across at Weyman, saw him bite his lips.
"That cough hurts, but it's better," Severn apologized, smiling weakly.
"Funny, ain't it, a man like me coming down with a cough? Why, I've
slept in ice a thousand times, with snow for a pillow and the
thermometer down to fifty. But this last winter it was cold, seventy or
lower, an' I worked in it when I ought to have been inside, warming my
toes. But, you see, I wanted to get the cabin built, an' things all
cleared up about here, before SHE came. It's the cold that got me,
wasn't it, doc?"
"That's it," said Weyman, rolling and lighting a cigarette. Then he
laughed, as the sick man finished another coughing spell, and said:
"I never thought you'd have a love affair, Bucky!"
"Neither did I," chuckled Severn. "Ain't it a wonder, doc? Here I'm
thirty-eight, with a hide on me like leather, an' no thought of a woman
for twenty years, until I saw HER. I don't mean it's a wonder I fell in
love, doc--you'd 'a' done that if you'd met her first. The wonder of it
is that she fell in love with me." He laughed softly. "I'll bet Father
Brochet'll go in a heap himself when he marries us! It's goin' to
happen next month. Did you ever see her, father--Marie La Corne, over
at the post on Split Lake?"
Severn dropped his head to cough, but Weyman say the sudden look of
horror that leaped into the little priest's face.
"Marie La Corne!"
"Yes, at Split Lake."
Severn looked up again. He had missed what Weyman had seen.
"Yes, I've seen her."
Bucky Severn's eyes lit up with pleasure.
"She's--she's beautiful, ain't she?" he cried in hoarse whisper. "Ain't
it a wonder, father? I come up there with a canoe full of supplies,
last spring about this time, an'--an' at first I hardly dast to look at
her; but it came out all right. When I told her I was coming over here
to build us a home, she wanted me to bring her along to help; but I
wouldn't. I knew it was goin' to be hard this winter, and she's never
goin' to work--never so long as I live. I ain't had much to do with
women, but I've seen 'em and I've watched 'em an' she's never goin' to
drudge like the rest. If she'll let me, I'm even goin' to do the
cookin' an' the dish-washing and scrub the floors! I've done it for
twenty-five years, an' I'm tough. She ain't goin' to do nothin' but sew
for the kids when they come, an' sing, an' be happy. When it comes to
the work that there ain't no fun in, I'll do it. I've planned it all
out. We're goin' to have half an arpent square of flowers, an' she'll
love to work among 'em. I've got the ground cleared--out there--you kin
see it by twisting your head through the door. An' she's goin' to have
an organ. I've got the money saved, an' it's coming to Churchill on the
next ship. That's goin' to be a surprise--'bout Christmas, when the
snow is hard an' sledging good. You see--"
He stopped again to cough. A hectic flush filled his hollow cheeks, and
there was a feverish glow in his eyes. As he bent his head, the priest
looked at Weyman. The doctor's lips were tense. His cigarette was
unlighted.
"I know what it means for a woman to die a workin'," Severn went on.
"My mother did that. I can remember it, though I was only a kid. She
was bent an' stoop-shouldered, an' her hands were rough and twisted. I
know now why she used to hug me up close and croon funny things over me
when father was away. When I first told my Marie what I was goin' to
do, she laughed at me; but when I told her 'bout my mother, an' how
work an' freezin' an' starvin' killed her when I needed her most, Marie
jest put her hand up to my face an' looked queer--an' then she burst
out crying like a baby. She understands, Marie does! She knows what I'm
goin' to do--"
"You mustn't talk any more, Bucky," warned the doctor, feeling his
pulse. "It'll hurt you."
"Hurt me!" Severn laughed hysterically, as If what the doctor had said
was a joke. "Hurt me? It's what's going to put me on my feet, doc. I
know it now, I been too much alone this last winter, with nothin' but
my dogs to talk to when night come. I ain't never been much of a
talker, but she got me out o' that. She used to tease me at first, an'
I'd get red in the face an' almost bust. An' then, one day, it come,
like a bung out of a hole, an' I've had a hankerin' to talk ever since.
Hurt me!"
He gave an incredulous chuckle, which ended in a cough.
"Do you know, I wish I could read better 'n I can!" he said suddenly,
leaning almost eagerly toward Father Brochet. "She knows I ain't great
shucks at that. She's goin' to have a school just as soon as she comes,
an' I'm goin' to be the scholar. She's got a packful of books an'
magazines an' I'm goin' to tote over a fresh load every winter. I'd
like to surprise her. Can't you help me to--"
Weyman pressed him back gently.
"See here, Bucky, you've got to lie down and keep quiet," he said. "If
you don't, it will take you a week longer to get well. Try and sleep a
little, while Father Brochet and I go outside and see what you've done."
When they went out, Weyman closed the door after them. He spoke no word
as he turned and looked upon what Bucky Severn had done for the coming
of his bride. Father Brochet's hand touched the doctor's and it was
cold and trembling.
"How is he?" he asked.
"It is the bad malady," said Weyman softly. "The frost has touched his
lungs. One does not feel the effect of that until spring comes. Then--a
cough--and the lungs begin literally to slough away."
"You mean--"
"That there is no hope--absolutely none. He will die within two days."
As he spoke, the little priest straightened himself and lifted his
hands as if about to pronounce a benediction.
"Thank God!" he breathed. Then, as quickly, he caught himself. "No, I
don't mean that. God forgive me! But--it is best." Weyman stared
incredulously into his face.
"It is best," repeated the other, as gently as if speaking a prayer.
"How strangely the Creator sometimes works out His ends! I came
straight here from Split Lake. Marie La Corne died two weeks ago. It
was I who said the last prayer over her dead body!"
HIS FIRST PENITENT
In a white wilderness of moaning storm, in a wilderness of miles and
miles of black pine-trees, the Transcontinental Flier lay buried in the
snow. In the first darkness of the wild December night, engine and
tender had rushed on ahead to division headquarters, to let the line
know that the flier had given up the fight, and needed assistance. They
had been gone two hours, and whiter and whiter grew the brilliantly
lighted coaches in the drifts and winnows of the whistling storm. From
the black edges of the forest, prowling eyes might have looked upon
scores of human faces staring anxiously out into the blackness from the
windows of the coaches.
In those coaches it was growing steadily colder. Men were putting on
their overcoats, and women snuggled deeper in their furs. Over it all,
the tops of the black pine-trees moaned and whistled in sounds that
seemed filled both with menace and with savage laughter.
In the smoking-compartment of the Pullman sat five men, gathered in a
group. Of these, one was Forsythe, the timber agent; two were traveling
men; the fourth a passenger homeward bound from a holiday visit; and
the fifth was Father Charles. The priest's pale, serious face lit up in
surprise or laughter with the others, but his lips had not broken into
a story of their own. He was a little man, dressed in somber black, and
there was that about him which told his companions that within his
tight-drawn coat of shiny black there were hidden tales which would
have gone well with the savage beat of the storm against the lighted
windows and the moaning tumult of the pine-trees.
Suddenly Forsythe shivered at a fiercer blast than the others, and said:
"Father, have you a text that would fit this night--and the situation?"
Slowly Father Charles blew out a spiral of smoke from between his lips,
and then he drew himself erect and leaned a little forward, with the
cigar between his slender white fingers.
"I had a text for this night," he said, "but I have none now,
gentlemen. I was to have married a couple a hundred miles down the
line. The guests have assembled. They are ready, but I am not there.
The wedding will not be to-night, and so my text is gone. But there
comes another to my mind which fits this situation--and a thousand
others--'He who sits in the heavens shall look down and decide.'
To-night I was to have married these young people. Three hours ago I
never dreamed of doubting that I should be on hand at the appointed
hour. But I shall not marry them. Fate has enjoined a hand. The Supreme
Arbiter says 'No,' and what may not be the consequences'?"
"They will probably be married to-morrow," said one of the traveling
men. "There will be a few hours' delay--nothing more."
"Perhaps," replied Father Charles, as quietly as before. "And--perhaps
not. Who can say what this little incident may not mean in the lives of
that young man and that young woman--and, it may be, in my own? Three
or four hours lost in a storm--what may they not mean to more than one
human heart on this train? The Supreme Arbiter plays His hand, if you
wish to call it that, with reason and intent. To someone, somewhere,
the most insignificant occurrence may mean life or death. And
to-night--this--means something."
A sudden blast drove the night screeching over our heads, and the
whining of the pines was almost like human voices. Forsythe sucked a
cigar that had gone out.
"Long ago," said Father Charles, "I knew a young man and a young woman
who were to be married. The man went West to win a fortune. Thus fate
separated them, and in the lapse of a year such terrible misfortune
came to the girl's parents that she was forced into a marriage with
wealth--a barter of her white body for an old man's gold. When the
young man returned from the West he found his sweetheart married, and
hell upon earth was their lot. But hope lingers in your hearts. He
waited four years; and then, discouraged, he married another woman.
Gentlemen, three days after the wedding his old sweetheart's husband
died, and she was released from bondage. Was not that the hand of the
Supreme Arbiter? If he had waited but three days more, the old
happiness might have lived.
"But wait! One month after that day the young man was arrested, taken
to a Western State, tried for murder, and hanged. Do you see the point?
In three days more the girl who had sold herself into slavery for the
salvation of those she loved would have been released from her bondage
only to marry a murderer!"
There was silence, in which all five listened to that wild moaning of
the storm. There seemed to be something in it now--something more than
the inarticulate sound of wind and trees. Forsythe scratched a match
and relighted his cigar.
"I never thought of such things in just that light," he said.
"Listen to the wind," said the little priest. "Hear the pine-trees
shriek out there! It recalls to me a night of years and years ago--a
night like this, when the storm moaned and twisted about my little
cabin, and when the Supreme Arbiter sent me my first penitent.
Gentlemen, it is something which will bring you nearer to an
understanding of the voice and the hand of God. It is a sermon on the
mighty significance of little things, this story of my first penitent.
If you wish, I will tell it to you."
"Go on," said Forsythe.
The traveling men drew nearer.
"It was a night like this," repeated Father Charles, "and it was in a
great wilderness like this, only miles and miles away. I had been sent
to establish a mission; and in my cabin, that wild night, alone and
with the storm shrieking about me, I was busy at work sketching out my
plans. After a time I grew nervous. I did not smoke then, and so I had
nothing to comfort me but my thoughts; and, in spite of my efforts to
make them otherwise, they were cheerless enough. The forest grew to my
door. In the fiercer blasts I could hear the lashing of the pine-trees
over my head, and now and then an arm of one of the moaning trees would
reach down and sweep across my cabin roof with a sound that made me
shudder and fear. This wilderness fear is an oppressive and terrible
thing when you are alone at night, and the world is twisting and
tearing itself outside. I have heard the pine-trees shriek like dying
women, I have heard them wailing like lost children, I have heard them
sobbing and moaning like human souls writhing in agony--"
Father Charles paused, to peer through the window out into the black
night, where the pine-trees were sobbing and moaning now. When he
turned, Forsythe, the timber agent, whose life was a wilderness life,
nodded understandingly.
"And when they cry like that," went on Father Charles, "a living voice
would be lost among them as the splash of a pebble is lost in the
roaring sea. A hundred times that night I fancied that I heard human
voices; and a dozen times I went to my door, drew back the bolt, and
listened, with the snow and the wind beating about my ears.
"As I sat shuddering before my fire, there came a thought to me of a
story which I had long ago read about the sea--a story of impossible
achievement and of impossible heroism. As vividly as if I had read it
only the day before, I recalled the description of a wild and stormy
night when the heroine placed a lighted lamp in the window of her
sea-bound cottage, to guide her lover home in safety. Gentlemen, the
reading of that book in my boyhood days was but a trivial thing. I had
read a thousand others, and of them all it was possibly the least
significant; but the Supreme Arbiter had not forgotten.
"The memory of that book brought me to my feet, and I placed a lighted
lamp close up against my cabin window. Fifteen minutes later I heard a
strange sound at the door, and when I opened it there fell in upon the
floor at my feet a young and beautiful woman. And after her, dragging
himself over the threshold on his hands and knees, there came a man.
"I closed the door, after the man had crawled in and fallen face
downward upon the floor, and turned my attention first to the woman.
She was covered with snow. Her long, beautiful hair was loose and
disheveled, and had blown about her like a veil. Her big, dark eyes
looked at me pleadingly, and in them there was a terror such as I had
never beheld in human eyes before. I bent over her, intending to carry
her to my cot; but in another moment she had thrown herself upon the
prostrate form of the man, with her arms about his head, and there
burst from her lips the first sounds that she had uttered. They were
not much more intelligible than the wailing grief of the pine-trees out
in the night, but they told me plainly enough that the man on the floor
was dearer to her than life.
"I knelt beside him, and found that he was breathing in a quick,
panting sort of way, and that his wide-open eyes were looking at the
woman. Then I noticed for the first time that his face was cut and
bruised, and his lips were swollen. His coat was loose at the throat,
and I could see livid marks on his neck.
"'I'm all right,' he whispered, struggling for breath, and turning his
eyes to me. 'We should have died--in a few minutes more--if it hadn't
been for the light in your window!'
"The young woman bent down and kissed him, and then she allowed me to
help her to my cot. When I had attended to the young man, and he had
regained strength enough to stand upon his feet, she was asleep. The
man went to her, and dropped upon his knees beside the cot. Tenderly he
drew back the heavy masses of hair from about her face and shoulders.
For several minutes he remained with his face pressed close against
hers; then he rose, and faced me. The woman--his wife--knew nothing of
what passed between us during the next half-hour. During that half-hour
gentlemen, I received my first confession. The young man was of my
faith. He was my first penitent."
It was growing colder in the coach, and Father Charles stopped to draw
his thin black coat closer to him. Forsythe relighted his cigar for the
third time. The transient passenger gave a sudden start as a gust of
wind beat against the window like a threatening hand.
"A rough stool was my confessional, gentlemen," resumed Father Charles.
"He told me the story, kneeling at my feet--a story that will live with
me as long as I live, always reminding me that the little things of
life may be the greatest things, that by sending a storm to hold up a
coach the Supreme Arbiter may change the map of the world. It is not a
long story. It is not even an unusual story.
"He had come into the North about a year before, and had built for
himself and his wife a little home at a pleasant river spot ten miles
distant from my cabin. Their love was of the kind we do not often see,
and they were as happy as the birds that lived about them in the
wilderness. They had taken a timber claim. A few months more, and a new
life was to come into their little home; and the knowledge of this made
the girl an angel of beauty and joy. Their nearest neighbor was another
man, several miles distant. The two men became friends, and the other
came over to see them frequently. It was the old, old story. The
neighbor fell in love with the young settler's wife.
"As you shall see, this other man was a beast. On the day preceding the
night of the terrible storm, the woman's husband set out for the
settlement to bring back supplies. Hardly had he gone, when the beast
came to the cabin. He found himself alone with the woman.
"A mile from his cabin, the husband stopped to light his pipe. See,
gentlemen, how the Supreme Arbiter played His hand. The man attempted
to unscrew the stem, and the stem broke. In the wilderness you must
smoke. Smoke is your company. It is voice and companionship to you.
There were other pipes at the settlement, ten miles away; but there was
also another pipe at the cabin, one mile away. So the husband turned
back. He came up quietly to his door, thinking that he would surprise
his wife. He heard voices--a man's voice, a woman's cries. He opened
the door, and in the excitement of what was happening within neither
the man nor the woman saw nor heard him. They were struggling. The
woman was in the man's arms, her hair torn down, her small hands
beating him in the face, her breath coming in low, terrified cries.
Even as the husband stood there for the fraction of a second, taking in
the terrible scene, the other man caught the woman's face to him, and
kissed her. And then--it happened.
"It was a terrible fight; and when it was over the beast lay on the
floor, bleeding and dead. Gentlemen, the Supreme Arbiter BROKE A
PIPE-STEM, and sent the husband back in time!"
No one spoke as Father Charles drew his coat still closer about him.
Above the tumult of the storm another sound came to them--the distant,
piercing shriek of a whistle.
"The husband dug a grave through the snow and in the frozen earth,"
concluded Father Charles; "and late that afternoon they packed up a
bundle and set out together for the settlement. The storm overtook
them. They had dropped for the last time into the snow, about to die in
each other's arms, when I put my light in the window. That is all;
except that I knew them for several years afterward, and that the old
happiness returned to them--and more, for the child was born, a
miniature of its mother. Then they moved to another part of the
wilderness, and I to still another. So you see, gentlemen, what a
snow-bound train may mean, for if an old sea tale, a broken pipe-stem--"
The door at the end of the smoking-room opened suddenly. Through it
there came a cold blast of the storm, a cloud of snow, and a man. He
was bundled in a great bearskin coat, and as he shook out its folds his
strong, ruddy face smiled cheerfully at those whom he had interrupted.
Then, suddenly, there came a change in his face. The merriment went
from it. He stared at Father Charles. The priest was rising, his face
more tense and whiter still, his hands reaching out to the stranger.
In another moment the stranger had leaped to him--not to shake his
hands, but to clasp the priest in his great arms, shaking him, and
crying out a strange joy, while for the first time that night the pale
face of Father Charles was lighted up with a red and joyous glow.
After several minutes the newcomer released Father Charles, and turned
to the others with a great hearty laugh.
"Gentlemen," he said, "you must pardon me for interrupting you like
this. You will understand when I tell you that Father Charles is an old
friend of mine, the dearest friend I have on earth, and that I haven't
seen him for years. I was his first penitent!"
PETER GOD
Peter God was a trapper. He set his deadfalls and fox-baits along the
edge of that long, slim finger of the Great Barren, which reaches out
of the East well into the country of the Great Bear, far to the West.
The door of his sapling-built cabin opened to the dark and chilling
gray of the Arctic Circle; through its one window he could watch the
sputter and play of the Northern Lights; and the curious hissing purr
of the Aurora had grown to be a monotone in his ears.
Whence Peter God had come, and how it was that he bore the strange name
by which he went, no man had asked, for curiosity belongs to the white
man, and the nearest white men were up at Fort MacPherson, a hundred or
so miles away.
Six or seven years ago Peter God had come to the post for the first
time with his furs. He had given his name as Peter God, and the Company
had not questioned it, or wondered. Stranger names than Peter's were a
part of the Northland; stranger faces than his came in out of the white
wilderness trails; but none was more silent, or came in and went more
quickly. In the gray of the afternoon he drove in with his dogs and his
furs; night would see him on his way back to the Barrens, supplies for
another three months of loneliness on his sledge.
It would have been hard to judge his age--had one taken the trouble to
try. Perhaps he was thirty-eight. He surely was not French. There was
no Indian blood in him. His heavy beard was reddish, his long thick
hair distinctly blond, and his eyes were a bluish-gray.
For seven years, season after season, the Hudson's Bay Company's clerk
had written items something like the following in his record-books:
Feb. 17. Peter God came in to-day with his furs. He leaves this
afternoon or to-night for his trapping grounds with fresh supplies.
The year before, in a momentary fit of curiosity, the clerk had added:
Curious why Peter God never stays in Fort MacPherson overnight.
And more curious than this was the fact that Peter God never asked for
mail, and no letter ever came to Fort MacPherson for him.
The Great Barren enveloped him and his mystery. The yapping foxes knew
more of him than men. They knew him for a hundred miles up and down
that white finger of desolation; they knew the peril of his baits and
his deadfalls; they snarled and barked their hatred and defiance at the
glow of his lights on dark nights; they watched for him, sniffed for
signs of him, and walked into his clever deathpits.
The foxes and Peter God! That was what this white world was made up
of--foxes and Peter God. It was a world of strife between them. Peter
God was killing--but the foxes were winning. Slowly but surely they
were breaking him down--they and the terrible loneliness. Loneliness
Peter God might have stood for many more years. But the foxes were
driving him mad. More and more he had come to dread their yapping at
night. That was the deadly combination--night and the yapping. In the
day-time he laughed at himself for his fears; nights he sweated, and
sometimes wanted to scream. What manner of man Peter God was or might
have been, and of the strangeness of the life that was lived in the
maddening loneliness of that mystery-cabin in the edge of the Barren,
only one other man knew.
That was Philip Curtis.
Two thousand miles south, Philip Curtis sat at a small table in a
brilliantly lighted and fashionable cafe. It was early June, and Philip
had been down from the North scarcely a month, the deep tan was still
in his face, and tiny wind and snow lines crinkled at the corners of
his eyes. He exuded the life of the big outdoors as he sat opposite
pallid-cheeked and weak-chested Barrow, the Mica King, who would have
given his millions to possess the red blood in the other's veins.
Philip had made his "strike," away up on the Mackenzie. That day he had
sold out to Barrow for a hundred thousand. To-night he was filled with
the flush of joy and triumph.