A Grain of Honesty

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

A GRAIN OF HONESTY

By THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

WHEN Paul Barrington first joined the Wickshire Regiment, he was no wiser and no more foolish, no better and no worse, no brighter and no duller, than dozens of other subaltern officers in the military service of the Empire; but he soon had the misfortune to displease his commanding officer, who was a vain, mean-souled person, given to unreasoning dislikes and petty jealousies. Thereafter Harrington's weaknesses and blunders—which were only the failings of youth—were magnified in the eyes and in the annual confidential reports of the said commanding officer.

In a case of this kind—when a confidential report is unfavourable—it is the duty of the officer making the report to inform the officer reported upon of the nature of his shortcomings. Paul Barrington's commanding officer did this according to the letter, but not the spirit, of the law as laid down in the King's Regulations and Orders. Instead of being kindly, he was sarcastic; instead of being paternal in his manner, he was hostile and overbearing; instead of warning the unfortunate subaltern, and requesting him to buck up, he menaced him, sneered at him, and let his mean and stupid dislike show in his eyes.

Barrington was astonished, puzzled, and grieved when informed of the nature of the first report, which was made at the conclusion of his first year's service. He could not understand the case against him; he could not see what he had done that other subalterns in the regiment were not doing, or what he had left undone that others were not neglecting; he was fairly well up in his work; he had not acted the fool to any very noticeable extent.

However, he was willing to do even better than this. For several weeks he read hard, drank less than usual, played less bridge, made very little noise, and walked abroad with circumspection. The Colonel failed to encourage him by word or look, and his brother-subalterns frankly objected to his new and virtuous ways, so he hit up the pace again. He kept himself well in bounds, however—strained no written or unwritten rules of the Service, and never slacked in his duties. He was simply a trifle frisky, as became his nature and his years.

At the end of Barrington's second year in the regiment, the Colonel informed him that he had again found it his painful duty to report him unfavourably to headquarters. The subaltern was frightened and bewildered; he felt sick and dizzy, and something buzzed so loudly in his ears that he did not hear the other's statement of definite charges. He was about to question and protest, but suddenly glimpsing the icy dislike in the older man's eyes, he understood the hopelessness of his position. His hand was on the handle of the door, when his fear turned suddenly to anger; he swung around, white of face and trembling from head to foot.

"It is not fair! It is a put-up game! You intend to drive me out!" he cried.

Then, choking down his rage with a mighty effort of will, he left the room. Three days later he applied for transfer to another regiment, but the application, blocked in some way by the Colonel, was not granted. At that he lost his head. For a little while he talked a great deal, telling the truth in bitter tones and at the top of his voice; then, too heartsick and disgusted to care for anything, he drank heavily, neglected his work, forgot his manners, and slacked off generally. He ran into debt. Several of his friends tried to steady him, but the Colonel only smiled icily.

At last the third confidential report was issued. That was the finish of Paul Barrington's military career. He was drunk when he packed his boxes; he was drunk when he held an auction in his rooms, and disposed of swords and mess-kits, tunics, belts, and boots; he was too drunk to notice the fact that the good fellows paid more for the things than they had cost him when new; he was drunk when they helped him into the waiting cab. It was a dismal, grey afternoon. The shabby driver cracked his whip, and that was the last of Paul Barrington, as far as the regiment and the Service were concerned.

II.

Lieutenant-Colonel Maul had been in command of the regiment only four years when he came into a snug fortune, and immediately retired from the service of his King and country. He was in his fiftieth year at the time. He had no wife, and was by way of being a sportsman. July of the year 1907 found him on a Labrador river, fishing for salmon. The fish were large and hungry, but so were the black flies and mosquitoes. Maul had been outfitted at the little Hudson Bay Company post at the mouth of the river, and had made the journey up-stream in a big canvas canoe of the Hudson Bay model, accompanied by two guides, "Sandy" McDuff and Pierre Jumeau, both half-breeds, despite their names.

The Colonel had pale grey, fishy eyes, which often offended even when no offence was intended. He was constitutionally rude and snappish; and, being somewhat stupid, he made the mistake of carrying into the wilderness the mannerisms of the orderly room. He had about as much tact as a fly on a freshly buttered pancake, and he was cursed with a fly's propensity to put his foot in it. You may be sure that the factor at the mouth of the river lost no time in outfitting him and starting him up-stream.

The fishing was good, but no one would have judged so from the way the Colonel sniffed and sneered and fussed. He ate three square meals a day, and cursed the food and the cooking. He sneered at the river, and fished like a glutton. Sandy McDuff and Pierre Jumeau said nothing, after the manner of their kind; but one fine morning they arose before dawn, launched the big canoe, and drifted away with the current. They were just too danged sick of Colonel Maul to associate with him another minute. They reached the post before noon of the next day, explained their feelings and their action to the factor in a few sullen words and a dozen gestures, and listened to his retort and comment in silence.

"Now, you can get back as quick as the devil will let you, and bring the Colonel out," concluded the factor.

They shook their heads.

"Then you don't get a cent of pay for the two weeks you've been with me," the factor threatened.

Sandy McDuff cursed the pay, and Pierre nodded concurrence. So the factor, who knew the kind of men he had to deal with, let it go at that, and sent two Indians up the river for the deserted Colonel. The Indians returned after eight days, but without the Colonel. They had not been able to find him. They had brought out the tent and provisions, however. The factor reflected for an hour. He knew that his men were honest.

"Wolves, like as not," he remarked at last. "Anyhow, the less said the soonest mended."

III.

On the morning of his desertion by the half-breed guides the Colonel had awakened at sunrise, and, looking at his watch, shouted to know if breakfast was ready. He repeated the question, this time with a curse at the end of it. No answer. He threw aside his blankets and crawled to the flap of the tent. The first thing that caught his eye was the dead fire—a mound of grey and black ashes encircled by charred butts of burned-out sticks. He shouted to the unseen guides by name, and held forth at length upon the worthlessness of all guides and servants in general and of half-breeds in particular. A big, ash-grey jay screamed in a near-by tree, fragments of his able discourse were shaken back to him from the woods on the far side of the river, but the guides remained silent and unseen. Then the angry and bewildered Colonel noticed for the first time the absence of the canoe.

He spent the day fuming up and down the shore near the camp, shouting for Pierre and Sandy, and scorching his fingers in attempts to cook food. Toward evening his spirits began to sink, and doubt assailed him. He ceased his cursing and fell into a train of moody reflections. He blistered his hands with chopping wood for the fire. He burned some bacon, boiled some tea, and sat down to the worst meal that it had ever been his misfortune to encounter—and the first one of his own cooking. After that he filled his pipe and heaped wood on the fire.

"I'll wait right here for a few days," he said. "I'll give the bally fools time to recover their senses and come back for me. If they don't turn up in three or four days, I'll walk down to the post, though I imagine it will be hard walking. Heavens, won't those breeds catch it!"

It must have been close upon nine o'clock when the Colonel was startled by a voice hailing him from beyond the black river. For a second he cringed and caught at his breath in senseless fear, as if a ghost had tickled the nape of his neck, for it is a disquieting thing to hear an unexpected voice crying to one at night out of an unpeopled wilderness. But the Colonel recovered quickly, sprang to his feet, flung more wood upon the fire, and moved down toward the edge of the river. He felt sure that it was one of his guides who had called to him. His spirits soared again, his doubts vanished, and his nasty temper expanded.

"So you've come back, have you, you dirty, thieving bounders?" he shouted. "You funked it, did you? Didn't quite see a way to leave me here and draw your wages, too!"

"Who the devil are you, and what are you kicking about?" inquired the voice from the other shore, and it suddenly dawned upon the Colonel that it was not the voice of Sandy or Pierre. He was flabbergasted for a moment.

"I thought you were one of my men," he cried. "They cleared out this morning with my canoe. Come over, will you, and be quick about it. My name is Maul—Lieutenant-Colonel H. P. F. Maul."

The silence which followed this announcement lasted several minutes. The Colonel, waiting there in the dark beside the swift river, grew anxious.

"Well, what's the matter with you now?" he asked.

"I'm coming," replied the voice from the other shore.

There was a chill in the night air; the sky and world were black with a looming, crowding, menacing blackness; the muffled, swishing slobber of the river suggested strangling pools and drifting horrors; the voice of the stranger sounded flat and distant, as the voice of a dead man might sound. The Colonel shivered, though he was a person of very limited imagination. Soon he heard the dip of a paddle, then the impact of a canoe's bow against the shingle. He saw the stranger, a black shape in the dark, stooping to lift the canoe out of the water.

"What's your name?" he asked steadily enough. "Are you a sportsman, or a native of this God-forsaken country?"

"Smith is my name," replied the other, stepping close on moccasined feet. "I live here, but I wasn't born here."

The Colonel led the way up to the fire. He tried unsuccessfully to obtain a fair view of the stranger's face in the flickering light. All that he could be sure of was that the fellow was white and wore a scraggy beard. He invited him to sit down and, if he was hungry, to cook himself something to eat. The stranger sat down on a blanket in the shadow of the high-drifting smoke. He said he was not hungry.

"What were you doing over there, Smith?" queried the Colonel, waving a hand toward the other side of the river.

"Just made camp," replied Smith. "Looking for a place to build a winter shack."

"What will you charge for taking me down to the post?"

"Nothing."

"Really, that is very good of you. You seem to be a superior sort of person."

"Don't mention it," said the stranger.

The Colonel crawled into his little tent, rolled himself in his blankets, and fell asleep, leaving Smith to shift for himself beside the fire.

It was still dark when the Colonel awoke. The sound of running water was all about him. A childish panic caught at his heart.

"Where am I?" he cried.

He lifted his hands from his lap, and felt that they were bound at the wrists. Terror gripped him the terror of the night and the vast unknown.

"Where am I?" he screamed.

"You are in my canoe," answered the voice of the stranger.

"But why? Where are we going? Why did you start at night, and why are my hands bound?"

"You have the reputation of a dangerous fellow, so I thought it safer to tie you up."

"You are using a pole! You are going up-stream!"

"My camp is up-stream."

"Your camp? I don't want to go to your camp. I want to get down to the post. You'll pay for this, I promise you!"

"I have already paid for it. Sit still, or I'll tap you over the head with a paddle!"

The Colonel swore manfully, but he sat still. At last he said—

"I left my money with Fisher, at the post, and I left my gold watch there, too. You'll find poor pickings, Smith."

"I don't want your money or your watch," replied Smith.

"Then what in thunder do you want?"

"Only your delightful company, my bold Colonel. I want to know you better."

"Better! You son of a blubber-chewer, you don't know me at all! Oh, I promise you a bellyful of acquaintance in return for this! Just wait till I get out, and I'll make you hop for this!"

Smith laughed unpleasantly.

At last a grey dawn flooded the eastern sky and struck pale and cold upon the dreary river. Smith ran the canoe ashore, stepped out, then turned and dragged Colonel Maul over the gunwale. He threw out his spare pole and paddles, his axe, rifle, sleeping-bag, and provisions. The light, strengthening every moment, now showed a tinge of gold. The woodsman lifted the canoe from the water. Then he unbound the Colonel's hands and feet. Their eyes met, and the morning light was on their faces. The Colonel's expression of rage changed to one of puzzled astonishment. Smith remarked it and smiled.

"Shoulder the canoe," he said. "We have a half-mile portage to make here. Look sharp about it!"

The Colonel failed to grasp the meaning of the words.

"One moment," he said. "I have seen you before. Where was it, and when? Smith? There are so many Smiths."

"Shoulder the canoe," repeated the woodsman. "Look sharp, or I'll lose my temper. Hustle, you miserable, mean-souled cad!"

"Barrington!" cried the other, retreating a step.

The woodsman pointed to the canoe. The Colonel laughed weakly.

"We can't stand here all day," said Paul Barrington. "Shoulder the canoe!"

"You—you are the last man in the world whom I expected to meet!" exclaimed the Colonel, with a brave attempt at composure.

"I believe you," said the other, sneering. "Do you intend to carry that canoe, or don't you?"

"Oh, I say, Barrington, don't—don't push the joke too far!" protested the Colonel.

Then Barrington jumped forward, flung his one-time commanding officer to the ground, and thrashed him with a paddle of rock maple. He swung the paddle with both hands. The Colonel staggered to his feet twice, only to fall each time beneath the shower of blows.

"Now you're not fit to carry the canoe," remarked Barrington. "Pick up that bag of grub and move along!"

Maul stood up slowly and painfully, and turned. His face was livid with fury. "I'm no man's servant!" he cried. "Carry your own blasted bag, confound you!"

Barrington swung his right fist on to the point of the Colonel's chin. The Colonel staggered, but came back. He was heavier than his one-time subaltern, but after five minutes of slug-as-slug-can, Barrington knelt upon the Colonel's chest and bound him again at wrist and ankle.

"Now lie there. I'll tote you around last of all."

Then he shouldered the canoe and went up the rugged path which led to quiet waters beyond the smoking falls. He returned in half an hour, made a pack of pole, paddles, and grub bag, shouldered it, and set out again on the portage. Half an hour later he was back again.

"Will you walk it, Maul, or do you want me to tote you?" he asked.

"Be reasonable, Barrington," pleaded the Colonel. "This is a civilised age in which we live. Sell me a canoe and let me go back to the post, and I promise to say nothing of the way you have treated me. I swear to keep it quiet."

"Will you walk, or must I carry you?"

"Don't be a fool, for Heaven's sake! Why do you want to take me up-river? I don't want to go. You must be mad!"

"I want you to visit me at my camp. I want to know you better."

"See here, Mr. Barrington, I'm a rich man now. I'll pay you one hundred dollars if you'll take me down to the post."

Barrington sneered.

"Five hundred," said the Colonel.

"Do you think I'd sell a chance like this for five hundred dollars? No, not for five thousand. This is the time I drain my heart of the bitterness that has been boiling there for two years. Heavens, man, do you think I am such a fool as to sell a chance like this? Will you walk, or must I shoulder you?"

"If—if you think I ever did you an injury, Barrington, I assure you that it was absolutely unintentional."

"Decide between walking and being carried, or I may unintentionally beat you up again with the paddle."

"What do you mean to do with me?"

"That's my business."

"Do you intend to murder me?"

"I hardly think it will come to that."

"For Heaven's sake, Barrington, don't forget that you were once an officer and a gentleman!"

"On the contrary, I shall have the pleasure of reminding myself of it frequently."

The Colonel was in a blue funk. Barrington freed his feet and hands, and without a word he staggered forward up the rough trail. It was a half-mile portage. Once the Colonel glanced over his shoulder.

"Don't worry about me," said Barrington. "I have the rifle."

They launched the canoe above the falls. Maul sat in the bow, facing Barrington, who stood in the stern, with a pole in his hands, and the rifle leaning against the bar in front of him. The canoe crawled slowly up the swift river. The Colonel tortured his mind for some plan of escape. His mean soul trembled within him.

"If you were honest, I think I might feel sorry for you," said Barrington suddenly, breaking a silence that had lasted nearly an hour, "but you are so rottenly dishonest that you cheat even yourself."

The Colonel kept his mouth shut, fearful of exciting the young man to renewed violence. He ached from neck to heel, and one of his pale eyes was puffed and discoloured.

"Why did you do it?" demanded the woodsman.

"What?" queried Maul.

"Drive me out of the Service—ruin my career?"

"Be reasonable, Barrington, I beg you. I did nothing more than my duty."

Barrington cried out at that, and looked up at the cold, blue sky as if calling upon God to give ear.

"If he had but a grain of honesty!" he cried. "Even a grain of honesty might save him!"

For another mile or so he forged upon the bending pole in silence, pushing the canoe up against the swift water foot by foot. Then, "I'll show you what a dirty, lying little soul you have, if it takes me ten years!" he cried.

"Barrington, my dear fellow, if you think that I did you an intentional injury, you are grievously mistaken," said the Colonel feebly.

The other gazed at him fixedly with disgust and pity in his eyes.

"You are a poor thing," he said—"vain, mean, dishonest, unjust, and cowardly."

At noon they landed, and Barrington ordered the Colonel to chop wood and make a fire. The Colonel did as he was told, but in so fumbling a manner that the woodsman cursed him and kicked him. Then he was set to frying bacon. After dinner he was forced to clean the frying-pan and tin plates. They worked up-stream all afternoon, and made camp shortly after sunset. Again the Colonel chopped wood and fried bacon. After supper they smoked, in a dangerous silence, until nine o'clock. Then Barrington got to his feet and produced the two pieces of rope with which the Colonel's hands and feet had been bound.

"Now I must tie you up for the night," he said.

Colonel Maul resisted, and was knocked about for his trouble. He was securely bound and rolled in his blankets by a quarter past nine.

In the morning the Colonel again did the guide work, the squaw work. They crawled up the river about three miles, then turned into the mouth of a narrow and shallow tributary stream. The gravel bars were dry and almost fenced the stream in many places, and so there was a great deal of wading and pulling to be done. The Colonel did the wading and pulling. They reached Barrington's headquarters before noon. Here, in a tiny clearing among the spruces, stood a small log cabin and a smaller storehouse.

"What is your object in bringing me to this place?" asked the Colonel. "And how long do you intend to keep me here?"

"Shut up! I am sick of your silly questions," returned Barrington heartlessly.

After they had opened up the shack and eaten, Barrington picked up two axes and led the Colonel into the woods. He pointed to a spruce.

"But the palms of my hands are raw," protested the Colonel, displaying them.

"Mine were worse than that," said Barrington.

So the Colonel set to work on one tree, and Barrington on another. The woodsman's tree was the first to fall. As it struck the moss, Barrington glanced quickly at his companion. The Colonel had stepped back and aside from his own tree, and stood with the axe swung behind his right shoulder, ready to throw. As their eyes met, the Colonel flung the axe hard and straight, accompanied by an oath. Barrington jumped to the left, avoiding the gleaming wedge of steel by half a second of time. The Colonel turned and bolted. Barrington overtook him before he got to the river, threw him down, dragged him back to the camp, and thrashed him with the paddle of rock maple.

The summer passed. The Colonel's hands healed and his figure improved. He became an expert cook, a skilled axeman, and a fair canoeman. Barrington continued to drive him hard, but, instead of binding his hands and feet every night, Barrington now chained him to his bunk by one ankle. The Colonel had found no second opportunity to throw an axe. As for firearms, he never saw them except in Barrington's hands. The first frost came to the wilderness. Then came ice and snow. Traps were set in lines that extended for miles from the lonely camp. The Colonel continued to try to argue his case, sometimes twice in a week, sometimes thrice, and Barrington continued to beat him for his trouble. Barrington himself did not make any mention of the past from the day of arriving at the camp until the middle of January.

On the morning of November 10 the Colonel ran away. He wandered in the desolation of snow and black brush until mid-afternoon; then, cursing his faint heart and the hopelessness of his position, he retraced his steps to the camp. It was dark when he reached the cabin. He stood outside the door for several minutes, afraid to open it. At last he pulled it open and slunk across the threshold.

"Supper is ready," said Barrington, glancing up from the little stove.

The Colonel was astonished. He removed his blanket coat and ate his supper. He filled his pipe, then laid it aside.

"For Heaven's sake, thrash me and get it over with!" he cried.

"Why should I thrash you for losing yourself in the woods?" asked Barrington.

The Colonel gazed at him anxiously and swallowed hard on the fear and self-pity that caught in his throat like a lump.

"I wasn't lost," he said. "I tried to run away."

Barrington looked at him for a long time.

"It is not an easy place to run away from," he said quietly. "But light your pipe, will you, and shut up."

Trapping is not as easy as it sounds. The Colonel was worked like a slave. When he did well, nothing was said. When he did ill, he was sworn at and knocked about. He continued occasionally to make rash attempts to explain his position in the matter of the confidential reports, and Barrington continued to silence him with a billet of stovewood or whatever weapon lay nearest to hand.

"Do you remember the evening of the fifth day after I joined the regiment?" asked Barrington one night, as they sat smoking before the stove.

"I—I am afraid not," replied the Colonel humbly.

"We played four or five rubbers of bridge," said Barrington. "You accused me of making a blunder, and I pointed out, to everybody's satisfaction, that you had made the blunder."

"I—I think I remember something about it."

"That was the beginning of it." Barrington turned his head and stared keenly at his companion. "Do you deny the statement that I would still be in the regiment if I had not argued with you that night?"

"You mean—that I allowed that incident to influence my—my judgment—my attitude toward you?" queried the Colonel nervously.

"That's what I mean. Do you deny it?"

"For Heaven's sake, don't—don't be violent!"

"I am asking you a question."

"I can't deny it."

"You admit it?"

"Yes, although I swear that I did not realise it at the time. I—I beg your pardon, Barrington."

"I am afraid that won't reinstate me in the regiment," said the woodsman bitterly. "However, we'll say no more about it."

The Colonel awoke at midnight. He moved his legs. He sat up suddenly and felt his right ankle with his hands. The chain was not there. For a long time he sat there, staring into the dark. At last he lay down, pulled his blankets well up to his neck, sighed, and fell asleep.

IV.

Paul Barrington and the Colonel took their pelts out in April, dragging them down the frozen river on hand sleds.

"Is it Colonel Maul?" cried the factor, in astonishment. "Man, I thought the wolves had got you!"

The Colonel smiled.

"After my guides deserted me, I ran across Barrington," he said. "We used to know each other in England. Queer chance, wasn't it? We have had a successful winter."

The factor laughed, glancing from the Colonel to Barrington, and back to the Colonel.

"I thought of that, too," he said, "but it didn't work out just that way in my head. I got an idea. Colonel, that maybe you were the same Colonel that Barrington once told me about when he first came to this country. Do you remember that night, Barrington, when you told me about the skunk who had driven you out of the Army and disgraced you? How you worked me up! I was ripe for murder that night! Well, do you know, I began to think over what you had told me, and, after a while, I had a fine story made up of how Colonel Maul might be the same Colonel who bad ruined your career, Barrington—you didn't tell me his name, you know—and I guessed that he had gone up into your country, and you'd got hold of him and shot him dead."

"Which is just what some men would have done," said the Colonel, turning away and staring hard at a pile of red blankets on the counter of the Company's store.

"That fellow was quite another Colonel," said Barrington, placing his hand on Maul's shoulder. "That one was my enemy, and Colonel Maul is my friend."

"I should think he must be, to spend half a summer and a whole winter up on Kill Devil Brook with you," said the honest factor.