“So? Good. Yes, I remember, you told me years ago, m’sieu’....
“The blinding Trail and Night and Cold are man’s: mine is the trail
that finds the Ancient Lodge. Morning and Night they travel with
me; my camp is set by the pines, its fires are burning—are burning.
The lost, they shall sit by my fires, and the fearful ones shall
seek, and the sick shall abide. I am the Hunter, the Son of the
North; I am thy lover where no man may love thee. With me thou
shalt journey, and thine the Safe Tent.
“As I said, the blood came back to my heart. I turned to my dogs, and gave them a cut with the whip to see if I dreamed. They sat back and snarled, and their wild red eyes, the same as mine, kept looking at the bear and the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. Tell me, can you think of anything like it?—the strange light, the white bear of the Pole, that has no friends at all except the shooting stars, the great ice plains, the quick night hurrying on, the silence—such silence as no man can think! I have seen trouble flying at me in a hundred ways, but this was different—yes. We come to the foot of the little hill. Still the bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my knives and my gun, the dogs began to snarl with anger, and for one little step I shivered, for the thing seem not natural. I was about two hundred feet away from the bear when it turned slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body. The dogs all at once come huddling about me, and I dropped on my knee to take aim, but the bear stole away from the man and come moving down past us at an angle, making for the plain. I could see his deep shining eyes, and the steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very slow and heavy, like as if he see no one and care for no one, he shambled down, and in a minute was gone behind a boulder. I ran on to the man—”
The governor was leaning forward, looking intently, and said now: “It’s like a wild dream—but the north—the north is near to the Strangest of All!”
“I knelt down and lifted him up in my arms, all a great bundle of furs and wool, and I got my hand at last to his wrist. He was alive. It was Little Babiche! Part of his face was frozen stiff. I rubbed out the frost with snow, and then I forced some brandy into his mouth, good old H.B.C. brandy,—and began to call to him: ‘Babiche! Babiche! Come back, Babiche! The wolf’s at the pot, Babiche!’ That’s the way to call a hunter to his share of meat. I was afraid, for the sleep of cold is the sleep of death, and it is hard to call the soul back to this world. But I called, and kept calling, and got him on his feet, with my arm round him. I gave him more brandy; and at last I almost shrieked in his ear. Little by little I saw his face take on the look of waking life. It was like the dawn creeping over white hills and spreading into day. I said to myself: What a thing it will be if I can fetch him back! For I never knew one to come back after the sleep had settled on them. It is too comfortable—all pain gone, all trouble, the world forgot, just a kind weight in all the body, as you go sinking down, down to the valley, where the long hands of old comrades beckon to you, and their soft, high voices cry, ‘Hello! hello-o!’” Pierre nodded his head towards the distance, and a musing smile divided his lips on his white teeth. Presently he folded a cigarette, and went on:
“I had saved something to the last, as the great test, as the one thing to open his eyes wide, if they could be opened at all. Alors, there was no time to lose, for the wolf of Night was driving the red glow-worm down behind the world, and I knew that when darkness came altogether—darkness and night—there would be no help for him. Mon Dieu! how one sleeps in the night of the north, in the beautiful wide silence!... So, m’sieu’, just when I thought it was the time, I called, ‘Corinne! Corinne!’ Then once again I said, ‘P’tite Corinne! P’tite Corinne! Come home! come home! P’tite Corinne!’ I could see the fight in the jail of sleep. But at last he killed his jailer; the doors in his brain flew open, and his mind came out through his wide eyes. But he was blind a little and dazed, though it was getting dark quick. I struck his back hard, and spoke loud from a song that we used to sing on the Chaudiere—Babiche and all of us, years ago. Mon Dieu! how I remember those days—
“‘Which is the way that the sun goes?
The way that my little one come.
Which is the good path over the hills?
The path that leads to my little one’s home—
To my little one’s home, m’sieu’, m’sieu’!’
“That did it. ‘Corinne, ma p’tite Corinne!’ he said; but he did not look at me—only stretch out his hands. I caught them, and shook them, and shook him, and made him take a step forward; then I slap him on the back again, and said loud: ‘Come, come, Babiche, don’t you know me? See Babiche, the snow’s no sleeping-bunk, and a polar bear’s no good friend.’ ‘Corinne!’ he went on, soft and slow. ‘Ma p’tite Corinne!’ He smiled to himself; and I said, ‘Where’ve you been, Babiche? Lucky I found you, or you’d have been sleeping till the Great Mass.’ Then he looked at me straight in the eyes, and something wild shot out of his. His hand stretched over and caught me by the shoulder, perhaps to steady himself, perhaps because he wanted to feel something human. Then he looked round slow-all round the plain, as if to find something. At that moment a little of the sun crept back, and looked up over the wall of ice, making a glow of yellow and red for a moment; and never, north or south, have I seen such beauty—so delicate, so awful. It was like a world that its Maker had built in a fit of joy, and then got tired of, and broke in pieces, and blew out all its fires, and left—ah yes—like that! And out in the distance I—I only saw a bear travelling eastwards.”
The governor said slowly:
And I took My staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break
My covenant which I had made with all the people.