Philip broke the silence.
"Now--you understand."
"It is impossible!" gasped Gregson. "I cannot believe this! It--it
might have happened a thousand--two thousand years ago--but not now. My
God, man!" he cried, more excitedly. "You do not mean to tell me that
you believe this will be done?"
"Yes," replied Philip.
"It is impossible!" exclaimed Gregson again, crushing the letter in his
hand. "A man doesn't live--a combination doesn't exist--that would
start such a hell loose as this--in this way!"
Philip smiled grimly.
"The man does live, and the combination does exist," he said, slowly.
"Greggy, I have known of men, and of combinations who have spent
millions, who have sacrificed everything of honor and truth, who have
driven thousands of men, women, and children to starvation--and
worse--to achieve a victory in high finance. I have known of men and
combinations who have broken almost every law of man and God in the
fight for money and power. And so have you! You have associated with
some of these men. You have laughed and talked with them, smoked with
them, and have dined at their tables. You spent a week at Selden's
summer borne, and it was Selden who cornered wheat three years ago and
raised the price of bread two cents a loaf. It was Selden who brought
about the bread riots in New York, Chicago, and a score of other
cities, who swung wide the prison doors for thousands, whose millions
were gained at a cost of misery, crime, and even death. And Selden is
only one out of thousands who live to-day, watching for their
opportunities, giving no heed to those who may fall under the
juggernaut of their capital. This isn't the age of petty
discrimination, Greggy. It's the age of the almighty dollar, and of the
fight for it. And there's no chivalry, no quarter shown in this fight.
Men of Selden's stamp don't stop at women and children. The
scrubwoman's dollar is just as big as yours or mine, and if a scheme
could be promoted whereby every scrubwoman in America could be safely
robbed of a dollar you'd find thousands of men down there in our cities
ready to go into it to-morrow. And to such men as these what is the
sacrifice of a few women up here?"
Gregson dropped the letter, crumpled and twisted, upon the table.
"I wonder--if I understand," he said, looking into Philip's white face.
"There has undoubtedly been previous correspondence, and this letter
contains the final word. It shows that your enemies have already
succeeded in working up the forest people against you, and have filled
them with suspicion. Their last blow is to be--"
He stopped, and Philip nodded at the horrified question in his eyes.
"Greggy, up here there is one law which reigns above all other law.
When I was in Prince Albert a year ago I was sitting on the veranda of
the little old Windsor Hotel. About me were a dozen wild men of the
north, who had come down for a day or two to the edge of civilization.
Most of those men had not been out of the forests for a year. Two of
them were from the Barrens, and this was their first glimpse of
civilized life in five years. As we sat there a woman came up the
street. She turned in at the hotel. About me there was a sudden
lowering of voices, a shuffling of feet. As she passed, every one of
those twelve rose from their seats and stood with bowed heads and their
caps in their hands until she had gone. I was the only one who remained
sitting! That, Greggy, is the one great law of life up here, the
worship of woman because she is woman. A man may steal, he may kill,
but he must not break this law. If he steals or kills, the mounted
police may bring the offender to justice; but if he breaks this other
law there is but one punishment, and that is the punishment of the
people. That is what this letter purposes to do--to break this law in
order that its penalty may fall upon us. And if they succeed, God help
us!"
It was Gregson who jumped to his feet now. He took half a dozen nervous
steps, paused, lighted a cigarette, and looked down into Philip's
upturned face.
"I understand now where the fight is coming in," he said. "If this
thing goes through, these people will rise and wipe you off the map.
They'll lay it to you and your men, of course. And I fancy it won't be
a job half done if they feel about it as I'd feel. But," he demanded,
sharply, "why don't you put the affair into the hands of the proper
authorities--the police or the government? You've got--By George, you
must have the name of the man to whom that letter was addressed!"
Philip handed him a soiled white envelope, of the kind in which
official documents are usually mailed.
"That's the man."
Gregson gave a low whistle.
"Lord--Fitzhugh--Lee!" he read, slowly, as though scarce believing his
eyes. "Great Scott! A British peer!"
The cynical smile on Philip's lips cut his words short.
"Perhaps," he said. "But if there is a British lord up here he isn't
very well known, Greggy. No one knows of him. No one has heard a rumor
of him. That is why we can't go to the police or the government. They'd
give small credence to what we've got to show. This letter wouldn't
count the weight of a feather without further evidence, and a lot of
it. Besides, we haven't time to go to the government. It is too far
away and too slow. And as for the police--I know of three in this
territory, and there are fifteen thousand square miles of mountains and
plains and forest in their 'beat.' It's up to you and me to find this
Lord Fitzhugh. If we can do that we will be in a position to put a
kibosh on this plot in a hurry. If we fail to run him down--"
"What then?"
"We'll have to watch our chances. I've told you all that I know, and
you're on an even working basis with me. At first I thought that I
understood the object of those who are planning to ruin us in this
cowardly manner. But I don't now. If they ruin us they also destroy the
chances of any other company that may be scheming to usurp our place.
For that reason I--"
"There must still be other factors in the game," said Gregson, as
Philip hesitated.
"There are. I want you to work out your own suspicions, Greggy, and
then we'll compare notes. Lord Fitzhugh is the key to the whole
situation. No matter who is at the bottom of this plot, Lord Fitzhugh
is the man at the working end of it. We don't care so much about the
writer of this letter as the one to whom it was written. It is evident
that he had planned to be at Churchill, for the letter is addressed to
him here. But he hasn't shown up. He has never been here, so far as I
can discover."
"I'd give a year's growth for a copy of the BRITISH PEERAGE or a WHO'S
WHO," mused Gregson, flecking the ashes from his cigarette. "Who the
deuce can this Lord Fitzhugh be? What sort of an Englishman would mix
up in a dirty job of this kind? You might imagine him to be one of the
men behind the guns, like Brokaw. But, by George, he's working the
dirty end of it himself, according to that letter!"
"You're beginning to use your head already, Greggy," said Philip, a
little more cheerfully. "I've asked myself that question a hundred
times during the last three days, and I'm more at sea than ever. If it
had been plain Tom Brown or Bill Jones, the name would not have
suggested anything beyond what you have read in the letter. That's the
question: Why should a Lord Fitzhugh Lee be mixed up in this affair?"
The two men looked at each other keenly for a few moments in silence.
"It suggests--" began Gregson.
"What?"
"That there may be a bigger scheme behind this affair than we imagine.
In fact, it suggests to me that the northerners are being stirred up
against you and your men for some other and more powerful reason than
to make you get out of the country and compel the government to
withdraw your license. So help me God, I believe there's more behind
it!"
"So do I," said Philip, quietly.
"Have you any suspicions of what might be the more powerful motive?"
"None. I know that British capital is heavily interested in mineral
lands east of the surveyed line. But there is none at Churchill. All
operations have been carried on from Montreal and Toronto."
"Have you written to Brokaw about this letter?"
"You are the first to whom I have revealed its contents," said Philip.
"I have neglected to tell you that Brokaw is so worked up over the
affair that he is joining me in the north. The Hudson's Bay Company's
ship, which comes over twice a year, touches at Halifax, and if Brokaw
followed out his intentions he took passage there. The ship should be
in within a week or ten days. And, by the way"--Philip stood up and
thrust his hands deep in his pockets as he spoke, half smiling at
Gregson--"it gives me pleasure to hand you a bit of cheerful
information along with that," he added. "Miss Brokaw is coming with
him. She is very beautiful."
Gregson held a lighted match until it burnt his finger-tips.
"The deuce you say! I've heard--"
"Yes, you have heard of her beauty, no doubt. I am not a special
enthusiast in your line, Greggy, but I will confirm your opinion of
Miss Brokaw. You will say that she is the most beautiful girl you have
ever seen, and you will want to make heads of her for BURKE'S. I
suppose you wonder why she is coming up here? So do I."
There was a look of perplexity in Philip's eyes which Gregson might
have noticed if he had not gone to the door to look out into the night.
"What makes the stars so big and bright up in this country, Phil?" he
asked.
"Because of the clearness of the atmosphere through which you are
looking," replied Philip, wondering what was passing through the
other's mind. "This air--compared with ours--is just like a piece of
glass that has been cleaned of a year's accumulation of dirt."
Gregson whistled softly for a few moments. Then he said, without
turning:
"She's got to go some if she beats the girl I saw this evening, Phil."
He turned at Philip's silence, and laughed. "I beg your pardon, old
man, I didn't mean to speak of her as if she were a horse. I mean Miss
Brokaw."
"And I don't particularly like the idea of betting on the merits of a
pretty girl," replied Philip, "but I'll break the rule for once, and
wager you the best hat in New York that she does beat her."
"Done!" said Gregson. "A little gentle excitement of this sort will
relieve the tension of the other thing, Phil. I've heard enough of
business for to-night. I'm going to finish a sketch that I have begun
of her before I forget the fine points. Any objection?"
"None at all," said Philip. "Meanwhile I'll go out to breathe a spell."
He put on his coat and took down his cap from a peg in the wall.
Gregson had seated himself under the lamp and was sharpening a pencil.
As Philip went to go out Gregson drew an envelope from his pocket and
tossed it on the table.
"If you should happen to see any one that looks like--her," he said,
nodding toward the envelope, "kindly put in a word for me, will you? I
did that in a hurry. It's not half flattering."
Philip laughed as he picked up the envelope.
"The most beau--" he began.
He caught himself with a jerk. Gregson, looking up from his
pencil-sharpening, saw the smile leave his lips and a quick flush leap
into his bronzed cheeks. He stared at the face on the envelope for a
half a minute, then gazed speechlessly at Gregson.
It was Gregson who laughed, softly and without suspicion.
"How does your wager look now?" he taunted.
"She--is--beautiful," murmured Philip, dropping the envelope and
turning to the door, "Don't wait for me, Greggy. Go to bed."
He heard Gregson laugh behind him, and he wondered, as he went out,
what Gregson would say if he told him that he had drawn on the back of
the old envelope the beautiful face of Eileen Brokaw!
V
A dozen steps beyond the door Philip paused in the shadow of a dense
spruce, half persuaded to return. From where he stood he could see
Gregson bending over the table, already at work on the picture. He
confessed that the sketch had startled him. He knew that it had sent
the hot blood rushing to his face, and that only through a fortunate
circumstance had Gregson ascribed its effect upon him to something that
was wide of the truth. Miss Brokaw was a thousand or more miles away.
At this moment she was somewhere in the North Atlantic, if their ship
had left Halifax. She had never been in the north. More than that, he
knew that Gregson had never seen Miss Brokaw, and had heard of her only
through himself and the society columns of the newspapers. How could he
explain his possession of the sketch?
He drew a step or two nearer to the open door, and stopped again. If he
returned to question Gregson it would draw him perilously near to
explanations which he did not care to make, to the one secret which he
wished to guard from his friend's knowledge. After all, the picture was
only a resemblance. It could be nothing but a resemblance, even though
it was so striking and unusual that it had thrown him off his guard at
first. When he returned later and looked at it again he would no doubt
be able to see his error.
He walked on through the spruce shadows and up a narrow trail that led
to the bald knob of the ridge, feeling his way with his right hand
before him when the denseness of the forest shut out the light of the
stars and the moon, until at last he stood out strong and clear under
the glow of the skies, with the world sweeping out in black and gray
mystery around him. To the north was the Bay, reaching away like a vast
black plain. Half a mile distant two or three lights were burning over
Fort Churchill, red eyes peering up out of the deep pool of darkness;
to the south and west there swept the gray, starlit distances which lay
between him and civilization.
He leaned against a great rock, resting his elbows in a carpet of moss,
and his eyes turned into the mystery of those distances. The sea of
spruce-tops that rose out of the ragged valley at his feet whispered
softly in the night wind; from out of their depths trembled the low
hoot of an owl; over the vaster desolation beyond hovered a weird and
unbroken silence. More than once the spirit of this world had come to
him in the night and had roused him from his slumber to sit alone out
under the stars, imagining all that it might tell him if he could read
the voice of it in the whispering of the trees, if he could but
understand it as he longed to understand it, and could find in it the
peace which he knew that it all but held for him. The spirit of it had
never been nearer to him than to-night. He felt it close to him, so
near that it seemed like the warm, vibrant touch of a presence at his
side, something which had come to him in a voiceless loneliness as
great as his own, watching and listening with him beside the rock. It
seemed nearer to him since he had seen and talked with Gregson. It was
much nearer to him since a few minutes ago, when he had looked upon
what he had first thought to be the face of Eileen Brokaw.
And this was the world--the spirit--that had changed him. He wondered
if Gregson had seen the change which he tried so hard to conceal. He
wondered if Miss Brokaw would see it when she came, and if her soft,
gray eyes would read to the bottom of him as they had fathomed him once
before upon a time which seemed years and years ago. Thoughts like
these troubled him. Twice that day he had found stealing over him a
feeling that was almost physical pain, and yet he knew that this pain
was but the gnawing of a great loneliness in his heart. In these
moments he had been sorry that he had brought Gregson back into his
life. And with Gregson he was bringing back Eileen Brokaw. He was more
than sorry for that. The thought of it made him grow warm and
uncomfortable, though the night air from off the Bay was filled with
the chill tang of the northern icebergs. Again his thoughts brought him
face to face with the old pictures, the old life. With them came
haunting memories of a Philip Whittemore who had once lived, and who
had died; and with these ghosts of the past there surged upon him the
loneliness which seemed to crush and stifle him. Like one in a dream he
was swept back. Over the black spruce at his feet, far into the gray,
misty distances beyond, over forests and mountains and the vast, grim
silences his vision reached out until he saw life as it had begun for
him, and as he had lived it for a time. It had opened fair. It had
given promise. It had filled him with hope and ambition. And then it
had changed.
Unconsciously he clenched his hands as he thought of what had followed,
of the black days of ruin, of death, of the dissolution of all that he
had hoped and dreamed for. He had fought, because he was born a
fighter. He had risen again and again, only to find misfortune still at
his face. At first he had laughed, and had called it bad luck. But the
bad luck had followed him, dogging him with a persistence which
developed in him a new perspective of things. He dropped away from his
clubs. He began to measure men and women as he had not measured them
before, and there grew in him slowly a revulsion for what those
measurements revealed. The spirit that was growing in him called out
for bigger things, for the wild freedom which he had tasted for a time
with Gregson--for a life which was not warped by the gilded amenities
of the crowded ballroom to-night, by the frenzied dollar-fight
to-morrow. No one could understand that change in him. He could find no
spirit in sympathy with him, no chord in another breast that he could
reach out and touch and thrill with understanding. Once he had
hoped--and tried--
A deep breath, almost a sigh, fell from his lips as he thought of that
last night, at the Brokaw ball. He heard again the laughter and chatter
of men and women, the soft rustle of skirts--and then the break, the
silence, as the low, sweet music of his favorite waltz began, while he
stood screened behind a bank of palms looking down into the clear gray
eyes of Eileen Brokaw. He saw himself as he had stood then, leaning
over her slim white shoulders, intoxicated by her beauty, his face pale
with the fear of what he was about to say; and he saw the girl, with
her beautiful head thrown a little back, so that her golden hair almost
touched his lips, waiting for him to speak. For months he had fought
against the fascination of her beauty. Again and again he had almost
surrendered to it, only to pull himself back in time. He had seen this
girl, as pure-looking as an angel, strike deeply at the hearts of other
men; he had heard her laugh and talk lightly of the wounds she had
made. Behind the eyes which gazed up at him, dear and sweet as pools of
sunlit water, he knew there lay the consuming passion for power, for
admiration, for the froth-like pleasures of the life that was swirling
about them. Sincerity was but their mask. He knew that the beautiful
gray eyes lied to him when he saw in them all that he held glorious in
womanhood.
He laughed softly to himself as the picture grew in his mind, and he
saw Ransom come blundering in through the palms, mopping his red face
and chattering inane things to little Miss Meesen. Ransom was always
blundering. This time his blunder saved Philip. The passionate words
died on his lips; and when Ransom and Miss Meesen turned about in a
giggling flutter, he spoke no words of love, but opened up his heart to
this girl whom he would have loved if she had been like her eyes. It
was his last hope--that she would understand him, see with him the
emptiness of his life, sympathize with him.
And she had laughed at him!
She had risen to her feet; there had come for an instant a flash like
that of fire in her eyes; her voice trembled a little when she spoke.
There was resentment in the poise of her white shoulders as Ransom's
voice came to them in a loud laugh from behind the palms; her red lips
showed disdain and anger. She hated Ransom for breaking in; she
despised Philip for allowing the interruption to tear away her triumph.
Her own betrayal of herself was like tonic to Philip. He laughed
joyously when he was alone out in the cool night air. Ransom never knew
why Philip hunted him out and shook his fat hand so warmly at parting.
Philip again felt himself in the fever of that night as he turned from
the rock and began picking his way down the side of the ridge toward
the Bay. He found himself wondering what had become of good-natured,
dense-headed Ransom, who had all he could do to spend his father's
allowance. From Ransom his thoughts turned to little Harry Dell,
Roscoe, big Dan Philips, and three or four others who had sacrificed
their hearts at Miss Brokaw's feet. He grimaced as he thought of young
Dell, who had worshiped the ground she walked on, and who had gone
straight to the devil when she threw him over. He wondered, too, where
Roscoe was. He knew that Roscoe would have won out if it had not been
for the financial crash which took his brokerage firm off its feet and
left him a pauper. He had heard that Roscoe had gone up into British
Columbia to recuperate his fortune in Douglas fir. As for big Dan--
Philip stumbled over a rock, and rose with a bruised knee. The shock
brought him back to realities, and a few moments later he stood upon
the narrow boulder-strewn beach, rubbing his knee and calling himself a
fool for allowing the old thoughts to stir him up. Out there,
somewhere, Brokaw and his daughter were coming. That Miss Brokaw was
with her father was a circumstance which was of no importance to him.
At least he told himself so, and set his face toward Churchill.
To-night the stars and the moon seemed to be more than usually
brilliant. About him the great masses of rock, the tumbling surf, the
edge of the forest, and the Bay itself were illumined as if by the
light of a softly radiant day. He looked at his watch and found that it
was past midnight. He had been up since dawn, and yet he felt no touch
of fatigue, no need of sleep. He took off his cap and walked bareheaded
in the mellow light, his moccasined feet falling lightly, his eyes
alert to all that this wonderful night world might hold for him. Ahead
of him rose a giant mass of rock, worn smooth and slippery by the water
dashed against it in the crashing storms of countless centuries, and
this he climbed, panting when he reached the top. His eyes turned to
where he saw Fort Churchill sleeping along the edge of the Bay.
In that same spot, a great pool of night-glow between two
forest-crowned ridges, it had lain for hundreds of years. He passed the
ancient landing-place of rocks, built a hundred and fifty years ago for
the first ships that came over the strange sea; he stood upon the
tumbled foundations of the Fort, that was still older, and saw the
starlight glinting on one of the brass cannon that lay where it had
fallen amid the debris, untouched and unmoved since the days,
ages-gone, when it had last thundered its welcome or its defiance
through the solitudes; he walked slowly along the shore where the sea
had lashed wearily for many a year, to reach the wilderness dead, and
where now, triumphant, the frothing surf bared gun-case coffins and
tumbled the bones of men down into its sullen depths. And such men! Men
who had lived and died when the world was unborn in a half of its
knowledge and science, when red blood was the great capital, strong
hearts the winners of life. And there were women, too, women who had
come with these men, and died with them, in the opening-up of a new
world. It was such men as these, and such women as these, that Philip
loved, and he walked with bared head and swiftly beating heart over the
unmarked jungle of the dead.
And then he came to other things, the first low log buildings of
Churchill, to the silence of sleeping life. New buildings loomed
up--working quarters of men who were grubbing for dollars, the new
wharves, the skeletons of elevators, sullen, windowless warehouses, the
office-buildings of men who were already fighting and quarreling and
gripping at one another's throats in the struggle for supremacy, for
the biggest and ripest plums in this new land of opportunity. The
dollar-fight had begun, and the things that already marked its presence
loomed monstrous and grotesque to Philip, as if jeering at the
forgotten efforts of those whom the sea was washing away. And suddenly
it struck Philip that the sea, working ceaselessly, digging away at its
dead, was not the enemy of the nameless creatures in the gun-case
coffins, but that it was a friend, stanch through centuries, rescuing
them now from the desecration that was to come; and for a moment he was
resistless to the spirit that moved him about and made him face that
sea with something that was almost a prayer in his heart.
As he turned he saw that a light had appeared in one of the low log
buildings which contained the two offices of the Keewatin Mines and
Lands Company. The light, and the bulky shadow of old Pearce, which
appeared for a moment on one of the drawn curtains, aroused Philip to
other thoughts. Since his arrival at Churchill he had made the
acquaintance of Pearce, and it struck him now that just such a man as
this might be Lord Fitzhugh Lee. The Keewatin Mines and Lands Company
had no mines and few lands, and yet Pearce had told him that they were
doing a hustling business down south, selling stock on mineral claims
that couldn't be worked for years. After all, was he any better than
Pearce?
The old bitterness rose in him. He was no better than Pearce, no better
than this Lord Fitzhugh himself, and it was fate--fate and people, that
had made him so. He walked swiftly now, following close along the shore
in the hard stretch kept bare by the tides, until he came to the red
coals of half a dozen Indian fires on the edge of the forest beyond the
company's buildings. A dog scented him and howled. He heard a guttural
voice break in a word of command from one of the tepees, and there was
silence again.
He turned to the right, burying himself deeper and deeper into the
great silence of the north, his quick steps keeping pace with the
thoughts that were passing through his brain. Fate, bad luck,
circumstance--they had been against him. He had told himself this a
hundred times, had laughed at them with the confidence of one who knew
that some day he would rise above these things in triumph. And yet what
were these elements of fortune, as he had called them, but people? A
feeling of personal resentment began to oppress him. People had downed
him, and not circumstance and bad luck. Men and women had made a
failure of him, and not fate. For the first time it occurred to him
that the very men and women whom Brokaw and his associates had duped,
whom Pearce was duping, would play the game in the same way if they had
the opportunity. What if he had played on the winning side, if he had
enlisted his fighting energies with men like Brokaw and Pearce, fought
for money and power in place of this other thing, which seemed to count
so little? Other men would have given much to have been in his favor
with Eileen Brokaw. He might have been in the front of this other
fight, the winning fight, the possessor of fortune, a beautiful woman--
He stopped suddenly. It seemed to him that he had heard a voice. He had
climbed from out of the shadow of the forest until he stood now on a
gray cliff of rock that reached out into the Bay, like the point of a
great knife guarding Churchill. A block of sandstone rose in his path,
and he passed quietly around it. In another instant he had flattened
himself against it.
A dozen feet away, full in the moonlight, three figures sat on the edge
of the cliff, as motionless as though hewn out of rock. Instinctively
Philip's hand slipped to his revolver holster, but he drew it back when
he saw that one of the three figures was that of a woman. Beside her
crouched a huge wolf-dog; on the other side of the dog sat a man. The
man was resting in the attitude of an Indian, with his elbows on his
knees, his chin in the palms of his hands, gazing steadily and silently
out over the Bay toward Churchill.
It was his companion that held Philip motionless against the face of
the rock. She, too, was leaning forward, gazing in that same steady,
silent way toward Churchill. She was bareheaded. Her hair fell loose
over her shoulders and streamed down her back until it piled itself
upon the rock, shining dark and lustrous in the light of the moon.
Philip knew that she was not an Indian.
Suddenly the girl sat erect, and then sprang to her feet, partly facing
him, the breeze rippling her hair about her face and shoulders, her
eyes turned to the vast gray depths of the world beyond the forests.
For an instant she turned so that the light of the moon fell full upon
her, and in that moment Philip thought that her eyes had searched him
out in the shadow of the rock and were looking straight into his own.
Never had he seen such a beautiful face among the forest people. He had
dreamed of such faces beside camp-fires, in the deep loneliness of long
nights in the forests, when he had awakened to bring before him visions
of what Eileen Brokaw might have been to him if he had found her one of
these people. He drew himself closer to the rock. The girl turned again
to the edge of the cliff, her slender form silhouetted against the
starlit sky. She leaned over the dog, and he heard her voice, soft and
caressing, but he could not understand her words. The man lifted his
head, and he recognized the swarthy, clear-cut features of a French
half-breed. He moved away as quietly as he had come.
The girl's voice stopped him.
"And that is Churchill, Pierre--the Churchill you have told me of,
where the ships come in?"
"Yes, that is Churchill, Jeanne."
For a moment there was silence. Then, clear and low, with a wild,
sobbing note in her voice that thrilled Philip, the girl cried:
"And I hate it, Pierre. I hate it--hate it--hate it!"
Philip stepped out boldly from the rock.
"And I hate it, too," he said.