THE LOVE OF WOMAN
It was past noon before they had completed Strangeways' burial at the
bend. When they had finished, the skies had cleared themselves of
storm and cloud, and the sun shone out again. The air was full of
earth-fragrance, and the landscape was cool and fresh. Nothing of
disorder remained, no sign that a man was dead, save only a mound of
piled-up stones and sod, surmounted by a little cross of branches
bound together with twisted grass.
Pere Antoine had searched the body with scant results, for he had
found no more than the warrant for Spurling's detection and arrest,
and the fragments of two torn and well-nigh obliterated letters, at
which latter he had only glanced up to the present. Nor had he seen
the contents of the locket as yet, for when he had asked Granger what
was its secret, he had received as answer, "Oh, nothing, only a young
girl's face." So he had been foiled in his endeavour to gather
materials for the establishing of Granger's innocence, should that be
assailed, and had discovered nothing which might be of use in his
defence. All he could contribute was his own personal evidence that
the appearance of the body, as he had seen it, bore out Granger's
account in every detail as to the manner in which Strangeways'
catastrophe had occurred, and that his deportment, when he had
charged him with murder, had proved conclusively to himself that there
was no ground for such an accusation.
When they had returned to the store and had had supper together,
Granger sat for a long while with the locket open before him, gazing
intently on the portrait. Suddenly he looked up. "Have you seen
Beorn?" he asked. "Do you know whether he is on his way back?"
"I have not seen him."
"Antoine, you must stay here with me until he returns."
"Why?"
"I was on my way to meet Peggy when you met and stopped me; I want you
to marry us."
"But why now and at once?"
"Because if we're not married she won't live with me,--and I must do
something to break down my loneliness by getting a new interest into
my life. If I don't, I shall be always thinking of what has happened,
and shall go mad,--in which case it will be the worse for Spurling. I
don't want to kill him--at least, not until he has had his chance to
explain himself. I'm sure now that it was Mordaunt whom he murdered,
but I'm still uncertain as to whether he knew that she was a woman, at
the time when he killed her--he may not know even yet. If he did it
mistaking her for a man, I might be able to forgive him; anyhow, I can
say so now, while you are with me. What I should do and think if I
were left here miserably alone, I dare not tell. Yet, if what
Strangeways said to me is true, that her body was found at Forty-Mile
in a woman's dress, which would mean that Spurling killed her,
well-knowing that she was a girl, why then I would go in search of
him, and tell him what I thought about him, and shoot him carefully,
and be glad when he was dead."
"But you have promised God to leave him alone with Himself."
"And shall I be the first man who has gone back on his prayers and
promises? There's nothing to be gained by talking about it; fate must
work itself out. But if you want to understand what Strangeways felt,
and what I am still feeling, then look at that."
He handed him the locket. Pere Antoine took it and bent above it. At
last he said, "Why, she's only a girl . . . and he killed _her_!"
"Yes, and he killed her when her back was turned. Now do you
understand?"
"May God help you!" was all that Antoine said. Granger went over to
where he sat and, from above his shoulder, gazed down upon the
portrait. The face had in it so little that was tragic that it seemed
impossible to realise that its owner should have encountered such a
death. When the smile upon the painted lips seemed so fresh and
imperishable, it seemed incredible that the lips themselves should be
now silent and underground.
"I wonder where she lived and what sort of a girlhood she had,"
Granger said.
"I have here two letters which I found upon Strangeways; perhaps they
may tell us something about her."
Pere Antoine produced the letters from an oilskin pouch. They were in
a pointed feminine hand, and the ink was faded. Granger lit the lamp,
for the twilight without was deepening into darkness; spreading out
the crumpled sheets on his knees before him, he read their contents
aloud. Across the top, left-hand corner of the uppermost page was
scrawled in a rude, boyish writing, "_The first letter she ever wrote
me_"; the letter itself had been evidently penned by a young girl's
hand. It bore the address of a school in London, and ran as follows:--
DEAR ERIC.
I am very miserable hear and sometimes wonder why I was
ever brought into the world. Your Papa was very kind to
me once, but why has he scent me away from you? You did
not want me to be scent, and so I can tell you all
about myself. I am very home-sick hear. I say
home-sick, though I have no home; I have always been a
stranger in your Papa's house. I suppose I am reely
home-sick for you. I think it is because you and I are
seperated that I am sorry. The girls hear are not
always kind; they say that I look as though I had been
crying, and then of course I do cry when they say that.
But if my eyes are red, I don't care. I want you badly
and I'm writting to tell you that. Don't forget to feed
my rabbits.
Your loving little friend,
J. M.
The second was marked in the same way, but in a manlier hand, "_Her
last letter to me_."
DEAREST ERIC.
I am so sorry that I am the cause of all this trouble,
and that I cannot love you in the way that you and your
father so much desire. I would do anything to make you
happy save that--play the coward, and say that I love
you as a woman should whom you were going to marry,
when I do not. I have always been used to think of you
as a brother, which is natural, seeing that from our
earliest childhood we have grown up together. I thought
that you would be content with that; no other kind of
affection for you has ever entered into my heart or
head.
Your father was very angry with me last night after you
went out. He said that I, by my conduct, had led you on
to _expect_; believe me, I never meant to do that. It
never occurred to me that there was any need to be
careful in your presence. The truth is, I have always
been an interloper in your home; you will remember how,
long years since, when first I went to boarding-school,
I told you that . . . (four lines were here
undecipherable, being faded and rubbed out). When I
look back, I see that in all my life you have been my
only friend--which makes me the more unhappy that this
has happened. Mind, I don't mean to accuse your family
of unkindness; I only say that I, perhaps naturally,
was never one of them. If I thought that you would be
willing, knowing how I feel toward you, to make me your
wife, for the sake of your peace I might consent even
to that. But you are not such a man. (Three lines were
here obliterated.) Let there be no bitterness between
us by reason of harsh words which others have spoken;
what has happened must make a difference, but I want to
remain still your friend. This recent occurrence seems
to make it necessary that one of us should go
away--there will never be any quiet in your father's
house while we both live there. Don't be alarmed or
surprised if you get word shortly that I have vanished.
Yours as ever,
J. M.
To this letter was added a note in Strangeways' hand at the bottom of
the page, "_She was not to blame; it was I who left_."
"We have not learnt very much about her from those two letters, have
we?" said Pere Antoine. "They are ordinary, and leave many questions,
which we wanted to ask, unanswered."
"Yes, they do little more than confirm Strangeways' own statements,
and yet. . . ."
"Well?"
"They tell us that her true initials were J. M., the same as those of
her assumed name, and the same as those of the monogram on the locket;
and they tell us of her great loneliness."
"But I can't see how a knowledge of that one fact--her great
loneliness--will help us; it does not reconstruct for us the details
of her life so that we can imagine her to ourselves, nor does it
contribute anything towards your defence."
"Bother my defence. I don't much care if I am hanged; that would at
least be a final solution, so far as I am concerned, to this problem
of living. What troubles me at present is, how is this woman feeling
about my marriage with a half-breed girl? Now these letters help me;
they make me certain that whatever I may be compelled to do at any
future time by reason of my isolation, she will not be hard upon me,
but will understand. This marriage with Peggy, for instance, looks
like a betrayal of her. And though she is dead, I should hate to
grieve her in the other world."
Granger paused, and then he added fiercely, "And I'm glad of that last
letter for another reason, because it states so clearly that she never
loved the other man."
"That can make no difference now."
"But it can," said Granger, rising to his feet, and speaking in a
strained whisper, with clenched hands, "I tell you it can. If I
thought that she had ever really cared for him, I would shoot myself
here and now, that I might be beside her to get between him and her.
The thought that he was there with her all alone in the vastness, free
to do and to say just whatever he pleased, and that I was shut out,
would drive me crazy. Do you think that, if I supposed that he had got
his arms around her over there, I could ever rest--if I thought that
she would allow him? One little pull of a trigger, the report of a
revolver, which I probably shouldn't hear and in any case shouldn't
care about, and the journey would be accomplished and I could be
bending over her. It sounds very tempting. But I'm prepared to live
out my life like a man, now that I know that she understands. If she
hadn't known what loneliness meant, she might misjudge my motives in
taking up with Peggy, and might, out of revenge, instead of waiting
for me, herself take up with Strangeways before my arrival there."
Pere Antoine watched him gravely for some seconds after he had
finished speaking; then he said, "I don't think that Heaven is quite
like that; but none of us can be certain, perhaps your views are as
correct as those of anyone else. When I was a young man, before I came
to Keewatin, I should have been angry with any man who had said to
me a thing like that--but we come to hold strange opinions in this
land where all things, judged by our former standards of sanity,
even God Himself, seem mad. At that time I longed to be dogmatic
and definite in all my beliefs on religion, and this life, and the
after-world--that was why I became a Jesuit, that I might exchange
despair for certainty. Now, priest though I am, like you I see one
gigantic interrogation mark written over sky and earth--and because of
it I am grateful. I have learnt that the whole attraction of religion
for the human mind, and the entire majesty of God depend on His
mystery and silence, and the things which He does not care to tell. If
all our questions were answered, we might lose our God-sense. If we
knew everything, we should cease to be curious and to strive. Of one
thing only are we certain, that Jesus lived and died, and that though
we live in the uttermost parts of the earth, it is our duty to be like
Him."
"And Spurling--if Spurling dwells near us in the uttermost parts of
the earth?"
"He also is God's child."
"It is easy for you to talk, Pere Antoine; you are an old man, and,
being a priest, have never loved a woman yourself."
The stern, grey features of the Jesuit relaxed; he hesitated, then he
said, "My child, don't be too sure of that. Perhaps I may be
attempting to live this life well only in order that I may make sure
of meeting and being worthy of one such woman in the after-world. If
that were so, it would be great shame to me, for I ought to be
striving to live this life well solely for the love of Christ."
He fell silent, sitting with his head bent forward, his gnarled hands
folded on his knees before him. A far-away look had come into his
eyes, a fixed expression of calmness, as though they slept with the
lids parted. Granger watched the hands, mutilated and ruined, with
three fingers missing from the right, and two from the left; and yet,
despite their brokenness, he thought how beautiful they were. There
was scarcely a part of the priest's body that had not been at some
time shattered with service. It had never occurred to Granger that
Pere Antoine, like most other men in the district, had a past which
did not belong to Keewatin--memories of a happier time to which he
might sometimes look back with the painfulness of regret. Antoine had
been there so long that there was no man who remembered the day when
first he arrived. He seemed as natural to the landscape as the Last
Chance River itself. And now suddenly, in an electric moment of
sympathy, his past had revealed itself.
Granger watched and waited, hoping that presently he would explain. It
occurred to him as a discovery that he had no knowledge of the
priest's real name or of his family. At his nationality he could only
guess, supposing him to be a Frenchman or a French-Canadian. How
incurious he had been! And, in this case, lack of curiosity had meant
lack of kindness; he blamed himself. He, like all Keewatin, was ready
in time of crisis to draw upon the old man's strength, but beyond that
he had never shown him real friendship--he had never been conscious of
any desire to hear about the man himself. And now he had learned that
this man also had a tragedy, and, like himself, had loved a woman who
was now long since dead. He wanted to ask him questions, that so he
might make up for omitted kindnesses; but he was restrained when he
looked upon the grey dreamy countenance, for it was evident that le
Pere was wandering in the idealised meadows of a bygone
pleasantness--a country which was known only to himself. So Granger
returned his eyes to the portrait which he had taken from the dead
man's hand, and, gazing upon it, tried his best to fill in the blanks
in his little knowledge of the woman he had loved.
He constructed for himself a picture of an ivied manor-house, terraced
and with an old-world garden lying round about it, where her childhood
had been spent and where she had grown to girlhood. He told himself
that there must have been a river somewhere near, and he imagined her
as stretched upon its banks in the summer shadows. And he thought of
the schoolhouse in London, and the little heart-weary child who had
penned that letter there. He re-read it, and then once again re-read
it, suffering the same agony of longing for things irrecoverable which
this small creature had suffered years ago, who was now beyond all
knowledge of pain. What a mystery it was that across that expanse of
space and years her letter should have drifted down to him, from
London to Keewatin, carried over the last few yards of its journey in
the breast of a man who was already dead. It made him feel less of an
exile that a miracle like that could happen--it was almost as though
she herself had appealed to him from the hidden world. It made him ask
himself that question, which so many had asked before him, "_And are
we really ever dead_?"
Pere Antoine stirred, rose up and walked over to the window, where he
stood in the shadow, outside the circle of the lamp's rays, with his
back turned toward the younger man. There was something which he
wanted to say, but which he found difficult to express. Granger
guessed that, and so he said, "Antoine, you are thinking of _her_
to-night. She must have lived very long ago. Was she anything like the
portrait of this young girl?"
There was silence. Then, still gazing away from him, his long lean
figure blocking out the moonlight, the priest returned, "All white
women seem alike to one who has lived long in Keewatin. Yet that face
did seem very like to hers; but it is many years ago now, and I may
not remember her well. She died; and she was everything that was of
worth to me in this world. I begin to fear that she is all that I
count of highest value in the next."
"But why fear? I should not fear that."
"Because, being a missionary, with me it should be otherwise. I became
a Jesuit through distrust of myself. I knew, when she had been taken
from me, that because of my despair, if I did not bind myself strongly
to that which was highest, I should sink to that which was worst. And
I knew that if I sank to that which was worst, she would be lost to me
throughout all eternity. So, in order that God might give her to me
again in a future world, I strove to bribe Him; I asked that I might
be sent to this hardest of all fields of missionary labour, hoping
that thus I might acquire merit. Since then a new doubt has come to
haunt me, has been with me half a century; the fear lest the life
which I have led may count for nothing, may be regarded as only
sinfulness, because I have done God's work for her sake rather than
for the sake of His Christ, and that therefore as a punishment to me
she may still be withheld. Ah, I have fought against her memory,
trying to cling only to God! That has been useless. So I have gone on
doing my best for my fellow-men, hoping that He may overlook the
motive, and judging only by the work, may give me my reward in the
end,--may allow me to be with her."
"Antoine, I am a sinful man and one who is little qualified to judge
of God's purposes, but I think that He will grant you your request.
But if you, with all your goodness, are banished from her whom you
loved most on earth, how can I hope for success?"
Then the Jesuit turned round and faced him. "It was because I feared
for your success that I mentioned my own trouble," he said. "You are
planning to do a thing which is right in marrying this half-breed
girl--you owe it to her and to God, inasmuch as you have lived with
her. But you will be doing her a greater wrong than if you were to
leave her unmarried, if, when you have made her your wife, you think
only of the dead white woman. When the turmoil of living is over, you
want to meet and be worthy of the woman who wrote those letters, you
tell me; your best chance of success in that desire is in trying to
forget her in this world, by giving all your affection to the woman
who is your wife, and trusting to God's goodness to give you the
rewards which He knows that you covet after death. Don't make my
mistake--it means torture in this life, and, perhaps, disappointment
in the next. Be true to the choice which you have made, and leave the
rest to God's mercy. I have not been strong enough to do all that I
advise, for, though I love Christ, I am shamed into owning, old man
though I am, that I more often do His work in the hope of re-meeting
with a woman who is dead than out of loyalty to Christ Himself."
"Pere Antoine, you do not judge kindly of your own actions as Christ
would judge of them; you Catholics, in making Christ God, forget that
He also was a lonely man. I think it is not as a God, but as a peasant
that He will judge us, having knowledge of what we have suffered--if
He judges us at all. It is more likely that He will just be sorry for
us, that we ever thought that He would judge us."
"Whether I judge kindly or not, will you try to take my advice? I have
told you a secret to-night which never, since I came to Keewatin, have
I told to any man. And I have told you that I may save you. Believe
me, if you cannot love your daily companions for their own sake in
this world, whoever and wherever they are, you will fail to find love
for your own sake in the next--and to love well, whatever you love you
must love for itself, and not for any future and mercenary end."
Granger moved restlessly, but remained silent; then he sat still and
thought. Pere Antoine also said nothing, for he knew that the man
before him was reasoning his way toward a decision upon which all his
happiness must depend.
But to Granger the problem appeared quite otherwise; it seemed to him
that he was being asked to abandon another pleasantness for the sake
of Peggy, a half-breed girl, for whom he had been prepared already to
sacrifice his career. To be sure, his career was not of much value at
present, and didn't seem a large thing to sacrifice; but then, when it
comes to giving anything away, even the most thorough-paced pessimist
is capable of turning optimist about its worth.
Since he had become certain of Mordaunt's death, he had vaguely
planned out for himself a course of spiritual debauchery, though he
would not have applied to it such a word. He had expected to marry
Peggy Ericsen, and to live with the memory of the woman for whom he
had really cared. His wife was to have been the servant of his comfort
and desires, and the dead woman the companion of his mind and daily
round. So he hoped, by keeping Mordaunt near him in his thoughts, to
qualify himself for attaining her after death, and to atone for his
apostasy in marrying a different woman while yet on earth. Throughout
all his reasoning ran a streak of madness, of which he himself was
totally unaware. And now, when he had completed arrangements to his
own satisfaction, here came this Jesuit telling him that such a course
of action savoured of adultery, and would probably end in the eternal
separation of Mordaunt from himself.
Presently he heard a sound of moving. He looked up. Antoine was
standing before him, on the outer edge of the light which was thrown
by the lamp, appearing huge and prophetic against the background of
dwarfed shadows which crawled over wall and ceiling, crowding behind
him. His awe for the office of the man returned to him, blotting out
the equality which the past few hours of confession had brought about.
Once more he recalled how it was said that le Pere had been seen
walking in the wilderness, wearing the countenance of Jesus Christ. He
looked like that now. Granger, made conscious of his own premeditated
wrong-doing, shrank back before him. Yet the words which Pere Antoine
uttered were very simple: "I am an old man, and I knew what I was
saying," was all he said.
Granger rose to his feet. "I'm going out," he said. "I'll return in a
little while and give you my decision."
He passed out from the close stale air of the shack into the
starlight; he could be nearer God there. A low, leisurely wind was
journeying over the forest, crooning softly to itself as it went.
Dominant over all other sounds, as was ever the case at Murder Point,
the wash of the ongoing river was to be heard--even in winter, when
every other live thing had ceased to stir, it was not silent. But now,
in the early summer of the northern year, it laughed uproariously and
clapped its hands against the banks in its passage, as if the water
were calling to the land, "Good-bye, old fellow; you won't see me
again for many a century. It was the end of the ice age when last we
parted." To Granger the shouting of the river was for all the world
like that of a troop-ship departing for a distant country. "Farewell,
farewell," it cried. The sound of its going made him weary with a
sense of world-wideness; if he was left behind to-day, when once he
had joined himself to a daughter of that country, he would be forever
left behind. But he had come outside not to reargue his way over the
old ground, but to decide. To do that he must be alone, quite
solitary; and there, just outside the shack, he was all too conscious
of Pere Antoine's eyes.
Slowly he commenced to descend the Point toward the river-bank. As he
went, a new desire sprang up within him--to speak with Strangeways; if
possible to make a compact and extort some approving sign from that
dead man. Stepping into the canoe, he pushed off lightly and set out
for the bend. The nearer he drew, the sterner his face became; he was
thinking of what he should say, and one has to be careful in what he
says in speaking with a man who is dead. Soon he came in sight of the
flimsy little cross which they had raised, and saw the stones which
they had piled above the body, shining white and grey in the
moonlight; then with a twist of the paddle his canoe shot in toward
the bank and the prow grated on the ice. Granger stepped out and
beached his craft above the water's edge. With slow deliberate steps
he went forward till he stood above the grave. There, with his hands
clasped behind him and his head bowed, he waited for a few minutes
listening, half expecting that something would happen. When nothing
stirred, he went upon his knees, as if he prayed, placing his lips so
near to the grave that sometimes they touched the stones and mould;
and so he began to speak to the man imprisoned beneath the ground.
"Strangeways," he said, "you know everything about me now, and you
ought to understand. I want to act fairly by you. I didn't do that in
your lifetime; if I had, you might not now be dead. I ought to have
warned you about the ice at first, and I ought to have told you the
truth about Spurling; then you might have believed me. But I did try
my best to save you in the end. Pere Antoine says that I may get
hanged for your death; but I don't mind that so very much, if I can
only act fairly by you now."
He paused to hear whether there was any sound of movement underground;
when he heard none, he knew that the dead man was listening and
waiting eagerly for what would come next. Crouching still nearer, so
that he might narrow the space between them, "Strangeways, are you
listening?" he said. "We both loved her, and neither of us won her in
this world; but because you are dead, you are nearer to her now than I
am. I want you to promise me to do nothing till I have come."
And still when he halted, waiting for his answer, nothing stirred.
Presently he spoke again. "I have a reason for asking which, if you
remember anything of what you suffered in this life, you should
understand. To save myself from madness, I must have a companion, and
so I am going to marry a woman of this country. In order that I may
live well with her, and even in order to marry her, I must pledge my
word to forget Mordaunt while I am in this world. Now do you
understand? I cannot pledge my word until you have promised me that
you will do nothing until I am also dead." He fell forward over the
grave and lay there silent. His brain had become numb; he could
fashion no more words--perhaps in the interval which elapsed he
slept. Then it seemed to him that the chambers within his brain were
lighted up, so that pressing his face against the crannies and between
the stones he could look right down, and see distinctly the narrow bed
of the grave whereon the body of Strangeways rested. The eyes of the
body were open and the lips were working, trying to say something. By
watching the lips he discovered that they kept on repeating, over and
over, one word; then he read that that word was _revenge_. "I cannot,
I cannot," he whispered. "I have promised God that I will not; and,
moreover, to take revenge on Spurling would be to remember her."
Was it that he moved as he slept, or did the thing which he thought he
saw actually occur! Some stones slipped from off the mound and, to his
eyes looking down into the grave, it seemed that Strangeways' hand
began to grope frantically after the locket which had been about his
neck, and that, finding it missing, his face became angry and he
strove to rise, causing the stones to fall and the ground to tremble.
Granger jumped up, and stood there shaking with his hands clenched and
his head thrown back, prepared.
"Will you answer me?" he cried in despair. "Don't you know how I
suffer? If you consent to what I have asked of you, give me a sign? If
nothing happens, I shall know that you are cruel and do not care."
When he had waited in vain some seconds, he lost his nerve and his
courage. Kneeling beside the grave he commenced to weep, smoothing the
stones with his hands coaxingly like a child, and whispering, "Give me
a sign. Give me a sign. Give me a sign."
Suddenly he paused in his pleading. The rustling of water against a
travelling prow, and sound of paddles thrust in, forced back, and
withdrawn, struck upon his ears. He threw himself full length along
the ground; he did not want to be discovered there. Stealing up-stream
from the northward, creeping close in to the opposite bank to avoid
the current, came a canoe, sitting deep in the water, heavily laden
with furs; the stern-paddle was held by a tall and thickly bearded
man, and in the prow, even at that distance and in that shadowy light,
it was possible to make out that the second figure was that of a girl.
Granger recognised them immediately, and knew that the Man with the
Dead Soul and his daughter had returned. He also noticed that Eyelids
was not there. They did not see him, but quickly vanished round the
bend.
When all was silent and lonely again, Granger arose. "It is a sign,"
he said. Standing above the grave, before departing he spoke once more
with the man who lay buried there. "Strangeways, you may rest quiet
now," he said. "Though I cannot revenge her as you have desired, we
can both, in our separate ways, be true to her."
He delayed a moment to have what he had said confirmed; but this time
no token either of dissent or approval was vouchsafed.