Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25
But the price was not yet paid, for the man waked from
insensibility--waked to see himself with the body of the boy beside him
in the red light of the fires.
For a moment his heart stopped beating, he turned sick and faint.
Deserted by those for whom he risked his life! . . . How long had he lain
there? What time was it? When was it that he had fought his way to the
nets and back again-hours maybe? And the dead boy there, Wingo, who had
risked his life, also dead--how long? His heart leaped--ah! not hours,
only minutes maybe. It was sundown as unconsciousness came on
him--Indians would not stay with the dead after sundown. Maybe it was
only ten minutes-five minutes--one minute ago since they left him! . . .
His watch! Shaking fingers drew it out, wild eyes scanned it. It was not
stopped. Then it could have only been minutes ago. Trembling to his feet,
he staggered over to Wingo, he felt the body, he held a mirror to the
lips. Yes, surely there was light moisture on the glass.
Then began another fight with death--William Rufus Holly struggling to
bring to life again Wingo, the waif of the Crees.
The blood came back to his own heart with a rush as the mad desire to
save this life came on him. He talked to the dumb face, he prayed in a
kind of delirium, as he moved the arms up and down, as he tilted the
body, as he rubbed, chafed and strove. He forgot he was a missionary, he
almost cursed himself. "For them--for cowards, I risked his life, the
brave lad with no home. Oh, God! give him back to me!" he sobbed. "What
right had I to risk his life for theirs? I should have shot the first man
that refused to go.... Wingo, speak! Wake up! Come back!"
The sweat poured from him in his desperation and weakness. He said to
himself that he had put this young life into the hazard without cause.
Had he, then, saved the lad from the rapids and Silver Tassel's brutality
only to have him drag fish out of the jaws of death for Silver Tassel's
meal?
It seemed to him that he had been working for hours, though it was in
fact only a short time, when the eyes of the lad slowly opened and closed
again, and he began to breathe spasmodically. A cry of joy came from the
lips of the missionary, and he worked harder still. At last the eyes
opened wide, stayed open, saw the figure bent over him, and the lips
whispered, "Oshondonto--my master," as a cup of brandy was held to his
lips.
He had conquered the Athabascas for ever. Even Silver Tassel acknowledged
his power, and he as industriously spread abroad the report that the
mikonaree had raised Wingo from the dead, as he had sown dissension
during the famine. But the result was that the missionary had power in
the land, and the belief in him was so great, that, when
Knife-in-the-Wind died, the tribe came to ask him to raise their chief
from the dead. They never quite believed that he could not--not even
Silver Tassel, who now rules the Athabascas and is ruled by William Rufus
Holly: which is a very good thing for the Athabascas.
Billy Rufus the cricketer had won the game, and somehow the Reverend
William Rufus Holly the missionary never repented the strong language he
used against the Athabascas, as he was bringing Wingo back to life,
though it was not what is called "strictly canonical."
THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS
He came out of the mysterious South one summer day, driving before him a
few sheep, a cow, and a long-eared mule which carried his tent and other
necessaries, and camped outside the town on a knoll, at the base of which
was a thicket of close shrub. During the first day no one in Jansen
thought anything of it, for it was a land of pilgrimage, and hundreds
came and went on their journeys in search of free homesteads and good
water and pasturage. But when, after three days, he was still there,
Nicolle Terasse, who had little to do, and an insatiable curiosity, went
out to see him. He found a new sensation for Jansen. This is what he said
when he came back:
"You want know 'bout him, bagosh! Dat is somet'ing to see, dat
man--Ingles is his name. Sooch hair--mooch long an' brown, and a leetla
beard not so brown, an' a leather sole onto his feet, and a grey coat to
his ankles--yes, so like dat. An' his voice--voila, it is like water in a
cave. He is a great man--I dunno not; but he spik at me like dis, 'Is
dere sick, and cripple, and stay in-bed people here dat can't get up?' he
say. An' I say, 'Not plenty, but some-bagosh! Dere is dat Miss Greet, an'
ole Ma'am Drouchy, an' dat young Pete Hayes--an' so on.' 'Well, if they
have faith I will heal them,' he spik at me. 'From de Healing Springs dey
shall rise to walk,' he say. Bagosh, you not t'ink dat true? Den you go
see."
So Jansen turned out to see, and besides the man they found a curious
thing. At the foot of the knoll, in a space which he had cleared, was a
hot spring that bubbled and rose and sank, and drained away into the
thirsty ground. Luck had been with Ingles the Faith Healer. Whether he
knew of the existence of this spring, or whether he chanced upon it, he
did not say; but while he held Jansen in the palm of his hand, in the
feverish days that followed, there were many who attached mysterious
significance to it, who claimed for it supernatural origin. In any case,
the one man who had known of the existence of this spring was far away
from Jansen, and he did not return till a day of reckoning came for the
Faith Healer.
Meanwhile Jansen made pilgrimage to the Springs of Healing, and at
unexpected times Ingles suddenly appeared in the town, and stood at
street corners; and in his "Patmian voice," as Flood Rawley the lawyer
called it, warned the people to flee their sins, and purifying their
hearts, learn to cure all ills of mind and body, the weaknesses of the
sinful flesh and the "ancient evil" in their souls, by faith that saves.
"'Is not the life more than meat'" he asked them. "And if, peradventure,
there be those among you who have true belief in hearts all purged of
evil, and yet are maimed, or sick of body, come to me, and I will lay my
hands upon you, and I will heal you." Thus he cried.
There were those so wrought upon by his strange eloquence and spiritual
passion, so hypnotised by his physical and mental exaltation, that they
rose up from the hand-laying and the prayer eased of their ailments.
Others he called upon to lie in the hot spring at the foot of the hill
for varying periods, before the laying on of hands, and these also,
crippled, or rigid with troubles' of the bone, announced that they were
healed.
People flocked from other towns, and though, to some who had been cured,
their pains and sickness returned, there were a few who bore perfect
evidence to his teaching and healing, and followed him, "converted and
consecrated," as though he were a new Messiah. In this corner of the West
was such a revival as none could remember--not even those who had been to
camp meetings in the East in their youth, and had seen the Spirit descend
upon hundreds and draw them to the anxious seat.
Then came the great sensation--the Faith Healer converted Laura Sloly.
Upon which Jansen drew its breath painfully; for, while it was willing to
bend to the inspiration of the moment, and to be swept on a tide of
excitement into that enchanted field called Imagination, it wanted to
preserve its institutions--and Laura Sloly had come to be an institution.
Jansen had always plumed itself, and smiled, when she passed; and even
now the most sentimentally religious of them inwardly anticipated the
time when the town would return to its normal condition; and that
condition would not be normal if there were any change in Laura Sloly. It
mattered little whether most people were changed or not because one state
of their minds could not be less or more interesting than another; but a
change in Laura. Sloly could not be for the better.
Her father had come to the West in the early days, and had prospered by
degrees until a town grew up beside his ranch; and though he did not
acquire as much permanent wealth from this golden chance as might have
been expected, and lost much he did make by speculation, still he had his
rich ranch left, and it, and he, and Laura were part of the history of
Jansen. Laura had been born at Jansen before even it had a name. Next to
her father she was the oldest inhabitant, and she had a prestige which
was given to no one else.
Everything had conspired to make her a figure of moment and interest. She
was handsome in almost a mannish sort of way, being of such height and
straightness, and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which more than
a few men had drowned themselves. Also, once she had saved a settlement
by riding ahead of a marauding Indian band to warn their intended
victims, and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life. Pioneers
proudly told strangers to Jansen of the girl of thirteen who rode a
hundred and twenty miles without food, and sank inside the palisade of
the Hudson's Bay Company's fort, as the gates closed upon the settlers
taking refuge, the victim of brain fever at last. Cerebrospinal
meningitis, the doctor from Winnipeg called it, and the memory of that
time when men and women would not sleep till her crisis was past, was
still fresh on the tongues of all.
Then she had married at seventeen, and, within a year, had lost both her
husband and her baby, a child bereaved of her Playmates--for her husband
had been but twenty years old and was younger far than she in everything.
And since then, twelve years before, she had seen generations of lovers
pass into the land they thought delectable; and their children flocked to
her, hung about her, were carried off by her to the ranch, and kept for
days, against the laughing protests of their parents. Flood Rawley called
her the Pied Piper of Jansen, and indeed she had a voice that fluted and
piped, and yet had so whimsical a note, that the hardest faces softened
at the sound of it; and she did not keep its best notes for the few. She
was impartial, almost impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and every man
was her friend--and nothing more. She had never had an accepted lover
since the day her Playmates left her. Every man except one had given up
hope that he might win her; and though he had been gone from Jansen for
two years, and had loved her since the days before the Playmates came and
went, he never gave up hope, and was now to return and say again what he
had mutely said for years--what she understood, and he knew she
understood.
Tim Denton had been a wild sort in his brief day. He was a rough diamond,
but he was a diamond, and was typical of the West--its heart, its
courage, its freedom, and its force; capable of exquisite gentleness,
strenuous to exaggeration, with a very primitive religion; and the only
religion Tim knew was that of human nature. Jansen did not think Tim good
enough--not within a comet shot--for Laura Sloly; but they thought him
better than any one else.
But now Laura was a convert to the prophet of the Healing Springs, and
those people who still retain their heads in the eddy of religious
emotion were in despair. They dreaded to meet Laura; they kept away from
the "protracted meetings," but were eager to hear about her and what she
said and did. What they heard allayed their worst fears. She still
smiled, and seemed as cheerful as before, they heard, and she neither
spoke nor prayed in public, but she led the singing always. Now the
anxious and the sceptical and the reactionary ventured out to see and
hear; and seeing and hearing gave them a satisfaction they hardly dared
express. She was more handsome than ever, and if her eyes glistened with
a light they had never seen before, and awed them, her lips still smiled,
and the old laugh came when she spoke to them. Their awe increased. This
was "getting religion" with a difference.
But presently they received a shock. A whisper grew that Laura was in
love with the Faith Healer. Some woman's instinct drove straight to the
centre of a disconcerting possibility, and in consternation she told her
husband; and Jansen husbands had a freemasonry of gossip. An hour, and
all Jansen knew, or thought they knew; and the "saved" rejoiced; and the
rest of the population, represented by Nicolle Terasse at one end and
Flood Rawley at the other, flew to arms. No vigilance committee was ever
more determined and secret and organised than the unconverted civic
patriots, who were determined to restore Jansen to its old-time
condition. They pointed out cold-bloodedly that the Faith Healer had
failed three times where he had succeeded once; and that, admitting the
successes, there was no proof that his religion was their cause. There
were such things as hypnotism and magnetism and will-power, and abnormal
mental stimulus on the part of the healed--to say nothing of the Healing
Springs.
Carefully laying their plans, they quietly spread the rumour that Ingles
had promised to restore to health old Mary Jewell, who had been bedridden
ten years, and had sent word and prayed to have him lay his hands upon
her--Catholic though she was. The Faith Healer, face to face with this
supreme and definite test, would have retreated from it but for Laura
Sloly. She expected him to do it, believed that he could, said that he
would, herself arranged the day and the hour, and sang so much exaltation
into him, that at last a spurious power seemed to possess him. He felt
that there had entered into him something that could be depended on, not
the mere flow of natural magnetism fed by an outdoor life and a
temperament of great emotional force, and chance, and suggestion--and
other things. If, at first, he had influenced Laura, some ill-controlled,
latent idealism in him, working on a latent poetry and spirituality in
her, somehow bringing her into nearer touch with her lost Playmates than
she had been in the long years that had passed; she, in turn, had made
his unrationalised brain reel; had caught him up into a higher air, on no
wings of his own; had added another lover to her company of lovers--and
the first impostor she had ever had. She who had known only honest men as
friends, in one blind moment lost her perspicuous sense; her instinct
seemed asleep. She believed in the man and in his healing. Was there
anything more than that?
The day of the great test came, hot, brilliant, vivid. The air was of a
delicate sharpness, and, as it came toward evening, the glamour of an
August when the reapers reap was upon Jansen; and its people gathered
round the house of Mary Jewell to await the miracle of faith. Apart from
the emotional many who sang hymns and spiritual songs were a few
determined men, bent on doing justice to Jansen though the heavens might
fall. Whether or no Laura Sloly was in love with the Faith Healer, Jansen
must look to its own honour--and hers. In any case, this peripatetic
saint at Sloly's Ranch--the idea was intolerable; women must be saved in
spite of themselves.
Laura was now in the house by the side of the bedridden Mary Jewell,
waiting, confident, smiling, as she held the wasted hand on the coverlet.
With her was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, who was swimming with
the tide, and who approved of the Faith Healer's immersions in the hot
Healing Springs; also a medical student who had pretended belief in
Ingles, and two women weeping with unnecessary remorse for human failings
of no dire kind. The windows were open, and those outside could see.
Presently, in a lull of the singing, there was a stir in the crowd, and
then, sudden loud greetings:
"My, if it ain't Tim Denton! Jerusalem! You back, Tim!"
These and other phrases caught the ear of Laura Sloly in the sick-room. A
strange look flashed across her face, and the depth of her eyes was
troubled for a moment, as to the face of the old comes a tremor at the
note of some long-forgotten song. Then she steadied herself and waited,
catching bits of the loud talk which still floated towards her from
without.
"What's up? Some one getting married--or a legacy, or a saw-off? Why,
what a lot of Sunday-go-to-meeting folks to be sure!" Tim laughed loudly.
After which the quick tongue of Nicolle Terasse: "You want know? Tiens,
be quiet; here he come. He cure you body and soul, ver' queeck--yes."
The crowd swayed and parted, and slowly, bare head uplifted, face looking
to neither right nor left, the Faith Healer made his way to the door of
the little house. The crowd hushed. Some were awed, some were
overpoweringly interested, some were cruelly patient. Nicolle Terasse and
others were whispering loudly to Tim Denton. That was the only sound,
until the Healer got to the door. Then, on the steps, he turned to the
multitude.
"Peace be to you all, and upon this house," he said and stepped through
the doorway.
Tim Denton, who had been staring at the face of the Healer, stood for an
instant like one with all his senses arrested. Then he gasped, and
exclaimed, "Well, I'm eternally--" and broke off with a low laugh, which
was at first mirthful, and then became ominous and hard.
"Oh, magnificent--magnificent--jerickety!" he said into the sky above
him.
His friends who were not "saved," closed in on him to find the meaning of
his words, but he pulled himself together, looked blankly at them, and
asked them questions. They told him so much more than he cared to hear,
that his face flushed a deep red--the bronze of it most like the colour
of Laura Sloly's hair; then he turned pale. Men saw that he was roused
beyond any feeling in themselves.
"'Sh!" he said. "Let's see what he can do." With the many who were
silently praying, as they had been, bidden to do, the invincible ones
leant forwards, watching the little room where healing--or tragedy--was
afoot. As in a picture, framed by the window, they saw the kneeling
figures, the Healer standing with outstretched arms. They heard his
voice, sonorous and appealing, then commanding--and yet Mary Jewell did
not rise from her bed and walk. Again, and yet again, the voice rang out,
and still the woman lay motionless. Then he laid his hands upon her, and
again he commanded her to rise.
There was a faint movement, a desperate struggle to obey, but Nature and
Time and Disease had their way. Yet again there was the call. An agony
stirred the bed. Then another great Healer came between, and mercifully
dealt the sufferer a blow--Death has a gentle hand sometimes. Mary Jewell
was bedridden still--and for ever.
Like a wind from the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed
through the window, and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were
upright now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean
over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and
opened it, and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing
the harsh murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she
motioned, and he came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed the people
before her silently for a moment, her eyes all huge and staring.
Presently she turned to Ingles and spoke to him quickly in a low voice;
then, descending the steps, passed out through the lane made for her by
the crowd, he following with shaking limbs and bowed bead.
Warning words had passed among the few invincible ones who waited where
the Healer must pass into the open, and there was absolute stillness as
Laura advanced. Their work was to come--quiet and swift and sure; but not
yet.
Only one face Laura saw, as she led the way to the moment's safety--Tim
Denton's; and it was as stricken as her own. She passed, then turned, and
looked at him again. He understood; she wanted him.
He waited till she sprang into her waggon, after the Healer had mounted
his mule and ridden away with ever-quickening pace into the prairie. Then
he turned to the set, fierce men beside him.
"Leave him alone," he said, "leave him to me. I know him. You hear? Ain't
I no rights? I tell you I knew him--South. You leave him to me."
They nodded, and he sprang into his saddle and rode away. They watched
the figure of the Healer growing smaller in the dusty distance.
"Tim'll go to her," one said, "and perhaps they'll let the snake get off.
Hadn't we best make sure?"
"Perhaps you'd better let him vamoose," said Flood Rawley anxiously.
"Jansen is a law-abiding place!" The reply was decisive. Jansen had its
honour to keep. It was the home of the Pioneers--Laura Sloly was a
Pioneer.
Tim Denton was a Pioneer, with all the comradeship which lay in the word,
and he was that sort of lover who has seen one woman, and can never see
another--not the product of the most modern civilisation. Before Laura
had had Playmates he had given all he had to give; he had waited and
hoped ever since; and when the ruthless gossips had said to him before
Mary Jewell's house that she was in love with the Faith Healer, nothing
changed in him. For the man, for Ingles, Tim belonged to a primitive
breed, and love was not in his heart. As he rode out to Sloly's Ranch, he
ground his teeth in rage. But Laura had called him to her, and: "Well,
what you say goes, Laura," he muttered at the end of a long hour of human
passion and its repression. "If he's to go scot-free, then he's got to
go; but the boys yonder'll drop on me, if he gets away. Can't you see
what a swab he is, Laura?"
The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently. The struggle between
them was over; she had had her way--to save the preacher, impostor though
he was; and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the same
fashion, that this man was a man of men.
"Tim, you do not understand," she urged. "You say he was a landsharp in
the South, and that he had to leave-"
"He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers."
"But he had to leave. And he came here preaching and healing; and he is a
hypocrite and a fraud--I know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn't do
what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell--the shock; and there
were other things he said he could do, and he didn't do them. Perhaps he
is all bad, as you say--I don't think so. But he did some good things,
and through him I've felt as I've never felt before about God and life,
and about Walt and the baby--as though I'll see them again, sure. I've
never felt that before. It was all as if they were lost in the hills, and
no trail home, or out to where they are. Like as not God was working in
him all the time, Tim; and he failed because he counted too much on the
little he had, and made up for what he hadn't by what he pretended."
"He can pretend to himself, or God Almighty, or that lot down there"--he
jerked a finger towards the town--"but to you, a girl, and a Pioneer--"
A flash of humour shot into her eyes at his last words, then they filled
with tears, through which the smile shone. To pretend to "a Pioneer"--the
splendid vanity and egotism of the West!
"He didn't pretend to me, Tim. People don't usually have to pretend to
like me."
"You know what I'm driving at."
"Yes, yes, I know. And whatever he is, you've said that you will save
him. I'm straight, you know that. Somehow, what I felt from his
preaching--well, everything got sort of mixed up with him, and he
was--was different. It was like the long dream of Walt and the baby, and
he a part of it. I don't know what I felt, or what I might have felt for
him. I'm a woman--I can't understand. But I know what I feel now. I never
want to see him again on earth--or in Heaven. It needn't be necessary
even in Heaven; but what happened between God and me through him stays,
Tim; and so you must help him get away safe. It's in your hands--you say
they left it to you."
"I don't trust that too much."
Suddenly he pointed out of the window towards the town. "See, I'm right;
there they are, a dozen of 'em mounted. They're off, to run him down."
Her face paled; she glanced towards the Hill of Healing. "He's got an
hour's start," she said; "he'll get into the mountains and be safe."
"If they don't catch him 'fore that."
"Or if you don't get to him first," she said, with nervous insistence.
He turned to her with a hard look; then, as he met her soft, fearless,
beautiful eyes, his own grew gentle. "It takes a lot of doing. Yet I'll
do it for you, Laura," he said. "But it's hard on the Pioneers." Once
more her humour flashed, and it seemed to him that "getting religion" was
not so depressing after all--wouldn't be, anyhow, when this nasty job was
over. "The Pioneers will get over it, Tim," she rejoined. "They've
swallowed a lot in their time. Heaven's gate will have to be pretty wide
to let in a real Pioneer," she added. "He takes up so much room--ah,
Timothy Denton!" she added, with an outburst of whimsical merriment.
"It hasn't spoiled you--being converted, has it?" he said, and gave a
quick little laugh, which somehow did more for his ancient cause with her
than all he had ever said or done. Then he stepped outside and swung into
his saddle.
It had been a hard and anxious ride, but Tim had won, and was keeping his
promise. The night had fallen before he got to the mountains, which he
and the Pioneers had seen the Faith Healer enter. They had had four
miles' start of Tim, and had ridden fiercely, and they entered the gulch
into which the refugee had disappeared still two miles ahead.