The Lady of North Star

“I examined you,” broke in the corporal. “I thought that you were dead!”

“But as you see I wasn’t,” replied the other, “and whilst I was lying there in the snow; Joe, who was waiting with the dogs, having heard the shots came to look for me. He carried me to the sled, took me to the woods on the other side of the river, made a fire, and having doctored me brought me along here. He’s a good sort is Joe, though his looks are against him.”

The corporal did not reply. From the trails he had found in the snow, he had already guessed part of the story which he had just heard and was not surprised at it. The wounded man laughed shortly.

“Joe is attached to me. I once did him a service, and if I told him to do it he’d run amuck through Regina barracks without demur. He doesn’t love the mounted police, as he owes his lost eye to one of them, so you will see, cousin, that only my family affection saves you.”

The Indian turned his scarred face from the stove, and laid the table in primitive fashion. Then having attended to his master, he placed a tin plate with moose meat and beans before the corporal, filled a mug with steaming coffee, and with a grunt invited him to eat. The officer did so readily enough. He had eaten nothing for fourteen hours and was feeling hungry.

“Plain fare,” commented his cousin, “but wholesome, and if one brings to it the sauce of hunger, it’s at least as good as anything we had at Harrow Fell… And that reminds me, cousin. How is the governor?”

The corporal remembered the dignified Sir James Bracknell as he had last seen him, and although he had had his own quarrel with him, felt resentment at the tone in which the question was asked.

“He was very well when last I saw him,” he answered stiffly.

“How long ago is that?”

“Two years.”

“Um! that’s a goodish time. May I inquire if he knows your whereabouts?”

“I think not. I didn’t tell him of my intentions when I came here. We – er – had a difference of opinion.”

Dick Bracknell laughed. “I don’t blame you for that. He’s a starchy old buffer is the governor, and a regular perambulating pepper pot.” He was silent for a moment, and then he inquired jerkily, “How – a – did he take – that – a – a – little affair of mine?”

“You mean the selling of the plans of the Travis gun?”

“There’s no need for you to be brutal!” was the sharp reply. “I’ve paid pretty heavily for that piece of madness. You’ve to remember that I’m the heir of Harrow Fell, and that if I show my nose in England I shall probably get five years at Portland or Dartmoor.”

The corporal knew that this was true, and was conscious of a little compunction. Without alluding to it he answered the question. “Sir James took that very badly. It was hushed up, of course, but when you disappeared, and your name was gazetted among the broken, he pressed for an explanation, and got it. As you can guess, proud old man as he is, it wasn’t a nice thing for him to hear.”

“No… Poor old governor!”

A strained silence followed, and a full two minutes passed without any one speaking. Then the corporal glanced at his cousin. The latter was sitting in his bunk, staring straight before him, with a troubled look in his eyes. He moved as the corporal looked at him, and as their eyes met, he laughed in a grating way.

“The husks are not good eating,” he commented, “and I’ve been feeding on them ever since the day I skipped from Alcombe.”

The corporal was still silent, a little amazed at his cousin’s mood, and the other spoke again. “Don’t you go thinking I never regret things, Roger my boy. There never was a prodigal yet who didn’t lie awake o’ nights thinking what a fool he’d been. And for some of us there’s no going back to scoop the ring and the robe and to feast on the fatted veal… There are times when I think of the Fell, and hear the pheasants clucking in the spinney. And I never sight at a ptarmigan but I think of the grouse driving down the wind on Harrow Moor. Man – it’s Hell, undiluted.”

The corporal pushed the tin plate from him. He felt strangely moved. He had thought of his cousin as wholly bad, and now he found good mingled with the evil. He turned round.

“Dick, old man,” he said in an unsteady voice, “you might make good yet, if you tried.”

His cousin laughed harshly. “Not me, you know better. What were you after me for? Whisky-running? Yes! I thought so. That’s bad enough for a man of – a – my antecedents. But there are worse things credited to Koona Dick, as you’ll learn. I’ve got too far. What is it that fellow Kipling says? ‘Damned from here to Eternity’? That’s me, and I know it.”

“You can pull up!” urged the other. “You can make reparation.”

“Reparation!” exclaimed the other. “Ah! you are thinking of – Joy – my wife, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered the corporal simply.

Dick Bracknell’s mood changed swiftly. “What’s Joy to you?” he demanded hoarsely. “You know her, you’ve talked with her, consoled her, I don’t doubt. What’s she to you?”

As he spoke his tones became violent, and he half threw himself out of the bunk, as if he would attack his cousin. The Indian started to his feet, and his one eye glared at the officer malevolently. The corporal did not move. As his cousin shouted the question the blood flushed his face, and in his heart he knew that he could not answer the question with the directness demanded.

“Don’t be a fool, Dick,” he replied quietly. “I never saw Joy Gargrave till four days ago, and if I talk of reparation, well, you’ll own it is due to her.”

Dick Bracknell’s jealous passion died down as suddenly as it had flamed. He threw himself back in the bunk and laughed shakily.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, “but it is one of the things that can’t be done.”

“You could let her divorce you!” blurted out the corporal. “It would be the decent thing to do.”

“When did I ever do the decent thing,” retorted his cousin sneeringly. “No, Joy’s my wife – and I’ll keep her. It is something to know that there are millions I can dip my hands in some day, and a warm breast I can flee to – ”

“Not now at any rate,” broke in the corporal sharply, only by an effort restraining himself. “Joy has started for England.”

“For England – when?” Dick Bracknell’s face and tones expressed amazement, but his next words were burdened with suspicion. “You’re not lying to me?”

“No, it is the truth. Joy started for England yesterday morning. I saw her start.”

“And I can’t follow,” commented the prodigal bitterly. “That’s part of the price I pay.”

He did not speak again for a long time, and the corporal charged his pipe, lit it, and sat smoking, staring into the stove, and reflecting on the mess his cousin had made of his life.

At the end of half an hour the Indian went out, and then Dick Bracknell broke the silence.

“I wonder what Joy thinks of me? Did she tell you?”

“She knows how she was trapped – you are aware of that, of course? I think she will never forgive you.”

“I’m not surprised,” was the reply, “and yet, Roger, I think the world of her. When I married her I loved her – and I wasn’t thinking of her money overmuch. It was Lady Alcombe who put that rotten scheme in my head. If I’d only been patient, and run straight, and not been tempted by that agent to sell the secret of the Travis gun – but there’s a whole regiment of ‘if’s’ so what’s the use of gassing? Anyway, Joy’s mine – and no man else can get her while I live.”

It was the last word he said upon the subject, and nearly three weeks later, having recovered sufficiently to travel, he journeyed with his cousin and the Indian up the Elkhorn. On the fourth morning of that journey Roger Bracknell woke, to find that preparations were already well advanced for departure. One team was already harnessed with a larger complement of dogs than usual, whilst his own sled, with three dogs standing by, was still unharnessed. His cousin indicated it with a jerk of his head.

“We part company today, Roger. I’m sorry to rob your dog team, but Joe insists as he’s afraid you’ll get down to the police-post too soon for us, if we leave you your full team. Besides, we’re tackling a stiff journey and we shall need dogs before we’re through. We’re starting immediately, and you’ll have to breakfast alone, and by the time you’re through with it your parole is off. You understand?”

The corporal nodded, and his cousin continued, “With only three dogs you won’t be such a fool as to try and trail us, and we’ve left you enough grub to get you down to North Star comfortably. Your rifle’s there on the top of your sled, and I trust you not to try and use it on us till you’ve eaten your breakfast… So long, old man.”

He turned lightly away, without waiting for his cousin to speak, and the corporal heard him humming an old chanson of the Voyageurs —

“Ah, ah, Babette,
We go away;
But we will come
Again, Babette —
Again back home,
On – ”