imagined:
how many times she had sworn she would not go, only to have her desires
open the question all over again. Perhaps she would not have come if
the maddeningly attractive young lady had not appeared on the scene;
perhaps she would have found an excuse to come anyway. Be that as it
may, she had brought Davy. In this she had not Mrs. Grundy's elaborate
code to guide her; it was an idea out of her own head--or an instinct
of her heart, rather. Watching Jack eagerly and covertly to see how he
took it, she decided that she had done right. "He will think more of
me," she thought with a breath of relief.
She had done wisely of course. Jack, after his first disappointment,
was compelled to doff his cap to her. He had never met a girl of the
country like this. He bestirred himself to put his visitors at their
ease.
"I will make tea," he said, reaching for the copper pot according to
the ritual of politeness in the North.
"We have just had tea," Mary said. "Davy will smoke with you."
Mary was now wearing a shawl over the print dress, but instead of
clutching it around her in the clumsy native way, she had crossed it on
her bosom like a fichu, wound it about her waist, and tucked the ends
in. Jack glanced at her approvingly.
Davy was young for his sixteen years, and as slender as a sapling. He
had thin, finely drawn features, and eyes that expressed something of
the same quality of wistfulness as his sister's. At present he was
very ill at ease, but his face showed a certain resoluteness that
engaged Jack's liking. The boy shyly produced a pipe that was
evidently a recent acquisition, and filled it inexpertly.
Jack's instinct led him to ignore Mary for the present while he made
friends with the boy. He knew how. They were presently engaged in a
discussion about prairie chicken, in an off-hand, manly tone.
"Never saw 'em so plenty," said Davy. "You only have to climb the hill
to bring back as many as you want."
"What gun do you use?" asked Jack.
The boy's eyes gleamed. "My father has a Lefever gun," he said
proudly. "He lets me use it."
"So!" said Jack, suitably impressed. "There are not many in the
country."
"She's a very good gun," said Davy patronizingly. "I like to take her
apart and clean her," he added boyishly.
"I'd like to go up on the prairie with you while I'm here," said Jack.
"But I have no shotgun. I'll have to try and put their eyes out with
my twenty-two."
This sort of talk was potent to draw them together. They puffed away,
ringing all the changes on it. Mary listened apart as became a mere
woman, and the hint of a dimple showed in either cheek. When she
raised her eyes they fairly beamed on Jack.
Jack knew that the way to win the hearts of the children of the North
is to tell them tales of the wonderful world outside that they all
dream about. He led the talk in this direction.
"I suppose you've finished school," he said to Davy, as man to man.
"Do you ever think of taking a trip outside?"
The boy hesitated before replying. "I think of it all the time," he
said in a low, moved voice. "I feel bad every time the steamboat goes
back without me. There is nothing for me here."
"You'll make it some day soon," said Jack heartily.
"I suppose you know Prince George well?" the boy said wistfully.
"Yes," said Jack, "but why stop at Prince George? That's not much of a
town. You should see Montreal. That's where I was raised. There's a
city for you! All built of stone. Magnificent banks and stores and
office buildings ten, twelve, fourteen stories high, and more. You've
seen a two-story house at the lake; imagine seven of them piled up one
on top of another, with people working on every floor!"
"You're fooling us," said the boy. His and his sister's eyes were
shining.
"No, I have seen pictures of them in the magazines," put in Mary
quickly.
"There is Notre Dame Street," said Jack dreamily, "and Great St. James,
and St. Catherine's, and St. Lawrence Main; I can see them now!
Imagine miles of big show-windows lighted at night as bright as
sunshine. Imagine thousands of moons hung right down in the street for
the people to see by, and you have it!"
"How wonderful!" murmured Mary.
"There is an electric light at Fort Ochre," said the boy, "but I have
not seen it working. They say when the trader claps his hands it
shines, and when he claps them again it goes out."
Mary blushed for her brother's ignorance. "That's only to fool the
Indians," she said quickly. "Of course there's some one behind the
counter to turn it off and on."
Jack told them of railway trains and trolley cars; of mills that wove
thousands of yards of cloth in a day, and machines that spit out pairs
of boots all ready to put on. The old-fashioned fairy-tales are
puerile beside such wonders as these--think of eating your dinner in a
carriage that is being carried over the ground faster than the wild
duck flies!--moreover, he assured them on his honour that it was all
true.
"Tell us about theatres," said Mary. "The magazines have many stories
about theatres, but they do not explain what they are."
"Well, a theatre's a son-of-a-gun of a big house with a high ceiling
and the floor all full of chairs," said Jack. "Around the back there
are galleries with more chairs. In the front there is a platform
called the stage, and in front of the stage hangs a big curtain that is
let down while the people are coming in, so you can't see what is
behind it. It is all brightly lighted, and there's an orchestra, many
fiddles and other kinds of music playing together in front of the
stage. When the proper time comes the curtain is pulled up," he
continued, "and you see the stage all arranged like a picture with
beautifully painted scenery. Then the actors and actresses come out on
the stage and tell a story to each other. They dance and sing, and
make love, and have a deuce of a time generally. That's called a play."
"Is it nothing but making love?" asked Davy. "Don't they have anything
about hunting, or having sport?"
"Sure!" said Jack. "War and soldiers and shooting, and everything you
can think of."
"Are the actresses all as pretty as they say?" asked Mary diffidently.
"Not too close," said Jack. "But you see the lights, and the paint and
powder, and the fine clothes show them up pretty fine."
"It gives them a great advantage," she commented.
Mary had other questions to ask about actresses. Davy was not
especially interested in this subject, and soon as he got an opening
therefor he said, looking sidewise at the leather case by the fire:
"I never heard the banjo played."
Jack instantly produced the instrument, and, tuning it, gave them song
after song. Brother and sister listened entranced. Never in their
lives had they met anybody like Jack Chanty. He was master of an
insinuating tone not usually associated with the blatant banjo.
Without looking at her, he sang love-songs to Mary that shook her
breast. In her wonder and pleasure she unconsciously let fall the
guard over her eyes, and Jack's heart beat fast at what he read there.
Warned at last by the darkness, Mary sprang up. "We must go," she said
breathlessly.
Davy, who had come unwillingly, was more unwilling to go. But the hint
of "father's" anger was sufficient to start him.
Jack detained Mary for an instant at the edge of the clearing. He
dropped the air of the genial host. "I shall not be able to sleep
to-night," he said swiftly.
"Nor I," she murmured. "Th--thinking of the theatre," she added lamely.
"When everybody is asleep," he pleaded, "come outside your house. I'll
be waiting for you. I want to talk to you alone."
She made no answer, but raised her eyes for a moment to his, two deep,
deep pools of wistfulness. "Ah, be good to me! Be good to me," they
seemed to plead with him. Then she darted after her brother.
The look sobered Jack, but not for very long. "She'll come," he
thought exultingly.
Left alone, he worked like a beaver, chopping and carrying wood for his
fire. Under stress of emotion he turned instinctively to violent
physical exertion for an outlet. He was more moved than he knew. In
an hour, being then as dark as it would get, he exchanged the axe for
the banjo, and, slinging it over his back, set forth.
The growth of young poplar stretched between his camp and the esplanade
of grass surrounding the buildings of the fort. When he came to the
edge of the trees the warehouse was the building nearest to him.
Running across the intervening space, he took up his station in the
shadow of the corner of it, where he could watch the trader's house. A
path bordered by young cabbages and turnips led from the front door
down to the gate in the palings. The three visible windows of the
house were dark. At a little distance behind the house the sledge dogs
of the company were tethered in a long row of kennels, but there was
little danger of their giving an alarm, for they often broke into a
frantic barking and howling for no reason except the intolerable ennui
of their lives in the summer.
There is no moment of the day in lower latitudes that exactly
corresponds to the fairylike night-long summer twilight of the North.
The sunset glow does not fade entirely, but hour by hour moves around
the Northern horizon to the east, where presently it heralds the sun's
return. It is not dark, and it is not light. The world is a ghostly
place. It is most like nights at home when the full moon is shining
behind light clouds, but with this difference, that here it is the
dimness of a great light that embraces the world, instead of the
partial obscurity of a lesser.
Jack waited with his eyes glued to the door of the trader's house.
There was not a breath stirring. There were no crickets, no katydids,
no tree-toads to make the night companionable; only the hoot of an owl,
and the far-off wail of a coyote to put an edge on the silence. It was
cold, and for the time being the mosquitoes were discouraged. The
stars twinkled sedulously like busy things.
Jack waited as a young man waits for a woman at night, with his ears
strained to catch the whisper of her dress, a tremor in his muscles,
and his heart beating thickly in his throat. The minutes passed
heavily. Once the dogs raised an infernal clamour, and subsided again.
A score of times he thought he saw her, but it was only a trick of his
desirous eyes. He became cold to the bones, and his heart sunk. As a
last resort he played the refrain of the last song he had sung her,
played it so softly none but one who listened would be likely to hear.
The windows of the house were open.
Then suddenly he sensed a figure appearing from behind the house, and
his heart leapt. He lost it in the shadow of the house. He waited
breathlessly, then played a note or two. The figure reappeared,
running toward him, still in the shadow. It loomed big in the
darkness. It started across the open space. Too late Jack saw his
mistake. He had only time to fling the banjo behind him, before the
man was upon him with a whispered oath.
Jack thought of a rival, and his breast burned. He defended himself as
best as he could, but his blows went wide in the darkness. The other
man was bigger than he, and nerved by a terrible, quiet passion. To
save himself from the other's blows Jack clinched. The man flung him
off. Jack heard the sharp impact of a blow he did not feel. The earth
leapt up, and he drifted away on the swirling current of
unconsciousness.
What happened after that was like the awakening from a vague, bad
dream. He had first the impression of descending a long and
tempestuous series of rapids on his flimsily hung raft, to which he
clung desperately. Then the scene changed and he seemed to be floating
in a ghastly void. He thought he was blind. He put out his hand to
feel, and his palm came in contact with the cool, moist earth, overlaid
with bits of twig and dead leaves, and sprouts of elastic grass. The
earth at least was real, and he felt of it gratefully, while the rest
of him still teetered in emptiness.
Then he became conscious of a comfortable emanation, as from a fire;
sight returned, and he saw that there was a fire. It had a familiar
look; it was the fire he himself had built some hours before. He felt
himself, and found that he was covered by his own blanket. "I have had
a nightmare," he thought mistily. Then a voice broke rudely on his
vague fancies, bringing the shock of complete recollection in its train.
"So, you're coming 'round all right," it said grimly.
At his feet, Jack saw David Cranston sitting on a log.
"I've put the pot on," he continued. "I'll have a sup of tea for you
in a minute. I didn't mean to hit you so hard, my lad, but I was mad."
Jack turned his head, and hid it in his arm. Dizzy, nauseated, and
shamed, he was as near blubbering at that moment as a self-respecting
young man could let himself get in the presence of another man.
"Clean hit, point of the jaw," Cranston went on. "Nothing broke.
You'll be as right as ever with the tea."
He made it, and forced Jack to drink of the scalding infusion. In
spite of himself, it revived the young man, but it did not comfort his
spirit any.
"I'm all right now," he muttered, meaning: "You can go!"
"I'll smoke a pipe wi' you," said Cranston imperturbably. "I want a
bit of a crack wi' you." Seeing Jack's scowl, he added quickly: "Lord!
I'm not going to preach over you, lying there. You tried to do me an
injury, a devilish injury, but the mad went out wi' the blow that
stretched ye. I wish to do you justice. I mind as how I was once a
young sprig myself, and hung around outside the tepees at night, and
tried to whistle the girls out. But I never held by such a
tingle-pingle contraption as that," he said scornfully, pushing the
banjo with his foot. "To my mind it's for niggers and Eyetalians.
'Tis unmanly."
Jack raised his head. "Did you break it?" he demanded scowling.
"Nay," said Cranston coolly. "I brought it along wi' you. It's
property, and I spoil nothing that is not my own."
There was a silence. Cranston with the greatest deliberation, took out
his pipe and stuck it in his mouth; produced his plug of tobacco,
shaved it nicely, and put it away again; rolled the tobacco thoroughly
between his palms, and pressed it into the bowl with a careful
forefinger. A glowing ember from the fire completed the operation.
For five minutes he smoked in silence, occasionally glancing at Jack
from under heavy brows.
"Have ye anything to say?" he asked at last.
"No," muttered Jack.
There was another silence. Cranston sat as if he meant to spend the
night.
"I don't get too many chances to talk to a white man," he finally said
with a kind of gruff diffidence. "Yon pretty fellows sleeping on the
steamboat, they are not men, but clothespins. Sir Bryson Trangmar,
Lord love ye! he will be calling me 'my good man' to-morrow. And him a
grocer once, they say--like myself." There was a cavernous chuckle
here.
Jack sensed that the grim old trader was actually making friendly
advances, but the young man was to sore, too hopelessly in the wrong,
to respond right away.
Cranston continued to smoke and to gaze at the fire.
"Well, I have something to say," he blurted out at last, in a changed
voice. "And it's none too easy!" There was something inexpressibly
moving in the tremor that shook his grim voice as he blundered on.
"You made a mistake, young fellow. She's too good for this 'whistle
and I'll come to ye, my lad,' business. If you had any sense you would
have seen it for yourself--my little girl with her wise ways! But no
offence. You are young. I wouldn't bother wi' ye at all, but I feel
that I am responsible. It was I who gave them a dark-skinned mother.
I handicapped my girl and my boys, and now I have to be their father
and their mother too."
A good deal less than this would have reached Jack's sense of
generosity. He hid his face again, and hated himself, but pride still
maintained the ascendency. He could not let the other man see.
"It is that that makes you hold her so lightly," Cranston went on. "If
she had a white mother, my girl, aye, wi' half her beauty and her
goodness, would have put the fear of God into ye. Well, the
consequences of my mistake shall not be visited on her head if I can
prevent it. What does an idle lad like you know of the worth of women?
You measure them by their beauty, which is nothing. She has a mind
like an opening flower. She is my companion. All these years I have
been silenced and dumb, and now I have one to talk to that understands
what a white man feels!
"She is a white woman. Some of the best blood of Scotland runs in her
veins. She's a Cranston. Match her wi' his lordship's daughter there,
the daughter of the grocer. Match her wi' the whitest lilies of them
all, and my girl will outshine them in beauty, aye, and outwear them in
courage and steadfastness! And she's worthy to bear sons and daughters
in turn that any man might be proud to father!"
He came to a full stop. Jack sat up, scowling fiercely, and looking
five years younger by reason of his sheepishness. What he had to say
came out in jerks. "It's damn hard to get it out," he stuttered. "I'm
sorry. I'm ashamed of myself. What else can I say? I swear to you
I'll never lay a finger of disrespect on her. For heaven's sake go,
and let me be by myself!"
Cranston promptly rose. "Spoken like a man, my lad," he said
laconically. "I'll say no more. Good-night to ye." He strode away.