Bog-Myrtle and Peat Part 41

"As I sat motionless I saw that she stood on the ground beside me, her nose quite on a level with my face. She came and smelled me over as if uncertain. Then she took a walk all round me. One of the cubs put his long thin snout into the pocket of my fur coat, and nuzzled delightedly among the crumbs. His mother gave him a cuff with her paw which knocked him sprawling three or four paces.

"Having finished her own survey, the bear-mother called away her offspring. The young bear which had first taken the liberty of search, waited till his mother was a few steps off, and then came slyly round and sunk his nose deep in the corresponding pocket on the other side. It was a false move and showed bad judgment. A fish-hook attached itself sharply to his nostril, and he withdrew his head with a howl of pain.

The mother turned with an impatient grunt, and I gave myself up for lost. She came back at a great stretching gallop, to where the cub was lying on the snow pawing at his nose. His mother, having turned him over two or three times as if he were a bag of wool, and finding nothing wrong, concluded that he had been stung by a gadfly, or that he was making a fuss about nothing, paying no attention to me whatever. Having finished her inspection, she cuffed him well for his pains, as a troublesome youngster, and disappeared over the _tundra_. I sat there for the matter of an hour, not daring to move lest the lady-bruin might return. Then fearfully and cautiously I found my way back to the boat and my companions.

"Our voyage after this was quiet and uneventful. Siberia is like no other country in the world, except the great Arctic plains which fence in the Pole on the American side. The very loneliness and vastness of the horizon, like the changeless plain of the sea, envelop you. As soon as you are off the main roads, wide, untrodden, untouched, virgin s.p.a.ce swallows you up.

"Specially were we safe in that we had chosen to go to the north. Had we fled to the east, we should have been pursued by swift horses; to the west, the telegraph would have stopped us; to the south, the Altai and Himalaya, to say nothing of three thousand miles, barred our way. But no escape had ever been made to the north, and, so far as we knew, no attempt.

"One evening, while I was rowing, bending a back far too weary to be conscious of any additional fatigue, Leof, who happened to be resting, cried out suddenly, 'The Arctic Ocean!' And there, blue and clear, through the narrow entrance of a channel half-filled with drift-ice, lay the mysterious ocean of which we had thought so long. The wind had been due from the north, and therefore in our teeth, so that not till now had we had any chance of sailing. Now, however, we rigged a sail, and, pa.s.sing over the bar, we felt for the first time the lift of the waves of the Polar Sea.

"Day by day we held on to the eastward, coasting along almost within hail of the lonely sh.o.r.e. Often the ice threatened to close in upon us.

Sometimes the growling of the pack churned and crackled only a quarter of a mile out. One night as we lay asleep--it was my watch, but in that great silence I too had fallen asleep--Big Peter waked first, and in his strong emphatic fas.h.i.+on he rose to take the oars. But there before us were three boats' crews within half a mile, all rowing toward us, while a mile out from sh.o.r.e, near the edge of the pack, lay a steamer, blowing off steam through her escape-valves, as though at the end of her day's run.

"As we woke our first thought was, 'Lost!' For we had no expectation that any other vessel save a Russian cruiser could be in these waters.

But out from the sternsheets of the leading cutter fluttered the blessed Stars and Stripes. My companions did not know all the happiness that was included in the sight of that ensign. Leof had reached for his case-knife to take his life, and I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him ere I told him that of all peoples the Americans would never give us up.

"We were taken on board the U.S. search-vessel _Concord_, commissioned to seek for the records of the lost American Polar expedition. There we were treated as princes, or as American citizens, which apparently means the same thing. That is all my yarn. The Czar's arm is long, but it does not reach either London or New York."

"And Leof and Big Peter?" I asked, as Constantine ceased speaking. As though with an effort, he recalled himself.

"Big Peter," he said, "is at St. Louis. He is in the pork trade, is married, and has a large family."

"And Leof?"

"Ah, Leof! he went back to Russia at the time of the former Czar's death, and has not been heard of since."

"And you, Constantine, you will never put your nose in the lion's den again--_you_ will never go back to Russia?"

Almost for the first time throughout the long story, Constantine looked me fixedly in the eyes. The strange light of another world, of the fatalist East, looked plainly out of his eyes. Every Russian carries a terrible possibility about with him like a torch of tragic flame, ready to be lighted at any moment.

"That is as may be," he said very slowly; "it is possible that I may go back--at the time of other deaths, _and--also--not--return--any--more_."

BOOK FOURTH

IDYLLS

I

ACROSS THE MARCH d.y.k.e

I

_Far in the deep of Arden wood it lies; About it pleasant leaves for ever wave.

Through charmed afternoons we wander on, And at the sundown reach the seas that lave The golden isles of blessed Avalon.

When the sweet daylight dies, Out of the gloom the ferryman doth glide To take us both into a younger day; And as the twilight land recedes away, My lady draweth closer to my side_.

II

_Thus to a granary for our winter need We bring these gleanings from the harvest field; Not the full crop we bring, but only sheaves At random ta'en from autumn's golden yield-- One handful from a forest's fallen leaves; Yet shall this grain be seed Wherewith to sow the furrows year by year-- These wither'd leaves of other springs the pledge, When thou shalt hear, over our hawthorn hedge The mavis to his own mate calling clear_.

"_Memory Harvest_."

There was the brool of war in the valley of Howpaslet. It was a warlike parish. Its strifes were ecclesiastical mainly, barring those of the ice and the channel-stones. The deep voice of the Reverend Doctor Spence Hutchison, minister of the parish, whose lair was on the broomy knowes of Howpaslet beside its ancient kirk, was answered by the keener, more intense tones of the Reverend William Henry Calvin, of the Seceder kirk, whose manse stood defiantly on an opposite hill, and dared the neighbourhood to come on. But the neighbourhood never came, except only the Kers. In fact, the neighbourhood mostly went to Dr. Hutchison's, for Howpaslet was a great country of the Moderates. Unto whom, as Mr. Calvin said, be peace in this world, for they have small chance of any in the next--at least not to speak of.

Now, ever since the school-board came to Howpaslet its meetings are the great arena of combat. At the first election Dr. Spence Hutchison had the largest number of votes by a very great deal, and carried two colleagues with him to the top of the poll as part of his personal baggage. He did not always remember to consult them, because he knew that they were put there to vote as he wished them, and for no other purpose. And, being honest and modest men, they had no objections. So Dr. Hutchison was chairman of Howpaslet school-board.

But he reigned not without opposition. The forces of revolution had carried the two minority men, and the Doctor knew that at the first meeting of the board he would be met by William Henry Calvin, minister of the Seceder kirk of the Cowdenknowes, and his argumentative elder, Saunders Ker of Howpaslet Mains--one of a family who had laid aside moss-trooping in order to take with the same hereditary birr to psalm-singing and church politics. They were, moreover, great against paraphrases.

That was a great day when the board was formed. There was a word that the Doctor was to move that the meetings of the school-board be private.

So the Kers got word of it and sent round the fiery cross. They gathered outside and roosted on the d.y.k.e by dozens, all with long faces and cutty pipes. If the proceedings were to be private they would ding down the parish school. So they said, and the parish believed them.

It is moved by the majority farmer, and seconded by the majority publican (whose names do not matter), that the Reverend Dr. Spence Hutchison, minister of the parish, take the chair. It is moved and seconded that the Reverend William Henry Calvin take the chair--moved by Saunders Ker, seconded by himself. So Dr. Hutchison has the casting vote, and he gives it on the way to the chair.

The school-board is const.i.tuted.

"Preserve us! what's that?" say the Kers from the windows where they are listening. They think it is some unfair Erastian advantage.

"Nocht ava'--it's juist a word!" explains to them over his shoulder their oracle Saunders, from where he sits by the side of his minister--a small but indomitable phalanx of two in the rear of the farmer and publican. The schoolroom, being that of the old parochial school, is crowded by the supporters of Church and State. These are, however, more especially supporters of the Church, for at the parliamentary elections they mostly vote for "Auld Wullie" in spite of parish politics and Dr.

Spence Hutchison.

"Tak' care o' Auld Willie's tickets!" is the cry when in Howpaslet they put the voting-urns into the van to be carried to the county town buildings for enumeration. It was a Ker who drove, and the Tories suspected him of "losing" the tickets of Auld Wullie's opponent by the way. They say that is the way Auld Wullie got in. But n.o.body really knows, and everybody is aware that a Tory will say anything of a Ker.

So the schoolroom was crowded with "Establishers," for the Kers would not come within such a tainted building as a parochial school--except to a comic n.i.g.g.e.r minstrel performance, which in Howpaslet levels and composes all differences. So instead they waited at the windows and listened. One prominent and officious stoop of the Kirk tried to shut a window. But he got a Ker's clicky[9] over his head from without, and sat down discouraged.

[Footnote 9: Shepherd's staff.]

"Wull it come to ocht, think ye?" the Kers asked of each other outside.

"I'm rale dootfu'," was the general opinion; "but we maun juist howp for the best."

So the Kers stood without and hoped for the best--which, being interpreted, was that their champions, the Reverend William Calvin and Saunders Ker of the Mains, would get ill-treated by their opponents inside, and that they, the Kers, might then have a chance of clearing out the school. Every Ker had already picked his man. It has never been decided, though often argued, whether in his introductory prayer Mr.

Calvin was justified in putting up the pet.i.tion that peace might reign.

The general feeling was against him at the time.

"But there's three things that needs to be considered," said Saunders Ker: "in the first place, it was within his richt as a minister to pit up what pet.i.tion he liked; and, in the second, he didna mean it leeterally himsel', for we a' kenned it was his intention to be doon the Doctor's throat in five meenits; an', thirdly, it wad be a bonny queer thing gin thirty-three Kers an' Grahams a' earnestly prayin' the contrar', hadna as muckle influence at a throne o' grace, as ae man that didna mean what he said, even though the name o' him was William Henry Calvin."

Saunders expressed the general feeling of the meeting outside, which was frankly belligerent. They had indeed been beaten at the polls as they had expected, but in an honest tulzie with d.i.c.kies the parish would hear a different tale.

But there was one element in the meeting that the Kers had taken no notice of. There was but one woman there, and she a girl. In the corner of the schoolroom, on the chairman's right hand, sat Grace Hutchison, daughter of the manse. The minister was a widower, and this was his only daughter. She was nineteen. She kept his house, and turned him out like a new pin. But the parish knew little of her. It called her "the minister's s.h.i.+lpit bit la.s.sie."

Her face was indeed pale, and her dark eyes of a still and serene dignity, like one who walks oft at e'en in the Fairy Glen, and sees deeper into the gloaming than other folk.