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 _metis_, 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, find the man never ventures again.
"If he is an ordinary _metis_ 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 a 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.