The Shape of Fear | Page 7

his eyes hard, he made
sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in
fluttering garments who sped over the ice as fast as ever werewolf
went.
He called aloud, but there was no answer. He shaped his hands and
trumpeted through them, but the silence was as before -- it was
complete. So then he gave chase, setting his teeth hard and putting a
tension on his firm young muscles. But go however he would, the white
skater went faster. After a time, as he glanced at the cold gleam of the
north star, he perceived that he was being led from his direct path. For a
moment he hesitated, wondering if he would not better keep to his road,
but his weird companion seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and
finding it sweet to follow, he followed.
Of course it came to him more than once in that strange pursuit, that the
white skater was no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes men see
curious things when the hoar frost is on the earth. Hagadorn's own
father -- to hark no further than that for an instance! -- who lived up
there with the Lake Superior Indians, and worked in the copper mines,
had welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter night, who was gone by

morning, leaving wolf tracks on the snow! Yes, it was so, and John
Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any day -- if he were
alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were, is melted now!)
Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the
ice flushed pink at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into the
cold heavens, she was gone, and Haga- dorn was at his destination. The
sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, and as
Hagadorn took off his skates and glanced carelessly lakeward, he
beheld a great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves showing blue and
hungry between white fields. Had he rushed along his intended path,
watching the stars to guide him, his glance turned upward, all his body
at magnificent momentum, he must certainly have gone into that cold
grave.
How wonderful that it had been sweet to follow the white skater, and
that he followed!
His heart beat hard as he hurried to his friend's house. But he
encountered no wed- ding furore. His friend met him as men meet in
houses of mourning.
"Is this your wedding face?" cried Haga- dorn. "Why, man, starved as I
am, I look more like a bridegroom than you!"
"There's no wedding to-day!"
"No wedding! Why, you're not --"
"Marie Beaujeu died last night --"
"Marie --"
"Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came
home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it
somehow. She grew worse and worse, and all the time she talked of
you."

"Of me?"
"We wondered what it meant. No one knew you were lovers."
"I didn't know it myself; more's the pity. At least, I didn't know --"
"She said you were on the ice, and that you didn't know about the big
breaking-up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore and the rift
widening. She cried over and over again that you could come in by the
old French creek if you only knew --"
"I came in that way."
"But how did you come to do that? It's out of the path. We thought
perhaps --"
But Hagadorn broke in with his story and told him all as it had come to
pass.
That day they watched beside the maiden, who lay with tapers at her
head and at her feet, and in the little church the bride who might have
been at her wedding said prayers for her friend. They buried Marie
Beaujeu in her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was before the altar
with her, as he had intended from the first! Then at midnight the lovers
who were to wed whispered their vows in the gloom of the cold church,
and walked together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths upon a
grave.
Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back again to his home. They
wanted him to go by sunlight, but he had his way, and went when
Venus made her bright path on the ice.
The truth was, he had hoped for the com- panionship of the white
skater. But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The
only voice he heard was the bay- ing of a wolf on the north shore. The
world was as empty and as white as if God had just created