The Leithen Stories (79 page)

All these weeks he had not noticed Galliard's presence or inquired what had happened to him. This man, the original purpose of his journey, had simply dropped out of his line of vision. He pondered on the queer tricks which the mind can play. The Frizels and the Indians were the human background to his life, but it was a background undifferentiated, for he never troubled to distinguish between the two Hares, and Lew, who was his daily ministrant, seemed to have absorbed the personality of Johnny. Galliard had sunk also into this background. One evening, when he saw what appeared to be three Frizels in the hut, he thought his mind wandering.

Moreover, the broken man, bedridden, half crazy, whom he had left behind when he set out for the Sick Heart River had disappeared. What he saw now was a big fellow, dressed in the same winter kit as Lew and Johnny, and busy apparently on the same jobs. He cut down young spruces and poplars for fuel, he looked after the big fire which burned outside and was used chiefly for melting snow and ice into water, and sometimes he hunted and brought back game. Slowly his figure disentangled itself from its background and was recognised. It had followed Leithen's example and shaved its beard, and the face was very much like that of the picture in the Park Avenue apartment.

Leithen's vitality had sunk so low that he had spoken little during his early recovery, and afterwards had been too much engaged with his own thoughts. This detachment had prevented
him listening to the talk in the hut. His attention was only engaged when he was directly addressed, and that was done chiefly by Lew. But now, while he did not attempt to overhear, he was conscious of the drone of conversation after supper in the evening, and began to distinguish the different notes in it. There was no mistaking Lew's beautiful rich tones with their subtle Scots cadences, and Johnny's harsher and more drawling voice. Then he became aware of a third note, soft like Lew's, but more nasal, and one afternoon, at the tailend of a blizzard, when Leithen lay abed in the firelight and the others were getting kindlings from the wind-felled trees, this voice addressed him.

‘Can we talk now?' it said. ‘I've been waiting for this chance now that you're mending. I think we have much to say to each other.'

Leithen was startled. This was what he had not heard for months, an educated voice, a voice from his own world. A stone had been thrown into the pool of his memory and the ripples stretched to the furthest shore. This was Galliard; he remembered everything about Galliard, reaching back to Blenkiron's first mention of him in his Down Street rooms.

‘Tell me who you are,' the voice continued.

Leithen did not answer. He was wondering how to begin an explanation of a purpose which must seem wholly fantastic. He, the shell of a creature, had set out to rescue this smiling frontiersman who seemed to fit perfectly into his environment.

‘Johnny says that you know some of my friends. Do you mind telling me your name? I don't trust Johnny's ear, but I think he said “Leven.”'

‘Not quite. Leithen.'

Galliard repeated the word, boggling, like all his countrymen, at the ‘th.' ‘Scotch, aren't you?'

‘Yes, but I live in England.'

‘You've been a pretty sick man, I gather, but you're mending fast. I wonder what brought a sick man to this outlandish place in midwinter? These mountains are not exactly a sanatorium … You don't mind my asking questions? You see, we come out of the same world, and we're alone here – the only people of our kind for a thousand miles.'

‘I want you to ask questions. It's the easiest way for me to tell you my story … I crossed the Atlantic last summer thinking that I was a dying man. The best English authority said so, and
the best American authority confirmed his view. I'm unmarried, and I didn't want to die in a nursing-home. I've always been an active man, and I proposed to keep going until I dropped. So I came out here.'

Galliard nodded. His brown eyes had a smiling, comprehending friendliness.

‘That I understand – and admire. But why to America? – Why just here? – And on a trip like this?'

‘I had to have a job. I must be working under orders, for it was the only way to keep going. And this was the job that offered itself.'

‘Yes, but please tell me. How did it happen that a sick Englishman was ordered to the Arctic Circle? What kind of job?'

Leithen smiled. ‘You will think it fantastic. The idea came from a kinsman of yours – a kinsman by marriage. His name is Blenkiron.'

Galliard's face passed from an amused inquisitiveness to an extreme gravity.

‘Our Uncle John! Tell me, what job did he give you?'

‘To find out where you had gone, and join you, and, if possible, bring you back. No, not
bring
you – for I expected to be dead before that – but to persuade you.'

‘You were in New York? You saw our Uncle John there?'

‘No. In London. I know his other niece, Lady Clanroyden – Clanroyden was at school and college with me – and I had some business once with Blenkiron. He came to my rooms one morning last summer, and told me about you.'

Galliard's eyes were on the ground. He seemed to have been overcome by a sudden shyness, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he asked—

‘You took on the job because you liked Blenkiron? Or perhaps Lady Clanroyden?'

‘No. I happen to like Lady Clanroyden very much – and old Blenkiron, too. But my motive was purely selfish. I wasn't interested in you – I didn't want to do a kindness to anybody – I wanted something that would keep me on my feet until I died. It wouldn't have mattered if I had never heard the name of any of the people concerned. I was thinking only of myself, and the job suited me.'

‘You saved my life. If you and Johnny hadn't followed our trail I would long ago have been a heap of bones under the
snow.' Galliard spoke very softly, as if he were talking to himself.

Leithen felt acutely uncomfortable.

‘Perhaps,' he said. ‘But that was an accident, and there's no gratitude due, any more than to the policeman who calls an ambulance in a street accident.'

Galliard raised his head.

‘You were in New York? Whom did you meet there? My wife?'

‘Yes. The Ravelstons, of course. And some of your friends like Bronson Jane, and Derwent, and Savory. But principally your wife.'

‘Can you' – the man stuttered – ‘can you tell me about her?'

‘She is a brave woman, but I need not tell you that. Anxious and miserable, of course, but one would never guess it. She keeps a stiff face to the world. She tells people that you are in South America inquiring into a business proposition. She won't have any fuss made, for she thinks it might annoy you when you come back.'

‘Come back! She believes I will come back?'

‘Implicitly. She thinks you had reached cross-roads in your mind and had to go away and think it out and decide which one to take. When you have decided, she thinks you will come back.'

‘Then why did she want you to go to look for me?'

‘Because there was always a chance you might be dead – or sick. I sent her a message from Fort Bannerman saying that I had ascertained you were alive and well up to a week before.'

‘How did you find me?'

‘I guessed that you had gone first to Clairefontaine. I got no news of you there, but some little things convinced me that you had been there. Then I guessed you had gone North where your brother and your uncle had gone. So I followed. I saw their graves, and then Johnny told me about Lew's craze for the Sick Heart River, and I guessed again that he had taken you there. It was simply a series of lucky guesses. If you like, you can call them deductions from scanty evidence. I was lucky, but that was because I had made a guess at what was passing in your mind, and I think I guessed correctly.'

‘You didn't know me – never met me. What data had you?'

‘Little things picked up in New York and at Clairefontaine. You see I am accustomed to weighing evidence.'

‘And what did you make of my psychology?'

‘I thought you were a man who had got into a wrong groove and wanted to get out before it was too late … No, that isn't the right way to put it. If it had been that way, there was no hope of getting you back. I thought you were a man who thought he had sold his birthright and was tortured by his conscience and wanted to buy it back.'

‘You think that a more hopeful state of affairs?'

‘Yes. For it is possible to keep your birthright and live in a new world. Many men have done it.'

Galliard got up and pulled on his parka and mitts. ‘I'm going out,' he said, ‘for I want to think. You're a wizard, Mr Leithen. You've discovered what was wrong with me; but you're not quite right about the cure I was aiming at … I was like Lew, looking for a Sick Heart River … I was seeking the waters of atonement.'

For a moment Leithen was alarmed. Galliard had seemed the sanest of men, all the saner because he had divested himself of his urban trappings and had yet kept the accent of civilisation. But his last words seemed an echo of Lew – Lew before his cure. But a glance at the steady eyes and grave face reassured him.

‘I mean what I say,' Galliard continued. ‘I had been faithless to a trust and had to do penance for it. I had forgotten God and had to find Him … We have each of us to travel to his own Sick Heart River.'

IN the days of short commons Lew was a tower of strength. He ran the camp in an orderly bustle, the Indians jumped to his orders, and Johnny worked with him like an extra right hand. His friendly gusto kept up everyone's spirits, and Leithen was never aware of the scarcity of rations.

It was a moment when he seemed to have reached the turning-point of his disease. Most of his worst discomforts had gone, and only weakness vexed him and an occasional scantiness of breath. The night sweats had ceased, and the nausea, and he could eat his meals with a certain relish. Above all, power was creeping back into his limbs. He could put on his clothes without having to stop and pant, and something of his old striding vigour was returning to his legs. He felt himself fit for longer walks than the weather and the narrow camp platform permitted.

Lew watched him with an approving eye. As he passed he would stop and pat him on his shoulder.

‘You're doing fine,' he would say. ‘Soon you'll be fit to go huntin'. You much of a shot?'

‘Fair.'

Lew laughed. ‘If an Old Countryman 'lows he's a fair shot, it means he's darned good.'

One evening just before supper when the others were splitting firewood, Lew sat himself down before Leithen and tapped him on the knee.

‘Mr Galliard,' he said – ‘I'd like to say something about Mr Galliard. You know I acted mighty bad to him, but then I was out of my senses, and he wasn't too firm in his. Well, I'm all right now, but I'm not so sure that he is. His health's fine, and he can stand a long day in the bush. But he ain't happy – no happier than when he first hired me way back last spring. I mean he's got his wits back, and he's as sensible as you and me, but there's a lot worryin' him.' Lew spoke as if he found it difficult to say what he wanted.

‘I feel kind o' responsible for Mr Galliard,' he said, ‘seeing that he's my master and is paying me pretty high. And you must feel kind o' responsible for him or you wouldn't have come five thousand miles looking for him … I see you've started talking to him. I'd feel easier in my mind if you had a good long pow-wow and got out of him what's biting him. You don't happen to know?'

Leithen shook his head.

‘Only that he wasn't happy and thought he might feel better if he went North. But the plan doesn't seem to have come off.'

The conversation, as it fell out, was delayed until early in February, when, in a spell of fine weather, Johnny and the smaller Indian had set off to the Hares' camp to bring back supplies by dog-team. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to go down in a sea of gold and crimson. Leithen sat at the hut door, facing the big fire on the platform which Galliard had been stoking. The latter pulled out a batch of skins and squatted on them opposite him.

‘Can we talk?' he said. ‘I've kept away from you, for I've been trying to think out what to say. Maybe you could help me. I'd like to tell you just how I was feeling a year ago.'

Then words seemed to fail him. He was overcome with extreme shyness, his face flushed, and he averted his eyes.

‘I have no business to trouble you with my affairs,' he stammered. ‘I apologise … I am a bore.'

‘Get on, man,' said Leithen. ‘I have crossed half the world to hear about your affairs. They interest me more than anything on earth.'

But Galliard's tongue still halted, and he seemed to find it impossible to start.

‘Very well,' said Leithen … ‘I will begin by telling you what I know about you. You come from the Clairefontaine valley in Quebec, which Glaubsteins have now made hideous with a dam and a pulp mill. I believe your own firm had a share in that sacrilege. You belong to an ancient family, now impoverished, and your father farmed a little corner of the old seigneury … When you were nineteen or so you got sick of your narrow prospects and went down to the States to try your luck. After a roughish time you found your feet, and are now a partner in Ravelstons, and one of the chief figures in American finance … Meantime your father died, soon after you left him. Your brother Paul carried on the farm, and then he also got restless, and a year or two ago went off to the North, pretending he was going to look for your uncle Aristide, who disappeared there years before. Paul got to the river which Aristide discovered, and died there – the graves of both are there, and you saw them last summer … At the other end something happened to
you
. You started out for Clairefontaine with Lew, and then you were at Ghost River, and then came on here. Is that sketch correct?'