Books: Isobel

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"An' what she said about the blue flower is comin' true, Billy," he
whispered. "It's bringing happiness to you, just as she said, for
you're going down to her--"

MacVeigh interrupted him.

"No, it's not," he said, softly. "She loved him-- as much as the girl
down there will ever love you, Pelly, and when I tell her what has
happened-- her heart will break. That can't bring happiness-- for me
!"

The hours of that day bore leaden weights for Billy. The two men made
their plans. A number of the Eskimos agreed to accompany Pelliter as
far as Eskimo Point, whence he would make his way alone to Churchill.
Billy would strike south to the Little Beaver in search of Couchée's
cabin and Isobel. He was glad when night came. It was late when he
went to the door, opened it, and looked out.

In the edge of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the
gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and
balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the
wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a
seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by
the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men
sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but twice as
many dogs, exhausted and footsore, lay curled in heaps, as inanimate
as if dead. There was present a strange silence and a strange and
unnatural gloom that was not of the night alone, a silence broken only
by the low moaning of the wind out on the Barren, the restlessness in
the air above the tree-tops, and the crackling of the fires. The
Eskimos were as motionless as so many dead men. Their round,
expressionless eyes were wide open. They sat or crouched with their
backs to the Barren, their faces turned into the still deeper
blackness of the forest. Some distance away, like a star, there
gleamed the small and steady light in the cabin window. For two hours
the eyes of those about the fires had been fixed on that light. And at
intervals there had risen from among the stony-faced watchers the
little chief, whose clacking voice joined for a few moments each time
the wailing of the wind, the swish of the low-hanging sky, and the
crackling of the fires. But there was sound of no other voice or
movement. He alone moved and spoke, for to the others the clacking
sounds he made was speech, words spoken each time for the man who lay
dead in the cabin.

A dozen times Pelliter and MacVeigh had looked out to the fires, and
looked each time at the hour. This time Billy said:

"They're moving, Pelly! They're jumping to their feet and coming this
way!" He looked at his watch again. "They're mighty good guessers.
It's a quarter after twelve. When a chief or a big man dies they bury
him in the first hour of the new day. They're coming after Deane."

He opened the door and stepped out into the night. Pelliter joined
him. The Eskimos advanced without a sound and stopped in a shadowy
group twenty paces from the cabin. Five of these little fur-clad men
detached themselves from the others and filed into the cabin, with the
chief man at their head. As they bent over Deane they began to chant a
low monotone which awakened little Isobel, who sat up and stared
sleepily at the strange scene. Billy went to her and gathered her
close in his arms. She was sleeping again when he put her down among
the blankets. The Eskimos were gone with their burden. He could hear
the low chanting of the tribe.

"I found her, and I thought she was mine," said Pelliter's low voice
at his side. "But she ain't, Billy. She's yours."

MacVeigh broke in on him as though he had not heard.

"You better get to bed, Pelly," he warned. "That arm needs rest. I'm
going out to see where they bury him."

He put on his cap and heavy coat and went as far as the door, then
turned back. From his kit he took a belt-ax and nails.

The wind was blowing more strongly over the Barren, and MacVeigh could
no longer hear the low lament of the Eskimos. He moved toward their
fires, and found them deserted of men, only the dogs rema g in their
deathlike sleep. And then, far down the edge of the timber, he saw a
flare of light. Five minutes later he stood hidden in a deep shadow, a
few paces from the Eskimos. They had dug the grave early in the
evening, out on the great snow-plain, free of the trees; and as the
fire they had built lighted up their dark, round faces MacVeigh saw
the five little black men who had borne forth Scottie Deane leaning
over the shallow hole in the frozen earth. Scottie was already gone.
The earth and ice and frozen moss were falling in upon him, and not a
sound fell now from the thick lips of his savage mourners. In a few
minutes the crude work was done, and like a thin black shadow the
natives filed back to their camp. Only one remained, sitting
cross-legged at the head of the grave, his long narwhal spear at his
back. It was O-gluck-gluck, the Eskimo chief, guarding the dead man
from the devils who come to steal body and soul during the first few
hours of burial.

Billy went deeper into the forest until he found a thin, straight
sapling, which he cut down with half a dozen strokes of his belt-ax.
From the sapling he stripped the bark, and then he chopped off a third
of its length and nailed it crosswise to what remained. After that he
sharpened the bottom end and returned to the grave, carrying the cross
over his shoulder. Stripped to whiteness, it gleamed in the firelight.
The Eskimo watcher stared at it for a moment, his dull eyes burning
darker in the night, for he knew that after this two gods, and not
one, were to guard the grave. Billy drove the cross deep, and as the
blows of his ax fell upon it the Eskimo slunk back until he was
swallowed in the gloom. When MacVeigh was done he pulled off his cap.
But it was not to pray.

"I'm sorry, old man," he said to what was under the cross. "God knows
I'm sorry. I wish you was alive. I wish you was going back to her--
with the kid-- instid o' me. But I'll keep that promise. I swear it.
I'll do-- what's right-- by her."

From the forest he looked back. The Eskimo chief had returned to his
somber watch. The cross gleamed a ghostly white against the thick
blackness of the Barren. He turned his face away for the last time,
and there filled him the oppression of a leaden hand, a thing that was
both dread and fear. Scottie Deane was dead-- dead and in his grave,
and yet he walked with him now at his side. He could feel the
presence, and that presence was like a warning, stirring strange
thoughts within him. He turned back to the cabin and entered softly.
Pelliter was asleep. Little Isobel was breathing the sweet
forgetfulness of childhood. He stooped and kissed her silken curls,
and for a long time he stood with one of those soft curls between his
fingers. In a few years more, he thought, it would be the darker gold
and brown of the woman's hair-- of the woman he loved. Slowly a great
peace entered into him. After all, there was more than hope ahead for
him. She-- the older Isobel-- knew that he loved her as no other man
in the world could love her. He had given proof of that. And now he
was going to her.

XIV

THE SNOW-MAN

After his return from the scene of burial Billy undressed, put out the
light, and went to bed. He fell asleep quickly, and his slumber was
filled with many dreams. They were sweet and joyous at first, and he
lived again his first meeting with the woman; he was once more in the
presence of her beauty, her purity, her faith and confidence in him.
And then more trouble visions came to him. He awoke twice, and each
time he sat up, filled with the shuddering dread that had come to him
at the graveside.

A third time he awakened, and he struck a match to look at his watch.
It was four o'clock. He was still exhausted. His limbs ached from the
tremendous strain of the fifty-mile race across the Barren, but he
could no longer sleep. Something-- he did not attempt to ask himself
what it was-- was urging him to action. He got up and dressed.

When Pelliter awoke two hours later MacVeigh's pack and sledge were
ready for the trip south. While they ate their breakfast the two men
finished their plans. When the hour of parting came Billy left his
comrade alone with little Isobel and went out to hitch up the dogs.
When he returned there was a fresh redness in Pelliter's eyes, and he
puffed out thick clouds of smoke from his pipe to hide his face.
MacVeigh thought of that parting often in the days that followed.
Pelliter stood last in the door, and in his face was a look which
MacVeigh wished that he had not seen. In his own heart was the dread
and the fear, the thing which he could not name.

For hours he could not shake off the gloom that oppressed him. He
strode at the head of old Kazan, the leader, striking a course due
south by compass. When he fell back for the third time to look at
little Isobel he found the child buried deep in her blankets sound
asleep. She did not awake until he stopped to make tea at noon. It was
four o'clock when he halted again to make camp in the shelter of a
clump of tall spruce. Isobel had slept most of the day. She was wide
awake now, laughing at him as he dug her out of her nest.

"Give me a kiss," he demanded.

Isobel complied, putting her two little hands to his face.

"You're a-- a little peach," he cried. "There ain't been a whimper out
of you all day. And now we're going to have a fire-- a big fire."

He set about his work, whistling for the first time since morning. He
set up his silk Service tent, cut spruce and balsam boughs until he
had them a foot deep inside, and then dragged in wood for half an
hour. By that time it was dark and the big fire was softening the snow
for thirty feet around. He had taken off Isobel's thick, swaddling
coat, and the child's pretty face shone pink in the fireglow. The
light danced red and gold in her tangled curls, and as they ate
supper, both on the same blanket, Billy saw opposite him more and more
of what he knew he would find in the woman. When they had finished he
produced a small pocket comb and drew Isobel close up to him. One by
one he smoothed the tangles out of her curls, his heart beating
joyously as the silken touch of them ran through his fingers. Once he
had felt that same soft touch of the woman's hair against his face. It
had been an accidental caress, but he had treasured it in his memory.
It seemed real again now, and the thrill of it made him place little
Isobel alone again on the blanket, while he rose to his feet. He threw
fresh fuel on the fire, and then he found that the warmth had softened
the snow until it clung to his feet. The discovery gave him an
inspiration. A warmth that was not of the fire leaped into his face,
and he gathered up the softened snow, raking it into piles with a
snow-shoe; and before Isobel's astonished and delighted eyes there
grew into shape a snow-man almost as big as himself. He gave it arms
and a head, and eyes of charred wood, and when it was done he placed
his own cap on the crown of it and his pipe in its mouth. Little
Isobel screamed with delight, and together, hand in hand, they danced
around and around it, just as he and the other girls and boys had
danced years and years ago. And when they stopped there were tears of
laughter and joy in the child's eyes and a filmy mist of another sort
in Billy's.

It was the snow-man that brought back to him years and years of lost
hopes. They flooded in upon him until it seemed as though the old life
was the life of yesterday and waiting for him now just beyond the edge
of the black forest. Long after Isobel was asleep in the tent he sat
and looked at the snow-man; and more and more his heart sang with a
new joy, until it seemed as though he must rise and cry out in the
eagerness and hope that filled him. In the snow-man, slowly melting
before the fire, there was a heart and a soul and voice. It was
calling to him, urging him as nothing in the world had ever urged him
before. He would go back to the old home down in God's country, to the
old playmates who were men and women now. They would welcome him-- and
they would welcome the woman. For he would take her. For the first
time he made himself believe that she would go. And there, hand in
hand, they would follow his boyhood footprints over the meadows and
through the hills, and he would gather flowers for her in place of the
mother that was gone, and he would tell her all the old stories of the
days that were passed.

It was the snow-man!

XV

LE MORT ROUGE-- AND ISOBEL

Until late that night Billy sat beside his campfire with the snow-man.
Strange and new thoughts had come to him, and among these was the
wondering one asking himself why he had never built a snow-man before.
When he went to bed he dreamed of the snow-man and of little Isobel;
and the little girl's laughter and happiness when she saw the curious
form the dissolving snow-man had taken in the heat of the fire when
she awoke the following morning filled him again with those boyish
visions of happiness that he had seen just ahead of him. At other
times he would have told himself that he was no longer reasonable.
After they had breakfasted and started on the day's journey he laughed
and talked with baby Isobel, and a dozen times in the forenoon he
picked her up in his arms and carried her behind the dogs.

"We're going home," he kept telling her over and over again. "We're
going home-- down to mama-- mama-- mama!" He emphasized that; and each
time Isobel's pretty mouth formed the word mama after him his heart
leaped exultantly. By the end of that day it had become the sweetest
word in the world to him. He tried mother, but his little comrade
looked at him blankly, and he did not like it himself. "Mama, mama,
mama," he said a hundred times that night beside their campfire, and
before he tucked her away in her warm blankets he said something to
her about "Now I lay me down to sleep." Isobel was too tired and
sleepy to comprehend much of that. Even after she was deep in slumber
and Billy sat alone smoking his pipe he whispered that sweetest word
in the world to himself, and took out the tress of shining hair and
gazed at it joyously in the glow of the fire. By the end of the next
day little Isobel could say almost the whole of the prayer his own
mother had taught him years and years and years ago, so far back that
his vision of her was not that of a woman, but of an elusive and
wonderful angel; and the fourth day at noon she lisped the whole of it
without a word of assistance from him.

On the morning of the fifth day Billy struck the Gray Beaver, and
little Isobel grew serious at the change in him. He no longer amused
her, but urged the dogs along, never for an instant relaxing his
vigilant quest for a sign of smoke, a trail, a blazed tree. At his
heart there began to burn a suspense that was almost suffocating. In
these last hours before he was to see Isobel there came the inevitable
reaction within him. Gloom oppressed him where a little while before
joyous anticipation had given him hope. The one terrible thought drove
out all others now-- he was bringing her news of death, her husband's
death. And to Isobel he knew that Deane had meant all that the world
held of joy or hope-- Deane and the baby.

It was like a shock when he came suddenly upon the cabin, in the edge
of a small clearing. For a moment he hesitated. Then he took Isobel in
his arms and went to the door. It was slightly ajar, and after
knocking upon it with his fist he thrust it open and entered.

There was no one in the room in which he found himself, but there was
a stove and a fire. At the end of the room was a second door, and it
opened slowly. In another moment Isobel stood there. He had never seen
her as he saw her now, with the light from a window falling upon her.
She was dressed in a loose gown, and her long hair fell in disheveled
profusion over her shoulders and bosom. MacVeigh would have cried out
her name-- he had told himself a hundred times what he would first say
to her-- but what he saw in her face startled him and held him silent
while their eyes met. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips burned an
unnatural red. Her eyes were glowing with strange fires. She looked at
him first, and her hands clutched at her bosom, crumpling the masses
of her lustrous hair. Not until she had looked into his eyes did she
recognize what he carried in his arms. When he held the child out to
her she sprang forward with the strangest cry he had ever heard.

"My baby!" she almost shrieked. "My baby-- my baby--"

She staggered back and sank into a chair near a table, with little
Isobel clasped to her breast. For a time Billy heard only those words
in her dry, sobbing voice as she crushed her burning face down against
her child's. He knew that she was sick, that it was fever which had
sent the hot flush into her cheeks. He gulped hard, and went near to
her. Trembling, he put out a hand and touched her. She looked up. A
bit of that old, glorious light leaped into her eyes, the light which
he had seen when in gratitude she had given him her lips to kiss.

"You?" she whispered. "You-- brought her--"

She caught his hand, and the soft smother of her loose hair fell over
it. He could feel the quick rise and fall of her bosom.

"Yes," he said.

There was a demand in her face, her eyes, her parted lips. He went on,
her hand clasping his tighter, until he could feel the swift beating
of her heart. He had never thought that he could tell the story in as
few words as he told it now, with more and more of the glorious light
creeping into Isobel's eyes. She stopped breathing when he told her of
the fight in the cabin and the death of the man who had stolen little
Isobel. A hundred words more brought him to the edge of the forest. He
stopped there. But she still questioned him in silence. She drew him
down nearer, until he could feel her breath. There was something
terrible in the demand of her eyes. He tried to find words to say, but
something rose up in his throat and choked him. She saw his effort.

"Go on," she said, softly.

"And then-- I brought her to you," he said.

"You met him?"

Her question was so sudden that it startled him, and in an instant he
had betrayed himself.

Little Isobel slipped to the floor, and Isobel stood up. She came near
to him, as she came that marvelous night out on the Barren, and in her
eyes there was the same prayer as she put her two hands up to him and
looked straight into his face.

He thought it would be easier. But it was terrible. She did not move.
No sound came from her tight-drawn lips as he told her of the meeting
with Deane, and of her husband's illness. She guessed what was coming
before he had spoken it. At his words, telling of death, she drew away
from him slowly. She did not cry out. Her only evidence that she had
heard and understood was the low moan that fell from her lips. She
covered her face with her hands and stood for a moment an arm's length
away, and in that moment all the force of his great love for her swept
upon MacVeigh in an overwhelming flood. He opened his arms, longing to
gather her into them and comfort her as he would have comforted a
little child. In that love he would willingly have dropped dead at her
feet if he could have given back to her the man she had lost. She
raised her head in time to see his outstretched arms, she saw the love
and the pleading in his face, and into her own eyes there leaped the
fire of a tigress.

"You-- you--" she cried. "It was you who killed him! He had done no
wrong-- save to protect me and avenge me from the insult of a brute!
He had done no wrong. But the Law-- your Law-- set you after him, and
you hunted him like a beast; you drove him from our home, from me and
the baby. You hunted him until he died up there-- alone. You-- you
killed him."

With a sudden cry she turned and caught up little Isobel and ran
toward the other door. And as she disappeared into the room from which
she had first appeared Billy heard her moaning those terrible words.

"You-- you-- you--"

Like a man who had been struck a blow he swayed back to the outer
door. Near his dogs and sledge he met Pierre Couchée and his
half-French wife coming in from their trap line. He scarcely knew what
explanation he gave to the half-breed, who helped him to put up his
tent. But when the latter left to follow his wife into the cabin he
said:

"She ess seek, ver' seek. An' she grow more seek each day until-- mon
Dieu!-- my wife, she ess scare!"

He cut a few balsam boughs and spread out his blankets, but did not
trouble to build a fire. When the half-breed returned to say that
supper was waiting he told him that he was not hungry, and that he was
going to sleep. He doubled himself up under his blankets, silent and
staring, even neglecting to feed the dogs. He was awake when the stars
appeared. He was awake when the moon rose. He was still awake when the
light went out in Pierre Couchée's cabin. The snow-man was gone from
his vision-- home and hope. He had never been hurt as he was hurt now.
He was yet awake when the moon passed far over his head, sank behind
the wilderness to the west, and blackness came. Toward dawn he fell
into an uneasy slumber, and from that sleep he was awakened by Pierre
Couchée's voice.

When he opened his eyes it was day, and the half-breed stood at the
opening of the tent. His face was filled with horror. His voice was
almost a scream when he saw that MacVeigh was awake and sitting up.

"The great God in heaven!" he cried. "It is the plague, m'sieur-- le
mort rouge-- the small pox! She is dying--"

MacVeigh was on his feet, gripping him by the arms.

He turned and ran toward the cabin, and Billy saw that the
half-breed's team was harnessed, and that Pierre's wife was bringing
forth blankets and bundles. He did not wait to question them, but
hurried into the plague-stricken cabin. From the woman's room came a
low moaning, and he rushed in and fell upon his knees at her side. Her
face was flushed with the fever, half hidden in the disheveled masses
of her hair. She recognized him, and her dark eyes burned madly.

"Take-- the baby!" she panted. "My God-- go-- go with her!"

Tenderly he put out a hand and stroked back her hair from her face.

"You are sick-- sick with the bad fever," he said, gently.

"Yes-- yes, it is that. I did not think-- until last night-- what it
might be. You-- you love me! Then take her-- take the baby and go--
go-- go!"

All his old strength came back to him now. He felt no fear. He smiled
down into her face, and the silken touch of her hair set his heart
leaping and the love into his eyes.

"I will take her out there," he said. "But she is all right-- Isobel."
He spoke her name almost pleadingly. "She is all right. She will not
take the fever."

He picked up the child and carried her out into the larger room.
Pierre and his wife were at the door. They were dressed for travel, as
he had seen them come in off the trap line the evening before. He
dropped Isobel and sprang in front of them.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "You are not going away! You cannot
go!" He turned almost fiercely upon the woman. "She will die-- if you
do not stay and care for her. You shall not run away!"

"It is the plague," said Pierre. "It is death to remain!"

"You shall stay!" said MacVeigh, still speaking to Pierre's wife. "You
are the one woman-- the only woman-- within a hundred miles. She will
die without you. You shall stay if I have to tie you!"

With the quickness of a cat Pierre raised the butt of the heavy
dog-whip which he held in his hand and it came down with a sickening
thud on Billy's head. As he staggered into the middle of the cabin
floor, groping blindly for a moment before he fell, he heard a
strange, terrified cry, and in the open inner door he saw the
white-robed figure of Isobel Deane. Then he sank down into a pit of
blackness.

It was Isobel's face that he first saw when he came from out of that
black pit. He knew that it was her voice calling to him before he had
opened his eyes. He felt the touch of her hands, and when he looked up
her loose, soft hair swept his breast. His head was bolstered up, and
so he could look straight into her face. It frightened him. He knew
now what she had been saying to him as he lay there upon the floor.

"You must get up! You must go!" he heard her mooning. "You must take
my baby away. And you-- you-- must go!"

He pulled himself half erect, then rose to his feet, swaying a little.
He came to her then, with the look in his face she had first seen out
on the Barren when he had told her that he was going with her through
the forest.

"No, I am not going away," he said, firmly, and yet with that same old
gentleness in his voice. "If I go you will die. So I am going to
stay."

She stared at him, speechless.

"You-- you can't," she gasped, at last. "Don't you see-- don't you
understand? I'm a woman-- and you can't. You must take her-- my baby--
and go for help."

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