Journey (3 page)

“Why should one route to the gold fields be more patriotic than another?”

“Have you no sense of geography? Can't you visualize Canada?”

“I care little about Canada,” the younger man confessed, “and very little about South Africa or India either.” He was not teasing, this handsome nineteen-year-old from Eton, about to go up to Oxford, with his modest flair for the classics.

“Canada lies north of the United States, as I'm quite sure you know,” Luton said, “and that's the infuriating part.”

“I do not understand.”

With bread rolls and tumblers, His Lordship laid out North America, with a teacup representing Alaska well off to the left: “This cascade of American gold we keep hearing about, it's all from Canada, you know. Not a farthing in the American part.” And he used a small silver teaspoon to represent the Yukon as it wound its way
across the Alaskan border into northwestern Canada. “Here's where the gold is, totally on our side.”

“What's deplorable about that?” Philip asked, using one of the big words to which he was addicted.

“To reach the gold, which is all Canadian, you must thread your way through this deplorable Alaska…” He caught Philip smiling, and the young man said: “You've picked up one of my words again.”

“Did I? Which one this time?”

“Deplorable.”

“But damn me, it
is
deplorable to think that we're forced to pass through American territory to reach what's ours to begin with.”

For Luton, like most men of his upbringing, considered all those areas on his globe which were shaded red to be British. He cared little for political matters and was oblivious of the self-government accorded Canada in 1867 when he had barely taken his first steps across the nursery. India, South Africa, Canada: they were all part of the unparalleled British Empire, unlike the American states which had unwisely and rudely rebelled against England's civilizing rule.

Philip did not need his uncle's attitude explained, and so he simply asked: “Is there no other way?”

“That's what we're here to find out, and we start our investigations tomorrow. We've got to put some funds in your exchequer.”

Of course, Luton could easily have stayed home and sent his nephew to look after his own money matters, but that was not his style.

He too had attended Eton, with no great distinction other than on the cricket field, and had later jollied his way through Oxford with a minimal degree. In both schools he had done a bit of boxing “to keep meself fit,” as he phrased it, and a modest amount of chasing after young women prominent in the theater. He was known to his friends as an advocate of the telling gesture, as when he appeared dressed in full military regalia, but of the era of William of Orange, to hear the public speech of a general who had won minor honors in the Afghan war. A handshake from Luton was better than a contract attested by a notary, and his friends supposed that he would soon offer such a handshake to one of the various young women of good family whom he escorted to balls and to Ascot. Before he took this extremely grave step, for the Bradcombes did not divorce, he was now eager to lead a small group of like-minded Englishmen to adventure in the gold fields.

“I'll approach Harry tomorrow,” he now told his nephew. “If we go, and I think we shall, I'd want him along.”

“I, too,” Philip said with unfeigned enthusiasm, for Harry Carpenter was one of those Englishmen who seemed to do everything easily. Thirty-seven and a graduate of a lesser school than Eton but a good one, he had received his degree from Cambridge with commendable honors but without much intense study. He had played rugby both for the university and his country and had served with his regiment on India's northwest frontier. He knew nothing of mining, nothing of Canada, but everything about living arduously on whatever frontier he found himself. He had climbed in the Himalayas while on leave from his regiment, but had stayed well away from the highest peaks: “I don't like cold weather and I'm afraid of high places.” It was unlikely that he was afraid of much except his wife—one of the minor Bradcombes and a most determined woman—for he had more than proved his valor by tramping alone on a feckless scouting penetration from Peshawar on the Indian border, through the Khyber Pass and south into the markets of Kandahar to collect intelligence for a later strike against Afghanistan. He was a formidable man, secretive, self-disciplined and always eager to tackle the next assignment. He was aware that in civilian life he had performed only indifferently and that his place was with troops, but as he approached his forties with a slim or no chance of ever becoming a colonel—he simply hadn't the private funds to support himself in a position as head of a regiment—he had decided that he was too old to be knocking about as a mere minor officer in some frontier unit in the foothills of the Himalayas, so his cousin Luton knew that for Harry, a chance to try his luck on the gold fields would prove a godsend.

Next day, when Luton tentatively suggested a foray into the Klondike, Harry, with his customary diffidence, affected to know nothing about the gold there: “Is that the place they've been making a fuss over in the papers? Revolution or something?”

“Gold, Harry.”

“Oh, yes. That Yukon bit.”

“I was thinking of taking a look. Care to join me?”

“Love to, old chap. Anything to get away from London for a while. But I say, Eskimos and all that. Will we be eating blubber?”

“We'll be a thousand miles from the Eskimos, if I calculate correctly.” Luton closed the conversation with an invitation: “I say,
Harry, I'm joining Phyllis's boy at the club tonight for dinner. Care to join us, to talk seriously about this?”

“I've found it dangerous to talk seriously about anything, but if you do go to the Klondike, consider me part of your team.”

That night Lord Luton and Philip seated themselves in the foyer of the club so as to keep an eye on the entrance, and it was Philip who spotted Carpenter first: “There he comes!” and into the vestibule, where patrons deposited their cloaks to the care of an elderly attendant, stepped a man of medium height, sturdily built and with a rather large military mustache that projected about half an inch past the flare of each nostril. It was neither a garish mustache nor a flamboyant one; it was the rugged symbol of a rugged man, and opponents on many playing fields had grown to respect it.

“I say, it's good to see you, Philip. How's the pater and all that?” Carpenter was one of Luton's rare friends who always asked about Henslow the Catholic interloper, and when he did, it was with honest affection, for he had always liked Philip's father.

“He told me to say hello,” Philip replied. “Said he wished he could join us.”

“In this Klondike business? He'd better stay home and mind the shop.”

“No, he meant for dinner tonight.”

After a congenial meal, at which they discussed only county cricket, they wandered into the smoking room, where Harry said: “I've brought something you both must read, that is, if we're going to pursue this gold foolishness,” and he passed along a worthy book published in London in 1868. It was by the English explorer Frederick Whymper,
Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska
, and it recounted in delightful style his fifteen-month trip to that region in 1866.

But after Luton had given the book only a cursory glance he shoved it back: “Harry, the man was never in Canadian territory. Our plan must be to move only through Canada.”

Before he could elaborate on the patriotic impulses that such a statement inspired, a white-haired club attendant came to suggest that since four members playing whist had protested the racket being made by Carpenter's rumbling voice, would the gentlemen please move to another room. Both Luton and Carpenter bowed politely to the servant, then to the whist players, and retired.

“Now, what we would do, assuming that I joined you,” Harry said as if there had been no rejection of his book, “is hie ourselves to San
Francisco by one of the railroads they say they have, then catch a ship to Petropavlovsk in Siberia and take some Russian steamer across the Bering Sea to the mouth of the Yukon, and up we go to this place called Dawson City, wherever it is. It's certainly not on this map.”

Lord Luton managed an icy laugh: “Harry, Whymper made his trip more than thirty years ago. If we wanted to go that route, we could take a train right out to this place called Seattle and then find us a big, comfortable oceangoing steamer straight to Alaska.”

“Oh.”

“But the whole purpose of our trip would be to make it exclusively on Empire terrain. Land in Montreal, go by train across Canada to a place whose name escapes me, go up one of the Canadian rivers, perhaps the Mackenzie, cross the Rockies, and drift easily down to the gold fields. Simple.”

“Can it be done?”

“Join me in the morning. We'll visit the Canadian offices. They must have the information.”

And as the summer evening passed, with fine cigars and ancient cognac, Philip listened intently while Luton and Carpenter reviewed the reasons why entering the Klondike by an all-Empire route was not only an act of patriotism but also a most appropriate act for a son of the Marquess of Deal: “Have you ever read, Harry, how my grandfather, the seventh marquess, was so badly treated by the Americans in that Oregon nonsense years ago? The braggarts changed the jingle ‘Fifty-four-forty or Fight,' and my grandfather, who was in charge of negotiations for the English, said in this very club: ‘Very well, if the scoundrels want a fight, let's give it them,' and he was prepared to lead volunteers into Canada, from which base he was ready to invade New York and Washington.”

“What did the Americans do to humiliate him?”

“That's the proper word,
humiliate
. In the middle of the proceedings, with war inevitable, they called the whole thing off, surrendered their silly claim to what would have been half of Canada, and made my grandfather look rather foolish. Of course he was rather foolish, as you know, but he didn't like to be exposed.”

“What happened?” Philip asked, and Luton said: “Nothing. It's sometimes advantageous when nothing happens.” But then he tightened his lips and added: “It did leave our family with an abiding distaste for what our relatives called their ‘ungrateful American colony.' Even today the Bradcombes try to avoid Americans.”

However, he could not help laughing at himself as he revealed one of the trivial reasons why he was personally impatient with Americans: “Anytime I meet one of them I have to explain my name. To them Evelyn can be only a girl's name, three syllables, rather 1840, you know. I have to tell them that in civilized lands it's an honored man's name, two syllables, first one to rhyme with
peeve
or
leave
. I have sometimes thought that I would punch the next American who asks me about it.”

—

In the morning Harry Carpenter stopped by to pick up young Philip Henslow after paying his respects to the boy's father. They proceeded to the club where Lord Luton was staying and then drove to the London offices of the Canadian government, where a commercial attaché awaited them. Taking them to his cluttered office, he sat them before a large wall map containing names with which he was familiar and they were not.

“Of course, we've known for years about scattered gold in these regions up here, but this Klondike thing is rather special, isn't it?” When Luton nodded, the attaché said disparagingly: “Since these lurid American newspaper stories, we've been so deluged with inquiries that Ottawa has had to cable us two pages of reliable information, which I'll pass along later. But for gentlemen of your standing, I must say our government would be most honored to receive you…well, I should think you ought to see a special cable which arrived only yesterday.”

“We would profit from any information,” Luton said, whereupon the attaché almost fell over himself to be gracious: “Could I have Miss Waterson fetch you some tea? Good.”

With a pointer he reviewed what he called the “rather simple problem of getting from London to Edmonton.”

“And why Edmonton?” Carpenter asked, and Luton interrupted: “That's the name I was trying to remember!”

“Your commodious Canadian steamer will disembark you at Montreal, a port equal in every way to New York, where the fast trains of the Canadian Pacific will carry you to Ottawa, Fort William and Winnipeg. Miss Waterson is from Winnipeg, and she can assure you it's a splendid stopover for a short rest before heading into the gold country.”

Miss Waterson did so assure them.

“And now we come to the exciting part of our trip, the journey through the vast lands of the Northwest Territories. Winnipeg across our District of Saskatchewan…”

“What glorious names!” Philip Henslow cried, and the attaché nodded: “They are indeed. Indian, too. And then west to Calgary, from which a spur runs north to Edmonton, the end of the railway and the beginning of your great adventure.”

“Where's Dawson City?” Luton asked, and the Canadian said: “Well, sir, it's not on the maps yet. It sprang up last year, overnight as it were.”

“But where is it?”

The attaché explained: “I have a recent letter from Ottawa which sketches the new developments, and it places Dawson right about here,” and he entered a dot on the map, siting it about a hundred and fifty miles nearer Edmonton than reality would justify.

“So you see, gentlemen, when you leave the train in Edmonton you're practically in the gold fields.”

“What gear should we take?” Carpenter asked, for when frontiers were involved he had a practical mind.

“Oh, sir! Only your traveling kit. One bag, two bags. Because everything you could possibly need in the gold fields can be purchased in Edmonton, and at prices considerably less than those being charged in the United States, where, if the truth be known, they're apt to prey upon the traveler.” Luton said, as if making his goodbyes: “I can believe that,” but the young man had one more important caution: “Milord, you really must get one fact burned into your mind, because a great deal depends upon your understanding of it. Here in England it's July, glorious time of the summer, boating and croquet. But in northern Canada it's almost the beginning of winter. If you're going, go soon and go fast, because our northern winters can be terribly deep and tediously long.”