Part 11

Doomsdorf had seemed almost incredible to him at first. It was as if he couldn’t possibly be true: a figment of nightmare that would vanish as soon as he wakened. But he was real enough now. Nothing was left to him but the knowledge how real he was.

He must not rest, he must not pause till the work was done. The fact that Bess had fallen, fainting, in the snow, did not affect him; he must swing his axe and hew the wood. Day was dying. Grayness was creeping in from the sea. It was like the essence of the sea itself, all gray, gray like his dreams, gray like the ashes of his hopes. He must finish the two trees before the darkness came down and kept him from seeing where to sink the blade. Otherwise it wouldn’t matter—day or night, one year or another. Time had ceased to count; seemingly it had almost ceased to move. But the _knout_ would be waiting, hardened and sharp with wire, if he didn’t do his work. Cold fear laid hold of him again.

He did not know that this cold that was upon him was not only that of fear. His clothes had been wet through by perspiration and melted snow, and now the bitter winds off the sea were getting to him. Still he swung his axe. It was always harder to strike true; the tough lengths took ever more blows to split. The time soon came when he was no longer aware of the blows against the wood. The axe swung automatically in his arms; even sense of effort was gone from him. The only reality that lived in him now, in that misty twilight, was the knowledge that he must get through.

It was too dark to see, now, how much of the work remained. The night was cheating him, after all. He struck once more at the tough length that lay at his feet—a piece at which he had already struck uncounted blows. He gave all his waning strength to the effort.

The length split open, but the axe slipped out of his bleeding hands, falling somewhere in the shadows beyond. He must crawl after it; he didn’t know how many more lengths there were to split. It was strange that he couldn’t keep his feet. And how deep and still was the night that dropped over him!

How long he groped for the axe handle in the snow he never knew. But he lay still at last. Twilight deepened about him, and the wind wept like a ghost risen from the sea. The very flame of his life was burning down to embers.

Thus it came about that Doomsdorf missed the sound of his axe against the wood. Swinging a lantern, a titantic figure among the snow-laden trees, he tramped down to investigate. Bess, semi-conscious again, wakened when the lantern light danced into her eyes. But it took him some little time to see Ned’s dark form in the snow.

The reason was, it was lying behind a mighty pile of split fuel. The light showed that only green branches, too small to be of value, remained of the two spruce. And Doomsdorf grunted, a wondering oath, deep in his throat.

They had been faithful slaves. Putting his mighty arm around them, each in turn, he half carried, half dragged them into the warmth of the cabin.

XVIII

Ned was spared the misery and despair that overswept Doomsdorf’s cabin the first night of his imprisonment. His master dropped him on the floor by the stove, and there he lay, seemingly without life, the whole night through. Even the sound of the wind could not get down into that dim region of half-coma where he was: he heard neither its weird chant on the cabin roof, or that eerie, sobbing song that it made to the sea, seemingly the articulation of the troubled soul of the universe. He did not see the snow piling deeper on the window ledge; nor sit straining in the dreadful, gathering silence of the Arctic night. The promised reward of food was not his because he could not get up to take it.

Yet he was not always deeply insensible. Sometimes he would waken with a knowledge of wracking pain in his muscles, and sometimes cold would creep over him. Once he came to himself with the realization that some one was administering to him. Soft, gentle hands were removing his wet, outer garments, rolling him gently over in order to get at them, slipping off his wet shoes and stockings. A great tenderness swept over him, and he smiled wanly in the lantern light.

Since he was a child, before the world was ever too much with him, no living human being had seen him smile in quite this way. It was a smile of utter simplicity, childishly sweet, and yet brave too,—as if he were trying to hearten some one who was distressed about him. He didn’t feel the dropping tears that were the answer to that smile, nor feel the heart’s glow, dear beyond all naming, that it wakened. To the girl who, scarcely able herself to stand erect, had crept from her warm cot to serve him, it seemed almost to atone for everything, to compensate for all she had endured.

“Lenore?” the man whispered feebly.

But there was no spoken answer out of the shadow at the edge of the lantern light. Perhaps there was the faint sound, like a gasp, almost as if a terrible truth that was for an instant forgotten had been recalled again; and perhaps the administering hands halted in their work for one part of an instant. But at once they continued to ply about him, so strong and capable, and yet so ineffably gentle. It couldn’t be Lenore, of course. No wonder,—Lenore had suffered grievously from the events of the past night. In his half-delirium it occurred to him that it might be his mother. There had been times in the past, when his mother had come to his bedside in this same way, with this same gentleness, during his boyhood sicknesses. But he couldn’t remain awake to think about it. His wet, clinging clothes had been removed, and blankets, already warmed, were being wrapped about him. He fell into deep, restful sleep.

But it ended all too soon. A great hand shook him, snatching him into a sitting position, and a great, bearded face, unspeakably terrible in the weird, yellow light of the lantern, showed close to his own. “Up and out,” he was shouting. “It’ll be light enough to work by the time you have breakfast. Out before I boot you out.”

He meant what he said. Already his cruel boot was drawn back. Ned’s conscious world returned to him in one mighty sweep, like a cruel, white light bursting upon tired eyes. The full dreadfulness of his lot, forgotten in his hours of sleep, was recalled more vividly than ever. It wasn’t just a dream, to be dispersed on wakening. Even yesterday’s blessed murk of unreality, dimming everything and dulling all his perceptions, was gone now that he was refreshed by sleep. His brain worked clear, and he saw all things as they were. And the black wall of hopelessness seemed unbroken.

Yet instantly he remembered Lenore. At least he must continue to try to shelter her—even to make conditions easy as possible for Bess. His love for the former was the one happiness of his past life that he had left; and he didn’t forget his obligation to the latter. Bess was already up, building up the fire at Doomsdorf’s command, but Lenore, with whom she had slept, still lay sobbing on her cot.

Ned pulled on his clothes, scarcely wondering at the fact that they were hanging, miraculously dry, back of the stove; and immediately hurried to Lenore’s side. He forgot his own aching muscles in distress for her; and his arms went about her, drawing her face to his own.

“Oh, my girl, you mustn’t cry,” he told her, with a world of compassion in his tone. “I’ll take care of you. Don’t you know I will——?”

But with tragic face Lenore drew back from his arms. “_How_ can you take care of me?” she asked with immeasurable bitterness. “Can you stand against that brute——?”

“Hush——!”

“Of course you can’t. You’re even afraid to speak his name.”

“Oh, my dear! Don’t draw away.” The man’s voice was pleading. “I was just afraid he’d take some awful punishment from you. Of course I’m helpless now——”

“Then how can you take care of me?” she demanded again, for a moment forgetting her despair in her anger at him. “Can you make him let me stay in bed, instead of going out to die in this awful snow? Death—that’s all there’s here for me. And the quicker it comes the better.”

She sobbed again, and he tried in vain to comfort her. “We’ll come through,” he whispered. “I’ll make everything as light as I can——”

But she thrust off his caressing hands. “I don’t want you to touch me,” she told him tragically. “You can’t make things light for me, in this living hell. And until you can protect me from that man, and save me, you can keep your kisses. Oh, why did you ever bring me here?”

“I suppose—because I loved you.”

“You showed it, in taking me into this awful land in an unsafe boat. You can keep your love. I wish I’d never seen you.”

Just a moment his hands dropped to his sides, and he showed her the white, drawn visage of utter despair. Yet he must not hold these words against her. Surely she had cause for them; perhaps she would find him some tenderness when she saw how hard he had tried to serve her, to ease her lot. Her last words recalled his own that he had spoken to Bess aboard the _Charon_: if he had railed as he had to Bess for such little cause, at least he must not blame Lenore, even considering the fact of their love, in such a moment as this. He _had_ brought her from her home and to this pass. Save for him, she would be safe in her native city, not a slave to an inhuman master on this godless island.

He looked down at her steadfastly. “I can’t keep my love,” he told her earnestly. “I gave it to you long ago, and it’s yours still. That love is the one thing I have left to live for here; the one thing that’s left of my old life. I’m going to continue to watch over you, to help you all I can, to do as much of your work as possible; to stand between you and Doomsdorf with my own life. I’ve learned, in this last day, that love is a spar to cling to when everything else is lost, the most important and the greatest blessing of all. And I’m not going to stop loving you, whether you want me to or not. I’m going to fight for you—to the end.”

“And in the end I’ll die,” she commented bitterly.

Doomsdorf reëntered the room then, gazing at them in amused contempt, and Ned instinctively straightened.

“I trust you’re not hatching mutiny?” the sardonic voice came out.

“Not just now,” Ned answered with some spirit. “There’s not much use to hatch mutiny, things being as they are.”

“You don’t say! There’s a rifle on the wall——”

“Always empty——”

“But the pistol I carry is always loaded. Why don’t you try to take it away from me?” Then his voice changed, surly and rumbling again. “But enough of that nonsense. You know what would happen to you if you tried anything—I’ve told you that already. There’s work to do to-day. There’s got to be another cabin—logs cut, built up, roof put on—a place for the three of you to bunk. That’s the work to-day. The three of you ought to get a big piece of it done to-day——”

“Miss Hardenworth? Is she well enough? Couldn’t she help your wife with the housework to-day?”

“It will take all three of you to do the work I’ll lay out. Lenore can learn to do her stint with the others. And hereafter, when you address me, call me ‘Sir.’ A mere matter of employer’s discipline——”

Because he knew his master, Ned nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir,” he returned simply. “One thing else. I can’t be expected to do real work in this kind of clothes. You’ve laid out furs and skins for the girls; I want to get something too that will keep me warm and dry.”

“I’m not responsible for the clothes you brought with you. You should have had greater respect for the North. Besides, it gives me pleasure, I assure you, to see you dressed as you are. It tones up the whole party.”

Stripped of his late conceit that might otherwise have concealed it from him, Ned caught every vestige of the man’s irony. “Do I get the warm clothes?” he demanded bluntly.

“When you earn them,” was the answer. “In a few days more you’ll be running out your traps, and everything you catch, at first, you can keep. You’ve got to prove yourself smarter than the animals before you get the right to wear their skins.”

XIX

The previous day and night had been full of revelation for Ned; and as he started forth from the cabin with his axe, there occurred a little scene that tended even further to illustrate his changing viewpoint. Gloating with triumph at the younger man’s subjection, Doomsdorf called sardonically from the cabin doorway.

“I trust I can’t help you in any way?” he asked.

Discerning the premeditated insult in his tone, Ned whirled to face him. Then for an instant he stood shivering with wrath.

“Yes,” he answered. His promise to say “sir” was forgotten in his rage. “You can at least treat me with the respect deserved by a good workman.”

The words came naturally to his lips. It was as if they reflected a thought that he had considered long, instead of the inspiration of the moment. The truth was that, four days before, he had never known that good work and good workmen were entitled to respect. The world’s labor had seemed apart from his life; the subject a stupid one not worth his thought and interest. In one terrible day Ned had found out what the word work meant. He had learned what a reality it was. All at once he saw in it a possible answer to life itself.

He stood aghast at the magnitude of his discovery. Why, _work_ was the beginning and the end of everything. Reaching back to the beginnings of creation, extending clear until the last soul in heaven had passed on and through the training camp of the last hereafter, it was the thing that counted most. He had never thought about it in particular before. Strangely it had not even occurred to him that the civilization that he worshipped, all the luxury and richness that he loved, had been possible only through the toil of human hands and brains.

Suddenly he knew that his father had been right and he had been wrong. The life of the humblest worker had been worth more than his. It would have been better for him to die, that long-ago night of the automobile accident, than for Bess to lose one of her working hands! He had been contemptuous of work and workers, but had not his own assumption of superiority been chiefly based upon the achievements of working men who had gone before him? What could he claim for himself that could even put him on the par with the great mass of manhood, much less make him their superior? He had played when there was work to do, shirked his load when the backs of better men were bent.

In his heart Ned had been a little ashamed of his father. He had felt it would have been more to his credit if the wealth that sustained him should have originated several generations farther back, instead of by the sole efforts of Godfrey Cornet. It had made Ned himself feel almost like one of the _nouveaux riches_. The more the blood of success was thinned, it seemed, the bluer it was; and it wasn’t easy to confess, especially to certain young English bloods, that the name emblazoned in electric lights across a great house of trade was, but one generation removed, his own. He had particularly deplored his father’s tendency to mention, in any company, his own early struggles, the poverty from which he sprung. But how true and genuine was the shame he felt now at that false shame! In this moment of revelation he saw his father plainly and knew him for the sturdy old warrior, the man of prowess, most of all for the sterling aristocrat that he was. He was a good workman: need anything more be said?

Ever since his college days he had snubbed him, patronized him, disregarded his teachings whereby he might have come into his own manhood. He had never respected good work or good workmen; and now it was fitting retribution that he should spend his natural life in the most grinding, bitter work. Even now he was making amends for his folly at the hands of the most cruel, ironical fate that could befall him. His axe was in his arms; his savage taskmaster faced him from the cabin doorway.

All these thoughts coursed through Ned’s keenly wakened brain in an instant. They seemed as instantaneous as the flood of wrath that had swept through him at Doomsdorf’s irony. And now would he suffer some unspeakable punishment for insolence to his master?

But little, amused lines came about Doomsdorf’s fierce eyes. “A good workman, eh?” he echoed. “Yes, you did work fair enough yesterday. Wait just a minute.”

He turned into his door, in a moment reappearing with a saw and several iron wedges from among his supplies of tools. He put them in Ned’s hands, and the latter received them with a delight never experienced at any favor of fortune in the past. The great penalty of such a life as he had lived, wherein almost every material thing came into his hands at his wish, is that it costs the power to feel delight, the simple joy and gratitude of children; but evidently Ned was learning how again. Just a saw of steel and wedges of iron for splitting! Workmen’s tools that he once regarded with contempt. But oh, they would save him many a weary hour of labor. The saw could cut through the fallen logs in half the time he could hack them with his axe; they could be split in half the number of strokes with the aid of the wedges.

He went to his toil; and he was a little amazed at how quickly he felled the first of the tall spruce. Seemingly his yesterday’s toil had bestowed upon him certain valuable knowledge. His strokes seemed to be more true: they even had a greater degree of power for the same amount of effort. There were certain angles by which he could get the best results: he would learn them, too—sooner or later.

As he worked, the stiffness and pain that yesterday’s toil had left in his muscles seemed to pass away. The axe swung easily in his arms. When the first tree was chopped down, he set Lenore and Bess at trimming off the branches and sawing twelve-foot logs for the hut.

It came about that he chopped down several trees before the two girls had finished cutting and trimming the first. Seemingly Lenore had not yet recovered from the trying experience of two nights before, for she wholly failed to do any part of the work. What was done at this end of the labor Bess did alone. The unmistakable inference was that Ned would have to double his own speed in order to avoid the lash at night.

Yet he felt no resentment. Lenore was even more inured to luxury and ease than he himself: evidently the grinding physical labor was infinitely beyond her. Bess, however, still toiled bravely with axe and saw.

The day turned out to be not greatly different from the one preceding. Again Ned worked to absolute exhaustion: the only apparent change seemed to be that he accomplished a greater amount of work before he finally fell insensible in the snow. This was the twilight hour, and prone in the snow he lay like a warrior among his fallen. About him was a ring of trees chopped down and, with Bess’s aid, trimmed of their limbs, notched and sawed into lengths for the cabin. They had only to be lifted, one upon another, to form the cabin walls.

Bess had collapsed too as the twilight hour drew on; and Lenore alone was able to walk unaided to the shack. Again Ned lay insensible on the floor beside the stove, but to-night, long past the supper hour, he was able to remove his own wet clothes and to devour some of the unsavory left-overs from the meal. Again the night fell over Hell Island, tremulous and throbbing with all the mighty passions of the wild, and again dawn came with its gray light on the snow. And like some insensible, mechanical thing Ned rose to toil again.

The third day was given to lifting the great logs, one upon another, for the walls of the cabin. It was, in reality, the hardest work he had yet done, as to shift each log into place took every ounce of lifting power the man had. The girls could help him but little here, for both of them together did not seem to be able to handle an end of the great logs. He found he had to lift each end in turn.

Yet he was able to drag to the cabin to-night, and torpid with fatigue, take his place at the crude supper table. He was hardly conscious that he was eating—lifting the food to his mouth as mechanically as he had lifted the great logs into place toward the end of the day—and the faces opposite him were as those seen in a dream, never in the full light, vague and dim like ghosts. Sometimes he tried to smile at one of them—as if by a long-remembered instinct—and sometimes one of the assembled group—a different face than that to which he addressed his smiles—seemed to be smiling at him, deep-blue eyes curiously lustrous as if with tears. Then there was a brown, inscrutable face that just now and then appeared out of the shadow, and a stealing, slipping, silent some one that belonged to it,—some one that now and then brought food and put it on the table.

But none of these faces went home to him like the great, hairy visage of the demon that sat opposite. Ned eyed him covertly throughout the meal, wondering every time he moved in his chair if he were getting up to procure his whip, flinching every time the great arm moved swiftly across the table. He didn’t remember getting up from his chair, stripping off part of his wet clothes and falling among the blankets that Doomsdorf had left for his use on the floor. Almost at once it was dawn again.

A new, more vivid consciousness was upon him when he wakened. The stabbing ache in his legs and arms was mostly worn off now; but there was a sharp pain in the small of his back that at first seemed absolutely unendurable. But it wailed, too, as he went to the work of finishing the cabin, laying the roof and hanging the crude door. To-day he was conscious of greater physical power, of more prolonged effort without fatigue. The whole island world was more vivid and clear than ever before.

It was with a certain vague quality of pleasure that he regarded this cabin he had built with his own hands, finished now, except for the chinking of the logs. It was the first creative work he had ever done, and he looked at it and saw that it was good.

He could forget, now, the dreadful, heart-breaking toil he had put into it. It had almost killed him, but he was no worse for it now. Indeed his arms were somewhat stronger, he was even better equipped to meet the next, greater task that Doomsdorf appointed him. It was curious that, slave of a cruel taskmaster that he was, he experienced a dim echo of something that was akin to a new self-respect.

These logs, laid one upon another, were visible proof that so far he had stood the gaff! He had done killing work, yet he still lived to do more. The fear that his spirit would fly from his exhausted frame at the end of one of these bitter days could soon be discarded; seemingly he could toil from dawn to dark, eat his fill, and in a night’s sleep build himself up for another day of toil. More and more of Lenore’s work could be laid on his ever-strengthening shoulders.

The cabin itself was roomy and snug: here he could find seclusion from Doomsdorf and his imperturbable squaw. It was blessing enough just to be out of his sight in the long winter nights after supper, no more to watch every movement of his arm! Besides, he was down to realities, and it was a mighty satisfaction to know that here was a lasting shelter from the storm and the cold. The Arctic winter was falling swiftly, and here was his defense.

Doomsdorf gave him a rusted, discarded stove; and it was almost joy to see it standing in its place! With Doomsdorf’s permission, he devoted a full day to procuring fuel for it.