unsteadily. "She takes care of our cabin, Jakapa's and mine."
"Is that _all_?" the Priest demanded.
Her eyes challenged him. What, indeed, was she to him?
What _was_ she? From the moment he had followed her into the boreal
night, with its streaming lights of mystery and promise, she had held
his imagination and his thoughts.
"Is that _all_?" the Priest insisted.
"You insult both this girl and me," Crossman retorted, stung to sudden
anger.
"_Dieu merci_!" the Curé made the sign of the cross as he spoke. "As
for this woman, send her away. She is _not_ the wife of Antoine
Marceau; she is not married--she _will_ not be."
In spite of himself a savage joy burned in Crossman's veins. She was
the wife of no man; she was a free being, whatever else she was.
"I do not have to marry," she jeered. "That is for the women that only
one man desires--or perhaps two--like some in your parish, _mon
père_."
"She is evil," the Priest continued, paying no attention to her
sneering comment. "I know not what she is, nor who. One night, in
autumn, in the dark of the hour before morning, she was brought to me
by some Indians. They had found her, a baby, wrapped in furs, in an
empty canoe, rocking almost under the Grande Falls. But I tell you,
and to my sorrow, I _know_, she is evil. She knows not God, nor God
her. You, whose soul is sick, flee her as you would the devil! Aurore,
the Dawn! I named her, because she came so near the morning. Aurore!
Ah, God! She should be named after the blackest hour of a witch's
Sabbath!"
She laughed. It was the first time Crossman had heard her laugh--a
deep, slow, far-away sound, more like an eerie echo.
"_He_ has a better name for me," she said, casting Crossman a look
whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black
Dawn'--_n'est-ce-pas?_ Though I _have_ heard him call me in the
night--by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the
axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed
the door between them.
The Priest turned on him. "My son," his eyes searched Crossman's, "you
have not lied to me?"
"No," he answered steadily. "Once I called her the Aurora
Borealis--that is all. To me she seems mysterious and changing, and
coloured, like the Northern Lights."
"She is mysterious and changing and beautiful, but it is not the
lights of the North and of Heaven. She is the _feu follet_, the
will-o'-the-wisp that hovers over what is rotten, and dead. Send her
away, my son; send her away. Oh, she has left her trail of blood and
hatred and malice in my parish, I know. She has bred feuds; she has
sent strong men to the devil, and broken the hearts of good women. But
_you_ will not believe me. It is to Jakapa I must talk. _Mon Dieu_!
how is it that he let her come! You are a stranger, but he----"
"Jakapa wished for Antoine, and she was with him," explained Crossman
uneasily, yet resentful of the Priest's vehemence.
"I can not wait." The Curé rose and began repinning his clerical
garments. "Where is Jakapa? Have you a pair of snowshoes to lend me?
You must forgive my agitation, Monsieur, but you do not
understand--I--which way?"
"He should be at Mile End, just above the Bijou. Sit still, Father; I
will send for him. The wind sets right. I'll call him in." Slipping on
his beaver jacket, he stepped outside and struck two blows on the
great iron ring, a bent rail, that swung from its gibbet like a
Chinese gong. A singing roar, like a metal bellow, sprang into the
clear, unresisting air, leaped and echoed, kissed the crags of the
Bijou and recoiled again, sending a shiver of sound and vibration
through snow-laden trees, on, till the echoes sighed into silence.
Crossman's over-sensitive ear clung to the last burring whisper as it
answered, going north, north, to the House of Silence, drawn there by
the magnet of Silence, as water seeks the sea. For a moment he had
almost forgotten the reason for the smitten clamour, hypnotized by the
mystery of sound. Then he turned, to see Aurore, a distant figure of
scarlet and black at the edge of the wood road, shuffling northward on
her long snowshoes, northward, as if in pursuit of the sound that had
gone before. She raised a mittened hand to him in ironic salutation.
She seemed to beckon, north--north--into the Silence. Crossman shook
himself. What was this miasma in his heart? He inhaled the vital air
and felt the rush of his blood in answer, realizing the splendour of
this beautiful, intensely living world of white and green, of sparkle
and prismatic brilliance. Its elemental power like the urge of the
world's youth.
But Aurore? His brain still heard the echo of her laugh. He cursed
savagely under his breath, and turned his back upon the Curé, unable
to face the scrutiny of those kind, troubled eyes.
"Jakapa will be here presently," he said over his shoulder. "That gong
carries ten miles if there's no wind. One ring, that's for the Boss;
two, call in for the whole gang; three, alarm--good as a telegraph or
the telephone as far as it goes. Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me, I'll
have a look at the larder."
Without a doubt, he reasoned, Aurore would have left their mid-day
meal ready. She would not return, he knew, until the guest had gone.
In the little overheated cook-house he found the meal set out. All was
in order. Then his eye caught a singular decoration fastened to the
door, a paper silhouette, blackened with charcoal, the shape of a
cassocked priest. The little cut-out paper doll figure was pinned to
the wood by a short, sharp kitchen knife driven viciously deep, and
the handle, quivering with the closing of the door, gave the illusion
that the hand that had delivered the blow must have only at that
instant been withdrawn.
Crossman shivered. He knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of
its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper
meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending
with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of the strange
woman.
A step outside crunching in the snow. The door opened, revealing
Antoine Marceau. The huge form of the log-brander towered above him.
He could not read the expression of the eyes behind the square-cupped
snow spectacles.
"She tell me, Aurore," he rumbled, "that I am to come. We have the
company."
"Yes, the Curé of Portage Dernier." Crossman watched him narrowly.
Antoine took off the protecting wooden blinders and thrust them in his
pocket.
Crossman stood aside, hesitating. Antoine drew off his mittens with
businesslike precision, and placed a huge, capable hand on a pot-lid,
lifted it, and eyed the contents of the saucepan.
"The Curé, he like ptarmigan," he observed, "but," he added in a
matter-of-fact voice, "the Curé like not Aurore--he have tell you,
_hein_? Ah, well, why not? For him such as Aurore _are_ not--_voilà_."
"The Curé says she is a devil." Crossman marvelled at his temerity,
yet he hung on the answer.
"Why not? For him, as I have say, she _is_ not--for _me_, for _you_,
ma frien', _that_ is different." Antoine turned on him eyes as
impersonal as those of Fate; where Crossman had expected to see
animosity there was none, only a strange brotherhood of pitying
understanding.
"For who shall forbid that the dawn she shall break--_hein_?" he
continued. "The Curé? Not mooch. When the Dawn she come, she come; not
with his hand can he hold her back. For me, now comes perhaps the
sunset; perhaps the dawn for you. But what would you? Who can put the
dog-harness on the wind, or put the bit in the teeth of the waterfall
to hold him up?"
"Or who with his hand can draw the Borealis from heaven?" Crossman cut
in. He spoke unconsciously. He had not wished to say that, he had not
wanted to speak at all, but his subconscious mind had welded the
thought of her so fast to the great mystery of the Northern Lights
that without volition he had voiced it.
Antoine Marceau nodded quietly. The strangely aloof acknowledgment of
Crossman's possible relation to this woman, _his_ woman, who yet was
not his or any man's, somehow shocked Crossman. His blood flamed at
the thought, and yet he felt her intangible, unreal. He had but to
look into her shifting, glittering eyes, and there were silence and
playing lights. Suddenly his vision of her changed, became human and
vital. He saw before him the sinuous movement of her strong young
body. He realized the living perfume of her, clean and fresh, faintly
aromatic as of pine in the sunlight, and violets in the shadow.
Antoine Marceau busied himself about the cook-house. He did not speak
of Aurore again, not even when his eye rested on the paper doll
skewered to the door by the deep-driven knife. He frowned, made the
sign of the cross, jerked out the knife, and thrust its point in the
purifying blaze of the charcoal fire. But he made no comment.
Crossman turned on his heel and entered the office-building. Through
the south window he saw Jakapa snowshoeing swiftly up the short
incline to the door; beside him walked the Curé, pleading and anxious.
He could follow the words as his lips framed them. In the present mood
Crossman did not wish to hear the Curé's denunciation. It was
sufficient to see that the Foreman had, evidently, no intention of
acting on the advice proffered.
As he softly closed the door between the main office and the living
room at the rear, he heard the men enter on a quick word of reproof in
the Curé's rich bass.
"She does her work sufficiently well, and I shall not order her from
the camp," Jakapa snapped in reply. "She is with Marceau; if he keeps
her in hand, what do I care? She leave him, that _his_ affair, _mon
Dieu, mon père_."
"She has bewitched you, too, Jakapa. She has bewitched that other, the
young man who is here for the healing of his soul. What an irony, to
heal his soul, and she comes to poison it!"
"Heal his soul?" Jakapa laughed harshly. "He's had the weak lung,
shell-shock, and he's a friend of the owner. _Mon père_, if he is here
for the good of his soul, that is _your_ province--but me?--I am here
to boss one job, and I boss him, that's all. I hope only you have not
driven the cook away, or the _pot-au-feu_, she will be thin." He tried
to speak the latter part of his sentence lightly, but his voice
betrayed his irritation.
Crossman opened the door and entered. "Antoine will be here in a
minute," he announced. "Aurore sent him back to feed the animals." He
took down the enamelled tin dishes and cups and set their places.
Jakapa eyed him covertly, with a half-sneering venom he had never
before shown.
It was a silent meal. The Curé sighed and shook his head at intervals,
and the Boss grumbled a few comments in answer to an occasional
question concerning his lumberjacks. Crossman sat in a dream. Could he
have understood aright when Antoine had spoken of the dawn?
Jakapa dropped a plate with a curse and a clatter. The sudden sound
ripped the sick man's nerves like an exploding bomb. White to the
lips, he jumped from his chair to meet the Boss's sneering eyes. The
Curé laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he settled back shamefacedly.
"Your pardon, _mon père_--my nerves are on edge--excuse me--an
inheritance of the trenches."
"Emotion is bad for you, my son, and you should not emotion yourself,"
said the Priest gently.
"Do you travel far when you leave us now?" Crossman asked
self-consciously, anxious to change the subject.
"To the camp at the Chaumière Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is
no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white
tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play."
He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and
with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his guest's departure.
As the sled disappeared among the trees, bearing the queerly bundled
figure of the Priest, the Boss unhooked his snowshoes from the wall.
He seemed to have forgotten Crossman's presence, but as he turned, his
smouldering eyes lighted on him. He straightened with a jerk. "What
did he mean when he say, _she_ have bewitch _you_?" As always, when
excited, his somewhat precise English slipped back into the idiom of
the habitant. "By Gar! Boss or no Boss, I pack you out if I catch you.
We make no jealousies for any one, not where I am. You come here for
your health--_hein?_ Well, better you keep this place healthy for
you."
As if further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit
the woman herself. She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking
from one to the other with mocking eyes.
"Well, do I leave? Am I to pack? Have you wash the hand of me to
please the Curé, yes?"
Jakapa turned on her brutally. "Get to the cook-house! Wash your dish!
Did I give orders to Antoine to leave hees work? By Gar! I feel like I
take you and break you in two!" He moved his knotted hands with a
gesture of destruction. There was something so sinister in the action
that, involuntarily, Crossman cried out a startled warning. Her laugh
tinkled across it.
"Bah!" she shrugged. "If you wish to kill, why do you not kill those
who make the interferre? Are you a man? What is it, a cassock, that it
so protect a man? But me, because I do not wear a woman's skirt, you
will break me, hey? _Me!_ Nevair mind, I prefer this man. He at least
make no big talk." She slipped her arm through Crossman's, letting her
fingers play down from his wrist to his finger-tips--and the thrill of
it left him tongue-tied and helpless.
Jakapa cursed and crouched low. He seemed about to hurl himself upon
the pair before him. Again she laughed, and her tingling, searching
fingers stole slowly over his throbbing pulses.
She released Crossman's arm with a jerk, and snapped the fingers that
had just caressed him in the face of the furious lumberman. "_Allons!_
Must I forever have no better revenge but to knife one paper doll? Am
I to be hounded like a beast, and threatened wherever I go? I am tired
of this dead camp. I think I go me down the river." She paused a
moment in her vehemence. Her next words came almost in a whisper:
"_Unless you can cross the trail to Chaumière Noire--then_, maybe, I
stay with you--I say--maybe." With a single swooping movement of her
strong young arm she swept the door open, and came face to face with
Antoine Marceau. "What, thou?" she said airily.
He nodded. "Shall I go back, or do you want that I go to the other
side?" he asked the Foreman.
"Go to the devil!" growled Jakapa, and slinging his snowshoes over his
arm, he stamped out.
"_Tiens_!" said Antoine. "He is mad, the Boss."
"I think we are all mad," said Crossman.
"Maybe," said Antoine. Quietly he gathered together his axe, mittens,
and cap, and shrugging his huge shoulders into his mackinaw, looked
out at the glorious brightness of the stainless world and frowned.
"Come, Aurore," he said quietly.
A little later, as Crossman rose to replenish the dwindling fire, he
saw him, followed by Aurore, enter the northern end of the timber
limit. Were they leaving, Crossman wondered. Had the silent woodsman
asserted his power over the woman? Crossman took down the
field-glasses from the nail on the wall. They were the sole reminder,
here in the North Country, of his years of war service. He followed
the two figures until the thickening timber hid them. Idly he swept
the horizon of black-green trees, blue shadows, and sparkling snow. A
speck moved--a mackinaw-clad figure passed swiftly across the clearing
above the Little Bijou--only a glimpse--the man took to cover in the
burned timber, where the head-high brush made a tangle of brown above
which the gaunt, white, black-smeared arms of dead trees flung
agonized branches to the sky.--"The short-cut trail to Chaumière
Noire"--"Shall I forever have no better revenge but to stab one paper
doll?" Her words echoed in his ears.
_Jakapa was on the short cut to the Chaumière Noire_! Only Crossman's
accidental use of the field-glasses had betrayed his going. For an
instant Crossman's impulse was to rush out and ring the alarm on the
shrieking steel gong, but the next instant he laughed at himself. Yes,
surely, he was a sick man of many imaginings. The gang boss was gone
about his business. The log-brander had called upon his woman to
accompany him. That was all. Her angry words were mere threats--best
forgotten.
With nervous haste he bundled into his heavy garments and ran from
himself and his imaginings into the dazzling embrace of the sun.
He tramped to the gang at work above the Little Bijou Chute, where
they raced the logs to the iron-hard ice of the river's surface far
below. He even took a hand with the axe, was laughed at, and watched
the precision and power of the Jacks as they clove, swung, and lopped.
From the cliff he looked down at the long bunk-house, saw the blue
smoke rising straight, curled at the top like the uncoiling frond of a
new fern-leaf. Saw the Chinese cook, in his wadded coat of blue,
disappear into the snow-covered mound that hid the provision shack,
and watched the bounding pups refusing to be broken into harness by
Siwash George. It was all very simple, very real, and the twists of
his tired mind relaxed; his nervous hands came to rest in the warm
depths of his mackinaw pockets. The peace of sunned spaces and
flowing, clean air soothed his mind and heart.
The blue shadows lengthened. The gang knocked off work. The last log
was rushed down the satin ice of the chute to leap over its fellows at
the foot. The smell of bacon sifted through the odours of evergreen
branches and new-cut wood. Crossman declined a cordial invitation to
join the gang at chuck. He must be getting back, he explained, "for
chow at the Boss's."
Whistling, he entered the office, stirred up the fire, and crossed to
the cook-house. It was empty. The charcoal fire was out. Shivering, he
rebuilt it, looked through the larder, and hacked off a ragged slice
of jerked venison. A film of fear rose in his soul. What if they were
_really_ gone? What if Antoine _had_ taken her? It looked like it. His
heart sank. Not to see her again! Not to feel her strange, thrilling
presence! Not to sense that indomitable, insolent soul, throwing its
challenge before it as it walked through the world!
Crossman came out, returned to the office, busied himself in tidying
the living room and solving the disorder of his desk. The twilight
sifted over wood and hill, crept from under the forest arches, and
spread across the snow of the open. He lit the lamps and waited. The
silence was complete. It seemed as if the night had come and closed
the world, locking it away out of the reach even of God.
The meal Crossman had bunglingly prepared lay untouched on the table.
Now and then the crash of an avalanche of snow from the overburdened
branches emphasized the stillness. Dreading he knew not what, Crossman
waited--and loneliness is not good for a sick soul.
Thoughts began crowding, nudging one another; happenings that he had
dismissed as casual took on new and sinister meanings. "Two and two
together" became at once a huge sum, leaping to terrifying
conclusions. Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting
came the sense of things finished--done forever. A vast, all-embracing
finality--"_Néant_"--the habitant expression for the uttermost
nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but
a premonition warned him that to utter it was to make it real.
Should he call upon the name of the Void, the Void would answer. He
feared it--it meant that She would be swallowed also in the great
gaping hollow of nothingness. He strained his ears for sounds of the
living world--the spit of the fire, the fall of clinkers in the grate,
the whisper of the wind stirring at the door. He tried to analyse his
growing uneasiness. He was sure now that she had followed Antoine's
bidding--forgetting him, if, indeed, her desires had ever reached
toward him.
Now she seemed the only thing that mattered. He must find her; he must
follow. Wherever she was, there only was the world of reality. Where
she was, was life. And to find her, he must find Antoine--and then,
without warning, the door gaped--and Antoine stood before him, like a
coloured figure pasted on the black ground of the night. Then he
entered, quiet and matter-of-fact. He nodded, closed the door against
the biting cold, pulled off his cap, and stood respectfully.
"It is no use to wait for the Boss; he will not come," said the
log-brander. "I came to tell Monsieur, before I go on, that le Curé is
safe at Chaumière Noire. Yes, he is safe, and Monsieur Jakapa have
turn back, when I catch up with him and tell him----"
"What?" gasped Crossman.
"It was to do," the giant twisted his cap slowly, "but it was harder
than I think. It was not for jealousy, I beg you to know. That she
would go if she want--to who she want, she can. I have no right to
stop her. But she would have had the Curé knifed to death. She made
the wish, and she put her wish in the heart of a man. If it had not
been this time--then surely some other time. She always find a hand to
do her will--even this of mine--once. I heard her tell to Jakapa.
Therefore, Jakapa he has gone back to watch with her body. I told him
where. Me I go. There are for me no more dawns. You love her, too,
Monsieur, therefore, I come to tell you the end. _Bon soir,
Monsieur_."
He was gone. Again there was silence. Crossman sat rigid. What had
happened? His mind refused to understand. Then he visioned her, lying
on the white snow, scarlet under her breast, redder than her mackinaw,
redder than her woollen mittens, redder than the cardinal-flower of
her mouth--cardinal no more! "No, no!" he shrieked, springing to his
feet. His words echoed in the empty room. "No--no!--He couldn't kill
her!" He clung to the table. "No--no! No!" he screamed. Then he saw
her eyes; she was looking in through the window--yes, they were her
eyes--changing and glowing, eyes of mystery, of magic, eyes that made
the silence, eyes that called and shifted and glowed. He laughed.
Fools, fools! to think her dead! He staggered to the door and threw it
wide. Hatless, coatless, he plunged headlong into the dark--the Dark?
No! for she was there--on high, wide-flung, the banners of the Aurora
Borealis blazed and swung, banners that rippled and ran, banners of
rainbows, the souls of amethysts and emeralds, they fluttered in the
heavens, they swayed across the world, streamed like amber wine poured
from an unseen chalice, dropped fold on fold, like the fluttering
raiment of the gods.
In the north a great sapphire curtain trembled as if about to part and
reveal the unknown Beyond; it grew brighter, dazzling, radiant.
"Aurore!" he called. "Aurore!" The grip of ice clutched his heart.
Cold seized on him with unseen numbing hands. He was struggling,
struggling with his body of lead--for one step--just a step nearer the
great curtain, that now glowed warm--red--red as the ghost of her
cardinal-flower lips--pillars of light, as of the halls of heaven.
"Aurore!--Aurore!"
MR. DOWNEY SITS DOWN
By L.H. ROBBINS
From _Everybody's_
I
Jacob Downey waited in line at the meat shop. A footsore little man
was he. All day long, six days a week for twenty-two years, he had
stood on his feet, trotted on them, climbed on them, in the hardware
department of Wilbram, Prescot & Co., and still they would not
toughen; still they would hurt; still to sustain his spirit after
three o'clock he had to invoke a vision of slippers, a warm radiator,
the _Evening Bee_, and the sympathy of Mrs. Downey and the youngsters.
To the picture this evening he had added pork chops.
The woman next in line ahead of him named her meat. Said the butcher,
with a side glance at the clock, "A crown roast takes quite a while,
lady. Could I send it in the morning?"
No, the lady wished to see it prepared. Expressly for that purpose had
she come out in the rain. To-morrow she gave a luncheon.
"First come first served," thought Jacob Downey, and bode his time in
patience, feeling less pity for his aching feet than for Butcher
Myers. Where was the charity in asking a hurried man at five minutes
to six o'clock to frill up a roast that would not see the inside of
the oven before noon next day?
Now, crown roasts are one thing to him who waits on fallen arches, and
telephone calls are another. Scarcely had Downey's opening come to
speak for pork chops cut medium when off went the bell and off rushed
Butcher Myers.