What Necessity Knows Part 7

How awfully silent it was! There was no breath in the chill, still air; there was no sound of life in all the dark, close brushwood; the oxen slept; and Saul, appalled by the silence that had come with his silence, appalled to realise more vividly than ever that he, and he alone, had been the instigator of voice in all that region, was cowed into thinking that, if the dead could rise from the grave for purposes of revenge, how much more easily could he rise now from so crude a coffin as he himself had helped to construct for him!

It was in this absolute silence that he heard a sound. He heard the dead man turn in his coffin! He heard, and did not doubt his hearing; it was not a thing that he could easily be deceived about as he sat with his elbow on the coffin. He sat there not one instant longer; the next moment he was twenty feet away, standing half-hidden in the edge of the brushwood, staring at the cart and the coffin, ready to plunge into the icy swamp and hide farther among the young trees if occasion required.

Occasion did not require. The oxen dozed on; the cart, the barrel, and the coffin stood just as he had left them.

Perhaps for five minutes the frightened man was still. Gradually his muscles relaxed, and he ceased to stand with limbs and features all drawn in horror away from the coffin. He next pulled back his foot from the icy marsh; but even then, having regained his equilibrium on the road, he had not decided what to do, and it took him some time longer to turn over the situation in his mind. He had heard the dead man move; he was terribly frightened; still, it might have been a mistake, and, any way, the most disagreeable course, clearly, was to remain there till nightfall. He had run backward in his first alarm; so, to get to the nearest habitation, it would be necessary to pa.s.s the cart on the road, even if he left it there. Had any further manifestation of vitality appeared on the part of the corpse he would have felt justified in running back into the forest, but this was an extreme measure. He did not wish to go near the cart, but to turn his back upon it seemed almost as fearsome. He stood facing it, as a man faces a fierce dog, knowing that if he turns and runs the dog will pursue. He supposed that as long as he stared at the coffin and saw nothing he could be sure that the deceased remained inside, but that if he gave the ghost opportunity to get out on the sly it might afterwards come at him from any point of the compa.s.s. He was an ignorant man, with a vulgar mind; he had some reverence for a corpse, but none whatever for a ghost. His mind had undergone a change concerning the dead the moment he had heard him move, and he looked upon his charge now as equally despicable and gruesome.

After some further delay he discovered that the course least disagreeable would be to drive the oxen with his voice and walk as far behind the cart as he now was, keeping the pine box with four nails on its lid well in view. Accordingly, making a great effort to encourage himself to break the silence, he raised his shout in the accustomed command to the oxen, and after it had been repeated once or twice, they strained at the cart and set themselves to the road again. They did not go as fast as when the goad was within reach of their flanks; or rather; they went more slowly than then, for "fast" was not a word that could have been applied to their progress before. Yet they went on the whole steadily, and the "Gee" and "Haw" of the gruff voice behind guided them straight as surely as bit and rein.

At length it could be seen in the distance that the road turned; and round this turning another human figure came in sight. Perhaps in all his life Saul never experienced greater pleasure in meeting another man than he did now, yet his exterior remained gruff and unperturbed. The only notice that he appeared to take of his fellow-man was to adjust his pace so that, as the other came nearer the cart in front, Saul caught up with it in the rear. At last they met close behind it, and then, as nature prompted, they both stopped.

The last comer upon the desolate scene was a large, hulking boy. He had been plodding heavily with a sack upon his back. As he stopped, he set this upon the ground and wiped his brow.

The boy was French; but Saul, as a native of the province, talked French about as well as he did English--that is to say, very badly. He could not have written a word of either.--The conversation went on in the _patois_ of the district.

"What is in the box?" asked the boy, observing that the carter's eyes rested uneasily upon it.

"Old Cameron died at our place the day before yesterday," answered Saul, not with desire to evade, but because it did not seem necessary to answer more directly.

"What of?" The boy looked at the box with more interest now.

"He died of a fall"--briefly.

The questioner looked at the pinewood box now with considerable solicitude. "Did his feet swell?" he asked. As Saul did not immediately a.s.sent, he added--"When the old M. Didier died, his feet swelled."

"What do you think of the coffin?" Saul said this eyeing it as if he were critically considering it as a piece of workmanship.

"M. Didier made a much better one for his little child," replied the boy.

"If he did, neither Mr. Bates nor me is handy at this sort of work. We haven't been used to it. It's a rough thing. Touch it. You will see it's badly made."

He gained his object. The boy fingered the coffin, and although he did not praise the handiwork, it seemed to Saul that some horrid spell was broken when human hands had again touched the box and no evil had resulted.

"Why didn't you bury him at home?" asked the boy. "He was English."

"Mr. Bates has strict ideas, though he is English. He wanted it done proper, in a graveyard, by a minister. He has wrote to the minister at St. Hennon's and sent money for the burying--Mr. Bates, he is always particular."

"You are not going to St. Hennon's?" said the boy incredulously. "I'll stay to-night at Turrifs, and go on in the morning. It's four days' walk for me and the cattle to go and come, but I shall take back a man to cut the trees."

"Why not send him by the new railroad?"

"It does not stop at Turrifs."

"Yes; they stop at the cross-roads now, not more than three miles from Turrifs, There's a new station, and an Englishman set to keep it. I've just brought this sack of flour from there. M. Didier had it come by the cars."

"When do they pa.s.s to St. Hennon's?" asked Saul meditatively,--"But anyway, the Englishman wouldn't like to take in a coffin."

"They pa.s.s some time in the night; and he must take it in if you write on it where it's going. It's not his business to say what the cars will take, if you pay."

"Well," said Saul. "Good-day. Yo-hoist! Yo, yo, ho-hoist!"

It did not seem to him necessary to state whether he was, or was not, going to take the advice offered. The straining and creaking of the cart, his shouts to the oxen, would have obliterated any further query the boy might have made. He had fairly moved off when the boy also took up his burden and trudged on the other way.

CHAPTER VIII.

When the blueberry bushes are dry, all the life in them, sucked into their roots against another summer, the tops turn a rich, brownish red; at this time, also, wild bramble thickets have many a crimson stalk that gives colour to their ma.s.s, and the twigs that rise above the white trunks of birch trees are not grey, but brown.

Round the new railway station at the cross-roads near Turrifs Settlement, the low-lying land, for miles and miles, was covered with, blueberry bushes; bramble thickets were here and there; and where the land rose a little, in irregular places, young birch woods stood. If the snow had sprinkled here, as it had upon the hills the night before, there was no sign of it now. The warm colour of the land seemed to glow against the dulness of the afternoon, not with the sparkle and brightness which colour has in sunshine, but with the glow of a sleeping ember among its ashes. Round the west there was metallic blue colouring upon the cloud vault. This colouring was not like a light upon the cloud, it was like a shadow upon it; yet it was not grey, but blue.

Where the long straight road from Turrifs and the long straight road from the hills crossed each other, and were crossed by the unprotected railway track with its endless rows of tree-trunks serving as telegraph poles, the new station stood.

It was merely a small barn, newly built of pinewood, divided into two rooms--one serving as a store-room for goods, the other as waiting-room, ticket office, and living-room of the station-master. The station-master, who was, in fact, master, clerk, and porter in one, was as new to his surroundings as the little fresh-smelling pinewood house.

He was a young Englishman, and at the first glance it could be seen he had not long been living in his present place. He had, indeed, not yet given up shaving himself, and his clothes, although rough, warm, and suited to his occupation, still suggested, not homespun, but an outfit bought of a tailor.

It was about four o'clock on that November afternoon when the new official of the new station looked out at the dark red land and the bright-tinted cloud. It was intensely cold. The ruts of the roads, which were not made of logs here, were frozen stiff. The young man stood a minute at his door with his hands in his pockets, sniffed the frost, and turned in with an air of distaste. A letter that had been brought him by the morning train lay on his table, addressed to "Alec Trenholme, Esq."

It had seen vicissitudes, and been to several addresses in different cities, before it had been finally readdressed to this new station.

Perhaps its owner had not found the path to fortune which he sought in the New World as easily accessible as he had expected. Whether he had now found it or not, he set himself to that which he had found in manly fashion.

Coming in from the cold without, and shutting himself in, as he supposed, for the evening, he wisely determined to alleviate the peculiar feeling of cold and desolation which the weather was fitted to induce by having an early tea. He set his pan upon a somewhat rusty stove and put generous slices of ham therein to fry. He made tea, and then set forth his store of bread, his plates and cup, upon the table, with some apparent effort to make the meal look attractive. The frying ham soon smelt delicious, and while it was growing brown, Alec Trenholme read his letter for the fifth time that day. It was not a letter that he liked, but, since the morning train, only two human beings had pa.s.sed by the station, and the young station-master would have read and re-read a more disagreeable epistle than the one which had fallen to his lot. It was dated from a place called Ch.e.l.laston, and was from his brother. It was couched in terms of affection, and contained a long, closely reasoned argument, with the tenor of which it would seem the reader did not agree, for he smiled at it scornfully!

He had not re-read his letter and dished his ham before sounds on the road a.s.sured him an ox-cart was approaching, and, with an eagerness to see who it might be which cannot be comprehended by those who have not lived in isolation, he went out to see Saul and his cattle coming at an even pace down the road from the hills. The cart ran more easily now that the road was of the better sort, and the spirits of both man and beasts were so raised by the sight of a house that they all seemed in better form for work than when in the middle of their journey.

Alec Trenholme waited till the cart drew up between his door and the railway track, and regarded the giant stature of the lumberman, his small, round head, red cheeks, and luxuriant whiskers, with that intense but unreflecting interest which the lonely bestow upon unexpected company. He looked also, with an eye to his own business, at the contents of the cart, and gave the man a civil "good evening."

As he spoke, his voice and accent fell upon the air of this wilderness as a rarely pleasant thing to hear. Saul hastily dressed his whiskers with his h.o.r.n.y left-hand before he answered, but even then, he omitted to return the greeting.

"I want to know," he said, sidling up, "how much it would cost to send that by the cars to St. Hennon's." He nudged his elbow towards the coffin as he spoke.

"That box?" asked the station-master. "How much does it weigh?"

"We might weigh it if I'd some notion first about how much I'd need to pay."

"What's in it?"

Saul smoothed his whiskers again. "Well," he said--then, after a slight pause--"it's a dead man."

"Oh!" said Trenholme. Some habit of politeness, unnecessary here, kept his exclamation from expressing the interest he instantly felt. In a country where there are few men to die, even death a.s.sumes the form of an almost agreeable change as a matter of lively concern. Then, after a pause which both men felt to be suitable, "I suppose there is a special rate for--that sort of thing, you know. I really haven't been here very long. I will look it up. I suppose you have a certificate of death, haven't you?"

Again Saul dressed his whiskers. His attention to them was his recognition of the fact that Trenholme impressed him as a superior.

"I don't know about a certificate. You've heard of the Bates and Cameron clearin', I s'pose; it's old Cameron that's dead"--again he nudged his elbow coffinward--"and Mr. Bates he wrote a letter to the minister at St. Hennon's."

He took the letter from his pocket as he spoke, and Trenholme perceived that it was addressed in a legible hand and sealed.

"I fancy it's all right," said he doubtfully. He really had not any idea what the railway might require before he took the thing in charge.

Saul did not make answer. He was not quite sure it was all right, but the sort of wrongness he feared was not to be confided to the man into whose care he desired to shove the objectionable burden.