Part 11 (1/2)

”The fold of the Church--yes, I understand all that,” Pierre answered.

”I have heard you and the priests of my father's Church talk. Which is right? But as for me, I am a missionary. Cards, law-breaking--these are what I have done; but these are not what I have preached.”

”What have you preached?” asked the other, walking on into the fast-gathering night, beyond the Post and the Indian lodges, into the wastes where frost and silence lived.

Pierre waved his hand towards s.p.a.ce. ”This,” he said suggestively.

”What's this?” asked the other fretfully.

”The thing you feel round you here.”

”I feel the cold,” was the petulant reply.

”I feel the immense, the far off,” said Pierre slowly.

The other did not understand as yet. ”You've learned big words,” he said disdainfully.

”No; big things,” rejoined Pierre sharply--”a few.”

”Let me hear you preach them,” half snarled Sherburne.

”You will not like to hear them--no.”

”I'm not likely to think about them one way or another,” was the contemptuous reply.

Pierre's eyes half closed. The young, impetuous half-baked college man.

To set his little knowledge against his own studious vagabondage! At that instant he determined to play a game and win; to turn this man into a vagabond also; to see John the Baptist become a Bedouin. He saw the doubt, the uncertainty, the shattered vanity in the youth's mind, the missionary's half retreat from his cause. A crisis was at hand. The youth was fretful with his great theme, instead of being severe upon himself. For days and days Pierre's presence had acted on Sherburne silently but forcibly. He had listened to the vagabond's philosophy, and knew that it was of a deeper--so much deeper--knowledge of life than he himself possessed, and he knew also that it was terribly true; he was not wise enough to see that it was only true in part. The influence had been insidious, delicate, cunning, and he himself was only ”a voice crying in the wilderness,” without the simple creed of that voice. He knew that the Methodist missionary was believed in more, if less liked, than himself. Pierre would work now with all the latent devilry of his nature to unseat the man from his saddle.

”You have missed the great thing, alors, though you have been up here two years,” he said. ”You do not feel, you do not know. What good have you done? Who has got on his knees and changed his life because of you?

Who has told his beads or longed for the Ma.s.s because of you? Tell me, who has ever said, 'You have showed me how to live'? Even the women, though they cry sometimes when you sing-song the prayers, go on just the same when the little 'bless-you' is over. Why? Most of them know a better thing than you tell them. Here is the truth: you are little--eh, so very little. You never lied--direct; you never stole the waters that are sweet; you never knew the big dreams that come with wine in the dead of night; you never swore at your own soul and heard it laugh back at you; you never put your face in the breast of a woman--do not look so wild at me!--you never had a child; you never saw the world and yourself through the doors of real life. You never have said, 'I am tired; I am sick of all; I have seen all.' You have never felt what came after--understanding. Chut, your talk is for children--and missionaries.

You are a prophet without a call, you are a leader without a man to lead, you are less than a child up here. For here the children feel a peace in their blood when the stars come out, and a joy in their brains when the dawn comes up and reaches a yellow hand to the Pole, and the west wind shouts at them. Holy Mother! we in the far north, we feel things, for all the great souls of the dead are up there at the Pole in the pleasant land, and we have seen the Scarlet Hunter and the Kimash Hills. You have seen nothing. You have only heard, and because, like a child, you have never sinned, you come and preach to us!”

The night was folding down fast, all the stars were shooting out into their places, and in the north the white lights of the aurora were flying to and fro. Pierre had spoken with a slow force and precision, yet, as he went on, his eyes almost became fixed on those s.h.i.+fting flames, and a deep look came into them, as he was moved by his own eloquence. Never in his life had he made so long a speech at once. He paused, and then said suddenly: ”Come, let us run.”

He broke into a long, sliding trot, and Sherburne did the same. With their arms gathered to their sides they ran for quite two miles without a word, until the heavy breathing of the clergyman brought Pierre up suddenly.

”You do not run well,” he said; ”you do not run with the whole body. You know so little. Did you ever think how much such men as Jacques Parfaite know? The earth they read like a book, the sky like an animal's ways, and a man's face like--like the writing on the wall.”

”Like the writing on the wall,” said Sherburne, musing; for, under the other's influence, his petulance was gone. He knew that he was not a part of this life, that he was ignorant of it; of, indeed, all that was vital in it and in men and women.

”I think you began this too soon. You should have waited; then you might have done good. But here we are wiser than you. You have no message--no real message--to give us; down in your heart you are not even sure of yourself.”

Sherburne sighed. ”I'm of no use,” he said. ”I'll get out. I'm no good at all.”

Pierre's eyes glistened. He remembered how, the day before, this youth had said hot words about his card-playing; had called him--in effect--a thief; had treated him as an inferior, as became one who was of St.

Augustine's, Canterbury.

”It is the great thing to be free,” Pierre said, ”that no man shall look for this or that of you. Just to do as far as you feel, as far as you are sure--that is the best. In this you are not sure--no. Hein, is it not?”

Sherburne did not answer. Anger, distrust, wretchedness, the spirit of the alien, loneliness, were alive in him. The magnetism of this deep penetrating man, possessed of a devil, was on him, and in spite of every reasonable instinct he turned to him for companions.h.i.+p.