The Priestly Prerogative
This is the story of a man who did not appreciate his wife; also,
of a woman who did him too great an honor when she gave herself
to him. Incidentally, it concerns a Jesuit priest who had never
been known to lie. He was an appurtenance, and a very necessary
one, to the Yukon country; but the presence of the other two was
merely accidental. They were specimens of the many strange waifs
which ride the breast of a gold rush or come tailing along
behind.
Edwin Bentham and Grace Bentham were waifs; they were also
tailing along behind, for the Klondike rush of '97 had long since
swept down the great river and subsided into the famine-stricken
city of Dawson. When the Yukon shut up shop and went to sleep
under a three-foot ice-sheet, this peripatetic couple found
themselves at the Five Finger Rapids, with the City of Gold still
a journey of many sleeps to the north.
Many cattle had been butchered at this place in the fall of the
year, and the offal made a goodly heap. The three fellow-voyagers
of Edwin Bentham and wife gazed upon this deposit, did a little
mental arithmetic, caught a certain glimpse of a bonanza, and
decided to remain. And all winter they sold sacks of bones and
frozen hides to the famished dog-teams. It was a modest price
they asked, a dollar a pound, just as it came. Six months later,
when the sun came back and the Yukon awoke, they buckled on their
heavy moneybelts and journeyed back to the Southland, where they
yet live and lie mightily about the Klondike they never saw.
But Edwin Bentham--he was an indolent fellow, and had he not been
possessed of a wife, would have gladly joined issued in the
dog-meat speculation. As it was, she played upon his vanity, told
him how great and strong he was, how a man such as he certainly
was could overcome all obstacles and of a surety obtain the
Golden Fleece. So he squared his jaw, sold his share in the bones
and hides for a sled and one dog, and turned his snowshoes to the
north. Needless to state, Grace Bentham's snowshoes never allowed
his tracks to grow cold. Nay, ere their tribulations had seen
three days, it was the man who followed in the rear, and the
woman who broke trail in advance. Of course, if anybody hove in
sight, the position was instantly reversed. Thus did his manhood
remain virgin to the travelers who passed like ghosts on the
silent trail. There are such men in this world.
How such a man and such a woman came to take each other for
better and for worse is unimportant to this narrative. These
things are familiar to us all, and those people who do them, or
even question them too closely, are apt to lose a beautiful faith
which is known as Eternal Fitness.
Edwin Bentham was a boy, thrust by mischance into a man's
body,--a boy who could complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from
wing, or cower in abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not
half his size. He was a selfish cry-baby, hidden behind a man's
mustache and stature, and glossed over with a skin-deep veneer of
culture and conventionality. Yes; he was a clubman and a society
man, the sort that grace social functions and utter inanities with
a charm and unction which is indescribable; the sort that talk
big, and cry over a toothache; the sort that put more hell into a
woman's life by marrying her than can the most graceless
libertine that ever browsed in forbidden pastures. We meet these
men every day, but we rarely know them for what they are. Second
to marrying them, the best way to get this knowledge is to eat
out of the same pot and crawl under the same blanket with them
for--well, say a week; no greater margin is necessary.
To see Grace Bentham, was to see a slender, girlish creature; to
know her, was to know a soul which dwarfed your own, yet retained
all the elements of the eternal feminine. This was the woman who
urged and encouraged her husband in his Northland quest, who
broke trail for him when no one was looking, and cried in secret
over her weakling woman's body.
So journeyed this strangely assorted couple down to old Fort
Selkirk, then through fivescore miles of dismal wilderness to
Stuart River. And when the short day left them, and the man lay
down in the snow and blubbered, it was the woman who lashed him
to the sled, bit her lips with the pain of her aching limbs, and
helped the dog haul him to Malemute Kid's cabin. Malemute Kid was
not at home, but Meyers, the German trader, cooked great
moose-steaks and shook up a bed of fresh pine boughs. Lake,
Langham, and Parker, were excited, and not unduly so when the
cause was taken into account.
'Oh, Sandy! Say, can you tell a porterhouse from a round? Come
out and lend us a hand, anyway!' This appeal emanated from the
cache, where Langham was vainly struggling with divers quarters
of frozen moose.
'Don't you budge from those dishes!' commanded Parker.
'I say, Sandy; there's a good fellow--just run down to the
Missouri Camp and borrow some cinnamon,' begged Lake.
'Oh! oh! hurry up! Why don't--' But the crash of meat and boxes,
in the cache, abruptly quenched this peremptory summons.
'Come now, Sandy; it won't take a minute to go down to the
Missouri--' 'You leave him alone,' interrupted Parker. 'How am I
to mix the biscuits if the table isn't cleared off?'
Sandy paused in indecision, till suddenly the fact that he was
Langham's 'man' dawned upon him. Then he apologetically threw
down the greasy dishcloth, and went to his master's rescue.
These promising scions of wealthy progenitors had come to the
Northland in search of laurels, with much money to burn, and a
'man' apiece. Luckily for their souls, the other two men were up
the White River in search of a mythical quartz-ledge; so Sandy
had to grin under the responsibility of three healthy masters,
each of whom was possessed of peculiar cookery ideas. Twice that
morning had a disruption of the whole camp been imminent, only
averted by immense concessions from one or the other of these
knights of the chafing-dish. But at last their mutual creation, a
really dainty dinner, was completed.
Then they sat down to a three-cornered game of 'cut-throat,'--a
proceeding which did away with all casus belli for future
hostilities, and permitted the victor to depart on a most
important mission.
This fortune fell to Parker, who parted his hair in the middle,
put on his mittens and bearskin cap, and stepped over to Malemute
Kid's cabin. And when he returned, it was in the company of Grace
Bentham and Malemute Kid,--the former very sorry her husband
could not share with her their hospitality, for he had gone up to
look at the Henderson Creek mines, and the latter still a trifle
stiff from breaking trail down the Stuart River.
Meyers had been asked, but had declined, being deeply engrossed
in an experiment of raising bread from hops.
Well, they could do without the husband; but a woman--why they
had not seen one all winter, and the presence of this one
promised a new era in their lives.
They were college men and gentlemen, these three young fellows,
yearning for the flesh-pots they had been so long denied.
Probably Grace Bentham suffered from a similar hunger; at least,
it meant much to her, the first bright hour in many weeks of
darkness.
But that wonderful first course, which claimed the versatile Lake
for its parent, had no sooner been served than there came a loud
knock at the door.
'Oh! Ah! Won't you come in, Mr. Bentham?' said Parker, who had
stepped to see who the newcomer might be.
'Is my wife here?' gruffly responded that worthy.
'Why, yes. We left word with Mr. Meyers.' Parker was exerting his
most dulcet tones, inwardly wondering what the deuce it all
meant. 'Won't you come in? Expecting you at any moment, we
reserved a place. And just in time for the first course, too.'
'Come in, Edwin, dear,' chirped Grace Bentham from her seat at
the table.
Parker naturally stood aside.
'I want my wife,' reiterated Bentham hoarsely, the intonation
savoring disagreeably of ownership.
Parker gasped, was within an ace of driving his fist into the
face of his boorish visitor, but held himself awkwardly in check.
Everybody rose. Lake lost his head and caught himself on the
verge of saying, 'Must you go?' Then began the farrago of
leave-taking. 'So nice of you--' 'I am awfully sorry' 'By Jove!
how things did brighten--' 'Really now, you--'
'Thank you ever so much--' 'Nice trip to Dawson--' etc., etc.
In this wise the lamb was helped into her jacket and led to the
slaughter. Then the door slammed, and they gazed woefully upon
the deserted table.
'Damn!' Langham had suffered disadvantages in his early training,
and his oaths were weak and monotonous. 'Damn!' he repeated,
vaguely conscious of the incompleteness and vainly struggling for
a more virile term. It is a clever woman who can fill out the
many weak places in an inefficient man, by her own indomitability,
re-enforce his vacillating nature, infuse her ambitious soul into
his, and spur him on to great achievements. And it is indeed a
very clever and tactful woman who can do all this, and do it so
subtly that the man receives all the credit and believes in his
inmost heart that everything is due to him and him alone.
This is what Grace Bentham proceeded to do. Arriving in Dawson
with a few pounds of flour and several letters of introduction,
she at once applied herself to the task of pushing her big baby
to the fore. It was she who melted the stony heart and wrung
credit from the rude barbarian who presided over the destiny of
the P. C. Company; yet it was Edwin Bentham to whom the
concession was ostensibly granted. It was she who dragged her
baby up and down creeks, over benches and divides, and on a dozen
wild stampedes; yet everybody remarked what an energetic fellow
that Bentham was. It was she who studied maps, and catechised
miners, and hammered geography and locations into his hollow
head, till everybody marveled at his broad grasp of the country
and knowledge of its conditions. Of course, they said the wife
was a brick, and only a few wise ones appreciated and pitied the
brave little woman.
She did the work; he got the credit and reward. In the Northwest
Territory a married woman cannot stake or record a creek, bench,
or quartz claim; so Edwin Bentham went down to the Gold
Commissioner and filed on Bench Claim 23, second tier, of French
Hill. And when April came they were washing out a thousand
dollars a day, with many, many such days in prospect.
At the base of French Hill lay Eldorado Creek, and on a creek
claim stood the cabin of Clyde Wharton. At present he was not
washing out a diurnal thousand dollars; but his dumps grew, shift
by shift, and there would come a time when those dumps would pass
through his sluice-boxes, depositing in the riffles, in the
course of half a dozen days, several hundred thousand dollars. He
often sat in that cabin, smoked his pipe, and dreamed beautiful
little dreams,--dreams in which neither the dumps nor the
half-ton of dust in the P. C. Company's big safe, played a part.
And Grace Bentham, as she washed tin dishes in her hillside
cabin, often glanced down into Eldorado Creek, and dreamed,--not
of dumps nor dust, however. They met frequently, as the trail to
the one claim crossed the other, and there is much to talk about
in the Northland spring; but never once, by the light of an eye
nor the slip of a tongue, did they speak their hearts.
This is as it was at first. But one day Edwin Bentham was brutal.
All boys are thus; besides, being a French Hill king now, he
began to think a great deal of himself and to forget all he owed
to his wife. On this day, Wharton heard of it, and waylaid Grace
Bentham, and talked wildly. This made her very happy, though she
would not listen, and made him promise to not say such things
again. Her hour had not come.
But the sun swept back on its northern journey, the black of
midnight changed to the steely color of dawn, the snow slipped
away, the water dashed again over the glacial drift, and the
wash-up began. Day and night the yellow clay and scraped bedrock
hurried through the swift sluices, yielding up its ransom to the
strong men from the Southland.
And in that time of tumult came Grace Bentham's hour.
To all of us such hours at some time come,--that is, to us who
are not too phlegmatic.
Some people are good, not from inherent love of virtue, but from
sheer laziness. But those of us who know weak moments may
understand.
Edwin Bentham was weighing dust over the bar of the saloon at the
Forks--altogether too much of his dust went over that pine
board--when his wife came down the hill and slipped into Clyde
Wharton's cabin. Wharton was not expecting her, but that did not
alter the case. And much subsequent misery and idle waiting might
have been avoided, had not Father Roubeau seen this and turned
aside from the main creek trail. 'My child,--' 'Hold on, Father
Roubeau! Though I'm not of your faith, I respect you; but you
can't come in between this woman and me!' 'You know what you are
doing?' 'Know! Were you God Almighty, ready to fling me into
eternal fire, I'd bank my will against yours in this matter.'
Wharton had placed Grace on a stool and stood belligerently
before her.
'You sit down on that chair and keep quiet,' he continued,
addressing the Jesuit. 'I'll take my innings now. You can have
yours after.'
Father Roubeau bowed courteously and obeyed. He was an easy-going
man and had learned to bide his time. Wharton pulled a stool
alongside the woman's, smothering her hand in his.
'Then you do care for me, and will take me away?' Her face seemed
to reflect the peace of this man, against whom she might draw
close for shelter.
'Dear, don't you remember what I said before? Of course I-' 'But
how can you?--the wash-up?' 'Do you think that worries? Anyway,
I'll give the job to Father Roubeau, here.
'I can trust him to safely bank the dust with the company.' 'To
think of it!--I'll never see him again.' 'A blessing!' 'And to
go--O, Clyde, I can't! I can't!' 'There, there; of course you
can, just let me plan it.--You see, as soon as we get a few traps
together, we'll start, and-' 'Suppose he comes back?' 'I'll break
every-' 'No, no! No fighting, Clyde! Promise me that.' 'All
right! I'll just tell the men to throw him off the claim. They've
seen how he's treated you, and haven't much love for him.'
'You mustn't do that. You mustn't hurt him.' 'What then? Let him
come right in here and take you away before my eyes?' 'No-o,' she
half whispered, stroking his hand softly.
'Then let me run it, and don't worry. I'll see he doesn't get
hurt. Precious lot he cared whether you got hurt or not! We won't
go back to Dawson. I'll send word down for a couple of the boys
to outfit and pole a boat up the Yukon. We'll cross the divide
and raft down the Indian River to meet them. Then--' 'And then?'
Her head was on his shoulder.
Their voices sank to softer cadences, each word a caress. The
Jesuit fidgeted nervously.
'And then?' she repeated.
'Why we'll pole up, and up, and up, and portage the White Horse
Rapids and the Box Canon.' 'Yes?' 'And the Sixty-Mile River; then
the lakes, Chilcoot, Dyea, and Salt Water.' 'But, dear, I can't
pole a boat.' 'You little goose! I'll get Sitka Charley; he knows
all the good water and best camps, and he is the best traveler I
ever met, if he is an Indian. All you'll have to do, is to sit in
the middle of the boat, and sing songs, and play Cleopatra, and
fight--no, we're in luck; too early for mosquitoes.'
'And then, O my Antony?' 'And then a steamer, San Francisco, and
the world! Never to come back to this cursed hole again. Think of
it! The world, and ours to choose from! I'll sell out. Why, we're
rich! The Waldworth Syndicate will give me half a million for
what's left in the ground, and I've got twice as much in the
dumps and with the P. C. Company. We'll go to the Fair in Paris
in 1900. We'll go to Jerusalem, if you say so.
'We'll buy an Italian palace, and you can play Cleopatra to your
heart's content. No, you shall be Lucretia, Acte, or anybody your
little heart sees fit to become. But you mustn't, you really
mustn't-' 'The wife of Caesar shall be above reproach.' 'Of
course, but--' 'But I won't be your wife, will I, dear?' 'I
didn't mean that.' 'But you'll love me just as much, and never
even think--oh! I know you'll be like other men; you'll grow
tired, and--and-'
'How can you? I--' 'Promise me.' 'Yes, yes; I do promise.' 'You
say it so easily, dear; but how do you know?--or I know? I have
so little to give, yet it is so much, and all I have. O, Clyde!
promise me you won't?'
'There, there! You musn't begin to doubt already. Till death do
us part, you know.'
'Think! I once said that to--to him, and now?' 'And now, little
sweetheart, you're not to bother about such things any more.
Of course, I never, never will, and--' And for the first time,
lips trembled against lips.
Father Roubeau had been watching the main trail through the
window, but could stand the strain no longer.
He cleared his throat and turned around.
'Your turn now, Father!' Wharton's face was flushed with the fire
of his first embrace.
There was an exultant ring to his voice as he abdicated in the
other's favor. He had no doubt as to the result. Neither had
Grace, for a smile played about her mouth as she faced the
priest.
'My child,' he began, 'my heart bleeds for you. It is a pretty
dream, but it cannot be.'
'And why, Father? I have said yes.' 'You knew not what you did.
You did not think of the oath you took, before your God, to that
man who is your husband. It remains for me to make you realize
the sanctity of such a pledge.' 'And if I do realize, and yet
refuse?'
'Then God'
'Which God? My husband has a God which I care not to worship.
There must be many such.' 'Child! unsay those words! Ah! you do
not mean them. I understand. I, too, have had such moments.' For
an instant he was back in his native France, and a wistful,
sad-eyed face came as a mist between him and the woman before
him.
'Then, Father, has my God forsaken me? I am not wicked above
women. My misery with him has been great. Why should it be
greater? Why shall I not grasp at happiness? I cannot, will not,
go back to him!' 'Rather is your God forsaken. Return. Throw your
burden upon Him, and the darkness shall be lifted. O my child,--'
'No; it is useless; I have made my bed and so shall I lie. I will
go on. And if God punishes me, I shall bear it somehow. You do
not understand. You are not a woman.' 'My mother was a woman.'
'But--' 'And Christ was born of a woman.' She did not answer. A
silence fell. Wharton pulled his mustache impatiently and kept an
eye on the trail. Grace leaned her elbow on the table, her face
set with resolve. The smile had died away. Father Roubeau shifted
his ground.
'You have children?'
'At one time I wished--but now--no. And I am thankful.' 'And a
mother?' 'Yes.' 'She loves you?' 'Yes.' Her replies were
whispers.
'And a brother?--no matter, he is a man. But a sister?' Her head
drooped a quavering 'Yes.' 'Younger? Very much?' 'Seven years.'
'And you have thought well about this matter? About them? About
your mother? And your sister? She stands on the threshold of her
woman's life, and this wildness of yours may mean much to her.
Could you go before her, look upon her fresh young face, hold her
hand in yours, or touch your cheek to hers?'
To his words, her brain formed vivid images, till she cried out,
'Don't! don't!' and shrank away as do the wolf-dogs from the
lash.
'But you must face all this; and better it is to do it now.' In
his eyes, which she could not see, there was a great compassion,
but his face, tense and quivering, showed no relenting.
She raised her head from the table, forced back the tears,
struggled for control.
'I shall go away. They will never see me, and come to forget me.
I shall be to them as dead. And--and I will go with Clyde--today.'
It seemed final. Wharton stepped forward, but the priest waved him
back.
'You have wished for children?' A silent 'Yes.' 'And prayed for
them?' 'Often.' 'And have you thought, if you should have
children?' Father Roubeau's eyes rested for a moment on the man
by the window.
A quick light shot across her face. Then the full import dawned
upon her. She raised her hand appealingly, but he went on.
'Can you picture an innocent babe in your arms? A boy? The world
is not so hard upon a girl. Why, your very breast would turn to
gall! And you could be proud and happy of your boy, as you looked
on other children?--' 'O, have pity! Hush!' 'A scapegoat--'
'Don't! don't! I will go back!' She was at his feet.
'A child to grow up with no thought of evil, and one day the
world to fling a tender name in his face. A child to look back
and curse you from whose loins he sprang!'
'O my God! my God!' She groveled on the floor. The priest sighed
and raised her to her feet.
Wharton pressed forward, but she motioned him away.
'Don't come near me, Clyde! I am going back!' The tears were
coursing pitifully down her face, but she made no effort to wipe
them away.
'After all this? You cannot! I will not let you!' 'Don't touch
me!' She shivered and drew back.
'I will! You are mine! Do you hear? You are mine!' Then he
whirled upon the priest. 'O what a fool I was to ever let you wag
your silly tongue! Thank your God you are not a common man, for
I'd--but the priestly prerogative must be exercised, eh? Well,
you have exercised it. Now get out of my house, or I'll forget
who and what you are!' Father Roubeau bowed, took her hand, and
started for the door. But Wharton cut them off.
'Grace! You said you loved me?' 'I did.' 'And you do now?' 'I
do.' 'Say it again.'
'I do love you, Clyde; I do.' 'There, you priest!' he cried. 'You
have heard it, and with those words on her lips you would send
her back to live a lie and a hell with that man?'
But Father Roubeau whisked the woman into the inner room and
closed the door. 'No words!' he whispered to Wharton, as he
struck a casual posture on a stool. 'Remember, for her sake,' he
added.
The room echoed to a rough knock at the door; the latch raised
and Edwin Bentham stepped in.
'Seen anything of my wife?' he asked as soon as salutations had
been exchanged.
Two heads nodded negatively.
'I saw her tracks down from the cabin,' he continued tentatively,
'and they broke off, just opposite here, on the main trail.' His
listeners looked bored.
'And I--I thought--'
'She was here!' thundered Wharton.
The priest silenced him with a look. 'Did you see her tracks
leading up to this cabin, my son?' Wily Father Roubeau--he had
taken good care to obliterate them as he came up the same path an
hour before.
'I didn't stop to look, I--' His eyes rested suspiciously on the
door to the other room, then interrogated the priest. The latter
shook his head; but the doubt seemed to linger.
Father Roubeau breathed a swift, silent prayer, and rose to his
feet. 'If you doubt me, why--' He made as though to open the door.
A priest could not lie. Edwin Bentham had heard this often, and
believed it.
'Of course not, Father,' he interposed hurriedly. 'I was only
wondering where my wife had gone, and thought maybe--I guess
she's up at Mrs. Stanton's on French Gulch. Nice weather, isn't
it? Heard the news? Flour's gone down to forty dollars a hundred,
and they say the che-cha-quas are flocking down the river in
droves.
'But I must be going; so good-by.' The door slammed, and from the
window they watched him take his guest up French Gulch. A few
weeks later, just after the June high-water, two men shot a canoe
into mid-stream and made fast to a derelict pine. This tightened
the painter and jerked the frail craft along as would a tow-boat.
Father Roubeau had been directed to leave the Upper Country and
return to his swarthy children at Minook. The white men had come
among them, and they were devoting too little time to fishing,
and too much to a certain deity whose transient habitat was in
countless black bottles.
Malemute Kid also had business in the Lower Country, so they
journeyed together.
But one, in all the Northland, knew the man Paul Roubeau, and
that man was Malemute Kid. Before him alone did the priest cast
off the sacerdotal garb and stand naked. And why not? These two
men knew each other. Had they not shared the last morsel of fish,
the last pinch of tobacco, the last and inmost thought, on the
barren stretches of Bering Sea, in the heartbreaking mazes of the
Great Delta, on the terrible winter journey from Point Barrow to
the Porcupine? Father Roubeau puffed heavily at his trail-worn
pipe, and gazed on the reddisked sun, poised somberly on the edge
of the northern horizon.
Malemute Kid wound up his watch. It was midnight.
'Cheer up, old man!' The Kid was evidently gathering up a broken
thread.
'God surely will forgive such a lie. Let me give you the word of
a man who strikes a true note: If She have spoken a word,
remember thy lips are sealed, And the brand of the Dog is upon
him by whom is the secret revealed.
If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can
clear, Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.'
Father Roubeau removed his pipe and reflected. 'The man speaks
true, but my soul is not vexed with that. The lie and the penance
stand with God; but--but--'
'What then? Your hands are clean.' 'Not so. Kid, I have thought
much, and yet the thing remains. I knew, and made her go back.'
The clear note of a robin rang out from the wooden bank, a
partridge drummed the call in the distance, a moose lunged
noisily in the eddy; but the twain smoked on in silence.
