CHAPTER XII
A RUMOR FROM THE SOUTH
It was a long winter for Cummins and Melisse. It was a longer one forJan. He had taken with him a letter from the factor at Lac Bain to thefactor at Churchill, and he found quarters with the chief clerk'sassistant at the post--a young, red-faced man who had come over on theship from England. He was a cheerful, good-natured young fellow, andwhen he learned that his new associate had tramped all the way from theBarren Lands to attend the new public school, he at once investedhimself with the responsibilities of a private tutor.
He taught Jan, first of all, to say "is" in place of "ees." It was atremendous lesson for Jan, but he struggled with it manfully, and aweek after his arrival, when one evening he was tuning his violin toplay for young MacDonald, he said with eager gravity:
"Ah, I have it now, Mr. MacDonald. It ees not 'EES,' it ees 'EES!'"
MacDonald roared, but persisted, and in time Jan began to get the twistout of his tongue.
The school opened in November, and Jan found himself one of twenty orso, gathered there from forty thousand square miles of wilderness. Twowhite youths and a half-breed had come from the Etawney; the factor atNelson House sent up his son, and from the upper waters of the LittleChurchill there came three others.
From the first, Jan's music found him a premier place in the interestof the tutor sent over by the company. He studied by night as well asby day, and by the end of the second month his only competitor was theyouth from Nelson House. His greatest source of knowledge was not theteacher, but MacDonald. There was in him no inherent desire for thelearning of the people to the south. That he was storing away, like afaithful machine, for the use of Melisse. But MacDonald gave him thatfor which his soul longed--a picture of life as it existed in thewonderful world beyond the wilderness, to which some strange spiritwithin him, growing stronger as the weeks and months passed, seemedprojecting his hopes and his ambitions.
Between his thoughts of Melisse and Lac Bain, he dreamed of that otherworld; and several times during the winter he took the little roll fromthe box of his violin, and read again and again the written pages thatit contained.
"Some time I will go," he assured himself always. "Some time, whenMelisse is a little older, and can go too."
To young MacDonald, the boy from Lac Bain was a "find." The Scottishyouth was filled with an immense longing for home; and as hishomesickness grew, he poured more and more into Jan's attentive earshis knowledge of the world from which he had come. He told him thehistory of the old brass cannon that lay abandoned among the vines andbushes, where a fort had stood at Churchill many years before. Hedescribed the coming of the first ship into the great bay; told ofHudson and his men, of great wars that his listener had never dreamedof, of kings and queens and strange nations. At night he read a greatdeal to Jan out of books that he had brought over with him.
As the weeks and months passed, the strange spirit that was calling tothe forest boy out of that other world stirred more restlessly withinhim. At times it urged him to confide in MacDonald what was hidden awayin the box of his violin.
The secret nearly burst from him one Sunday, when MacDonald said:
"I'm going home on the ship that comes over next summer. What do yousay to going back with me, Jan?"
The spirit surged through Jan in a hot flood, and it was only anaccident that kept him from saying what was in his heart.
They were standing with the icy bay stretching off in interminablemiles toward the pole. A little way from them, the restless tide wasbeating up through the broken ice, and eating deeper into the frozenshore. From out of the bank there projected, here and there, the endsof dark, box-like objects, which, in the earlier days of the company,had been gun-cases. In them were the bones of men who had lived anddied an age ago; and as Jan looked at the silent coffins, now fallinginto the sea, another spirit--the spirit that bound him toMelisse--entered into him, and he shuddered as he thought of what mighthappen in the passing of a year.
It was this spirit that won. In the spring, Jan went back to Lac Bainwith the company's supplies. The next autumn he followed the school toYork Factory, and the third year he joined it at Nelson House. Then thecompany's teacher died, and no one came to fill his place.
In midwinter of this third year, Jan returned to Lac Bain, and, huggingthe delighted Melisse close in his arms, he told her that never againwould he go away without her. Melisse, tightening her arms around hisneck, made his promise sacred by offering her little rosebud of a mouthfor him to kiss. Later, the restless spirit slumbering within hisbreast urged him to speak to Cummins.
"When Melisse is a little older, should we not go with her into theSouth?" he said. "She must not live for ever in a place like this."
Cummins looked at him for an instant as if he did not understand. WhenJan's meaning struck home, his eyes hardened, and there was the vibrantring of steel in his quiet voice.
"Her mother will be out there under the old spruce until the end oftime," he said slowly; "and we will never leave her--unless, some day,Melisse goes alone."
From that hour Jan no longer looked into the box of his violin. Hestruggled against the desire that had grown with his years until hebelieved that he had crushed it and stamped it out of his existence. Inhis life there came to be but one rising and one setting of the sun.Melisse was his universe. She crowded his heart until beyond her hebegan to lose visions of any other world.
Each day added to his joy. He called her "my little sister," and withsweet gravity Melisse called him "brother Jan," and returned in fullmeasure his boundless love. He marked the slow turning of her flaxenhair into sunny gold, and month by month watched joyfully the deepeningof that gold into warm shades of brown. She was to be like her mother!Jan's soul rejoiced, and in his silent way Cummins offered up wordlessprayers of thankfulness.
So matters stood at Post Lac Bain in the beginning of Melisse's ninthyear, when up from the south there came a rumor. As civil war spreadsits deepest gloom, as the struggle of father against son and brotheragainst brother stifles the breathing of nations, so this rumor setcreeping a deep pall over the forest people.
Rumor grew into rumor. From the east, the south and the west theymultiplied, until on all sides the Paul Reveres of the wildernesscarried news that the Red Terror was at their heels, and the chill of agreat fear swept like a shivering wind from the edge of civilization tothe bay.