This was their home. The tent that had sheltered Marjorie on the way up was erected close to this hut to serve as a rude scullery and outhouse, and they also made a long, roughly thatched roof with a canvas cover, supported on stakes, to shelter the rest of the stores. The stuff in tins and cases and jars they left on the ground under this; the rest—the flour, candles, bacon, dried caribou beef, and so forth, they hung, as they hoped, out of the reach of any prowling beast. And finally and most important was the wood pile. This they accumulated to the north and east of the hut, and all day long with a sort of ant-like perseverance Trafford added to it from the thickets below. Once or twice, however, tempted by the appearance of birds, he went shooting, and one day he got five geese that they spent a day upon, plucking, cleaning, boiling and putting up in all their store of empty cans, letting the fat float and solidify on the top to preserve this addition to their provision until the advent of the frost rendered all other preservatives unnecessary. They also tried to catch trout down in the river below, but though they saw many fish the catch was less than a dozen.
It was a discovery to both of them to find how companionable these occupations were, how much more side by side they could be amateurishly cleaning out a goose and disputing about its cooking, than they had ever contrived to be in Sussex Square.
"These things are so infernally interesting," said Trafford, surveying the row of miscellaneous cans upon the stove he had packed with disarticulated goose. "But we didn't come here to picnic. All this is eating us up. I have a memory of some immense tragic purpose——"
"That tin's boiling!" screamed Marjorie sharply.
He resumed his thread after an active interlude.
"We'll keep the wolf from the door," he said.
"Don't talk of wolves!" said Marjorie.
"It is only when men have driven away the wolf from the door—oh! altogether away, that they find despair in the sky? I wonder——"
"What?" asked Marjorie in his pause.
"I wonder if there is nothing really in life but this, the food hunt and the love hunt. Is life just all hunger and need, and are we left with nothing—nothing at all—when these things are done?... We're infernally uncomfortable here."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Marjorie.
"Think of your carpets at home! Think of the great, warm, beautiful house that wasn't big enough!—And yet here, we're happy."
"We are happy," said Marjorie, struck by the thought. "Only——"
"Yes."
"I'm afraid. And I long for the children. And the wind nips."
"It may be those are good things for us. No! This is just a lark as yet, Marjorie. It's still fresh and full of distractions. The discomforts are amusing. Presently we'll get used to it. Then we'll talk out—what we have to talk out.... I say, wouldn't it keep and improve this goose of ours if we put in a little brandy?"
§ 2
The weather broke at last. One might say it smashed itself over their heads. There came an afternoon darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale and an icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that Trafford looked out next morning to see a maddening chaos of small white flakes, incredibly swift, against something that was neither darkness nor light. Even with the door but partly ajar a cruelty of cold put its claw within, set everything that was moveable swaying and clattering, and made Marjorie hasten shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once or twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and store-shed, several times wrapped to the nose he battled his way for fresh wood, and for the rest of the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavours of tobacco and food. There were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again, turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador, earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against inconceivable wrongs.
And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up was accomplished, winter had established itself, the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an ice-bound world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless sky.
§ 3
Through all that time they got no further with the great discussion for which they had faced that solitude. They attempted beginnings.
"Where had we got to when we left England?" cried Marjorie. "You couldn't work, you couldn't rest—you hated our life."
"Yes, I know. I had a violent hatred of the lives we were leading. I thought—we had to get away. To think.... But things don't leave us alone here."
He covered his face with his hands.
"Why did we come here?" he asked.
"You wanted—to get out of things."
"Yes. But with you.... Have we, after all, got out of things at all? I said coming up, perhaps we were leaving our own problem behind. In exchange for other problems—old problems men have had before. We've got nearer necessity; that's all. Things press on us just as much. There's nothing more fundamental in wild nature, nothing profounder—only something earlier. One doesn't get out of life by going here or there.... But I wanted to get you away—from all things that had such a hold on you....
"When one lies awake at nights, then one seems to get down into things...."
He went to the door, opened it, and stood looking out. Against a wan daylight the snow was falling noiselessly and steadily.
"Everything goes on," he said.... "Relentlessly...."
§ 4
That was as far as they had got when the storms ceased and they came out again into an air inexpressibly fresh and sharp and sweet, and into a world blindingly clean and golden white under the rays of the morning sun.
"We will build a fire out here," said Marjorie; "make a great pile. There is no reason at all why we shouldn't live outside all through the day in such weather as this."
§ 5
One morning Trafford found the footmarks of some catlike creature in the snow near the bushes where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he took his knife and rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx—for that he decided the animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store shed a trifle safer; but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it promised excitement; some primordial instinct perhaps urged him.
The morning was a little overcast, and very cold between the gleams of wintry sunshine. "Good-bye, dear wife!" he said, and then as she remembered afterwards came back a dozen yards to kiss her. "I'll not be long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and if it doesn't get wind of me I ought to find it in an hour." He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder whether he hid from her the same dread of loneliness that she concealed. Or perhaps he only knew her secret. Up among the tumbled rocks he turned, and she was still watching him. "Good-bye!" he cried and waved, and the willow thickets closed about him.
She forced herself to the petty duties of the day, made up the fire from the pile he had left for her, set water to boil, put the hut in order, brought out sheets and blankets to air and set herself to wash up. She wished she had been able to go with him. The sky cleared presently, and the low December sun lit all the world about her, but it left her spirit desolate.