CHAPTER VIII
"And why should I not be proud of my race?"
Frona's cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling. They had both beenharking back to childhood, and she had been telling Corliss of hermother, whom she faintly remembered. Fair and flaxen-haired, typicallySaxon, was the likeness she had drawn, filled out largely withknowledge gained from her father and from old Andy of the Dyea Post.The discussion had then turned upon the race in general, and Frona hadsaid things in the heat of enthusiasm which affected the moreconservative mind of Corliss as dangerous and not solidly based onfact. He deemed himself too large for race egotism and insularprejudice, and had seen fit to laugh at her immature convictions.
"It's a common characteristic of all peoples," he proceeded, "toconsider themselves superior races,--a naive, natural egoism, veryhealthy and very good, but none the less manifestly untrue. The Jewsconceived themselves to be God's chosen people, and they still soconceive themselves--"
"And because of it they have left a deep mark down the page ofhistory," she interrupted.
"But time has not proved the stability of their conceptions. And youmust also view the other side. A superior people must look upon allothers as inferior peoples. This comes home to you. To be a Romanwere greater than to be a king, and when the Romans rubbed against yoursavage ancestors in the German forests, they elevated their brows andsaid, 'An inferior people, barbarians.'"
"But we are here, now. We are, and the Romans are not. The test istime. So far we have stood the test; the signs are favorable that weshall continue to stand it. We are the best fitted!"
"Egotism."
"But wait. Put it to the test."
As she spoke her hand flew out impulsively to his. At the touch hisheart pulsed upward, there was a rush Of blood and a tightening acrossthe temples. Ridiculous, but delightful, he thought. At this rate hecould argue with her the night through.
"The test," she repeated, withdrawing her hand without embarrassment."We are a race of doers and fighters, of globe-encirclers andzone-conquerors. We toil and struggle, and stand by the toil andstruggle no matter how hopeless it may be. While we are persistent andresistant, we are so made that we fit ourselves to the most diverseconditions. Will the Indian, the Negro, or the Mongol ever conquer theTeuton? Surely not! The Indian has persistence without variability;if he does not modify he dies, if he does try to modify he dies anyway.The Negro has adaptability, but he is servile and must be led. As forthe Chinese, they are permanent. All that the other races are not, theAnglo-Saxon, or Teuton if you please, is. All that the other raceshave not, the Teuton has. What race is to rise up and overwhelm us?"
"Ah, you forget the Slav," Corliss suggested slyly.
"The Slav!" Her face fell. "True, the Slav! The only stripling inthis world of young men and gray-beards! But he is still in thefuture, and in the future the decision rests. In the mean time weprepare. If may be we shall have such a start that we shall preventhim growing. You know, because he was better skilled in chemistry,knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed theAztec. May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and itsresources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nipthe Slav ere he grows a thatch to his lip?"
Vance Corliss shook his head non-committally, and laughed.
"Oh! I know I become absurd and grow over-warm!" she exclaimed. "Butafter all, one reason that we are the salt of the earth is because wehave the courage to say so."
"And I am sure your warmth spreads," he responded. "See, I'm beginningto glow myself. We are not God's, but Nature's chosen people, weAngles, and Saxons, and Normans, and Vikings, and the earth is ourheritage. Let us arise and go forth!"
"Now you are laughing at me, and, besides, we have already gone forth.Why have you fared into the north, if not to lay hands on the racelegacy?"
She turned her head at the sound of approaching footsteps, and criedfor greeting, "I appeal to you, Captain Alexander! I summon you tobear witness!"
The captain of police smiled in his sternly mirthful fashion as heshook hands with Frona and Corliss. "Bear witness?" he questioned."Ah, yes!
"'Bear witness, O my comrades, what a hard-bit gang were we,-- The servants of the sweep-head, but the masters of the sea!'"
He quoted the verse with a savage solemnity exulting through his deepvoice. This, and the appositeness of it, quite carried Frona away, andshe had both his hands in hers on the instant. Corliss was aware of aninward wince at the action. It was uncomfortable. He did not like tosee her so promiscuous with those warm, strong hands of hers. Did sheso favor all men who delighted her by word or deed? He did not mindher fingers closing round his, but somehow it seemed wanton when sharedwith the next comer. By the time he had thought thus far, Frona hadexplained the topic under discussion, and Captain Alexander wastestifying.
"I don't know much about your Slav and other kin, except that they aregood workers and strong; but I do know that the white man is thegreatest and best breed in the world. Take the Indian, for instance.The white man comes along and beats him at all his games, outworks him,out-roughs him, out-fishes him, out-hunts him. As far back as theirmyths go, the Alaskan Indians have packed on their backs. But thegold-rushers, as soon as they had learned the tricks of the trade,packed greater loads and packed them farther than did the Indians.Why, last May, the Queen's birthday, we had sports on the river. Inthe one, two, three, four, and five men canoe races we beat the Indiansright and left. Yet they had been born to the paddle, and most of ushad never seen a canoe until man-grown."
"But why is it?" Corliss queried.
"I do not know why. I only know that it is. I simply bear witness. Ido know that we do what they cannot do, and what they can do, we dobetter."
Frona nodded her head triumphantly at Corliss. "Come, acknowledge yourdefeat, so that we may go in to dinner. Defeat for the time being, atleast. The concrete facts of paddles and pack-straps quite overcomeyour dogmatics. Ah, I thought so. More time? All the time in theworld. But let us go in. We'll see what my father thinks of it,--andMr. Kellar. A symposium on Anglo-Saxon supremacy!"
Frost and enervation are mutually repellant. The Northland gives akeenness and zest to the blood which cannot be obtained in warmerclimes. Naturally so, then, the friendship which sprang up betweenCorliss and Frona was anything but languid. They met often under herfather's roof-tree, and went many places together. Each found apleasurable attraction in the other, and a satisfaction which thethings they were not in accord with could not mar. Frona liked the manbecause he was a man. In her wildest flights she could never imaginelinking herself with any man, no matter how exalted spiritually, whowas not a man physically. It was a delight to her and a joy to lookupon the strong males of her kind, with bodies comely in the sight ofGod and muscles swelling with the promise of deeds and work. Man, toher, was preeminently a fighter. She believed in natural selection andin sexual selection, and was certain that if man had thereby becomepossessed of faculties and functions, they were for him to use andcould but tend to his good. And likewise with instincts. If she feltdrawn to any person or thing, it was good for her to be so drawn, goodfor herself. If she felt impelled to joy in a well-built frame andwell-shaped muscle, why should she restrain? Why should she not lovethe body, and without shame? The history of the race, and of allraces, sealed her choice with approval. Down all time, the weak andeffeminate males had vanished from the world-stage. Only the strongcould inherit the earth. She had been born of the strong, and shechose to cast her lot with the strong.
Yet of all creatures, she was the last to be deaf and blind to thethings of the spirit. But the things of the spirit she demanded shouldbe likewise strong. No halting, no stuttered utterance, tremulouswaiting, minor wailing! The mind and the soul must be as quick anddefinite and certain as the body. Nor was the spirit made alone forimmortal dreaming. Like the flesh, it must strive and toil. It mustbe workaday as well as i
dle day. She could understand a weaklingsinging sweetly and even greatly, and in so far she could love him forhis sweetness and greatness; but her love would have fuller measurewere he strong of body as well. She believed she was just. She gavethe flesh its due and the spirit its due; but she had, over and above,her own choice, her own individual ideal. She liked to see the two gohand in hand. Prophecy and dyspepsia did not affect her as afelicitous admixture. A splendid savage and a weak-kneed poet! Shecould admire the one for his brawn and the other for his song; but shewould prefer that they had been made one in the beginning.
As to Vance Corliss. First, and most necessary of all, there was thatphysiological affinity between them that made the touch of his hand apleasure to her. Though souls may rush together, if body cannot endurebody, happiness is reared on sand and the structure will be everunstable and tottery. Next, Corliss had the physical potency of thehero without the grossness of the brute. His muscular development wasmore qualitative than quantitative, and it is the qualitativedevelopment which gives rise to beauty of form. A giant need not beproportioned in the mould; nor a thew be symmetrical to be massive.
And finally,--none the less necessary but still finally,--Vance Corlisswas neither spiritually dead nor decadent. He affected her as freshand wholesome and strong, as reared above the soil but not scorning thesoil. Of course, none of this she reasoned out otherwise than bysubconscious processes. Her conclusions were feelings, not thoughts.
Though they quarrelled and disagreed on innumerable things, deep down,underlying all, there was a permanent unity. She liked him for acertain stern soberness that was his, and for his saving grace ofhumor. Seriousness and banter were not incompatible. She liked himfor his gallantry, made to work with and not for display. She likedthe spirit of his offer at Happy Camp, when he proposed giving her anIndian guide and passage-money back to the United States. He could_do_ as well as talk. She liked him for his outlook, for his innateliberality, which she felt to be there, somehow, no matter that oftenhe was narrow of expression. She liked him for his mind. Thoughsomewhat academic, somewhat tainted with latter-day scholasticism, itwas still a mind which permitted him to be classed with the"Intellectuals." He was capable of divorcing sentiment and emotionfrom reason. Granted that he included all the factors, he could not gowrong. And here was where she found chief fault with him,--hisnarrowness which precluded all the factors; his narrowness which gavethe lie to the breadth she knew was really his. But she was aware thatit was not an irremediable defect, and that the new life he was leadingwas very apt to rectify it. He was filled with culture; what he neededwas a few more of life's facts.
And she liked him for himself, which is quite different from liking theparts which went to compose him. For it is no miracle for two things,added together, to produce not only the sum of themselves, but a thirdthing which is not to be found in either of them. So with him. Sheliked him for himself, for that something which refused to stand out asa part, or a sum of parts; for that something which is the corner-stoneof Faith and which has ever baffled Philosophy and Science. Andfurther, to like, with Frona Welse, did not mean to love.
First, and above all, Vance Corliss was drawn to Frona Welse because ofthe clamor within him for a return to the soil. In him the elementswere so mixed that it was impossible for women many times removed tofind favor in his eyes. Such he had met constantly, but not one hadever drawn from him a superfluous heart-beat. Though there had been inhim a growing instinctive knowledge of lack of unity,--the lack ofunity which must precede, always, the love of man and woman,--not oneof the daughters of Eve he had met had flashed irresistibly in to fillthe void. Elective affinity, sexual affinity, or whatsoever theintangible essence known as love is, had never been manifest. When hemet Frona it had at once sprung, full-fledged, into existence. But hequite misunderstood it, took it for a mere attraction towards the newand unaccustomed.
Many men, possessed of birth and breeding, have yielded to this clamorfor return. And giving the apparent lie to their own sanity and moralstability, many such men have married peasant girls or barmaids, Andthose to whom evil apportioned itself have been prone to distrust theimpulse they obeyed, forgetting that nature makes or mars theindividual for the sake, always, of the type. For in every such caseof return, the impulse was sound,--only that time and space interfered,and propinquity determined whether the object of choice should bebar-maid or peasant girl.
Happily for Vance Corliss, time and space were propitious, and in Fronahe found the culture he could not do without, and the clean sharp tangof the earth he needed. In so far as her education and culture went,she was an astonishment. He had met the scientifically smattered youngwoman before, but Frona had something more than smattering. Further,she gave new life to old facts, and her interpretations of commonthings were coherent and vigorous and new. Though his acquiredconservatism was alarmed and cried danger, he could not remain cold tothe charm of her philosophizing, while her scholarly attainments werefully redeemed by her enthusiasm. Though he could not agree with muchthat she passionately held, he yet recognized that the passion ofsincerity and enthusiasm was good.
But her chief fault, in his eyes, was her unconventionality. Woman wassomething so inexpressibly sacred to him, that he could not bear to seeany good woman venturing where the footing was precarious. Whatevergood woman thus ventured, overstepping the metes and bounds of sex andstatus, he deemed did so of wantonness. And wantonness of such orderwas akin to--well, he could not say it when thinking of Frona, thoughshe hurt him often by her unwise acts. However, he only felt suchhurts when away from her. When with her, looking into her eyes whichalways looked back, or at greeting and parting pressing her hand whichalways pressed honestly, it seemed certain that there was in hernothing but goodness and truth.
And then he liked her in many different ways for many different things.For her impulses, and for her passions which were always elevated. Andalready, from breathing the Northland air, he had come to like her forthat comradeship which at first had shocked him. There were otheracquired likings, her lack of prudishness, for instance, which he awokeone day to find that he had previously confounded with lack of modesty.And it was only the day before that day that he drifted, before hethought, into a discussion with her of "Camille." She had seenBernhardt, and dwelt lovingly on the recollection. He went homeafterwards, a dull pain gnawing at his heart, striving to reconcileFrona with the ideal impressed upon him by his mother that innocencewas another term for ignorance. Notwithstanding, by the following dayhe had worked it out and loosened another finger of the maternal grip.
He liked the flame of her hair in the sunshine, the glint of its goldby the firelight, and the waywardness of it and the glory. He likedher neat-shod feet and the gray-gaitered calves,--alas, now hidden inlong-skirted Dawson. He liked her for the strength of her slenderness;and to walk with her, swinging her step and stride to his, or to merelywatch her come across a room or down the street, was a delight. Lifeand the joy of life romped through her blood, abstemiously filling outand rounding off each shapely muscle and soft curve. And he liked itall. Especially he liked the swell of her forearm, which rose firm andstrong and tantalizing and sought shelter all too quickly under theloose-flowing sleeve.
The co-ordination of physical with spiritual beauty is very strong innormal men, and so it was with Vance Corliss. That he liked the onewas no reason that he failed to appreciate the other. He liked Fronafor both, and for herself as well. And to like, with him, though hedid not know it, was to love.