GOD'S GIFT
They buried Mrs. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly,
if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to
keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her
death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so
loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through
so many days.
Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in
the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where
she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had
done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and
surprise at her composure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes
were dry through it all.
"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and
her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.
Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a
big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at
night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not
Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the
deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the
mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that
Will had "made his strike."
They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was
going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little
of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear,
and the air singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly
realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled
on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale
blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges
cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the
atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were
nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow
ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the
middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew
one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled
down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless.
It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards
from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her
with startled admiration. He himself never shot except for food or
other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise,
but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious
that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.
"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut
face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the
continuous mounting of their steps.
"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the
thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but
straight ahead.
"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and
regret.
Katrine laughed.
"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good
shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way, what have I
to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."
He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to
the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced
at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of
blood-stained fur.
"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.
"Practice, that's all," she answered.
"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"
"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing
to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost
entirely sure I should kill it."
There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up
one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and
making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my
great protection. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and
wanted to kiss me--would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he
did."
"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished
tone, elevating his eyebrows.
"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely,
with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.
Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful
hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary
anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the
way.
At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her
hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you,"
and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.
It was about a fortnight later on, one of those dreary grey afternoons
of late winter, nearly dark already, though still early by the clock,
and the mercury in the thermometers had gone out of sight and stayed
there. Katrine came tripping along a side street on her way back to the
row, warm in her skin coat, and her face all aglow and abloom under her
fur cap. She had turned into the "Swan and Goose" saloon on her way up,
had put in half-an-hour over a game, and won a fat little canvas bag
stuffed with gold dust; had thinned it out somewhat in hot drinks across
the bar, and now, warmed through with rum, and light-hearted, she was
returning with the bag still well lined in her waist-belt.
She had recovered from the great shock of Annie's death. Her nature,
though essentially kind, was not of that soft, tender stamp that
receives deep and painful impressions from other's sufferings. She would
exert herself strenuously for another, as she had done for Annie, but
it was not in her nature to sorrow long or deeply for the irrevocable.
There was a certain hardness and philosophy in her temperament that her
life and surroundings and all her experience had tended to develop. And
in Annie's death there was nothing striking or unusually sad in this
corner of the world, so crowded with scenes of suffering, so filled with
pathos of every form. There were women hoping and waiting, and longing
and starving, in every street of the town, she knew; sickness and sorrow
and death looked her in the eyes from some poor face at every corner.
Annie had been but one poor little unit in the crowd of sufferers, but
one example of the misery of the town, the plague-stricken town, the
town stricken with a curse--the curse of the greed of gold.
Matters had brightened very much in Dawson lately, a new feeling of hope
and fresh life had gone through the town. The weather was less severe,
the days were lengthening, the skies were brighter, the sickness had
died out, and people went about their work looking cheerful again; and
Katrine, freed from her anxieties and nursing, felt her elastic spirits
bound upwards in response to the general brightness of the camp.
She came along humming behind her closed lips, and then suddenly turning
a corner, stopped dead short with a horrified stare in her eyes. She had
come round by one of the lowest dens in the city. Katrine knew it both
inside and out, for there was no place from hut to hut in Dawson that
she was afraid to enter. The door was standing open. It opened inwards,
and there was a group of men, some inside and some outside, and amongst
them they were forcing into the street a drunken woman. The entry to the
place was beneath the level of the ground, and reached by a few uneven,
miry steps, and up these the unfortunate was blindly stumbling under a
rain of blows, pushes, and curses. She was old, and her hair streamed in
ragged streaks across her bloodshot eyes, her tawdry skirt was long, and
got under her unsteady feet. Just as she had managed to totter to the
topmost step, a young man in the group behind her struck her a heavy
blow between the shoulders. She tripped in the long skirt and trod on
it, tearing it with a ripping sound from the waist, and fell forward,
striking her face on the uneven frozen ground. Katrine sprang forward,
but before she could reach her the woman had staggered to her feet and
turned to face her tormentors, the blood streaming now from her cut
lips, her trembling hands vaguely grasping at her torn skirt and trying
to keep it to her waist. A roar of laughter burst from the men at the
pitiful sight, and then died suddenly as they recognised Katrine. She
stepped in front of the old woman, and faced them with a scorn in her
eyes beyond all words. Then she turned in silence, put her arm round the
helpless creature's waist, and supported her frail, tottering steps over
the slippery, uneven ground. For an instant the men stood abashed and
ashamed, then when the spell of those great fearless, scornful eyes was
removed, their natures reasserted themselves, and a general laugh went
round.
"Birds of a feather!" shouted one, mockingly, as the two retreating
figures disappeared in the gathering darkness. Katrine heard it, and
winced; but she did not relax the hold of her supporting arm, and by
gentle and repeated questioning managed to elicit from the helpless old
being where she lived. Katrine turned her steps in the given direction,
and drawing out her handkerchief wiped the blood from the old woman's
face, and smoothed her straggling grey hair back behind her ears. When
they reached her cabin at last, Katrine saw that the stove was black
and empty. There was no light of any sort in the place, and the freezing
darkness of the interior chilled her through. She would not leave the
old woman until she had lighted a fire and candle for her and got her to
bed; then, without waiting to listen to the mumbled and incoherent
thanks showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place.
She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked
herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her
well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.
"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the
silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all,
really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her?
What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the
saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance round
her. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and
admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden
reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not
forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before
her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and
glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town
that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced
when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any
longer.
She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force
her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the
hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he
thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the
oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to
him, gazing absently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her
shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and
clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and
gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day,
and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to
him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel
drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow
sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut,
delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank
wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his
life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the
large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines,
he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade,
formed by her chair back, ran up beside and mingling with the other
lines. It seemed to curve over towards her shoulder, and then a few
seconds more, and to Stephen's drowsy gaze, the harsh line expanded into
a hideous grotesque figure. Out of those few shades upon the wall there
leaped a picture to his eyes: the girl, and at her side, bending over
her, a hideous devil, a strange vampire, hovering nearer or farther, in
blacker or lighter shades, as the flames in the fire rose and fell.
Stephen watched in a fascinated stupor, and then suddenly, as the light
died down in the grate and the shade leaped out nearer and blacker, he
started to his feet with a sudden exclamation.
The girl started too, and looked up. "What is it?" she asked.
Stephen pointed to the wall. Katrine turned, the blaze sprang up on the
hearth, the shadows were gone, the illusion vanished.
"What is it?" she said again, wonderingly.
"Oh, nothing--a hideous shape on the wall," stammered Stephen. "I was
watching your shadow, and another seemed to come up and threaten it.
Imagination, I suppose--perhaps I had fallen into a dream," he added
hurriedly, fearing she would laugh at him.
But Katrine did not laugh: she looked at him gravely and in silence. In
her mind she was pondering a question, hesitating, half fearing to speak
to him, half impelled to, and half held back, and the equal opposite
forces acting on her mind kept her silent.
Stephen, unused to her present mood, felt perhaps she was annoyed or
wearied, and drew out his watch. It was past ten.
"I will say good-night," he said, rising.
Katrine got up too. Her face paled yet more, her bosom rose and fell
quickly. "Take me away from here," she said abruptly and suddenly.
She had been thinking all the evening how she would approach the subject
with him, and then at last his leave-taking had startled away all her
circuitous phrases and left her only the crudest words at her command to
express her meaning.
Stephen was startled and confused, but his voice was very tender as he
took her hand in his and said, "I don't understand, dear; what do you
mean?"
He felt her hand tremble in his. She looked up at him appealingly. Her
eyes seemed frightened and uncertain. She was more womanly at this
moment than she had ever been. To Stephen she was infinitely more
fascinating than she had ever been. Accustomed to her bright, fearless
independence, admire that as he might, in this weakness, whatever its
cause, she was irresistible.
"Well, I mean," she said, speaking nervously, but with an effort to
control her excitement, "the other day you spoke of our being married,
and I said I couldn't stand a quiet life. Stephen, I will marry you now,
and go anywhere with you. I will be content with any life, any
monotony--only take me from here at once! I loathe this place, this
life." She stopped suddenly, and a wave of crimson blood swept over the
white face. "I want to be taken away," she repeated.
Stephen looked at her a moment in silence, with a sense of apprehension
and alarm. He could not do as she asked; he was not free--his claim held
him.
"I don't know quite what you mean," he said, a little stiffly, though he
felt he did know. "It would be quite impossible for me to go away now;
my whole heart's in the work, and I've sunk all I had in it."
"Yes; and your soul too," said Katrine suddenly, looking at him with
shining eyes and a calm face. "You're a slave now to your gold, the
same as we all are here--a community of slaves," and she laughed.
Stephen grew red, and looked confused, alarmed, and angry, all at the
same time.
"Nobody would go now," he said, remonstratingly, "and leave ground like
that. It would be insanity. Ask Talbot, ask anybody if they would."
"Talbot!" repeated Katrine, scornfully; "he's the worst slave of all;
but then he never preached about his soul, and wanting to reform
people."
"No one can reform you if you won't reform yourself," replied Stephen,
coldly; and there he spoke the truth.
"Who was it who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown
into evil. If I were not--" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange
pathetic note in it. It ceased, and then there was silence.
Stephen felt as if a hand were laid on his lips and crushed down the
voice that kept struggling from his heart. A second more, and then the
girl laughed suddenly.
"Oh, I was stupid! I did not know what I was saying, did not mean it
anyway. It's quite right for you to stick to your claim and the idea you
started with, and so on. You will make a great success if you do, and
that is all you want!"
Her tone was jesting and cynical as ever now--the usual hardness had
come back to her face. The moment of submission, of confidence, of
repentance, had passed--a moment when she could have been moved and won
to any life he wished, and he had lost it. He felt it. Yet how could he
have done otherwise?
"Forget what I said--quite," she added; "and go now. It's getting late,
and I want to get down to the saloons."
A thrill of horror went through Stephen, as she knew it would. He gazed
at her blankly with a horrible feeling, as if he were murdering
somebody, clutching at his heart.
"What are you waiting for?" she said, impatiently. "Why don't you hurry
back to your claim?"
"Katrine ... I--" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a
great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him.
"Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't give it up now."
"Good-night," said Katrine, and he turned and fumbled for the door
handle and went out.
When he was gone Katrine turned to her small square of looking-glass
that hung beneath the lamp on the wall.
"What a fool I was to-night!" she said, looking at the sweet reflection
and smiling lips.
A few minutes after Stephen had gone, a slight figure, muffled up to the
eyes, slipped out of No. 13 and hurried with quick steps down the
uneven footway of Good Luck Row.
That night Stephen climbed to his cabin with his head on fire and a
singing in his ears. A terrific struggle was going on in his breast. He
felt the path of duty was clear to him now, and equally that he did not
want to follow it. He had tried to shut his eyes to it; tried to believe
that it was not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary
to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but
he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night,
and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow
little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and
he groaned out aloud in the silent icy night.
To leave now meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, the million
dollars that he felt in a month or two he could take out of his claim;
and to stay meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, a human soul! A
million dollars, a human soul! These two ideas possessed him. A million
dollars, a human soul! the two thoughts rang alternately through his
brain until it seemed as if voices were crying them out upon the
soundless air. According to his religion, spirits combated for the soul
of man, and it seemed to Stephen that night as he mounted the solitary
path under the far-seeing eyes of the frosty stars above him, that
spirits really fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A
million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A
human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His
sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul
shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold,
and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now
was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay
he had not the strength and the fervour now that had brought him
through former battles. He was as a warrior that has fallen asleep and
awakened to find his arms grown rusty while he has been sleeping.
Gradually for the last six months the lust for gold had been eating into
his spirituality and destroying it. You cannot serve God and mammon: had
he not entered into the services of mammon, and been held there by the
rich rewards?
He thought of the rich pans he had been getting out. There was no claim
like his in the camp. There was no man more envied nor considered more
lucky than he. Yes, mammon had paid him well in the six months he had
served it, showered upon him more than God had done in six-and-twenty
years; and here was God's gift, a human soul, a sweet human life, he
could save and make his own--and Stephen groaned again, for he felt that
the gold was dearer to him. How could he have so changed, he wondered.
A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of a million dollars being
a bribe for him to sin. He looked into his heart now and found there was
nothing there but a passion for gold, gold! It was a yellow rust that
had eaten into his Christian's sword.
Then his thoughts strayed to the girl he had just left, and her bright
fresh face seemed to sway before him as he walked. His excited fancy
painted it upon the snow banks at his side. She was so young, she seemed
so fresh and lovely, it was impossible to think of her as tainted
already with vice and sin. It was only if she were kept in this
snow-bound prison, this mournful land of darkness and suffering, where,
as she said, she had no place nor aim, that she would fall as those
bright meteors were falling now far in the distant darkness. He could be
her deliverer, her saviour, if--if he could.
In the icy cold of that arctic night, great drops of sweat broke out
hotly on Stephen's forehead as his brain was wrenched to and fro in the
struggle. He tried to bribe even himself, tried to let his thoughts
dwell on his passion for the girl, tried to think of the mere human
sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he
won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved
human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the
clamour of the greater greed.
The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his
claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and
looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes
lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay
about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's
foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims looked very cold and
drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky.
But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it
matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!
Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his
defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was
crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought
desperately to find relief and justification for himself in
contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in
other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by
gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly
ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a
hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his
claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his
conscience, and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that
they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen
snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been
at work the previous day.
That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at
ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to
be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he
had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless
hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of
possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were
in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew
his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of
his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were unbearable. The
night was still and starlit, the air keen and thin as a knife-blade.
Stephen strode along the narrow frosty path, and took the road down into
the town. On his way he passed Talbot's cabin. It was lighted up. The
little window made a square of yellow light in the darkness; the blind
over it was drawn only half-way down. Stephen stepped up over the bank
of frosted snow and looked in. The great fire lighted up the whole of
the small interior, and threw its red light up to the cross logs in the
roof. In the centre of the room, at a table. Talbot sat working. There
were some sheets of paper before him, and he held a pen in his hand with
which he was checking off some figures. His face was turned to the
window; it looked pale and tired, but there was a curious expression of
extreme tranquillity upon it--a settled, serene patience that struck the
onlooker. He sat there working on steadily, motionless, calm as a figure
in stone; and poor Stephen, torn in the struggle of his desires,
slipping into the cold slough of self-condemnation, and burnt with the
fever of greed, groaned aloud as he stood outside. Then he turned from
the window and plunged back through the snow to the path that led to the
town. He wanted to see Katrine, and yet he hated the thought of facing
her after their parting of last night. What must she think of him? With
her quick mental perceptions she would have seen through and through his
miserable mind; seen that the gold had got hold of him, held him now,
and that his boasted religion had no power against it. No, he thought,
he could not face her--he was still some distance from the town; then as
he drew nearer, the unappeasable desire to see her and hear her fresh
bright voice came over him. When he reached Good Luck Row he went
straight to No. 13. He might have saved himself the trouble of his
decisions. Katrine had decided for him whether he should see her that
night or not. The window was dark; he tried the door, it was fastened;
she was evidently not there. A chill ran over Stephen from head to foot,
and then he recognized how much he had really wanted to see her. He
stood outside the door a long time; the row was quiet, there were few
passers. He waited, hoping to see her come up each minute--perhaps she
had only gone out on some errand; but the minutes passed and he grew
cold standing there, still she did not come. At last Stephen moved away
from the door and wandered disconsolately down the row. He went on
mechanically, not heeding where his footsteps took him, and found
suddenly that he had reached the main street down by the river. There
was no darkness nor quiet here, all the stores had their windows wide
open, and the light from them poured out upon the black slippery mass of
ice and melted snow that lay over the frozen ground. The saloons were in
full blast, brilliantly lighted and filled with noisy crowds of miners.
The dance halls, of which there were some dozen along the street, seemed
doing a good business. A shooting gallery that had been fixed up in a
tent was not only filled inside, but a crowd of men and some women were
gathered round the tent entrance, pushing and pressing each other in
their efforts to get in; the glare from the flaming lights inside fell
on their faces, and Stephen glanced eagerly over them to see if Katrine
was amongst them. He passed on, disappointed. There was another tent a
little farther on, where a cheap band was playing, and a board outside
announced in pen-and-ink characters the attraction of a "Catherine Wheel
Dance." The crowd here was even larger, and lights were fixed outside
flaring merrily in the frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores
and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance
halls and the variety show tents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry,
glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the
sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had
outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had
left the noise, and light, and laughter behind him. When he glanced
round he saw he had nothing but the river and a waste of darkness beside
him. There was an old log in his path; he sat down upon it and looked
back to the mist of light that hung over the town, then his gaze
wandered back disconsolately and rested on the ice-bound river.
Katrine had passed that day wretchedly too. She had been down idling in
one of the saloons through the afternoon, but the old resorts seemed to
have lost their charm. The old pleasure had gone, and the stimulus would
not come back. The cards looked greasy and dirty and revolted her, and
the drink seemed to turn to carbolic acid in her mouth. She left at
last, and went home to her lonely cabin and flung herself down in the
dark in the chimney corner and tried to sleep, but horrible faces danced
before her, and women with grey hair and wrinkles, with her own face,
stared at her from the walls.
She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after
that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid
tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her
face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder,
but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung
in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As
she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the
threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at
the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his
eyes. His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely
with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and
ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the
thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to
give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs
will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven
away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks,
she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the
threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.
"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it,
"if I--if--I gave--up," and then the words died, strangled in his
throat. Katrine held up her hand.
"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing
him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warm again. Where
have you been freezing yourself like this?"
She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened
coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by
the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee
and poured him out a cup.
"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling
mixture, from which the steam came furiously.
"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup.
With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to
come back to his face.
Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of
the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through
the roof.
"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was
selfish of me to ask you to leave your claims. I've been thinking of it
all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."
Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some
rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims,
those golden claims! and Katrine too--he seemed to see her dressed in
gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she
turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.
"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands
almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil
smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an
exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for
any man!"
Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here
made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.
Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You
had better hear what sort of girl I am."
Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth,
her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red
firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened
rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his
hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him.
Stephen looked down at her and felt content.
"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will
efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have
stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her
pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.
"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy
before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and then you will
know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards;
and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."
Stephen shuddered.
"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they
tell lies, you'll just shoot them."
Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of
shooting--taking a human life--murder--as though it were no more than a
snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance
back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not
bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days
were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he
knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that
she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an
epitome of evil, who, as she lay now in the firelight by his feet,
reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was
a pleasure--what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But
what was this pleasure?--was it also evil? What was this passion? His
thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across
them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.
"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, and _then_ we can start
afresh, as you say."
Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded
unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral
cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to
forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had
changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to
confide in him.
"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink--I like
drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine
and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in
town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I
like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and
laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble,"
Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then
went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I
love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love
excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all
my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."
There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again--
"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."
There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his
covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully;
he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was
true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension
that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to
him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he
expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the
former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.
"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.
"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.
She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a
cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping
his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing,
and drew her up to him.
"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing
more to confess to me?"
Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and
protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never
known.
"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her
silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him,
and a tremor ran through his whole frame.
"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss
on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity
of growing passion.
"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking
straight up to his.
Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless
look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she
had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on
her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of
"Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except
that she was loved and very happy.