THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH
BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER
Author of "The Heart of a Man," etc.
M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
CHICAGO--NEW YORK
Copyright 1916
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916.
Reprinted March, 1916 June, 1916 October, 1916.
February, 1917.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN 3
II THE CHOIR UNSEEN 35
III GLOW OF DAWN 64
IV THE ANSWER 103
V MON PERE JE ME 'CUSE 137
VI THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD 174
VII THE INNER CITADEL 210
VIII SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I? 243
IX THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD 277
X THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID 311
THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH
THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH
I
THE WHITE HORSE CHAPLAIN
The Bishop of Alden was practising his French upon Arsene LaComb. It
was undoubtedly good French, this of M'sieur the Bishop, Arsene
assured himself. It must be. But it certainly was not any kind of
French that had ever been spoken by the folks back in Three Rivers.
Still, what did it matter? If Arsene could not understand all that the
Bishop said, it was equally certain that the Bishop could not
understand all that Arsene said. And truly the Bishop was a cheery
companion for the long road. He took his upsets into six feet of
Adirondack snow, as man and Bishop must when the drifts are soft and
the road is uncertain.
In the purple dawn they had left Lowville and the railroad behind and
had headed into the hills. For thirty miles, with only one stop for a
bite of lunch and a change of ponies, they had pounded along up the
half-broken, logging roads. Now they were in the high country and
there were no roads.
Arsene had come this way yesterday. But a drifting storm had followed
him down from Little Tupper, covering the road that he had made and
leaving no trace of the way. He had stopped driving and held only a
steady, even rein to keep his ponies from stumbling, while he let the
tough, willing little Canadian blacks pick their own road.
Twice in the last hour the Bishop and Arsene had been tossed off the
single bobsled out into the drifts. It was back-breaking work, sitting
all day long on the swaying bumper, with no back rest, feet braced
stiffly against the draw bar in front to keep the dizzy balance. But
it was the only way that this trip could be made.
The Bishop knew that he should not have let the confirmation in French
Village on Little Tupper go to this late date in the season. He had
arranged to come a month before. But Father Ponfret's illness had put
him back at that time.
Now he was worried. The early December dark was upon them. There was
no road. The ponies were tiring. And there were yet twelve bad miles
to go.
Still, things might be worse. The cold was not bad. He had the bulkier
of his vestments and regalia in his stout leather bag lashed firmly to
the sled. They could take no harm. The holy oils and the other sacred
essentials were slung securely about his body. And a tumble more or
less in the snow was a part of the day's work. They would break their
way through somehow.
So, with the occasional interruptions, he was practising his amazing
French upon Arsene.
Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden was of old Massachusetts stock. He had
learned the French that was taught at Harvard in the fifties.
Afterwards, after his conversion to the Catholic Church, he had gone
to Louvain for his seminary studies. There he had heard French of
another kind. But to the day he died he spoke his French just as it
was written in the book, and with an aggressive New England accent.
He must speak French to the children in French Village to-morrow, not
because the children would understand, but because it would please
Father Ponfret and the parents.
They were struggling around the shoulder of Lansing Mountain and the
Bishop was rounding out an elegant period to the bewildered admiration
of Arsene, when the latter broke in with a sharp:
"Jomp, M'sieur l'Eveque, _jomp_!"
The Bishop jumped--or was thrown--ten feet into a snow-bank.
While he gathered himself out of the snow and felt carefully his
bulging breast pockets to make sure that everything was safe, he saw
what had happened.
The star-faced pony on the near side had slipped off the trail and
rolled down a little bank, dragging the other pony and Arsene and the
sled with him. It looked like a bad jumble of ponies, man and sled at
the bottom of a little gully, and as the Bishop floundered through the
snow to help he feared that it was serious.
Arsene, his body pinned deep in the snow under the sled, his head just
clear of the ponies' heels, was talking wisely and craftily to them in
the _patois_ that they understood. He was within inches of having his
brains beaten out by the quivering hoofs; he could not, literally,
move his head to save his life, and he talked and reasoned with them
as quietly as if he stood at their heads.
They kicked and fought each other and the sled, until the influence of
the calm voice behind them began to work upon them. Then their own
craft came back to them and they remembered the many bitter lessons
they had gotten from kicking and fighting in deep snow. They lay still
and waited for the voice to come and get them out of this.
As the Bishop tugged sturdily at the sled to release Arsene, he
remembered that he had seen men under fire. And he said to himself
that he had never seen a cooler or a braver man than this little
French-Canadian storekeeper.
The little man rolled out unhurt, the snow had been soft under him,
and lunged for the ponies' heads.
"Up, Maje! Easee, Lisette, easee! Now! Ah-a! Bien!"
He had them both by their bridles and dragged them skilfully to their
feet and up the bank. With a lurch or two and a scramble they were all
safe back on the hard under-footing of the trail.
Arsene now looked around for the Bishop.
"Ba Golly! M'sieur l'Eveque, dat's one fine jomp. You got hurt, you?"
The Bishop declared that he was not in any way the worse from the
tumble, and Arsene turned to his team. As the Bishop struggled back up
the bank, the little man looked up from his inspection of his harness
and said ruefully:
"Dat's bad, M'sieur l'Eveque. She's gone bust."
He held the frayed end of a broken trace in his hand. The trouble was
quite evident.
"What can we do?" asked the Bishop. "Have you any rope?"
"No. Dat's how I been one big fool, me. I lef' new rope on de sled
las' night on Lowville. Dis morning she's gone. Some t'ief."
"We must get on somehow," said the Bishop, as he unbuckled part of the
lashing from his bag and handed the strap to Arsene. "That will hold
until we get to the first house where we can get the loan of a trace.
We can walk behind. We're both stiff and cold. It will do us good. Is
it far?"
"Dat's Long Tom Lansing in de hemlocks, 'bout quarter mile, maybe."
The little man looked up from his work long enough to point out a
clump of hemlocks that stood out black and sharp against the white
world around them. As the Bishop looked, a light peeped out from among
the trees, showing where life and a home fought their battle against
the desolation of the hills.
"I donno," said Arsene speculatively, as he and the Bishop took up
their tramp behind the sled; "Dat Long Tom Lansing; he don' like
Canuck. Maybe he don' lend no harness, I donno."
"Oh, yes; he will surely," answered the Bishop easily. "Nobody would
refuse a bit of harness in a case like this."
It was full dark when they came to where Tom Lansing's cabin hid
itself among the hemlocks. Arsene did not dare trust his team off the
road where they had footing, so the Bishop floundered his way through
the heavy snow to find the cabin door.
It was a rude, heavy cabin, roughly hewn out of the hemlocks that had
stood around it and belonged to a generation already past. But it was
still serviceable and tight, and it was a home.
The Bishop halloed and knocked, but there was no response from within.
It was strange. For there was every sign of life about the place.
After knocking a second time without result, he lifted the heavy
wooden latch and pushed quietly into the cabin.
A great fire blazed in the fireplace directly opposite the door. On
the hearth stood a big black and white shepherd dog. The dog gave not
the slightest heed to the intruder. He stood rigid, his four legs
planted squarely under him, his whole body quivering with fear. His
nose was pointed upward as though ready for the howl to which he dared
not give voice. His great brown eyes rolled in an ecstasy of fright
but seemed unable to tear themselves from the side of the room where
he was looking.
Along the side of the room ran a long, low couch covered with soft,
well worn hides. On it lay a very long man, his limbs stretched out
awkwardly and unnaturally, showing that he had been dragged
unconscious to where he was. A candle stood on the low window ledge
and shone down full into the man's face.
At the head of the couch knelt a young girl, her arm supporting the
man's head and shoulder, her wildly tossed hair falling down across
his chest.
She was speaking to the man in a voice low and even, but so tense that
her whole slim body seemed to vibrate with every word. It was as
though her very soul came to the portals of her lips and shouted its
message to the man. The power of her voice, the breathless, compelling
strength of her soul need seemed to hold everything between heaven
and earth, as she pleaded to the man. The Bishop stood spellbound.
"Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back, My Father!" she was saying over and
over. "Come back, come back, Daddy Tom! It's not true! God doesn't
want you! He doesn't want to take you from Ruth! How could He! It's
not never true! A tree couldn't kill my Daddy Tom! Never, never! Why,
he's felled whole slopes of trees! Come back, Daddy Tom! Come back!"
For a time which he could not measure the Bishop stood listening to
the pleading of the girl's voice. But in reality he was not listening
to the sound. The girl was not merely speaking. She was fighting
bitterly with death. She was calling all the forces of love and life
to aid her in her struggle. She was following the soul of her loved
one down to the very door of death. She would pull him back out of the
very clutches of the unknown.
And the Bishop found that he was not merely listening to what the girl
said. He was going down with her into the dark lane. He was echoing
every word of her pleading. The force of her will and her prayer swept
him along so that with all the power of his heart and soul he prayed
for the man to open his eyes.
Suddenly the girl stopped. A great, terrible fear seemed to grip and
crush her, so that she cowered and hid her face against the big,
grizzled white head of the man, and cried out and sobbed in terror.
The Bishop crossed the room softly and touched the girl on the head,
saying:
"Do not give up yet, child. I once had some skill. Let me try."
The girl turned and looked up blankly at him. She did not question who
he was or whence he had come. She turned again and wrapped her arms
jealously about the head and shoulders of her father. Plainly she was
afraid and resentful of any interference. But the Bishop insisted
gently and in the end she gave him place beside her.
He had taken off his cap and overcoat and he knelt quickly to listen
at the man's breast.
Life ran very low in the long, bony frame; but there was life,
certainly. While the Bishop fumbled through the man's pockets for the
knife that he was sure he would find, he questioned the girl quietly.
"It was just a little while ago," she answered, in short, frightened
sentences. "My dog came yelping down from the mountain where Father
had been all day. He was cutting timber. I ran up there. He was pinned
down under a limb. I thought he was dead, but he spoke to me and told
me where to cut the limb. I chopped it away with his axe. But it must
be I hurt him; he fainted. I can't make him speak. I cut boughs and
made a sledge and dragged him down here. But I can't make him speak.
Is he?-- Is he?-- Tell me," she appealed.
The Bishop was cutting skilfully at the arm and shoulder of the man's
jacket and shirt.
"You were all alone, child?" he said. "Where could you get the
strength for all this? My driver is out on the road," he continued, as
he worked on. "Call him and send him for the nearest help."
The girl rose and with a lingering, heart-breaking look back at the
man on the couch, went out into the snow.
The Bishop worked away deftly and steadily.
The man's shoulder was crushed hopelessly, but there was nothing there
to constitute a fatal injury. It was only when he came to the upper
ribs that he saw the real extent of the damage. Several of them were
caved in frightfully, and it seemed certain that one or two of them
must have been shattered and the splinters driven into the lung on
that side.
The cold had driven back the blood, so that the wounds had bled
outwardly very little. The Bishop moved the crushed shoulder a little,
and something black showed out of a torn muscle under the scapula.
He probed tenderly, and the thing came out in his hand. It was a
little black ball of steel.
While the Bishop stood there wondering at the thing in his hand, a
long tremor ran through the body on the couch. The man stirred ever so
slightly. A gasping moan of pain escaped from his lips. His eyes
opened and fixed themselves searchingly upon the Bishop. The Bishop
thought it best not to speak, but to give the man time to come back
naturally to a realisation of things.
While the man stared eagerly, disbelievingly, and the Bishop stood
holding the little black ball between thumb and fore-finger, Ruth
Lansing came back into the room.
Seeing her father's eyes open, the girl rushed across the room and was
about to throw herself down by the side of the couch when her father's
voice, scarcely more than a whisper, but audible and clear, stopped
her.
"The White Horse Chaplain!" he said in a voice of slow wonder. "But I
always knew he'd come for me sometime. And I suppose it's time."
The Bishop started. He had not heard the name for twenty-five years.
The girl stopped by the table, trembling and frightened. She had heard
the tale of the White Horse Chaplain many times. Her sense told her
that her father was delirious and raving. But he spoke so calmly and
so certainly. He seemed so certain that the man he saw was an
apparition that she could not think or reason herself out of her
fright.
The Bishop answered easily and quietly:
"Yes, Lansing, I am the Chaplain. But I did not think anybody
remembered now."
Tom Lansing's eyes leaped wide with doubt and question. They stared
full at the Bishop. Then they turned and saw the table standing in its
right place; saw Ruth Lansing standing by the table; saw the dog at
the fireplace. The man there was real!
Tom Lansing made a little convulsive struggle to rise, then fell back
gasping.
The Bishop put his hand gently under the man's head and eased him to a
better position, saying:
"It was just a chance, Lansing. I was driving past and had broken a
trace, and came in to borrow one from you. You got a bad blow. But
your girl has just sent my driver for help. They will get a doctor
somewhere. We cannot tell anything until he comes. It perhaps is not
so bad as it looks." But, even as he spoke, the Bishop saw a drop of
blood appear at the corner of the man's white mouth; and he knew that
it was as bad as the worst.
The man lay quiet for a moment, while his eyes moved again from the
Bishop to the girl and the everyday things of the room.
It was evident that his mind was clearing sharply. He had rallied
quickly. But the Bishop knew instinctively that it was the last,
flashing rally of the forces of life--in the face of the on-crowding
darkness. The shock and the internal hemorrhage were doing their work
fast. The time was short.
Evidently Tom Lansing realised this, for, with a look, he called the
girl to him.
Through the seventeen years of her life, since the night when her
mother had laid her in her father's arms and died, Ruth Lansing had
hardly ever been beyond the reach of her father's voice. They had
grown very close together, these two. They had little need of clumsy
words between them.
As the girl dropped to her knees, her eyes, wild, eager, rebellious,
seared her father with their terror-stricken, unbelieving question.
But she quickly saw the stab of pain that her wild questioning had
given him. She crushed back a great, choking sob, and fought bravely
with herself until she was able to force into her eyes a look of
understanding and great mothering tenderness.
Her father saw the struggle and the look, and blessed her for it with
his eyes. Then he said:
"You'll never blame me, Ruth, girl, will you? I know I'm desertin'
you, little comrade, right in the mornin' of your battle with life.
But you won't be afraid. I know you won't."
The girl shook her head bravely, but it was clear that she dared not
trust herself to speak.
"I'm goin' to ask this man here to look to you. He came here for a
sign to me. I see it. I see it plain. I will trust him with your life.
And so will you, little comrade. I--I'm droppin' out. He'll take you
on.
"He saved my life once. So he gave you your life. It's a sign, my
Ruth."
The girl slipped her hands gently under his head and looked deep and
long into the glazing eyes.
Her heart quailed, for she knew that she was facing death--and life
alone.
Obedient to her father's look, she rose and walked across the room.
She saw that he had something to say to this strange man and that the
time was short.
In the doorway of the inner room of the cabin she stood, and throwing
one arm up against the frame of the door she buried her face in it.
She did not cry or sob. Later, there would be plenty of time for
that.
The Bishop, reading swiftly, saw that in an instant an irrevocable
change had come over her. She had knelt a frightened, wondering,
protesting child. A woman, grown, with knowledge of death and its
infinite certainty, of life and its infinite chance, had risen from
her knees.
As the Bishop leaned over him, Lansing spoke hurriedly:
"I never knew your name, Chaplain; or if I did I forgot it, and it
don't matter.
"I'm dying. I don't need any doctor to tell me. I'll be gone before he
gets here.
"You remember that day at Fort Fisher, when Curtis' men were cut to
pieces in the second charge on the trenches. They left me there,
because it was every man for himself.
"A ball in my shoulder and another in my leg. And you came drivin' mad
across the field on a big, crazy white horse and slid down beside me
where I lay. You threw me across your saddle and walked that wild
horse back into our lines.
"Do you remember? Dying men got up on their elbows and cheered you. I
lay six weeks in fever, and I never saw you since. Do you remember?"
"I do, now," said the Bishop. "Our troop came back to the Shenandoah,
and I never knew what--"
That terrible, unforgettable day rolled back upon him. He was just a
few months ordained. He had just been appointed chaplain in the Union
army. All unseasoned and unschooled in the ways and business of a
battlefield, he had found himself that day in the sand dunes before
Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes,
lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He
saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the
Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into
the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered
blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to
a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving
water; there hearing the confession of a Catholic.
Now the smoke cleared, and Curtis' troops came yelling across the flat
land. Once, twice they tried the trenches and were driven back into
the marshes. A captain was shot off the back of a big white horse. The
animal, mad with fright and blood scent, charged down upon him as he
bent over a dying man. He grabbed the bridle and fought the horse.
Before he realised what he was doing, he was in the saddle riding back
and forth across the field. Right up to the trenches the horse carried
him.
Within twenty paces of their guns lay a boy, a thin, long-legged boy
with a long beardless face. He lay there marking the high tide of the
last charge--the farthest of the fallen. The chaplain, tumbling down
somehow from his mount, picked up the writhing boy and bundled him
across the saddle. Then he started walking back looking for his own
lines.
Now here was the boy talking to him across the mists of twenty-five
years. And the boy, the man, was dying. He had picked the boy, Tom
Lansing, up out of the sand where he would have died from fever bloat
or been trampled to death in the succeeding charges. He had given him
life. And, as Tom Lansing had said to his daughter, he had given that
daughter life. Now he knew what Lansing was going to say.
"I didn't know you then," said Lansing. "I don't know who you are now,
Chaplain, or what you are.
"But," he went on slowly, "if I'd agiven you a message that day you'd
have taken it on for me, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would."
"Suppose it had been to my mother, say: You'da risked your life to get
it on to her?"
"I hope I would," said the Bishop evenly.
"I believe you would. That's what I think of you," said Tom Lansing.
"I went back South after the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's
mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel
that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up
here into the hills and she died when the baby was just a few weeks
old.
"There ain't a relation in the world that my little girl could go to.
I'm goin' to die in half an hour. But what better would she be if I
lived? What would I do with her? Keep her here and let her marry some
fightin' lumber jack that'd beat her? Or see her break her heart
tryin' to make a livin' on one of these rock hills? She'd fret
herself to death. She knows more now than I do and she'd soon be
wantin' to know more. She's that kind.
"She'd ought to have her chance the way I've seen girls in towns
havin' a chance. A chance to study and learn and grow the way she
wants to. And now I'm desertin'; goin' out like a smoky lamp.
"It was a crime, a crime!" he groaned, "ever to bring her mother up
into this place!"
"You could not think of all that then. No man ever does," said the
Bishop calmly. "And I will do my best to see that she gets her chance.
I think that's what you want to ask me, isn't it, Lansing?"
"Do you swear it?" gasped Lansing, struggling and choking in an effort
to raise his head. "Do you swear to try and see that she gets a
chance?"
"God will help me to do the best for her," said the Bishop quietly. "I
am the Bishop of Alden. I can do something."
With the definiteness of a man who has heard a final word, Tom
Lansing's eyes turned to his daughter.
Obediently she came again and knelt at his side, holding his head.
To the very last, as long as his eyes could see, they saw her smiling
bravely and sweetly down into them; giving her sacrament and holding
her light of cheering love for the soul out-bound.
When the last twinging tremour had run through the racked body, she
leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips.
Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night.
While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man
and two women came into the room.
They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours
whom Arsene had brought.
The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing
more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him.
He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold,
and asked him to find her.
Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing
since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing
Mountain. He knew where he would find her.
Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people
had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once.
"No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to
send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever
heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and
mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried.
"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River.
They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on
Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a
preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here
sings something."
"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly.
"At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"
"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the
first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in
the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black
hair?"
"He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the
description out of the memory of that day.
"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow,"
said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"
"He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the
stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand."
"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do
not say things easily.
"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his
people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read
the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that lean, dark face
which he had once seen, with the purple scar above the eye-brow.
Mrs. Whiting put her arm protectingly about her sister.
"Are you--?" she questioned, hesitating strangely. "Are you the White
Horse Chaplain?"
"The boys called me that," said the Bishop. "Though it was only a name
for a day," he added.
"It was true, then?" she said slowly, as if still unready to believe.
"We never half believed our boys when they came home from the war--the
ones that did come home--and told about the white horse and the priest
riding the field. We thought it was one of the things men see when
they're fighting and dying."
Then Jeffrey Whiting came back into the room leading Ruth Lansing by
the hand.
The girl was shaking with cold and grief. The Bishop drew her over to
the fire.
"I must go now, child," he said. "To-morrow I must be in French
Village. Monday I will be here again.
"Our comrade is gone. Did you hear what he said to me, about you?"
The girl looked up slowly, searchingly into the Bishop's face, then
nodded her head.
"Then, we must think and pray, child, that we may know how to do what
he wanted us to do. God will show us what is the best. That is what he
wanted.
"God keep you brave now. Your friends here will see to everything for
you. I have to go now."
He crossed the room and laid his hand for a moment on the brow of the
dead man, renewing in his heart the promise he had made.
Then, with a hurried word to Mrs. Whiting that he would be back before
noon Monday, he went out to where Arsene and his horses were stamping
in the snow.
The little man had replaced the broken trace, and the ponies, fretting
with the cold and eager to get home, took hungrily to the trail.
But the Bishop forgot to practise his French further upon Arsene. He
told him briefly what had happened, then lapsed into silence.
Now the Bishop remembered what Tom Lansing had said about the girl.
She knew more now than he did. Not more than Tom Lansing knew now. But
more than Tom Lansing had known half an hour ago.
She would want to see the world. She would want to know life and ask
her own questions from life and the world. In the broad open space
between her eye-brows it was written that she would never take
anybody's word for the puzzles of the world. She was marked a seeker;
one of those who look unafraid into the face of life, and demand to
know what it means. They never find out. But, heart break or sparrow
fall, they must go on ever and ever seeking truth in their own way.
The world is infinitely the better through them. But their own way is
hard and lonely.
She must go out. She must have education. She must have a chance to
face life and wrest its lessons from it in her own way. It did not
promise happiness for her. But she could go no other way. For hers was
the high, stony way of those who demand more than jealous life is
ready to give.
The Bishop only knew that he had this night given a promise which had
sent a man contentedly on his way. Somehow, God would show him how
best to keep that promise.
And when they halloed at Father Ponfret's house in French Village he
had gotten no farther than that.
Tom Lansing lay in dignified state upon his couch. Clean white sheets
had been draped over the skins of the couch. The afternoon sun looking
in through the west window picked out every bare thread of his service
coat and glinted on the polished brass buttons. His bayonet was slung
into the belt at his side.
Ruth Lansing sat mute in her grief at the head of the couch, listening
to the comments and stumbling condolences of neighbours from the high
hills and the lower valleys. They were good, kindly people, she knew.
But why, why, must every one of them repeat that clumsy, monotonous
lie-- How natural he looked!
He did not. He did not. He did _not_ look natural. How could her Daddy
Tom look natural, when he lay there all still and cold, and would not
speak to his Ruth!
He was dead. And what was death-- And why? _Why?_
Who had ordered this? And _why?_
And still they came with that set, borrowed phrase--the only thing
they could think to say--upon their lips.
Out in Tom Lansing's workshop on the horse-barn floor, Jacque Lafitte,
the wright, was nailing soft pine boards together.
Ruth could not stand it. Why could they not leave Daddy Tom to her?
She wanted to ask him things. She knew that she could make him
understand and answer.
She slipped away from the couch and out of the house. At the corner of
the house her dog joined her and together they circled away from the
horse-barn and up the slope of the hill to where her father had been
working yesterday.
She found her father's cap where it had been left in her fright of
yesterday, and sat down fondling it in her hands. The dog came and
slid his nose along her dress until he managed to snuggle into the cap
between her hands.
So Jeffrey Whiting found her when he came following her with her coat
and hood.
"You better put these on, Ruth," he said, as he dropped the coat
across her shoulder. "It's too cold here."
The girl drew the coat around her obediently, but did not look up at
him. She was grateful for his thought of her, but she was not ready to
speak to any one.
He sat down quietly beside her on the stump and drew the dog over to
him.
After a little he asked timidly:
"What are you going to do, Ruth? You can't stay here. I'll tend your
stock and look after the place for you. But you just can't stay
here."
"You?" she questioned finally. "You're going to that Albany school
next week. You said you were all ready."
"I was all ready. But I ain't going. I'll stay here and work the two
farms for you."
"For me?" she said. "And not be a lawyer at all?"
"I--I don't care anything about it any more," he lied. "I told mother
this morning that I wasn't going. She said she'd have you come and
stay with her till Spring."
"And then?" the girl faced the matter, looking straight and unafraid
into his eyes. "And then?"
"Well, then," he hesitated. "You see, then I'll be twenty. And you'll
be old enough to marry me," he hurried. "Your father, you know, he
always wanted me to take care of you, didn't he?" he pleaded,
awkwardly but subtly.
"I know you don't want to talk about it now," he went on hastily. "But
you'll come home with mother to-morrow, won't you? You know she wants
you, and I--I never had to tell you that I love you. You knew it when
you wasn't any higher than Prince here."
"Yes. I always knew it, and I'm glad," the girl answered levelly. "I'm
glad now, Jeff. But I can't let you do it. Some day you'd hate me for
it."
"Ruth! You know better than that!"
"Oh, you'd never tell me; I know that. You'd do your best to hide it
from me. But some day when your chance was gone you'd look back and
see what you might have been, 'stead of a humpbacked farmer in the
hills. Oh, I know. You've told me all your dreams and plans, how
you're going down to the law school, and going to be a great lawyer
and go to Albany and maybe to Washington."
"What's it all good for?" said the boy sturdily. "I'd rather stay here
with you."
The girl did not answer. In the strain of the night and the day, she
had almost forgotten the things that she had heard her father say to
the White Horse Chaplain, as she continued to call the Bishop.
Now she remembered those things and tried to tell them.
"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father
that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White
Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to
look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I
thought it was only in books about Europe."
"What did they say?"
"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know
things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was
no place for me in the hills."
"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to
school?" he guessed shrewdly.
"I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly.
"Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had
taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was
full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see
and pick up. And to-day I don't care."
She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and
down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all
she had in the world.
The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.
He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:
"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know."
Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought.
Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it
was just the eternal surrender of woman.
When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears,
the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run
out into the night.
He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white,
desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried
troth.
When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and
the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came
and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him
to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's
clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They
told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was
not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his.
"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he
began. "To a school, I suppose."
"I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try
to see that she got the chance that she will want in the world."
"But I love her. She's going to marry me in the Spring."
The Bishop was surprised. He had not thought matters had gone so far.
"How old are you?" he asked thoughtfully.
"Twenty in April."
"You have some education?" the Bishop suggested. "You have been at
school?"
"Just what Tom Lansing taught me and Ruth. And last Winter at the
Academy in Lowville. I was going to Albany to law school next week."
"And you are giving it all up for Ruth," said the Bishop incisively.
"Does it hurt?"
The boy winced, but caught himself at once.
"It don't make any difference about that. I want Ruth."
"And Ruth? What does she want?" the Bishop asked. "You are offering to
make a sacrifice for her. You are willing to give up your hopes and
work yourself to the bone here on these hills for her. And you would
be man enough never to let her see that you regretted it. I believe
that. But what of her? You find it hard enough to give up your chance,
for her, for love.
"Do you know that you are asking her to give up her chance, for
nothing, for less than nothing; because in giving up her chance she
would know that she had taken away yours, too. She would be a good and
loving companion to you through all of a hard life. But, for both your
sakes, she would never forgive you. Never."
"You're asking me to give her up. If she went out and got a start,
she'd go faster than I could. I know it," said the boy bitterly.
"She'd go away above me. I'd lose her."
"I am not asking you to give her up," the Bishop returned steadily.
"If you are the man I think you are, you will never give her up. But
are you afraid to let her have her chance in the sun? Are you afraid
to let her have what you want for yourself? Are you afraid?"
The boy looked steadily into the Bishop's eyes for a moment. Then he
turned quickly and walked across the room to where Ruth sat.
"I can't give it up, Ruth," he said gruffly. "I'm going to Albany to
school. I can't give it up."
The girl looked up at him, and said quietly:
"You needn't have tried to lie, Jeff; though it's just like you to put
the blame on yourself. I know what he said. I must think."
The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light
up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all
its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now
he knew that he had lost.
The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was
slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be
caught.
"We must not be hurried, my children," he said, standing by the boy
and girl. "The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this
side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days,
telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go
as she directs.
"You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier's daughter could
be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy," he
added.
When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the
shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he
turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.
"To-day," he said to himself, "I have set two ambitious, eager souls
upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left
them where they were?
"I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix
things up so that I'll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will
let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in
Him."
II
THE CHOIR UNSEEN
Ruth Lansing sat in one of the music rooms of the Sacred Heart convent
in Athens thrumming out a finger exercise that a child of six would
have been able to do as well as she.
It was a strange, little, closely-crowded world, this, into which she
had been suddenly transplanted. It was as different from the great
world that she had come out to see as it was from the wild, sweet life
of the hills where she had ruled and managed everything within reach.
Mainly it was full of girls of her own age whose talk and thoughts
were of a range entirely new to her.
She compared herself with them and knew that they were really children
in the comparison. Their talk was of dress and manners and society and
the thousand little and big things that growing girls look forward to.
She knew that in any real test, anything that demanded common sense
and action, she was years older than they. But they had things that
she did not have.
They talked of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk
across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked
on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking
as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never
in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into
hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were
supposed to be new. She knew that these were not things that they had
learned by studying. They just grew up to them, just as she knew how
to throw a fishing line and hold a rifle.
But she wanted all those things that they had; wanted them all
passionately. She had the sense to know that those were not great
things. But they were the things that would make her like these other
girls. And she wanted to be like them.
Because she had not grown up with other girls, because she had never
even had a girl playmate, she wanted not to miss any of the things
that they had and were.
They baffled her, these girls. Her own quick, eager mind sprang at
books and fairly tore the lessons from them. She ran away from the
girls in anything that could be learned in that way. But when she
found herself with two or three of them they talked a language that
she did not know. She could not keep up with them. And she was stupid
and awkward, and felt it. It was not easy to break into their world
and be one of them.
Then there was that other world, touching the world of the girls but
infinitely removed from it--the world of the sisters.
That mysterious cloister from which the sisters came and gave their
hours of teaching or duty and to which they retreated back again was a
world all by itself.
What was there in there behind those doors that never banged? What was
there in there that made the sisters all so very much alike? They must
once have been as different as every girl is different from every
other girl.
How was it that they could carry with them all day long that air of
never being tired or fretted or worried? What wonderful presence was
there behind the doors of that cloistered house that seemed to come
out with them and stay with them all the time? What was the light that
shone in their faces?
Was it just because they were always contented and happy? What did
they have to be happy about?
Ruth had tried to question the other girls about this. They were
Catholics. They ought to know. But Bessie Donnelly had brushed her
question aside with a stare:
"Sisters always look like that."
So Ruth did not ask any more. But her mind kept prying at that world
of the sisters behind those walls. What did they do in there? Did
they laugh and talk and scold each other, like people? Or did they
just pray all the time? Or did they see wonderful, starry visions of
God and Heaven that they were always talking about? They seemed so
familiar with God. They knew just when He was pleased and especially
when He was displeased.
She had come down out of her hills where everything was so open, where
there were no mysteries, where everything from the bark on the trees
to the snow clouds on Marcy, fifty miles away, was as clear as a
printed book. Everything up there told its plain lesson. She could
read the storm signs and the squirrel tracks. Nothing had been hidden.
Nothing in nature or life up there had ever shut itself away from
her.
Here were worlds inside of worlds, every one of them closing its door
in the face of her sharp, hungry mind.
And there was that other world, enveloping all the other lesser worlds
about her--the world of the Catholic Church.
Three weeks ago those two words had meant to her a little green
building in French Village where the "Canucks" went to church.
Now her day began and ended with it. It was on all sides of her. The
pictures and the images on every wall, the signs on every classroom
door. The books she read, the talk she heard was all filled with it.
It came and went through every door of life.
All the inherited prejudices of her line of New England fathers were
alive and stirring in her against this religion that demanded so much.
The untrammelled spirit that the hills had given her fought against
it. It was so absolute. It was so sure of everything. She wanted to
argue with it, to quarrel with it. She was sure that it must be wrong
sometimes.
But just when she was sure that she had found something false,
something that she knew was not right in the things they taught her,
she was always told that she had not understood. Some one was always
ready to tell her, in an easy, patient, amused way, that she had
gotten the thing wrong. How could they always be so sure? And what was
wrong with her that she could not understand? She could learn
everything else faster and more easily than the other girls could.
Suddenly her fingers slipped off the keys and her hands fell
nervelessly to her sides. Her eyes were blinded with great, burning
tears. A wave of intolerable longing and loneliness swept over her.
The wonderful, enchanting world that she had come out of her hills to
conquer was cut down to the four little grey walls that enclosed her.
Everything was shut away from her. She did not understand these
strange women about her. Would never understand them.
Why? Why had she ever left her hills, where Daddy Tom was near her,
where there was love for her, where the people and even the snow and
the wild winds were her friends?
She threw herself forward on her arms and gave way utterly, crying in
great, heart-breaking, breathless sobs for her Daddy Tom, for her
home, for her hills.
At five o'clock Sister Rose, coming to see that the music rooms were
aired for the evening use, found Ruth an inert, shapeless little
bundle of broken nerves lying across the piano.
She took the girl to her room and sent for the sister infirmarian.
But Ruth was not sick. She begged them only to leave her alone.
The sisters, thinking that it was the fit of homesickness that every
new pupil in a boarding school is liable to, sent some of the other
girls in during the evening, to cheer Ruth out of it. But she drove
them away. She was not cross nor pettish. But her soul was sick for
the sweeping freedom of her hills and for people who could understand
her.
She rose and dragged her little couch over to the window, where she
could look out and up to the friendly stars, the same ones that peeped
down upon her in the hills.
She did not know the names that they had in books, but she had framed
little pet names for them all out of her baby fancies and the names
had clung to them all the years.
She recognised them, although they did not stand in the places where
they belonged when she looked at them from the hills.
Out among them somewhere was Heaven. Daddy Tom was there, and her
mother whom she had never seen.
Suddenly, out of the night, from Heaven it seemed, there came stealing
into her sense a sound. Or was it a sound? It was so delicate, so
illusive. It did not stop knocking at the portals of the ear as other
sounds must do. It seemed, rather, to steal past the clumsy senses
directly into the spirit and the heart.
It was music. Yes. But it was as though the Soul of Music had freed
itself of the bondage and the body of sound and notes and came
carrying its unutterable message straight to the soul of the world.
It was only the sisters in their chapel gently hymning the _Salve_ of
the Compline to their Queen in Heaven.
Ruth Lansing might have heard the same subdued, sweetly poignant
evensong on every other night. Other nights, her mind filled with
books and its other business, the music had scarcely reached her.
To-night her soul was alive. Her every sense was like a nerve laid
bare, ready to be thrilled and hurt by the most delicate pressures.
She did not think of the sisters. She saw the deep rose flush of the
windows in the dimly lighted chapel across the court, and knew
vaguely, perhaps, that the music came from there. But it carried her
beyond all thought.
She did not hear the words of the hymn. Would not have understood them
if she had heard. But the lifting of hearts to _Our Life, our
Sweetness and our Hope_ caught her heart up into a world where words
were never needed.
She heard the cry of the _Banished children of Eve_. The _Mourning and
weeping in this vale of tears_ swept into her soul like the flood-tide
of all the sorrow of all the world.
On and upwards the music carried her, until she could hear the
triumph, until her soul rang with the glory and the victory of _The
Promises of Christ_.
The music ceased. She saw the light fade from the chapel windows,
leaving only the one little blood-red spot of light before the altar.
She lay there trembling, not daring to move, while the echo of that
unseen choir caught her heartstrings and set them ringing to the
measure of the heart of the world.
It was not the unembodied cry of the pain and helplessness but the
undying hope of the world that she had heard. It was the cry of the
little blind ones of all the earth. It was the cry of martyrs on their
pyres. It was the cry of strong men and valiant women crushed under
the forces of life. And it was the voice of the Catholic Church, which
knows what the soul of the world is saying. Ruth Lansing knew this.
She realised it as she lay there trembling.
Always, as long as life was in her; always, whether she worked or
laughed, cried or played; always that voice would grip her heart and
play upon it and lead her whether she would or no.
It would lead her. It would carry her. It would send her.