Part 10

He was silent; she felt his kindness reaching out to her as he had reached his hand; a kindness somehow pitiful. At last he said quietly, “Because—this time—I believe it really will be good-bye, Guida. I don’t think I shall come back.”

“You mean. . . ?”

His eyes met hers, gravely, across that strange distance. “I mean—if there’s any justice, or any mercy, in earth or heaven, I _can’t_ come back.”

She said at once. “You’ll have to tell me the whole thing. You owe me that.”

“Yes, I owe you that. . . and so much more! If only I can make you understand. . .”

Sheer fright was sickening her. A hundred broken words beat on her bewildered mind. Exposure—shock—could his brain be affected? That small crying voice repeated over and over, “What is it, O, what is it? What’s happened to him? What does it mean?” She did not know she had spoken the last words aloud till he answered them.

“I mean only that I believe, this time, I shan’t come back, my dear.”

“But you’ve come through safely—come through everything—up till now!”

He smiled at her affectionately from his far distance. “O, I don’t mean warnings or presentiments, or any of that rot! I mean a reasoned assurance that I am not to survive the war.”

She managed a smile also. “You look—very much alive, Dick!”

“Yes.” He was looking at her very straightly. “But you see—it’s not my own life. It’s just on loan for a time. That’s the way I look at it.”

She heard her own voice saying, “You must try to make me understand, Dick.” He answered at once, “I’ll try, Guida.”

“You know all the newspaper part of it. You know the ship was torpedoed without warning; that she sank in eight minutes; that the sea was so rough only three boats were launched safely? Yes? Well, you know as much of that part of it as I do, then. For I fell when she heeled to the explosion, and either struck my head, or was struck by something. I remember nothing till I found myself fighting upwards out of the sea; not much then; I was pretty far gone. . . ‘All Thy waves and billows are gone over me.’ You’ve read that. So had I. But it’s a strange thing to _feel_ it.

“I was swimming by instinct when I came to myself. My head felt as if it was split in two, and I could scarcely see, what with dizziness and salt water. But there was some sort of wreckage floating near, and I made for it. It was one of those collapsible canvas boats. I don’t know where it came from. It was floating bottom up and crumpled. The air caught under it, made it float like a buoy, but it gave a bit with my weight. Then I saw that there was someone else clinging to the other side of it. A girl.

“I was quite in possession of myself, but awfully sick and shaken. I said ‘Will it bear two, d’you think?’ And she said, ‘Yes, rather. Can you get hold of it?’

“I got hold of it after a fashion. My hands didn’t seem to belong to me. She watched me across the keel with some anxiety. I misread this, and said, ‘I’ll just rest here a bit, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll swim off and find something else. She said at once, ‘Please don’t. If we keep the gunwale under each side, the air won’t leak out so much. It kept bobbing up before you came. You’re a soldier, aren’t you? I saw you on board.’

“I said, Yes, I was a soldier; wounded, sent south, and just on my way back. Couldn’t say I’d noticed her on board, for I hadn’t. I noticed her now, though. She was quite young; her hair was tied in a sopping tail at the back of her neck, schoolgirl fashion, her face was fair, rather square, perfectly calm, and streaming, I thought at first with sea-water. Then I saw it was with tears. She saw me look at her and said at once, ‘There were children on board, you know. I was playing with them this morning. Jolly lucky for us that it’s not cold, and that we can both swim.’ I said, Yes, jolly lucky. . .”

He stopped. He was silent so long that the woman listening stirred and drew a long breath like a sob. He looked at her quickly. “You and I,” he went on in a low voice, “we’ve talked so much of life and . . . death, and what death means. And there, with that girl, nearer to it than I’d ever been before, I hadn’t a thought or a word different to what you’d have at five o’clock tea! She talked a good deal—rather off-hand and slangy like a boy—of a safety-waistcoat and a certain Miss Matthews. ‘We’d only one,’ she said, ‘and of course, I put it on Miss Matthews, and she sat up all night in it, reading Gold Dust. . . Beastly little books.’ She said, when did I think we’d be picked up? And I said ‘O, any moment,’ though I’d the greatest doubts if we’d be picked up at all. Then wave after wave of pain and sickness came over me. My head was on fire. I thought I must let go. But I hung on; really because I didn’t want to leave the girl alone. . . When I came out of ’em, she—she comforted me. How? O, I don’t know. She just said ‘Stick to it. O _do_ stick to it! You can manage it a bit longer, and a ship is sure to turn up.’ So I kept on managing it a bit longer.

“I’d have done better to let go then.

“Once, though, I must have fainted or something. I came to, and she had swum round, and was supporting me. I don’t know what I said, but she dived back to the other side like a fish. ‘Jolly lucky,’ she told me, ‘that I went in for swimming. I’ve two cups.’ We talked about the cups, I remember; and that Miss Matthews had thought it unladylike to choose cups when you might have had teaspoons instead.

“We must have been two hours in the water. My God! such hours! Not that we suffered much. But that passive _waiting_ was so strange. It called for every ounce of endurance in soul and body; I’ve never felt such a strain on me, even in the trenches. And she—that girl—bore it, and better than I. . .”

He was silent again. Guida listened to the ticking of a little French clock, whose pendulum was a gilded Love swinging on a wreath of roses. Presently it sounded a small ringing chime; and a peal beaten by iron hammers in a hundred towers could not have been more remorseless than the fairy sound.

“From first to last we saw nothing of the other boats, nor of any other survivors. The sea seemed to have been swept clear, even of the tragedy. I did see one smear of smoke on the horizon, but would not draw her attention to it, and it quickly passed.

“I roused from a sort of doze—if it’s possible to doze clinging to an upturned boat, with a broken head. The sky seemed lower and darker. The waves seemed to run against it. It was a funny effect. I expected them to splash and flop back! We were very low in the sea. I thought the boat we clung to was lower. And evening was coming on. Our last hope, I thought, would go with the day. . .

“I looked across the keel. That brave child’s face was very pale. Her mouth was set in such resolution it made her look old. She said quietly. ‘The air’s leaking out of the boat.’

“Not a thing could I do or say to help her! I don’t hold it’s any part of a man’s duty to throw dust in the eyes of a plucky girl facing danger; but I _did_ long to be able to ease it a bit for her. And beyond what comfort the mere presence of another human being gave her, I was utterly useless. However, something in her face made me think she’d have been worse off alone, and I resolved to cling on to the last possible moment. But I was very weak and drowsy. I’d have let go and given up if it hadn’t been for her.

“‘If it sinks any lower.’ I told her, ‘you must work round to the stern and cling on there, and I’ll swim alongside.’ I knew I shouldn’t swim far; but I thought the thing would serve to keep her head out of the water for another couple of hours, anyway. And then she leaned a little forward and said ‘No!’

“‘You must,’ I said. But she went on quite quietly, ‘No. If this boat will only support one—if only one of us is to be saved—then it must be you.’

“I laughed. I was very angry with her—with that small, steady, white face of hers. I said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense, if you please. It’s all quite bad enough without that. You’ll do as you’re told.’ I suppose I was awfully rude to her. . . But she made me listen.

“‘That’s all right,’ she said, in her boyish way, ‘when other things are all right. But everything’s upside down now. Nothing is as usual. You know what I mean. And of the two, you _must_ be saved, if there’s a choice. Just _because_ of—of women and children. Just _because_ you’re a man, and can fight, and help to stop—this. Don’t you see? Can’t you see?’

“I talked a lot more—talked like a Dutch Uncle. We argued the rights and wrongs of it for ever so long. It must have been. . . funny. . . we two specks of human beings, talking like that in the middle of the Atlantic! Her arguing was not the least use, of course. She to argue down the deepest instinct in the nature of any decent man of our race—she, that little thing! She was silent at last. I thought I’d convinced her of the sheer, rank, outrageous impossibility of her idea. And all the time I was longing to give in and let go there and then. Only I read in her face—somehow; how does one know things at such times?—that her one fear was just being left alone. She wasn’t afraid of death; but she _was_ afraid of the gray twilight and the empty, empty sea.

“We did not speak for a long time after that. We were too tired. That wild suggestion of hers never crossed my mind again. I was thinking,—chiefly of going ratting with Gherkin, the terrier I left with the Dunstables! I was in a sort of dream, I think. But once I heard her speak, low and clearly. ‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘hold on. Stick it out! It’s your duty. You’re not your own now. You belong to every weak and defenceless thing there is in the world. . .’ I didn’t quite take in what she said, or its meaning; I was too far gone. But I lifted my head—I was resting it against the bulge of the broken canvas keel—and nodded to her, and she nodded back at me. I remembered afterwards that her eyes were starry bright. . . Then I let my head go down again, and shut my eyes a minute. . .”

He turned slowly, so that he faced Guida full. She saw, with an indescribable wrench of pain, that his brown cheeks were glistening wet; and as she saw it, he wiped the tears away, openly, on his knuckles, like a child. His eyes, looking into hers, held the reflection of a great light. And he was miles away; separated from her by measureless emotion, as by time and space.

He said, quite steadily, “I never saw her again.

“When I remember anything more, I was in the vast blaze of a searchlight—an agony of light, it seemed to me, boring through me. Then there were black shapes of men, trying to lift me into a boat. My hands were so clenched and numbed on the gunwale of that canvas thing that they had to cut free the bits I was hanging on to. . . for fear I left the girl in the lurch. And I shouted to them ‘Have you got the lady? Have you got the young lady? Take her first!’ And one of them put his ear down to my mouth, and listened carefully, and then looked at the others. And he said, very gently, ‘There ain’t no young lady, sir. You’re the only one on that boat.’”

Pity rushed over the frozen woman in the chair; pity, warm and blinding. “O, the poor child!” she said, “O, the poor child!”

But Lewis swung on her almost angrily. “Don’t pity her,” he said at once. “There’s nothing to pity in such a royal sort of generosity as hers! She and her gift are not to be pitied. Don’t waste pity on—either of us, Guida.”

Meeting her dumb, bewildered look, after a moment he went on, “If I’m sure of anything, in earth or heaven, I’m sure that she gave her life for mine—that she let go her hold on that boat deliberately—to give me a better chance—because she thought mine the more useful life.”

“You can’t be _sure_, my poor Dick!”

“But I am sure. She was in better case to stick to that boat than I was. She gave me my life—no, lent it!—the divine, unpardonable child. . . She lent it, in her own words, to all the weak things of the world, because I could fight on their side till such deeds as _that_ were done away. I take it so. I believe I am—meant to take it so. It’s not my own life any more. It’s a loan, till the end of justice has been reached—the end we all have fought for, she not less than I. God knows! And when that end’s attained, I think God in His mercy will call in the debt—that He won’t leave me under such a proud, intolerable, burden. . . What a lot we’ve talked about—things—before. And here, I suppose, is the strangest thing of all. Only it doesn’t seem strange to me. Just natural. One didn’t exactly run away from. . . death. . . before, you know. The difference now is only that, when I see it coming, I shall run to meet it.”

She could find no relief in thought or feeling. He sat quite still in his pet chair, the traces of those unashamed tears still on his cheeks, staring at the rug; and as she watched him, she saw a terror opening before her, a gray desolation. The familiar room, the afternoon sunlight in squares on the carpet, the faint rattle of a wind-stirred blind—all the old familiar things were there. But in the half of an hour, the soul of them was changed past any recall of hers.

She tried once, timidly, desperately, “But if she _gave_ it to you. . .”

He answered quickly, “For that! Just for that. I shall have no right to the loan any longer.” He looked at her quietly. And she spoke, answering something his eyes had said rather than his lips.

“I see. And nothing I can say will make you look at it differently. . .”

“No. I don’t think it will, Guida. I’ve had a long time to think things out, you see.”

The familiar room, the familiar figure, Guida saw them as in a glass darkly. She knew it was no use fighting. Something confronted her which was implacable by words or tears or prayers; implacable as death, yet wearing the bright face of life and love.

He was watching her, with infinite kindness, from that great and starry distance. “I didn’t do wrong to tell you, did I?” he asked gently. “There was more or less of an unspoken compact—we always talked out our philosophies. How thin they seem—now. . . . And I thought you wouldn’t—grieve—when it comes. . . If I could show you that grief was—would be—out of place.”

She bent her head and after a minute asked calmly, “when do you go?”

“This evening.” And afterwards she could remember no interval between his saying so and his rising to go. A few more brief sentences, broken words of courage that were on a thousand lips; then he was at the door, turning with a smile. She did not press him to stay. Life was going with him; but better it should go, she thought. She knew afterwards that he had held her hands, kissed her once, and blessed her for “the truest friend ever man had.” But all the time their souls were divided by a barrier of great and shining things in which she had no share.

“Good-bye, Guida.”

“No, Dick, no! Au ’voir!”

For a moment that light seemed to include her as she defied it, to shine on her too. Then it was gone with him, and the door closed.

She stayed quiet, as she was, for a long time; then she slid forward slowly to the floor and knelt there, her face in her hands. Later she rose, and went to a glass, and mercilessly examined her beauty.

“A little while, my dear,” she said, “a little while, and you’ll be old. And lonely. . . Would it have made any difference if you’d told Dick you loved him?”

“Would it have made it seem _happier_ to Guida,” Dick Lewis was asking himself, “if I could have told her that I’ll be not only willing, but glad—eager—to go, for the sake of the one chance in a thousand that I’ll find that girl again—the girl whose name I never knew—the girl on the other side?”

THE DISTANT DRUMS

War broke out in August, 1914, as everyone knows. In the October of that same memorable year, Garry Redmond, descending from the Far-alone country to the comparative civilisation of the All-alone, found in the possession of John Akkamuk a bottle, with a scrap of newspaper stuck to it.

Squatting in the thick murk of John Akkamuk’s winter house, Garry lifted the bottle to the lamplight, and read the paper.

“You give me this, John?” he suggested.

John thought his white friend had gone mad; but then, he often thought so.

“Yes,” he said, “you have him. You good feller.” He had just struck an excellent bargain with Garry over a loon-skin rug, and felt generous.

Garry pulled out of his pocket a tiny canvas bag, from which he shook into his broad palm a glittering fairy pyramid of gold dust.

“Where you get that?” asked John, leaning forward.

Garry grinned at him, happily.

“Ne’er mind, my simple heathen,” said he. “I’ll get lots more of it next summer. This is just a free sample; but I’ll give it to you right now if you can find me the bit that’s tore off this paper.”

“No go,” said John, gloomily. He had never had any more of the paper than that piece stuck on the bottle. Garry took the bottle and the loon-skin rug home with him, and when he had gone, John turned to and beat his wives, one after the other, out of sheer vexation.

Garry’s home that winter was a one-roomed shack, lined with skins, buried to the roof in earth, gravel, turf—anything that would keep the winds out. It was built on the clean rock, because if you built on the earth, the whole thing was likely to collapse in sludge, after the stove had been lighted long enough to melt the ice under the earth. There was not room in the shack for much but the stove, two bunks, and some soapstone lamps that the Inniut use.

Kob Smit was lying in one of the bunks. He turned his head, with a dim smile, as Garry entered. The whole of him was dimmed, sapped, whitened, like a plant that’s been away from the light too long. Weeks earlier he had fallen on the rocks, and had been ill since. He had a hard time of it, fighting out from the Far-alone. Now he was “resting up,” in the midst of every luxury to be had north of sixty-five; for next summer was to bring the partners luck at last.

“This is for you, Kob,” said Garry, flinging the lovely feather rug over his feet. “It’ll keep you fine and warm.”

“It’ll keep me fine and warm,” agreed Kob, nodding and smiling. He had a gentle, docile voice, like a big child’s. “You’re a good feller, Garry. Always white to me.”

“What d’you make of this?” Garry wished to change the subject, and thrust the bottle forward where Kob could see it. Kob frowned at the blurred words, reading them out almost letter by letter.

“Eng—land De—clares War—” he read. Then, with a sudden, mild brightening: “Well, say, Garry, that’s quite interesting, ain’t it?’ England Declares War.’ But it don’t say who with, eh, Garry?”

“No, it don’t,” said Garry. “You wait now, Kob; I’m just goin’ to fix you up some broth.”

“You’re awful good to me, Garry.”

Garry took the bottle away and hid it under his bunk. But Kob talked a lot about the scrap of newspaper.

“My father,” said Kob, “he fought in a war over there, somewheres. He’d got a wound, too.”

Garry did not talk of it again. But, sometimes when Kob was asleep, he pulled the bottle out from under his bunk, and read the message on it over and over. Once Kob woke in the night, and saw Garry standing over him.

“What’s your real name, Kob?” said Garry.

“Yawcob Schmidt, I guess. But are you crazy, Garry?”

“No,” said Garry. “Hush up! Sleep!”

“Well,” Garry told himself, “I’ll know in the spring. Maybe it ain’t anything, either.”

He settled down to the interminable monotony of wintering north—not his first experience. What to another and softer breed of men would have been a hardship and desolation unspeakable, he half-unconsciously enjoyed. It was in this environment in which all his qualities of body and soul, having freest range, came to their finest, stoic fruition. He loved the first storms out of the Arctic, heralded by their clanging clouds of wildfowl; the rare days of clear sun, when the sky was a turquoise, and the poudre played its magic with the hills; track of wolf and hare and caribou among the low birch scrub for his following. And the nights—above all, the nights—when the earth was a star glittering under the icy fires of the universe unveiled. All these things he had loved, without knowing. That winter he began to know.

One night, he went swinging home on snowshoes, carrying a string of fish frozen stiff as platters. He’d been fishing through the ice on a small lake, sitting in the buckle, as he had been taught by the natives of a yet farther north. It was so cold the air seared like heat, but he liked it. He liked such a murderous night, that he might battle with it; he liked to pit the heat of his generous blood against that cold; the courage of his generous heart against the loneliness more fatal than hunger; the strength of his limbs against those aching distances—and win. He had been satisfied with those noble, homely endurances. He was so no longer.

On the way he turned into John Akkamuk’s.

“You got the rest of that paper yet, John?”

“Me no got’m,” said John, sourly.

Garry turned to go, but paused, and asked idly after the dogs. Were there any good dogs to be had—say, round the Backs? No, only pups. All the grown sledge-dogs were dead of the sickness. Maybe the Montagnais at Moon River might have some. Garry crawled out, not stopping to argue that the Montagnais only had curs.

Once home, he thawed out the fish in the frying-pan. He was silent and very thoughtful. After he had served Kob and helped himself, he brought out the bottle, and sat holding it in both hands, reading and re-reading that unfinished message. At last, he stood up with a long sigh, stretching both arms above his head. He held them so a minute, still thinking. When he lowered his arms, he had made up his mind. He went slowly to the bunk.

“Kob!”

Kob blinked up at him, full-fed and kindly.

“Kob, I got to find out about this here—about this war.”

“Why, you’ll know when things open up in the spring, Garry.”

“I can’t wait so long. I have to know now, Kob. I guess I’ll have to make Fort Scarlett and—and find out.”

Kob lay motionless, staring up at him, and into his mild, pale eyes fear suddenly leapt, alive and vivid.

“You’d go to Fort Scarlett—go an’ leave me here like this—”

“No,” said Garry, gently; “no, I won’t leave you, Kob, and you know it. I’ll take you along.”

“You’re _crazy_, Garry!”

“No, I ain’t crazy. I—I _got_ to know, Kob. There’s a nice hospital at Fort Scarlett, Kob, where you could lay up.”

“You’ll never get me there—”

“Yes, I will, Kob; I’ll get you there. I _got_ to go—”

After a long silence, Kob said, fretfully:

“Well, if you _got_ to go, I’ll have to go, too.” He waited for the brief grip of Garry’s hand, which he somehow expected. But Garry was looking at him from a mental distance, very kindly. Seeing Kob’s vexed, inquiring face, he said only, “I guess maybe it’s them Boers again,” and went out to the cache behind the shack.

Quietly, for four days, he made his preparations for the biggest job he had ever undertaken in his life—the job of getting Kob to Fort Scarlett, single-handed and without dogs. Like most of the very strong, he was ruthless in his purpose, but he was tenderly careful of Kob.

They started on the fifth day. Garry had left as little as possible to chance. The sledge was loaded with many things besides Kob, including two sealskin sleeping bags, a tiny canvas shelter, a big lamp for cooking and heating, and food for ten days. He reckoned they could make Fort Scarlett in ten days. Kob was well below his normal weight, but even so, the load was over the two-hundred and fifty pounds, which is about the limit that a man can pull.