The Law-bringers/Chapter 22

by G. B. Lancaster

 

CHAPTER XXII

"WHAT ETERNAL CHILDREN WE ARE"

"So you are really going to condescend to know us again," said Hensham.

Dick moved his head irritably. He did not want to be disturbed. This warm peace which flowed through and over every part of him was not a thing which a man parts with lightly. He lay there in an absolute acceptance of contented inertia. Why not? Why not? Dimly he knew that long ago he had submitted body and soul to some great suffering—the fires of hell of the crushing bergs of the Pole. He did not remember which; and it did not matter. They had beaten and refined the evil out of him, and he had come through to some place of laughter and golden sunshine where Tempest was, young and bright-eyed and thrilling still with his ideals; and where Jennifer was, with sweet eyes, no longer red, but merry, and lips that kissed his eyelids until he saw all things new and beautiful, and that kissed his mouth until he laughed from sheer light-hearted gladness.

Something was disturbing him in that world now, and it made him angry. He set his teeth against the hard thing which continued to thrust into itself his mouth, and at last in suddenly roused wrath he spoke to it.

"Get out of my mouth," he said; and then the hot broth took its swift way down his throat, and his eyes flashed open.

"Ah!" he said, and Hensham laughed as he refilled the spoon.

"Guess that's the proper persuader," he said. "But you must go slow, Heriot. If there's any belief in the divine luck of occurrence you didn't come to our wood-camp to peter out now. But you're weak. Heavens, man, you are weak."

Dick did not care what Hensham thought. He went back into his dreamland when the spoon ceased to empty itself down his throat, and vaguely he sought for the utter peace of it again. But that was not to be. Life was stirring in him now, and when, towards evening, he looked up and spoke, his senses were sharpening. Anderson was on guard; but he called Hensham, and Hensham came, bringing his strong vigorous presence into the misty greyness which hedged Dick.

"Here's some more soup," said Hensham, and went to work promptly with spoon and bowl. Then he propped Dick with pillows and gave him leave to talk.

"Not that I imagine you'll have much to say just yet," he remarked. "You came pretty near finding us drawing up your epitaph, Heriot. When we heard that you hadn't been seen on the Mackenzie we guessed what had happened."

Dick shut his eyes. The voice was surely friendly; but in this dim light he could not tell what the face was saying, and sheer physical weakness made him afraid to look.

"What—did happen?" he asked slowly.

"Why, I guess you know best." Hensham laughed. "We figured out that the girl ran away from you and you went right after her without coming back for help. I've heard that you always defied Providence when you had a chance. And then—well, you got lost, of course. But I want to know what happened to her?"

"She ran away—she ran away——" Dick tried to remember; but his thoughts were in flux, and he could not get beyond the lead which Hensham's words had given him.

"There!" Hensham spoke triumphantly to someone unseen. "What did I tell you, Baskerville! I said he'd come out with a clean sheet all right. You go to sleep again, Heriot. Lord, he's as weak as a day-old puppy."

The little room shook with the strong tread of life going out from it; and Dick lay still, hovering yet on the edge of that life and unsure if he were man or only spirit. The long starvation and the long suffering had taken more from him than would come back at once, and the memories that drifted through his brain were not acute enough to hurt him. There was the knowledge somewhere that they ought to hurt, that they would hurt, by and by, but there was a strange sense of peace and healing on him now. Words without end or beginning were sliding through his mind. Some of them said: "Can only be bought back by tears—by tears—and the fires that are not quenched." What could only be bought back? He fell asleep over the thought, but when he woke again it was ready for him.

"The simplicity of the heart can only be bought back by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched."

That was it. But what did it mean to him? Idly he tried to reason the matter, and because thought flowed more coherently now, he acknowledged certain things. Certainly he had sold his simplicity of heart long ago—if he ever had it. For a while his mind slid among memories of the past which seemed to indicate that he had had it; and drifting out of nowhere came the legend of the old Norse Loke who had the mind of the gods, desiring good, and the heart of the giants, desiring evil. Far away in those dim, childish years, and in the later keener years of boyhood, Dick remembered how those two had always warred in him. He smiled now in a curious pity for that growing fierce-hearted boy who had once been himself. But Loke had cast himself out of Jotunheim in despair at his increasing wickedness. Dick would never need to do that. He had never fully let his heart overrule his mind. He had always kept his work straight and honest. That thought brought him up with a jarring, clattering crash that seemed almost physical. His drowsy content flew to pieces, and with staring, horror-stricken eyes he tried to sit up, tried to get out of bed.

The room was dark and still. It was midnight, perhaps, and men were asleep about him; men who knew what he had done, who knew that he had betrayed the last thing which he held sacred; men who knew thought again jerked him to a full stop. They did not know. Hensham's friendly voice and words conveyed meaning to him now. They did not know, thank God, and they need never know. He lay down again, shivering and feeling the throbbing ache of returning life in all his limbs.

"Thank God, they need not know," he repeated; and then felt with a curious, irritated surprise that the words did not seem to lift the burden in the least. The expression of relief was only a form. But the other words were true. And then, in this hazy, giddy world where he lived now, sense began to twist itself about until he did not know which part were true or which he wanted true. He was too tired, he told himself. Hands and feet and head felt too big for the rest of him. They jumped and throbbed; and he won through the night somehow, sleeping fitfully, and thankful when the morning brought the cheerful Hensham and his breakfast. But Hensham was decidedly awkward this morning, and when the spoon and bowl were put away he sat on the bedside, attempting conversation nervously.

"You—you I suppose you haven't noticed anything wrong with any part of you—your feet, for instance?" he asked, presumably addressing the wall.

Had he been looking at Dick he would have seen for one instant what no man saw through that which followed. It was the sudden flicker of a deadly fear; but Dick's voice was normal to the somewhat obtuse policeman.

"I can't say that I have. Frost-bite, is it?"

"Well, yes; it is. The left foot. Baskerville—he's H.B. factor, and quite a bit of a doctor—he has been overhauling it, and he is very anxious to know if it hurts you at all."

"Ah! Fears mortification, does he?"

Dick was conscious with a sickening certainty that that left foot was just as dead and heavy a thing as the rest of him.

"Well—of course, one can't tell. It's such a little while since you came round, and perhaps—would you like to see him? He told me to send for him any time."

"Thank you. If he is at liberty I might as well. He wants to take it off, I suppose. The H.B. factors have exploited themselves in surgery from immemorable ages."

"Good Heavens! You don't imagine he'd want to do it unless——"

"I never try to imagine other men's thoughts." Dick smiled a little. "Don't look so scared, Hensham. He doesn't want my head, too, does he? Yes, we may as well see him as he has nothing better to do just now."

In the twenty minutes which passed before Hensham brought Baskerville Dick lay motionless, staring at the wall and marshalling his strength. Twice he said through stiff lips "I would rather die," and he knew that he meant it. And a bitter hate surged in him against the luck which had saved him for this. But through the examination following the coming of the grave bearded man to his room he showed far less nervousness than either of the others.

"Yes; the little toe must go," he said when it was over. "But I will hang on to the rest so long as I can, thank you Baskerville.

"If you'll let me operate at once——"

"This minute if you like. No, I won't take an anesthetic."

When the men left him Dick turned his face to the wall and lay still. At best this meant some permanent crippling. At worst it meant death. His spirit preferred death. But his body could not. He had too much innate vitality, and he knew that he would struggle for life until the last hour overcame him. But just at present he was facing a struggle which went deeper than this.

Dick's manhood had been his fetish, even as his work had been his pride. Because he had never acknowledged this even to himself the feeling was the stronger. It was strong enough to flail him now when he saw where he stood in that clear sight of his. He was a coward and a deserter. He had sinned wilfully; but he dared not bear the shame. He dare not. Tempest had dared; but then Tempest stood in that vague sexless category of saints and martyrs who do these things because they are not exactly men nor women. Dick believed this for three minutes before the bottom fell out of it. Tempest was very thoroughly a man in his temptation and his fall. He had been very thoroughly a man in his bitter resentment. He was a man, even as Dick. But, as a man, he would not live a lie.

He fought that acknowledge through the whole night, forgetting even Jennifer. For the devil in his blood would not die while that blood ran. But his feebleness prevented fever of body or mind, and it kept him sane while he groped slowly toward the light.

"The fact that you have so little blood left in you is your great salvation," said Baskerville one day, and Dick assented with an amused gravity.

His spirit had still enough blood in it to make thinking a very vital thing through those long and lonely days. His thoughts were often necessarily painful and sordid and miserable. He had lived too long in such an atmosphere to struggle out of it easily. But there was an unexpected luminosity about some things now. Since he had seen that light in Andree's dying eyes he knew with that belief which is beyond reason that her fiery, untamed soul was not a thing which death had blown out. Since he had walked so close to the borderland of death himself he began to look on it as a probable development, not an extinction. And if it were possible to believe this thing which he could not prove, then many unprovable things were possible. Day by day as he lay there he thought these puzzles out, mocking at himself often, sinking down into the old sloughs often, and yet finding a strange persevering interest and amusement in recognising some rationality in those things which did not answer to the touch-stone of logic, and which he would once have swept away for that reason.

He did not dare let himself think too much of his probable maiming; he was too weak to talk for long at a time, and so he thought, not realising that this was the natural flower from that new growth of charity towards his neighbour which had led him to help Tempest in the first place; to rouse Slicker from his inertia; to attempt rescue of the white baby from Alphonse Michu. To the end of his life he would almost certainly mock more than he would sympathise; but now that the blackest of his trouble was upon him he was losing much of the bitterness which had characterised his whole life. It seemed as if through recognising his weakness he was at last gaining inner strength. Even Hensham's noisy rejoicing over the fact that Dick would not have to lose his foot did not rouse that caustic tongue. But Dick's heart knew that to drag a useless member through life would be little better than to lose it. And no man could tell yet if that would be so or not.

And then, one day, the test of all which he had been learning and thinking came on him suddenly with Hensham's announcement that a trader was going up to the South next day.

"He can be trusted to take letters," said Hensham. "I'm sending some, and of course you'll want to send a line to your folks."

Dick's smile was bitter for a moment. His folks had forgotten him long ago.

"Thanks," he said. "I must write Regina, anyway. It will months yet before I can travel."

"I'm afraid so. Of course it's awfully jolly for us having you here, and I really do believe that foot will get fairly right, you know. You are a trump of a patient, Heriot. I'd be growling and cursing about it all day."

Dick's lips twitched a little. Perhaps some day Hensham would learn that there are things which go too deep for outside comment.

"You'd probably bundle me out if I did," he said. "I might as well write now, before Baskerville comes to do my foot."

"Of course I've put this business in my report," said Hensham. "I wish we had been able to find that poor girl's body, you know. I guess I'd be glad to know that she was properly buried. Of course we haven't a notion how many days you traveled after you'd left her. If you'd been keeping your diary to the last as young Grahame did——"

"Yes. It was an oversight, wasn't it? You might hand me the pen and paper. Thanks."

For a little while after Hensham had gone he sat still with his lips set and his eyes unusually sad and soft. He knew what he was going to write. He had come to the decision through too fierce a fight not to know it. And he was not coward enough to retract now. But a little shudder ran through him as he took up the pen. He was going to do the hardest thing that his life had demanded of him yet. He wrote a short letter to the Commisioner, and a long one to Jennifer. But the gist of both was the same. He made a full confession of the betrayal of his trust; he expressed repentence, and he did not ask for mercy. The letters were sealed and lying on the table when Hensham came back, and the vigorous young fellow exclaimed at the white tired face.

"I say! You're fagged out, Heriot. I should have come in before. I'm so sorry."

"You're a good chap, Hensham." There was no mockery in Dick's smile just now. "I'll have to pass all you've done for me on to the next man, for you don't look a fit subject for medical administrations."

"I've done nothing." Hensham reddened. "You—you're so awfully brickish about it all, you know."

"Am I? That's an unusual accusation. Yes; those are the letters. You can stamp them. Thanks."

He watched them go with a curious half-wonder in his eyes. Why should he feel relief at having done a thing which was probably going to damn him in the eyes of the world? What had taught him that if a man puts himself right with himself he can afford to face what that world may say? And why was it putting him right with himself to do a foolish and quixotic thing?

Baskerville came in and interrupted his meditations; and Dick, with a sudden swing of the pendulum, said several unusually nasty things to him. But Baskerville met them with the tolerance one shows a man who may be crippled for life. Dick understood the reason, and it did not sweeten his temper. Natural reaction had set in, and he spent a wretched night. But he did not ask for the letters back again. His weaknessess seldom took the form of retraction in any way. Through the following weeks and months that grew to spring he never thought once of making confession to Hensham. This was not Hensham's business, nor the business of any save the two who would know by now, and Dick was not the man to fling himself to penitential extremes.

Careful nursing and time brought power back to the maimed foot, little by little. But the ice was gone and the canoes were on the river before Dick went south again. He took Indians with him from post to post, leaving the last one at Simpson, and paddling the long stage into Fort Resolution alone. He bad known long since that Tempest was in charge of the Mackenzie District now; and he had heard from the steamer, which he met near Simpson, that letters were waiting him in Tempest's care. Those letters haunted the day and the night for him now. Dear though Jennifer was to him, much though she meant and always would mean in his life, he knew that no possible tenderness of hers could quite atone for the public disgrace which might fall on him. And for more than the disgrace—for the pain and the heartache it would be to him to know the North no more.

For all she had given him to bear his heart glowed yet with love for this great sweeping space of Northland. Her wild and lavish glory of young summer stirred the undying wild youth in himself. He could never leave her without a heartbreak. But he knew that he would never come back if his dishonour had gone down these mighty rivers before him. On the last evening before he reached Fort Resolution he camped in a spruce clump redolent with piny odours, and with an outlook upon the lake. The turquoise and raw gold of the quivering sunset across that rimless reach of faintly rolling water seemed more glorious than he had ever seen it before. His own life was just as horizonless at present, and there was none of that beauty in it, and yet there was a new-sprung hope and pleasure in him that used not to be there. He was hoping because he dared not do anything else. He was trying to believe because he dared not do anything else. And this is really the one and only reason which makes a man in earnest.

Lulled there in the lap of that great silence with only his pipe for company the radiance of the sunset held more meaning, the brooding calm of the deepening sky held more, the occasional scuffling and splash of the ducks in the reeds held more. He seemed to have stumbled on some new understanding and comradeship with that mighty Life which pulsed through everything, and yet he could not tell how and where he felt in touch with it. But he carried a courageous heart into Fort Resolution next day, and he received his letter and the news that Tempest would be back in a couple of hours with a like serenity. Then, because he dared not read those letters out in the breezy day with the sunlight dancing on the lake and all the wildwood scents loose about him, he took them into Tempest's little sitting-room, and shut the door, and sat down in Tempest's chair to read them.

He sat still for very long after they were read, and he was sitting there still when he heard Tempest's voice in the passage.

"What? In there, is he? Very well. Yes. I'll call you when I want you, Bernard."

Dick stood up, thrusting the letters into his pocket. He heard Tempest's step, and both step and voice seemed to bear the eager ring of the old days. Then Tempest swung the door open, and came in swiftly.

"My word, I am glad to see you, old man," he said.

The grip of the hand told it, and the half-break in the voice. Then Tempest stood back, laughing half-nervously.

"They've managed to put some flesh on you again down at Macpherson," he said. "You're not eligible for our 'Dulce et decorum' roll-call yet."

Dick winced. This was touching on the sore place already.

"Macpherson must share her honours," he said. "Young Grahame was offered up on her altar."

"Yes. Sad thing that. Sit down, and let me look at you. Fit? I should think I was. No time to be anything else up here."

He talked cheerfully, with much of the old buoyancy back in his manner and words. But it had a deeper note and a greater gravity at times, and there were some threads of grey in his thick hair. It was Dick who spoke of his lameness because he had seen the contraction of Tempest's forehead when he limped to his chair.

"It will be permanent," he said. "But there is no pain now."

"It won't incapacitate you for duty?"

"No." Dick's smile was peculiar. "I don't expect that to incapacitate me for duty."

For a while longer they talked of other things. Then Tempest said:

"Now tell me about Andree, please."

He was silent while Dick gave such particulars as would not pain Tempest too much. Then he added: "I think she did not suffer at the last. She died in my arms, and her eyes were glorious when I closed them."

"She loved you to the last, Dick?"

"Yes."

There was a pause. Then Tempest said, quietly:

"Thank you. I think I am glad to know that. It would make her happy just to be with you. And yet—they said she ran away from you."

"She did. But that was not the beginning. I ran away with her first, Tempest."

"You did what?"

"I was taking her out to Dawson City. Wait a minute! I changed my mind and tried to bring her back. I suppose I was rather brutal to her, and she ran away from me. There is no need for you to make any comment on this. Don't imagine that I have lost all sense of proportion because I so nearly lost everything else."

Tempest sprang up and began to walk through the room. It was his old habit when in strong agitation, and Dick sat still, staring at the floor. He did not know that he had meant to tell Tempest. Now he saw that it could not have been otherwise. He owed Andree's ever-true lover that. Presently he said:

"I should like to tell you one reason why I really did that thing. But I cannot."

"I know." Tempest halted in his walk. "It was because Mrs. Ducane sent you away."

"You——" Dick's oath was hot and quick. "What do you know about that?"

"Mrs. Ducane told me, Dick."

"She told you?"

"She knew that I was dreading this very thing; and she told me that it would not be, and she told me why she was sure of it."

He continued to walk the room, and Dick's eyes went back to the floor. This hurt more than he had expected to be hurt again. It was Tempest who spoke next.

"I have no right to blame any man when I have been so far from blameless myself. If I had been less hard to you it might have helped you."

"I deserved all I got there. It would have helped, though. You and Jennifer were too good and too far-off for me." He shrugged his shoulders with a slight laugh. "But I had to come back to you," he said.

Tempest did not ask what had brought him back. That was Dick's own arrangement with his God—if he had one.

"And you have the right to come back now," he said. "Did you know that Ducane is dead?"

"I have had a letter from her telling me. I wrote her from Macpherson." It was Tempest's silence drew the next words out of him. "She is waiting at Grey Wolf until I come. It rather frightens one to know how much a woman can forgive."

"So long as you stay frightened you'll be all right," said Tempest dryly. Then he came over, standing close by Dick's chair.

"I am a brute to say such things to you," he said with his old impetuosity. "You saved me, and nearly lost yourself over doing it. That should make us quits. You didn't know what was going to come out of it."

"I don't know that I cared, after the first. And you have surely more humour than to make apologies to me." Dick pushed his chair back, and stood up. "I think you're wanted. Someone has been perambulating the passage and coughing discreetly for the last three minutes."

Tempest turned to the door. But he looked back.

"You'll give me all the days you can spare, won't you, Dick?" he asked.

"I shall be glad to," said Dick briefly.

But under the bald words both men felt the pull of that old bond of friendship again. It was not broken, and it would not break now. Dick knew this certainly as he went out to smoke a pipe along the sunny beach, and he felt surprisedly that he was glad, really glad, although joy and he had been strangers so long. Even Jennifer's letter had not made him glad, for its sweet unreproachful wisdom had humbled him into the dust. And the Commissioner's letter had not made him glad. It had made him thankful. He smiled a little, thinking of it. There was quite evidently something of the woman in the Commissioner too. Or perhaps it was because he had had such a very large acquaintance with men for so many years that he was prepared for everything. Or it may have been that he set undue value on the fact that one of those men had confessed a fault which he so easily might have suppressed. Whatever the reason it seemed more likely that Dick would find a friend at Regina, in place of the judge he expected. A sudden twist of his ever-nimble brain suggested that it might be the same at the end of that longer journey which he was taking. But here he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh of half-contempt. Those kinds of thoughts and his nature were so ridiculously at variance. It must be, of course, because he was thinking more of Jennifer than usual. Behind the blowing smoke-cloud his eyes softened.

"If only I could bring her more," he said, under his breath. "If I could bring her more for all she has to give me. But a man can't waste his years and his heart and his soul for nothing. I haven't got it to give now."

Something of this was touched on a few nights later when Dick and Tempest walked the dreaming beach under the stars. They would part in the morning, and it would quite probably be long before they met again; and this knowledge, and the haunting beauty and loneliness of the wide lake loosened their tongues a little, so that, hesitatingly and with many pauses, they spoke more intimately than they had done since the days of their fiery youth. Even better than Dick, Tempest knew that the human soul is a shy wild thing which often cannot give where it most desires to give. But, by putting something of man's natural reserve aside, his intuitive skill led him to make some confessions in order to gain them. And by slow degrees he did gain them, until Dick was sufficiently softened to speak of his remorse. But here Tempest stopped him.

"We were both to blame," he said. "Which is, I suppose, much the same as saying we are both human. But my sin was worse than yours because I knew that I was wrong. Almost from the beginning I knew it; but I went on 'in spite of Hell.' Well—you gave me Hell, and I've got out of it" He glanced at Dick with a whimsical smile. "Your methods were not gentle. But I want you to believe that I sincerely think I could have forgiven anything you did to myself only without very much effort, Dick."

"I would not have had you forgive the other easily," said Dick sharply.

The long silence which followed was broken by Dick.

"I shall probably be married very soon if I can get permission from the Commissioner. Ducane has been dead eight months, and I am due for leave. I didn't take it when I enlisted four years ago."

"Ah! Then your term is up next year?"

"I know. But I shall join again if I am allowed. I can't settle to any other life now. I have knocked about too long."

"Is that—will that be fair on on——"

"No!" Dick's laugh held a sting of bitterness. "Have I ever been fair to her or anyone else? But it is inevitable, and she recognises that. Do you remember what some poet says about Hercules? He fell into all sorts of evils if he didn't have the chance to sweat his soul out occasionally at honest hard work. Not that I compare myself to the god in any other way; but I do understand the common-sense of that. My nature will always be too strong for me if I can't find manual work enough to keep it down. She'll help—Jennifer will. But she can't do it all. It is part of the penalty, I suppose, that I shall never be able to settle down into a comfortable fat father and husband as you could. Oh—I never meant——"

"It's all right. Don't imagine that that hurts now, Dick. I am not a child to spend my life crying over what I can't have. I think I would have been rather glad to to follow your example. I thought about it when I went East, and I—well, I tried. But I saw that, whoever the woman might be, she would take such a very third-class place behind my work and my country that it would have been dishonourable to ask her."

"You have more conscience than I have, Tempest."

"No. I have merely centred my interests where you have always wanted them to be—where I had thought I wanted them to be myself. A man can do little, perhaps. But the utmost which he can give will be asked of him. That is the great consolation."

"You'll do more than a little, old chap."

"I hope so." Tempest's eyes shone suddenly, and his voice rang. "Lord! What eternal children we are! We'll build our mud-heaps to raise us up to conquer the stars until the end of time, never heeding how often they crumble under us." He laid his hand on Dick's shoulder. "Whatever you did or meant to do to me I owe it to you that I have taken hold of things again," he said. "I can't see yet what it is all for. I can't see why the innocent should suffer for the guilty, or why self should be such an eternal devil to fight. There seems injustice somewhere. But perhaps I'll see clearer in time. Till I do—I'll go on building mud-heaps."

"And when you do you'll conquer the stars."

But Dick's raillery was very friendly, for the boyishness, which would never die out of Tempest, touched the younger man, who was so infinitely older in many ways. And for an hour yet they smoked their pipes as they kept step up and down the beach and spoke of many things. But they did not touch on those private subjects again; and their words and their good-byes were casual on the shore in the morning when the breed in the stern of Dick's canoe held it against the bank, and Dick turned for a moment to give his hand to Tempest.

They did not weaken that hand-grip with words, although Dick had a jest for his lame foot as he clambered into the canoe. He turned once to see Tempest straight and tall on the shore. Then he went on paddling with slow, long strokes and the tobacco-smoke blowing out either side him. Tempest watched until the dazzle of light on the water hid him and the entrance to the Great Slave River lay near. Then he went along the beach, and flung himself down on the sand, looking out to the shoreless lake that ran blue against the blue sky. His eternal duties would call him up presently, and next week he would start his long patrol to the North by the ways up which Dick had come. But this warm golden hour of silence between earth and Heaven was his own.

Cicadas were chirping, and all across the lake sea-birds dipped and called. The air was full of the healthy smell from little far-off fires, and the light breeze helped his pipe to keep off the mosquitoes. He lay on his back, staring up into the blue, which seemed to recede and deepen, drawing his thoughts up with it. And his mind turned again to that inexplicable secret of the universe which so puzzled him and which he so struggled to interpret. For all Dick's cynical, clear-sighted unbelief he believed that Dick was nearer the solution than himself. But Dick had Jennifer to help him. Tempest had to find his way along a lonely road. And why should that be so? Why should one man have and another man lose? Why should evil trip the feet up on the very altar-steps? Why should doubt be born of belief and belief of doubt? Why, and why, and again, why? Where was the reason of it all?

An ant ran up his hand, and he raised it to watch as the little thing darted this way and that, afraid to make excursions up his arm, afraid to drop over into the unknown. It rested at last, accepting the inevitable and trusting in the fortune which had guided it so far. Tempest lowered his hand and let it run off into the sand. He had found the first word of that interpretation which he sought, and it was one which had been about him all the time. That word was Faith, and by the very nature of it he knew that it would be the only one which he and his generation—and perhaps many generations after him—would learn. And by its very nature it gave rich promise of other words, other revelations to be understood when the first was fully mastered. Then, and not until then, would come the progression, even as our forefathers progressed from arrows to knives and from verbal to written speech. Faith, not blind and stupid, but Faith completely equipped and strong and eager for the next step. In some strange way Dick's unbelief had come to an acceptance of a faith of some sort. Tempest's years of belief had found it more difficult. Tempest believed that he could interpret that. In his weariness the beggared heart in Dick had turned gratefully to the crumbs which fell from the table, where Tempest in his pride and impatience had demanded cake.

One white line of cloud drew itself delicately across the curve of blue, and the sun-warmth soaked into him as he lay. His thoughts went back to the ant. That ant could not understand why Tempest lifted it up, nor why he put it down again. Supposing that he was expecting information on subjects which he was as little capable of understanding? All over this great humming world lives were being born, lives were dying, with every breath he drew. What other equipment could avail man against that reeling knowledge but Faith? Faith that his God held the ends of every tangled skein; faith that when he too was able to understand he should understand; faith that the submissive acceptance of Faith as ultimate was the one way; of growing beyond it. It would not be for Tempest to discover his Great Secret this side the stars, although, by his life, he might help secure the discovery to later generations. As he lay there a strange, peaceful sense of fatherhood towards the future, of sonhood towards the past, came over him. As his progenitors, the Cavemen, had worked through their descendants out of blind animal terrors and ignorance, so the men that should come after Tempest might work to heights now unguessed at by him. Whether he knew or not would not matter. He knew now. He knew that he and all men had their glorious infinitesimal part in the moulding of the future. For the fact that man may not live to himself alone is at once the redemption and the temptation of mankind.

He got up at last and walked back to the barracks. Through long tangled ways he had returned to the truth which a child learns at its mother's knee. But he had won it for himself now, and therefore it was precious as it could never have been before. It might not make life easier, perhaps, because life is not meant to be easy. It might not make him very good, because man is not meant to be very good. He is meant to stay human enough to sympathise with other men. But he had got a solid base at last on which to build his mud-heaps.

Before him the great lake rolled to rightward and the great plains rolled to left. The sun was warm and hazily golden over both, and a faint blue veined the distance. There was the smell of rain and of quickening earth in the air, and a few duck flew over; making no sound, but striking the note of life into the far-spreading peace.

Tempest stood still to watch them go. Then he looked out across the land which was so dear to him with the old light shining in bis eyes. His right hand was closed, as the hand of a man who grasps a rapier-hilt. Presently he spoke, with a half-laugh and a half-break of love in the words.

"To love you isn't enough," he said. "God grant we're ready to suffer and work for you—Canada."

 

THE END