Flower of the North. James Oliver Curwood
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Isobel wanted color, I imagine that it is there, and she is perfect! But this one that I saw to-night is perfect! Now what I want to know is this, Who the deuce is she!"
—"where can she be found, and will she sit for a 'Burke,' two or three miscellaneous, and a 'study' for the annual sale," struck in Whittemore. "Is that it?"
"Exactly. You've a natural ability for hitting the nail on the head, Phil."
"And Burke told you to take a rest."
Gregson offered his cigarettes.
"Yes, Burke is a good-natured, poetic old soul who has a horror of spiders, snakes, and sky-scrapers. He said to me: 'Greggy, go and seek nature in some quiet, secluded place, and forget everything for a fortnight or two except your clothes and half a dozen cases of beer.' Rest! Nature! Beer! Think of those cheerful suggestions, Phil, while I was dreaming of Valencia, of Donna Isobels, and places where Nature cuts up as though she had been taking champagne all her life. Gad, your letter came just in time!"
"And I told you little enough in that," said Philip, quickly, rising and pacing uneasily back and forth across the cabin floor. "I gave you promise of excitement, and urged you to join me if you could. And why? Because—"
He turned sharply, and faced Gregson across the table.
"I wanted you to come because the thing that happened down in Valencia, and that other at Rio, isn't a circumstance to the hell that's going to cut loose pretty soon up here—and I'm in need of help. Understand? It's not fun—this time. I'm playing a single hand in what looks like a losing game. If I ever needed a fighter in my life I need one now. That's why I sent for you."
Gregson shoved back his chair and rose to his feet. He was a head shorter than his companion, of almost delicate physique. Yet there was something in the cold gray-blue of his eyes, a peculiar hardness of his chin, that compelled one to look at him twice and rendered first judgment unsafe. His slim fingers closed like steel about Philip's.
"Now you're coming down to business, Phil," he exclaimed. "I've been waiting with the patience of Job—or of little Bobby Tuckett, if you remember him, who began courting Minnie Sheldon seven years ago—and married her the day after I got your letter. I was too busy figuring out what you hadn't written to go to the wedding. I tried to read between the lines, and fell down completely. I've been thinking all the way up from Le Pas, and I'm still at sea. You called. I came. What's up?"
"It's going to sound a little mad—at first, Greggy," chuckled Whittemore, lighting his pipe. "It's going to give your esthetic tastes a jar. Look here!"
He seized Gregson by the arm and led him to the door.
The cold northern sky was brilliant with stars. The cabin, its logs half smothered in dying masses of verdure which had climbed about it during the summer, was built on the summit of one of the wind-cropped ridges which are called mountains in the far north. Into that north swept infinite wilderness, white and gray where the starlit tops of the spruce rose up at their feet, black in the distance. From somewhere out of it there came the low, weeping monotone of surf beating on a shore. Philip, with one hand on Gregson's shoulder, pointed with the other into the lonely desolation which they were facing.
"There isn't much between us and the Arctic Ocean, Greggy," he said. "See that light off there, like a great fire that has half a mind to die out one minute and flares up the next? Doesn't it remind you of the night we got away from Carabobo, when Donna Isobel pointed out our way to us, with the moon coming up over the mountains as a guide? That isn't the moon. It's the aurora borealis. You can hear the wash of the Bay down there, and if you're keen you can catch the smell of icebergs. There's Fort Churchill—a rifle-shot beyond the ridge, asleep. There's nothing but Hudson's Bay Company's posts, Indian camps, and trappers between here and civilization, which is four hundred miles down there. Seems like a quiet and peaceful country, doesn't it? There's something about it that makes you thrill and wonder if this isn't the biggest part of the universe after all. Listen! Hear the Indian dogs wailing down at Churchill! That's the primal voice in this world, the voice of the wild. Even that beating of the surf is filled with the same thing, for it's rolling up mystery instead of history. It is telling what man doesn't know, and in a language which he cannot understand. You're a beauty scientist, Greggy. This must sink deep."
"It does," said Gregson. "What the deuce are you getting at, Phil?"
"I'm arriving gradually and without undue haste to the point, Greggy. I'm about to tell you why I induced you to join me up here. I hesitate at the last word. It seems almost brutal, taking into consideration your philosophy of beauty, to drop from all this—from that blackness and mystery out there, from Donna Isobels and pretty eyes, down to—fish."
"Fish!"
"Yes, fish."
Gregson, lighting a fresh cigarette, held the match so that the tiny flame lighted up his companion's face for a moment.
"Look here," he expostulated, "you haven't got me up here to go—fishing?"
"Yes—and no," said Philip. "But even if I have—"
He caught Gregson by the arm again, and there was a tightness in the grip of his fingers which convinced the other that he was speaking seriously now.
"Do you remember what started the revolution down in Honduras the second week after we struck Puerto Barrios, Greggy? It was a girl, wasn't it?"
"Yes, and she wasn't half pretty at that."
"It was less than a girl," went on Philip. "Scene: the palm plaza at Ceiba. President Belize is drinking wine with his cousin, the fiancee of General O'Kelly Bonilla, the half Irish, half Latin-American leader of his forces, and his warmest friend. At a moment when their corner of the plaza is empty Belize helps himself to a cousinly kiss. O'Kelly, unperceived, arrives in time to witness the act. From that moment his friendship for Belize turns to hatred and jealousy. Within three weeks he has started a revolution, beats the government forces at Ceiba, chases Belize from the capital, gets Nicaragua mixed up in the trouble, and draws three French, two German, and two American war-ships to the scene. Six weeks after the wine-drinking he is President of the Republic, en facto. And all of this, Greggy, because of a kiss. Now, if a kiss can start a revolution, unseat a President, send a government to smash, what must be the possibilities of a fish?"
"I'm getting interested," said Gregson. "If there's a climax, come to it, Phil. I admit that there must be enormous possibilities in—a fish. Go on!"
II
For a moment the two men stood in silence, listening to the sullen beat of surf beyond the black edge of forest. Then Philip led the way back into the cabin.
Gregson followed. In the light of the big oil-lamp which hung suspended from the ceiling he noticed something in Whittemore's face he had not observed before, a tenseness about the muscles of his mouth, a restlessness in his eyes, rigidity of jaw, an air of suppressed emotion which puzzled him. He was keenly observant of details, and knew that these things had been missing a short time before. The pleasure of their meeting that afternoon, after a separation of nearly two years, had dispelled for a time the trouble which he now saw revealing itself in his companion's face and attitude, and the lightness of Whittemore's manner in beginning his explanation for inducing him to come into the north had helped to complete the mask. There occurred to him, for an instant, a picture which he had once drawn of Whittemore as he had known him in certain stirring times still fresh in the memory of each—a picture of the old, cool, irresistible Whittemore, smiling in the face of danger, laughing outright at perplexities, always ready to fight with a good-natured word on his lips. He had drawn that picture for Burke's, and had called it "The Fighter." Burke himself had criticized it because of the smile. But Gregson knew his man. It was Whittemore.
There was a change now. He had grown older, surprisingly older. There were deeper lines about his eyes. His face was thinner.