On the next day, when Fogarty returned from the latrine, he saw a pathetic sight: Harry Carpenter was on his weakened hands and knees, trying with the shovel, whose long handle he managed poorly, to grub away the surface of the frozen earth in what the Irishman knew was a search for elusive roots that might help stem his rampant scurvy. He was obviously not having any luck, but with the quiet determination that had always marked him he continued his futile scraping until he fell forward, exhausted, the heavy shovel falling useless beside him.
Fogarty considered for some moments whether he should run to Carpenter’s aid, but some inner sense cautioned him that a man like this would want to solve his own problems and would, indeed, resent intrusion from another, so he withdrew out of sight, taking a position from which he could maintain watch over the fallen man. In due course Harry rose, took almost two minutes to steady himself, then walked slowly back to the hut, dragging the shovel behind him. When he saw Fogarty, he brought it sharply up and placed it against his shoulder as if it were a rifle and he on parade.
‘I’ve been giving a touch to our track,’ he said as he walked past, but when Fogarty saw his ashen face he breathed a silent cry: Dear Jesus! He’s going to die.
No matter how courageous and determined Carpenter was, he could not avoid brooding about the awfulness of dying in these bleak surroundings, where every means that might have enabled him to fight off his debility was missing: the medicines, the proper diet, the good doctors, the nursing, the supervised recuperation … How valuable these things were, how clear an indication that the society which ensured them was properly civilized.
However, his painful reflections did not always center on himself. He thought often of his cousin Julia, nineteen when last he saw her, and a young woman who would never be beautiful in the ordinary sense of that word; she did not even have what was described as a ‘flawless English complexion,’ but she did have what Trevor Blythe had recognized, a positively glowing inner fire that made whatever she said sound reasonable and whatever she did seem humane. ‘Best of her breed,’ Harry whispered to himself as he visualized her running freely across the lawn, to greet him after a safari in Kenya, ‘bubbling with life’s infinite possibilities.’
Then came the gloom, for he had in his life of moving about, especially among English families living abroad, seen a score of young women like Julia, radiant and of great power but not particularly marketable in the marriage bazaars, and if they failed in their twenties to find the one good man who could appreciate their inner beauty, they might find no one, and have to content themselves, in their forties, with playing the cello, reading good books and doing needlework.
When such thoughts assailed him he recalled Trevor’s commission: ‘When we reached home I intended speaking with your cousin, Lady Julia. Please tell her.’ He was certain now that he would not be reaching home, that Julia would never know that a young poet of marked talent had loved her, nor would she receive the gift that would express this love. He became so obsessed with the thought that he would fail to fulfill this mission that for two days he chastised himself, then asked for one of the last precious pieces of paper, on which he tried to tell Julia of Trevor Blythe’s death and of the young man’s last request: that she be told he would have been coming home to marry her. But he had neither the strength nor the concentration to finish the letter, and as the pencil fell from his almost lifeless hand he realized the true significance of death and murmured in a voice too low for his companions to hear: ‘It means that messages of love will not be delivered.’
That night Lord Luton, seeing the desolation of spirit which had overcome his chief lieutenant, cried brightly: ‘I say, men! Isn’t it time we attacked another can of our Fort Norman supply,’ and as before, Fogarty chopped the can open and brought out the saucepan. This time he was able to throw in a small collection of roots he had grubbed from the thawing soil, and when stew was rationed out, it was twice as tasty as before and the three diners leaned back and smacked their lips, remarking upon what a civilizing effect a substantial hot meal could have upon a hungry man.
But Carpenter was so debilitated that his high spirits did not last the night, and in the morning he had neither the strength nor the resolve to leave his bed. Luton, sick at heart over the weakening condition of his friend, sat beside Carpenter and took him by the shoulders: ‘Look here, Harry, this won’t do. It won’t do at all.’ Harry, thinking he was being rebuked for purposely malingering and unable because of his illness to see that Luton was merely using the hale-and-hearty approach of the regimental marshal, took offense at his friend’s chiding.
Hiding his distress, he rose on pitifully weakened legs whose sores had never healed but only worsened, put on his heaviest clothing, and said cheerfully: ‘You’re right, Evelyn. I could do with a bit of jog,’ and walking unsteadily, he started to step out into the bitter cold, pausing for one fleeting moment to whisper to Fogarty. But what he said, Lord Luton could not hear.
The two men remaining in the hut agreed that spurring him to action had been salutary, but since they did not continue to monitor him as he ran right past the track, they did not see him slow down because of gasping pain near his heart, nor when he was out of sight, begin to take off his outer garments one by one. Heavy parka, gone! Woolen jacket with double pockets, thrown aside! Inner jacket, also of wool, away! Now his good linen shirt came off and next his silk-and-wool undershirt, until he stumbled ahead, naked to the waist in cold that had returned to many degrees below zero.
There was no wind, so for a few minutes he could move forward, but then his scurvied legs refused to function and his lungs began to freeze. Grasping for the branches of a stunted tree, he held himself upright, and in that position froze to death.
When Harry’s return was delayed, Lord Luton said to Fogarty: ‘Good, Harry’s whipping himself back into shape,’ but when the absence became prolonged, Luton said with obvious apprehension: ‘Fogarty, I think we’d better look into Harry’s running.’ From the cabin door they stared at the track, but they saw nothing.
‘Whatever could have happened?’ Luton asked, and Fogarty had no reasonable surmise. They walked tentatively toward the running oval, and Fogarty spotted the red-and-gray parka lying on the ground and rushed forward to retrieve it. As he did so, Luton, coming behind, spotted the woolen jacket, and then the inner jacket and not far beyond the erect corpse of Harry Carpenter, already frozen almost solid.
When they returned to the shack, a distraught Evelyn could not accept the death of his friend as merely the kind of accident one could anticipate during a protracted adventure. In a voice trembling with anguish and self-doubt he asked: ‘What did he whisper to you, Fogarty?’ and the Irishman replied: ‘He praised you, sir.’
‘What did he say?’ Luton cried, his voice an agitated demand, and Fogarty whispered: ‘He told me “Keep Evelyn strong for crossing the mountains.” ’
“Why would he have said that?’ in higher voice.
‘Because he knew we were trapped … by those mountains Mr. Trevor wrote about.’
Luton and Fogarty were to experience an additional horror in Harry’s manly suicide. Unable at that moment to dig a grave, and not wishing to bring the corpse into the cabin, they collected his strewn garments and placed them like robes over the stiff body, which they laid in the snow. When they returned the next day they discovered what food the ravens of the arctic fed upon.
March was especially difficult, for with the coming of the vernal equinox, when night and day were twelve hours long at all spots on the earth, the two survivors had visible reason for thinking that spring was already here, and desperately they wanted the snow and ice to melt so they could be on their way. But this did not happen, for although the days grew noticeably warmer and those fearful silent nights when the temperature dropped to minus-sixty were gone, it still remained below freezing and no relaxation of winter came.
It was a time of irritation, and one day when Luton was beginning to fear the onset o
f scurvy himself, he railed at Fogarty: ‘You boasted last year that you were a poacher extraordinaire. For God’s sake, let’s see you bag something,’ and Fogarty merely said: ‘Yes, Milord,’ but was unable to find anything to shoot.
Even in the closeness of the cabin, Lord Luton maintained separation by caste. Fogarty was a servant, an unlettered man who had been brought along to assist his betters, and never did either man forget that. During two winters, each more than seven months long, Luton never touched Fogarty, although Fogarty sometimes touched him when performing a service, and it would have been unthinkable for Luton to have addressed him by a first name. And had Fogarty referred to His Lordship as Evelyn, the cabin would have trembled as if struck by an earthquake. From these strict rules, hammered out over the centuries, there could be no deviation. If Fogarty had to address Luton directly, it was ‘Milord’ and nothing else; Luton would have considered even ‘sir’ too familiar.
And yet there was mutual respect between these men. The Luton party had started with five, and now only two were left, and at times Luton had entertained but never voiced the judgment that if in the end there was to be only one to reach Dawson, it would probably be this happy moonfaced Irishman. ‘Damn me,’ he muttered to himself one day as he watched Fogarty running his laps on the oval track where mud was beginning to show. ‘Peasants have a capacity for survival. I suppose that’s why there’s so many of ’em.’
In fairness to Luton, he never demanded subservience of a demeaning kind. The original rule still prevailed: ‘Fogarty is the servant of the expedition, not of any individual member.’ And in a dozen unspoken ways he let the Irishman know that the latter’s contribution was both essential and highly regarded. It was an arrangement that only two well-intended and thoroughly disciplined men could have maintained under these difficult conditions, and they knew that if they remained obedient to it, they had a fighting chance to bring their odd combination safely to Dawson and its gold fields.
Despite their shared determination to avoid any differences of opinion that might exacerbate tempers already in danger, each had a strong individual attitude toward what should be done with the four remaining cans of meat. Lord Luton, as the descendant of gentlemen for fifteen generations and noblemen for nine, insisted upon living by the code of the endangered aristocrat: ‘Decency says we must save the cans till the very last. Stands to reason, Fogarty, it would be unconscionable to devour them now, when they may be required in some great extremity.’
Fogarty, on the other hand, was descended from some of the shrewdest, self-protecting peasants Ireland had ever produced, and like the sensible pragmatist he was, he saw even the precious cans of meat only as means to some worthy end, and if there was a good chance of getting to Dawson alive, he would use them now, when they were obviously needed: ‘I say, with all due deference, Milord, we ought to chop one of them open right now and fill our bellies.’
‘We’ll have none of that, Fogarty. Those cans are for an emergency.’
At this very moment, in a small Scottish hamlet many thousands of miles distant from this segment of the Arctic Circle, a sentimental little Scottish writer, James Barrie (later Sir James), was brooding over a winsome idea for a stage play, one which would later fill theaters of the world with joy and chuckles. The Admirable Crichton dealt with a situation somewhat like the one in which Luton and Fogarty found themselves: a spoiled and pampered family of the English gentry is marooned on a tropical island along with a trusted retainer, their butler Crichton, and as the family falls apart in this crisis, displaying a lack of both common sense and will power, Crichton reveals himself as a master of every emergency. Only his courage, inventiveness and inexhaustible good sense save the family, but when rescue comes, he, of course, reverts to being their servant. It was neat, amusing and reassuring, and people loved it, especially the upper classes who were the butt of the joke.
That was not to be the case on the frozen banks of the Peel. Lord Luton did not reveal himself as a giddy fop; he was tougher than walrus hide. Nor did Fogarty suddenly step forward as all-wise or possessed of the masterful characteristics that Luton lacked. Fogarty was a good factotum, and Luton was more than able to care for himself, but gradually through the pressure of circumstances and the necessity for decisions of great moment, the two men seemed to reach a status of equality, each complementing the other and necessary to the partnership. This was never better exemplified than during the days following the equinox when they had to make up their minds as to how they would operate in the more fortunate weeks they could be sure were coming when summer returned. All depended upon one crucial decision: ‘Since we’re through the canyons, shall we put the half-boat back in the water and pole our way to the headwaters and then hike over the mountains, or shall we abandon the boat here and start walking immediately?’ They whipped this back and forth, with Luton now asking Fogarty for his opinion, because at long last the noble lord was beginning to suspect that his earlier obstinate decisions might have been largely to blame for the deaths of Blythe and Carpenter.
Pleased that finally Luton sought his advice, Fogarty would propose: ‘Let’s keep the boat, Milord, because with it, we can carry more stuff,’ and Luton would respond: ‘But if we head out swiftly on foot with the simplest backpacks, we can certainly make it before another winter.’
At the next discussion, Fogarty would defend the backpacks and Luton the retention of the boat, and in this way each calculated danger or emergency was voiced and assessed. It was Luton who had the courage to investigate one of the most painful situations: ‘Fogarty, we’ve seen men die … from causes they could not control. If only one of us survived, which way would be better?’ Without hesitation Fogarty replied: ‘If he lived and was alone, he’d have to leave the boat, because otherwise …’ and that settled the matter: ‘Since we’re both going to live, we’ll keep the boat until the last practical moment.’
The choice having been made, the two men spent much of April deciding in minute detail what would be carried by boat to the headwaters and which articles would be taken forward in each of the backpacks. They must take the tent, and the tools for survival and all available food, which was not much. Looking at the dried beans and the other edibles that kept the body alive but allowed the extremities to die, Luton again felt intimations of scurvy—a loosening tooth, a sensation of numbness in his toes. When Fogarty was absent he saw with horror that when he pushed his forefinger into the flesh of his right leg, the indentation remained.
At this moment in the twenty-first month of the doomed expedition, he almost lost heart, but when he heard the approach of Fogarty he stiffened and presented his servant with the obligatory posture of a gentleman still in control: ‘Fogarty, we really must see if we can get ourselves some meat.’ That was all he said, but the Irishman knew that Lord Luton was not going to make it through the mountains unless he, Fogarty, brought home some game.
He thereupon started the most significant hunting journey of his life, traveling each day up and down the frozen Peel looking for anything that moved, and each night when he returned empty-handed, to the terrible disappointment of his waiting companion, he could see His Lordship’s shoulders not sag but stiffen with determination: ‘Good try, Fogarty. I’m sure you’ll get something yet.’
Luton’s journal now lacked the easy flow and broad philosophical base that had characterized it the preceding winter, when five able men were really exploring life in a cramped cabin in the arctic. One night, after Fogarty had once more returned empty-handed, Luton wrote in disjointed, trembling phrases:
Again no meat. Pushed right forefinger in leg, mark remained hours. Am slipping. If I must die terrible isolation pray God able to do it with grace of Trevor Blythe, courage of Harry Carpenter. Right now pray Fogarty finds caribou.
Shortly after this admission of despair, Luton left the cabin and tried to run his customary laps, but as he used the oval which Harry Carpenter had tramped into the snow, he began to see images of that good man who
m he had brought to his death, and of Philip lost in the Mackenzie, and of the poet Trevor Blythe, perhaps the greatest loss of all. He started to stagger and duel with phantoms, so that Fogarty, who was watching from the cabin, having learned from Carpenter’s suicide, saw that his master was in difficulty.
Running to help, he heard Luton cry to the phantoms: ‘I am strangled! I am cursed with grief! Oh God, that I should have done this to these men through my ineptitude!’
The Irishman, who was not supposed to hear this confession, jogged methodically behind Lord Luton, overtaking him on a turn, where he said in his best matter-of-fact voice: ‘Milord, we’ll be in sore trouble if we don’t chop more wood.’ Luton, rattling his head to drive away the cruel images, said: ‘Fetch the axes,’ and as they exorcised their terror through sweating work, Luton’s head cleared and he said: ‘Fogarty, unless you bag us something …’ and Fogarty knew immediately what he must do: they were starving and to allow this to continue when the four cans of meat were available was stupidity.
Ignoring orders and grabbing the ax before Luton could stop him, he strode back to the cabin, took one of the sacrosanct cans, chopped off the top, and placed the meat in a saucepan, adding one of the last onions and handfuls of his arctic roots. When the stew was bubbling, he ladled out a bowlful and set it before Luton, who looked down at it, breathed its ravishing aroma, and with a fork neatly picked out one small piece of meat after another, never wolfing it down and never berating Fogarty for disobeying him.
Refreshed by the unexpected food, he slept soundly, rose early and shaved as usual. Refusing to acknowledge even to himself how close to surrender he had been the night before, he dressed in his meticulous way, took down his gun and a pocketful of George Michael’s shells, and said: ‘Time comes, Fogarty, when a man must find his own caribou,’ and off he marched, thinking as he went: This may be the final effort. My legs. My damned legs.
Journey: A Novel Page 15
