Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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In vital things the instinct becomes abnormally acute, and, one day, when
the priest looked at her commiseratingly, she had divined what moved him.
However it was, she drove him into a corner with a question to which he
dare not answer yes, but to which he might not answer no, and did not;
and she realised that he knew the truth, and she was the better for his
knowing, though her secret was no longer a secret. She was not aware that
Finden also knew. Then Varley came, bringing a new joy and interest in
her life, and a new suffering also, for she realised that if she were
free, and Varley asked her to marry him, she would consent.
But when he did ask her, she said no with a pang that cut her heart in
two. He had stayed his four months, and it was now six months, and he was
going at last-tomorrow. He had stayed to give her time to learn to say
yes, and to take her back with him to London; and she knew that he would
speak again to-day, and that she must say no again; but she had kept him
from saying the words till now. And the man who had ruined her life and
had poisoned her true spirit was come back broken and battered. He was
hanging between life and death; and now--for he was going
to-morrow--Varley would speak again.
The half-hour she had just spent in the hospital with Meydon had tried
her cruelly. She had left the building in a vortex of conflicting
emotions, with the call of duty and of honour ringing through a thousand
other voices of temptation and desire, the inner pleadings for a little
happiness while yet she was young. After she married Meydon, there had
only been a few short weeks of joy before her black disillusion came, and
she had realised how bitter must be her martyrdom.
When she left the hospital, she seemed moving in a dream, as one,
intoxicated by some elixir, might move unheeding among event and accident
and vexing life and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river
flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled by living
woods, lipped with green, kept surging in her ears, inviting her,
alluring her--alluring her with a force too deep and powerful for weak
human nature to bear for long. It would ease her pain, it said; it would
still the tumult and the storm; it would solve her problem, it would give
her peace. But as she moved along the river-bank among the trees, she met
the little niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing as though
she was born but to sing, a song which Finden had written and Father
Bourassa had set to music. Did not the distant West know Father
Bourassa's gift, and did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play the
organ afterwards? The fresh, clear voice of the child rang through the
trees, stealing the stricken heart away from the lure of the river:
"Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'?
The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin';
There's a little lake I know,
And a boat you used to row
To the shore beyond that's quiet--will you come back home?
Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of
fightin';
Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
Here's the hand of love will brew you
The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?"
She stood listening for a few moments, and, under the spell of the fresh,
young voice, the homely, heart-searching words, and the intimate
sweetness of the woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away. She
started forwards again with a new understanding, her footsteps quickened.
She would go to Father Bourassa. He would understand. She would tell him
all. He would help her to do what now she knew she must do, ask Leonard
Varley to save her husband's life--Leonard Varley to save her husband's
life!
When she stepped upon the veranda of the priest's house, she did not know
that Varley was inside. She had no time to think. She was ushered into
the room where he was, with the confusing fact of his presence fresh upon
her. She had had but a word or two with the priest, but enough for him to
know what she meant to do, and that it must be done at once.
Varley advanced to meet her. She shuddered inwardly to think what a
difference there was between the fallen creature she had left behind in
the hospital and this tall, dark, self-contained man, whose name was
familiar in the surgeries of Europe, who had climbed from being the son
of a clockmaker to his present distinguished place.
"Have you come for absolution, also?" he asked with a smile; "or is it to
get a bill of excommunication against your only enemy--there couldn't be
more than one?"
Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her
paleness, and the strange light in her eyes, gave him a sense of anxiety.
He wondered what trouble was on her.
"Excommunication?" he repeated.
The unintended truth went home. She winced, even as she responded with
that quaint note in her voice which gave humour to her speech. "Yes,
excommunication," she replied; "but why an enemy? Do we not need to
excommunicate our friends sometimes?"
"That is a hard saying," he answered soberly. Tears sprang to her eyes,
but she mastered herself, and brought the crisis abruptly.
"I want you to save a man's life," she said, with her eyes looking
straight into his. "Will you do it?"
His face grew grave and eager. "I want you to save a man's happiness," he
answered. "Will you do it?"
"That man yonder will die unless your skill saves him," she urged.
"This man here will go away unhappy and alone, unless your heart
befriends him," he replied, coming closer to her.
"At sunrise to-morrow he goes." He tried to take her hand.
"Oh, please, please," she pleaded, with a quick, protesting gesture.
"Sunrise is far off, but the man's fate is near, and you must save him.
You only can do so, for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is sick,
and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the operation alone. It is
too critical and difficult, he says."
"So I have heard," he answered, with a new note in his voice, his
professional instinct roused in spite of himself. "Who is this man? What
interests you in him?"
"To how many unknown people have you given your skill for nothing--your
skill and all your experience to utter strangers, no matter how low or
poor! Is it not so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have given
to so many, but I can help in my own way."
"You want me to see the man at once?"
"If you will."
"What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances."
She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper
and woodsman."
"But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are
made," he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes
again.
"But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded,
unable now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth.
Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not
stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and shame filled her mind, and she
had challenged him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice this man
she loved to the perverted criminal who had spoiled her youth and taken
away from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right
of justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if
she had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in
the mire her unspotted life--unspotted, for in all temptation, in her
defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment; she had, while
at the mercy of her own temperament, fought her way through all, with a
weeping heart and laughing lips. Had she not longed for a little home
with a great love, and a strong, true man? Ah, it had been lonely,
bitterly lonely! Yet she had remained true to the scoundrel, from whom
she could not free herself without putting him in the grasp of the law to
atone for his crime. She was punished for his crimes; she was denied the
exercise of her womanhood in order to shield him. Still she remembered
that once she had loved him, those years ago, when he first won her heart
from those so much better than he, who loved her so much more honestly;
and this memory had helped her in a way. She had tried to be true to it,
that dead, lost thing, of which this man who came once a year to see her,
and now, lying with his life at stake in the hospital, was the repellent
ghost.
"Ah, you will not see him die?" she urged.
"It seems to move you greatly what happens to this man," he said, his
determined dark eyes searching hers, for she baffled him. If she could
feel so much for a "casual," why not a little more feeling for him?
Suddenly, as he drew her eyes to him again, there came the conviction
that they were full of feeling for him. They were sending a message, an
appealing, passionate message, which told him more than he had ever heard
from her or seen in her face before. Yes, she was his! Without a spoken
word she had told him so. What, then, held her back? But women were a
race by themselves, and he knew that he must wait till she chose to have
him know what she had unintentionally conveyed but now.
"Yes, I am moved," she continued slowly. "Who can tell what this man
might do with his life, if it is saved! Don't you think of that? It isn't
the importance of a life that's at stake; it's the importance of living;
and we do not live alone, do we?"
His mind was made up. "I will not, cannot promise anything till I have
seen him. But I will go and see him, and I'll send you word later what I
can do, or not do. Will that satisfy you? If I cannot do it, I will come
to say good-by."
Her face was set with suppressed feeling. She held out her hand to him
impulsively, and was about to speak, but suddenly caught the hand away
again from his thrilling grasp and, turning hurriedly, left the room. In
the hall she met Father Bourassa.
"Go with him to the hospital," she whispered, and disappeared through the
doorway.
Immediately after she had gone, a man came driving hard to bring Father
Bourassa to visit a dying Catholic in the prairie, and it was Finden who
accompanied Varley to the hospital, waited for him till his examination
of the "casual" was concluded, and met him outside.
"Can it be done?" he asked of Varley. "I'll take word to Father
Bourassa."
"It can be done--it will be done," answered Varley absently. "I do not
understand the man. He has been in a different sphere of life. He tried
to hide it, but the speech--occasionally! I wonder."
"You wonder if he's worth saving?"
Varley shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "No, that's not what I meant."
Finden smiled to himself. "Is it a difficult case?" he asked.
"Critical and delicate; but it has been my specialty."
"One of the local doctors couldn't do it, I suppose?"
"They would be foolish to try."
"And you are going away at sunrise to-morrow?"
"Who told you that?" Varley's voice was abrupt, impatient.
"I heard you say so-everybody knows it. . . . That's a bad man yonder,
Varley." He jerked his thumb towards the hospital. "A terrible bad man,
he's been. A gentleman once, and fell down--fell down hard. He's done
more harm than most men. He's broken a woman's heart and spoilt her life,
and, if he lives, there's no chance for her, none at all. He killed a
man, and the law wants him; and she can't free herself without ruining
him; and she can't marry the man she loves because of that villain
yonder, crying for his life to be saved. By Josh and by Joan, but it's a
shame, a dirty shame, it is!"
Suddenly Varley turned and gripped his arm with fingers of steel.
"His name--his real name?"
"His name's Meydon--and a dirty shame it is, Varley."
Varley was white. He had been leading his horse and talking to Finden. He
mounted quickly now, and was about to ride away, but stopped short again.
"Who knows--who knows the truth?" he asked.
"Father Bourassa and me--no others," he answered. "I knew Meydon thirty
years ago."
There was a moment's hesitation, then Varley said hoarsely, "Tell
me--tell me all."
When all was told, he turned his horse towards the wide waste of the
prairie, and galloped away. Finden watched him till he was lost to view
beyond the bluff.
"Now, a man like that, you can't guess what he'll do," he said
reflectively. "He's a high-stepper, and there's no telling what
foolishness will get hold of him. It'd be safer if he got lost on the
prairie for twenty-four hours. He said that Meydon's only got twenty-four
hours, if the trick isn't done! Well--"
He took a penny from his pocket. "I'll toss for it. Heads he does it, and
tails he doesn't."
He tossed. It came down heads. "Well, there's one more fool in the world
than I thought," he said philosophically, as though he had settled the
question; as though the man riding away into the prairie with a dark
problem to be solved had told the penny what he meant to do.
Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room
of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild
thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of
the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring
artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and
tree and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen
were washed with flood, and the green and gold things of garden and field
and harvest crumbled beneath the sheets of rain.
The faces at the window of the little room of the hospital, however, were
but half-conscious of the storm; it seemed only an accompaniment of their
thoughts, to typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them.
For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A life might be saved, and
it was his duty to save it. He had ridden back from the prairie as the
sun was setting the night before, and had made all arrangements at the
hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no food whatever till the
operation was performed the next afternoon, and nothing to drink except a
little brandy-and-water.
The operation was performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the
operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal
which had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting,
with a piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she
heard him say, "All right!" The words brought a sense of relief, for if
he had failed it would have seemed almost unbearable in the
circumstances--the cup of trembling must be drunk to the dregs.
Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained
behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep
into which he had fallen when Varley left.
But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in
evident danger. Varley had come, and had now been with the patient for
some time.
At last the door opened and Varley came in quickly. He beckoned to Mrs.
Meydon and to Father Bourassa. "He wishes to speak with you," he said to
her. "There is little time."
Her eyes scarcely saw him, as she left the room and passed to where
Meydon lay nerveless, but with wide-open eyes, waiting for her. The eyes
closed, however, before she reached the bed. Presently they opened again,
but the lids remained fixed. He did not hear what she said.
......................
In the little waiting-room, Finden said to Varley, "What happened?"
"Food was absolutely forbidden, but he got it from another patient early
this morning while the nurse was out for a moment. It has killed him."
"'Twas the least he could do, but no credit's due him. It was to be. I'm
not envying Father Bourassa nor her there with him."
Varley made no reply. He was watching the receding storm with eyes which
told nothing.
Finden spoke once more, but Varley did not hear him. Presently the door
opened and Father Bourassa entered. He made a gesture of the hand to
signify that all was over.
Outside, the sun was breaking through the clouds upon the Western
prairie, and there floated through the evening air the sound of a child's
voice singing beneath the trees that fringed the river:
"Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of
fightin';
Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
Here's the hand of love will brew you
The cup of peace-ah, darlin', will you come back home?"
WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION
"In all the wide border his steed was the best," and the name and fame of
Terence O'Ryan were known from Strathcona to Qu'appelle. He had ambition
of several kinds, and he had the virtue of not caring who knew of it. He
had no guile, and little money; but never a day's work was too hard for
him, and he took bad luck, when it came, with a jerk of the shoulder and
a good-natured surprise on his clean-shaven face that suited well his
wide grey eyes and large, luxurious mouth. He had an estate, half ranch,
half farm, with a French Canadian manager named Vigon, an old prospector
who viewed every foot of land in the world with the eye of the
discoverer. Gold, coal, iron, oil, he searched for them everywhere,
making sure that sooner or later he would find them. Once Vigon had found
coal. That was when he worked for a man called Constantine Jopp, and had
given him great profit; but he, the discoverer, had been put off with a
horse and a hundred dollars. He was now as devoted to Terence O'Ryan as
he had been faithful to Constantine Jopp, whom he cursed waking and
sleeping.
In his time O'Ryan had speculated, and lost; he had floated a coal mine,
and "been had"; he had run for the local legislature, had been elected,
and then unseated for bribery committed by an agent; he had run races at
Regina, and won--he had won for three years in succession; and this had
kept him going and restored his finances when they were at their worst.
He was, in truth, the best rider in the country, and, so far, was the
owner also of the best three-year-old that the West had produced. He
achieved popularity without effort. The West laughed at his enterprises
and loved him; he was at once a public moral and a hero. It was a legend
of the West that his forbears had been kings in Ireland like Brian
Borhoime. He did not contradict this; he never contradicted anything. His
challenge to all fun and satire and misrepresentation was, "What'll be
the differ a hundred years from now!"
He did not use this phrase, however, towards one experience--the advent
of Miss Molly Mackinder, the heiress, and the challenge that reverberated
through the West after her arrival. Philosophy deserted him then; he fell
back on the primary emotions of mankind.
A month after Miss Mackinder's arrival at La Touche a dramatic
performance was given at the old fort, in which the officers of the
Mounted Police took part, together with many civilians who fancied
themselves. By that time the district had realised that Terry O'Ryan had
surrendered to what they called "the laying on of hands" by Molly
Mackinder. It was not certain, however, that the surrender was complete,
because O'Ryan had been wounded before, and yet had not been taken
captive altogether. His complete surrender seemed now more certain to the
public because the lady had a fortune of two hundred thousand dollars,
and that amount of money would be useful to an ambitious man in the
growing West. It would, as Gow Johnson said, "Let him sit back and view
the landscape o'er, before he puts his ploughshare in the mud."
There was an outdoor scene in the play produced by the impetuous
amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated by three "imps of fame" at
the suggestion of Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice
towards O'Ryan, though this his colleagues did not know distinctly. The
scene was a camp-fire--a starlit night, a colloquy between the three,
upon which the hero of the drama, played by Terry O'Ryan, should break,
after having, unknown to them, but in sight of the audience, overheard
their kind of intentions towards himself.
The night came. When the curtain rose for the third act there was exposed
a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with
distinctness, each star sharply twinkling from the electric power
behind-a pretty scene evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this
back curtain--they had taken care that he should not--and, standing in
the wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the
audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and now
a peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the
significance of the stars of Orion on the back curtain.
O'Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause which shook
the walls. La Touche rose at him, among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the
front row with the notables.
He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in the ultramarine
blue. According to the stage directions, he was to steal along the trees
at the wings, and listen to the talk of the men at the fire plotting
against him, who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his face.
It was a vigorous melodrama with some touches of true Western feeling.
After listening for a moment, O'Ryan was to creep up the stage again
towards the back curtain, giving a cue for his appearance.
When the hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the
three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They
used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the
audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn "The Sunburst
Trail" at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began,
O'Ryan could scarcely trust his ears, or realise what was happening.
"Ah, look," said Dicky Fergus at the fire, "as fine a night as ever I saw
in the West! The sky's a picture. You could almost hand the stars down,
they're so near."
"What's that clump together on the right--what are they called in
astronomy?" asked Constantine Jopp, with a leer.
"Orion is the name--a beauty, ain't it?" answered Fergus.
"I've been watching Orion rise," said the third--Holden was his name.
"Many's the time I've watched Orion rising. Orion's the star for me. Say,
he wipes 'em all out--right out. Watch him rising now."
By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the back curtain slowly,
and blazed with light nearer the zenith. And La Touche had more than the
worth of its money in this opening to the third act of the play. O'Ryan
was a favourite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the
stars convulsed them.
At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the
meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had
confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion
moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He
gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue which had nothing to do with
"The Sunburst Trail."
"What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the
gent called Orion in them far-off days?" asked Holden.
"He did some hunting in his time--with a club," Fergus replied. "He kept
making hits, he did. Orion was a spoiler. When he took the field there
was no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a
habit. They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens Eirenicon
said that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would
rise like a bird."
At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and when the
audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:
"Why does he wear the girdle?"
"It is not a girdle--it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus's reply. "The gods
gave it to him because he was a favourite. There was a lady called
Artemis--she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another
lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and
Artemis shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she didn't
marry Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering
belt, around him. And Orion keeps on rising."
"Will he ever stop rising?" asked Holden.
Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the
laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall,
"He'll stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess."
It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man knew Terry O'Ryan better,
or could gauge more truly the course he would take. He had been in many
an enterprise, many a brush with O'Ryan, and his friendship would bear
any strain.
O'Ryan recovered himself from the moment he saw the back curtain, and he
did not find any fun in the thing. It took a hold on him out of all
proportion to its importance. He realised that he had come to the parting
of the ways in his life. It suddenly came upon him that something had
been lacking in him in the past; and that his want of success in many
things had not been wholly due to bad luck. He had been eager,
enterprising, a genius almost at seeing good things; and yet others had
reaped where he had sown. He had believed too much in his fellow-man. For
the first time in his life he resented the friendly, almost affectionate
satire of his many friends. It was amusing, it was delightful; but down
beneath it all there was a little touch of ridicule. He had more brains
than any of them, and he had known it in a way; he had led them
sometimes, too, as on raids against cattle-stealers, and in a brush with
half-breeds and Indians; as when he stood for the legislature; but he
felt now for the first time that he had not made the most of himself,
that there was something hurting to self-respect in this prank played
upon him. When he came to that point his resentment went higher. He
thought of Molly Mackinder, and he heard all too acutely the vague veiled
references to her in their satire. By the time Gow Johnson spoke he had
mastered himself, however, and had made up his mind. He stood still for a
moment.