The Magnetic North Part 33

"And yet you nursed the old man and were kind to him, I believe, after the offense."

"I--I thought you had killed him. But even you must see that we cannot have a man received here as Nicholas was--the most favoured child of the mission--who helps to perpetuate the degrading blasphemies of his unhappy race. It's nothing to you; you even encourage--"

"'Pon my soul--" But Brother Paul struck in with an impa.s.sioned earnestness:

"We spend a life-time making Christians of these people; and such as you come here, and in a week undo the work of years."

"I--_I?_"

"It's only eighteen months since I myself came, but already I've seen--" The torrent poured out with never a pause. "Last summer some white prospectors bribed our best native teacher to leave us and become a guide. He's a drunken wreck now somewhere up on the Yukon Flats. You take our boys for pilots, you entice our girls away with trinkets--"

"Great Caesar! _I_ don't."

But vain was protest. For Brother Paul the visitor was not a particular individual. He stood there for the type of the vicious white adventurer.

The sunken eyes of the lay-brother, burning, impersonal, saw not a particular young man and a case compounded of mixed elements, but--The Enemy! against whom night and day he waged incessant warfare.

"The Fathers and Sisters wear out their lives to save these people. We teach them with incredible pains the fundamental rules of civilization; we teach them how to save their souls alive." The Boy had jumped up and laid his hand on the door-k.n.o.b. "_You_ come. You teach them to smoke--"

The Boy wheeled round.

"I don't smoke."

"... and to gamble."

"Nicholas taught _me_ to gamble. Brother Paul, I swear--"

"Yes, and to swear and get drunk, and so find the shortest way to h.e.l.l."

"Father Brachet! Father Wills!" a voice called without.

The door-k.n.o.b turned under the Boy's hand, and before he could more than draw back, a whiff of winter blew into the room, and a creature stood there such as no man looks to find on his way to an Arctic gold camp. A girl of twenty odd, with the face of a saint, dressed in the black habit of the Order of St. Anne.

"Oh, Brother Paul! you are wanted--wanted quickly. I think Catherine is worse; don't wait, or she'll die without--" And as suddenly as she came the vision vanished, carrying Brother Paul in the wake of her streaming veil.

The Boy sat down by the stove, cogitating how he should best set about finding Nicholas to explain the failure of their mission.... What was that? Voices from the other side. The opposite door opened and a man appeared, with Nicholas and his father close behind, looking anything but cast down or decently penitential.

"How do you do?" The white man's English had a strong French accent. He shook hands with great cordiality. "We have heard of you from Father Wills also. These Pymeut friends of ours say you have something to tell me."

He spoke as though this something were expected to be highly gratifying, and, indeed, the cheerfulness of Nicholas and his father would indicate as much.

As the Boy, hesitating, did not accept the chair offered, smiling, the Jesuit went on:

"Will you talk of zis matter--whatever it is--first, or will you first go up and wash, and have our conference after supper?"

"No, thank you--a--Are you the Father Superior?"

He bowed a little ceremoniously, but still smiling.

"I am Father Brachet."

"Oh, well, Nicholas is right. The first thing to do is to explain why we're here."

Was it the heat of the stove after the long hours of cold that made him feel a little dizzy? He put up his hand to his head.

"I have told zem to take hot water upstairs," the Father was saying, "and I zink a gla.s.s of toddy would be a good sing for you." He slightly emphasised the "you," and turned as if to supplement the original order.

"No, no!" the Boy called after him, choking a little, half with suppressed merriment, half with nervous fatigue. "Father Brachet, if you're kind to us, Brother Paul will never forgive you. We're all in disgrace."

"Hein! What?"

"Yes, we're all desperately wicked."

"No, no," objected Nicholas, ready to go back on so tactless an advocate.

"And Brother Paul has just been saying--"

"What is it, what is it?"

The Father Superior spoke a little sharply, and himself sat down in the wooden armchair he before had placed for his white guest.

The three culprits stood in front of him on a dead level of iniquity.

"You see, Father Brachet, Ol' Chief has been very ill--"

"I know. Much as we needed him here, Paul insisted on hurrying back to Pymeut"--he interrupted himself as readily as he had interrupted the Boy--"but ze Ol' Chief looks lively enough."

"Yes; he--a--his spirits have been raised by--a--what you will think an unwarrantable and wicked means."

Nicholas understood, at least, that objectionable word "wicked"

cropping up again, and he was not prepared to stand it from the Boy.

He grunted with displeasure, and said something low to his father.

"Brother Paul found them--found _us_ having a seance with the Shaman."

Father Brachet turned sharply to the natives.

"Ha! you go back to zat."

Nicholas came a step forward, twisting his mittens and rolling his eye excitedly.

"Us no wicked. Shaman say he gottah scare off--" He waved his arm against an invisible army. Then, as it were, stung into plain speaking: "Shaman say _white man_ bring sickness--bring devils--"

"Maybe the old Orang Outang's right."

The Boy drew a tired breath, and sat down without bidding in one of the wooden chairs. What an idiot he'd been not to take the hot grog and the hot bath, and leave these people to fight their foolishness out among themselves! It didn't concern him. And here was Nicholas talking away comfortably in his own tongue, and the Father was answering. A native opened the door and peeped in cautiously.