SPURLING MAKES A REQUEST

There had been a time when Granger had desired to kill Spurling, and, though latterly he had not consciously wished that he were dead, yet he resented his reappearance; his presence broke in as a storm-influence on the stoical quiet which he had attained. This man stood for so many things which had been sinful and passionate in the past—things which it had cost him so much even to attempt to forget; things which he had promised himself that he would forget for Peggy's sake. And now, because he had chosen to return, it seemed necessary that he should call to mind the entire tragedy by asking the question, "When you shot that woman in the Klondike, did you know that she was not a man? And was she clothed in a woman's dress?"

Even though he kept silence, any hour Spurling himself might reopen the subject by inquiring after Strangeways, as to whether he had pursued farther, as to how he had fared, as to where he was at present. Granger was by no means certain that he did not already know that the corporal was dead. He shrank from the discomfort of playing the accuser again; he shrank still more from making the ugly confession that he himself was likely to be suspected of having committed a kindred crime,—a confession which would tend to degrade him to the level of this man whom he affected to despise. So, from day to day, he postponed his questions and, in the meanwhile, watched Spurling narrowly.

His conduct had been very curious since that morning of his arrival, when he had announced himself by playing the spy, through the window of Bachelors' Hall, on the inhabitants of the Point. How long he had been there, and how much he had heard of what the Man with the Dead Soul had had to say, kneeling outside in the semi-darkness with his ear pressed against the pane, Granger had no means of discovering. But from the first it was clear to him that Spurling and Eyelids were possessed of a common knowledge, which made them enemies. Perhaps they had met before near the Forbidden River, and this had been the cause of Eyelids' delay.

Under ordinary circumstances, the mystery would soon have been swept aside by the putting of a single interrogation; but men on the Last Chance River get out of the habit of asking leading questions; in their parsimony over words, they prefer to watch and to wait the reading of the minds of their fellows, and the secreting of their own motives, is almost their only pastime. So Granger watched and waited.

In Spurling, so soon as he had been fed and cared for, he was quick to discover a change. He had become manlier and braver—more like his old self. He carried himself with a kind of timid pride, as though he knew himself to be of a greater value than he was likely to be reckoned at by others; almost as though he were confident that he was possessed of a claim to merit which, once stated, could not fail to be recognised. At the same time, there was a distressful hesitancy in his manner, not unnatural under the circumstances, of a man not sure of his acceptability. He seemed forever on the point of declaring himself, and forever thinking better of his decision—postponing his declaration to a later time. His bearing was an irritating combination of false humility and suppressed self-assertion.

Beorn, when he had recovered from his debauch, was as silent, absorbed, and uncompanionable as ever. He appeared to have retained no memory of what he had said, and to be quite unconscious of Spurling's arrival—he had become again in all things the Man with the Dead Soul.

But with Peggy and Eyelids it was different. Half-breeds as they were, and, by reason of their Indian blood, instinctive disguisers of emotion, their aversion for Spurling was plain. Sometimes, when his back was turned and they thought that they were unobserved, they would glance swiftly up at one another, and an expression would come into their eyes, a small pin-point of angry fire, which betokened danger for the man they hated. Very strangely to Granger, since Spurling's arrival, they had manifested a great fondness for being in his own company; one or other of them was never far from his side. Though he turned upon them angrily, telling them that he wished to be by himself, they continually disobeyed and, next minute, like faithful dogs, with apologetic faces, were to be found watching near by. What was the motive of their conduct? Did they think that he was in danger, and required protecting?

But there was a graver happening which he had noticed. With Spurling's return, he had thought that now certainly he had solved the mystery of the signalling to the bend. On the first day, however, he had found himself mistaken. Sitting in the doorway of his store, he had watched the undesired one go down to the pier, push off in a canoe, and paddle down-river for a bathe. Quarter of a mile from the bend, he had seen him back-water, rise to his knees, gaze straight ahead in a startled manner, and then, turning quickly about, come racing back like one pursued for his life. Looking round, he had seen that Peggy and Eyelids were also witnessing these tactics, with expressions which betrayed their consternation. As he watched, they had raised their hands and waved. When Spurling had landed, he had been waiting for him at the pier-head. "What was it that you saw over there?" he asked sternly.

Spurling, being panic-stricken, had at first found difficulty in recovering his voice. Then, "Where? What do you mean?" he had panted.

Granger, in silence, had pointed northeasterly towards the bend.

With a nervous laugh, though his face was bloodless, Spurling had replied, "Nothing. I saw nothing. I just thought that it looked a bit lonesome, . . . so I turned back."

Gazing at him attentively, and seeing how he trembled, Granger knew that he had not answered truly. With a shrug of his shoulders, twisting round on his heel, he had said sneeringly, "On the Last Chance River we don't run away from loneliness as though the hangman were behind us. If we did, we should be running all the time."

He had not stayed to see the effect of his words, but long afterwards, when he looked down to the water's edge, Spurling was still sitting there, with his head between his hands and his body shaking.

Early one evening, some days later, he came to him and said, "Mr. Granger," and it sounded oddly from those lips—in the old days, even in the beginning of their acquaintance, they had never mistered one another, "Mr. Granger, is there anywhere we can go to be quiet? I have something very private which I want to say."

"O yes, there's the whole of Keewatin."

"But isn't there some place where we shan't be overheard?"

"We can paddle down to the bend. There's only one man who can hear us there—and he's in his grave."

"Not there. Not there," Spurling had cried, trembling with fear and excitement.

"Well, then, if you're so particular, you can speak with me here."

Spurling looked round to where, at a short distance, Eyelids was diligently idling above a broken net. "Somewhere where we can't be overheard," he reiterated. At that moment Eyelids turned his head.

This continual spying on all that he did, the reason for which he could not comprehend, was getting on Granger's nerves; he felt that it would be a relief to be alone, even though it meant being alone with the man whom he had most cause to hate. However, somehow he pitied him just now; perhaps because of the manner of his address, which had brought into sharp contrast their present relations with those of other days.

"There's the island up-river to the westward, where I keep my dogs in summer-time; if that will suit your purpose."

Spurling showed his pleasure at the suggestion, and, hurrying his steps, led the way down to the river-bank. Getting into a canoe, they set out towards the west. They had not gone half a mile before they caught the sound of paddle-strokes behind them. Turning about, they saw that Eyelids was following. He attempted to loiter, and threw in a line as if his only intention were to fish. Granger flushed with anger. Without a word, he commenced to paddle back till they drew nearly level with the intruder, who pretended to be so engaged in his pastime as not to notice their approach. Then he cried in a voice that was choking with rage, "Get back to the Point, you half-breed spy. If you dare to follow me again, I'll turn you out to-morrow, and you can take your trade elsewhere." Nor would he proceed farther on his journey till he had watched his brother-in-law get safe to land; then, with a twist of the paddle, he brought his own craft round, and continued towards the sunset. Two miles up-river, in the middle-stream, stood a rocky island; as yet it was only a dull grey speck in a pathway of red.

They pushed on in silence up the straight, dark grove of mysterious forest. Water-birds were calling in the rushes; at one point, as they passed, a great bull caribou lifted up his head from drinking, and regarded them with a look of curiosity, totally void of fear; a heron drifted slowly over the tree-tops, and disappeared. To Granger, with even this short distance placed between himself and his customary associates, there came a sense of release, and with it an instinct for kindness. As they neared the shore of the island, the huskies commenced to howl; soon they could see them bunched together on the shore awaiting their arrival. A dog in the north, even though he has been imported, is never heard to bark. To hear them at first, a stranger might suppose that a woman was wearily weeping herself to death in the forest, because of a grief which was inconsolable. The wail of the huskies, reaching him at intervals across the expanse of water, seemed the voice of his own desolation, coming out to meet him.

The whole world was empty, and he began to feel the need of friendship. He let his eyes linger on the head and shoulders of the man in front of him, and remembered with what eagerness long ago, when awaiting his arrival at some appointed rendezvous, he had striven to catch sight of him approaching, towering above the littler people of the London crowd. And now, instead of brief and chance-snatched moments, they were allowed to pass whole days together; yet, because of what had happened, they could find no pleasure in one another. Pleasure! The only sensation which he derived from Spurling's company was one of intense annoyance. And there had been a time when, if anyone had dared to tell him that that could ever happen, he would have denied it with an oath.

Could it be that the fault was his own, and that he had misjudged this man? He recalled how, when he had discovered Strangeways' body at the bend, and had thought it Spurling's, he had bitterly accused himself of all manner of unkindness. He smiled grimly at the remembrance—it was human nature to do that. He could quite well imagine that at some future time, when Spurling was truly dead, he might blame himself afresh, with an equal bitterness and an equal sincerity. It would be easy to judge charitably of him then, for he would be beyond power of working any further mischief to the living. It is fear, not cruelty, which lies at the root of all uncharitableness. If apprehension were removed from our lives, it would be possible for the weakest man to live well. It was the fact that, trusting in God, he took no thought for the morrow, which enabled Jesus to become Christ.

Gliding round the island, they came to a sandy cove, which faced the sunset. There they landed. Lifting the canoe a dozen paces up the shore and placing it in the scrub, where it might be out of sight, they struck into the brushwood by a narrow trail, which at once commenced to climb. After three minutes of travelling, they came out on to a tall bare rock, to one side of which grew a solitary pine. From there they could command a view of the river on every side.

Granger settled himself down, with his back toward his companion, propping himself against the pine-trunk, with his face towards the fading light. The huskies gathered hungrily round in a semicircle, squatting on their haunches, wondering whether the coming of these men meant that they were going to be fed. The frogs croaked in the river; the mosquitoes trumpetted about their heads; save for these sounds, and the continual low murmur of the river, there was absolute quiet. In this environment, his eyes upon the faery domes and fiery spires of the western sky, into the inmost mystery of which the Last Chance River led, that torturing and old desire, which had always made it impossible for him to enjoy the moment in its flight, again possessed his mind: he had known it from a child, the ambition to follow, follow, follow, in the hope that somewhere, perhaps behind the setting sun, he might arrive at the land of perfectness for which he craved.

His thoughts were disturbed somewhat brutally by a voice behind. "Still careless of your life! I see you hav'n't brought your gun with you. How did you know that it wasn't 'Die,' that I wanted to say?"

He turned lazily round, and was surprised at the altered expression which had come into Spurling's face. It was frank and self-reliant, and, oddly enough, had a look that was almost tender.

"What made you say that?" Granger inquired.

Spurling drew nearer. "Well, a fellow had to say something to break the ice," he replied; "so I thought I might as well give you your chance of taking the worst impression of me." He paused; then he asked in a low voice, "You were thinking of London and the old times?"

Granger nodded his head.

"I've often done that; I can understand. It was torture to me in the Yukon, and it was madness to me over there," pointing with his hand to the northward, where the Forbidden River lay. "What would you say," he added, "if I were to tell you that it could all come back again?"

Granger's reply was quiet and calculated, so that it seemed to be quite within the bounds of courteous conversation. "I think I should tell you that you lied," he said.

"But if I should give you proof that not only the old things were possible, but that El Dorado might come true, and that within a year we could seek it out together, as we have always planned to do?"

For answer Granger jerked out his foot, and sent a gaunt grey husky flying, which had come within his range. It was one of those which Spurling had left behind over two months ago at Murder Point, when he had exchanged teams with Granger in his endeavour to escape Strangeways. Spurling, when he saw it, recognised the meaning which Granger's action implied. It was as if he had said, "So the old things are possible, are they, you villain? What about that man whom you say that you killed, whose body was washed up near Forty-Mile?" He opened his lips to explain, and then fell silent. It was impossible to excuse himself in the presence of those wolfish beasts, who had been witnesses to all the degradation of mind and body which had overtaken him in that terrible escape. No man could estimate the penalty which he had had to pay for his moment's folly, except one who had endured it. When he allowed his memory to dwell upon it, that frenzied rush across half a continent seemed to have occupied all his life. The thought of it made him afraid.

"Good God! And my mother meant me for a minister!" he exclaimed, burying his face in his hands.

Granger looked up suspiciously, but he said nothing.

"No, I never told you that," he continued fiercely, "and I suppose you don't believe me now. Seems somehow odd to you, I daresay, that Druce Spurling should ever have thought himself worthy to talk to men about their souls and Christ. You'd have thought it a good joke if I'd told you even when you knew me at my best. When you knew me! Bah! You never knew me; you were always a harsh judge when it came to setting a value on things which you didn't understand."

When Granger still kept silent and gave no sign of interest, Spurling broke out afresh: "Damnation! I tell you you never knew anything about me. You were always too selfish to take the trouble to get into other folks' insides; yet you went about complaining that people were unsympathetic. Here's the difference between us; I may be a scoundrel, but whatever I've done I've played the man and never blamed anyone else for my crimes, while you—! You were always a weak dreamer, depending on others for your strength. You were discontented, but you never raised your littlest finger in an attempt to make men better. All you could think of was yourself, and your own ambition to escape. So though, perhaps, I've sunk to a lower level than you have ever touched, I want you to know there was once a time when I did reach up to a nobler and a better."

Gradually, as he had spoken, there had grown into his voice a concentrated fury. He was giving utterance to an old grievance over which he had brooded for many years; as happens frequently in such cases, only a portion of his complaint could be proved by facts, the remainder being an overgrowth of embittered imagination.

His eyes sought out the face of the man whom he accused, but it told him nothing; he sat there silent, with his head thrown back a little, unemotional as the distant stretch of cold grey river up which he gazed.

The sun had vanished, and the prolonged dusk of the northland was stealing from out the forest. At length Granger answered him: "It may be true, and if so, what follows?"

"Oh, nothing: only I thought I'd tell you this so that one man might not think too badly of me, if before long I should be called upon to die. I must have looked a horrid beast when I came to you last April."

Whether consciously or not, Granger nodded his head, as much as to say, "You did. Most certainly you did."

His companion broke into a harsh laugh. "The Reverend Druce Spurling! How d'you like the sound of it? That's what I might have been to-day, and a fat lot you care about it."

To Granger, as he listened, there had come the painful knowledge, bearing out the accusation that he had never cared for the inward things of men, that this was the first scrap of confession which Spurling had ever let fall in his presence. Why, up to that moment he had not heard a word about his mother, and had certainly never credited him with a pronounced religious instinct.

Yes, perhaps that statement, which had sounded so exaggerated at first, was true; and he was a hard and selfish man. Up to now he'd excused himself on the score of his superior sensitiveness and ideality. Probably it was this same error which PÈre Antoine, in gentler manner, had tried to point out, when he said, "You will never help yourself, or the world, by merely being sad. No man ever has. It is because of your flight from sadness that you have met with all your dangers. All your life you have spent in striving to escape from things which are sad." His thoughts travelled back to those earlier days, when he'd poured out his troubles to Spurling, and told him all about himself; and always with the assurance that he would be understood and would gain sympathy. John Granger as he had been then, now seemed like a complaining child to himself. He was certain that, were he to be met by that old self to-day, he would have no patience with him. But Spurling had had patience.

So, when all was said and done, he must consider himself a pretty worthless fellow; and, after all, Spurling, despite his blood-stained hands, was probably the better man.

"Why Spurling failed to become a parson"—a strange topic for thought and conversation this, on the Last Chance River at nightfall!

But Spurling was speaking again, timidly and half to himself. "Suppose God should brand a mark on our foreheads for every crime which we have perpetrated, I wonder what kind of beasts we should appear to one another then?"

Turning his head, in order that his face might not be seen, Granger replied, "Much the same kind of beasts, I suspect, as we appear to one another now." Then, speaking more hurriedly, "It wasn't to talk of these things, and to ask me that question, that you required me to come with you to some place where we might be by ourselves. Tell me, what is it that you want me to do for you? You were good to me once, and I'm willing to help you in any way that is honourable, and that isn't too dangerous."

Spurling laughed shortly, and said, "It isn't your help that I'm asking; it's you that I'm trying to help. Here, look at that." He passed something to him. "I didn't act squarely by you in the Klondike, and I want to make up for it now. When we made that strike in Drunkman's Shallows, the success of it turned my head; even then, if you'd not been so impatient, I think I should have come to myself and have behaved decently. You put my back up with your suspicions, and by seeming to claim a part of my wealth as though it were yours by right. But I'm anxious to forget that now."

In the meanwhile, Granger had been examining the thing which had been placed in his hands. It was wrapped up carefully in several rags, which were knotted and tedious to untie. When he had stript them off, he found that they contained a nugget, somewhat bigger than the one which Eyelids had shown him, but of the same rounded formation, as though it had been taken from a river-bed. "Where did you get it?" he asked excitedly.

"Where the half-breed got his—from the Forbidden River. Does El Dorado seem more possible to you now?"

But Granger was thinking, and he did not answer the question. Suddenly the dream of his life had become recoverable. He had forgotten Peggy, and Murder Point, and even Spurling himself. Once more in imagination he was sailing up the Great Amana, following in his father's track. Once more he saw, as in Raleigh's day, the deer come down to the water's side, as if they were used to the keeper's call; and he watched anxiously ahead lest, in the rounding of the latest bend, the shining city should meet his sight and the salt expanse of Parima, from whose shores its towers are said to rise. In his eyes was the vision of the island near Puna, which Lopez wrote about, with its silver herb-gardens, and its flowers of gold, and its trees of gold and of silver; and in his ears was the tinkling music, which the sea-wind was wont to make as it swept through the metal forest, causing its branches to clang and its leaves to shake. He was far away from Keewatin now, making the phantom journey to the land of his desire.

"Does El Dorado seem more possible to you now?"

He turned to Spurling a face which had grown thin with earnestness, "Druce, tell me quickly," he said, "how long will it take us to get there?"

"To get to El Dorado? The answer to that you should know best. But to get to the place on the Forbidden River where this gold was found? Oh, about five days."

"Let us go there at once, then, before Beorn finds us out."

"Ah, Beorn! The old trapper who put that half-breed on my track!"

"Did he do that? Tell me about it."