A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD
The sun was shining down; the spring rains had ceased; within less
than a month winter had vanished, and summer had swept through
Keewatin with a burst of gladness. The land was riotously green;
through the heart of it wandered the river, newly released, a streak
of azure, or of gilded splendour where smitten by the sun. Although
its waters were running freely, many memories of the frozen quiet
still remained in the shape of ice piled up along its banks, sometimes
to the height of fifteen feet, and of snow in the more shady hollows
of the forest, which glimmered distantly between leaves and branches
hinting at secret woodland lakes. Even the most backward among the
trees had commenced to unfold their buds. All day long, and through
the major portion of the night, the frogs continued to whistle in the
marshes and along the river's edges. Flock after flock of duck
arrived, flashing their wings against the sky, dropping from under a
cloud suddenly, and coming to rest in the water with a shower of
spray, where they rode at ease side by side, like painted, anchored
merchantmen returned in safety from the earth's end. Now the wild
swan, teal, or goose would go by with a whirr of wings, crying
hoarsely. To make the world seem yet more wide an occasional gull
would heave in sight, drifting without effort in silent flight
majestically. In the forest Granger was conscious of a commotion at
the cause of which he could only guess. Love was at work in the
shadows, or what among the dumb creation passes for love. There was a
continual stirring of leaves, the rustle of branches forced aside, the
scattering of birds, those spies and betrayers of the four-footed
animal, and the grievous low wail of the wolf. Sometimes a fish would
leap in the river, flash silvery and dripping in the sunlight, on its
bridal journey from the ocean. Was it an act of gallantry, he
wondered, which some deep-sea female witnessed from beneath the ripple
of the stream, or was it a terrified effort to escape from love. He
knew what that best of all passions could mean to the forest animal,
and how cruel it might become. Often in the fall of the year he had
watched a doe, seen her dash down the river bank, stand quivering,
leap in and swim, made fearless of man because she knew that her
lover, the stag, was not far behind.
This frenzy of passion set him thinking, and made him long for the
return of Peggy Ericsen. He knew that his love for her was not of the
highest, was little more than physical, not much nobler than forest
love; but what was a man to do, and how guide his conduct when all the
world was a-mating? On occasions he had a clearer vision, and realised
with a sense of sudden shame to how low a level he had sunk. Then he
would strive to throw off this attraction for a half-breed girl by
recalling the faces of all the other women whom he had admired and
loved. Yet this also was dangerous, for it caused him to remember
Mordaunt, thoughts of whom roused up anger within him against
Spurling. He had agreed to leave him to God, and could not go back on
his word; therefore he must forget Mordaunt and, if his mind must be
haunted by womankind, think only of Peggy. Peggy! Well, she was not a
bad little sort. Pretty? Yes. But between her and himself there could
be no community of mind. He knew that for hundreds of years it had
been the custom of traders and white trappers to take to themselves a
squaw from a tribe of friendly Indians, sometimes for the sake of
commercial advantages, sometimes for defence, sometimes for domestic
convenience, rarely for love. But there his education, which would
have served him well in an older land, stood in his way, as it had so
often done, making him over-delicate.
He could find it in his heart to wish himself more ignorant and less
refined. That glamour of intellectual gentility, which England sets
such store by, had made him unfit for the outdoor brutalities of
northern life. In his catastrophe he knew that he was not single,
though there was small consolation in that; all through Canada he had
encountered younger sons, drawing-room bred young gentlemen, who
worked in lumber camps, on railroads, and in mines by day, and spelt
out their Horace from ragged texts by brushwood fires, beneath the
stars, or in verminous shacks by night. Their power to construe a dead
language served to differentiate them from their associates, and,
rather foolishly if heroically, to bolster up their pride.
But, to return to Peggy, what a pity it was that she had insisted on
the marriage ceremony! Yet, he respected her for that. _But_, and
there was always a but in Granger's reasonings, suppose he should get
his chance to return to England one day! And this would certainly
happen to him on his mother's death. And suppose, when he had
tethered himself to this half-breed wife, he should get word that
Mordaunt was still alive! Granger was always at a loss when the moment
for decision presented itself; he was too moderate, too far-sighted
and philosophic to act immediately. It takes an abrupt, coarse-grained
man, or a prophet, to handle a crisis efficiently; your man who is
only endowed just beyond the average sees too far--and not far enough.
The insolent infringement of personality which he had suffered as man
and child from his mother's unwise interference had caused him to
become a chronic hesitator. As usual, in this case as in all others,
he determined to let matters slide, to give circumstance an unfettered
opportunity to evolve its own event. He was content to remain the
spectator of his own career, allowing Chance to be the only doer of
the deeds which went to make up the record of his life. And what would
Chance do next? The Man with the Dead Soul might return at any hour
from his winter's hunt, bringing with him his daughter, in which case
most surely his book of life would commence to write out its latest
chapter of disgrace.
Beorn had cached a canoe at the mouth of the Forbidden River, and
therefore would reach the Point up-stream from the northward. Granger
found excitement in the thought that any minute, looking out from his
window, he might discover the approach of his future wife. The more he
allowed his fancy to dwell upon her, the more pleasant her image
became for him. After all, there is always something of romance, at
first at any rate, in marrying out of your blood heritage. Pizarro
must have felt that when he took to himself Inez Huayllas Nusta, the
Inca princess. The havoc of affection which was being enacted
secretly beneath the shadow of the forest trees urged him on, crying,
"Take your pleasure while it is yours, winter will return. Short views
of life are best." Having listened to that advice for several days, he
allowed himself to be persuaded. It seemed to him, when he remembered
how they had parted, that it would be a gallant and reconciling act to
set forth to meet her. Moreover, though the mind that was in him stood
aside from the project in disdain, the body cried, "Forward! Forward!"
in chorus with the song of the wild-wood.
Early one morning he carried down his canoe to the water's edge,
loaded it with a week's provisions, padlocked his store and set out.
As the prow drove forward down-stream, exultation entered into him. He
was playing at saying good-bye to his long exile; miles ahead lay the
Hudson Bay, and beyond that England. If his boat were not so frail and
his arms were stronger, by pressing on and onward he could escape.
These were scarcely the thoughts with which a man should set out to
meet his bride. Desires to meet and avoid her alternated even now,
when with each fresh thrust of the paddle he approached her nearer
presence. Yet, even to his way of thinking, there was something epic
in the situation--that this girl of an alien tradition and a savage
race, with her copper skin, and blue-black hair, and timid eyes,
should be threading her passage up her native river, through the early
summer, toward her western lover who was hastening down the self-same
primeval highroad to meet her. Oh, he would be very happy with Peggy!
Thus imagining himself on through the labyrinth of passionate fancy,
he floated down stream, shrouded in the morning mist. He had to go
slowly, for he could not see far ahead, and travel by water was still
treacherous by reason of belated floes of ice. Over to the eastward
the sun winked down on him with a dissipated bloodshot eye, knowingly,
with the cruel misanthropic humour of a tired man of the world who,
regarding idealism as a jest, had guessed at the purpose of his errand
and was eager to declare his own shrewd cleverness.
And if the sun is a cynic, who can blame him? He alone of created
things has an intimate knowledge of all live things' love affairs,
from when Eve shook back her hair and lifted up her lips, to the last
girl kissed in Japan. The canoe drifting out of a scarf of mist
brought Granger in sight of the bend, where Strangeways had been
drowned. He plunged his paddle deeper in the water, thrusting it
forward to stay the progress of the prow, and glanced from side to
side, then straight ahead. He had caught the smell of burning. On the
northern side of the bend, curling above the trees, he could detect
the rise of smoke. Someone had lit a fire and was camping there. But
who? Was it Beorn and Peggy? No, they would not camp so near their
destination; they would have pushed on to the store for rest. Nor
could it be men from the Crooked Creek coming up to God's Voice; the
season was as yet too early for them to be expected. Then, was it
Spurling?
Paddling out into the middle stream, he stole beneath the farther
bank, and, rounding the bend, came in sight of two men, the one seated
upright before the fire cooking his bannocks, the other stretched out
twenty paces distant at the edge of the underbrush, completely covered
with a robe, motionless as if he slept. The man who was awake looked
up, shaded his eyes, then rising to his feet came down to the water's
edge and waved his hand.
Granger recognised in him his friend Pere Antoine, the gaunt old
Jesuit of Keewatin. No one could remember, not even the Indians, at
what time he had first come into the district; he seemed to have been
there always and was of a great age. Yet, despite his many years, he
could travel miracles of journeys in the name of Mary's son. It was
said of him that he was always to be seen mounting the sky-line in
times of crisis and temptation; that he knew by instinct where men
were in spiritual peril, as the caribou scents water; that he had
often broken out of the forest unexpectedly in time to prevent murder.
There were Indians to be found who would circumstantially assert that
they had met with Pere Antoine, five hundred miles distant from the
spot where he had last been seen, walking in the wilderness radiantly,
wearing the countenance of Jesus Christ.
Granger recalled these legends as he gazed toward the camp; he watched
the figure of the sleeping man--and he thought of Spurling. Was this
Spurling? He tried to make out the man's identity by his figure's
outline, but the robes which were piled above him forbade that. Yet
within himself he was sure that his guess was correct. What was more
likely than that Antoine should have met the fugitive wandering up the
Forbidden River, perhaps sick and starving, should have taken his
confession and compassionately have brought him back? Probably it was
Antoine's purpose that they two should be reconciled. He might even
have converted Spurling and have brought back God into his life, so
that now he was willing to return to Winnipeg to give himself up, and
to take his chance of death.
Having run his canoe aground between the bank-ice, he stepped out and
grasped the Jesuit's hand.
"God has arrived before you this time, Pere Antoine," he said, jerking
his head in the direction of the sleeping man; "he has already done
your work. I have promised Him that I will do no harm to your
companion, so you have arrived too late."
"If it was God who arrived," he said, "I am content."
He spoke significantly, hinting at a further knowledge of which he
supposed Granger to be possessed.
"If it was not God, then who else?"
"Ah, who else?"
Granger, in common with most white men of the district, had fallen
into the Indian superstition that Pere Antoine was omniscient; it came
to him as a shock that he might be unaware of how God had written on
the ice. Usually in talking with the priest he took short-cuts in his
methods of communication, leaving many things understood but
unmentioned, as a man is wont to do when conversing with himself.
"There is no doubt that it was God," he said; "He did not want me to
murder this man. He wished that I should leave him alone, to be judged
in the forest by Himself. Therefore, if you have brought him here with
you to make us friends, I will not do that; but I will promise you, as
I have promised God, that I will not be his enemy."
Antoine tapped him on the arm gently, looking him full in the face
with his grave, penetrating eyes: "And did not God Himself arrive too
late?" he asked.
Granger flushed hotly, for he thought that he detected an under-tone
of accusation in the way in which those words were uttered. "Tell me,
is he dead?" he asked abruptly.
"He is dead."
"Is it . . . is that his body over there?"
"You should know best."
Involuntarily Granger sank his voice, now that he knew that that
sleeping man was dead. He pressed closer to the priest and commenced
to whisper, now that he knew that no noise of his, however loud, could
disturb the rest of this man who would never wake. Sometimes, when in
the hurry of his speech his voice had been by accident a little
raised, he would cease speaking, lift up his head, and peer furtively
from side to side, then over to where the dead man lay, to make
certain that he had not stirred,--all this lest someone in that great
silence should have heard what he had said. Thus does the presence of
the dead accuse living men, as if by our mere retention of life we did
them injury. Wheresoever we encounter them, whether in the hired pride
of the vulgar city hearse, or in the pitiful disarray of bleached
bones and tattered raiment strewn on a mountainside, they make even
those of us who are remotest from blame feel guilty men.
"But, Pere Antoine, I did not kill him," Granger was saying. "I was
gravely tempted, but God wrote upon the ice and stayed my hand. This
man was once my friend, and is now again--now that he is dead. Let me
uncover and look upon his face."
But the priest withheld him. "Not yet--not yet," he said. "Let us
first talk together awhile, that I may hear what has happened, and get
to understand."
So there in the quiet of the early morning, with nothing to break the
stillness save the crackling of the fire, and the flowing of the
river, and the occasional flight of a bird, Granger told the priest
all his story, from his first dream of El Dorado to the thoughts of
escape and of Peggy Ericsen which he had had, as drifting down-stream,
he had caught the smell of burning and come in sight of the bend. It
was a true confession; nothing to his own discredit was left out.
When he came to an end the mist had lifted, and the sun rode high in
the heavens disentangled of cloud. All the time that he had been
speaking the priest had sat motionless, with his head bent forward
listening, his knees drawn up and his arms about them. Now that the
tale was over, he slowly turned his head; and then it was for the
first time that Granger knew what the Indians meant when they said
that they had met with Pere Antoine in the wilderness, walking
radiantly, wearing the countenance of Jesus Christ. There was such a
brightness about him that he could not bear his gaze, but trembling
with a kind of fearful joy fell forward on his face, covering his eyes
with his hands. And still the priest said nothing, not trusting
himself to speak, perhaps, so great was his compassion.
But it was not long before Granger was conscious of a hand, hard and
horny and ungentle, as far as outward circumstance could make it so,
which rested on his head. At last he spoke. "I think I understand," he
said, and then, after a pause, "but you will never help yourself or
the world by merely being sad. No man ever has."
When Granger answered nothing nor lifted up his head, he spoke again.
"Does that seem a strange judgment to pass on you here in Keewatin?
Does it sound too much like the speech of a city man? Nevertheless, it
is because of your flight from sadness that you have met with all your
dangers. All your life you have spent in striving to escape from
things which are sad. Why did you dream of El Dorado when you were in
London? Because, as you yourself have told me, exquisiteness of dress
did not reassure you of another's happiness; you were always
remembering that a decent coat may sometimes cover cancer. You are one
of those who suffer more because of the sores of Lazarus than Lazarus
himself. That is well and Christlike, if you suffer gladly--which you
do not. So you left London and travelled half across the world to
Yukon, only to find a greater wretchedness; for your misery growing
vicious pursued you, and goaded you on to crime. Once more to escape
you left Yukon and came to Winnipeg, and came up here, and still you
are sad. Will I tell you why? Always, always you have depended on
yourself for escape and rest. That is useless, for your sadness does
not belong to any city, or any land; it is within yourself. Wherever
you have travelled you have carried it with you. You must look for
help from outside yourself."
Again he paused, but Granger did not stir. Then he repeated, speaking
yet more gently, "I am an old man and have lived in Keewatin the
length of most men's lives, yet I have not always lived up here. I was
not always happy, and I say to you, you must look for help from
outside yourself."
Then Granger answered him, keeping his head still bowed.
"Where, where must I look for help?"
"Lift up your head."
He obeyed, and the first sight he saw was the face of Pere Antoine
bent above him. Again he was struck with its likeness to the
traditional face of Christ--but the face was that of a Jesus who had
grown grey in suffering and had been often crucified, who was very
ancient and had not yet attained his death. Then he thought he knew
what le Pere had meant by saying that he must look for help from
outside himself. He turned his eyes away and gazed into the sunshine,
and on the greenness of the awakened country. Somehow it all looked
very happy and changed from what it had been before they two had met.
He vaguely wondered whether already he might not be now experiencing
that help. But, as had always happened to him after tasting of a
momentary joy, in turning his head he found a new grief awaiting him,
for there, twenty paces distant, stretched out at the edge of the
underbrush, covered with a robe, he caught sight of that recumbent
figure, lying motionless as if it slept. He shuddered, and seizing the
priest by the arm, speaking hoarsely with suppressed excitement,
exclaimed, "Where did he come from? But where did you find him?"
"I found him stretched out on the bank-ice, awaiting me as I paddled
up-stream toward the bend."
"Then he was coming back. God must have met him down there on the
Forbidden River and have spoken with him face to face; he could not
endure His voice, so he fled. Oh, to come back at such a season, when
the river was in flood, he must have been terribly afraid. He must
have clambered his way up-stream, all those hundred miles, running by
the bank. Pere Antoine, you know many things, what kind of words were
those, do you suppose, that God spoke to Spurling?"
"The kind of words which God always speaks to men; He told him the
truth about himself."
"The truth about himself? There are few who could endure to hear
that."
"Yes, He would accuse him with a question, I think."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because that is the way in which God usually speaks to men. He asked
Adam a question, and Adam hid himself; he asked Cain a question, and
Cain became a vagabond in the earth."
They sat in silence awhile, and then Granger said, "And if God were to
speak to me, what question would He ask?"
"I think he would say, 'John Granger, by how much are you better than
Spurling, whom you condemn?'"
"You are right; yes, I think He would say that. Even I have asked
myself that question before to-day."
"You did not ask yourself; it was God's voice."
"And I could give no answer to what He said. Pere Antoine, before we
met, I had often wondered what I would say to Spurling should we meet
again. I had planned all manner of kindly phrases to make him again my
friend; but I had thought of him as coming to me prosperous, with the
approval of the world. When he came to me in poverty, asking help, in
peril of his life for a sin which had been almost mine, I turned him
away. He had chosen me out from among all men between Winnipeg and the
Klondike, as the only one to whom he could safely go for help; and I
turned him away. I see it clearly now; God sent to me this man whom I
had wished to murder, when he had performed my crime, that, by
endangering my life for his, I might cleanse myself. When all men had
failed him, he and God expected that I, at least, would understand.
But for Mordaunt, I might have had to flee as he fled, changed by the
raising of a gun and hasty pulling of a trigger into a Judas to all
that is best; I might have had to support within me his utter
solitariness and agony of mind, and have been compelled to see myself
as debased throughout and forever by a single, momentary act. How he
must have suffered! I shall fear to die now; till now I have been
afraid only of life."
"Why will you fear to die?"
"Because I shall meet with Spurling, and then I shall hear God's
question and His accusing voice."
The priest laid a hand upon his shoulder gently. "Ah, my child, but
you forget," he said; "in the country where Spurling has gone he will
have learnt how to understand."
That thought was new to Granger, that of the two faults his own was
the greater and that forgiveness belonged to Spurling. He sat
motionless for a long time arguing it out; he wanted to be exactly
just to both Spurling and himself. The fire died down and Pere Antoine
threw on more brushwood; the sun grew tall in the heavens and a rain
cloud gathered in the west; the floe-ice caught in its passage round
the bend, gasped and whined and, tearing itself free again, vanished
down river out of sight. The arithmetic of the problem stood thus:
Spurling's sin had been the result of a sudden violence, his own of a
conscious and premeditated uncharitableness. Which sin was morally the
worse, to shoot a fellow creature in a fit of passionate desperation,
or to turn your back upon a bygone benefactor who comes to you in
distress, comes to you when his heart is breaking, because he can
trust himself with no one else? "My sin is the greater," Granger told
himself, "I am more wrongful than wronged against"; his thoughts going
back to what le Pere had said, he added, "I am Cain, and yet I judged
Spurling as if I had been God Himself."
He was roused from his meditation by a dull thudding sound which had
commenced behind his back; turning his head, he saw that Pere Antoine
was already digging a grave. Rising without a word, he began to lend a
hand. They had not gone far when they found that the ground was hard
as granite, that it had not yet thawed out; then they commenced to
look for stones to pile upon the body so that, since the grave would
be shallow, they might raise a mound above it to prevent the wolves
from getting the body out.
By the time they had completed their preparations the rain was falling
in large and heavy drops, and the storm was blowing in great gusts
through the forest, causing the young leaves to shudder and whisper
together, and to turn their backs to the wind. The priest and the
trader stood upright from their work and gazed at one another. Already
the narrow hole, which they had scooped out, was filling with water;
there was no time to lose; yet neither seemed inclined to hurry. At
last Pere Antoine said, "So you are sure that you did not do it?"
"I cannot be sure of that."
"Ah, but you did not do it in the way I mean? You did not kill him
with the strength of your hands?"
They went together to the edge of the underbrush where the dead man's
body lay, and carried it, without disturbing the coverings, to the
side of the grave; there they set it down.
"I cannot bear that he should lie in that dampness," Granger broke
out; "I remember when we were in London, how he used to hate the wet.
Coldness he could put up with or the hottest sunshine, but he could
not endure the damp. He said it made him feel as though the world was
crying, like a dreary woman because her youngest child was dead. We
can't drop him into that puddle and leave him there."
He commenced to strip off his clothes, and to fold them along the
floor of the grave. When he had apparently made all ready, he stooped
down again and smoothed out a ruck, lest its discomfort should irk the
dead.
"Now," he said, "let me see his face for the last time, for he was my
friend."
Le Pere bent down, and drew the coverings back to the waist, while
Granger leant over him in his eagerness. The body, having lain upon
the ice, had been well preserved, no feature had been disturbed; but
it was not the body of a man who was newly dead, nor was it the face
of Spurling. So absorbed had Granger been by thoughts of the comrade
whom he had treated harshly, and by the mysterious meaning of the
writing which he had seen upon the ice, that the likelier solution of
the problem of this man's identity had not entered into his head, that
the body might be that of Strangeways, thrown up by the back-rush of
the current around the bend.
"Strangeways," he muttered, "it is Strangeways." And with those words
his charity towards Spurling began to ebb.
Pere Antoine, when he heard it, realising that these were the remains
of an officer of justice, for whom, when he did not return, search
would be made, and not of an escaped murderer with a price upon his
head, at news of whose death Authority would be glad, went down on his
hands and knees and began to examine the clothing of the dead for
proofs of his identity, which could be sent in to headquarters for the
establishing of his death. He foresaw that there was need for care;
when the matter came to be investigated, it would be discovered that
Granger had been Spurling's partner in the Klondike; questions would
certainly be asked of Robert Pilgrim, as Hudson Bay factor and head
man of the district, concerning Granger's conduct in Keewatin, and no
good word could be looked for from that quarter. That which would tell
most heavily against him would be this fact, that two men, separated
by a few hours, were known to have passed God's Voice en route for the
independent store of Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, the first a hunted
criminal, the second an officer of justice--the criminal had escaped
and the officer was dead. Presumably both pursued and pursuer had
arrived at Murder Point, for the body of Strangeways, the follower,
had been found a mile down-river below the Point. Then where was
Spurling? And how had he managed to escape, if he had not been helped?
Who could have helped him save Granger? And why was Strangeways dead?
These were some of the many questions which avenging justice would be
sure to ask, and, however skilfully they might be answered, the priest
knew well that it would be difficult to prevent suspicion from
attaching to a hated independent trader, especially when it became
known that he had once been the fugitive's friend. Why, he himself had
suspected Granger at first!
His present purpose was, if possible, to gather such proofs from the
dead man's clothing as would exclude the doubt of foul play, and
establish as a fact Granger's assertion that the corporal had arrived
at his death by the accident of drowning.
In the meanwhile, he was not meeting with much success in his search,
for the right arm of the dead man was pressed so rigidly across his
breast that it could not be moved without breaking; the hand was
concealed and the fingers tangled in the folds of his dress, as if
even in the last moments of life he had been conscious that he kept a
secret hidden there. Only with violence could it be forced aside, and
to this the priest was averse; he commenced to cut away the clothing,
above downwards from the neck, below upwards from the belt. The cloth
ripped easily, having become rotten with the wet, but the trimmings of
fur were tough and obstinate to separate. When he had slit the capote
and under-garments above and below the arm in two big flaps, he rolled
them back, laying bare the breast, where he discovered a silver chain
which went about the neck, the pendant to which, wrapped in the
portion of the dress that had covered it, was clutched in the icy
hand. He now cut away the stuff from around the hand, and, with a
severity which seemed both profane and cruel, bent back the fingers
one by one, compelling them to release their hold, so that the bones
were heard to crack.
"What are you doing?" cried Granger, angrily, being roused by the
sound from an unsatisfactory examination of the mixed feelings which
had arisen within him on discovering that Spurling, whom he had just
been regretting, was not dead. "Why must we torture him? Why can't we
leave him alone, and lay him decently in his grave?"
"Perhaps in order that we may prevent you from being hanged."
"From being hanged! You mistake me for Spurling, Pere Antoine; your
memory must be failing. What have I done to deserve such courtesy at
the hands of Fate? Why should men want to hang me?"
"For the murder of Strangeways."
Granger stood back, and drew himself erect, as if by asserting his
physical cleanness and manhood he could refute the accusation. He
lifted up his head and gazed with a fixed stare on the landscape,
seeing nothing. Yes, it was true, they could make that accusation;
there was sufficient evidence for suspecting him and, with the aid of
a few lies and inaccurate statements on the part of his
enemies--Robert Pilgrim, for instance, and Indians whom he had
offended--sufficient evidence might be got together to bring him to
the gallows. A fitting ending that for the son of the ambitious mother
who had stinted herself and planned for his success, and a most
appropriate sequel to the example of reckless bravery set by the last
two generations of his father's house!
Dimly, slowly, as he stood there in the northern icy drizzle, with his
eyes on the muddy river hurrying toward its freedom between jagged
banks, he came very wretchedly to realise that there was only one way
in which he could save himself, a way, albeit, which both his loyalty
and honour forbade, by becoming ardent in the pursuit and effecting
the capture of Spurling, that so he might prove his innocence. An
emotion of shame and self-disgust throbbed through him that it should
have been possible for him, even for a moment, to entertain such a
coward's thought as that. He shook himself free from temptation and
looked about. What was Pere Antoine doing? What had he meant by saying
that he was perhaps preventing him from being hanged? Did he still
believe him to be guilty, as he had evidently done at first?
Pere Antoine was intent upon his undertaking; when asked, he only
shook his head, saying, "If I believed you guilty, why should I
endeavour to find the signs which will prove you innocent? Would I do
that, do you think, if I believed you to be a guilty man?"
Granger was softened by those words; they meant a great deal to him at
such a time, spoken as they were curtly by one who was so eager to
rehabilitate his character before all the world that he had no moments
to waste in argument. They were far more convincing to him of the true
opinion which le Pere held of him than an hour consumed in apology,
which would have been an hour spent in idleness. He came and knelt
down by the side of the priest, and gazed on the results of his work.
He saw the cold white face of Strangeways with the eyes set wide,
staring upwards at the clouds. Their gaze did not seem to concentrate
as in life, but like that of a well-painted portrait, while the eyes
themselves remained fixed, wandered everywhere. Yet, when he settled
his attention upon them, they seemed to look at him alone as if, since
the lips were silent, they were trying to speak those words which the
body had come to utter; if he turned his head away for a moment and
then looked back, they seemed themselves to have changed their
direction and to be staring again incuriously out on space, having
abandoned hope of delivering their message. And he saw the naked
throat and neck, and the marks where the teeth of the yellow-faced
husky had clashed and met; last of all he saw the silver chain and the
pendant attached, which Pere Antoine had at that moment succeeded in
freeing from the cold clenched hand.
"What have you there?" he asked.
"I don't know yet. Lift up the head, so that we can slip the chain
over and find out."
Granger did as he was bidden; but, as he stooped to his task, he was
horribly conscious that the dead man's eyes were intently fixed upon
him, as if they knew and lived on, though every other part of the
motionless body was dead and ignorant.
"Well, here it is. It's a locket."
Granger started up from the ground trembling. "Pere Antoine, do you
think we ought to look at it?" he said.
"Why not?"
"Look at the eyes of that dead man."
"They seem to me to be saying 'yes.'"
Granger looked again, went near, bent down and looked carefully; then
he turned his head. "You are right," he said; "I also think they are
saying 'yes.'"
The priest put the locket in his hand. "It is for you to open it," he
said.
It was of gold and studded with turquoise, a woman's trinket and
old-fashioned, the chasing being worn flat in places; the silver chain
was common and strong, and had evidently not at first belonged to it,
being of modern manufacture--probably a comparatively recent
purchase. Granger looked it over critically, but could get no hint of
its contents from the outside. On the front was engraved a monogram J.
M., and on the back a coat-of-arms. The lines of the monogram were
distinct and sharp to the touch, they must have been cut many years
after the locket itself was made, but the coat-of-arms seemed
contemporary with the rest of the chasing. He tried to open it, but
the dampness had caused it to stick, so that he broke his nails upon
the fastening. He took out his knife and attempted to lever its edges
apart with the blade. At last, growing impatient, he set it on its
hinges upon a rock and commenced to hammer it with a stone. At the
third blow the fastening gave, and the sides fell apart. He could see
that it contained a miniature, and, on the other side, a lock of hair;
but the glasses which shut them in were mist-covered. He rubbed them
clean on the lining of his coat and looked again.
The portrait was that of a young girl, fresh and innocent, about
eighteen years of age; her hair, worn loose, all blown about, fell
upon her neck and shoulders in long curls; her eyes were blue and
intensely bright; her face was animated, with a certain dash of
generous spirit and healthy defiance in it, which were chiefly denoted
by the full firm lips and arching brows--and the face was the face of
Mordaunt. For the first time, he saw the woman whom he had loved, in
her rightful woman's guise. He had often longed that he might do that;
it had made him feel that he shared so small a portion of her life
that he should know her only by her man's name and remember her only
in her Yukon placer-miner's dress. He would have stooped to kiss her
lips at that time, had it not been for the presence of the dead, who
had also loved her and from whom he had stolen his treasure. Would his
body be able to rest in the grave when thus robbed of the symbol of
the passion which had caused its blood to pulsate most fiercely in its
life?
Then he fell to thinking other thoughts--of how strangely this
knowledge had come to him, from all across the world, by the hand of a
rejected lover who was dead. Had this been the secret which the
corporal had waited to tell him, thrown up on the ice, lying silent
and deserted throughout that month at the bend; had he been waiting
only to say, "I hold the knowledge which you most desire in my
clenched right hand. Here is her woman's likeness. I require it no
longer, now that I am dead?" No, surely he had not delayed for that.
Then suddenly he realised that this must mean that the woman herself
was dead. He remembered distinctly those last words which Strangeways
had spoken, even as though he were now repeating them again aloud, "I
tell you if the ice were as rotten as your soul or Spurling's, I would
still follow him, though I had to follow him to Hell." And his last
utterance had been a reiteration of that promise, "He killed the woman
I loved, and he shall pay the price though I follow him to Hell."
This was the fulfilment of that promise; though he himself was dead,
he had delayed his body near Murder Point that, with his pale and
silent lips and the portrait which hung about his neck, he might urge
his rival on in their common cause of vengeance. "I will pray God
every day of my life that Spurling may be damned throughout the
ages--eternally and pitilessly damned," he had said, and now that the
days of his life were over his body had tarried behind to continue
that errand, so far as was possible, into the days of his death. When
they had parted that night, a month ago outside the shack, he had told
a lie; he had denied that the woman was Mordaunt who had been
murdered, and had tried to prove his words by asserting that the body
which was found in the creek near Forty-Mile had worn a woman's dress.
Now he had come back to silently refute his own statement, and to
declare the truth which would stir up anger and give him an inheritor
of his revenge.
Here, then, was a new reason why he should become ardent in the
pursuit and effect the capture of Spurling, that by so doing he would
be behaving honourably by a man who was dead. He saw in it at present,
with his cynic's eye for self-scorn and self-depreciation, only an
added excuse and more subtle temptation for the saving of himself.
"No, I cannot do it," he said. And yet, somewhere at the back of his
brain, the monotonous and oracular voice of a wise self-knowledge kept
answering, "But you will do it, when you have had leisure to be
lonely, and have tortured yourself with memories of her."
It seemed to Granger as though Strangeways himself were the speaker of
those words; but when he turned round hotly, prepared for argument, he
found that the eyes had become glazed and vacant, and that at last the
body was truly dead. It had no need to live longer--it had delivered
its message.