The Prospector Part 50

In another week two other letters came, each profoundly affecting Shock and his life. One was from Helen, giving a full account of his mother's illness and death, telling how beautifully the Superintendent had taken part in the funeral service, and preserving for her son those last precious messages of love and grat.i.tude, of faith and hope, which become the immortal treasures of the bereaved heart. As he read Helen's letter Shock caught a glimpse of the glory of that departing. Heaven came about him, and the eternal things, that by reason of the nearness of the material world too often become shadowy, took on a reality that never quite left him. Where his mother was henceforth real things must be.

The letter closed with a few precious sentences of love and sympathy from Helen, but in these Shock, reading with his heart in his eyes, and longing for more than he could rightly find in them, thought he could detect a kind of reserve, a reserve which he could not interpret, and he laid down the letter with painful uncertainty. Was her love more than she cared to tell, or was it less than she knew he would desire?

From Helen's letter Shock turned to Mrs. Fairbanks' and read:

My Dear Mr. Macgregor:

We all deeply sympathise with you in your great loss, as I know you will with us in our grief. We can hardly speak of it yet. It is so new and so terribly sudden that we have not been able fully to realise it.

My great comfort in this terrible sorrow is my daughter Helen. Mr.

Lloyd, too, has proved himself a true friend. Indeed, I do not know what we should have done without him. We are more and more coming to lean upon him. You will not have heard yet that we have been so greatly attracted by Mr. Lloyd's preaching, and influenced by our regard for him personally, that we have taken sittings in the Park Church.

Helen, I am glad to say, is beginning to take an interest in the church and its work, and as time goes on I think her interest will grow. I should be glad indeed that it should be so, for our relations with Mr.

Lloyd are very close; and, in fact, I may tell you what is yet a secret, that he has intimated to me his desire to make Helen his wife.

Helen is very favourably disposed to him, and all our circle of friends would rejoice in this as an ideal marriage. Mr. Lloyd belongs to her own set in society, is a gentleman of culture and high character, and in every way suitable. As for myself, in my loneliness I could not endure the thought of losing my only daughter, at all, and her marriage would be a great blow to me were it not that her home is to be so close at hand.

There is one thing, however, about which Helen is sensitive. She cannot rid herself of a feeling that she is in a manner bound to you on account of her foolish and impetuous words, uttered under the excitement of your departure; but I am sure you would never think of holding her because of those words, uttered in a moment of great feeling, and I also feel sure that you would not in any way interfere with her happiness, or do anything that would hinder the consummation of a marriage so eminently suitable in every way.

We hear of you and of your work occasionally. It must be a terrible country, and a very depressing life. The loneliness and isolation must be well-nigh overwhelming. I am sure you have all our sympathy. I suppose work of this kind must be done, and it is a good thing that there are men of such rugged strength and such courage as you have, who seem to be fitted for this kind of work.

Now, my dear Mr. Macgregor, in your answer I think that a few words of a.s.surance to Helen on the points I have suggested would be greatly appreciated, and would do much to remove difficulties that now stand in the way of her happiness and mine.

Yours very sincerely,

E. Fairbanks.

It was then that Shock drank to the dregs his full cup of bitter sorrow. The contrasts suggested by Mrs. Fairbanks' letter stood out vividly before him. He thought of Helen's beautiful home, where she was surrounded with all the luxuries of a cultured life; he thought of her circle of friends, of the life work to which, as Lloyd's wife, she would be permitted to take up; he thought, too, of her mother's claim upon her. And then he looked about upon his bare room, with its log walls, its utter absence of everything that suggested refinement; he thought of the terrible isolation that in these days had become so depressing even to himself; he thought of all the long hours of weary yearning for the sight and touch of all that he held dear, and for the sake of the girl to whom he had given his heart's love in all its unsullied purity and in all its virgin freshness he made his decision.

He took up his cross, and though his heart bled he pressed his lips upon it.

His letter to Mrs. Fairbanks was brief and clear.

"I thank you for your sympathy," he wrote, "and I grieve with you in your great sorrow."

"In regard to what you write concerning Miss Helen, you have made yourself perfectly clear, and I wish to repeat now what I said on the morning of my leaving home: that Miss Helen is to consider herself in no sense bound to me. She is perfectly free, as free as if she had not spoken. I fully realise the possibility of mistaking one's feelings under the stress of such emotional excitement. The sphere of work opening out before her is one in every way suited to her, and one in which she will find full scope for her splendid powers of heart and mind, and I shall be glad to know that her happiness is a.s.sured. At the same time, truth demands that I should say that my feelings toward her have not changed, nor will they ever change; and, while I cannot ask her to share a life such as mine, I shall never cease to love her."

In Shock's preaching, and in his visitation of his people, a new spirit made itself felt. There was no less energy, but there was an added sweetness, and a deeper sympathy. He had entered upon the way of the Cross, and the bruising of his heart distilled all its tenderness in word and deed. Isis preaching was marked by a new power, a new intensity; and when, after the evening service, they gathered about the organ to spend an hour in singing their favourite hymns, than most of all they were conscious of the change in him. The closer they drew toward him the more tender did they find his heart to be.

The loneliness of the days that followed was to Shock unspeakable.

There was no one to whom he could unburden himself. His face began to show the marks of the suffering within. Instead of the ruddy, full, round, almost boyish appearance, it became thin and hard, and cut with deep lines.

The doctor, who now made his home in Loon Lake, became anxious about his friend, but he was too experienced and too skilled a physician to be deceived as to the cause of Shock's changed appearance.

"It is not sickness of the body," he remarked to Ike, who was talking it over with him, "but of the mind, and that, my friend, is the most difficult to treat."

"Well," said Ike, "when I hear him speak in meetin', and see him git on one of them smiles of his, I come purty nigh makin' a fool of myself. I guess I'll have to quit goin' to church."

"No, I do not think you will quit, Ike, my boy," said the doctor. "You have become thoroughly well inoculated. You could not, if you tried."

"Well, I surmise it would be difficult, but I wish somethin' would happen."

XVIII

THE DON'S RECOVERY

Ike had his wish; for, when one day his business took him to the Fort, the stage brought a stranger asking the way to Mr. Macgregor's house, and immediately Ike undertook to convoy him thither. It was The Don.

Shock's shout of welcome did Ike good, but the meeting between the two men no one saw. After the first warm greeting Shock began to be aware of a great change in his friend. He was as a man whose heart has been chilled to the core, cold, hard, irresponsive. Toward Shock himself The Don was unchanged in affection and admiration, but toward all the world he was a different man from the one Shock had known in college days.

In Shock's work he was mildly interested, but toward all that stood for religion he cherished a feeling of bitterness amounting to hatred.

True, out of respect he attended Shock's services, but he remained unmoved through all; so that, after the first joy in his friend's companionship, the change in him brought Shock a feeling of pain, and he longed to help him.

"We will have to get him to work," he said to the doctor, to whom he had confided The Don's history in part, not omitting the great grief that had fallen upon him.

"A wise suggestion," replied the doctor, who had been attracted by his young brother in the profession, "a wise suggestion. This country, however, is painfully free from all endemic or epidemic diseases."

"Well, doctor, you know we ought to get that hospital going in the Pa.s.s. Let us talk it over with him."

At the first opportunity Shock set forth his plans for the physical and moral redemption of the lumbermen and miners of the Pa.s.s.

"I have seen the most ghastly cuts and bruises on the chaps in the lumber camps," he said, "and the miners are always blowing themselves up, and getting all sorts of chest troubles, not to speak of mountain fever, rheumatism, and the like. There is absolutely no place for them to go. Hickey's saloon is vile, noisy, and full of bugs. Ugh! I'll never forget the night I put in there. I can feel them yet. And besides, Hickey has a gang about him that make it unsafe for any man to go there in health, much less in sickness. Why, the stories they tell are perfectly awful. A fellow goes in with his month's pay. In one night his fifty or sixty dollars are gone, no one knows how. The poor chap is drunk, and he cannot tell. When a prospector comes down from the hills and sells a prospect for a good figure, from a hundred to five hundred dollars, and sometimes more, these fellows get about him and roll him. In two weeks he is kicked out, half dead. Oh, Hickey is a villain, and he is in league with the red-light houses, too. They work together, to the physical and moral d.a.m.nation of the place. We want a clean stopping-place, a club-room, and above everything else a hospital. Why, when the miners and lumbermen happen to get off the same night the blood flows, and there is abundant practice for any surgeon for a week or so."

"Sounds exciting," said The Don, mildly interested. "Why don't you go up, doctor?"

"It is not the kind of practice I desire. My tastes are for a gentler mode of life. The dangers of the Pa.s.s are too exciting for me. They are a quaint people," the doctor continued, "primitive in their ideas and customs, pre-historic, indeed, in their practice of our n.o.ble art. I remember an experience of mine, some years ago now, which made a vivid impression upon me at the time, and indeed, I could not rid myself of the effects for many days, for many days."

"What was that, doctor?" enquired Shock, scenting a story.

"Well, it is a very interesting tale, a very interesting tale. Chiefly so as an ill.u.s.tration of how, in circ.u.mstances devoid of the amenities of civilised life, the human species tends toward barbarism. A clear case of reversion to type. There was a half-breed family living in the Pa.s.s, by the name of Goulais, and with the family lived Goulais'

brother, by name Antoine, or, if you spelled it as they p.r.o.nounced it, it would be 'Ontwine.' The married one's name was Pierre. Antoine was a lumberman, and in the pursuit of his avocation he caught a severe cold, which induced a violent inflammation of the bowels, causing very considerable distension and a great deal of pain. Being in the neighbourhood attending some cases of fever, I was induced by some friends of the Goulais to call and see the sick man."

"The moment I opened the door I was met by a most pungent odour, a most pungent odour. Indeed, though I have experienced most of the smells that come to one in the practice of our profession, this odour had a pungency and a nauseating character all its own. Looking into the room I was startled to observe the place swimming with blood, literally swimming with blood. Blood on the floor, blood upon the bed, and dripping from it."

"'What does this mean? Is someone being murdered? Whence this blood?'"

"'Non! non!" exclaimed Mrs. Goulais. "There is no one keel. It is one cat blood.'"

"Approaching the bed to obtain a nearer view of the patient, I discovered the cause. Turning down the bed quilt to make an examination, you may imagine my surprise and horror to observe a ghastly and b.l.o.o.d.y object lying across the abdomen of the sick man. A nearer examination revealed this to be an immense cat which had been ripped up from chin to tail, and laid warm and bleeding, with all its appurtenances, upon the unhappy patient. All through the day the brother, Pierre; had been kept busily engaged in hunting up animals of various kinds, which were to be excised in this manner and applied as poultice."

"In uncivilised communities the animal whose healing virtues are supposed to be most potent is the cat, and the cure is most certainly a.s.sured if the cat be absolutely black, without a single white hair. In this community, however, deprived of many of the domestic felicities, the absence of cats made it necessary for poor Pierre to employ any animal on which he could lay his hands; so, throughout the day, birds and beasts, varied in size and character, were offered upon this altar.

The cat which I discovered, however, was evidently that upon which their hopes most firmly rested; for, upon the failure of other animals, recourse would be had to the cat, which had been kept in reserve. The state of preservation suggested this."

"A very slight examination of the patient showed me that there was practically no hope of his recovery, and that it would be almost useless in me to attempt to change the treatment, and all the more that I should have to overcome not only the prejudices of the patient and of his sister-in-law, but also of his very able-bodied brother, whose devotion to his own peculiar method of treatment amounted to fanaticism. However, I determined to make an attempt. I prepared hot fomentations, removed the cat, and made my first application. But no sooner had I begun my treatment than I heard Pierre returning with a freshly slaughtered animal in his hand. The most lively hope, indeed, triumph, was manifest in his excited bearing. He bore by the tail an animal the character of which none of us were in doubt from the moment Pierre appeared in sight. It was the mephitis mephitica, that mephitine musteloid carnivore with which none of us desire a close acquaintance, which announces its presence without difficulty at a very considerable distance; in short, the animal vulgarly known as the skunk."

"'Voila!' exclaimed Pierre, holding the animal up for our admiration.

'Dis feex him queek."