II

"The journey to the village of Pont Croix was that of a man walking over

graves. Every step sent a pang to my heart,--a boy of twenty-one, grown

old in a moment. It was not that I had gone a little lame from a hurt

got on the expedition with the governor, but my whole life seemed

suddenly lamed. Why did I go? Ah, you do not know how discipline gets

into a man's bones, the pride, the indignant pride of obedience! At that

hour I swore that I should myself be the governor of that Company one

day,--the boast of loud-hearted youth. I had angry visions, I dreamed

absurd dreams, but I did not think of disobeying. It was an unheard-of

journey at such a time, but I swore that I would do it, that it should go

into the records of the Company.

"I reached the village, found the Indians, and at once moved on to the

settlement where we were to stay that night. Then my knee began to pain

me. I feared inflammation; so in the dead of night I walked back to the

village, roused a trader of the Company, got some liniment and other

trifles, and arrived again at St. Saviour's before dawn. My few clothes

and necessaries came in the course of the morning, and by noon we were

fairly started on the path to exile.

"I remember that we came to a lofty point on the St. Lawrence just before

we plunged into the woods, to see the great stream no more. I stood and

looked back up the river towards the point where Lachine lay. All that

went to make the life of a Company's man possible was there; and there,

too, were those with whom I had tented and travelled for three long

months,--eaten with them, cared for them, used for them all the woodcraft

that I knew. I could not think that it would be a young man's lifetime

before I set eyes on that scene again. Never from that day to this have

I seen the broad, sweet river where I spent the three happiest years of

my life. I can see now the tall shining heights of Quebec, the pretty

wooded Island of Orleans, the winding channel, so deep, so strong. The

sun was three-fourths of its way down in the west, and already the sky

was taking on the deep red and purple of autumn. Somehow, the thing that

struck me most in the scene was a bunch of pines, solemn and quiet, their

tops burnished by the afternoon light. Tears would have been easy then.

But my pride drove them back from my eyes to my angry heart. Besides,

there were my Indians waiting, and the long journey lay before us. Then,

perhaps because there was none nearer to make farewell to, or I know not

why, I waved my hand towards the distant village of Lachine, and, with

the sweet maid in my mind who had so gently parted from me yesterday, I

cried, 'Good-bye, and God bless you.'"

He paused. Pierre handed him a wooden cup, from which he drank, and then

continued:

"The journey went forward. You have seen the country. You know what it

is: those bare ice-plains and rocky unfenced fields stretching to all

points, the heaving wastes of treeless country, the harsh frozen lakes.

God knows what insupportable horror would have settled on me in that

pilgrimage had it not been for occasional glimpses of a gentler life--for

the deer and caribou which crossed our path. Upon my soul, I was so full

of gratitude and love at the sight that I could have thrown my arms round

their necks and kissed them. I could not raise a gun at them. My

Indians did that, and so inconstant is the human heart that I ate

heartily of the meat. My Indians were almost less companionable to me

than any animal would have been. Try as I would, I could not bring

myself to like them, and I feared only too truly that they did not like

me. Indeed, I soon saw that they meant to desert me,--kill me, perhaps,

if they could, although I trusted in the wholesome and restraining fear

which the Indian has of the great Company. I was not sure that they were

guiding me aright, and I had to threaten death in case they tried to

mislead me or desert me. My knee at times was painful, and cold, hunger,

and incessant watchfulness wore on me vastly. Yet I did not yield to my

miseries, for there entered into me then not only the spirit of

endurance, but something of that sacred pride in suffering which

was the merit of my Covenanting forefathers.

"We were four months on that bitter travel, and I do not know how it

could have been made at all, had it not been for the deer that I had

heart to eat and none to kill. The days got shorter and shorter, and we

were sometimes eighteen hours in absolute darkness. Thus you can imagine

how slowly we went. Thank God, we could sleep, hid away in our fur bags,

more often without a fire than with one,--mere mummies stretched out on a

vast coverlet of white, with the peering, unfriendly sky above us; though

it must be said that through all those many, many weeks no cloud perched

in the zenith. When there was light there was sun, and the courage of it

entered into our bones, helping to save us. You may think I have been

made feeble-minded by my sufferings, but I tell you plainly that, in the

closing days of our journey, I used to see a tall figure walking beside

me, who, whenever I would have spoken to him, laid a warning finger on

his lips; but when I would have fallen, he spoke to me, always in the

same words. You have heard of him, the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash

Hills. It was he, the Sentinel of the North, the Lover of the Lost.

So deep did his words go into my heart that they have remained with

me to this hour."

"I saw him once in the White Valley," Pierre said in a low voice. "What

was it he said to you?"

The other drew a long breath, and a smile rested on his lips. Then,

slowly, as though liking to linger over them, he repeated the words of

the Scarlet Hunter:

"'O son of man, behold!

If thou shouldest stumble on the nameless trail,

The trail that no man rides,

Lift up thy heart,

Behold, O son of man, thou hast a helper near!

"'O son of man, take heed!

If thou shouldst fall upon the vacant plain,

The plain that no man loves,

Reach out thy hand,

Take heed, O son of man, strength shall be given thee!

"'O son of man, rejoice!

If thou art blinded even at the door,

The door of the Safe Tent,

Sing in thy heart,

Rejoice, O son of man, thy pilot leads thee home?'

"I never seemed to be alone after that--call it what you will, fancy or

delirium. My head was so light that it appeared to spin like a star, and

my feet were so heavy that I dragged the whole earth after me. My

Indians seldom spoke. I never let them drop behind me, for I did not

trust their treacherous natures. But in the end, as it would seem, they

also had but one thought, and that to reach Fort Ungava; for there was no

food left, none at all. We saw no tribes of Indians and no Esquimaux,

for we had not passed in their line of travel or settlement.

"At last I used to dream that birds were singing near me,--a soft,

delicate whirlwind of sound; and then bells all like muffled silver rang

through the aching, sweet air. Bits of prayer and poetry I learned when

a boy flashed through my mind; equations in algebra; the tingling scream

of a great buzz-saw; the breath of a racer as he nears the post under the

crying whip; my own voice dropping loud profanity, heard as a lad from

a blind ferryman; the boom! boom! of a mass of logs as they struck a

house on a flooding river and carried it away. . . .

"One day we reached the end. It was near evening, and we came to the top

of a wooded knoll. My eyes were dancing in my head with fatigue and

weakness, but I could see below us, on the edge of the great bay, a large

hut, Esquimau lodges and Indian tepees near it. It was the Fort, my

cheerless prison-house."

He paused. The dog had been watching him with its flaming eyes; now it

gave a low growl, as though it understood, and pitied. In the interval

of silence the storm without broke. The trees began to quake and cry,

the light snow to beat upon the parchment windows, and the chimney to

splutter and moan. Presently, out on the bay they could hear the young

ice break and come scraping up the shore. Fawdor listened a while, and

then went on, waving his hand to the door as he began: "Think! this, and

like that always: the ungodly strife of nature, and my sick, disconsolate

life."

"Ever since?" asked Pierre. "All the time."

"Why did you not go back?"

"I was to wait for orders, and they never came."

"You were a free man, not a slave."

"The human heart has pride. At first, as when I left the governor at

Lachine, I said, 'I will never speak, I will never ask nor bend the knee.

He has the power to oppress; I can obey without whining, as fine a man as

he.'"

"Did you not hate?"

"At first, as only a banished man can hate. I knew that if all had gone

well I should be a man high up in the Company, and here I was, living

like a dog in the porch of the world, sometimes without other food for

months than frozen fish; and for two years I was in a place where we had

no fire,--lived in a snow-house, with only blubber to eat. And so year

after year, no word!"

"The mail came once every year from the world?" "Yes, once a year the

door of the outer life was opened. A ship came into the bay, and by that

ship I sent out my reports. But no word came from the governor, and no

request went from me. Once the captain of that ship took me by the

shoulders, and said, 'Fawdor, man, this will drive you mad. Come away to

England,--leave your half-breed in charge,--and ask the governor for a

big promotion.' He did not understand. Of course I said I could not go.

Then he turned on me, he was a good man,--and said, 'This will either

make you madman or saint, Fawdor.' He drew a Bible from his pocket and

handed it to me. 'I've used it twenty years,' he said, 'in evil and out

of evil, and I've spiked it here and there; it's a chart for heavy seas,

and may you find it so, my lad.'

"I said little then; but when I saw the sails of his ship round a cape

and vanish, all my pride and strength were broken up, and I came in a

heap to the ground, weeping like a child. But the change did not come

all at once. There were two things that kept me hard."

"The girl?"

"The girl, and another. But of the young lady after. I had a half-breed

whose life I had saved. I was kind to him always; gave him as good to

eat and drink as I had myself; divided my tobacco with him; loved him as

only an exile can love a comrade. He conspired with the Indians to seize

the Fort and stores, and kill me if I resisted. I found it out."

"Thou shalt keep the faith of food and blanket," said Pierre. "What did

you do with him?"

"The fault was not his so much as of his race and his miserable past. I

had loved him. I sent him away; and he never came back."

"Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one

woman."

"For the girl. There was the thing that clamped my heart. Never a

message from her or her brother. Surely they knew, and yet never,

thought I, a good word for me to the governor. They had forgotten the

faith of food and blanket. And she--she must have seen that I could have

worshipped her, had we been in the same way of life. Before the better

days came to me I was hard against her, hard and rough at heart."

"Remember the sorrow of thine own wife." Pierre's voice was gentle.

"Truly, to think hardly of no woman should be always in a man's heart.

But I have known only one woman of my race in twenty-five years!"

"And as time went on?"

"As time went on, and no word came, I ceased to look for it. But I

followed that chart spiked with the captain's pencil, as he had done it

in season and out of season, and by and by I ceased to look for any word.

I even became reconciled to my life. The ambitious and aching cares of

the world dropped from me, and I stood above all--alone in my suffering,

yet not yielding. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Under it a man--"

"Goes mad or becomes a saint--a saint!" Pierre's voice became reverent.

Fawdor shook his head, smiling gently. "Ah no, no. But I began to

understand the world, and I loved the north, the beautiful hard north."

"But there is more?"

"Yes, the end of it all. Three days before you came I got a packet of

letters, not by the usual yearly mail. One announced that the governor

was dead. Another--"

"Another?" urged Pierre.

--"was from Her. She said that her brother, on the day she wrote, had by

chance come across my name in the Company's records, and found that I had

been here a quarter of a century. It was the letter of a good woman.

She said she thought the governor had forgotten that he had sent me here

--as now I hope he had, for that would be one thing less for him to think

of, when he set out on the journey where the only weight man carries is

the packload of his sins. She also said that she had written to me twice

after we parted at Lachine, but had never heard a word, and three years

afterwards she had gone to India. The letters were lost, I suppose,

on the way to me, somehow--who can tell? Then came another thing, so

strange, that it seemed like the laughter of the angels at us. These

were her words: 'And, dear Mr. Fawdor, you were both wrong in that

quotation, as you no doubt discovered long ago.' Then she gave me the

sentence as it is in Cymbeline. She was right, quite right. We were

both wrong. Never till her letter came had I looked to see. How vain,

how uncertain, and fallible, is man!"

Pierre dropped his cigarette, and stared at Fawdor. "The knowledge of

books is foolery," he said slowly. "Man is the only book of life. Go

on."

"There was another letter, from the brother, who was now high up in the

Company, asking me to come to England, and saying that they wished to

promote me far, and that he and his sister, with their families, would be

glad to see me."

"She was married then?"

The rashness of the suggestion made Fawdor wave his hand impatiently.

He would not reply to it. "I was struck down with all the news," he

said. "I wandered like a child out into a mad storm. Illness came; then

you, who have nursed me back to life. . . . And now I have told all."

"Not all, bien sur. What will you do?"

"I am out of the world; why tempt it all again? See how those twenty-

five years were twisted by a boy's vanity and a man's tyranny!"

"But what will you do?" persisted Pierre. "You should see the faces of

women and children again. No man can live without that sight, even as a

saint."

Suddenly Fawdor's face was shot over with a storm of feeling. He lay

very still, his thoughts busy with a new world which had been disclosed

to him. "Youth hungers for the vanities," he said, "and the middle-aged

for home." He took Pierre's hand. "I will go," he added. "A door will

open somewhere for me."

Then he turned his face to the wall. The storm had ceased, the wild dog

huddled quietly on the hearth, and for hours the only sound was the

crackling of the logs as Pierre stirred the fire.