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NORTHERN LIGHTS
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 3.
WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY
GEORGE'S WIFE
MARCILE
WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY
The arrogant sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him
banners of gold and crimson, and a swift twilight was streaming over the
land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill followed it,
and the look of one was like a light in a window to a lost traveller.
It had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a
journey this man had made as few have ever attempted, and fewer
accomplished. To the farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the
shoulder of a continent juts out into the northwestern Arctic seas, he
had travelled on foot and alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian
guides, who now and then shepherded him from point to point. The vast
ice-hummocks had been his housing, pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and
even the fat and oil of seals had been his food. Ever and ever through
long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and
ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a
white sickle in the sky to warn him that his life must be mown like
grass. At night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the steely
wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of frost; while the
illimitably distant sun made the tiny flakes sparkle like silver--a
poudre day, when the face and hands are most like to be frozen, and all
so still and white and passionless, yet aching with energy. Hundreds
upon hundreds of miles that endless trail went winding to the farthest
North-west. No human being had ever trod its lengths before, though
Indians or a stray Hudson's Bay Company man had made journeys over part
of it during the years that have passed since Prince Rupert sent his
adventurers to dot that northern land with posts and forts, and trace
fine arteries of civilisation through the wastes.
Where this man had gone none other had been of white men from the Western
lands, though from across the wide Pacific, from the Eastern world,
adventurers and exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon
Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his grandfather, an
Eastern scholar, had come to know; and for love of adventure, and because
of the tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he
had been ruined by bad investments, he had made a journey like none ever
essayed before. And on his way up to those regions, where the veil
before the face of God is very thin and fine, and men's hearts glow
within them, where there was no oasis save the unguessed deposit of a
great human dream that his soul could feel, the face of a girl had
haunted him. Her voice--so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled
silver in his ears, till, in the everlasting theatre of the Pole, the
stars seemed to repeat it through millions of echoing hills, growing
softer and softer as the frost hushed it to his ears-had said to him late
and early, "You must come back with the swallows." Then she had sung a
song which had been like a fire in his heart, not alone because of the
words of it, but because of the soul in her voice, and it had lain like a
coverlet on his heart to keep it warm:
"Adieu! The sun goes awearily down,
The mist creeps up o'er the sleepy town,
The white sail bends to the shuddering mere,
And the reapers have reaped and the night is here.
Adieu! And the years are a broken song,
The right grows weak in the strife with wrong,
The lilies of love have a crimson stain,
And the old days never will come again.
Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim
'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim,
Shall not our querulous hearts prevail,
That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail.
Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between
The things that are and that might have been
Be folded back for our eyes to see,
And the meaning of all shall be clear to me."
It had been but an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his
expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into his mind that
life was now a thing to cherish, and that he must indeed come back;
though he had left England caring little if, in the peril and danger of
his quest, he ever returned. He had been indifferent to his fate till he
came to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of
the maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whose
life was knit with the far north, whose mother's heart was buried in the
great wastes where Sir John Franklin's expedition was lost; for her
husband had been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of
that civilisation for which they had risked all and lost all save
immortality. Hither the two had come after he had been cast away on the
icy plains, and as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with
it, always on the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward.
Here, with small income but high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived
and laboured. And when this newcomer from the old land set his face
northward to an unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the
mother did in the old days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee,
and it was not yet certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away
for ever. Something in him, his great height, his strength of body,
his clear, meditative eyes, his brave laugh, reminded her of him--her
husband--who, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little
where men did their duty, since God was always near to take or leave as
it was His will. When Bickersteth went, it was as though one they had
known all their lives had passed; and the woman knew also that a new
thought had been sown in her daughter's mind, a new door opened in her
heart.
And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the
village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the
cluster of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little
Mission Church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the
hearts of all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for "the
peace of the Holy Grail." The village was, in truth, but a day's march
away from him, but he was not alone, and the journey could not be
hastened. Beside him, his eyes also upon the sunset and the village,
was a man in a costume half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy grey beard
and massive frame, and a distant, sorrowful look, like that of one whose
soul was tuned to past suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his
breast, his elbow resting on a stump of pine--the token of a progressive
civilisation--his chin upon his hand, he looked like the figure of Moses
made immortal by Michael Angelo. But his strength was not like that of
the man beside him, who was thirty years younger. When he walked, it was
as one who had no destination, who had no haven towards which to travel,
who journeyed as one to whom the world is a wilderness, and one tent or
one hut is the same as another, and none is home.
Like two ships meeting hull to hull on the wide seas, where a few miles
of water will hide them from each other, whose ports are thousands of
miles apart, whose courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder
man, sick and worn, and near to death, in the poor hospitality of an
Indian's tepee. John Bickersteth had nursed the old man back to
strength, and had brought him southward with him--a silent companion, who
spoke in monosyllables, who had no conversation at all of the past, and
little of the present; but who was a woodsman and an Arctic traveller of
the most expert kind; who knew by instinct where the best places for
shelter and for sleeping might be found; who never complained, and was
wonderful with the dogs. Close as their association was, Bickersteth had
felt concerning the other that his real self was in some other sphere or
place towards which his mind was always turning, as though to bring it
back.
Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the old man to speak about
the past, but he had been met by a dumb sort of look, a straining to
understand. Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both of his
own, and gazed with painful eagerness into his face, as though trying to
remember or to comprehend something that eluded him. Upon these
occasions the old man's eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet, which
tortured Bickersteth beyond bearing. Just such a look he had seen in the
eyes of a favourite dog when he had performed an operation on it to save
its life--a reproachful, non-comprehending, loving gaze.
Bickersteth understood a little of the Chinook language, which is
familiar to most Indian tribes, and he had learned that the Indians knew
nothing exact concerning the old man; but rumours had passed from tribe
to tribe that this white man had lived for ever in the farthest north
among the Arctic tribes, and that he passed from people to people,
disappearing into the untenanted wilderness, but reappearing again among
stranger tribes, never resting, and as one always seeking what he could
not find.
One thing had helped this old man in all his travels and sojourning.
He had, as it seemed to the native people, a gift of the hands; for when
they were sick, a few moments' manipulation of his huge, quiet fingers
vanquished pain. A few herbs he gave in tincture, and these also were
praised; but it was a legend that when he was persuaded to lay on his
hands and close his eyes, and with his fingers to "search for the pain
and find it, and kill it," he always prevailed. They believed that
though his body was on earth his soul was with Manitou, and that it was
his soul which came into him again, and gave the Great Spirit's healing
to the fingers. This had been the man's safety through how many years--
or how many generations--they did not know; for legends regarding the
pilgrim had grown and were fostered by the medicine men who, by giving
him great age and supernatural power, could, with more self-respect,
apologise for their own incapacity.
So the years--how many it was impossible to tell, since he did not know
or would not say--had gone on; and now, after ceaseless wandering, his
face was turned towards that civilisation out of which he had come so
long ago--or was it so long ago--one generation, or two, or ten? It
seemed to Bickersteth at times as though it were ten, so strange, so
unworldly was his companion. At first he thought that the man remembered
more than he would appear to acknowledge, but he found that after a day
or two everything that happened as they journeyed was also forgotten.
It was only visible things, or sounds, that appeared to open the doors of
memory of the most recent happenings. These happenings, if not varied,
were of critical moment, since, passing down from the land of unchanging
ice and snow, they had come into March and April storms, and the perils
of the rapids and the swollen floods of May. Now, in June, two years and
a month since Bickersteth had gone into the wilds, they looked down upon
the goal of one at least--of the younger man who had triumphed in his
quest up in these wilds abandoned centuries ago.
With the joyous thought in his heart, that he had discovered anew one of
the greatest gold-fields of the world, that a journey unparalleled had
been accomplished, he turned towards his ancient companion, and a feeling
of pity and human love enlarged within him. He, John Bickersteth, was
going into a world again, where--as he believed--a happy fate awaited
him; but what of this old man? He had brought him out of the wilds, out
of the unknown--was he only taking him into the unknown again?
Were there friends, any friends anywhere in the world waiting for him?
He called himself by no name, he said he had no name. Whence came he?
Of whom? Whither was he wending now? Bickersteth had thought of the
problem often, and he had no answer for it save that he must be taken
care of, if not by others, then by himself; for the old man had saved him
from drowning; had also saved him from an awful death on a March day when
he fell into a great hole and was knocked insensible in the drifting
snow; had saved him from brooding on himself--the beginning of madness--
by compelling him to think for another. And sometimes, as he had looked
at the old man, his imagination had caught the spirit of the legend of
the Indians, and he had cried out, "O soul, come back and give him
memory--give him back his memory, Manitou the mighty!"
Looking on the old man now, an impulse seized him. "Dear old man," he
said, speaking as one speaks to a child that cannot understand, "you
shall never want, while I have a penny, or have head or hands to work.
But is there no one that you care for or that cares for you, that you
remember, or that remembers you?"
The old man shook his head though not with understanding, and he laid a
hand on the young man's shoulder, and whispered:
"Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the land. I have seen it
--I have seen it once." His shaggy eyebrows gathered over, his eyes
searched, searched the face of John Bickersteth. "Once, so long ago--
I cannot think," he added helplessly.
"Dear old man," Bickersteth said gently, knowing he would not wholly
comprehend, "I am going to ask her--Alice--to marry me, and if she does,
she will help look after you, too. Neither of us would have been here
without the other, dear old man, and we shall not be separated. Whoever
you are, you are a gentleman, and you might have been my father or hers
--or hers."
He stopped suddenly. A thought had flashed through his mind, a thought
which stunned him, which passed like some powerful current through his
veins, shocked him, then gave him a palpitating life. It was a wild
thought, but yet why not--why not? There was the chance, the faint,
far-off chance. He caught the old man by the shoulders, and looked him
in the eyes, scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the rugged
forehead.
"Dear old man," he said, his voice shaking, "do you know what I'm
thinking? I'm thinking that you may be of those who went out to the
Arctic Sea with Sir John Franklin--with Sir John Franklin, you
understand. Did you know Sir John Franklin--is it true, dear old boy, is
it true? Are you one that has lived to tell the tale? Did you know Sir
John Franklin--is it--tell me, is it true?"
He let go the old man's shoulders, for over the face of the other there
had passed a change. It was strained and tense. The hands were
outstretched, the eyes were staring straight into the west and the coming
night.
"It is--it is--that's it!" cried Bickersteth. "That's it--love o' God,
that's it! Sir John Franklin--Sir John Franklin, and all the brave lads
that died up there! You remember the ship--the Arctic Sea--the ice-
fields, and Franklin--you remember him? Dear old man, say you remember
Franklin?"
The thing had seized him. Conviction was upon him, and he watched the
other's anguished face with anguish and excitement in his own. But--but
it might be, it might be her father--the eyes, the forehead are like
hers; the hands, the long hands, the pointed fingers. "Come, tell me,
did you have a wife and child, and were they both called Alice--do you
remember? Franklin--Alice! Do you remember?"
The other got slowly to his feet, his arms outstretched, the look in his
face changing, understanding struggling for its place, memory fighting
for its own, the soul contending for its mastery.
"Franklin--Alice--the snow," he said confusedly, and sank down.
"God have mercy!" cried Bickersteth, as he caught the swaying body, and
laid it upon the ground. "He was there--almost."
He settled the old man against the great pine stump and chafed his hands.
"Man, dear man, if you belong to her--if you do, can't you see what it
will mean to me? She can't say no to me then. But if it's true, you'll
belong to England and to all the world, too, and you'll have fame
everlasting. I'll have gold for her and for you, and for your Alice,
too, poor old boy. Wake up now and remember if you are Luke Allingham
who went with Franklin to the silent seas of the Pole. If it's you,
really you, what wonder you lost your memory! You saw them all die,
Franklin and all, die there in the snow, with all the white world round
them. If you were there, what a travel you have had, what strange things
you have seen! Where the world is loneliest, God lives most. If you get
close to the heart of things, it's no marvel you forgot what you were,
or where you came from; because it didn't matter; you knew that you were
only one of thousands of millions who have come and gone, that make up
the soul of things, that make the pulses of the universe beat. That's
it, dear old man. The universe would die, if it weren't for the souls
that leave this world and fill it with life. Wake up! Wake up,
Allingham, and tell us where you've been and what you've seen."
He did not labour in vain. Slowly consciousness came back, and the grey
eyes opened wide, the lips smiled faintly under the bushy beard; but
Bickersteth saw that the look in the face was much the same as it had
been before. The struggle had been too great, the fight for the other
lost self had exhausted him, mind and body, and only a deep obliquity and
a great weariness filled the countenance. He had come back to the verge,
he had almost again discovered himself; but the opening door had shut
fast suddenly, and he was back again in the night, the incompanionable
night of forgetfulness.
Bickersteth saw that the travail and strife had drained life and energy,
and that he must not press the mind and vitality of this exile of time
and the unknown too far. He felt that when the next test came the old
man would either break completely, and sink down into another and
everlasting forgetfulness, or tear away forever the veil between himself
and his past, and emerge into a long-lost life. His strength must be
shepherded, and he must be kept quiet and undisturbed until they came to
the town yonder in the valley, over which the night was slowly settling
down. There two women waited, the two Alices, from both of whom had gone
lovers into the North. The daughter was living over again in her young
love the pangs of suspense through which her mother had passed. Two
years since Bickersteth had gone, and not a sign!
Yet, if the girl had looked from her bedroom window, this Friday night,
she would have seen on the far hill a sign; for there burned a fire
beside which sat two travellers who had come from the uttermost limits of
snow. But as the fire burned--a beacon to her heart if she had but known
it--she went to her bed, the words of a song she had sung at choir--
practice with tears in her voice and in her heart ringing in her ears.
A concert was to be held after the service on the coming Sunday night,
at which there was to be a collection for funds to build another mission-
house a hundred miles farther North, and she had been practising music
she was to sing. Her mother had been an amateur singer of great power,
and she was renewing her mother's gift in a voice behind which lay a
hidden sorrow. As she cried herself to sleep the words of the song which
had moved her kept ringing in her ears and echoing in her heart:
"When the swallows homeward fly,
And the roses' bloom is o'er--"
But her mother, looking out into the night, saw on the far hill the fire,
burning like a star, where she had never seen a fire set before, and a
hope shot into her heart for her daughter--a hope that had flamed up and
died down so often during the past year. Yet she had fanned with
heartening words every such glimmer of hope when it came, and now she
went to bed saying, "Perhaps he will come to-morrow." In her mind, too,
rang the words of the song which had ravished her ears that night, the
song she had sung the night before her own husband, Luke Allingham, had
gone with Franklin to the Polar seas:
"When the swallows homeward fly--"
As she and her daughter entered the little church on the Sunday evening,
two men came over the prairie slowly towards the town, and both raised
their heads to the sound of the church-bell calling to prayer. In the
eyes of the younger man there was a look which has come to many in this
world returning from hard enterprise and great dangers, to the familiar
streets, the friendly faces of men of their kin and clan-to the lights of
home.
The face of the older man, however, had another look.
It was such a look as is seldom seen in the faces of men, for it showed
the struggle of a soul to regain its identity. The words which the old
man had uttered in response to Bickersteth's appeal before he fainted
away, "Franklin--Alice--the snow," had showed that he was on the verge;
the bells of the church pealing in the summer air brought him near it
once again. How many years had gone since he had heard church-bells?
Bickersteth, gazing at him in eager scrutiny, wondered if, after all, he
might be mistaken about him. But no, this man had never been born and
bred in the far North. His was a type which belonged to the civilisation
from which he himself had come. There would soon be the test of it all.
Yet he shuddered, too, to think what might happen if it was all true, and
discovery or reunion should shake to the centre the very life of the two
long-parted ones.
He saw the look of perplexed pain and joy at once in the face of the old
man, but he said nothing, and he was almost glad when the bell stopped.
The old man turned to him.
"What is it?" he asked. "I remember--" but he stopped suddenly, shaking
his head.
An hour later, cleared of the dust of travel, the two walked slowly
towards the church from the little tavern where they were lodged. The
service was now over, but the concert had begun. The church was full,
and there were people in the porch; but these made way for the two
strangers; and, as Bickersteth was recognised by two or three present,
place was found for them. Inside, the old man stared round him in a
confused and troubled way, but his motions were quiet and abstracted and
he looked like some old viking, his workaday life done, come to pray ere
he went hence forever. They had entered in a pause in the concert, but
now two ladies came forward to the chancel steps, and one with her hands
clasped before her, began to sing:
"When the swallows homeward fly,
And the roses' bloom is o'er,
And the nightingale's sweet song
In the woods is heard no more--"
It was Alice--Alice the daughter--and presently the mother, the other
Alice, joined in the refrain. At sight of them Bickersteth's eyes had
filled, not with tears, but with a cloud of feeling, so that he went
blind. There she was, the girl he loved. Her voice was ringing in his
ears. In his own joy for one instant he had forgotten the old man beside
him, and the great test that was now upon him. He turned quickly,
however, as the old man got to his feet. For an instant the lost exile
of the North stood as though transfixed. The blood slowly drained from
his face, and in his eyes was an agony of struggle and desire. For a
moment an awful confusion had the mastery, and then suddenly a clear
light broke into his eyes, his face flushed healthily and shone, his arms
went up, and there rang in his ears the words:
"Then I think with bitter pain,
Shall we ever meet again?
When the swallows homeward fly--"
"Alice--Alice!" he called, and tottered forward up the aisle, followed
by John Bickersteth.
"Alice, I have come back!" he cried again.
GEORGE'S WIFE
"She's come, and she can go back. No one asked her, no one wants her,
and she's got no rights here. She thinks she'll come it over me, but
she'll get nothing, and there's no place for her here."
The old, grey-bearded man, gnarled and angular, with overhanging brows
and a harsh face, made this little speech of malice and unfriendliness,
looking out on the snow-covered prairie through the window. Far in the
distance were a sleigh and horses like a spot in the snow, growing larger
from minute to minute.
It was a day of days. Overhead, the sun was pouring out a flood of light
and warmth, and though it was bitterly cold, life was beating hard in the
bosom of the West. Men walked lightly, breathed quickly, and their eyes
were bright with the brightness of vitality and content. Even the old
man at the window of this lonely house, in a great lonely stretch of
country, with the cedar hills behind it, had a living force which defied
his seventy odd years, though the light in his face was hard and his
voice was harder still. Under the shelter of the foothills, cold as the
day was, his cattle were feeding in the open, scratching away the thin
layer of snow, and browsing on the tender grass underneath. An arctic
world in appearance, it had an abounding life which made it friendly and
generous--the harshness belonged to the surface. So, perhaps, it was
with the old man who watched the sleigh in the distance coming nearer,
but that in his nature on which any one could feed was not so easily
reached as the fresh young grass under the protecting snow.
"She'll get nothing out of me," he repeated, as the others in the room
behind him made no remark, and his eyes ranged gloatingly over the cattle
under the foothills and the buildings which he had gathered together to
proclaim his substantial greatness in the West. "Not a sous markee," he
added, clinking some coins in his pocket. "She's got no rights."
"Cassy's got as much right here as any of us, Abel, and she's coming to
say it, I guess."
The voice which spoke was unlike a Western voice. It was deep and full
and slow, with an organ-like quality. It was in good keeping with the
tall, spare body and large, fine rugged face of the woman to whom it
belonged. She sat in a rocking-chair, but did not rock, her fingers busy
with the knitting-needles, her feet planted squarely on the home-made
hassock at her feet.
The old man waited for a minute in a painful silence, then he turned
slowly round, and, with tight-pressed lips, looked at the woman in the
rocking-chair. If it had been anyone else who had "talked back" at him,
he would have made quick work of them, for he was of that class of tyrant
who pride themselves on being self-made, and have an undue respect for
their own judgment and importance. But the woman who had ventured to
challenge his cold-blooded remarks about his dead son's wife, now
hastening over the snow to the house her husband had left under a cloud
eight years before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard for
him. He respected her, as did all who knew her--a very reticent,
thoughtful, busy being, who had been like a well of comfort to so many
that had drunk and passed on out of her life, out of time and time's
experiences. Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding, strong, full
of work, and fuller of life's knowledge. It was she who had sent the
horses and sleigh for "Gassy," when the old man, having read the letter
that Cassy had written him, said that she could "freeze at the station"
for all of him. Aunt Kate had said nothing then, but, when the time
came, by her orders the sleigh and horses were at the station; and the
old man had made no direct protest, for she was the one person he had
never dominated nor bullied. If she had only talked, he would have worn
her down, for he was fond of talking, and it was said by those who were
cynical and incredulous about him that he had gone to prayer-meetings,
had been a local preacher, only to hear his own voice. Probably if there
had been any politics in the West in his day, he would have been a
politician, though it would have been too costly for his taste, and
religion was very cheap; it enabled him to refuse to join in many forms
of expenditure, on the ground that he "did not hold by such things."
In Aunt Kate, the sister of his wife, dead so many years ago, he had
found a spirit stronger than his own. He valued her; he had said more
than once, to those who he thought would never repeat it to her, that
she was a "great woman"; but self-interest was the mainspring of his
appreciation. Since she had come again to his house--she had lived with
him once before for two years when his wife was slowly dying--it had been
a different place. Housekeeping had cost less than before, yet the
cooking was better, the place was beautifully clean, and discipline
without rigidity reigned everywhere. One by one the old woman's boys
and girls had died--four of them--and she was now alone, with not
a single grandchild left to cheer her; and the life out here with Abel
Baragar had been unrelieved by much that was heartening to a woman; for
Black Andy, Abel's son, was not an inspiring figure, though even his
moroseness gave way under her influence. So it was that when Cassy's
letter came, her breast seemed to grow warmer, and swell with longing to
see the wife of her nephew, who had such a bad reputation in Abel's eyes,
and to see George's little boy, who was coming too. After all, whatever
Cassy was, she was the mother of Abel's son's son; and Aunt Kate was too
old and wise to be frightened by tales told of Cassy or any one else.
So, having had her own way so far regarding Cassy's coming, she looked
Abel calmly in the eyes, over the gold-rimmed spectacles which were her
dearest possession--almost the only thing of value she had. She was not
afraid of Abel's anger, and he knew it; but his eldest son, Black Andy,
was present, and he must make a show of being master of the situation.
"Aunt Kate," he said, "I didn't make a fuss about you sending the horses
and sleigh for her, because women do fool things sometimes. I suppose
curiosity got the best of you. Anyhow, mebbe it's right Cassy should
find out, once for all, how things stand, and that they haven't altered
since she took George away, and ruined his life, and sent him to his
grave. That's why I didn't order Mick back when I saw him going out with
the team."
"Cassy Mavor," interjected a third voice from a corner behind the great
stove--"Cassy Mavor, of the variety-dance-and-song, and a talk with the
gallery between!"
Aunt Kate looked over at Black Andy, and stopped knitting, for there was
that in the tone of the sullen ranchman which stirred in her a sudden
anger, and anger was a rare and uncomfortable sensation to her. A flush
crept slowly over her face, then it died away, and she said quietly to
Black Andy--for she had ever prayed to be master of the demon of temper
down deep in her, and she was praying now:
"She earnt her living by singing and dancing, and she's brought up
George's boy by it, and singing and dancing isn't a crime. David danced
before the Lord. I danced myself when I was a young girl, and before I
joined the church. 'Twas about the only pleasure I ever had; 'bout the
only one I like to remember. There's no difference to me 'twixt making
your feet handy and clever and full of music, and playing with your
fingers on the piano or on a melodeon at a meeting. As for singing, it's
God's gift; and many a time I wisht I had it. I'd have sung the
blackness out of your face and heart, Andy." She leaned back again and
began to knit very fast. "I'd like to hear Cassy sing, and see her dance
too."
Black Andy chuckled coarsely, "I often heard her sing and saw her dance
down at Lumley's before she took George away East. You wouldn't have
guessed she had consumption. She knocked the boys over down to Lumley's.
The first night at Lumley's done for George."
Black Andy's face showed no lightening of its gloom as he spoke, but
there was a firing up of the black eyes, and the woman with the knitting
felt that--for whatever reason--he was purposely irritating his father.
"The devil was in her heels and in her tongue," Andy continued. "With
her big mouth, red hair, and little eyes, she'd have made anybody laugh.
I laughed."
"You laughed!" snapped out his father with a sneer.
Black Andy's eyes half closed with a morose look, then he went on. "Yes,
I laughed at Cassy. While she was out here at Lumley's getting cured,
accordin' to the doctor's orders, things seemed to get a move on in the
West. But it didn't suit professing Christians like you, dad." He
jerked his head towards the old man and drew the spittoon near with his
feet.
"The West hasn't been any worse off since she left," snarled the old man.
"Well, she took George with her," grimly retorted Black Andy.
Abel Baragar's heart had been warmer towards his dead son George than
to any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair
as Andrew was dark; as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and
dispiriting; as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was
slow and angular; as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was
phlegmatic and sour--or so it seemed to the father and to nearly all
others.
In those old days they had not been very well off. The railway was not
completed, and the West had not begun "to move." The old man had bought
and sold land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow margin of
safety, but in the hope that one day the choice bits of land he was
shepherding here and there would take a leap up in value; and his
judgment had been right. His prosperity had all come since George went
away with Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the more acute,
because the thing happened at a time when his affairs were on the edge of
a precipice. He had won through it, but only by the merest shave, and it
had all left him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his "having
religion." Whenever he remembered George, he instinctively thought of
those black days when a Land and Cattle Syndicate was crowding him over
the edge into the chasm of failure, and came so near doing it. A few
thousand dollars less to put up here and there, and he would have been
ruined; his blood became hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to
fight the worst of it through alone, for George, who had been useful as a
kind of buyer and seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready
with quip and jest, and not a little uncertain as to truth--to which the
old man shut his eyes when there was a "deal" on--had, in the end, been
of no use at all, and had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most
needed. His father had put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled
things since she had come to Lumley's, and being a man of very few ideas,
he cherished those he had with an exaggerated care. Prosperity had not
softened him; it had given him an arrogance unduly emphasised by a
reputation for rigid virtue and honesty. The indirect attack which
Andrew now made on George's memory roused him to anger, as much because
it seemed to challenge his own judgment as cast a slight on the name of
the boy whom he had cast off, yet who had a firmer hold on his heart than
any human being ever had. It had only been pride which had prevented him
from making it up with George before it was too late; but, all the more,
he was set against the woman who "kicked up her heels for a living"; and,
all the more, he resented Black Andy, who, in his own grim way, had
managed to remain a partner with him in their present prosperity, and had
done so little for it.
"George helped to make what you've got, Andy," he said darkly now. "The
West missed George. The West said, 'There was a good man ruined by a
woman.' The West'd never think anything or anybody missed you, 'cept
yourself. When you went North, it never missed you; when you come back,
its jaw fell. You wasn't fit to black George's boots."
Black Andy's mouth took on a bitter sort of smile, and his eyes drooped
furtively, as he struck the damper of the stove heavily with his foot,
then he replied slowly:
"Well, that's all right; but if I wasn't fit to black his boots, it ain't
my fault. I git my nature honest, as he did. We wasn't any cross-
breeds, I s'pose. We got the strain direct, and we was all right on her
side." He jerked his head towards Aunt Kate, whose face was growing
pale. She interposed now.
"Can't you leave the dead alone?" she asked in a voice ringing a little.
"Can't you let them rest? Ain't it enough to quarrel about the living?
Cassy'll be here soon," she added, peering out of the window, "and if I
was you, I'd try and not make her sorry she ever married a Baragar. It
ain't a feeling that'd make a sick woman live long."
Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did, she struck hard. Abel
Baragar staggered a little under this blow, for, at the moment, it seemed
to him that he saw his dead wife's face looking at him from the chair
where her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart, where there
had been little which was companionable, there was a shadowed corner.
Sophy Baragar had been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he
had been so impatient and exacting with her, till the beautiful face,
which had been reproduced in George, had lost its colour and its fire,
had become careworn and sweet with that sweetness which goes early out of
the world. In all her days the vanished wife had never hinted at as much
as Aunt Kate suggested now, and Abel Baragar shut his eyes against the
thing which he was seeing. He was not all hard, after all.
Aunt Kate turned to Black Andy now.
"Mebbe Cassy ain't for long," she said. "Mebbe she's come out for what
she came out for before. It seems to me it's that, or she wouldn't have
come; because she's young yet, and she's fond of her boy, and she'd not
want to bury herself alive out here with us. Mebbe her lungs is bad
again."
"Then she's sure to get another husband out here," said the old man,
recovering himself. "She got one before easy, on the same ticket." With
something of malice he looked over at Black Andy.
"If she can sing and dance as she done nine years ago, I shouldn't
wonder," answered Black Andy smoothly. These two men knew each other;
they had said hard things to each other for many a year, yet they lived
on together unshaken by each other's moods and bitternesses.
"I'm getting old,--I'm seventy-nine,--and I ain't for long," urged Aunt
Kate, looking Abel in the eyes. "Some day soon I'll be stepping out and
away. Then things'll go to sixes and sevens, as they did after Sophy
died. Some one ought to be here that's got a right to be here, not a
hired woman."
Suddenly the old man raged out.
"Her--off the stage, to look after this! Her, that's kicked up her heels
for a living! It's--no, she's no good. She's common. She's come, and
she can go. I ain't having sweepings from the streets living here as if
they had rights."
Aunt Kate set her lips.
"Sweepings! You've got to take that back, Abel. It's not Christian.
You've got to take that back."
"He'll take it back all right before we've done, I guess," remarked Black
Andy. "He'll take a lot back."
"Truth's truth, and I'll stand by it, and--"
The old man stopped, for there came to them now, clearly, the sound of
sleigh bells. They all stood still for an instant, silent and attentive,
then Aunt Kate moved towards the door.
"Cassy's come," she said. "Cassy and George's boy've come."
Another instant and the door was opened on the beautiful, white,
sparkling world, and the low sleigh, with its great warm buffalo robes,
in which the small figures of a woman and a child were almost lost,
stopped at the door. Two whimsical but tired eyes looked over a rim of
fur at the old woman in the doorway, then Cassy's voice rang out.
"Hello, that's Aunt Kate, I know! Well, here we are, and here's my boy.
Jump, George!"
A moment later, and the gaunt old woman folded both mother and son in her
arms and drew them into the room. The door was shut, and they all faced
each other.
The old man and Black Andy did not move, but stood staring at the trim
figure in black, with the plain face, large mouth, and tousled red hair,
and the dreamy-eyed, handsome little boy beside her.
Black Andy stood behind the stove, looking over at the new-comers with
quizzical, almost furtive eyes, and his father remained for a moment with
mouth open, gazing at his dead son's wife and child, as though not quite
comprehending the scene. The sight of the boy had brought back, in some
strange, embarrassing way, a vision of thirty years before, when George
was a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was beginning to ride
the prairie with him. This boy was like George, yet not like him. The
face was George's, the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not
those of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate's family; and they were
not wholly like the mother's. They were full and brimming, while hers
were small and whimsical; yet they had her quick, humourous flashes and
her quaintness.
"Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten me?" Cassy asked, looking
the old man in the eyes. "You look as strong as a bull." She held out
her hand to him and laughed.
"Hope I see you well," said Abel Baragar mechanically, as he took the
hand and shook it awkwardly.
"Oh, I'm all right," answered the nonchalant little woman, undoing her
jacket. "Shake hands with your grandfather, George. That's right--don't
talk too much," she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as the old
man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child shook hands in silence.
Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove. "Well, Andy, have you
been here ever since?" she asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly
caught him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. "Last time I
saw you, you were behind the stove at Lumley's. Nothing's ever too warm
for you," she added. "You'd be shivering on the Equator. You were
always hugging the stove at Lumley's."
"Things was pretty warm there, too, Cassy," he said, with a sidelong look
at his father.
She saw the look, her face flashed with sudden temper, then her eyes fell
on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself.
"There were plenty of things doing at Lumley's in those days," she said
brusquely. "We were all young and fresh then," she added, and then
something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little--a hard,
dry, feverish cough. "Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there,
at the Forks?" she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing.
"Cleaned out--all scattered. We own the Lumleys' place now," replied
Black Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put
some more wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider,
grimly watched and listened.
"Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?" she asked almost abstractedly.
"Jim's dead-shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler," answered
Black Andy suggestively. "Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one
of our, hands on the place; and Abner is in jail."
"Abner-in jail!" she exclaimed in a dazed way. "What did he do? Abner
always seemed so straight."
"Oh, he sloped with a thousand dollars of the railway people's money.
They caught him, and he got seven years."
"He was married, wasn't he?" she asked in a low voice. "Yes, to Phenie
Tyson. There's no children, so she's all right, and divorce is cheap
over in the States, where she is now."
"Phenie Tyson didn't marry Abner because he was a saint, but because he
was a man, I suppose," she replied gravely. "And the old folks?"
"Both dead. What Abner done sent the old man to his grave. But Abner's
mother died a year before."
"What Abner done killed his father," said Abel Baragar with dry emphasis.
"Phenie Tyson was extravagant-wanted this and that, and nothin' was too
good for her. Abner spoilt his life gettin' her what she wanted; and it
broke old Ezra Lumley's heart."
George's wife looked at him for a moment with her eyes screwed up, and
then she laughed softly. "My, it's curious how some folks go up and some
go down! It must be lonely for Phenie waiting all these years for Abner
to get free. . . . I had the happiest time in my life at Lumley's.
I was getting better of my-cold. While I was there I got lots of
strength stored up, to last me many a year when I needed it; and, then,
George and I were married at Lumley's. . . ."
Aunt Kate came slowly over with the boy, and laid a hand on Cassy's
shoulder, for there was an undercurrent to the conversation which boded
no good. The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar and his
son's wife into the midst of the difficulty which she had hoped might,
after all, be avoided.
"Come, and I'll show you your room, Cassy," she said. "It faces south,
and you'll get the sun all day. It's like a sun-parlour. We're going to
have supper in a couple of hours, and you must rest some first. Is the
house warm enough for you?"
The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but shook back her red
hair and caught her boy to her breast and kissed him; then she said in
that staccato manner which had given her words on the stage such point
and emphasis, "Oh, this house is a'most too warm for me, Aunt Kate!"
Then she moved towards the door with the grave, kindly old woman, her
son's hand in her own.
"You can see the Lumleys' place from your window, Cassy," said Black Andy
grimly. "We got a mortgage on it, and foreclosed it, and it's ours now;
and Jerry Lumley's stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he's better off than
Abner, or Abner's wife."
Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively she caught at some
latent conflict with old Abel Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and
her face softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he was not
against her.
"I'm glad to be back West," she said. "It meant a lot to me when I was
at Lumley's." She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a
laugh.
"How long have you come to stay here--out West?" asked the old man
furtively.
"Why, there's plenty of time to think of that!" she answered brusquely,
and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her.
In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the
windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays,
glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save
the cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills
for the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the
vision of the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of
warmth and refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant peace seemed to
rest upon the wide, silent expanse. The birds of song were gone South
over the hills, and the living wild things of the prairies had stolen
into winter quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon the exquisite
beauty of the scene, upon the splendid outspanning of the sun along the
hills, the deep plangent blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw
a world in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted. The sun shone
bright on the windows of Lumley's house, but she could hear the crying of
Abner's wife, and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children were
stricken or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew tighter and tighter the chains
of the mortgage, which at last made them tenants in the house once their
own. Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not
happened to her, too, in those eight years!
With George--reckless, useless, loving, lying George--she had left
Lumley's with her sickness cured, as it seemed, after a long year in the
West, and had begun life again. What sort of life had it been? "Kicking
up her heels on the stage," as Abel Baragar had said; but, somehow, not
as it was before she went West to give her perforated lung to the healing
air of the plains, and to live outdoors with the men--a man's life. Then
she had never put a curb on her tongue, or greatly on her actions, except
that, though a hundred men quarrelled openly, or in their own minds,
about her, no one had ever had any right to quarrel about her. With a
tongue which made men gasp with laughter, with as comic a gift as ever
woman had, and as equally comic a face, she had been a good-natured
little tyrant in her way. She had given a kiss here and there, and had
taken one, but always there had been before her mind the picture of a
careworn woman who struggled to bring up her three children honestly, and
without the help of charity, and, with a sigh of content and weariness,
had died as Cassy made her first hit on the stage and her name became a
household word. And Cassy, garish, gay, freckled, witty and whimsical,
had never forgotten those days when her mother prayed and worked her
heart out to do her duty by her children. Cassy Mavor had made her
following, had won her place, was the idol of "the gallery"; and yet she
was "of the people," as she had always been, until her first sickness
came, and she had gone out to Lumley's, out along the foothills of the
Rockies.
What had made her fall in love with George Baragar?