PART THIRD.
VIII.
The hollow huge, where lay the dark lake cold,Had once been, so my observations told,The head of a great glacier thick and vast,Whose icy masses, in the years long past,Had with its motion, ponderous and slow,Ploughed out the narrow canon far below,And as it downward moved with growl upon,Smoothed the long granite ledges 'till they shone.No doubt the causeway, half the canon's length,Was by the monster piled up in his strength;His bristling front and ice-caves rested there,Ere he retreated to that upper lair.
Now the wild hollow sees tremendous slides,That often fall concurrent from its sides.With force resistless and with thunders loudThey beat the lake into a misty cloud,Or out of their deep bed the waters sweep,To pass in hissing floods adown the steep.Thus once had Jo and I beheld them fall,A sight and sound the stoutest to appal.
'Twas more than once there came to me a thought,Why tempt adversity more than one ought?Our cabin—did it stand in place quite safe,Would Providence our welfare still vouchsafe?The cabin stood on a low ridge or moundThat heretofore the slides had passed around.So I believed that they would do once more—I did not see the shadow at our door—And then—the time was brief we had to stay,We thought that quick—and it would pass away.
Procrastination—'tis the miner's bane!To wait, put off, to loiter, he is fain;He stubborn is and, whether right or wrong,Keeps to his moods and faces odds too long;Oh! only beck and voice of Chance he heeds,And follows blind and deaf where'er she leads.
The golden autumn days had sudden end,And darkly wild we saw the storms extend;With chilly notes November's wind piped loud,Along the mountain side the tall pines bowed;From out ravine and glen and bushy aisles,The crisped leaves were heaped in russet piles;Or without moment's pause or respite givenWere in the pale, swol'n torrents fiercely driven.Then came the masses of dull, leaden cloud,That like gray specters did each other crowd;Cold drenching rains fell in the vales below,But on the mountains changed to heavy snow.With winding sheet it did all things efface;The heights above "Our Home" grew white apace:On earth was whiteness, on the sky was frown;By day and night the flakes were wafted down;Swirled round and round and wildly drifted o'erUntil it seemed the steeps could bear no more,And in vast combs, along the winding wall,The avalanche hung poised for instant fall!
'Twas night, and seated by our cabin boardWe listened to the wind that shrieked and roared,If we had erred 'twas now beyond reform—We were held fast by reason of the storm.For one whole week it raged without allay,Nor sign had come that it would yield its sway.Yes, fairly through our rashness we were caught,And I to blame, for I was better taught:The blasts still came, the snow unceasing fell,Our log-built hut became a citadel.Across the hollow, we could hear them rave,And more and more my judgment I misgave;Hurled wild against the walls each wintry corps,We hardly dared to open once the door.
And that night too! That night of all the year—How very strange sometimes decrees appear!A twelvemonth since we'd saved his future mate,And now poor Jo touched by the hand of fate!Strange, strange indeed, that it should happen then—You see it was the Christmas Eve again!
With feet upon the stove my poor boy sat,I'd tried to help his mood with this and that;Our miner's lamp down from a huge beam hung,And o'er our cheerless room its rays it flung.Within his hand Jo, listless, held a book,But half the time his eye the page forsook;He could not read and yet a silence kept—What meant that change that o'er his features crept?There was in his pale face too strange a blend,I did not like whate'er it might portend;So by the red and dim uncertain lightI watched his face and heard how wild the night;My head was leaned in thought against my bunk,I own I was in dark forebodings sunk—For once since I had met him I was blue,That we were there appeared great cause to rue.To keep this fact from Jo's quick sense I tried,With cheery words my inmost thought belied;But now by dull, cold fear I felt assailed,Before some power invisible I quailed.
A strange world this! How full of woe and weal,What play of fate and chance our lives reveal!Our lightest word may prove a dread command,The balance turns with a mere grain of sand;We do that trifle; and go here or there,Speak or keep silent,—joy bring or despair!One moment's action may prove as a knife,The thread to cut and make or mar a life!
As thus I mused—what had I done for Jo?Sudden he spoke—"'Twas right that we should go,"It startled me,—his words were but a chime;'Twas clear our thoughts unspoken had kept time:Who should he think of now if not of Plet?Oh! how she would at his forced absence fret!The yester-morn 'twas his desire to start,But I, the elder, played the cautious part;To try the slopes too dangerous did appear,—To me the thought itself was madness sheer.Why, could we in such storm have kept our breath?It would have been a challenge sent to death.Yet now, so strong my mood within me wrought.I would have ventured without moment's thought.Would I had done so! Then I'd blameless been;Another end—but that was all unseen!
Ere I made answer, Jo had spoke again—I was surprised and troubled at his vein—His spoken musings saddest tenor bore,There was a break, too, from his words before:—
Strange question surely with so sad a brow—"What should prevent my being happy now?Oh! Yes, I know what power the rich command;I've seen the true and brave hard want withstand;My sister, dead—Ah! even as I speak,I see again her flushed and wasted cheek.Yes, she was working for the sweaters then—Most brutal, mean, and sordid of all men—It killed her! Yes, she slowly drooped and pined,Sunk 'neath her load and mother's loss combined;Her task was all too great, nor bold nor strong,An orphan left amid the heedless throng.Oh! I was nothing but an urchin small,My help was little, if 'twas help at all;'Twas cruel, cruel that she suffered so;On my account I know she feared to go.She shared her little when she ill could spare;Would that with her my hope I now might share.What happiness it would to me impart,Could she but live and heal again her heart.My mother, too,—to me her face is dim—It fills my mem'ry like some vague, sweet hymn—Yet though I cannot see her face aright,I feel her dark eyes look in mine tonight."
My Jo was sad indeed and sore oppressed,His happy prospects did not bring him rest;And I, too—I was filled with cold alarm,Some premonition of impending harm!I felt a warning through my being creep,And he sat brooding as I fell asleep.
Crash! crash!! crash!!!—O God, what awful roar!It bursts upon my hearing ever more!A rush, a fury; sudden, bitter cold;Confusion utter on my senses rolled;A rending, grinding; hiss of sliding snow;Enormous mixing of dread sounds below;A noise terrific, wonderful and vast,As though of earthly things it told the last;Like trump of doom it seemed to rend the sky,And turn the brain to numbness——Where was I?Half stunned I sat bolt upright in my bunk;My head swam round as if I had been drunk.The sudden noise had ended, all was still,And yet a tremor did the darkness fill;Our lamp still burned, a red spot in the gloom,But all was chill and silent as a tomb.I was too dazed, too lost to understand,Yet felt the snow drift on my face and hand.
I called aloud to Jo. No answer came.I called, again, again, and 'twas the same!
What was it? Where was Jo? What did it mean?What meant that vacancy where Jo had been!His bunk was empty, and the stove was—where?Was that Jo's hat upon the table there?In sort of dreamy spell I stared and asked,But to the answering felt myself o'ertasked.Why did our cabin wall so whitish grow—Why did it look so very much like snow?In distance, too, I saw it slow expand,And still I felt the snow on face and hand.
Then I was wide awake! My mind was cleared—Oh, all too plain the dreadful truth appeared!The slides! the slides! "Our Home" was wrecked by slides!And there was terror in this thought besides—My Jo? Ah! God of Mercy! where was Jo?Did he lie bleeding on the rocks below?"Our Home" was struck, there but remained the half—Oh, then I seemed to hear the dark fates laugh!Not one thing touched or moved where I had lain,And Jo, perhaps, hurled down to ghastly pain.Down, down the slopes he had been whirled away,Ere this it might be—was but lifeless clay:Was that a voice that called on me to come,While I stood there in anguish, terror-dumb?
Outside the wreck—when I stood there at last,The storm rolled back—as if in mockery passed;A scene of desolation, weird and white,Beneath the parting clouds fell on my sight;Like to a lamp the moon hung wan and pale,As though it lit the path through death's own vale.My pair of snow-shoes from the wall I took—Jo's hung there with them on the self-same hook—Then to my belt a miner's lamp I tied,Seized the long pole that would my steep course guide;Though frantic in my fear, all desperate,I must my acts in order regulate.Well that some little skill I could command,Well that I know each foot of mountain land;Or never could I, had it not been so,Have reached the spot where I, at last, found Jo.
The snow was wildly drifted; rocks were bare,The white blown from them to make mounds in air;The surface here all soft and loose did feel,Here 'twas hard-packed and smooth as polished steel.The slides had met above—there had been two—Their mighty tracks stretched upward full in view;Where they had joined in fierce and deadly shockWas piled on high the tons of shattered rock.One had possessed a greater power and forceAnd drove the other from its downward course—You see how all conspired to change our luck—That swerve was why the cabin had been struck;And far below, in a small valley penned,The rushing snow was forced to make an end,A level space with rocks all jagged and sharp,The first uplifting of the counterscarp.If Jo against those cruel rocks was borne,Oh, then, I knew, was come my time to mourn!
And hidden dangers it was mine to face,A moment, I believe, I asked for grace;Then without pause I glided down the slope,In that hot fire that burns 'tween fear and hope.I knew not where to pause or where to look;The awful wreckage all my courage shook;He might be crushed by boulder or tree-trunk,Or out of reach in some ravine be sunk.Each object dark that on the surface layPlucked at my heart and filled me with dismay.What likely seemed within the shadows dim,I hoped, yet dreaded, that it might be him!
What were those timbers sticking through the snow?I hardly dared another glance bestow.Ah! what were they it needed little proof,'Twas splintered fragments of our cabin roof:And what was that black something lying there?'Twas Jo's great coat that hung upon his chair.Was he, then, somewhere near? Oh! could I save?One choking thump I felt that my heart gave,Then in my bosom it was turned to lead.Where was he? Was he yet alive—or dead?
XI.
Quite dead! All hopeless, my poor Jo was dead!Yes, all too soon I knew that life had fled!Oh! not the slightest flutter at his heart;No warmth to his cold lips could I impart;I could not bring the breath to my poor mate,I'd found him; but, ah, God! I'd found too late!
Oh! what I suffered I can never tell,It seemed to me I tasted then of hell!Despair came o'er me, I was dazed with grief,As palsy struck I trembled like a leaf.Would I go mad? Yes, without thought or aim,I smoothed Jo's brow and called upon his name;Strange and unnatural my voice with woe,And lost at once amid the wreaths of snow!Should I feel shame that grief did me unman—That down my furrowed cheeks the hot tears ran?That night I learned what friendship true can be;How near a son the lad had been to me.Before that hour no gray my locks o'er cast,And after that the white came thick and fast.
'Twas by the wreckage, some ten yards away,And near the surface that my poor boy lay,One hand thrust upward, as in mute appeal.Alas! my frenzied clasp he could not feel!Upon his other hand each fingernailFurrowed the flesh, did deep the palm impale.Oh, it was gruesome! Oft I've seen it so,Upon the hands of those killed by the snow.
What could I do—when bitter tears and griefPassed to a dull despair beyond relief?When I was sure that I all power did lack;That tears and labor could not bring him back?Must I make ready for a solemn task—The end of which I dared not see nor ask?Dimly, through all the rack of ache and pain,I knew the truth—Jo could not there remain;And then the thought upon my brain dawned slow,That I must take him to the camp below.
Oh! friend, who listens calmly to this tale,Did it show weakness that my heart should fail?That I before the coming task did shrink—Held back as one upon a chasm's brink?"Not so," you say? I hope in all the sumOf your life's days such task may never come!
Close by our cabin we had kept a sled,Thereon awhile poor Jo must find a bed.Oft he had pulled beside me on the slope—Brave, honest Jo, when he was filled with hope;Now he would be the burden it must bear.Hard pang it gave to go and leave him there;Lying so rigid, lonely and so still,He did with fearfulness the wild scene fill!I seemed to see all nature through a pall,A sign of death was written over all,—Life, hope, fate, death; the helplessness of men—The mystery of all weighed on me then!
Across the sled I laid pine-branches deep,Placed Jo upon them in his endless sleep;With his own blankets wrapped the body o'er—Under their folds he'd dream of love no more—And when I'd fitting made his bed at last,With long, stout cords I tightly bound all fast;Felt one deep surge of pain my breast within,And, then—my course was ready to begin.
Then downward; downward, in pale light of dawn,Down the steep slopes and ledges long outdrawn.Over the snowy hillocks, mighty drifts,Across ice-bridges o'er the deep-made rifts,Down, down the hidden trail we knew so well—Within my ears a sound like passing bell;My heart like fire, my throbbing brow cold-damp,As, in the wintry noon, I reached the camp.Oh, awful hour! My task of tasks came yet,Ah, God! how could I bear the news to Plet?
Fear not,—I shall not tell of all the woe,The misery Jo's death did clear foreshow.Why should I try those dark hours to recall,Dwell on the blank that fell upon us all?O regal Death, you wear a changeful crown,You come with gentle smile or tyrant frown!We know sometimes with terror you assail,Or to sweet rest you touch the eyelids pale:That to the living, from your unseen train,Too oft remorse doth bring its aching pain,And to the sorrows that bereavement brings,The earthly needings like a horror clings.
Too dreadful was the time between the dayI reached the camp and he was laid away.Yes, I have lived through saddened hours and dark,Known trials that on life have left their mark;I've my own share of keenest anguish seen,For all too soon my life had failure been;I knew what 'twas to miss the hoped-for goal,And feel the iron enter in my soul;Yet only then I saw all hope depart,To come no more when Jo received death's dart;And still more black became the gloom profound,Between that hour and the burial ground.
Her father told her—how I do not know.When I told him, he reeled as from a blow;I did not dare to go and look on her,Of tidings evil I the messenger.Yet later in her sorrow I could shareWhen in the dusk we took Jo's body there.
A dreary, dreary winter day was that,Deep lay the snow upon the lonesome flat;Slowly the big white flakes were falling round,And in a deeper shroud the hills enwound.You should not think the hands of friends forgotTo dig a pathway to the chosen spot.Slowly through white the black procession passed,And stood beside the open grave at last.Plet, speechless, tearless, to her father clung,A sight so pitiful each heart was wrung.By one most worthy a few lines were read,In simple service for untimely dead.The end was reached when, like a sudden knell,The clods all frozen on the coffin fell.
Nor was there lack of kindly effort madeTo ease the grief on her so heavy laid.All in the camp had hunger in their heartTo her some grain of comfort to impart;But such her feeling that they must forego,And leave her silent in her utter woe.
XIII.
And after that all is to me quite vague,My memory seemed smitten by a plague;A strange uncertainty did all confuse,Things and events I saw through changing hues.My merry Plet, sweet as the sun shone on,I saw like a cut flower all droop and wan,Or one that's stricken by a cruel frost,Or like a weary bird, that's tempest-tossed.She who had been so lively and so gayChanged to a spirit that might pass away.How soon the dawn of love so rosy brightHad given place to dark and solemn night!Her only wish now seemed to be alone,To listen for a word in that loved tone—Yes, she who longed to meet the future years,Now backward looked and through a mist of tears.
And doubt and fear obscure oppressed my brain,My mind was clouded by a nameless pain,And o'er and o'er again came this dark thought,She too must go—she but a long rest sought;On other paths than ours she soon must wend,Her broken heart foreshadowed but this end.
Her father wished to take her from the place,But Plet begged hard for little time of grace.He to remove her from those scenes was fain,She to look on them still would there remain.How could she go and leave that new-made grave,When, to be near, her only comfort gave?Ah, all unlike is woman to the man!And yet we know 'tis to some noble plan—Man in his strength, the past lets go its way,Though thus forever some great hope decay!But woman, loving, tender, still clings fast,And hopeless yearns until the very last;Keeps sacred in her heart and holds supremeWhate'er remains of her sweet broken dream.
And so that grave held Plet with unseen power.Was there some influence at their natal hour?Oh, yes, to me the sequel seemed to showThat they were linked indeed for weal or woe!
And so there came again a summer day,With Plet and father climbing up the way.What madness filled his brain to let her come?The very sight with anguish struck me dumb.I knew she struggled with her love in vain,'Twas hopelessness that brought her once again.The same wild flowers were growing by the lake,As when she first came for my poor Jo's sake.Can the eyes speak farewell? Oh! if they can,How simple was the key to her sad plan.She only came with her dead hope to part,To be where love had entered in her heart!
And now there came that looked-for scene and last,To which that other seemed but a forecast;Once more the great white flakes were falling slow,To wrap in fleecy folds the earth below.A year with all its changes had gone roundSince Jo was buried in that mountain ground,The third of that glad season since they met,And now I saw the grave close over Plet.
For he had promised—kept the promise true,Nor death nor circumstance should part those two.And now that vow the stricken father made,We with bowed heads in silence saw obeyed.Her happiness had been his own, and whyShould he her last and fondest wish deny?And that last wish had almost been a prayer,That she might lie beside her lover there.
The Christmas Eve—it weighed upon my heart,It seemed the hot tears from my eyes must start;In anguish o'er my brow I passed my hand,Life seemed no surer than a rope of sand:The Christmas Eve with dire importance fraught,Plet and her father 'neath the wild snows caught;The Christmas Eve and Jo swept to his death,Upon the jagged rocks to yield his breath,And Christmas Eve again, and Plet asleep,Where on the flat the snow lay cold and deep.The Christmas Eve, I whispered o'er and o'er,While echoes seemed to come from a far shore.Oh, why so fateful to them was that night—Why did it always bring so sad a plight?I tried an answer to my words to frame—But no solution to the question came;I choking struggled with the hopeless task,And life for death did only seem a mask;I felt all hope was but sad pretence whenTheir voices I should never hear again!