"I am no man's man but my own," he answered, simply.
"Then why do you stay in this dreadful North?" she asked.
"Because I love it. It is my life. I want to go where no man has set
foot before me; I want to stand alone under the sky; I want to show
myself that nothing is too big for me--no difficulty, no
hardship--nothing!"
"Why did you come here, then? Here at least are forests so that you
can keep warm. This is not so dreadful as the Coppermine, and the
country of the Yellow Knives. Did you come here to try _la Longue
Traverse_ of which you spoke to-day?"
He fell suddenly sombre, biting in reflection at his lip.
"No--yes--why not?" he said, at length.
"I know you will come out of it safely," said she; "I feel it. You are
brave and used to travel. Won't you tell me about it?"
He did not reply. After a moment she looked up in surprise. His brows
were knit in reflection. He turned to her again, his eyes glowing into
hers. Once more the fascination of the man grew big, overwhelmed her.
She felt her heart flutter, her consciousness swim, her old terror
returning.
"Listen," said he. "I may come to you to-morrow and ask you to choose
between your divine pity and what you might think to be your duty.
Then I will tell you all there is to know of _la Longue Traverse_.
Now it is a secret of the Company. You are a Factor's daughter; you
know what that means." He dropped his head. "Ah, I am tired--tired
with it all!" he cried, in a voice strangely unhappy. "But yesterday I
played the game with all my old spirit; to-day the zest is gone! I no
longer care." He felt the pressure of her hand. "Are you just a little
sorry for me?" he asked. "Sorry for a weakness you do not understand?
You must think me a fool."
"I know you are unhappy," replied Virginia, gently. "I am truly sorry
for that."
"Are you? Are you, indeed?" he cried. "Unhappiness is worth such pity
as yours." He brooded for a moment, then threw his hands out with what
might have been a gesture of desperate indifference. Suddenly his mood
changed in the whimsical, bewildering fashion of the man. "Ah, a star
shoots!" he exclaimed, gayly. "That means a kiss!"
Still laughing, he attempted to draw her to him. Angry, mortified,
outraged, she fought herself free and leaped to her feet.
"Oh!" she cried, in insulted anger.
"Oh!" she cried, in a red shame.
"_Oh!_" she cried, in sorrow.
Her calm broke. She burst into the violent sobbing of a child, and
turned and ran hurriedly to the factory.
Ned Trent stared after her a minute from beneath scowling brows. He
stamped his moccasined foot impatiently.
"Like a rat in a trap!" he jeered at himself. "Like a rat in a trap,
Ned Trent! The fates are drawing around you close. You need just one
little thing, and you cannot get it. Bribery is useless! Force is
useless! Craft is useless! This afternoon I thought I saw another
way. What I could get no other way I might get from this little girl.
She is only a child. I believe I could touch her pity--ah, Ned Trent,
Ned Trent, can you ever forget her frightened, white face begging you
to be kind?" He paced back and forth between the two bronze guns with
long, straight strides, like a panther in a cage. "Her aid is mine for
the asking--but she makes it impossible to ask! I could not do it.
Better try _la Longue Traverse_ than take advantage of her pity--she'd
surely get into trouble. What wonderful eyes she has. She thinks I am
a brute--how she sobbed, as though her little heart had broken. Well,
it was the only way to destroy her interest in me. I had to do it. Now
she will despise me and forget me. It is better that she should think
me a brute than that I should be always haunted by those pleading
eyes." The door of the distant church house opened and closed. He
smiled bitterly. "To be sure, I haven't tried that," he acknowledged.
"Their teachings are singularly apropos to my case--mercy, justice,
humanity--yes, and love of man. I'll try it. I'll call for help on the
love of man, since I cannot on the love of woman. The love of
woman--ah--yes."
He set his feet reflectively toward the chapel.
_Chapter Nine_
After a moment he pushed open the door without ceremony, and entered.
He bent his brows, studying the Reverend Archibald Crane, while the
latter, looking up startled, turned pink.
He was a pink little man, anyway, the Reverend Archibald Crane, and
why, in the inscrutability of its wisdom, the Church had sent him out
to influence strong, grim men, the Church in its inscrutable wisdom
only knows. He wore at the moment a cambric English boating-hat to
protect his bald head from the draught, a full clerical costume as far
as the trousers, which were of lavender, and a pair of beaded
moccasins faced with red. His weak little face was pink, and two tufts
of side-whiskers were nearly so. A heavy gold-headed cane stood at his
hand. When he heard the door open he exclaimed, before raising his
head, "My, these first flies of the season do bother me so!" and then
looked startled.
"Good-evening," greeted Ned Trent, stopping squarely in the centre of
the room.
The clergyman spread his arms along the desk's edge in embarrassment.
"Good-evening," he returned, reluctantly. "Is there anything I can do
for you?" The visitor puzzled him, but was dressed as a _voyageur_.
The Reverend Archibald immediately resolved to treat him as such.
"I wish to introduce myself as Ned Trent," went on the Free Trader
with composure, "and I have broken in on your privacy this evening
only because I need your ministrations cruelly."
"I am rejoiced that in your difficulties you turn to the consolations
of the Church," replied the other in the cordial tones of the man who
is always ready. "Pray be seated. He whose soul thirsteth need offer
no apology to the keeper of the spiritual fountains."
"Quite so," replied the stranger dryly, seating himself as suggested,
"only in this case my wants are temporal rather than spiritual. They,
however, seem to me fully within the province of the Church."
"The Church attempts within limits to aid those who are materially in
want," assured Crane, with official dignity. "Our resources are small,
but to the truly deserving we are always ready to give in the spirit
of true giving."
"I am rejoiced to hear it," returned the young man, grimly; "you will
then have no difficulty in getting me so small a matter as a rifle and
about forty or fifty rounds of ammunition."
A pause of astonishment ensued.
"Why, really," ejaculated Crane, "I fail to see how that falls within
my jurisdiction in the slightest. You should see our Trader, Mr.
McDonald, in regard to all such things. Your request addressed to me
becomes extraordinary."
"Not so much so when you know who I am. I told you my name is Ned
Trent, but I neglected to inform you further that I am a captured Free
Trader, condemned to _la Longue Traverse_, and that I have in vain
tried to procure elsewhere the means of escape."
Then the clergyman understood. The full significance of the
intruder's presence flashed over his little pink face in a trouble of
uneasiness. The probable consequences of such a bit of charity as his
visitor proposed almost turned him sick with excitement.
"You expect to have them of me!" he cried, getting his voice at last.
"Certainly," assured his interlocutor, crossing his legs comfortably.
"Don't you see the logic of events forces me to think so? What other
course is open to you? I am in this country entirely within my legal
rights as a citizen of the Canadian Commonwealth. Unjustly, I am
seized by a stronger power and condemned unjustly to death. Surely you
admit the injustice?"
"Well, of course you know--the customs of the country--it is hardly an
abstract question--" stammered Crane, still without grasp on the logic
of his argument.
"But as an abstract question the injustice is plain," resumed the Free
Trader, imperturbably. "And against plain injustice it strikes me
there is but one course open to an acknowledged institution of
abstract--and concrete--morality. The Church must set itself against
immorality, and you, as the Church's representative, must get me a
rifle."
"You forget one thing," rejoined Crane.
"What is that?"
"Such an aid would be a direct act of rebellion against authority on
my part, which would be severely punished. Of course," he asserted,
with conscious righteousness, "I should not consider that for a moment
as far as my own personal safety is concerned. But my cause would
suffer. You forget, sir, that we are doing here a great and good work.
We have in our weekly congregational singing over forty regular
attendants from the aborigines; next year I hope to build a church at
Whale River, thus reaching the benighted inhabitants of that distant
region. All of this is a vital matter in the service of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. You suggest that I endanger all this in order to
right a single instance of injustice. Of course we are told to love
one another, but--" he paused.
"You have to compromise," finished the stranger for him.
"Exactly," said the Reverend Crane. "Thank you; it is exactly that. In
order to accomplish what little good the Lord vouchsafes to our poor
efforts, we are obliged to overlook many things. Otherwise we should
not be allowed to stay here at all."
"That is most interesting," agreed Ned Trent, with a rather biting
calm. "But is it not a little calculating? My slight familiarity with
religious history and literature has always led me to believe that you
are taught to embrace the right at any cost whatsoever--that, if you
give yourself unreservedly to justice, the Lord will sustain you
through all trials. I think at a pinch I could even quote a text to
that effect."
"My dear fellow," objected the Reverend Archibald in gentle protest,
"you evidently do not understand the situation at all. I feel I should
be most untrue to my trust if I were to endanger in any way the
life-long labor of my predecessor. You must be able to see that for
yourself. It would destroy utterly my usefulness here. They'd send me
away. I couldn't go on with the work. I have to think what is for the
best."
"There is some justice in what you say," admitted the stranger, "if
you persist in looking on this thing as a business proposition. But
it seems to my confessedly untrained mind that you missed the point.
'Trust in the Lord,' saith the prophet. In fact, certain rivals in
your own field hold the doctrine you expound, and you consider them
wrong. 'To do evil that good may come' I seem to recognize as a tenet
of the Church of the Jesuits."
"I protest. I really do protest," objected the clergyman, scandalized.
"All right," agreed Ned Trent, with good-natured contempt. "That is
not the point. Do you refuse?"
"Can't you see?" begged the other. "I'm sure you are reasonable enough
to take the case on its broader side."
"You refuse?" insisted Ned Trent.
"It is not always easy to walk straightly before the Lord, and my way
is not always clear before me, but--"
"You refuse!" cried Ned Trent, rising impatiently.
The Reverend Archibald Crane looked at his catechiser with a trace of
alarm.
"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I must," he apologized.
The stranger advanced until he touched the desk on the other side of
which the Reverend Archibald was sitting, where he stood for some
moments looking down on his opponent with an almost amused expression
of contempt.
"You are an interesting little beast," he drawled, "and I've seen a
lot of your kind in my time. Here you preach every Sunday, to whomever
will listen to you, certain cut-and-dried doctrines you don't believe
practically in the least. Here for the first time you have had a
chance to apply them literally, and you hide behind a lot of words.
And while you're about it you may as well hear what I have to say
about your kind. I've had a pretty wide experience in the North, and I
know what I'm talking about. Your work here among the Indians is rot,
and every sensible man knows it. You coop them up in your log-built
houses, you force on them clothes to which they are unaccustomed until
they die of consumption. Under your little tin-steepled imitation of
civilization, for which they are not fitted, they learn to beg, to
steal, to lie. I have travelled far, but I have yet to discover what
your kind are allowed on earth for. You are narrow-minded, bigoted,
intolerant, and without a scrap of real humanity to ornament your mock
religion. When you find you can't meddle with other people's affairs
enough at home you get sent where you can get right in the
business--and earn salvation for doing it. I don't know just why I
should say this to you, but it sort of does me good to tell it. Once I
heard one of your kind tell a sorrowing mother that her little child
had gone to hell because it had died before he--the smug
hypocrite--had sprinkled its little body with a handful of water.
There's humanity for you! It may interest you to know that I thrashed
that man then and there. You are all alike; I know the breed. When
there is found a real man among you--and there are such--he is so
different in everything, including his religion, as to be really of
another race. I came here without the slightest expectation of getting
what I asked for. As I said before, I know your breed, and I know just
how well your two-thousand-year-old doctrines apply to practical
cases. There is another way, but I hated to use it. You'd take it
quick enough, I dare say. Here is where I should receive aid. I may
have to get it where I should not. You a man of God! Why, you poor
little insect, I can't even get angry at you!"
He stood for a moment looking at the confused and troubled clergyman.
Then he went out.
_Chapter Ten_
Almost immediately the door opened again.
"You, Miss Albret!" cried Crane.
"What does this mean?" demanded Virginia, imperiously. "Who is that
man? In what danger does he stand? What does he want a rifle for? I
insist on knowing."
She stood straight and tall in the low room, her eyes flashing, her
head thrown back in the assured power of command.
The Reverend Crane tried to temporize, hesitating over his words. She
cut him short.
"That is nonsense. Everybody seems to know but myself. I am no child.
I came to consult you--my spiritual adviser--in regard to this very
case. Accidentally I overheard enough to justify me in knowing more."
The clergyman murmured something about the Company's secrets. Again
she cut him short.
"Company's secrets! Since when has the Company confided in Andrew
Laviolette, in Wishkobun, in _you_!"
"Possibly you would better ask your father," said Crane, with some
return of dignity.
"It does not suit me to do so," replied she. "I insist that you answer
my questions. Who is this man?"
"Ned Trent, he says."
"I will not be put off in this way. _Who_ is he? _What_ is he?"
"He is a Free Trader," replied the Reverend Crane with the air of a
man who throws down a bomb and is afraid of the consequences. To his
astonishment the bomb did not explode.
"What is that?" she asked, simply.
The man's jaw dropped and his eyes opened in astonishment. Here was a
density of ignorance in regard to the ordinary affairs of the Post
which could by no stretch of the imagination be ascribed to chance. If
Virginia Albret did not know the meaning of the term, and all the
tragic consequences it entailed, there could be but one conclusion:
Galen Albret had not intended that she should know. She had purposely
been left in ignorance, and a politic man would hesitate long before
daring to enlighten her. The Reverend Crane, in sheer terror, became
sullen.
"A Free Trader is a man who trades in opposition to the Company," said
he, cautiously.
"What great danger is he in?" the girl persisted with her catechism.
"None that I am aware of," replied Crane, suavely. "He is a very
ill-balanced and excitable young man."
Virginia's quick instincts recognized again the same barrier which,
with the people, with Wishkobun, with her father, had shut her so
effectively from the truth. Her power of femininity and position had
to give way before the man's fear for himself and of Galen Albret's
unexpressed wish. She asked a few more questions, received a few more
evasive replies, and left the little clergyman to recover as best he
might from a very trying evening.
Out in the night the girl hesitated in two minds as to what to do
next. She was excited, and resolved to finish the affair, but she
could not bring her courage to the point of questioning her father.
That the stranger was in antagonism to the Company, that he believed
himself to be in danger on that account, that he wanted succor, she
saw clearly enough. But the whole affair was vague, disquieting. She
wanted to see it plainly, know its reasons. And beneath her excitement
she recognized, with a catch of the breath, that she was afraid for
him. She had not time now to ask herself what it might mean; she only
realized the presence of the fact.
She turned instinctively in the direction of Doctor Cockburn's house.
Mrs. Cockburn was a plain little middle-aged woman with parted gray
hair and sweet, faded eyes. In the life of the place she was a
nonentity, and her tastes were homely and commonplace, but Virginia
liked her.
She proved to be at home, the Doctor still at his dispensary, which
was well. Virginia entered a small log room, passed through it
immediately to a larger papered room, and sat down in a musty red
arm-chair. The building was one of the old régime, which meant that
its floor was of wide and rather uneven painted boards, its ceiling
low, its windows small, and its general lines of an irregular and
sagging rule-of-thumb tendency. The white wall-paper evidently
concealed squared logs. The present inhabitants, being possessed at
once of rather homely tastes and limited facilities, had
over-furnished the place with an infinitude of little things--little
rugs, little tables, little knit doilies, little racks of photographs,
little china ornaments, little spidery what-nots, and shelves for
books.
Virginia seated herself, and went directly to the topic.
"Mrs. Cockburn," she said, "you have always been very good to me,
always, ever since I came here as a little girl. I have not always
appreciated it, I am afraid, but I am in great trouble, and I want
your help."
"What is it, dearie," asked the older woman, softly. "Of course I will
do anything I can."
"I want you to tell me what all this mystery is--about the man who
to-day arrived from Kettle Portage, I mean. I have asked everybody: I
have tried by all means in my power to get somebody somewhere to tell
me. It is maddening--and I have a special reason for wanting to know."
The older woman was already gazing at her through troubled eyes.
"It is a shame and a mistake to keep you so in ignorance!" she broke
out, "and I have said so always. There are many things you have the
right to know, although some of them would make you very unhappy--as
they do all of us poor women who have to live in this land of dread.
But in this I cannot, dearie."
Virginia felt again the impalpable shadow of truth escaping her.
Baffled, confused, she began to lose her self-control. A dozen times
to-day she had reached after this thing, and always her fingers had
closed on empty air. She felt that she could not stand the suspense of
bewilderment a single instant longer. The tears overflowed and rolled
down her cheeks unheeded.
"Oh, Mrs. Cockburn!" she cried. "Please! You do not know how dreadful
this thing has come to be to me just because it is made so
mysterious. Why has it been kept from me alone? It must have something
to do with me, and I can't stand this mystery, this double-dealing,
another minute. If you won't tell me, nobody will, and I shall go on
imagining--Oh, please have pity on me! I feel the shadow of a tragedy.
It comes out in everything, in everybody to whom I turn. I see it in
Wishkobun's avoidance of me, in my father's silence, in Mr. Crane's
confusion, in your reluctance--yes, in the very reckless insolence of
Mr. Trent himself!"--her voice broke slightly. "If you will not tell
me, I shall go direct to my father," she ended, with more firmness.
Mrs. Cockburn examined the girl's flushed face through kindly but
shrewd and experienced eyes. Then, with a caressing little murmur of
pity, she arose and seated herself on the arm of the red chair, taking
the girl's hand in hers.
"I believe you mean it," she said, "and I am going to tell you myself.
There is much sorrow in it for you; but if you go to your father it
will only make it worse. I am doing what I should not. It is shameful
that such things happen in this nineteenth century, but happen they
do. The long and short of it is that the Factors of this Post tolerate
no competition in the country, and when a man enters it for the
purpose of trading with the Indians, he is stopped and sent out."
"There is nothing very bad about that," said Virginia, relieved.
"No, my dear, not in that. But they say his arms and supplies are taken
from him, and he is given a bare handful of provisions. He has to make a
quick journey, and to starve at that. Once when I was visiting out at
the front, not many years ago, I saw one of those men--they called him
Jo Bagneau--and his condition was pitiable--pitiable!"
"But hardships can be endured. A man can escape."
"Yes," almost whispered Mrs. Cockburn, looking about her
apprehensively, "but the story goes that there are some cases--when
the man is an old offender, or especially determined, or so prominent
as to be able to interest the law--no one breathes of these cases
here--but--_he never gets out_!"
"What do you mean?" cried Virginia, harshly.
"One dares not mean such things; but they are so. The hardships of the
wilderness are many, the dangers terrible--what more natural than
that a man should die of them in the forest? It is no one's fault."
"What do you mean?" repeated Virginia; "for God's sake speak plainly!"
"I dare not speak plainer than I know; and no one ever really _knows_
anything about it--excepting the Indian who fires the shot, or who
watches the man until he dies of starvation," whispered Mrs. Cockburn.
"But--but!" cried the girl, grasping her companion's arm. "My father!
Does _he_ give such orders? _He?_"
"No orders are given. The thing is understood. Certain runners, whose
turn it is, shadow the Free Trader. Your father is not responsible; no
one is responsible. It is the policy."
"And this man--"
"It has gone about that he is to take _la Longue Traverse_. He knows
it himself."
"It is barbaric, horrible; it is murder."
"My dear, it is all that; but this is the country of dread. You have
known the soft, bright side always--the picturesque men, the laugh,
the song. If you had seen as much of the harshness of wilderness life
as a doctor's wife must you would know that when the storms of their
great passions rage it is well to sit quiet at your prayers."
The girl's eyes were wide-fixed, staring at this first reality of
life. A thousand new thoughts jostled for recognition. Suddenly her
world had been swept from beneath her. The ancient patriarchal, kindly
rule had passed away, and in its place she was forced to see a grim
iron bond of death laid over her domain. And her father--no longer the
grave, kindly old man--had become the ruthless tyrant. All these
bright, laughing _voyageurs_, playmates of her childhood, were in
reality executioners of a savage blood-law. She could not adjust
herself to it.
She got to her feet with an effort.
"Thank you, Mrs. Cockburn," she said, in a low voice. "I--I do not
quite understand. But I must go now. I must--I must see that my
father's room is ready for him," she finished, with the proud
defensive instinct of the woman who has been deeply touched. "You know
I always do that myself."
"Good-night, dearie," replied the older woman, understanding well the
girl's desire to shelter behind the commonplace. She leaned forward
and kissed her. "God keep and guide you. I hope I have done right."
"Yes," cried Virginia, with unexpected fire. "Yes, you did just right!
I ought to have been told long ago! They've kept me a perfect child to
whom everything has been bright and care-free and simple. I--I feel
that until this moment I have lacked my real womanhood!"
She bowed her head and passed through the log room into the outer air.
Her father, _her_ father, had willed this man's death, and so he was
to die! That explained many things--the young fellow's insolence, his
care-free recklessness, his passionate denunciation of the Reverend
Crane and the Reverend Crane's religion. He wanted one little
thing--the gift of a rifle wherewith to assure his subsistence should
he escape into the forest--and of all those at Conjuror's House to
whom he might turn for help, some were too hard to give it to him, and
some too afraid! He should have it! She, the daughter of her father,
would see to it that in this one instance her father's sin should
fail! Suddenly, in the white heat of her emotion, she realized why
these matters stirred her so profoundly, and she stopped short and
gasped with the shock of it. It did not matter that she thwarted her
father's will; it would not matter if she should be discovered and
punished as only these harsh characters could punish. For the brave
bearing, the brave jest, the jaunty facing of death, the tender, low
voice, the gay song, the aurora-lit moment of his summons--all these
had at last their triumph. She knew that she loved him; and that if he
were to die, she would surely die too.
And, oh, it must be that he loved her! Had she not heard it in the
music of his voice from the first?--the passion of his tones? the
dreamy, lyrical swing of his talk by the old bronze guns?
Then she staggered sharply, and choked back a cry. For out of her
recollections leaped two sentences of his--the first careless,
imprudent, unforgivable; the second pregnant with meaning. "_Ah, a
star shoots!_" he had said. "_That means a kiss!_" and again, to the
clergyman, "_I came here without the slightest expectation of getting
what I asked for. There is another way, but I hate to use it._"
She was the other way! She saw it plainly. He did not love her, but he
saw that he could fascinate her, and he hoped to use her as an aid to
his escape. She threw her head up proudly.
Then a man swung into view across the Northern Lights. Virginia
pressed back against the palings among the bushes until he should
have passed. It was Ned Trent, returning from a walk to the end of the
island. He was alone and unfollowed, and the girl realized with a
sudden grip at the heart that the wilderness itself was sufficient
safe-guard against a man unarmed and unequipped. It was not considered
worth while even to watch him. Should he escape, unarmed as he was,
sure death by starvation awaited him in the land of dread.
As he entered the settlement he struck up an air.
_"Le fils du roi s'en va chassant,
En roulant ma boule,
Avec son grand fusil d'argent,
Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant."_
Almost immediately a window slid back, and an exasperated voice cried
out:
"_Hólà_ dere, w'at one time dam fool you for mak' de sing so late!"
The voice went on imperturbably:
"_Avec son grand fusil d'argent,
En roulant ma boule,
Visa le noir, tua le blanc,
Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant_."
"_Sacrè!_" shrieked the habitant.
"Hello, Johnny Frenchman!" called Ned Trent, in his acid tones. "That
you? Be more polite, or I'll stand here and sing you the whole of it."
The window slammed shut.
Ned Trent took up his walk again toward some designated sleeping-place
of his own, his song dying into the distance.
_"Visa le noir, tua le blanc,
En roulant ma boule,
O fils du roi, tu es mêchant!
Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant."_
"And he can _sing_!" cried the girl bitterly to herself. "At such a
time! Oh, my dear God, help me, help me! I am the unhappiest girl
alive!"
_Chapter Eleven_
Virginia did not sleep at all that night. She was reaching toward her
new self. Heretofore she had ruled those about her proudly, secure in
her power and influence. Now she saw that all along her influence had
in not one jot exceeded that of the winsome girl. She had no real
power at all. They went mercilessly on in the grim way of their
fathers, dealing justice even-handed according to their own crude
conceptions of it, without thought of God or man. She turned hot all
over as she saw herself in this new light--as she saw those about her
indulgently smiling at her airs of the mistress of it. It angered
her--though the smile might be good-humored, even affectionate.
And she shrank into herself with utter loathing when she remembered
Ned Trent. There indeed her woman's pride was hard stricken. She
recalled with burning cheeks how his intense voice had stirred her;
how his wishes had compelled her; she shivered pitifully as she
remembered the warmth of his shoulder touching carelessly her own. If
he had come to her honestly and asked her aid, she would have given
it; but this underhand pretence at love! It was unworthy of him; and
it was certainly most unworthy of her. What must he think of her? How
he must be laughing at her--and hoping that his spell was working, so
that he could get the coveted rifle and the forty cartridges.
"I hate him!" she cried to herself, the backs of her long, slender
hands pressed against her eyes. She meant that she loved him, but for
the purposes in hand one would do as well as the other.
At earliest daylight she was up. Bathing her face and throat in cold
water, and hastily catching her beautiful light hair under a cap, she
slipped down stairs and out past the stockade to the point. There she
seated herself, a heavy shawl about her, and gave herself up to
reflection. She had approached silently, her moccasins giving no
sound. Presently she became aware that someone was there before her.
Looking toward the river she saw on the next level below her a man,
seated on a bowlder, and gazing to the south.
His very soul was in his eyes. Virginia gasped at the change in him
since last she had seen him. The gay, mocking demeanor which had
seemed an essential part of his very flesh and blood had fallen away
from him, leaving a sad and lofty dignity that ennobled his
countenance. The lines of his face were stern, of his mouth pathetic;
his eyes yearned. He stared toward the south with an almost mesmeric
intensity, as though he hoped by sheer longing to materialize a
vision. Tears sprang to the girl's eyes at the subtle pathos of his
attitude.
He stretched his arms wearily over his head, and sighed deeply and
looked up. His eyes rested on the girl without surprise; the
expression of his features did not change.
"Pardon me," he said, simply. "To-day is my last of plenty. I am up
enjoying it."
Virginia had anticipated the usual instantaneous transformation of his
manner when he should catch sight of her. Her resentment was
dispelled. In face of the vaster tragedies little considerations gave
way.
"Do you leave--to-day?" she asked, in a low voice.
"To-morrow morning, early," he corrected. "To-day I found my
provisions packed and laid at my door. It is a hint I know how to
take."
"You have everything you need?" asked the girl, with an assumption of
indifference.
He looked her in the eyes for a moment.
"Everything," he lied, calmly.
Virginia perceived that he lied, and her heart stood still with a
sudden hope that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, he might have
repented of his unworthy intentions toward herself. She leaned to him
over the edge of the little rise.
"Have you a rifle--for _la Longue Traverse_?" she inquired, with
meaning.
He stared at her a little the harder.
"Why--why, surely," he replied, in a tone less confident. "Nobody
travels without a rifle in the North."
She dropped swiftly down the slope and stood face to face with him.
"Listen," she began, in her superb manner. "I know all there is to
know. You are a Free Trader, and you are to be sent to your death. It
is murder, and it is done by my father." She held her head proudly,
but the notes of her voice were straining. "I knew nothing of this
yesterday. I was a foolish girl who thought all men were good and
just, and that all those whom I knew were noble. My eyes are open now.
I see injustice being done by my own household, and"--tears were
trembling near her lashes, but she blinked them back--"and I am no
longer a foolish girl! You need not try to deceive me. You must tell
me what I can do, for I cannot permit so great a wrong to be done by
my father without attempting to set it right." This was not what she
had intended to say, but suddenly the course was clear to her. The
influence of the man had again swept over her, drowning her will,
filling her with the old fear, which was now for the moment turned to
pride by the character of the situation.
But to her surprise the man was thinking of something else.
"Who told you?" he demanded, harshly. Then, without waiting for a
reply, "It was that little preacher; I'll have an interview with him!"
"No, no!" protested the girl. "It was not he. It was a friend. I had
the right to know."
"You had no right!" he cried, vehemently. "You and life should have
nothing to do with each other. There is a look in your eyes that was
not in them yesterday, and the one who put it there is not your
friend." He stood staring at her intently, as one who ponders what is
best to do. Then very quietly he took her hands and drew her to a
place beside him on the bowlder.
"I am going to tell you something, little girl," said he, "and you
must listen quietly to the end. Perhaps at the last you may see more
clearly than you do now.
"This old Company of yours has been established for a great many
years. Back in old days, over two centuries ago, it pushed up into
this wilderness to trade for its furs. That you know. And then it
explored ever farther to the west and the north, until its servants
stood on the shores of the Pacific and the stretches of the Arctic
Ocean. And its servants loved it. Enduring immense hardships, cut off
from their kind, outlining dimly with the eye of faith the structure
of a mighty power, they loved it always. Thousands of men were in its
employ, and so loyal were they that its secrets were safe and its
prestige was defended, often to a lonely death. I have known the
Company and its servants for a long time, and if I had leisure I could
instance a hundred examples of devotion and sacrifice beside which
mere patriotism would seem a little thing. Men who had no country
cleaved to her desolate posts, her lakes and rivers and forests; men
who had no home ties felt the tug of her wild life at their hearts;
men who had no God bowed in awe before her power and grandeur. The
Company was a living thing.
"Rivals attempted her supremacy, and were defeated by the
steadfastness of the men who received her meagre wages and looked to
her as their one ideal. Her explorers were the bravest, her traders
the most enterprising and single-minded, her factors and partners the
most capable and potent in all the world. No country, no leader, no
State ever received half the worship her sons gave her. The fierce
Nor'westers, the traders of Montreal, the Company of the X Y, Astor
himself, had to give way. For, although they were bold or reckless or
crafty or able, they had not the ideal which raises such qualities to
invincibility.
"And, little girl, nothing is wrong to men who have such an ideal
before them. They see but one thing, and all means are good that help
them to assure that one thing. They front the dangers, they overcome
the hardships, they crush the rivals. Bloody wars have taken place in
these forests, ruthless deeds have been done, but the men who
accomplished them held the deeds good. So for two hundred years, aided
by the charter from the king, they have made good their undisputed
right.
"Then the railroad entered the west. The charter of monopoly ran out.
Through the Nipissing, the Athabasca, the Edmonton, came the Free
Traders--men who traded independently. These the Company could not
control, so it competed--and to its credit its competition has held
its own. Even far into the Northwest, where the trails are long, the
Free Traders have established their chains of supplies, entering into
rivalry with the Company for a barter it has always considered its
right. The medicine has been bitter, but the servants of the Company
have adjusted themselves to the new conditions, and are holding their
own.
"But one region still remains cut off from the outside world by a
broad band of unexplored waste. The life here at Hudson's
Bay--although you may not know it--is exactly the same to-day that it
was two hundred years ago. And here the Company makes its stand for a
monopoly.
"At first it worked openly. But in the case of Guillaume Sayer, a
daring and pugnacious _mètis_, it got into trouble with the law. Since
that time it has wrapped itself in secrecy and mystery, carrying on
its affairs behind the screen of five hundred miles of forest. Here it
has still the power; no man can establish himself here, can even
travel here, without its consent, for it controls the food and the
Indians. The Free Trader enters, but he does not stay for long. The
Company's servants are mindful of their old fanatical ideal. Nothing
is ever known, no orders are ever given, but something happens, and
the man never ventures again.
"If he is an ordinary _mètis_ or Canadian, he emerges from the forest
starved, frightened, thankful. If his story is likely to be believed
in high places, he never emerges at all. The dangers of wilderness
travel are many: he succumbs to them. That is the whole story. Nothing
definite is known; no instances can be proved; your father denies the
legend and calls it a myth. The Company claims to be ignorant of it,
perhaps its greater officers really are, but the legend holds so good
that the journey has its name--_la Longue Traverse_.
"But remember this, no man is to blame--unless it is he who of
knowledge takes the chances. It is a policy, a growth of centuries, an
idea unchangeable to which the long services of many fierce and loyal
men have given substance. A Factor cannot change it. If he did, the
thing would be outside of nature, something not to be understood.
"I am here. I am to take _la Longue Traverse_. But no man is to blame.
If the scheme of the thing is wrong, it has been so from the very
beginning, from the time when King Charles set his signature to the
charter of unlimited authority. The history of a thousand men gives
the tradition power, gives it insistence. It is bigger than any one
individual. It is as inevitable as that water should flow down hill."
He had spoken quietly, but very earnestly, still holding her two
hands, and she had sat looking at him unblinking from eyes behind
which passed many thoughts. When he had finished, a short pause
followed, at the end of which she asked unexpectedly,
"Last evening you told me that you might come to me and ask me to
choose between my pity and what I might think to be my duty. What are
you going to ask of me?"
"Nothing. I spoke idle words."
"Last evening I overheard you demand something of Mr. Crane," she
pursued, without commenting on his answer. "When he refused you I
heard you say these words, 'Here is where I should have received aid;
I may have to get it where I should not.' What was the aid you asked
of him? and where else did you expect to get it?"
"The aid was something impossible to accord, and I did not expect to
get it elsewhere. I said that in order to induce him to help me."
A wonderful light sprang to the girl's eyes, but still she maintained
her level voice.
"You asked him for a rifle with which to escape. You expected to get
it of me. Deny it if you can."
Ned Trent looked at her keenly a moment, then dropped his eyes.
"It is true," said he.
"And the pity was to give you this weapon; and the duty was my duty to
my father's house."
"It is true," he repeated, dejectedly.
"And you lied to me when you said you had a rifle with which to
journey _la Longue Traverse_."
"That too is true," he acknowledged.
When next she spoke her voice was not quite so well controlled.
"Why did you not ask me, as you intended? Why did you tell me these
lies?"
The young man hesitated, looked her in the face, turned away, and
murmured,
"I could not."
"Why?" persisted the girl. "Why? You must tell me."
"Because," said Ned Trent--"because it could not be done. Every rifle
in the place is known. Because you would be found out in this, and I
do not know what your punishment might not be."
"You knew this before?" insisted Virginia, stonily.
"Yes."
"Then why did you change your mind?"
"When first I saw you by the gun," began Ned Trent, in a low voice, "I
was a desperate man, clutching at the slightest chance. The thought
crossed my mind then that I might use you. Then later I saw that I had
some influence over you, and I made my plan. But last night--"
"Yes, last night?" urged Virginia, softly.
"Last night I paced the island, and I found out many things. One of
them was that I could not."
"Even though this dreadful journey--"
"I would rather take my chances."
Again there was silence between them.
"It was a good lie," then said Virginia, gently--"a noble lie. And
what you have told me to comfort me about my father has been nobly
said. And I believe you, for I have known the truth about your fate."
He shut his lips grimly. "Why--why did you come?" she cried,
passionately. "Is the trade so good, are your needs then so great,
that you must run these perils?"
"My needs," he replied. "No; I have enough."
"Then why?" she insisted.
"Because that old charter has long since expired, and now this country
is as free for me as for the Company," he explained. "We are in a
civilized century, and no man has a right to tell me where I shall or
shall not go. Does the Company own the Indians and the creatures of
the woods?" Something in the tone of his voice brought her eyes
steadily to his for a moment.
"Is that all?" she asked at length.
He hesitated, looked away, looked back again.
"No, it is not," he confessed, in a low voice. "It is a thing I do not
speak of. My father was a servant of this Company, a good, true
servant. No man was more honest, more zealous, more loyal."
"I am sure of it," said Virginia, softly.
"But in some way that he never knew himself he made enemies in high
places. The cowards did not meet him man to man, and so he never knew
who they were. If he had, he would have killed them. But they worked
against him always. He was given hard posts, inadequate supplies, scant
help, and then he was held to account for what he could not do. Finally
he left the company in disgrace--undeserved disgrace. He became a Free
Trader in the days when to become a Free Trader was worse than attacking
a grizzly with cubs. In three years he was killed. But when I grew to be
a man"--he clenched his teeth--"by God! how I have _prayed_ to know who
did it." He brooded for a moment, then went on. "Still, I have
accomplished something. I have traded in spite of your factors in many
districts. One summer I pushed to the Coppermine in the teeth of them,
and traded with the Yellow Knives for the robes of the musk-ox. And they
knew me and feared my rivalry, these traders of the Company. No district
of the far North but has felt the influence of my bartering. The traders
of all districts--Fort au Liard, Lapierre's House, Fort Rae, Ile à la
Crosse, Portage la Loche, Lac la Biche, Jasper's House, the House of the
Touchwood Hills--all these, and many more, have heard of Ned Trent."
"Your father--you knew him well?"
"No, but I remember him--a tall, dark man, with a smile always in his
eyes and a laugh on his lips. I was brought up at a school in Winnipeg
under a priest. Two or three times in the year my father used to
appear for a few days. I remember well the last time I saw him. I was
about thirteen years old. 'You are growing to be a man,' said he;
'next year we will go out on the trail.' I never saw him again."
"What happened?"
"Oh, he was just killed," replied Ned Trent, bitterly.
The girl laid her hand on his arm with an appealing little gesture.
"I am so sorry," said she.
"I have no portrait of him," continued the Free Trader, after an
instant. "No gift from his hands; nothing at all of his but this."
He showed her an ordinary little silver match-safe such as men use in
the North country.
"They brought that to me at the last--the Indians who came to tell my
priest the news; and the priest, who was a good man, gave it to me. I
have carried it ever since."
Virginia took it reverently. To her it had all the largeness that
envelops the symbol of a great passion. After a moment she looked up
in surprise.
"Why!" she exclaimed, "this has a name carved on it!"
"Yes," he replied.
"But the name is Graehme Stewart."
"Of course I could not bear my father's name in a country where it was
well known," he explained.
"Of course," she agreed. Impulsively she raised her face to his, her
eyes shining. "To me all this is very fine," said she.