PAGE 16
The March Of The White Guard
by
There was a pause, then Hume replied: “Yes, upon such terms, times, and conditions as I shall hereafter fix. You have no child, Lepage?” he gently added.
“We have no child; it died with my fame.”
Hume looked steadily into the eyes of the man who had wronged him. “Remember, Lepage, you begin the world again. I am going now. By the memory of old days, good-bye.” He held out his hand. Lepage took it, rose tremblingly to his feet, and said, “You are a good man, Hume. Good-bye.”
The sub-factor turned at the door. “If it will please you, tell your wife that I saved you. Some one will tell her; perhaps I would rather–at least it would be more natural, if you did it.”
He passed out into the sunshine that streamed into the room and fell across the figure of Lepage, who murmured dreamily: “And begin the world again.”
Time passed. A shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed upon Lepage. He looked up. There was a startled cry of joy, an answering exclamation of love, and Rose was clasped in her husband’s arms.
A few moments afterwards the sweet-faced woman said: “Who was that man who rode away to the north as I came up, Clive? He reminded me of some one.”
“That was the leader of the White Guard, the man who saved me, Rose.” He paused a moment and then solemnly said: “It was Jaspar Hume.”
The wife came to her feet with a spring. “He saved you–Jaspar Hume! Oh, Clive!”
“He saved me, Rose.”
Her eyes were wet: “And he would not stay and let me thank him! Poor fellow, poor Jaspar Hume! Has he been up here all these years?”
Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in seeing her husband again.
“Yes, he has been here all the time.”
“Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!” Her thoughts went back to the days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health’s sake, and she remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was that when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or her husband, and offered no congratulations. She had not deliberately wronged him. She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage. A promise had been given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that she grew to love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her husband. No real pledge had been broken. Even in this happiness of hers, sitting once again at her husband’s feet, she thought with tender kindness of the man who had cared for her eleven years ago; and who had but now saved her husband.
“He has not succeeded in life,” she repeated softly. Looking down at her, his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: “He is a great man, Rose.”
“I am sure he is a good man,” she added.
Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said almost sternly: “He is a great man.”
His wife looked up half-startled and said: “Very well, dear; he is a good man–and a great man.”
The sunlight still came in through the open door. The Saskatchewan flowed swiftly between its verdant banks, an eagle went floating away to the west, robins made vocal a solitary tree a few yards away, troopers moved backwards and forwards across the square, and a hen and her chickens came fluttering to the threshold. The wife looked at the yellow brood drawing close to their mother, and her eyes grew wistful. She thought of their one baby asleep in an English grave. But thinking of the words of the captain of the White Guard, Lepage said firmly: “We will begin the world again.”
She smiled, and rose to kiss him as the hen and chickens hastened away from the door, and a clear bugle call sounded in the square.
XI
Eleven years have gone since that scene was enacted at Edmonton.