A thousand deaths by Jack London

hear.

“What’s the matter, Joe?” she asked, with a tenderness the power of

which to thrill him she knew full well.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I was only thinking–and wishing.”

“Wishing?–what?” Her voice was seduction itself, and her eyes

would have melted stronger than he, though they failed in calling

his up to them.

Then, deliberately, his eyes lifted to hers. “I was wishing you

could see me fight just once.”

She made a gesture of disgust, and his face fell. It came to her

sharply that the rival had thrust between and was bearing him away.

“I–I’d like to,” she said hastily with an effort, striving after

that sympathy which weakens the strongest men and draws their heads

to women’s breasts.

“Will you?”

Again his eyes lifted and looked into hers. He meant it–she knew

that. It seemed a challenge to the greatness of her love.

“It would be the proudest moment of my life,” he said simply.

It may have been the apprehensiveness of love, the wish to meet his

need for her sympathy, and the desire to see the Game face to face

for wisdom’s sake,–and it may have been the clarion call of

adventure ringing through the narrow confines of uneventful

existence; for a great daring thrilled through her, and she said,

just as simply, “I will.”

“I didn’t think you would, or I wouldn’t have asked,” he confessed,

as they walked out to the sidewalk.

“But can’t it be done?” she asked anxiously, before her resolution

could cool.

“Oh, I can fix that; but I didn’t think you would.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he repeated, still amazed, as he helped

her upon the electric car and felt in his pocket for the fare.

THE GAME

7

CHAPTER II

Genevieve and Joe were working-class aristocrats. In an environment

made up largely of sordidness and wretchedness they had kept

themselves unsullied and wholesome. Theirs was a self-respect, a

regard for the niceties and clean things of life, which had held

them aloof from their kind. Friends did not come to them easily;

nor had either ever possessed a really intimate friend, a heart-

companion with whom to chum and have things in common. The social

instinct was strong in them, yet they had remained lonely because

they could not satisfy that instinct and at that same time satisfy

their desire for cleanness and decency.

If ever a girl of the working class had led the sheltered life, it

was Genevieve. In the midst of roughness and brutality, she had

shunned all that was rough and brutal. She saw but what she chose

to see, and she chose always to see the best, avoiding coarseness

and uncouthness without effort, as a matter of instinct. To begin

with, she had been peculiarly unexposed. An only child, with an

invalid mother upon whom she attended, she had not joined in the

street games and frolics of the children of the neighbourhood. Her

father, a mild-tempered, narrow-chested, anaemic little clerk,

domestic because of his inherent disability to mix with men, had

done his full share toward giving the home an atmosphere of

sweetness and tenderness.

A

n orphan at twelve, Genevieve had gone straight from her father’s

funeral to live with the Silversteins in their rooms above the candy

store; and here, sheltered by kindly aliens, she earned her keep and

clothes by waiting on the shop. Being Gentile, she was especially

necessary to the Silversteins, who would not run the business

themselves when the day of their Sabbath came round.

And here, in the uneventful little shop, six maturing years had

slipped by. Her acquaintances were few. She had elected to have no

girl chum for the reason that no satisfactory girl had appeared.

Nor did she choose to walk with the young fellows of the

neighbourhood, as was the custom of girls from their fifteenth year.

“That stuck-up doll-face,” was the way the girls of the

neighbourhood described her; and though she earned their enmity by

her beauty and aloofness, she none the less commanded their respect.

“Peaches and cream,” she was called by the young men–though softly

and amongst themselves, for they were afraid of arousing the ire of

the other girls, while they stood in awe of Genevieve, in a dimly

religious way, as a something mysteriously beautiful and

unapproachable.

For she was indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of

American descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class

blooms which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears

and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a

beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as

THE GAME

8

to earn for her the apt description, “peaches and cream.” She was a

beauty in the regularity of her features; and, if for no other

reason, she was a beauty in the mere delicacy of the lines on which

she was moulded. Quiet, low-voiced, stately, and dignified, she

somehow had the knack of dress, and but befitted her beauty and

dignity with anything she put on. Withal, she was sheerly feminine,

tender and soft and clinging, with the smouldering passion of the

mate and the motherliness of the woman. But this side of her nature

had lain dormant through the years, waiting for the mate to appear.

Then Joe came into Silverstein’s shop one hot Saturday afternoon to

cool himself with ice-cream soda. She had not noticed his entrance,

being busy with one other customer, an urchin of six or seven who

gravely analyzed his desires before the show-case wherein truly

generous and marvellous candy creations reposed under a cardboard

announcement, “Five for Five Cents.”

She had heard, “Ice-cream soda, please,” and had herself asked,

“What flavor?” without seeing his face. For that matter, it was not

a custom of hers to notice young men. There was something about

them she did not understand. The way they looked at her made her

uncomfortable, she knew not why; while there was an uncouthness and

roughness about them that did not please her. As yet, her

imagination had been untouched by man. The young fellows she had

seen had held no lure for her, had been without meaning to her. In

short, had she been asked to give one reason for the existence of

men on the earth, she would have been nonplussed for a reply.

As she emptied the measure of ice-cream into the glass, her casual

glance rested on Joe’s face, and she experienced on the instant a

pleasant feeling of satisfaction. The next instant his eyes were

upon her face, her eyes had dropped, and she was turning away toward

the soda fountain. But at the fountain, filling the glass, she was

impelled to look at him again–but for no more than an instant, for

this time she found his eyes already upon her, waiting to meet hers,

while on his face was a frankness of interest that caused her

quickly to look away.

That such pleasingness would reside for her in any man astonished

her. “What a pretty boy,” she thought to herself, innocently and

instinctively trying to ward off the power to hold and draw her that

lay behind the mere prettiness. “Besides, he isn’t pretty,” she

thought, as she placed the glass before him, received the silver

dime in payment, and for the third time looked into his eyes. Her

vocabulary was limited, and she knew little of the worth of words;

but the strong masculinity of his boy’s face told her that the term

was inappropriate.

“He must be handsome, then,” was her next thought, as she again

dropped her eyes before his. But all good-looking men were called

handsome, and that term, too, displeased her. But whatever it was,

he was good to see, and she was irritably aware of a desire to look

at him again and again.

As for Joe, he had never seen anything like this girl across the

counter. While he was wiser in natural philosophy than she, and

could have given immediately the reason for woman’s existence on the

THE GAME

9

earth, nevertheless woman had no part in his cosmos. His

imagination was as untouched by woman as the girl’s was by man. But

his imagination was touched now, and the woman was Genevieve. He

had never dreamed a girl could be so beautiful, and he could not

keep his eyes from her face. Yet every time he looked at her, and

her eyes met his, he felt painful embarrassment, and would have

looked away had not her eyes dropped so quickly.

But when, at last, she slowly lifted her eyes and held their gaze

steadily, it was his own eyes that dropped, his own cheek that

mantled red. She was much less embarrassed than he, while she

betrayed her embarrassment not at all. She was aware of a flutter

within, such as she had never known before, but in no way did it

disturb her outward serenity. Joe, on the contrary, was obviously