G. B. Lancaster

“ Change was the only thing which never tired him; the new was the only mate he always met with gladness; the elusive and the uncertain were the only loves he had ever wanted to hold and kiss. This wild creed which he had taught himself had done him no good. But he could not fling it aside. It did not seem possible now that Tempest could ever give way to a newer friend; Jennifer to a newer love. And yet such things had been his experience all through life. Constancy is more an ingrained habit than a natural virtue, and Dick had never cultivated habits. ”

“ And Andree stood for the old dynasty; the thing which must die; the thing to be trodden hard that the roots of the new-planted tree should stand firm in it. This was the law of life; the law of eternity. It was the ever-mutable. Now out of which the Future is shaped. All mankind were governed alike by that law. There was no escape. But, with those young arms gripped about him, Dick did not feel competent to lay the whole blame on the natural evolution of destiny.
Andree drew herself up against him; lifting her quivering lips. ”

“ Life meant no more to her than the day. Death meant no more. It was a vague thing which she would not think of; which she could not think of because all greatness had no meaning for her. She was stupid, utterly and entirely stupid, and he knew it. And those mocking words which he had said to Hensham about her beauty were true, and he knew that also.
Without that inconsequent alluring wild-wood bloom of her no man would ever have looked twice at Grange's Andree. He would not. If Andree had been like Moosta to look at he would not be doing this now. ”

“ Bush and hollow, ridge and snake-fence were as levelly white as paper. Dick wondered idly what kind of land O'Hara was like to find where he was going. Would the vivid air bring the blood leaping from a man's heart along his veins there? Would there be a bullmoose like that one on horizon to strike a wonderful note of virility over this senseless snow that pushed itself against the pale blue of the sky? Would a trail like this of the Moon-Dance, kept hard by the passing of many Indians, lead O'Hara anywhere—anywhere at all? Dick yawned, and turned to torment de Choiseaux. ”

“ The fur-hunters of the North were bringing their winter's yield into the big Hudson Bay sheds at old Chipewyan, and there was no one in the settlement who did not know it. To-day the Hudson Bay Company was king of the North as it was in the golden days of its reign, nearly three hundred years ago. From out of unnumbered solitary places the trappers came to do honour to it; deep-eyed, alert men, with that hip-rolling walk which is born of the snow-shoe and those sudden spurts into ungoverned merriment which are in the blood of the French-Indian breed. ”

“ Something of this was touched on a few nights later when Dick and Tempest walked the dreaming beach under the stars. They would part in the morning, and it would quite probably be long before they met again; and this knowledge, and the haunting beauty and loneliness of the wide lake loosened their tongues a little, so that, hesitatingly and with many pauses, they spoke more intimately than they had done since the days of their fiery youth. Even better than Dick, Tempest knew that the human soul is a shy wild thing which often cannot give where it most desires to give. ”

“ Jennifer heard the half-choked cry as Florestine saw him, and it drove home the truth of his words. In order that the world may go on sin must be punished, rooted out, crushed into death. Nature demands it, and opposite the neglect of this law she sets the extinction and the degradation of the race. Jennifer stood for a little in the great white day with bowed head. Then she followed Tempest into the shack.
It was very cold in the shack, for Florestine had made no fire since the baby died. It smelt of moose-skin and coal-oil and all airless greasiness and wood-smoke. ”

“ She laughed again, flinging her arms up.
"Hear the wind," she cried. "Hear the wind! Dieu! C'est to ride the wind when it comes so. Ah! Vous terrible! Vous si cruelle! Ecoutez moi!" she cried to it, breaking into the deep belling whistle of the moose-call. Dick's eyes changed. For she struck his own wild fibres to a chord of restless passion.
"Speak you little devil," he said, and shook her again. "Who's been here? Ogilvie?"
"Ogilvie! Ogilvie l'ivrogne! Ah! Tant pis pour il if he had."
"I don't doubt it. I fancy it's the worse for anyone who has much to do with you. Who, then? Robison?" ”

“ Or the blue of the lake, and the warm umbers of the tepees, and the pure ash-grey of a dog that scratched itself at Tempest's feet. Tempest he did not care to look at. Through those long steamer days on the Athabaska Dick had seen more of Tempest than he ever wished to see again, and he was dreading the plunge into the wilderness as he had not dreaded the future ever before in all his life. For the fret of that impotent rage which we feel only against those whom we have wronged and who will not give us the satisfaction of justifying ourselves was on Dick, by day and by wakeful night. ”

“ He was struggling still when Dick sat upright with a sharp oath which cut de Choiseaux's efforts in half. O'Hara's shack lay on the snow like a boat in the trough of a wave; and, down the slope where a snake-fence was broken and tangled, an up-ended sled tilted athwart a dead horse. A trail wound from the sled to the shack; a wide smudged trail, dabbled here and there with blood; and, twisted through and through it like a thread, ran the coyote-spore which antedated the accident twenty hours back at least.
"But he brought himself in," said Dick. "Well—a man has to pay for his carelessness." ”

“ No power on earth could ruffle Depache's gentle melancholy into a storm. When Dick and Myers cursed the flies and the damp heat along the ragged streams and boulders that broke the portages, and yet would not allow canoe- work; when they swore at the windy nights; at the infinitely desolate hills where only the moss and a few handfuls of grass in the bottoms offered fuel; when, rising to giddy peaks of profanity, they vowed that they would feed no more biscuit to the stomachs that desired bread—bread, and could make no fire wherewith to bake it ”

“ The training of a whole life could not fail when once the man's eyes were open. It surely could not fail. But even as he said it Dick felt the doubt come. Dared man say that anything was sure? And if it was, what made it so? Not the shifting sand of man's own heart; not the vagrant wind-puffs of his desires; not the trembling marsh-flames of his beliefs. Then, since there was nothing beyond or above man, it followed that nothing was sure. Tempest might fall into a deeper pit than that from which Dick had pulled him. Jennifer might give the lips which she had denied him to another man. ”

“ If Ducane lived he would find him. If Ducane died he would know it. Concerning this matter he had the strange intuition which occasionally comes to men who have relied all their lives on chance.
The Lake, wide and moaning as the sea, was dark with the wrath of an eastern wind that night. But it was no darker than Tempest's spirit as he walked the stony ridge behind their island camp, forgetful of the mosquito-smudges, and remembering only that he had at last taken the decisive step away from civilisation and from all knowledge of Andree. ”

“ Dick heard all the sounds. But they seemed far off. Nothing was near but the ugly rock on which a good man was splitting his life.
"Tempest," he said in his throat. "Good God! Tempest!"
He told himself that he had known it before. But he knew with an artist's instinct that he had not known until he saw Andree's face. There was no heart behind that face; no understanding. Tempest meant no more to her than Robison or O'Hara had done. Perhaps not so much. And she meant to Tempest—Dick thrust himself through a gap in the rail-fence, and felt the dried grass of the churchyard beneath his feet. ”

“ He was so proud of Tempest, and it stung him to the quick that Tempest should be willing to lower his standard of life as he unquestionably was doing. Some unlocated words flashed to his mind suddenly.
"When the will has forgotten the lifelong aim,
And the mind can only disgrace its fame,
And a man is uncertain of his own name . . ."
The mercilessness of the thought jarred all the love alive in Dick. Such things might be for men spent with toil and years; but for Tempest in full strength and vigour the thing was brutal, unreal, hideous. ”

“ Jennifer stood a moment in the door. At the broad blackened bench running along one side of the place the slow, clumsy half-breed girl was splashing greasy water as she scraped a pot. She was a living thorn in Jennifer's flesh; a primitive thing that could not be taught, and that never lost its temper. Up in the dark rough rafters were thrust broken snow-shoes, a special hand-sled of Ducane's, a couple of bear-skins of his own curing, and many other things which belonged to the days before Jennifer came and which she had not had the courage to touch. ”

“ She ran with the long easy Indian lope, and she was white as the winter ermine and nearly as lithe in her long fur coat and her round fur cap with the ear-pieces.
A young moose slung beside her with long fiddle-head and loose lips up, sniffing the taint of man. She came like the strange wild breath that blows in the forest, God only knew why and where and how, and within a man's length of Tempest the moose propped stiffly, making little complaining cries like a child. The girl flung an arm over the rough crest, and the two looked at Tempest with the wide wild soft eyes of the forest-born. ”

“ He spoke little that night, and repulsed all Andree's overtures. And long after Andree had curled herself in her deerskin robes at the back of the tent Dick sat with his back against the sled and watched the smoky fire and thought.
His work seemed hateful to him now. The past in which he had loved Jennifer and Tempest seemed hateful. He wanted to cut himself free from it as he had done with other pasts. Against the whirling snow Tempest's face shaped itself, with the square strong forehead and the sword of justice in his eyes. He laughed at it. ”

“ And it waits for the lonely Indian, that law; guarding him along his silent trails; for the breed, weakened and demoralised by his contact with the white man who recognises no duty towards his brother; for the new lives yet to be: the strange, wonderful medley of lives out of which is to be fused the still untabulated race which will produce the Canadian of the future. It waits for them all; held grimly, firmly in its place by the untiring hands and the unflagging souls of the few, the very few, who prove worthy of their trust until the end. ”

“ For each man his own thoughts were full enough company. On the edge of the moonlight the first shacks of the Reserve showed, low and darkly. Naked scrub and undergrowth made scratchy shadows to the very doors, and like shadows too, a handful of Indian dogs flicked out, leaping and barking and rolling in the snow. A sore-withered pony raised its head; then returned to its investigations among the bare twigs, and where a red fire darkened the forest to ink a few women moved with the light trembling on their black hair and eyes and dull stuff dresses. ”