British Columbia -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction; Sawmills -- Fiction
But he played Fan-tan of course, and couldn't be expected to stay in
all the time, or to understand that the Missus was upset in her mind
about morality. And he knew nothing and cared less about the Bible.
There wasn't the making of a rice Christian in him unless rice was
very scarce indeed, and now he lived on the fat of the land of
British Columbia.
So the day after she had cried herself to sleep, she came across the
Bible.
It was not quite a family Bible, and only weighed a pound or so, but
it had a biblical cover of sullen puritanical leather which suggested
that the very bookbinder himself was of the sourest disposition, a
round-head, a kill-joy, with ethics equal to the best Scotch
morality. This binding alone, however, would have had comparatively
little effect on the childish mind of Jenny. But the book had in it
dour and savage pictures of so surprising a lack of artistic merit
that they struck her down at once, poor child. In spite of the lack
of colour the dreadful draughtsman made very effective curly-whirly
flames in a hell which was remarkably like a study of a suburban
coal-cellar, and the victims of his fire and ferocity expressed the
extremest anguish as they fried on eternal grids! Oh, horrors, but
the pictures brought back to the fearful mind of the tenas klootchman
all the dread with which the good (or bad) minister, Alexander
Mickie, had inspired her when she attended Sunday School at Kamloops
and heard him preach in Chinook. For Chinook is no more than a few
hundred words and most of them are very material. So was Mickie's
mind, whether he preached openly or drank in secret, and the hyas
piah of Lejaub, or the great fire of the Devil (Lejaub being equal to
Le Diable), was a hot wood fire to Jenny. She believed naturally
enough in Lejaub much more than in God, for her Indian blood helped
her there, or rather hindered her, and the English God was a far-off
notion to a mind not given to high abstractions.
So Jenny when she got the picture Bible sat with it in her lap and
trembled.
"I a bad woman, I go to hell; very wrong for me to love Tchorch!" was
her mind's commentary as she turned the blind pages for some other
picture.
And every now and again she turned back to the curling flames and
elaborate grids of hell. She traced in some anguished lineaments a
remote likeness to herself. Then she fell to weeping, and weeping
Sam found her. He was sympathetic. On the whole Sam was a very good
sort.
"Why you cly, Missus?"
It was in vain for her to say she wasn't crying.
"Oh, yes, you cly, Missus, but what for you cly? Mista Quin he come
back to-molla."
He might even be back that night, as Sam knew, though he would not be
till late. But Jenny sobbed and the Bible slipped from her knees
upon the floor. Sam picked it up and recognised it at once. He
snorted as he gave it her back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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