The Faith of Men

J >> Jack London >> The Faith of Men


"Why, it's Jees Uck!" Neil Bonner said, when he entered. He said it
calmly, with even a ring of joyful cordiality, coming over to her and
shaking both her hands, but looking into her eyes with a worry in his own
that she understood.

"Hello, Neil!" she said. "You look much good."

"Fine, fine, Jees Uck," he answered heartily, though secretly studying
Kitty for some sign of what had passed between the two. Yet he knew his
wife too well to expect, even though the worst had passed, such a sign.

"Well, I can't say how glad I am to see you," he went on. "What's
happened? Did you strike a mine? And when did you get in?"

"Oo-a, I get in to-day," she replied, her voice instinctively seeking its
guttural parts. "I no strike it, Neil. You known Cap'n Markheim,
Unalaska? I cook, his house, long time. No spend money. Bime-by,
plenty. Pretty good, I think, go down and see White Man's Land. Very
fine, White Man's Land, very fine," she added. Her English puzzled him,
for Sandy and he had sought, constantly, to better her speech, and she
had proved an apt pupil. Now it seemed that she had sunk back into her
race. Her face was guileless, stolidly guileless, giving no cue. Kitty's
untroubled brow likewise baffled him. What had happened? How much had
been said? and how much guessed?

While he wrestled with these questions and while Jees Uck wrestled with
her problem--never had he looked so wonderful and great--a silence fell.

"To think that you knew my husband in Alaska!" Kitty said softly.

Knew him! Jees Uck could not forbear a glance at the boy she had borne
him, and his eyes followed hers mechanically to the window where played
the two children. An iron hand seemed to tighten across his forehead.
His knees went weak and his heart leaped up and pounded like a fist
against his breast. His boy! He had never dreamed it!

Little Kitty Bonner, fairylike in gauzy lawn, with pinkest of cheeks and
bluest of dancing eyes, arms outstretched and lips puckered in
invitation, was striving to kiss the boy. And the boy, lean and lithe,
sunbeaten and browned, skin-clad and in hair-fringed and hair-tufted
_muclucs_ that showed the wear of the sea and rough work, coolly
withstood her advances, his body straight and stiff with the peculiar
erectness common to children of savage people. A stranger in a strange
land, unabashed and unafraid, he appeared more like an untamed animal,
silent and watchful, his black eyes flashing from face to face, quiet so
long as quiet endured, but prepared to spring and fight and tear and
scratch for life, at the first sign of danger.

The contrast between boy and girl was striking, but not pitiful. There
was too much strength in the boy for that, waif that he was of the
generations of Shpack, Spike O'Brien, and Bonner. In his features, clean
cut as a cameo and almost classic in their severity, there were the power
and achievement of his father, and his grandfather, and the one known as
the Big Fat, who was captured by the Sea people and escaped to Kamchatka.

Neil Bonner fought his emotion down, swallowed it down, and choked over
it, though his face smiled with good-humour and the joy with which one
meets a friend.

"Your boy, eh, Jees Uck?" he said. And then turning to Kitty: "Handsome
fellow! He'll do something with those two hands of his in this our
world."

Kitty nodded concurrence. "What is your name?" she asked.

The young savage flashed his quick eyes upon her and dwelt over her for a
space, seeking out, as it were, the motive beneath the question.

"Neil," he answered deliberately when the scrutiny had satisfied him.

"Injun talk," Jees Uck interposed, glibly manufacturing languages on the
spur of the moment. "Him Injun talk, _nee-al_ all the same 'cracker.'
Him baby, him like cracker; him cry for cracker. Him say, '_Nee-al_,
_nee-al_,' all time him say, '_Nee-al_.' Then I say that um name. So
um name all time Nee-al."

Never did sound more blessed fall upon Neil Bonner's ear than that lie
from Jees Uck's lips. It was the cue, and he knew there was reason for
Kitty's untroubled brow.

"And his father?" Kitty asked. "He must be a fine man."

"Oo-a, yes," was the reply. "Um father fine man. Sure!"

"Did you know him, Neil?" queried Kitty.

"Know him? Most intimately," Neil answered, and harked back to dreary
Twenty Mile and the man alone in the silence with his thoughts.

And here might well end the story of Jees Uck but for the crown she put
upon her renunciation. When she returned to the North to dwell in her
grand log-house, John Thompson found that the P. C. Company could make a
shift somehow to carry on its business without his aid. Also, the new
agent and the succeeding agents received instructions that the woman Jees
Uck should be given whatsoever goods and grub she desired, in whatsoever
quantities she ordered, and that no charge should be placed upon the
books. Further, the Company paid yearly to the woman Jees Uck a pension
of five thousand dollars.

When he had attained suitable age, Father Champreau laid hands upon the
boy, and the time was not long when Jees Uck received letters regularly
from the Jesuit college in Maryland. Later on these letters came from
Italy, and still later from France. And in the end there returned to
Alaska one Father Neil, a man mighty for good in the land, who loved his
mother and who ultimately went into a wider field and rose to high
authority in the order.

Jees Uck was a young woman when she went back into the North, and men
still looked upon her and yearned. But she lived straight, and no breath
was ever raised save in commendation. She stayed for a while with the
good sisters at Holy Cross, where she learned to read and write and
became versed in practical medicine and surgery. After that she returned
to her grand log-house and gathered about her the young girls of the
Toyaat village, to show them the way of their feet in the world. It is
neither Protestant nor Catholic, this school in the house built by Neil
Bonner for Jees Uck, his wife; but the missionaries of all the sects look
upon it with equal favour. The latchstring is always out, and tired
prospectors and trail-weary men turn aside from the flowing river or
frozen trail to rest there for a space and be warm by her fire. And,
down in the States, Kitty Bonner is pleased at the interest her husband
takes in Alaskan education and the large sums he devotes to that purpose;
and, though she often smiles and chaffs, deep down and secretly she is
but the prouder of him.