Chapter IV (2)

With the subconscious watchfulness of those who care for the beloved, she was awake five times in the long night to feed the stove. Each time she looked at Derek, and thought, with a pang, that he was deeper sunken among the pillows. His eyes were not quite closed; the silvery line of eyeball reflected the red glow. She would have liked to close them, but her hand shrank from so prophetic an action.

The last time she woke the sun had risen. The gathered crystals on the windows were lit with a glow that paled the stove. Dorette went into the inner room and braided her hair.

That day passed as the first had done. Her brother was weaker. She pleaded with him, passionately tender. “Just a mouthful of soup, Derry. Wake up, Derry dear. Take it for my sake, Derry!” but her voice, which had dimly roused him the day before, could not reach him now. She looked round for something she might do for him.

The diminished heap of logs on the floor showed her work enough. She must bring in a fresh supply from the pile behind the cabin. She ate a hasty breakfast and made herself some coffee. Then, hooded and wrapped against the cold, she opened the door.

She stepped into a world of white, blue, and black; solid, translucent, and motionless as though built from gems. Where the blue sky touched the black trees there seemed to run a setting of gold; where the black trees trailed branches to the snow, was a stain of sapphire shadow. It was fiercely cold. She shut the door behind her, hastily, ran to the snow-buried wood pile behind the cabin, burdened herself with an armful of small logs, returned, set her load on the threshold, opened the door, and tumbled the wood on the floor. All the morning she worked thus. Her spirits rose; she began to believe that Derek would not die, and soon she might think of Garth’s return. The noise of the logs as she flung them on the floor pleased her. It was a change from the one unceasing voice that filled the cabin day and night—the voice of the stove.

The second night she was restless. She dared not sleep at first, for fear she should sleep too well. Wind came up with the electric stars; the great stove sang to a higher, more tremendous note; she could scarcely keep pace with its consuming hunger. The pine knots and bright birch logs fell to ash in a moment. If she slept, she dreamed that the stove was out, and the cold creeping into the cabin in long feathers of frost, that twisted under the door like snakes, until one touched her on the throat and she woke, choking.

Dawn found the sky fleeced with cloud, the cabin warm, and the hurt man yet alive.

Again with the day her heart lightened. Four—five hours from that time, and she might expect Garth with the doctor from the mines at Mandore. She wound the clock, and turned it with its chipped white face to the room, no longer dreading to tell the passage of the hours.

Yet five hours went, and Garth had not come.

She went to the door. Closing it behind her that the cold might not get into the cabin even for a moment, she stared down the trail. It ran in the straight no more than a half-mile; farther than that, she could not see. Yet it was less her eyes than her soul that she thus strained to see beyond the forest.

“Garth! Garth! Garth!”

Who had given that wild cry that rang among the trees? For a moment she wondered, then knew it had come from her own troubled heart.

She must see beyond the first bend of the trail; she must see if, farther than that, the blue-white ribbon between the trees was still empty of her hope.

She built up the fire again, put on coat and hood and snowshoes, took one glance at Derek, and left the cabin. She sped down the trail. She was panting when she reached the first curve. Almost afraid to look, she saw the long track before her—empty. There was something conscious and deliberate in that emptiness, as if the forest knowingly withheld from her a secret. She dared go no farther. She turned back and fled home.

The clock ticked off another hour—two, three, four. Garth had not come.

Darkness, and he had not come.

Loneliness and suspense were shaking her strong, young nerves. The worst of all was the silence. The voice of the stove became first an annoyance, then a weariness, then an intolerable burden. The voice of its devouring hunger was the very voice of silence, of desolation. She flung the wood in angrily. “If there was only someone to _speak_ to,” she said, a little wildly—“just someone to give me a word!”

There was no one—then, nor through the endless night, when she feared to sleep, lest, in her dreams, or in reality, that insatiable thing in the stove that kept them alive might escape her, nor with the stormy dawn. Garth did not come.

There was no wood left in the house. Before she did anything else, she wrapped herself and went to the wood-pile.

The wood-pile was heaped against the back of the cabin: it was roofed and sheeted with snow. She pulled at the butt of a log, and the wood came down with a run, mixed with much snow—such dry snow that the wood was not moistened until she held it in her warm hand. The bitter work was a relief to her. She thrust the soft, dark hair out of her eyes and piled herself such a load that she swayed under it. “But it’s something to do for Derek,” she said, wistfully. “It’s all I can do.”

She took in enough for the day. But there was the night.

“Garth will be back by then,” she muttered, with cold lips, staring at the stove.

“Garth _must_ be back by then.” The stove sent a screaming rush of flame up the pipe, as if in mockery. She felt an unreasoning hatred for it, as she went wearily out again to gather enough wood for the night too.

Kneeling beside the wood-pile, she groped with numbed hands. She felt nothing but snow.

She thrust in her arm to the shoulder. She met no resistance but that of the snow.

Her heart beat in shuddering throbs. She brought a long pole and prodded the pile, then swung the pole and levelled it. She found nothing but snow.

“How did it happen?” She heard herself asking this over and over. Easily enough. She or Garth or Derek had been drawing supplies from the other side of the pile, and the snow had slipped from the roof and filled the spaces; hardening, it had stretched a roof over emptiness. The pile, which had been taken for good, hardwood logs, fodder for that roaring hungry heat within, was no more than a heap of snow.

Dorette turned slowly, and went into the cabin.

She stood by Derek’s bunk, staring at the wood on the floor. It was enough for the day, but what of the night?

Would Garth return before the night?

She looked about the cabin. There were things there, things that would burn. Her sleepy brown eyes widened. There was war in them as she leaned and kissed Derek’s cheek. He did not stir from that deepening sleep of his.

“Sleep on, Derry,” she whispered, scarcely knowing what she said, “sleep well, Derry. I’ll take care of you, I’ll fight for you!”

She took Garth’s heavy axe, and began on the chairs.

They were heavy and clumsy things, Garth’s pride, since he had made them himself. They would feed the stove well; but they were hard for a girl’s arm to chop, even though she struck true as a woodman, and Dorette’s hands were scorched from the door of the stove. As she toiled, her eyes ranged the cabin, calculating on this box, that shelf, the table. Her heart beat to every sound. As the wind rose higher, the bitter day was full of sounds. A dozen times she ran to the door, crying, “Garth!” A dozen times she saw nothing but the forest and a driven mist of snow, as fine and dry as dust.

By the earliest dusk she had chopped up everything in the cabin. Each stroke sent a jar of pain to her shoulder from her burned and bruised hands, but she did not feel it. And still the stove roared, insatiable. The dried wood of their furnishings, pine for the most part, burned like straw. The great iron horror must be fed, and she had nothing to feed it.

She took the axe and went out.

The grey forest fronted her in a rustling drive of snow and shadow. There must be a hundred fallen boughs within range of the cabin. She found one, dragged it from the snow, and toiled with it into the house. She twisted it apart, desperately, and there was blood on the rough, broken stuff she thrust into the stove.

She went out again. She was growing more desperate as her strength failed. There was a great branch trailing from a spruce, and she tore and wrenched at it, but it would not yield—it was frozen. She swung her weight upon it, sobbing. She struck with all the force remaining in her, but the axe-blade turned in her weary hands. She felt as though the will in her, passionately strong, should sever the bough as by steel. She did not know she was beaten, until she slipped weakly and fell in the snow and lay there, wailing helplessly and softly as a child.

The bitter snow stung her face like heat—like the heat of the stove. If she stayed there, the stove would be out. She lifted herself to her knees, and saw in the growing dark a man, who stood with a rifle on his arm, looking down at her.

“_Garth!_ Oh, Garth!”

But even as the cry left her lips, she knew it was not Garth.

A figure, lithe even under the heavy furs, a face hidden in the cowl he had drawn forward above his fur cap, a certain strange immobility that vaguely chilled her, but surely—help? So swift is thought, that in the transitory seconds before she spoke again her brain had shown her a picture, a memory of a wild-cat which she and Garth had vainly tried to corner in the yard—of the creature’s utter immobility until it launched itself and struck.

“The stove! Oh, the stove!”

She thought, as her hands went out to that motionless figure in the shadows, that she had spoken all the desperate appeal that was in her heart. But she only repeated: “Oh, the stove, the stove!”

“What stove?”

“The stove. The stove in our cabin. There’s—no more wood for it!”

She waited. Surely he understood. But he remained as he was, motionless, staring down at her.

She looked up at him with a burning appeal. She had forgotten to rise from her knees. She kneeled at his feet in the snow. Her breath came in gasps. “There,” she repeated, helplessly, “there—in the cabin—the stove! It’s going out!”

Still he waited.

“There’s a sick man there—my brother! Oh!” she finished, as he did not stir, “help me, if you’re a man!”

“Oh, b’gosh, yes, I’m a man!” She fancied that he was laughing in the shadow of the cowl. “But why should I help you?”

She had no more words. Silently she lifted and held out to him her bleeding hands.

After a long minute he stirred slowly. Without a word he laid his gun crosswise on two fir branches that grew above her reach, easily within his own. He lifted the axe from the snow. She watched him. Four sharp cross-cuts, and the trailing branch fell. He set his foot on it, chopped it quickly into four or five pieces. As each piece rolled free, Dorette snatched it as a starving woman might snatch bread.

“That enough?”

Staggering under her load, she stared at him. “No, no!” she stammered. “It’s not enough for the night. For the pity of Heaven, cut me some more!”

She turned away and hurried towards the cabin. Halfway there he overtook her. Without a word he lifted the logs from her arms into his own. She was too spent to thank him. Dumbly she moved at his side, conscious only that strength was here, help was here, that she might yet save Derek.

Entering the cabin, there was no glow, no light at all. With a low sound, Dorette swung open the door of the stove. Nothing was there but a handful of red ash ringed with grey.

With trembling hands she gathered a few splinters and thrust them in; she crouched before the gaunt, iron thing, as though she would hold it in her arms and warm it in her bosom. But the man, who had followed her, thrust her aside curtly enough. She watched him as he shaved a stick into delicate ribbons of wood—watched him as he coaxed them into flame. He tickled the appetite of the sullen, devouring thing in the stove with scraps of resinous bark and little twigs. Presently the fire laid hold on the larger logs, and fed upon them, hissing. He shut the door then, and turned to her.

She had lighted a lamp, and in the light stood looking at him, softly bright. Her eyes were stars of gratitude. She said at once: “My brother’s still living.”

She gestured towards the bunk. His eyes did not follow the gesture, or move from her pale face, as he said, abruptly: “You stay here with him. I’m goin’ to get you in some more wood.”

Her eyes flashed suddenly with tears. She said, brokenly: “You’re _good_. Oh, you’re a good man! While you’re—cuttin’ the wood, I’ll—thank God you came!”

He went out into the night without answering her.

He returned in half an hour, loaded mightily. Sitting on the end of her cot, she smiled at him, falteringly. She had been weeping.

He did not speak to her. Light-footed as a cat, he busied himself about the humming stove, then went forth again.

When he came back the second time, she was asleep.

Her face—very pale, very pure, fragile for one of her life and race—was rosed in the glow of the stove. Her hurt hands were curled within one another, like the hands of a child. Moving in his noiseless way, the man went again, and looked down at her.

His furred cowl had fallen back. His face also caught the light of the stove. Dark, keen, predatory, it was the face less of a man than of some embodied passion of hate or revenge, the face of an Ishmael, the face of Cain. It looked strange now, so little was it shaped or accustomed to the gentleness of expression it momentarily wore, as a breath blurs the gleam of steel. Light and silent as all his movements were, they showed no gentleness. But he seemed gentle when he lifted the end of one of Dorette’s dark plaits, which had fallen to the soiled floor, and laid it on the cot beside her just because he hesitated and was clumsy.

The plait of dark, silken hair was warm; his hand lingered over it. He leaned above her, and her breath was warm. That strangely unmoving regard of his was on her face. As if it had called her from her dreams, she woke, and lifted to him the clear eyes of a child. “I—did thank God—you came,” she whispered, with a child’s simplicity. Sleep held her again, almost before she had finished speaking.

The young man drew back, noiselessly lifted the axe, and once more went out.

Sinewy, silent, untiring, he toiled for her all night. And all night she slept.

She had slipped into unconsciousness as a child does, worn out with anxiety and fatigue. She woke a woman, and flushed to her hair, as she realized what she had done.

The man who had helped and guarded her all night, was standing in the doorway. The door was open; there was a frosty freshness in the air, which the roaring stove raised to the warmth of summer. The world outside was a dazzle of sun; silver drops rattled from the eaves; a crow called in the forest. It was the first sun of spring, the year’s change. In Dorette’s heart was a change also, a quickening, a birth of something new and unknown, that almost brought tears to her eyes. For the first time in her hard life she had rested on another’s strength; unconsciously she had found it sweet. That simple heart was in her look as she went to the stranger. She said, softly, “I did not mean to sleep. Why did you let me?”

He said, almost roughly; “You were all tired out.”

The tears brimmed over. She did not know if pain or happiness moved her. She went on: “I said—I knew—you were a good man.”

“Well,” he answered, but not as if he was answering her, “for one night.”

His furred hood hid his face. The wakening blush dyed her clear face again, as she said: “Let me see you. Let me see your face.”

“Why?”

On the word she faltered, confused. She did not know why. She stammered: “Because of what you have done—of what we owe you.”

“We?”

“My brothers and I. Derek’s still alive. I almost think he’s sleeping better—more natural. When—when Garth comes home, he’ll thank you as I’d like to.”

She looked up into the shadowed face, wistfully. He had turned from her again, and was gazing down the trail. After a moment, he said: “There’s coffee on the back of the stove, and some cornbread. You’d better eat it. I’ve had some.”

She went meekly, shamed that she had slept while her saviour served himself. She would have liked to serve him. Something strange and stormy was shaking her; she had no name for it. The food choked her, hungry as she was, but she ate it obediently.

She had scarcely finished, when he called her. She ran and joined him at the door. Something in his voice thrilled her; she saw in him again that strange and threatening immobility of the night before.

He said, swiftly: “You’re lookin’ for your brother to come back?”

“Yes, yes. Any time.”

“With another man?”

“With the doctor. Why?”

He raised his arm and pointed. In the blinding dazzle of sun on snow, she saw two small, dark figures, just rounding the curve of the trail.

Her heart rose and flooded her with a passion of thankfulness. She said, quietly, after a minute: “Yes, yes, it’s him and the doctor. Now—now, you’ll let him thank you, as you—won’t let me.”

Her words ended almost in a question, for she saw that, while she had been eating, he had taken his rifle on his arm and put on his snowshoes. Suddenly, she began to tremble a little, aware of something in his silence, his stillness, which vaguely threatened.

He swung upon her suddenly—one would have said, savagely, but that he was laughing. Those two black figures down the trail were sweeping rapidly nearer. All the latent fierceness of the man had flamed into being, at their approach. He laid a hard, slim hand on Dorette’s shoulder and turned her, so that, at less than arm’s length, she faced him. He said, softly, in the midst of his almost noiseless laughter: “I’ll show you how you can thank me.”

She looked up at him, her face colourless, her lips parted. In the shadow of the hood his eyes gleamed at her, his face bent nearer. The world fell away from her; there was nothing left in life for a minute but that face, that voice.

She just breathed: “Who are you?”

“You’ll know in a minute!” He looked swiftly from her to the two men down the trail. They were coming on fast. He seemed to be measuring his distance from them.

When they were so near that their faces were all but discernible, he caught the girl to him. She was slack in his hold; all her life seemed to be in her dazed eyes; she would have fallen, but that he held her with an arm like a steel bar. And twice and three times he kissed her.

“That’s how you can thank me!” He released her laughing still.

She staggered, her hands over her red mouth. With the movement of release he thrust her, rough and swift, within the door of the cabin. A bullet sent a spray of dusty snow over him. She saw, in one reeling instant, Garth on his knee down the trail, rifle levelled for another shot; the other, a laughing shadow, slipping from her hands, from her life, into the shadow of the forest from which he had come.

Another shot, wide of the mark; Garth leaping to his feet again and tearing towards her, followed by the doctor who was to save Derek, and whom he had found at last, thirty miles beyond Mandore. But she had no eyes for them—for a moment, no heart.

Eyes and heart were on that other figure at the edge of the trees, swift, terrible, laughing, calling to her with raised hand—

“Tell him you kissed Maxime Dufour!”

When Garth reached her side, she was on her knees, laughing and sobbing, striving, with her scarred small hands to obliterate his trail in the snow.

LA BLANCHISSEUSE DORÉE

As Père Barthélemy turned out of the gusty, dusty street, where the wind had been tugging rudely at his old soutane, and into Mère Bazane’s yard, he stepped into peace. Smiling, he flicked the dust off his sleeve with delicate fingers, looking at the tubs under the apple-trees, at the little gray shanty, and at the sign over the door. It seemed to him that the tarnished letters were full of little, gaping mouths, ready to snap at a possible customer. Some penniless student had painted the sign for her, long ago; “La Blanchisseuse Dorée,” in a fat flourish of gold. “Long ago,” said Père Barthélemy, with something of a sigh, “when she was not called the White-foot for nothing.”

But there she was, toiling at her tubs, and Père Barthélemy knew she needed smiles from him, not sighs.

“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”

“And upon you, mon père.” The little woman looked up from her reverie with a quick smile, and her eyes, in her small, weather-beaten face, were still as blue as wild flax. “It is a beautiful day, mon père.”

“Dusty and gusty in the streets.”

“Ah, the streets, my father! I am out of them here, and glad to be so. Sometimes a bird comes to the apple-trees, and when they are in leaf I look up among their boughs and think I am in my old home again. We had an orchard there.”

“A beautiful one, my friend?” Père Barthélemy’s keen, brown eyes were very soft.

“An orchard is always beautiful, my father.”

“That is true. And how is your good husband to-day?”

The accustomed mist of grief dimmed the blue eyes of the Golden Washerwoman. “Ah, my father, he is no better; he will never be better. Ah, the poor child, how he suffers! All last night I was rubbing him with oils. But I mind nothing, if I can keep my strength and get him all he needs. He is much younger than I.” Her little, knotted hands shook upon the side of the tub. “I weep in the night when I think of it. What if I should die first, and leave him uncared for?”

Something, that might have been admiration, rippled over the priest’s calm, brown face. “I am not old, Mère Bezane. Will you trust me? While I live I will never forget him.”

“Ah, mon père!” Her hands shook still more. “That is good, that is of a heavenly kindness. But no one can understand him but I, no one does him justice, no one can guess his sufferings. And he speaks to me with such affection! Only this morning, he said, ‘Hola! my little, old cabbage,’ he said, ‘make me some good soup.’ The brave heart! Will you not see him?”

“I have no time, and I must not hinder you when you are so busy.”

“Yes, I am busy, thank the saints. It is a lady’s dress, my father, and the work upon it is wonderful.” Her fingers sought the fine lace, wistfully. “But before it came to me it received, not a washing, but a massacre.”

That evening, Monsieur le Curé went to see his friend, the doctor.

Le Docteur Simon was hard at work among his hollyhocks when Père Barthélemy leaned over the gate. “Ha!” said he, pointing a trowel at his visitor. “I can see where you have been! You have been with our Blanchisseuse Dorée.”

“Yes,” said the curé, quietly, “and I have come to ask you—is there anything the matter with that villainous husband of hers?”

“I do not know,” said Simon, gruffly, making the earth fly, like a digging terrier.

“There were bruises on her arm again,” said Père Barthélemy, slowly. “I have thought much of that matter, my friend.”

“So have I.” The doctor spoke from a shower of flying earth. “And I will tell you this. The brute will die, if he dies at all, from eating, and lying still. Unless by the judgment of God. But that is _your_ department.”

“Our poor little Golden Washerwoman! How long is she to endure?”

“Till her heart breaks. You have all influence. Why do you not have the brute removed?”

“I have thought much, Simon. And I have thought—I have guessed—that it would not be for her happiness.”

“Ha!” said the doctor, again, with a look at the curé. “Ha. This Love!”

“Just so, my friend. We cannot meddle with it.”

The doctor grunted among his hollyhocks. “Yes, this Love. I have seen many manifestations; many symptoms of it. The heroic symptom has never shown itself so plainly as in the case of our Blanchisseuse Dorée. Name of a name! If I were _you_, my dear, I should never be surprised to see a hale young angel or two helping her with the wringing, and half the powers of heaven on guard among her apple trees.”

“And there is no hope for her release?”

“Speaking as a doctor, no. As a man”—the doctor was small, and of a wicked, selfish humour—“as a man, I am so greatly tempted to tell the pig to drink his liniments someday—”

Père Barthélemy laughed. “He is of my flock, and I say that a long purgatory is his only chance. Well, well! What would she say if she heard us?”

“Those sort of creatures always live long. Perhaps you can tell me why. These slugs are manifold as my good intentions, and will have a like fate. Remember our Blanchisseuse in your prayers.”

But for once, the doctor was wrong. La Blanchisseuse’s husband died, quite suddenly, and she was a widow. Upon Père Barthélemy came the weight of her wild grief.

“O, mon père, he is gone, he is gone! Dead before me, and he so much younger! You should have seen him when he came courting me. Such a fine lad, and even then I was plain and hard-favoured. I cannot believe it. O Mother of Sorrows, give him back to me! I was weak, I was wicked. When he called me, sometimes I came slowly. My legs were stiff with rheumatism, but I should have hastened. And often I fell asleep when I was rubbing him. O, my father, how shall I live without him?”

“She will not live,” said the curé. But the doctor said: “Wait. That grief must find healing.”

The Golden Washerwoman awoke, at last, to a sense of other things than her loneliness. She need be the Golden Washerwoman no more. There was the insurance to meet the dues for which she had striven for years, urged and helped by Père Barthélemy. La Blanchisseuse Dorée was rich, mon Dieu, as rich as any lonely woman need be. My faith, she had money in the bank. Regardez la!

“I will buy mourning,” she said, “such mourning as will become my age.”

So she bought cheap, black materials, and made them up herself, after long-forgotten fashion-plates of twenty years before. A little monument in grief, veiled in crape, she attended mass and spoke long to the priest who loved her. “She begins to take an interest in her dresses,” said he to his friend the doctor. In the luxury of buying, Mère Bazane found a little comfort.

And presently, the crape upon her gown gave place to black lace, very deep, and of a heavy pattern, the like of which had never been seen in the parish. She bought a chain of large jet beads, linked with gold. A brooch of black enamel, roped with gold, bore a little blackish portrait of her husband. There was a dreadful mourning ring upon one of her little, knotted fingers. The flock of Père Barthélemy wondered and admired.

Upon the day when the old sign, “La Blanchisseuse Dorée” disappeared from above her door, and she herself appeared in penetrating purple ribbons, Monsieur le Curé went to see her.

“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”

The Golden Washerwoman, smaller and more meagre than ever before, rustled her heavy, black draperies upon the floor, and wept upon Père Barthélemy’s hand.

“How is it with you, Mère Bazane?”

“Well, well, mon père. The emptiness of the heart is terrible, and the nights are full of a voice that does not call me, that will never call me again. Sometimes I look for my tubs under the trees, and for a little I am desolate that I need them no more. And then—”

“And then?”

“Then I go and buy things, my father.” She raised brave, blue eyes, like the eyes of a child. “It helps me to forget, it fills the emptiness, seest thou? I have never bought things before. When I washed the fine dresses of rich ladies, I used to lay the lace against my hands, because I loved it. It was beautiful. And I had never had anything that was beautiful.” She smoothed the deep, black flounce of her dress with a little hand that was always tremulous now. “This is beautiful, too, but it has no colour. Colour warms me like a fire, mon père; fills me like a food. Is it a sin?”

“It is no sin, my friend.”

“Come then, and I will show. At first I was afraid. That was a sin, to be afraid of thee.”

She went to a little wooden chest, and raised the lid. It was as if a rainbow had flashed suddenly into the dark, damp room. La Blanchisseuse Dorée laid her tremulous hands upon a silk web of pure colour within, and drew it out—pale blue, the colour of spring skies. Upon that she shook a length of rose-coloured satin, damasked in a pattern of butterflies. And then a glow of crimson silk, worked in tiny silver flowers.

“When my mourning is ended,” she explained, fondling the gorgeous fabrics, feverishly, “I can wear these. Meantime, I buy them, my father.”

Something nearer tears than laughter took Père Barthélemy by the throat, as he thought of the little washerwoman dressed in these silks.

“She will waste all her money,” he said, anxiously, to Le Docteur Simon, “buying these things.”

“Let her,” answered the doctor, “if it makes her happy.”

“It does not make her happy,” said Père Barthélemy, quietly. He knew his Blanchisseuse Dorée.

As time went on, the Golden Washerwoman broke further from the bounds of decorous mourning. The flock was interested, if a little scandalized. She adopted the royal colour of grief, and upon it played infinite variations, in which she trotted to church, like an army with banners. The two men who honoured her were troubled.

“If you had not touched wine for thirty years, it would not take much to make you drunk,” said Le Docteur Simon.

“She is searching feverishly for happiness,” said Père Barthélemy.

When Mère Bazane appeared in a purple dress, with large white spots, the curé was taking a hard-earned rest among the hills. But he heard of it. And on his return, he went straight to her house.

As he turned out of the dusty street, he saw her under the apple trees, toiling above her old tubs. She was singing as she worked, in a worn, sweet voice, of a fair Isabeau of long ago, who walked in her garden. And above her head the leafless apple boughs stretched a gray web of shadows, and the old sign creaked in the wind.

“Mère Bazane!”

“Ah, mon père! Ah, mon père, I need nothing now to complete my happiness. It is by the blessing of God that you are returned. I die of joy.”

“But—my dear, you are working again?”

“Ah, my father, there is need!” She spoke as if in triumph, and her blue eyes gleamed among the gentle wrinkles.

“Need? Your money—?”

“Safe in the bank, and there it will stay. Come, my father, and see!” She led him to the open door, and pointed within.

Upon the floor sat a fat, dark child, some three years old. He had pulled the end of the rose-coloured satin out of the chest, and wrapped himself in it. He gazed at Mère Bazane and the curé with sullen, dark eyes, set rather close in a small, heavy face.

“See him, the beautiful! He is the orphan of my dear husband’s nephew. Now I am so rich, they have let me take him to bring up. Shall I not be rich for his sake? Mon Dieu, how I will work and save!”

Her voice trembled with her little, knotted, fluttering hands. She moved to draw the silk away. “Give it to me, my angel.”

The angel wrapped himself in the rich folds tighter than ever, and screamed harshly, like a fierce bird that has no words. La Blanchisseuse Dorée looked up, flushed and panting. “See,” she said, proudly, “already he wants all the fine things he sees, and fights for them. Is he not clever? Such a determined mind for his age. And he shall have all he wants, the little one. Mon Dieu! how I will wash and bleach. I will never grow tired.”

The child, released, wrapped himself again in the soft satin, and resumed his sullen, steady stare. Père Barthélemy stood, chilled and silent, seeing the whole tragedy of sacrifice renewed. He saw the small, dark thing for ever asking, demanding, claiming. La Blanchisseuse forever toiling to supply, until—until she was cast aside, like a worn-out husk. He shrank from the child, as from a little full-fed vampire.

And then the true thought burst winged from his heart,

“She has her reward already,” he thought.

“I shall cut up my dresses to make things for him,” said the Golden Washerwoman, happily, “and spend no more money, no indeed. He will want it all, all. And he shall have it. Mon Dieu, how I will work.”

Père Barthélemy’s eyes were dim as he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. “Of such are the kingdom of heaven,” he said, softly.

But he did not say them of the child, as the Golden Washerwoman thought.

THE LOST SPRING

Sitting in the sun outside the skin-house, old Eetah will tell you of the time they lost a Spring on the Little Moon.

As in most other places, they only have one Spring a year there. But it comes so late, and is so short, they love it even more than other folk. When the sun comes back from the south, bringing the wildfowl with it; when the ice melts a little on the long, long, gravel beaches; when the moss turns green, and the saxifrage and stone-crop bud, then it is Spring on the Little Moon, and everybody is glad.

But one winter, Ka-leet lent a harpoon to the angekok.

It was a lovely harpoon. The haft was walrus-ivory, cunningly fitted and carved with hunting stories. The blade was hammered hoop iron from a whale ship. “I’ll lend you this,” said Ka-leet, “till the Spring. Then you must give it back to me. But you may use it till the Spring comes.”

The angekok went back to his snow house, and thought. He wanted to keep that harpoon. So he went out and travelled south till he met the Spring. He caught it and put it in a skin bag, and carried it home with him, and hung it up in a dark corner of his snow house. The Spring went to sleep in the bag, and no one on the Little Moon saw a sign of it; the birds did not come back, nor the seal, nor the salmon. It was winter all the time, and the people stayed in their snow houses and were sick for lack of the sun.

“We will go south,” they said, “and find new places to hunt in, before we die of hunger.” But the wicked angekok went out and called the Winter down from the North. Out of the North came the Winter; it came in the shape of a great bear, made of ice, cold, blue-green, glittering ice all through. Only within its body a great, still heart, a heart that never beat, shone like a frozen star. The Bear sat down between the Little Moon and the south, and no one could pass that way.

All the men of the tribe gathered together, the strong hunters and the wise old men; and they stood in a half-circle in front of the Bear, and threw darts and harpoons, and great stones at him. But the weapons could not pierce him, nor the stones hurt him.

Then the women came, and they gathered drift-wood, and precious sticks, and spear-handles from this house and that; and they brought the biggest soapstone cooking-lamps, and lighted them and lighted fires, to see if they might melt the Bear. But the great Bear, that was the Winter, bent his nose to the snow, and breathed once. All the flames went out, and the ashes were covered with ice, and everyone ran away. They were frightened. Even the angekok began to be frightened, for he could not get rid of the Bear he had called. The people went back to their houses and stayed there, very quiet, waiting to die. They were afraid, as they had never been before. If a man crawled to the entrance of his igloo and looked out, he saw only the Bear sitting in front of the village, resting his nose on the snow. The starlight and the aurora shone on his icy pelt, so that sometimes he was blue, sometimes rosy, and sometimes golden as fire. But he was always there, so that presently no one even bothered to go and look.

The only one who still went to look was Mit-kah, the little daughter of Ka-leet.

Mit-kah was the littlest, brownest, merriest thing that ever lived within thirty degrees of the Pole. She was not afraid of anything, and she had many thoughts. Gentle thoughts flowered in her heart as thick as stone-crop flowers in the sun. She used to crawl out of Ka-leet’s house and look at the Bear; and then she would go and listen outside the magic house, the angekok’s house, because she always heard music there. It was the Spring, singing in its sleep in the skin bag, but no one else heard it, not even the angekok. Then she would go away by herself, and think.

She thought a great deal about two things. She wondered why, if they were all dying for want of the Spring, it was not possible to go and borrow some Spring from someone else, as they had borrowed oil once from the Big Moon people when their own stores failed. And she was sorry for the Bear.

She thought he looked very cold and unhappy, sitting there with his nose in the snow, so far away from his home. And one night, when she saw him, all gray in the bitter starlight, she pulled her best hood out of the bag she kept her clothes in, and crept out and went and put it on the Bear to keep his ears warm.

It was a lovely hood, made of finest sealskin, with a long tail behind, and worked in patterns of red and white feathers. It was quite a little hood, but, somehow, it fitted the Bear; it must have stretched. Mit-kah reached up and pulled it well over his stony, icy ears, and tied it under his chin, all bearded with icicles. It froze on immediately, and Mit-kah was a little sorry to think she’d never be able to get it off again. But she thought the great Bear looked at her gratefully out of his ice-eyes, and his still, glittering heart beat once.

“Well, his head is warmer,” said little Mit-kah, “but his poor feet must be very cold.”

Day and night, the great Bear, that was the Winter, sat in front of the village in the snow. And, at last, the thought of his cold toes worried Mit-kah so, that she took a set of new dog-shoes her father had just made, and crept out, and fitted them on the Bear.

The shoes were little, and the Bear was huge, but somehow they went on; and he held up one foot after another, like a puppy, and little Mit-kah tied the thongs about his frosty legs. This time, he turned his terrible, gleaming head, and looked at her, and his frozen heart beat twice, flaming like a star. And Mit-kah went away and sat behind the angekok’s house, listening to the music; it was sweeter than ever, for the Spring in the skin bag was dreaming in its sleep.

Then she thought that the Bear must be hungry, sitting there for no reason at all, and never going away to catch fish; so she took her own dinner of dried salmon and fish-oil, and put it in a bowl and offered it to the Bear.

He ate it, every scrap, and Mit-kah watched him. She forgot her own hunger, it was so wonderfully interesting to see the bits of fish going down inside the Bear, who was, of course, transparent. When he had finished it, his great heart beat three times, and he got up and shook himself. Then he looked thoughtfully at Mit-kah, who was standing, just a little speck, between his front dog-shoes.

“No one has ever done anything kind to me before,” said the great Bear, who was the Winter, and his voice was like the clanging of sledge-runners on ice, “nor even said anything kind. Why were you kind, little Mit-kah?”

“I don’t know,” said Mit-kah, with her thumb in her mouth. It is wrong to speak with your thumb in your mouth but she did not know any better.

“That’s the best sort of kindness,” said the Bear, very gently, “and the least I can do in return, is to go away. But is there anything I can do for you first?”

“You might tell me where the Spring is,” answered Mit-kah.

“Hanging up in a bag in your angekok’s house,” said the Bear. “Didn’t you know?”

“No,” said Mit-kah, “I didn’t, and thank you very much for telling me. I’ll just go straight away and let it out.” For she was not afraid of anything.

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” replied the Bear, apologetically. “You see, it’s so cold from my being about here so long, that if you let the Spring out of the bag, it’ll just die.”

“Then couldn’t I go and borrow some elsewhere?”

“N—n—no, I’m afraid that won’t do, either.” The Bear shook his head, regretfully. “You see, there’s never more than enough to go round, as it is.”

“Then what am I to do?” asked Mit-kah, sadly.

“I don’t know, unless you could find something even warmer than the Spring, to warm the bag before it wakes up. Look here, I don’t know much about such things, but if you came home with me, the Old Woman could tell you.”

“What Old Woman?”

The Bear looked surprised. “Why, the Old Sky Woman. She housekeeps for the lot of us, you know—all the Weathers and the Seasons. If there’s anything warmer than the Spring, she could tell you of it. Wonderful things she has at home! But perhaps you would be afraid to come with me?”

“Why should I be afraid?” said Mit-kah.

The Bear stretched his terrible head, and snuffed the air towards the North Star. “Many fear me, but not all,” he said. “Come if you will, little Mit-kah.”

Then he made himself all flat in the snow, and she climbed upon his neck, and held on by the long tail of the hood. And the Bear got up, and went swiftly away, northwards; very swiftly he ran, glisading over the glittering snow, and wherever he went, there it became cold as death. But little Mit-kah was quite warm.

When Ka-leet looked for her and could not find her, he went away from the lamp, and lay in a corner, weeping. For he thought she had wandered away and died. Nothing comforted him, not even when they told him that the Bear was gone. And as yet the Spring did not come.

Meanwhile, Mit-kah and the Bear went north and north, so far that they could go no farther, till they came to the place where the Bear lived, and the igloo of the Old Sky Woman. Never had Mit-kah seen such a house; it cricked her neck to look at the top of the entrance-tunnel, and as for the living-place behind, it had neither top nor bottom, nor beginning nor end. It was like a cloud. Here the Old Sky Woman sat over a great cooking-pot and a clear fire; and about her the Stars and the Weathers, the Winds and the Seasons, went in and out; but she sat still and cooked.

The Bear, that was the Winter, went in to the fire, and lay down beside it in his place. Then, for the first time, Mit-kah was frightened, and looked, and did not know what she saw; and listened, and did not know what she heard, only she knew that a hand came down sometimes and stirred the stuff in the pot; and that across the fire a caribou buck lifted his head and looked at her, and his eyes were softer than sleep, and there were stars in his antlers. “That is the South-west Wind,” said the Bear to her, softly. “He is the only one at home. He is kind. Don’t be afraid.” But Mit-kah crouched low on the Bear’s neck and hid her face.

Then the Old Sky Woman stooped her head from the cloudy roof of her igloo, and asked what Mit-kah wanted. “Mother,” said the Bear, very respectfully, “she wants to know if there is anything warmer than the Spring. The Little Moon angekok has caught their Spring and hung it up in a skin bag in his house, and there it sleeps. If it woke without warmth, it will die in the cold. Is there anything warmer than the Spring? I am Winter. I know nothing about such things.”

“Yes,” said the Old Sky Woman, “there is one thing warmer than Spring. It is the fire under my cooking-pot. It is called Love, and you’ll find it anywhere, but it’s hard to put your hand on sometimes.”

“I am Winter,” said the Bear, again, “I know nothing about Love. I have only one gift, and that is Sleep. But will you give her some of your fire, Mother?”

“Yes,” answered the Old Sky Woman, “she shall have some of my fire. But she must carry it in her hands, and go away from here quickly, or it will go out, and I can’t have it wasted.”

“Hold out your hands, Mit-kah,” said the Bear, softly, “you shall have some of the fire that is warmer than Spring, and with it, you shall wake the Spring. Hold out your hands, and do not fear, it will not burn you.”

Then Mit-kah held out her little brown hands, joined together, and the Old Sky Woman took the great spoon with which she stirred in her pot, and lifted in it a tiny ember from the fire, and laid it in Mit-kah’s hands. It did not burn her. It shone in a clear flame between her curved hands, and it was warm as sunlight, and sweet as willow-buds. Mit-kah laughed with happiness, and was not afraid.

“Carry it like that,” said the Old Sky Woman, “or you will lose it. And take it away quickly.”

Then the great Buck, who was the South-west Wind, rose and came round the fire, and the stars in his antlers were like fish in a net. “You are swift, Brother,” he said to the Bear, “but you are not so swift as I. I will take Mit-kah home.” His voice was soft as running water when the rivers break free, and Mit-kah looked into his eyes, and the flame of Love that she carried in her hands was reflected in his eyes like two more stars.

“Go with the Wind, little Mit-kah,” said the Bear, drowsily. “He is swifter than I, but he does not love you so well. Do not forget me, little Mit-kah.”

“I will not forget you,” said Mit-kah. She slid from the Bear’s neck, and stood in front of him, gazing into his eyes. It was like gazing into one of the blue pools that form in the ice on warm days; but far down in them, the flame she carried was reflected. Then the Bear shut his eyes lazily, and went to sleep by the fire. And the Old Sky Woman lifted Mit-kah and set her on the back of the Caribou Buck, and he bore her out of the igloo and southward over the snow.

Mit-kah, carrying the flame, had nothing to hold on by, but she did not need anything. The Bear had been smooth and swift, but the great Buck fled like a cloud, and his antlers caught new stars from the sky as a net catches fish. With him, went the sound of rain and the melting of waters and the rushing wings of birds. And so they came to the Little Moon.

The Buck knelt down and made himself all small, and Mit-kah slid from his neck and stood before him, and thanked him prettily, but he did not pay much attention to her, though his eyes were so soft and kind. Before she had finished, he had risen and snuffed the air and stamped the earth with his forefoot; then he fled away, moving like a cloud under the stars, and which went with him and which stayed in the sky, Mit-kah could not tell. She went soberly down to her village, carrying the fire.

She stood in the midst of the dark snow-houses and called aloud to her people. One by one they answered her, and came crawling out. Ka-leet was the first, and he ran to Mit-kah, and would have taken her in his arms, but he saw the fire in her little brown hands, and was afraid. “Are you Mit-kah?” he said, “or are you a ghost?” “Are you dead, or have you come back to die with us?”

“I am not dead,” said Mit-kah, “I have come back to wake the Spring for you.”

Then, the flame as still as a flower in her hands, she went to the house of the angekok, all the people following her. She crawled into the house, the people following her, Ka-leet the first. When the angekok saw her come in, carrying the small, bright flame, he fell on his face. But Mit-kah paid no attention to him. For out of the bag on the wall came a single clear, sweet note, like the mating call of a bird.

“That is the Spring waking!” cried Mit-kah.

She stood under the skin bag, where the angekok had kept the Spring, and raised the flame towards it. And the flame left her hands and floated upwards, and enclosed the skin bag in a tender light, a warmth and a shining. Then the bag opened, and out of it came the waking Spring.

What was it like? I don’t know. Light, and swiftness, and joy, leaves, wings, and little stars—the memory of all these, and the hope of all that are to come, Mit-kah let loose from the bag. Outside, the sun came back from the south like a swan; the ice melted, the salmon leaped in the rivers, the moss greened, and a thousand tiny flowers opened under the rocks. The people all ran out to look, but Ka-leet stayed behind in the angekok’s house, holding his little daughter in his arms.

In all hearts, also, the winter was past. And the angekok got up and put a good face on it and returned the harpoon.