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Chapter Eleven

"I, thomasine, take thee, Robert …"

This, Tamsin felt, was absurd. She had never been called Thomasine in her life. They were marrying some other girl to Rab under the bower of spruce-branches in the living-room with all the Eskimo ivories and Indian fire-bags blinking on the walls in the lamp-light and the familiar wild odour of cured pelts rising from floor and chair-backs in the heat. The heat stifled her; but Rab's fumbling fingers were cold as they pushed the ring on. And the ring was cold. She felt a shiver run through her, and then everyone was laughing and crowding and kissing and calling her Mrs. Stewart, and her father's cheek was wet where it brushed hers.

This was terrible. She had never known feyther to cry except when her mother died. And of course Tamsin MacDonald was dead now. Here and for ever was the end of Tamsin MacDonald …

Between shoulders she saw old Mat watching her with a queer formless gravity, and she smiled at him uncertainly. Only he and she knew the real meaning back of all this. Only he and she knew that it was done to bring Kirk back. He came to kiss her, whispering: "I been enquirin' o' Los, the Sperrit o' Prophecy, dear, an' she says it's all goin' fine." Then it surged up again, all the unreal noise and heat and laughter and colour, and presently the young men were dragging Stewart and herself on a sled heaped with bear-robes down to the Rest-house.

They make jokes that at another time would have turned her crimson. They shouted and cheered and sang, these young men who had so often wanted to marry her themselves; and the married women—there were no girls up here—flung the jests back as they walked beside, carrying lanterns to light the dim white way under the moon. But Challis, hauling with page 257them on the leather trace-lines, heard the young men grumbling to each other: "What's his sort doin' on this stampin'-ground?" they said. And: "How's he come to barge in when we couldn't?" And: "I'll lay thar's suthin' in them tales 'bout Regard after all …"

The Indians stood-by watching: shaggy-haired men in worn furs, their dark wild eyes doubtfully gazing; women and children in any gaudy garment from a long mustard-coloured ulster buttoned to the feet to three tiers of flannel and fur, tasselled with bright wool and surmounted by a purple silk jockey-cap. It was the faces which unnerved Stewart as he sat stiffly, gripping Tamsin's hand. Strange secret untameable faces, their jutting contours polished bronze in the shifting light, presented one after another as he was dragged by. "The next will be Ooket," he thought.

And presently the next was Ooket, indiscreetly gay with a great necklace of false stones. But the ear-rings were gone from her ears. "That doesn't matter. I know she had them," he thought, feeling sick as Tamsin's hand clutched his trustfully. By and by, he supposed, he would have to tell Challis …

At the open door with a flood of light behind Miss Tinney met them, all pink frills to her square bony shoulders. Mrs. Sheridan fluttered round in bright yellow with a lot of burnt neck and arms; and inside was Aggie Colom who had refused to attend the wedding, her pig-eyes red and malicious above a billowing purple garment.

"So you've gotten a man at last, Tamsin MacDonald," she cried, shrilly. "I'll say you've been tryin' long enough."

Stewart felt a sudden easement of his trouble about Ooket. He stepped up to Aggie, and "My! but he looked ugly," the women said, watching.

"Yes? Here's the man. What do you want to say, Mrs. Colom?" he asked.

"I was speakin' to Tamsin," sputtered Aggie.

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"That is the same as speaking to me now, and I'll be glad to have you remember it. I am sure that it will always give me pleasure to listen to anything you may say of my wife, Mrs. Colom, but those who speak of her in a way that does not please me will very shortly find a law-suit on their hands." He went back to Tamsin standing, he thought, in her fragrant maidenhood like a rose in snow, and left Aggie gaping. He knew that he had used the one weapon to frighten her. MacDonald might have gone for her with a gun and she would have promptly pushed old Mat between, but even Aggie Colom's tongue would guard her pocket. Mrs. Sheridan who went about 'saving situations' as she considered it, cried loudly:

"Now, folks; here's the tables groaning with good things. Aren't we going to sit down?" and Stewart gravely took Tamsin's hand and led her to her place. He was always acutely sensitive to the limelight, but pride and anger gave him courage now. Among the bustle and chatter, the grinding of eagerly pushed-in chairs and the gusts of laughter he saw her smiling at him and went giddy with ecstasy. "My very own girl now. Mine!" he thought.

The young men were looking at him sideways through the steam of the hot meats. This old fellow with his talk of lawyers when everyone knew that Aggie Colom should have been ridden out of town on a rail. And after their frequent visits to the whiskey-barrel in MacDonald's store they would have rejoiced to do it.

For a while there was no sound but the clatter of knives on plates and the heavy tramping round of the waiting Indian girls. These men and women had travelled far to stoke themselves on Miss Tinney's famous cooking. Great haunches of moose and bear, ham and caribou disappeared as quickly as the geese and swan and duck, and after them came the pies. Meat-pies, berry-pies, mince-pies, angel-cake, strawberry short-cake, hot biscuit, jellies, waffles, sausage-rolls, washed page 259down with pints of hot coffee and all the whiskey that the permits of half-a-dozen men could bring together. It will be long before Tamsin MacDonald's wedding feast is forgotten in the Yukon.

Challis, anxious about the Indians who would be moving on after the remains of the food had been turned over to them and despairing of getting Stewart to identify Ooket to-night, looked at the silent company and felt that matters were going heavily.

"Pretty dumb, aren't they?" he said to Miss Tinney, and received a surprised stare as she splashed out steaming cups of coffee.

"Sakes alive, man! You don't expect folks to talk when they're eatir'," she said.

Certainly they were eating, these bunches of miners, hunters, river-hands, in creased tweeds, mackinaws, even blue dungarees or corduroys as they sat over their plates with hair sleeked by bear's grease and flushed shaven faces. The women made a better showing. Not one from the farthest river-bars but had contrived some little feminine daintinesses. Queer things, women, thought Challis, watching Tamsin sitting with her grey ridged bridegroom at the table-end. Tamsin laughed and talked. She looked happy, fragrant as though some bud of desire had suddenly flowered in her.

"She can't love him," thought Challis. "Not after all I saw between her and Regard. What is it? Does she know about Olafssen? But she wouldn't give him up for that if I know her."

He wondered if Regard had forgotten her. Men, he had found, did not usually forget those frank grey starry eyes with the little dark line circling the iris. Tamsin had beautiful eyes. She turned them on him now, smiling.

"And it's through her husband that we're going to catch her lover," thought Challis, with an unusual tingling of his nerves, "My! What do you know about that!"

Sheridan, that silent tireless hunter, rose to give the health page 260of bride and bridegroom in a nervous little speech which Mrs. Sheridan knew that she could have done much better. He had little to say of Stewart, but he was nearly enthusiastic over Tamsin… "For besides being the finest girl in Yukon the bride has caught the biggest fish that even Sagish Lake…"

Shouts, stamping and cheers drowned him, and he sat down thankfully. Then Stewart was up, and Challis almost pitied him. Stewart was no fool. He had known well enough that he dared not touch liquor to-night, and he knew in that remote sensitive mind of his that every man here considered that Tamsin had thrown herself away. But he was deeply, savagely in love, Challis thought. His words had a harsh brevity as though he defied them all. "She's mine and I mean to keep her," he seemed to say.

"Yes. But what if young Regard comes back and wants her, old fellow?" thought Challis.

Big Jere, a tiny wizened old prospector, was on his feet now, getting off a little story of how Tamsin had tended him when he came in snow-blind from 'ways off behind Llewellyn Glaisher,' and he gave an old toast that Tamsin loved.

"Here's to the man whose hand is firm when it grasps my own With a grip of steel that makes me feel I'm not in the world alone.

Here's to the woman whose smile put the sombre clouds to rout,

Who's good and fair and kind and square to the girl who's down and out."

The crockery danced, and the room rang to fist-thumpings and the roars of approval, and Stewart knew that they were all for Tamsin. There were more poetical toasts; queer things he felt them to be, with a strange wistful tang of strength and simplicity. And then the topical ones.

"Mr. and Mrs. Stewart. May Misfortune never dump her tailings on them,"

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"Hi, Tamsin! Here's hoping Good-luck will grub-stake you to the end of your days."

"May you never go out after b'ar an' come home with a rabbit."

This, Challis felt, was only too clearly what Tamsin had done. He got up. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Prospector's Epitaph. He never cheated any but himself, or beat a store bill, so I guess he'll take a chance on a new trail. Goodluck to you, Stewart."

He saw the flush of gratitude on Stewart's gaunt face, and realized that the man was unnerved, defiant. "He's not the sort for her. He'll be jealous of her popularity, I wouldn't wonder," thought Challis. "Poor old Stewart!" And then Mat Colom, very startling in a new red and purple mackinaw, persisted in being heard.

"I've knowed Tamsin ever since she was born as Eve was born to Adam. The Great Blake says as all feminine creations are emanations of the masculine and the Four Mighty Ones are in every man, so I guess woman gets a right smart piece of em too. She gen'ly contrives to get a bit of everything…."

He was drowned by laughter and dragged down by Aggie, still shouting: "Luvah… that's one of em, an' she's Human Love governed by E-motion an' don't you forgit it, Tamsin… "

MacDonald made no speech. He tried, and broke down for the first time in his life. His sleds, already loaded in the backyard, seemed to him suddenly a menace, even a wickedness. While the room was being cleared for dancing he went out into the still cold and stared blankly at the stars. In a few hours he would be trekking off under them, leaving his own girl to sink or swim as she might. "Dom it; I should a-held on here tae see hoo it pans oot," he thought, desperately, and then knew, even more desperately, that Tamsin was no longer his business. Then her arms came slipping round his neck, and he turned to grip her long in a silent hug before they went page 262in again to the calling fiddles and the feet tapping. This was their real good-bye, he thought, and he had not asked her anything, said anything, dumb auld fool that he was.

She flew by presently in some man's arms; her great mass of bronze hair a little loosened, her close white frock showing her buoyant outlines, her round firm neck and arms. She looked a little dazed, he thought, with her eyes rather wide and her breast rising and falling in quick short breaths, and her brief uncertain smiles for one and another.

Tamsin was feeling dazed. Something was settled and done with for ever now, but she could not feel sure what it was. Even when Stewart held her stiffly, stepping gravely round and round, his hard forehead beaded by the heat of the crowded noisy room she had no real sensation of his nearness. All these people were here to see her bound to him, but she did not feel bound. She knew as she had often known, that her body and spirit were different things, and her spirit was away up on the hills behind Sagish with Kirk.

At her ear Rab said, urgently: "Tamsin, Tamsin; is it true?" She did not answer, and his terrible doubts assailed him again. After all that bright cruse of youth from which she had drunk with young Regard how could it be possible that she really cared for him. "Tamsin," he whispered: "do you love me? Do you?"

She looked at him then, suddenly startled by an anxious humility that she had not seen in him before, and a consciousness of how very little she had been thinking of him swept over her. He was feeling intensely, this stiff reticent old man, and she had not known, had not cared.

"Oh, Rab," she said, impulsively; "I will try to be all you want me to be. I will. I will."

Then the music stopped and she was gone, laughing, looking back with a gay promising nod of her bright head. But she was a little tremulous as she sought MacDonald, a little frightened for the first time. She meant to try in all honesty page 263to give Rab all the care and consideration and obedience that she gave MacDonald, but how if he suspected her? She flung that thought from her with terror. It was not possible. He was so grateful to her…

"Feyther de-ar," she patted his arm, trying to laugh. "It's the Lancers next, feyther, and you're leading out Auntie Ag… "

"Na, na, Tamsin. Na, lassie. Naething daeing. Tell me tae lead oot a jack-rabbit an' I'll try, but… "

"Then she'll lead you out. In fact, I think that's how I put it to her and she said she'd rather lead out a loon. So you'll both be unhappy to please me, darling, and that will make you happy, won't it? An' I have Uncle Mat… "

In the empty latter days when there was no more Tamsin, Stewart could always call up that dance in the big disordered room with astonishing clearness. He could remember just how the tight amber satin wrinkled under the arms of Mrs. Sheridan pounding the piano; how the two fiddlers, discarding coats and vests, laboured with the bows until the sweat ran down their red-lined faces; how dust flew from the boards so that someone was always sneezing and the men swung the women with the ancient dog-team cries:

"Gee, Dolly. Gee, Fanny. Haw, Fanny. Mush…." And then would follow the helter-skelter up the middle with Tamsin in the lead; head up, some loose white drapery about her shoulders flying, her red lips curved in laughter, her strong pliant young body poised like some merry Amazon with her heterogeneous panting company behind her.

Challis was one of them: a scarlet tanager joined for the time to a bluebird who was wife to some hillside gouger out on the Creeks. Stewart wondered later why he had not even then seen the doom of all this in Chaliis' eyes…

Going away the men were whistling The Moon Shines To-Night on Pretty Red-Wing, as they packed their women into the sleds and on to the horses under the cold white page 264heaven-fires. Jests went lumbering round; curiously circumspect and formal among the men and rather easier among the women. In all mixed occasions, thought husbands and fathers, women have the advantage, being naturally bolder with the tongue. The Indians were still there, immovable in the cold, and Challis made a last desperate attempt to speak to Stewart.

"If you see the girl Ooket anywhere, Stewart… "

"What?" said Stewart, unheeding. He was wrapping Tamsin for the procession down to the Store headed by both fiddlers, and Challis dropped back. To-morrow, he hoped, would be time enough.

Ooket and her Loucheux were close to him, had he been able to recognize them; their faces greasy with food, their eyes dulled with it. To-morrow they would all sleep about the Indian village until the sun was high, and then they would pull out for the far North and the long summer.

Everyone sang and laughed as the bridal pair were marched home over the frosty boards with MacDonald hurrying ahead to pile more billets into the stove. "So now the Kanana has put the rubber-stamp of approval on our marriage," cried Tamsin on the door-step. "Sakes, I didn't guess there were so many congratulations in the world as I've listened to to-night. Thanks ever so, folks. You've been lovely to me. Good-night."

She dismissed them as a queen might do, thought Stewart, going in to find her in MacDonald's arms. She did not cry, but she held him close with a strange feeling of dizziness.

"You'll come back soon?" she whispered.

"Sure," said MacDonald. But he had no intention of doing that. "No the sort tae horn in betune husband an' wife afore they're settled, I guess," he thought. To Stewart he said only: "Ye've got the best thing in Yukon, Rab. Tak' care o't," and went out hastily, slamming the door behind.

Tamsin looked round, pushing back her hair.

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"It feels—funny," she said. She laughed uncertainly. "There has always been feyther—coming in, you know."

Stewart felt suddenly like hot fluid cased in iron. He said with incredible stiffness:

"You must be tired. You'd like—to retire. I shall have a pipe first."

"Oh, yes. All right." She fluttered about, moving a chair, a photograph; blew him a kiss from between the curtains leading to the bedrooms and vanished.

Stewart dropped into MacDonald's leather chair and lit his pipe with shaking fingers. Emotion and exertion had exhausted him amazingly. His mind, less supple than Tamsin's, less direct than MacDonald's, momentarily refused to obey him. Disgust and despair at his ruined years; humbleness, wonder, trembling eagerness were all at work in him, driving him this and that way. "I'm not old," he thought, savagely. And then, piteously: "I am old, and she is so young. So young… "

He listened to Tamsin moving behind the curtains, and the hammering of his pulses drove him to his feet. He walked up and down between the flowering window-boxes and the glowing stove. "It'll be all right. All right," he told himself. "I'll be good to her. God knows I mean to be good to her."

In her small familiar room next MacDonald's, Tamsin had stood a minute looking at the shut door. But Stewart's reality had passed with the sight of him. Here, in her own place, with Tall Thing watching starry-headed beyond the window and Kirk watching starry-eyed from the wall, were the only realities. She turned swiftly and flung off her wedding-trappings as though the last of that grotesque business went with them; huddled a warm blue gown over her night-dress and sat down by the open window, leaning herself on her elbows to look out at the night. Slowly that starry silence calmed the tumult in her, lifted her on broad wings of strength and peace.

Up there on the snowy haunch of Tall Thing all life lay page 266seemingly arrested; but deep within that giant body was already the stirring of new life secretly building up into fresh glories to be. No death anywhere; no real frustration. Only re-creation, eternal, mysterious, indestructible; only the fading of one headland beyond the horizon and the lifting of another, Only the passing of one flower and the glow of another rising above its crispy ghost.

"I can never be young again," thought Tamsin with the wisdom of her twenty years. "But now I can give Kirk all he will take. I can give him friendship… and help him. And that's all I really want." Something far back in her mind seemed refusing to sanction that. She insisted: "Yes; I do mean that. I've made sure that I mean it. This makes sure."

She looked down at the broad gold band on her finger; pressed it against her eyes in a valiant effort to call up Stewart's face. But it was Kirk's face that came; so gay, so young with laughter that before she knew it she was torn with an agony of tears.

But the tears were dried when later she opened the door at Stewart's knock and went out to him with a smile.