The Red Patrol
by
St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, had given him its licentiate’s hood, the Bishop of Rupert’s Land had ordained him, and the North had swallowed him up. He had gone forth with surplice, stole, hood, a sermon-case, the prayer-book, and that other Book of all. Indian camps, trappers’ huts, and Company’s posts had given him hospitality, and had heard him with patience and consideration. At first he wore the surplice, stole, and hood, took the eastward position, and intoned the service, and no man said him nay, but watched him curiously and was sorrowful–he was so youthful, clear of eye, and bent on doing heroical things.
But little by little there came a change. The hood was left behind at Fort O’Glory, where it provoked the derision of the Methodist missionary who followed him; the sermon-case stayed at Fort O’Battle; and at last the surplice itself was put by at the Company’s post at Yellow Quill. He was too excited and in earnest at first to see the effect of his ministrations, but there came slowly over him the knowledge that he was talking into space. He felt something returning on him out of the air into which he talked, and buffeting him. It was the Spirit of the North, in which lives the terror, the large heart of things, the soul of the past. He awoke to his inadequacy, to the fact that all these men to whom he talked, listened, and only listened, and treated him with a gentleness which was almost pity–as one might a woman. He had talked doctrine, the Church, the sacraments, and at Fort O’Battle he faced definitely the futility of his work. What was to blame–the Church–religion–himself?
It was at Fort O’Battle that he met Pierre, and heard a voice say over his shoulder, as he walked out into the icy dusk: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness… and he had sackcloth about his loins, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”
He turned to see Pierre, who in the large room of the Post had sat and watched him as he prayed and preached. He had remarked the keen, curious eye, the musing look, the habitual disdain at the lips. It had all touched him, confused him; and now he had a kind of anger.
“You know it so well, why don’t you preach yourself?” he said feverishly.
“I have been preaching all my life,” Pierre answered drily.
“The devil’s games: cards and law-breaking; and you sneer at men who try to bring lost sheep into the fold.”
“The fold of the Church–yes, I understand all that,” Pierre answered. “I have heard you and the priests of my father’s Church talk. Which is right? But as for me, I am a missionary. Cards, law-breaking–these are what I have done; but these are not what I have preached.”
“What have you preached?” asked the other, walking on into the fast-gathering night, beyond the Post and the Indian lodges, into the wastes where frost and silence lived.
Pierre waved his hand towards space. “This,” he said suggestively.
“What’s this?” asked the other fretfully.
“The thing you feel round you here.”
“I feel the cold,” was the petulant reply.
“I feel the immense, the far off,” said Pierre slowly.
The other did not understand as yet. “You’ve learned big words,” he said disdainfully.
“No; big things,” rejoined Pierre sharply–“a few.”
“Let me hear you preach them,” half snarled Sherburne.
“You will not like to hear them–no.”
“I’m not likely to think about them one way or another,” was the contemptuous reply.
Pierre’s eyes half closed. The young, impetuous half-baked college man. To set his little knowledge against his own studious vagabondage! At that instant he determined to play a game and win; to turn this man into a vagabond also; to see John the Baptist become a Bedouin. He saw the doubt, the uncertainty, the shattered vanity in the youth’s mind, the missionary’s half retreat from his cause. A crisis was at hand. The youth was fretful with his great theme, instead of being severe upon himself. For days and days Pierre’s presence had acted on Sherburne silently but forcibly. He had listened to the vagabond’s philosophy, and knew that it was of a deeper–so much deeper–knowledge of life than he himself possessed, and he knew also that it was terribly true; he was not wise enough to see that it was only true in part. The influence had been insidious, delicate, cunning, and he himself was only “a voice crying in the wilderness,” without the simple creed of that voice. He knew that the Methodist missionary was believed in more, if less liked, than himself. Pierre would work now with all the latent devilry of his nature to unseat the man from his saddle.