CHAPTER I

THE MUSIC

"Listen, John—I hear music—"

The words came in a gentle whisper from the woman's lips. One white, thin hand lifted itself weakly to the rough face of the man who was kneeling beside her bed, and the great dark eyes from which he had hidden his own grew luminously bright for a moment, as she whispered again:

"John—I hear—music—"

A sigh fluttered from her lips. The man's head drooped until it rested very near to her bosom. He felt the quiver of her hand against his cheek, and in its touch there was something which told John Cummins that the end of all life had come for him and for her. His heart beat fiercely, and his great shoulders shook with the agony that was eating at his soul.

"Yes, it is the pretty music, my Mélisse," he murmured softly, choking back his sobs. "It is the pretty music in the skies."

The hand pressed more tightly against his face.

"It's not the music in the skies, John. It is real—REAL music that I hear—"

"It's the sky music, my sweet Mélisse! Shall I open the door so that we can hear it better?"

The hand slipped from his cheek. Cummins lifted his head, slowly straightening his great shoulders as he looked down upon the white face, from which even the flush of fever was disappearing, as he had seen the pale glow of the northern sun fade before a thickening snow. He stretched his long, gaunt arms straight up to the low roof of the cabin, and for the first time in his life he prayed—prayed to the God who had made for him this world of snow and ice and endless forest very near to the dome of the earth, who had given him this woman, and who was now taking her from him.

When he looked again at the woman, her eyes were open, and there glowed in them still the feeble fire of a great love. Her lips, too, pleaded with him in their old, sweet way, which always meant that he was to kiss them, and stroke her hair, and tell her again that she was the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

"My Mélisse!"

He crushed his face to her, his sobbing breath smothering itself in the soft masses of her hair, while her arms rose weakly and fell around his neck. He heard the quick, gasping struggle for breath within her bosom, and, faintly again, the words:

"It—is—the—music—of—my—people!"

"It is the music of the angels in the skies, my sweet Mélisse! It is OUR music. I will open the door."

The arms had slipped from his shoulders. Gently he ran his rough fingers through the loose glory of the woman's hair, and stroked her face as softly as he might have caressed the cheek of a sleeping child.

"I will open the door, Mélisse."

His moccasined feet made no sound as he moved across the little room which was their home. At the door he paused and listened; then he opened it, and the floods of the white night poured in upon him as he stood with his eyes turned to where the cold, pale flashes of the aurora were playing over the pole. There came to him the hissing, saddening song of the northern lights—a song of vast, unending loneliness, which they two had come to know as the music of the skies.

Beyond that mystery-music there was no sound. To the eyes of John Cummins there was no visible movement of life. And yet he saw signs of it—signs which drew his breath from him in choking gulps, and which sent him out into the night, so that the woman might not hear.

It was an hour past midnight at the post, which had the Barren Lands at its back door. It was the hour of deep slumber for its people; but to-night there was no sleep for any of them. Lights burned dimly in the few rough log homes. The company's store was aglow, and the factor's office, a haven for the men of the wilderness, shot one gleaming yellow eye out into the white gloom. The post was awake. It was waiting. It was listening. It was watching.

As the woman's door opened, wide and brimful of light, a door of one of the log houses opened, and then another, and out into the night, like dim shadows, trod the moccasined men from the factor's office, and stood there waiting for the word of life or death from John Cummins. In their own fashion these men, who, without knowing it, lived very near to the ways of God, sent mute prayers into the starry heavens that the most beautiful thing in the world might yet be spared to them.

It was just two summers before that this beautiful thing had come into Cummins' life, and into the life of the post. Cummins, red-headed, lithe as a cat, big-souled as the eternal mountain of the Crees, and the best of the company's hunters, had brought Mélisse thither as his bride. Seventeen rough hearts had welcomed her. They had assembled about that little cabin in which the light was shining now, speechless in their adoration of this woman who had come among them, their caps in their hands, their faces shining, their eyes shifting before the glorious ones that looked at them and smiled at them as the woman shook their hands, one by one.

Perhaps she was not strictly beautiful, as most people judge; but she was beautiful here, four hundred miles beyond civilization. Mukee, the half-Cree, had never seen a white woman, for even the factor's wife was part Chippewayan; and no one of the others went down to the edge of the southern wilderness more than once each twelvemonth or so.

Melisse's hair was brown and soft, and it shone with a sunny glory that reached far back into their conception of things dreamed of but never seen. Her eyes were as blue as the early wild flowers that came after the spring floods, and her voice was the sweetest sound that had ever fallen upon their ears. So these men thought when Cummins first brought home his wife, and the masterpiece which each had painted in his soul and brain was never changed. Each week and month added to the deep-toned value of that picture, as the passing of a century might add to a Raphael or a Vandyke.

The woman became more human, and less an angel, of course, but that only made her more real, and allowed them to become acquainted with her, to talk with her, and to love her more. There was no thought of wrong, for the devotion of these men was a great, passionless love unhinting of sin. Cummins and his wife accepted it, and added to it when they could, and were the happiest pair in all that vast Northland.

The girl—she was scarce more than budding into womanhood—fell happily into the ways of her new life. She did nothing that was elementally unusual, nothing more than any pure woman reared in the love of God and of a home would have done. In her spare hours she began to teach the half-dozen wild little children about the post, and every Sunday she told them wonderful stories out of the Bible. She ministered to the sick, for that was a part of her code of life. Everywhere she carried her glad smile, her cheery greeting, her wistful earnestness, to brighten what seemed to her the sad and lonely lives of these silent men of the North.

And she succeeded, not because she was unlike other millions of her kind, but because of the difference between the fortieth degree and the sixtieth—the difference in the viewpoint of men who fought themselves into moral shreds in the big game of life and those who lived a thousand miles nearer to the dome of the earth.

A few days before there had come a wonderful event in the history of the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their existence—a part of it as truly as the strange lights for ever hovering over the pole, as surely as the countless stars that never left the night skies, as surely as the endless forests and the deep snows!

Then had come the sudden change, and the gloom, that brought with it the shadow of death, fell like a pall upon the post, stifling its life, and bringing with it a grief that those who lived there had never known before.

There came to them no word from Cummins now.

He stood for a moment before his lighted door, and then went back, and the word passed softly from one to another that the most beautiful thing in the world was still living her sweet life in that little cabin at the end of the clearing.

"You hear the music in the skies—now, my Mélisse?" whispered the man, kneeling beside her again. "It is very pretty to-night!"

"It was not that," repeated the woman.

She attempted to stroke his face, but Cummins saw nothing of the effort, for the hand lay all but motionless. He saw nothing of the fading softness that glowed in the big, loving eyes, for his own eyes were blinded by a hot film. And the woman saw nothing of the hot film, so torture was saved them both. But suddenly the woman quivered, and Cummins heard a thrilling sound.

"It is the music!" she panted. "John, John, it is—the music—of—my—people!"

The man straightened himself, his face turned to the open door. He heard it now! Was it the blessed angels coming for his Mélisse? He rose, a sobbing note in his throat, and went, his arms stretched out, to meet them. He had never heard a sound like that—never in all his life in this endless wilderness.

He went from the door out into the night, and, step by step, through the snow toward the black edge of the spruce forest. The sobs fell chokingly from his lips, and his arms were still reaching out to greet this messenger of the God of his beloved; for Cummins was a man of the wild and mannerless ways of a savage world, and he knew not what to make of this sweetness that came to them from out of the depths of the black forest.

"My Mélisse! My Mélisse!" he sobbed.

A figure came from the shadows, and with the figure came the music, sweet and soft and low. John Cummins stopped and turned his face straight up to the sky. His heart died within him.

The music ceased, and when he looked again the figure was close to him, staggering as it walked, and a face white and thin and starved came with it. It was a boy's face.

"For the museek of the violon—somet'ing to eat!" he heard, and the thin figure swayed and fell almost into his arms. The voice came weak again. "Thees is Jan—Jan Thoreau—and his violon—"

The woman's bloodless face and her great staring dark eyes greeted them as they entered the cabin. As the man knelt beside her again, and lifted her head against his breast, she whispered once more:

"It is the—music—of my people—the violin!"

John Cummins turned his head.

"Play!" he breathed.

"Ah, the white angel is seek—ver' seek," murmured Jan, and he drew his bow gently across the strings of his violin.

From the instrument there came something so soft and sweet that John Cummins closed his eyes as he held the woman against his breast and listened. Not until he opened them again, and felt a strange chill against his cheek, did he know that his beloved's soul had gone from him on the gentle music of Jan Thoreau's violin.

CHAPTER II

MUKEE'S STORY

For many minutes after the last gentle breath had passed from the woman's lips, Jan Thoreau played softly upon his violin. It was the great, heart-broken sob of John Cummins that stopped him. As tenderly as if she had fallen into a sweet sleep from which he feared to awaken her, the man unclasped his arms and lowered his wife's head to the pillow; and with staring black eyes Jan crushed his violin against his ragged breast and watched him as he smoothed back the shimmering hair and looked long and hungrily into the still, white face.

Cummins turned to him, and, in the dim light of the cabin, their eyes met. It was then that Jan Thoreau knew what had happened. He forgot his starvation. He crushed his violin closer, and whispered to himself:

"The white angel ees—gone!"

Cummins rose from the bedside, slowly, like a man who had suddenly grown old. His moccasined feet dragged as he went to the door. They stumbled when he went out into the pale star-glow of the night.

Jan followed, swaying weakly, for the last of his strength had gone in the playing of the violin. Midway in the cabin he paused, and his eyes glowed with a wild, strange grief as he gazed down upon the still face of Cummins' wife, beautiful in death as it had been in life, and with the sweet softness of life still lingering there. Some time, ages and ages ago, he had known such a face, and had felt the great clutching love of it.

Something drew him to where John Cummins had knelt, and he fell upon his knees and gazed hungrily and longingly where John Cummins had gazed. His pulse was beating feebly, the weakness of seven days' starvation blurred his eyes, and unconsciously he sank over the bed and one of his thin hands touched the soft sweep of the woman's hair. A stifled cry fell from him as he jerked himself rigidly erect; and as if for the desecration of that touch there was but one way of forgiveness, he drew his violin half to his shoulder, and for a few moments played so softly that none but the spirit of the woman and himself could hear.

Cummins had partly closed the door after him; but watchers had seen the opening of it. A door opened here, and another there, and paths of yellow light flashed over the hard-trodden snow as shadowy life came forth to greet what message he brought from the little cabin.

Beyond those flashes of light there was no other movement, and no sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence. The hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of his cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the forest. A score of eyes watched Cummins as he came out into the snow, and the rough, loyal hearts of those who looked throbbed in fearful anticipation of the word he might be bringing to them.

Sometimes a nation ceases to breathe in the last moments of its dying chief, and the black wings of calamity gather over its people, enshrouding them in a strange gloom and a stranger fear; and so, because the greatest of all tragedies had come into their little world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for the final word. And when the word came to them at last, and passed from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another, the doors closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until there remained only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the faint glow from the little cabin in which John Cummins knelt with his sobbing face crushed close to that of his dead.

There was no one who noticed Jan Thoreau when he came through the door of the factor's office. His coat of caribou-skin was in tatters. His feet thrust themselves from the toes of his moccasins. His face was so thin and white that it shone with the pallor of death from its frame of straight dark hair. His eyes gleamed like black diamonds. The madness of hunger was in him.

An hour before, death had been gripping at his throat, when he stumbled upon the lights of the post, That night he would have died in the deep snows. Wrapped in its thick coat of bearskin he clutched his violin to his breast, and sank down in a ragged heap beside the hot stove. His eyes traveled about him in fierce demand. There is no beggary among these strong-souled men of the far North, and Jan's lips did not beg. He unwrapped the bearskin, and whispered:

"For the museek of the violon—somet'ing to eat!"

He played, even as the words fell from him, but only for a moment—for the bow slipped from his nerveless grip and his head sank forward upon his breast.

In the half-Cree's eyes there was something of the wild beauty that gleamed in Jan's. For an instant those eyes had met in the savage recognition of blood; and when Jan's head fell weakly, and his violin slipped to the floor, Mukee lifted him in his strong arms and carried him to the shack in the edge of the spruce and balsam.

And there was no one who noticed Jan the next day—except Mukee. He was fed. His frozen blood grew warm. As life returned, he felt more and more the pall of gloom that had settled over this spark of life in the heart of the wilderness. He had seen the woman, in life and in death, and he, too, loved her and grieved that she was no more. He said nothing; he asked nothing; but he saw the spirit of adoration in the sad, tense faces of the men. He saw it in the terror-stricken eyes of the wild little children who had grown to worship Cummins' wife. He read it in the slinking stillness of the dogs, in the terrible, pulseless quiet that had settled about him.

It was not hard for Jan to understand, for he, too, worshiped the memory of a white, sweet face like the one that he had seen in the cabin. He knew that this worship at Lac Bain was a pure worship, for the honor of the big snows was a part of his soul. It was his religion, and the religion of these others who lived four hundred miles or more from a southern settlement.

It meant what civilization could not understand—freezing and slow starvation rather than theft, and respect for the tenth commandment above all other things. It meant that up here, under the cold chill of the northern skies, things were as God meant them to be, and that a few of His creatures could live in a love that was neither possession nor sin.

A year after Cummins brought his wife into the North, a man came to the post from Fort Churchill, on Hudson's Bay. He was an Englishman, belonging to the home office of the Hudson's Bay Company in London. He brought with him something new, as the woman had brought something new; only in this instance it was an element of life which Cummins' people could not understand.

It breathed of tragedy from the first, to the men of the post. To the Englishman, on the other hand, it promised to be but an incident—a passing adventure in pleasure. Here again was that difference of viewpoint—the eternity of difference between the middle and the end of the earth.

Cummins was away for a month on a trap-line that went into the Barren Lands. At these times the woman fell as a heritage to those who remained, and they watched over her as a parent might guard its child. Yet the keenest eyes would not have perceived that this was so.

With Cummins gone, the tragedy progressed swiftly toward finality. The Englishman came from among women. For months he had been in a torment of desolation. Cummins' wife was to him like a flower suddenly come to relieve the tantalizing barrenness of a desert; and with the wiles and ways of civilization he sought to breathe its fragrance.

In the days and weeks that followed, he talked a great deal, when heated by the warmth of the box stove and by his own thoughts; and this was because he had not yet measured the hearts of Cummins' people. And because the woman knew nothing of what was said about the box stove, she continued in the even course of her pure life, neither resisting nor encouraging the new-comer, yet ever tempting him with that sweetness which she gave to all alike.

As yet there was no suspicion in her soul. She accepted the Englishman's friendship, for he was a stranger among her people. She did not hear the false note, she saw no step that promised evil. Only the men at the post heard, and saw, and understood.

Like so many faithful beasts, they were ready to spring, to rend flesh, to tear life out of him who threatened the desecration of all that was good and pure and beautiful to them; and yet, dumb in their devotion and faith, they waited and watched for a sign from the woman. The blue eyes of Cummins' wife, the words of her gentle lips, the touch of her hands, had made law at the post. If she smiled upon the stranger and talked with him, and was pleased with him, that was only one other law that she had made for them to respect. So they were quiet, evaded the Englishman as much as possible, and watched—always watched.