"He stands in the porch of the world--
(Why should the door be shut?)
The grey wolf waits at his heel,
(Why is the window barred?)
Wild is the trail from the Kimash Hills,
The blight has fallen on bush and tree,
The choking earth has swallowed the streams,
Hungry and cold is the Red Patrol:
(Why should the door be shut?)
The Scarlet Hunter has come to bide--
(Why is the window barred?)"
Pierre stopped to listen. The voice singing was clear and soft, yet
strong--a mezzo-soprano without any culture save that of practice and
native taste. It had a singular charm--a sweet, fantastic sincerity.
He stood still and fastened his eyes on the house, a few rods away. It
stood on a knoll perching above Fort Ste. Anne. Years had passed since
Pierre had visited the Fort, and he was now on his way to it again, after
many wanderings. The house had stood here in the old days, and he
remembered it very well, for against it John Marcey, the Company's man,
was shot by Stroke Laforce, of the Riders of the Plains. Looking now,
he saw that the shutter, which had been pulled off to bear the body away,
was hanging there just as he had placed it, with seven of its slats
broken and a dark stain in one corner. Something more of John Marcey
than memory attached to that shutter. His eyes dwelt on it long he
recalled the scene: a night with stars and no moon, a huge bonfire to
light the Indians, at their dance, and Marcey, Laforce, and many others
there, among whom was Lucille, the little daughter of Gyng the Factor.
Marcey and Laforce were only boys then, neither yet twenty-three, and
they were friendly rivals with the sweet little coquette, who gave her
favors with a singular impartiality and justice. Once Marcey had given
her a gold spoon. Laforce responded with a tiny, fretted silver basket.
Laforce was delighted to see her carrying her basket, till she opened it
and showed the spoon inside. There were many mock quarrels, in one of
which Marcey sent her a letter by the Company's courier, covered with
great seals, saying, "I return you the hairpin, the egg-shell, and the
white wolf's tooth. Go to your Laforce, or whatever his ridiculous name
may be."
In this way the pretty game ran on, the little goldenhaired, golden-
faced, golden-voiced child dancing so gayly in their hearts, but nestling
in them too, after her wilful fashion, until the serious thing came--the
tragedy.
On the mad night when all ended, she was in the gayest, the most elf-like
spirits. All went well until Marcey dug a hole in the ground, put a
stone in it, and, burying it, said it was Laforce's heart. Then Laforce
pretended to ventriloquise, and mocked Marcey's slight stutter. That was
the beginning of the trouble, and Lucille, like any lady of the world,
troubled at Laforce's unkindness, tried to smooth things over--tried very
gravely. But the playful rivalry of many months changed its composition
suddenly as through some delicate yet powerful chemical action, and the
savage in both men broke out suddenly. Where motives and emotions are
few they are the more vital, their action is the more violent. No one
knew quite what the two young men said to each other, but presently,
while the Indian dance was on, they drew to the side of the house, and
had their duel out in the half-shadows, no one knowing, till the shots
rang on the night, and John Marcey, without a cry, sprang into the air
and fell face upwards, shot through the heart.
They tried to take the child away, but she would not go; and when they
carried Marcey on the shutter she followed close by, resisting her
father's wishes and commands. And just before they made a prisoner of
Laforce, she said to him very quietly--so like a woman she was--"I will
give you back the basket, and the riding-whip, and the other things, and
I will never forgive you--never--no, never!"
Stroke Laforce had given himself up, had himself ridden to Winnipeg,
a thousand miles, and told his story. Then the sergeant's stripes had
been stripped from his arm, he had been tried, and on his own statement
had got twelve years' imprisonment. Ten years had passed since then--
since Marcey was put away in his grave, since Pierre left Fort Ste.
Anne, and he had not seen it or Lucille in all that time. But he knew
that Gyng was dead, and that his widow and her child had gone south or
east somewhere; of Laforce after his sentence he had never heard.
He stood looking at the house from the shade of the solitary pine-tree
near it, recalling every incident of that fatal night. He had the gift
of looking at a thing in its true proportions, perhaps because he had
little emotion and a strong brain, or perhaps because early in life his
emotions were rationalised. Presently he heard the voice again:
"He waits at the threshold stone--
(Why should the key-hole rust?)
The eagle broods at his side,
(Why should the blind be drawn?)
Long has he watched, and far has he called
The lonely sentinel of the North:
"Who goes there?" to the wandering soul:
Heavy of heart is the Red Patrol
(Why should the key-hole rust?)
The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home,
(Why should the blind be drawn?)"
Now he recognised the voice. Its golden timbre brought back a young
girl's golden face and golden hair. It was summer, and the window with
the broken shutter was open. He was about to go to it, when a door of
the house opened, and a girl appeared. She was tall, with rich, yellow
hair falling loosely about her head; she had a strong, finely cut chin
and a broad brow, under which a pair of deep blue eyes shone-violet blue,
rare and fine. She stood looking down at the Fort for a few moments,
unaware of Pierre's presence. But presently she saw him leaning against
the tree, and she started as from a spirit.
"Monsieur!" she said--"Pierre!" and stepped forward again from the
doorway.
He came to her, and "Ah, p'tite Lucille," he said, "you remember me, eh?
--and yet so many years ago!"
"But you remember me," she answered, "and I have changed so much!"
"It is the man who should remember, the woman may forget if she will."
Pierre did not mean to pay a compliment; he was merely thinking.
She made a little gesture of deprecation. "I was a child," she said.
Pierre lifted a shoulder slightly. "What matter? It is sex that I mean.
What difference to me--five, or forty, or ninety? It is all sex. It is
only lovers, the hunters of fire-flies, that think of age--mais oui!"
She had a way of looking at you before she spoke, as though she were
trying to find what she actually thought. She was one after Pierre's own
heart, and he knew it; but just here he wondered where all that ancient
coquetry was gone, for there were no traces of it left; she was steady of
eye, reposeful, rich in form and face, and yet not occupied with herself.
He had only seen her for a minute or so, yet he was sure that what she
was just now she was always, or nearly so, for the habits of a life leave
their mark, and show through every phase of emotion and incident whether
it be light or grave.
"I think I understand you," she said. "I think I always did a little,
from the time you stayed with Grah the idiot at Fort o' God, and fought
the Indians when the others left. Only--men said bad things of you, and
my father did not like you, and you spoke so little to me ever. Yet I
mind how you used to sit and watch me, and I also mind when you rode the
man down who stole my pony, and brought them both back."
Pierre smiled--he was pleased at this. "Ah, my young friend," he said,
"I do not forget that either, for though he had shaved my ear with a
bullet, you would not have him handed over to the Riders of the Plains
--such a tender heart!"
Her eyes suddenly grew wide. She was childlike in her amazement, indeed,
childlike in all ways, for she was very sincere. It was her great
advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth, she had
not suffered that sickness, social artifice.
"I never knew," she said, "that he had shot at you--never! You did not
tell that."
"There is a time for everything--the time for that was not till now."
"What could I have done then?"
"You might have left it to me. I am not so pious that I can't be
merciful to the sinner. But this man--this Brickney--was a vile
scoundrel always, and I wanted him locked up. I would have shot him
myself, but I was tired of doing the duty of the law. Yes, yes," he
added, as he saw her smile a little. "It is so. I have love for
justice, even I, Pretty Pierre. Why not justice on myself? Ha! The
law does not its duty. And maybe some day I shall have to do its work on
myself. Some are coaxed out of life, some are kicked out, and some open
the doors quietly for themselves, and go a-hunting Outside."
"They used to talk as if one ought to fear you," she said, "but"--she
looked him straight in the eyes--"but maybe that's because you've never
hid any badness."
"It is no matter, anyhow," he answered. "I live in the open, I walk in
the open road, and I stand by what I do to the open law and the gospel.
It is my whim--every man to his own saddle."
"It is ten years," she said abruptly.
"Ten years less five days," he answered as sententiously.
"Come inside," she said quietly, and turned to the door.
Without a word he turned also, but instead of going direct to the door
came and touched the broken shutter and the dark stain on one corner with
a delicate forefinger. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her on
the doorstep, looking intently.
He spoke as if to himself: "It has not been touched since then--no.
It was hardly big enough for him, so his legs hung over. Ah, yes, ten
years-- Abroad, John Marcey!" Then, as if still musing, he turned to
the girl: "He had no father or mother--no one, of course; so that it
wasn't so bad after all. If you've lived with the tongue in the last
hole of the buckle as you've gone, what matter when you go! C'est egal
--it is all the same."
Her face had become pale as he spoke, but no muscle stirred; only her
eyes filled with a deeper color, and her hand closed tightly on the door-
jamb. "Come in, Pierre," she said, and entered. He followed her.
"My mother is at the Fort," she added, "but she will be back soon."
She placed two chairs not far from the open door. They sat, and Pierre
slowly rolled a cigarette and lighted it.
"How long have you lived here?" he asked presently.
"It is seven years since we came first," she replied. "After that night
they said the place was haunted, and no one would live in it, but when my
father died my mother and I came for three years. Then we went east, and
again came back, and here we have been."
"The shutter?" Pierre asked.
They needed few explanations--their minds were moving with the same
thought.
"I would not have it changed, and of course no one cared to touch it.
So it has hung there."
"As I placed it ten years ago," he said.
They both became silent for a time, and at last he said: "Marcey had no
one,--Sergeant Laforce a mother."
"It killed his mother," she whispered, looking into the white sunlight.
She was noting how it was flashed from the bark of the birch-trees near
the Fort.
"His mother died," she added again, quietly. "It killed her--the gaol
for him!"
"An eye for an eye," he responded.
"Do you think that evens John Marcey's death?" she sighed.
"As far as Marcey's concerned," he answered. "Laforce has his own
reckoning besides."
"It was not a murder," she urged.
"It was a fair fight," he replied firmly, "and Laforce shot straight."
He was trying to think why she lived here, why the broken shutter still
hung there, why the matter had settled so deeply on her. He remembered
the song she was singing, the legend of the Scarlet Hunter, the fabled
Savior of the North.
"Heavy of heart is the Red Patrol--
(Why should the key-hole rust?)
The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home,
(Why should the blind be drawn?)"
He repeated the words, lingering on them. He loved to come at the truth
of things by allusive, far-off reflections, rather than by the sharp
questioning of the witness-box. He had imagination, refinement in such
things. A light dawned on him as he spoke the words--all became clear.
She sang of the Scarlet Hunter, but she meant someone else!
That was it--
"Hungry and cold is the Red Patrol--
(Why should the door be shut?)
The Scarlet Hunter has come to bide,
(Why is the window barred?)"
But why did she live here? To get used to a thought, to have it so near
her, that if the man--if Laforce himself came, she would have herself
schooled to endure the shadow and the misery of it all? Ah, that was it!
The little girl, who had seen her big lover killed, who had said she
would never forgive the other, who had sent him back the fretted-silver
basket, the riding-whip, and other things, had kept the criminal in her
mind all these years; had, out of her childish coquetry, grown into--
what? As a child she had been wise for her years--almost too wise.
What had happened? She had probably felt sorrow for Laforce at first,
and afterwards had shown active sympathy, and at last--no, he felt that
she had not quite forgiven him, that, whatever was, she had not hidden
the criminal in her heart. But why did she sing that song? Her heart
was pleading for him--for the criminal. Had she and her mother gone to
Winnipeg to be near Laforce, to comfort him? Was Laforce free now, and
was she unwilling? It was so strange that she should thus have carried
on her childhood into her womanhood. But he guessed her--she had
imagination.
"His mother died in my arms in Winnipeg," she said abruptly at last.
"I'm glad I was some comfort to her. You see, it all came through me--
I was so young and spoiled and silly--John Marcey's death, her death,
and his long years in prison. Even then I knew better than to set the
one against the other. Must a child not be responsible? I was--I am!"
"And so you punish yourself?"
"It was terrible for me--even as a child. I said that I could never
forgive, but when his mother died, blessing me, I did. Then there came
something else."
"You saw him, there amie?"
"I saw him--so changed, so quiet, so much older--all grey at the temples.
At first I lived here that I might get used to the thought of the thing
--to learn to bear it; and afterwards that I might learn--" She paused,
looking in half-doubt at Pierre.
"It is safe; I am silent," he said.
"That I might learn to bear--him," she continued.
"Is he still--" Pierre paused.