Chapter VII: Part TWO: The American Madonna (3)

"Case of the last dollar, eh? Well, we'll soon mend that. When you've put yourself outside a sirloin steak ... here, Mr. Squire, send Charlie up at once ... I'll breakfast here--it's my old room.... Now, hurry!" He bustled round in a furious heat of action, flung his fur-coat from him, talking all the while. "Omelette, steak, and special coffee--that'll do for a beginning, Charlie; ... and see here, Mr. Squire"--this to the clerk--"my friend is a distinguished Englishman, and don't you forget it."

"Of course," said the clerk. "I knew he was a friend of yours, or I wouldn't have done what I did for him."

"That's all right, Mr. Squire. But you'd better forget what you said about going out on the bat--he's not that kind. Now, are we ready?"

And with the suddenness of a transformation scene in a pantomime, Arthur found himself seated at a laden table, the meats steaming on the dish, the coffee bubbling in the percolator, the very air fragrant with provocation to his appetite. No wonder men stole for food, he thought; his very nostrils quivered with the lust of meat. The blood sang within his veins as the first drop of liquid warmth thrilled his palate, and his flesh seemed sweeter to him, his whole house of man renewed. Until that hour he had not known how hardly he had used his body, how great the violence he had offered it. Now he entered into the repossession of his own flesh; this was the moment of his reconciliation, and this the sacramental food of a physical atonement.

"And now," said Bundy, when the meal was finished, "tell me all about yourself."

Arthur told his story from the beginning, Bundy meanwhile smoking and watching him with a curious flicker of suppressed humour in his eye. It was a little disconcerting to be so watched; it set Arthur wondering what Bundy really thought of him, and at last he broke out with the remark, "I'm afraid you think me something of a fool, Mr. Bundy?"

"Well, I won't pretend to say that I would have done all that you've done," Bundy answered. "I don't quite get your view-point, especially in what you say about your father. But there's one thing in which I see you have been wise--you've left England, and that was the wisest thing you ever did."

"I've sometimes thought it the most foolish."

"Ah! because you've had a hard time. But that's nothing. I've been stony-broke myself a dozen times, and I've lived to think that these were the moments when I enjoyed my life the most. The great point is, you've shown yourself capable of an adventure. That's the spirit I like to see, and I like you the better for it. Now, my boy, I'd recommend you to get a good sleep. I've a pile of business to attend to. Later on we'll talk over your affairs, and I'll have something definite to say to you."

Great is the power of wealth, greater still, perhaps, the power of reputed wealth and the willingness to distribute it. At the waving of Bundy's magic wand Arthur had become at once a person of consideration; he was the tenant of an admirable suite of rooms, waited on by obsequious bell-boys, remarked by admiring chamber-maids, even sought by adroit reporters. He was a friend of Bundy's--that was the sole explanation of the miracle--for it appeared that Bundy's star was once more in the ascendant. When, late in the afternoon, Arthur left his room and went down into the hotel lobby, it seemed to him that it hummed with the name of Bundy. A constant stream of messenger-boys sought Parlour A.; a succession of automobiles discharged at the hotel door fur-coated men with anxious eyes, all bound for the same goal; the evening papers were full of the portraits and exploits of Bundy. Opening the door of Parlour A., he had a passing glimpse of a Bundy he had never seen before--a wild-eyed, gesticulating Bundy, orating behind a barricade of books and papers to a crowded room, rushing at intervals to the telephone and shouting orders, a man glowing with ardour, on springs with energy, intoxicated with success.

"I'll see you presently," he cried, and went on pouring out what appeared to be a Niagara of figures.

Arthur withdrew silently, went up to his room, and ordered all the papers, from which he proceeded to inform himself on the doings of his friend. The story, divested of a vast accretion of shop-soiled adjectives, reduced itself to this--that Bundy had suddenly enrolled himself among the multi-millionaires, at least potentially.

"The story of Mr. Bundy," began the chronicle, "is one of those romances of sudden wealth which are only possible in this country of unlimited and still undiscovered resources. Born in humble circumstances in the city of London, England, Mr. Bundy has raised himself by his own exertions to a place among the great captains of wealth, whose remarkable careers constitute the epic of human progress, and shed glory on the institutions of this free and enlightened country." Here, it appeared, the journalist's well of rhetoric ran dry, and he condescended to laconic statement. It was not to be supposed that a plain statement of fact could support all the amiable exaggerations with which the reporter had adorned Mr. Bundy's personal history; but the facts themselves were sufficiently amazing. From them Arthur gathered that Bundy had discovered fresh deposits of gold in the rivers of the Yukon, of undoubted value, and was about to float a dredging company which promised enormous dividends. "As early as 1898," continued the report, "fine-grained platinum was recognised in the black sand obtained along the Tuslin River, Yukon Territory, but until recently no active preparations have been made to recover it. This river drains the Tuslin Lake; its gravel-bed carries gold in paying quantities even by hand-working, throughout its entire length of 120 miles. Mr. Bundy claims that this gravel-bed contains immense quantities of gold, which may be recovered by the simple process of dredging. For thousands of years the erosion of the hills has precipitated gold into the river; the gold has sunk by its specific gravity into the river-bed, and there it remains in incalculable quantities. A good dredger costs about five thousand dollars. It scoops up the river-bed in so thorough a fashion that not a grain of gold is lost. Mr. Bundy has proved by actual experiment that from ten ounces of black sand, taken at random, sixty cents worth of platinum is obtainable, and gold in much larger quantities. Mr. Bundy holds a concession for more than eighty miles of this river. This means that with the most adequate machinery it will take fifty years to dredge the Tuslin. When we reckon the relatively light cost of dredging, it appears probable that Mr. Bundy's proposition means not less than _one thousand per cent._ profit to the fortunate investor."

So this accounted for the wild scene in Parlour A., the rush of automobiles to the door of the hotel, the sudden fame of Bundy. The indefatigable adventurer, who was supposed to be in Texas or Oklahoma, had all the time been scooping gold in handfuls from the lap of the frozen north; Oklahoma had no doubt been used as a blind to cover his tracks; the reports in the papers had been ingeniously engineered; and then, at the precise moment, Bundy had descended on New York in a benignant advent. Arthur's thoughts went back to the shabby house in Lion Row, and he wondered if Mrs. Bundy had heard the news. He saw her preparing for a new apotheosis; fitting on the golden wings, so to speak, which were to waft her to the porticos of palaces; and, remembering her stories of similar hegiras, he wondered how much of truth lay behind this astounding story. Bundy no doubt believed it--it was impossible to doubt his good faith; but Bundy had been deceived before, he might be deceived again. A voice told Arthur that there was something unsubstantial in this glittering edifice; somewhere there was a rotten bolt, which, if plucked out, would result in total ruin. And the same voice told him that his own path did not lie in this direction; that whatever its allurement, it was not for him.

Bundy did not have the promised talk with him that evening, nor all the next day. The man was devoured by his own energy; he ate little, slept not at all, rushed frantically about New York in automobiles, was always the centre of a crowd, himself excited, vociferous, burning with zeal like an apostle. It was not until the third evening that he rushed into Arthur's room, and sank exhausted on the couch.

"I've treated you shamefully," he cried, "but it couldn't be helped. Lad, I've done it. I've pulled it off. Don't speak a word to me about it yet. I believe I've gone the limit. One more question to answer and I'd have a fit."

It was obvious even to an unpractised eye that he spoke the truth. The blood was congested in his cheeks, his breath came unevenly, his hands trembled, an insane frenzy blazed in his eyes.

"Order dinner," he went on hoarsely. "An hour's time--that will do. I didn't know I was so tired. I believe I'll just go to sleep where I am. They won't look for me here."

Arthur turned the lights down, covered him with a travelling-rug, and left him. He might have been a felon hiding from justice rather than a triumphant millionaire, and Arthur could not but reflect upon the strangeness of the spectacle. It was the first time he had looked upon the lust for gold. His father had acquired wealth, but not in this way. It had been won by deliberate siege, by steady, patient pressure which called for high qualities of restraint; if it was a gross passion, it had elicited certain elements of character that in themselves were worthy. But this mode of winning wealth had no dignity. It was a lust. It had the grossness and ferocity of a lust. It took the brain and body of a man and shattered them with its tremendous throb. And it was a lust also that had contagion in it. It was impossible to deny that its subtle virus had already touched his own heart. During those three days he had been as a man deafened by the noise of guns; he had stood in the very heart of the explosion, and had recognised something strong and savage in the scene. It thrilled him, fascinated him, made all ordinary modes of life trite and tame, and left him asking, Was not this life indeed?

And he knew it was not. He had only to think of that prostrate, half-demented man, sunk in the sleep of exhaustion on the couch, only to recollect the brave and lonely woman waiting for him in Lion Row, to know that this was not life. Better, better far, the humblest bread earned in quietness and eaten in peace, than this madness of mere possession. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth"--ah no! _things_ are a poor substitute for life, and to forfeit life in the pursuit of things is man's crowning folly.

An hour later there emerged a Bundy clothed and in his right mind, fresh-shaved, fresh-bathed, smiling, easy, tolerant. Dinner was served in Bundy's rooms, and when the meal was over he began to talk freely of his adventures and affairs.

"You'll never know how good civilised food is till you've gone upon a diet of salt-horse and biscuit for four months," he remarked. Little by little he unfolded the story of his travels, a story full of fierce hazards, Homeric toils, adroit strategies, defeats, despairs, surprising victories, ending in the supreme moment when he held his dearly-won concession in his hand, and knew himself master of incalculable spoil. It was the story of Ulysses, master of men, diplomat and fighter, swift, strong, and infinitely cunning, retold not without pride, but with the laconic brevity of the man who counts past hazards things of no importance.

"Well, I've pulled it off," he cried. "I've paid blood and sweat to do it. And now, do you know, about the only thing I've left to wish for is to go to sleep for a month, and wake up in my old bed at home, and smell the eggs and bacon cooking for my breakfast, and hear the old dog barking in the garden at the kids."

"Mrs. Bundy will be glad to hear the news."

"Yes, I guess she will. I didn't ought to have been away so long. It's been hard on her. Tell me, now, how was she looking? Older, I'm afraid, eh?"

And then he fell into a train of tender reminiscence. He talked of how brave and patient his wife had been, and of the long separation, and of the boys of whom he had seen so little.

"Sometimes it seems as if it wasn't worth it. It's only a short time folk have to live together any way, and I've been away from home most of my life. I don't know but what I'd have been a sight happier if I'd have lived like other folk, and gone to church Sundays with the kids, and earned my bit of money in the city, and just had a home. That's the thing I've never had--a home."

It was a singular confession for a man to make who had just attained the summit of success. He spoke with an extraordinary simplicity and tenderness, as if unconscious of an auditor, obedient only to some tide of memory that rose and swelled within his bosom.

"It's queer, the way we're made," he went on. "Here am I telling you what I've got by leaving England, and yet, if you're like me, you'll never have a happy day till you get back again. There's a house me and Mrs. Bundy lived in when we were first married: it was out Epping way, and it had a bed of mignonette under the window, and a hay-field just beyond the garden-wall; and I can smell that mignonette now, and the hay, and up there in the Yukon I'd wake in the mornings with that smell in the air, though there wasn't a flower in sight for God knows how many miles. I don't believe I could bear to see that house again. Yet if I could just go back, and be young again, I guess I'd give all the gold in the Yukon to do it--and then repent my bargain, and go off to get some more. Well, that's the way we're made. We don't know what we want, and with all our trying we get the wrong thing after all, most like."

He ended abruptly.

"I oughtn't to be talking like this. I guess it's mere foolishness. Well, let us come to business. There's something I want to say to you. It's about your father. Now, did Mrs. Bundy ever tell you that your father once helped me when I was in difficulties?"

"Yes, she told me that."

"She did, eh? Well, I've never forgotten it. Of course I've paid the money back long ago, but you can't pay a debt like that with money. I've always wanted to do more than that, and now the chance has come to me. I can't do anything for your father, but there's something I would like to do for you."

"You've already done a great deal, for which I am deeply grateful," said Arthur.

"Ah, that's a bagatelle! I mean something permanent. Now, how would it suit you if I made you secretary to my Dredging Company? You could draw five thousand dollars a year for a beginning, and I'd assign you shares in the company besides."

It was a splendid offer which might well dazzle a youth who a week ago had been acquainted with starvation. Had it come on that night when he shuddered at the bread-line, he would have snatched it as a starving dog flies upon a bone. But he had had time to recapture his self-control. He had been fed with good meat, he had slept, and once more the physical machine ran sweetly. And he had also had a terrifying glimpse of what the lust of gold meant, he had just heard Bundy's own expression of innocent regret, he had before him the man himself. Did he envy him? Something half-heroic in those Homeric labours he could recognise, but what about their object? And it came to him with the vividness of a revelation that there were elements in his own nature that responded all too eagerly to the bribe held out to him; that if he yielded now he would go the way of multitudes whose only god is wealth; that if he resisted now he might preserve those higher ideals of life so intimately dear and sacred to him, and only thus could they be retained. No, it must not be. The die was cast in silence, and the golden phantom vanished.

"Mr. Bundy," he said in a low and trembling voice, "you have made me a munificent offer. You have spoken to me your own intimate thoughts. Will you now let me speak mine with equal frankness?"

"Surely."

"Don't think me ungrateful, but I must refuse your offer."

"Why?"

"For reasons, some of which you have supplied, some of which lie in my own character. To be quite frank, I am not strong enough to resist the fascination of wealth. Some men know how to set a boundary to their desires, to stop there, and say, 'I will go no farther.' I do not believe I am one of these. If I once took the road of wealth, I should push on to the utmost limit. I might not become avaricious, but the fascination of the game would absorb me, and God only knows whether I might not become cruel and hard in course of time. Well, I dare not risk it, and that is the truth, the humiliating truth, if you like. The life I have always planned for myself is a life of quiet toil, simple, content--books, a garden, a home: I cannot let it go. My only anchorage in life lies there; without it I know not whither I might drift."

He ended. He had not noticed Bundy's face as he spoke; he had been too absorbed in his own confession. He saw that face now--pale, eager, and with tears upon the cheek. To his immense surprise, Bundy sprang up and flung his arms about his neck.

"My dear fellow," he cried, "I understand. Ah, you little know how you've torn the veil from my own heart! I once had all those thoughts. I would have entered the Church; I don't know why I didn't. I took another road--the wrong road, I suppose, and here I am.... Well, well! it can't be altered now.

"You're the best and kindest man I ever knew," cried Arthur. "And I know some one else who would say so too--Mrs. Bundy."

"Ah! that's because she loves me too much to see my faults. But I can see them. Well, well!" He turned his head away, his good honest face bowed in his hands. Then he recovered himself briskly, turned round, and said, "Well, that's done with. Now we'll start out afresh upon a new tack. I've _got_ to help you, don't you understand? And I'm going to. Let me think a moment."

Presently he said, "Now I think I've got it. Sit down and light a fresh cigar. That's right. Now I believe I know the kind of life you want. Shall I take it for granted you don't mean to return to England?"

"No; there is no place for me there, at present."

"Well, there's one point settled, and let me say I agree with you. Now for another point. You want an outdoor life?"

"Yes, I prefer it."

"Very good. Now, let me paint you a picture. A country of wooded hills and snow mountains, a lake, a log-house, and let us say a hundred acres of cleared land with seventy-five apple trees to the acre. Do you know what that means? I'll tell you. An apple tree in bearing means from five to ten dollars. An orchard of only fifty acres therefore means--here, hand me that paper-pad."

And straightway he fell to work, with all the recovered ardour of the speculator, adding and re-adding interminable lines of figures, until he announced the surprising result that the man who owned fifty acres of land in this most desirable of valleys might count upon a yearly income of $18,750, and in due time twice or thrice that sum.

"It's better than a gold-mine," he cried inconsistently. "And it's safe--it's absolutely safe!"

"But how am I to buy it?"

"You're not going to buy it. Don't you understand? It's already yours. Here, wait a moment."

There was another series of swift calculations, and then Bundy communicated this result: that the money Archibold Masterman had lent him years before had been really worth to him thrice its value, for it had set him on his feet; that morally therefore he owed £2,000 to Archibold Masterman; that the price of this excellent fruit ranch, by a strange coincidence, was exactly £2,000; and that finally it was his fixed determination to make the ranch over to Arthur, as an act of gratitude.

"There's the life you want," he cried enthusiastically.

"But, Mr. Bundy----"

"Now don't object, for I won't hear of it. I'm only too glad you made me think of this. Why, if I were younger and hadn't got the Dredging Company on my hands, I'd go there myself, like a shot. There's no credit to me in giving it you. I'm rich; and besides, it's yours morally. God bless you, my boy! and if ever things go wrong with me, keep a room for poor old Bundy on the ranch. And now let us go to bed."

And, as if to prevent all further discussion, he swiftly switched the lights off, and incontinently vanished.

XVI

KOOTENAY

The train was climbing slowly to the summit of the Crow's Nest Pass. To the northward rose an extraordinary mountain, deeply tinted at its base with greens and purples, and capped with a dazzling crown of snow and ice. Around the glowing base, like children gathered at the knees of a monstrous mother, rose seven inferior monoliths, pillars of rock which in the morning light flamed like torches. All around were mountains, some flat-topped and hooded, some broken spires as of a vast cathedral ruined; beneath them wild gullies yawned, intricate defiles, deep canyons to whose sides the pines clung in an agony of effort; and so far below that it appeared but a thread of silver ran a silent river. Into these defiles the train moved timorously; now hanging for an instant on a wall of precipice, now suspended on a groaning trestle-bridge over depths of air, but ever moving on, like a living creature animate with the unconquerable energy of man. How good this mountain air, chill and clear and bright; how welcome this irregularity of form, passing through every grade from the exquisite to the magnificent, after the long, barren monotony of the plains! It was the transition from prose to poetry, from barbarian prose to lyric music. It was with a sinking heart that Arthur had remarked the long unfolding of the plains. They oppressed the mind, they lay like a weight upon the eyes, they breathed a savage and a hostile spirit. The scattered towns had an air of dereliction; the very houses seemed frozen to the soil, and around them was a silence, like the silence of death. But here once more Nature became a living thing, a hospitable and kindly mother. And to Arthur, who had never seen a mountain, this sudden revelation of grandeur and magnificence came with a shock of exquisite pain. His eyes filled with happy tears, his nerves tingled with delight, he drank long draughts of crystal air, he could have sobbed and shouted. For the first time he knew the bliss of being alive.

On that long westward journey he had had time to reflect on many things. New York had already sunk into the past like a disordered dream. Legion and Horner were alike unsubstantial figures, shapes that had moved for an instant on a tinted cloud and had disappeared. But Bundy travelled with him; the spirit of the man still warmed his heart like a cordial. He saw his honest features wet with tears as he recalled his home; heard his reverberating eloquence in Parlour A.; was subdued and reverent before the generosity and ardour of the man. He had parted with him two days after that memorable midnight conversation. He was now upon his way to England--and Mrs. Bundy. If Arthur could have chosen, he would have wished to be the sole architect of his own fortunes. That had been his proud dream, and he had been slow to relinquish it. His pride had struggled to the last against Bundy's generosity, until remonstrance seemed ungracious and insulting. He saw now that that pride was the least worthy thing about him. The refusal to accept generosity was scarcely less base than the refusal to confer it. God had not designed man to stand alone; He had surrounded him with a network of obligations and relationships; total independence was impossible in a world where all living creatures existed by a dependence on each other. He had been in peril of becoming an Ishmael by renunciation of the social bond; Bundy had re-created that social bond for him.

And, strangely enough, Bundy's generosity owed itself to a similar generosity in his father--the father whom he had deserted. There was plentiful food for irony in that thought. He had condemned his father's mode of life, applied to him unsparing judgments, fled from him; and here, six thousand miles away, he was travelling toward an opportunity that would not have existed but for a quality of goodness in Archibold Masterman. He had refused partnership with his father in London; here, in a strange and distant land, he was still the partner of his father's deeds. The thought sensibly softened his heart toward his father. He had long ago ceased to think of him with anger; enmity he had never felt; now there came to him a gush of tender recollection, and with it the power of truer comprehension. He saw that no man is either wholly good or wholly bad; that character cannot be limned in plain black and white; that a thousand delicate gradations separate yet unite the two extremes; and that the final verdict on any man lies beyond the human mind. Man must be taken as he is; he is at all times a contradiction, an enigma, a creature that exceeds his category. To see this is to become human; to miss this vision is to remain a Pharisee, whose cardinal defect is inhumanity. And it was this wider and more charitable temper that came to birth in him as he reflected on the new course his life had taken.

From his pocket he took a bundle of letters, and re-read them slowly. The latest in date was from Elizabeth, and it closed with a phrase that had clamoured in his memory through all that week of journeying--"Well I know my true knight will not fail me." No emotional utterance could have moved his so deeply. It was the affirmation of a vow which he knew would endure as long as time, and after. It braced his spirit to repeat it; he accepted with a swelling heart its brave implication, and wore it like a badge of honour.

The longest letter was from Vickars. It was the last letter he had received before he left New York, and he had read it so often that he almost knew it by heart. "I have shot my arrow in the air," he wrote, "and God alone knows where it may fall. My book is out, and there are some signs that it may succeed. You know what I mean by that. The only success I crave is to influence other minds in right directions. Men have called me a dreamer, perhaps you yourself have thought so too; but I know, and I think you know, that I have dreamed true. We are moving toward a revolution. It is impossible that the present system can endure much longer. My message is for the day after the revolution is accomplished. Then will begin the reconstruction of life again from the base upward, a simpler and an ampler life. It is for that day I write, and my bones will thrill to it even in the grave. As for me, I am like Balaam; I shall see it, but not now; I shall behold it, but not nigh. Even so, I am content." There followed a fuller expression of his social ideals, and the whole closed with this paragraph--"Your mother came to see us last week. It was a great but very happy surprise. Can you guess what we talked of? Of you, Arthur. For we three know you as no others do, and we love you, and believe in you. She kissed Elizabeth at parting, and said, 'Some day----' and then stopped; but we knew what she meant. Well, you must work on toward that some day. Poor lady! Deal tenderly with her. I think she has sore wounds in her heart, and remember it was harder for her to part from you than for you to go. By so much her quiet sacrifice is greater than yours. She is the tarrier by the stuff, a harder lot, I think, than his that goes down into the battle."

Tears filled his eyes as he read the words. There came to him a sudden vision of the London he had left--the vast tribes of toiling men, the blind pain and suffering of so many millions, the silent agonies that hid beneath those gray skies and congregated roofs. And then, looking from the windows, the eye dwelt again upon this magnificent heritage that bore the flag of England, and he marvelled why men fought for bare life in cities when an empty empire called for them. Surely some day the wizard's spell would break, and London would pour its wasted tribes into this land of fertility and beauty. To reconstruct life from the base upward, that could never be done there; it might be done here. Here the simpler, ampler life was possible. Ah! if he could not fight by Vickars' side in London, he was still fighting for him here, and was it not better to create the new than to rebuild the old?

The mountain peaks were gradually receding. The train crawled slowly round the walls of precipice, hung suspended for a giddy instant, and then, with a tumult of squealing brakes and hissing steam, plunged into the abyss, doubling on itself a score of times, till it reached the valley and the roaring river. It was past noon when the train stopped beside a placid lake. Immense forests rose on every side; an immemorial silence lay on all things, broken only by the gentle ripple of the waters. A steamer lay beside the landing-stage; an hour later he was afloat.

There were not many passengers, and what there were seemed uncommunicative. They were for the most part long-limbed, sturdy men, ranchers, traders, lumber-jacks, their faces bronzed with outdoor life. They eyed him narrowly and critically. He knew quite well what their criticism implied. He was a greenhorn, and no doubt looked like one. As long as the light lasted he took no notice of them; he was too absorbed in the unfolding beauty of the lake, and in curiosity as to what it would reveal for him. Somewhere on the lake lay his small estate, and he found himself studying with eager interest the wooded shores, in the hope of discovering something that gave a hint of human habitation. There was very little to reward his gaze. Twice he saw a blue curl of smoke rising from the forest; once a rude hut, whose one window glittered like a gem in the setting sun; beyond this nothing met the eye but a shore of snow, the black bare poles of charred trees rising above the living pines, and the solitary sky. The scene was sombre; the silence so profound that the churning stern-wheel sounded like the passage of an army. Night fell swiftly. It was seven o'clock when a lighted hillside met the eye, and he was told that it was Nelson.

He slept that night at a small hotel near the shore, and rising early next morning was quite unprepared for the beauty of the scene that awaited him. The distant hills of snow were touched with rosy fire, the lake was like a turquoise, and the town surprised him by its sober aspect of prosperity. He scarce knew what he had expected in this remote outpost of the Empire, but certainly not what he saw--broad streets, buildings of hewn stone, substantial shops and warehouses, all gathered round a curve of lake so exquisite that few places could surpass it in its natural loveliness. The hotel was kept by an Englishman, who made haste to cultivate his acquaintance. He was a lightly built, bearded fellow, with a shrewd eye and a perpetual smile, one of the numerous family of Smith.

"So you're going up the lake?" he inquired.

"Yes. I want a ranch called Bundy's."

"Bundy. Let me see. I don't know of any Bundy here."

"He isn't here. It's his ranch I want to find."

"Did he tell you where it was?"

"Poplar Point."

"Ah! now I know. If you'll come with me, I think I can show you whereabouts it is." He took him to the landing-stage, and pointed out a deep fold in the hills. "You make for that," he said. "Unless I disremember, Bundy's ranch is there or thereabout. But people are always going and coming here. These 'ere ranches are always changing hands. Young fellows like you come out, and get tired of the work at the end of the summer, and sell out. They're the plague of Nelson. Quitters, we call 'em. I hope you ain't a quitter."

"I don't think I am. I've come here to live."

"Well, sir, you've come to a good place. But let me give you a word of warning. It's only hard work that pays here, and you'll have to work hard and wait long if you want to do anything in fruit. This is no place for quitters."

He went on to give him many brief histories of the obnoxious tribe of quitters. They were all looking out for a soft job--that was what was the matter with them. Mamma's darlings--that's what they were. Did he know what it was to handle an axe. No, he thought not. Land had to be cleared--did he know what that meant?

"But mine is cleared," Arthur interrupted. "At least, fifty acres are."

At this he looked puzzled.

"I never heard of fifty acres of cleared land anywheres near Poplar Point," he observed.

There happened to come along the landing-stage at that moment a somewhat extraordinary-looking old man. He wore blue jeans, a red wool sweater, and a battered felt hat. His hair and beard were unkempt, and both were gray. A beggar could not have been worse dressed, and yet there was about him something of the dignity that marks the open-air man.

"That's Jim Flanagan," remarked Smith; "he ought to know. Here, Jim, I want to speak to you."

The old man came towards them in silence.

"Jim, do you know a ranch at Poplar Point called Bundy's? You know most of the places up and down the lake, don't you?"

"Yes, I know it. It lies back a quarter of a mile or so, on a bench."

"Cleared, is it?"

"Not much. It was once, but most of it's growed up again."

"Well, this gentleman's going there. Maybe you could give him pointers."

"Going to live there?" asked Flanagan.

"Yes, I'm going to live there," said Arthur.

"Well, I don't know but what you can. There's a pretty good log-house. I'm living not far away myself."

"Can't you row me over?"

"No, I can't do that. It wouldn't be no good if I did. You can't live there without a good bit of preparation. There ain't no shops at Poplar Point, and there ain't no hotel," he remarked with a grin.

"Now I'll tell you what I would do, if I was you," said the landlord. "You just let Jim give you some pointers. He'll treat you right, will Jim."

"I'll be glad to do anything I can," said the old man. "I've got an hour to spare, any way."

Arthur took Flanagan up to the hotel with him, and was soon interested in his strange preceptor. It seemed he was an old hunter and prospector, a man of infinite adventures, with a dislike of civilisation, which was perhaps his most marked characteristic. There was no remote solitude of the surrounding woods with which he was not acquainted.

"As for this ranch of yours, I guess you've been expecting too much," he remarked. "It's good enough land, that I believe. And I won't say but what it has been planted all right once. But it's been let grow up. I kind of remember a man called Bundy bought it--took it for a debt, 'twas said. But he's never been here, not a£ I remember. And I've been here and hereabout a matter of a dozen years."

So it appeared that Bundy had let the light of his imagination gild Kootenay Lake with a delusive splendour, as it did all those "propositions" which engaged his ardent rhetoric. But Arthur was in no mood to judge his benefactor critically. The land was there--that was something; and it would go hard with him if he could not make it all that Bundy had imagined it. He might have known that Bundy had never seen it for himself. The story of his having taken it for a debt had the accent of truth. The mouth of the gift-horse must not be too closely examined, but at least he was a veritable beast. And in spite of the passing shadow of disappointment, Arthur's spirits rose at the menace of unexpected difficulty.

"Well," said Flanagan. "I must be getting along. When will you be coming out?"

"Immediately. Some time this afternoon."

"In that case you'll have to get a move on. You've a lot to do."

Flanagan thereupon sat down again and gave him a series of elaborate instructions. He must first of all buy a boat; he'd need one, any way. There was a boat he knew of that might be had second-hand for twenty dollars. Then he'd want to buy an axe or two, a grub-hoe, a sack of flour, sugar, rice, tea, coffee, tinned milk, and may be a side of bacon and a case of eggs. That would do for a beginning.

The boat was duly bargained for upon the wharf. It was an interesting ruin: the paint had long since disappeared, it had no rudder, and it leaked like a sieve. Its owner, remarking Arthur's innocence, wished to raise the price, but Jim kept him to the twenty dollars.

"That or nothing," he said sternly. "And put a couple of baling-tins in. They'll be needed."

Arthur looked upon this ancient tub with frank dislike and with some dismay. The beauty of the rose-tinted morn was over; the sky was gray, and a rising north-west wind was making more than ripples on the lake.

"How far is Poplar Point?" he asked.

"Five miles," Jim answered. "But I guess you'll do it. You look strong."

"It isn't myself I'm thinking of; it's the boat. Do you think she can do it?"

"I've seen worse," said Jim. "Not many of them, though. But she'll do it, never fear. That there old boat have been on the lake ever since I knowed it."

Which, under the circumstances, was scarcely a recommendation.

By one o'clock, somehow or other, Arthur had got through his preparations. His story had got about; he found himself stared at in the streets as a greenhorn; but every one had shown him civility, and some a rough kindness. At the bank a great surprise awaited him. He found that Bundy had telegraphed a considerable sum of money to his credit, more than enough to give him a fair and even generous start. Willing hands helped him to pack his goods. They were all there--the axes, the grub-hoe (with whose uses he was totally unacquainted), the sack of flour, and the various provisions. His valise was shoved under the stern seat, and with it half a dozen pamphlets on fruit-growing which he collected in the town. Flanagan had gone two hours earlier, with the promise that he would look out for him at Poplar Point.

"Keep your eye on the gap in the hills," was his final instruction, "then push up the creek to the left; and if it's dark, I'll burn a flare."

He had no sooner left the landing than he began to feel the force of the wind. It blew with a steady and increasing violence, dead ahead; pull as he would, he made little progress, and, to add to his discomfiture, he had to be continually baling. The moment he stopped to bale, the boat swung round or was driven backward. His hands were soon blistered, his muscles ached, yet toil as he would the far-off gap in the hills seemed no nearer. The water ran black and foam-flecked in short, choppy waves; the sky had darkened rapidly, and presently a cutting hail fell. In ordinary circumstances he would have turned back, but he had a lively recollection of Smith's stinging phrases, and had no mind to be written down a mamma's darling or derided as a quitter. This was, in its way, his first test, and to succumb would be to lose nerve for future difficulties. He was now in the very centre of the lake, and a thrill of apprehension seized him as he saw how small an object this crazy boat appeared in that loneliness of angry water. Black water, black forests, and on the upper hills pale rays of watery sunset--that was what he saw, and himself scarcely more noticeable than a bird, buffeted by the impending storm. But he toiled on, and at last got a little shelter from the shore. More than three hours had passed since he left Nelson; and in this deep fissure of the hills the night had already camped. The darkness deepened rapidly. It was five o'clock when he rounded the point of the creek. Here the water was smoother, and he could pull more leisurely; but it was now quite dark. All his hopes were fixed on Flanagan. For another hour he searched the shores eagerly for any sign of light. Nothing met his eye but the tiny twinkling of a lamp here and there in the window of some unseen house. At last, just when he had made up his mind to spend the night upon the lake and wait for dawn, a sudden shaft of red flame soared up not a hundred yards away. A voice hailed him, and never did a human voice sound sweeter. Ten minutes later Flanagan's hand grasped his, and he stepped ashore.

"The old boat's done it, then," said Flanagan. "I rather guessed she would. Now you come right along with me."

"So it was only a guess, was it?"

"Well, most things in this world are a sort of guess," said the old man. "The only thing sure is that men don't die till their hour's come." He turned away gruffly, and at once began to shoulder Arthur's goods.

"But you can't carry all that," cried Arthur, as the old man hoisted the sack of flour upon his shoulders.

"Needs must when the devil drives," he said grimly. "There ain't no hotel hereabouts, didn't I tell you? You've got to get all your goods into the shack to-night. That wind's bringing up snow, and the sooner we get this job done the better."

Arthur grasped his valise, and such impedimenta as Flanagan would let him carry, and followed the old man.

The snow was deep and soft, in spite of the cold wind. The darkness was like a solid wall on either side of the thin ray that fell from Jim's lantern. Through the wood there ran a perpetual ghostly murmur, a sound of sighing, groaning, struggling, as the branches beat to and fro and rubbed against each other. Suddenly a long and terrible cry rose above the noises of the forest, a cry of infinite pain, despair, melancholy, and Arthur started back, shouting, "What's that?"

"Why, that's only a coyote," said Jim--"just an old dog coyote. Bless you! he won't hurt you."

Arthur said no more, but he was glad that no one could see the colour of his face. He struggled breathlessly in the steps of his guide. The hill was steep, the foothold uncertain; more than once he waded to his knees in a hidden bog-hole. And yet, in spite both of his discomfort and his fear, he was conscious of a gradual heightening of his spirits. There was something wild and savage in these black walls of forest that encompassed him, in the mystery and solitude of this primeval place, something that exhilarated while it awed him. He was conscious of the falling from him of the trappings of a discarded civilisation. He had come to a place where the artificialities of life had no significance; where the natural man stood front to front with the stubborn earth, with no weapons to subdue her but his own thews and muscles, his own right of domination, and his unconquerable will.

The ground was easier now, and they moved more swiftly on a level narrow trail. At last the darkness thinned a little; they had reached a small clearing, and a light shone brightly.

"Here we are," said Jim. "And not sorry to get here either."

He pushed open the door of a log-hut. It was perhaps fourteen feet square; a stove burned red-hot in the centre of the hut; on one side was a long bunk built of red cedar.

"I done my best to clean it up," said Jim. "Maybe there's a rat or two around, and perhaps a porcupine, but they won't hurt you. It's dry, that's one thing. And now I'll say good-night."

He tramped off into the wood. Arthur stood a long time listening, but Jim's footsteps were soon lost amid the groaning of the trees. The long, melancholy cry of the coyote again thrilled the air. Arthur shut the door.

And it was so that he came into his heritage.

XVII

THE NEW LIFE

He contrived to make himself some coffee, and after a while extinguished the lamp and crawled into the bunk. The red-hot stove filled the hut with a dim light, and he fell asleep.

An hour later he woke in a sweat of terror. The fire in the stove had died down, the hut was bitterly cold, and he was in total darkness. The darkness was like nothing he had known before; it closed round him with a pressure that was almost tangible, and it seemed alive. There was a horrible sense of something hostile in it; he could have thought it moved stealthily, with a faint rustling of unseen robes, that it breathed and palpitated, that it was a presence inimical to life. A rat ran across his bed, and on the roof there was a long grating sound. Outside, in the wide night, he could recognise the melancholy cry of the coyote; but there were other cries and sounds which he could not recognise. Close to the door of the hut there was audible what seemed like deep, stertorous breathing, deepening into a human groan. From the depth of the wood came a fearful wail, as of a woman in distress. He sprang from the bunk, rushed to the door, and opened it. There was a soft flutter of wings, and the groaning ceased; but the wailing in the woods went on, upon a scale of rising agony. There was nowhere any sign of life. The moon had risen, and the snow-laden trees rose pure and mystic in the silver light. They were like a cohort of silent watchers round his lonely hut, and he welcomed them as comrades. Slowly his fears subsided. It was not until the next day he learned from Flanagan that the soft groaning at the door proceeded from nothing more alarming than a mountain owl, and that the wailing in the forest was merely a mountain lion in search of prey.

This unforgetable night was his first and last occasion of terror. It is only when the causes of phenomena are hidden from us that the phenomena themselves are terrible. When we know that the tapping in the wainscot is caused by an innocent insect, the movements in the forest to be the work of wind or frost, the breathing in the dark to be a sleeping owl, the mind at once regains the equipoise of reason. Perhaps if we knew what really lay behind the mystery of death, we should fear it as little as we do the commonplace phenomena of birth and life.

The morning came at last in floods of living light, and as Arthur once more stood at the cabin door, he thought that he had never looked upon a scene so exquisite. Pale rays of colourless and pure fire spread like a fan along the eastern sky; they deepened into momentary purple, throbbed as with a pulse, and suddenly were quickened with a flood of scarlet. The distant peaks of snow one by one caught the elemental splendour, the higher summits topped with flame, the lower stained with rose; and across the dim and quiet lake, from an open gateway of the hills a shaft of light shot, slender as a spear and vibrating with the joy of speed. A gust of air shook the forest, and the ice-clad boughs tinkled like a chime of bells. There was no other sound except the little song of water, running underneath its roof of ice. All around rose the still and solemn woods. The miniature plains of snow gathered at their feet glittered like a floor of diamonds. And from sky and lake and forest came an air inimitably virginal, the cold and taintless air of unviolated Nature, infinitely pure and strong and vital.

He stood for some moments quite silent, in that intense clarity of dawn, scarcely conscious of himself, his whole being drawn out in a kind of effortless and sacred awe. He had an inward sense of lustration and release: the soul rose clean as from a bath of fire; the will, so often misdirected, was modulated to the perfect harmony of this external world. Such moods lie beyond reason, and are therefore beyond the explication of the reason. The pivots upon which life moves consist of a few rare and exquisite moments; for one man a sunrise, for another a strain of music heard at midnight, for yet another the sudden, arrowy fragrance of violets in a wood, and behold! life is changed, something has been withdrawn from it and something added--a new element, wholly authentic, yet wholly indefinable. It was such a moment with this solitary exile. The dawn came to him as an omen and a challenge. It was the porch of a new life, and he entered it with willing feet.

He returned to the cabin, and breakfasted in haste after a fashion which would have provoked pity and derision in the bosom of the British house-wife. His coffee was boiled in a discarded meat-tin; bread he had none; and his effort to fry eggs was probably among the least successful of all recorded operations known to culinary science. In the midst of his crude performance Jim Flanagan arrived, surveying him from the doorway with a smile of irony.