THE DANCE
"Are you all set? Then dance! damn you, dance! Come on, gentlemen, get partners for the next."
Frank Corte's great dance was on. Hugh and his companions stood by the door of the dining-hall. On went the dance; and through the atmosphere—thick with tobacco-smoke—the native women were guided, their bronzed faces speaking excitement.
"Come on in, gentlemen!"
The walls of the room were lined with men. Squaws, who had not yet learned the dance, sat on boxes. The three friends crowded into the room and stood with their backs against the wall. Frank Corte was beating time with his foot and clapping his hands, while he sang the calls in a weird drawl.
"Honours to the right." Each man bowed most gravely to his partner, who most respectfully returned it. "Honours to the left." Each man bowed to the lady at his left in the quadrille: and when "Swing your right-hand lady; dance around the room" came, the men grabbed their partners and whirled around—quarters were too close to permit of any great range of movement, and the squaws were so excited, they seemed to occupy more room than really they did.
"A la main left." All stood to attention. "First gent swing the left-hand lady, with the left hand round."
Every gentleman turned towards the lady on his left. The ladies turned to the right. They grasped left hands at the height of their shoulders, and pranced round to the left.
"The left hand round.—Turn your partners, with the right hand, round.—The right hand round.—All chassez!—First couple lead to the right.—Four hand round.—Dos à balnette.—Right hand to partner, and grand dos à balnette." Every man took his partner's right hand and wheeled to the right; and then her left hand. This movement brought them opposite, and so they were in a circle, at which they balanced, the men facing outwards, the women inwards.
"On to the next!"
The men wheeled, and with their ladies pivoted to the left; then the men took the hand of the ladies next on their right as they swung round. The ladies holding the men by the left gave their right hand, and at the words "dos à balnette," all again balanced—the men this time facing inwards, the ladies outwards.
"On the next!"—again brought the men facing outwards, the ladies inwards—and so on. The quadrille was concluded with,
"Promenade all
Around the hall,
And seat your ladies at the ball."
The faces of the crowd were wild with excitement. The music was weird and discordant. Yet John found it all very stimulating. Dance after dance was gone through, while he stayed and watched, till there came to his mind pictures of the old home—his father's house in London, and Alice Peel! Was she thinking of him?
"Say! why don't you fellows get in and dance?"
Dreams and fancies were reft away as reality, in the person of Haskins of the saw-pits, stood before John Berwick. Then he noticed George laughing at a clumsy mystified squaw, a beginner in the dance. His hilarity provoked the squaw, and, as the dance paused for a second, between her gasps and through her perspiration she hissed with a look of contempt,
"Che—chac. Ka!"
"Say! you fellows will have to get in and dance in this next set. I saw a squaw looking at you and saying 'heap dam dood,' so if you want to keep your station in society you've got to dance." Haskins was again worrying them.
"All right. Who will I ask to dance?" George was ready.
"Go and ask that squaw sitting in the corner," said Haskins, pointing across the room. She it was who had said "Heap dam dood."
George went and invited her to be his partner.
"Ni—ka halo introdux" (You have not been introduced), she answered.
This was more than George could withstand in gravity. He roared with laughter and returned to Haskins. He only guessed the meaning of the words, so he repeated them to Haskins.
"Who the devil has taught these savages up here chinook! It's a special lingo manufactured by the Hudson Bay Company to suit the savages, and when white men first came into British Columbia they found the savages with a lingo which was called white man's wa-wa, and which no person could understand; it is easy enough to learn, you can pick it up in a week; it has only about six hundred words. All the old-timers in British Columbia talk it. Dagoes, Chinese, Mexicans, Swedes, all talked it in the old days in Caribou. The Siwash calls an Englishman 'King George man' and an American 'Boston man.'"
The squaw in the corner was keeping her eye on George with evident dislike. As John noticed this he recommended their departure; so George and he went back to bed. Hugh arrived home hours later in great glee.
"You fellows will laugh at the Siwashes, eh? Well—you'll get the worst of it. George, I hear you were not sufficiently formal with one of the klootches (squaws), and got called down—ha, ha!"
On the Sunday morning following John left Hugh and George repairing their wardrobe in the tent, and was strolling past Frank Corte's kitchen to where the scows were being built.
"Hullo! how's the 'heap dam dood'? Come in, I want to argue with you."
John looked up and saw the smiling face of Frank at his kitchen door. He had no great wish to argue; but he loved the study of humanity, and realized that Frank was something of a conundrum.
Corte, who was kneading bread, took a seat on a box by the kitchen door.
"Say! don't you think it would be a good thing for this country if Uncle Sam was really to come over and take it?"
"I hope not. What's the matter with it as it is?"
"Too much police—too much law and order; you can never have a real live mining-camp in Canada."
"That was a pretty good dance you had Friday night."
"Yes, it was all right; but what a time we would have had if we had had lots of hootch! But say! that was a good one when the squaw told the other 'King George man' he had not been introduced to her!"
Frank chuckled; and then, as the prospect of an international argument did not seem good, went on another tack.
"Do you believe there is a God?"
A flood of memories surged through Berwick's brain.
He glanced at the dark sinister features of the man awaiting his reply and then looked at the sunlight. Should he give such an answer in such a tone as would discourage further argument? No—the question was too serious. He might not have felt called upon at one time to divulge his belief, which in the past had been a burden of much questioning; but here it was asked, perhaps in levity, by one who evidently could not fully believe. He felt called upon to answer,
"Yes, I do."
Corte's face had taken on a strained look. Realizing the seriousness with which Berwick regarded the question, he feared lest he had hurt the feelings of his guest. The answer he received reassured him. Removing his big arms from the dough, and gesticulating, he answered,
"Well, partner, I don't. Now here's the proposition: those who say there is a God say what He set out to do. The first thing God done was to build the world; and after He done this He built a mighty fine ranch and fixed it up A1; and then He puts Adam and Eve into it, after having made them. He tells them not to eat apples—and then He goes and has a snake which tells them to eat apples. And because they do eat apples He pulls up the ranch and kicks them out. Now there would be no kick coming if He simply turned them loose and made them rustle—having to rustle never hurt any man—but He brings all sorts of diseases and pains on earth. That's what keeps me from believing in God.
"Now look here; if God was able to make the earth, and the stars, and everything, why should He not make man and let him enjoy all this—seeing that He is doing it all more or less for amusement—without putting him in the middle of a lot of good things and then putting up a job on him? I've talked to parsons on this thing, and some of them says that after He bust up the home ranch He kind of got sorry, and says He would send His Son on earth to die—to fix up the big mistake Adam and Eve made in eating one apple. Now, say! If you was doing all this, would you, after you made man, and put him on the earth and he did wrong, would you send your son to fix things up so that the crowd would go and nail him to a big wooden cross by driving big stakes through his hands and feet—and then stick him up for the crows to peck at? If God was not able to make a man the first go off who would stand a mill-test, why did He not kill him off, body and soul, and try again without trying to fix things up by making His Son suffer? The whole proposition ain't natural. And what would you think of a man who, if he fell down on any proposition, would make his son go and suffer to fix up his mistakes? Why did He not come on earth and die on the cross Himself, and suffer, and turn the earth and all the stars and the rest of it over to His Son to run while He was gone?"
John Berwick was not by nature argumentative, having seldom in his life allowed himself to be drawn into any but political controversy. He had, it is true, discussed doctrine at college with his class-mates. He had read much philosophy, and had pondered deeply on the mystery of human suffering—the deepest of all mysteries. He had weighed the arguments of great minds which wanted belief in God, and in his own mind had done much to surmount the difficulty, to justify the ways of God to man; but the crude intellect before him had launched forth a proposition he could not confute. His training in rhetoric and in the drawing of parallels was of use only against the cultured mind. The legend of the Saxon king drawing the simile of life from the little bird which flew within the hall firelight and was gone again came to his mind, but he put it aside as impotent. He did not know what to say; he said nothing.
Frank Corte was working at his bread again, his face twitching with a smile.
"And then there's miskities, and black flies, and moose flies, and bull-dogs. Say! wait a month or two till the miskities get busy, and then try and figure out how any great and good God would put such things on earth! These devils ain't in cities where men is, but in the country where the beasts is. Have you ever seen a big bull-moose going hell-bent for election through the bush chased by flies? Have you ever shot a bear, with his eyes and ears and nose full of flies, and the flies sticking all round his eyes, enough to drive even a bear plumb crazy? Why should God, because man went and eat an apple, make animals suffer in trying to get even?"
Frank Corte returned to the kneading, while John Berwick thoughtfully watched the sun-flooded landscape.
"Frank," he said, after a pause, "'the proof of the pudding is the eating.' I have never heard any argument quite like yours, but man's coming to the world, how he came to the world, and whether he has a soul have been the greatest subjects of study through the ages. We know the Christian religion was taught back to within a few years of the time Christ came on earth; and from that time on has got bigger in power and influence over the minds of men, so that the majority of civilized people give justice to their fellows because this religion tells them to do so.
"The Bible tells a story of the origin of man, which we may or may not believe. The Bible says there is a God; and God sees best not to explain His schemes and why He makes man and animals suffer. I believe there is a God, and that God is just, and that there is a reason for everything. Why not try to believe there is a God, rather than argue with yourself and others that there is no God? If the Christian belief has made the world so much better as a whole, it will make you and me better as single men; and I know you would give a man a meal if he wanted it; or if a fellow were sick you would help him out all you could, and you'd expect me to do the same. If you saw a fellow drowning in the river you'd help him out; but the Chinaman, who is not a Christian, would let him drown. You're a Christian all right; but you don't know it."
John paused, and would have added something; but Frank, his face half flushed in confusion, his voice less rasping than usual, broke in,
"Say! stranger, when I first saw you I sized you up along with the Siwashes as a 'heap dam dood,' though I didn't like to say it serious-like; but that's a pretty good talk of yours, and, sure, sounds natural. Say! is that other 'King George man' with you as good a fellow as you are? Say! you've set me thinking!"
Frank had set Berwick thinking too.