of it, civilization will be sweet? What do you say?”
Fairfax’s face took on a stolid expression. “Oh, I don’t know. At least
they’re honest folk and live according to their lights. And then they are
amazingly simple. No complexity about them, no thousand and one subtle
ramifications to every single emotion they experience. They love, fear,
hate, are angered, or made happy, in common, ordinary, and unmistakable
terms. It may be a beastly life, but at least it is easy to live. No
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7
philandering, no dallying. If a woman likes you, she’ll not be backward in
telling you so. If she hates you, she’ll tell you so, and then, if you feel
inclined, you can beat her, but the thing is, she knows precisely what you
mean, and you know precisely what she means. No mistakes, no
misunderstandings. It has its charm, after civilization’s fitful fever.
Comprehend?”
“No, it’s a pretty good life,” he continued, after a pause; “good enough for
me, and I intend to stay with it.”
Van Brunt lowered his head in a musing manner, and an imperceptible
smile played on his mouth. No philandering, no dallying, no
misunderstanding. Fairfax also was taking it hard, he thought, just because
Emily Southwaithe had been mistakenly clawed by a bear. And not a bad
sort of a bear, either, was Carlton Southwaithe.
“But you are coming along with me,” Van Brunt said deliberately.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Life’s too easy here, I tell you.” Fairfax spoke with decision. “I
understand everything, and I am understood. Summer and winter alternate
like the sun flashing through the palings of a fence, the seasons are a blur
of light and shade, and time slips by, and life slips by, and then . . . a
wailing in the forest, and the dark. Listen!”
He held up his hand, and the silver thread of the woman’s sorrow rose
through the silence and the calm. Fairfax joined in softly.
“O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ha-aa-a-a, O-o-o-o-o-o-a-ha-a-ha-a,” he sang.
“Can’t you hear it? Can’t you see it? The women mourning? the funeral
chant? my hair white-locked and patriarchal? my skins wrapped in rude
splendor about me? my hunting-spear by my side? And who shall say it is
not well?”
Van Brunt looked at him coolly. “Fairfax, you are a damned fool. Five
years of this is enough to knock any man, and you are in an unhealthy,
morbid condition. Further, Carlton Southwaithe is dead.”
Van Brunt filled his pipe and lighted it, the while watching slyly and with
almost professional interest. Fairfax’s eyes flashed on the instant, his fists
clenched, he half rose up, then his muscles relaxed and he seemed to
brood. Michael, the cook, signalled that the meal was ready, but Van
Brunt motioned back to delay. The silence hung heavy, and he fell to
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
8
analyzing the forest scents, the odors of mould and rotting vegetation, the
resiny smells of pine cones and needles, the aromatic savors of many
camp-smokes. Twice Fairfax looked up, but said nothing, and then:
“And. . . Emily. . . ?”
“Three years a widow; still a widow.”
Another long silence settled down, to be broken by Fairfax finally with a
naive smile. “I guess you’re right, Van Brunt. I’ll go along.”
“I knew you would.” Van Brunt laid his hand on Fairfax’s shoulder. “Of
course, one cannot know, but I imagine—for one in her position— she has
had offers—”
“When do you start?” Fairfax interrupted.
“After the men have had some sleep. Which reminds me, Michael is
getting angry, so come and eat.”
After supper, when the Crees and voyageurs had rolled into their blankets,
snoring, the two men lingered by the dying fire. There was much to talk
about,—wars and politics and explorations, the doings of men and the
happening of things, mutual friends, marriages, deaths,— five years of
history for which Fairfax clamored.
“So the Spanish fleet was bottled up in Santiago,” Van Brunt was saying,
when a young woman stepped lightly before him and stood by Fairfax’s
side. She looked swiftly into his face, then turned a troubled gaze upon
Van Brunt.
“Chief Tantlatch’s daughter, sort of princess,” Fairfax explained, with an
honest flush. “One of the inducements, in short, to make me stay. Thom,
this is Van Brunt, friend of mine.”
Van Brunt held out his hand, but the woman maintained a rigid repose
quite in keeping with her general appearance. Not a line of her face
softened, not a feature unbent. She looked him straight in the eyes, her
own piercing, questioning, searching.
“Precious lot she understands,” Fairfax laughed. “Her first introduction,
you know. But as you were saying, with the Spanish fleet bottled up in
Santiago?”
Thom crouched down by her husband’s side, motionless as a bronze statue,
only her eyes flashing from face to face in ceaseless search. And Avery
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
9
Van Brunt, as he talked on and on, felt a nervousness under the dumb
gaze. In the midst of his most graphic battle descriptions, he would
become suddenly conscious of the black eyes burning into him, and would
stumble and flounder till he could catch the gait and go again. Fairfax,
hands clasped round knees, pipe out, absorbed, spurred him on when he
lagged, and repictured the world he thought he had forgotten.
One hour passed, and two, and Fairfax rose reluctantly to his feet. “And
Cronje was cornered, eh? Well, just wait a moment till I run over to
Tantlatch. He’ll be expecting you, and I’ll arrange for you to see him after
breakfast. That will be all right, won’t it ?” He went off between the pines,
and Van Brunt found himself staring into Thom’s warm eyes. Five years,
he mused, and she can’t be more than twenty now. A most remarkable
creature. Being Eskimo, she should have a little flat excuse for a nose, and
lo, it is neither broad nor flat, but aquiline, with nostrils delicately and
sensitively formed as any fine lady’s of a whiter breed—the Indian strain
somewhere, be assured, Avery Van Brunt. And, Avery Van Brunt, don’t
be nervous, she won’t eat you; she’s only a woman, and not a bad-looking
one at that. Oriental rather than aborigine. Eyes large and fairly wide
apart, with just the faintest hint of Mongol obliquity. Thom, you’re an
anomaly. You’re out of place here among these Eskimos, even if your
father is one. Where did your mother come from? or your grandmother?
And Thom, my dear, you’re a beauty, a frigid, frozen little beauty with
Alaskan lava in your blood, and please don’t look at me that way.
He laughed and stood up. Her insistent stare disconcerted him. A dog was
prowling among the grub-sacks. He would drive it away and place them
into safety against Fairfax’s return. But Thom stretched out a detaining
hand and stood up, facing him.
“You?” she said, in the Arctic tongue which differs little from Greenland
to Point Barrow. “You?”
And the swift expression of her face demanded all for which “you” stood,
his reason for existence, his presence there, his relation to her husband—
everything.
“Brother,” he answered in the same tongue, with a sweeping gesture to the
south. “Brothers we be, your man and I.”
She shook her head. “It is not good that you be here.”
“After one sleep I go.”
“And my man ?” she demanded, with tremulous eagerness.
CHILDREN OF THE FROST
10
Van Brunt shrugged his shoulders. He was aware of a certain secret
shame, of an impersonal sort of shame, and an anger against Fairfax. And
he felt the warm blood in his face as he regarded the young savage. She
was just a woman. That was all—a woman. The whole sordid story over
again, over and over again, as old as Eve and young as the last new lovelight.
“My man! My man! My man!” she was reiterating vehemently, her face
passionately dark, and the ruthless tenderness of the Eternal Woman, the
Mate-Woman, looking out at him from her eyes.
“Thom,” he said gravely, in English, “you were born in the Northland
forest, and you have eaten fish and meat, and fought with frost and famine,
and lived simply all the days of your life. And there are many things,
indeed not simple, which you do not know and cannot come to understand.
You do not know what it is to long for the flesh-pots afar, you cannot
understand what it is to yearn for a fair woman’s face And the woman is
fair, Thom, the woman is nobly fair. You have been woman to this man,
and you have been your all, but your all is very little, very simple. Too
little and too simple, and he is an alien man. Him you have never known,
you can never know. It is so ordained. You held him in your arms, but you
never held his heart, this man with his blurring seasons and his dreams of