Chapter XVII

All the summer flowers were faded, but Ivan’s ingenuity devised a bridal bouquet of scarlet autumn leaves into which strands of green moss were intertwined that was in harmony with their surroundings. With branches of alder, rich with a glory of golden leaves, he decorated the camp, covering up the unsightly piles of supplies, framing the door of the dugout and festooning the great rock before which he and his bride would stand, facing the cross. Neither Pete nor Dorothy assisted greatly in these preparations, Pete because of his weakness from yesterday’s accident, Dorothy simply because she could not rouse the impulse to make this marriage a holiday occasion. Fortune Joe, however, worked with considerable enthusiasm, and Pavlof caught the contagion of his master’s exultation and was delighted to the core.

Ivan shaved, bathed and dressed with care, and the two packers set out to serve such a wedding feast as had not been tasted since the American occupation. White breasts of ptarmigan, tender chops of caribou veal, baked clams and baked salmon would comprise the body of the meal; then there would be reflector biscuits served with canned honey and raisin cake. Fortune Joe contributed, as a surprise, a salad made of the white, crablike flesh of the devil-fish, and Pavlof prepared a Russian dish of doubtful content. In these hours Dorothy lay in troubled sleep in her tent; and Pete, in his dugout, sat gazing darkly out to sea.

Dorothy had been true to her promise to herself, and she had shut all misgivings out of her mind. She had decided upon her course, and she knew that only doubt and despair would follow any attempt to consider the matter further. Meanwhile Pete had searched Heaven and earth for strength to stand up under the bitterness of this hour.

Like Dorothy, Pete did not dare let his thoughts stray afar. His only vestige of salvation lay in a fervid belief that Dorothy was acting for the best—that Ivan would do well for her, and that she would find happiness in his arms—and he feared that such belief could not stand close scrutiny. It was not that, as far as principle went, he could see evil in the marriage. Peter Newhall was dead to the living world of men. This much was certain. The instinctive horror that crept like a poison through him at the very thought of to-night’s events had a deeper, darker origin.

He must fight it down. He must eject from his mind all his vague doubts, his strange, lurking antipathy for Ivan; and he must never, never question but that the Mongol’s love for her was the great, gentle love that he himself had known and knew still. Only terror, only despair that could never end and destruction lay that way! He must shut away the terrible, prophetic pictures that passed in review before him: pictures of Ivan when his passion was cold and his ardor spent; of a cold, cruel face that now was flushed with victory, of neglect; of brazen infidelity; at last of a girl who wept alone. He could not bear to see Dorothy’s tears, even in fancy. He could only trust to his star.

It was a bitter day, as if in tragic prophecy. The wind’s blast was like a breath of death; it shrilled over the hills and fretted the sea in eddying streaks and dark, uneasy billows, and it blew the fine, stinging sand in invisible clouds. The fogs lifted and lowered, ghostly and wan; and any instant might bring the pelting sleet. They intended to hold the wedding feast in the open before the fireside, but this was given over as the lowering dusk increased the intensity of the cold. Pavlof served his fine meal with a flourish in Dorothy’s tent; he and Fortune Joe ate in the dugout as ever. Pete himself complained that he was still ill from his accident, and the loaded pans passed him by.

To Dorothy it was impossible to believe that the appointed hour was almost at hand. The bleak day was dying; she had promised to go to Ivan in the dusk. Already the outline of the hills had softened, the alder thickets were becoming a gray blur in the lowering gloom, the myriad tones and hues of the sea were darkened and subdued. Only the white cross that marked the grave was still plain and bright. The twilight grew upon her like a sorrow.

Ivan smiled at her. “Is it time?” he asked.

“Any time now,” she told him simply.

He walked over to the dugout and summoned Pete and the two natives. It was all very expeditious and simple. He placed Pavlof, his Russian pocket Bible that he could not read in his hand, directly in front of the white cross of the grave, just above where the highest waves rolled on the shore. The other two men, acting as witnesses, stood at one side. Then Ivan joined Dorothy at the door of the tent.

“I’m going to play our own wedding music,” he told her softly. “You’ll enjoy the memory of it. What would you like?”

“Something not too profound. ‘Oh, Promise Me,’ if you like.”

This did not represent the kind of music that Ivan personally preferred, and he secretly scorned this particular selection because of the many times he had heard it badly rendered; yet because Dorothy had asked for it, he would give it all he had. He took his violin from its case; then, standing in the twilight, the glow of the fire on his twinkling white hands and his rapt, almost-beautiful face, he began to play.

The sweetness of that old song brought tears at once to her eyes, but she did not let the melody transport her out of the grim, living present. She did not let her thoughts and dreams soar with her again, only to shatter her to earth. She was true to her promise to herself. It was a strange, weird picture: the fire that glowed and leaped in the dusk, the restless sea, the silent, watching witnesses standing beside the white cross that marked the grave. The song died away and the brisk wind scattered the last, fine golden threads of melody; and then, urged by some impulse of his artist’s soul, Ivan began to play again.

He had played “Oh, Promise Me” solely for Dorothy, but now he was playing for himself, and partly perhaps for the man of his own blood who waited with open Bible at the edge of the sea. Something in the scene and the wind’s wail had inspired him, and he chose a selection from the Peer Gynt suite, by Grieg. It was a wild, haunting thing, and in it he put his own passion, the mood of his own heart.

It was not a wise choice, if he cared for Dorothy’s peace of mind. The song moved her and bewitched her, but also it frightened her beyond any power of hers to understand. That wild music became, through the magic of his genius, some way part of the night, the very voice of this wild, eerie savage land into which he was cast. The wind beat at her face, chilling and appalling her, and its threat was that of a great, white winter that was even now closing down upon her. No wonder Ivan made response to this land so far west that it was almost east. He was of it, and it of him, and its mood was echoed in his heart. At that instant he was whole worlds and centuries apart from her. She saw him as the Mongol, his slanted eyes alight, devoured by his Oriental passion, lost in an alien ecstasy. She felt estranged, unspeakably terrified. Yet even now, as the music paled, she must stand beside him at this crude cross so white in the dusk. She must go to him, like a maiden sacrifice to some unearthly, heathen god. It mystified her, filled her with a poignant sense of imponderable prophecy, that the cross that marked the grave should be the only whiteness left in the spreading dusk.

She was hardly aware when the music stopped. The wind and the softer noises of the sea and the night continued its refrain. Ivan stepped beside her, then they walked together until they stood in the place where they would plight their vows.

In that moment Pavlof had become a figure of unmistakable dignity. He was no longer merely a packer, a degenerate descendant of many crossed breeds. He was the Priest, the high ambassador of the Church. He stood erect, his voice low and full of feeling; and it was plain that he considered this a holy rite, sacred to his heathen gods.

Ivan had not been mistaken in thinking that the ceremony would be impressive. Here were the eternal realities—the sea and the sky and the storm-swept shore—and the weird tone and quality of the night added to it an effect of dignity. The worship that throbbed in Pavlof’s tone was real, even if it were mistaken, even though he had long turned away from the Light to bow before graven images. It was exactly the kind of marriage that Ivan, in particular, would have preferred. It appealed to his eternal sense of fitness, the attribute of his genius; and it lifted him out of himself like the passion of his own great music.

Very soon the vows were spoken, and ignoring the presence of the priest and the two witnesses, Ivan took his bride in his arms. Pavlof shook hands with them both, himself carried away by exultation, and Fortune Joe came up clumsily to offer his good wishes.

“We owe a lot to you,” Ivan told him happily. “That message to ‘change the name’ that you brought through helped more than any other thing to make up Mrs. Ishmin’s mind.”

Dorothy turned, her heart leaping, to receive Pete’s congratulations, but the head guide still loitered in the dusk. In this same instant he was almost carried away by a half-mad impulse to take the girl in his arms for one kiss that by an old custom at weddings he might rightly claim. It would mean more to him than mere beauty and loveliness; it would be a memory to harbor in the days to come and it would some way exalt him in ways beyond his ken. It was not just a whim, a delusion; all his longing and his loss had some way centered, for the instant, in this; and it was suddenly a veritable need. Some way that kiss would be an enduring token of what he had been and what he had given, and it would help sustain him in the darkening future. But he repelled the impulse with an iron will, wondering, for the instant, if even to dwell upon it signified the first wandering of insanity. Such an act would only put him to needless trial, open old wounds. She would know his lips of old and feel the love that poured through them: he might, by one selfish act, risk the inviolacy of his disguise. Even yet it might cost her her happiness.

“Aren’t you going to wish us well, Pete?” he heard the girl say in the dusk.

Her tremulous voice brought him to himself. “In just a minute,” he answered as casually as he could. “I’ve got to get the camp ready for you first. After that, I’ll give you all the good wishes that I know.”

He turned, groping, into the gloom, and lifted his face to the doubtful mercy of the wind. It swept by him, chanting, into the fastnesses of the night; and he wondered if it would not blow out the wan flame of his own life. He had a feeling that oblivion was near; that somehow, because the need of him was done, the curtain would soon fall over his own existence. Surely it was futile henceforth; the drama was concluded, the game was through and the counters put away.

He felt that the will to fight on—without which he could not survive in this hostile land—had departed for good and all. Already he could glimpse this stormy shore without him, the wind shrieking by, unheard by human ears, the snow lying untracked, the storm venting itself in vain fury on the desolate hillsides. His four companions would sail away on the morrow; and there might be a time of waiting—perhaps long years, possibly only months—for the final wind-up of his destiny, but the ultimate conquest of the raw powers of the wild was certain as the rising sun. The camp fire would burn out, smothered at last by the far-spread blanket of snow, and the last wisp of smoke—like an intangible human soul—blow away in the gust. Then the joke would be complete, and Big Chris Larson would have some days of company in the shadow of the moldering cross—before he was borne away—and then its false inscription might come true.

The game was played and finished. This now was only the epilogue of a drama that was done.

It was an ironic thing that the performance of his camp duties—not even now to be forgotten—must include the widening of the bed in Dorothy’s tent where the wedded pair would lie. He kneeled and cut long grass, heaped it into a pile, and then loaded it into his great arms. Strangely dulled—partly from the events of the past hour and partly, perhaps, from the effects of yesterday’s injury—he made his way to the door of Dorothy’s tent through which Ivan and the girl had just passed. “Can I come in?” he called. “I’ve got more hay for your bunk——”

Ivan had just closed the tent flap, but Dorothy drew it quickly aside. Pete did not look into her white face as he stumbled in. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he did not see that she was pale and drawn as he had never before seen her. He knelt on the floor and began the work of widening her bunk. He built it up with all the care he knew, spread the blankets, then slowly stood erect. He turned with the air of a prophet to Ivan.

“We’ve talked intimately before,” he began quietly.

“Yes,” Ivan agreed. “Perhaps too intimately.” He studied Pete’s set face, and his brows lowered. “That doesn’t necessarily mean we will talk intimately again.”

“We _will_ talk intimately again.” There was nothing in his straightforward gaze and firm lips to suggest the underling; he had shuffled off, for the moment, the character of Limejuice Pete. “This is the last chance—you are going away to-morrow in the dory—I stay here. I’ve come in here to wish you happiness, particularly to wish _her_ happiness, but I’ve got something else to say too.”

His voice was deep and moving, and Ivan knew that he could not help but hear.

“Your wife didn’t ask me to say this, but there’s no one else to do it—no one of her own kin who would have the right to say it. My right is that the girl is my own race, and I am hers—and there’s no one else here who is her own race. I understand her because she’s an Anglo-Saxon, and I can speak for her. We talked once before about race—which is the best breed isn’t the question to-night. The point is—that they are a different breed. I know her because she’s my own race—and race matters more than most people know. And because I’ve been out here—so far west that it’s almost east—for months and years—I know you, too.”

Ivan smiled, his thin lips closely pressed. “You seem to have forgotten you’re the guide—not a family adviser. Please give Mrs. Ishmin your best wishes and get out.”

They looked eyes into eyes. Slowly the look of scorn, of arrogance passed from the Mongol’s face. This man might be of a lower social plane, of different caste and class, but Ivan could not doubt what he saw in the blue, steadfast eyes. This was no menial. He saw in him a worthy representative of a proud, unconquerable race. They were man to man, the East and the West, and Ivan looked and knew that he must listen and heed. He might hate him to the world’s end—the East has always hated the conquering West—but he dared not scorn or disregard him. Pete’s gaze neither changed nor lowered.

“I _am_ the guide—I’m here to tell you that I’ve been her guide and protector for some weeks, now; and it’s come to me that I want to continue to be, even after she goes home,” Pete replied. “Just why this is so I don’t feel the need of explaining, even if I could explain—it’s enough that it is so. I want to be something more too. To-night I’m no longer under your employ, and I want you to imagine that I’m her real brother—instead of just a race brother. Ishmin, I know your breed, part by instinct, part by acquaintance, and I know you individually, and this is in the nature of a warning. Remember she’s finer clay than you. I know your attitude toward women, but I want to say in this case you’ve married above you, forever and ever, and I want you to bear it in mind. Worship her, and thank God for her, and be kind to her, every minute of every hour.”

The girl tried to speak, but the words choked her, and Ivan’s eyes glittered under his brows. “I heard what you said. You’ve gone insane. Now get out.”

“One thing more. I’m not her only protector. This may sound insane, as you say, but both of you know it’s true. Who gave the word that this marriage should take place?”

The girl spoke sharply in the silence. “Peter Newhall, my dead husband,” she answered in evident awe.

“That word came from beyond the grave,” Pete went on solemnly. He was partly acting on inspiration now—an urge that he did not know—and partly in a deliberate attempt to take advantage of Ivan’s Asiatic superstitions. “Peter Newhall that was your husband is dead, but his ghost has been here all the time—both of you know it.” The girl’s eyes filmed with tears, and she nodded. “Ivan, the ghost of Peter Newhall is guarding this girl still. It will guard her clear to the end—I’m not a medium, as Joe is, yet I know that as well as I know anything. You can take my word for gospel. Worship her and thank God for her and be kind to her—and your soul will be saved. But at the first cruelty, the first infidelity, the first wickedness of which you are so easily capable—the ghost of Peter Newhall will hound you to your destruction!”

Ivan stared like a stricken man. Pete took a long-drawn, audible breath, then turned to Dorothy. “I want you to remember too,” he told her gently, his eyes fixed on hers. “The ghost of your husband is watching over you—believe me, because it’s true! If you ever need him, he will be there to help you. If you ever need me—your guide that is more than a guide—I will come, no matter how many seas I have to cross. All you have to do is to send for me.”

To Dorothy, it was like an unearthly dream. She knew, with a sure knowledge, that this man meant exactly what he said; and she had been lifted up out of herself, out of her terror and doubt, and she had experienced a new sense of security and peace that could never wholly pass away. Already this seer was turning to go. His trembling hand was at the flap of the tent.

He seemed to be listening. As she watched, fascinated, she saw the rapt look leave his face, and a look of common earthly interest take its place. He bent his head, straining; then turned to Ivan.

“It’s the squaw, I guess,” he said. “She’s already come with the supplies.”

They heard dragging steps; then the crackle of dead twigs that were strewn about the camp fire. Some one with a heavy load halted just outside the flap of the tent.

Pete drew aside the flap, and the candle light streamed out into the gloom. It was not an Indian squaw who had brought this backload of supplies from across the Peninsula. One glance revealed the stupefying, incredible truth. The black-bearded, stalwart man who stood without was Paul Sarichef whom Peter Newhall had supposedly drowned in the Savannah River years before.