Edison Marshall

“ All too plainly Doomsdorf had merely hinted at the cruel rigors of the trapper’s trail. Yet Lenore was smiling.
Then Ned saw, with a queer little tug of his heart, that the smile was not meant for him. It was not a gracious signal of her love, meant to encourage him in his despair. A woman herself, and understanding women, Bess never dreamed for an instant that it was; she knew only too well the thought and the aim behind that sudden, dazzling sunshine in Lenore’s face. Yet her only reaction, beyond amazement, was a swift surge of tenderness and pity for Ned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ned and his kind had come to be sufficient unto themselves. They had lost the wonder and fear of life, and that meant nothing less than the loss of their wonder and fear of the great Author of life. To these, life had been a game that they thought they had mastered. They had laughed to scorn the philosophies that a hundred generations of nobler men had built up with wondering reverence. Made arrogant by luxury and ease, they knew of nothing too big for them, no mystery that their contemptuous gaze could not penetrate, no wonder that their reckless hands could not unveil. ”

“ Ned knew he was going to his death: any other possibility was utterly beyond hope. The only wonder he had left was what form his death would take. There was no shadow of mercy on the evil face of his captor.
Bess knew that her portion was also death, simply because the white, pure flame that was her life could not abide in the body that was prey to Doomsdorf. Death itself would cheat those terrible, ravishing hands: this was as certain a conviction as any she had ever known in all the brief dream of her life. ”

“ In spite of his own despair, his own bitter hopelessness, he must do what he could to keep hope alive in Lenore and Bess. It was the only chance he had to pay, even in the most pitiful, slight degree for what he had done to them. He must always try to make their lot easier, doing their work when he could, maintaining an attitude of cheer, living the lie of hope when hope seemed dead in his breast.
Ned Cornet was awake at last. He knew himself, his generation, the full enormity of his own folly, the unredeemed falsehood of his old philosophy. ”

“ Day after day the snow sifted down, ever laying a deeper covering over the island, bending down the limbs of the strong trees, obscuring all things under this cold infinity of white. The traps had to be laboriously dug out and reset, again and again. These were the days when the old “sourdough” on the mainland remained within his cabin, merely venturing to the door after fuel; but Ned and Bess knew no such mercy. Their fate was to struggle on through those ever-deepening drifts until they died. Driven by a cruel master they dared not rest even a day. ”

“ Rather they were like figures in metal, a great artist’s theme of incredible stress. Ned’s face was drawn and black from congested blood. His lips were drawn back, the tendons of his hand, free of the glove, seemed about to break through the skin. For that long moment Ned called on every ounce of strength of his body and soul. Only his body’s purely physical might could force back the fierce head the ghastly inch that was needed; only the high-born spirit of strength, the mighty urge by which man holds dominion over earth and sea, could give him resolution to stand the incredible strain. ”

“ The strain itself would soon shatter and destroy their mortal hearts. The night seemed to be falling before Ned’s eyes; his familiar, snowy world was dark with the nearing shadow of death. But the pistol was free of the holster now, and he was trying to turn it in his hand.
It took all the strength of his remaining consciousness to exert a last, vital ounce of pressure. Then there was a curious low sound, muffled and dull as sounds heard in a dream. And dreams passed over him, like waves over water, as he relaxed at last, breathing in great sobs, in the reddened drifts. ”

“ All at once, as the last vestige of the white roof was concealed behind the snow-laden branches of the spruce, he found himself in the very heart of the wilderness. It was as if he had passed from one world to another.
Even the air was different. It stirred and moved and throbbed in a way he couldn’t name, as if mighty, unnamable passions seemed about to be wakened. He caught a sense of a resistless power that could crush him to earth at a whim, of vast forces moving by fixed, invisible law; he felt that secret, wondering awe which to the woodsman means the nearing presence of the Red Gods. ”

“ A few feet distant on the deck Bess’s eyes turned from the miracle in the skies to watch the slowly growing light in Ned Cornet’s face. It was well enough for him to find his inspiration in the majesty of nature. Bess was a woman, and that meant that man that is born of woman was her work and her being. She turned her eyes from God to behold this man.
And it was well for her that Lenore was not near enough to see her face in the wan, ghostly radiance of the Northern Lights. Her woman’s intuition would have been quick to lay bare the secret of the girl’s wildly leaping heart. ”

“ For the first time since they were born Ned and Lenore were face to face with life, and also with the death that shadows life. For the first time they knew the abject terror of utter helplessness. There was nothing they could do. They were impotent prey to whatever fate awaited them. Captain Knutsen, mighty of frame, his blood surging fiercely through the avenues of his veins, and Bess, schooled to hardship, were ever so much better off than they. They were better disciplined, stronger in misfortune, better qualified to meet danger and disaster. ”

“ The physical side of him was conquered; the primitive desire for life no longer manifested itself in his spirit. Just to fall in the snow, to let his tired legs wilt under him, perhaps to creep a little way back into the thicket where Doomsdorf’s lantern would fail to reveal him: then he would be free of this dreadful training camp for good! The sleep that would come upon him then would not be cursed with the knowledge of a coming dawn, as gray and hopeless as the twilight just departed! He would be safe then from Doomsdorf’s lash! ”

“ They treat me with the respect that is born of fear.
“That toil, that hard schooling, has made me what I am and given me the highest degree possible of human happiness. I find a satisfaction in living; I am able to hold my head up among men. I have health, the adoring love of a wonderful woman; I give service to the world. I can see old age coming upon me without regret, without vain tears for what might have been, without fear for whatever fate lies beyond. I am schooled for that fate, Ned. I’ve got strength to meet it. ”

“ Wholly without warmth, just like the matter of business that it was, he told her his plan and offered her the position. It was for ninety days, he said, and owing to the nature of the work, irregular hours and more or less hardship, her pay would be twice that which she received in the city. Would she care to go?
She looked up at him with blue eyes smiling,—a smile that crept down to her lips for all that she tried to repel it. She looked straight into Ned’s eyes as she answered him simply, candidly, quite like a social equal instead of a lowly employee. ”

“ The fear of which psychologists speak, that of the leap into darkness that is glibly said to be the last conscious instinct, was absolutely absent. Death was a word to conjure with no more. It was no harder for him to think of than the fall of a tree beneath his axe. The terror that surrounded it was ever only a specter: and in the clear vision that came to him in those terrible twilights, only realities were worth the effort of thought. The physical torture of staggering through the snow back to the cabin was so infinitely worse than any conception that he could retain of death ”

“ No one could wonder that Lenore Hardenworth was a social success. Besides her beauty of face, the grace of a slender but well-muscled form, she unquestionably had a great deal of ambition and spirit. She was well schooled in the tricks of her trade: charming and ingratiating with her girl friends, sweet and deeply respectful to the old, and striking a fine balance between recklessness and demureness with available men. It can be said for Lenore that she wasted no time with men who were not eligible, in every sense of the word. Lenore had her way to make in this world of trial and stress. ”

“ He knew perfectly that it was his own recklessness and folly that set the cups of burning liquor before Captain Knutsen as he stood at his wheel. It was his own unpardonable conceit, his own self-sufficiency that made him start out to meet the North half prepared, daring to disturb its ancient silences with the sound of his wild revelry; and to live, in its grim desolation, the same trivial life he lived at home. He hadn’t even brought a pistol. Sensing his weakness and his unpreparedness, Doomsdorf hadn’t even done him the honor of searching him for one. ”

“ Whatever darkness engrossed him at the sight of the ignoble girl, begging for her little life even at the cost of her lover’s, showed not at all in his white, set face. Whatever unspeakable despair came upon him at this ruin of his ideals, this destruction of all his hopes, it was evidenced neither in his actions nor in the clear, cool quality of his thought.
No other crisis had ever found him better disciplined. His mind seemed to circumscribe the whole, dread situation in an instant. He turned, met Bess’s straightforward gaze, saw her half-smile of complete understanding. ”

“ Her depression deepened, and she couldn’t fight it off. This North was so remorseless and so cruel, laying so many pitfalls for the unsuspecting. It was strange what blind terror swept through her at just the thought of disaster befalling Ned. It made her doubt herself, her own mastery of her heart. She never considered the dangers that lay in her own path, only those in his. At the end of a miserable hour she straightened, scarcely able to believe her eyes.
On the glare ice of the glacier, a mile straight up the ridge from the cabin, she saw the figure of a man. ”

“ XXIV Ned knew what fear was, well enough, as he lay in the darkened chasm, staring up at the white line of the crevice above him. The old love of life welled back, sweeping his spirit as in a flood, and with it all the hopes and fears of which life is made. He remembered Lenore, now. Her image was not just a lovely photograph of a past day,—a silvery daguerreotype of a happiness forgotten. He remembered again his debt of service to her, his dear companionship for Bess, his dreams of escape from the island. ”

“ Around them endlessly lay the sea, swept by unknown winds, cursed by the winter’s cold, like death itself in its infinity and its haunting fear. The life they had left behind was already shadowed and dim: the farewell shouts, the laughter, the gaiety, the teeming crowds that moved and were never still were all like something imagined, unspeakably far off. Only the sea and the sky were left, and the craft struggling wearily, ever farther into the empty North.
Lenore found herself oppressed by an unreasoning fear. Realities were getting home to her, and she was afraid of them. ”

“ Ned, there’s one thing to bring it back—and that is hardship. I mean by hardship all that is opposite to ease: self-restraint instead of license; service instead of self-love; devotion to a cause of right rather than to pleasure; most of all, hard work instead of ease. I’ve heard it said, as a thing to be deplored, that shirt sleeves go to shirt sleeves every three generations. Thank God it is so. There is nothing like shirt sleeves, Ned, to make a man—and hard-working, bunching muscles under them. And through my own weakness I’ve let those fine muscles of yours grow flabby and soft. ”