The Law-bringers/Chapter 18

by G. B. Lancaster

 

CHAPTER XVIII

"THE EPITOME OF LIFE"

"A la claire fontaine
M'en allant promener;
J'ai trouver l' eau si belle
Que je m'y suis baigne."

The strong, soft voice died out as the passing breed swung by on his snow-shoes through the clear, frosty night. Slicker turned back from the window with the hard lines of his young face softened too. But he did not cross the room where, at one end of the table, the men of the Split Lake Detachment were gathered in a mist of tobacco-smoke and a silence broken only by the curt sentences as the cards went round. Slicker was one of the four at that table usually; but a prospector passing through to the North had taken his place to-night, and so Slicker had stood at the window and heard the breed sing and felt a wave of home-sickness for the old life with Jennifer and Dick and Tempest in it.

For three months now he had known this Split Lake life; and to him it had been a time of stagnation and of numbing ideals. He had expected so much from the call to which he had answered; knowing as he did the work at Grey Wolf, the stern self-denial and the long hours of labour on an under-manned, difficult post. Slicker had prepared himself for that. He was ardent for self-sacrifice. He was ready to die on the trail if need be for the glory of service. He was eager to serve nobly and with his whole heart. And Life had required of him another test than this. It had sent him to one for which he was ill-prepared and ill-fitted. It had sent him to a lonely post where the only give-and-take of thought was from these men at the table; where there was little work to do and less to see and less still to think about. This detachment was a integral part of the whole: it guarded a line; it made a nucleus for a mighty tract of country. But few people passed that line—few came on to it from the country. It was there as a warning and a promise, but it had few chances of fulfilling either.

When the winter wood was drawn and cut; when the walls, were muddied-up, and the sleds overhauled, and a few more necessary things done, work was at a dead-lock—until something happened. And things did not often happen at Split Lake. The other men accepted the stagnation contentedly enough. They slept a good deal, they smoked, and they played cards; and, according to Cordy's assertion, they "pegged along very comfortably." But for Slicker with his young high heart and his aspirations the life was purgatory. He puckered his brows, looking at the men with a kind of hate. He was so tired of them: of little Hopper, the Sergeant, morose and nervous and with a curious dread of being left alone; of the dull, stupid Smith, with his limited, coarse thoughts; even of Cordy, the light-hearted gentleman who was his one friend and who was always full of laughing regrets that he could not cease to dress and move like a man of the London Clubs. Slicker wondered idly why Cordy had ever come away from them; why he didn't go back. And then, suddenly, he saw Hopper, the nervous little Sergeant, who was playing on Cordy's right, thrust his chair back and stand up.

"I've had enough," he said, in that uncertainly defiant voice of his. "There's some kinds of luck a man can't play against."

Smith looked up with a whistle of amaze, but the man on Cordy's left sat still. If Hopper was his host, so was Cordy. Cordy swept up the cards.

"Perhaps you'll have better luck next time," he said pleasantly.

"There won't be a next time." Hopper gripped the chair-back fiercely, and Slicker came forward in a hurry. He felt as though the hinted accusation had been flung at himself. But Cordy was untroubled. He lifted his eye-brows.

"Just as you like, of course," he said. "Hallo, Slicker, you take a hand?"

"Don't you. Unless you got more money than you want to keep."

"Oh I say," said Slicker, and turned from Hopper's scarlet face to Cordy, expecting to see the anger that he knew was in his own eyes. But Cordy laughed, although there was a dull flush on his cheeks.

"Losers are allowed some latitude," he said. "I'm sorry, Hopper, but you can't win every time. Just see what your luck last night has done to your temper!"

"We were not playing for such big stakes last night."

"Lord, man; you don't call these big stakes! Don't be sarcastic. Coming, Slicker?"

A moment Slicker hesitated. Then he slipped into Hopper's chair, and Hopper turned and walked out of the room sharply. The game went on, and Cordy's easy manner soon brushed the restraint off it. But Slicker played badly. He felt vaguely outraged; not so much at the accusation as at the fact that Cordy did not seem to resent it. For his own honour, for the honour of the Force, for the honour of this little post itself, Cordy ought have resented it before this quiet-eyed, observant civilian who lost his money with such equanimity. Slicker had worked himself into acute indignation by the time the evening was done, and Cordy had cheerfully seen the prospector into his room down the passage and had come back to turn the lamp out. Smith was gone; but Slicker sat at the table with his blue eyes alight and that square look on his jaw which Cordy had come to know. He went straight to his point.

"Why didn't you give Hopper the lie just now?" he demanded.

Cordy yawned. But there was an unpleasant look in his eyes.

"This life imposes bonds considerably tighter than the marriage-bond, my dear boy," he said. "I have probably got to live with Hopper for the next few years and he is my boss."

"Will it improve the situation to have him think you a cheat?"

"My dear Slicker!" Cordy laughed, but his cheeks took their dull flesh again. "You haven't learnt the graces of speech yet. Why, of course, it will improve it. Hopper will bear anything better than contradiction. And how could I disabuse his mind except by my fists? I don't want to go out of here in irons."

"If you'd given him your word of honour he'd have had to believe you!"

Cordy glanced at him sharply. There was something of envy and of pain in the quickly-veiled eyes. He knew, and Hopper knew, why he did not offer his word of honour. And Hopper knew, as he knew, that the matter would have to blow over simply because these lonely men dared not make their daily life intolerable. Cordy registered a determination that Hopper should be his partner for a few times when a fellow came by who was worth fleecing. That would shut Hopper's mouth if nothing else would. He yawned again.

"Oh, my dear boy, what do these louts know about a word of honour?" he said. Then he laughed softly, drawing up his coat as he stood before the stove. "That reminds me of a funny story that happened to a chap I knew in England." He paused, with light raillery in his eyes. "I don't know if you're old enough to hear it," he added.

Slicker fingered his lip where the soft down was already beginning to part itself into a moustache. This touched him on the quick as Cordy knew.

"Go on," he said surlily. And he laughed when it was told; for it was very funny, and Cordy's subtle delineations flattered his raw manhood. But he went to bed more uneasy than he cared to allow. That little song had in some way brought Jennifer and Tempest very clearly into his mind. And he did not care to think of them in connection with Cordy.

For several days the thought of Tempest possessed him. He knew, of course, that Tempest was at Churchill and that he would probably come out as soon as he Was fit. He realised that of late he had not been very anxious to see Tempest again, and with that straight courage which seldom failed him he sought the reason and found it. He did not want to have Cordy tell Tempest that he and Slicker were such good chums. And he knew just exactly how Cordy would say it, too. This matter kept him sulky; until he found a solution where nine-tenths of humanity finds it, in a compromise. He could not quarrel with Cordy. That would be absurd; besides, the old fellow was really such awfully good company. And he could not tell him that his way of looking at life was not elevating. Cordy had seen much more of life than Slicker, and he would think Slicker a fool. No; he could not behave differently to Cordy, but he would not let what Cordy said hurt him. "A fellow can laugh at a joke without approving of it," he told himself.

But when Tempest came Slicker was taken unawares For Cordy groaned.

"Don't you think it's likely to be—well—to be a little dull to-night?" he asked. "I wouldn't say anything against the Inspector, of course. But he will inspect more than our kits and our teeth, won't he? Have you got your soul cleaned up, Slicker?"

"Tempest doesn't preach," said Slicker, but he reddened.

"Oh, my dear boy, no. He's a gentleman, of course. But can't you just see how Tempest, the immaculate, will look on us, the erring ones. He won't say anything, of course; but he'll purse his mouth up and shake his head inside himself at our card-playing. I'm going to take the very shirt off you to-night, Slicker. But I'll let you have it back to-morrow. As philosophers, you know, we are bound to meet circumstances as cheerfully as we can."

"Tempest plays cards himself," said Slicker.

"Cribbage," suggested Cordy. "Or is it patience, Slicker?"

Slicker laughed with him, although he felt the treachery to Tempest. But he went away thinking that perhaps Tempest was a little—well, not exactly the sort of fellow one would set out to have a jolly time with. And Cordy was.

But Cordy had made a miscalculation when he asserted that Tempest would not say anything. Acting on this belief he forced animal spirits to take the place of the drink which was debarred at the detachment, and in a little while he heard Tempest come down the passage which separated the mess-room from Hooper's quarters. Tempest stood in the door, smiling at Slicker, who, stripped to shirt and trousers and with his hair wild, was attempting to sand-bag Cordy as the elder man dodged and feinted and doubled. There was considerable skill shown by both, and Tempest dropped into a chair and watched them. It was against strict etiquette, but he had known Slicker so well once. He had been in a little earlier in the evening, waiting for Hooper to finish a game of cards, and he looked on now with a very much clearer knowledge of Cordy than Cordy imagined. And neither he nor Hopper guessed why Tempest had insisted that the Sergeant should finish his game. Nor why Tempest came back now.

They were exhausted presently, and Tempest made them sit down and talk. He had not seen Slicker since the boy had worn the khaki and he chaffed him about it, good-naturedly and cleverly enough to make Cordy laugh once. In some way this astonished Slicker. He was coming to look on stronger meat as the only possible material for jokes. And that Cordy should laugh raised his opinion of Tempest considerably. But the real mischief in Cordy which had enabled him to weather all the winds that buffeted him was his undoing very presently. Slicker never quite remembered at what point of the conversation he felt Tempest look at him; look again, and finally break in on Cordy's easy-flowing speech.

"Slicker," he said, "I wish you'd ask the Sergeant if my kit has been taken to my room. And I'm going to ask you to unpack it for me. I can't do much stooping yet."

What Tempest said to Cordy after the door was shut Slicker never knew in the least, for Cordy showed no after-signs of it. But what Tempest said to Slicker himself Slicker knew very certainly. Tempest had an apt directness of speech on some occasions.

"I am going to use a very unpleasant simile, Slicker," he said; "and I am using it because I think it more appropriate than any other. There are many men and animals which are attracted by vile smells and tastes—high game, rotten cheese, asafœtida, and all that kind of thing. Those are the physical attractions. Animals—we say unfortunately for them, but there may be some doubts about that—cannot be attracted on the mental side as men must be—and are. Your friend Cordy is mentally attracted by mental Bombay ducks and putrid game. I won't add garlic; that's a healthy smell, though I don't like it myself."

Slicker wriggled in his chair, but his manner suggested that he had expected something of this sort and was indifferent to it. Tempest looked at him narrowly.

"How long have you been here, Slicker?" he asked.

"Four months," said Slicker sulkily.

"And Cordy is the only friend you've got?"

"There's no one else."

"No. There's no one else, I suppose. I wonder if you remember anything of what I said that day in Grey Wolf when you asked me if you should join the Force?"

"Yes. But—but I say, Tempest " Slicker forgot his rank and uniform—"a fellow can't stay a kid all his life. I've got to do as men do when I'm with them, you know."

"Do I? But why not make them do as you do?"

This was a new thought to Slicker. He stared.

"I couldn't," he said.

"You mean that you have not enough character; not enough initiative, or brain, or common-sense?"

This was not pretty, put into words. Slicker reddened, standing still.

"Poor old fellow," said Tempest. "It isn't easy, is it? But you didn't expect ease when you gave yourself to us."

"I don't want ease," burst out Slicker. "I want work, and there's nothing to do here. That's the—the damnable part of it all. There's nothing to do and nothing to drink, and so I fool around with Cordy. I can't help it."

"Well," said Tempest, "you remember our motto, don't you? We maintain the right over a fairly big jurisdiction—several million square miles. But that's not so much to be proud of if we can't maintain it over ourselves. I don't know if there are many men fit to preach to other men on that exact point. I'm not. We all have some special place where we fail most, Slicker, and it will probably trip us more or less all our lives. But because a fellow has fallen over a stone he is not debarred from shouting a warning to the fellow behind. I have no right to do more than shout the warning. But you'll allow me that, won't you?"

"I wish to goodness I'd been put somewhere under you."

"That woudn't be very much use. We can't do such a tremendous lot for each other, old fellow. And if we try we perhaps make things worse."

He was thinking of something which had been done to himself under the name of help. Slicker saw the shade on his face, and the crust of these latter days split through completely.

"You know—sometimes when I used to hear you and Jennifer yarning about all kinds of things—or when you used to get on to Dick, and the old beggar would smoke and grin quietly till he had you up on your feet—then I felt that I—that I wanted to—to go out and do some of the big things that fellows did in the old days. I did really, Tempest. And now—to have nothing to do. It's knocked the bottom out of all my ideas. It's a rotten life."

"There's the army that pushes the trail through into the enemy's country, and there are the details who guard the line. They are of equal importance." Tempest smiled. "You may not have to be a detail for long," he said. "But if you are you must remember that you're necessary or you wouldn't be here. I mentioned to Cordy that he wasn't exactly the man I'd choose for an intimate friend, and he may profit by the hint or he may take his revenge out of you. But more probably he won't do either. I'm going straight to Regina now, and I'll see what I can do there. But if I can't do anything, you remember, Slicker, that Cordy is better as an enemy than as a friend." Tempest screwed his face up as though he tasted something unpleasant. "He's a highly-specialised and refined beast," he said. "And they're the worst sort. I hate to know that there are such fellows in the Force. It gives some people a chance to call us a refuge for derelicts; though, thank Heaven, I don't think there are many like him."

Tempest did not forget his promise when he came to report to the Commissioner at Regina three weeks later. He touched on the matter lightly, with an apology.

"For the boy joined on my recommendation," he said. "And he's a clever boy. I think he may be worth a good deal to us if he has a fair start. He has a temperament which takes up some things very enthusiastically."

"Then he probably won't stay with us. The work is not what it was when J was on patrol. Too much sentry-go and too little whiskey-smuggling and raiding to please the men. Isn't that so?"

"Why, certainly—in some cases." Tempest thought of Dick. "But I believe young Warriner would want to stay if he had more to do."

"Well, I'll make a note of it. Perhaps I can move him. You say that one of the men is a bad companion for him?"

"Undoubtedly. I shouldn't wonder if you had trouble with him later. Other parts of the world have possibly had trouble with him already."

"I'll make a note of that, too." The Commissioner turned from the subject with relief. " You are not quite strong yet? I notice that you limp a little. It started from a fall, did it?"

"The rheumatism settled in my hip. But I'll be all right once the warm weather comes. Yes; it was a fall. I ricked myself."

"Ah! I want to put you in charge of the MacKenzie District, Tempest. Channing has resigned, and he comes out this summer. You'll get your furlough first, of course. But if the doctor won't pass you I don't quite know what I'm going to do."

"He will pass me," said Tempest quietly.

He sat silent for a minute, trying to brace himself for the next thing which he wanted to say. Andree was seldom long away from his thoughts; but as he got nearer Regina she filled them up with a completeness which was absolute torture. Sight of the familiar little chapel and the prison across the barrack square had made him giddy with the flood of realisation. Was Andree now shut in Fort Saskatchewan prison? Had she met her death there, or did she live still? His love for her was now protection and pity only; but the memory of what had been was sharp. He turned in his chair with his face from the light.

"Corporal Heriot brought out some more information about the Robison-Ogilvie case," he said. "Has it been followed up!"

The Commissioner frowned.

"That is the worst case we have had in the Force," he said. "I hate to think of it. We have hanged an innocent man, and the girl who is responsible for the two deaths has gone off to the North somewhere. I sent Heriot after her once, and he'll get her if anyone can. But I don't expect to hear any more for a long while yet. She had about two months' start."

Tempest had schooled himself to hear something which would hurt. But not all his self-control was quite sufficient. The Commissioner looked up.

"You knew something about her, too, did you? I remember that Heriot was very averse to going. Had he—but that is no business of mine. I told him not to come back without her, and he is too keen on his work to fail."

Tempest stood up, smiling a little.

"No. I don't expect that he will fail," he said. "And I must ask you to excuse me, sir. I'm sleeping at the Ferrar's to-night, and they have people coming for dinner, so I'll have to go round and borrow some clothes. I have only my kit here."

But he walked across the square to the married officers' quarters and up to his room in Ferrar's house without thinking any more about the clothes. He did not quite know what he thought until he caught his eyes asking him the question from the mirror. It was chiefly the eyes which told how Tempest had suffered. The eager glow in them was quenched, and the steady light which shone instead kept its gravity, even when he smiled. There were a few white threads in the thick hair, and the temporal arteries showed more clearly. But the wind-tanned, muscle-hard face held its fine lines still, and his mouth had not lost its sweetness.

"Dick!" he said to the eyes in the mirror. "Dick!"

He sat down, hiding his face in his hands, shaking with the rebellion against life which swept over him. He judged Dick as more merciless, more indifferent, more wilfully cruel than he really was, and for the moment he hated most fiercely the man who had been his friend and whom he loved still, as he knew that Dick loved him. Dick would not fail. He would bring Andree back to that justice which had waited her over-long. And Andree loved him. Tempest did not dare let himself think for many minutes on that flight and the return. He got up and went out through the grey chill dusk to borrow a mess suit from Charteris or Bayne or someone else.

Charteris could not lend, because he also was going to dinner at the Ferrar's; but he arranged the matter for Tempest, insisted on his dressing at the Bachelor Quarters, and walked over with him afterwards. Charteris was a good-natured, obtuse man with a tendency to spread himself over the affairs of others, and he made the conversation at table more personal than Tempest desired. He had just been East for his leave, and had stayed with Tempest's people, and he did not forget it.

"They'll never let you come back a bachelor, Tempest," he said. "There's your sister engaged and Lloyd married, and young Stuart thinking about it. You will have to take the plunge some day, you know. Ferrars can tell you that it isn't as bad as it's supposed to be."

"Ferrars had a special inducement." Tempest turned to Mrs. Ferrars with his smiling courtesy. "And also a good deal of conceit. There is no other occasion on which a man needs such a good opinion of himself, is there?"

"Except in the dock. It's marvellous how nerve will carry a fellow through them. Does anyone remember that case of young Claverley——"

"We have all forgotten it, Charteris," said Ferrars blandly. "And we are not going to be pilloried for our ignorance. It would be quite as hopeless as discussing the Balkan trouble or the reason why so many men prefer death in an aeroplane to life on the earth."

"Or a year's isolation round the rim of the Pole to city comforts. How long since you have eaten with a silver fork or drunk wine, Tempest?"

"I forget. But I have borne those deprivations with much greater equanimity than I bore the loss of my razor when a breed upset all my dunnage in Pelican Rapids. It's awful how a man accustomed to a smooth face loses his self-respect when he can't shave for weeks at a time."

The pretty girl at Tempest's side looked up at him. Mrs. Ferrars had placed her there in order that she should.

"Fancy thinking of that in such a strenuous life. How wonderful you are," she sighed.

"I know," admitted Tempest. "But so few people recognise it. I have to be Bowdlerised for ordinary conversation, you see."

"He means that the person who hasn't been there only understands and commends us for the obvious things," interpreted Bolton, who was an Inspector himself. "And they are never the things that are of any consequence."

"Oh," murmured a soft voice on Tempest's other side, "Clothes, for instance."

"My dear Christine," Mrs. Ferrars laughed. "We women and our ideas don't count on the outside edges of things."

"I mean to count," said Christine. She glanced up at Tempest with a spark of challenge in her dark eyes. "Are sweethearts and wives among the deprivations which you men of the police can bear with equanimity?" she demanded.

Tempest knew her for the wife of a young Englishman who had just entered the Force. It was suspected that he had done it for the sake of excitement, and that he would not stay in it long. He smiled quietly.

"You must ask someone who is better qualified to give an opinion," he said. "In poetical phraseology I happen to be wedded to my work, and so I have all I want of life, you see."

The young eyes questioned his a moment longer, and he bore the look unflinchingly. It was the stand he meant to take all his life through now. But he was relieved when the two women were gone. Good wine, and a good cigar, and the talk and voices of the men of his own class were very comforting to him after the five strait years of naked necessities only.

A little later the name of Ducane came up. Tempest was known to be connected with the case, and Bolton asked questions.

"I am working it up here," he said. "The man is & worm. He turned King's Evidence and told every mortal thing he knew. So he's out on bail, pending the arrest of the others. We have two of them, but the rest have disappeared. Of course we'll get them, though it may take time. It is going to be quite a big affair, for people have been wanting to get at the basis of the Canada Home-lot Extension Company for some time. You knew Heriot, Tempest? He was under you at Grey Wolf, wasn't he?"

"Yes."

"Bad luck for him that he hadn't the chance to carry this thing through. He would probably have got his step over it. He's a clever chap, too. A confoundedly clever chap. But there's kink in him somewhere, to my mind. I fancy he is safer hunting criminals along the Mackenzie than knocking around among civilised beings. Didn't you find him hard to manage?"

"Not particularly. You said Ducane was out on bail. Where is he?"

"Gone back to his wife at Grey Wolf, I believe. Poor little woman, she'll need to be good stuff to stand him. And she is good stuff, I know. One of our oldest Toronto families. Eh? Why yes. She did go home for a while. But she came back to Grey Wolf. I happened to see her on Regina station the day she passed through. She has wonderful eyes."

Tempest assented absently. He wondered if Jennifer had gone back to Grey Wolf to take care of Andree. And he wondered what she was doing there now with Ducane. Before the evening was over he had made his mind up on one point. He would spend the two first months of his leave in a fleeting visit to Grey Wolf. Jennifer deserved that of him. And, besides, she could tell him so much about Andree.

In the bachelor quarters several of the men spoke about Tempest later on. Bolton was genuinely troubled.

"He's as good a fellow as ever, of course," he said. "But he looks as if he'd had a knock."

"Had a knock! He looks as if he'd been shot sitting and drilled clean through," declared Charteris. "I hope his folk will marry him off, down East. A good, comfortable, domesticated life is what he wants. He should give up the Force. You can see he's had enough of it."

But before Tempest went East he presented himself one warm, wet spring morning at the house across the lake from Grey Wolf, and heard Jennifer's cry of joy, and felt the grasp of her hands as she welcomed him.

"Oh," she said. "How I wish you had six hands to shake, I can't tell you how glad I am. And you haven't got this district, have you? That would be too splendid to be true."

"Yes; I'm afraid it would. I'm on leave, and I'm spending a part of it in hunting up my old friends." He looked at her intently. "I came to see if you needed help," he said.

"That is like you." Jennifer's eyes met his bravely. "You will see Harry directly, and I shall be glad to talk to you afterwards. Here's mother. And mother and I hunt through every day for all the fun we can get out of it, you know. It makes life so much more—more bearable."

Tempest understood completely why she chose that epithet when Ducane came in to lunch. The fellow was a wreck of the burly, blustering man whom Grey Wolf had once known. He shuffled in his walk, hanging his head. The shadow of the cells was on him, and horror of the future showed in his shifty eyes and in his manner. He alternately raved at Jennifer and cajoled her. He cringed to Tempest, and when the two men went out under the light spring rain with their pipes he gave way altogether; shivering and sobbing; cursing Dick and himself and the law, and imploring Tempest to help him.

"It would be so hard on Jenny to have me in—in—locked up again," he whined. "And she's been a good wife to me always. I don't deserve it. I know I don't deserve it. But she knows I'm fond of her. She knows it. Poor Jenny."

It was a horrible exhibition to Tempest; but he bore with it in patience. Even so little as he could do eased the burden for those brave women in the house. And, for all the fallen manhood in Ducane; for all the shameful thing which he had become, there was still that redeeming feature in him. He loved Jennifer. After each burst of passion he came to her like a dog, whimpering for forgiveness. His eyes followed her about the room, and the touch of her hand soothed him in his sudden fits of excitement. Tempest guessed that if Ducane were parted from that sweet womanly strength on which he fed he would soon be parted from life also. And in his heart he hoped that that day might come soon.

On the second night, when Ducane, cross and sleepy as a child, had stumbled off to bed, Jennifer slid her arm through her mother's.

"Mr. Tempest is going in the morning, little mother," she said. "And I have got one or two things to scold him about privately. You don't mind, darling? I knew you wouldn't." Then when the door was shut, she drew a chair for Tempest up to the fire, and sat down in a corner of the lounge where she had said good-bye to Dick.

"I want to speak to you about Andree," she began at once, not looking at Tempest. "When I got your letter I came back to look after her. Don't thank me. I had nearly decided to come anyway. And I was glad of the excuse. I did what I could." She paused a moment. "She cared for him too much to look at anyone else. And then she went North. I had not heard of any reason why she should go until Mr. Heriot told me that he had been sent after her. She did not come to say good-bye to me. I am sorry that I failed to—to understand her better. I did try. But Andree never cared about women."

Tempest sat back in his chair for a long while, staring into the fire. At last he said slowly:

"You saw Heriot as he came through?"

"Yes."

"And she loved him still? As much as ever?"

Jennifer felt her eyes fill. She knew how this man had loved Grange's Andree.

"He seemed to have wakened her heart, and so he possessed it. I think they both realise that."

Tempest was silent again. His hand shaded his face, but Jennifer could guess something of his thoughts. For a little she struggled with herself, trying to brace herself to give him comfort which it was going to hurt her unspeakably to give. She laid her hand lightly on his knee for a moment.

"You are afraid that she will tempt him to—to forget his work and to run away with her, or or something of that sort. He won't, Mr. Tempest. And he won't be cruel to her. I think he will try to treat her as I would want him to treat her."

Tempest looked up sharply.

"How do you know that?"

"Because he loves me and I love him. And we have told each other so," said Jennifer bravely.

Tempest stared at her, not conscious that he was staring.

"Is that true?" he said.

"Yes."

"My God!" said Tempest. He put his hand up to his forehead. "He—he has——" He looked away, stunned by the revelation. "You—you can't mean but how could he ever have——"

"Each time I sent him away it maddened him. I can't understand. Perhaps you can't, either. But— I have had to understand that it did not alter his feeling for me. I could not blind my eyes to that."

"But——" he fell into thought again. Then he seemed to catch hold of his natural courtesy. "I did not deserve this nobleness from you," he said. "I think no woman could have done a more gracious act."

"I had to." Jennifer was speaking very low and levelly, with her hands gripped tight. "I trust him, and you must trust him too."

"But you said you sent him away? And last time—I—I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to——"

"This time was different," said Jennifer steadily. "He—we said more than we had done before. We knew that—there could not be anyone else. You see he understood that he had perhaps brought Harry back to me."

Tempest shivered. Beside this tragedy even his own seemed to have faded. For he did not love—he never had loved Andree as Dick assuredly would love this woman. The thought brought him to his feet with his pulses beating unevenly and his voice unsteady.

"I do not know how to thank you for telling me this. It explains so much. And I had never guessed—good Heavens! Why, I—I—asked you to look after Andree because——"

"That did not matter very much." Jennifer smiled faintly. "He wrote to me before he went North with you. Just a few lines, but they made the matter clear. I mean—they did not palliate it. He has never tried to do that with anything in his life."

Tempest leaned his elbows on the mantel-shelf, pressing his temples with his fingers. This man who had lived with him daily, for weeks, for months, for years, had had this in his heart all the while.

"And—and his evidence at the trial?" he said.

"He did not mind what people said of himself. He tried to make it easy for me. And he would not make excuses for what he had done to me. He had done it, and he let me know it. He—he used that work as a weapon to—to fight himself with in part. And—and he would not let me think him better than he was."

Tempest nodded. He knew that love can be as merciless as hate. Dick would have Jennifer's love and his bold temper would insist that he had it in spite of what she knew of him.

"And he knew that he left you to—this," he said slowly.

Jennifer did not answer. Memories were too keenly sharp. The thoughts of both were with the man somewhere out along the far trails in the silence.

The fire fell together with a crash, and Jennifer looked up.

"Have you forgiven him for what he did to you?" she asked.

"I thought I had. I know now that I had not. I can guess a little at what pain would do to a man of his temperament. If I had only known—but he would not tell me, of course. He could not."

"But you can forgive him now?"

"I have already forgiven him officially," Tempest smiled a little bitterly. "And I can't cease to care for him. I don't know if I shall ever feel the same way towards him again. He did a great wrong, not to me, but to her."

"No one could have expected her to care."

"He knew his power with women. I beg your pardon——"

"Please don't. He has been quite honest with me, so there is no need."

There was silence again until Tempest straightened himself and looked at her.

"You make me ashamed," he said. "I have seen your gentleness and your care of Ducane, and now I have seen—something that I can't speak about. I had thought we men of the Mounted Police were doing a great thing for Canada. But perhaps when all is made clear we'll understand that some of the greatest things done here have been done by the women. You—you still intend to look after him?"

"So long as I can. If they imprison him I shall get rooms near the prison. He needs me."

"I shall be in the North later, as I told you. But my leave lasts four months yet, and if you want me during that time you know how gladly I will come. And if ever there is anything I can do and that I can free myself for you, will you tell me?"

"I surely will." She stood up and gave him her hand. "I hope I have helped you, for your sympathy has helped me. There are certain things which one cannot fight against. We have to order our lives from that standpoint. But there are so many things which we can. And, after all, the epitome of Life is battle and conquest, isn't it?"

"Or defeat"

"There are high defeats which are better than low conquests," said Jennifer, and her words stayed with him when she went away and left him alone by the dying fire.

Would not those words of Jennifer's apply to more than the abstract case? Had he not himself been seeking conquest along infinitely lower lines than this high defeat which had overtaken Jennifer and Dick? Nature had insisted that he should love Andree even as it had insisted that Dick should love Jennifer. But must a man always accept Nature's ordinances from end to end? Is it not against old Nature that her sons and daughters have to do their fighting with conscience as the umpire? Tempest knew, as he had known for long, what must have happened if he had persuaded Andree to marry him. She could have been no helpmate for his soul. He could never have made her other than she was. And yet nothing but the knowledge that he could not get her had parted him from her. Then those things which he used to talk of. That conception about the Norse Edda: he had believed that he had stumbled on a great truth there. But in how far had he acted on it? Dick had frankly acknowledged his preference for Gigungagap. Tempest had talked of the higher planes—he could remember now the thrill and the certainty with which he had spoken. Then were all his great dreams, all his aspirations and beliefs dead leaves only; ropes of sand; dust that the first wind of desire blew out of existence?

"Oh God! Not that! Not that!" he cried. He had surely struggled. He had schooled himself, to accept the inevitable—when he was very sure that it was the inevitable. He had now lifted this love into a sacred thing which he could think of without shame and without passion. But who had enabled him to do this? Not his own strength. Not his own conscience nor his love for that work which he had believed meant more to him than anything else. It was Dick who had thrust him back; brutally, mercilessly, but faithfully into the battle. And he could not forgive and he could not forget because Andree had been sacrificed that this should be accomplished. And yet he had consented that Dick should sacrifice Jennifer for his work's sake. He had seen very clearly there how the individual must perish to further the growth of the whole. But where the matter touched himself; where Andree had to go that he might give what the years, what his birth and training and traditions, had made him for the aid of the many, what had he cared for his work then?

He got up, walking through the dusky room as Dick had walked on the night when he pleaded with Jennifer. Through these months Dick must have been fighting nearly as stern a battle as himself. He would suffer for what Jennifer might have to undergo with Ducane as Tempest suffered for Andree. But Dick had never let his work go. Wild-hearted, bitter-minded unbeliever though he was, he had held valiantly to his work, even using it, as Jennifer had said, for a sword against himself. He remembered the cruel mockery of those sketches in the Grey Wolf bunk-room. Dick had no more to help him through life than what they told. He had nothing to hold to. What wonder then if he fell? But had he fallen any further than Tempest? Than Tempest, who knew and preached the right—to others?

Tempest went late to his bed that night, and when he said good-bye to Jennifer in the morning his manner was very gentle.

"I owe you a very great deal," he said. "And I owe Dick a very great deal." He smiled. "He knew that before I did," he added. "But perhaps he can bear to hear it again."

He saw Bolton for a moment on the Regina Station as the train carried him East, and the jovial Inspector shook his hand warmly.

"’Pon my soul, you look better already, old fellow," he said. "Wait till the pretty girls in Ontario get hold of you. They'll knock ten years off you."

"Thank you," said Tempest. "I think I don't want to lose those years, Bolton. Not a blessed one of them."

His welcome at home shamed him again. They were so transparently joyful at his coming, and he had wanted so little to come. He knew that all the great issues of his life were bound up for ever with the West: with the places where he had suffered and lost and gained so much. And yet he found that there was something for him to gain in the old home. Some panacea which he had needed and which nothing else could have given him. He found it in his mother's kiss, and in Betty's throttling embraces, and in Lloyd's hand-grip. It was Lloyd who got down to the heart of the matter at once, reading him as a man reads his kind.

"You won't get old Neil to cut the Service and settle down over here, mother," he said. "You may trot out your eligibles and stay him with dinner-parties and comfort him with dances all you know—and it won't help you worth a cent. Something else has booked him, mother, and we're going to lose him."

"Oh, Lloyd! You don't think that any girl out there——"

"No. Or if there was he's lost her. But I noticed him talking with Carter and Orde last night. It's Canada has taken him, I guess. He means to give himself to his work, and not to anything else."

Betty scoffed at this doctrine and angled for him with all the arts which she and her friends could muster. In the first glow of her own love she appealed to Tempest vividly, and he delighted to take her about. She was much younger than himself; and she had been a merry child when he was a tall and studious boy. She was a merry girl still, and she brought the sweets of life back to him in many ways through those brief weeks. Tempest had that quiet, interested courtesy which charms wherever it goes; but his serene indifference to its effects roused Betty's ire, and one evening as he smoked his cigar under the scented limes she came to him, running in her white dress over the grassy lawn, and walked up and down with him. Her hand was through his arm, and she chattered to him and scolded him, half in mischief, half in real earnest. For a while Tempest parried her thrusts with good-natured evasion. Then he turned on her slim finger the ring which sparkled through the starlight.

"It's once and for altogether, Betty dear?" he asked.

"Oh, yes." She fell shy instantly at confessing her love.

"Even though you lost him there could never be anyone else?"

"Never! Oh, never!"

"Well—that's my answer, dear," he said gently.