Eight months passed over the country of the Assiniboine, bringing their
changes. The short full-tide of the summer seemed to run out with the
going of the venturers, and the autumn to come from the north-west in a
night.
Great splashes of colour dropped on the land, spilled from the palette
of some careless giant,--gold and crimson and purple. Glorious fires
burned in the cooling skies and the sweet breath of autumn tingled in
the air.
There was comment, and the shaking of heads among the old trappers. The
wrong time of year to take the long trail with women,--the wrong time,
but, bon Dieu! who was to stop that woman with the sombre eyes? Voila! A
woman to thrill the blood in any man who was still warm with life!
“Love awakened in her would be a thing of flame and fury, they had
thought, that long past day,” thought Pierre Garcon to himself; “he and
that friend of his heart, Marc Dupre,--it had been a thing of patient
servitude, of transcendent daring, and Marc Dupre; ah! He had been a
part of it. But there was much of mystery about it all, and no one knew,
nor would any know, all that it had meant.”
So the changes came and passed, and when Anders McElroy again opened his
eyes to reason, the world was white against the pane of the one window
of the little room,--the long snows had arrived. Winter was upon the
Northland.
It was on a night when the wind without howled like a lost soul shut
out from the universe and the sucking of the chimney-throat roared to
heaven.
Edmonton Ridgar sat at the hearth gazing into the leaping flames, and
Rette de Lancy passed and repassed among the shifting shadows, busy at
some kindly task.
Long he lay, this man returned from the Borderland of the Unknown,
and stared weakly at the familiar sights that were yet touched with a
puzzling strangeness.
It seemed that this was all as it should be, and yet there was something
lacking,--a great gap, whose images and happenings were wiped out as
a cloth wipes clean a slate,--a space of darkness, of blankness, whose
empty void held prescience of some great sadness. He lay on his side
facing the fire, and twice he thought to speak to Ridgar with a question
of this strangeness, and each time he was conscious of a vast surprise
that the man did not answer.
His lips, so long unused to sane direction, had made no sound in the
roar of the night.
And then Ridgar, drawn by that intangible sense of eyes upon him, raised
his head; and, as their glances met, that great void flashed suddenly
into full panoply of life peopled with a ring of painted faces against
the background of a night forest, a leaping fire, and the heroic figure
of a tall woman who stood in the dancing light and threw a hatchet at a
painted post.
Ridgar's eyes, as he had seen them in the dimness of the outskirts of
that massed circle, brought back the lost period of time and all that
had passed therein.
He stared wildly at him, and then around the firelit room.
“Ah!” said Ridgar softly, getting slowly to his feet with a smile at
once tender and exaggeratedly calm. “You have awakened, have you; eh,
lad? Would you sleep the whole night away as well as the day?”
He came to the bed and took McElroy's hand tenderly in his, while he
gave Rette a warning glance.
McElroy tried to rise, but only his head obeyed, lifting itself a bit
from the pillow to fall helplessly back.
He looked up at Ridgar with a look that cut that good man's heart, so
full was it of wild entreaty and piteous grief.
“Maren?” whispered the weak lips. “Maren,--where--?” And they, too,
failed him.
“Safe,” said Ridgar gently; “all is well. We are at De Seviere and there
is no need to think. Do you drink a sip of Rette's good broth and sleep
again.”
With a sigh of ineffable relief the sick man obeyed like a child,
falling back into the shadows, though this time they were the blessed
shades of the Vale of Healing Rest.
Rette in a corner was wiping her eyes and saying, over and over, a
prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from death.
With infinite tact Ridgar kept him quiet, promising the tale of what
had happened, and, when the flow of returning life could no longer be
stemmed, he set himself the task of telling what he knew of those swift
days.
It was again night, though a week of nights had passed since that on
which the factor had awakened to consciousness, and Ridgar had dismissed
Rette.
There was only the roar of the wind without, the whistle of the fire,
and the two men alone in the room as they had been many a winter's
night.
“Now,--where shall I begin?” said the chief trader, gazing into the
fire. “At what point?”
“Maren,” said McElroy eagerly, from the bed; “begin with her.”
Ridgar shook his head.
“Nay, it goes farther back. Let it begin with the leaving of De Seviere
and the coldness of my bearing to you.... Did you never think, lad, that
it was but a blind, covering the determination to help you at the first
opportunity? Thought you the friendship of years so poor a thing as to
be turned in a day? Day by day my heart ached for some word with you,
or even a glance that would make all straight; but those painted devils
watched my every move, my every look, the very intaking of my breath,
as the coyote watches the gopher-hole when the badger is below. Only for
sake of the dead chief at my feet was I given such seemingly free leave
among them,--for myself, I had been shipped as were poor De Courtenay's
Nor'westers at Wenusk Creek. And now is the time when I must go farther
back and tell you of the good chief who was my father, indeed, at
heart.”
Ridgar paused a moment, and his eyes took on a look of distant things
“Have you not wondered how it was, lad, that a man should live long as I
have lived in the wilderness, alone, without ties other than those which
bind him to the Great Company, without love of woman, without the joy
of children?... I have not always lived so. Time was when I had my own
wickiup, when I lay by my own night-fire and played with the braids of a
woman's hair,--long black braids, bound with crimson silk and heavy with
ornaments, for whose buying I paid my year's catch, when I looked into
eyes black as the woods at night and dumb with the great love she could
not speak.... She lived it one day ... nay, died it--when I had some
words with a young man of the tribe, who drew a spear before I knew what
he meant and hurled it at me. She...leaped between. God!”
He ceased again, and McElroy could hear his breathing, see the whitened
knuckles of his hands grasping the poker from the hearth where he had
absently stirred the leaping fire.
“It went quite through her,--a foot beyond her swelling breast, full for
my only child, unborn.... She was Negansahima's daughter.... We mourned
together, the old chief and I, and our hearts were bound close as the
tree and its bark. In a far high hill of the Pays d'en Haut we put her
to sleep with that last look of love on her dark face...and we made a
pact to lie beside her when our time should come, he who out-lived the
other to see the rites of the Death Feast. He has joined her. I saw his
rites. So for this end, reaching far back, I did not return when you
came back to De Seviere, going on with that rabble who dared not harm me
who am to share the Sleep of Chiefs some day....
“So!
“Now for the rest. I know no more of Maren Le Moyne than that first
tragic sight of her, hauled into the light by the brute DesCaut. I only
know that she stood before those savages as fearless as a lioness and
threw again and again, her black head up and sane, her young body under
her own command in every taut cord and muscle, and that again and again
and yet again the flying hatchet landed in its own cleft,--a wonderful
performance!--putting off with coolness and skill the death they would
see her decide, choosing neither man of you.”
“But,” cried McElroy, “it was De Courtenay she came to see,--to
save,--to die with,--she loved him, man!”
“Aye,--maybe. But I know only that that young trapper, Marc Dupre, gave
his life as gallantly as might be to cover our retreat while we, the
Nor'wester and I, slipping among the sleepers, carried you to the river;
that they woke, those devils, before we had cleared the little gorge,
and that M'sieu de Courtenay, brave man and gay cavalier, gave your
knees to this woman who helped me get you to the canoe, himself taking
the only gun and meeting what fate was his in the narrow seam among the
rocks. She had with her men of Mr. Mowbray's brigade, that she had got
somewhere on Winnipeg, and we put you in their waiting canoe. She was
dragged in among the thwarts,--while I--slipped back among the shadows,
circled the camp, and was at my death-watch inside the big tepee when
peering eyes looked in. I saw no more of the dashing Nor'wester, save a
flash of long gold curls at a headman's belt. What fate was meted out to
him was swift and therefore merciful. Peace be to him!
“No more I know, my friend, save that, when I returned to De Seviere, I
found you ill with some fever of the brain.”
“But, Ridgar, for love of Heaven, what of Maren?”
“She had brought you here, and Rette says the women hung off from her
and laughed in corners, whispering and talking, and that her face was
worn and greatly changed, as if with some deep sorrow.”
McElroy turned his head upon the pillow and weak tears smarted under his
lids.
“Me! It was I she saved when it was I who slew her lover! God forgive
me, for I cannot forgive myself!”
“Nay, boy, hush! It is all as God wills. We are but shuttles in the web
of this tangled life.”
“But--tell me,--what does she now? How looks her dear face?”
Ridgar was silent a moment, and McElroy repeated his question, with his
face still turned away:
“Does she pass among them,--the vipers? Does she seem to care for life
at all now?”
“Lad,” said Ridgar gently, “I know not, for she is gone.”
“Gone!”
The pale man on the pillow sprang upright, staring at the other with
open mouth.
“Aye, softly, boy; softly! She has been gone these many weeks; even
while summer was here she gathered her people, outfitted by our men,
all of whom were so glad for your deliverance that they gave readily to
their debt, and took up again her long trail to the Athabasca. Rette, I
believe, has a letter which she left for you.... Would you read it now?”
McElroy nodded dumbly, and Ridgar went out in the night to Rette's cabin
for this last link between the factor and the woman he loved.
When he returned, and McElroy had taken it in his shaking hands, he sat
down and turned his face to the fire.
There was silence while the flames crackled and the chimney roared, and
presently the factor said heavily:
“I cannot! Read...”
So Ridgar, bending in the light, read aloud Maren's letter.
At its end the man on the bed turned his face to the wall and spoke no
more.
From that time forth the tide of returning life in him stopped
sluggishly, as if the locks were set in some ocean-tapping channel.
The bleakness of the cold north winter was in his heart and life was
barren as the eastern meadows.
So passed the days and the weeks, with quip and jest from Ridgar, whose
eyes wore a puzzled expression; with such coddling and coaxing from
Rette as would have spoiled a well man, and, with not the least to be
counted, daily visits to the factory of the little Francette, who defied
the populace and came openly.
With returned consciousness to McElroy, there came back to the little
maid much of her damask beauty. The pretty cheeks bloomed again and she
was like some bright butterfly flitting about the bare room in her red
kirtle.
Sometimes McElroy would smile, watching her play with a young bob-cat,
which some trapper had brought her from the woods, and whose savage
playfulness seemed to be held in leash under her small hands. The
creature would mouth and fawn upon her, taking her cuffs and slaps, and
follow her about like a dog.
Rette tolerated the two with a bad grace, for, since the day when Maren
Le Moyne had stood at the door with her haggard beauty so wistfully sad,
her sympathies had been all with the strange girl of Grand Portage.
Light and flitting, sparkling as an elf, full to the brim of laughter
and light, little Francette was playing the deepest game of her life.
With the cunning of a woman she was trying to woo this man back to the
joy of earth, to wind herself into his heart, and so to fill his hours
with her brightness that he would come to need her always.
So she came by day and day, and now it would be some steaming dainty
cooked at her father's hearth by her own hands, again a branch of the
fir-tree coated with ice and sparkling with a million gems, that she
brought into the dull blankness of the room, and with her there always
came a fresh sweet breath of the winter world without.
McElroy smiled at her pretty conceits, her babbling talk, her gambols,
and her gifts.
“What have you done with Loup, little one?” he asked, one day. “Does he
wait on the steps to growl at this usurper purring at your heels?”
The little maid grew pearly white and looked away at Rette fearfully, as
if at sudden loss, in danger of some betrayal.
“Nay,” she said, “Loup...is an ingrate. He has ceased to care.”
And always after she avoided aught that could excite mention of the dog.
But, in spite of all her effort, McElroy lay week after week in the back
room, looking for hours together into the red heart of the fire, silent,
uncomplaining, in no apparent pain, but shiftless as an Indian in the
matter of life.
The business of the factory was brought to him nightly by Ridgar and
the young clerk Gifford, and he would look over things and make a few
suggestions, dispose of this and that as a matter of course and fall
back into his lethargy.
“What think you, M'sieu?” asked Rette anxiously, of Ridgar. “Is there
naught to stir him from these hours of dulness?”
“I know not, Rette. Would I did! The surgeon says there is nothing
wrong with the man, save lack of desire to live. He has lost the love of
life.”
And so it seemed. Weeks dragged themselves by and months rolled after
them, and still he lay in a great weakness that held his strong limbs as
in a vice.
Winter was roaring itself away with tearing winds, with snow that
fell and drifted against the stockade wall, and fell again, with vast
silences and cold that glazed the surface of the world with ice.
January dragged slowly by, with dances for the young couples in the
cabins at nights, and little Francette, for the first time in her life,
refused to share in the merry-making of which she had always been the
heart and soul.
Instead, she lay awake in the attic of the Moline cabin and cried in her
hands, listening to the whirl of the nights without.
Alone in those long vigils instinct was telling her that she had failed.
Failed utterly!
The young factor cared no more for her than on that night in spring when
he had kissed her and told her to “play in the sunshine and think no
more of him.”
She had played for a man and failed.
Moreover, she had not played fairly, and for her wickedness he lay now
as he had lain so long, drifting slowly but surely toward that land of
shadows whence there is no return.
She clinched her small hands in the darkness and wept, and they were
woman's tears.
Back to her led all the threads of tragedy, of death and danger and
heartbreak, that had so hopelessly tangled themselves in Fort de
Seviere.
But for that one hour at the factory steps what time she lay in
McElroy's arms and saw Maren Le Moyne pause at the corner, all would be
well.
Young Marc, Dupre would be singing his gay French songs with his red cap
tilted on his curls, that handsome Nor'wester of the Saskatchewan would
be going his merry way, loving here and there,--instead of bleaching
their bones in some distant forest, as the whispers said; and, last
of all, this man she loved with all the intensity of her soul would be
brown and strong with life, not the weary wreck of a man who gazed into
the fire and would not get well.
So the long nights took toll of the little Francette and a purpose grew
in her chastened heart, a purpose far too big for it.
At last the purpose blossomed into full maturity, hastened by the dark
shadows that were beginning to spread beneath McElroy's hopeless eyes,
as if the spirit, so little in the body, were already leaving it to its
earthly end, and one day at dusk, trembling and afraid, she went to the
factory for the last time.
“Rette,” she said plaintively, “will you leave me alone with M'sieu the
factor for an hour? Think what you will,” she added fiercely, as she saw
the woman's look; “tell all the populace! I care not! Only give me one
hour! Mon Dieu! A little space to pay the debt of life! Leave me, Rette,
as you hope for Heaven!”
And Rette, wondering and vaguely touched, complied.
McElroy was looking, after his habit, at the leaping flames and his thin
hands played absently and constantly with the covering of the bed, when
the door opened and closed and the little maid stood shrinking against
it.
He did not look up for long, thinking, if his dull mind could form a
thought through his melancholy dreams, that Ridgar had come in.
At last a sigh that was like a gasp pierced his lethargy and he raised
his eyes.
She stood with one small hand over her beating heart and her cheeks
white in the firelight.
“Ah! little one!” he said gently. “Why did you come through such a
night? 'Tis wild as--as--Sit in the big chair,” he added kindly.
But Francette, in whose face was an unbearable anguish, came swiftly and
fell on her knees beside the bed, raising her eyes to his.
“M'sieu!” she cried, with great labouring breaths. “Oh! M'sieu, I have
come to confess! If there is in your good heart pity for one who has
sinned beyond pardon, give it me, I pray, for love of the good God!”
McElroy stared down at her in wonder.
“Confess? Sinned?” he said. “Why, little one, what can a child like you
know of sin? 'Tis only some blunderer like myself who should speak its
damnable name.”
“Nay, nay! Oh, no! No! No! Not on you is there one lightest touch,
M'sieu, but on me,--me--me--does rest the weight of all!”
Her eyes were wide and full of tears, and McElroy laid a weak hand on
her head.
“Hush, child!” he said, with some of his old sternness, when condemning
wrong; “there is a fever at your brain. You have come too long to this
dull room--”
“No! No! Take away your hand! Touch me not, M'sieu, for I am as dust
beneath your feet! I alone am at bottom of all that has happened in Fort
de Seviere this year past! Through me alone have come death and sorrow
and misunderstanding! I caused it all, M'sieu, because I--loved you! For
love of you and hope to gain your heart I set you apart from that woman
of Grand Portage!”
She buried her face on the covering of the bed and her voice came
muffled and choking.
“That night at the factory steps,--you recall, M'sieu,--she came to
you,--I saw her in the dusk as she turned at the corner, a rod away, saw
her and knew with some touch of deviltry the sudden way of keeping you
from her, your arms from about her, your lips from hers! Oh, that I
could not bear, M'sieu! Not though I died for it! So I threw my own arms
about your throat--you remember, M'sieu--and whispered that for one
kiss I would go and forget. In the gentleness of your heart you kissed
me--and--she saw that kiss. Saw me lying in your arms as if you held
me there from love,--saw and turned away. She made no sound in the soft
dust, and when I loosed your face from my clasp she was gone! So I
broke your faith, M'sieu,--so I dragged forth one by one all the sorry
happenings that have followed that evil night.”
The muffled voice fell silent, save for the sobs that would no longer
be withheld, and there was an awful stillness in the room, broken by a
stick falling on the hearth and the added roar in the chimney.
When Francette raised her weeping eyes she saw McElroy's face above her
like a mask.
Its lips were open as if breath had suddenly been denied them, its
wasted cheeks were blue, and its eyes stared down upon her in horror:
“Oh! O God! Rette!”
She screamed and sprang up, to run back and crouch against the empty
chair beside the hearth.
The figure upon the bed, half-risen, worked its lips and then fell back,
and the little maid raised her voice and screamed again and again in
mortal terror.
It brought Rette running from where she had waited in the trading-room.
She raised him, and her face was red with rage.
“What have you done! You evil cat! What have you done to the man?”
But McElroy's breast had heaved with a great breath, sweet as the wind
over a harvest field to a tired man, and he looked up at Rette with eyes
that seemed to be suddenly flooded with life.
“Done?” he whispered; “done, Rette? The child has given me salvation!”
And then he held out a shaking, thin hand.
“Come here,” he said softly; “come here.”
Fearful, trembling, tear-stained Francette crept back, and the factor
took both her small hands in a tender clasp:
“I thank you, little one,” he said, “from my heart I thank you,--there
is nothing to forgive. We are all sinners through the only bit of Heaven
we possess,--love. Go, little one, and cease this crying. Know that I
shall sleep this night in a mighty peace. You have given me--life!”