The Honor of the Big Snows Part 2

As the earth fell, there came from the edge of the forest the low, sweet music of Jan Th.o.r.eau's violin. No man in all the world could have told what he played, for it was the music of Jan's soul, wild and whispering of the winds, sweetened by some strange inheritance that had come to him with the picture which he carried in his throbbing heart.

He played until only the tall spruce and John c.u.mmins stood over the lone grave. When he stopped, the man turned to him, and they went together to the little cabin where the woman had lived.

There was something new in the cabin now--a tiny, white, breathing thing over which an Indian woman watched. The boy stood beside John c.u.mmins, looking down upon it, and trembling.

"Ah," he whispered, his great eyes glowing. "It ees the LEETLE white angel!"

"It is the little Melisse," replied the man.

He dropped upon his knees, with his sad face close to the new life that was to take the place of the one that had just gone out. Jan felt something tugging in a strange way at his heart, and he, too, fell upon his knees beside John c.u.mmins in this first worship of the child.

From this hour of their first kneeling before the little life in the cabin, something sprang up between Jan Th.o.r.eau and John c.u.mmins which it would have been hard for man to break. Looking up after many moments' contemplation of the little Melisse, Jan gazed straight into c.u.mmins' face, and whispered softly the word which in Cree means "father." This was Jan's first word for Melisse.

When he looked back, the baby was wriggling and kicking as he had seen tiny wolf-whelps wriggle and kick before their eyes were open. His beautiful eyes laughed. As cautiously as if he were playing with hot iron, he reached out a thin hand, and when one of his fingers suddenly fell upon something very soft and warm, he jerked it back as quickly as if he had been burned.

That night, when Jan picked up his violin to go back to Mukee's cabin, c.u.mmins put his two big hands on the boy's shoulders and said:

"Jan, who are you, and where did you come from?"

Jan stretched his arm vaguely to the north.

"Jan Th.o.r.eau," he replied simply. "Thees is my violon. We come alone through the beeg snow."

c.u.mmins stared as if he saw a wonderful picture in the boy's eyes. He dropped his hands, and walked to the door. When they stood alone outside, he pointed up to the stars, and to the mist-like veil of silver light that the awakening aurora was spreading over the northern skies.

"Get your bearings, and tell me again where you came from, Jan!"

Unhesitatingly the boy pointed into the north.

"We starve seven day in the beeg snow. My violon keep the wolf off at night."

"Look again, Jan! Didn't you come from there, or there, or there?"

c.u.mmins turned slowly, facing first to the east and Hudson's Bay, then to the south, and lastly to the west. There was something more than curiosity in the tense face that came back in staring inquiry to Jan Th.o.r.eau.

The boy hunched his shoulders, and his eyes flashed.

"It ees not lie that Jan Th.o.r.eau and hees violon come through the beeg snow," he replied softly. "It ees not lie!"

There was more than gentleness in John c.u.mmins' touch now. Jan could not understand it, but he yielded to it, and went back into the cabin.

There was more than friendship in c.u.mmins' eyes when he placed his hands again upon the boy's shoulders, and Jan could not understand that.

"There is plenty of room here--now," said c.u.mmins huskily. "Will you stay with the little Melisse and me?"

"With the leetle Melisse!" gasped the boy. Softly he sped to the tiny cot and knelt beside it, his thin shoulders hunched over, his long black hair shining l.u.s.trously in the lamp-glow, his breath coming in quick, sobbing happiness. "I--I--stay with the leetle white angel for ever and ever!" he whispered, his words meant only for the unhearing ears of the child. "Jan Th.o.r.eau will stay, yes--and hees violon! I give it to you--and ze museek!"

He laid his precious violin across the foot of the cot.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM

In the days that followed, there came other things which Jan could not understand, and which he made no great effort to understand. He talked little, even to c.u.mmins. He listened, and his eyes would answer, or he would reply with strange, eery little hunches of his shoulders, which ruffled up his hair. To the few simple souls at the post, he brought with him more than his starved body from out of the unknown wilderness.

This was the chief cause of those things which he could not understand.

No man learned more of him than had c.u.mmins. Even to Mukee, his history was equally simple and short. Always he said that he came from out of the north--which meant the Barren Lands; and the Barren Lands meant death. No man had ever come across them as Jan had come; and at another time, and under other circ.u.mstances, c.u.mmins and his people would have believed him mad.

But others had listened to that strange, sweet music that came to them from out of the forest on the night when the woman died, and they, like c.u.mmins, had been stirred by thrilling thoughts. They knew little of G.o.d, as G.o.d is preached; but they knew a great deal about Him in other ways. They knew that Jan Th.o.r.eau had come like a messenger from the angels, that the woman's soul had gone out to meet him, and that she had died sweetly on John c.u.mmins' breast while he played. So the boy, with his thin, sensitive face and his great, beautiful eyes, became a part of what the woman had left behind for them to love. As a part of her they accepted him, without further questioning as to who he was or whence he came.

In a way, he made up for her loss. The woman had brought something new and sweet into their barren lives, and he brought something new and sweet--the music of his violin. He played for them in the evening, in the factor's office; and at these times they knew that c.u.mmins' wife was very near to them and that she was speaking to them through the things which Jan Th.o.r.eau played.

Music had long pa.s.sed out of their lives. Into some, indeed, it had never come. Years ago, Williams had been at a post where there was an accordion. c.u.mmins had heard music when he went down to civilization for his wife, more than two years ago. To the others it was mystery which stirred them to the depths of their souls, and which revealed to them many things that had long been hidden in the dust of the past.

These were hours of triumph for Jan in the factor's office. Perched on a box, with his back to the wall, his head thrown back, his black eyes shining, his long hair giving to his face a half savage beauty, he was more than king to the grim-visaged men about him. They listened, movelessly, soundlessly; and when he stopped there was still neither move nor sound until he had wrapped his violin in its bear-skin and had returned to John c.u.mmins and the little Melisse. Jan understood the silence, and took it for what it meant.

But it was the audience in the little cabin that Jan liked best, and, most of all, he loved to have the little Melisse alone. As the days of early spring trapping approached, and the wilderness for a hundred miles around the post was crisscrossed with the trails of the Cree and Chippewayan fur-seekers, c.u.mmins was absent for days at a time, strengthening the company's friendships, and bargaining for the catch that would be coming to market about eight weeks later.

This was a year of intense rivalry, for the Revillons, French compet.i.tors of the company, had established a post two hundred miles to the west, and rumor spread that they were to give sixty pounds of flour to the company's forty, and four feet of cloth to the yard. This meant action among Williams and his people, and the factor himself plunged into the wilderness. Mukee, the half-Cree, went among his scattered tribesmen along the edge of the barrens, stirring them by the eloquence of new promises and by fierce condemnation of the interlopers to the west. Old Per-ee, with a strain of Eskimo in him, went boldly behind his dogs to meet the little black people from farther north, who came down after foxes and half-starved polar bears that had been carried beyond their own world on the ice-floes of the preceding spring. Young Williams, the factor's son, followed after c.u.mmins, and the rest of the company's men went into the south and east.

The exodus left desolate lifelessness at the post. The windows of the fireless cabins were thick with clinging frost. There was no movement in the factor's office. The dogs were gone, and wolves and lynx sniffed closer each night. In the oppression of this desertion, the few Indian and half-breed children kept indoors, and Williams' Chippewayan wife, fat and lazy, left the company's store securely locked.

In this silence and lifelessness Jan Th.o.r.eau felt a new and ever-increasing happiness. To him the sound of life was a thing vibrant with harshness; quiet--the dead, pulseless quiet of lifelessness--was beautiful. He dreamed in it, and it was then that his fingers discovered new things in his violin.

He often sent Maballa, the Indian woman who cared for Melisse, to gossip with Williams' wife, so that he was alone a great deal with the baby. At these times, when the door was safely barred against the outside world, it was a different Jan Th.o.r.eau who crouched upon his knees beside the cot. His face was aflame with a great, absorbing pa.s.sion which at other times he concealed. His beautiful eyes glowed with hidden fires, and he whispered soothing, singsong things to the child, and played softly upon his violin, leaning his black head far down so that the baby Melisse could clutch her appreciative fingers in his hair.

"Ah, ze sweet leetle white angel!" he would cry, as she tugged and kicked. "I luf you so--I luf you, an' will stay always, ah' play ze violon! Ah, mon Dieu, you will be ze gr-r-r-eat bea-utiful white angel lak--HER!"

He would laugh and coo like a mother, and talk, for at these times Jan Th.o.r.eau's tongue was as voluble as his violin.

Sometimes Melisse listened as if she understood the wonderful things he was telling her. She would lie upon her back with her eyes fixed upon him, her little red fists doubled over his bow, or a thumb thrust into her mouth. And the longer she lay like this, gazing at him blankly, the more convinced Jan became that she was understanding him; and his voice grew soft and low, and his eyes shone with a soft mist as he told her those things which John c.u.mmins would have given much to know.

"Some day you shall understand why it happened, sweet Melisse," he whispered, bringing his eyes so near that she reached up an inquiring finger to them. "Then you will luf Jan Th.o.r.eau!"

There were other times when Jan did not talk, but when the baby Melisse talked to him; and these were moments of even greater joy. With the baby wriggling and kicking, and making queer noises in her tiny cot, he would sit silently upon his heels, watching her with the pride and happiness of a mother lynx in the first tumbling frolics of her kittens.

Once, when Melisse straightened herself for an instant, and half reached up her tiny arms to him, laughing and cooing into his face, he gave a glad cry, crushed his face down to hers, and did what he had not dared to do before--kissed her. There was something about it that frightened the little Melisse, and she set up a wailing that sent Jan, in a panic of dismay, for Maballa. It was a long time before he ventured to kiss her again.

It was during this fortnight of desolation at the post that Jan discovered the big problem for himself and John c.u.mmins. In the last days of the second week, he spent much of his time skirting the edge of the barrens in search of caribou, that there might be meat in plenty when the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the meat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slender body doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sight greeted him in the little clearing at the post.

Upon her knees in front of their cabin was Maballa, industriously rolling the half-naked little Melisse about in a soft pile of snow, and doing her work, as she firmly believed, in a most faithful and thorough manner. With a shriek, Jan threw off his pack and darted toward her like a wild thing.

"Sacre bleu--you keel--keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize--ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin, flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewildered Maballa.

Jan left the rest of his musk-ox to the wolves and foxes. He went out into the snow, and found half a dozen other snow-wallows in which the helpless Melisse had taken her chilling baths. He watched Maballa with a new growing terror, and fifty times a day he said to her: