should not you, too, cry peccavi? If I have broken promises, have
not you? Your love of the rose garden was of all time, or so you
said. Where is it now?”
“It is here! now!” he cried, striking his breast passionately with
clenched hand. “It has always been.”
“And your love was a great love; there was none greater,” she
continued; “or so you said in the rose garden. Yet it is not fine
enough, large enough, to forgive me here, crying now at your
feet?”
The man hesitated. His mouth opened; words shaped vainly on his
lips. She had forced him to bare his heart and speak truths which
he had hidden from himself. And she was good to look upon,
standing there in a glory of passion, calling back old
associations and warmer life. He turned away his head that he
might not see, but she passed around and fronted him.
“Look at me, Dave! Look at me! I am the same, after all. And so
are you, if you would but see. We are not changed.”
Her hand rested on his shoulder, and his had half-passed, roughly,
about her, when the sharp crackle of a match startled him to
himself. Winapie, alien to the scene, was lighting the slow wick
of the slush lamp. She appeared to start out against a background
of utter black, and the flame, flaring suddenly up, lighted her
bronze beauty to royal gold.
“You see, it is impossible,” he groaned, thrusting the fair-haired
woman gently from him. “It is impossible,” he repeated. “It is
impossible.”
Tales of the Klondyke
23
“I am not a girl, Dave, with a girl’s illusions,” she said softly,
though not daring to come back to him. “It is as a woman that I
understand. Men are men. A common custom of the country. I am
not shocked. I divined it from the first. But–ah!–it is only a
marriage of the country–not a real marriage?”
“We do not ask such questions in Alaska,” he interposed feebly.
“I know, but–”
“Well, then, it is only a marriage of the country–nothing else.”
“And there are no children?”
“No.”
“Nor–”
“No, no; nothing–but it is impossible.”
“But it is not.” She was at his side again, her hand touching
lightly, caressingly, the sunburned back of his. “I know the
custom of the land too well. Men do it every day. They do not
care to remain here, shut out from the world, for all their days;
so they give an order on the P. C. C. Company for a year’s
provisions, some money in hand, and the girl is content. By the
end of that time, a man–” She shrugged her shoulders. “And so
with the girl here. We will give her an order upon the company,
not for a year, but for life. What was she when you found her? A
raw, meat-eating savage; fish in summer, moose in winter, feasting
in plenty, starving in famine. But for you that is what she would
have remained. For your coming she was happier; for your going,
surely, with a life of comparative splendor assured, she will be
happier than if you had never been.”
“No, no,” he protested. “It is not right.”
“Come, Dave, you must see. She is not your kind. There is no
race affinity. She is an aborigine, sprung from the soil, yet
close to the soil, and impossible to lift from the soil. Born
savage, savage she will die. But we–you and I–the dominant,
evolved race–the salt of the earth and the masters thereof! We
are made for each other. The supreme call is of kind, and we are
of kind. Reason and feeling dictate it. Your very instinct
demands it. That you cannot deny. You cannot escape the
generations behind you. Yours is an ancestry which has survived
for a thousand centuries, and for a hundred thousand centuries,
and your line must not stop here. It cannot. Your ancestry will
not permit it. Instinct is stronger than the will. The race is
mightier than you. Come, Dave, let us go. We are young yet, and
life is good. Come.”
Tales of the Klondyke
24
Winapie, passing out of the cabin to feed the dogs, caught his
attention and caused him to shake his head and weakly to
reiterate. But the woman’s hand slipped about his neck, and her
cheek pressed to his. His bleak life rose up and smote him,–the
vain struggle with pitiless forces; the dreary years of frost and
famine; the harsh and jarring contact with elemental life; the
aching void which mere animal existence could not fill. And
there, seduction by his side, whispering of brighter, warmer
lands, of music, light, and joy, called the old times back again.
He visioned it unconsciously. Faces rushed in upon him; glimpses
of forgotten scenes, memories of merry hours; strains of song and
trills of laughter –
“Come, Dave, Come. I have for both. The way is soft.” She
looked about her at the bare furnishings of the cabin. “I have
for both. The world is at our feet, and all joy is ours. Come!
come!”
She was in his arms, trembling, and he held her tightly. He rose
to his feet . . . But the snarling of hungry dogs, and the shrill
cries of Winapie bringing about peace between the combatants, came
muffled to his ear through the heavy logs. And another scene
flashed before him. A struggle in the forest,–a bald-face
grizzly, broken-legged, terrible; the snarling of the dogs and the
shrill cries of Winapie as she urged them to the attack; himself
in the midst of the crush, breathless, panting, striving to hold
off red death; broken-backed, entrail-ripped dogs howling in
impotent anguish and desecrating the snow; the virgin white
running scarlet with the blood of man and beast; the bear,
ferocious, irresistible, crunching, crunching down to the core of
his life; and Winapie, at the last, in the thick of the frightful
muddle, hair flying, eyes flashing, fury incarnate, passing the
long hunting knife again and again–Sweat started to his forehead.
He shook off the clinging woman and staggered back to the wall.
And she, knowing that the moment had come, but unable to divine
what was passing within him, felt all she had gained slipping
away.
“Dave! Dave!” she cried. “I will not give you up! I will not
give you up! If you do not wish to come, we will stay. I will
stay with you. The world is less to me than are you. I will be a
Northland wife to you. I will cook your food, feed your dogs,
break trail for you, lift a paddle with you. I can do it.
Believe me, I am strong.”
Nor did he doubt it, looking upon her and holding her off from
him; but his face had grown stern and gray, and the warmth had
died out of his eyes.
“I will pay off Pierre and the boatmen, and let them go. And I
will stay with you, priest or no priest, minister or no minister;
go with you, now, anywhere! Dave! Dave! Listen to me! You say
I did you wrong in the past–and I did–let me make up for it, let
Tales of the Klondyke
25
me atone. If I did not rightly measure love before, let me show
that I can now.”
She sank to the floor and threw her arms about his knees, sobbing.
“And you DO care for me. You DO care for me. Think! The long
years I have waited, suffered! You can never know!” He stooped
and raised her to her feet.
“Listen,” he commanded, opening the door and lifting her bodily
outside. “It cannot be. We are not alone to be considered. You
must go. I wish you a safe journey. You will find it tougher
work when you get up by the Sixty Mile, but you have the best
boatmen in the world, and will get through all right. Will you
say good-by?”
Though she already had herself in hand, she looked at him
hopelessly. “If–if–if Winapie should–” She quavered and
stopped.
But he grasped the unspoken thought, and answered, “Yes.” Then
struck with the enormity of it, “It cannot be conceived. There is
no likelihood. It must not be entertained.”
“Kiss me,” she whispered, her face lighting. Then she turned and
went away.
“Break camp, Pierre,” she said to the boatman, who alone had
remained awake against her return. “We must be going.”
By the firelight his sharp eyes scanned the woe in her face, but
he received the extraordinary command as though it were the most
usual thing in the world. “Oui, madame,” he assented. “Which
way? Dawson?”
“No,” she answered, lightly enough; “up; out; Dyea.”
Whereat he fell upon the sleeping voyageurs, kicking them,
grunting, from their blankets, and buckling them down to the work,
the while his voice, vibrant with action, shrilling through all
the camp. In a trice Mrs. Sayther’s tiny tent had been struck,