"Mother and daughter, father and son,
Come to my solitude one by one;
But come they stranger, or come they kin,
I gather--gather--I gather them in."
--_The Old Sexton_
Two days later the little funeral cortege slowly wound its way up to the
diminutive cemetery, situated on a rising plateau at the back of the
little town.
It was a still, fine afternoon, and the bright sunshine flooded
everything around that peaceful spot with its sleepy, golden haze. Far
away in the distance arose the purple peaks of the Rockies, white-capped
with their eternal snows against the pure, turquoise-blue sky. It was a
day to gladden the hearts of all living creatures, but somehow its
tranquillity awoke no response in the breasts of the two men who
followed the dead to their last resting place.
Arriving at the grave-side they reverently bared their heads, and the
clergyman, a kindly, earnest-faced young man with a deep, resonant
voice, began the service.
Ellis felt unaccountably oppressed with many conflicting emotions.
Though never a downright unbeliever, religion was to him more or less of
a sealed book, and the reckless, irresponsible wandering life that had
been his since boyhood had not been conducive to much serious thought on
that sacred subject. The solemn, beautiful, tremendous words that stand
at the head of the burial service, with their glorious, all-powerful
promise of Eternal Life affected him strangely now, with their
awe-inspiring significance.
_"I am the Resurrection and the Life," saith the Lord: "He that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die."_
Often--ah, how often--with the callous indifference bred of active
service and its cruel, sordid realities, had he listened to them before,
out there on the far-away South African veldt, blaspheming, as like as
not, under his breath at the heat, and the dust, and the maddening flies
as, "Resting upon Arms Reversed," he stood beside the freshly dug grave
of some dead comrade.
"_The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away._"
And the vision of his dream rose up in his brooding mind once more; and
again he seemed to behold that poor girl before him, arisen from the
dead, and the glory in her eyes as, with bowed head and outstretched
arms like the Angel of Pity, she gazed sweetly, but sadly, down upon him
from amidst that great, shining, billowy cloud of light.
And then--his brain sank into a deep oblivion of dreamy, chaotic
thought, through which the curate's sonorous intonation, sounding far
off and indistinct, penetrated at intervals.
"_We therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust._"
At the well-remembered words mechanically, from long practise, he
stooped and cast a handful of earth into the grave. And, the dull thud
of its fall upon her coffin, was on his very heart.
The service ended, but still the scarlet-coated figure remained there
motionless, with bowed head, as of one in a dream. He was aroused from
his reverie by Musgrave touching him on the arm.
"Come, old man!" said the doctor gently, "it's all over now; let's go.
Are you going to wait for the--other?..."
"Yes," responded Ellis in a strained, unnatural voice, without raising
his eyes.
Drearily, without another word being uttered on either side the whole
way back, they returned to the detachment and, sitting down in the
little office, filled their pipes and smoked moodily awhile, amidst an
embarrassing silence, which was finally broken by Musgrave.
"Well, Ellis, old man," he said quietly, "seems we've come through
rather a sad passage."
Benton raised his troubled eyes and, for the first time that day, looked
the other squarely in the face, with a certain sense of relief as he did
so.
"Yes," he answered listlessly. "I know I have. Charley," he continued,
"I don't know exactly why it is, but that girl's death's shaken me up
rather bad ... kid was an utter stranger to me, but somehow--somehow--it
seems as if I'd known her always. Must have been her eyes." His voice
shook a little, and trailed off into a murmur. "Yes ... they were very
like poor Eileen Regan's--way back there in Jo'burg--very like hers,
weren't they?"
He paused, and the doctor nodded sympathetically. Before the war he had
known the Sergeant's dead love well--had attended her in her last
illness. There was a long silence.
"Don't worry, Ellis," said Musgrave softly. "She's in a better place
now, I think, for she was more sinned against than sinning, poor girl."
Benton got up and, leaning out of the open window, looked dreamily away
over the sun-scorched prairie.
"Aye," he muttered slowly, half to himself; "I don't think--I know. I
saw the look on her face the night she died ... an' I saw her
again--afterwards. That should stop me from worrying. See here; look,
Charley," he went on, in a steadier voice, turning to his companion:
"You must have seen many deaths in your time--lots more than I have, I
guess ... an' God knows I've seen enough, one way an' another. I tell
you--people in their last stages see something that _we_ can't. It's
beyond _our_ ken--but it's there. Probably you as a doctor, with all
your scientific medical theories, analyze it differently, but you know
what I mean, for all that."
Musgrave did not answer at once, but smoked thoughtfully on for a space.
"Yes," he agreed, with a curious, dry intonation in his voice, "I know
what you mean, all right. No doubt they _do_ possess some strange
prescience ... but I don't think we'll start a discussion on that, old
man. Circumstances have reduced both of us to a certain frame of mind
just now, wherein we might be persuaded into believing anything."
Ellis cogitated awhile over this last utterance.
"M'm--yes," he admitted reluctantly. "Only temporarily at that, too.
Begad!... I'm the one that knows it.... Guess I'm the most impulsive,
changeable beggar that ever was.... Always have been more or less of an
impressionable fool--where women are concerned, anyway. S'pose it's my
nature. Here are we two--we've both had our troubles at various periods
of our sinful lives. Some were of our own making--some were not. Mind!
I'm not meanin' this lightly, remember ... far from it at such a time as
this ... but just the plain, absolute facts--coming from a man who knows
himself too well to trust his passing emotions." He struck a match and
lit his pipe again, continuing with some irritation in his voice. "All
that bunkum that religious extremists and temperance cranks would have
you believe ... about sudden conversions an' all that.... Fellows _can_
alter their ways a bit--chuck a brace, an' climb out of the pit they've
dug for themselves, no doubt. But it's a _gradual_ process, an' doesn't
come quick by any means, like these fanatics try to make out. There's
one of 'em, in particular, who makes a specialty of writing--what he, in
his limited knowledge of actual facts--conceives to be true Western
yarns. Most of 'em, I guess, pass as such with the general public who
read 'em. Oh, he's great on this conversion business. One was a fool
book about _our_ Force, I remember, where he makes the bucks go pallin'
around arm in arm with their superior officers--doin' the 'Percy, old
chap,' stunt, 'When we were at college together, you know!' Sounds all
hunkadory--like a happy family, an' all that but, unfortunately, it
ain't true. Can't imagine it happening with any of the powers that be in
_our_ Division, anyway. Take 'Father,' for instance--what? Then,
again--all that stuff--what 'Tork abaht Tompkins' our regimental
teamster calls ''Igh falutin' Bull-Durham,' and 'Father'--'Poppycock'
that's written about the Force. An' oh--_always_ in a bloomin' red
serge, of course, no matter what dirty job they're on ... never a
stable-jacket--they don't wear such things. All the pictures you see of
Mounted Policemen, too, chasin' cattle rustlers, arresting bootleggers,
an' nitchies, in which we're depicted as such 'eroes'--red serge,
again--so's the noble Mounted cop can be seen comin' a long ways off.
That reminds me, though--I'll have to ride back to the Creek in one
myself," he added ruefully. "My stable-jacket's ruined with all that
blood on it."
He paused, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
"No, _sir_," he continued emphatically. "_I_ know what becomes of the
large percentage of your sudden converts. Most of 'em land up as
hopeless booze artists in the last stages of D.T.--or else go
_completely_ bug-house. Lord knows, we get all kinds of 'em in that
guardroom at the Post. Many's the screechin', prayin' strait-jacketed
nuisance I've had to escort up to Ponoka. After all's said an' done, the
only philosophy a man can practise to make life worth living at all, is
just to peg along quietly, doing the best he can under the circumstances
in which he finds himself placed day by day. I know it is for a Mounted
man, anyway for, begad! he get's everybody else's bloomin' troubles
dinned into his ears in addition to his own.
"As you said just now, we've both come through a sad passage. We have.
But this feeling won't stay with us. We'll be genuinely an' sincerely
sorry an' repentant for the time being, but by degrees we'll fall back
into our old ways again. It may be smug, complacent reasoning, but it's
a fact. Now, isn't that right, Charley?"
The elder man smiled wearily. "Guess you're pretty near it," he
admitted. "Don't know whether you're able to put all _your_ troubles
behind you as effectively as you intimate. I know I can't lots of mine.
There's some I can't forget--even after all these years. They're with me
night and day. Remember me telling you ... that day when we were up at
Cecil Rhodes' tomb, 'way back there up in the Matoppos?"
He gazed at Benton anxiously, almost timidly. Ellis bowed his head in
assent, but he could not find words to answer just then. For there was
something in the haggard, deeply lined face of his old friend that
forbade conventional condolence.
A long silence ensued, and presently Musgrave rose to go.
"The Devil was sick--
The Devil a monk would be;"
he quoted, with a wry, whimsical smile. "I guess I'll go on over to the
hotel and see 'Wilks,' as you call him. He was much better this morning.
Believe he'll pull through without an operation now. Churchill should be
able to take him down in three or four days' time if he keeps improving
like this. By the way! Churchill's making a pretty long stay at the
Post, isn't he?"
"Oh, I don't know," yawned the Sergeant. "P'r'aps he's not through with
that case of his yet. It was right at the end of the docket. Maybe he's
got mighty good reason for not hurrying back, too," he added ominously.
"I never noticed till the other day he'd got the South African ribbon
up--whatever outfit was _he_ in?" inquired the doctor.
"Search me," said Ellis contemptuously. "The 'Can I Venture,' 'Jam
Wallahs,'--'Sacca Bona's Horse,' or some irresponsible bunch o'
Bashi-Bazouks, I guess. I've never asked him. I think I told you before,
Charley, there's five hundred dollars' reward for Wilks. If it comes
through, so much the better for both of us. I'll see you sure get your
fee an' expenses in full. In all fairness you're entitled to half of it,
anyway, in consideration of the whisper you gave me in the beginning."
"Didn't think you fellows were allowed to accept rewards," said the
doctor.
"Well, we're not, as a rule," Ellis admitted. "But now an' again they
make exceptions when the crime has been committed outside our usual
jurisdiction. Take that hold-up of the C.P.R. passenger train near Ducks
in B.C. that time, by those three chaps--Bill Miner, Shorty Dunn, an'
Lewis Colquhoun. Five of our men got rewarded for nailing _them_. Let's
see! there was Wilson, Shoebotham, Peters, Stewart, an' Browning. They
got thirteen hundred an' fifty apiece for that job. But we never receive
it direct. It has to come through the Commissioner. Generally it's
turned into the Fine Fund at Headquarters, an' the grant is made from
there."
"All right," said Musgrave indifferently, as he opened the door. "If it
does come through--why, all well and good, though I'm sorry, in a way,
for the poor devil."
With his hand on the knob, he turned, the ghost of a smile flitting
across his strong intellectual face.
"Guess you weren't far out in your remarks just now," he said. "Seems
the transformation's begun already. Afraid we've come down to Mother
Earth again with a vengeance. Remember Sir Noel Paton's great
picture--'The Man with the Muckrake,' Ellis? So long!"
"So long," the other answered mechanically, without turning his head.
And the door closed softly.