Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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Again and again, how many hundreds of times, had Roger Lygon seen in his
sleep--had even seen awake so did hallucination possess him--the new
cattle trail he had fired for scores of miles. The fire had destroyed the
grass over millions of acres, two houses had been burned and three people
had lost their lives; all to satisfy the savage desire of one man, to
destroy the chance of a cattle trade over a great section of country for
the railway which was to compete with his own--an act which, in the end,
was futile, failed of its purpose. Dupont and Lygon had been paid their
price, and had disappeared, and been forgotten--they were but pawns in
his game--and there was no proof against Henderley. Henderley had
forgotten. Lygon wished to forget, but Dupont remembered, and meant now
to reap fresh profit by the remembrance.
Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of crime was to be dug up
again. So it had been planned. As the shadows fell, Lygon roused himself
from his trance with a shiver. It was not cold, but in him there was a
nervous agitation, making him cold from head to foot; his body seemed as
impoverished as his mind. Looking with heavy-lidded eyes across the
prairie, he saw in the distance the barracks of the Riders of the Plains
and the jail near by, and his shuddering ceased. There was where he
belonged, within four stone walls; yet here he was free to go where he
willed, to live as he willed, with no eye upon him. With no eye upon him?
There was no eye, but there was the Whisperer whom he could never drive
away. Morning and night he heard the words, "You--you--you! Fire, and
blood, and shame!" He had snatched sleep when he could find it, after
long, long hours of tramping over the plains, ostensibly to shoot wild
fowl, but in truth to bring on a great bodily fatigue--and sleep. His
sleep only came then in the first watches of the night. As the night wore
on the Whisperer began again, as the cloud of weariness lifted a little
from him, and the senses were released from the heavy sedative of
unnatural exertion.
.........................
The dusk deepened. The moon slowly rose. He cooked his scanty meal, and
took a deep draught from a horn of whiskey from beneath a board in the
flooring. He had not the courage to face Dupont without it, nor yet to
forget what he must forget, if he was to do the work Dupont came to
arrange--he must forget the girl who had saved his life and the influence
of those strange moments in which she had spoken down to him, in the
abyss where he had been lying.
He sat in the doorway, a fire gleaming behind him; he drank in the good
air as though his lungs were thirsty for it, and saw the silver glitter
of the moon upon the water. Not a breath of wind stirred, and the shining
path the moon made upon the reedy lake fascinated his eye. Everything was
so still except that whisper louder in his ear than it had ever been
before.
Suddenly, upon the silver path upon the lake there shot a silent canoe,
with a figure as silently paddling towards him. He gazed for a moment
dismayed, and then got to his feet with a jerk.
"Dupont," he said mechanically.
The canoe swished among the reeds and rushes, scraped on the shore, and a
tall, burly figure sprang from it, and stood still, looking at the house.
"Qui reste la--Lygon?" he asked.
"Dupont," was the nervous, hesitating reply. Dupont came forwards
quickly. "Ah, ben, here we are again--so," he grunted cheerily.
Entering the house they sat before the fire, holding their hands to the
warmth from force of habit, though the night was not cold.
"Ben, you will do it to-night--then?" Dupont said. "Sacre, it is time!"
"Do what?" rejoined the other heavily.
An angry light leapt into Dupont's eyes. "You not unnerstan' my
letters-bah! You know it all right, so queeck."
The other remained silent, staring into the fire with wide, searching
eyes.
Dupont put a hand on him. "You ketch my idee queeck. We mus' have more
money from that Henderley--certainlee. It is ten years, and he t'ink it
is all right. He t'ink we come no more becos' he give five t'ousan'
dollars to us each. That was to do the t'ing, to fire the country. Now we
want another ten t'ousan' to us each, to forget we do it for him--hein?"
Still there was no reply. Dupont went on, watching the other furtively,
for he did not like this silence. But he would not resent it till he was
sure there was good cause.
"It comes to suit us. He is over there at the Old Man Lak', where you can
get at him easy, not like in the city where he lif'. Over in the States,
he laugh mebbe, becos' he is at home, an' can buy off the law. But
here--it is Canadaw, an' they not care eef he have hunder' meellion
dollar. He know that--sure. Eef you say you not care a dam to go to jail,
so you can put him there, too, becos' you have not'ing, an' so dam seeck
of everyt'ing, he will t'ink ten t'ousan' dollar same as one cent to Nic
Dupont--ben sur!"
Lygon nodded his head, still holding his hands to the blaze. With ten
thousand dollars he could get away into--into another world somewhere,
some world where he could forget; as he forgot for a moment this
afternoon when the girl said to him, "It is never too late to mend."
Now as he thought of her, he pulled his coat together, and arranged the
rough scarf at his neck involuntarily. Ten thousand dollars--but ten
thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire, and blood,
and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a new crime?
He stirred, as though to shake off the net that he felt twisting round
him, in the hands of the robust and powerful Dupont, on whom crime sat so
lightly, who had flourished while he, Lygon, had gone lower and lower.
Ten years ago he had been the better man, had taken the lead, was the
master, Dupont the obedient confederate, the tool. Now, Dupont, once the
rough river-driver, grown prosperous in a large way for him--who might
yet be mayor of his town in Quebec--he held the rod of rule. Lygon was
conscious that the fifty dollars sent him every New Year for five years
by Dupont had been sent with a purpose, and that he was now Dupont's
tool. Debilitated, demoralised, how could he, even if he wished, struggle
against this powerful confederate, as powerful in will as in body? Yet if
he had his own way he would not go to Henderley. He had lived with "a
familiar spirit" so long, he feared the issue of this next excursion into
the fens of crime.
Dupont was on his feet now. "He will be here only three days more--I haf
find it so. To-night it mus' be done. As we go I will tell you what to
say. I will wait at the Forks, an' we will come back togedder. His cheque
will do. Eef he gif at all, the cheque is all right. He will not stop it.
Eef he haf the money, it is better--sacre--yes. Eef he not gif--well, I
will tell you, there is the other railway man he try to hurt, how would
he like--But I will tell you on the river. Main'enant--queeck, we go."
Without a word Lygon took down another coat and put it on. Doing so he
concealed a weapon quickly as Dupont stooped to pick a coal for his pipe
from the blaze. Lygon had no fixed purpose in taking a weapon with him;
it was only a vague instinct of caution that moved him.
In the canoe on the river, in an almost speechless apathy, he heard
Dupont's voice giving him instructions.
.......................
Henderley, the financier, had just finished his game of whist and
dismissed his friends--it was equivalent to dismissal, rough yet genial
as he seemed to be, so did immense wealth and its accompanying power
affect his relations with those about him. In everything he was
"considered." He was in good humour, for he had won all the evening, and
with a smile he rubbed his hands among the notes--three thousand dollars
it was. It was like a man with a pocket full of money, chuckling over a
coin he has found in the street. Presently he heard a rustle of the inner
tent-curtain and swung round. He faced the man from the reedy lake.
Instinctively he glanced round for a weapon, mechanically his hands
firmly grasped the chair in front of him.
He had been in danger of his life many times, and he had no fear. He had
been threatened with assassination more than once, and he had got used to
the idea of danger; life to him was only a game.
He kept his nerve; he did not call out; he looked his visitor in the
eyes.
"What are you doing here? Who are you?" he said.
"Don't you know me?" answered Lygon, gazing intently at him.
Face to face with the man who had tempted him to crime, Lygon had a new
sense of boldness, a sudden feeling of reprisal, a rushing desire to put
the screw upon him. At sight of this millionaire with the pile of notes
before him there vanished the sickening hesitation of the afternoon, of
the journey with Dupont. The look of the robust, healthy financier was
like acid in a wound; it maddened him.
"You will know me better soon," Lygon added, his head twitching with
excitement.
Henderley recognised him now. He gripped the armchair spasmodically, but
presently regained a complete composure. He knew the game that was
forward here; and he also thought that if once he yielded to blackmail
there would never be an end to it. He made no pretence, but came straight
to the point.
"You can do nothing; there is no proof," he said with firm assurance.
"There is Dupont," answered Lygon doggedly.
"Who is Dupont?"
"The French Canadian who helped me--I divided with him."
"You said the man who helped you died. You wrote that to me. I suppose
you are lying now."
Henderley coolly straightened the notes on the table, smoothing out the
wrinkles, arranging them according to their denominations with an
apparently interested eye; yet he was vigilantly watching the outcast
before him. To yield to blackmail would be fatal; not to yield to it--he
could not see his way. He had long ago forgotten the fire, and blood, and
shame. No Whisperer reminded him of that black page in the history of his
life; he had been immune of conscience. He could not understand this man
before him. It was as bad a case of human degradation as ever he had
seen--he remembered the stalwart, if dissipated, ranchman who had acted
on his instigation. He knew now that he had made a foolish blunder then,
that the scheme had been one of his failures; but he had never looked on
it as with eyes reproving crime. As a hundred thoughts tending towards
the solution of the problem by which he was faced, flashed through his
mind, and he rejected them all, he repeated mechanically the phrase, "I
suppose you are lying now."
"Dupont is here--not a mile away," was the reply. "He will give proof. He
would go to jail or to the gallows to put you there, if you do not pay.
He is a devil--Dupont."
Still the great man could not see his way out. He must temporise for a
little longer, for rashness might bring scandal or noise; and near by was
his daughter, the apple of his eye.
"What do you want? How much did you figure you could get out of me, if I
let you bleed me?" he asked sneeringly and coolly. "Come now, how much?"
Lygon, in whom a blind hatred of the man still raged, was about to reply,
when he heard a voice calling, "Daddy, Daddy!"
Suddenly the red, half-insane light died down in Lygon's eyes. He saw the
snake upon the ground by the reedy lake, the girl standing over it--the
girl with the tawny hair. This was her voice.
Henderley had made a step towards a curtain opening into another room of
the great tent, but before he could reach it the curtain was pushed back,
and the girl entered with a smile.
"May I come in?" she said; then stood still astonished; seeing Lygon.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh--you!"
All at once a look came into her face which stirred it as a flying insect
stirs the water of a pool. On the instant she remembered that she had
seen the man before.
It was ten years ago in Montana on the night of her birthday. Her father
had been called away to talk with this man, and she had seen him from the
steps of the "special." It was only the caricature of the once strong,
erect ranchman that she saw, but there was no mistake, she recognised him
now.
Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father, and he saw now in
Henderley's eyes a fear that was not to be misunderstood.
Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could be brought to his knees.
It was the vulnerable part of him. Lygon could see that he was stunned.
The great financier was in his power. He looked back again to the girl,
and her face was full of trouble.
A sharp suspicion was in her heart that somehow or other her father was
responsible for this man's degradation and ruin. She looked Lygon in the
eyes.
"Did you want to see me?" she asked.
She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible of trouble, maybe
of tragedy, somewhere; and she had a vague dread of she knew not what,
for hide it, avoid it, as she had done so often, there was in her heart
an unhappy doubt concerning her father.
A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence had altered him. He was
again where she had left him in the afternoon.
He heard her say to her father, "This was the man I told you of--at the
reedy lake. Did you come to see me?" she repeated.
"I did not know you were here," he answered. "I came"--he was conscious
of Henderley's staring eyes fixed upon him helplessly--"I came to ask
your father if he would not buy my shack. There is good shooting at the
lake; the ducks come plenty, sometimes. I want to get away, to start
again somewhere. I've been a failure. I want to get away, right away
south. If he would buy it I could start again. I've had no luck." He had
invented it on the moment, but the girl understood better than Lygon or
Henderley could have dreamed. She had seen the change pass over Lygon.
Henderley had a hand on himself again, and the startled look went out of
his eyes.
"What do you want for your shack and the lake?" he asked with restored
confidence. The fellow no doubt was grateful that his daughter had saved
his life, he thought.
"Five hundred dollars," answered Lygon quickly. Henderley would have
handed over all that lay on the table before him but that he thought it
better not to do so. "I'll buy it," he said. "You seem to have been hit
hard. Here is the money. Bring me the deed to-morrow--to-morrow."
"I'll not take the money till I give you the deed," said Lygon. "It will
do to-morrow. It's doing me a good turn. I'll get away and start again
somewhere. I've done no good up here. Thank you, sir--thank you." Before
they realised it, the tent-curtain rose and fell, and he was gone into
the night.
The trouble was still deep in the girl's eyes as she kissed her father,
and he, with an overdone cheerfulness, wished her a good night.
The man of iron had been changed into a man of straw once at least in his
lifetime.
Lygon found Dupont at the Forks.
"Eh ben, it is all right--yes?" Dupont asked eagerly as Lygon joined him.
"Yes, it is all right," answered Lygon.
With an exulting laugh and an obscene oath, Dupont pushed out the canoe,
and they got away into the moonlight. No word was spoken for some
distance, but Dupont kept giving grunts of satisfaction.
"You got the ten t'ousan' each--in cash or cheque, eh? The cheque or the
money-hein?"
"I've got nothing," answered Lygon. Dupont dropped his paddle with a
curse.
"You got not'ing! You said eet was all right," he growled.
"It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing. I have had enough.
I have finished."
With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught him by the throat as
the canoe swayed and dipped. He was blind with fury.
Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it, but the pressure on
his throat was growing terrible. For minutes the struggle continued, for
Lygon was fighting with the desperation of one who makes his last awful
onset against fate and doom.
Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got
it home, he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into
the water with a groan.
Lygon, weapon in hand, and bleeding freely, waited for him to rise and
make for the canoe again.
Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not rise. A minute went by,
and still there was no stir, no sign. Dupont would never rise again. In
his wild rage he had burst a blood vessel on the brain.
Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could. He did--it calmly,
whispering to himself the while.
"I must do it. I must get there if I can. I will not be afraid to die
then," he muttered to himself. Presently he grasped an oar and paddled
feebly.
A slight wind had risen, and, as he turned the boat in to face the Forks
again, it helped to carry the canoe to the landing-place.
Lygon dragged himself out. He did not try to draw the canoe up, but began
this journey of a mile back to the tent he had left so recently. First,
step by step, leaning against trees, drawing himself forwards, a journey
as long to his determined mind as from youth to age. Would it never end?
It seemed a terrible climbing up the sides of a cliff, and, as he
struggled fainting on, all sorts of sounds were in his ears, but he
realised that the Whisperer was no longer there. The sounds he heard did
not torture, they helped his stumbling feet. They were like the murmur of
waters, like the sounds of the forest and soft, booming bells. But the
bells were only the beatings of his heart-so loud, so swift.
He was on his knees now crawling on-on-on. At last there came a light,
suddenly bursting on him from a tent, he was so near. Then he called, and
called again, and fell forwards on his face. But now he heard a voice
above him. It was her voice. He had blindly struggled on to die near her,
near where she was, she was so pitiful and good.
He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was speaking above him.
There were other voices, but it was only hers that he heard.
"God help him--oh, God help him!" she was saying. He drew a long quiet
breath. "I will sleep now," he said clearly.
He would hear the Whisperer no more.
AS DEEP AS THE SEA
"What can I do, Dan? I'm broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last
debt to-day. I've nothing but what I stand in. I've got prospects, but I
can't discount prospects at the banks." The speaker laughed bitterly.
"I've reaped and I'm sowing, the same as you, Dan."
The other made a nervous motion of protest. "No; not the same as me,
Flood--not the same. It's sink or swim with me, and if you can't help
me--oh, I'd take my gruel without whining, if it wasn't for Di! It's that
knocks me over. It's the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and
fool--and thief, I've been!"
"Thief-thief?"
Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light a
cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn,
handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He felt
that the black words which had fallen from his friend's lips--from the
lips of Diana Welldon's brother--were the truth. He looked at the plump
face, the full amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless
hand nervously feeling the golden moustache, at the well-fed, inert body;
and he knew that whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not
surmount it alone.
"What is it?" Rawley asked rather sharply, his fingers running through
his slightly grizzled, black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted no
scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was
necessary, he must remain cool. What she was to him, Heaven and he only
knew; what she had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as yet.
"What is it--quick?" he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon
Dan Welldon's shoulder. "Racing--cards?"
Dan nodded. "Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred on Jibway, the
favourite--he fell at the last fence; five hundred at poker with Nick
Fison; and a thousand in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin.
Everything went wrong."
"And so you put your hand in the railway company's money-chest?"
"It seemed such a dead certainty--Jibway; and the Edmonton corner-blocks,
too. I'd had luck with Nick before; but--well, there it is, Flood."
"They know--the railway people--Shaughnessy knows?"
"Yes, the president knows. He's at Calgary now. They telegraphed him, and
he wired to give me till midnight to pay up, or go to jail. They're
watching me now. I can't stir. There's no escape, and there's no one I
can ask for help but you. That's why I've come, Flood."
"Lord, what a fool! Couldn't you see what the end would be, if your
plunging didn't come off? You--you oughtn't to bet, or speculate, or play
cards, you're not clever enough. You've got blind rashness, and so you
think you're bold. And Di--oh, you idiot! And on a salary of a thousand
dollars a year!"
"I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn't explain." The weak face
puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered in the ox-like eyes.
"Yes, she probably would help you. She'd probably give you all she's
saved to go to Europe with and study, saved from her pictures sold at
twenty per cent of their value; and she'd mortgage the little income
she's got to keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would, and of
course you ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it." Rawley
lighted his cigar and smoked fiercely.
"It would be better for her than my going to jail," stubbornly replied
the other. "But I don't want to tell her, or to ask her for money. That's
why I've come to you. You needn't be so hard, Flood; you've not been a
saint; and Di knows it."
Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back his head, and laughed
mirthlessly, ironically. Then suddenly he stopped and looked round the
room till his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on the wall
opposite the window, through which the sun poured. It was the face of a
girl with beautiful bronzed hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled
face, with brown eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time and
space behind them--not before them. The lips were delicate and full, and
had the look suggesting a smile which the inward thought has stayed. It
was like one of the Titian women--like a Titian that hangs on the wall of
the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality, had an
air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering
duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills, when on a visit
to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not
superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It
had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when
Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to
his future as two thousand dollars were vital to Dan Welldon now.
"You've not been a saint, and Di knows it," repeated the weak brother of
a girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for
cheerful looks; whose buoyant humour and impartial friendliness gained
her innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her a
certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude
and provincial life around her.
When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness.
"I haven't been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law
is on my side as yet, and it isn't on yours. There's the difference."
"You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn't to
walk up my back with hobnailed boots."
"Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My
record was writ pretty big. But I didn't lay my hands on the ark of the
social covenant, whose inscription is, Thou shalt not steal; and that's
why I'm poor but proud, and no one's watching for me round the corner,
same as you."
Welldon's half-defiant petulance disappeared. "What's done can't be
undone." Then, with a sudden burst of anguish: "Oh, get me out of this
somehow!"
"How? I've got no money. By speaking to your sister?"
The other was silent.
"Shall I do it?" Rawley peered anxiously into the other's face, and he
knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being
laid bare to her.
"I want a chance to start straight again."
The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but
the words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said to
Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him. He
stepped forwards and, gripping Dan's shoulder with a hand of steel, said
fiercely:
"No, Dan. I'd rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known
you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have--or nearly
all--is your lovely looks, and what they call a kind heart. There's only
you two in your family, and she's got to live with you--awhile, anyhow.
She couldn't stand this business. She mustn't stand it. She's had enough
to put up with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the other
side, and there would be an end. It would have been said that Flood
Rawley had got his deserts. It's different with you." His voice changed,
softened. "Dan, I made a pledge to her that I'd never play cards again
for money while I lived, and it wasn't a thing to take on without some
cogitation. But I cogitated, and took it on, and started life over
again--me! Began practising law again--barrister, solicitor, notary
public--at forty. And at last I've got my chance in a big case against
the Canadian Pacific. It'll make me or break me, Dan. . . . There, I
wanted you to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me
that you'll not leave these rooms till I see you again. I'll get you
clear; I'll save you, Dan."