“Me not know. Over de beeg water, think. He go some place,” replied Tom, waving his hand in the direction of the universe generally.
“Oh, all right. I shall get into touch with him and he will tell me everything,” said Paul more to himself than to Tom.
“And Sleeman, Tom?” inquired Paul.
“Sleeman? He at ranch. Ole woman she go dead. Girl she at home—good clothes—oh!” Here, English failing him, Tom launched forth in his native tongue into a highly coloured description of the magnificence of the Sleeman girl. Asa, too, according to Tom, had developed into a “beeg man,” “fat,” with plenty of money and gorgeously apparelled. Sleeman, as far as Paul could gather, had made “much big money” through his contracts in supplies with the railway construction gangs. He listened with growing bitterness of spirit to Tom’s glowing accounts of the good fortune that had come to the Sleemans, with which he contrasted the unhappy fate that had befallen his father and his family, due to Sleeman’s crimes. The age-long problem of the prosperity of the wicked in a world ruled by a righteous God pressed hard upon his soul. During those six lonely years with the Chippewayans in the North land, while he was passing from boyhood to manhood, he had pondered long and deeply upon that problem. True, his father had committed his sin. But he had repented of his sin, bitterly repented, and to the utmost of his power had made atonement. His sin had been forgiven and he himself reinstated in the Divine favour. That was simple and right. Paul had come to estimate at its full ethical value that sin and not according to the standard of the savage or of the frontier people with whom he had met. In her hasty flight from the consequences of her crime his Indian stepmother had taken care to pack with her necessities a few books, snatched up almost at random, among them two engineering books of his father’s, a volume of Shakespeare and his Bible, his mother’s gift to him. The engineering books and the Shakespeare he had practically mastered, as far at least as the text was concerned. As for the Bible, during those years of isolation from civilisation no day passed without his giving an hour or more to its study. More than that, at the request of his stepmother it became his daily practice to make the Bible a text book for her children. For Tanna this was an hour of unmixed delight, but for Peter the trail was heavy and progress was at the cost of much toil and suffering.
In regard to his problem of evil and its punishment Paul had founded his system of ethics upon the doctrine set forth in the Old Testament and in the tragedies of the great master of the drama in the English or indeed in any other tongue. That doctrine was simple and straightforward. The criminal in due course received the just reward of his crime, both here and hereafter. That was entirely as it should be.
The prosperity and happy fortune of Sleeman and his family, in contrast to the tragic death of his father and his family, constituted an insoluble problem for Paul. Had the Indian woman’s knife found its intended vital spot and had Sleeman in consequence “gone to his own place,” as was the case both in the Old Testament and in Shakespeare, the demands of righteous government would have been met. But his father slept on the hillside, done to death practically by Sleeman; his Indian wife, balked of her just vengeance, lay in her far North land grave, leaving her children homeless among strangers; while, prosperous and happy, Sleeman and his family still lived, untouched by the vengeance of man or God. Here upon the scene of this tragedy and in the atmosphere in which it had been consummated, the pain of the insoluble problem became almost unbearably acute. Paul thrust it from him in the meantime and turned to matters more immediately pressing.
Indian Tom had evidently been making his abode in the kitchen, which reproduced in its condition of general disorder and dirt the Indian mode of housekeeping. From the kitchen Paul passed into the living room, and went through the rest of the house, followed by Tom, whose face exhibited every sign of anxiety. Paul was amazed and delighted at what he saw. The rooms were in a condition of perfect order and cleanliness.
“Why, Tom, this is wonderful! You are a splendid housekeeper.” He ran his hand over the face of the piano. “Not a speck of dust anywhere! Did you have a housecleaning today?”
“Huh!” grunted Tom, in a state of high delight. “Every day! Every day! Clean! clean! sweep! sweep! Every day! Every day! Colonel’s Pelham’s woman she say clean him up every day. Look!” He caught down a shot gun from the wall and threw open the breach. Paul looked through the barrels. They glistened like silver.
“Good! Fine! Father himself never had it better. You have kept everything in the very best shape.”