Here, then, was a new reason why he should become ardent in the pursuit and effect the capture of Spurling, that by so doing he would be behaving honourably by a man who was dead. He saw in it at present, with his cynic's eye for self-scorn and self-depreciation, only an added excuse and more subtle temptation for the saving of himself.

"No, I cannot do it," he said. And yet, somewhere at the back of his brain, the monotonous and oracular voice of a wise self-knowledge kept answering, "But you will do it, when you have had leisure to be lonely, and have tortured yourself with memories of her."

It seemed to Granger as though Strangeways himself were the speaker of those words; but when he turned round hotly, prepared for argument, he found that the eyes had become glazed and vacant, and that at last the body was truly dead. It had no need to live longer--it had delivered its message.

CHAPTER XI

THE LOVE OF WOMAN

It was past noon before they had completed Strangeways' burial at the bend. When they had finished, the skies had cleared themselves of storm and cloud, and the sun shone out again. The air was full of earth-fragrance, and the landscape was cool and fresh. Nothing of disorder remained, no sign that a man was dead, save only a mound of piled-up stones and sod, surmounted by a little cross of branches bound together with twisted gra.s.s.

Pere Antoine had searched the body with scant results, for he had found no more than the warrant for Spurling's detection and arrest, and the fragments of two torn and well-nigh obliterated letters, at which latter he had only glanced up to the present. Nor had he seen the contents of the locket as yet, for when he had asked Granger what was its secret, he had received as answer, "Oh, nothing, only a young girl's face." So he had been foiled in his endeavour to gather materials for the establishing of Granger's innocence, should that be a.s.sailed, and had discovered nothing which might be of use in his defence. All he could contribute was his own personal evidence that the appearance of the body, as he had seen it, bore out Granger's account in every detail as to the manner in which Strangeways'

catastrophe had occurred, and that his deportment, when he had charged him with murder, had proved conclusively to himself that there was no ground for such an accusation.

When they had returned to the store and had had supper together, Granger sat for a long while with the locket open before him, gazing intently on the portrait. Suddenly he looked up. "Have you seen Beorn?" he asked. "Do you know whether he is on his way back?"

"I have not seen him."

"Antoine, you must stay here with me until he returns."

"Why?"

"I was on my way to meet Peggy when you met and stopped me; I want you to marry us."

"But why now and at once?"

"Because if we're not married she won't live with me,--and I must do something to break down my loneliness by getting a new interest into my life. If I don't, I shall be always thinking of what has happened, and shall go mad,--in which case it will be the worse for Spurling. I don't want to kill him--at least, not until he has had his chance to explain himself. I'm sure now that it was Mordaunt whom he murdered, but I'm still uncertain as to whether he knew that she was a woman, at the time when he killed her--he may not know even yet. If he did it mistaking her for a man, I might be able to forgive him; anyhow, I can say so now, while you are with me. What I should do and think if I were left here miserably alone, I dare not tell. Yet, if what Strangeways said to me is true, that her body was found at Forty-Mile in a woman's dress, which would mean that Spurling killed her, well-knowing that she was a girl, why then I would go in search of him, and tell him what I thought about him, and shoot him carefully, and be glad when he was dead."

"But you have promised G.o.d to leave him alone with Himself."

"And shall I be the first man who has gone back on his prayers and promises? There's nothing to be gained by talking about it; fate must work itself out. But if you want to understand what Strangeways felt, and what I am still feeling, then look at that."

He handed him the locket. Pere Antoine took it and bent above it. At last he said, "Why, she's only a girl . . . and he killed _her_!"

"Yes, and he killed her when her back was turned. Now do you understand?"

"May G.o.d help you!" was all that Antoine said. Granger went over to where he sat and, from above his shoulder, gazed down upon the portrait. The face had in it so little that was tragic that it seemed impossible to realise that its owner should have encountered such a death. When the smile upon the painted lips seemed so fresh and imperishable, it seemed incredible that the lips themselves should be now silent and underground.

"I wonder where she lived and what sort of a girlhood she had,"

Granger said.

"I have here two letters which I found upon Strangeways; perhaps they may tell us something about her."

Pere Antoine produced the letters from an oilskin pouch. They were in a pointed feminine hand, and the ink was faded. Granger lit the lamp, for the twilight without was deepening into darkness; spreading out the crumpled sheets on his knees before him, he read their contents aloud. Across the top, left-hand corner of the uppermost page was scrawled in a rude, boyish writing, "_The first letter she ever wrote me_"; the letter itself had been evidently penned by a young girl's hand. It bore the address of a school in London, and ran as follows:--

DEAR ERIC.

I am very miserable hear and sometimes wonder why I was ever brought into the world. Your Papa was very kind to me once, but why has he scent me away from you? You did not want me to be scent, and so I can tell you all about myself. I am very home-sick hear. I say home-sick, though I have no home; I have always been a stranger in your Papa's house. I suppose I am reely home-sick for you. I think it is because you and I are seperated that I am sorry. The girls hear are not always kind; they say that I look as though I had been crying, and then of course I do cry when they say that.

But if my eyes are red, I don't care. I want you badly and I'm writting to tell you that. Don't forget to feed my rabbits.

Your loving little friend, J. M.

The second was marked in the same way, but in a manlier hand, "_Her last letter to me_."

DEAREST ERIC.

I am so sorry that I am the cause of all this trouble, and that I cannot love you in the way that you and your father so much desire. I would do anything to make you happy save that--play the coward, and say that I love you as a woman should whom you were going to marry, when I do not. I have always been used to think of you as a brother, which is natural, seeing that from our earliest childhood we have grown up together. I thought that you would be content with that; no other kind of affection for you has ever entered into my heart or head.

Your father was very angry with me last night after you went out. He said that I, by my conduct, had led you on to _expect_; believe me, I never meant to do that. It never occurred to me that there was any need to be careful in your presence. The truth is, I have always been an interloper in your home; you will remember how, long years since, when first I went to boarding-school, I told you that . . . (four lines were here undecipherable, being faded and rubbed out). When I look back, I see that in all my life you have been my only friend--which makes me the more unhappy that this has happened. Mind, I don't mean to accuse your family of unkindness; I only say that I, perhaps naturally, was never one of them. If I thought that you would be willing, knowing how I feel toward you, to make me your wife, for the sake of your peace I might consent even to that. But you are not such a man. (Three lines were here obliterated.) Let there be no bitterness between us by reason of harsh words which others have spoken; what has happened must make a difference, but I want to remain still your friend. This recent occurrence seems to make it necessary that one of us should go away--there will never be any quiet in your father's house while we both live there. Don't be alarmed or surprised if you get word shortly that I have vanished.

Yours as ever, J. M.

To this letter was added a note in Strangeways' hand at the bottom of the page, "_She was not to blame; it was I who left_."

"We have not learnt very much about her from those two letters, have we?" said Pere Antoine. "They are ordinary, and leave many questions, which we wanted to ask, unanswered."

"Yes, they do little more than confirm Strangeways' own statements, and yet. . . ."

"Well?"

"They tell us that her true initials were J. M., the same as those of her a.s.sumed name, and the same as those of the monogram on the locket; and they tell us of her great loneliness."

"But I can't see how a knowledge of that one fact--her great loneliness--will help us; it does not reconstruct for us the details of her life so that we can imagine her to ourselves, nor does it contribute anything towards your defence."

"Bother my defence. I don't much care if I am hanged; that would at least be a final solution, so far as I am concerned, to this problem of living. What troubles me at present is, how is this woman feeling about my marriage with a half-breed girl? Now these letters help me; they make me certain that whatever I may be compelled to do at any future time by reason of my isolation, she will not be hard upon me, but will understand. This marriage with Peggy, for instance, looks like a betrayal of her. And though she is dead, I should hate to grieve her in the other world."

Granger paused, and then he added fiercely, "And I'm glad of that last letter for another reason, because it states so clearly that she never loved the other man."

"That can make no difference now."

"But it can," said Granger, rising to his feet, and speaking in a strained whisper, with clenched hands, "I tell you it can. If I thought that she had ever really cared for him, I would shoot myself here and now, that I might be beside her to get between him and her.

The thought that he was there with her all alone in the vastness, free to do and to say just whatever he pleased, and that I was shut out, would drive me crazy. Do you think that, if I supposed that he had got his arms around her over there, I could ever rest--if I thought that she would allow him? One little pull of a trigger, the report of a revolver, which I probably shouldn't hear and in any case shouldn't care about, and the journey would be accomplished and I could be bending over her. It sounds very tempting. But I'm prepared to live out my life like a man, now that I know that she understands. If she hadn't known what loneliness meant, she might misjudge my motives in taking up with Peggy, and might, out of revenge, instead of waiting for me, herself take up with Strangeways before my arrival there."

Pere Antoine watched him gravely for some seconds after he had finished speaking; then he said, "I don't think that Heaven is quite like that; but none of us can be certain, perhaps your views are as correct as those of anyone else. When I was a young man, before I came to Keewatin, I should have been angry with any man who had said to me a thing like that--but we come to hold strange opinions in this land where all things, judged by our former standards of sanity, even G.o.d Himself, seem mad. At that time I longed to be dogmatic and definite in all my beliefs on religion, and this life, and the after-world--that was why I became a Jesuit, that I might exchange despair for certainty. Now, priest though I am, like you I see one gigantic interrogation mark written over sky and earth--and because of it I am grateful. I have learnt that the whole attraction of religion for the human mind, and the entire majesty of G.o.d depend on His mystery and silence, and the things which He does not care to tell. If all our questions were answered, we might lose our G.o.d-sense. If we knew everything, we should cease to be curious and to strive. Of one thing only are we certain, that Jesus lived and died, and that though we live in the uttermost parts of the earth, it is our duty to be like Him."

"And Spurling--if Spurling dwells near us in the uttermost parts of the earth?"

"He also is G.o.d's child."

"It is easy for you to talk, Pere Antoine; you are an old man, and, being a priest, have never loved a woman yourself."

The stern, grey features of the Jesuit relaxed; he hesitated, then he said, "My child, don't be too sure of that. Perhaps I may be attempting to live this life well only in order that I may make sure of meeting and being worthy of one such woman in the after-world. If that were so, it would be great shame to me, for I ought to be striving to live this life well solely for the love of Christ."

He fell silent, sitting with his head bent forward, his gnarled hands folded on his knees before him. A far-away look had come into his eyes, a fixed expression of calmness, as though they slept with the lids parted. Granger watched the hands, mutilated and ruined, with three fingers missing from the right, and two from the left; and yet, despite their brokenness, he thought how beautiful they were. There was scarcely a part of the priest's body that had not been at some time shattered with service. It had never occurred to Granger that Pere Antoine, like most other men in the district, had a past which did not belong to Keewatin--memories of a happier time to which he might sometimes look back with the painfulness of regret. Antoine had been there so long that there was no man who remembered the day when first he arrived. He seemed as natural to the landscape as the Last Chance River itself. And now suddenly, in an electric moment of sympathy, his past had revealed itself.

Granger watched and waited, hoping that presently he would explain. It occurred to him as a discovery that he had no knowledge of the priest's real name or of his family. At his nationality he could only guess, supposing him to be a Frenchman or a French-Canadian. How incurious he had been! And, in this case, lack of curiosity had meant lack of kindness; he blamed himself. He, like all Keewatin, was ready in time of crisis to draw upon the old man's strength, but beyond that he had never shown him real friendship--he had never been conscious of any desire to hear about the man himself. And now he had learned that this man also had a tragedy, and, like himself, had loved a woman who was now long since dead. He wanted to ask him questions, that so he might make up for omitted kindnesses; but he was restrained when he looked upon the grey dreamy countenance, for it was evident that le Pere was wandering in the idealised meadows of a bygone pleasantness--a country which was known only to himself. So Granger returned his eyes to the portrait which he had taken from the dead man's hand, and, gazing upon it, tried his best to fill in the blanks in his little knowledge of the woman he had loved.