Part 8

Something nearer tears than laughter took Père Barthélemy by the throat, as he thought of the little washerwoman dressed in these silks.

“She will waste all her money,” he said, anxiously, to Le Docteur Simon, “buying these things.”

“Let her,” answered the doctor, “if it makes her happy.”

“It does not make her happy,” said Père Barthélemy, quietly. He knew his Blanchisseuse Dorée.

As time went on, the Golden Washerwoman broke further from the bounds of decorous mourning. The flock was interested, if a little scandalized. She adopted the royal colour of grief, and upon it played infinite variations, in which she trotted to church, like an army with banners. The two men who honoured her were troubled.

“If you had not touched wine for thirty years, it would not take much to make you drunk,” said Le Docteur Simon.

“She is searching feverishly for happiness,” said Père Barthélemy.

When Mère Bazane appeared in a purple dress, with large white spots, the curé was taking a hard-earned rest among the hills. But he heard of it. And on his return, he went straight to her house.

As he turned out of the dusty street, he saw her under the apple trees, toiling above her old tubs. She was singing as she worked, in a worn, sweet voice, of a fair Isabeau of long ago, who walked in her garden. And above her head the leafless apple boughs stretched a gray web of shadows, and the old sign creaked in the wind.

“Mère Bazane!”

“Ah, mon père! Ah, mon père, I need nothing now to complete my happiness. It is by the blessing of God that you are returned. I die of joy.”

“But—my dear, you are working again?”

“Ah, my father, there is need!” She spoke as if in triumph, and her blue eyes gleamed among the gentle wrinkles.

“Need? Your money—?”

“Safe in the bank, and there it will stay. Come, my father, and see!” She led him to the open door, and pointed within.

Upon the floor sat a fat, dark child, some three years old. He had pulled the end of the rose-coloured satin out of the chest, and wrapped himself in it. He gazed at Mère Bazane and the curé with sullen, dark eyes, set rather close in a small, heavy face.

“See him, the beautiful! He is the orphan of my dear husband’s nephew. Now I am so rich, they have let me take him to bring up. Shall I not be rich for his sake? Mon Dieu, how I will work and save!”

Her voice trembled with her little, knotted, fluttering hands. She moved to draw the silk away. “Give it to me, my angel.”

The angel wrapped himself in the rich folds tighter than ever, and screamed harshly, like a fierce bird that has no words. La Blanchisseuse Dorée looked up, flushed and panting. “See,” she said, proudly, “already he wants all the fine things he sees, and fights for them. Is he not clever? Such a determined mind for his age. And he shall have all he wants, the little one. Mon Dieu! how I will wash and bleach. I will never grow tired.”

The child, released, wrapped himself again in the soft satin, and resumed his sullen, steady stare. Père Barthélemy stood, chilled and silent, seeing the whole tragedy of sacrifice renewed. He saw the small, dark thing for ever asking, demanding, claiming. La Blanchisseuse forever toiling to supply, until—until she was cast aside, like a worn-out husk. He shrank from the child, as from a little full-fed vampire.

And then the true thought burst winged from his heart,

“She has her reward already,” he thought.

“I shall cut up my dresses to make things for him,” said the Golden Washerwoman, happily, “and spend no more money, no indeed. He will want it all, all. And he shall have it. Mon Dieu, how I will work.”

Père Barthélemy’s eyes were dim as he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. “Of such are the kingdom of heaven,” he said, softly.

But he did not say them of the child, as the Golden Washerwoman thought.

THE LOST SPRING

Sitting in the sun outside the skin-house, old Eetah will tell you of the time they lost a Spring on the Little Moon.

As in most other places, they only have one Spring a year there. But it comes so late, and is so short, they love it even more than other folk. When the sun comes back from the south, bringing the wildfowl with it; when the ice melts a little on the long, long, gravel beaches; when the moss turns green, and the saxifrage and stone-crop bud, then it is Spring on the Little Moon, and everybody is glad.

But one winter, Ka-leet lent a harpoon to the angekok.

It was a lovely harpoon. The haft was walrus-ivory, cunningly fitted and carved with hunting stories. The blade was hammered hoop iron from a whale ship. “I’ll lend you this,” said Ka-leet, “till the Spring. Then you must give it back to me. But you may use it till the Spring comes.”

The angekok went back to his snow house, and thought. He wanted to keep that harpoon. So he went out and travelled south till he met the Spring. He caught it and put it in a skin bag, and carried it home with him, and hung it up in a dark corner of his snow house. The Spring went to sleep in the bag, and no one on the Little Moon saw a sign of it; the birds did not come back, nor the seal, nor the salmon. It was winter all the time, and the people stayed in their snow houses and were sick for lack of the sun.

“We will go south,” they said, “and find new places to hunt in, before we die of hunger.” But the wicked angekok went out and called the Winter down from the North. Out of the North came the Winter; it came in the shape of a great bear, made of ice, cold, blue-green, glittering ice all through. Only within its body a great, still heart, a heart that never beat, shone like a frozen star. The Bear sat down between the Little Moon and the south, and no one could pass that way.

All the men of the tribe gathered together, the strong hunters and the wise old men; and they stood in a half-circle in front of the Bear, and threw darts and harpoons, and great stones at him. But the weapons could not pierce him, nor the stones hurt him.

Then the women came, and they gathered drift-wood, and precious sticks, and spear-handles from this house and that; and they brought the biggest soapstone cooking-lamps, and lighted them and lighted fires, to see if they might melt the Bear. But the great Bear, that was the Winter, bent his nose to the snow, and breathed once. All the flames went out, and the ashes were covered with ice, and everyone ran away. They were frightened. Even the angekok began to be frightened, for he could not get rid of the Bear he had called. The people went back to their houses and stayed there, very quiet, waiting to die. They were afraid, as they had never been before. If a man crawled to the entrance of his igloo and looked out, he saw only the Bear sitting in front of the village, resting his nose on the snow. The starlight and the aurora shone on his icy pelt, so that sometimes he was blue, sometimes rosy, and sometimes golden as fire. But he was always there, so that presently no one even bothered to go and look.

The only one who still went to look was Mit-kah, the little daughter of Ka-leet.

Mit-kah was the littlest, brownest, merriest thing that ever lived within thirty degrees of the Pole. She was not afraid of anything, and she had many thoughts. Gentle thoughts flowered in her heart as thick as stone-crop flowers in the sun. She used to crawl out of Ka-leet’s house and look at the Bear; and then she would go and listen outside the magic house, the angekok’s house, because she always heard music there. It was the Spring, singing in its sleep in the skin bag, but no one else heard it, not even the angekok. Then she would go away by herself, and think.

She thought a great deal about two things. She wondered why, if they were all dying for want of the Spring, it was not possible to go and borrow some Spring from someone else, as they had borrowed oil once from the Big Moon people when their own stores failed. And she was sorry for the Bear.

She thought he looked very cold and unhappy, sitting there with his nose in the snow, so far away from his home. And one night, when she saw him, all gray in the bitter starlight, she pulled her best hood out of the bag she kept her clothes in, and crept out and went and put it on the Bear to keep his ears warm.

It was a lovely hood, made of finest sealskin, with a long tail behind, and worked in patterns of red and white feathers. It was quite a little hood, but, somehow, it fitted the Bear; it must have stretched. Mit-kah reached up and pulled it well over his stony, icy ears, and tied it under his chin, all bearded with icicles. It froze on immediately, and Mit-kah was a little sorry to think she’d never be able to get it off again. But she thought the great Bear looked at her gratefully out of his ice-eyes, and his still, glittering heart beat once.

“Well, his head is warmer,” said little Mit-kah, “but his poor feet must be very cold.”

Day and night, the great Bear, that was the Winter, sat in front of the village in the snow. And, at last, the thought of his cold toes worried Mit-kah so, that she took a set of new dog-shoes her father had just made, and crept out, and fitted them on the Bear.

The shoes were little, and the Bear was huge, but somehow they went on; and he held up one foot after another, like a puppy, and little Mit-kah tied the thongs about his frosty legs. This time, he turned his terrible, gleaming head, and looked at her, and his frozen heart beat twice, flaming like a star. And Mit-kah went away and sat behind the angekok’s house, listening to the music; it was sweeter than ever, for the Spring in the skin bag was dreaming in its sleep.

Then she thought that the Bear must be hungry, sitting there for no reason at all, and never going away to catch fish; so she took her own dinner of dried salmon and fish-oil, and put it in a bowl and offered it to the Bear.

He ate it, every scrap, and Mit-kah watched him. She forgot her own hunger, it was so wonderfully interesting to see the bits of fish going down inside the Bear, who was, of course, transparent. When he had finished it, his great heart beat three times, and he got up and shook himself. Then he looked thoughtfully at Mit-kah, who was standing, just a little speck, between his front dog-shoes.

“No one has ever done anything kind to me before,” said the great Bear, who was the Winter, and his voice was like the clanging of sledge-runners on ice, “nor even said anything kind. Why were you kind, little Mit-kah?”

“I don’t know,” said Mit-kah, with her thumb in her mouth. It is wrong to speak with your thumb in your mouth but she did not know any better.

“That’s the best sort of kindness,” said the Bear, very gently, “and the least I can do in return, is to go away. But is there anything I can do for you first?”

“You might tell me where the Spring is,” answered Mit-kah.

“Hanging up in a bag in your angekok’s house,” said the Bear. “Didn’t you know?”

“No,” said Mit-kah, “I didn’t, and thank you very much for telling me. I’ll just go straight away and let it out.” For she was not afraid of anything.

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” replied the Bear, apologetically. “You see, it’s so cold from my being about here so long, that if you let the Spring out of the bag, it’ll just die.”

“Then couldn’t I go and borrow some elsewhere?”

“N—n—no, I’m afraid that won’t do, either.” The Bear shook his head, regretfully. “You see, there’s never more than enough to go round, as it is.”

“Then what am I to do?” asked Mit-kah, sadly.

“I don’t know, unless you could find something even warmer than the Spring, to warm the bag before it wakes up. Look here, I don’t know much about such things, but if you came home with me, the Old Woman could tell you.”

“What Old Woman?”

The Bear looked surprised. “Why, the Old Sky Woman. She housekeeps for the lot of us, you know—all the Weathers and the Seasons. If there’s anything warmer than the Spring, she could tell you of it. Wonderful things she has at home! But perhaps you would be afraid to come with me?”

“Why should I be afraid?” said Mit-kah.

The Bear stretched his terrible head, and snuffed the air towards the North Star. “Many fear me, but not all,” he said. “Come if you will, little Mit-kah.”

Then he made himself all flat in the snow, and she climbed upon his neck, and held on by the long tail of the hood. And the Bear got up, and went swiftly away, northwards; very swiftly he ran, glisading over the glittering snow, and wherever he went, there it became cold as death. But little Mit-kah was quite warm.

When Ka-leet looked for her and could not find her, he went away from the lamp, and lay in a corner, weeping. For he thought she had wandered away and died. Nothing comforted him, not even when they told him that the Bear was gone. And as yet the Spring did not come.

Meanwhile, Mit-kah and the Bear went north and north, so far that they could go no farther, till they came to the place where the Bear lived, and the igloo of the Old Sky Woman. Never had Mit-kah seen such a house; it cricked her neck to look at the top of the entrance-tunnel, and as for the living-place behind, it had neither top nor bottom, nor beginning nor end. It was like a cloud. Here the Old Sky Woman sat over a great cooking-pot and a clear fire; and about her the Stars and the Weathers, the Winds and the Seasons, went in and out; but she sat still and cooked.

The Bear, that was the Winter, went in to the fire, and lay down beside it in his place. Then, for the first time, Mit-kah was frightened, and looked, and did not know what she saw; and listened, and did not know what she heard, only she knew that a hand came down sometimes and stirred the stuff in the pot; and that across the fire a caribou buck lifted his head and looked at her, and his eyes were softer than sleep, and there were stars in his antlers. “That is the South-west Wind,” said the Bear to her, softly. “He is the only one at home. He is kind. Don’t be afraid.” But Mit-kah crouched low on the Bear’s neck and hid her face.

Then the Old Sky Woman stooped her head from the cloudy roof of her igloo, and asked what Mit-kah wanted. “Mother,” said the Bear, very respectfully, “she wants to know if there is anything warmer than the Spring. The Little Moon angekok has caught their Spring and hung it up in a skin bag in his house, and there it sleeps. If it woke without warmth, it will die in the cold. Is there anything warmer than the Spring? I am Winter. I know nothing about such things.”

“Yes,” said the Old Sky Woman, “there is one thing warmer than Spring. It is the fire under my cooking-pot. It is called Love, and you’ll find it anywhere, but it’s hard to put your hand on sometimes.”

“I am Winter,” said the Bear, again, “I know nothing about Love. I have only one gift, and that is Sleep. But will you give her some of your fire, Mother?”

“Yes,” answered the Old Sky Woman, “she shall have some of my fire. But she must carry it in her hands, and go away from here quickly, or it will go out, and I can’t have it wasted.”

“Hold out your hands, Mit-kah,” said the Bear, softly, “you shall have some of the fire that is warmer than Spring, and with it, you shall wake the Spring. Hold out your hands, and do not fear, it will not burn you.”

Then Mit-kah held out her little brown hands, joined together, and the Old Sky Woman took the great spoon with which she stirred in her pot, and lifted in it a tiny ember from the fire, and laid it in Mit-kah’s hands. It did not burn her. It shone in a clear flame between her curved hands, and it was warm as sunlight, and sweet as willow-buds. Mit-kah laughed with happiness, and was not afraid.

“Carry it like that,” said the Old Sky Woman, “or you will lose it. And take it away quickly.”

Then the great Buck, who was the South-west Wind, rose and came round the fire, and the stars in his antlers were like fish in a net. “You are swift, Brother,” he said to the Bear, “but you are not so swift as I. I will take Mit-kah home.” His voice was soft as running water when the rivers break free, and Mit-kah looked into his eyes, and the flame of Love that she carried in her hands was reflected in his eyes like two more stars.

“Go with the Wind, little Mit-kah,” said the Bear, drowsily. “He is swifter than I, but he does not love you so well. Do not forget me, little Mit-kah.”

“I will not forget you,” said Mit-kah. She slid from the Bear’s neck, and stood in front of him, gazing into his eyes. It was like gazing into one of the blue pools that form in the ice on warm days; but far down in them, the flame she carried was reflected. Then the Bear shut his eyes lazily, and went to sleep by the fire. And the Old Sky Woman lifted Mit-kah and set her on the back of the Caribou Buck, and he bore her out of the igloo and southward over the snow.

Mit-kah, carrying the flame, had nothing to hold on by, but she did not need anything. The Bear had been smooth and swift, but the great Buck fled like a cloud, and his antlers caught new stars from the sky as a net catches fish. With him, went the sound of rain and the melting of waters and the rushing wings of birds. And so they came to the Little Moon.

The Buck knelt down and made himself all small, and Mit-kah slid from his neck and stood before him, and thanked him prettily, but he did not pay much attention to her, though his eyes were so soft and kind. Before she had finished, he had risen and snuffed the air and stamped the earth with his forefoot; then he fled away, moving like a cloud under the stars, and which went with him and which stayed in the sky, Mit-kah could not tell. She went soberly down to her village, carrying the fire.

She stood in the midst of the dark snow-houses and called aloud to her people. One by one they answered her, and came crawling out. Ka-leet was the first, and he ran to Mit-kah, and would have taken her in his arms, but he saw the fire in her little brown hands, and was afraid. “Are you Mit-kah?” he said, “or are you a ghost?” “Are you dead, or have you come back to die with us?”

“I am not dead,” said Mit-kah, “I have come back to wake the Spring for you.”

Then, the flame as still as a flower in her hands, she went to the house of the angekok, all the people following her. She crawled into the house, the people following her, Ka-leet the first. When the angekok saw her come in, carrying the small, bright flame, he fell on his face. But Mit-kah paid no attention to him. For out of the bag on the wall came a single clear, sweet note, like the mating call of a bird.

“That is the Spring waking!” cried Mit-kah.

She stood under the skin bag, where the angekok had kept the Spring, and raised the flame towards it. And the flame left her hands and floated upwards, and enclosed the skin bag in a tender light, a warmth and a shining. Then the bag opened, and out of it came the waking Spring.

What was it like? I don’t know. Light, and swiftness, and joy, leaves, wings, and little stars—the memory of all these, and the hope of all that are to come, Mit-kah let loose from the bag. Outside, the sun came back from the south like a swan; the ice melted, the salmon leaped in the rivers, the moss greened, and a thousand tiny flowers opened under the rocks. The people all ran out to look, but Ka-leet stayed behind in the angekok’s house, holding his little daughter in his arms.

In all hearts, also, the winter was past. And the angekok got up and put a good face on it and returned the harpoon.

THE THIRD GENERATION

No shanty fires shall cheer them, No comrades march beside, But the northern lights shall beckon And the wandering winds shall guide. They shall cross the silent waters By a trail that is wild and far. To the place of the lonely lodges Under a lonely star. _La Longue Traverse._

“Bob, is this Lake Lemaire?”

Bob Lemaire, leaning against a wind-twisted tamarack on the ridge above the portage, looked long and very long at the desolate country spread out beneath them. Then he looked at a map, drawn on parchment in faded ink, which he had just unfolded from a waterproof case. “I can’t identify it,” he confessed at last, “but I think—”

“If you say another word,” groaned Barrett, “about the reliability of your grandfather, I—I’ll heave rocks at you.” Lemaire smiled slowly, and the smile transfigured his lean, serious face; he folded the map and replaced it in the little case “Well,” he answered, comfortingly, “we can’t mistake P’tite Babiche, anyway, when we come to it.”

“If the thing exists. . . Oh, I know your grandfather said he found it, and stuck it on his map. But no one else has ever found it since.”

“No one else,” said Lemaire, quietly, “has been so far west from the Gran’ Babiche.”

He looked again at the land, one of the most desolate in the world, across which they must go. Lake, rapid, river; rock, scrub, pine, and caribou moss—here the world held only these things, repeated to infinity. But as Lemaire’s grave eyes rested on them, those eyes showed nothing but stillness and a strange content. And Barrett, who had been watching his friend and not the new chain of lakes ahead, cried suddenly, “Bob, I believe you like it!”

“Yes, I like it—if like is the word.”

“O gosh! And you never saw it till five years ago?”

“No.”

“And your father never saw it at all?”

“No. He married young, you know, and had no money. He worked in an office all his life. My mother said he used to talk in his sleep of—all this—which he had never seen. And when I saw it, it just seemed to—come natural.” He smiled again. “We’ve three—four—more portages,” he went on, “before we camp.”

“And it’s along of having Forbes Lemaire for a grandfather,” groaned Barrett, as he limped after Lemaire’s light stride, down the rocky slope to the little beach where they had left their canoe.

They launched the canoe, thigh deep in the rush of the ice-clear water, and put out into yet another of that endless chain of unknown and uncharted lakes whose course they were following. Only one map in the world showed these lakes, those low iron hills, that swamp—the map made by Bob Lemaire’s grandfather fifty years before; as far as was known, only one white man before themselves had ever tried the journey from the Gran’ Babiche due west to the P’tite Babiche, that mythical river; and that had been Forbes Lemaire. As Barrett said, it was a tour personally conducted by the ghost of a grandfather.

Another wet portage—tripping and sliding under a low cliff among fallen shale and willow bushes—another lake, as wide, as lonely, as the former one. So for three hours. And then the afternoon shut down in drive on drive of damp gray mist; and they edged the canoe inshore, and beached it at last upon a dun ridge of sand, the shadows of dwarfed bullpines promising firing.

Too tired to speak, they made their camp, deftly, as long practice had taught them. Tinned beef, flapjacks and coffee had power, however, to change the very aspect of the weather. And Barrett, smoking the pipe of repletion, under a wisp of tent, had time to admire the Japanese effect of the writhed pines in the fog, to hear a sort of wild music in the voices of rain and water, and to meditate on the chances of an ouananiche for the morning’s meal.

The shadows of the fog were changing to the shadows of night, and the silent Lemaire rose and flung wood on the fire. It sent out a warm glow; and as if it had been a signal, a living shadow crept from the shadow of the rocks, and very timidly approached the light.

Both men rose with an exclamation; for they had not seen a human being for nearly a month. Barrett said, “An Indian,” and sank back on his blanket, leaving Lemaire to ask questions. Lemaire went round the fire, and stooped over the queer huddled shadow on the ground.

“Well?” Barrett called after him at last.