“WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD ELY.”

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 13948, 3 January 1906, Page 3

“WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD ELY.”

(By GILBERT PARKER.) Author of “ Seats of the Mighty,” “ The Right of Way,” etc.

The arrogant sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him banners of gold and crimson, , and a swift twilight was streaming over the land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a'high bill followed it, and the look of one- was like a light in a window to a lost traveller. It had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a' journey this man had made as few have ever attempted, and fewer accomplished. To the v farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the shoulder of a continent jute out into the north-western Arctic seas, he had travelled on’foot and alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian guides who, now and then, shepherded him from point to point. The vast icehummocks had been his housing, pemmican, the raw' flesh of fish, and -even the fat and oil of seals had been his food. Ever and ever through long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, ( thc cloudless sky, the moon at the full, or like a white sickle set to warn him that his life must be mown down like grass. At night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the steely wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of frost; while the inimitably distant sun made the tiny flakes sparkle like silver—a poudre day, when the face and-hands are .most like to be frozen, and all so still and white and passionless, yet aching with energy. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles that endless trail’winding to the farthest NorthWest, a trail which no human being had ever taken before, though Indians or a stray Hudson’s Bay Company man had made journeys over part of it during the two hundred years since Prince Rupert sent bis adventurers to dot that northern land with posts and forts, and trace fine arteries of civilisation through the wastes which now are slowly being eaten up by busy settlers and busier towns. Where he had gone, none other, had been of white men from the Western I lands, though from across the wide Pacific, from the Eastern world, adventurers and exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his grandfather, an Eastern scholar, had com© to know ; and for love of adventure, and because of the tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he had been ruined by bad investments, had made a journey like none any one man had essayed before. And on his way up to those regions, where, the veil before the face of God is very/ thin and fine, and men’s hearts glow within them, though all the world of herb and flower and-flowing water is congealed about them, and never a bird floats in the, air, or a tree in loneliness stretches out gaunt arms to the spring—on his way to the desert of white, where no oasis was save the unguessed deposit of a great human dream that his soul could feel but hie eyes could not behold, he had seen the face ' if a carl which had haunted him on the

austere pilgrimage. Her voice, so sweet a voice, that it rang like muffled silver in his ears, till, in the arena of the everlasting theatre of the Pole, the stars seemed to repeat it through millions of echoing hills, growing softer and softer as the frost line lied it to'his ears—it had said to him late and early, so that ho was cheered when he wonkl have wept in misery, and raised when he would have fallen, “You must come back with the swallows.” Then she had sung a song which had been like a fire in his heart, not alone because of the words of it, hut because of the sou! in her voice, and it had lain like a coverlet bn his heart to keep it warm; "Adieu! The sun goes a-weari!y down, The in is is creep up o’er the sleepy town, The white sail bends to the shuddering mere, And the reapers have reaped, and the night is here.. “Adieu! And the years are a brokfcn song, The right grows weak in the strife with wrong, The lilies of love hav 1 a crimson stain, And’ the old days never will coiuo again. “Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim ’Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim, Shall nit our querulous hearts prevail, That have prayed for the peace of the Ho'y Grail? “Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between The things that are and that might have been, ~ Be. folded back for onr eyes to see, And the moaning of all ' shall be clear <c me.” It had been hut an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into liis mind, that his life was now a thing to cherish and that ho must indeed come back, though ho had- left England little caring if, in the peril and danger of his quest, he ever returned. Ho had been indifferent to his fate till ho came to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whoso life was knit with the far north, whose mother’s heart was buried in the great wastes where Sir John Franklin’s expedition was lost, for her husband had been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of their kind and of that civilisation for which they had risked,all and lost all save immortality. Hither, they had cbm© after' he had been oast away on the icy plains, and, as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with it, always on the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward. Here, with small income hut high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and laboured, angels of. mercy and kindness among . pioneers, as he whom they mourned had been before them. Aud when the man, who now looked down in safety upon'the little town, set his face northwards to an unknown destination, she and hoi” daughter had prayed as the ■ mother did in the old days when the daughter was but a babe at her. knee, and it was,- not yet- certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away for ever. Something in this wayfarer, his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes, his bravo laugh, reminded her of him—her husband—who, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since God was always near to take or leave as ir was His will. When Bickersteth went, it was as though one they had known all their lives had passed; and the woman knew also', that a now thought had been sown in her daughter’s mind, a new door opened in her heart, a hope born in her soul. Of this event she had always been apprehensive, for she was come of good family la England, and though she felt she would never return there, that her life was dedicated to the land where her husband’s bones lay'in the fields of the White Circle, she wished her daughter to return one day, and to make her home in the country where she and her Jo.it comrade were She Jiad ! ed that; rthrbugk the loneliness of the life in this far North, the girl, seeing only the frontiersmen and the pioneers, might’.marry unwisely. In this newcomer, however, who had com© and gone into “the ice-fields and the main,” she had read a great ■ nature which, whatever its faults in the past, and these faults had with great frank-' ness been told her, might do good things, if not great things, in the, world. He had a soul above all littleness, a fine power not yet tested. But would he come back—would he come back!

And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the village lay. Far, far over, two days’ march away, ho could see the cluster of houses, and the glow of the sun' on the tin spire of the little Mission Church where he had heard the girl and her mother’sing till the hearts of all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for “ the peace of the Holy Grail.” The village was, in truth, but a day’s march away from him, but he was not alone, and the journey could not be hastened. Beside him, his eyes also upon the sunset arid the village, was a man in a costume half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy grey beard and massive frame, and a distant sorrowful look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his elbow resting on a stump of pine—the token of a progressive civilisation—his chin upon his hand, he looked like the figure of Moses' made immortal by Michael Angelo. But his strength was not like that of the young man beside him, who was thirty years younger. When he walked it was as one who had no destination, who had no haven towards which to travel, who journeyed as one to whom the world is a wilderness, and. one tent or one hiil*;is the same as another, and none is home. Like , two'ships .meeting hull to hull on the wide seas where' a few miles of water will hide them from each other, whose ports are thousands of miles apart, whoso courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder man, sick and worn and near to death, in tho poor hospitality of an Indian’s tepee. John Bickersteth had nursed him back to strength, and had brought him southwards with him, a silent companion who spoke in monosyllables, who had no conversation at all of the past, and little of the present, but who- was a woodsman, and an Arctic traveller of the most expert .kind, who knew by instinct where the best places for shelter and for sleeping might bo found, who never complained, was wonderful witli the dogs, of whom only one was left of the original team with which the younger man had started. Close as their association was, Bickersteth had felt concerning the other that his real self was in some other sphere or place towards which his mind was_ always turning as though to bring it back. Shoulder to shoulder as they walked, he felt that they were thousands of leagues apart, as though, as the occult people say, there were astral bodies and dual life, and by some catastrophe tho astral and the real in this man were separated, and followed the tragedy of the search, one for the _ other, through vague agonies of desire and vaguer hops. Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the old man to speak about the past, but he had been met by a dumb sort of look, a straining to understand. Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both of his, and fixed his look with a painful eagerness upon his face as though trying to remember or to comprehend something, as a child overburdened with a task in geometry will study with increasingly hopeless gaze the probl6m that eludes it, while the shame of defeat grows. Upon these occasions the old man’s eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet, which tortured Bicker-

steth beyond bearing. Just such a look ho had seen s 'in the eyes of'a favourite deg when he had performed an operation on it to save its life-—a reproachful, non-comprehending, yet. loving gaze, such indeed 'as the childmartyr. who was not old enough to understand God’s will or way, must have felt at the stake and. in the five. What did Bickersteth know of him? Little or nothing. Bickersteth knew a little of the Chinook language, which is known to most Indian tribes, a kind of Volapuk, the lingua franca of the north, and ho had learned that the Indians knew nothing exact concerning the old man; but there were Rumours which had passed from tribe to tribe that this white man had lived for ever in the farthest north among the Arctic Esquimaux, and the least-known tribes, and that he passed from people to people disappearing-into the untenantcd wilderness, again among stranger tribes; ; never resting, but as one always seeking'what he could not find. One thing had helped the man in all his travels and sojourning. Hg had, as it seemed to the native people, a gift of the hands, for' when they were sick, a- few moments’ manipulation of his huge quiet fingers and pain vanished. A few herbs he gave in' tinctures,, and these also were praised; but it was a legend that when he was persuaded to lay on his hands, and close his eyes, and with his fingers to “ search for the pain, and find it, and kill it,” he always prevailed. These lonely aborigines had the belief as the Egyptians have, that though his body was on earth his soul was with' Manitou, and that it was his soul which came into him again, and gave the Great Spirit’s healing to the fingers. This had been the man’s safety through how many years—or how many generations—they did not know, for the Indian loves legend, and the legends regarding the pilgrim had grown and were festered by the medicine men who, by giving him great age and supernatural power, could; with more self-respect, apologise for their own incapacity. To them, indeed, he had given something of his own gift, and the secret of most of his own herbs, and in time they had come ,to speak of him as their master and not ns their rival.

So the, yoaits, how many it was impossible* to toll, since ho did not know or would not say, had gone on, and now, after ceaseless wandering, his face was turned towards that civilisation out of which he had come so long agp—or was it so long ago—one generation, or two—or ten ? It seemed to Bickersteth at times as though it,wore ten, so, strange, so unworldly, so distant, was his companion. At first he thought that the ana n remembered more than ho would appear to acknowledge, but he found that after a day or. two everything that happened as they journeyed was also forgotten, i He tested it in many ways, and found that it was so, and when he questioned closely and urged remembrance, that same pained, puzzled, anxious expression which he had seen now and then came into the eyes. It was only visible things or sounds that appeared to open the doors of memory of the most recent, happenings. These happenings, if not varied, were of the', most critical moment, since, passing down from the land of unchanging ice and snow, they had come into .March and April storms, and the perils of the rapids and the swollen floods of May. Now, in June, two years and a month since Bickersfeth hat} gone into the wilds, they looked down upon the goal of one at least—of the younger man who had triumphed in his quest up in those wilds abandoned four centuries ago, and whose face now was shining in what was to him— : he had said it so often to himself—the light of home; of love and home. With this joyous thought in his heart, that he had succeeded, that he had discovered anew one of the greatest goldfields of the world, and that a journey unparalleled had- been accomplished, and all that was dearest to his wards his ancient companion,'-'arid' a great feeling of pity and human love enlarged within him. He, John Bicker—steth, .was going into a world again,; where his fate—as he believed, a happy fate—awaited him; but what of this old man?> He had brought him out of the wilds, out of the unknown—was he only taking-him into the unknown again? Weye there friends, any anywhere : in the world waiting for him ? He called himself by no name, ho said ho had no name. Whence came he? Of whom ? ■ Whither was he wending now? Bickersteth had thought of the-, problem so often, and he had no answer for it, save that he must be taken care of, if not by others, then by himself; for the old man had saved him from drowning;.had saved him from an awful death on a.March day when be fell into a great hole and was knocked-in-sensible in the drifting snow;- - had saved him from brooding on hinuwlf—the beginning of madness—by compelling him-to think for another. And sometimes, as he had locked at the old man, his imagination had caught the’ spirit of the legend of the Indians, and he had oven cried out, “ 0 soul, come back -into his. body and give him memory—give him back his memory, Manitou the Mighty !” • As he looked on him now, an impulse seized - .him. , “ Dear old. man," , he said, scarce knowing what his words were, but. happnjgssvand pity in him, at once, and talking as tone talks to 4 a child that' “■ you• shall never want while I have a penny or have head pr hands to, work. But is there no one that you care for or that cares for you, that you remember, or that remembers you?” • • The old man shook his head though

not with understanding, for he. appear- j ed rapt in reverie as ho looked out on j the green valley, the sweet ■ verdure far i away, and the shining skies. But he i laid a hand on the young man s shoul- j der, and whispered.: i “ Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the land. I have seen it j I have seen it once.” His shaggy eyebrows gathered over, his eyes searched, searched the face-of John Bickersteth; “ Once, so long ago—l cannot think, he added helplessly. “Dear old man,” Bickersteth said gently, knowing he would .not wholly comprehend, “I am going.to ask her--: Alice—to marry me, and if she does she will help look after you, too. Neither of us would have been here without the other, dear old man, and we shall not bo saparated. Whoever you_ are, you are a gentleman, and you might have been my father or hers—or hers! He stopped '-suddenly. _ A thought had flashed through his mind, a thought which stunned him, which passed like some powerful current through ms veins, shocked him, then gave him a papitat'ing life. It was a wild thought, but yet why not—why not? There was the chance,’ the faint, far-off chance. He caught the old man by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes, scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the rugged forehead. “Dear old man.” he said, his voice shaking, “ do vou know what I in thinking? I’m thinking that yon may be of" those who went out to the Arctic Sea with Sir John Franklin with Sir John Franklin, you understand-. _ M you know Sir John Franklin- is v it true, dear old boy, is it /H’m? , , « you one that has lived to tell the tale ? Did you knew Sir John Franklin—is it true—oh, is it true?” " , He let go the "old man s shoulders, .for over the face of the other three, had passed a 'change—it was strained and tense, the hands were-outstretched, the eyes now staring straight into the West and the coming; night. . “ Dear God ! It is—it itl cried Bickersteth. That si-01 love of Christ, that’s it! Sir John Frank-lin-Sir John Franklin and all the brave lads that died up -there—you remember the ship—the Arctic Sea tho ice-fields, and Franklin—you remember him? • Dear old man,' say you remember Franklin!” . The thing had seized him. : Conviction was upon him, and, he' watched the other’s anguished face-with angmsh and excitement, in'his; own. But —but it might bo—it might be her father—the eves,' the' eyes, the forehead are like hers, the hands, the long hands, the -pointed fingers, the eyesi’f it should he »; if I aw, not and it is only sol Dear old .man, d»d vou have a wife and ,child, and,we* o thev both called Alice—do you reir.emw? Alice, and thev both had faces like angels-! F.ranklin —Alicer—do you remember?” . , The did man got slowly to bis feet, bis arras, outstretched,, the look on Ins face changing, understanding sirugnilng for its place, .memory, fighting for its own, the soul contending for its mastery.' ' ; . ’ . . , , “ Franklin—Alice—the snow! he said confusedly, and sank down. “God have mercy!.” cried Biekerstelh, as he caught-'the swayinu body and laid it upon the ground. “ He was there—almost.” against the great pine stump and chafed, his hand??. “Man,,dear man, if you belong to her I if yon do, can’t yon see what it- v.ill meaiv to me—she can’t say no to me then But, if it’s true, -you 11 belong to England and to all the world, toe and you’ll have fame everlasting. I ll have gold for her and for, yon, and for your Alice, too, dear; old man. Wake up now, you’re coming home, and remember—you must remember everything, or it- will be so* awful if .you are Dyke Alliugham who went with Franklin to the sileut seas ofthe Pole.- If it’s yon—rcalb you, what~ wonder vou lost your memory 1" You ■-saw things that no other man has seen—saw them all die but .you.‘Franklin and all, die there in' the s-now ; with all the white world round them.. If you were there, dear; old mail, what a travel you have had,'’ what strange, things* you have seen! Where the ,world is loneliest—there, I;suppose, God is most, and you got near the,/heart of it all. -If vou did. if you have seen things closer than the’rest of ns, it’s no marvel you forgot what vou were, or where you came from, because it didn’t matter—you knew-that you were only one of ..thousands of millions who have come, and gone, that make up the soul of things, that make, the pulses of the universe beat'. That’s it, dear - old .traveller, the universe would die if it weren’t for the souls that leave this world and fill it with life. Wake up—wake ill, Allingham, and tell ns where you’ve been, and what you’ve seen.” He" did not labour in vain. Slowly consciousness came back, and the grey eyes opened wide, the lips smiled faintly under the bushy beard, but :Bickersteth saw that the look ip the face was much the same as it* had been before. The struggle had been too great, the figlit-for'the. other lost self had exmind: and body, and only a defep;obliquity and a great weariness ■ filled:',the'- countenance. He had come back to the'verge, he had almost again discovered but the door which was' bpenihg had sljut fast again suddenly,/and he’was back again in the night/..the in-companionable, night of forgetfulness.* - Bickersteth saw the travail and strife had drained life and energy, and that, ho must not- press the mind and vitality of, this exile of time and urn known, too far. He felt that when the nest test came the old man would either break completely, and sink down into another and everlasting forgetfulness, o-r tear array forever the veil between himself and bis past, and emerge into a long-lost life. “ He must shepherd his strength and keep him quiet and undisturbed until they came to the town yonder in the valley, over which the. night was. slowly settling down, and where two women waited. The two Alices, from both of whom had gone two lovers into the North, who had not returned; the daughter living over again in-lier. young love the pangs of suspense through which her mother had passed, yot who had never told her love, who had never had more than • the assurance of a fond look and a last hand-clasp, and broken words of farewell, that the man loved her; while her mother had had for a few. years unequalled happiness ■ and love,' and comradeship. Two years since Bickersteth had gone,'and not a sign ! Yet, if she had looked out from her bedroom window, which faced, the north this Friday night after practice of the choir, she would have seen on the far hill, a sign, for there burned a fire beside which sat-two travellers who had come from the uttermost limits of snow. But as the fire burned, a’beacon to her heart if she had but known it, she went to her rest, the words of a song ehe had sung with tears in her

| voice and in her heart ringing in h« j ears. Thor© was to bo a concert after. | the service o-n the coming Sunday. ■ * 1 night, at which there was .to he a colI lection for funds to build another,mis-. - sion house a hundred miles further north, and she had practised songs.aha I was to sing. Her mother had been an ; * j amateur singer of great power, trained ,1 under the best masters, and she ,waa; renewing her mother’s gift in a;:voio* behind which lay a hidden sorrow, a« above her smiling there was a shadow in the’ ©yes that would not away,. Thi* night as she tried to sleep the*word( ■ of -the song which had moved her; kept -J •;ringing-in-her ears, and echoing in Mr J,heart: ■>" ' wMs | “Who: the swallows homewaid Hr, I And the roses’ bloom is o’et But her mother looking out into thtf night saw on the hill the fire, burning like a star, where she had never" sees j a fire set before, and a hope shof into { her heart for her daughter, a hope that 1 had flamed up and died down so ofte*! during the past year. Yet she had fan- ' ned with her life-breath every suck glimmer of hope when it came, and' now’she wont to her rest saying, “Perhaps ho will com© to-monowln her ears,, too, rang the words of the eon( which had, ravished her ears that night, the song she. had sung the* night before her husband, Dyke Allingham, had gone with Franklin to the Polar Sea* “ When the swallows homeward fly—” ' Next .morning, as she and her daughter looked out into the valley the north, words flashed: into her. mind which she had not thought of for many S a year; since, indeed, her own mother had passed. away with them on her lips, “ Mine eyes look towards the-hill* from whence cometh my help.” She ■ K was happier all that day, and the next, \ she-knew not, or thought not, why.. * , As she and her daughter entered the > little church on the Sunday evening,' two stalwart men came slowly toward* , '• the town with a worn team of dogs,:.'. and both raised their heads to the sound of the church bell calling ‘ to prayer. In the eyes of the :younger ’ man there-came a look which has come to many in this world returning from hard enterprise and great dangers, to the,familiar streets, the friendly, face* * .of men of their kin and clan, ,to the lights of home. * ." - The face of the older man, however, . had another look. It was such a. look , as has seldom been seen in .the face* • ■ of men, for it showed the struggle of ' a soul to regain its identity." The word* ’ which the old man had uttered in response to Bickersteth’ appeal before h« , i fainted away, “Franklin —Alice—tin ' ■ snow;” had showed that .he was on th* - i verge; the bells of.the Church pealing. in the summer air brought him near it ■ once again. How many years ■ had gbno since ho had heard them? Brake re - ■ telh, gazing at him in wonder and 1 . scrutiny, wondered if, all, h* might- be mistaken about- him! Yet . no °this man had never been born and bred in the far north. His.was a type which belonged to the civilisation from ' . which he himself had come. There would soon bo the test of it all. Yet he shuddered, too, to think what might -. happen if it was all .true, and die r oovery, or reunion—howvkishqart leap**ed I—should ■ shake; to the centre th* " ■ very life of the two .long-parted one*. He saw th© look or. perplexed pai» * ■ and joy at once in the face of the old * man, but he. said nothing, and he re., „ almost glad when the sound stopped. i> - • The old man turned" to, him. ’ “ What is it?’’* he said: - “ I remem- ’ . ber-- but he ebook" hie" nond .and . • stopped suddenly. An hour -later the two waited slowly towards the church from the littJ* tavern where they had put their dogp. They were cleared of the dust of travel t and Bickersteth, - who. knew that lit* two whom he most wanted to"see-on . earth would be at .evening semcoj drew the old man' thither. The service was over, but the*concert had b£t V , gun. - The church was full, and there were . people. in -the porch, hut thes* made way for the two strange figure*, ... and, as Bickersteth. was "recognised by two or -three men, place was found for them iustuev: The old man. stared round him in a confused and troubled way, but his -motions -were quiet and- pa- - tient, and he looked'like some old. viking, his work-a-day life done, oome to •*.' , pray ere he-went lieucb. They, had cn-. , tei-ed- in a pause in the concert, but , now two ladies came forward- to tbe, : * chancel steps, and one with her .hand* , clasped before, her, began to sing -i “"When the swallows homeward fly, And tho roses’ bloom is o'er, ‘ And the; nightingale’s sweet song, ' In i the- woods’: is heard no more. " It was Alice —Alice, the - and presently the mother, the other Alice, joinou in the refrain. At s»gnt ... of them Bickoisteth’s eyes, had filled, not with tears, hut with a cloud « - feeling, so that he went blind. There she was, the girl he loved. .Her vow*' **'; was ringing in his oars. In his own ’ joy for one instant he had forgotten the old man reside him, and fhe great test that was now upon him. He turn-■ ed quickly as the old man got to hi* feet*. For • an- instant the lost- exilo ■*,. of -.-e North stood as though tran*-; fixed. The blood slowly drained fromliis face, and in. his eyes were an agony of struggle and desire. For a moment an awful confusion bad the mastery,. and then suddenly a-clear, burst into.,.*-, his eyes, his face flushed healthily and -.* shone, ...s arms went- up, as there rang,';; in his ears the words— •; * < i- > “Then I think* with bitter fain, Shall we ever meet again ? When the swallow’s homeward fly—” “ Alice—’Alice”’ ,he called.* O, myGod!” . He tottered forward up the: aisle, followed by. John Bickersteth. “ Alice, I have <k»me back!” he cried -1' again. Alice, my wife!” ■ One that had died .-with Franklin Had returned-to life 'and all life,; good, and one 6ther had returned also, and at the chancel steps lie knew h» fate and’his. happiness. h !