A LETTER FROM BILL
All through the long night she lay awake, struggling with the
incredible fact that Bill had left her; trying to absolve herself from
blame; flaring up in anger at his unyielding attitude, even while she
was sorely conscious that she herself had been stubbornly unyielding.
If he had truly loved her, she reiterated, he would never have made it
an issue between them. But that was like a man--to insist on his own
desires being made paramount; to blunder on headlong, no matter what
antagonisms he aroused. And he was completely in the wrong, she
reasserted.
She recapitulated it all. Through the winter he had consistently
withdrawn into his shell. For her friends and for most of her
pleasures he had at best exhibited only tolerance. And he had ended by
outraging both them and her, and on top of that demanded that she turn
her back at twenty-four hours' notice, on Granville and all its
associations and follow him into a wilderness that she dreaded. She
had full right to her resentment. As his partner in the chancy
enterprise of marriage were not her feelings and desires entitled to
equal consideration? He had assumed the role of dictator. And she had
revolted. That was all. She was justified.
Eventually she slept. At ten o'clock, heavy-eyed, suffering an
intolerable headache, she rose and dressed.
Beside her plate lay a thick letter addressed in Bill's handwriting.
She drank her coffee and went back to the bedroom before she opened the
envelope. By the postmark she saw that it had been mailed on a train.
DEAR GIRL: I have caught my breath, so to speak, but I doubt if ever a
more forlorn cuss listened to the interminable clicking of car wheels.
I am tempted at each station to turn back and try again. It seems so
unreal, this parting in hot anger, so miserably unnecessary. But when
I stop to sum it up again, I see no use in another appeal. I could
come back--yes. Only the certain knowledge that giving in like that
would send us spinning once more in a vicious circle prevents me. I
didn't believe it possible that we could get so far apart. Nor that a
succession of little things could cut so weighty a figure in our lives.
And perhaps you are very sore and resentful at me this morning for
being so precipitate.
I couldn't help it, Hazel. It seemed the only way. It seems so yet to
me. There was nothing more to keep me in Granville--everything to make
me hurry away. If I had weakened and temporized with you it would only
mean the deferring of just what has happened. When you declared
yourself flatly and repeatedly it seemed hopeless to argue further. I
am a poor pleader, perhaps; and I do not believe in compulsion between
us. Whatever you do you must do of your own volition, without pressure
from me. We couldn't be happy otherwise. If I compelled you to follow
me against your desire we should only drag misery in our train.
I couldn't even say good-by. I didn't want it to be good-by. I didn't
know if I could stick to my determination to go unless I went as I did.
And my reason told me that if there must be a break it would better
come now than after long-drawn-out bickerings and bitterness. If we
are so diametrically opposed where we thought we stood together we have
made a mistake that no amount of adjusting, nothing but separate roads,
will rectify. Myself I refuse to believe that we have made such a
mistake. I don't think that honestly and deliberately you prefer an
exotic, useless, purposeless, parasitic existence to the normal,
wholesome life we happily planned. But you are obsessed,
intoxicated--I can't put it any better--and nothing but a shock will
sober you. If I'm wrong, if love and Bill's companionship can't lure
you away from these other things--why, I suppose you will consider it
an ended chapter. In that case you will not suffer. The situation as
it stands will be a relief to you. If, on the other hand, it's merely
a stubborn streak, that won't let you admit that you've carried your
proud little head on an over-stiff neck, do you think it's worth the
price? I don't. I'm not scolding, little person. I'm sick and sore
at the pass we've come to. No damn-fool pride can close my eyes to the
fact or keep me from admitting freely that I love you just as much and
want you as longingly as I did the day I put you aboard the _Stanley
D._ at Bella Coola. I thought you were stepping gladly out of my life
then. And I let you go freely and without anything but a dumb protest
against fate, because it was your wish. I can step out of your life
again--if it is your wish. But I can't imprison myself in your cities.
I can't pretend, even for your sake, to play the game they call
business. I'm neither an idler nor can I become a legalized buccaneer.
I have nothing but contempt for those who are. Mind you, this is not
so sweeping a statement as it sounds. No one has a keener appreciation
of what civilization means than I. Out of it has arisen culture and
knowledge, much of what should make the world a better place for us
all. But somehow this doesn't apply to the mass, and particularly not
to the circles we invaded in Granville. With here and there a solitary
exception that class is hopeless in its smug self-satisfaction--its
narrowness of outlook, and unblushing exploitation of the less
fortunate, repels me.
And to dabble my hands in their muck, to settle down and live my life
according to their bourgeois standards, to have grossness of soft flesh
replace able sinews, to submerge mentality in favor of a specious
craftiness of mind which passes in the "city" for brains--well, I'm on
the road. And, oh, girl, girl, I wish you were with me.
I must explain this mining deal--that phase of it which sent me on the
rampage in Granville. I should have done so before, should have
insisted on making it clear to you. But a fellow doesn't always do the
proper thing at the proper time. All too frequently we are dominated
by our emotions rather than by our judgment. It was so with me. The
other side had been presented to you rather cleverly at the right time.
And your ready acceptance of it angered me beyond bounds. You were
prejudiced. It stirred me to a perfect fury to think you couldn't be
absolutely loyal to your pal. When you took that position I simply
couldn't attempt explanations. Do you think I'd ever have taken the
other fellow's side against you, right or wrong?
Anyway, here it is: You got the essentials, up to a certain point, from
Brooks. But he didn't tell it all--his kind never does, not by a long
shot. They, the four of them, it seems, held a meeting as soon as I
shipped out that gold and put through that stock-selling scheme. That
was legitimate. I couldn't restrain them from that, being a hopeless
minority of one. Their chief object, however, was to let two or three
friends in on the ground floor of a good thing; also, they wanted each
a good bundle of that stock while it was cheap--figuring that with the
prospects I had opened up it would sell high. So they had it on the
market, and in addition had everything framed up to reorganize with a
capitalization of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This all cut
and dried before I got there. Now, as it originally stood, the five of
us would each have made a small fortune on these Klappan claims.
They're good. But with a quarter of a million in outstanding
stock--well, it would be all right for the fellow with a big block.
But you can see where I would get off with a five-thousand-dollar
interest. To be sure, a certain proportion of the money derived from
the sale of this stock should be mine. But it goes into the treasury,
and they had it arranged to keep it in the treasury, as a fund for
operations, with them doing the operating. They had already indicated
their bent by voting an annual stipend of ten thousand and six thousand
dollars to Lorimer and Brooks as president and secretary respectively.
Me, they proposed to quiet with a manager's wage of a mere five
thousand a year--after I got on the ground and began to get my back up.
Free Gold would have been a splendid Stock Exchange possibility. They
had it all doped out how they could make sundry clean-ups irrespective
of the mine's actual product. That was the first thing that made me
dubious. They were stock-market gamblers, manipulators pure and
simple. But I might have let it go at that, seeing it was their game
and not one that I or anybody I cared about would get fleeced at. I
didn't approve of it, you understand. It was their game.
But they capped the climax with what I must cold-bloodedly characterize
as the baldest attempt at a dirty fraud I ever encountered. And they
had the gall to try and make me a party to it. To make this clear you
must understand that I, on behalf of the company and acting as the
company's agent, grubstaked Whitey Lewis and four others to go in and
stake those claims. I was empowered to arrange with these five men
that if the claims made a decent showing each should receive five
thousand dollars in stock for assigning their claims to the company,
and should have employment at top wages while the claims were operated.
They surely earned it. You know what the North is in the dead of
winter. They bucked their way through a hell of frost and snow and
staked the claims. If ever men were entitled to what was due them,
they were. And not one of them stuttered over his bargain, even though
they were taking out weekly as much gold as they were to get for their
full share. They'd given their word, and they were white men. They
took me for a white man also. They took my word that they would get
what was coming to them, and gave me in the company's name clear title
to every claim. I put those titles on record in Hazleton, and came
home.
Lorimer and Brooks deliberately proposed to withhold that stock, to
defraud these men, to steal--oh, I can't find words strong enough.
They wanted to let the matter stand; wanted me to let it be adjusted
later; anything to serve as an excuse for delay. Brooks said to me,
with a grin; "The property's in the company's name--let the roughnecks
sweat a while. They've got no come-back, anyhow."
That was when I smashed him. Do you blame me? I'd taken over those
fellows' claims in good faith. Could I go back there and face those
men and say: "Boys, the company's got your claims, and they won't pay
for them." Do you think for a minute I'd let a bunch of lily-fingered
crooks put anything like that over on simple, square-dealing fellows
who were too honest to protect their own interests from sharp practice?
A quartet of soft-bodied mongrels who sat in upholstered office chairs
while these others wallowed through six feet of snow for three weeks,
living on bacon and beans, to grab a pot of gold for them! It makes my
fist double up when I think about it.
And I wouldn't be put off or placated by a chance to fatten my own bank
roll. I didn't care if I broke the Free Gold Mining Company and myself
likewise. A dollar doesn't terrify nor yet fascinate me--I hope it
never will. And while, perhaps, it was not what they would call good
form for me to lose my temper and go at them with my fists, I was
fighting mad when I thoroughly sensed their dirty project. Anyway, it
helped bring them to time. When you take a man of that type and cuff
him around with your two hands he's apt to listen serious to what you
say. And they listened when I told them in dead earnest next day that
Whitey Lewis and his partners must have what was due them, or I'd wreck
the bunch of them if it took ten years and every dollar I had to do it.
And I could have put them on the tramp, too--they'd already dipped
their fingers in where they couldn't stand litigation. I'm sure of
that--or they would never have come through; which they did.
But I'm sorry I ever got mixed up with them. I'm going to sell my
stock and advise Lewis and the others to do the same while we can get
full value for it. Lorimer and that bunch will manipulate the outfit
to death, no matter how the mine produces. They'll have a quarter of a
million to work on pretty soon, and they'll work it hard. They're
shysters--but it's after all only a practical demonstration of the
ethics of the type--"Do everybody you can--if you can do 'em so there's
no come-back."
That's all of that. I don't care two whoops about the money. There is
still gold in the Klappan Range and other corners of the North,
whenever I need it. But it nauseated me. I can't stand that cutthroat
game. And Granville, like most other cities of its kind, lives by and
for that sort of thing. The pressure of modern life makes it
inevitable. Anyway, a town is no place for me. I can stomach it about
so long, and no longer. It's too cramped, too girded about with
petty-larceny conventions. If once you slip and get down, every one
walks on you. Everything's restricted, priced, tinkered with. There
is no real freedom of body or spirit. I wouldn't trade a comfy log
cabin in the woods with a big fireplace and a shelf of books for the
finest home on Maple Drive--not if I had to stay there and stifle in
the dust and smoke and smells. That would be a sordid and impoverished
existence. I cannot live by the dog-eat-dog code that seems to prevail
wherever folk get jammed together in an unwieldy social mass.
I have said the like to you before. By nature and training I'm
unfitted to live in these crowded places. I love you, little person, I
don't think you realize how much, but I can't make you happy by making
myself utterly miserable. That would only produce the inevitable
reaction. But I still think you are essentially enough like me to meet
me on common ground. You loved me and you found contentment and joy at
our little cabin once. Don't you think it might be waiting there again?
If you really care, if I and the old North still mean anything to you,
a few days or weeks, or even months of separation won't matter. An
affection that can't survive six months is too fragile to go through
life on. I don't ask you to jump the next train and follow me. I
don't ask you to wire me, "Come back, Bill." Though I would come quick
enough if you called me. I merely want you to think it over soberly
and let your heart decide. You know where I stand, don't you, Hazel,
dear? I haven't changed--not a bit--I'm the same old Bill. But I'd
rather hit the trail alone than with an unwilling partner. Don't
flounder about in any quicksand of duty. There is no "I ought to"
between us.
So it is up to you once more, little person. If my way is not to be
your way I will abide by your decision without whining. And whenever
you want to reach me, a message to Felix Courvoiseur, Fort George, will
eventually find me. I'll fix it that way.
I don't know what I'll do after I make that Klappan trip. I'm too
restless to make plans. What's the use of planning when there's nobody
but myself to plan for?
So long, little person. I like you a heap, for all your cantankerous
ways.
BILL.
She laid aside the letter, with a lump in her throat. For a brief
instant she was minded to telegraph the word that would bring him
hurrying back. But--some of the truths he had set down in cold black
and white cut her deep. Of a surety she had drawn her weapon on the
wrong side in the mining trouble. Over-hasty?--yes. And shamefully
disloyal. Perhaps there was something in it, after all; that is to
say, it might be they had made a mistake. She saw plainly enough that
unless she could get back some of the old enthusiasm for that
wilderness life, unless the fascination of magnificent distances, of
silent, breathless forests, of contented, quiet days on trail and
stream, could lay fast hold of her again, they would only defer the day
of reckoning, as Bill had said.
And she was not prepared to go that far. She still harbored a
smoldering grudge against him for his volcanic outburst in Granville,
and too precipitate departure. He had given her no time to think, to
make a choice. The flesh-pots still seemed wholly desirable--or,
rather, she shrank from the alternative. When she visualized the North
it uprose always in its most threatening presentment, indescribably
lonely, the playground of ruthless, elemental forces, terrifying in its
vast emptinesses. It appalled her in retrospect, loomed unutterably
desolate in contrast to her present surroundings.
No, she would not attempt to call him back. She doubted if he would
come. And she would not go--not yet. She must have time to think.
One thing pricked her sorely. She could not reconcile the roguery of
Brooks and Lorimer with the men as she knew them. Not that she doubted
Bill's word. But there must be a mistake somewhere. Ruthless
competition in business she knew and understood. Only the fit
survived--just as in her husband's chosen field only the peculiarly fit
could hope to survive. But she rather resented the idea that pleasant,
well-bred people could be guilty of coarse, forthright fraud. Surely
not!
Altogether, as the first impression of Bill's letter grew less vivid to
her she considered her grievances more. And she was minded to act as
she had set out to do--to live her life as seemed best to her, rather
than pocket her pride and rejoin Bill. The feminine instinct to compel
the man to capitulate asserted itself more and more strongly.
Wherefore, she dressed carefully and prepared to meet a luncheon
engagement which she recalled as being down for that day. No matter
that her head ached woefully. Thought maddened her. She required
distraction, craved change. The chatter over the tea-cups, the
cheerful nonsense of that pleasure-seeking crowd might be a tonic.
Anything was better than to sit at home and brood.