Barbara Lynn Part 23

CHAPTER XIII

JOEL TAKES THE LONG TRAIL

It was the spring of the next year, and Joel Hart sat smoking outside the store of Red Rivers Town. The hunters and trappers were returning from the forest, bringing in their winter's catch of peltries, and the place swarmed with men of many races, and all grades of colour from the ebony of the negro, up through copper to the lighter eyes and fair skin of the European.

The town was a huddled collection of log houses, built round a wooden fort. Puny, dirty, and arrogant, it yet stood boldly alone, snapping its fingers--as it were--in the face of the wilderness, and telling it that the days were numbered in which its silent places would remain tenantless, and its secrets undiscovered. The forest crowded up to its very doors, like a pack of wild creatures, gathering round the circle of its fires, but kept at bay with axe and saw.

Joel looked steadily before him. There were trees, trees, trees, nothing but fluttering leaves and solemnly waving boughs for hundreds of miles.

On the fringe, where some men had been felling, lay lopped limbs, fragrant logs, and stacks of small branches; but the forest stood behind like an army, watchful, waiting, full of animosity. It threatened the town as the town threatened it. Any weakness on the part of man would bring it forward in a riotous march, waving green triumphal banners.

For some days Red Rivers had been seething with excitement. It was rumoured that in the mountains, far beyond the forest, gold had been found. Already men were fitting themselves out to take the long trail, and Joel was one of them.

A hard and dangerous journey it would be, for, between civilisation and the Delectable Mountains, stretched first the forest, then the wilderness, silent and visibly hostile. It had baulked the desires of many, and sown gra.s.s between their ribs; it lay like a colossal dragon, like the worm Fafnir, guarding treasures that had been their bane. But as the old saga saith--Every brave man and true will fain have his hand on wealth till that last day.

For gold men will face the deadliest of foes--the Unknown. They will fight its cunning with human craftiness, its strength with endurance, its secrecy with open minds. Though perils from snakes and savage creatures, perils from savager tribes, from disease, exhaustion, hunger, and thirst, may be their daily portion, yet they will push on with a blind trust in their own good fortune. And as they go they will cheer themselves with thoughts of nuggets, large as cricket b.a.l.l.s, which they will make the earth disgorge.

Nearly a year had pa.s.sed since Joel had left High Fold. It had been a time of varied experiences. He had been dejected; he had been lifted high. He had said that Destiny would never lead him to sip at the Fountain of Success; he had blessed his lucky stars. He had made money, and after his former habit, lost it in a night. Sometimes the future had been a blank; sometimes it was lit with fantastical hopes. Occasionally the present felt like h.e.l.l, oftener it drifted away--he hardly knew how--and left behind it a sense of dissatisfaction. He had soon tired of the post which Mistress Lynn's money had secured for him--there was too much drudgery in it to suit a pleasure-loving nature like his. But he kept it until he had won, by less virtuous means, enough to pay his debts to her and his friends. Then he gave it up.

But the influence of a new world, where men wrestled cheerfully with adverse circ.u.mstances, and overcame them by force of will, roused the latent manliness in him. They went forth daily--their muscles tough as steel, their bodies trained to every kind of hards.h.i.+p--and they came back, sometimes in a few months, rich with the rewards of their endurance. And so, when he saw men all around him strip for the contest, and some bear off the prize, he determined to do likewise.

He found an unexpected pleasure in action. Life, smacking of adventure, got hold of his imagination, and quickened his brain. An up-hill road of monotonous toil, even though it had led to honour and greater wealth, could not have spurred him to self-denial and energy, such as now regulated his thoughts. There was much of the excitement of the racecourse in the life that he was living. He looked forward eagerly to the day when he, and a small party of adventurers would set out into the Unknown, carrying their lives in their hands.

A genial glow suffused his outlook; he could see the dawn of a new life before him. He was like one watching the light broaden and deepen before the rising of the sun.

A wind blew from the west, sweet with the perfume of damp wood. Few things stir the memory like a scent, and Joel's mind harked back to Cringel Forest, and the old house above the tree-tops. With luck he would be able to restore it to its former modest but honourable position among its neighbours. With luck he would yet set Lucy Lynn there as its mistress.

When he first left High Fold he had tried to thrust the memory of her pleading eyes away. To a certain extent he had succeeded; for the world to which he had come was a world of men and not of women, and no one crossed his path to waken a longing for her in his heart. He had not meant to treat her slightingly, any more than he had meant to rob Mistress Lynn. He had drifted into the one, as he had drifted towards the other, through a light and reckless valuation of moral conduct, and an utter disregard of responsibility. He had written once, but things were not going well with him at the time, so his letter was short and superficial. He had meant to write again when luck changed: but luck was long in changing, and by then her form had grown indistinct.

With the awakening of his manhood, however, came a stirring of the old pa.s.sion. Every part of him was quickened--both his conscience and his memory. He tried to bring her features back, but he must pay the price for having neglected her so long, and hard as he strove to imagine her as she was, her face eluded him, tantalized him, and came near only to fade away as soon as he turned his eyes upon it.

But the spirit in him, which Barbara Lynn, by her personality, had touched to consciousness for a few moments, was now fully roused, and struggling up, through manifold weaknesses that swathed it, to take its place as the true director of his life.

He acknowledged that he had done Lucy a great wrong--wrong at the beginning and wrong afterwards--and he had made up his mind to atone for it as far as he could. He would write to her to-night--a clean confession of all that he had done amiss, before he disappeared into the wilderness for--how long? Perhaps to find a grave there.

Just now, as he sat smoking at the store-house door, looking into the forest, he seemed to see Lucy clearly. She was walking demurely down the woodland path in her best buckled shoes, which she only wore on Sundays.

She appeared to be happy. Her face was as childish in its outlines, her skin as white as milk and red as roses, her eyes were as blue as when he had first kissed her. He fell into a reverie, dreading to hear a strange bird cry lest it should dispel the illusion.

The afternoon quickly pa.s.sed and evening came. He stood and watched the sunset flare over the tree-tops in red and yellow--the red of blood and the yellow of gold, two colours that have striped and stained each other since ever gold was desired by the eyes of men, and blood willingly paid for it.

Joel went nearer to the forest and looked at the threshold leading to the long trail--a great doorway of primeval trees, beyond which he could see a grey-green road leading--whither? Through a hundred miles of forest! He thought what a land of trees this was to which he had come.

The weight of luscious growth must give the world a tilt, he had heard a man say, like a market basket over-full at one end. One day he had climbed a hill in the neighbourhood, and seen below him a vast expanse of green boughs, green to the horizon. Somewhere beyond them, bare and blue, were the treasure mountains that he hoped to reach.

Swamp and river, he had been warned, many a swamp and blackly-flowing river, hiding from the wholesome light of the sun under the over-arching boughs, would try to bar his path to fortune. The leaves were chiming overhead--a pleasant sound to casual ears. But he had heard that it drove men crazy. Though it were as unhallowed and insistent as the voices which haunted those Persian adventurers who were turned to stone in their endeavours to find the speaking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water--a tale which Timothy Hadwin had told him long ago--yet such was his present determination it would not have held him back. The hope of fabulous things allured Joel as it had allured the men of old.

He went into the store to write his letter to Lucy.

As he sat, pen in hand, the lovely phantom which he had seen walking in the forest with her best buckled shoes on, fled, and she a.s.sumed a solidity that disconcerted him, now he was prepared to communicate directly with her. His ready a.s.surance vanished. What right had he to send her a letter now, after so long a silence? She was human, not faery: conjuring with a human heart had risks.

He sat for a time pondering over the past, his eyes darkened with regrets and timid with new fears. Many changes might have taken place in the dale since he bade it farewell. A letter took months to come. His letter, if he wrote now, would not reach her till the summer was in full blow. Perhaps the great-grandmother was dead--swept away by the breath of the past winter. Lucy might be dead! Death as often took the young as the old. The silence gripped him like a nightmare. He wanted to break the suspense. So intense were his feelings, that he felt he could roll up the s.p.a.ce which divided them, roll it up like a scroll, and see her face to face. But he could not get his hands on the impalpable, restless curtain, that shut them off from each other.

If he had been able to roll it up, he could only have seen that which would have robbed him of his energy and hope, for Lucy was in the midst of preparations for her marriage with Peter Fleming.

While he was thus pondering upon the best way to begin his letter, his eyes wandered round the store. Two flaring lamps lit it up, and added the smell of rancid oil to the strange odour of tan, hides, furs, and woods with which it was redolent. He looked at the shelves of blankets, the canoe paddles, the canisters of shot, all things alien to his experience. He felt himself to be adrift in the Unknown, going he knew not whither. He craved for a familiar sound or sight. He wanted Lucy as he had never wanted her before. He began to write and tell her so.

Then a man entered, the leader of the expedition which was going out in a few days to look for gold. He was tall and sinewy, wearing a buffalo cloak, and a hunting belt embroidered with the quills of the porcupine.

He inspired confidence. He knew the Unknown, and had conquered it.

"What ho!" he said to Joel, "writing to your sweetheart? That's right.

Tell her you're going to seek your fortune, and will keep the first bit of gold you find to make the wedding ring."

"That's a good idea," replied Joel with a laugh.

He wrote his letter. He poured out himself. He hid nothing from her, neither his weaknesses, nor his selfishness, nor the despair which he had felt, at times, when he thought of her so far away, and wondered if he would ever see her again. Perhaps he made more of this latter statement than the facts warranted, but on the whole his letter was that of an honest man who did sincerely love the woman to whom he was writing. He did not implore her to wait, but he said that if heaven sent him fortune, he would come to her--however late in the day it might be--and ask her to share it.

He ended by telling her that he would keep the first bit of gold he found for the wedding ring.

PART II

CHAPTER XIV

BARBARA AND PETER

Winter came to the dale, bringing snow, wind, and rain. It sneaked into the sheep-fold like a wolf, and not only into the sheep-fold, but it went down to the village, and quietly carried off some of the old folk there. Yet it did not so much as snarl at the threshold of Greystones.

It ran as it were--with its tail between its legs, past the house, afraid of the great-grandmother in the four-post bed.

Then the summer came, bringing the flocks back to the mountains, and plenty to the dale. It poured its riches into the old woman's lap, for the farm prospered. Hard on its heels followed another winter.

Mistress Fleming at the mill-house, folded her hands, and lay down in her last sleep. Her spirit slipped away in the night-time without a sigh, and Peter, standing by her bedside in the morning, and looking at the sweet old face, rosy still in death, found it hard to believe that she would not soon waken and speak to him. The miller lingered out another year, then he followed his wife.

Peter was forced to acknowledge to himself, with bitterness, that they did not find in their latter days, all the joy which they had expected.

No word of complaint ever crossed their lips, they were loving and kind, but he read in their faces a disappointment which they strove to hide, and thought they had hidden.

Not only had he failed to realise their fond hopes for him, but his marriage with Lucy lacked something, which they dimly felt, yet could not see. The girl was pretty, and sweet, and dutiful. They welcomed her with open arms. But she never took the place of a daughter to them.

When Lucy first came to the mill-house, she experienced an uplifting of her whole nature. She was treated with a respect, a dignity new to her, and she was happy, believing that she had done right in marrying Peter.

But before long she began to feel the strain of living at so high an alt.i.tude. She could not reach the standard expected of her by the old couple, whose idol was their son; neither could she reach the standard of her husband, who scorned to show littlenesses of mind or temper, and would not have feared to lay his whole life open to the world, conscious of its integrity, had duty demanded such a revelation.