CHAPTER IX
Vance Corliss proceeded at a fair rate to adapt himself to theNorthland life, and he found that many adjustments came easy. Whilehis own tongue was alien to the brimstone of the Lord, he became quiteused to strong language on the part of other men, even in the mostgenial conversation. Carthey, a little Texan who went to work for himfor a while, opened or closed every second sentence, on an average,with the mild expletive, "By damn!" It was also his invariable way ofexpressing surprise, disappointment, consternation, or all the rest ofthe tribe of sudden emotions. By pitch and stress and intonation, theprotean oath was made to perform every function of ordinary speech. Atfirst it was a constant source of irritation and disgust to Corliss,but erelong he grew not only to tolerate it, but to like it, and towait for it eagerly. Once, Carthey's wheel-dog lost an ear in a hastycontention with a dog of the Hudson Bay, and when the young fellow bentover the animal and discovered the loss, the blended endearment andpathos of the "by damn" which fell from his lips was a relation toCorliss. All was not evil out of Nazareth, he concluded sagely, and,like Jacob Welse of old, revised his philosophy of life accordingly.
Again, there were two sides to the social life of Dawson. Up at theBarracks, at the Welse's, and a few other places, all men of standingwere welcomed and made comfortable by the womenkind of like standing.There were teas, and dinners, and dances, and socials for charity, andthe usual run of things; all of which, however, failed to whollysatisfy the men. Down in the town there was a totally different thoughequally popular other side. As the country was too young forclub-life, the masculine portion of the community expressed itsmasculinity by herding together in the saloons,--the ministers andmissionaries being the only exceptions to this mode of expression.Business appointments and deals were made and consummated in thesaloons, enterprises projected, shop talked, the latest news discussed,and a general good fellowship maintained. There all life rubbedshoulders, and kings and dog-drivers, old-timers and chechaquos, met ona common level. And it so happened, probably because saw-mills andhouse-space were scarce, that the saloons accommodated the gamblingtables and the polished dance-house floors. And here, because he needsmust bend to custom, Corliss's adaptation went on rapidly. And asCarthey, who appreciated him, soliloquized, "The best of it is he likesit damn well, by damn!"
But any adjustment must have its painful periods, and while Corliss'sgeneral change went on smoothly, in the particular case of Frona it wasdifferent. She had a code of her own, quite unlike that of thecommunity, and perhaps believed woman might do things at which even thesaloon-inhabiting males would be shocked. And because of this, she andCorliss had their first disagreeable disagreement.
Frona loved to run with the dogs through the biting frost, cheekstingling, blood bounding, body thrust forward, and limbs rising andfalling ceaselessly to the pace. And one November day, with the firstcold snap on and the spirit thermometer frigidly marking sixty-fivebelow, she got out the sled, harnessed her team of huskies, and flewdown the river trail. As soon as she cleared the town she was off andrunning. And in such manner, running and riding by turns, she sweptthrough the Indian village below the bluff's, made an eight-mile circleup Moosehide Creek and back, crossed the river on the ice, and severalhours later came flying up the west bank of the Yukon opposite thetown. She was aiming to tap and return by the trail for the wood-sledswhich crossed thereabout, but a mile away from it she ran into the softsnow and brought the winded dogs to a walk.
Along the rim of the river and under the frown of the overhangingcliffs, she directed the path she was breaking. Here and there shemade detours to avoid the out-jutting talus, and at other timesfollowed the ice in against the precipitous walls and hugged themclosely around the abrupt bends. And so, at the head of her huskies,she came suddenly upon a woman sitting in the snow and gazing acrossthe river at smoke-canopied Dawson. She had been crying, and this wassufficient to prevent Frona's scrutiny from wandering farther. A tear,turned to a globule of ice, rested on her cheek, and her eyes were dimand moist; there was an-expression of hopeless, fathomless woe.
"Oh!" Frona cried, stopping the dogs and coming up to her. "You arehurt? Can I help you?" she queried, though the stranger shook herhead. "But you mustn't sit there. It is nearly seventy below, andyou'll freeze in a few minutes. Your cheeks are bitten already." Sherubbed the afflicted parts vigorously with a mitten of snow, and thenlooked down on the warm returning glow.
"I beg pardon." The woman rose somewhat stiffly to her feet. "And Ithank you, but I am perfectly warm, you see" (settling the fur capemore closely about her with a snuggling movement), "and I had just satdown for the moment."
Frona noted that she was very beautiful, and her woman's eye roved overand took in the splendid furs, the make of the gown, and the bead-workof the moccasins which peeped from beneath. And in view of all this,and of the fact that the face was unfamiliar, she felt an instinctivedesire to shrink back.
"And I haven't hurt myself," the woman went on. "Just a mood, that wasall, looking out over the dreary endless white."
"Yes," Frona replied, mastering herself; "I can understand. There mustbe much of sadness in such a landscape, only it never comes that way tome. The sombreness and the sternness of it appeal to me, but not thesadness."
"And that is because the lines of our lives have been laid in differentplaces," the other ventured, reflectively. "It is not what thelandscape is, but what we are. If we were not, the landscape wouldremain, but without human significance. That is what we invest it with.
"'Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe.'"
Frona's eyes brightened, and she went on to complete the passage:
"'There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around.'
"And--and--how does it go? I have forgotten."
"'Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in--'"
The woman ceased abruptly, her voice trilling off into silvery laughterwith a certain bitter reckless ring to it which made Frona inwardlyshiver. She moved as though to go back to her dogs, but the woman'shand went out in a familiar gesture,--twin to Frona's own,--which wentat once to Frona's heart.
"Stay a moment," she said, with an undertone of pleading in the words,"and talk with me. It is long since I have met a woman"--she pausedwhile her tongue wandered for the word--"who could quote 'Paracelsus.'You are,--I know you, you see,--you are Jacob Welse's daughter, FronaWelse, I believe."
Frona nodded her identity, hesitated, and looked at the woman withsecret intentness. She was conscious of a great and pardonablecuriosity, of a frank out-reaching for fuller knowledge. Thiscreature, so like, so different; old as the oldest race, and young asthe last rose-tinted babe; flung far as the farthermost fires of men,and eternal as humanity itself--where were they unlike, this woman andshe? Her five senses told her not; by every law of life they were no;only, only by the fast-drawn lines of social caste and social wisdomwere they not the same. So she thought, even as for one searchingmoment she studied the other's face. And in the situation she found anuplifting awfulness, such as comes when the veil is thrust aside andone gazes on the mysteriousness of Deity. She remembered: "Her feettake hold of hell; her house is the way to the grave, going down to thechamber of death," and in the same instant strong upon her was thevision of the familiar gesture with which the woman's hand had gone outin mute appeal, and she looked aside, out over the dreary endlesswhite, and for her, too, the day became filled with sadness.
She gave an involuntary, half-nervous shiver, though she said,naturally enough, "Come, let us walk on and get the blood moving again.I had no idea it was so cold till I stood still." She turned to thedogs: "Mush-on! King! You Sandy! Mush!" And back again to thewoman, "I am quite chilled, and as for you, you must be--"
"Quite warm, of course. You have been running and your clothes are wetagainst you, while I have kept up the needful circulation and no more.I saw you when you
leaped off the sled below the hospital and vanisheddown the river like a Diana of the snows. How I envied you! You mustenjoy it."
"Oh, I do," Frona answered, simply. "I was raised with the dogs."
"It savors of the Greek."
Frona did not reply, and they walked on in silence. Yet Frona wished,though she dared not dare, that she could give her tongue free rein,and from out of the other's bitter knowledge, for her own soul's sakeand sanity, draw the pregnant human generalizations which she mustpossess. And over her welled a wave of pity and distress; and she felta discomfort, for she knew not what to say or how to voice her heart.And when the other's speech broke forth, she hailed it with a greatrelief.
"Tell me," the woman demanded, half-eagerly, half-masterly, "tell meabout yourself. You are new to the Inside. Where were you before youcame in? Tell me."
So the difficulty was solved, in a way, and Frona talked on aboutherself, with a successfully feigned girlhood innocence, as though shedid not appreciate the other or understand her ill-concealed yearningfor that which she might not have, but which was Frona's.
"There is the trail you are trying to connect with." They had roundedthe last of the cliffs, and Frona's companion pointed ahead to wherethe walls receded and wrinkled to a gorge, out of which the sleds drewthe firewood across the river to town. "I shall leave you there," sheconcluded.
"But are you not going back to Dawson?" Frona queried. "It is growinglate, and you had better not linger."
"No . . . I . . ."
Her painful hesitancy brought Frona to a realization of her ownthoughtlessness. But she had made the step, and she knew she could notretrace it.
"We will go back together," she said, bravely. And in candidall-knowledge of the other, "I do not mind."
Then it was that the blood surged into the woman's cold face, and herhand went out to the girl in the old, old way.
"No, no, I beg of you," she stammered. "I beg of you . . . I . . . Iprefer to continue my walk a little farther. See! Some one is comingnow!"
By this time they had reached the wood-trail, and Frona's face wasflaming as the other's had flamed. A light sled, dogs a-lope andswinging down out of the gorge, was just upon them. A man was runningwith the team, and he waved his hand to the two women.
"Vance!" Frona exclaimed, as he threw his lead-dogs in the snow andbrought the sled to a halt. "What are you doing over here? Is thesyndicate bent upon cornering the firewood also?"
"No. We're not so bad as that." His face was full of smilinghappiness at the meeting as he shook hands with her. "But Carthey isleaving me,--going prospecting somewhere around the North Pole, Ibelieve,--and I came across to look up Del Bishop, if he'll serve."
He turned his head to glance expectantly at her companion, and she sawthe smile go out of his face and anger come in. Frona was helplesslyaware that she had no grip over the situation, and, though a rebellionat the cruelty and injustice of it was smouldering somewhere deep down,she could only watch the swift culmination of the little tragedy. Thewoman met his gaze with a half-shrinking, as from an impending blow,and with a softness of expression which entreated pity. But heregarded her long and coldly, then deliberately turned his back. As hedid this, Frona noted her face go tired and gray, and the hardness andrecklessness of her laughter were there painted in harsh tones, and abitter devil rose up and lurked in her eyes. It was evident that thesame bitter devil rushed hotly to her tongue. But it chanced just thenthat she glanced at Frona, and all expression was brushed from her facesave the infinite tiredness. She smiled wistfully at the girl, andwithout a word turned and went down the trail.
And without a word Frona sprang upon her sled and was off. The way waswide, and Corliss swung in his dogs abreast of hers. The smoulderingrebellion flared up, and she seemed to gather to herself some of thewoman's recklessness.
"You brute!"
The words left her mouth, sharp, clear-cut, breaking the silence likethe lash of a whip. The unexpectedness of it, and the savagery, tookCorliss aback. He did not know what to do or say.
"Oh, you coward! You coward!"
"Frona! Listen to me--"
But she cut him off. "No. Do not speak. You can have nothing to say.You have behaved abominably. I am disappointed in you. It ishorrible! horrible!"
"Yes, it was horrible,--horrible that she should walk with you, havespeech with you, be seen with you."
"'Not until the sun excludes you, do I exclude you,'" she flung back athim.
"But there is a fitness of things--"
"Fitness!" She turned upon him and loosed her wrath. "If she is unfit,are you fit? May you cast the first stone with that smuglysanctimonious air of yours?"
"You shall not talk to me in this fashion. I'll not have it."
He clutched at her sled, and even in the midst of her anger she noticedit with a little thrill of pleasure.
"Shall not? You coward!"
He reached out as though to lay hands upon her, and she raised hercoiled whip to strike. But to his credit he never flinched; his whiteface calmly waited to receive the blow. Then she deflected the stroke,and the long lash hissed out and fell among the dogs. Swinging thewhip briskly, she rose to her knees on the sled and called franticallyto the animals. Hers was the better team, and she shot rapidly awayfrom Corliss. She wished to get away, not so much from him as fromherself, and she encouraged the huskies into wilder and wilder speed.She took the steep river-bank in full career and dashed like awhirlwind through the town and home. Never in her life had she been insuch a condition; never had she experienced such terrible anger. Andnot only was she already ashamed, but she was frightened and afraid ofherself.