The Magnetic North Part 68

The priest kept on: "But you felt a great longing to make a breach in the high walls that shut you in. You wanted to fare away on some voyage of discovery. Wasn't that it?". He paused now in his turn, but the Boy looked straight before him, saying nothing. The priest leaned forward with a deeper gravity.

"It will be a fortunate expedition, this, my son, _if thou discover thyself_--and in time!" Still the Boy said nothing. The other resumed more lightly: "In America we combine our travels with business. But it is no new idea in the world that a young man should have his Wanderjahr before he finds what he wants, or even finds acquiescence. It did not need Wilhelm Meister to set the feet of youth on that trail; it did not need the Crusades. It's as old as the idea of a Golden Fleece or a Promised Land. It was the first man's first inkling of heaven."

The Boy p.r.i.c.ked his ears. Wasn't this heresy?

"The old idea of the strenuous, to leave home and comfort and security, and go out to search for wisdom, or holiness, or happiness--whether it is gold or the San Grael, the instinct of Search is deep planted in the race. It is this that the handful of men who live in what they call 'the world'--it is this they forget. Every hour in the greater world outside, someone, somewhere, is starting out upon this journey. He may go only as far as Germany to study philosophy, or to the nearest mountain-top, and find there the thing he seeks; or he may go to the ends of the earth, and still not find it. He may travel in a Hindu gown or a Mongolian tunic, or he comes, like Father Brachet, out of his vineyards in 'the pleasant land of France,' or, like you, out of a country where all problems are to be solved by machinery. But my point is, _they come_! When all the other armies of the world are disbanded, that army, my son, will be still upon the march."

They were silent awhile, and still the young face gave no sign.

"To many," the Travelling Priest went on, "the impulse is a blind one or a shy one, shrinking from calling itself by the old names. But none the less this instinct for the Quest is still the gallant way of youth, confronted by a sense of the homelessness they cannot think will last."

"That's it, Father! That's it!" the Boy burst out. "Homelessness! To feel that is to feel something urging you----" He stopped, frowning.

"----urging you to take up your staff," said the priest.

They were silent a moment, and then the same musical voice tolled out the words like a low bell: "But with all your journeying, my son, you will come to no Continuing City."

"It's no use to say this to me. You see, I am----"

"I'll tell you why I say it." The priest laid a hand on his arm. "I see men going up and down all their lives upon this Quest. Once in a great while I see one for whom I think the journey may be shortened."

"How shortened?"

A heavy step on the stair, and the Boy seemed to wake from a dream.

"Good-morning," said the Colonel, coming in cheerily, rubbing his hands.

"I am very jealous!" He glanced at the Boy's furs on the floor. "You have been out, seeing the rest of the mission without me."

"No--no, we will show you the rest--as much as you care for, after breakfast."

"I'm afraid we oughtn't to delay--"

But they did--"for a few minutes while zey are putting a little fresh meat on your sled," as Father Brachet said. They went first to see the dogs fed. For they got breakfast when they were at home, those pampered mission dogs.

"And now we will show you our store-house, our caches--"

While Father Brachet looked in the bunch for the key he wanted, a native came by with a pail. He entered the low building on the left, leaving wide the door.

"What? No! Is it really? No, not _really!_" The Colonel was more excited than the Boy had ever seen him. Without the smallest ceremony he left the side of his obliging host, strode to the open door, and disappeared inside.

"What on earth's the matter?"

"I cannot tell. It is but our cow-house."

They followed, and, looking in at the door, the Boy saw a picture that for many a day painted itself on his memory. For inside the dim, straw-strewn place stood the big Kentuckian, with one arm round the cow, talking to her and rubbing her nose, while down his own a tear trickled.

"Hey? Well, yes! Just my view, Sukey. Yes, old girl, Alaska's a funny kind o' place for you and me to be in, isn't it? Hey? Ye-e-yes." And he stroked the cow and sniffed back the salt water, and called out, seeing the Boy, "Look! They've got a thoroughbred bull, too, an' a heifer.

Lord, I haven't been in any place so like home for a c.o.o.n's age! You go and look at the caches. I'll stay here while Sambo milks her."

"My name is Sebastian."

"Oh, all right; reckon you can milk her under that name, too."

When they came back, the Colonel was still there exchanging views about Alaska with Sukey, and with Sebastian about the bull. Sister Winifred came hurrying over the snow to the cow-house with a little tin pail in her hand.

"Ah, but you are slow, Sebastian!" she called out almost petulantly.

"Good-morning," she said to the others, and with a quick clutch at a respectful and submissive demeanour, she added, half aside: "What do you think, Father Brachet? They forgot that baby because he is good and sleeps late. They drink up all the milk."

"Ah, there is very little now."

"Very little, Father," said Sebastian, returning to the task from which the Colonel's conversation had diverted him.

"I put aside some last night, and they used it. I send you to bring me only a little drop"--she was by Sebastian now, holding out the small pail, unmindful of the others, who were talking stock--"and you stay, and stay--"

"Give me your can." The Boy took it from her, and held it inside the big milk-pail, so that the thin stream struck it sharply.

"There; it is enough."

Her shawl had fallen. The Colonel gathered it up.

"I will carry the milk back for you," said the Boy, noticing how red and cold the slim hands were. "Your fingers will be frostbitten if you don't wrap them up." She pulled the old shawl closely round her, and set a brisk pace back to the Sisters' House.

"I must go carefully or I might slip, and if I spilt the milk--"

"Oh, you mustn't do that!"

She paused suddenly, and then went on, but more slowly than before. A glaze had formed on the hard-trodden path, and one must needs walk warily. Once she looked back with anxiety, and, seeing that the precious milk was being carried with due caution, her glance went gratefully to the Boy's face. He felt her eyes.

"I'm being careful," he laughed, a little embarra.s.sed and not at first lifting his bent head. When, after an instant, he did so, he found the beautiful calm eyes full upon him. But no self-consciousness there. She turned away, gentle and reflective, and was walking on when some quick summons seemed to reach her. She stopped quite still again, as if seized suddenly by a detaining hand. Her own hands dropped straight at her sides, and the rusty shawl hung free. A second time she turned, the Boy thought to him again; but as he glanced up, wondering, he saw that the fixed yet serene look went past him like a homing-dove. A neglected, slighted feeling came over him. She wasn't thinking of him the least in the world, nor even of the milk he was at such pains to carry for her. What was she staring at? He turned his head over his right shoulder. Nothing. No one. As he came slowly on, he kept glancing at her. She, still with upturned face, stood there in the att.i.tude of an obedient child receiving admonition. One cold little hand fluttered up to her silver cross. Ah! He turned again, understanding now the drift, if not the inner meaning, of that summons that had come.

"Your friend said something--" She nodded faintly, riverwards, towards the mission sign. "Did you feel like that about it--when you saw it first?"

"Oh--a--I'm not religious like the Colonel."

She smiled, and walked on.

At the door, as she took the milk, instead of "Thank you," "Wait a moment."

She was back again directly.

"You are going far beyond the mission ... so carry this with you. I hope it will guide you as it guides us."

On his way back to the Fathers' House, he kept looking at what Sister Winifred had given him--a Latin cross of silver scarce three inches long. At the intersection of the arms it bore a chased lozenge on which was a mitre; above it, the word "Alaska," and beneath, the crossed keys of St. Peter and the letters, "P.T.R."

As he came near to where the Colonel and his hosts were, he slipped the cross into his pocket. His fingers encountered Muckluck's medal. Upon some wholly involuntary impulse, he withdrew Sister Winifred's gift, and transferred it to another pocket. But he laughed to himself. "Both sort o' charms, after all." And again he looked at the big cross and the heaven above it, and down at the domain of the Inua, the jealous G.o.d of the Yukon.

Twenty minutes later the two travellers were saying good-bye to the men of Holy Cross, and making their surprised and delighted acknowledgments for the brand-new canvas cover they found upon the Colonel's new sled.