Thomas Jefferson Brown | Page 3

we were going to take him ashore, and
said:
"Bobby, why don't you come along? Let's chum it, old man, and see
what happens."
When he went ashore, the next day, I went with him, and we each took
three months' supply of grub and our pay. From that hour there began
the big change--the change which turned Thomas Jefferson back into
Thomas Jefferson Brown, and which it took a girl to finish.
It came first in his eyes, and then in his laugh. After that he seemed to
grow an inch or two taller, and he lost that careless, shiftless way which
comes of what he called the wanderlust bug. There wasn't so much
laughter in his eyes, but something better had taken its place--a deeper,
grayer, more thoughtful look, and he didn't play those queer things with
his mouth any more.
The police at Point Fullerton hardly had a glimpse of him as the big,
sunny, loose-jointed giant, Thomas Jefferson. He had become a
bronze-bearded god, with the strength of five men in his splendid
shoulders, and a port to his head that made you think of a piece of
sculpture.
"You can't be anything but a man up here, Bobby," he said one day, and
I knew what he meant. "It's not the air, it's not the cold, and it's not the
fight you make to keep life in your body," he added, "but it's God!
That's what it is, Bobby. There's not a sound or a sight up here, outside
of that little cabin, that's human. It's all God--there's nothing else--and it
makes you think!"

III
It was spring when we came down to Fort Churchill, and it was
summer when we struck York Factory. It was the middle of one of
those summer days when strawberries ripen even up there, that the last
prop fell out from under Thomas Jefferson, and he became Thomas
Jefferson Brown. He met Lady Isobel. The title did not really belong to
her, for she was only the cousin of Lord Meton; but Thomas Jefferson
Brown called her that from the first.
It was down close to the boats, where their launch lay, and the wind
had frolicked with Lady Isobel's hair until it rippled about her face and
shoulders like a net of spun gold. She was bareheaded, and he was
bareheaded, and they stared for a moment, her blue eyes flashing into
his gray ones; and then there came into her face a color like rose, and
he bowed, as one of the old-time Presidents might have bowed to a
hair-powdered beauty in the days when the Capitol was young.
That was the beginning, and to his honor be it said that Thomas
Jefferson Brown never revealed that he was a gentleman born, though
his heart was stricken with love at that first sight of Lady Isobel's
lovely face. Lord Meton wanted a man--one who could handle a canoe
and shoulder two hundred pounds of duff; and "Tom" became the man,
working like a slave for a month; but always with the pride and bearing
of a king.
It wasn't difficult to see what was happening. Lord Meton saw, and
understood; but he knew that the proud blood in Lady Isobel was an
invulnerable armor that would protect her from indiscretion. And as for
Thomas Jefferson Brown--
"Bobby," he said, standing up straight and tall, "if she can only love a
gentleman, and not a man, what's the use of playing cards?"
One day, when he had to carry Lady Isobel ashore from a big York boat,
something inside him got the best of his arms, and he held her tight--so

tight that her eyes came down to his with a frightened look, and he
heard a breath come from her that was almost a sob. They gazed at each
other for a moment, and it was then that Thomas Jefferson Brown told
her that he loved her--not in words, but in a way that she understood.
When he set her down on shore she was as white as death. From that
day she treated him a little coolly--up to the last moment, out on the
bay.
It was a bright, sunshiny day when the three--Lord Meton, Lady Isobel,
and Thomas Jefferson Brown--set off in a big birchbark canoe, bound
for Harrison's Island, a dozen miles out from the mainland. But you
can't tell much about sunshine and calm on Hudson Bay. They're like a
jealous woman's smile, masking something hidden. Four miles out, the
wind came up; midway between the island and the mainland, it was a
small gale. Even at that, Thomas Jefferson Brown would have made it
all right if the beat of the sea hadn't broken a rotten thread under the
bow, letting the birch seam