The Honor of the Big Snows | Page 3

few days before there had come a wonderful event in the history of
the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of
Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their
people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife
was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their
existence--a part of it as truly as the strange lights for ever hovering
over the pole, as surely as the countless stars that never left the night
skies, as surely as the endless forests and the deep snows!
Then had come the sudden change, and the gloom, that brought with it
the shadow of death, fell like a pall upon the post, stifling its life, and
bringing with it a grief that those who lived there had never known
before.
There came to them no word from Cummins now.
He stood for a moment before his lighted door, and then went back, and
the word passed softly from one to another that the most beautiful thing
in the world was still living her sweet life in that little cabin at the end

of the clearing.
"You hear the music in the skies--now, my Mélisse?" whispered the
man, kneeling beside her again. "It is very pretty to-night!"
"It was not that," repeated the woman.
She attempted to stroke his face, but Cummins saw nothing of the
effort, for the hand lay all but motionless. He saw nothing of the fading
softness that glowed in the big, loving eyes, for his own eyes were
blinded by a hot film. And the woman saw nothing of the hot film, so
torture was saved them both. But suddenly the woman quivered, and
Cummins heard a thrilling sound.
"It is the music!" she panted. "John, John, it is--the music--of--my--
people!"
The man straightened himself, his face turned to the open door. He
heard it now! Was it the blessed angels coming for his Mélisse? He
rose, a sobbing note in his throat, and went, his arms stretched out, to
meet them. He had never heard a sound like that--never in all his life in
this endless wilderness.
He went from the door out into the night, and, step by step, through the
snow toward the black edge of the spruce forest. The sobs fell
chokingly from his lips, and his arms were still reaching out to greet
this messenger of the God of his beloved; for Cummins was a man of
the wild and mannerless ways of a savage world, and he knew not what
to make of this sweetness that came to them from out of the depths of
the black forest.
"My Mélisse! My Mélisse!" he sobbed.
A figure came from the shadows, and with the figure came the music,
sweet and soft and low. John Cummins stopped and turned his face
straight up to the sky. His heart died within him.
The music ceased, and when he looked again the figure was close to

him, staggering as it walked, and a face white and thin and starved
came with it. It was a boy's face.
"For the museek of the violon--somet'ing to eat!" he heard, and the thin
figure swayed and fell almost into his arms. The voice came weak
again. "Thees is Jan--Jan Thoreau--and his violon--"
The woman's bloodless face and her great staring dark eyes greeted
them as they entered the cabin. As the man knelt beside her again, and
lifted her head against his breast, she whispered once more:
"It is the--music--of my people--the violin!"
John Cummins turned his head.
"Play!" he breathed.
"Ah, the white angel is seek--ver' seek," murmured Jan, and he drew his
bow gently across the strings of his violin.
From the instrument there came something so soft and sweet that John
Cummins closed his eyes as he held the woman against his breast and
listened. Not until he opened them again, and felt a strange chill against
his cheek, did he know that his beloved's soul had gone from him on
the gentle music of Jan Thoreau's violin.
CHAPTER II
MUKEE'S STORY
For many minutes after the last gentle breath had passed from the
woman's lips, Jan Thoreau played softly upon his violin. It was the
great, heart-broken sob of John Cummins that stopped him. As tenderly
as if she had fallen into a sweet sleep from which he feared to awaken
her, the man unclasped his arms and lowered his wife's head to the
pillow; and with staring black eyes Jan crushed his violin against his
ragged breast and watched him as he smoothed back the shimmering
hair and looked long and hungrily into the still, white face.

Cummins turned to him, and, in the dim light of the cabin, their eyes
met.