AT THE END OF THE TRAIL
When Donald reached Fort Bruce with Millington he placed him in charge
of the Mounted Police, who had returned, and then went to the Keewatin
headquarters down the shore. He did not go near the Layard home but
Evelyn drove down as soon as she heard he had returned.
"Donald," she began at once, "this can't go on any longer. Janet is
breaking her heart. I know I sent you away once. I have never forgiven
myself but I want you to forgive me and I want you to forget your
groundless fears."
He turned quickly away and stood at a window with his back to her. Even
in those first days of disillusionment he had never held her action
against her, recognizing in it the instinctive recoil of a mother from
what she felt to be disaster, but now he saw the Evelyn he had always
known.
"It is very wonderful of you to come here and say that," he said.
In that moment he was tempted to break forth with his momentous news.
Every instinct save that of caution prompted it, though the last two
years had destroyed his faith in many things.
That first night after Millington had told his story, Donald had
thought only of hurrying back to Fort Bruce and Janet. He had started
with that idea but as the miles slipped behind he began to see the
possibilities of the situation.
At first he had believed, wholly and without suspicion, and then
reflection showed how flimsy was the thread by which his whole future
was suspended--Millington's second-hand story, a story as incredible
as it was diabolical, and the little gold ring which he carried in his
pocket.
In those first moments his mind had swept back through his life and
had gathered many bits of circumstantial evidence that supported
Nee-tah-wee-gan's actions and her confession. He remembered
particularly the manner in which the Indian woman had received the
account of his fasting dream, her abject fear when he had spoken of
fire, how she had exhibited unmistakable signs of terror upon learning
that he was to be the manager at Fort James.
But later when he had sifted all these facts, had built up the case
as his heart wished it to be, he realized that it all hung on one
thing, on one man's action. Whatever he, Donald, might hope or believe,
the matter of his birth would never become an established fact until
Corrigal had stamped it with the seal of his own faith. As soon as
Donald grasped this he determined that he would not tell the story to
anyone until he had talked with Corrigal. He wanted to go to Janet at
once. He wondered if he could keep away from her while at Fort Bruce,
and yet he saw the cruelty of such an action if Corrigal repudiated
Millington's tale.
Even now, when Evelyn Layard had come to him with her double plea, he
was tempted more strongly than ever to tell. He felt that he must, that
something within him would burst if he did not relieve the pressure,
but as he turned toward her he determined to adhere to his original
plan.
"It was wonderful of you to come," he repeated. "I--I don't know what
to say. I must go to Fort James immediately but I'm coming back this
winter and when I do I will talk to you about it."
"But why wait?" Evelyn pleaded.
Again he faltered and then he saw that everything, all he had dreamed
of, all that Janet wished, depended on one thing, on the reactions of
one man. The need of settling it as quickly as possible became more
overwhelmingly imperative than ever.
"Please don't ask," he begged. "There is a reason. I can't tell it now.
I left in a hurry. Things are in a mess. I must get right back."
"But Donald! You're in no condition to travel. You're worn out."
"I'll get a chance to rest in the spring," he said with a smile.
Hope had flared again, irrepressible hope, youth's indomitable faith
and desire, and Evelyn, seeing the evidences of it, was puzzled.
"Has Corrigal given in?" she demanded. "Will he take you back?"
"Yes," he admitted.
"And you will be with the Hudson's Bay again?"
"Next summer."
"Then why----?"
Evelyn did not finish the sentence. An inspiration had come, one born
of the suppressed emotion evident in Donald's manner and of a woman's
intuition.
"I don't understand," she faltered. "I only know you are wrong. But you
will promise to come to me when you return to Fort Bruce?"
"Yes, I promise."
She went at once to the door and opened it.
"Good-by. I'll be waiting, Donald."
He heard the tinkle of sled bells as she was driven away to the
Hudson's Bay but when he was alone he did not go to bed as he should
have done, nor did he even sit down. Many hours before dawn the next
morning he would be on the trail, eastward bound, facing three hundred
and fifty miles of toil and cold and darkness, of aching muscles and
frost-scorched lungs. He was in need of rest and yet something drove
him to striding back and forth the length of his office.
His thoughts were at the end of that trail, in the living room of the
Hudson's Bay at Fort James, in the presence of a cold, sorrow-hardened
man, a man whose inner nature he had glimpsed on two occasions and to
whose racked soul he must penetrate again.
So preoccupied was he the sound of sled bells did not impress
themselves until the door was thrown open and Janet entered.
"Donald!" she cried. "Mother said you wished to see me, that you were
worn out, unable to----"
He had successfully conquered the temptation to see her even when
he had been swayed by Evelyn's pleading, and now the integrity and
strength which had carried him through a similar meeting in that same
room rose instinctively to wage the same old fight.
Yet words would not come. It was as if he faced an opponent with the
gloves and could not raise his hands. He was helpless in her presence,
aware only that she was there, that some power over which he had no
control was driving him forward.
In a last desperate effort he tried to turn his eyes from that eager
face, from all that he read in it. He saw that she had come with the
confident expectation that he had abandoned his former stand. He knew
she believed the end of their disheartening trail had been reached and
he could not bear to tell her of the hazard still remaining.
Then the light in her eyes died. She drew back against the door, her
hand searching behind her for the latch.
"I am sorry," she whispered. "I see it now. Mother thought--she did not
know--understand. She believed----"
Her hand found the latch and she turned quickly.
"Janet!" Donald cried.
With a bound he was across the room and whirling her toward him. He
lifted her chin and looked down into a face blank with despair.
"Janet! Janet!" he exclaimed. "Nothing matters. Nothing! Nothing! I've
been a fool, a stubborn, selfish fool!"
His arms went around her but even before he had drawn her close he felt
the quick, passionate straining of her body as she swayed against him.
She lifted her face--a face so radiant he was dazzled--and as they
clung together he knew that nothing could ever separate them, that
whether white or smeared with red he had not the right to deny her even
a brief happiness.
For an instant he was tempted to tell Millington's story but as he
lifted her head and looked into her eyes, now glowing through tears, he
understood that nothing could add to that moment, that nothing counted
with Janet but he himself, that the question of his parentage weighed
so little in her mind that the mere introduction of the subject would
only mar her ecstasy.
Then there came to him a complete realization of how marvelous a thing
the love of a woman could be. It had risen above race, had scorned the
teachings of precedent and the counsel of wisdom. It had dared custom,
defied opinion, braved all the future might hold.
"Janet," he whispered brokenly, "you are the most glorious being in
the world. I didn't know it, but from that day you looked through the
picket fence at me at Kenogami I have loved you. And I always will,
always."
She drew away and looked at him.
"There never was a fence, dearest, except in your own mind. And no
matter what comes, Donald, always think first that I love you."
"But you give me so much and I----"
"You give me all that I wish, and you always can. There are only three
things in the world, you and I and our love for each other, and the
three, dearest--don't you see? They are inseparable, and always will
be, no matter what happens, for we have the power to make them so."
It was with that last sentence foremost in his thoughts that Donald
started early the next morning for Fort James. Yet with each of
those three hundred and fifty miles over which he sped its potency
diminished. Away from Janet, alone in the wilderness with his
half-breed driver, fighting for each foot and each second, the fatigue
of his body brought a weariness and a trembling of the spirit.
In those dreary miles he saw things as they were, as he always had seen
them, as they must irrevocably be unless----More and more he felt
that the very strength and purity of Janet's love demanded a future
untainted by the common tragedy of fur land; that somehow he must wring
sanction from the man who had impressed all the north country with his
hardness.
Yet when he reached Fort James another factor intruded itself. For the
first time he saw clearly what he was about to do, understood that the
man to whom he was going was his father and that he must tell him a
story that could be only stunning and excruciating in its effect.
Corrigal himself came to the door when Donald drove up at the Hudson's
Bay.
"Did you get him?" he demanded eagerly.
"Yes, the other side of Fort Bruce. I turned him over to the Mounted."
Corrigal led the way into the living room, asking questions rapidly as
he did so.
"Wait," Donald protested. "I'll tell all that later. There's something
else, something more important."
For five minutes Corrigal listened without interruption. Donald sought
desperately not to color the story. He tried to repeat it exactly
as Millington had told it to him, while he cringed there beside the
camp-fire and the two half-breeds grumbled in the cold a hundred yards
down the trail. He did not tell all the circumstantial facts in his own
history and as he neared the end he eagerly searched the face of the
man who sat opposite him.
But after the first startling statements Corrigal's expression had
hardened and told nothing. When Donald reached the point where
Nee-tah-wee-gan had described the murder of the helpless woman the
district manager leaped to his feet with a sharp cry.
Donald was silent as he paced the floor.
"Go on," Corrigal said at last.
He continued his pacing when Donald had finished and for a full minute
the younger man sat there with hope dwindling and heart sinking.
Back and forth Corrigal strode. His features were twisted by rage and
pain and then he stopped directly before Donald and looked down at him.
"Lad," he said huskily, "that was a terrible thing to bring to me. For
a moment I couldn't think of anything except the horror of it--of how
she must have died there alone.
"But that is something we'll have to make each other forget. Some day
I'll tell you about her. You'll want to hear--and I have never told
anyone. But I know you can help me. You have already. There are thirty
years we will have to wipe clean and----"
"You mean," Donald cried when he paused, "you mean that you believe
it--that you believe I am----"
He had risen to his feet and Corrigal threw both arms around him.
"Great God!" he cried in a voice that touched Donald as nothing else
ever had.
His head was down on Donald's shoulder and his body shook as the room
echoed with his sobs.
But in a moment he got hold of himself. He leaned back, grasping the
younger man by the arms and holding him away. The tears were running
down his cheeks but through them there shone a smile that was like a
child's, for it had broken through the repression of thirty years.
"Son!" he whispered. "My son! Mine!"