What perplexed him chiefly, however, was the attitude his brother showed towards old John Rossiter. He could almost have imagined that the two men had met and known each other out in Canada, though Rossiter showed him how impossible that was, both in point of time and of geography as well. He had brought them together within the first few days, and Jim, silent, gloomy, morose, even surly, had eyed him like an enemy. Old Rossiter, the milk of human kindness as thick in his veins as cream, had taken no offence. Grizzled veteran of the wilds, he had served his full term with the Company and now enjoyed his well-earned pension. He was full of stories, reminiscences, adventures of every sort and kind; he knew men and values, had seen strange things that only the true wilderness delivers, and he loved nothing better than to tell them over a glass. He talked with Jim so genially and affably that little response was called for luckily, for Jim was glum and unresponsive almost to rudeness. Old Rossiter noticed nothing. What Tom noticed was, chiefly perhaps, his brother’s acute uneasiness. Between his desire to help, his attachment to Rossiter, and his keen personal distress, he knew not what to do or say. The situation was becoming too much for him.
The two families, besides — Peace and Rossiter — had been neighbours for generations, had intermarried freely, and were related in various degrees. He was too fond of his brother to feel ashamed, but he was glad when the visit was over and they were out of their host’s house. Jim had even declined to drink with him.
“They’re good fellows on the island,” said Tom on their way home, “but not specially entertaining, perhaps. We all stick together though. You can trust ’em mostly.”
“I never was a talker, Tom,” came the gruff reply. “You know that.” And Tom, understanding more than he understood, accepted the apology and made generous allowances.
“John likes to talk,” he helped him. “He appreciates a good listener.”
“It’s the kind of talk I’m finished with,” was the rejoinder. “The Company and their goings-on don’t interest me any more. I’ve had enough.”
Tom noticed other things as well with those affectionate eyes of his that did not want to see yet would not close. As the days drew in, for instance, Jim seemed reluctant to leave the house towards evening. Once the full light of day had passed, he kept indoors. He was eager and ready enough to shoot in the early morning, no matter at what hour he had to get up, but he refused point blank to go with his brother to the lake for an evening flight. No excuse was offered; he simply declined to go.
The gap between them thus widened and deepened, while yet in another sense it grew less formidable. Both knew, that is, that a secret lay between them for the first time in their lives, yet both knew also that at the right and proper moment it would be revealed. Jim only waited till the proper moment came. And Tom understood. His deep, simple love was equal to all emergencies. He respected his brother’s reserve. The obvious desire of John Rossiter to talk and ask questions, for instance, he resisted staunchly as far as he was able. Only when he could help and protect his brother did he yield a little. The talk was brief, even monosyllabic; neither the old Hudson Bay fellow nor the Orkney farmer ran to many words:
“He ain’t right with himself,” offered John, taking his pipe out of his mouth and leaning forward. “That’s what I don’t like to see.” He put a skinny hand on Tom’s knee, and looked earnestly into his face as he said it.
“Jim!” replied the other. “Jim ill, you mean!” It sounded ridiculous.
“His mind is sick.”
“I don’t understand,” Tom said, though the truth bit like rough-edged steel into the brother’s heart.
“His soul, then, if you like that better.”
Tom fought with himself a moment, then asked him to be more explicit.
“More’n I can say,” rejoined the laconic old backwoodsman. “I don’t know myself. The woods heal some men and make others sick.”
“Maybe, John, maybe.” Tom fought back his resentment. “You’ve lived, like him, in lonely places. You ought to know.” His mouth shut with a snap, as though he had said too much. Loyalty to his suffering brother caught him strongly. Already his heart ached for Jim. He felt angry with Rossiter for his divination, but perceived, too, that the old fellow meant well and was trying to help him. If he lost Jim, he lost the world — his all.
A considerable pause followed, during which both men puffed their pipes with reckless energy. Both, that is, were a bit excited. Yet both had their code, a code they would not exceed for worlds.
“Jim,” added Tom presently, making an effort to meet the sympathy half way, “ain’t quite up to the mark, I’ll admit that.”
There was another long pause, while Rossiter kept his eyes on his companion steadily, though without a trace of expression in them — a habit that the woods had taught him.
“Jim,” he said at length, with an obvious effort, “is skeered. And it’s the soul in him that’s skeered.”
Tom wavered dreadfully then. He saw that old Rossiter, experienced backwoodsman and taught by the Company as he was, knew where the secret lay, if he did not yet know its exact terms. It was easy enough to put the question, yet he hesitated, because loyalty forbade.
“It’s a dirty outfit somewheres,” the old man mumbled to himself.
Tom sprang to his feet, “If you talk that way,” he exclaimed angrily, “you’re no friend of mine — or his.” His anger gained upon him as he said it. “Say that again,” he cried, “and I’ll knock your teeth — —”
He sat back, stunned a moment.
“Forgive me, John,” he faltered, shamed yet still angry. “It’s pain to me, it’s pain. Jim,” he went on, after a long breath and a pull at his glass, “Jim is scared, I know it.” He waited a moment, hunting for the words that he could use without disloyalty. “But it’s nothing he’s done himself,” he said, “nothing to his discredit. I know that.”
Old Rossiter looked up, a strange light in his eyes.
“No offence,” he said quietly.
“Tell me what you know,” cried Tom suddenly, standing up again.
The old factor met his eye squarely, steadfastly. He laid his pipe aside.
“D’ye really want to hear?” he asked in a lowered voice. “Because, if you don’t — why, say so right now. I’m all for justice,” he added, “and always was.”
“Tell me,” said Tom, his heart in his mouth. “Maybe, if I knew — I might help him.” The old man’s words woke fear in him. He well knew his passionate, remorseless sense of justice.
“Help him,” repeated the other. “For a man skeered in his soul there ain’t no help. But — if you want to hear — I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me,” cried Tom. “I will help him,” while rising anger fought back rising fear.
John took another pull at his glass.
“Jest between you and me like.”
“Between you and me,” said Tom. “Get on with it.”
There was a deep silence in the little room. Only the sound of the sea came in, the wind behind it.
“The Wolves,” whispered old Rossiter. “The Wolves of God.”
Tom sat still in his chair, as though struck in the face. He shivered. He kept silent and the silence seemed to him long and curious. His heart was throbbing, the blood in his veins played strange tricks. All he remembered was that old Rossiter had gone on talking. The voice, however, sounded far away and distant. It was all unreal, he felt, as he went homewards across the bleak, wind-swept upland, the sound of the sea for ever in his ears....
Yes, old John Rossiter, damned be his soul, had gone on talking. He had said wild, incredible things. Damned be his soul! His teeth should be smashed for that. It was outrageous, it was cowardly, it was not true.
“Jim,” he thought, “my brother, Jim!” as he ploughed his way wearily against the wind. “I’ll teach him. I’ll teach him to spread such wicked tales!” He referred to Rossiter. “God blast these fellows! They come home from their outlandish places and think they
can say anything! I’ll knock his yellow dog’s teeth...!”
While, inside, his heart went quailing, crying for help, afraid.
He tried hard to remember exactly what old John had said. Round Garden Lake — that’s where Jim was located in his lonely Post — there was a tribe of Redskins. They were of unusual type. Malefactors among them — thieves, criminals, murderers — were not punished. They were merely turned out by the Tribe to die.
But how?
The Wolves of God took care of them. What were the Wolves of God?
A pack of wolves the Redskins held in awe, a sacred pack, a spirit pack — God curse the man! Absurd, outlandish nonsense! Superstitious humbug! A pack of wolves that punished malefactors, killing but never eating them. “Torn but not eaten,” the words came back to him, “white men as well as red. They could even cross the sea....”
“He ought to be strung up for telling such wild yarns. By God — I’ll teach him!”
“Jim! My brother, Jim! It’s monstrous.”
But the old man, in his passionate cold justice, had said a yet more terrible thing, a thing that Tom would never forget, as he never could forgive it: “You mustn’t keep him here; you must send him away. We cannot have him on the island.” And for that, though he could scarcely believe his ears, wondering afterwards whether he heard aright, for that, the proper answer to which was a blow in the mouth, Tom knew that his old friendship and affection had turned to bitter hatred.
“If I don’t kill him, for that cursed lie, may God — and Jim — forgive me!”
3
It was a few days later that the storm caught the islands, making them tremble in their sea-born bed. The wind tearing over the treeless expanse was terrible, the lightning lit the skies. No such rain had ever been known. The building shook and trembled. It almost seemed the sea had burst her limits, and the waves poured in. Its fury and the noises that the wind made affected both the brothers, but Jim disliked the uproar most. It made him gloomy, silent, morose. It made him — Tom perceived it at once — uneasy. “Scared in his soul” — the ugly phrase came back to him.
“God save anyone who’s out to-night,” said Jim anxiously, as the old farm rattled about his head. Whereupon the door opened as of itself. There was no knock. It flew wide, as if the wind had burst it. Two drenched and beaten figures showed in the gap against the lurid sky — old John Rossiter and Sandy. They laid their fowling pieces down and took off their capes; they had been up at the lake for the evening flight and six birds were in the game bag. So suddenly had the storm come up that they had been caught before they could get home.
And, while Tom welcomed them, looked after their creature wants, and made them feel at home as in duty bound, no visit, he felt at the same time, could have been less opportune. Sandy did not matter — Sandy never did matter anywhere, his personality being negligible — but John Rossiter was the last man Tom wished to see just then. He hated the man; hated that sense of implacable justice that he knew was in him; with the slightest excuse he would have turned him out and sent him on to his own home, storm or no storm. But Rossiter provided no excuse; he was all gratitude and easy politeness, more pleasant and friendly to Jim even than to his brother. Tom set out the whisky and sugar, sliced the lemon, put the kettle on, and furnished dry coats while the soaked garments hung up before the roaring fire that Orkney makes customary even when days are warm.
“It might be the equinoctials,” observed Sandy, “if it wasn’t late October.” He shivered, for the tropics had thinned his blood.
“This ain’t no ordinary storm,” put in Rossiter, drying his drenched boots. “It reminds me a bit” — he jerked his head to the window that gave seawards, the rush of rain against the panes half drowning his voice— “reminds me a bit of yonder.” He looked up, as though to find someone to agree with him, only one such person being in the room.
“Sure, it ain’t,” agreed Jim at once, but speaking slowly, “no ordinary storm.” His voice was quiet as a child’s. Tom, stooping over the kettle, felt something cold go trickling down his back. “It’s from acrost the Atlantic too.”
“All our big storms come from the sea,” offered Sandy, saying just what Sandy was expected to say. His lank red hair lay matted on his forehead, making him look like an unhappy collie dog.
“There’s no hospitality,” Rossiter changed the talk, “like an islander’s,” as Tom mixed and filled the glasses. “He don’t even ask ‘Say when?’” He chuckled in his beard and turned to Sandy, well pleased with the compliment to his host. “Now, in Malay,” he added dryly, “it’s probably different, I guess.” And the two men, one from Labrador, the other from the tropics, fell to bantering one another with heavy humour, while Tom made things comfortable and Jim stood silent with his back to the fire. At each blow of the wind that shook the building, a suitable remark was made, generally by Sandy: “Did you hear that now?” “Ninety miles an hour at least.” “Good thing you build solid in this country!” while Rossiter occasionally repeated that it was an “uncommon storm” and that “it reminded” him of the northern tempests he had known “out yonder.”
Tom said little, one thought and one thought only in his heart — the wish that the storm would abate and his guests depart. He felt uneasy about Jim. He hated Rossiter. In the kitchen he had steadied himself already with a good stiff drink, and was now half-way through a second; the feeling was in him that he would need their help before the evening was out. Jim, he noticed, had left his glass untouched. His attention, clearly, went to the wind and the outer night; he added little to the conversation.
“Hark!” cried Sandy’s shrill voice. “Did you hear that? That wasn’t wind, I’ll swear.” He sat up, looking for all the world like a dog pricking its ears to something no one else could hear.
“The sea coming over the dunes,” said Rossiter. “There’ll be an awful tide to-night and a terrible sea off the Swarf. Moon at the full, too.” He cocked his head sideways to listen. The roaring was tremendous, waves and wind combining with a result that almost shook the ground. Rain hit the glass with incessant volleys like duck shot.
It was then that Jim spoke, having said no word for a long time.
“It’s good there’s no trees,” he mentioned quietly. “I’m glad of that.”
“There’d be fearful damage, wouldn’t there?” remarked Sandy. “They might fall on the house too.”
But it was the tone Jim used that made Rossiter turn stiffly in his chair, looking first at the speaker, then at his brother. Tom caught both glances and saw the hard keen glitter in the eyes. This kind of talk, he decided, had got to stop, yet how to stop it he hardly knew, for his were not subtle methods, and rudeness to his guests ran too strong against the island customs. He refilled the glasses, thinking in his blunt fashion how best to achieve his object, when Sandy helped the situation without knowing it.
“That’s my first,” he observed, and all burst out laughing. For Sandy’s tenth glass was equally his “first,” and he absorbed his liquor like a sponge, yet showed no effects of it until the moment when he would suddenly collapse and sink helpless to the ground. The glass in question, however, was only his third, the final moment still far away.
“Three in one and one in three,” said Rossiter, amid the general laughter, while Sandy, grave as a judge, half emptied it at a single gulp. Good-natured, obtuse as a cart-horse, the tropics, it seemed, had first worn out his nerves, then removed them entirely from his body. “That’s Malay theology, I guess,” finished Rossiter. And the laugh broke out again. Whereupon, setting his glass down, Sandy offered his usual explanation that the hot lands had thinned his blood, that he felt the cold in these “arctic islands,” and that alcohol was a necessity of life with him. Tom, grateful for the unexpected help, encouraged him to talk, and Sandy, accustomed to neglect as a rule, responded readily. Having saved the situation, however, he now unwittingly led it back into the danger zone.
“A night for tales, eh?” he remarked, as the
wind came howling with a burst of strangest noises against the house. “Down there in the States,” he went on, “they’d say the evil spirits were out. They’re a superstitious crowd, the natives. I remember once — —” And he told a tale, half foolish, half interesting, of a mysterious track he had seen when following buffalo in the jungle. It ran close to the spoor of a wounded buffalo for miles, a track unlike that of any known animal, and the natives, though unable to name it, regarded it with awe. It was a good sign, a kill was certain. They said it was a spirit track.
“You got your buffalo?” asked Tom.
“Found him two miles away, lying dead. The mysterious spoor came to an end close beside the carcass. It didn’t continue.”
“And that reminds me — —” began old Rossiter, ignoring Tom’s attempt to introduce another subject. He told them of the haunted island at Eagle River, and a tale of the man who would not stay buried on another island off the coast. From that he went on to describe the strange man-beast that hides in the deep forests of Labrador, manifesting but rarely, and dangerous to men who stray too far from camp, men with a passion for wild life over-strong in their blood — the great mythical Wendigo. And while he talked, Tom noticed that Sandy used each pause as a good moment for a drink, but that Jim’s glass still remained untouched.
The atmosphere of incredible things, thus, grew in the little room, much as it gathers among the shadows round a forest camp-fire when men who have seen strange places of the world give tongue about them, knowing they will not be laughed at — an atmosphere, once established, it is vain to fight against. The ingrained superstition that hides in every mother’s son comes up at such times to breathe. It came up now. Sandy, closer by several glasses to the moment, Tom saw, when he would be suddenly drunk, gave birth again, a tale this time of a Scottish planter who had brutally dismissed a native servant for no other reason than that he disliked him. The man disappeared completely, but the villagers hinted that he would — soon indeed that he had — come back, though “not quite as he went.” The planter armed, knowing that vengeance might be violent. A black panther, meanwhile, was seen prowling about the bungalow. One night a noise outside his door on the veranda roused him. Just in time to see the black brute leaping over the railings into the compound, he fired, and the beast fell with a savage growl of pain. Help arrived and more shots were fired into the animal, as it lay, mortally wounded already, lashing its tail upon the grass. The lanterns, however, showed that instead of a panther, it was the servant they had shot to shreds.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 534
