Murder Point Part 4

"Am I mad?"

He stumbled to the far end of the room and flung himself down in his bunk, burying his face in its coverings that he might shut out the light and gain a moment's rest. But his imaginings followed and knelt beside him.

"Well, if I must think," he whispered, "I will think of that which is best." He beckoned from out the shadows his memory of Mordaunt's face, and gave himself over to recalling all that it once had meant. They had nicknamed him "The Girl" because of his shyness and modesty, and had not always been particular in the jokes which they had made at his expense. Yes, and he had had a woman's ways from first to last.

Nothing that had happened had been able to coa.r.s.en him; he had never given way to loose talk or brutal jests, and in the presence of suffering had invariably been full of tenderness.

Good heavens! pa.s.s on to the crisis--to that day when he had come to the top of the shaft and called down to him! He had answered his call, praying him in an agonized voice to descend and rescue him. He could see him now approaching hurriedly, yet cautiously, through the darkness, lifting high up his swinging lamp so that its rays fell across his face. He could still remember how absurd it had seemed to suppose that a creature, so small and fragile, could save him from _that other_. Yet he had; and after that, because of the relief he felt, he had confessed. Then, in a moment of compa.s.sionate self-forgetfulness, Mordaunt had placed his arms about him and had drawn down his head upon his breast--an action of which no man in dealing with another man was ever capable; the mother-instinct was manifested there. In the flickering lamplight, with his head pressed close to his companion's breast, feeling its rise and fall at each struggling intake of the breath, crouching underground upon the bed-rock, he had guessed the secret--_that Mordaunt was not a man_.

From that hour he had loved her. She had never known that he shared her secret. Thank G.o.d, he had remained so much a gentleman that he had not told her that! Who she was, why she had come to the Klondike, what was her proper name, he had not permitted himself to inquire; for him it had been sufficient that she was a woman, and that he loved her, and that he was unworthy of her love. After she had seen him shoot at Spurling he had avoided her, lest by contact with him she should be defiled. He had vaguely hoped at the time of leaving that the day might come, after he had cleansed himself and proved himself a man, when he might seek her out and ask her to be his wife. Through the last three years he had lived for that. To have asked her then would have been an insult, an act of cowardice. How would an upright woman answer a man whom she had just saved from homicide? How would she regard a man who had discovered the secret of her s.e.x in such a manner, because of her compa.s.sion, and had not had the decency to keep that knowledge secret even from herself? So he had fled from the Shallows for a double reason; that he might not do violence to Spurling, and that he might not betray himself to her. He had left her without a hint of his going, or a word of explanation.

What had she thought of him? He had often wondered that. Had she also loved him, and not dared to speak about it? He half-suspected that. If she had loved him and had spoken out, he would not have married her at that time, when even he despised himself; to have done so would have been to drag her down. Still, he could not help speculating as to what she had said and thought on that morning when she awoke in the winter dreariness, and, gazing round the cabin, found that he had vanished.

Had she regretted him, and had she sometimes, when Spurling had become intolerable, gone aside and wept? After three years, though he had loved her, he could only recall her by her man's name, and picture her in her man's dress.

Then, while he thought with closed eyes, that awful question came again, "Is Mordaunt dead?"

Whilst she was in the world it had been possible for him to strive to be straightforward and courageous; but, _if she was dead_ . . .! If Spurling had murdered her, if he had lied to him and _she_ was his partner, what then? Well, that all depended on whether Spurling had known her s.e.x. If not, what a revenge he would take when he should confront him, and inform him that he had murdered a woman, and not a man! He knew Spurling; for him the public ignominy of being hanged would be as nothing compared with such private knowledge--it would thrust him into h.e.l.l in this life.

Ah, but that could not be; G.o.d would not allow it! Spurling himself had said that he had not sunk so low as that. Yet, in case it might be so, he would keep his word and help him to escape--from the Mounted Police, but not from himself. He would be the executioner if there must be one. The law should not rob him of his revenge. He would save Spurling's life in case he might need to take it.

Then, unbidden and against his will, there rose up the image of the man who had saved his life in Tagish Lake. Spurling had forestalled him, bribed him beforehand, by restoring him his own life in exchange for the life which he was doomed to take. Did that not make amends?

Also he had rescued Mordaunt from disaster on the Skaguay trail, where he would certainly have perished had he been left. He had done unconsciously that which Granger proposed to do of set purpose--saved a life that he might take it. Did not that in some measure make amends? The problem was too complicated; it must work itself out in its own way. Yet, it would be a bitter irony if, after he had travelled a continent to avoid this deed, he should be forced to kill Spurling in the end--Spurling, who had come to him of his own accord.

Still more burlesque would it be if, after Spurling was at rest, he should be hanged in his stead.

But perhaps Mordaunt was not dead.

To rid himself of these morbid questionings, he would give his remoter memory the reins to-day, at whatever cost; it was pleasanter to remember bygone unpleasantness than to live with the ills which threatened his present life. He recollected how some one had once asked Carlyle, "Why does the Past always seem so much happier than the Present?" And Carlyle's stern reply, "Because the fear has gone out of it." How odd it seemed to him that he should be recalling Carlyle up there in Keewatin! Yet, because that answer was true, he took up the thread of his London life again, that so, with the drug of memory, he might lay to rest his immediate misfortunes. He was a little boy again in the old red house on Clapton Common. One by one he entered its homely rooms with their ancient furniture, quaint wall-paper, and general look of substantial comfort. Once more he leant out of the bow-window at the back and gazed beyond the hill, upon which the house was built, up which gardens climbed, divided by creeper-covered walls of crumbling brick, down to where at its foot the river ran through flats and marshes. Far away, a little to the right, old Woodford raised its head; to the left Chingford, as yet unmodernized, showed up; and straight ahead, at a distance of seven miles, the steeple of High Beech, in the kindly habitable forest of Epping, was in sight.

This was the house in which he had first dreamed the dream by the glamour of which he had been led astray. His father had dreamed the same dream, and his grandfather before him; it seemed to be a part of the walls and masonry, so interwoven was it with his memories of that house. It had been the first faery-story which he had ever listened to, and had been told to him for the most part in that back room with the bow-window, as he had sat on his grand-father's knee on winters'

nights.

The first time that he had heard it he could not have been more than five, and his father was absent, so his grandfather said, pursuing the dream on the other side of the world. This was the story as he remembered it. "In the land of Guiana there is a golden city named Manoa, but El Dorado in the Spanish language, which stands on the sh.o.r.es of a vast inland lake whose waters are salt, which is called Parima, and which is two hundred leagues in length. Juan Martinez was the first white man to visit it, and he did so through no fault of his own! When he was with the Spanish army at the port of Morequito, the store of powder, of which he had charge, caught fire and was destroyed. His commander, Diego Ordas, was so enraged that he sentenced him to death; but being appealed to by the soldiery with whom Martinez was a favourite, he commuted his punishment to this--that he should be set in a canoe alone, without any victual, only with his arms, and so turned loose on the great river. By the grace of G.o.d he floated down stream and was captured by certain Indians, who, never having seen a European before or anyone of that colour, carried him into a land to be wondered at, and so from town to town, until he came to the golden city of Manoa of which Inca was emperor. Now the emperor, when he beheld him, knew him to be a Christian, for not long since his brethren had been vanquished by the Spaniards in Peru; therefore he had him lodged in his palace and ordered that he should be respectfully entertained. There Martinez lived for seven months, and all that while was not allowed to wander beyond the city's walls lest he should discover the country's secrets, for he had been brought thither blindfold and had been fifteen days in the pa.s.sage. When, years later, he came to die, he confessed to a priest that he had entered Manoa at high noon and that then his captors had uncovered his eyes, and that he had travelled all that day till nightfall through its streets and all the next, from the rising to the setting of the sun, of so great extent was it, until he arrived at the palace. It was Martinez who had given to Manoa its name of El Dorado, because its roadways were paved with gold, and there was so great an abundance of that metal there that, before the emperor would carouse with his captains, all those who were to pledge him were stripped naked, and their bodies anointed with white balsam, over which through hollow canes was blown by slaves the dust of fine gold, so that when his guests sat down to drink with him, they glistened yellow in the sun like gilded statues.

"When Martinez had obtained his freedom and returned to Trinidad, and told his story, many other adventurers set out in quest of Manoa; but none so much as saw it save only Pedro de Urra. He, after incredible labours, at length arrived at a mountain peak whence, looking down, far away in the distance he could just descry the shining roofs of palaces and golden domes of Inca temples, wherein, he was told, were stored gold images of women and children more beautiful than G.o.d had yet wrought into flesh and blood. But his strength was spent and his troops were famished, also the Incas' armies were moving forward to check his advance; therefore he had to retreat, and to return to the seacoast, where he fretted away his life in dreaming of the splendours of which he had only just had sight. Fifty years later Berreo, governor of Trinidad, set out from Nuevo Reyno with seven hundred horse and slaves, and descended the Ca.s.sanar river, bound upon the same errand. What with fever and poisonous water he lost many of his men and cattle, so that, when he reached the Province of Amapaia, he had but one hundred and twenty soldiers left, and these were sick and dying; and so he also was forced to abandon his search. And this man Raleigh captured, and from him extorted his secrets, when he sailed to discover and conquer El Dorado for Queen Elizabeth, having in his company Jacob Whiddon, the English pirate, and George Gifford who was captain of the Lion's Whelp.

"All the way across the ocean they studied the records of the adventurers who had sought before them, till they had them all by memory; for they hoped to find those same wonders which Lopez says that Pizarro found in the first home of the Incas: 'A royal city where all the vessels of the emperor's house, table, and kitchen, were of gold and silver, and the meanest of silver and copper for strength and hardness of metal. He had in his wardrobe hollow statues of gold which seemed giants, and the figures in proportion and bigness of all the beasts, birds, trees, and herbs that earth produceth; and of all the fishes that the sea or waters of his kingdom breedeth. He had also ropes, budgets, chests, and troughs of gold and silver, heaps of billets of gold, that seemed wood marked out to burn. Finally, there was nothing in his country whereof he had not the counterfeit in gold.

Yea, and they say, that the Incas had a garden of pleasure in an island near Puna, where they went to recreate themselves when they would take the air of the sea, which had all kinds of garden-herbs, flowers, and trees of gold and silver, an invention and magnificence till then never seen. Besides all this, he had an infinite quant.i.ty of silver and gold unwrought in Cuzco.' The counterpart of all these marvels Raleigh hoped to find, when he had sailed up the Orinoco to its watershed.

"So, when he had gathered all the information which he could from Berreo, he departed and rowed up the river in the galego boat of the Lion's Whelp, till on the fourth day he dropped into the waters of the Great Amana. Up the Great Amana he travelled, always getting news of his city, always being told that it was farther inland. On the banks of this river grew diverse sorts of fruit good to eat, flowers and trees of such variety as were 'sufficient to make ten books of herbals.' And everywhere he saw mult.i.tudes of birds of all colours, some carnation, some crimson, some orange-tawny, purple, watchet, and of all other sorts, so that, as he himself has said, 'It was unto us a great good pa.s.sing of the time to behold them, besides the relief we found in killing some store of them; and still as we rowed, the deer came down feeding by the water's side, as if they had been used to the keeper's call.'

"Lured on by these delights, he journeyed farther inland until at last he came to the first great silver mine; but here the Orinoco and all the other rivers had risen from four to five feet in height, so that it was not possible by the strength of man or with any boat whatsoever to row into the river against the stream. However, before his return, one day as it drew towards sunset, he had sight of a crystal mountain, which was said to be studded with diamonds and precious stones, which shone afar off, the appearance of which was like to that of a white church tower of exceeding height. Over the summit rushed a mighty river, which touched no part of the mountainside, and fell with a great clamour as if a thousand bells were knocked together; so, though he did not find El Dorado, he was somewhat comforted by the marvel of this sight. Also, before he left he saw _El Madre del Oro_, the mother of gold, which proved that treasure lay not far underground."

So, hour after hour, and night after night, the old man had told his magic story of the search for El Dorado to the little boy. And sometimes he would vary it with other tales and legends of men who had gone upon quests equally wild; of Ponce de Leon, who had sought for the Bimini Isle, where arose a fountain whose waters could cause men to grow young again; of the Sieur D'Ottigny, who set sail for the Unknown in search of wealth, singing songs as if bound for a bridal feast; and of Va.s.seur, who first brought news of the distant Appalachian Mountains, whose slopes teem with precious metals and with gems beyond price. But always the narration would return to El Dorado on the sh.o.r.es of Parima. Then the little boy would ask, "But, Grandpa, is it true, or is it only a faery-tale? Was there ever such a city, and does it exist to-day?" Whereupon the old gentleman would grow very serious and would reply, "Certainly there is such a city, my dear; for when I was young I went in search of it, and your father is out there finding it to-day."

After which answer he would get out maps, and show the child the red lines, which were his own journeys, and the exact spot in the watershed of the Orinoco where he believed the city to stand. Then they would reason about it together, bending low beneath the lamp, tracing out the various routes of past explorers, until his mother came in and, seeing what they were so busy about, carried him off to bed. At an early age he discovered that his mother approved neither of the grand-father's stories, nor of her husband's absence. She was often at pains to tell him that there was no such city, that the stories were all fables, and that his grandpapa had wasted his fortune and talents in its search. But the boy believed in the fables, for he liked to think of his father as sailing up the Great Amana, where the deer feed along the banks, until at last he came to the golden city where the men are like gilded statues. He was sure that his papa would return rich one day, bringing with him an Inca princess for his son to marry.

But, when his father did return, he brought back with him only a fever-shattered body for his wife to nurse, and a plucky belief that he would succeed next time. Ah, but those were good days which he had spent by his father's bedside, when he had gazed on that fair-haired, soldierly man who had trodden in Raleigh's footsteps! He remembered how his father had laughed when he had asked in awe-struck tones whether he might be allowed to kiss his hands, and how he had said, "If I do not find, you will seek for it some day"--and then he had felt proud. How eagerly he had listened when the two explorers, father and son, had sat together and had talked over their various travels!

And how he could remember his father's account of his latest journey!

His mother had been out at the time when it was related; they never mentioned these matters in her presence because they pained her; moreover, if she was near by when they were talked about, she would contrive some excuse for s.n.a.t.c.hing the boy away. They had watched their opportunity, however, and his father had told him.

He had set out in a canvas sailing boat, and had ascended the Orinoco for twenty days. Every now and then he had come to rapids, where he had had to go ash.o.r.e to carry his boat, or to marshes, where he had had to wade. As he travelled farther from the mainland, his Indian guides had deserted him till there was none left, and he had had to go on alone. Day by day he had pa.s.sed by great rocks, on which there was writing engraved, which, perhaps, contained directions for travellers who, ages since, had been bound for that same city; but they were now of no use to him, because they were written in a forgotten language and in an alphabet which not even the Indians could understand. So he had gone on until at last he came to the crystal mountain, and the waterfall which Raleigh had described; and after that he had travelled further than even great Raleigh himself, or any other white man. It was at this point that the boy had gasped and asked to be allowed to kiss his father's hands.

Then his father had told him how beyond the mountain there had seemed to be nothing but tangled wood and swamp, and how he had caught fever and wandered on in delirium until, when he came to himself, he had found himself standing on the sh.o.r.es of what had once been a vast inland lake, but which had now become partially dry, through which it was only possible to wade. So he left his boat and waded on, sometimes shoulders high, for four days; for, though he was racked with pains, he would not give up because he believed the lake to be Parima. On the evening of the fourth day, when his strength was almost spent and he was ready to sink with faintness, he came to an island and saw in the distance, in the light of the setting sun, golden spires and the roofs of houses many miles away, which he knew to be El Dorado. But by this time he had only two days' provisions left and dared not venture further; so he, like Pedro de Urra, having come within sight of his desire, had been compelled to turn back. Of his return journey he said nothing; Granger learnt that from his mother in later years. It had been made in agonies of hunger and thirst, which had nearly robbed him of his life. Nevertheless, his father had told him that, so soon as he got well again, he was going back, and that he would reach El Dorado this time. True to his word, when his fever had left him, he had bade them all good-bye, making his son secretly promise that, if he should not come back, when he became a man, he would follow him in the quest.

Then had come the two years of anxious waiting in which they had had no news of him, and the final acceptance of the belief that he was dead. But his grandfather would not lose faith; he himself had once been missing for five years. He said that his son had reached the city, and was pushing homeward through the Andes on to the Pacific side. Night by night, in that back room with the bow-window, he had collected his records and studied them beneath the lamp. "He must be about here by now," he would say, pointing to a certain place. But the boy's mother had only smiled sadly, saying, "Is he not yet undeceived?" Then one evening they had left him in his chair, and had not heard him come up to bed, and in the morning had found him sitting stiff and silent in the sunshine, with the map of Guiana spread out before him and his finger on the spot where he had written EL DORADO, the magic word.

The child had never forgotten that sight, its impression had sunk deep into his nature; somehow it had become symbolic for him of loyalty to one's chosen purpose in life. As he had once asked permission to kiss his father's hands, so, when there was no one in the room to watch him, he had stolen up and smoothed his hands with reverence against the cushions of the chair where the old grey head had last rested--but he had never sat there. After the old man's death, all things in that room became objects for his veneration. It was just this capacity in the small boy for hero-worship which his mother never tried to understand; so he kept his secret, and thus began the breach which was presently to widen. From that day Granger had pledged himself, when he should become a man, to go in search of his father and to inherit his quest; and to such a nature as Granger's that childish pledge was binding. He could never be persuaded that his father was dead; he always spoke and thought of him as a soldierly fair-haired man, living in a desirable land hard by a garden, like to that of the isle near Puna, which had herbs and flowers and trees of gold and silver, one who was an honoured guest in the emperor's house where the meanest utensils were of silver and copper for strength. At first, when only he and his mother were left, he had spoken to her of these fancies; but she had shown herself more and more averse to their mention, so he had learnt to keep his longings to himself.

His mother was a practical woman, born of a race of lawyers and diplomatists. Hence she coveted above all things for her son, as she had done for his father before him, the certainties of life--social recognition and a banking-account; she had no sympathy with theories, however heroic, or with any kind of success which was not obvious and within hand-stretch. She was one of those safe people who always choose to-day's salary, if it be promptly paid, in preference to the more generous triumph of a to-morrow which may never come. She was wisely parsimonious in all things and, daring nothing herself, had no patience with natures which were more courageous. Much of her own money, and all of her husband's, had been spent by him in his fruitless explorations of Guiana. Now that he was gone, she discreetly invested what was left of her fortune, and deprived herself of all luxuries, so that when the time should come, her boy should have his chance in life unembarra.s.sed by his father's previous reckless expenditures. She was proud of her son, for he was handsome; but she never realised that half a day of spoken love and sympathy can purchase more friendship than twenty years of benefits punctually and dutifully conferred--still less did she recognise the necessity for a mother consciously to cultivate a friendship with her boy. Not that she was ungentle; she craved his affection, but she made the mistake of demanding it as her right--all of which is the same as saying that she was mentally insensitive, and was unaware that with thoughtful people the road to the heart must first lead through the mind; of people's minds she was incurious. She gave her son the kind of education which befits men to inherit rather than to earn. His wishes were never consulted; nor even when he went to university was he given any choice. Like a dumb brute beast he was goaded forward without knowledge of his destination, and was expected to be grateful to the hand which kept him moving, and prevented him from turning aside.

He permitted this well-intentioned despotism not through any lack of spirit, but partly because it was well-intentioned, and mostly because his immediate present seemed of little consequence to him. He felt himself to be an embryo prophet who awaited his hour; when that should strike, he would concentrate. Not until he was twenty-two years of age did he expostulate, and by that time it was too late; his training had made him dependent upon money for success. His mother had the money, and she selected the Bar as a suitable profession for him; then it was that he broke his twelve years' silence, and scandalised her with the information that his great ambition was to follow in his father's footsteps, and to find both him and El Dorado, fulfilling the promise which he had given as a child. Startled by this unexpected confession, she had charged him with disloyalty and ingrat.i.tude to herself; to avoid complications and a breach which he foresaw would become irreparable, he had accepted her choice and studied for a barrister.

This utterance of his secret, however, had only served to make him aware of the intensity of his own desire. He could not work, he could not rest, he could not apply his mind; always he saw before him the tropic river with its mult.i.tude of carnation, crimson, and orange-tawny birds, its low green banks where the deer come down to graze, and far ahead and visionary the swampy lake, built on whose sh.o.r.e the golden city raises up its head. So books, and law, and London became for him the custodians of his captivity--things to be hated and despised.

In the three years which followed he had made one friend, a mining engineer, by name Druce Spurling. In him he had confided, and Spurling had responded with a sympathy which did him credit, kindling to the romance of the story. He had tested with his expert knowledge the evidence which Granger had laid before him for the belief that such a city as El Dorado had existed, and he had been satisfied--or, at any rate, had been made certain that in the watershed of the Orinoco gold was yet to be found in great quant.i.ties, as in the Spaniard's time. He had promised that, so soon as he had the capital, he would help him in his quest. Granger coveted the journey for its adventure, and the opportunity of fulfilling his promise to his father; Spurling only for its possibilities of attaining wealth. In their community of ambition this difference of purpose was lost to sight. Then, when Granger was twenty-five and had just completed his course of reading for the Bar, his great chance came. It was the year of the Klondike gold-rush and Spurling was going out; he wanted a partner, and offered to take Granger with him if he, in return, would promise to give him one third of all the gold he mined. Their idea was that, with the money thus earned, they would be able to provide funds for the following up of their dream of El Dorado. Granger accepted the offer at once, partly influenced by his desire to prove to his mother that he _could_ do something by himself. After a painful farewell, he had departed to seek his fortune in the North World.

Ah, how his mother had cried when he went away! He recalled all that to-day, now that he was in Keewatin, and gazed back incredulously upon that mistaken former self, wondering whether he could have been really like that. London, indeed! What would he not give to be in London to-day; to stand in Fleet Street, listening to the roar of the pa.s.sing traffic and brushing shoulders with living, companionable men? Ah well, what good purpose would it serve to think about it! He had chosen his own fate. Here he was at Murder Point, and he would soon be married to Peggy, after which, no matter what avalanche of good luck befell him, there would be no return. What would his proud old mother say to a little half-breed grandchild? The mere thought made him smile. In cynical self-derision, he pictured himself accompanied by his Indian tribe, knocking at the door of the old red house on Clapton Common--and his reception there. He gave a name to his picture, and it was "_The Return of the Ne'er-do-well_."

His brain was getting cloudy; he could not tell whether he was asleep or awake. He felt as if he had been bound hand and foot so that he could not stir, and had been raised aloft to a dizzy height. He knew that he was far above the earth, for he was very cold and was conscious of mists which drifted across his face and left it damp.

Suddenly he discovered that he could open his eyes. Looking down, he saw with supernatural distinctness the entire course of the frozen river-bed. Far to the north he could descry Spurling, plodding desperately on across the thawing ice. A few miles to the west, perhaps an hour's journey from Murder Point, he could see a second figure, tall, soldierly, erect, which approached with swift clean strides, through the solitude, inevitably as Fate--the symbol of Justice in pursuit of Crime. He watched with fascination how the distance between the hunter and the hunted narrowed; only one thing could save the criminal from capture--the intervention of Murder Point.

And then the cloud rolled back again; he closed his eyes, and lost consciousness in untroubled forgetfulness.

CHAPTER VI

THE PURSUER ARRIVES

He was awakened by a man bending over him and holding a lighted match to his face. Careless as usual of preserving his life, he did not attempt to rise or defend himself, but simply gazed back indifferent and a little bewildered. He did not recognise the man; he was an utter stranger. As if wearied with an inspection which did not interest him, he turned his eyes away, and found that the room had become dark. How many hours he had slept, he could not calculate; perhaps nine or ten.

He wondered what had made the night return so quickly. He looked toward the window, and saw that it was blinded with snow; and, as he listened, could hear the roaring of the wind, and, in the lull which followed, the rustling and settling down of the flakes. Then the match went out, and neither of them could perceive the other's face. Granger arose and pushed back the shutter of the stove, that so they might get a little light. "I needn't ask you to make yourself at home," he said; "you've done that already."

The stranger did not reply, but surveyed him closely all the while.

"You must have had good company out there to be so silent now that you have arrived."

Then the man spoke. "What's your name?" he asked abruptly. "Is it Granger?"

"I was always told so, and have as yet found no good reason for believing otherwise."

"Then this is the store of Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, to which I was directed by Robert Pilgrim of G.o.d's Voice?"

"That is right, but I don't often have the pleasure of entertaining guests from G.o.d's Voice."

The stranger paused in doubt, as though choosing the best words to say; then he blurted out, "But you're a gentleman?"

"I hope so."

"An Oxford man?"