Flower of the North Part 29

And Philip, brokenly, said aloud:

"G.o.d bless you, Pierre, old man!"

He lifted the cold hands back, and gently drew the covers which had hidden the telltale stains of death from Jeanne's eyes. He turned down Pierre's shirt, and in the lamp-glow there glistened the golden locket.

For the first time he noticed it closely. It was half as large as the palm of his hand, and very thin, and he saw that it was bent and twisted. A shudder ran through him when he understood what had happened. The bullet that had killed Pierre had first struck the locket, and had burst it partly open. He took it in his hand. And then he saw that through the broken side there protruded the end of a bit of paper. For a brief s.p.a.ce the discovery made him almost forget the presence of death. Pierre had never opened the locket, because it was of the old-fashioned kind that locked with a key, and the key was gone.

And the locket had been about Jeanne's neck when he found her out in the snows! Was it possible that this bit of paper had something to do with the girl he loved?

Carefully, so that it would not tear, he drew it forth. There was writing on the paper, as he had expected, and he read it, bent low beside the lamp. The date was nearly eighteen years old. The lines were faint. The words were these:

MY HUSBAND,--G.o.d can never undo what I have done. I have dragged myself back, repentant, loving you more than I have ever loved you in my life, to leave our little girl with you. She is your daughter, and mine. She was born on the eighth day of September, the seventh month after I left Fort o' G.o.d, She is yours, and so I bring her back to you, with the prayer that she will help to fill the true and n.o.ble heart that I have broken. I cannot ask your forgiveness, for I do not deserve it. I cannot let you see me, for I should kill myself at your feet. I have lived this long only for the baby. I will leave her where you cannot fail to find her, and by the time you have read this I will have answered for my sin--my madness, if you can have charity regard it so.

And if G.o.d is kind I will hover about you always, and you will know that in death the old sweetheart, and the mother, has found what she could never again hope for in life.

YOUR WIFE.

Philip rose slowly erect and gazed down into the still, tranquil face of Pierre, the half-breed.

"Why didn't you open it?" he whispered. "Why didn't you open it? My G.o.d, what it would have saved--"

For a full minute he looked down at Pierre, as though he expected that the white lips would move and answer him. And then he thought of Jeanne hurrying to Fort o' G.o.d, and of the terrible things which she was to reveal to her father that night. She was D'Arcambal's own daughter.

What pain--what agony of father and child he might have saved if he had examined the locket a little sooner! He looked at his watch and found that Jeanne had been gone three hours. It would be impossible to overtake MacDougall and the girl unless something had occurred to delay them somewhere along the trail. He hurried back into the little room, where he had left Ca.s.sidy. In a few words he explained that it was necessary for him to follow Jeanne and the engineer to D'Arcambal House without a moment's delay, and he directed Ca.s.sidy to take charge of camp affairs, and to send Pierre's body with a suitable escort the next day.

"It isn't necessary for me to tell you what to do," he finished, "You understand."

Ca.s.sidy nodded. Six months before he had buried his youngest child under a big spruce back of his cabin.

Philip hastened to the stables, and, choosing one of the lighter animals, was soon galloping over the trail toward the Little Churchill.

In his face there blew a cold wind from Hudson's Bay, and now and then he felt the sting of fine particles in his eyes. They were the presage of storm. A shifting of the wind a little to the east and south, and the fine particles would thicken, and turn into snow. By morning the world would be white. He came into the forests beyond the plain, and in the spruce and the cedar tops the wind was half a gale, filling the night with wailing and moaning sounds that sent strange shivers through him as he thought of Pierre in the cabin. In such a way, he imagined, had the north wind swept across the cold barrens on the night that Pierre had found the woman and the babe; and now it seemed, in his fancies, as though above and about him the great hand that had guided the half-breed then was bringing back the old night, as if Pierre, in dying, had wished it so. For the wind changed. The fine particles thickened, and changed to snow. And then there was no longer the wailing and the moaning in the tree-tops, but the soft murmur of a white deluge that smothered him in a strange gloom and hid the trail.

There were two canoes concealed at the end of the trail on the Little Churchill, and Philip chose the smallest. He followed swiftly after MacDougall and Jeanne. He could no longer see either side of the stream, and he was filled with a fear that he might pa.s.s the little creek that led to Fort o' G.o.d. He timed himself by his watch, and when he had paddled for two hours he ran in close to the west sh.o.r.e, traveling so slowly that he did not progress a mile in half an hour.

And then suddenly, from close ahead, there rose through the snow-gloom the dismal howl of a dog, which told him that he was near to Fort o'

G.o.d. He found the black opening that marked the entrance to the creek, and when he ran upon the sand-bar a hundred yards beyond he saw lights burning in the great room where he had first seen D'Arcambal. He went now where Pierre had led him that night, and found the door unlocked.

He entered silently, and pa.s.sed down the dark hall until, on the left, he saw a glow of light that came from the big room. Something in the silence that was ahead of him made his own approach without sound, and softly he entered through the door.

In the great chair sat the master of Fort o' G.o.d, his gray head bent; at his feet knelt Jeanne, and so close were they that D'Arcambal's face was hidden in Jeanne's shining, disheveled hair. No sooner had Philip entered the room than his presence seemed to arouse the older man. He lifted his head slowly, looking toward the door, and when he saw who stood there he raised one of his arms from about the girl and held it out to Philip.

"My son!" he said.

In a moment Philip was upon his knees beside Jeanne, and one of D'Arcambal's heavy hands fell upon his shoulder in a touch that told him he had come too late to keep back any part of the terrible story which Jeanne had bared to him. The girl did not speak when she saw him beside her. It was as if she had expected him to come, and her hand found his and nestled in it, as cold as ice.

"I have hurried from the camp," he said. "I tried to overtake Jeanne.

About Pierre's neck I found a locket, and in the locket--was this--"

He looked into D'Arcambal's haggard face as he gave him the blood-stained note, and he knew that in the moment that was to come the master of Fort o' G.o.d and his daughter should be alone.

"I will wait in the portrait-room," he said, in a low voice, and as he rose to his feet he pressed Jeanne's hand to his lips.

The old room was as he had left it weeks before. The picture of Jeanne's mother still hung with its face to the wall. There was the same elusive movement of the portrait over the volume of warm air that rose from the floor. In this room he seemed to breathe again the presence of a warm spirit of life, as he had felt it on the first night--a spirit that seemed to him to be a part of Jeanne herself, and he thought of the last words of the wife and mother--of her promise to remain always near those whom she loved, to regain after death the companionship which she could never hope for in life. And then there came to him a thought of the vast and wonderful mystery of death, and he wondered if it was her spirit that had been with him more than one lonely night, when his camp-fire was low; if it was her presence that had filled him with transcendent dreams of hope and love, coming to him that night beside the rock at Churchill, and leading him at last to Jeanne, for whom she had given up her life. He heard again the rising of the wind outside and the beating of the storm against the window, and he went softly to see if his vision could penetrate into the white, twisting gloom beyond the gla.s.s. For many minutes he stood, seeing nothing. And then he heard a sound, and turned to see Jeanne and her father standing in the door. Glory was in the face of the master of Fort o' G.o.d. He seemed not to see Philip--he seemed to see nothing but the picture that was turned against the wall. He strode across the room, his great shoulders straightened, his s.h.a.ggy head erect, and with the pride of one revealing first to human eyes the masterpiece of his soul and life he turned the picture so that the radiant face of the wife and mother looked down upon him. And was it fancy that for a fleeting moment the smile left the beautiful lips, and a light, soft and luminous, pleading for love and forgiveness, filled the eyes of Jeanne's mother? Philip trembled. Jeanne came across to him silently, and crept into his arms. And then, slowly, the master of Fort o' G.o.d turned toward them and stretched out both of his great arms.

"My children!" he said.

XXV

All that night the storm came out of the north and east. Hours after Jeanne and her father had left him Philip went quietly from his room, pa.s.sed down the hall, and opened the outer door. He could hear the gale whistling over the top of the great rock, and moaning in the spruce and cedar forest, and he closed the door after him, and buried himself in the darkness and wind. He bowed his head to the stinging snow, which came like blasts of steeled shot, and hurried into the shelter of the Sun Rock, and stood there after that listening to the wildness of the storm and the strange whistling of the wind cutting itself to pieces far over his head. Since man had first beheld that rock such storms as this had come and gone for countless generations. Two hundred years and more had pa.s.sed since Grosellier first looked out upon a wondrous world from its summit. And yet this storm--to-night--whistling and moaning about him, filling all s.p.a.ce with its grief, its triumph, and its madness, seemed to be for him--and for him alone. His heart answered to it. His soul trembled to the marvelous meaning of it. To-night this storm was his own. He was a part of a world which he would never leave.

Here, beside the great Sun Rock of the Crees, he had found home, life, happiness, his G.o.d. Here, henceforth through all time, he would live with his beloved Jeanne, dreaming no dreams that went beyond the peace of the mountains and the forests. He lifted his face to where the storm swept above him, and for an instant he fancied that high up on the ragged edge of the rock there might have stood Pierre, with his great, gaping, hungry heart, filled with pain and yearning, staring off into the face of the Almighty. And he fancied, too, that beside him there hovered the wife and mother. And then he looked to Fort o' G.o.d. The lights were out. Quiet, if not sleep, had fallen upon all life within.

And it seemed to Philip, as he went back again through the storm, that in the moaning tumult of the night there was music instead of sadness.

He did not sleep until nearly morning. And when he awoke he found that the storm had pa.s.sed, and that over a world of spotless white there had risen a brilliant sun. He looked out from his window, and saw the top of the Sun Rock glistening in a golden fire, and where the forest trees had twisted and moaned there were now unending canopies of snow, so that it seemed as though the storm, in pa.s.sing, had left behind only light, and beauty, and happiness for all living things.

Trembling with the joy of this, Philip went to his door, and from the door down the hall, and where the light of the sun blazed through a window near to the great room where he expected to find the master of Fort o' G.o.d, there stood Jeanne. And as she heard him coming, and turned toward him, all the glory and beauty of the wondrous day was in her face and hair. Like an angel she stood waiting for him, pale and yet flushing a little, her eyes shining and yearning for him, her soul in the tremble of the single word on her sweet lips.

"Philip--"

"Jeanne--"

No more--and yet against each other their hearts told what it was futile for their lips to attempt. They looked out through the window.

Beyond that window, as far as the vision could reach, swept the barrens, over which Pierre had brought the little Jeanne. Something sobbing rose in the girl's throat. She lifted her eyes, swimming with love and tears, to Philip, and from his breast she reached up both hands gently to his face.

"They will bring Pierre--to-day---" she whispered.

"Yes--to-day."

"We will bury him out yonder," she said, stroking his face, and he knew that she meant out in the barren, where the mother lay.

He bowed his face close down against hers to hide the woman's weakness that was bringing a misty film into his eyes.

"You love me," she whispered. "You love me--love me--and you will never take me away, but will stay with me always. You will stay here--dear--in my beautiful world--we two--alone--"

"For ever and for ever," he murmured.

They heard a step, firm and vibrant with the strength of a new life, and they knew that it was the master of Fort o' G.o.d.

"Always--we two--forever," whispered Philip again.

THE END