Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion, but it cleared
presently, and he said with a dry laugh: "Well, I guess they must make me
a sergeant pretty quick. I'm a colonel in the Kentucky Carbineers!"
She laughed, too; then a moment afterwards, womanlike, wondered if she
was right, and was a little frightened. But that was only because she was
not self-opinionated, and was anxious, more anxious than any woman in all
the North.
It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at once--Sally managed
that; for, when it came to the point, and she saw the conditions in which
the privates lived, and realised that Jim must be one of them and clean
out the stables, and groom his horse and the officers' horses, and fetch
and carry, her heart failed her, and she thought that she was making her
remedy needlessly heroical. So she went to see the Commissioner, who was
on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival at the post, and, as better men
than he had done in more knowing circles, he fell under her spell. If she
had asked for a lieutenancy, he would probably have corrupted some member
of Parliament into securing it for Jim.
But Jim was made a sergeant, and the Commissioner and the captain of the
troop kept their eyes on him. So did other members of the troop who did
not quite know their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him here
and there. They found that his actions were greater than his words, and
both were in perfect harmony in the end, though his words often seemed
pointless to their minds, until they understood that they had conveyed
truths through a medium more like a heliograph than a telephone. By and
by they begin to understand his heliographing, and, when they did that,
they began to swear by him, not at him.
In time it was found that the troop never had a better disciplinarian
than Jim. He knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open. To
non-essentials he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very
wide open. There were some men of good birth from England and elsewhere
among them, and these mostly understood him first. But they all
understood Sally from the beginning, and after a little they were glad
enough to be permitted to come, on occasion, to the five-roomed little
house near the barracks, and hear her talk, then answer her questions,
and, as men had done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They
noticed, however, that while she made them barley-water, and all kinds of
soft drinks from citric acid, sarsaparilla and the like, and had one
special drink of her own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no
spirits were to be had. They also noticed that Jim never drank a drop of
liquor, and by and by, one way or another, they got a glimmer of the real
truth, before it became known who he really was or anything of his story.
And the interest in the two, and in Jim's reformation, spread through the
country, while Jim gained reputation as the smartest man in the force.
They were on the outskirts of civilisation; as Jim used to say, "One step
ahead of the procession." Jim's duty was to guard the columns of
settlement and progress, and to see that every man got his own rights and
not more than his rights; that justice should be the plumb-line of march
and settlement. His principle was embodied in certain words which he
quoted once to Sally from the prophet Amos: "And the Lord said unto me,
Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline."
On the day that Jim became a lieutenant his family increased by one. It
was a girl, and they called her Nancy, after Jim's mother. It was the
anniversary of their marriage, and, so far, Jim had won, with what
fightings and strugglings and wrestlings of the spirit only Sally and
himself knew. And she knew as well as he, and always saw the storm coming
before it broke--a restlessness, then a moodiness, then a hungry, eager,
helpless look, and afterwards an agony of longing, a feverish desire to
break away and get the thrilling thing which would still the demon within
him.
There had been moments when his doom seemed certain--he knew and she knew
that if he once got drunk again he would fall never to rise. On one
occasion, after a hard, long, hungry ride, he was half-mad with desire,
but even as he seized the flask that was offered to him by his only
enemy, the captain of B Troop, at the next station eastward, there came a
sudden call to duty, two hundred Indians having gone upon the war-path.
It saved him; it broke the spell. He had to mount and away, with the
antidote and stimulant of responsibility driving him on.
Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety. They had been idle
for days in a hot week in summer, waiting for orders to return from the
rail-head where they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and
hilarity were common. Suddenly--more suddenly than it had ever come, the
demon of his thirst had Jim by the throat. Sergeant Sewell, of the
grey-stubble head, who loved him more than his sour heart had loved
anybody in all his life, was holding himself ready for the physical
assault he must make upon his superior officer, if he raised a glass to
his lips, when salvation came once again. An accident had occurred far
down on the railway line, and the operator of the telegraph-office had
that very day been stricken down with pleurisy and pneumonia. In despair
the manager had sent to Jim, eagerly hoping that he might help them, for
the Riders of the Plains were a sort of court of appeal for every trouble
in the Far North.
Instantly Jim was in the saddle with his troop. Out of curiosity he had
learned telegraphy when a boy, as he had learned many things, and,
arrived at the scene of the accident, he sent messages and received
them--by sound, not on paper as did the official operator, to the
amazement and pride of the troop. Then, between caring for the injured in
the accident, against the coming of the relief train, and nursing the
sick operator through the dark moments of his dangerous illness, he
passed a crisis of his own disease triumphantly; but not the last crisis.
So the first and so the second and third years passed in safety.
III
"PLEASE, I want to go, too, Jim."
Jim swung round and caught the child up in his arms. "Say, how dare you
call your father Jim--eh, tell me that?"
"It's what mummy calls you--it's pretty."
"I don't call her 'mummy' because you do, and you mustn't call me Jim
because she does--do you hear?" The whimsical face lowered a little, then
the rare and beautiful dark blue eyes raised slowly, shaded by the long
lashes, and the voice said demurely, "Yes--Jim."
"Nancy--Nancy," said a voice from the corner in reproof, mingled with
suppressed laughter. "Nancy, you musn't be saucy. You must say 'father'
to--"
"Yes, mummy. I'll say father to--Jim."
"You imp--you imp of delight," said Jim, as he strained the dainty little
lass to his breast, while she appeared interested in a wave of his black
hair, which she curled around her finger.
Sally came forwards with the little parcel of sandwiches she had been
preparing, and put them in the saddle-bags lying on a chair at the door,
in readiness for the journey Jim was about to make. Her eyes were
glistening, and her face had a heightened colour. The three years which
had passed since she married had touched her not at all to her
disadvantage, rather to her profit. She looked not an hour older;
motherhood had only added to her charm, lending it a delightful gravity.
The prairie life had given a shining quality to her handsomeness, an air
of depth and firmness, an exquisite health and clearness to the colour in
her cheeks. Her step was as light as Nancy's, elastic and buoyant--a
gliding motion which gave a sinuous grace to the movements of her body.
There had also come into her eyes a vigilance such as deaf people
possess, a sensitive observation imparting a deeper intelligence to the
face.
Here was the only change by which you could guess the story of her life.
Her eyes were like the ears of an anxious mother who can never sleep till
every child is abed; whose sense is quick to hear the faintest footstep
without or within; and who, as years go on, and her children grow older
and older, must still lie awake hearkening for the late footstep on the
stair. In Sally's eyes was the story of the past three years: of love and
temptation and struggle, of watchfulness and yearning and anxiety, of
determination and an inviolable hope. Her eyes had a deeper look than
that in Jim's. Now, as she gazed at him, the maternal spirit rose up from
the great well of protectiveness in her and engulfed both husband and
child. There was always something of the maternal in her eyes when she
looked at Jim. He did not see it--he saw only the wonderful blue, and the
humour which had helped him over such difficult places these past three
years. In steadying and strengthening Jim's will, in developing him from
his Southern indolence into Northern industry and sense of
responsibility, John Appleton's warnings had rung in Sally's ears, and
Freddy Hartzman's forceful and high-minded personality had passed before
her eyes with an appeal powerful and stimulating; but always she came to
the same upland of serene faith and white-hearted resolve; and Jim became
dearer and dearer.
The baby had done much to brace her faith in the future and comfort her
anxious present. The child had intelligence of a rare order. She would
lie by the half-hour on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book
without pictures, and, before she could speak, would read from the pages
in a language all her own. She made a fairy world for herself, peopled by
characters to whom she gave names, to whom she assigned curious
attributes and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh and
blood, and she was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried
herself in her father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in
the troop, and for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially
warm place.
"You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start,
with the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love
you, Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only
long afterwards that "gri-gri" meant "grey-grey," to signify that she
called him after his grizzled hairs.
What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew.
Jim regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his
strength, his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy was
the charm he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once, when
she was ill, he had suffered as he had never done before in his life. He
could not sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream.
When his struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over
her name to himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was
Sally's hand he held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in
this fight between appetite and will there are moments when only the
animal seems to exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of
the primal emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called
Sally his "guinea-girl."
From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
hours, some innate optimism and humour held him steady in his fight. It
was not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence of
an appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile
upon their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the
aftermath of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow of
experience. He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his
figure, the deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force of
a singular personality. As in the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a long
reflective look which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers
present. His lips smiled often, but the eyes said: "I have lived, I have
seen, I have suffered, and I must suffer more. I have loved, I have been
loved under the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and golden
hours, but not peace--never peace. My soul has need of peace."
In the greater, deeper experience of their lives, the more material side
of existence had grown less and less to them. Their home was a model of
simple comfort and some luxury, though Jim had insisted that Sally's
income should not be spent, except upon the child, and should be saved
for the child, their home being kept on his pay and on the tiny income
left by his mother. With the help of an Indian girl, and a half-breed for
outdoor work and fires and gardening, Sally had cared for the house
herself. Ingenious and tasteful, with a gift for cooking and an educated
hand, she had made her little home as pretty as their few possessions
would permit. Refinement covered all, and three or four-score books were
like so many friends to comfort her when Jim was away; like kind and
genial neighbours when he was at home. From Browning she had written down
in her long sliding handwriting, and hung up beneath Jim's looking-glass,
the heartening and inspiring words:
"One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."
They had lived above the sordid, and there was something in the nature of
Jim's life to help them to it. He belonged to a small handful of men who
had control over an empire, with an individual responsibility and
influence not contained in the scope of their commissions. It was a
matter of moral force and character, and of uniform, symbolical only of
the great power behind; of the long arm of the State; of the insistence
of the law, which did not rely upon force alone, but on the certainty of
its administration. In such conditions the smallest brain was bound to
expand, to take on qualities of judgment and temperateness which would
never be developed in ordinary circumstances. In the case of Jim
Templeton, who needed no stimulant to his intellect, but rather a
steadying quality, a sense of proportion, the daily routine, the command
of men, the diverse nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the
personal appeals made on all sides by the people of the country for
advice, for help, for settlement of disputes, for information which his
well-instructed mind could give--all these modified the romantic
brilliance of his intellect, made it and himself more human.
It had not come to him all at once. His intellect at first stood in his
way. His love of paradox, his deep observation, his insight, all made him
inherently satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure
whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world
was imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving towards perfection
rather than imperfection. He grew to realise that what seemed so often
weakness in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil. And in
the end he thought better of himself as he came to think better of all
others. For he had thought less of all the world because he had thought
so little of himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them
into crimes in his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar
import, had become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had
remained, a boy.
In all that he had changed a great deal. His heart was still the heart of
a boy, but his intellect had sobered, softened, ripened--even in this
secluded and seemingly unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it
would. Sally's conviction had been right. But the triumph was not yet
achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones of his voice told her, the
look that came into his eyes proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and
restlessness made it certain. How many a night had she thrown her arm
over his shoulder, and sought his hand and held it while in the dark
silence, wide-eyed, dry-lipped, and with a throat like fire he had held
himself back from falling. There was liquor in the house--the fight would
not have been a fight without it. She had determined that he should see
his enemy and meet him in the plains and face him down; and he was never
many feet away from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years
all had gone well. There was another year. Would he last out the course?
At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in
terms of currency, with the head of Jim's father on every note, was much
with her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars
stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the
game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her;
but rather what it represented--power, width of action, freedom to help
when the heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans, ability
to surround with advantage those whom we love. So, at first, while yet
the memories of Washington were much with her, the appeal of the millions
was strong. The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake braced
her; she felt the blood quicken in her pulse.
But, all through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea
that Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived
became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of
vivacious memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to
be repeated--days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in
her face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been
set on the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarised her
mind, made her end and goal sordid--the descent of a nature rather than
its ascension.
When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on a new importance,
for now it seemed to her that it was her duty to secure for the child its
rightful heritage. Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who
could never fulfil himself unless working through the natural channels of
his birth, inheritance, and upbringing. Jim, drunken and unreliable, with
broken will and fighting to find himself--the waste places were for him,
until he was the master of his will and emotions. Once however, secure in
ability to control himself, with cleansed brain and purpose defined, the
widest field would still be too narrow for his talents--and the five,
yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his.
She had never repented having married Jim; but twice in those three years
she had broken down and wept as though her heart would break. There were
times when Jim's nerves were shaken in his struggle against the unseen
foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her
tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself--the fear that
she might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close
to her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and
monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being
to him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without
whom he could care for nothing else.
"Oh, my God, give me his love," she had prayed. "Let me keep it yet a
little while. For his sake, not for my own, let me have the power to hold
his love. Make my mind always quiet, and let me blow neither hot nor
cold. Help me to keep my temper sweet and cheerful, so that he will find
the room empty where I am not, and his footsteps will quicken when he
comes to the door. Not for my sake, dear God, but for his, or my heart
will break--it will break unless Thou dost help me to hold him. O Lord,
keep me from tears; make my face happy that I may be goodly to his eyes,
and forgive the selfishness of a poor woman who has little, and would
keep her little and cherish it, for Christ's sake."
Twice had she poured out her heart so, in the agony of her fear that she
should lose favour in Jim's sight--she did not know how alluring she was,
in spite of the constant proofs offered her. She had had her will with
all who came her way, from governor to Indian brave. Once, in a journey
they had made far north, soon after they came, she had stayed at a
Hudson's Bay Company's post for some days, while there came news of
restlessness among the Indians, because of lack of food, and Jim had gone
farther north to steady the tribes, leaving her with the factor and his
wife and a halfbreed servant.
While she and the factor's wife were alone in the yard of the post one
day, an Indian--chief, Arrowhead, in warpaint and feathers, entered
suddenly, brandishing a long knife. He had been drinking, and there was
danger in his black eyes. With a sudden inspiration she came forward
quickly, nodded and smiled to him, and then pointed to a grindstone
standing in the corner of the yard. As she did so, she saw Indians
crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She
beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured
some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now
impassive Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on
the stone. She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as
with anxiety she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the
gate. Faster and faster she turned, and at last the Indian lifted his
knife from the stone. She reached out her hand with simulated interest,
felt the edge with her thumb, the Indian looking darkly at her the while.
Presently, after feeling the edge himself, he bent over the stone again,
and she went on turning the wheel still singing softly. At last he
stopped again and felt the edge. With a smile which showed her fine white
teeth, she said, "Is that for me?" making a significant sign across her
throat at the same time.
The old Indian looked at her grimly, then slowly shook his head in
negation.
"I go hunt Yellow Hawk to-night," he said. "I go fight; I like marry you
when I come back. How!" he said and turned away towards the gate.
Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death in their looks. He
saw. "My knife is sharp," he said. "The woman is brave. She shall
live--go and fight Yellow Hawk, or starve and die."
Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had come
to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food, and the
woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned for more.
Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into their hands.
With grunts of satisfaction they seized what she gave, and thrust it into
their mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked on stern and
immobile, but when at last she and the factor's wife sat down before the
braves with confidence and an air of friendliness, he sat down also; yet,
famished as he was, he would not touch the food. At last Sally, realising
his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a little lump of pemmican and a
biscuit, and with a grunt he took it from her hands and ate it. Then, at
his command a fire was lit, the pipe of peace was brought out, and Sally
and the factor's wife touched their lips to it, and passed it on.
So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with Arrowhead and his
tribe by a woman without fear, whose life had seemed not worth a minute's
purchase; and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men went forth to
make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the Nettigon River. In this wise had her
influence spread in the land.
.......................
Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with
a shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon him
a sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally
understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm.
"Oh, Jim," she said playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You
hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!"
"I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in
his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could
see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and
there in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery
of eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman
riding towards the postriding hard.
"It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted
. . . I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I have a feeling about him. See,
he's been riding hard and long-you can tell by the way the horse drops
his legs. He sags a bit himself. . . . But isn't it beautiful, all that
out there--the real quintessence of life."
The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun
sparkled, and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor
stir of leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the
air, energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty
ground, that broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that
stirred the flag by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the
wide prospect over which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had
chosen right.