Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 695
“Them’s graves,” said Johnny. “The big ones go up in the trees, the smaller ones are under them humps, and them of no account, like babies and old folk, just get chucked out in the drifts. There’s been a power o’ dyin’ here.”
Lew turned to Leithen for orders.
“Which comes first?” he asked, “Zacharias or the priest?”
“We will go to the presbytery,” was the answer.
14
There was at first no sign of life in the irregular street of huts that made the ascent to the presbytery. The roofs of some of them were sagging with the weight of snow, and one or two had collapsed. But there were people in them, for, now that they were seen at closer quarters, wraiths of smoke came from the vents, which proved that there were fires within, though very meagre ones. Once a door opened and a woman looked out; she at once drew back with a scared look like an animal’s; a whimper of a child seemed to come from indoors.
Then suddenly there rose a wild clamour from starving dogs picketed in the snow. Their own dogs answered it and the valley resounded with the din. After the deathly quiet the noise seemed a horrid impiety. There was nothing in it of friendly barking; it was like the howling of a starving wolf pack lost and forgotten at the world’s end.
The sound brought Father Duplessis to the presbytery door. He was about Leithen’s own age, but now he looked ten years older than at Fort Bannerman. Always lean, he was now emaciated, and his pallor had become almost cadaverous. He peered and blinked at the newcomers, and then his face lit up as he came forward with outstretched hands.
“God be praised!” he cried. “It is my English comrade-in-arms.”
“Get hold of the chief,” Leithen told Johnny. “Take the Indians with you and make a plan for distributing the meat. Then bring Zacharias up here.”
He and Galliard and Lew followed the priest into the presbytery. In Father Wentzel’s time the place had smelt stuffy, like a furniture store. Now it reeked of ether and carbolic, and in a corner stood a trestle table covered with a coarse linen cloth. He remembered that Father Duplessis was something of a doctor.
He was also most clearly a soldier, a soldier tired out by a long and weary campaign. There was nothing about him to tell of the priest except the chain which showed at his neck and which held a cross tucked under his shirt. He wore kamiks and a dicky of caribou skin and a parka edged with wolverine fur, and he needed all his clothing, for the presbytery was perishing cold. He might have been a trapper or a prospector but for his carriage, his squared shoulders and erect head, which showed the discipline of St. Cyr. His silky brown beard was carefully combed and trimmed. A fur skull-cap covered the head where the hair had been cut to the bone. He had the long, high-bridged nose of Picardy gentlefolk, and a fine forehead, round the edges of which the hair was greying. His blue eyes looked washed out and fatigued, but the straight lines of the brows gave an impression of power and reserve. The osseous structure of his face was as sharply defined as the features on a newly minted coin.
“Thank Heaven you have come,” he said. “This campaign is too hard for one man. And perhaps I am not the man. In this task I am only a subaltern and I need a commanding officer.”
He looked first at Galliard and then at Leithen, and his eyes remained on the latter.
“We are fighting a pestilence,” he went on, “but a pestilence of the soul.”
“One moment,” Leithen broke in. “What about this war in Europe?”
“There is war,” said the priest gravely. “The news came from the Fort when I sent a dog-team for supplies. But I know no more than that the nations are once again at each other’s throats. Germany with certain allies against your country and mine. I do not think of it — Europe is very far away from my thoughts.”
“Supplies? What did you get?”
“Not much. Some meal and flour, of which a balance remains. But that is not the diet for the poor folk here. Also a little coffee for myself. See, I will make you a cup.”
He bustled for a minute or two at the stove, and the pleasant odour of coffee cut sharply into the frowst of the room.
“A pestilence of the mind?” Leithen asked. “You mean — ?”
“In myself — and in you — it would be called accidie, a deadly sin. But not, I think, with this people. They are removed but a little way from the beasts that perish, and with them it is an animal sickness.”
“They die of it?”
“But assuredly. Some have T.B. and their sickness of the mind speeds up that disease. Some are ageing and it makes them senile, so that they perish from old age. With some it unhinges the wits so that the brain softens. Up to now it is principally the men who suffer, for the women will still fight on, having urgent duties. But soon it will mean the children also, and the women will follow. Before the geese return in spring, I fear, I greatly fear, that my poor people will be no more in the land.”
“What are you doing about it?”
Father Duplessis shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands.
“There is little I can do. I perform the offices of the Church, and I strive to make them worship with me. I preach to them the way of salvation. But I cannot lift them out of the mire. What is needed is men — a man — who will force their life again into a discipline, so that they will not slip away into death. Someone who will give them hope.”
“Have you no helpers?”
“There is the chief Zacharias, who has a stout heart. But he is old and crippled. One or two young men, perhaps, but I fear they are going the way of the rest.”
15
Leithen had asked questions automatically and had scarcely listened to the replies, for in that dim, stuffy, frigid presbytery, where the only light came through the cracks in the door and a dirty window in the roof, he was conscious of something in the nature of a revelation. His mind had a bitter clarity, and his eyes seemed to regard, as from a high place, the kingdoms of the world and men’s souls.
His will was rising to the same heights. At last, at long last, his own course was becoming crystal clear.
Memories of the war in which he had fought raced before him like a cinema show, all in order and all pointing the same truth. It had been waste, futile waste, and death, illimitable, futile death. Now the same devilment was unloosed again. He saw Europe as a carnage pit — shattered towns, desecrated homes, devastated cornlands, roads blocked with the instruments of war — the meadows of France and of Germany, and of his own kind England. Once again the free peoples were grappling with the slave peoples. The former would win, but how many free men would die before victory, and how many of the unhappy slaves!
The effluence of death seemed to be wafted to his nostrils over the many thousand miles of land and sea. He smelt the stench of incinerators and muddy trenches and bloody clothing. The odour of the little presbytery was like that of a hospital ward.
But it did not sicken him. Rather it braced him, as when a shore-dweller who has been long inland gets a whiff of the sea. It was the spark which fired within him an explosive train of resolution.
There was a plain task before him, to fight with Death. God for His own purpose had unloosed it in the world, ravening over places which had once been rich in innocent life. Here in the North life had always been on sufferance, its pale slender shoots fighting a hard battle against the Elder Ice. But it had maintained its brave defiance. And now one such pathetic slip was on the verge of extinction. This handful of Hares had for generations been a little enclave of life besieged by mortality. Now it was perishing, hurrying to share in the dissolution which was overtaking the world.
By God’s help that should not happen — the God who was the God of the living. Through strange circuits he had come to that simple forthright duty for which he had always longed. In that duty he must make his soul.
There was a ring of happiness in his voice. “You have me as a helper,” he said. “And Mr. Galliard. And Lew and Johnny. Between us we will save your Hares from themselves.”
Lew’s face set, as if he had heard something which he had long feared.
“You mean we’ve got to feed ‘em?”
Leithen nodded. “Feed them — body and mind.”
Lew’s eyebrows fell.
“You coming out in the woods with us? I guess that’s the right thing for you.”
“No, that’s your job, and Johnny’s. I stay here.”
Lew exploded. Even in the dimness his eyes were like points of blue fire.
“Hell!” he cried. “You can’t do it. You jest can’t do it. I was afeared you’d have that dam’ foolish notion. Say, what d’you think life here would be like for you? You’re on the road to be cured, but you ain’t cured yet. Come out with me and Johnny and you’ll be living healthy. We won’t let you do too much. It’s a mighty interesting job hunting moose in their ravages and you’ll get some fine shooting. We’ll feed you the kind of food that’s good for you, and at night we’ll make you as snug as a wintering bear. I’ll engage by the spring you’ll be a mighty strong man. That’s good sense, ain’t it?”
“Excellent good sense. Only it’s not for me. My job is here.”
“Man, I tell you it’s suicide. Fair suicide. I’ve seen plenty cases like yours, and I’ve seen ‘em get well and I’ve seen ‘em die. There’s one sure way to die and that’s to live in a shack or among shacks, and breathe stinking air and be rubbing shoulders with sick folks, and wearing your soul out trying to put some pep into a herring-gutted bunch of Indians. You’ll be sicker than ever before a week is out, and a corp in a month, and that’ll be darned little use to anybody.”
Lew’s soft rich voice had become hoarse with passion. He got up from his seat and stood before Leithen like a suppliant, with his hands nervously intertwining.
“You may be right,” Leithen said. “But all the same I must stay. It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”
“It matters like hell,” said Lew, and there was that in his voice which made the presbytery a solemn place, for it was the cry of a deep affection.
“This is a war and I obey orders. I’ve got my orders. In a world where Death is king we’re going to defy him and save life. The North has closed down on us and we’re going to beat the North. That is to your address, Galliard.”
Galliard was staring at him with bright comprehending eyes.
“In this fight we have each got his special job. I’m in command, and I hand them out. I’ve taken the one for myself that I believe I can do best. We’re going to win, remember. What does my death matter if we defeat Death?”
Lew sat down again with his head in his hands. He raised it like a frightened animal at Leithen’s next words.
“This is my Sick Heart River. Galliard’s too, I think. Maybe yours, Lew. Each of us has got to find his river for himself, and it may flow where he least expects it.”
Father Duplessis, back in the deep shadows, quoted from the Vulgate psalm, “Fluminis impetus laetificat civitatem Dei.”
Leithen smiled. “Do you know the English of that, Lew? There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God. That’s what you’ve always been looking for.”
16
The place was suddenly bright, for the door had opened. A wave of icy air swept out the frowst, and Leithen found himself looking into a radiant world, rimmed with peaks of bright snow and canopied by a sky so infinitely far away that it had no colour except that of essential light.
It was the old chief, conducted by Johnny. Zacharias was a very mountain of a man, and age had made him shapeless while lumbago had bent him nearly double. He walked with two sticks, and Johnny had to lower him delicately to a seat. The Hares were not treaty Indians, but nevertheless he wore one of the soup-plate Victorian silver medals, which had come to him through a Cree grandmother. His heavy face had a kind of placid good sense, and age and corpulence had not dimmed the vigour of his eye.
He greeted Leithen ceremonially, realising he was the leader of the newcomers. He had a few words of English, but Johnny did most of the interpreting. He sat with his hands on his knees, like a schoolboy interviewed by a headmaster, but though his attitude suggested nervousness his voice was calm.
“We are a ver’ sick people,” he repeated several times. It was his chief English phrase.
What he had to tell was much the same story that Johnny had brought to the mountain camp. But since then things had slipped further downhill. There had been more deaths of children and old people, and even of younger men. They did not die of actual starvation, but of low diet and low spirits. Less than half a dozen went hunting, and not many more brought in fuel, so there was little fresh meat and too little firewood. People sat huddled in icy shacks in all the clothes they could find, and dreamed themselves into decay. The heart had gone out of them. The women, too, had ceased to scold and upbraid, and would soon go the way of their menfolk.
“Then our people will be no more,” said Zacharias grimly.
Leithen asked what help he could count on.
“There is myself,” said the chief, “and this good Father. I have three sons who will do my bidding, and seven grandsons — no, five, for two are sick. There may be a few others. Say at the most a score.”
“What would you advise?”
The old man shook his head.
“In our fathers’ day the cure would have been a raid by Chipewyans or Dog-ribs! Then we would have been forced to be up and doing or perish. A flight of arrows is the best cure for brooding. Now — I do not know. Something harsh to get the sullenness out of their bones. You are a soldier?”
“The Father and I served in the same war.”
“Good! Soldiers’ ways are needed. But applied with judgment, for my people are weak and they are also children.”
Leithen spoke to the company.
“There are a score of us for this job then. Mr. Galliard and I stay here. Lew and Johnny go hunting, and will take with them whom they choose. We shall need all the dog-teams we can get to bring back meat and cordwood. But first there are several jobs to be done. You’ve got to build a shack for Mr. Galliard and myself. You’ve got to get a mighty big store of logs, for a fire must be kept burning day and night.”
He was addressing Lew, whose eyes questioned him.
“Why? Because these people must be kept in touch with life, and life is warmth and colour. A fire will remind them that there is warmth and colour in the world. . . . Tomorrow morning we will have a round-up and discover exactly what is the size of our job. . . . You’ve made camp, Johnny? Mr. Galliard and I will be there by supper-time. Now you and Lew go along and get busy. We’ve a lot to do in the next few days.”
The door opened again and disclosed the same landscape of primitive forms and colours, its dazzle a little dimmed by the approach of evening.
This second glimpse had a strange effect on Leithen, for it seemed to be a revelation of a world which he had forgotten. His mind swooped back on it and for a little was immersed in memories. Zacharias was hoisted to his feet and escorted down the hill. Father Duplessis prepared a simple meal. There was a little talk about ways and means after Lew left, Galliard questioning Leithen and getting answers. Yet all the time the visualising part of Leithen’s mind was many thousands of miles away in space and years back in time.
The stove had become too hot, so the door was allowed to remain half open, for the year had turned, and the afternoon sun was gaining strength. So his eyes were seeing a segment of a bright coloured world. The intense pure light brought a flood of pictures all linked with moments of exultant physical vigour. Also with friendships. He did not probe the cause, but these pictures seemed to imply companionship. In each Archie Roylance, or Clanroyden, or Lamancha was just round the corner waiting. . . . There was a July morning, very early, on the Nantillons glacier, on his way to make a traverse of the Charmoz which had once been famous. There was a moonlit night on an Ægean isle when he had been very near old mysteries. There were Highland dawns and twilights — one especially, when he sat on a half-submerged skerry watching for the wild geese — an evening when Tir-nan-og was manifestly re-created. There were spring days and summer days in English meadows, Border bent with the April curlews piping, London afternoons in May with the dear remembered smells fresh in his nostrils. . . . In each picture he felt the blood strong in his veins and a young power in his muscles. This was the man he once had been.
Once! He came out of his absorption to realise that these pictures had not come wholly through the Ivory Gate. He was no longer a dying man. He had been reprieved on the eve of execution, and by walking delicately the reprieve might be extended. His bodily strength was like a fragile glass vessel which one had to carry while walking on a rough road; with care it might survive, but a jolt would shatter it. . . . No, that was a false comparison. His health was like a small sum of money, all that was left of a big fortune. It might be kept intact by a stern economy, or it might be spent gallantly on a last venture.
Galliard and Father Duplessis were sitting side by side and talking earnestly. He caught a word of the priest’s: “Dieu fait bien ce qu’il fait” and remembered the quotation. Was it La Fontaine? He laughed, for it fitted in with his own mood.
He had found the right word both for Galliard and himself. They were facing the challenge of the North, which a man must accept and repel or submit to servitude. Lew and Johnny and their kind did not face that challenge; they avoided it by walking humbly; they conciliated it by ingenious subterfuges; its blows were avoided and not squarely met, and they paid the price; for every now and then they fell under its terrors.
He was facing, too, the challenge of Death. Elsewhere in the world the ancient enemy was victorious. If here, against all odds, he could save the tiny germ of life from its maw he would have met that challenge, and done God’s work.
Leithen’s new-found mission for life gave him a happy retrospect over his own career. At first, when he left England, he had looked back with pain at the bright things now forbidden. In his first days in the North his old world had slipped from him wholly, leaving only a grey void which he must face with clenched teeth and with grim submission. He smiled as he remembered those days, with their dreary stoicism. He had thought of himself like Job, as one whose strength lay only in humbleness. He had been crushed and awed by God.
