CITIES OUT OF SIGHT
In Keewatin the human intellect stands forever at a halt, awed in the
presence of a limitless serenity for which it can find no better name
than God, since, of all things which are incalculable, He seems most
infinite.
In this land of rivers and solitude Man is unnecessary, disregarded,
and plays no part; if, after two hundred odd years of white, and many
centuries of Indian habitation, Man were to withdraw himself
to-morrow, he would leave no permanent record of his sojourn
there--only a few outposts and forts, several far-scattered
independent traders' stores, one or two missions and fishing-stations,
all of them built of wood, which within a decade would have crumbled
to decay, over which the tangled forest would silently close up.
Instinctively he knows himself for an impudent intruder on something
which is sacred; he hears continually what Adam heard when he stole of
the fruit which was forbidden, God walking in the garden in the cool
of the day--the accusing footsteps of God. His brain is staggered by
an unchartered immensity in which he has no portion, which he can only
watch. His individual worth to the universe is dwarfed by the
imminence of the All: so nothing seems very serious which is only
personal and, since all things which we apprehend must become in some
sense personal, nothing is very important. The procession of human
effort becomes a spectacle at sight of which Homeric laughter may
sometimes be permissible, but tears never. If a man once gives way to
weeping in Keewatin, he will weep always. Only by the exercise of a
self-restraint which at first seems brutal can life be endured there.
Granger, as he walked toward his store under the shadow of the dawn,
was conscious of all this. The land was wrapped in the intensest
quiet; the very crunch of his snowshoes seemed a profanation, though
he trod lightly. When he had ascended the Point, he paused and gazed
back. Already the thaw had commenced; down the still white face of the
country, which lay at his feet like a shrouded corpse, the tears had
begun to trinkle, though the eyes were tranquil and fast shut; the
sight was as astounding to him as if a man six months dead should be
seen to stir within his coffin of glass. Here and there in the expanse
of forest he could see flashes of green and brown, of tree-tops from
which the snow had fallen. The river-banks, which yesterday had seemed
chiselled out of solid marble, were to-day tunnelled and scarred with
tiny rills and watercourses which groped their way feebly riverwards.
As he stood in silence meditating, he was startled by the whirr of
wings, and looking southward descried the advance-guard of the first
flock of ducks. "Ha, the spring has come," he cried; but immediately
he checked his ecstasy, for his eyes had again caught sight of the
emotionless expression on that great white face with its closed eyes
turned toward the sun. Though no voice spoke it seemed to him to say,
making by its silence its meaning plain, "There is nothing of which
the importance is so great that we should forsake our calm."
He felt rebuked for vulgarity, as though he had been found shouting in
a cathedral-nave where priests were praying for the peace of souls of
the departed. He desired to hide himself; entering his shack, he
pushed to the door. He was tired; his brain ached with thought, and
his thought was disjointed. He could not believe that Spurling had
ever come; it was all an hallucination. Thinking about the past had
made him imagine all that, or else he had dreamed it in the night. He
went over detail by detail all that had seemed to him to happen; and
even then, when it fitted reasonably together, he could not be
certain. It was too monstrous that Spurling should have become like
that! He would not believe it. Then his anxiety for Mordaunt sprang up
and commenced to craze him. The terrible question throbbed through his
mind, "Is Mordaunt dead?"
The mania for questions grew upon him. Three separate voices spoke
clamorously at once: "Is Mordaunt dead?"
"Did Spurling murder him?"
"Am I mad?"
He stumbled to the far end of the room and flung himself down in his
bunk, burying his face in its coverings that he might shut out the
light and gain a moment's rest. But his imaginings followed and knelt
beside him.
"Well, if I must think," he whispered, "I will think of that which is
best." He beckoned from out the shadows his memory of Mordaunt's face,
and gave himself over to recalling all that it once had meant. They
had nicknamed him "The Girl" because of his shyness and modesty, and
had not always been particular in the jokes which they had made at his
expense. Yes, and he had had a woman's ways from first to last.
Nothing that had happened had been able to coarsen him; he had never
given way to loose talk or brutal jests, and in the presence of
suffering had invariably been full of tenderness.
Good heavens! pass on to the crisis--to that day when he had come to
the top of the shaft and called down to him! He had answered his call,
praying him in an agonized voice to descend and rescue him. He could
see him now approaching hurriedly, yet cautiously, through the
darkness, lifting high up his swinging lamp so that its rays fell
across his face. He could still remember how absurd it had seemed to
suppose that a creature, so small and fragile, could save him from
_that other_. Yet he had; and after that, because of the relief he
felt, he had confessed. Then, in a moment of compassionate
self-forgetfulness, Mordaunt had placed his arms about him and had
drawn down his head upon his breast--an action of which no man in
dealing with another man was ever capable; the mother-instinct was
manifested there. In the flickering lamplight, with his head pressed
close to his companion's breast, feeling its rise and fall at each
struggling intake of the breath, crouching underground upon the
bed-rock, he had guessed the secret--_that Mordaunt was not a man_.
From that hour he had loved her. She had never known that he shared
her secret. Thank God, he had remained so much a gentleman that he had
not told her that! Who she was, why she had come to the Klondike, what
was her proper name, he had not permitted himself to inquire; for him
it had been sufficient that she was a woman, and that he loved her,
and that he was unworthy of her love. After she had seen him shoot at
Spurling he had avoided her, lest by contact with him she should be
defiled. He had vaguely hoped at the time of leaving that the day
might come, after he had cleansed himself and proved himself a man,
when he might seek her out and ask her to be his wife. Through the
last three years he had lived for that. To have asked her then would
have been an insult, an act of cowardice. How would an upright woman
answer a man whom she had just saved from homicide? How would she
regard a man who had discovered the secret of her sex in such a
manner, because of her compassion, and had not had the decency to keep
that knowledge secret even from herself? So he had fled from the
Shallows for a double reason; that he might not do violence to
Spurling, and that he might not betray himself to her. He had left her
without a hint of his going, or a word of explanation.
What had she thought of him? He had often wondered that. Had she also
loved him, and not dared to speak about it? He half-suspected that. If
she had loved him and had spoken out, he would not have married her at
that time, when even he despised himself; to have done so would have
been to drag her down. Still, he could not help speculating as to what
she had said and thought on that morning when she awoke in the winter
dreariness, and, gazing round the cabin, found that he had vanished.
Had she regretted him, and had she sometimes, when Spurling had become
intolerable, gone aside and wept? After three years, though he had
loved her, he could only recall her by her man's name, and picture her
in her man's dress.
Then, while he thought with closed eyes, that awful question came
again, "Is Mordaunt dead?"
Whilst she was in the world it had been possible for him to strive to
be straightforward and courageous; but, _if she was dead_ . . .! If
Spurling had murdered her, if he had lied to him and _she_ was his
partner, what then? Well, that all depended on whether Spurling had
known her sex. If not, what a revenge he would take when he should
confront him, and inform him that he had murdered a woman, and not a
man! He knew Spurling; for him the public ignominy of being hanged
would be as nothing compared with such private knowledge--it would
thrust him into Hell in this life.
Ah, but that could not be; God would not allow it! Spurling himself
had said that he had not sunk so low as that. Yet, in case it might be
so, he would keep his word and help him to escape--from the Mounted
Police, but not from himself. He would be the executioner if there
must be one. The law should not rob him of his revenge. He would save
Spurling's life in case he might need to take it.
Then, unbidden and against his will, there rose up the image of the
man who had saved his life in Tagish Lake. Spurling had forestalled
him, bribed him beforehand, by restoring him his own life in exchange
for the life which he was doomed to take. Did that not make amends?
Also he had rescued Mordaunt from disaster on the Skaguay trail, where
he would certainly have perished had he been left. He had done
unconsciously that which Granger proposed to do of set purpose--saved
a life that he might take it. Did not that in some measure make
amends? The problem was too complicated; it must work itself out in
its own way. Yet, it would be a bitter irony if, after he had
travelled a continent to avoid this deed, he should be forced to kill
Spurling in the end--Spurling, who had come to him of his own accord.
Still more burlesque would it be if, after Spurling was at rest, he
should be hanged in his stead.
But perhaps Mordaunt was not dead.
To rid himself of these morbid questionings, he would give his remoter
memory the reins to-day, at whatever cost; it was pleasanter to
remember bygone unpleasantness than to live with the ills which
threatened his present life. He recollected how some one had once
asked Carlyle, "Why does the Past always seem so much happier than the
Present?" And Carlyle's stern reply, "Because the fear has gone out of
it." How odd it seemed to him that he should be recalling Carlyle up
there in Keewatin! Yet, because that answer was true, he took up the
thread of his London life again, that so, with the drug of memory, he
might lay to rest his immediate misfortunes. He was a little boy again
in the old red house on Clapton Common. One by one he entered its
homely rooms with their ancient furniture, quaint wall-paper, and
general look of substantial comfort. Once more he leant out of the
bow-window at the back and gazed beyond the hill, upon which the house
was built, up which gardens climbed, divided by creeper-covered walls
of crumbling brick, down to where at its foot the river ran through
flats and marshes. Far away, a little to the right, old Woodford
raised its head; to the left Chingford, as yet unmodernized, showed
up; and straight ahead, at a distance of seven miles, the steeple of
High Beech, in the kindly habitable forest of Epping, was in sight.
This was the house in which he had first dreamed the dream by the
glamour of which he had been led astray. His father had dreamed the
same dream, and his grandfather before him; it seemed to be a part of
the walls and masonry, so interwoven was it with his memories of that
house. It had been the first faery-story which he had ever listened
to, and had been told to him for the most part in that back room with
the bow-window, as he had sat on his grand-father's knee on winters'
nights.
The first time that he had heard it he could not have been more than
five, and his father was absent, so his grandfather said, pursuing the
dream on the other side of the world. This was the story as he
remembered it. "In the land of Guiana there is a golden city named
Manoa, but El Dorado in the Spanish language, which stands on the
shores of a vast inland lake whose waters are salt, which is called
Parima, and which is two hundred leagues in length. Juan Martinez was
the first white man to visit it, and he did so through no fault of his
own! When he was with the Spanish army at the port of Morequito, the
store of powder, of which he had charge, caught fire and was
destroyed. His commander, Diego Ordas, was so enraged that he
sentenced him to death; but being appealed to by the soldiery with
whom Martinez was a favourite, he commuted his punishment to
this--that he should be set in a canoe alone, without any victual,
only with his arms, and so turned loose on the great river. By the
grace of God he floated down stream and was captured by certain
Indians, who, never having seen a European before or anyone of that
colour, carried him into a land to be wondered at, and so from town to
town, until he came to the golden city of Manoa of which Inca was
emperor. Now the emperor, when he beheld him, knew him to be a
Christian, for not long since his brethren had been vanquished by the
Spaniards in Peru; therefore he had him lodged in his palace and
ordered that he should be respectfully entertained. There Martinez
lived for seven months, and all that while was not allowed to wander
beyond the city's walls lest he should discover the country's secrets,
for he had been brought thither blindfold and had been fifteen days in
the passage. When, years later, he came to die, he confessed to a
priest that he had entered Manoa at high noon and that then his
captors had uncovered his eyes, and that he had travelled all that day
till nightfall through its streets and all the next, from the rising
to the setting of the sun, of so great extent was it, until he arrived
at the palace. It was Martinez who had given to Manoa its name of El
Dorado, because its roadways were paved with gold, and there was so
great an abundance of that metal there that, before the emperor would
carouse with his captains, all those who were to pledge him were
stripped naked, and their bodies anointed with white balsam, over
which through hollow canes was blown by slaves the dust of fine gold,
so that when his guests sat down to drink with him, they glistened
yellow in the sun like gilded statues.
"When Martinez had obtained his freedom and returned to Trinidad, and
told his story, many other adventurers set out in quest of Manoa; but
none so much as saw it save only Pedro de Urra. He, after incredible
labours, at length arrived at a mountain peak whence, looking down,
far away in the distance he could just descry the shining roofs of
palaces and golden domes of Inca temples, wherein, he was told, were
stored gold images of women and children more beautiful than God had
yet wrought into flesh and blood. But his strength was spent and his
troops were famished, also the Incas' armies were moving forward to
check his advance; therefore he had to retreat, and to return to the
seacoast, where he fretted away his life in dreaming of the
splendours of which he had only just had sight. Fifty years later
Berreo, governor of Trinidad, set out from Nuevo Reyno with seven
hundred horse and slaves, and descended the Cassanar river, bound upon
the same errand. What with fever and poisonous water he lost many of
his men and cattle, so that, when he reached the Province of Amapaia,
he had but one hundred and twenty soldiers left, and these were sick
and dying; and so he also was forced to abandon his search. And this
man Raleigh captured, and from him extorted his secrets, when he
sailed to discover and conquer El Dorado for Queen Elizabeth, having
in his company Jacob Whiddon, the English pirate, and George Gifford
who was captain of the Lion's Whelp.
"All the way across the ocean they studied the records of the
adventurers who had sought before them, till they had them all by
memory; for they hoped to find those same wonders which Lopez says
that Pizarro found in the first home of the Incas: 'A royal city where
all the vessels of the emperor's house, table, and kitchen, were of
gold and silver, and the meanest of silver and copper for strength and
hardness of metal. He had in his wardrobe hollow statues of gold which
seemed giants, and the figures in proportion and bigness of all the
beasts, birds, trees, and herbs that earth produceth; and of all the
fishes that the sea or waters of his kingdom breedeth. He had also
ropes, budgets, chests, and troughs of gold and silver, heaps of
billets of gold, that seemed wood marked out to burn. Finally, there
was nothing in his country whereof he had not the counterfeit in gold.
Yea, and they say, that the Incas had a garden of pleasure in an
island near Puna, where they went to recreate themselves when they
would take the air of the sea, which had all kinds of garden-herbs,
flowers, and trees of gold and silver, an invention and magnificence
till then never seen. Besides all this, he had an infinite quantity of
silver and gold unwrought in Cuzco.' The counterpart of all these
marvels Raleigh hoped to find, when he had sailed up the Orinoco to
its watershed.
"So, when he had gathered all the information which he could from
Berreo, he departed and rowed up the river in the galego boat of the
Lion's Whelp, till on the fourth day he dropped into the waters of the
Great Amana. Up the Great Amana he travelled, always getting news of
his city, always being told that it was farther inland. On the banks
of this river grew diverse sorts of fruit good to eat, flowers and
trees of such variety as were 'sufficient to make ten books of
herbals.' And everywhere he saw multitudes of birds of all colours,
some carnation, some crimson, some orange-tawny, purple, watchet, and
of all other sorts, so that, as he himself has said, 'It was unto us a
great good passing of the time to behold them, besides the relief we
found in killing some store of them; and still as we rowed, the deer
came down feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to the
keeper's call.'
"Lured on by these delights, he journeyed farther inland until at last
he came to the first great silver mine; but here the Orinoco and all
the other rivers had risen from four to five feet in height, so that
it was not possible by the strength of man or with any boat whatsoever
to row into the river against the stream. However, before his return,
one day as it drew towards sunset, he had sight of a crystal mountain,
which was said to be studded with diamonds and precious stones, which
shone afar off, the appearance of which was like to that of a white
church tower of exceeding height. Over the summit rushed a mighty
river, which touched no part of the mountainside, and fell with a
great clamour as if a thousand bells were knocked together; so, though
he did not find El Dorado, he was somewhat comforted by the marvel of
this sight. Also, before he left he saw _El Madre del Oro_, the mother
of gold, which proved that treasure lay not far underground."
So, hour after hour, and night after night, the old man had told his
magic story of the search for El Dorado to the little boy. And
sometimes he would vary it with other tales and legends of men who had
gone upon quests equally wild; of Ponce de Leon, who had sought for
the Bimini Isle, where arose a fountain whose waters could cause men
to grow young again; of the Sieur D'Ottigny, who set sail for the
Unknown in search of wealth, singing songs as if bound for a bridal
feast; and of Vasseur, who first brought news of the distant
Appalachian Mountains, whose slopes teem with precious metals and with
gems beyond price. But always the narration would return to El Dorado
on the shores of Parima. Then the little boy would ask, "But, Grandpa,
is it true, or is it only a faery-tale? Was there ever such a city,
and does it exist to-day?" Whereupon the old gentleman would grow very
serious and would reply, "Certainly there is such a city, my dear; for
when I was young I went in search of it, and your father is out there
finding it to-day."
After which answer he would get out maps, and show the child the red
lines, which were his own journeys, and the exact spot in the
watershed of the Orinoco where he believed the city to stand. Then
they would reason about it together, bending low beneath the lamp,
tracing out the various routes of past explorers, until his mother
came in and, seeing what they were so busy about, carried him off to
bed. At an early age he discovered that his mother approved neither of
the grand-father's stories, nor of her husband's absence. She was
often at pains to tell him that there was no such city, that the
stories were all fables, and that his grandpapa had wasted his fortune
and talents in its search. But the boy believed in the fables, for he
liked to think of his father as sailing up the Great Amana, where the
deer feed along the banks, until at last he came to the golden city
where the men are like gilded statues. He was sure that his papa would
return rich one day, bringing with him an Inca princess for his son to
marry.
But, when his father did return, he brought back with him only a
fever-shattered body for his wife to nurse, and a plucky belief that
he would succeed next time. Ah, but those were good days which he had
spent by his father's bedside, when he had gazed on that fair-haired,
soldierly man who had trodden in Raleigh's footsteps! He remembered
how his father had laughed when he had asked in awe-struck tones
whether he might be allowed to kiss his hands, and how he had said,
"If I do not find, you will seek for it some day"--and then he had
felt proud. How eagerly he had listened when the two explorers, father
and son, had sat together and had talked over their various travels!
And how he could remember his father's account of his latest journey!
His mother had been out at the time when it was related; they never
mentioned these matters in her presence because they pained her;
moreover, if she was near by when they were talked about, she would
contrive some excuse for snatching the boy away. They had watched
their opportunity, however, and his father had told him.
He had set out in a canvas sailing boat, and had ascended the Orinoco
for twenty days. Every now and then he had come to rapids, where he
had had to go ashore to carry his boat, or to marshes, where he had
had to wade. As he travelled farther from the mainland, his Indian
guides had deserted him till there was none left, and he had had to go
on alone. Day by day he had passed by great rocks, on which there was
writing engraved, which, perhaps, contained directions for travellers
who, ages since, had been bound for that same city; but they were now
of no use to him, because they were written in a forgotten language
and in an alphabet which not even the Indians could understand. So he
had gone on until at last he came to the crystal mountain, and the
waterfall which Raleigh had described; and after that he had travelled
further than even great Raleigh himself, or any other white man. It
was at this point that the boy had gasped and asked to be allowed to
kiss his father's hands.
Then his father had told him how beyond the mountain there had seemed
to be nothing but tangled wood and swamp, and how he had caught fever
and wandered on in delirium until, when he came to himself, he had
found himself standing on the shores of what had once been a vast
inland lake, but which had now become partially dry, through which it
was only possible to wade. So he left his boat and waded on, sometimes
shoulders high, for four days; for, though he was racked with pains,
he would not give up because he believed the lake to be Parima. On
the evening of the fourth day, when his strength was almost spent and
he was ready to sink with faintness, he came to an island and saw in
the distance, in the light of the setting sun, golden spires and the
roofs of houses many miles away, which he knew to be El Dorado. But by
this time he had only two days' provisions left and dared not venture
further; so he, like Pedro de Urra, having come within sight of his
desire, had been compelled to turn back. Of his return journey he said
nothing; Granger learnt that from his mother in later years. It had
been made in agonies of hunger and thirst, which had nearly robbed him
of his life. Nevertheless, his father had told him that, so soon as he
got well again, he was going back, and that he would reach El Dorado
this time. True to his word, when his fever had left him, he had bade
them all good-bye, making his son secretly promise that, if he should
not come back, when he became a man, he would follow him in the quest.
Then had come the two years of anxious waiting in which they had had
no news of him, and the final acceptance of the belief that he was
dead. But his grandfather would not lose faith; he himself had once
been missing for five years. He said that his son had reached the
city, and was pushing homeward through the Andes on to the Pacific
side. Night by night, in that back room with the bow-window, he had
collected his records and studied them beneath the lamp. "He must be
about here by now," he would say, pointing to a certain place. But the
boy's mother had only smiled sadly, saying, "Is he not yet
undeceived?" Then one evening they had left him in his chair, and had
not heard him come up to bed, and in the morning had found him sitting
stiff and silent in the sunshine, with the map of Guiana spread out
before him and his finger on the spot where he had written EL DORADO,
the magic word.
The child had never forgotten that sight, its impression had sunk deep
into his nature; somehow it had become symbolic for him of loyalty to
one's chosen purpose in life. As he had once asked permission to kiss
his father's hands, so, when there was no one in the room to watch
him, he had stolen up and smoothed his hands with reverence against
the cushions of the chair where the old grey head had last rested--but
he had never sat there. After the old man's death, all things in that
room became objects for his veneration. It was just this capacity in
the small boy for hero-worship which his mother never tried to
understand; so he kept his secret, and thus began the breach which was
presently to widen. From that day Granger had pledged himself, when he
should become a man, to go in search of his father and to inherit his
quest; and to such a nature as Granger's that childish pledge was
binding. He could never be persuaded that his father was dead; he
always spoke and thought of him as a soldierly fair-haired man, living
in a desirable land hard by a garden, like to that of the isle near
Puna, which had herbs and flowers and trees of gold and silver, one
who was an honoured guest in the emperor's house where the meanest
utensils were of silver and copper for strength. At first, when only
he and his mother were left, he had spoken to her of these fancies;
but she had shown herself more and more averse to their mention, so he
had learnt to keep his longings to himself.
His mother was a practical woman, born of a race of lawyers and
diplomatists. Hence she coveted above all things for her son, as she
had done for his father before him, the certainties of life--social
recognition and a banking-account; she had no sympathy with theories,
however heroic, or with any kind of success which was not obvious and
within hand-stretch. She was one of those safe people who always
choose to-day's salary, if it be promptly paid, in preference to the
more generous triumph of a to-morrow which may never come. She was
wisely parsimonious in all things and, daring nothing herself, had no
patience with natures which were more courageous. Much of her own
money, and all of her husband's, had been spent by him in his
fruitless explorations of Guiana. Now that he was gone, she discreetly
invested what was left of her fortune, and deprived herself of all
luxuries, so that when the time should come, her boy should have his
chance in life unembarrassed by his father's previous reckless
expenditures. She was proud of her son, for he was handsome; but she
never realised that half a day of spoken love and sympathy can
purchase more friendship than twenty years of benefits punctually and
dutifully conferred--still less did she recognise the necessity for a
mother consciously to cultivate a friendship with her boy. Not that
she was ungentle; she craved his affection, but she made the mistake
of demanding it as her right--all of which is the same as saying that
she was mentally insensitive, and was unaware that with thoughtful
people the road to the heart must first lead through the mind; of
people's minds she was incurious. She gave her son the kind of
education which befits men to inherit rather than to earn. His wishes
were never consulted; nor even when he went to university was he given
any choice. Like a dumb brute beast he was goaded forward without
knowledge of his destination, and was expected to be grateful to the
hand which kept him moving, and prevented him from turning aside.
He permitted this well-intentioned despotism not through any lack of
spirit, but partly because it was well-intentioned, and mostly because
his immediate present seemed of little consequence to him. He felt
himself to be an embryo prophet who awaited his hour; when that should
strike, he would concentrate. Not until he was twenty-two years of age
did he expostulate, and by that time it was too late; his training had
made him dependent upon money for success. His mother had the money,
and she selected the Bar as a suitable profession for him; then it was
that he broke his twelve years' silence, and scandalised her with the
information that his great ambition was to follow in his father's
footsteps, and to find both him and El Dorado, fulfilling the promise
which he had given as a child. Startled by this unexpected confession,
she had charged him with disloyalty and ingratitude to herself; to
avoid complications and a breach which he foresaw would become
irreparable, he had accepted her choice and studied for a barrister.
This utterance of his secret, however, had only served to make him
aware of the intensity of his own desire. He could not work, he could
not rest, he could not apply his mind; always he saw before him the
tropic river with its multitude of carnation, crimson, and
orange-tawny birds, its low green banks where the deer come down to
graze, and far ahead and visionary the swampy lake, built on whose
shore the golden city raises up its head. So books, and law, and
London became for him the custodians of his captivity--things to be
hated and despised.
In the three years which followed he had made one friend, a mining
engineer, by name Druce Spurling. In him he had confided, and Spurling
had responded with a sympathy which did him credit, kindling to the
romance of the story. He had tested with his expert knowledge the
evidence which Granger had laid before him for the belief that such a
city as El Dorado had existed, and he had been satisfied--or, at any
rate, had been made certain that in the watershed of the Orinoco gold
was yet to be found in great quantities, as in the Spaniard's time. He
had promised that, so soon as he had the capital, he would help him in
his quest. Granger coveted the journey for its adventure, and the
opportunity of fulfilling his promise to his father; Spurling only for
its possibilities of attaining wealth. In their community of ambition
this difference of purpose was lost to sight. Then, when Granger was
twenty-five and had just completed his course of reading for the Bar,
his great chance came. It was the year of the Klondike gold-rush and
Spurling was going out; he wanted a partner, and offered to take
Granger with him if he, in return, would promise to give him one third
of all the gold he mined. Their idea was that, with the money thus
earned, they would be able to provide funds for the following up of
their dream of El Dorado. Granger accepted the offer at once, partly
influenced by his desire to prove to his mother that he _could_ do
something by himself. After a painful farewell, he had departed to
seek his fortune in the North World.
Ah, how his mother had cried when he went away! He recalled all that
to-day, now that he was in Keewatin, and gazed back incredulously upon
that mistaken former self, wondering whether he could have been really
like that. London, indeed! What would he not give to be in London
to-day; to stand in Fleet Street, listening to the roar of the passing
traffic and brushing shoulders with living, companionable men? Ah
well, what good purpose would it serve to think about it! He had
chosen his own fate. Here he was at Murder Point, and he would soon be
married to Peggy, after which, no matter what avalanche of good luck
befell him, there would be no return. What would his proud old mother
say to a little half-breed grandchild? The mere thought made him
smile. In cynical self-derision, he pictured himself accompanied by
his Indian tribe, knocking at the door of the old red house on Clapton
Common--and his reception there. He gave a name to his picture, and it
was "_The Return of the Ne'er-do-well_."
* * * * *
His brain was getting cloudy; he could not tell whether he was asleep
or awake. He felt as if he had been bound hand and foot so that he
could not stir, and had been raised aloft to a dizzy height. He knew
that he was far above the earth, for he was very cold and was
conscious of mists which drifted across his face and left it damp.
Suddenly he discovered that he could open his eyes. Looking down, he
saw with supernatural distinctness the entire course of the frozen
river-bed. Far to the north he could descry Spurling, plodding
desperately on across the thawing ice. A few miles to the west,
perhaps an hour's journey from Murder Point, he could see a second
figure, tall, soldierly, erect, which approached with swift clean
strides, through the solitude, inevitably as Fate--the symbol of
Justice in pursuit of Crime. He watched with fascination how the
distance between the hunter and the hunted narrowed; only one thing
could save the criminal from capture--the intervention of Murder
Point.
And then the cloud rolled back again; he closed his eyes, and lost
consciousness in untroubled forgetfulness.