Part 33

"The stake, Jim," said Sally. "If you did not drink for four years--never touched a drop--we were to have five million dollars."

"You never told him, then--you never told him that?" asked the old man.

"I wanted him to win without it," she said. "If he won, he would be the stronger; if he lost, it would not be so hard for him to bear."

The old man drew her down and kissed her cheek. He chuckled, though the tears were still in his eyes.

"You are a wonder--the tenth wonder of the world!" he blurted.

Jim stood staring at the bundle in Nancy's hands. "Five millions--five million dollars!" he kept saying to himself.

"I said Nancy's worth ten times that, Jim." The old man caught his hand and pressed it. "But it was a damned near thing, I tell you," he added. "They tried to break me and my railways and my bank. I had to fight the combination, and there was one day when I hadn't that five million dollars there, nor five. Jim, they tried to break the old man! And if they'd broken me, they'd have made me out a scoundrel to her--to this wife of yours who risked everything for both of us--for both of us, Jim; for she'd given up the world to save you, and she was playing like a soul in hell for heaven. If they'd broken me, I'd never have lifted my head again. When things were at their worst I played to save that five millions--her stake and mine; I played for that. I fought for it as a man fights his way out of a burning house. And I won--I won. And it was by fighting for that five millions I saved fifty--fifty millions, son. They didn't break the old man, Jim. They didn't break him--not much."

"There are giants in the world still," said Jim, his own eyes full. He knew now his father and himself, and he knew the meaning of all the bitter and misspent life of the old days. He and his father were on a level of understanding at last.

"Are you a giant?" asked Nancy, peering up into her grandfather's eyes.

The old man laughed, then sighed. "Perhaps I was once, more or less, my dear," saying to her what he meant for the other two--"perhaps I was; but I've finished. I'm through. I've had my last fight."

He looked at his son. "I pass the game on to you, Jim. You can do it. I knew you could do it as the reports came in this year. I've had a detective up here for four years. I had to do it. It was the devil in me. You've got to carry on the game, Jim; I'm done. I'll stay home and potter about. I want to go back to Kentucky, and build up the old place, and take care of it a bit--your mother always loved it. I'd like to have it as it was when she was there long ago. But I'll be ready to help you when I'm wanted, understand."

"You want me to run things--your colossal schemes? You think--?"

"I don't think. I'm old enough to know,"

WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY

The arrogant Sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him banners of gold and crimson, and a swift twilight was streaming over the land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill followed it, and the look of one was like a light in a window to a lost traveller. It had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a journey this man had made as few have ever attempted and fewer accomplished. To the farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the shoulder of a continent juts out into the northwestern arctic seas, he had travelled on foot and alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian guides who now and then shepherded him from point to point. The vast ice-hummocks had been his housing; pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and even the fat and oil of seals had been his food. Ever and ever through long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. At night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the steely wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of frost; while the illimitably distant sun made the tiny flakes sparkle like silver--a poudre day, when the face and hands are most like to be frozen, and all so still and white and passionless, yet aching with energy. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles that endless trail went winding to the farthest Northwest. No human being had ever trod its lengths before, though Indians or a stray Hudson's Bay Company man had made journeys over part of it during the years that have passed since Prince Rupert sent his adventurers to dot that northern land with posts and forts and trace fine arteries of civilization through the wastes.

Where this man had gone none other had been of white men from the western lands, though from across the wide Pacific, from the Eastern world, adventurers and exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his grandfather, an Eastern scholar, had come to know; and for love of adventure, and because of the tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he had been ruined by bad investments, he had made a journey like none ever essayed before. And on his way up to those regions, where the veil before the face of God is very thin and fine, and men's hearts glow within them, where there was no oasis save the unguessed deposit of a great human dream that his soul could feel, the face of a girl had haunted him. Her voice--so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled silver in his ears, till, in the everlasting theatre of the pole, the stars seemed to repeat it through millions of echoing hills, growing softer and softer as the frost hushed it to his ears--had said to him late and early, "You must come back with the swallows." Then she had sung a song which had been like a fire in his heart, not alone because of the words of it, but because of the soul in her voice, and it had lain like a coverlet on his heart to keep it warm:

"Adieu! The sun goes awearily down, The mist creeps up o'er the sleepy town, The white sail bends to the shuddering mere, And the reapers have reaped and the night is here.

"Adieu! And the years are a broken song, The right grows weak in the strife with wrong, The lilies of love have a crimson stain, And the old days never will come again.

"Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim 'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim, Shall not our querulous hearts prevail, That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail?

"Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between The things that are and that might have been Be folded back for our eyes to see, And the meaning of all shall be clear to me."

It had been but an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into his mind that life was now a thing to cherish, and that he must indeed come back; though he had left England caring little if, in the peril and danger of his quest, he ever returned. He had been indifferent to his fate till he came to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whose life was knit with the far North, whose mother's heart was buried in the great wastes where Sir John Franklin's expedition was lost; for her husband had been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of that civilization for which they had risked all and lost all save immortality. Hither the two had come after he had been cast away on the icy plains, and, as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with it, always on the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward. Here, with small income but high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and labored.

And when this newcomer from the old land set his face northward to an unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away forever. Something in him--his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes, his brave laugh--reminded her of him, her husband, who, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth went, it was as though one they had known all their lives had passed; and the woman knew also that a new thought had been sown in her daughter's mind, a new door opened in her heart.

And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the cluster of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little mission church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the hearts of all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for "the peace of the Holy Grail." The village was, in truth, but a day's march away from him, but he was not alone, and the journey could not be hastened. Beside him, his eyes also upon the sunset and the village, was a man in a costume half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy gray beard and massive frame, and a distant, sorrowful look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his elbow resting on a stump of pine--the token of a progressive civilization--his chin upon his hand, he looked like the figure of Moses made immortal by Michael Angelo. But his strength was not like that of the man beside him, who was thirty years younger. When he walked, it was as one who had no destination, who had no haven toward which to travel, who journeyed as one to whom the world is a wilderness, and one tent or one hut is the same as another, and none is home.

Like two ships meeting hull to hull on the wide seas, where a few miles of water will hide them from each other, whose ports are thousands of miles apart, whose courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder man, sick and worn and near to death, in the poor hospitality of an Indian's tepee. John Bickersteth had nursed the old man back to strength, and had brought him southward with him--a silent companion, who spoke in monosyllables, who had no conversation at all of the past and little of the present, but who was a woodsman and an arctic traveller of the most expert kind, who knew by instinct where the best places for shelter and for sleeping might be found, who never complained, and was wonderful with the dogs. Close as their association was, Bickersteth had felt concerning the other that his real self was in some other sphere or place toward which his mind was always turning, as though to bring it back.

Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the old man to speak about the past, but he had been met by a dumb sort of look, a straining to understand. Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both of his own and gazed with painful eagerness into his face, as though trying to remember or to comprehend something that eluded him. Upon these occasions the old man's eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet, which tortured Bickersteth beyond bearing. Just such a look he had seen in the eyes of a favorite dog when he had performed an operation on it to save its life--a reproachful, non-comprehending, loving gaze.

Bickersteth understood a little of the Chinook language, which is familiar to most Indian tribes, and he had learned that the Indians knew nothing exact concerning the old man; but rumors had passed from tribe to tribe that this white man had lived forever in the farthest North among the arctic tribes, and that he passed from people to people, disappearing into the untenanted wilderness, but reappearing again among stranger tribes, never resting, and as one always seeking what he could not find.

One thing had helped this old man in all his travels and sojourning. He had, as it seemed to the native people, a gift of the hands; for when they were sick a few moments' manipulation of his huge, quiet fingers vanquished pain. A few herbs he gave in tincture, and these also were praised; but it was a legend that when he was persuaded to lay on his hands and close his eyes, and with his fingers to "search for the pain and find it, and kill it," he always prevailed. They believed that, though his body was on earth, his soul was with Manitou, and that it was his soul which came into him again, and gave the Great Spirit's healing to the fingers. This had been the man's safety through how many years--or how many generations--they did not know; for legends regarding the pilgrim had grown and were fostered by the medicine-men, who, by giving him great age and supernatural power, could, with more self-respect, apologize for their own incapacity.

So the years--how many it was impossible to tell, since he did not know or would not say--had gone on; and now, after ceaseless wandering, his face was turned toward that civilization out of which he had come so long ago--or was it so long ago?--one generation, or two, or ten? It seemed to Bickersteth at times as though it were ten, so strange, so unworldly was his companion. At first he thought that the man remembered more than he would appear to acknowledge, but he found that after a day or two everything that happened as they journeyed was also forgotten.