Part 24 (2/2)

”Why did you not go back?”

”I was to wait for orders, and they never came.”

”You were a free man, not a slave.”

”The human heart has pride. At first, as when I left the governor at Lachine, I said, 'I will never speak, I will never ask nor bend the knee. He has the power to oppress; I can obey without whining, as fine a man as he.'”

”Did you not hate?”

”At first, as only a banished man can hate. I knew that if all had gone well I should be a man high up in the Company, and here I was, living like a dog in the porch of the world, sometimes without other food for months than frozen fish; and for two years I was in a place where we had no fire,--lived in a snow-house, with only blubber to eat. And so year after year, no word!”

”The mail came once every year from the world?” ”Yes, once a year the door of the outer life was opened. A s.h.i.+p came into the bay, and by that s.h.i.+p I sent out my reports. But no word came from the governor, and no request went from me. Once the captain of that s.h.i.+p took me by the shoulders, and said, 'Fawdor, man, this will drive you mad. Come away to England,--leave your half-breed in charge,--and ask the governor for a big promotion.' He did not understand. Of course I said I could not go.

Then he turned on me, he was a good man,--and said, 'This will either make you madman or saint, Fawdor.' He drew a Bible from his pocket and handed it to me. 'I've used it twenty years,' he said, 'in evil and out of evil, and I've spiked it here and there; it's a chart for heavy seas, and may you find it so, my lad.'

”I said little then; but when I saw the sails of his s.h.i.+p round a cape and vanish, all my pride and strength were broken up, and I came in a heap to the ground, weeping like a child. But the change did not come all at once. There were two things that kept me hard.”

”The girl?”

”The girl, and another. But of the young lady after. I had a half-breed whose life I had saved. I was kind to him always; gave him as good to eat and drink as I had myself; divided my tobacco with him; loved him as only an exile can love a comrade. He conspired with the Indians to seize the Fort and stores, and kill me if I resisted. I found it out.”

”Thou shalt keep the faith of food and blanket,” said Pierre. ”What did you do with him?”

”The fault was not his so much as of his race and his miserable past. I had loved him. I sent him away; and he never came back.”

”Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman.”

”For the girl. There was the thing that clamped my heart. Never a message from her or her brother. Surely they knew, and yet never, thought I, a good word for me to the governor. They had forgotten the faith of food and blanket. And she--she must have seen that I could have wors.h.i.+pped her, had we been in the same way of life. Before the better days came to me I was hard against her, hard and rough at heart.”

”Remember the sorrow of thine own wife.” Pierre's voice was gentle.

”Truly, to think hardly of no woman should be always in a man's heart.

But I have known only one woman of my race in twenty-five years!”

”And as time went on?”

”As time went on, and no word came, I ceased to look for it. But I followed that chart spiked with the captain's pencil, as he had done it in season and out of season, and by and by I ceased to look for any word. I even became reconciled to my life. The ambitious and aching cares of the world dropped from me, and I stood above all--alone in my suffering, yet not yielding. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Under it a man--”

”Goes mad or becomes a saint--a saint!” Pierre's voice became reverent.

Fawdor shook his head, smiling gently. ”Ah no, no. But I began to understand the world, and I loved the north, the beautiful hard north.”

”But there is more?”

”Yes, the end of it all. Three days before you came I got a packet of letters, not by the usual yearly mail. One announced that the governor was dead. Another--”

”Another?” urged Pierre--”was from Her. She said that her brother, on the day she wrote, had by chance come across my name in the Company's records, and found that I had been here a quarter of a century. It was the letter of a good woman. She said she thought the governor had forgotten that he had sent me here--as now I hope he had, for that would be one thing less for him to think of, when he set out on the journey where the only weight man carries is the packload of his sins. She also said that she had written to me twice after we parted at Lachine, but had never heard a word, and three years afterwards she had gone to India. The letters were lost, I suppose, on the way to me, somehow--who can tell? Then came another thing, so strange, that it seemed like the laughter of the angels at us. These were her words: 'And, dear Mr. Fawdor, you were both wrong in that quotation, as you no doubt discovered long ago.' Then she gave me the sentence as it is in Cymbeline. She was right, quite right. We were both wrong. Never till her letter came had I looked to see. How vain, how uncertain, and fallible, is man!”

Pierre dropped his cigarette, and stared at Fawdor. ”The knowledge of books is foolery,” he said slowly. ”Man is the only book of life. Go on.”

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