The Honor of the Big Snows Part 28

CHAPTER XXVI

TEMPTATION

That night, leaving Thornton still at supper in the little old Windsor Hotel, Jan slipped away, and with Kazan at his heels, crossed the frozen Saskatchewan to the spruce forest on the north sh.o.r.e. He wanted to be alone, to think, to fight with himself against a desire which was almost overpowering him. Once, long ago, he had laid his soul bare to Jean de Gravois, and Jean had given him comfort. To-night he longed to go to Thornton, as he had gone to Jean, and to tell him the same story, and what had pa.s.sed that day in the office of the sub-commissioner. In his heart there had grown something for Thornton that was stronger than friends.h.i.+p--something that would have made him fight for him, and die for him, as he would have fought and died for Jean de Gravois. It was a feeling cemented by a belief that something was troubling Thornton--that he, too, was filled with a loneliness and a grief which he was trying to conceal. And yet he fought to restrain himself from confiding in his new friend. It would do no good, he knew, except by relieving him of a part of his mental burden. He walked along the sh.o.r.e of the river and recrossed it again near the company's offices. All were dark with the exception of the sub-commissioner's room. In that there glowed a light. The sub-commissioner was keeping his promise. He was working. He worked until late, for Jan came back two hours after and saw the light still there.

A week--it might be ten days, the sub-commissioner had told him, and it would be over. Always something in the north drew Jan's eyes, and he looked there now, wondering what would happen to him after that week was over.

Lights were out and people were in bed when he and Kazan returned to the hotel. But Thornton was up, sitting by himself in the gloom, as Jan had first seen him at Le Pas. Jan sat down beside him. There was an uneasy tremor in Thornton's voice when he said:

"Jan, did you ever love a woman--love her until you were ready and willing to die for her?"

The suddenness of the question wrung the truth from Jan's lips in a low, choking voice. For an instant he thought that Thornton must have guessed his secret.

"Yes, m'sieur."

Thornton leaned toward him, gripping his knees, and the misery in his face was deeper than Jan had ever seen it before.

"I love a woman--like that," he went on tensely. "A girl--not a woman, and she is one of your people, Jan--of the north, as innocent as a flower, more beautiful to ME than--than all the women I have ever seen before. She is at Oxford House. I am going home to--to save myself."

"Save yourself!" cried Jan. "Mon Dieu, m'sieur--does she not love you?"

"She would follow me to the end of the earth!"

"Then--"

Thornton straightened himself and wiped his pale face. Suddenly he rose to his feet and motioned for Jan to follow him. He walked swiftly out into the night, and still faster after that, until they pa.s.sed beyond the town. From where he stopped they could look over the forests far into the pale light of the south.

"THAT'S h.e.l.l for me!" said Thornton, pointing. "It's what we call civilization--but it's mostly h.e.l.l, and it's all h.e.l.l for me. It's a h.e.l.l of big cities, of strife, of blood-letting, of wickedness. I never knew how great a h.e.l.l it was until I came up here--among YOU. I wish to G.o.d I could stay--always!"

"You love her," breathed Jan. "You can stay."

"I can't," groaned Thornton. "I can't--unless--"

"What, m'sieur?"

"Unless I lose everything--but her."

Jan's fingers trembled as they sought Thornton's hand.

"And everything is--is--nothing when you give it for love and happiness," he urged. "The great G.o.d, I know--"

"Everything," cried Thornton. "Don't you understand? I said EVERYTHING!" He turned almost fiercely upon his companion. "I'd give up my name--for HER. I'd bury myself back there in the forests and never go out of them--for HER. I'd give up fortune, friends, lose myself for ever--for HER. But I can't. Good G.o.d, don't you understand?"

Jan stared. His eyes grew large and dark.

"I've spent ten years of WORSE than h.e.l.l down there--with a woman,"

went on Thornton. "It happens among us--frequently, this sort of h.e.l.l.

I came up here to get out of it for a time. You know--now. There is a woman down there who--who is my wife. She would be glad if I never returned. She is happy now, when I am away, and I have been happy--for a time. I know what love is. I have felt it. I have lived it. G.o.d forgive me, but I am almost tempted to go back--to HER!"

He stopped at the change which had come in Jan, who stood as straight and as still as the blank spruce behind them, with only his eyes showing that there was life in him. Those eyes held Thornton's. They burned upon him through the gray gloom as he had never seen human eyes burn before. He waited, half startled, and Jan spoke. In his voice there was nothing of that which Thornton saw in his eyes. It was low, and soft, and though it had that which rung like steel, Thornton could not have understood or feared it more.

"M'sieur, how far have you gone--WITH HER?" Thornton understood and advanced with his hands reaching out to Jan.

"Only as far as one might go with the purest thing on earth," he said.

"I have sinned--in loving her, and in letting her love me, but that is all, Jan Th.o.r.eau. I swear that is all!"

"And you are going back into the south?"

"Yes, I am going back into the south."

The next day Thornton did not go. He made no sign of going on the second day. So it was with the third, the fourth, and the fifth. On each of these days Jan went once, in the afternoon, to the office of the sub-commissioner, and Thornton always accompanied him. At times, when Jan was not looking, there was a hungry light in his eyes as he followed the other's movements, and once or twice Jan caught what was left of this look when he turned unexpectedly. He knew what was in Thornton's mind, and he pitied him, grieved with him in his own heart until his own secret almost wrung itself from his lips. Somehow, in a way that he could not understand, Thornton's sacrifice to honor, and his despair, gave Jan strength, and a hundred times he asked himself if a confession of his own misery would do as much for the other. He repeated this thought to himself again and again on the afternoon of the ninth day, when he went to the sub-commissioner's office alone.

This time Thornton had remained behind. He had left him in a gloomy corner of the hotel room from which he had not looked up when Jan went out with Kazan.

This ninth day was the last day for Jan Th.o.r.eau. In a dazed sort of way he listened as the sub-commissioner told him that the work was ended.

They shook hands. It was dark when Jan came out from the company's offices, dark with a pale gloom through which the stars were beginning to glow--with a ghostly gloom, lightened still more in the north with the rising fires of the northern lights. Alone Jan stood for a few moments close down to the river. Across from him was the forest, silent, black, reaching to the end of the earth, and over it, like a signal light, beckoning him back to his world, the aurora sent out its shafts of red and gold. And as he listened there came to him faintly a distant wailing sound that he knew was the voice from that world, and at the sound the hair rose along Kazan's spine, and he whined deep down in his throat. Jan's breath grew quicker, his blood warmer. Over there--across the river--his world was calling to him, and he, Jan Th.o.r.eau, was now free to go. This very night he would bury himself in the forest again, and when he lay down to sleep it would be with his beloved stars above him, and the winds whispering sympathy and brotherhood to him in the spruce tops. He would go--NOW. He would say good-by to Thornton--and GO.

He found himself running, and Kazan ran beside him. He was breathless when he came to the one lighted street of the town. He hurried to the hotel and found Thornton sitting where he had left him.

"It is ended, m'sieur," he cried in a low voice. "It is over, and I am going. I am going to-night."

Thornton rose. "To-night," he repeated.

"Yes, to-night--now. I am going to pick up my things. Will you come?"

He went ahead of Thornton to the bare little room in which he had slept while at the hotel. He did not notice the change in Thornton until he had lighted a lamp. Thornton was looking at him doggedly. There was an unpleasant look in his face, a flush about his eyes, a rigid tenseness in the muscles of his jaws.

"And I--I, too, am going to-night," he said. "Into the South, m'sieur?"

"No, into the NORTH." There was a fierceness in Thornton's emphasis. He stood opposite Jan, leaning over the table on which the light was placed. "I've broken loose," he went on. "I'm not going south--back to that h.e.l.l of mine. I'm never going south again. I'm dead down there--dead for all time. They'll never hear of me again. They can have my fortune--everything. I'm going North. I'm going to live with YOU people--and G.o.d--AND HER!"

Jan sank into a chair, Thornton sat down in one across from him.

"I am going back to her," he repeated. "No one will ever know."

He could not account for the look in Jan's eyes nor for the nervous twitching of the lithe brown hands that reached half across the table.

But Kazan's one eye told him more than Thornton could guess, and in response to it that ominous s.h.i.+vering wave rose along his spine.

Thornton would never know that Jan's fingers twitched for an instant in their old mad desire to leap at a human throat.

"You will not do that," he said quietly.

"Yes, I will," replied Thornton. "I have made up my mind. Nothing can stop me but--death."

"There is one other thing that can stop you, and will, m'sieur," said Jan as quietly as before. "I, Jan Th.o.r.eau, will stop you."

Thornton rose slowly, staring down into Jan's face. The flush about his eyes grew deeper.

"I will stop you," repeated Jan, rising also. "And I am not death."