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diff --git a/old/61932-h/61932-h.htm b/old/61932-h/61932-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index a61ae36..0000000 --- a/old/61932-h/61932-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,22137 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Come and Find Me, by Elizabeth Robins. - </title> - - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - -<style type="text/css"> - -a { - text-decoration: none; -} - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - -h1,h2 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -hr { - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - clear: both; - width: 65%; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; -} - -p { - margin-top: 0.5em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; - text-indent: 1em; -} - -p.dropcap { - text-indent: 0em; -} - -p.dropcap:first-letter { - color: transparent; - visibility: hidden; - margin-left: -0.9em; -} - -img.dropcap { - float: left; - margin: 0 0.5em 0 0; -} - -table { - margin: 1em auto 1em auto; - max-width: 40em; - border-collapse: collapse; -} - -td { - padding-left: 2.25em; - padding-right: 0.25em; - vertical-align: top; - text-indent: -2em; -} - -.tdpg { - vertical-align: bottom; - text-align: right; -} - -.blockquote { - margin: 1.5em 10%; -} - -.caption { - text-align: center; - margin-bottom: 1em; - font-size: 90%; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.center { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.larger { - font-size: 150%; -} - -.noindent { - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - right: 4%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; -} - -.poetry-container { - text-align: center; - margin: 1em; -} - -.poetry { - display: inline-block; - text-align: left; -} - -.poetry .verse { - text-indent: -3em; - padding-left: 3em; -} - -.poetry .indent7 { - text-indent: 4em; -} - -.poetry .indent10 { - text-indent: 7em; -} - -.poetry .indent15 { - text-indent: 13em; -} - -.right { - text-align: right; -} - -.smaller { - font-size: 80%; -} - -.smcap { - font-variant: small-caps; - font-style: normal; -} - -.tb { - margin-top: 3em; - text-indent: 0; -} - -.titlepage { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 3em; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -@media handheld { - -img { - max-width: 100%; - width: auto; - height: auto; -} - -.poetry { - display: block; - margin-left: 1.5em; -} - -.blockquote { - margin: 1.5em 5%; -} - -img.dropcap { - display: none; -} - -p.dropcap:first-letter { - color: inherit; - visibility: visible; - margin-left: 0; -} -} - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Come and Find Me, by Elizabeth Robins - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Come and Find Me - -Author: Elizabeth Robins - -Illustrator: E. L. Blumenschein - -Release Date: April 25, 2020 [EBook #61932] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COME AND FIND ME *** - - - - -Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">Come and Find Me</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus1"> -<img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">Hildegarde</p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">Come and Find Me</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">By<br /> -<span class="larger">Elizabeth Robins</span><br /> -Author of “The Magnetic North,” “The Convert,” etc.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">With Illustrations by<br /> -E. L. Blumenschein</p> - -<div class="blockquote smaller"> - -<p>“I ... had ambition not only to go farther than any one had -been before; but as far as it was possible for man to go....”</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Captain Cook.</span></p> - -<p>“Det er et svært vejarbejde—oppe i det norlige. Med fjeldovergange—og -med de utroligste vanskeligheder at overinde! Å du store, -vakkre verden,—hvad det er for en lykke, det, at være vejbygger!”</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Lille Eyolf.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class="titlepage">New York<br /> -The Century Co.<br /> -1908</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">Copyright, 1907, 1908, by<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span></p> - -<p class="center smaller"><i>Published, February, 1908</i></p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">THE DE VINNE PRESS</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> - -<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> - -<table summary="List of illustrations"> - <tr> - <td>Hildegarde</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">FACING PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“Mar’s eyes looked over the little boy’s head into space”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus2">36</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“It was the teacher of arithmetic to the life, only it was Bella - Wayne”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus3">56</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“The two girls sat in front of the confident young face looking - out of the silver locket”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus4">100</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“‘Brethren,’ he said, ‘the angel of the Lord has been with me. He - has shown me great riches’”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus5">186</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“‘I know you’ll do your best for me,’ Hildegarde said, anxiously”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus6">232</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Hildegarde’s mother and Mr. Blumpitty</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus7">278</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“Nearer, my God, to Thee”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus8">412</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“Coolies crawled up the ladder with vast burdens”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus9">426</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“‘I suppose you think I have something very valuable here?’”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">474</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>“Hildegarde’s ankle turned more than once, and now she was almost - down”</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus11">518</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p> - -<h2><i>TO FLORENCE BELL</i></h2> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Chinsegut, Hernando County, Florida</span><br /> -Jan. 20, 1906</p> - -<p class="noindent"><span class="smcap">My Dear F. B.</span>:</p> - -<p>I believe it to be commonly the practice of authors to write -the dedication last. But I, being summoned by the laconic -imperative of the Atlantic cable to exchange London for -Florida, and being thereby arrested midway in what I have -always thought of as your book, must needs recover some of -the old impulse that you gave me to begin it, before I can -go on.</p> - -<p>I invoke you as I would a breath of your invigorating -Yorkshire, for I am captive in a land of idleness—myself -idlest of all the easy, time-squandering folk that are making -believe to finish my house here upon the sunburnt hilltop.</p> - -<p>This lodge in the wilderness, uplifted like an island above -encompassing seas of green; this wind-swept, sun-steeped place, -ought, perhaps (in spite of latitude and longitude), to give -me back without your aid the picture and the feeling of the -North. For the first word I set at the top of my page, though -Indian, would not have been understanded of my ancient -neighbors here. Not the Seminoles, the Alaskans gave us -our name. I and another for whom it means home, pronounced -it first to the rhythm of breakers beating on that wild -Bering coast—in the midst of the pandemonium of the “farthest -North” gold boom, we dreamed and planned the picture -I look out upon this morning. It might not seem beautiful -to you, yet, in spite of your wise warning, there have gone -into my effort to make the dream come true the most precious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> -things I had. Into this Chinsegut, as you know, went, amongst -the rest, a great faith.</p> - -<p>So that, however reminiscent of people or conditions long -since passed away, however much of the spirit of the past is -garnered here as living influence, or as debris and as ashes, -these were for me infinitesimal affairs by comparison with the -hope for the Future that made me turn deaf ears to your -admonishing. For this was to be a place where my fellow-dreamer -and I should not only rest, but having rested, work -as never before. Our best and biggest room was to be called -the Workroom.</p> - -<p>But some strange spell has hitherto hung over that apartment -and all the house, since even the white remodelers of the -slave-built dwelling have found it easier to play than work -here.</p> - -<p>As if foreseeing that the added wing, new stable, and the -rest, would take more months a-building than they would need -weeks in other climes, our “workmen,” uneasy perhaps under -the misnomer, organized themselves into a Musical Society. -They would lay a brick or rap in a nail, and then, casting -aside trowel or hammer, would catch up fiddle and bow, horn, -or clarinet, trying (since walls had been known to fall at -trumpet blast) whether these could be induced to rise to -strains of “Dixie.” One of the band to whom I owe my not -very sound roof, was at least a person of imagination, as I -will make your ladyship admit, if the distractions here will -give me leave to try. These are not solely the growling of -saws, the scraping of planes and of fiddles. I find myself -forever running to and fro like a child in some enchanted -playground, wooed by fifty things at once—but not one of -them has aught to do with books or with any aspect of the art -of letters.</p> - -<p>My distractions have to do with such toys as the joy of -re-discovering old friends in all three kingdoms, from the forgotten -beauty of palms standing sentinel-like in sand as white -as meal, to the blue heron that goes sailing by to the lake at -our feet. Or I am called early to see the delicate print of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span> -deer’s foot that passed our very gate; or I must watch the -sun caught at setting in the great ilex, and see the light spilling -into the Spanish moss, soaking into the long draperies, -till they seem to hold refulgence in solution. Or I must go and -plan the hedge of roses round an old burying-ground on the -place, or listen half a morning to a mocking-bird, or steal -down in the dusk to my beloved copse and play eavesdropper -to the sullen owl who pretends he doesn’t haunt the magnolia -above the spring. Or I must leave my coveted place of shade -on the north veranda and come to watch our friend, Mr. Tarrypin, -creeping heavily by in the hot sun on his way (I grieve -to tell you) to the soup tureen. (“Lawd, yes. Tarrypin? -He jes de same es chick’n, Miss ’Lizbess—once he in de pot!”)</p> - -<p>Even my interviews with the cook, elsewhere so summarily -despatched, are here a thief of time. For our Peter, who -learned his craft of the Cubans during the late war, is the -most beguiling of conversationalists. In beautiful sky-blue, -brass-buttoned clothes showing under a spotless apron, he -stands, interlarding his promise to “do it Spanish style,” with -legends learned of his mother who was born in the negro -quarters here in those more sumptuous days when our hill -was crowned with the finest orange grove in all Hernando. -Peter will tell you, chuckling, that our great twelve by twelve-inch -cypress beams that turn the edge of the white carpenters’ -tools, were hand-hewn by his grandfather, and by that gallant -woodman “tied and pinned” to frame the house before the -“orange” days—when all cleared land was cotton field.</p> - -<p>But more than by any other creature the spirit of idleness -has been fostered by my four-footed friend, the particular joy -of my life here, Dixie. For I must tell you that one’s love of -woods is only whetted by looking out, as I am told we do, upon -two hundred and fifty thousand acres of virgin forest—the -old Seminole hunting-grounds—which swallow up the white -man’s puny clearings so effectually that even a Zeiss glass can -scarcely pick them out. Dixie and I may travel for hours, -through tangles of jessamine-laced live-oak and palmetto, -down to dim lakes where the cypresses stand in water to their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span> -“knees” (with all the moss curtains close-drawn against the -sun), and never see a soul. Then, when even in the open ways -of the pine woods we find the warm day quenched in mist, -I let the rein fall slack and trust to that skill of Dixie’s, never -baffled yet, to take me home the shortest way, in spite of night -or storm or the fierce dazzle of tropic lightning.</p> - -<p>If we are late, we know “Uncle” Fielding will be looking -out for us. Even if I fail to distinguish his kind, dark face, -I see the whites of his eyes shining, I hear his rich voice -lowered to reproach that I should be abroad so late in the vast -Annuttalagga woods that go to the verge of the world.</p> - -<p>But Uncle Fielding has his share in my idleness, for he -knows the stories I like best of all. When I’ve gone to sit -within the radiance of the great open fireplace (less for -warmth than for sake of cedar scent and love of the flaring, -singing resin in the pine), Uncle Fielding will come staggering -in under the weight of a single log, and having thrown it -down, will tarry awhile. To my polite hope that he feels at -home in his new cottage, he replies with gentle assurance: “I’ll -haf to be mighty ole and mighty painful befoh I leave this -hilltop.” With humility I learn to see myself as the transient -one, the visitor, and Uncle Fielding as the one who rightly is -“at home.” Even for neighborly credit and fair regard I look -to him. For when one of the younger generation, or some mere -new-comer ventures: “They say, in the old days, you knew -her brother,” “<em>Knew</em> him?” says Uncle Fielding loftily, “<em>I -raised him</em>—” and so re-establishes our respectability in a -land that for so many years has known us only as little-remembered -names.</p> - -<p>Can you not see that with the vivid intervention of all this -new-old life—the story you bade me write has in a brief space -gone to a distance so illimitable that beside such a standard -of remoteness, Florida is neighbor to the Pole? I tell you -plainly that if this book of yours is ever to be finished, you -must send me something of that influence that has so often -spurred me on before. Once even here, a touch of it, like -your hand on my shoulder, reached me one evening, in spite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span> -of all the hosts of Hernando. Walking about at sunset to -count how many mangoes were growing near the house—I -was pursued as far as the great ilex at the gates by faint -intermittent strains of some unearthly music. I looked up, -thinking of those “harps” that Hilda heard and to whose -strains she unsealed the Master Builder’s ears. Again that -music! faint but unmistakable; sad and wild, with its vaguely -inciting call. A little shamefaced for my fancy, I said to -one who knew not Hilda: “I could almost swear I heard -harps in the air.” “Yes,” was the answer, “on the roof,” as -though it were the most natural thing on earth that a carpenter, -instead of making us rain-proof, should devise and lash -in place a wind-harp over our heads! I thought how you -would have disapproved that man—and cherished him.</p> - -<p>Although the winds that come sweeping over the Mexican -Gulf have cast the great lyre down from my housetop—nevertheless, -now that I’ve invoked you, I seem to hear the -air again—even feel on my shoulder that touch of your hand -with which you sent me forth to try if, in the midst of the -London din, we might not make folk pause an instant, and -say with upturned faces: “Harps in the air!” You and I have -heard them for many a year, my friend. I think I never was -with you long, but I caught some note of that far music. Even -with the thick of the world between us, I listen for you to call -the tune that “sends me on.”</p> - -<p class="right">E. R.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1>COME AND FIND ME</h1> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-a.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">A crisis in the financial world of California -kept the men who were employed in the -Palmas Valley Bank of Valdivia hard at -work for several hours after statutory closing -time.</p> - -<p>Nathaniel Mar never came home in these days without -bringing a black leather bag full of papers, to work over -in the dining-room.</p> - -<p>He had his big desk in there because Mrs. Mar thought -it out of place in the parlor, though the parlor was the -quietest room in the house and the least used, whereas the -dining-room was the most frequented quarter of the -modest establishment, and the very place where both the -big desk, and the big man who sat before it, were most in -the way.</p> - -<p>For here the family not only ate their meals, but here, -in Mrs. Mar’s rocking-chair, the screams of the infant -daughter were drowned in milk or overcome by sleep; -here the two small boys were taught letters and manners; -here, on their mother’s work-table, was reared the ever-renewed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -mountain of “mending,” and these the walls that -oftener than any others looked down upon the mistress’s -struggles with the “single-handed help”—a succession -of Irish or Scandinavian girls who came, saw, conquered -some of the china, and departed.</p> - -<p>This concentration of family life in the dining-room -was not peculiar to the Mars. Valdivia—all California, -indeed all the towns of all the northern and western -states, were full of houses where the shut-up parlors bore -dumb witness to a social habit that was become mere -tradition.</p> - -<p>The forebears of these people, especially those German, -French, or Spanish, had need of a room where they might -receive their friends and talk to them at their ease. But -in their descendants this much chastened need had taken -on the air of an indulgence, and was shrinking out of -sight.</p> - -<p>It is true that even the less well-to-do, summoning all -their strength, sometimes gave “parties,” but few houses -encouraged the cheerful custom of having friends “drop -in.” And so, no more useless room in any dwelling than -the parlor. Yet so great was the power of this tradition -of a lost hospitality, that people who had almost nothing -else over and above the grimmest necessities, still had -their parlor. Discomfort and cramping of every kind -was stoically borne that the sacred precincts might be -preserved inviolate. For what? Nobody ever asked.</p> - -<p>So then, in the dining-room, sat Nathaniel Mar even on -this fine Sunday afternoon, when, as a rule, the desk was -shut and the owner gone to potter in the garden. But the -exigency was great, and for once even the Seventh Day -had brought no rest. As he sat there, bent over the desk,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -the light fell with such harshness on the man’s foreshortened -features, under the unkempt mop of prematurely -graying hair, that you would not easily have -believed him to be under forty odd.</p> - -<p>He was not yet thirty-five. The deep line that dropped -from the side of each nostril, to lose itself in the heavy, -dark mustache, gave to his face a stricken and weariful -air. And he sat crooked, with one high shoulder more -hunched than the other. You saw the reason of that -when he got up to shut out the sounds of pan-banging, -and fire-irons rattling, that came in through the inch of -open door opposite the one leading into the hall. Before -rising, Mar had felt for his walking-stick, and any one -who noticed how heavily he bore upon it in limping over -the worn carpet, knew why it was that one of his great -shoulders was pushed awry.</p> - -<p>He made the same detour in returning to his seat as -had carried him to the kitchen door, carefully cruising -round the pitfall presented by a half-yard or so of extra -dilapidation in the yellow-brown carpet. As you looked -closer at what his avoidance made more noticeable, you -saw that a less faded piece had been tacked over a part -hopelessly worn and mended, and how even this newer -square had despairingly let go of the tacks that held it, -and been kicked up by some foot less considerate or more -courageous than Mr. Mar’s. The superimposed piece sat -now, in a frayed, rag-baggy condition, gaping with -despair, and like some beggar in extremis by the way, -ready to lay hold on the first unwary foot that passed.</p> - -<p>The entire room wore that indescribable air of settled -melancholy that no one thing in it, not even the carpet, -seemed quite ugly or uncomfortable enough to account<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -for. The furniture was heavy and old. Upon the walls, -besides two or three reconnaissance maps, were some inoffensive -prints. A “Signing of the Declaration of Independence” -hung high between the two windows, and -underneath, in oval, gilt frames, were companion pictures -of Mar’s mother and of his father, who had been -for many years minister to Valdivia’s first Presbyterian -Church.</p> - -<p>On the opposite wall a good engraving of Lincoln was -flanked, somewhat incongruously, by a photograph of a -buxom young woman with a group of girls behind her—Mar’s -wife in her school-teaching days, with her class. -Besides these, an old view of the Lake of Geneva, a print -of Cromwell, and on the wall behind Mar’s revolving -chair, an engraved portrait, bearing underneath it the -inscription: John W. Galbraith, President Rock Hill -Mining Co.</p> - -<p>Even if these adornments were of a very mild description, -they, at least, covered several feet of the marbled -yellow paper that apparently had been chosen (and -chosen a good while ago) to “go with” the hideous -“grained” woodwork. That it did “go with” that peculiarly -perverse soiling and smearing of inoffensive surfaces, -may not be denied. It went far. It arrived at -such a degree of success that all the little room irradiated -a bilious yellowness “clawed” with muddy brown.</p> - -<p>The very atmosphere was not left as nature sent it in -at the window. It halted upon the sill and changed -color, like one who gets wind of ill news. The moment it -penetrated beyond the holland blinds it turned sick and -overflowed the room in dirty saffron.</p> - -<p>It may well be wondered why any creature who was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -not obliged to should come here. And yet the defeated-looking -man at the window did not lack high companionship. -Sunset and the rain, the call of the winds, clouds -of majesty, and mists of silver, not these alone. Daydreams -penetrated the sullen walls. Here, where the -rudest emigrant would not long abide, fair visions made -themselves at home—“exultations, agonies”—a field here -for the unconquerable mind no more unfit than many another -for the long battle men call life.</p> - -<p>On this particular July afternoon, Nathaniel Mar had -no sooner shut out one order of disturbance, than another -penetrated the room from a different direction.</p> - -<p>“Sigma!” a loud, clear voice was calling from the -region of the stairs. “Sigma,” and again, “Sigma! -Have you set the table? Sigma-a-a!”</p> - -<p>Nathaniel Mar wrote on.</p> - -<p>The door opened suddenly and in came a brisk, rather -handsome, dark-eyed woman, with an infant on her arm. -Singularly enough the child seemed to be as little interrupted -in its occupation of sleeping as the father in his -writing. There were certain sounds that both were inured -to. Among others, Mrs. Mar calling “Sigma,” or -“Kate,” or “Jane.” But when she stopped short near -the threshold and asked:</p> - -<p>“Where is that girl?” Mar, without raising his eyes -from his paper, made a little motion toward the door he -had just shut.</p> - -<p>“I should think,” he said, quietly, “she was probably -breaking up the kitchen stove.”</p> - -<p>Before he finished, Mrs. Mar had opened the other -door, and again called “Sigma!”</p> - -<p>“Yes—yes.” In rushed a little white-headed Swede,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -fourteen to fifteen years of age, her sleeves tucked up, -her coarse gown tucked up, her fair skin showing vividly -a sooty mark across her forehead, which she had smudged -down her nose and finely shaded off into the red of her -cheek.</p> - -<p>When Sigma was calm and collected she walked the -floor as if it were knee-deep in sand. When she was -agitated she did not walk at all. She plunged. Sigma -was agitated now.</p> - -<p>“Coom!” she said, lifting a bare elbow toward the -kitchen as another person might point with a finger. -“Coom!” and turning heavily she was about to plunge -back into her special domain.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Mar arrested her. “Why haven’t you set -the table? Look at the time.” She pointed.</p> - -<p>Sigma paused and thought. Following the index -finger she recognized the clock, looked inquiringly from -it to the lady, and then suddenly felt she understood, a -thing of almost exciting infrequency. She scuffled good-naturedly -across the room, picked up the heavy timepiece -and was in the act of handing it to Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Let the clock alone! Put it down, I say. What will -she do next? The table. Table!” She beat upon it -briskly with her one free hand. “<em>Supper.</em>”</p> - -<p>“Oh, soopra!” says the girl, setting down the clock -and lurching hurriedly toward the kitchen.</p> - -<p>“Stop! Don’t you understand you have to set the -table earlier to-day? Before—you—go—out. Your evening. -Understand? Your friend calls for you at six.” -She indicated the hour on the clock face. “Takes you—heaven -knows where. <em>She</em> doesn’t forget if you do. -<em>Your—evening—out.</em>” As Sigma only stood and stared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -dully, Mrs. Mar dropped into the rocking-chair with, -“I foresee this girl will drive me demented.”</p> - -<p>Sigma embraced the opportunity to shuffle toward the -door again.</p> - -<p>“Where you off to now? You can’t go till you’ve set -the table. Here!” Still with the well-inured infant -sleeping on her arm, Mrs. Mar, remarking in a conversational -tone that she was “certain she should go mad,” -pulled open the sideboard drawer and took out the tablecloth. -“Put this on. <em>Straight</em>, for a change. Then the -mats.”</p> - -<p>The mistress’s eye falling suddenly upon that deplorable -place in the carpet, she was forcibly reminded of the -little copper-toed boots that had wrought the havoc.</p> - -<p>“What are they at now?” she said, half to herself, as -she crossed the room, and, craning her chin over the sleeping -child at her breast, she guided the toe of her shoe -under the tacked bit, stroking down the darned tatters -underneath, before she straightened and trod flat the -outer layer. Each time thereafter that she crossed the -troubled area her foot, half-impatient, half-caressing, encouraged -the patch to lie still. “What keeps those children -so quiet? Where are they?”</p> - -<p>Sigma, hearing the anxious rise in her mistress’s voice, -dropped the corner of the cloth she was twitching and -rushed for the mats.</p> - -<p>“No, no, finish. Here. Straight. Like this.” A moment’s -silence, and then again, “Where are those children?”</p> - -<p>Sigma hurriedly offered her the cruet.</p> - -<p>“Idiot. I am asking you about the children. The—chil—dren. -Where—are—they? Don’t you know? Little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -boys. Trenn, and Harry, and Jack Galbraith—where -gone?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Yack! He—” Sigma, with great action of -hip and elbow, splurged over to the window, and motioned -away across an empty lot.</p> - -<p>“What, <em>again</em>? Here,” Mrs. Mar wheeled upon her -husband, “you must hold the baby a moment. If I lay -her down she’ll wake up and scream.”</p> - -<p>As Mrs. Mar hastened out through the kitchen you -could hear that she paused an instant to exclaim aghast -at something she found there.</p> - -<p>Mr. Mar had accepted the charge with a curious tranquillity, -making the infant comfortable in the hollow of -his left arm. Then he went on with his writing.</p> - -<p>Sigma returned to the intricate task of setting the -table. She did it all with an excited gravity, as if she -were engaged in some spirited game, putting down plates, -knives, and forks with an air of one playing trumps, and -yet not quite sure if it was the right moment for them. -When she had placed the straw mats with mathematical -precision, she drew off proudly, to get the full splendor -of effect. When it came to dealing with the sugar bowl, -she glanced at Mar’s bent head, and helped herself to a -lump, became furiously industrious upon the strength of -that solatium, and plunged after spoons and cups. Whenever -she made a clatter she stopped sucking and glanced -nervously toward Mar, as if she expected him to rise and -overwhelm her.</p> - -<p>He, with unlifted head, wrote steadily on.</p> - -<p>The child slept.</p> - -<p>Sigma put a worn horsehair chair at head and foot -of the table, two high chairs on one side for the little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -boys, and an ordinary one on the other; as she did this -last her eye fell on the four cups. She paused uncertain, -till she had noiselessly counted five on her stumpy fingers. -Then, “Oh, Yack maa ha’ en!” she reminded herself, -lurched away into the kitchen and reappeared wiping -a cup on a dish towel, one end of which she had -tucked in her apron string. As she was about to deposit -the fifth cup, she glanced at the man bent over the desk, -and put her disengaged hand again in the sugar bowl. -Mar turned suddenly in his creaking chair; Sigma -started, and meaning to drop the sugar, dropped the cup -instead. She stared an instant, open-mouthed, as at some -unaccountable miracle; and then, with a howl, flung up -her bare arms and fled round the table on her way to -the kitchen, caught her great foot in the carpet-trap and -measured her length on the floor.</p> - -<p>“Look here, you must go into the kitchen to do that.” -Mar spoke as one not presuming to deny that it might be -a part of her duty to precipitate herself on her stomach -and howl, but questioning only the propriety of the spot -selected. “I can’t have you doing it here,” he said.</p> - -<p>Sigma was still “doing it,” so far as howling went, -but she was also scrambling up, with her elbow held over -her head, as if she counted on a thumping. From under -her bare forearm her streaming eyes looked out at Mar. -Whether the man’s quiet face in the midst of the uproar -astonished, calmed her—she gaped, letting the rude lamentation -die in her throat.</p> - -<p>“Men—<em>Meesis Marr—rr</em>!” she said under her breath, -picking up the cup.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar’s husband held out his hand for it. “It’s -only the handle,” he said, and set the cup down on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> -writing-table, that he might change the position of the -fretting child. For his long-suffering daughter was at -last roused to protest.</p> - -<p>The little maid-servant wiped her eyes, and, with the -air of one who is willing to let bygones be bygones, shuffled -a step nearer to the desk.</p> - -<p>“Me—Gif Sigma,” she said, and held out her red -arms.</p> - -<p>Mar looked up, understood, and handed over the baby. -It was curious to see the practised sureness with which -this female barbarian—who caught her big feet in the -carpet and dropped the china—with what skill she handled -that fragile and intricate mechanism, an infant. -Mar watched her as she stood there, swaying her own -thick body back and forth like a human rocking-chair, -holding the child in sure comfort, patting it softly, and -crooning to it uncouth words in a foreign tongue. Miss -Mar understood perfectly, and responded by laying her -small pink face against the scullion’s untidy gown and -falling back into slumber.</p> - -<p>The opening of the front door, and voices in the hall—above -all one voice ordaining that certain persons should -go up-stairs and <em>wait for her</em>!—made Sigma pause, listen, -and then, still holding close the pacified infant, she -beat a stealthy retreat, shutting the kitchen door behind -her with a softness incredible.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar, upon her reappearance, was seen to be ushering -in by the shoulder an anxious little boy of eight or -nine. As with some force she conveyed him across the -room, his foot caught in the same place where Sigma had -met defeat. But Sigma had not been sustained by Mrs. -Mar’s hand. The lady merely unhooked the boy with an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -extra shake. Then, with her free hand, she pulled his -chair out from the table, and thrust him into it.</p> - -<p>“Now, you’re to sit right there, and then I’ll know -that at least till supper-time you won’t be getting my -children into any more mischief.”</p> - -<p>Mar had looked up upon their entrance, seemed about -to speak, and then dropped a discreet head over his work.</p> - -<p>“Where’s the baby?” demanded his wife.</p> - -<p>“Sigma—”</p> - -<p>“This precious protégé of yours,” interrupted the -lady, again straightening the carpet with the toe of her -shoe; “this precious protégé of yours has pulled up a -plank out of the sidewalk, dragged it across the field -down to the duck-pond, and there I found him, using it -as a raft.”</p> - -<p>“<em>I</em> hadn’t used it—not yet.” A world of lost opportunity -was heavily recalled.</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, <em>you</em> weren’t using it.”</p> - -<p>But the irony was lost.</p> - -<p>“Vere wasn’t woom for all of us, so I let Twenn and -Hawwy go ve first voyage. I’m vewwy kind to little -boys.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, indeed! So kind you preferred to risk other children’s -lives while you looked on.”</p> - -<p>“Looked on? Oh, no, ma’am, didn’t you see I was -workin’ like anyfing?” He glanced across at his ally. -“It was a steamship, Mr. Mar. I was ve injine. I’m a -most glowious injine—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, if you please,” Mrs. Mar broke in. “He’s been -propelling the plank all round the pond with those two -poor little innocents on it—the greatest wonder they -weren’t drowned.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It was very wrong,” said Mr. Mar, gravely—then, -under his breath to his wife, “but the water isn’t much -over a foot at the deepest.”</p> - -<p>“Quite enough to drown any wretched baby that might -fall in—but, of course, you defend that boy no matter -what he—”</p> - -<p>“Not at all—not at all. I don’t approve in the least -of his—”</p> - -<p>“And our two little boys mud and dirt from their -heads to their heels, looking like a couple of chimney-sweeps—”</p> - -<p>“No, ma’am,” said the young gentleman from the -horsehair chair, in a conciliatory tone. “Twenn and -Hawwy ain’t black, only just bwown.”</p> - -<p>“Brown, indeed! I’ll brown <em>you</em>, sir, if you ever do -such a thing again while you’re staying <em>here</em>! Harry -with his stocking quite torn off one leg! And Trennor’s -only decent breeches—”</p> - -<p>“Vere was a nail in vat board,” Jack explained, conversationally, -putting a finger through a jag in his own -trouser knee.</p> - -<p>“Small matter to <em>you</em>, if you do ruin your things.” -(Jack began to swing his muddy feet—it was gloriously -true.) “But you’ve got to remember that other children’s -clothes don’t grow on gooseberry bushes.”</p> - -<p>“My pants didn’t neever,” returned Jack, sturdily.</p> - -<p>“Keep your feet still and your tongue, too.”</p> - -<p>“Yes ’m.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar was in the act of turning away, after a further -slight attention to the carpet patch, when her eye -fell upon the handleless cup on the desk.</p> - -<p>“Did you do that?” she demanded.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mar cleared his throat, and Mrs. Mar for once, not -waiting to hear the horrid details, sat down in her rocking-chair, -despair in her face and the broken cup in her -hand.</p> - -<p>“I never saw anything like it. The grate in the kitchen -range has just collapsed, too.”</p> - -<p>“Really? That’s bad—”</p> - -<p>“It’s worse than bad—it’s awful.”</p> - -<p>“We must let the stove people know—”</p> - -<p>“How are you going to do that on Sunday?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—ah—well, it matters less I suppose on Sunday -than if it happened on a week-day.”</p> - -<p>“It won’t matter in the least, of course, to have no hot -water to wash the clothes in, Monday morning. Perhaps -<em>you’ll</em> think it matters more when it comes to eating cold -things for I don’t know how long.”</p> - -<p>“I think you’ll find I shall be able to put up with—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s perfectly true, I always find you readier to -put up with disaster than to struggle against it.”</p> - -<p>“How would you propose I should struggle against a -broken stove?”</p> - -<p>She turned her flushed face from him.</p> - -<p>“Didn’t I tell you not to kick the table?” she demanded -of Jack.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Yes ’m. I forgot.” He curled up the disgraced -foot underneath him, for a reminder that it was -to keep still.</p> - -<p>“The furniture,” Mrs. Mar went on, looking round -the room, “is quite dilapidated enough without <em>your</em> -making it worse.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I suppose I must go and attend to those children,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -and the supper. But don’t let him kick the furniture, -Nathaniel, even if he is the son of your adored -Galbraith. The owner of all that Rock Hill Mining -property didn’t trouble himself much about <em>you</em>.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, he did. He was a very good friend,” and Mar -made a slight movement as of one clearing a space in the -air before setting to work again.</p> - -<p>His wife, in her progress to the door, halted mechanically -in the middle of the patch, as though the -momentary weight of her presence there would leave behind -a subjugating effect. But she murmured absently: -“I must have another hunt for—” Then, turning with -sudden animation: “Is it you who’ve taken away my -tack-hammer?” she demanded of Jack.</p> - -<p>“No, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>“Well, understand,” she went on, precisely as though he -had admitted his responsibility for the disappearance of -the tool, “understand you’re to sit there till supper, and -this is the last of your playing about that dirty duck-pond.”</p> - -<p>“I forgot it was Sunday,” he said, penitent.</p> - -<p>“Sunday or any other day—never again.”</p> - -<p>Jack gasped with incredulity, and then, slowly, “You -don’t weally mean we’re never to go to ve pond for ever -and ever!”</p> - -<p>“Well, just you try it! And you’ll find yourself going -back to school to spend your holidays with the janitor.”</p> - -<p>In the pause that followed this awful threat Jack murmured: -“Never go a-sploring any more!” and then sat -as one paralyzed by an awful and unexpected blow.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar replaced the handleless cup upon the table, -and took up the corner of the cloth to determine the extent -of a damage wrought in the last washing.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Everything we possess seems to be giving out at once—like -the different parts of the One Hoss Shay. It’s -exactly”—she turned her bright, dark eyes toward the -writing-table, and spoke with a sudden access of vigor—“exactly -as if there was a law that allowed you for -months and years to patch and tinker, to bolster up your -rickety furniture, to darn your old carpets, to reseat your -old chairs, to make over the clothes, to solder the saucepans, -and keep things going generally, up to a given moment. -But when that moment comes”—she lifted her -finger Sibyl-like in the air—“every blessed belonging begins -to crack, or fray, or creak with the pangs of approaching -dissolution. Are you listening to what I say, -Nathaniel? There isn’t a thing in this house that -doesn’t need to be renewed.” She spoke with a directness -that seemed pointedly to include her husband among -the dilapidations. He, half-absent, half-speculative, -looked round upon objects familiar to him from childhood.</p> - -<p>“Who’d ever think,” pursued his wife, “who’d ever -think that we’d been married less than eight years? -But this is what comes of not furnishing new when you -first set up housekeeping. If you don’t get nice things -when you marry you never get them.”</p> - -<p>“Some people,” said Mar, “seem to like old furniture.”</p> - -<p>“Let them have it, then!” Her quick gesture presented -the entire contents of the house to the first bidder. -“<em>I</em> say for young people to begin life with the battered -belongings of their fathers and mothers is a mistake.”</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear,” returned her husband, with some -dignity, “it’s a mistake you had no share in. But,” he -added hastily, “we had no choice.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> - -<p>“No,” she said bitterly, “we’ve had very little -choice.”</p> - -<p>“We did once,” said Nathaniel Mar.</p> - -<p>In the pause she looked down at the patch on the carpet.</p> - -<p>“And we ignored it,” he finished.</p> - -<p>“Oh, if you are going back upon that old foolishness.” -She turned abruptly and set down the broken cup.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t think it so foolish when I first told you -about it.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, didn’t I!”</p> - -<p>“No. It made just all the difference then.”</p> - -<p>“What difference, I’d like to know, did it ever -make?”</p> - -<p>“It made you say ‘Yes’ after you’d said ‘No.’”</p> - -<p>“The more fool I,” she said, and left the room.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">The big man and the little man sat and looked -at the patch on the carpet, till for one of -them the ragged place disappeared.</p> - -<p>A big tear splashed on the grimy little -hand.</p> - -<p>But out of the mist, a voice: “Can’t you think of any -safer sort of games?”</p> - -<p>The balked navigator sniffed audibly, and with the -back of his hand he made a dirty smear across his wet -face. “We don’t any of us seem to care much about -vem, if vey are too safe.”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” and with a faint smile Mar resumed his -writing.</p> - -<p>Jack Galbraith sat quite still, for him, with the disgraced -foot tucked under him. But Mar, without raising -his eyes, was conscious as a woman might have been, -of the frequent journey of the small hand across the -eyes, and now and then the more efficacious aid of a -sleeve employed to clear the watery vision.</p> - -<p>Presently, “After I ’most dwownded ve childwen, I -expect she wouldn’t let me wead my twavel book. What -do you fink, Mr. Mar?”</p> - -<p>The gentleman addressed laid down his pen, but still -looking at it, “Well, I don’t know,” he said cautiously.</p> - -<p>Whereupon Jack Galbraith gave way openly to tears.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You’re not going to forget,” said the man, with no -great show of sympathy, “you’re not going to forget -that however much a boy’s father leaves him, America -hasn’t got any use for an idle man.”</p> - -<p>“It’s Mrs. Mar makes me sit here doin’ nuffin’,” the -child indignantly defended himself.</p> - -<p>“Oh, for the moment, yes. But when the time comes -to choose what you’re going to do, Jack—if I’m not at -hand to talk it over, think about civil engineering. It -takes a man about, and on more intelligent terms than -my profession—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Jack threw in upon the ground swell of a -heavy sob. “I shouldn’t like sittin’ countin’ money in -a bank,” and while he caught his breath he looked about -drearily, as if already he saw himself an imprisoned -cashier.</p> - -<p>“Sitting in a bank isn’t the profession I chose, either. -I am—I was a surveyor,” said Nathaniel Mar.</p> - -<p>“Oh—h?” inquired the child, in his surprise forgetting -to continue the celebration of his private misfortunes. -“Did <em>you</em> use to go all over everywhere wiv a -spy-glass and a chain?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, the members of the Scientific Corps are expected -to go ’ all over everywhere.’”</p> - -<p>“Clear wound ve world?”</p> - -<p>“Well, <em>we</em> didn’t go round—we went the other way, -the way that takes you to the top.”</p> - -<p>“Did you get clear to ve vewwy top of ve world?”</p> - -<p>“Nobody’s ever been clear to the top.”</p> - -<p>“Why hasn’t anybody?”</p> - -<p>“Tough job!”</p> - -<p>“Was it tough job to go where you went?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It wasn’t easy. Some of our work lay quite near -enough to the arctic circle.”</p> - -<p>“But I expect you liked it a lot better van—” He -paused, looked about, and felt gloom return upon him. -If Mar was thinking so was Jack Galbraith. Again he -dragged his rough sleeve across his hot, little face. -“Ain’t it perferly awful sittin’ still?” he observed.</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s pretty awful,” agreed Mr. Mar, glancing -out of the window.</p> - -<p>“Was it up vere you found ve parlor bearskin and -Mrs. Mar’s white fox?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it was up there.”</p> - -<p>“You’re sure if I’m a engineer or a surveyor <em>I’ll</em> be -able to go up vere where you found—”</p> - -<p>“Certain to be able to go somewhere.”</p> - -<p>“Why can’t I go where you did?” he asked, querulously. -As Mr. Mar did not answer at once, “Isn’t vere -any little fing left to be done up vere?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, lots! But you see I went there in ’65—going on -ten years ago, when people thought they’d like to have -a telegraph line between Asia and America. So some of -us went to survey the Alaskan part of the route (only it -wasn’t called Alaska then) and decide the best course -for the line that was to meet the one coming across from -Siberia.” Again Nathaniel Mar studied the end of his -pen.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Jack, blowing his nose with an air of -faintly reviving faith in life’s possibilities. “Yes, and -vere you met ve bear, and Mrs. Mar’s white—”</p> - -<p>“We got some furs and truck, but we didn’t get the -telegraph line.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t you?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, you see, only a few years ago people laughed at -the idea of an Atlantic cable. But while we were hard -at work up yonder surveying and clearing and setting -up telegraph poles, didn’t some other fellows prove the -possibility of an Atlantic cable by just going and laying -it! So we were recalled.”</p> - -<p>“But you had got pwetty far, anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, we got pretty far.”</p> - -<p>“You got to where ve foxes turn white and ve -bears—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Mar, reflectively, and then there was a -pause.</p> - -<p>Jack looked at him. “Couldn’t you tell me about -when you got vat bear, or”—in the tone of one grateful -for small favors—“or how you found Mrs. Mar’s -white—”</p> - -<p>“I don’t seem to remember anything specially interesting -about the bears or the foxes.” His far-off look -gave the little boy a sudden feeling of being abandoned -by his one friend. He stood it for a moment, and then -suddenly twisted his lithe body round and buried his -face in the crook of the arm that clutched the chair back. -Mar raised his eyes and seemed to come home from some -vast journey.</p> - -<p>“Something curious did happen to a man I knew up -there,” he said, in that friendly tone Jack knew so well. -“A fellow who was knocking round the Russian Redoubt -at St. Michaels, with the rest of the Scientific Corps, -waiting for the revenue cutter that was to take us back -to San Francisco. We got pretty tired waiting—”</p> - -<p>“Pwickers in your feet?” Jack interrupted, suddenly. -Mar stopped short, for although Jack had uncovered his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -face to listen he was engaged in making the most surprising -grimaces. “I’ve got awful pwickers myself,” -he said.</p> - -<p>“Prickers?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Oh, oh, my foot’s full of champagne.” Gingerly, -and with further contortions of countenance, he -stretched the cramped foot out.</p> - -<p>“Champagne?” Mar had echoed. “What do you -know about champagne?”</p> - -<p>“Once—papa’s birfday. Oh, oh, my foot’s full of it!”</p> - -<p>“If it’s gone to sleep you’d better stamp,” recommended -his friend gravely, and Jack applied the remedy -with apparent relief after the first awful shock. He -stood cautiously twisting about to restore circulation -while Mar went on: “Yes, we got pretty tired hanging -round St. Michaels, and one day two of the party took a -boat and went off to an island to get birds’ eggs. While -they were out a storm came up. An awful storm,” he -assured his inattentive listener, but Jack was still gloomily -twirling about, trying his numb foot, and not taking -any stock apparently in a story that didn’t boast a bear -in it, or even a white—</p> - -<p>“I never in my life saw anything like it,” Mar went -on. “The gale churned up the sediment of Norton -Sound into a boiling, yellow froth. The sleet gave up -trying to come down, and took to shooting horizontally, -as straight as a charge of musketry, and wherever it hit -bare flesh—” He shook his shaggy head at the memory.</p> - -<p>“<em>I</em> wouldn’t mind a little fing like vat!” said Jack, -loftily.</p> - -<p>“Well,”—Mar accepted the implied criticism with -meekness,—“what they minded most was that they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -couldn’t steer a course. It was going to be great luck if -the boat lived at all in such a sea. She was driven north -first. Neither one of the men knew just where it was -they’d got to, but any kind of land was a pretty good -sight. They were almost as glad to get near it as they -were to get away from it.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t vey like it?” Jack didn’t so much as -pause in his twirling to inquire.</p> - -<p>“Well, it wasn’t a very pretty place for landing purposes.”</p> - -<p>“Ho!” said the young gentleman with careless superiority, -“I don’t mind where <em>I</em> land! One time I landed -wight on top of a earfquake!”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” said Mar, gravely, “that was pretty daring; -but you may depend it wasn’t in as bad a place as the -one I’m talking about. Horrible steep cliffs sheer down -to the shore. Boulders piled helter-skelter. Couldn’t -see much through the dimness of the sleet and the dazzle -of the spray, still, they saw enough to know it wasn’t the -harbor they were hoping for. But to get the boat out -of that boiling surf alive—no, it wasn’t easy.”</p> - -<p>Mar caught the first look of keenness that crossed the -tear-stained face—the sudden taut aspect of the slim -little body, and he knew perfectly well that the modest -young navigator before him was saying in his heart, “Ah, -now, if <em>I’d</em> been there.” Thus encouraged, Mar went -on: “Things had been bad enough out in the open sea, -but here you were being driven straight on the rocks, and -the wind—you don’t know anything yet about what the -wind can do when it tries.”</p> - -<p>“What kind of fing?”</p> - -<p>“It cut the top off those great waves as clean as you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -can slice the peak off a hillock of ice-cream; and the -water was hurled at you, not in spray, but in masses, -you know—masses that never broke till they struck the -men or the boat—except when the wind veered, and then -the water masses were flung clean up on the cliffs, as -neatly as you could throw a bottle of soda on our roof -here and never see a drop spilled till the glass burst on -the slates.”</p> - -<p>Jack nodded and seemed to forget his twirling, though -he stood with his body slightly askew, ready to begin -again.</p> - -<p>“They’d never have got out of that boiling caldron -alive if the wind hadn’t changed.” Mar wagged his -head in a final sort of way, and turned in his revolving -chair to pick up a fallen paper.</p> - -<p>“Is vat all? And vey did get home—”</p> - -<p>“No, that’s not all, and they didn’t get home. Only -one of them got anywhere.” Mar bent his big body -slightly forward and clasped his hands round the good -knee. The other leg was stretched straight out in front -of him, stiff and lifeless looking.</p> - -<p>“They kept afloat for several hours,” he went on, -“only to be wrecked after all, a mile or two beyond an -ugly looking cape called Nome.”</p> - -<p>“Wecked! Were vey weally wecked?”</p> - -<p>Mar nodded. In an emergency so great Jack did not -scruple to turn his back on the stool of penitence. He -came and planted himself on wide apart legs, directly in -front of Mr. Mar, and stood there waiting. But Mr. Mar -seemed to be thinking less about Jack now, and he stared -steadily at the hole in the carpet.</p> - -<p>“What happened to ve little boat?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The little boat was rapidly converted into little -flinders.”</p> - -<p>“Ven how could ve men get away again?”</p> - -<p>“That’s what one of the men would have liked somebody -to tell him.”</p> - -<p>“Weren’t vere any people vere on vat land?”</p> - -<p>“Not a soul.”</p> - -<p>“Where was ve ovver man?”</p> - -<p>“He had been washed out of the boat—he—it was -hard to say where the other man was.”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t his fwiend look for him?”</p> - -<p>“Not just then. The first thing the friend did was to -tear up his shirt.”</p> - -<p>“Gwacious! Was he as mad as vat?”</p> - -<p>“No, he wasn’t mad, but he wanted some strips to tie -round a wound he’d got.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! And when he’d done vat?”</p> - -<p>“Then he went up on the tundra.”</p> - -<p>“What’s ve—”</p> - -<p>“The tundra is the great, rolling plain. They call it -‘the steppes’ in Siberia. A few inches below the arctic -moss that covers it, it’s frozen, even in summer, as hard -as iron. And it never melts. It’s been frozen like that -for millions of years.”</p> - -<p>“Why did ve man want to go up on ve—ve—?”</p> - -<p>“Well, he seemed to think he’d like to go to sleep. So -that’s what he did. He slept a long time. When he -woke up he went down to the beach, and the first thing -he saw was his friend. It looked as if the friend had been -sleepy, too. He was taking his ease down there on the -sand, in a tangle of seaweed. His face was hidden. The -other one went down to him, as fast as his wound would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -let him, and he called several times. Then he took hold of -his friend’s shoulder and shook him. But the friend -never stirred—he was dead. Up there, above the line of -seaweed and driftwood, either he or the surf had flung -his rifle—the butt rather battered, but nothing a handy -man couldn’t put right; only a rifle isn’t much good -without cartridges. By and by, the live man dug a grave -for the dead one up above tide line in the sand; and when -he had buried the body, he sat down and wondered how -long it would be before the end would come for himself. -While he sat there tinkering at the rifle, a couple of natives -came down the coast.”</p> - -<p>“Cannibals?” In his excitement Jack dropped on the -floor like a small Turk, with his legs curled under him. -But he had steadied his precipitate fall into that position -with a hand on his friend’s leg—and, as ill-luck would -have it, not the good leg, but the stiff, forbidding member -that poor Mar dragged about the world with the -help of his stout walking-stick. Now, to touch that leg -would have been like touching the leg of a table, if somehow -it hadn’t been more like touching a corpse. Jack’s -friend didn’t seem to mind. But the boy felt the contact -the more keenly for the fact that Mar felt it hardly -at all. That was the horror of a wooden leg—that it -couldn’t feel. Jack snatched away his hand as if it had -been burned. But Mar was saying calmly, “Cannibals? -Oh, no. Esquimaux, quite good fellows. They must -have seen white men and firearms before, for they took -a deep interest in the rifle. The castaway made them -understand he was hungry. They nodded and pointed -back the way they had come. The white man got up and -hobbled away with them.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What made him hobble?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—a—it’s quite common after a wreck—you’ll -notice people often hobble for a while. Well, they went -along the beach, till they came to a place so rocky it -drove them up on the edge of the tundra; and up there -the white man saw across the plain to the nor’ard, a low -line of hills streaked with snow. And there was one bare -peak in particular that stood out very plain. It looked -only about eight or nine miles away, and you could see -quite well there was something curious about it. Yes, -it was queer.”</p> - -<p>“What was ve matter wiv it?”</p> - -<p>“It had a curious-shaped top. Even from the coast it -didn’t look natural. You’d swear it was a monument -of some kind. The natives didn’t seem to know -anything about it. There was a river flowing down from -the hills through the tundra to the sea, and all the mouth -of it was choked with driftwood, though there wasn’t a -tree in sight and hadn’t been all along. Beyond the -driftwood, a long sand-spit ran out into the sea, and -spread itself right and left, parallel to the coast, and on -this sand-spit were a lot of little driftwood huts, skin -boats drawn up, and people in fur standing round a fire. -The two Esquimaux took the white man across in a boat, -and told the other Esquimaux about him. And they gave -him some food, fish. Everybody took so much interest in -his rifle that he had to sit on it. They talked a good deal, -but the white man didn’t know what it was all about. So -he ate and slept, and ate and slept, always with his rifle -under his arm. When he got tired of eating and sleeping, -the castaway sat and looked at the sea. Never a sail. -And sometimes he would turn and look at that queer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -peak over beyond the tundra. He gathered that these -people didn’t live here on this sand-spit—they were only -camping. Kind of Esquimaux summer resort. No, they -couldn’t take him to a white settlement. They knew -nothing about any white settlement. Then he would show -them, he said. Let them bring down their best boat, and -he would give his gun to them if they’d take him off -there to the southeast, to St. Michaels. They shook their -heads and bustled away. The white man saw with horror -signs of a beginning to break camp. Where were they -all going? Over the hills? No, on up the coast by sea. -When?” Mar pantomimed their answer—placed his -two hands palm to palm, laid his head down on them -sideways and shut his eyes, opened them briskly, and -took hold of his stick as if about to start on a journey.</p> - -<p>Jack was grinning with delight. “Was <em>vat</em> ve way vey -said ‘to-morrow morning?’”</p> - -<p>“Just like that. They were going off the very next -day!”</p> - -<p>“Not goin’ to leave vat poor man all alone vere, were -vey?”</p> - -<p>“No, they seemed quite ready to take the castaway and -his rifle along. But”—Mr. Mar looked so grave that -Jack came closer still—“to go up yonder with them to -their underground winter home seemed to the castaway -almost as horrible as to be left behind. Well, he had a -day anyhow to think it over. His wound was still pretty -painful, but he felt whatever happened, he ought to go -over the tundra to that queer hill and take a look at the -situation from the top. He must have been feverish, or -he’d have realized that he wasn’t fit yet for hard exercise, -and that there wasn’t a ghost of a likelihood of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -settlement on the far side, since these natives knew nothing -about it. Then you see, there was the awful danger -that on this last day a rescue party should sail hopelessly -by while he was away, or a whaling schooner pass, that he -might have hailed. But no. He had got it into his head -that if he could only reach the top of that glacier-carved -height, all his troubles would be at an end. But he did -have the sense to guard against the natives making off -in his absence. He got one of the boys to come along -with him.</p> - -<p>“How old was vat boy?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—a—about your size, but four or five years older, -and very clever at throwing the bird-dart. No, I’ll tell -you about that another time. They set off across the -tundra. It wasn’t easy walking. It wasn’t walking at -all. It was jumping from one moss knoll to another, or -wading to the knees in the spongy hollows. But he’d -look up at the peak and say: ‘Once I’m <em>there</em>—’ All the -same, he had to call a halt several times. He’d find a -dryish place, and he’d sit down and stare about him. -They had long lost sight of the sand-spit. Even the sea -had disappeared. To right and left, as far as you could -see, tundra, tundra, nothing but tundra, a few pools shining -in the hollows, and acres of sedge and moss, and low-growing -‘scrub-willow.’ Nothing else. Just this featureless -plain till the land met the ocean and the ocean met -the arctic ice. Suddenly, ‘What’s that?’ says the white -man, and he pointed sou’west. The native stared. The -light plays you queer tricks on the tundra. You often -see lakes and ships and cities that aren’t there. But this -didn’t look like a mirage, it was too simple, too distinct. -Just two sticks stuck in the tundra. They might be one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -mile away, they might be ten. But there those sticks -stood as clear against the blue sky as a couple of bean -poles on a prairie farm.”</p> - -<p>“Vey <em>weren’t</em> bean poles!” said the prescient listener.</p> - -<p>“No,” agreed Mar. “The white man decided it must -be some driftwood contrivance of the natives. Only the -remarkable thing about it was, that he hadn’t noticed it -before. For a thing like that is apt to strike you in a -country where there wasn’t a tree for a hundred and -fifty miles to the south’ard, and not one between you and -the Pole. Well, he felt he’d know more about those -sticks, and he’d know more about a lot besides, when -he’d got to the top of the hill. So they went on; but the -hill was a good way off. The ‘little white patches’ turned -out to be vast fields of rotten snow. You went in up to -your waist. The native jabbered, and seemed to be pointing -out that it was better to go the long way round. -There was less snow, and there didn’t seem to be such a -chaos of talus—broken rock, you know—tumbled down -from the peak. And the peak wasn’t a peak. It was -more like a queer-shaped, flat stone set on a rock pedestal. -‘It’s all right,’ the man kept saying to himself, as -they pushed on, ‘I shall feel it was worth it, once I’m on -the top.’ And they went on and on. All of a sudden the -man looked up, and realized that the feeling that had been -haunting him was justified. The rock up there was like -a giant anvil. So like, it was almost uncanny to think -nature could have carved a stone with such whimsical exactness. -‘Just wait till I get up there,’ he said again, -half-laughing to himself; ‘see if I don’t hammer out -<em>something</em>!’ and he forgot his wound and how it hurt -him to walk, and he jumped across a water hole to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -higher knoll and saw that the ground on the other side -fell gently down to a shallow valley. And the valley held -a little stream in its lap. The white man realized when -he saw that, how thirsty he was. He hadn’t dared to -drink out of the standing pools on the tundra, and he -went as fast as he could away from the anvil, and down -the slope to the running water. He saw a dash of something -white on the edge of the bank, as he hurried down -to the creek, and he knew in the back of his head that it -was a little heap of weather-bleached bones that shone so, -off there in the grass. But he never stopped till he stood -by the bed of the stream. He took up the water in his -double hands and drank. It was good water, and he’d -never been so thirsty before in his life. But the water -spilled away through his fingers, and he felt he should -never get enough. So he balanced himself over some -stones, and he lay on his stomach, and reached his lips to -the clear water. He drank and drank, with his half-shut -eyes fixed on a spark of mica, that caught the light and -was shining like a diamond under the water. No, it -wasn’t mica. He saw plainer now. He leaned over a -little further, and picked the bit of pyrites out of the -wet gravel. The Esquimau boy saw the white man stand -up as suddenly as if he’d been stung. But he held on to -the thing he had taken into his palm, and he lifted his -hand, like this, several times, and he turned the thing -over and over, weighing it. One place in the stained, -brassy-looking thing had been scratched, and every time -the light caught that new abrasion, it glinted. The white -man took out his knife and cut the substance. It was gold!”</p> - -<p>“<em>Weal</em> gold?” said Jack Galbraith, gathering up his -sprawled-out body with a squirrel-like quickness.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Real gold,” answered Mar. “‘Any more stuff like -this about?’ the white man asked. The native looked at -the nugget, and shrugged indifferently. The white man -dug about in the gravel with his hands and a sharp stone, -and then he sat down and thought, with his eyes on the -place where the nugget had been. The Esquimau boy -got out his bird-dart, and went off a little way after a -jack-snipe. The white man knew he ought to make a -miner’s assay.”</p> - -<p>“What’s vat?”</p> - -<p>“That’s ‘panning.’ If he’d had a round pan like -Sigma’s bread pan, he’d have put some sand and gravel -in it, and he would fill it to the brim with water, and -he’d wash the sand and gravel round and round, picking -out all the stones and letting off the water little by little, -with a circular motion—so. And all the lighter sand and -stuff would get washed out; and by and by, if the miner -knows his business, any gold that may have been in that -sand, every particle, is left behind in the bottom of the -pan.”</p> - -<p>“Gwacious! Vat <em>would</em> be luck!” said Jack, with enthusiasm.</p> - -<p>“No, it isn’t luck. It’s skill and specific gravity.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t ve man twy it?”</p> - -<p>“He hadn’t any pan. He hadn’t even a shovel. I’ve -seen it done very cleverly with a shovel. I’ve seen it -done with a saucer. He had nothing. How was he going -to find out if there was any more of that stuff there? Had -this one nugget by any chance been dropped? No, that -was absurd. Who could have dropped it? But he looked -up the bank where the bones shone, and out of the coarse -grass a skull grinned at him. Not a wolf’s skull, or a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -deer’s, as he’d thought. A human being’s—a white -man’s, perhaps. Had the nugget belonged to him? Had -he brought it from some valley far away, and lost his bit -of gold as well as his life here under the shadow of the -great stone anvil? The graver the man got down there -by the water, the broader the one on the bank seemed to -grin. Suddenly the living man got up, and ran toward -that heap of bones as if he couldn’t rest till he’d found -out what the joke was the dead man was laughing at. He -picked up the skull, and he saw it was a white man’s.”</p> - -<p>“How could he see vat?”</p> - -<p>“He looked at the teeth. They were splendid. Good -as any savage’s—all but one—one was filled. When he -saw that, the castaway knew that probably this white -man, who had been here before him, had dropped that -nugget in the creek—or it had been washed down there -after the wolves had torn the dead man’s clothes. But who -could tell! ‘Look here,’ the live man asked, ‘what <em>did</em> -happen?’ But the other wouldn’t say a word, just went -on grinning in that irritating way of his. So the live -man picked up two stones, and got out his big clasp-knife, -and he went at that skull with might and main, -sawing at it with the knife (which was no good at all), -and hammering with first one stone and then another, -working away like one possessed.”</p> - -<p>“Did he weally fink he could make ve skull tell him -somefing?” and Jack Galbraith laughed aloud at so foolish -an adventurer.</p> - -<p>“Seemed as if he thought he’d get <em>some</em> satisfaction -out of it, from the way he kept on. By the time the Esquimau -boy got back with the jack-snipe, the white man -had hammered away everything from that skull except<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -the round basin of the cranium—this part, you know. -The Esquimau boy was horrified, and made signs of disapproval.</p> - -<p>“‘Just you wait,’ said the white man. He took the -bone bowl down to the bank. He filled it full, and three -times he ‘panned’ the gravel of that creek. <em>And every -time he got gold!</em>”</p> - -<p>“Gwacious!” said Jack, in an excited whisper.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” agreed Mr. Mar, “when he saw colors the third -time he just poured the stuff wet into his handkerchief, -and told the Esquimau boy he was ready to go now. As -he went up the bank, he passed the bones again. ‘I wonder -if he knew!’ the castaway thought, and as he went on -he thought more and more, and he got solemner and -solemner. He said to himself: ‘A gold mine will do me -just about as much good as it did Old Bones, if I have to -stay up here with the Esquimaux. We’ll go back the -other way,’ he called to the boy, and the boy didn’t -think much of the plan. But the white man kept looking -all round in every direction, to see if there was the least -little trail leading anywhere, or the smallest human sign. -Only those bones shining so white down there on the bank! -The castaway went on, feeling pretty sick and anxious, -till he looked straight up and saw off there against the -blue, that great anvil, plainer than ever. The nose quite -sharp and finely cut, the top as flat as our dining-table, -and the waist gouged in exactly as a real anvil is. ‘Well, -I won’t give up going to the top,’ he said out loud, ‘and -if there <em>are</em> any settlements—’ It was a crazy thing to -do, but he did it; and when he got to the top he saw -something he wouldn’t have seen in time, if he hadn’t -climbed Anvil Rock.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What did he see?” Jack gathered together his -sprawled-out body and sat up.</p> - -<p>Mar’s eyes looked over the little boy’s head into space. -“No settlements. Beyond the creek, barren hills to the -north. No hope that way. East and west the tundra -stretched to the horizon line level as the ocean. No hope -right or left. He turned round and saw off there to the -south the coast where he’d been wrecked, and the sand-spit -the Esquimaux were making ready to leave, and beyond -that, against the horizon—what was that! He -nearly fell off the rock. For a two-masted schooner was -lying a couple of miles off the shore. Two masts! It -flashed over him those were the two poles he’d seen -sticking up above the tundra, several hours before. Well, -he got down off that rock double quick, and he nearly -killed himself tearing back to the coast, and signaling the -ship. He was only just in time—they were weighing anchor.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Jack, with a long breath of relief, “it -<em>was</em> a good fing he climbed vat funny hill!”</p> - -<p>“Y—yes,” said Nathaniel Mar. His tone was hardly -satisfactory.</p> - -<p>“Didn’t he get back to his fwiends all wight?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, he got back all right.”</p> - -<p>“What did vey say when he told vem about ve gold?”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t tell anybody about that just then.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“If he had, somebody might have rushed there and -cleaned the whole creek out, before he had a chance.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! How soon did he go back?”</p> - -<p>“He—he didn’t go.”</p> - -<p>Jack sat there wide-eyed. “W—why didn’t he?”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus2"> -<img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“Mar’s eyes looked over the little boy’s head into space”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, you see, he had a pretty bad time with that leg -of his.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it was his leg, was it?”</p> - -<p>“A—yes—his leg. He kept waiting for the doctors to -cure it. Instead of curing it they kept cutting off little -bits of it.”</p> - -<p>“Ow! Well—and after vat, when it <em>did</em> get well.”</p> - -<p>“It didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“And was he lame always, like you?”</p> - -<p>“Something like me.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t <em>he</em> get a store leg, too?”</p> - -<p>“He did, I believe—ultimately.”</p> - -<p>“And wasn’t it any good?”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t quite the same as the one he’d lost.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no.” Jack realized that, with a creep down his -back. He could still feel the dreadful touch of it on his -fingers. “But I suppose he sent somebody else up after -vat gold?”</p> - -<p>“N-no.”</p> - -<p>“Well, what <em>did</em> he do?”</p> - -<p>“He—he got married.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—h. And after vat?”</p> - -<p>“Then he got a post of some sort—not easy to get, still -harder to leave.”</p> - -<p>“And—”</p> - -<p>“And then he got some children. Oh, he was always -getting things, that fellow! Once it was intermittent -fever. Anyhow he had to stay where he was.”</p> - -<p>“Ven who got ve gold?”</p> - -<p>“Nobody. Not yet.”</p> - -<p>“Ve gold is waitin’ vere now?” Jack jumped to his -feet with dancing eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p> - -<p>“So—a—so he says.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—<em>oh</em>!” Then with an air of fiery impatience:</p> - -<p>“What you say vat man’s doin’ now?”</p> - -<p>“He—well—I understand he’s hanging on to that -post.”</p> - -<p>“Hangin’ on a post!” Jack colored as Mar laughed, -and added hurriedly, “Just waitin’ to see if vat leg -won’t get better, I s’pose.”</p> - -<p>“Waiting for—several things.”</p> - -<p>Jack came closer. “Oh, <em>doesn’t</em> he mean to never -mind his leg, and go back some day?”</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t be surprised if he had times of thinking -he would go back <em>somehow</em>. After he’s educated his -children, and got them off his hands, and can afford to -take risks. Or, if the worst comes to the worst, his sons -will go one day.”</p> - -<p>“Or <em>I</em> might go,” said Jack, quickly.</p> - -<p>Mar smiled and fell silent. Jack walked away with his -hands in his breeches pockets, and his eyes big with -dreams. The opening of the door made them both start.</p> - -<p>“Didn’t I tell you not to get out of that chair till -supper?” Mrs. Mar demanded. She stood there with the -butter dish in one hand and the milk pitcher in the other, -snapping her bright eyes at the culprit.</p> - -<p>He for his part had turned about sharply, and he fell -from the infinite skies with a bump.</p> - -<p>“I—I—” he stammered, backing against the bookcase.</p> - -<p>“It’s on the lower shelf,” said Mar, calmly. “The -heavy brown book.” Jack turned again, utterly bewildered, -but following the direction indicated by Mr. Mar’s -walking-stick.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s ‘Franklin’s Second Voyage,’ next the dictionary. -Yes, that’s what I want. I think,” he went -on to his wife, as Jack stooped to obey him, “I think I -must always keep a small prisoner in here, to hand me -things out of my reach.”</p> - -<p>She answered nothing as she set down the butter and -the milk, but she kept her eyes on Jack.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes,” he was saying hurriedly, “vis is Fwanklin.” -He carried the book to his friend.</p> - -<p>“Fwanklin!” repeated that gentleman with affectation -of scorn, as he opened the book. “Now, sir, go back -to your seat and practice your R’s. It’s ridiculous for a -boy of your age to be talking baby talk.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sir,” said Jack, getting very red as he returned -to his place. Mrs. Mar stood at the sideboard making a -dressing for the salad. Every now and then she looked -over her shoulder. But Jack sat impeccable in the penitential -chair, saying softly, but with careful emphasis:</p> - -<p>“Awound ve wugged wocks ve wagged wascal wan. -Awound ve,”—but his eyes were too shining to show a -mind properly bent upon the course pursued by that particular -wascal.</p> - -<p>After supper, while Mrs. Mar was putting Trennor -and Harry to bed, Jack Galbraith looked everywhere he -could think of for his book. No, Mr. Mar hadn’t seen it. -“Here, I’ll lend you mine. You’ll understand some of -the chapter about,”—and he turned the pages till he -found the place, and he put in a slip of paper. “There! -Franklin didn’t find what he was looking for, but he’s -written the best travel book I know.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, fank you, sir.” Jack took the big volume in -both arms, and was making off with it.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> - -<p>“And look here, Jack, about that other fellow—the -man who did find something up there, you and I won’t -tell anybody about that.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” He stopped and nodded at Mar over the great -book. “All wight. But I may speak to <em>you</em> about it -sometimes—”</p> - -<p>“When we’re alone.”</p> - -<p>“All wight. Hasn’t he,” Jack lowered his tone to -conspirator’s pitch, “hasn’t he ever told anybody but -you?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he’s told one or two. But in confidence, you -know. People he can trust.”</p> - -<p>Jack pulled himself up proudly. “I can keep secrets -like anyfing.” But again he lowered his voice, and smiling -delightedly, “What do vey say,” he demanded with -lively anticipation, “vose ovvers, when vey hear about -it?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Mar did not answer instantly.</p> - -<p>Jack drew nearer, still clasping the great book. “Oh, -<em>do</em> tell me what vey say.”</p> - -<p>“They—they think he dreamed it.”</p> - -<p>“B—b—but,” Jack stuttered with indignation, -“doesn’t he show vem ve nugget, and ve handkerchief -wiv ve—”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Mar, sadly. “He lost that handkerchief -somewhere on the tundra.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-n.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Not for several years had Mar made mention -of the far northern experience which, beside -laming him for life, had as yet but one visible -effect upon his circumstances—that of -ruining his credit as a man of judgment -among those nearest to him.</p> - -<p>People had recognized Nathaniel Mar as one marked -out for misfortune, when, upon his father’s death, he had -been obliged to give up his theological studies, and come -back from college, to take the first thing that offered him -a little ready money for the assistance of his mother. His -modest salary as surveyor’s clerk was presently augmented, -in recognition of his good draftsmanship and -his surprisingly quick mastery of the new field. But it -was not till the work he did the following year, over -in the Rock Hill district, brought him the friendship of -the prosperous young mine owner Galbraith, that Mar -found an opportunity of following the more scientific -side of his new profession. It was Galbraith who got -him the post on the Coast Survey, that led to Mar’s joining -the Russian-American Expedition.</p> - -<p>After his return the handsome schoolmistress, who had -reluctantly said “no” to the penniless surveyor, consented -to look with favor upon the Discoverer of Gold in -the new territory of Alaska.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> - -<p>But she warmly opposed Mar’s design of going to Rock -Hill to share the great secret with his friend Galbraith. -No, indeed! The Rock Hill mining magnate was in small -need of “tips.” It was clearly Mar’s duty to give the -men of Miss Trennor’s family the first chance of joining -in this glorious scheme that was to enrich them all.</p> - -<p>When Harriet Trennor called the Trennor brothers -“the men of her family,” she made the most of what was -a second cousinship. It was even the case that she was -not on very good terms with those go-ahead young gentlemen; -for the Trennors, in spite of their prosperity, -had never, as she expressed it, “done anything” for her. -It had been for the sake of her old father that they had -bestirred themselves sufficiently to recommend Harriet -for the post of assistant superintendent of the Girls’ College -of Valdivia. But after providing her with an opportunity -to leave their common birthplace in St. Joseph, -Missouri, the Trennors and their respective wives had, in -point of fact, neglected Miss Harriet to such a degree, -that there would be a certain magnificence in her heaping -coals of fire on their heads. She, the poor relation, -whom they had so little regarded, would put it in the way -of men merely well-off to become millionaires. They -would learn her worth at last!</p> - -<p>Yes, yes, Nathaniel must keep the great secret close, till -the Trennors (who were in New York on their yearly business -trip) should have returned. But the affairs of the -brothers took them to Mexico, and their home coming was -further delayed.</p> - -<p>While they tarried acute pneumonia appeared upon -the Rock Hill scene, and carried off John Galbraith. Little -part in Mar’s grief at the loss of his best-loved friend<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -was played by the thought that now he could not count -upon his “backing.” Galbraith took with him out of the -world something that to a man of Mar’s temperament -meant more. And at that time he looked upon himself -as possessor of a secret that any capitalist in the -country would hold himself lucky to share. It was not -till the return of his wife’s cousins that he found there -could be exceptions to this foregone conclusion.</p> - -<p>As enterprising dabblers in real estate and mining, -and with the Palmas Valley Bank behind them, the Trennor -brothers were constantly being approached by people -with schemes for making millions. Such persons, though -almost invariably as poor as Mar, were not often, the -Trennor brothers agreed, ready with propositions so fantastic.</p> - -<p>Alaska was in those days further away from men’s imaginations -than Patagonia. The few people who had anything -to say about the newly acquired territory, used it -only as a club to belabor the then secretary of state. -What had he been thinking of to advise his foolish country -to pay seven millions for the barren rocks and worthless -ice-fields that astute Russia, after one hundred and -twenty-six years’ attempt at occupation, was so ready to -abandon!</p> - -<p>“Worthless!” retorted Secretary Seward’s friends. -“Why, the Seal Islands alone—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, the Seal Islands <em>are</em> alone on the credit side -of the transaction. Seward gave those seven millions for -the two little Pribyloffs, and the value of Alaska may be -gaged by the fact that it was just thrown in.”</p> - -<p>Was it to be believed, the Trennors asked, was it -<em>likely</em> there was gold in a place where fellows with such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> -keen noses as the Russians—they shook their heads. Both -of them shook their heads, for the Trennor brothers always -did everything together. Who could believe it had -been left for a man like Mar—besides, that gold should -be up there was dead against the best geologic opinion of -the day. The precious metal had never been found under -these conditions. There were reasons, scientific reasons, -as anybody but Mar would know, why gold -couldn’t exist in just that formation (they spoke as if -the vast new realm boasted but one). And, finally, even -if there <em>was</em> gold in such a place, how the dickens was it -going to be got out?</p> - -<p>It was in the talk about mining facilities that Mar’s -own faith suffered the first of many hurts.</p> - -<p>He was obliged to concede that these astute young men -were well-informed as regards the difficulties and disappointments -of mining, even in a land where transport -was easy, food cheap, and labor plentiful—a land blessed -by running water and perpetual summer. No less was -Mar constrained to admit that this gold he believed he -had found was hidden in a barren corner of the uttermost -North, where not even an occasional tree promised -timber for sluice boxes, where the winter was nine -months long, and where, even in summer, the soil six -inches below the surface was welded with the frost of -ages.</p> - -<p>They were surprised, the Trennors said, that any one -should expect them to take stock in such a—</p> - -<p>Oh, he didn’t (Mar hastened to defend himself), he -didn’t at all expect—it was only that his wife had -begged him to come to them first.</p> - -<p>And they smiled. They always smiled when Mar’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -mad notion was mentioned. Even after it ceased to be -actually mentioned, they had for his mere name a particular -kind of tolerant, distant-cousin-by-marriage smile -that said “poor Mar,” with an accent on the adjective.</p> - -<p>The new Mrs. Mar was at first boundlessly indignant -with her kinsmen. “Never mind,” she adjured her husband, -with flashing eyes; as soon as he should be able to -travel, they would go up there themselves. She seemed -unobservant of the fact that his spirits were not raised -by her kind proposition. They would have no trouble, -she assured him, in finding worthier partners to join -them in the great scheme when once they had “made -sure.”</p> - -<p>“Made sure?” said Mar, wincing; “but I <em>have</em> made -sure.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, of course. Still you did lose the nugget—and -the gold dust, too.”</p> - -<p>For the first time Mar changed the subject.</p> - -<p>“You haven’t anything <em>to show</em>,” she persisted. To -which he answered nothing.</p> - -<p>Shortly after they were married, Mar’s mother became -very ill. The following spring she died. Mar’s own -health and spirits were a good deal lowered by the surgical -torment he was called on periodically to undergo, as -amputation followed amputation.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, without waiting to “go up there and make -sure,” two efforts on Mrs. Mar’s part to interest moneyed -men in her husband’s discovery, resulted not alone in -failing to convince any one else that this was a fine opportunity -for investment, but ultimately in undermining -her own faith.</p> - -<p>With the coming of her first child she prepared to cast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -overboard the wild hope (she saw now that it <em>was</em> wild) -of a fortune up yonder in the ice-fields, and showed herself -wisely ready to make what she could out of the saner -possibilities life presented in Valdivia. Her cousins had -been right. She wouldn’t admit it to them—not yet—but -it was a crazy scheme, that notion of gold in the -arctic regions!</p> - -<p>Dreamer as he was, Mar missed nothing of the intended -effect when she first ceased to talk about his discovery—ceased -to plan all life with that fact for its corner-stone. -Her initial silence hurt him probably more -than the half-veiled taunts of a later time. It was all the -difference between the shrinking of an open wound and -the dull beating of an ancient cicatrice.</p> - -<p>Not only, as time went on, did she resent the illusion -she had been under, but, as is common with women of -her type, her husband’s greater significance since motherhood -had come to her, made her increasingly dread that -foolish infatuation of his. She foresaw that a continued -faith in the value of his “find” would stand between him -and energetic pursuit of fortune in any other direction. -So it was that the North was not merely for her, as time -went on, the type of a shattered dream—it came to be -her and her babies’ rival in this man’s thoughts. This -man—who owed to them all his thoughts, all his faith -and energy—he was divided in his allegiance.</p> - -<p>And not in dreams alone might he desert them. He -might even conceivably insist, against all rational advice -and plain duty, he might insist on going back there! -The mere idea of his fatuous clinging to the old plan -came to exercise over her an almost uncanny power for -misery. Not that he continued openly to admit his preoccupation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -But it was there—she was sure of that—in -his head, more properly in his heart, his refuge, his darling, -his delight. She came to feel for it the hatred, and -to have before it the involuntarily nerve recoil, that lies -for some wives in the thought of another woman. What -if she never succeeded in rooting the fancy out of his -brain? How was she at least to make sure of preventing -his squandering time and money in pursuit of it?—now, -when she could not go too, and when his going would -mean (as she honestly thought) disaster to her and to -the children and the humiliation of falling back for cousinly -help on those wise young Missourians, who had seen -at once the madness of the scheme.</p> - -<p>She patched up the breach with her two kinsmen, and -induced them to offer her husband a small position in -their bank.</p> - -<p><em>That</em> would hold him.</p> - -<p>But although she succeeded in seeing the cripple made -teller—as a first step, she was firmly convinced, on the -road to a partnership—she was not delivered from her -fear. The unspoken dread that he might throw aside the -humble, though precious, “sure thing” for this chimera -beckoning from the North—the dread of it became the -main factor in their spiritual relation. For not only did -she never free herself from her grudging love of the man—and -never, therefore, from her shrinking at the prospect -of separation—not only did she conceive of him in -the American way as the property of his family and -bound as bondsmen are to serve them to the end, but in -addition to all that, more and more as the years went on, -did she come profoundly to disbelieve in the validity of -his story.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Do you still think you may go back there one day?” -she burst out on one occasion, looking darkly at the reconnaissance -map that hung on the dining-room wall. -Mar mumbled something about the satisfaction in the -verifying of an impression.</p> - -<p>“Verifying <em>what</em>? How do you verify pure fancy?” -Then turning suddenly upon him, “If ever you do go, -you’ll only be giving a fantastic reason for a restless -man’s longing to leave his home.”</p> - -<p>At moments conceived by her to be critical, she would -toss at him the reproach of his well-known visionariness, -and all their old foolish hope and its utter loss would be -held up to scorn in her saying, apropos of something -quite foreign: “That’s like some one I once knew who -wanted people to believe in a miracle. But not without -proof, he said. He <em>had</em> proof—absolute proof—only he’d -lost it.” Or, less offensive, but for Mar no less pointed, -the form of skepticism his loss of the nugget had crystallized -for her, “You’ve got to have something to <em>show</em> -to a Missourian.”</p> - -<p>This was later not only adopted by her boys as a favorite -family gibe, but introduced into their school, and -thence spread abroad as a foolish and pointless saying -sometimes will, no one quite knowing why, till all of that -generation, whatever their origin, would say with a wag -of the head: “You’ve got to <em>show</em> me—I’m from Missouri,” -whenever they wished to announce themselves -acute fellows by no means to be taken in.</p> - -<p>As to the particular matter that gave rise to the saying, -Mrs. Mar’s strong personal feeling about it was augmented -by outside circumstances. Stories of failure in -gold mining were too rife and too well-attested not to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -have a significance difficult to disregard. Blameless misfortune -as well as wholesale swindling, were so much the -order of the day in the West, that men of business like -the Trennors, when they wanted to promote some mining -scheme, must needs have recourse to the gorgeous East. -New York had plenty of money for “wildcat” schemes. -But no place, the wise would tell you, like conservative -old Boston for floating a risky concern. New Englanders -were at that distance which lends enchantment. For -them gold mining is still a form of romance—the mere -thought of it goes to the head like wine.</p> - -<p>But Valdivia was neither near enough to the mining -centers to catch the fever, nor yet so far away but what -her citizens mightily feared infection. Had not their -townsman, Ben White, lost his head and his fortune over -at Huerfano Creek? Wasn’t there young Andrews for -a warning!</p> - -<p>No catastrophe of this kind in their little world lost -through Mrs. Mar’s agency any of its ironic usefulness as -illustration. She succeeded not only in making her husband -doubt the wisdom of giving up a sure thing in the -bank, to claim an unworkable gold mine, but little by -little, as the rain and the weather wear away the sharp -outlines of a stone inscription, so for Nathaniel Mar the -years and the unbelief about him brought a gradual blurring -of the picture, till even to himself its early outlines -were a little dimmed.</p> - -<p>To revive its actuality, more than for any other purpose, -nearly ten years after he had told the story to little -Jack Galbraith, he told it again to Mr. Elihu H. Cox. -The man listened with such a look in his big, fishy eyes, -in a silence so galling, that Mar interposed hurriedly:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -“And there’s one capital thing about it. It’s safe -enough. If the gold’s there, it certainly won’t run -away,” and abruptly changed the subject; though to -hear himself saying “if it’s there,” rankled in his memory -like apostasy. He would never tell the story again -till his boys were grown and he told it to them. <em>They</em> -would believe him. They, with youth and four sound -legs between them, they would go up there and justify -the long faith.</p> - -<p>For fear that he might die before they were old enough -to be indoctrinated, he wrote out as circumstantial an -account as he could between intervals of black despair at -finding how dim were certain details. He grappled with -the horror and saw it recede before the draftsman’s skill -and his peerless satisfaction in preparing careful diagrams -and a map to larger scale. There was an effect of -mathematical accuracy about these illustrations of his -account that gave him back his confidence. If there was -any trifling difference between these data and those furnished -upon his return, the apparent discrepancy lay in -the essential impressionism of mere words. The compass -and the rule can’t lie. He put the precious document -away with his will, in the vault of the Palmas Valley -Bank, but he did not put away the thought of it. On the -contrary, he kept it by him day and night, turning it -over in his mind with the rich comfort of the man who -reflects that he will leave to his children a handsome inheritance -and a fund of gratitude. Something in this -case that partook of the nature of a paternal life-insurance—the -kind of thing that had not profited, could not -profit the giver, except as it profited him to feel that for -all his appearance of being one of life’s failures, he yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> -had insured his children against the meaner assaults of -fortune. For this “policy” that he held for them was -“paid up.” Oh, yes, Nathaniel Mar had paid heavily—not -yearly, but daily, almost hourly, for his lien upon the -riches of the North.</p> - -<p>The thought of the gold-shotted creek between the -Great Stone Anvil and the arctic circle comforted him -not least when he looked at his little daughter. It was -good to know—the knowledge helped him through many -a difficult hour—that Hildegarde would never be forced -to join the ever fuller ranks of the bread-winning -women. It would be no hurt to her that, however great -an heiress she might be, she had been frugally brought -up.</p> - -<p>There was something large and fine and tranquil about -the Scandinavian-looking girl, whom her parents had -called by the stately northern name with more luck than -attends many a christening—since it is well-known Victoria -is, like as not, to take on an aspect depressed and -down-trodden; Grace to turn out clumsy and hideous; -while Ivy shows a sturdy independence, and Blanche and -Lily grows swarthy as a squaw.</p> - -<p>But the fact was that the little Mar girl was named -Harriet Hildegarde, and was even called “Hattie” till -she was nearly twelve, when, after remarking one day, -“I don’t look like a Hattie, and I’m not going to be a -Hattie,” she refused thereafter to hear the obnoxious diminutive -and quietly but firmly coerced her family and -her schoolmates into saying “Hildegarde,” if they -wanted her to notice them.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar was grieved to find that her only daughter -had no conspicuous talents, and was not even a girl of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -spirit—lacked, moreover, the will to cultivate that affectation -of being spirited, which goes in America by the -name of “brightness.” But she was not a bad sort of -little girl after all; she got her lessons, and played games -with a certain boyish gusto, and gardened with a patient -devotion that her mother thought worthy of a better -cause. But Mrs. Mar consoled herself for the girl’s lack -of brilliancy by reflecting that Hildegarde was probably -going to be handsome and that men were great donkeys -and might never find out that she was slow.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde herself was conscious of her shortcomings—without -the knowledge overwhelming her. Life -was going to be very good, even if she wasn’t at the head -of the class, or a shining light at the school commencements. -She had no talent for music, and quite as little -for recitation. It was something to hear her saying, in -the famous garden scene—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Geh’ falsche gleissnerische Königin</div> -<div class="verse">Wie du die Welt so täusch’ ich Dich—”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">in a tone of unruffled courtesy and with a brow serene. -When the fiery Madeleine Smulsky took her off with, -“This is Hildegarde laying dark plots—now she’s doing -foul murder,” and proceeded to translate her friend’s -large tranquillity into the feverish terms of picturesque -wickedness, the effect was distinctly diverting. Even -Hildegarde laughed. For she got over “minding.” It -was when she was quite little that she had suffered most, -and from the scorn of her own family. Her brothers -were both “such very bright boys,” and her mother she -knew to be enormously clever. It had been painful to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> -feel that beside these richly dowered ones, she was “next -door to an idiot.” She made no outward struggle -against the verdict of her family, accepting it as many -a young creature will, without a doubt of its being as -just as final. But, fortunately, hers was a nature too -sane and sunny for her to run the risk many children do -of coming nervously to dread, and so making true, a -prophecy having no foundation in necessity. When she -discovered that she had competent hands—hands with -which she could perform all manner of pleasant domestic -miracles—that gradually, and because of her, the house -was transformed and the garden made to smile; that, -moreover (assuring her of a hold upon the fine arts, too), -she could tell ghost stories that made her school friends -gibber with excitement, the girl felt agreeably conscious -that her destiny after all was maybe larger than the -family eye had been able to discern.</p> - -<p>When Hildegarde was sixteen a new pupil appeared at -the Valdivia School for Young Ladies. A little girl -hardly twelve, delicate, pretty, appealing, yet self-sufficing; -so backward in some of her studies, and so advanced -in others, that she could not be entered in either -the upper primary or lower academic classes, but was -sent to recite arithmetic and geography with the infants, -Latin with the first academic girls, and French with the -second collegiates—young ladies four to six years older -than little Bella Wayne.</p> - -<p>She was a boarder, and it was said her parents had put -her under the special care of Miss Gillow, the principal. -She even had special dishes cooked for her, and the fact -that these “milk puddings” (as it seemed they were -called) were plainer than the food set before the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -boarders, did nothing to mitigate the offensiveness of the -distinction. Certainly the principal accorded the “new -girl” so many privileges that a strong party sprang up -against her.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, even before a certain day of wrath, had -found herself unconsciously absorbed in watching this -thin slip of prettiness, who looked as if a puff of wind -would blow her away, who ought to have carried herself -humbly, if not actually depressed, in her capacity of unclassifiable -new-comer, and who yet walked about with -her little nose in the air, as if she despised Valdivia, and -especially scorned the critical young ladies of Valdivia’s -celebrated school.</p> - -<p>It did not help her good standing that she showed herself -indifferent to an opportunity of joining the Busy -Bees. Now, the Busy Bees were a very popular organization -which not only sewed on alternate Saturday afternoons -at the rectory, but danced with an equal regularity, -in various other places, and organized a bazaar once a -year in the Masonic Hall. Besides the gaiety of this -function, there was a fine flavor of philanthropy about -the regular application of the proceeds to the clothing -and educating of a little Hindu girl, who was able -strangely soon to write pious letters to the young ladies -of Valdivia—letters in which she seemed to get even with -her benefactors by saying that she never forgot to pray -for them. The Bees had had the joy of deciding by what -name their protégé should be christened. As there were -three Marys and six Trennors among them, the little -Hindu was called Mary Trennor, and every properly constituted -girl felt pledged for Mary Trennor’s material -and spiritual welfare—that is, every girl in Valdivia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -whose fortunate social condition permitted her to aspire -to wear the badge of the Golden Bee. It followed that -the new girl was not properly constituted when she -declined the honor. It was even apparent that her heart -was not in the right place. For when Beatrice Trennor -most forbearingly showed the new girl the framed -photograph of the Hindu convert, in order to stimulate -interest in the cause, Miss Bella Wayne turned from it -with the observation, “She’s ugly. I shan’t do a single -thing for such a hideous little girl. I don’t think they -ought to be encouraged.”</p> - -<p>It was plain, therefore, that she thought too much of -good looks, and was a stony-hearted monster.</p> - -<p>“Serves her right,” said primaries, academics and -collegiates all with one voice, when Bella Wayne, having -for a week daily put the arithmetic class to shame, was -banished to Miss MacIver’s room to spend two hours in -austere solitude over the lesson of the day.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had got special permission to go for ten -minutes after school hours to visit Madeleine Smulsky -(also a boarder), who was in bed with a violent cold. -Coming down-stairs, as Hildegarde passed Miss MacIver’s -room she saw the door cautiously open. A spectacled -eye gleamed strangely low down in the aperture -for one of Miss MacIver’s height, and then the owner of -the eye, as if reassured by the look of things outside, -opened the door a little wider, and the apparition stood -fully revealed. Miss MacIver, many inches shorter than -anybody had ever seen her before, and narrowed in proportion, -the familiar crochet shawl hanging dowdily -over one shoulder, the stiff-held head ornamented with -the front of sandy curls, a gouty finger held crookedly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -up, the effect of cold in the nose faithfully reproduced as -the voice twanged out:</p> - -<p>“Neow young ladies, observe—” It was the arithmetic -teacher to the life, only it was Bella Wayne, with -her perky little nose supporting huge round spectacles, -and her baby mouth pursed in severity repeating the -rule, “One or bore of the decibal divisiods of a unid are -galled a decibal fragtion.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had stopped, stared, and was seized with -uncontrollable giggles. Madeleine Smulsky, hearing -these demonstrations, got up out of bed and made all -haste to thrust her bare toes through the banisters, and -crane a tousled head far enough over the rail to discover -what was happening below. Her ecstatic merriment induced -Miss Wayne to come further into the hall, and -reprove her with a supple young finger stiffly crooked, -and speaking not only with a cold in the head, but with -that intolerable click in the nose of the sufferer from -chronic catarrh—</p> - -<p>“I would lige yeou do observe there is a sbezial beaudy -aboud the laws of bathebadigs—” Again the dreadful -noise in the impudent little nose. Madeleine’s attempt -to suppress her laughter brought on a fit of coughing, -which, with a spasmodic suddenness, choked and died in -her throat. For all of a sudden there were three figures -in the hall below, and one of them was the real Miss MacIver, -saying to herself in miniature:</p> - -<p>“And now, Miss Wayne, you may take off my shawl, -and my skirt, and my glasses.” (Not a syllable about -the opulent front.) “And in ten minutes go and report -to the principal.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus3"> -<img src="images/illus3.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“It was the teacher of arithmetic to the life, only it was -Bella Wayne”</p> -</div> - -<p>As the real Miss MacIver, six feet of indignation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -turned away trembling with fury, she looked back an instant -over her shoulder to say: “You or I, Biss Wayne, -bust leave Valdivia—”</p> - -<p>But Bella had already vanished into the room of penitence, -and was feverishly pulling off her strange habiliments. -The bare toes of Miss Smulsky had been hurriedly -withdrawn from between the banisters, and any -girl but Hildegarde Mar would have been fleeing down -the staircase, “and so home.” But she walked quietly -away, her large deliberateness even a little emphasized -as she went, weighed down by fearful speculation as to -what form of retribution would overtake the wicked, new -girl.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde went to school the next morning ten minutes -earlier than usual. No one yet in the big school-room, -so she wandered restlessly through the empty halls, -wishing she dared go up-stairs and compare notes with -Madeleine. From a window at the back, looking out on -a group of eucalyptus trees and a mass of syringa, she -saw little Bella Wayne sitting very subdued on the topmost -of two stone steps; slate on knee and pencil poised, -but eyes fastened on a woodpecker tap-tap-tapping at the -tree.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde went out and spoke kindly to the unlucky -little girl. “What’s happened since—?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing much,” and Bella put up her chin.</p> - -<p>“Are you—are you going away?”</p> - -<p>“Me? No.” And with that she dropped her slate and -pencil on the step, dropped her face into her two hands, -and wept.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde thought she had misheard—it must be -that Bella was crying because she was expelled. After<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -all Hildegarde had expected she would be expelled. -What she had not expected was that she, one of the big -girls, would be so sorry to hear that this was the last she -should see of little Bella Wayne. Hildegarde picked up -the broken slate, and tried to think of something comforting.</p> - -<p>“I was <em>sure</em> they’d send me home,” Bella sobbed. -“But they w-won’t! Not even if I d-don’t beg her p-par-don.”</p> - -<p>“And you <em>want</em> to be sent home!”</p> - -<p>“Of course!” Bella got out a handkerchief three -inches square and dabbed her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Was that why you did it?”</p> - -<p>“No. It <em>would</em> have been if I’d thought she’d come -and catch me. But—no—I did it because—oh, because -there wasn’t any other earthly thing to do in that -room!” she said, with a burst. Then, more collectively: -“Were you ever in Miss MacIver’s room?”</p> - -<p>“No. I’ve always been rather afraid of Miss MacIver.”</p> - -<p>“Well, wait till you’ve seen her room—and her -family! You’ll be ’fraider than ever. The only pictures -she has in there are photographs of a lot of nightmarey -people all just like her. Oh, it was dreadful being -shut up there with millions of MacIvers! I did everything -I could think of to forget ’em. I looked at all her -dull books. Then I smelt all her bottles—<em>they</em> aren’t -so dull. Do you know she’s got seventeen on her wash-stand?”</p> - -<p>“Not bottles!”</p> - -<p>“Bottles. When I’d smelt them all—some very queer—what -else <em>was</em> there to take your mind off those pictures -but to try on her things?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p> - -<p>The three-minute bell began to ring, and Hildegarde -went back to the school-room.</p> - -<p>Bella did not reappear among her kind for twenty-four -hours. Some said she’d already gone home. Others -said no, she was waiting till her mother came for her. -Certainly Miss MacIver made no sign; but her cold -seemed better.</p> - -<p>Upon resuming her place the next day, Bella, still -with her nose in the air, publicly announced that she had -begged Miss MacIver’s pardon.</p> - -<p>“How did they make you do it?” Hildegarde asked -the little girl at recess.</p> - -<p>The wicked Miss Wayne was again sitting solitary on -the stone steps among the shrubbery at the back, holding -on her knees a new slate, the lower part covered with -neat little figures—the upper elegantly decorated with -dragons.</p> - -<p>“<em>No</em>body made me,” answered Bella, while she carefully -shaded the scaly coil on the monster’s tail. “The -door was a little bit open—Miss MacIver’s door—and I -saw her packing up. Then she looked out and caught me -peeking at her.”</p> - -<p>“Heavens!” breathed Hildegarde, so overcome she sat -down. “What happened then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I went in.”</p> - -<p>“She called you?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“You didn’t go in without being made to?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I did.”</p> - -<p>“Gracious! How <em>could</em> you, Bella?”</p> - -<p>“I thought I’d better. I went in and asked her pardon.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What did she say?”</p> - -<p>“She just”—the outrageous Bella made the obnoxious -clicking in her nose. “Do you know she’s only got two -dresses?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’ve noticed.”</p> - -<p>“But she’s very well off for fronts.”</p> - -<p>“Is she?”</p> - -<p>Bella nodded. “Got three.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean to tell me, Bella Wayne, Miss MacIver’s -got three false fronts!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, she has. And the weeest little, teenty-weenty -trunk, she’s got. But it’s quite big enough. I could -see she hadn’t anything, hardly, to put in it. Only bottles -and fronts. After I’d begged pardon, and was -going out, I suddenly thought she must be pretty poor, -even if she did have such a lot of—do you suppose it’s -because she can’t afford hats? Well, I don’t know. Anyhow -I asked her what school she was going to after this. -She said she didn’t know. Then I looked at those nightmarey -MacIvers and asked her if she was going home. -She suddenly began to look awfuller than ever. I saw -<em>she</em> was thinking about the MacIvers, too, and it was -’most more than she could bear. So I ran back and -begged her not to go. I said I did so need her.”</p> - -<p>“You needed her?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, to—to teach me decimal fractions.” Bella -brought out the words a little shamefaced. Then, hurriedly, -as if to forestall misapprehension: “Oh, I <em>said</em> I -knew it wasn’t much of an attraction for her—of course, -it must be perfectly horrid to have a girl like me in the -arithmetic class. But, after all”—Bella paused, and -then, with the air of a discoverer of one of the deeper -mysteries of nature—“after all, Miss MacIver <em>likes</em> hammering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -those disgusting rules into girls. What she hates -is to think there’s a girl going round without those rules -somewhere inside her. So I just told her that wherever -she was going she wouldn’t find anybody who knew as -little about fractions as I did. I was certain I told her, -perfectly certain, that she could show me all about ’em -if only she wasn’t going away. One thing was sure as a -gun—I was never going to let anybody else teach me! -She said something about that. It was the first time she -spoke, and she stood like this, with her flannel petticoat -in one hand, and a bottle in the other. But I just said: -‘Seven people have tried it already, and <em>you</em> know if -they succeeded. There’s only one person in the world -that can make me understand those disgusting rules.’ -And I went quite close to her, and I said: ‘Miss MacIver, -cross my heart and hope I may die, if ever I let anybody -else <em>speak</em> to me about fractions!’ So we agreed it was -her duty to stay. But now the awful thing is I’ve <em>got</em> -to do these sickening sums! Isn’t it terrible what a lot of -trouble you can make for yourself, just all in a minute?”</p> - -<p>“Well, I hope you’ll stick to your part of the bargain, -Bella,” said the big girl, smiling.</p> - -<p>“Got to—got to!” said the luckless one, flourishing her -pencil over the biggest of the dragons. “If I don’t she’ll -go away and starve with the rest of the MacIvers; or -drink up all those medicine bottles, and die in a wink—like -that!”</p> - -<p>“Look here, shall I just see if you’re going the right -way about it?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>thank</em> you,”—Bella relinquished the slate with -alacrity—“only be careful not to rub out my dragons. -They keep my mind off the MacIvers.”</p> - -<p>And that was how the friendship began.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-n.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Nathaniel Mar made the mistake of -thinking that you can put off to a given -date impressing your good judgment on -those who share your life.</p> - -<p>Trenn and Harry had an affection for -their father—that he without difficulty inspired—but in -their heart of hearts they were a little ashamed of their -love for him, as a species of weakness. They frankly despised -his <i lang="fr">laissez-aller</i> way of life, and looked upon him -as a warning. Their mother had seen to that.</p> - -<p>The Mar boys, however, had shown business capacity -from their childhood, when instead of buying “peanut -brittle” and going to the circus, they saved up their -money to invest in hens. They made what their mother -called “a pretty penny” by selling fresh eggs to the -neighbors. The thriving young tradesmen made even -their mother pay for whatever she required, and she -“planked down the cash” without a murmur. It was a -small price for the holy satisfaction of seeing that her -children were early learning the value of money.</p> - -<p>Mar got less pleasure out of his sons’ budding business -instincts. He was even obviously annoyed when he discovered -that Trenn helped Eddie Cox with his lessons, -not out of good comradeship, but at the rate of “two -bits” for each half-hour’s aid.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It’s ugly,” said Mar, with unusual spirit. His wife -felt obliged to point out that she herself had been engaged -in very much the same occupation, when he first -met her. The “ugliness” of being paid for helping people -with their studies had not oppressed him then.</p> - -<p>“You were their teacher,” said her husband.</p> - -<p>“And Trenn is Eddie’s teacher while he’s teaching -him!” Then as Mar opened his lips, she quickly closed -the argument by adding, “Besides, <em>Eddie’s</em> father has -made money and Trenn’s father hasn’t. Eddie Cox will -have to buy brains all his life—he may just as well begin -now.”</p> - -<p>Trenn Mar was not yet nineteen when he was so fortunate -as to have two business openings. One was to go -down to a ranch in southern California and round up -cattle for Karl Siegel, and learn all he could for Trenn -Mar. The other, to enter the employment of Messrs. -Wilks & Simpson, of the Crœsus Creek Mining Company.</p> - -<p>Trenn’s father meant him to take the latter—in fact -he had put himself to an uncommon amount of trouble -to get his son this opening. But Trenn was all for the -cattle business. “Besides, look at what Siegel offers. -It’s wonderful! Those men usually expect a young fellow -to buy his experience. But Siegel—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” agreed Mar; “it looks better to start with, but -that’s not the main thing. You must look ahead.”</p> - -<p>Trenn opened his brown eyes. He even grinned. -“Why yes, I mean to.”</p> - -<p>“With Wilks & Simpson you’ll get the hang of the -best managed placer-mining property in California.”</p> - -<p>“But that whole blessed country is prospected already. -There’s no money in it for me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s precisely what there is in it.”</p> - -<p>Trenn looked about the room, impatient to be gone. -What did his father know about money? Less than -many a sharp boy of twelve.</p> - -<p>“Sound mining knowledge,” he was saying, “will be -very useful. Not only for itself, but because it will -bring you into business contact with mining men.”</p> - -<p>“What good’ll that do me?” demanded the boy, impatiently. -“<em>We</em> haven’t got any capital.”</p> - -<p>“No, <em>they’ll</em> have the capital. You’ll have something -more rare.”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p>“A great property to develop.” Then he told his son -the story of the shipwreck, and of those wonderful hours -on the farther side of Anvil Rock. Trenn sat and stared. -Mar wished he would stop it. It got on his nerves at last, -those round, brown eyes, keen, a little hard, fixed in that -wide, unwinking gaze.</p> - -<p>“So that’s why I say let the cattle business go. Take -the small salary that Wilks & Simpson offer, study practical -mining, and wait for your chance. In any case, by -the time Harry’s left the High School you’ll have some -valuable experience to bring into the partnership.”</p> - -<p>Trenn got up and crossed the room.</p> - -<p>“Yes, that’s the place,” said Mar, excitedly, thinking -the boy’s goal was the brown and faded reconnaissance -map. But Trenn walked straight past it to the window, -and stood looking out, to where the duck-pond used to be, -and where now a row of pretentious little pseudo-Spanish -“villas” shut out the prospect. And still he didn’t -speak.</p> - -<p>“What I consider so important, is not the practical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -knowledge <i lang="la">per se</i>, though I think it a very real value. -Not that so much, as the fact that through associating -yourself with that kind of enterprise you are brought -into relation with just the men you’ll need to know. If -I hadn’t gone to Rock Hill I would never have met Galbraith. -The longer I live, the more I realize it’s through -<em>people</em>—through having the right sort of human relationships, -that work is best forwarded. Here have I lived -for nearly twenty years with a secret worth millions, and -for lack of knowing the right men—”</p> - -<p>“Why did you never tell Charlie Trennor?” the boy -turned round to ask.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Charlie Trennor! He’s not the sort. But, as a -matter of fact, I did once mention the circumstance to -the Trennors. Many years ago. But they are men -who”—Mar stumbled—“they’ll never do anything very -big; they neither one of them have a scintilla of imagination.” -And then, in sheer excitement, speaking his -mind for once: “There never was a Trennor who had.”</p> - -<p>“I expect,” said the boy, doggedly, “there’s a certain -amount of Trennor about me. I never noticed that -<em>I</em> had any imagination to speak of.”</p> - -<p>Mar was conscious that his own spirit was contracting -in a creeping chill. But he said to himself it was only -because he had made the mistake of criticizing his wife -(by implication) before her son. It was right and -proper that Trenn, on such an occasion, should range -himself on the side of his mother’s family. Mar’s conception -of loyalty commonly protected him from appearing -to pass adverse judgment on the Trennors. But he -was excited and overwrought to-day. <em>He</em>, not Trenn. -All through the story, that for Mar was of such palpitating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -importance, this well-groomed youth had kept -himself so well in hand, that his father, looking at the -“correct,” cool face, had somewhat modified the presentment -of the narrative, had cut description, emotion, wonder, -and come to Hecuba as quickly as might be. And -yet now that, with as business-like an air as he could -muster, he had revealed his great secret—handed over -the long-treasured legacy—something still in the judicial -young face that gave the older man a sensation of acute -self-consciousness, made him in some inexplicable manner -feel “cheap.”</p> - -<p>But he would conquer the ridiculous inclination.</p> - -<p>It was for Mar an hour of tremendous significance. -He had been waiting for it for eighteen years. “After -all,” he said, making a fresh start, “you don’t need -imagination in this case. You need only to use your -eyes—”</p> - -<p>Trenn lifted his, and the use he made of them was to -look at his father. Didn’t say a single word. Just -looked at the heavily-lined face a moment and then allowed -his clear, brown eyes to drop till they rested on the -toes of his own immaculate boots.</p> - -<p>Hardly more than three seconds between the raising -and the lowering of the eyes. Not a sound in the room. -And yet between the meeting of that look and the losing -of it, Nathaniel Mar passed through the most painful -crisis of a life made well acquainted with pain.</p> - -<p>There is a special sting in the skepticism of the young. -They should be full of faith, inclined even to credulity. -Fit task for their elders, the checking of too generous ardor. -But for the elder to detect the junior in thinking -him foolishly enthusiastic, childishly gullible—there is,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -in that conjuncture, something to the older mind quite -specially wounding. It passes the limit of mere personal -humiliation. It takes on the air of an affront against the -seemliness of nature. The elder has betrayed his class -and kind—has laid open to callow derision the dignity of -the riper years.</p> - -<p>Mar waited. And little as he looked like it he was -praying. “Oh, my boy, believe me! Have faith that -what I say is so. And then I’ll have faith that all the -loss will be won back, through <em>you</em>, Trenn. I’ll take -heart again. It all depends on you. We’ll do great -things together, Trenn—you and I—oh, believe, believe!”</p> - -<p>But Trennor Mar sat there on the narrow ledge of the -window-sill absolutely silent, with his brown eyes on his -shining boots.</p> - -<p>“I was wrong,” said his father, humbly. “I have put -you off the track by using the word imagination. It has -no place here. I speak to you of fact.”</p> - -<p>Trenn got up with the brisk air of one who remembers -he has business to transact, then pausing for a moment -with an eye flown already to find his hat, “I might,” he -said obligingly, “I might try to get up there some vacation, -and have a look round.”</p> - -<p>He “might.” He might <em>try</em>. During some idle interval -in the real business of life. Once on the spot he -would condescend to “look round.”</p> - -<p>Even his own son could not take the thing seriously.</p> - -<p>Well, it began to look as if, after all, they might be -right—his wife, Charlie and Harrington Trennor, Elihu -Cox, and now Trenn. Mar, the man who believed he had -a gold mine in the arctic regions, was a sort of harmless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -monomaniac. Sitting there in a sudden darkness that -was dashed with self-derision (much was clear in those -scorching flashes), Nathaniel Mar met the grim moment -when to his own mind he first admitted doubt.</p> - -<p>Groping by and by for comfort, he touched the heart -of sorrow with “Nothing like this can ever happen to me -again.”</p> - -<p>It was true. In that hour something precious went -out of his life. No one, not even Trenn, had any idea -what had happened. But every one saw that Nathaniel -Mar was changed.</p> - -<p class="tb">Trenn went to work on Karl Siegel’s ranch, and Harry -presently announced that he meant to join him. No, he -wasn’t going to finish at the High School. Trenn had -an opportunity to go in with Siegel on a new deal, and -Harry could be made use of, too, if he came <em>now</em>. Such -an opportunity might never repeat itself. Mrs. Mar was -of the same opinion as the boys, and Harry was in towering -good spirits.</p> - -<p>His father wondered dully. Ought he not give his -younger son the same chance he’d given the elder, even -if, like Trenn, Harry should fail utterly to see how great -it was?</p> - -<p>Mar shrank from a second ordeal, and yet he knew -that, vaguely enough, he had been depending on Harry’s -helping him to bear Trenn’s indifference and unbelief. -Had he not for a year now, in any lighter hour, invariably -said to himself: “After all, I have two boys. Perhaps -Harry will be the one”—yes, he must tell Harry, or -the boy might reproach him in time to come.</p> - -<p>Trenn’s letter had arrived in the morning. All day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -Mar revolved in his head how he would present this other -“opening” so that Harry— In the end he resolved to -take the papers out of the safe, and simply turn them -over to his son, as though the father were no longer there -to give the story tongue. Mar took the precious packet -home with him the same afternoon. Harry was out. -That evening he was late for supper, and he came in full -of the outfit he’d been buying.</p> - -<p>“Buying an outfit already!” his father exclaimed.</p> - -<p>“Of course! <em>I</em> don’t mean to let the grass grow—”</p> - -<p>“Nor Trenn, apparently. I hadn’t heard that he was -financing you.”</p> - -<p>“He isn’t. I had a little saved up, and mother gave -me the rest.”</p> - -<p>Mar stared through his spectacles, and met the bright -roving eyes of the lady.</p> - -<p>“<em>You</em> gave him the rest! How were you able to do -that?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I have a pittance in the City Bank.”</p> - -<p>The rival concern. Even Hildegarde gaped with astonishment -at this revelation. Mrs. Mar had not trusted any -one to know of this nest-egg—savings out of the “house -money,” the inadequacy of which had been so often -deplored. She seemed to be torn now between regret -that its existence should have been revealed, and -pride that she had wrung it out of conditions so unpromising.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, with a spark of anger in her eye, -“and you’ll be kind enough, Nathaniel, not to break -your arm, or get yourself disabled in any way, for -there’s nothing left now for a rainy day. Unless <em>you</em> -have looked ahead as I’ve struggled to—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> - -<p>He knew that she knew he had not “looked ahead” in -her sense of laying by a secret hoard, but the form of her -mandate pricked him.</p> - -<p>He glanced at the desk for comfort. He had, after all, -“looked ahead” in another fashion—as Harry would see. -But—again he fell back before the check of an outfit already -bought for another purpose. And Harry was talking -all the time that he was eating—telling his mother -about his prospects and about the letter he had written -in answer to Trenn’s.</p> - -<p>Already he had written! Without an hour’s hesitation, -or an instant’s consultation with his natural adviser. -Ah, no, his true “natural adviser” had obviously -been invoked, and had responded by offering him the -sinews of war. Mar, looking down into his plate, or for -occasional refreshment of the spirit into Hildegarde’s -soft, young face, was nevertheless intensely conscious of -the vivid alert personality at the other end of the table. -His wife was, as usual, not content to contemplate with -idle tranquillity the fruit of some achievement in the -past. Strange contrast to her daughter’s faculty for extreme -stillness, Mrs. Mar presented the stirring spectacle -of a person who was always “getting something done,” -and commonly getting a number of things done at once. -If it was only while the plates were being changed, she -would pull out of the yellow bag suspended at her belt, a -postcard, and with an inch length of pencil would briskly -write an order to some tradesman, or she would jump up -to straighten a picture or set the clock on three minutes, -or “catch any odd job on the fly,” as Trenn used disrespectfully -to say in private. Even on this important -and exciting occasion, she was not content merely to eat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -her supper, listen to Harry’s outpouring, and throw in -shrewd responses from time to time.</p> - -<p>Her handsome features wore that look of animation the -spectacle of “getting on” ever inspired in the lady, her -eyes glittered like pieces of highly polished, brown onyx, -and while she put food into her mouth with the right -hand, the left, by a common practice, executed five-finger -exercises up and down the cloth, between her plate and -the end of the table. But to-night she broke into a fantasia—the -pliant little finger curled and tossed its tip in -air, playing a soundless pæon to celebrate Harry’s entrance -into the business of life.</p> - -<p>For Mar, in circumstances like these, to hold wide a -different door—had there ever been a moment less propitious?</p> - -<p>“You ought to have shown me the letter before you -sent it off,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I would, only I knew you’d think I ought to catch -the afternoon mail. There was barely time. And the -letter was all right—I’m sure it was. I told Trenn -either he or Siegel had got to pay me from the start. I -don’t ask much, I said, but I’m worth something if I -<em>am</em> a raw hand. I wrote the sort of letter Trenn can -show to Siegel. I piled it on about the interruption to -my studies, and about father’s preferring me to stick at -books a year or two more.”</p> - -<p>“It was ingenious of you to discover that fact,” said -Mar, quietly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, they mustn’t think I’m too keen, you know.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar nodded as she wound up her silent accompaniment -with a chord. But if she followed the implied -course of reasoning, not so the boy’s father.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If you’ve written in that vein,” said Mar, slowly, -“it seems to me still more premature to have ordered -your outfit.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that’s all O.K.,” said Harry, genially condescending -to soothe his father’s fears. “Of course I’m -<em>going</em>. Trenn’ll understand. He’s got a long head, old -Trenn has!”—and he exchanged secure smiles with his -mother—“I had to write as I did, don’t you see”—again -Harry obligingly reduced his tactics to simpler terms to -meet the slower comprehension of his father—“just to -make Siegel understand he needn’t expect to get me for -nothing. I’m not coming in on the ‘little brother -racket.’ No, sir! Old Siegel’s got to pay me something -from the start, or how can I be supposed to know it’s a -good thing? Siegel’s got to <em>show me</em>! I’m from Missouri.” -He made the boast with his pleasant boyish -laugh, pushed back his chair, and walked about, hands in -pockets, head in air, describing to his mother how fellows -often did better to take their pay in cattle, and little by -little get their own herd, and little by little get land. -Often they ended by buying out those other fellows who -started with capital. She would see! He and Trenn -weren’t going to take anything on trust. “They’ll find -they’ve got to <em>show</em> us,” he said, squaring himself before -a lot of imaginary Siegels. “We’re from Missouri!”</p> - -<p>Mar, sitting silently by, rose upon that word, and tied -up the loose papers that he had laid out on his writing-table. -He returned them to the office bag, finding himself -arrived at wondering what he had better say if the -day ever came when Harry should reproach his father -for not telling him about—</p> - -<p>But Mar was borrowing trouble.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> - -<p>Trenn had already told him.</p> - -<p>And they had laughed together. “Isn’t it just <em>like</em> -him!” Harry had said, and slapped his knee as one who -makes a shrewd observation.</p> - -<p class="tb">After all there was a kind of rough justice in it. It had -been Galbraith who had made it possible for Mar to go -to Alaska. It was fitting that it should be his son who -should share in the benefits.</p> - -<p>Mar spent part of the following Saturday afternoon in -drafting a letter to the son of his long dead friend. He -took uncommon pains with it and he copied it several -times. It had no need to be long, for Jack would remember -the story. He could not, of course, be expected to interrupt -those postgraduate studies, whatever they were -precisely—studies which twice already had been dropped, -as Mar supposed, while Mr. Jack went cruising about the -world in his steam-yacht. But in the nature of things the -completion of his preparation for the business of life must -be near at hand, for young Galbraith, the most energetic -and ambitious of men, was in his twenty-fourth year. -Never was such a glutton for work before. Even when he -went off pleasuring in his yacht, he went to places not renowned -for recreation, and his boon companions were -geographers and biologists and such-like gay dogs.</p> - -<p>He might, at all events, without prejudice to these final -studies, begin to lay plans either for going himself to -Alaska presently, or for sending some one else. The best -course would be for him to come at once to Valdivia to -see his old friend, and to talk things over. Mar thought -it advisable to enclose in his letter a sketch of the most -interesting section of the Alaskan coast. He could have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -drawn it with his eyes shut, now, but he got up, hobbled -round the desk, and took down the reconnaissance map -from between the pictures of his father and mother. At -the same moment, and while he was in the act, Mrs. Mar -came in, with that air, especially her own, of one arriving -in the nick of time to save the country. Her errand, -however, was the one Saturday afternoon invariably -brought, the conveying here of the week’s mending for -Hildegarde’s attention; the fastening of the book-rest on -the table’s edge, the propping up of some volume in the -French or German tongue, and the laying ready at one -side of a stump of lead-pencil for the marking of pregnant -passages. In front of these Mrs. Mar would establish -herself in the rocking-chair, with her knitting, or -crochet, or some other form of occupation not requiring -eyes.</p> - -<p>“Hildegarde! Hildegarde!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, mama,” came in through the open window from -the garden.</p> - -<p>“I’m ready!” When wasn’t Mrs. Mar “ready!” -But she announced the fact with a flourish of knitting-needle, -as she rocked back and forth and scrutinized her -husband. “I’m glad,” she said, briskly, “to see you taking -down that old eye-sore.” Her eyes pecked at the -faded map. “It’s high time it was thrown away.”</p> - -<p>Her husband paused in his halting progress back to -the writing-table. “Time it was thrown away?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Isn’t that what you’ve got it down for?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“What are you going to do with it, then?”</p> - -<p>Mar seemed not to hear. He turned his back on the -rocking-chair, and propped the map up in front of him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> -against the mucilage pot, very much as his wife had -propped Eckermann for his regular Saturday conversation -with Gœthe.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Mar was never inclined to let her observations -go by ignored. “I can hardly suppose you want to -have it lumbering up the place here any longer.” As -still he took no notice, “It certainly isn’t decorative.” -A pause long enough for him to defend it, if he’d been -going to. “Perhaps you’ll tell me what’s the good of -keeping it.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps you’ll tell me what’s the harm.”</p> - -<p>She could, easily, but she forbore.</p> - -<p>She only agitated the rocking-chair yet more violently, -clashed her knitting-needles as she turned the stocking in -her quick, competent hands, and with a glance at the -clock said briskly, as the door opened: “Come, come, Hildegarde. -You’re nearly three minutes behind time.”</p> - -<p>The girl carried her bowl of roses over to her father’s -open window, and set it carefully down. Hildegarde was -the one person in the world Mrs. Mar never seemed to -fluster. As the girl’s eye fell on the big envelop addressed -in Mar’s bold writing, “Oh!” she said, pausing, -“have you been hearing again?”</p> - -<p>“Hearing what?” came sharply from the swaying figure -on the other side of the room.</p> - -<p>“You’ll read it to me after we’ve done our German, -won’t you?” whispered the girl, caressingly, as she -leaned a moment on the back of Mar’s chair.</p> - -<p>“Read it to you? Why should I?” he said, nervously, -as he laid a piece of blotting-paper over his letter.</p> - -<p>“You always do,” she pleaded. But if Mr. Mar imagined -that his daughter was begging to hear the letter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -he himself had just written, Mrs. Mar made no such mistake. -She was well aware whose communications had -power to stir the “stolid” Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“You never told me,” the lady arraigned her husband’s -back, “that you’d been hearing again from -young Galbraith.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, under the electric shock of the spoken -name, seemed to feel called upon to make some show of -indifference. She inspected the pile of mending with an -air of complete absorption in the extent of the damage. -Her mother was saying: “I haven’t heard anything -about that gentleman”—(oh, wealth of ironic condemnation -the accomplished speaker could throw into the innocent -words “that gentleman!”)—“not since the letter -he wrote from the barbarous place you didn’t know how -to pronounce, and couldn’t so much as find on the -map!”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t you?” said her husband. “Well, you soon -may.”</p> - -<p>The girl’s lowered eyelids fluttered, but the prospect of -soon hearing something on this theme left Mrs. Mar collected -enough to say: “No earthly use to darn that.”</p> - -<p>“N-no,” agreed the girl.</p> - -<p>“Lay a piece under. Match the stripe and cut out the -fray. There’s some like it in the ottoman.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde went and kneeled down before the big deal -“store-box.” Its lid, stuffed and neatly covered, made a -sightly receptacle for endless oddments.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar, as she clicked her needles and oscillated her -entire frame, kept her eye on the place where she was -going to dash into Eckermann the instant Hildegarde -was settled to her sewing. But true to the sacred principle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -of doing something while she was waiting, Mrs. Mar -thus delayed, saw it to be a timely moment to put Jack -Galbraith in his proper place. It was not the sort of -thing you could do thoroughly once, and be done with. -Like house-cleaning, it required to be seen to periodically. -“Well, what’s the <i lang="de">epoche-machende</i> news this time?” -As her husband made no haste to answer, “He’s always -‘going to break the record,’ that young gentleman! I -never knew anybody with so many big words in his -mouth.”</p> - -<p>The stricture was deserved enough to gall Jack’s -friend, who moved uneasily in his revolving chair. But -he kept his eyes on the map he was drawing and he kept -his lips close shut.</p> - -<p>“I see precious little result so far,” she was beginning -again.</p> - -<p>“The result,” interrupted Mar, “will be judged when -he’s finished his life-work, not while he’s still preparing -for it.”</p> - -<p>“Preparing! Bless me, isn’t he old enough to have -<em>done</em> something, if he was ever going to?”</p> - -<p>“If he were going into business, yes. Science is a -longer story.”</p> - -<p>“One excuse is as good as another, I suppose, when a -man wants to please himself. It’s like Galbraith to call -his fecklessness by a highfalutin name. ‘Science,’ ‘Investigation,’ -‘Anthropology.’ Humph! But it does <em>sound</em> -better, I agree, than saying he likes satisfying a low curiosity -about savages. It isn’t even as if he wanted to -convert them. Not he! Likes them best as they are: filthy -and degraded. ‘Philology?’ Tomfoolology!”</p> - -<p>It was more even than the tranquil Hildegarde could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -bear. “Hasn’t he done something wonderful about -ocean currents, papa? Didn’t you say that was the real -reason why he went that last time to—?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. It was a piece of work that brought him recognition -very creditable to so young a student.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Whose</em> recognition?” Not hers, the critic of the rocking-chair -seemed to say. But Mar took no notice. “And -where’s that book he was boasting about six months ago? -The one that was going to shed such valuable new light -on the—the—Jugginses of No Man’s Land. So far as I -can see by the feeble light of the female intellect, the -Jugginses still sit in the dark. Haven’t you found that -roll of seersucker yet, Hildegarde? Upon my soul!”—faster -flew the needles, harder rocked the chair—“compared -with you a snail is a cross between an acrobat and -a hurricane.”</p> - -<p>The girl only laughed. “Here’s the horrid stripey -stuff, hiding at the very bottom!” She laid the roll -aside, and with a neat precision proceeded to put back all -the things she had taken out, for Hildegarde knew, if not -properly packed, the ottoman would overflow.</p> - -<p>“Now, make haste,” urged her mother, “if anything -so alien is possible to you. I’m certainly not going to -read to you while you’re fussing about on the other side -of the room.” Then, not deterred in her unswerving attempt -to improve the shining hour, Mrs. Mar flung a -quick look at the bent back of her husband, and proceeded -to put in the time in clearing up one of his multitudinous -misapprehensions.</p> - -<p>“What <em>I</em> can’t forgive Jack Galbraith is his ingratitude -to you.”</p> - -<p>Again Mar moved a little in his creaking chair, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -halted this side speech. Hildegarde, busily repacking, -turned her blonde head toward her mother, saying: “Ingratitude! -Why, he’s perfectly devoted to papa! -That’s why I like Mr. Galbraith.”</p> - -<p>“Devoted, is he? Well, he’s got odd ways of showing it. -When he was a troublesome, inquisitive little pest, he used -to reveal his devotion by coming twice every year to turn -our house upside down, and get our boys into every conceivable -mischief. Glad enough to plant himself here -then, when nobody else would be bothered with him. But -his devotion to your father doesn’t carry him the length -of coming to see him nowadays. Why, it’s fourteen years -since Jack Galbraith darkened these doors, and—”</p> - -<p>“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to darken -them very soon,” said Mr. Mar.</p> - -<p>“What!” said Mrs. Mar, so surprised she allowed the -rocking-chair to slow down.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde stood transfixed, with the top of the ottoman -arrested, half shut.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Mr. Mar, steadily, and in complete good -faith, as he slipped the diagram into the envelop. “I’m -expecting him out here this spring.”</p> - -<p>“Jack is coming!” Hildegarde said to her heart. -“Wonderful Jack is coming! Dear Jack! Dear, <em>dear</em> -Jack! Oh, the beautiful world!”</p> - -<p>“Indeed!” said Mrs. Mar, beginning slowly to rock -again, “and what’s he coming for <em>this</em> time?”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps, as Hildegarde is fantastic enough to think, -he may be coming to see me,” Mar answered.</p> - -<p>His wife’s laugh had a tang of shrewdness. “You’ll -find he has business of some sort to attend to in California, -if he <em>does</em> come!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Just now you were complaining that he didn’t attend -to business anywhere.”</p> - -<p>“My complaint—no, my regret—is, that gratitude -isn’t in the Galbraith blood.”</p> - -<p>“You have no good reason for saying that.” He -spoke with uncommon emphasis.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Mar’s spirit rose to meet him. “I have the -excellent reason that I know enough about the father as -well as the son to form an opinion. I don’t forget how -your ‘greatest friend’ died, leaving you his executor and -leaving you nothing else. Not a penny piece out of all -that money.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t see why my friends should leave me money—”</p> - -<p>“No, nor why you should get it any other way! Don’t -let me hurry you, Hildegarde, but if you’ve quite finished -mooning about in the corner there, I’d like to -mention that it’s exactly twelve and a half minutes since -I called you in to your German, and there’s the Missionary -Society at half past four, and choir practice at -seven, and before we can turn round Mrs. Cox will be -here about electing the new secretary to the Shakspere -Club, and if I’d known you were going to squander my -time like this I’d have stopped to make Harry his last -Washington pie before—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, mama. Now I’m settled.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde took the seat opposite her mother and -silently applied the seersucker patch. While Mr. Mar, -behind the screen of a much-hunched shoulder, copied -with infinite care the “eye-sore” map, Mrs. Mar knitting -all the while at lightning speed, rolled out the German -uninterruptedly, till a ring at the bell was followed by -sounds of Mrs. Cox being shown into the parlor.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar had known no one so well in Valdivia all -these years as Mrs. Elihu Cox. Mrs. Elihu was considered -“a very bright woman,” and it was no doubt so, -since even Mrs. Mar did not demur at her renown. They -met seldom, outside of church, the Shakspere Club, or the -Mission Society, yet each had admitted things to the -other that neither had admitted to any one else. Even -to-day, when there was definite business to arrange, they -talked of other matters than the vacant secretaryship. -They presented each other with views upon domestic service, -education, and husbands.</p> - -<p>“I left Mr. Cox supremely happy,” said his spouse, in -that tone of humorous scorn by which many women -try to readjust the balance between the sexes. “Yes, -supremely happy, clearing out his desk. He does it -once a month. Nothing Mr. Cox does brings him so near -absolute bliss, except wandering about the place with a -hammer and nails.”</p> - -<p>Both women smiled at the inveterate childishness of -the lords of creation.</p> - -<p>And then, on a sudden, Mrs. Cox was grave. One -might laugh at the odd ways of men with any woman. It -is the universal bond that binds the sex together; the fine -lady feels it no less when she condoles with her washer-woman -upon a stay-at-home husband,—“Yes, yes, a man -in the house all day is dreadfully in the way,”—and -their identity of sentiment bridges the difference in fortune. -But Mrs. Mar was one with whom you might not -only laugh over the foibles of the opposite sex, you might -even be grave with her on the same ground—a rarer privilege -to the educated woman.</p> - -<p>“That monthly orgy, that’s such unalloyed delight to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> -Mr. Cox, used to be a time of great interest to me, too,” -admitted Mrs. Cox.</p> - -<p>“Really!” The president of the Valdivia Shakspere -Society could hardly believe it of her friend.</p> - -<p>“Yes. You see, there’s always a great clearance made—a -general getting rid of all sorts of accumulations. I -used to watch every time when he came to the lower left-hand -drawer—” Mrs. Cox smiled faintly as one pitiful -of some long-past pain.</p> - -<p>“Well, what was the matter with the lower left-hand -drawer?”</p> - -<p>“That was where he kept a faded photograph of Ellie -Brezee. I used to watch to see if <em>that</em> time he was going -to throw it away. He never did.”</p> - -<p>“Who was Ellie Brezee?”</p> - -<p>“A sister of Colonel George Brezee—the one that died. -That was before you came to California. Mr. Cox was -engaged to Ellie when he was nineteen. But, thank goodness, -my concern about it is among the things that I’m -done with. I don’t any longer sit at home, now, with the -tail of my eye on the lower left-hand drawer while Ellie -Brezee comes out for her monthly airing.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you disposed of Ellie?”</p> - -<p>“No, oh, no.”</p> - -<p>“He finally threw the picture away himself?”</p> - -<p>“No. Only now, I know he never will.”</p> - -<p>They were silent a moment. “I never <em>said</em> anything, -of course; and he never made any secret about it. I -didn’t think it any disloyalty to me that he should keep -it. At the same time”—she dropped her voice—“the -pain the sight of that faded face was to me for years—you -think it supremely silly, I suppose. But then <em>your</em><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> -husband doesn’t hoard up the memory of some girl -that’s been dead and buried for twenty years, so you -can’t understand.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I can understand,” Mrs. Mar answered, with an -eye that saw through the wall the reconnaissance map of -Norton Sound.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-j.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Jack Galbraith replied to Mr. Mar’s letter -by return of post. He apologized for not -writing more at length, but he was up to his -eyes in proof-correcting. He was seeing -through the press—(“Yes, yes, but all that -was singularly irrelevant”)—book about his experiences -(“Hum! hum!”), “extreme northern Siberia.” (“<em>Siberia</em>, -forsooth!”); no white man had ever been there before. -(“And to think he <em>might</em> have spent that time in -Alaska!”) He was “making a genuine contribution to -science”—oh, yes, quite so—“most travelers too imperfectly -equipped.” (“He couldn’t have had my letter -when he wrote this.”) The implication was, of course, -that Galbraith’s own equipment left nothing to be desired. -He even touched airily upon his claims to be considered -geographer as well as navigator, electrician, geologist, -philologist, biologist, and the Lord knows what, -beside. Yes, Jack had a large way of envisaging human -endeavor, especially his own. But certainly their letters -had crossed. Hum! he had “covered areas in science -never before exploited by a single man.” The result Mar -should presently see. For Galbraith would leave word -that a copy of the great work should be sent to his old -friend. It would be two years before he himself could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -see the thing in book form. (“What’s this?”) “Off -again, to join an expedition!” And wasn’t it strange? -He was going to the arctic as Mar was recommending. -Not precisely to Norton Bay, but (“Then he <em>had</em> got the -letter!”) “with the Swedish explorer Nordenskjöld to see -if by good luck” they could find the North Pole. And -why shouldn’t they “come home via Norton Bay?” he -asked, with irresponsible arrogance, adding, characteristically: -“I’ll mention it to the Swede. Perhaps we’ll crawl -over the crown of the world and coast down the shore of -Alaska till we come up against your Anvil Rock. If we -do, I promise to go and see after the gold-mine for you. -Thank you for saying I’m to have my share—but thank -you most of all for telling me such a mighty fine story -when I was a kid. It had a great deal to do with the -shaping of my ambition, and the direction of my multifarious -studies.”</p> - -<p class="tb">And this was Galbraith’s good-by.</p> - -<p>These events had taken place nearly two years before -Bella Wayne began her meteoric career at the Valdivia -School for Young Ladies.</p> - -<p>If Hildegarde had recovered somewhat from her disappointment -at Jack’s failure to visit California, her -father had not ceased silently to lament, and secretly to -contemn Galbraith’s wounding flippancy in his choice of -a route to Alaska.</p> - -<p>When Madeleine Smulsky’s family took her away to -live in Wyoming, Hildegarde would have been even more -desolate but for her espousal of Bella Wayne’s cause, and -consequent preoccupation with that not altogether satisfactory -protégée.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> - -<p>For Miss Bella had “ways” that were distinctly rasping. -She was abominably selfish, and her big family of -brothers and sisters had spoiled her from the day she -could toddle.</p> - -<p>She was, besides, the uncomfortable kind of little girl -in whose eyes you always saw reflected whatever was -amiss with you. You might have on a hat of ravishing -beauty, but if your belt had worked up and your skirt -had worked down, Bella’s glance ignored your highly -satisfactory top and fastened on your middle. Not until -after she had known Bella Wayne for some months did -Hildegarde begin to divine her own shortcomings in the -matter of dress. No gulf of years, or respect for high -standing in the school, deterred Bella from letting Miss -Mar know that she could never, never wear with success a -checked shirt-waist. Why not? Because. And for the -same excellent reason, Miss Mar must have her things -made plainer. No puffing; no shirring. “<em>I</em> can wear -‘fluffery,’ but you can’t. You’re much too like an old -goddess or Boadicea, or some whacking person like that,” -which was tepid and discreet in comparison with many -of her deliverances. She would ask you a highly inconvenient -question as soon as wink, and her own frankness -was a thing to make you cold down your back. An eye -that nothing escaped, the keenest of little noses for a secret, -a ruthless finger for any sensitive spot—that was -Bella Wayne at twelve. It was the second time that she -was being so kindly helped by Miss Hildegarde, and yet -more than at the reduction of “those disgusting fractions” -Bella looked at her new friend, bent so low over -the slate that her sole ornament, a silver locket, swung -against the dado of dragons, without whose scaly support<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> -Bella could never hope to bring her mind down to mathematics -for a moment. She reflected that she had never -seen Miss Mar without that locket. Was there anything -inside it? Her fingers itched to open it and see. It was -suspended round the smooth neck on a narrow velvet ribbon. -Bella, supposed to be following the course of reasoning -by which it was to be demonstrated that “since -100 pounds of coal cost $0.33 per hundredweight, 385 -pounds (which are equal to 3.85 times 100 pounds) will -cost 3.85 times $0.33,” she was in reality making mental -calculation of a quite different character, as she studied -the little black velvet bowknot that rested on the milk-white -nape of Miss Mar’s neck, just underneath a flaxen -ring of hair. One end of the bow was longer than the -other.</p> - -<p>“Five times three are fifteen. Five and carry one—see, -Bella?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.” What Bella saw, with that look of luminous -intelligence, was that the silver locket was sliding into -Miss Mar’s lap.</p> - -<p>“Eight times three—oh!” But before Hildegarde -could close her fingers on the fallen trinket, Bella had -snatched it up and carried it away behind the syringas.</p> - -<p>“Give me back my locket!” called Hildegarde. “Give -it back this minute!”</p> - -<p>Bella made off to a remoter fastness. Hildegarde -pursued her. But Hildegarde never could catch anybody, -and Bella was already the champion runner of the -school. “Bella, I never show that to anybody. I won’t -forgive you if you open it.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I <em>must</em> see why you say that!” Bella stopped -and tried the fastening. Hildegarde rushed at her, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -Bella fled at each approach. At last the big girl stopped -breathless, and tried moral suasion. The little girl only -laughed, and standing just out of reach had the effrontery -to open the locket and make unseemly comment upon -what she found within.</p> - -<p>“My gracious! <em>Isn’t</em> he a sweet? Where does he -live? Does he go to church? I’m sure <em>I’ve</em> never seen -this bee-yew-tiful young man before. Girls, do you want -to look at Miss Mar’s sweetheart. Come and see this darling -duck!” She summoned the laughing group that had -been looking on.</p> - -<p>But Bella only pretended to show them. Every time -anybody came near, she covered the face with her thumb. -But Hildegarde, lacking the small satisfaction of knowing -that, worn out with the race and scarlet with indignation, -breathless, outraged, pursued the fleet little villain -from group to group, and after the bell rang, from -garden to hall. In vain.</p> - -<p>When Bella appeared at the breaking up of school that -day, and restored the locket, Miss Mar received it in a -lofty silence, refusing even to look at a little girl so ill-mannered -and ungrateful.</p> - -<p>But the next day Bella, much subdued by one of her -recurrent attacks of homesickness, red-eyed, a little -pinched-looking and woebegone, begged pardon so prettily, -that Miss Mar’s heart was melted.</p> - -<p>“And I didn’t really show it to the others. Ask -anybody. I wouldn’t do <em>that</em>. Oh, no!” And then betraying -the true ground of this pious self-control, “Is it -your brother?”</p> - -<p>“No.” Hildegarde bent her head over the slate.</p> - -<p>“Who is it?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p> - -<p>“A friend of my father’s.”</p> - -<p>“Do you love him dreadfully?”</p> - -<p>“Of <em>course</em> not. I never saw him.”</p> - -<p>“What makes you wear his picture?”</p> - -<p>“I only put it in the locket because I hadn’t anything -else the right size. That’s all.”</p> - -<p>“Then why did you make such a fuss when I—”</p> - -<p>“Because I thought it very rude of you to look into -somebody else’s locket without permission. And it -<em>might</em> have been something that mattered.”</p> - -<p>There was that in the unconverted look on the little -face which made Hildegarde hot to her ear-tips.</p> - -<p>But Bella said not a word, only smiled with that returning -interest in life that so readily revives in the -breast of the shrewd observer. And without a “please” -or a “will you?” Bella handed the big girl her slate, -with its two days’ accumulation of fractions and of -dragons. Hildegarde’s sensibilities were once more so -outraged that for a moment she hesitated to accept the -task so coolly put upon her.</p> - -<p>“I believe you’re a little monster,” said Miss Mar, -in her slow way. “I don’t see why I should trouble myself -about you or your arithmetic.”</p> - -<p>“I know why,” returned Bella, unmoved.</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Because you’re the nicest of all the big girls.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde tried to conceal the fact that she was -somewhat softened by this tribute. “I’m not really the -nicest,” she said, trying to be modest.</p> - -<p>“Well, perhaps you’re not the nicest, but you’ve got -the longest eyelashes. It’s a good thing they aren’t as -light as your hair, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t know. Fives into—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you do, you know you’d cry your eyes out if -your winkers were as nearly white as your hair is. -What do you do to make your eyelashes so long?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing. Now pay attention. You reduce thirty-three -and a third to thirds and—”</p> - -<p>“Did your mother keep them cut when you were a -baby?”</p> - -<p>“No, silly.”</p> - -<p>“I believe she did.” The next day Miss Bella appeared -without eyelashes. Every individual hair snipped -close to the lid.</p> - -<p>“I mean to have mine just like Miss Mar’s,” she told -the group gathered about Hildegarde’s desk. “Hers -are so immense they <em>trail</em>. I’m sure they must get -awfully in the way sometimes.”</p> - -<p>“Then I wonder you run such a risk. You’d better -have left yours as they were.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, if mine grow out as long as that, of course I -shall plait them and tie them up with blue ribbons.”</p> - -<p>But it was not always admiration to which she treated -her patron.</p> - -<p>She was once twitted quite groundlessly with feeling -herself obliged to “mind” Miss Mar.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, laughing a little wickedly. “I <em>must</em>, -you see. She’s so massive. Just look at her shoulders. -Look at her hips. Even her hair is massive. See what -wobs it goes into.” This conversation took place in the -cloak-room. “Everything about her is so big, it scares a -little person like me. Look at that hat. You’d know it -must belong to Miss Mar. If it was anybody else’s it -would be a parasol. But you can tell it’s a hat because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> -it’s got an elastic instead of a stick. And just look at -the size of that elastic. Why, it’s as broad as my -garter.”</p> - -<p>Now and then she would startle Hildegarde’s self-possession -by an outburst of torrential affection. And so it -came about that in spite of Bella’s blithe impertinence, -Hildegarde even in those early days thought of her with -sympathy as a lonely little being who was in reality very -grateful for a big girl’s friendship. She would follow at -Hildegarde’s heels like a pet dog, walk with her down to -the gate every day after school, and invent one ingenious -pretext after another to keep Hildegarde standing there -a moment longer. Sometimes, when at last she said -“good-by,” there was not regret alone but tears as well -in Bella’s pretty eyes.</p> - -<p>“It must have been a little girl at boarding-school -that found out Friday was an unlucky day,” she announced -on one occasion. “It’s the miserablest, blackest -day of the week. Yes it is, Miss Mar. It’s just hellish.”</p> - -<p>“Why, Bella Wayne! What <em>awful</em> language.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you have to get hold of awful language when -you’re thinking of an awful thing. All to-night, and all -to-morrow, and all to-morrow night, and all Sunday, and -all Sunday night, to live through before I see you -again!” The small face worked with suppressed emotion, -the small mind with suppressed arithmetic. Both -eventually found outward expression. “Sixty-six -hours!” she said, while two tears rolled out of her eyes. -“Sixty-six hours till you’re back here again. I don’t -honestly think I can bear it this time. I shall die. I -know I shall. I feel very strange already. Would you -care if I died? W-would you come to the funeral?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -She choked. “W-what would you wear? You’d look -p-perfectly bee-yew-tiful in black. <em>Do</em> wear black. Oh, -I <em>wish</em> I was dead. It would be so nice to see how you -look in black.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was touched to find how wildly delighted -the homesick little girl was at the idea of being invited to -spend Saturday afternoon at the Mars—a little anxious, -too, was Miss Mar, lest the occasion should not come up -to such ecstatic expectation. Not that the Mar house -was at all the forlorn and dingy place it had been in the -days when Mrs. Mar struggled alone, with a scant income -and three babies. The general impression was that the -Mar boys already contributed generously to the family -resources. But the fact was that their mother was ingeniously -making the very most of what “the boys” -added to the common purse. The amount was as yet -quite trifling—“of necessity,” she would have added, -for they were both young men who looked ahead. But it -was really to Hildegarde that the little house owed its -air of immaculate freshness and good taste. If she -couldn’t play or sing, she could paint—bookshelves, the -floors, even the woodwork. Several years ago she proved -that she could paper a room. She managed to cover the -old furniture with charming chintz “for a song,” and -she made curtains out of nothing at all. No one could -arrange flowers better or grow them half so well. When -she was given money for her clothes, she often spent it on -something for the house. Not fully realizing her genius -for domestic affairs, she told herself the reason she did all -this was to make the house pretty “for when Jack comes -back.” He might arrive quite suddenly. He did everything -without warning. I may come home from school<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -any day to find him here! Oh, it lent a wonderful zest -to life to remember that.</p> - -<p>Bella was pleased to like Miss Mar’s garden immensely, -but even more she liked Miss Mar’s room, with its white -curtains and dimity-covered toilet-table, and the scant -and simple furniture that looked so nice and fresh since -Hildegarde had herself enameled it. When the little -visitor looked round with that quick-glancing admiration -and said: “Oh, it’s much prettier than mine at -home.”</p> - -<p>“What’s yours like?” asked Miss Mar, politely.</p> - -<p>“Oh, it’s all pink silk, and I’m sick of it. What -made you think of having everything white?”</p> - -<p>“This, I believe,” said her hostess, nodding at the -climbing white rose that looked in at the window. “But -it’s partly that I like things that wash and that don’t -fade.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I simply love your house. I’d no <em>idea</em> it would -be like this.”</p> - -<p>“Why, what did you think it would be like?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—a—kind of—no, I shan’t say. You’d misunderstand.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde felt it prudent not to insist. If you did, -with this young person, you were exposed to the most -mortifying results.</p> - -<p>“Who are these?” Bella demanded, inspecting the -pictures.</p> - -<p>“My brothers. That’s Trenn and this is Harry.”</p> - -<p>“Will they be at tea?”</p> - -<p>“No, they’re on a ranch in Tulare County.”</p> - -<p>“Why, <em>we’ve</em> got a ranch in Tulare County.” She -was still looking round as if expecting to find something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -that as yet escaped her eye. “Where’s—where—a—Show -me your—your ribbons and things.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t got any. We can’t afford ribbons in this -family.”</p> - -<p>“Let me see your collars and ties, then.” Hildegarde -opened her top drawer. In the course of turning over -collars and handkerchiefs and little boxes the silver -locket came to light.</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you wear it any more?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>Bella leaned her head with its halo of short, brown -curls against her friend, and very softly she beguiled -her: “Please, Miss Mar, show me that friend of your -father’s again.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde hesitated a moment and then she opened -the locket. Jack Galbraith’s face smiled out upon the -big girl and the little girl.</p> - -<p>“Did you say you hadn’t ever seen him?”</p> - -<p>“No, he hasn’t been here for sixteen years. Not since -he was a little boy. And he might have been here always, -because he was an orphan and his father was my -father’s greatest friend. But some relations of his that -nobody had ever heard of before, they discovered him -when he was nine, and made him come to New York and -live with them. But he didn’t like it. At least—<em>I</em> don’t -know—mother thinks <em>they</em> didn’t like it.”</p> - -<p>“Why does she think that?”</p> - -<p>“Because they let him go away to school. And he -spent his vacations canoeing, climbing mountains, and -doing all sorts of queer things rather than live with his -relations. Then he went to Harvard, and then he went -abroad and studied. He’s always studying.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Gracious! what makes him do that?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he wants to find out about everything. And -he’s doing it. He’s written a book with things in it nobody -ever heard of before. Father says it’s a work of -genius. Mr. Galbraith was coming here two years ago, -when he’d finished the book, only just then—”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t think,” Bella interrupted with a sigh, “I -didn’t think from his picture he was so awful old.”</p> - -<p>“He isn’t. He’s barely twenty-five.”</p> - -<p>But Bella shook her head. “If a person’s over twenty -he might just as well be a hundred.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ordinary people. But it doesn’t matter <em>how</em> -old a genius is. Father’s awfully excited about Mr. -Galbraith just now, for he’s been away a year and a -half on an arctic expedition and we’re expecting him -back next summer. We may be hearing from him any -day after the middle of June. Father and I often talk -about it when we’re alone together.”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you talk about it when there’s anybody -there?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, mother’s always so down on Mr. Galbraith.”</p> - -<p>“What’s she down on him for?”</p> - -<p>“Just because he wants to discover the North Pole.”</p> - -<p>“Well, don’t you think yourself that’s rather—”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t.”</p> - -<p>“To be wasting two whole years in just hunting round -for the Pole? What’s the good of the Pole, anyway?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde smiled a smile of superiority.</p> - -<p>“My geography”—Bella invoked authority that even -a big girl must respect—“my geography says—”</p> - -<p>“You’re too young to understand. It’s not the -Pole. It’s the glory.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What glory?”</p> - -<p>“Nobody’s ever yet got there.”</p> - -<p>“Why should anybody? Lots of nicer places.”</p> - -<p>“A great many people have tried. A good many have -died trying—”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s a good reason for not bothering about -it any more.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’re just like—” But filial respect restrained -Miss Mar. “I agree with Mr. Galbraith. He -thinks there’s nothing in the world half so interesting -to do.”</p> - -<p>“He <em>must</em> be silly.”</p> - -<p>“No, he isn’t! He’s splendid—” But Hildegarde -snapped the locket to, and hid it under her best handkerchiefs.</p> - -<p>The following Saturday, when Bella asked again to -see the locket, Miss Mar declined to bring it out. Bella -begged in vain. She discovered that her big, gentle -friend could be immovable.</p> - -<p>To Hildegarde’s dismay, Bella presently dissolved in -tears. “Then may I s-see the work of g-genius?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you may look at his book all you like.” She -even let Bella take it away with her to tide her over -Sunday. But Mr. Galbraith’s “Winter among the -Samoyedes” had small success with Miss Wayne. “They -make me sick, those people! I can’t think how anybody -likes hearing about their dirty ways,” and she even cast -reflections on Jack for wasting his time over such “horrors.” -However, there was another side to it. “What a -relief it’ll be to him to be with <em>us</em> after the Samoyedes!”</p> - -<p>“With <em>us</em>!” Hildegarde smiled inwardly.</p> - -<p>Sitting by the rose-framed window one Saturday<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -afternoon, talking as usual about Mr. Galbraith and how -soon he might be expected back from the Pole, Bella suddenly -burst out: “I’m tired to death of saying ‘Miss -Mar.’ I <em>do</em> wish you’d let me call you ‘Hildegarde.’”</p> - -<p>The big girl’s breath was taken away. For the gulf -between twelve and sixteen is a thing hardly passable in -that stronghold of class distinction, a girls’ school. It -was rare, indeed, that one of Miss Mar’s ripe age stooped -to help a little girl over a difficulty in her lessons. It -required something of the missionary spirit to take such -pity upon homesickness, as occasionally to give the -afflicted one the great treat of visiting a big girl on -Saturday afternoon—but really to go to the length -proposed—</p> - -<p>“I shan’t believe you really love me,” the little girl -rushed on, “unless you say yes. Oh, do say yes. <em>Everything</em> -depends on it. I’ll promise always to say ‘Miss -Mar’ before people. But if you’ll let me call you Hildegarde -when we’re alone, I’ll <em>know</em> you’re my best -friend. And then I’ll tell you a secret. I’ll tell you -two. <em>Tremendous</em> secrets!”</p> - -<p>It was finally arranged.</p> - -<p>“Now for the tremendous secrets,” said Hildegarde, -smiling.</p> - -<p>But Bella was portentously grave, even agitated. -“Well,” she said, bracing herself, “my father’s an -Englishman. Don’t tell anybody. Cross your heart and -hope you may die if ever you tell the girls.”</p> - -<p>“All right. Cross my heart and hope I may die. But -how in the world—?”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t my fault, you see. And <em>I’m</em> an American -all right. I’ve always wanted to explain to you ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> -since you were so angelic about my fractions; it’s because -my father’s an Englishman I have to eat milk -pudding. Over there”—Bella flicked a small hand across -the American continent and over the Atlantic deep, to -indicate an inconsiderable island where the natives persist -in strange customs—“over there they all do it. Of -course, the minute I’m of age I shall insist on pie.” -They discussed the matter in all its bearings.</p> - -<p>“Now about the other secret.”</p> - -<p>“Well”—even the daring Bella caught her breath and -paused. “No, not to-day. I’ll keep the tremendousest -one for another time. But <em>do</em> get out the silver locket, -<em>dear</em> Hildegarde, and let’s look at it.”</p> - -<p>Ultimately she prevailed. The next time Bella came -she found a delightful surprise. The low table was -cleared of everything but bowls of roses; and against the -white wall great ferns printed plain their tall and splendid -plumes—leaving free a little space in the middle -where, on a gilt nail, hung the open locket.</p> - -<p>Bella was delighted with the whole scheme. “It only -wants one thing to make it perfect. No, I won’t tell you -what it is. I’ll bring it next Saturday.”</p> - -<p>“It” proved to be a paper of Chinese joss-sticks, and a -little bronze perforated holder. “We must each burn -one to him every week,” she said, setting up her contribution -below the dangling locket.</p> - -<p>“I don’t quite know if we ought,” Hildegarde said. -“Joss-sticks are prayers you know—at least the Chinese -think so.”</p> - -<p>“Well, of course they’re prayers. That’s why I -brought them.”</p> - -<p>While the two joss-sticks sent up into the rose-perfumed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -air faint spirals of an alien fragrance, the two -girls sat in front of the confident young face looking out -of the silver locket, and talked endlessly about the owner.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde found it subtly intoxicating to have so keen -an auditor—a sharer even (to the humble extent possible -for extreme youth) in the great pivotal romance of existence.</p> - -<p>And then Bella had such wonderful inspirations. It -was she who saw the larger fitness in Mr. Mar’s habit of -going fishing on Saturday afternoons. What was that -but an arrangement of the gods that he should be so -effectually out of the way, that Hildegarde might with -safety borrow from his desk the Galbraith letters. Sitting -close together on a square of Japanese matting, in front -of the rose table, an anxious ear listening for Mrs. Mar’s -return from the missionary meeting, the dark head leaned -against the fair, while the two girls read and re-read -those precious documents, in an atmosphere charged with -incense and a palpitating joy. One day, arrived regretfully -at the end of the letter they liked best, Bella bent -and kissed the signature. Hildegarde’s heart gave a -great jump. The daring of that deed was well-nigh impious. -Hildegarde, when all by herself, had done the -same, but that was different.</p> - -<p>“Now you know my other secret,” said Bella, very -pink—“the tremendousest one of all.” When the first -shock had died away, Hildegarde was left with a pitiful -tenderness before the disarming frankness of such a confession. -Poor little Bella! Why, Jack didn’t even know -of her existence. He never would, till in some rare idle -hour of the glorious future, Hildegarde should tell him -of a little homesick girl she had befriended once at school.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Bella could be depended on to break in upon such -gracious forecasting of the future, with a suddenness that -made the picture dance, “Which of us two do you suppose -Jack’ll fall in love with?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, almost paralyzed by the presumption this -implied, barely managed to bring out, “You’re much too -little to think of—”</p> - -<p>“I shan’t be little always.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll always be more than twelve years younger -than Mr. Galbraith.” Hildegarde always said Mr. Galbraith -when she wanted to keep the intruder at a distance.</p> - -<p>But Bella advanced as bold as brass. “<em>Anyhow</em> I think -he’ll fall in love with me.”</p> - -<p>“Of course a person so modest would be likely to appeal -to any gentleman.”</p> - -<p>“No, it’s not my being modest he’ll mind about. It’s -other things.”</p> - -<p>“What other things?”</p> - -<p>“Well—you—of course you’ve got your eyelashes, -and you’re in the full bloom of womanhood. But <em>I’m</em> -in the first blush of youth. I think he’ll like that best.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus4"> -<img src="images/illus4.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“The two girls sat in front of the confident young face looking -out of the silver locket”</p> -</div> - -<p>It was the second Saturday in June, and school was -breaking up next week. Mrs. Mar had finished off the -Braut von Messina in the dining-room, and barely begun -with the Hindu Mission on the other side of the city. -Hildegarde had retired to her room to watch, not for -Bella’s coming (the window did not command the front), -but for Mr. Mar’s going down the garden with rod and -creel. What made him so dilatory to-day? While Hildegarde -wondered, Bella came flying in, shut the door -with agitated care, faced about with cheeks of crimson,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -hat over one ear and the whisper, “Hildegarde, I’ve -seen him! I’ve seen him! Oh, Hildegarde, he’s here!” -Wherewith she precipitated herself upon her friend’s -neck and hugged her breathlessly.</p> - -<p>“Who, who?”</p> - -<p>“Why, ‘he.’ <em>He’s</em> here! The only man I ever loved!”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde took the dancing dervish by the shoulders. -“You don’t mean—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, I do. He came in just before me. He’s -perfectly glorious. Just to look at him makes you feel—makes -you think you’ve got windmills shut up inside -you. Everything goes whirling round. And when he -asked” (Bella lowered her pipe to a masculine depth): -“‘Is Mr. Mar at home?’ it sounded so beautiful, I thought -for a moment he was talking poetry. Oh, Hildegarde! -<em>Hildegarde!</em>” Again she sunk her ecstacy to whispering -as she followed her friend out into the hall. Together -they hung over the banisters. The visitor was talking -more poetry apparently in the dining-room. The two -girls stayed suspended there an eternity. At last with -thumping hearts, upon Bella’s suggestion, they went -down into the entry. “We’ll pretend to be putting on -our overshoes. I’ll have Mrs. Mar’s!” whispered -Bella, excitedly, ignoring the fact that the continued fine -weather and dusty streets lent an air of eccentricity to -the proceeding. She stopped after drawing on one big -overshoe and shuffled softly to the dining-room door. She -put her eye to the keyhole. No use. Notwithstanding -Hildegarde’s whispered remonstrance, she glued her ear -to the aperture. The door was suddenly opened and Miss -Bella fell sideways into the arms of an astonished young -man, who said: “Hello, what’s this?” Hildegarde,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -drowned in sympathetic confusion, helped Bella to regain -her equilibrium, while she muttered the explanation -“Overshoes!”</p> - -<p>“This is my daughter Hildegarde, Mr. Cheviot,” -said Mr. Mar, “and this is our little friend, Bella -Wayne.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Ch-Cheviot!</em>” stuttered the little friend.</p> - -<p>The young man with the laughing eyes said: “Anything -wrong with the name?” and having shaken hands -with “my daughter Hildegarde,” he departed.</p> - -<p>“Did you say his name was Cheviot?” Hildegarde -asked her father.</p> - -<p>“Yes. The new recruit at the bank. Seems to be an -intelligent sort of fellow.”</p> - -<p class="tb">With ease and celerity Miss Bella transferred her affections -from a faded photograph, a packet of letters, and a -book of travels, to a real live young man with a square -jaw that looked as if he meant business, but with a ready -laugh, too, as if the business were not without its diverting -aspect. Then he had rough brown hair that “fitted” -him. Bella would have told you this was a rarity, most -people’s beginning too far back from the forehead, or -growing too much away from the ears, leaving them -with a bare and naked look. Or it grew in a peak. Or it -didn’t grow low enough on the neck and was like a -badly made wig, that had slipped forward. Or worse -than anything, it forgot where to stop and grew down -into the collar like Professor Altberg’s, prompting the irreverent -Bella to whisper to her neighbor (while the -grave instructor was sitting with head bent over a Latin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -exercise): “How far do you think it goes? Do you suppose -he’s hairy <em>all</em> down his back?”</p> - -<p>However that might be, Cheviot’s hair fitted him. -Moreover, he had, in Bella’s estimation, a fascinating, if -somewhat mocking air toward little girls, and he helped -one little girl gallantly through the dismal Sundays by -the simple process of sitting in church where she could -watch him. Once in a while in coming out, Bella would -catch his eye, and he would laugh and give her a nod. -On the rare occasions of his encountering Miss Bella at -the Mars’, he never failed to stop and mimic her first -greeting, “I’m ‘Ch-Cheviot,’ you know. Now what’s -the matter with that name?” which was vastly entertaining, -not to say “taking.”</p> - -<p class="tb">John Galbraith came back to America that autumn, -but he stayed in the East.</p> - -<p>Bella didn’t much care what he did now, for she was -thirteen, and in spite of the ugliness of their Hindu -protégée Miss Wayne had joined the Busy Bees. That -was because Hildegarde had told her that Louis Cheviot -went to their dances. Bella saw at once the fitness of her -doing the same. The result was that she seldom waltzed -less than twice with the new hero, who, it must be admitted, -was a better batsman than dancer. But nobody -could help “getting through” with Bella as a partner, -for she danced divinely. Cheviot should have been better -pleased to get her for his partner, but it was plain that -he was unduly preoccupied about “my daughter Hildegarde.” -Several of the young men were. Bella told herself -with a consciousness of native worth, that she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -never minded in the least before. But this was different. -She made up her mind that if “Ch-Cheviot” goaded her -much further by this display of misplaced devotion, she -would just take the misguided young man aside some -day and talk to him “as a friend.”</p> - -<p>She would tell him about Jack Galbraith.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-b.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Bella Wayne’s father had been in the -royal navy. His health had given way -about the same time as his patience on the -vexed question of non-promotion. He retired -from the service, went with his -American wife and family to California on a visit, -became enamoured of the climate, bought a place, and -settled there. The three youngest of his seven children -were born in Tulare County, but for him “home” was -still England, however ungrateful. They all went back -every second year to visit his father in Staffordshire, and -when Bella’s two sisters found English husbands, there -were three reasons for the recurrent visit to the old -country. The eldest son, Tom Wayne, had made a -fortune on the New York Stock Exchange and married -a girl belonging to one of the old Knickerbocker families. -Tom’s country house on Staten Island proved highly -convenient as a half-way station between England and -California. Mrs. Tom was a very charming person, and -a certain portion of Bella’s satisfaction in going abroad -lay in the chance it presented of making a visit to Staten -Island, on the way over and back. Nevertheless, as she -never failed to tell Hildegarde on her return, there was -no place to be compared to California, no friend and no -“in-law” who could make up to her for being away from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -Hildegarde, and she might have added, from the neighborhood -of that obdurate creature with the cold blue -eyes and the colder heart, Louis Cheviot. Those who -thought about it at all were surprised that the friendship -of the two girls was not more interrupted upon Hildegarde’s -graduating from the school, when Bella was less -than fifteen. But not upon community of tasks, rather -upon something essential in the nature of each had their -alliance been founded—kept vital by wants in each that -the other could supply, excesses in each that the other -helped to modify. They themselves thought their relation -had its deeper roots in a conviction of the peculiar -sanctity of girls’ friendships; a creed to which Hildegarde’s -fidelity effected Miss Bella’s actual adhesion only -by degrees and with notable backslidings.</p> - -<p>But even in early days, Bella felt it was highly distinguished -to stand in this relation to one who thought and -talked about it as Hildegarde did. Hadn’t she said in -that soft, deliberate way of hers, that it was capable of -being one of the most beautiful things in all the beautiful -world? It was something, she said, no man knew anything -about. Why, they presumed to doubt its possibility -even! Ah, they should have known Hildegarde Mar and -Bella Wayne. Men believed that all girls were, at heart, -jealous of all other girls. They thought meanly of the -sex. They pointed to David and Jonathan, to Orestes -and Pylades, to instances innumerable of men’s faithfulness -to men. But what bard or legend celebrates -woman’s friendship as toward woman? Well, you see, -all the chroniclers since the beginning of the world have -been of the scoffer’s sex. That was why women’s friendships -had never been celebrated—though men said the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -real reason was—oh, they spoke blasphemies!—and they -hadn’t known Hildegarde and Bella. It was Hildegarde’s -theme, but Bella agreed to every word. Yes, -yes, <em>their</em> friendship would show the world!</p> - -<p>For qualities alien to her own, Hildegarde came to look -upon her little friend with an adoring admiration. -Bella’s wit and Bella’s originality, Bella’s entire “mode -of being,” were at once tonic and delight. Then, too, behind -her provoking charm was a finished daintiness, -which with her became elevated into a special quality, -distinctive, all-pervading, a certain strangeness of -fragility—a physical fineness like the peculiar fineness of -a flower—a something suggesting evanescence, and having -the subtle pathos of the thing that may not, cannot -bide.</p> - -<p>It would have been hard to say which was of most use -to the other in making clearer the riddle of life, or more -radiant the beauty of the world, or more wonder-waking, -the mystery of a young girl’s heart. They read, and -walked, and talked, and worked, together, paying their -vaunted friendship a finer tribute than words, however -honestly uttered; for they grew in each other’s company.</p> - -<p>The younger, too, was cured of certain of her more inadmissible -“ways,” while the elder learned from Butterfly -Bella many a thing besides the art of making the most -of her beauty.</p> - -<p>Not that Hildegarde despised this last. She had none -of the comfort of knowing it was part of her largeness of -nature, that she should take more easily to beautifying -her home than to making the best of herself. Indeed to -the end of time, she required guidance in matters of -dress. And who so well qualified as Miss Bella to give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -advice. She went further: with her own ingenious little -hands she made the most becoming of “shirt-waists,” -trimmed heavenly hats, and firmly forbade fripperies.</p> - -<p>“No, no, they’re not for the massive.” She applauded -her friend for not wearing trinkets—she didn’t like to -see her even with her maternal grandmother’s emerald -brooch. “No, I don’t like you in ‘didoes’ of any sort. -They’re too insignificant for you. You ought to wear -ropes of pearls, or a tiara of diamonds, or better still, -something barbaric—what’s one little lady-like emerald -set in a filigree of diamond chips? Why, it can’t even be -seen—on you. Of course the emerald’s a pretty little -stone, and the old setting’s nice. It would shine out on -me, but—well, it’s simply <em>lost</em>, you know, on your heroic -neck.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde deplored her size, she carried it even with -a sense of humiliation just as she bore with her lack of -elegant accomplishments. It was pretty terrible to have -to put up with being such a great lump—especially with -the ethereal Bella always by to point the advantage of -the opposite. Still, there was no blinking the facts. -“You’re right, I believe, didoes of any sort <em>are</em> rather -wasted on me,” Hildegarde would say meekly, “I must -have felt that when I hardly ever wore them—though I -liked them. It takes you, Bella, to explain things.”</p> - -<p>Nothing was ever allowed to come in the way of their -spending their Saturday afternoons together, and if, as -time went on, less was heard about Jack from Hildegarde, -it was only because so very much more was heard about -Cheviot from Bella.</p> - -<p>It was a difficult moment when two girls with such -lofty ideas of friendship met for the first time after Cheviot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -had said to Hildegarde at a dance: “When are you -going to begin to care for me?” She had been so taken -by surprise that she had only smiled and said: “I don’t -know,” but she thought hardly less of Bella at the moment -than she thought of Jack. So the next time that -Bella remarked by the way: “Isn’t he perfectly fascinating?” -Hildegarde had hesitated, and she—yes—she -was actually getting red. Bella stared, “Why, are <em>you</em> -coming to—to—”</p> - -<p>“No; <em>oh</em>, no! Only—”</p> - -<p>“Only what?”</p> - -<p>“It’s dreadfully hard, but I haven’t forgotten our -compact. So I suppose I’ve got to tell you what—what -he said to me last night.”</p> - -<p>Bella received the information with a half-hysterical -pretense of carrying it off gaily. “Well, what’s there -new in that? As if every soul in Valdivia hasn’t known -for perfect ages that he cares about you frightfully. I -don’t mind <em>you</em>. Because you’re Hildegarde, and any -man who didn’t love you must—well, there must be -something pretty wrong about him. I shall give him a -whole year—maybe even two, to go on like that, and then -when I’m sixteen, or seventeen at the latest, I won’t have -it any longer.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, enormously relieved, laughed and kissed -her. “Oh, you nice, funny child!”</p> - -<p>“Only promise me again, cross your heart and hope -you may die, if you ever keep anything from me about -Louis Cheviot.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde complied and life went on as before—only -that Hildegarde showed herself less ready to fall in with -Bella’s ecstasies. An instinct to forestall a possible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -jealousy made her cavil from time to time. “Don’t you -think his shoulders are too broad for his height?”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t, and look how splendidly he carries them. -You have to see him beside a huge man, like Mr. Mar, -before you realize—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes; <em>that’s</em> true,” Hildegarde hastened to heal -the wound.</p> - -<p>“And, anyhow, I don’t think it’s kind of you to run -Louis down. I am always very nice about Jack.”</p> - -<p>The end of it was that Cheviot came more and more to -the Mar house, and seemed so diverted when he found the -lively Bella there, that Hildegarde gave herself up without -reserve to the three-cornered friendship.</p> - -<p>He took the girls boating and organized parties to the -Tule Lands, and was altogether a most invaluable ally in -the agreeable pursuit of being a young lady in her first -season.</p> - -<p>Still, when Bella praised him absolutely without -moderation, “Y-yes,” Hildegarde would respond, “he is -<em>nice</em>, only—”</p> - -<p>“Only what?” says Miss Bella, instantly on the defensive.</p> - -<p>“Well, you know I prefer big men.”</p> - -<p>“Of course you do. It’s being so massive yourself. -But he’s exactly the right size for me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, and he’s quite the nicest of all the Valdivia -boys.”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s going pretty far,” says Bella, with an -edge in her voice.</p> - -<p>Then the other, with that recurrent though only half-conscious -need to show that after all, she, Hildegarde, -wasn’t dazzled—not being in Bella’s state, <em>she</em> could see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -blemishes—the older girl would add: “And yet somehow -for all his niceness, and making us always have a good -time when he’s there, to my thinking there’s something -terribly unromantic about Louis Cheviot.”</p> - -<p>“Now you only say that,” retorts Miss Bella, with -sparkling eyes, “because he’s in a bank.”</p> - -<p>“No—no,” vaguely, “but I don’t believe he’s got any -soul.”</p> - -<p>“Just because he isn’t hunting the North Pole!”</p> - -<p>“No. That isn’t the reason. I assure you it isn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Then it <em>can</em> only be because he likes to laugh at -everything.”</p> - -<p>“He <em>is</em> pretty frivolous,” said Hildegarde, “and he -ridicules friendship. But no, it’s not that, either. It’s -because he’s kind of chilling. To <em>me</em>.”</p> - -<p>“Chilling to you?” Bella beamed. “Oh, do tell me -about that.”</p> - -<p>“Sometimes he’s positively rude.”</p> - -<p>“To <em>you</em>?” Bella could have danced.</p> - -<p>“To anybody.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but <em>when</em> was he positively rude to you? How -black-hearted of you, Hildegarde, not to tell me that before! -You might have known I’d simply <em>love</em> hearing -about that.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde laughed. “Why, I haven’t seen you since -Thursday.”</p> - -<p>“Was it at your birthday party?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, at the birthday party.”</p> - -<p>“Well, well, how did he do it? What did he say?”</p> - -<p>“It was after we’d all been reading the poem that -came with Eddie Cox’s present. Louis made fun of it.”</p> - -<p>“That was only being rude to Eddie.” Bella’s face fell.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Wait till you hear. I defended it, of course, and -said: ‘It isn’t as easy as it looks to make birthday odes.’ -‘It certainly doesn’t <em>look</em> difficult—to make <em>that</em> kind,’ -he said. ‘Then why,’ I said, just to stand up for Eddie, -‘why have you never written a poem about my airy -tread?’ And Louis said: ‘Well, there may be another -reason, but no girl who stands five foot ten in her stockings -and weighs a hundred and fifty pounds need ask it.’ -<em>That’s</em> the kind of thing.”</p> - -<p>It was an incident Miss Bella loved to recall. No man -could be really in love with a girl he had said <em>that</em> to.</p> - -<p>But some months later, Hildegarde was obliged, according -to the code, to report that Cheviot had been -“going on” again.</p> - -<p>Bella insisted on having all the “horrid details.”</p> - -<p>“It was last night at the taffy pulling. You know how -we’d all been laughing at his stories of Miss Monk meeting -the Carters’ black cow—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I was laughing so I couldn’t stop, and it was -so warm in that room the candy was melting. You remember -he said—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes,” said Bella, with feeling, “<em>I</em> remember. He -said you must come and pull with him.”</p> - -<p>“—out in the porch where the candy and I would cool -off.”</p> - -<p>“And you went.”</p> - -<p>“And he made more jokes on the way out. I begged -him not to talk any more, for I’d got into a silly mood -and everything he said made me laugh. ‘I know, I -know,’ he said. ‘I labor under the fatal disadvantage of -the funny man, but I could make you serious you know.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -And then—then—he had the impertinence—to kiss -me.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Hildegarde!”</p> - -<p>“Yes. It was dreadfully grotesque, too—our hands -were stuck together by that great yellow rope of taffy, -and I could only stammer and get redder. But I did say -I was not going to forgive him. Nobody had ever been -so rude to me before. Then he got awfully serious and -said all kinds of things—”</p> - -<p>“<em>What</em> kind?”</p> - -<p>“And at last he asked me what was wrong with -Ch-Cheviot—your old joke, you know.”</p> - -<p>Bella clenched her hands. Sacrilege! to present <em>her</em> -joke to another girl! She had always imagined that -would be just how he would propose to her. He would say: -“Bella, my beautiful, what’s the matter with Ch-Cheviot?”</p> - -<p>“Well, go on.”</p> - -<p>“If I didn’t like him enough he said, what sort of man -<em>was</em> I going to like? And I thought it only fair to give -him some idea, so I tried to soften it by laughing a little—I’d -forgiven him by then, you know, for he’d said -<em>such</em> things—”</p> - -<p>“What things?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, sorry kind of things, and he looked so—so—well, -I’d forgiven him. But I told him plainly that if it ever -is a question of the sort of man I am to care for, it won’t -be some one who is just nice and makes me have a good -time. It will be some great, gloomy creature who makes -me cry—and lifts me to the stars. I was laughing, but I -meant it—and I said: ‘I’d worship <em>that</em> kind of man.’”</p> - -<p>“What did he say then?”</p> - -<p>“Well, he looked sort of down I thought, so I said:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -‘You wouldn’t let me worship you, even if I could.’ -‘I’d let you love me,’ he said.”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h. What else?”</p> - -<p>“We went in after that.”</p> - -<p>“And he was just as funny as ever,” said Bella, -clutching at frail comfort.</p> - -<p>“Oh, quite,” agreed Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>It was small consolation to Miss Bella that Cheviot was -singular in his obduracy. Before she was eighteen she -was uncommonly well accustomed to seeing the stoutest -masculine defenses go down before her. The two Mar -boys had long been her devoted slaves. And Bella had -flirted with both of them impartially, taking what she felt -was only a becoming share in the interest all Valdivia -felt in those go-ahead young men, whenever they came -home for a visit. They were pointed to as models. Look -how they “got on”—they did it visibly—while you -looked they seemed to have to restrain themselves from -rising out of your sight. They kept Miss Bella supplied -with candy and flowers and they corresponded with her -when she went abroad. Secretly dreading the fascinations -of the Britisher, they asked in scoffing postscripts -how the effete nations were getting on. Bella’s view of -all this was that, provided the young men were “nice,” -a girl could hardly have too many of them contending -for her favor. It was what they were there for. Each -time she came home, she brought the Mar boys a scarf-pin -apiece, and pleased them still more by invariably demanding -a cent in return. “I can’t <em>give</em> you a thing -with a point. Something dreadful would happen! you -must buy them.” That looked, they felt, as if she were -“taking it seriously”—but which was she taking?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p> - -<p>The year that Bella was eighteen, after a summer in -England, she arrived at Staten Island just in time to -celebrate her birthday. She was full of joy at getting -back.</p> - -<p>The conscious approval that she bestowed on the -greater splendor of the American autumn had been generously -extended to the profusion of fine fruit that greets -one here at breakfast, to the individual bathrooms, even -to the spacious, drawered, behooked, and shelved clothes-closets -so agreeably numerous in the American house. -The same satisfaction with which she had noted these -things consciously revisited her as she trod the wide, -shallow steps of the staircase, that in its descent halted -leisurely upon two broad landings, having each a large -unglazed window opening upon the hall below. The observant -young eyes paid a flitting tribute to the beautiful -woodwork of the balusters and the great tall doors of the -rooms she passed, deciding as she went, there’s nothing -nicer than a new American house, unless it’s an old -(and a very old) English one. Even then, to <em>live</em> in, -give her the American.</p> - -<p>Like so many of the first generation born in “the -States,” this child of an old-world father was more -American in tastes and spirit than any daughter of the -Revolution. But, partly as a matter of physical inheritance, -partly, perhaps, because of her frequent visits -to England, she bore about her still a good deal of the -peculiar stamp of a certain type of English girl. As she -came trailing slowly down the wide staircase of Tom -Wayne’s country house on Staten Island, the practised -eye would have little difficulty in detecting a difference -between the figure on the stair and the typical “American<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -beauty,” a something less sumptuous and more distinguished. -Her head held not quite so high, and yet in -her carriage something indefinably more aloof. The -longer waist, not quite so ruthlessly stayed and belted, -giving an effect of greater ease; the longer neck, the -shoulders a little more sloping, the eyes less eager and -yet with more vision in them—something in the whole, -gracious as the aspect was, a little reluctant and more -than a little elusive. The Paquin gown Bella had brought -back and wore to-night for the first time, was long, and -straight, and plainer than prescribed by the New York -fashion of the moment—a gauze, discreetly iridescent, -showing over a white satin petticoat shifting lights of -pink, and pearl, and silver, a gown that shimmered as -the wearer walked, and clothed her in glancing light and -soft-hued shadows.</p> - -<p>Bella knew that she was very early, and she came -down slowly, drawing a long glove up her slim, bare -arm. When she reached the square window on the -lower landing, she stopped, laid the other glove on the -sill, and proceeded to button the one she had on. A -slight noise in the hall below made her lean her arms on -the broad, polished sill of the opening, and look down.</p> - -<p>A man stood by a table facing her, but with eyes bent -upon the books he was turning over—a man rather over -medium height, sunburnt, with a lean, clean-shaven face, -fair hair, and clean cut mouth and chin. That was all -she had time to take in before he raised his eyes.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” ejaculated Bella, involuntarily, and then after -meeting a moment longer the wide, unwinking, upward -look, “How do you do!” she said.</p> - -<p>“How do you do,” echoed the sunburnt man, and he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -did not bow nor move; just stood looking at the picture -up there on the wall.</p> - -<p>Miss Bella was not as a rule easily embarrassed, but -she was conscious now of feeling a little at a loss.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know exactly why I am in such a hurry to -say ‘how do you do,’ that I can’t wait till I come down. -But I do know you, don’t I?”</p> - -<p>“Of course you know me”; but that time he smiled, -and Bella said to herself, how <em>could</em> I have forgotten -anybody so—so—</p> - -<p>She picked up her glove with the intention of running -down. But, I expect I look rather nice here in the window, -she reflected, and instead of going down instantly -she said: “It’s some time since I was here before.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s a long time,” he answered. His tone -pleased her.</p> - -<p>“And I run about the world such a lot, I can’t be expected -to remember everybody’s name just all at once, -can I?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the name doesn’t matter.”</p> - -<p>“Does that mean you aren’t quite sure of mine?”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t the faintest notion of it.”</p> - -<p>“Then how do you know—what made you say, ‘Of -course I knew you’?”</p> - -<p>“Because I was sure you did.”</p> - -<p>“Why should I remember you, any more than you -should remember me? Are you somebody very special?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Very</em> special.”</p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’ll hear.”</p> - -<p>“How shall I hear?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you myself.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, go on.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t, now.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“You—you’re too far off.”</p> - -<p>“When I come down, you’ll tell me?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Will</em> you?—will you ever come down?” He was -smiling.</p> - -<p>“Why shouldn’t I?” she said, bewildered.</p> - -<p>“I never saw it tried before.”</p> - -<p>“Never saw me try to come down-stairs!”</p> - -<p>“Never, yet.”</p> - -<p>Had he been here that time she sprained her ankle? -“Do you imagine I’m lame?”</p> - -<p>“On the contrary, I’m ready to believe you have -wings. Please fly down.”</p> - -<p>“What a very odd person you are! I can’t think how -I came to forget—”</p> - -<p>He made no answer. Just stood there leaning against -the heavy table, half-smiling and never turning away his -eyes.</p> - -<p>She caught up her glove and ran down several steps, -but just before she reached the open place where the -stair turned abruptly, and the solid wall gave way to a -procession of slender pillars, she stopped, overcome by a -sudden rush of shyness. Behind that last yard of sheltering -wall she waited breathless, while you might count -seven, and then turned on a noiseless foot and fled up-stairs, -bending low as she passed the square windows, so -that not even the top of her brown head should be visible -to that very odd man waiting for her down there in -the hall.</p> - -<p>She reappeared ten minutes later with the first batch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -of guests, and while they were speaking to their hostess, -the sunburnt man made his way to Bella, and held out -his hand.</p> - -<p>“It took you a long time,” he said. “How did you -manage it?”</p> - -<p>“Manage what?”</p> - -<p>“Getting down. You’re the cleverest picture I ever -saw on any wall. How long do they give you?”</p> - -<p>“Out of the frame?” she said, catching up his fancy -with a laugh. “Oh, only long enough to find out what -you’ve done to make you the special person you say you -are.”</p> - -<p>“It’s not what I <em>have</em> done, but what I shall do.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m very much disappointed. I thought you -must be distinguished, and now I see you’re only conceited.”</p> - -<p>He smiled—he was rather wonderful when he smiled.</p> - -<p>“Of course, I know perfectly well we’ve met before,” -Bella went on, “but I don’t remember who you are.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you some day.”</p> - -<p>“Some day? How absurd. Why not now?”</p> - -<p>“Because the surprise might be too great.”</p> - -<p>She opened her eyes yet wider and laughed as a girl -will in recognition of a point she sees as yet only with -the eye of faith. “Didn’t you promise you’d tell me -if I came down?”</p> - -<p>“But you haven’t come down. You are still far out -of reach.”</p> - -<p>“It’s ridiculous of you not to tell me your name.”</p> - -<p>“My name wouldn’t mean anything to you—not yet. -You wouldn’t know it.”</p> - -<p>“What!” She drew back.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p> - -<p>“But we have met,” he reassured her hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“I felt we must have, but where was it?”</p> - -<p>“I can’t quite remember, either. It may have been -when you were Queen in Babylon and I was a Christian -slave.”</p> - -<p>She drew nearer with lit face. “Oh, do you believe -in all those delightful things?”</p> - -<p>“I believe—” he began on a different and lower note -and then he stopped suddenly. Bella’s upturned face -silently begged him to go on with his profession of faith.</p> - -<p>But just then, Bella’s brother, having passed a boring -guest on to his wife, came between the two who stood -so oblivious of the rest of the company. The apparition -of Tom Wayne brought Bella back to the every-day -world, and to a half-frightened self-criticism, in view of -the long flight she had taken from it in the last few seconds.</p> - -<p>Her brother laid an affectionate hand on the shoulder -of the sunburnt man, and said, laughing, to Bella: “You -must be careful with this person. He’s the most desperate -flirt.”</p> - -<p>Bella winced inwardly, but she disguised the little -hurt with smiling mockery. “Really! I should <em>never</em> -have thought it!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, goes off with first one heart and then another. -And he goes so far! That’s the worst of him.”</p> - -<p>“Where does he go?”</p> - -<p>“Lord knows! Let’s see, what God-forgotten place -was the last book about?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you write books? Then you <em>are</em> distinguished—”</p> - -<p>“You aren’t telling me you didn’t know who it -was?” exclaimed her brother.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I thought I did, and I’ve been behaving as if I -did.”</p> - -<p>There was a general movement to the dining-room, -but Tom paused long enough to say with mock formality: -“Miss Wayne, Mr. John Galbraith.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Oh!</em>” ejaculated the girl, growing pink with -excitement. “Are you Hildegarde’s Jack?”</p> - -<p>The sunburnt man looked mystified a moment, and -then with sudden daring, “Is your name Hildegarde?” -he said.</p> - -<p>This was on the twenty-fourth of September. Six -days later she began a letter to her friend.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Oh, Hildegarde! Hildegarde! You’re quite right. -He’s the most wonderful person in the world, and I hope -you don’t mind, but we are engaged to be married—Jack -Galbraith and I! It turns out that he’s an old friend of -Marion’s family, and after she married my brother, when -Jack came to see them last winter, Tom liked him awfully—of -course everybody does that—and since then -they’ve all three been great friends.</p> - -<p>“And one of the first things he asked me when he -heard Tom came from near Valdivia, was all about you—I -mean your father. He says such beautiful things about -your father, and how kind he was when Jack was a poor, -forlorn, little boy. But oh, Hildegarde! he’s the most -glorious person now you ever saw in your life. The old -faded photograph isn’t a bit like him. I am sending you -a new one, and that isn’t like him, either. But I am going -to get a silver frame for it and I shall be dreadfully -hurt if you don’t put it on the altar-table, with the old -locket and the roses—if you’re really glad of our happiness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -you’ll even burn a joss now and then for our sake. -I’m miserable when I think how little good any photograph -of such a person is! You can’t imagine what it’s -like when he smiles. All the whole earth smiles, too. I -adore him when he smiles—and when he doesn’t. I adore -him every minute, except when he talks about Franz -Josef Land, or something disgusting like that. But then -he doesn’t do it much—never, except when Mr. Borisoff -is here. Mr. Borisoff is a man I can’t stop to tell you -about, only I don’t like him, and I shall let Jack know -some day that I don’t think he is a good influence.</p> - -<p>“But I began to say that you mustn’t think Jack is -the least solemn as his letters used to sound and as the -pictures make out. In fact, he began our acquaintance -by flirting quite desperately, but he says it wasn’t flirting -at all. He meant all those things! He says they -were a profession of faith upon a miraculous revelation -(that’s me—I’m the miraculous revelation!), and it -only sounded flirtatious because I didn’t realize, as he -did, that we had been waiting for one another.</p> - -<p>“He’s waited a good deal longer than I have, poor -Jack! He’s more than twelve years older than I am; -do you remember how you used to throw that in my face? -But it doesn’t matter the least in the world. Besides, -you’d never think he was so old—he’s such a darling; -and he talks like a poet, and a painter, and an archangel, -all rolled into one. I am so wildly happy I can’t write -a proper letter, only I do want you to know that your -mother is mistaken, as we always thought. Jack is a -saint—simply a saint. When my father behaved quite -horridly, and said he couldn’t have me marrying a man -who went away for two or three years on long, scientific -expeditions, Jack said he wouldn’t do it any more,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> -though I think it cost him something to say that. He -was quite silent for hours afterward, and didn’t even -notice I’d done my hair differently. And that horrid -Mr. Borisoff was in such a rage. He didn’t say anything, -but oh! he looked. But now he’s gone away, -thank goodness, and I shall try to make Jack not ever -see him again. Then another thing, just to show you -what a perfect angel Jack is. My mother said I was delicate -and too young, and things like that, and she got -father to agree that I was only eighteen and was the -weakling of the family, and they made up their wicked -old minds that I mustn’t be married right away as Jack -and I had arranged. And what do you think? Jack -said he would wait for me? A whole year! I cried when -they settled that, but wasn’t he a seraph? Fathers and -mothers are very selfish; I shall not treat my daughters -like that.</p> - -<p>“How Jack and I will ever get through a year of waiting -is more than either of us know. I am not coming home -till the first week in December, and Jack’s coming to us -for Christmas. And then you’ll see him! I hope you -are pleased that I’m going to marry the man we’ve -talked so much about. It seems like another bond, -doesn’t it? How is Louis Cheviot? I can forgive him -now for always liking you best. I can’t imagine how I -ever looked at him. Oh, Hildegarde, Jack is a perfect—well, -I never heard the word that was beautiful enough -to describe him.</p> - -<p>“Good-by, I hear him now out in the garden. Jack is -the most perfect whistler.</p> - -<p class="center">“Your loving and devoted</p> - -<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Bella</span>.”</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-d.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">December did not bring Galbraith—nor -even Bella.</p> - -<p>“Jack found he couldn’t leave that -odious Mr. Borisoff to settle up some business -all alone, but my brother Tom has got -mama to consent to stay over Christmas with me in New -York at Marion’s. So Jack and I shan’t die, as we fully -intended to if we were separated.”</p> - -<p>Just as the girl and her mother, early in the new year, -were at last going home, a cable came from England to -say that Bella’s sister, Mrs. Hilton, had been badly hurt -in a carriage accident.</p> - -<p>The cable was couched in the most alarming terms—there -seemed to be every prospect of three little children -being left motherless. Bella and her mother took the first -ship that sailed.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“If we have to stay any time, Jack says he will come -over.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>They did stay, and Jack was as good as his word. Mrs. -Hilton did not die, but she lay for months in a critical -condition, and her mother mounted guard over the new -baby and the three other little people.</p> - -<p>Bella meanwhile was amusing herself right royally.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I’ve been presented and I’m having a perfect, rapturous -time.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> - -<p>“And now it’s decided we don’t have to wait quite a -whole year—we are going to be married before we come -back to America, some time in the summer. Just think -of it, Hildegarde! You and I not to meet again till I’m -married! Oh, do write and say you’ll love me just as -much as ever.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Then for a time no more long letters, but a shower of -happy little notes, that descended with tolerable regularity. -After that, the wedding invitation! Ten days’ -interval and then two communications by the same mail. -The first:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">“<span class="smcap">Dearest Hildegarde</span>:</p> - -<p>“Mother and I are just back from a week-end at -Tryston. It was rather dull. All the men were immensely -distinguished and at least eighty. I was glad -to get back to town. Hengler’s Circus has been turned -into a skating-rink. We all went to a delightful party -there last week. The wife of the Governor-General of -Canada skated most wonderfully. I wish I could. Jack -didn’t take his eyes off her. Mr. Borisoff has come to -London. I hate Mr. Borisoff as much as ever, if not -worse.</p> - -<p>“I haven’t time for more if I’m to catch this post. -But I can’t have you thinking I forget you in my happiness. -Besides, I shall be happier when Mr. Borisoff goes -back to his fellow-barbarians, and leaves me and Jack -alone. The next, I promise, shall be a great, long letter. -You’ll see! I do love you, Hildegarde.</p> - -<p class="center">“From your loving</p> - -<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Bella</span>.</p> - -<p>“P. S. I wish you were here.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> - -<p>It struck Hildegarde it was the first time she had said -that since Jack had appeared on the scene.</p> - -<p>The other letter was without date or beginning.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Jack and I have quarreled. Oh, if you were here!</p> - -<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Bella.</span>”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Immediately after, a mysterious cable, that told simply -the date of Bella’s homeward sailing. Had the quarrel -frightened her lover and so hastened on the marriage? -But no, for while Bella was still upon the sea came a -formal notice that the marriage was “postponed.” It -had been mailed some days before the cable was sent.</p> - -<p class="tb">Hildegarde’s first feeling upon Bella’s return was that -since the writing of that final note from London, and the -dispatching of the postponement notice, the trouble, -whatever it had been, was patched up. Impossible to -think there was a cloud in her sky. Not matured at all; -only a little thinner and, save for that, exactly the same -Bella—“unthinking, idle, wild, and young.”</p> - -<p>But as the minutes went by and she ran from one -familiar thing to another in garden and house, with -greeting and gay comment, spinning out the time till -she and Hildegarde should be alone together, the older -girl began to have her doubts. Was Bella as happy as -she pretended, flitting about with all her “dear Mars?”</p> - -<p>Nothing possible to gather from her eagerness to be -assured that so far from being forgotten, she was more -than ever an object of interest and devotion. Nothing -new Bella’s little weakness for wanting everybody to be -visibly enlivened by her return from “abroad,” bringing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -her adorable frocks (for Bella’s American mama had -come into money, and Bella was helping her to come out -of a certain portion), bringing remembrances for everybody, -bringing a whiff of foreign airs, and a touch of -something exciting, exotic, into the lives of stay-at-home -folk. Bella had always been one of those who, however -much adored, would like to be adored yet a little more. -She couldn’t bear that any one within reach of her influence -should escape caring about her, and she cast a -net uncommon wide. It was meant to enmesh even -Hildegarde’s mother, partly because that lady was so -little lavish in bestowing her affection, but mostly because -if you were much in the Mar house it mattered -enormously upon what terms you were with Mrs. Mar. -But, as ill-luck would have it, Bella never thought of the -lady once she was away from her. Though she had -brought back scarf-pins for the boys, and a silver-mounted -blackthorn for Mr. Mar, and a quite wonderful -necklace for Hildegarde, there was nothing—nothing at -all for Mrs. Mar—and it was serious.</p> - -<p>Bella never realized the awful omission till, having -dispensed the other gifts, she stood with the rest of the -family in the garden, not even asking where Mrs. Mar -was, till looking up, she saw that lady at her bedroom -window carefully trying on a new pair of gloves. -“Everything depends on the way they’re put on the -first time.” Bella could hear her saying it, and she -looked up smiling and waving her hand, as much as to -say, “Oh, please hurry down! <em>You’re</em> the person I’m -pining most of all to see again.” But, of herself, Miss -Bella was silently asking, “What <em>am</em> I to do! What will -happen if she should see she’s the only one I’ve forgotten?”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -Bella’s brain worked feverishly. Glancing down, -her eye fell on a gold pencil she was wearing on a chain. -Surreptitiously detaching this latest gift of her mother’s, -Bella slipped it in her pocket, talking all the time; telling -Mr. Mar what it felt like to see sunshine, real Californian -sunshine again; offering up to public scorn the English -girl who had disapproved of the unappreciative Californians -for rooting arum lilies out of their gardens, and -throwing them away in sheaves, which Bella admitted -was what they did with the “pest.” “Just like your -American extravagance,” the English girl had said.</p> - -<p>Oh, it was so perfectly heavenly to be at home again! -Bella beamed in her old conscienceless way at poor Trenn, -who found a heady tonic—a hope new born, in hearing -the adored one call the Mar house “home.”</p> - -<p>But even while he was savoring the sweetness of that -thought, there was the distracting creature linking her -arm in Harry’s, and saying: “Come away a moment -and tell me something I want to know.”</p> - -<p>What could a boy like Harry possibly tell Bella that -she could want to know!</p> - -<p>Harry’s own huge satisfaction in the incident was -cruelly damped upon Bella’s saying: “Does your mother -still love stumps?”</p> - -<p>“Stumps! Love s-stumps!” he muttered, in amazement.</p> - -<p>“Yes. You haven’t forgotten how she always kept -her pencils till they were so little nobody else could have -held on to them.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that kind. Yes. Stumps! I see.”</p> - -<p>“Well, does she dote on them as much as ever? Does -she pick them out of the fender, when Mr. Mar has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -thrown his away? Does she still say: ‘Well, <em>I’m</em> not so -well off that I can put a thing in the fire that’s only -half-used?’ Does she do that the same as ever, or are you -all too rich now?”</p> - -<p>Harry laughed. “Oh, we’ll never be so rich that -mother won’t use a pencil to its last grasp.”</p> - -<p>“Well, then, I’ve got the very thing for her! A nice -gold one—pencil, you know. But rather a stump, too. -See?—just her size!”</p> - -<p>Harry looked doubtfully down upon the somewhat -massive pencil-case which Bella had drawn from her -pocket and was telescoping in and out. “That’s an -awfully fine one, but I can’t quite imagine mother giving -up her—”</p> - -<p>“Well, look here,” interrupted Bella, “Mrs. Mar’s a -person you can’t take risks with. Do you mind going -up-stairs and showing her this? Just ask her what she -thinks of it—as though I’d brought it to you, you -know.” Harry departed on the errand, while Bella -returned to the others, but her emissary was back directly -with a doubtful face, and Mrs. Mar following not far -behind.</p> - -<p>“Well?” Bella demanded in an undertone.</p> - -<p>“Oh—a—I asked her if she didn’t think it was an -awfully fine one, and all she said was: ‘The Lord was -very good. He had delivered her many years ago from -gold pencils.’”</p> - -<p>“What on earth does she mean?”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t the ghost—’Sh!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, how do you do, dear Mrs. Mar!” Bella flew to -embrace the lady, who received the advance with self-possession, -but not without a glint of pleasure.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p> - -<p>Harry still stood with the intended tribute in his hand. -Mrs. Mar’s eye fell upon it critically.</p> - -<p>“Is it true—a—you don’t think much of gold pencils?” -hazarded Bella.</p> - -<p>“Oh, if you’re a person of leisure—”</p> - -<p>“What’s that got to do with it?”</p> - -<p>“It’s a pursuit in itself, keeping a gold pencil going.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no. Look. This one goes beautifully.” Bella -took it from Harry and shot it in and out.</p> - -<p>“That’s just its wiliness. Wait till you <em>need</em> it.”</p> - -<p>“Really this one’s very good. It’s warranted—”</p> - -<p>“<em>I’ll</em> warrant it’ll always be wanting a new lead. -Especially at the moment when you can’t possibly stop -to niggle about with fitting one in. Then you’ll put the -thing away till you can take an afternoon off just to -get your handsome gold pencil into working order again. -And when you’ve done that and gone thoroughly into -the subject, you’ll find there isn’t a store on the Pacific -coast that keeps your size leads. No lead in any store -will ever fit your pencil. Then you’ll write to New -York to a manufactory. Then you’ll wait a month, -maybe two. Then, by the time you’ve got them, you’ll -find the pencil has forgotten how to assimilate leads. It -will break them off short and spit them out. If you try -to discipline the pencil, it’ll turn sulky and refuse to -open. Or it stays open and refuses to shut.”</p> - -<p>“I assure you, Mrs. Mar, <em>this</em> one—”</p> - -<p>“And I assure you, Miss Bella Wayne, that even if -you’re under the special favor of Providence, and none -of these things happen, you’ll still find you can never -get the work out of a twenty-dollar gold pencil that you -can out of a five-cent cedar.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p> - -<p>Bella was catching Harry’s eye and trying not to -laugh.</p> - -<p>“And remember what I tell you,” Mrs. Mar wound -up, “you’ll have to treat that gold pencil as you treat -Mrs. Harrington Trennor, with reverence and awe. If you -don’t you’ll be sorry. If you lean on it, it will collapse. -If you do anything but admire it, it will teach you better.” -Bella opened her lips—Mrs. Mar stopped her with, -“Unless you come to my way of thinking, you’ll use -that pencil in fear and trembling till the merciful grave -offers you a refuge from your slavery. As I told Harry”—she -buttoned the last button on her new gloves (why -hadn’t Bella brought her anything as sensible as -gloves!) and she drew down her cuff with a business-like -air—“the Lord has delivered me from many snares; gold -pencils among the rest!” And she marched off toward -the gate.</p> - -<p>“Oh, mother,” said Hildegarde, at her side, “how -could you! That dear little Bella brought the beautiful -gold pencil for you all the way from Europe.”</p> - -<p>“Do you suppose I didn’t guess that? Good-by!” -She looked back and nodded to Bella. “I’ve got to go to -the missionary meeting now, but I’ll see you at supper.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, and you’ll tell me the rest then?” asked the -wicked Bella, with an innocent look.</p> - -<p>“The rest!” Mrs. Mar glanced sharply over her shoulder -as she laid her hand on the latch of the gate. “There -is no rest for anybody who depends on a contrivance like -that. Whenever I see a person with a gold pencil, I -know it won’t be long before she’s asking me to lend -her my wooden stump. As a rule she likes my wooden -stump so well she walks off with it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p> - -<p>As Mrs. Mar vanished round the corner, Bella gave -way to suppressed chuckles. Impossible to think she -had a care in the world greater than a rejected gold -pencil.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Hildegarde. I’m coming directly; only Trenn -hasn’t given me a spray of lemon verbena yet, to console -me for the scandalous way his mother treats me. Don’t -you remember you <em>always</em> give me lemon verbena when -we’re in the garden?” She showed no impatience when -Trenn prolonged the time-honored process—not a bit of -it, went on laughing and chattering there in the sunshine -and telling how they thought in England that the American -girl was only keeping up the transatlantic reputation -for “telling tall stories,” when Bella had said that verbena -at home was a tree, and grew to the second-story -window. Then having undone in half an hour any good -of peace regained by the “Mar boys” through her absence -and engagement, Miss Bella found her way up-stairs.</p> - -<p>Her vivacity fell visibly from the moment she crossed -the threshold of Hildegarde’s familiar little room. But -she commented favorably upon the new home-worked -counterpane, and then, as though without seeing it, -walked past the familiar old altar-table, with its ferny -background and the roses ranged below. There was the -big silver locket hung above, like some peasant’s votive -offering at a foreign shrine, and down there in front -of the massed roses was that other picture, that had -been new only a year ago, when Bella’s happiness was -born.</p> - -<p>She went straight to the window and stood quite silent, -looking down upon Hildegarde’s flower borders. Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> -without turning round, “Will you do something for -me?”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p>“Take that picture away. The locket, too.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Bella! Is it as bad as that?”</p> - -<p>“You’ll put them out of sight?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes; of course I will.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Now!</em>” She might as well have said: I won’t turn -round until they’re gone.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde opened a drawer. “I’ll put them in here -till things come right again.”</p> - -<p>“Things aren’t ever coming right.”</p> - -<p>“Bella!”</p> - -<p>Not till she heard the drawer shut did the girl turn -from the window, and Hildegarde could see that the -small face was quivering.</p> - -<p>“Bella, dear!” Her friend swept to her on a sudden -wave of pity. “It will all come right.”</p> - -<p>But the younger girl drew back. Although her tears -were brimming she spoke with a certain half-choked -hardness: “I’ve hurried mother back as fast as boats -and trains could bring us; just to be with you again, but -not to hear you say that. I wanted to be with you just -because you will know better. Hildegarde—I—I’d like -to stay with you awhile. May I?”</p> - -<p>“I want nothing so much—we all want you.”</p> - -<p>“Trenn, too?” she actually laughed through her tears. -What a queer creature.</p> - -<p>“Trenn, too. Only”—Hildegarde glanced from the -empty place on the altar-table, to the shut drawer—“only -you’ll be kind enough not to break Trenn’s heart -as well.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p> - -<p>“As well as my own?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde’s face grew hard with the words, “As -well as Jack Galbraith’s.”</p> - -<p>Bella, too, was grave enough now; “I haven’t broken -his heart. But—I’ve got a crack in my own. Only”—she -lifted her pretty eyes with an air almost of panic—“only -nobody else is to know. You”—she came nearer -and laid a nervous hand on Hildegarde’s firm arm—“you -must help me to keep everybody from knowing.”</p> - -<p>“Dear,” was all Hildegarde’s answer, but she leaned -her cheek against Bella’s thin face.</p> - -<p>“And there’s another thing,” the younger girl went on -a little feverishly, still clinging to Hildegarde’s arm, “I -hate talking about it.”</p> - -<p>“Of course. Just at first, it must be—”</p> - -<p>“No, it isn’t ‘of course’ and it’s not only at first. -It’s for always. Most girls talk their love affairs to tatters. -I’ve noticed that. I want you to help me to—to -keep my—” Her voice went out upon a sudden flood of -tears. Hildegarde drew her into the window-seat and sat -down beside her. They were silent for a time, until Bella -laid her wet face down on her friend’s shoulder with, -“Mind, Hildegarde! We aren’t to talk about it. Not -even you and I. John Galbraith is too—too—” She -raised her head, drew her small hand across her eyes, -and then sprang up and faced the window, as if some -enemy without had challenged her. “It may be that I -<em>don’t</em> understand what a great man he is, as Mr. Borisoff -says. But, at least, I know he’s not the sort of person to -be chattered over.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde remembered with a sting how for years she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -had “chattered” with Galbraith for her theme. And -she hadn’t little Bella’s excuse. Yes, it was always like -this. She was for ever stumbling upon something dignified -and fine in Butterfly Bella.</p> - -<p>The pretty tear-stained face was lifted to the sunlight, -and the childish red mouth, so used to laughter, was pitifully -grave, as Bella, staring up into the square of sky -over Hildegarde’s head said: “He is up there!”</p> - -<p>“Jack!” Hildegarde exclaimed in a half-whisper.</p> - -<p>“John Galbraith,” said Bella. “He is way up there, -and I won’t be the one to pull him down.”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h. I was half afraid you meant he was dead.”</p> - -<p>“As good as dead.”</p> - -<p>Fear took fresh hold on the older girl. He is going to -marry some one else, Hildegarde said to herself. Yes, -yes; as she looked at poor Bella’s face, she was sure of it. -And now the slim little figure had sunk on its knees. She -leaned against her friend for support. But she looked -out across Hildegarde’s shoulder, searching space -through tears. Hildegarde held tight the childish-looking -hands, and asked the last question she was ever to -put about the common hero of their girlhood. “Where -is he?” she said.</p> - -<p>“He’s gone off with Mr. Borisoff somewhere.”</p> - -<p>“You mean you don’t know where?”</p> - -<p>“Somewhere in the arctic.” She hid her face in Hildegarde’s -lap.</p> - -<p>They sat so a long, long time.</p> - -<p class="tb">In spite of her year’s absence, Bella found nothing much -changed in the Valdivia situation, except that the Mar -boys had “got on” more than ever, and that their father’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -form of progress seemed still more strikingly to consist -in “getting on” in years.</p> - -<p>It was a long time since his wife had given him the credit -for doing more than his share at the bank with a view to -promotion to be head cashier, or even a “silent partner.” -Each time a vacancy occurred some one else had stepped -into it; Louis Cheviot had been the last. But Mrs. Mar -learned through the years that the reason her husband -accepted increased tasks was that he was born to bear -burdens, as the sparks to fly upward. If any extra work -was “going,” so to speak, it gravitated unerringly to -Nathaniel Mar. As to the question of his reward, what -would be gained by giving a better position to a man who -in any crisis could be depended on to do all the work of a -higher office, and never ask for increased emolument? -The only person who ever hinted such a thing to the -Trennors had been Cousin Harriet. The Trennor Brothers’ -success (which was proverbial in Valdivia) had long -extended to avoidance of Cousin Harriet. Certainly Mr. -Mar’s life-long ill-luck brought out more clearly the fact -of his boys’ early prosperity. Not that it was enormous -as yet, though quite sufficient to have enabled them to -marry, had they so chosen.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar’s satisfaction in her sons was checkered by -the fact that each of these otherwise reasonable and enterprising -young men clung to his boyish infatuation for -Bella Wayne, long after their boyhood had gone the way -of the years. It certainly did seem as though not till -one or both were cut out by her marrying some one else, -would either Trenn or Harry look at any of the girls -Mrs. Mar considered more desirable. Not that the boys’ -mother had been able wholly to escape the general Mar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -devotion to the disturber of their peace, but as the seasons -passed, and Bella rejected one swain after another, -it became increasingly vexatious to Mrs. Mar that her -sons should not realize and amend the stupidity of caring -about a girl who was more and more under suspicion of -being handicapped by a silly passion for a mad fool who -had given up the substance for the shadow, and had met -his due reward—being now these many months lost in -the arctic ice.</p> - -<p class="tb">Hildegarde’s theory that since the unhappy issue of the -love affair, Bella had greater need of her friend than -ever before, and Hildegarde’s own consequent inaccessibility -to others was the cause of some restiveness on Cheviot’s -part. His old friendliness for Bella had vanished. -He spoke of her with a humorous disparagement that did -him ill-service with Hildegarde. But he was grave -enough sometimes.</p> - -<p>“I never get a word alone with you, nowadays,” he -said one night, as he sat smoking on the steps of the -porch at Hildegarde’s feet, while Bella walked about the -garden with Trenn. Hildegarde made some perfunctory -answer, and they sat silent for a time.</p> - -<p>The light wind brought up waves of fragrance from -the tangle of roses under Hildegarde’s window, and the -little path stretched away to indefiniteness in the starlight, -till it was lost long before it reached the garden’s -end. The limits of the narrow inclosure, so sharply -drawn by day, were nobly enlarged, lost even, at this -hour, in the dim reaches of green turned silver and -black, as the moon came over the tops of the conifers.</p> - -<p>Down by the arbor vitæ hedge growing things that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -Hildegarde had planted sent their souls to her across the -lawn, piercing the heavier air of roses with arrowy -shafts of spicy sweetness.</p> - -<p>On such a night no one is alone. Where two go down -a darkling walk, or sit on the steps in the dusk, others -gather round them. Invisible presences—the singers, -the beautiful ones, the stern doers of great deeds—join -us common folk, and give us a share in their glory or -their steadfast pain. Hopes of our own, that look too -large by day—too dim and inaccessible, they come -walking in our garden at such an hour, beckoning us or -looking, smiling, on. Living men, rumored to be far -away, suddenly stand before us. Women who have been -long aloof draw near. All the barriers go down. Even -the dead come home.</p> - -<p>John Galbraith was down there, where Bella’s white -gown shone among the trees, and John Galbraith was -sitting between those other two on the steps.</p> - -<p>And Cheviot knew it.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was reminded of the visible presence by -his saying, in a low voice, that he understood the reason -of his ill-success with her.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Bella told me. Years ago. When she was so -little you thought she—”</p> - -<p>“Told you what?”</p> - -<p>“That you had been in love with John Galbraith since -you were sixteen.”</p> - -<p>“But you must see that’s absurd. I’ve never even -seen him!”</p> - -<p>“I wish to God you had! Then you might get over -it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p> - -<p>Hildegarde roused herself to say with equal emphasis, -“You are really talking the greatest foolishness—”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t you got his picture in your room this moment?”</p> - -<p>“I have the picture he—had taken for Bella.”</p> - -<p>“Before he ever met Bella you had a picture of Galbraith. -You used to wear it. Bella said—”</p> - -<p>“You seem to forget you’re talking about what happened -when I was a little school-girl, and about an old—a -very old friend of my family. We all have pictures -of Mr. Galbraith—and, why, there’s one of you there, -too.”</p> - -<p>“On the altar?”</p> - -<p>(Oh, Bella! Bella! How could you!) “The one on -the flower-table was put there because Bella asked me to. -It’s not there any more. And while it was, I looked -upon it as the future husband of my dearest friend.”</p> - -<p>But the description of Bella sounded suddenly ironic. -It hurt. For Cheviot was the man who all along had -laughed at girls’ friendships, and all along he had -known that Bella was capable of—</p> - -<p>“It isn’t that I couldn’t forgive you for not being in -love with me,” he said. “But for being in love with a -photograph and a packet of letters—<em>no!</em> that wasn’t -easy. At the same time I knew well enough that if your -life hadn’t been so narrow, you wouldn’t have been so -at the mercy of this one romantic figure in it. If you’d -been able to travel, or even to go to the university—if -you’d had <em>any</em> other door open, you wouldn’t have -looked so long out of that one window.”</p> - -<p>A scrap of one of Mrs. Browning’s letters flew across -her mind—the dearer somehow for being a little incoherent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -not fitted together at all, yet finely consequent -to the inner spirit—those words: “The pleasantest place -in the house is the leaning out of the window.”</p> - -<p>Ah, it was very true of the Mar house.</p> - -<p>“And your mother,” Cheviot went on, “always ready -to puncture any home-blown bubble with the needle of -her wit; mercilessly critical, for fear her children should -have too low standards; ready to flay anybody alive in -the cause of education. Never letting you rest satisfied -for a moment with the attainable—you must always be -reaching out—reaching out—and when you reached out -you touched Galbraith.”</p> - -<p>How strangely well he knew—this man. It was odd, -but she could never again think him obtuse, at any rate. -That comfort was gone.</p> - -<p>“I was even sorry for you while the engagement -lasted,” the low voice went on, unmindful of the uneasy -stir of the figure sitting above him in the dusk. He took -the half-smoked cigar from his lips and laid it by the -pillar. Over the edge of the porch the tip shone red. -“I saw how hard it was for you; you had been weaving -romances round Galbraith for years—you had looked -upon him for so long as your special property—” Hildegarde -drew back into the deeper shadow. But by his -own suffering urged to win a companion in pain, he persisted: -“And you thought if it had been <em>you</em> he had met, -it would have been you that he—” Hildegarde’s skirts -rustled as if she were getting up—“Look here, I’ve told -you before you’ve got a genius for truth—I’m treating -you on that basis.” She said nothing, but she sat still. -“There was a moment,” Cheviot’s voice was unnaturally -low, “last spring, when I knew I was gaining ground<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -with you. It was the day I came back from Mexico. I -came here straight from the station, and you—you—” -She heard him strike his hands suddenly together in the -dusk, and a curious excitement took hold of her. “When -I went home, I found the invitation to Bella’s wedding. -It had been lying there for days. Then I understood. -You had had all those days and nights to get accustomed -to realizing it was the end of the old—where are -you going? Can’t you even bear to have me speak of it -this once!”</p> - -<p>The white figure was still again.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I understood!” He picked up the cigar again. -“I felt just the same as you did. I knew the ghost that -had stood so long between us was suddenly gone. He -had moved out of the way, and you could see that I was -there. For those next days you were—you were—I -was full of hope. Then came word that Bella had broken -her engagement.”</p> - -<p>“No, that the marriage was postponed.”</p> - -<p>He waited a moment, seemed about to speak, and -then, instead of saying anything, with a sharp movement -he threw his half-smoked cigar across the whitening silver -of the path into the inky blotch the shrubbery made. -Hildegarde’s eyes followed the flying red light till, -against a tree trunk, it fell in a splash of sparks, and was -swallowed up in shadow.</p> - -<p>“I shan’t forget,” Cheviot went on, still on that low -restrained note, “the look in your face as you said: ‘I -never thought they were suited to one another. It would -never have done.’”</p> - -<p>“<em>Did</em> I say that?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and I looked up and I saw the ghost was there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> -again, and presently I saw he wasn’t a ghost any longer, -but a real man. An active expectation on your part—”</p> - -<p>“No, no.” The voice was less denial than beseeching.</p> - -<p>“Yes, a <em>plan</em>.”</p> - -<p>The hands that were gripping the wicker chair pulled -her quickly to her feet. “Bella!” she called to the white -flicker by the dial. “It’s getting late!”</p> - -<p>Cheviot stood up, too. “On your honor, Hildegarde—” -Was it the moonlight blanched her, or was -she indeed so white? His heart smote him—but, “On -your honor can you deny it?” he demanded.</p> - -<p>“No,” she said, with sudden passion; “I don’t deny -it.” And while her words should have steeled him, her -voice brought a lump to his throat.</p> - -<p>“You mean,” he asked, huskily, “to wait till John -Galbraith comes back?”</p> - -<p>“I know it’s quite mad—but there! A thing can take -you like that. You <em>can’t</em> change.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">With the precision of clockwork, every day of -his life but Sundays, Nathaniel Mar walked -down the main street of Valdivia to the -bank. People who lived out of sight of the -City Hall timepiece, set their watches by -the appearance of the lame man with the stick. He never -varied the route, any more than he altered his time, and -both had been exactly the same for twenty-eight years.</p> - -<p>The other bank cashiers (few of them over thirty) -said that, in their opinion, Mr. Mar had hung on quite -long enough. They did not hesitate to add that his post -would have fallen to a younger man years ago had Mar -not been “a sort of relation.” Even so it was pretty -steep that an old codger of sixty should be blocking up -the way like that. A bank was no place for the superannuated, -unless, of course, a man was a director.</p> - -<p>So acute was the hearing of the old codger (who was -not yet sixty) that sotto-voce observations of this sort -had, from time to time, reached his ears.</p> - -<p>He saw all about him men, younger than himself, -turned out of positions they had occupied, with usefulness -and integrity, for years, and for no other reason -than to make way for some “boy” in his early twenties. -Men of his own standing had from time to time in the -past decade raged hopelessly against this tendency in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> -nation, where the great god, Efficiency, demands the fine -flower of each man’s life, and looks with disfavor upon -lined faces and whitening hair, even when the capacity -for service is unimpaired. It is part of the doctrine of -“<em>show me</em>.” There being any good, or any force not -capable of being “shown”—well, it was doubtful. Best -not take chances.</p> - -<p>Mar had sympathized with his contemporaries for being -elbowed out of their places, but he had smiled at one -or two who had suffered the common fate of the American -clerk, in spite of having dyed their hair, and worn -jaunty pince-nez instead of “good honest spectacles.” -Nevertheless, Mar’s own secret uneasiness—not being -assuaged by hair dye or dissipated by pince-nez—took -the form of making him the more ready to be the Trennor -Brothers’ pack-horse, unconsciously the more eager -to oblige any and everybody at the bank, to “show” -from Monday morning to Saturday afternoon how indispensable -he was. He knew they could get no one to do -what he did with the same care and assiduity for the -same salary. His astonishment was, therefore, hardly -less than his chagrin, when he found upon his desk, one -morning, a letter from the firm “terminating their long -and pleasant connection upon the usual notice.”</p> - -<p>In the bitterness of that hour he felt that nothing he -ever had suffered before had mattered so vitally. As -long as a man has work he can bear trouble and disappointment—life -without work—it was something not to -be faced. For the work, little by little, had devoured -everything else, narrowed down his friendships, cut off -his recreations, produced a brain-fag that made him unfit -even for reading anything but newspapers.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> - -<p>He set instantly about finding another post. The story -of the days that followed—the writing to and interviewing -whippersnapper young managers of flourishing concerns, -and of being more or less cavalierly “turned -down,” as the slang phrase went—it would make a book -of itself; a tragic and significant book to boot, and one -essentially “American.”</p> - -<p>The Mar boys behaved very well. <em>They</em>, at least, were -not surprised. They had, in point of fact, expected the -occurrence long before.</p> - -<p>What they had not expected was that the old man -“would take it so mighty hard.” Why, he could scarcely -be more cut up if he were alone in the world—dependent -entirely upon his own exertions—instead of having two -fine go-ahead sons, who were getting on in life so rapidly -that it really wasn’t a matter of vital importance -whether the old man did anything or not; for they had -every intention of being good to their father.</p> - -<p>They told him so. And he had not shown himself -grateful. And <em>still</em> they meant to be “good” to him. -They were “mighty nice young men.”</p> - -<p class="tb">Nathaniel Mar saw clearly by the time the “notice” -was up, that he lagged superfluous. There was no opening -for him anywhere.</p> - -<p>The first morning that he had no right to go down to -the bank was one of the most difficult he had known. He -went out just the same, at precisely the same moment, -and came in at the usual time. No one knew where he -had spent those hours, but he looked tired and ill when -he sat down to the midday meal. After it was over, he -said he thought he would “go up and lie down.” He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -had never done such a thing before in his life, at that -hour of the day. The following mornings he spent at his -writing-table in the dining-room, and although there -were no screaming children there now, and the room -was bright and pretty, he sat miserably, day after day, -turning over old letters and papers, till in despair he -would get up and take down a book to read. But his -thoughts were all “down at the bank.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar dashed in and out, called brisk directions to -the Chinaman, who presided now in the kitchen, and -when there was nothing else to do, she would fly at the -sewing-machine. This appeared to be the kind of -mechanism which was worked with the whole human -body. The hands traveling briskly along with the moving -seam, head going like a mandarin’s, knees up, knees -down, Mrs. Mar pedaled and buzzed away.</p> - -<p>Her husband seldom spoke. Having retired within -himself directly after the breakfast things were cleared -away, he seemed to be averse from making the smallest -movement while his wife was in the room. He sat there -intensely still, even turning the leaf of his book only at -long intervals, surreptitiously, without a sound. It was -as though, by a death-like stillness, he should prove that -he was not there. He was really down at the bank—his -motionlessness seemed to say.</p> - -<p>As if Mrs. Mar divined this mental ruse of his, and felt -a need to unmask it, she would look at him sideways, and -“What are you doing?” she would ask briskly.</p> - -<p>“Reading.”</p> - -<p>“That old Franklin again? Why, you’ve read it -three or four times already!” No answer. “Why don’t -you get something up-to-date from the library?” Still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -no response. “Content just to sit <em>and sit</em>!” she would -comment inwardly. Then aloud, “Don’t they want a -manager up at Smithson’s?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you try for the secretaryship of the -New Pickwick?”</p> - -<p>“Monty Fellowes has got it.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, well, I suppose Monty Fellowes went the length -of asking for it.”</p> - -<p>Nathaniel Mar had also gone that length, though the -post was beneath a man of his powers. But he could not -tell over again at home the tale of his failures. Better -she should think he hadn’t tried.</p> - -<p>But, oh, the very look of him sat upon her spirit, and -still she looked.</p> - -<p>“You’ll be ill if you stay in the house so much. Remember -you’ve had a walk twice a day for going on -thirty years.” No answer. His immobility made it a -positive necessity for her to get up and poke the fire -vigorously, or do something with might and main. That -was a thing <em>he</em> had never tried in his life—to do something -with might and main! And that was why he was -stranded like this now. A man of only fifty-eight! Why, -she herself—Harriet T. Mar—was fifty-nine. And just -see how <em>she</em> took hold of existence—very much as she -gripped the poker. Oh, it was a trial living in the same -house, and all day long in the same room with a “logy” -man! He was more sodden with failure every day he -lived. Misfortune acted upon him like an opiate. Ha! -If she—Harriet T. Mar—were <em>ninety</em>, misfortune would -sting her into action. At the mere thought she sprang -up and stung her husband, or the imperturbable Mongol<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> -in the kitchen, or the gentle Hildegarde. But truth to -tell, though that girl <em>looked</em> such a tender, simple creature, -it was as little rewarding to wrestle with Hildegarde -as with Mar, or the stolid Chinaman.</p> - -<p>Indeed, the more the mother bustled the quieter grew -the girl—not at first consciously as a form of protest, but -by a process of natural reaction that was largely responsible -for Hildegarde’s seeming calm to the verge of insensibility.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar never wholly realized how much to the mother’s -exuberant energy the daughter owed her impassive air. -These influences playing about sensitive -people produce a curious rhythm in family life. Nathaniel -Mar’s supineness made his wife seize the reins and -ceaselessly whip up the horses of their car. Mrs. Mar’s -frantic urging of the pace, the dust and noise and whip-cracking -of her progress, produced not merely a yearning -for peace in Hildegarde’s mind, but a positive physical -need to simulate it. People talk much of the value -of good example, forgetting that we are sometimes shown -there is nothing so salutary as a bad example, since out -of example is wrought not merely the impulse toward -imitation, but often a passionate realization of the advantage -of “another way.”</p> - -<p>There was always in the Mar house one person with an -eye upon the clock—why need you wear a watch?</p> - -<p>No need for you to spur on a servant, or make example -of a tardy errand boy. There was always Mrs. Mar to do -these things with a swingeing efficacy. Those who live -with the Mrs. Mars of the world do not realize that they -owe their own reputation for sweetness largely to the -caustic temper of some one else. Under Mrs. Mar’s roof<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -you may “cultivate kindness” and not suffer for it. -Away from her drastic influence, you yourself will have -to apportion grace and discipline more evenly.</p> - -<p>So various is life that we have sometimes a chance of -learning from people’s vices what their virtues could -never so deeply have impressed.</p> - -<p>Something of this the “slow” girl arrived at.</p> - -<p>The day Mrs. Mar and Hildegarde went off to spend a -week down at the ranch with the Waynes, the two came -into the dining-room to say good-by to Mr. Mar. It was -to be “a house-party,” and Cheviot and Mr. Mar had -been asked, too. Cheviot had accepted—“from Saturday -night till Monday morning”—but Mar had declined -to go for any length of time whatever.</p> - -<p>“A body would think he had affairs too important to -leave! Well, good-by, Nathaniel. Don’t let hot cinders -fall on the new hearth-rug. Take care of yourself, -and I <em>hope</em> you’ll have some news for me when I come -home.”</p> - -<p>Upon their return the following week, he was found -sitting in exactly the same place, in the precise attitude, -and one might almost think with the same old book on his -knee open at the self-same page.</p> - -<p>“Upon my soul!” ejaculated Mrs. Mar, stopping short -on the threshold, while Hildegarde went forward to kiss -her father. “No need to ask if you’ve found anything -to do! You haven’t even remembered to put on a little -coal.” She fell upon the poker and punished the flagging -fire. “Have you been sitting there like that ever -since I went away?”</p> - -<p>Mar drew himself out from Hildegarde’s embrace, took -firm hold on his walking-stick and rose to his feet. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -looked huge, as he towered above the two women, and -rather wonderful, as both of them had often thought of -late. Even the flippant Bella had said, “He’s more and -more like Moses and the Prophets.”</p> - -<p>“As to sitting here”—he looked down sternly on his -wife—“you may as well understand, Harriet, that this -is the house I propose to sit in till I go out lying down. -Only not in this room. I agree with you as to the unfitness -of that.” He limped over to the kitchen door, -opened it, and said, “John, will you light a fire in the -young gentlemen’s bedroom.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar stared a moment, and then went up-stairs to -take off her things. It was no secret between her and -Hildegarde that “after all” they stood a little in awe of -the head of the house. The girl, however, knowing herself -a privileged character, attempted to smooth things -over with a little jest. She linked her arm in his, and -told how her mother, on the way down in the train, had -produced the book rest and a minute pencil from her -traveling-bag, had fastened the rest on the back of the -seat in front of her, to the surprise and inconvenience of -the occupants, had set up the French biography, put on -her spectacles, got out her crochet and read her “Lucien -Pérey” and crocheted for dear life (or for the Hindus -rather) every minute of the time that she was being -rushed along by the express to Fern Lea; “and Louis -Cheviot leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Your -mother’s losing time with her feet.’”</p> - -<p>But Mar’s faint smile was pretty grim. “Your mother -has all the virtues, my dear, but she’s a woman of an -implacable industry.”</p> - -<p>With the help of John Chinaman and the grocer’s boy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> -that very afternoon Mr. Mar got his big desk established -in “the spare chamber” that had been Trenn’s and -Harry’s room, and still was theirs when one or other of -them was in town,—which was often enough whenever -Bella was staying at the Mars’.</p> - -<p>But whether it was that uncomfortable as the old quarters -had been, it disturbed Mar to change them after -thirty years, certainly, in spite of his pronouncement to -his wife, he did not “sit” at home as much after this. -He made a habit of going down town after breakfast, to -the San Joaquin Hotel “to read the papers,” really to -smoke in peace, and exchange views on the political situation, -or the Cuban atrocities, with chance travelers or -old habitués.</p> - -<p>Then came the day when Spanish incompetence and -cruelty found a rival excitement. In a remote region of -British North America gold had been discovered. The -veterans in the San Joaquin reading-room pooh-poohed -the notion—all but Nathaniel Mar.</p> - -<p>From the beginning he took the Klondike seriously. -Not long before everybody was doing the same. Instead -of quickly exhausting itself the excitement grew. Had -diamonds been discovered in Dakota, the matter would -have been a nine days’ wonder, and then died as the -easily accessible fields were reached and appropriated. -Paradox as it might appear, it was owing to the forbidding -circumstances under which those pioneers of ’97 -found their treasure, that made the appeal “Klondike” -so irresistible to the marvel-loving fancy of the world. -The papers overflowed with accounts of the awful hardship -and the huge reward—combination irresistible since -history began. And if any Missourian said “show me!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -he <em>was</em> shown. The actual nuggets and the veritable -dust, displayed in a bank window, made would-be miners -of men as they passed, or as they meant to pass and stood -riveted, staring, seeing there a type of what they might -attain unto, if only they had much courage and a little -money for an outfit. Who lacked the first? Who could -not, for so alluring a purpose, collect the second?</p> - -<p>The trains to the ports of San Francisco, Seattle, Victoria, -were crammed; the north-bound ships overflowed. -Unenterprising, indeed, any store on the Pacific coast -that did not advertise some essential to a Klondike outfit. -People talked with as much earnestness of the science of -life under arctic conditions as they before had discussed -Spanish misrule in the South. Even for the vast majority -who had no hope of being able to join the rush, -the great problem of transportation and the value of -evaporated food stuffs, obscured many an issue nearer -home.</p> - -<p>The one man that he was on fairly intimate terms with, -yet to whom Mar had not mentioned the new craze, was -Cheviot. It was the kind of thing he would be certain to -scoff at. People at the San Joaquin had noticed that -scoffing at the Klondike annoyed Mr. Mar, and they wondered -a little. Mar had quite made up his mind not to -give Cheviot’s skepticism a chance for expression. If -you were unwary you might easily think, “So sympathetic -and understanding a young man can’t help taking -fire over this burning question.” And then Cheviot -would show you how easily he could help it. Watch him -playing with his little nephews and nieces and you’d -say, “So kind to children, he will be kind to the childishness -in me.” And behold he wasn’t. He was an “awfully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> -good fellow,” but he expected a man to be grown -up—and few are.</p> - -<p>Mar’s anticipation of what would be Cheviot’s views -about the new craze were very much Hildegarde’s own. -Her astonishment was therefore well-nigh speechless, -when, on the occasion of his next visit, after ten minutes’ -general conversation in the garden, Cheviot said, “By -the way, Hildegarde, I’ve come to tell you I’m going to -the Klondike.”</p> - -<p>“You!” and she stared at him in silence till she could -reassure herself by saying, “Nonsense!”</p> - -<p>“It may be nonsense, but I’m going.”</p> - -<p>“You <em>can’t</em> be in earnest!”</p> - -<p>“Quite.”</p> - -<p>She stood, watering-pot in hand, her big eyes wider -than ever he had seen them, and a look on her face certainly -disturbed, even annoyed.</p> - -<p>It wasn’t very nice, this feeling as if the bottom were -dropping out of existence. He had no right to make her -feel like that.</p> - -<p>Very neatly he switched off the head of a withered -flower with his stick, and began, “The Klondike—”</p> - -<p>“It’s rather horrid of you,” Hildegarde interrupted, -“but of course I know—you—you’re only seeing how -I’d take it—”</p> - -<p>“I shan’t be here to see how you’ll take it.”</p> - -<p>She set down the watering can. “You surely won’t -dream of doing anything so foolish—so—so—dangerous.”</p> - -<p>He didn’t answer, and she walked beside him down -the path to the lower gate. When they got beyond the -group of conifers, she stopped. “You simply mustn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Why do you say that? You don’t care where I go.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You know quite well I do.”</p> - -<p>He didn’t even look at her, and he shook his head. -Then, after a little pause, “Who knows, you might even -come to feel differently about things—if—if—”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean”—Hildegarde drew herself up—“if -you came home a millionaire?”</p> - -<p>“If I didn’t come home at all.”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p>“At least for a long time, like—”</p> - -<p>“I certainly hope”—nervously she forestalled the -utterance of that other name—“that you won’t do anything -so disappointing to all your old friends. It’s the -kind of fortune-hunting expedition for the ne’er-do-well. -It isn’t for a man like you.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ve thought it over,” he said, “and I’ve -come to the conclusion that I’m best out of Valdivia for -a time. You see, Hildegarde, you’re too used to me.”</p> - -<p>“I’m <em>not</em> ‘too used.’”</p> - -<p>“Too certain of me—yes, you are. I’ve been uncommon -helpless in the matter. I’ve got nothing of the -actor in me. I can’t be near you, and inspire you with -the smallest doubt as to how things are with me. The -one thing I can do is <em>not</em> to be near. And that’s what -I’m going to do.”</p> - -<p>She wrinkled up her white forehead with a harassed -attempt to keep her wits about her, and not be betrayed -into rash professions. “You can go away from Valdivia -for a while, if that idea is so attractive, without going to -the horrible Klondike.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I could go to Pasadena or some seaside resort, -so that I could come running back, as I did last year -from Monterey, on the first hint that you might be missing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> -me a little. No, all that’s been tried. It doesn’t -work. I must go to some place where I <em>can’t</em> take the -first train back; where I won’t live through the day expecting -a letter from you. It isn’t easy in these times -for anybody to be really ‘out of reach.’ When we all -know that we’ve only to go to the nearest telegraph -office for news, we can’t know what it would be like utterly -to lose some one—unless death teaches us. The -nearest approach to the sort of thing I mean—this side -of Kingdom Come—is the Klondike.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Klondike, Klondike! I’m sick of the very -sound of those two syllables. There’s something uncanny -about them. People have gone mad since they -heard the ugly word, but not you!”—to give her words -more than common emphasis, to insure winning the day, -she laid her hand on his arm, and said again, with soft -deliberation—“Not you, Louis.”</p> - -<p>“You’d like me to stay here and suffer. Yes, I know -that.” Her hand dropped from his sleeve. “But I -shan’t stay here,” he went on unmoved, “and pretty -soon I shan’t suffer—so much.”</p> - -<p>From that old, recurrent touch of hardness in his voice -and air, she once again recoiled. “Well, I’ve said all I -mean to say. You must please yourself.”</p> - -<p>“Pleasure is of course what one expects in the Klondike.”</p> - -<p>They walked in absolute silence back to the porch. -Hildegarde went in at once, saying “good-night” over -her shoulder, and quite sure that as usual he would follow -her. But he stayed behind for fully twenty minutes, -talking with Mr. Mar, who was smoking out there in the -dusk. Hildegarde turned up the electric light in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> -parlor, and moved about the room, picking up and putting -down one book after another. How many of them -he had given her—that provoking person who stayed so -long talking to her father! By and by she heard her -own name called. Was that her father? How curious -his voice sounded!</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she answered, but made no great haste. When -at last she reached her father’s side, she couldn’t see -where Cheviot was. She looked round in the dim light, -and a little sharply, “Has he gone?” she said. As the -words fell on the quiet air, she heard the gate shut. The -sound jarred. It gave her a sensation as of a being abandoned. -The house was very quiet to-night.</p> - -<p>“Gone? Yes. Where’s your mother, Hildegarde?” -Mar asked with unheard-of briskness.</p> - -<p>“She’s over at the Coxes’.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” A moment’s pause, and then, “To think of -Cheviot! Cheviot of all men! Weren’t you surprised?”</p> - -<p>“You aren’t talking about the Klondike?”</p> - -<p>“What else should I be talking of?” he demanded unreasonably, -for after all there were other topics.</p> - -<p>“Do you think he really means it?” Hildegarde asked.</p> - -<p>“<em>Means</em> it?—with a year’s leave granted, and his -ticket in his pocket? He’s been getting ready all this -week. That’s why we haven’t seen him. Sails Wednesday.”</p> - -<p>“Not—not really!”</p> - -<p>“Off to ’Frisco to-morrow,” said her father, still in -that odd brisk voice—“four days to see about his outfit. -He—it’s a queer world!—he said Trenn had been into -the bank this afternoon, and offered to grubstake him. -But Cheviot’s got money. So anything he finds will be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> -his own. Trenn! H’m! <em>Trenn!</em>” he repeated, as -though he couldn’t get over it. Then it seemed to dawn -upon him that Hildegarde had been unprepared for -something else than her brother’s part in the affair. “I -thought Cheviot said he’d been talking to you about it—had -said good-by.”</p> - -<p>“I—I didn’t believe he was in earnest.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?” demanded her father a little harshly, -and then, perceiving that her incredulity might have -other grounds than disapproval of the enterprise in itself, -he said more gently: “He talks very sensibly about -it, my dear. A man can’t save much at the bank—he -may go on for thirty years and find—Cheviot has seen -what that may come to. He gives himself a nine months’ -holiday, with the chance of its turning out the most -profitable nine months of his life. <em>I</em> didn’t discourage -him.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde sat down on the step. “Oh, you didn’t -discourage him,” she repeated dully. Behind her own -sense of being wronged in some way, as well as disappointed, -she was conscious of an unwonted excitement in -her father.</p> - -<p>He, sitting there in the dusk, puffing out great clouds -of smoke, was oblivious of everything except that the old -pride of discovery had awaked in him, and the fever of -his youth came back.</p> - -<p>“Even Cheviot! And think of <em>Trenn</em>!” That Trenn -should be looking about for some one to send to the North -on this errand—it touched the topmost pinnacle of the -fabulous. And yet, why not? The country was aflame. -Thousands starting off on an uncertainty to try for the -thing he, Nathaniel Mar, had been certain of.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Hildegarde, where is your mother?”</p> - -<p>“I told you, at the Coxes’.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, at the Coxes’.”</p> - -<p>“Why, father?”</p> - -<p>“Would you like to know the reason I didn’t discourage -Cheviot from going to the—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, father,” said the girl dully.</p> - -<p>“Then come nearer.”</p> - -<p>She moved toward him. Feeling a little dreary, she -came quite close. She laid her head against the one -strong knee.</p> - -<p>In a vigorous undertone, the voice with new life in it -told why Nathaniel Mar didn’t blame any young man—there -was more treasure in the North than even the Klondiker -dreamed. Mar had known it all along—and then -the story. In spite of the girl’s listlessness when he began, -he could feel directly that the thing was taking hold -of her. She was intensely still; that was because she was -being “held,” and small wonder! It was a better story -than he had realized. It took hold of him even, who -knew it so well. Before he got to the end, his voice was -shaking, and he leaned forward thirsting to see an answering -excitement in the young face at his knee. But -the darkness shrouded it, and he went on. He wished -she would speak or move. Always so still, that girl! -Now he was telling her of his home-coming from that -barren coast in the North—explaining, excusing what, -by this new lurid light of the Klondike, seemed inexcusable—his -never going back. He tried to reconstruct for -her the obstacles—huge, insurmountable; the long illness, -and the new wife; the post at the bank; the children, -poverty, skepticism and the obscuring dust of the years.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> -And lo! as he disturbed these ashes, he saw afresh the -agonies they hid—remembered with a growing chill, -what had befallen before whenever he told this story; -saw the tolerant smile of the smug young bankers; saw -the dull embarrassment in Elihu Cox’s eye; heard Mrs. -Mar leading the family chorus, “You’ve got to <em>show</em> me!”</p> - -<p>Even Hildegarde might ask—he hastened to forestall -the dreaded word. “There was nothing to <em>show</em>,” he -said, “absolutely nothing to prove it wasn’t a dream.” -And she made no sign that for her either it was more -than fantasy.</p> - -<p>He wondered miserably why he had told her. “Of -course it was all long before anybody had heard of the -Klondike,” he said, and he drew a heavy breath. “The -theory was, that geologically speaking, gold couldn’t -exist up there, and even people who weren’t geologists -agreed it couldn’t be got out if it <em>was</em> there”—all the -confidential earnestness had vanished out of the voice, -and he paused like one very weary. “Nobody believed—” -He tried to go on, and to speak as usual, but -memory, master of the show, brought up Trenn—Trenn -with the look he had worn the day his father had told -him the great secret. Mar drew back into the deeper -shadow. But the critical boy face found his father out, -and stung him in the dark.</p> - -<p>He was an old fool. What had possessed him to rake -it all up again. Oh, yes, he said bitterly in his heart, -there was one member of his family who hadn’t yet -smiled and said, “<em>Show me.</em> I’m from Missouri.” It -was Hildegarde’s turn.</p> - -<p>“Well, my girl,” he ended miserably, “that’s the -story that nobody believed.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p> - -<p>Hildegarde lifted her head and put up her two hands, -feeling in the dark for his. But Mar shrank back. Not -from Hildegarde herself could he in that hour take mere -sympathy, craving hopelessly as he did with the long -thirst of years a thing more precious than pity—the -thing that he once had had and had no more.</p> - -<p>Like a man who utters his own epitaph, “I lost faith -myself,” he said.</p> - -<p>“But I have found it, father!” and there was joy as -well as the sound of tears in the thrilling young voice.</p> - -<p>“Found—what did you say, Hildegarde?”</p> - -<p>“That I believe the gold’s there, waiting!”</p> - -<p>“Ah—h—h!” He bent over her with a sound that -was almost a sob. “Then I—I believe it, too!”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-l.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Louis Cheviot was one of those who -reached the Klondike in the autumn of ’97.</p> - -<p>A lucky chance brought him the opportunity -of going shares in a lay on Bonanza, -with a man whose fitness for “pardnership” -Cheviot had tested coming over the awful Pass and -shooting the Hootalinqua Rapids.</p> - -<p>The two had washed out ten thousand dollars apiece -by the end of June. They had the prospect of making -an even better thing of it the next year. Cheviot left his -partner to carry on the development of the lease, and -for himself, turned his bronzed face homeward.</p> - -<p>He was as certain now as before he had garnered this -experience that for wild life, <i lang="la">qua</i> wild life, he had no -taste. That it should be so was partly, strange as it may -sound, a result of the cool and balanced mixing of the -elements in him. He had no physical sluggishness to be -sloughed off by harsh impacts, no mental inertia to -be hammered into action by hard necessity, no crust of -chrysalis that must be broken before the winged life -might emerge, no essential wildness of spirit that needed -training, no excess of ungoverned ardor that needed -cooling in the northern frosts.</p> - -<p>And so it was that he was coming home with little -gain but bullion, since he had gone forth with smaller<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -need than most of the lesson learnt in chastening the -body, or the lightening revelation of some crashing -danger.</p> - -<p>He could endure hardship with reasonable patience -for some reasonable end, but the gains of civilization -were in his eyes too excellent to be even temporarily -abandoned without a sense of heavy deprivation, which -affected him like a loss of common dignity.</p> - -<p>Even though he hadn’t one he loved the idea of home. -He loved his friends and all the friendlier aspect of the -earth, gardens, ordered communities of his kind, and -all man’s device for socializing life and regulating the -unruliness of nature.</p> - -<p>And there was Hildegarde—who had not answered -either of his two letters. Why was that? He felt a contraction -of the heart as he refused to allow himself to -formulate surmise; yet if any one had come and said to -him, “Galbraith’s in Valdivia,” he would have felt it -no surprise.</p> - -<p>Some friends of his were going out by the Yukon River -route. He knew it to be unlikely that he should return to -this part of the world. As well see that more western aspect -of it, too, since he might do so in congenial company.</p> - -<p>It was really the company that decided him—that was -responsible for a circumstance that changed the entire -course of his own and several other lives. Instead of -going back as he had come, by the shorter way, he found -himself, at the end of July, with seventeen hundred miles -of river behind him waiting at the mouth of the Yukon -for the San Francisco steamer.</p> - -<p>He heard with surprise that there was a letter for him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -at the post-office. The more strange, if true, since his -coming to St. Michaels was less than mere chance—it had -been unlikely in the extreme.</p> - -<p>However, upon demand, an envelop appeared in the -window of the little post-office. Before ever it reached -the hand of the man waiting without, he recognized Hildegarde’s -writing. He tore it open to read a hurried -resumé of what she said she had already written him at -length, to Dyea and to Dawson, and now repeated, on the -bare possibility of his taking the American route home. -For her father was just setting out by that same route -to the far North, and by the same ship that carried her -letter. His plan of campaign was not generally known, -and all she could say with certainty was that he would -be at St. Michaels some time in August. And she greatly -hoped that if Cheviot should be passing that way, or -even if he found that he could arrange to go there without -too great personal cost, Hildegarde hoped, and even -begged, that he would look out for her father. She -“quite approved,” Cheviot read with incredulous eyes—(Hildegarde! -who had thought the expedition mad for a -man young and sound as an oak)—she quite approved -her father’s going. At the same time she did not forget -that he was no longer young, and being so lame was at a -disadvantage. “Good Lord! I should say so!” The upshot -was that she “lived upon the hope” that Cheviot -would bring her news of Mr. Mar. The ideal thing would -be that they should come home together. If Cheviot -brought that about she would be “unendingly grateful.”</p> - -<p>No syllable about Galbraith.</p> - -<p>Cheviot went straight to the Alaska Commercial Company’s -hotel and looked through the names registered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -since the season opened. Not a Mar among them. So -the ship that brought the letter had not brought Mr. Mar—for -this was the only conceivable place he could have -stayed in. It was no small personal relief to Cheviot to -conclude that wiser counsels had prevailed.</p> - -<p>The same afternoon it was noised about the office that -a steamer had just been sighted. After all, Mar might -only be delayed! While most of the population rushed -down to the beach, Cheviot scribbled a hasty note and -handed it to the clerk.</p> - -<p>“If a man of that name should come in on this ship—” -he began.</p> - -<p>“He hasn’t gone back yet,” interrupted the clerk, -studying the superscription.</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean he’s here already?”</p> - -<p>“Well, he <em>was</em>.”</p> - -<p>“When? It can’t be the person I mean?”</p> - -<p>“Lame man, about sixty? Yes, yes, remember him -perfectly. Couldn’t quite make him out, for he didn’t -seem to care a tinker’s curse about getting to the Klondike. -The boys set him down finally as a sort of a missionary, -because” (with a laugh) “he seemed so ready to -go the wrong way.”</p> - -<p>“Which way?”</p> - -<p>“Up the coast to Golovin Bay.” No, he hadn’t come -back. A trader from Kwimkuk, who had been down for -supplies, said Mar was staying up there at the Swedish -Mission. That was all the clerk knew. He was turning -the pages back to the entries of the previous summer. -“That’s the man!” And there was Mar’s unmistakable -signature staring Cheviot in the face.</p> - -<p>“But that’s ’97,” he said bewildered. He pulled out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -Hildegarde’s letter, and looked again at the date. It -was a year old.</p> - -<p>Shortie Hinkson stopped sweeping out the office to say: -“One o’ them missionary fellers come down here from -Golovin Sat’day. No, he ain’t gone back yit. I seen -him only a while ago goin’ by the A.C. office.”</p> - -<p>When a few minutes later, among the crowd down by -the old Block House, the missionary was run to earth, -Cheviot found him a great tow-headed Swede, looking as -if he had been not so much cut out of wood as hacked -out, and with a very dull implement at that. Close at -his elbow, and appealed to now and then for verification -of some statement, was a thin little dark man, with glittering -black eyes and a turn for silence.</p> - -<p>The tall missionary was bargaining about some “canned -stuff” with the great A.C. Company’s agent, Captain -Seilberg. This magnate, leaning against one of the -mounted cannon the Russians had left behind in ’67, was -looking through a spy-glass at the ship discernible on -the far horizon, while between ejaculatory oaths he “did -business” with the rugged Lutheran. Waiting for a -chance to introduce himself, Cheviot wondered aside to -a bystander why those two talked English to each other.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Seilberg’s a Norwegian.”</p> - -<p>“No, a Dane,” put in another, overhearing.</p> - -<p>“I thought,” said Cheviot, “they could all understand -one another after a fashion—all Scandinavians.”</p> - -<p>“Scanda who? Well, anyway, they’re too thick on the -ground in Alaska for us to bother about fine distinctions.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” agreed the customs officer, as Cheviot pressed -forward to speak to the missionary, “so far as we’re -concerned they’re all Scandahoojians together.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p> - -<p>Certainly Mr. Christianson knew Mr. Mar. Mr. Mar -was still at the Mission House up at Kwimkuk. How to -get there? The big missionary turned to his silent companion, -who still stood gloomily by. Mr. Björk and he -wouldn’t mind taking back a passenger in their boat. -They were going just as soon as they’d settled matters -with Captain Seilberg.</p> - -<p>“Vell, <em>I</em> von’t keep you,” says the great man cavalierly, -shutting up the spy-glass with a snap. “Dat’s -not de <i>Trush</i>, Got dammer!” and he turned testily away. -Mr. Christianson followed with words about rebate on -“damaged cans.” Mr. Björk followed Mr. Christianson, -deaf to Cheviot’s questions about Mar, eyes fixed in -abstraction on the red-brown scoriæ under foot.</p> - -<p class="tb">The two “Scandahoojians” and their passenger left St. -Michaels the next day in the little sail-boat <i>St. Olaf</i>, -managed with no small skill by Mr. Björk. It was the -rugged Christianson, however, who issued the orders, and -strangely enough, considering his aspect, supplied the -social element and the information. If you saw Christianson -alone, you would have thought him one of the -grimmest works of God, but seeing him beside Björk -you would find him almost genial.</p> - -<p>What chiefly occupied Cheviot, as the <i>St. Olaf</i> sped -through the windy drizzle, was a growing wonder as to -how Hildegarde’s father had come to be stranded up -here all these months, and how a man accustomed to -creature comforts, a cripple, and close on sixty—how -had he endured the conditions of life at “Golovin!” -What <em>were</em> the conditions at Golovin? Curious to know, -for Hildegarde would ask—afraid to know, for Hildegarde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> -must be answered, he kept seeing in flashes and -as through the eyes of a girl, all the probable harshness -of the old man’s adventure.</p> - -<p>Cheviot’s questions about Golovin were interrupted -by Mr. Christianson somewhat narrowly—eliciting an -account of how the mission prospered; what the native -population was; how many were converts; and -other matters not strictly to the point Cheviot had in -mind.</p> - -<p>“Yes, <em>oh</em>, yes! Dere is great acti-<em>vitty</em>. You can -see in our reports. Ve make great progress. Ve bring -de true light to many who sat in darkness. But ve arre -poore—meezerabble poore. Nobody knows, what haf -not lief dere, how harrd de life. Eh, Björk?”</p> - -<p>Björk, sheet in hand, gloomily assented, without the -aid of speech.</p> - -<p>Cheviot caught his glancing eye. “Are you—a—a—at -the mission, too?”</p> - -<p>The dark man studied the course and held on his silent -way.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes. Mr. Björk ees von of os. He is not long -dere—but he understand. Ve haf great need of vorkers. -So he come.”</p> - -<p>“You mean you sent home for Mr. Björk?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Christianson stared a moment. “Send home? Oh, -it is far to Sveden. Heaven is nearer.”</p> - -<p>It was Cheviot’s turn for mystification.</p> - -<p>“Vhen ve need helpers,” Mr. Christianson explained, -“ve pray for dem. God send os Mr. Björk.”</p> - -<p>He spoke with a curious matter-of-factness.</p> - -<p>“Oh,” said Cheviot, “and—a—how did Mr. Björk -know where to find you?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p> - -<p>“He see Kwimkuk in a visshun. He see de Mission -House and he see me, too. Eh, Björk.”</p> - -<p>The helper nodded with preternatural gravity.</p> - -<p>“Where were you,” said Cheviot, “when you had the -vision?”</p> - -<p>“On board a whaler. Dat’s where Björk was,” -proudly Christianson answered for him. “On de whaler -up in Grantley Harbor, vhile I am down dere at Kwimkuk -praying for help.”</p> - -<p>“But how could he leave his ship?”</p> - -<p>“Leedle boat,” said Christianson, laconic for once.</p> - -<p>“Oh, the captain let him off?”</p> - -<p>Christianson shook his pale locks. “You do not know -vhat dey are—dose whaling captains.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean”—in his astonishment Cheviot addressed -the dumb navigator again, as if given such a -theme even he must at last find tongue—“you don’t -mean you,” and then he halted, for there is something -about the impact of the word “deserted” that men shy -from, “you don’t mean you left the ship without -leave?” Björk’s face never changed.</p> - -<p>But not so Christianson’s. He regarded his acolyte -with a somber enthusiasm. “It was yoost like Björk. -Say noddind. Yoost follow de call. Dat’s Björk!”</p> - -<p>“Pretty big risk, I should have thought.”</p> - -<p>At which, somewhat to Cheviot’s surprise, Björk gave -a sharp little nod and Christianson showed his long yellow -teeth in a rather horrible smile.</p> - -<p>Cheviot felt egged on to say, “Don’t they shoot deserters -up here?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Yes!</em>” said Björk, speaking for the first time.</p> - -<p>“If dey find dem,” amended Christianson.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p> - -<p>Björk’s little eyes glittered. His thin lips moved -faintly, as if they, too, would have smiled had they ever -learned the trick of it.</p> - -<p>“And you came straight to Kwimkuk?” persisted -Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“No, he land oop by Sinook,” Christianson said. -“He see dat not de place he vas shown in de visshun, and -dose whaler fellows after him de next day. Björk hide -in de scrub villow, and creep along vid hands and knees. -After two days he come to a native camp. Next morning -he see out dere dat <i>Seagull</i> comin’. But he haf anodder -visshun. He know now he haf to get a squaw to -hide him in de bottom ob a kyak, and take him like dat -down de coast to Golovin. Terrible long journey! I -am down dere on de shore, when de squaw beach de boat. -I see Björk crawl out de hole in de middle, half dead, -and look round. Look all round. Den I hear him say in -Svedish, ‘Dis de place!’ and I say, ‘Vad Plads?’ leedle -surprised, and he come right away up to me, and he say -‘De Lord sent me.’ So I see he vas de man I pray for.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! And when he isn’t managing a boat—up at -the mission, what does Mr. Björk do?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he help,” said Christianson, with unshakable satisfaction -in the answer to his prayer. “Better as anybody -he can preach.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Preach?</em>” echoed Cheviot, not believing his ears.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Björk not talk <em>mooch</em>, except vhen he is in de -pulpit or vhen he haf a refelation.”</p> - -<p>Well, they were odd Hausgenossen for Hildegarde’s -father! “How long had Mr. Mar been with them,” Cheviot -asked. Ten or eleven months. He had got to St. -Michaels too late last year to reach the Klondike. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -just had time to go and take a look at Golovin Bay, -when the winter overtook him at Kwimkuk. So he -stayed there.</p> - -<p>But this summer? Well, he was taken ill just about -the time the ice went out of the bay—no, no, he was all -right now. Mrs. Christianson had nursed him. Christianson -didn’t know what Mar’s plans were—doubted if -anybody did; though he was laying in supplies for some -sort of excursion. He once had an idea of going all the -way to Teller Station to see the Government reindeer. -That was Mar’s stuff, there, in the boat. Of course it was -little use now to go to the Klondike. Besides, what incentive -had a man of that age to face the hardships of -prospecting in the arctic? It was no matter if such a -man had not great fortune. He wouldn’t know how to -use it. He had not, Mr. Christianson was sorry to say it, -but Mr. Mar had not the true light.</p> - -<p>From which Cheviot gathered that Mr. Mar had not -contributed all he might to the cause of Righteousness. -But it was a relief to know that he had not been in -straits. “He seem to haf blenty to bay his bills”—so -why had he come up there, caring neither for money -nor for missions? Here Cheviot caught the momentary -gleam in Björk’s little eyes. A question in them, but -unspoken, like all else that went on in the close-cropped -bullet head. Cheviot became aware that his old friend -had somehow succeeded in making himself an object of -intense curiosity to these queer folk.</p> - -<p>They liked Mr. Mar, though—Christianson tried to -catch Björk’s eye, but the dark one declined confederacy—though -Mr. Mar had done something a little while ago -that made a great deal of trouble.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Hein? Veil, it vas like dis. Von of our great deeficoolty -is de vitchcraftiness of de natives. Not a season -go by vidout dey have to tie up some von.” He pursed -his wrinkled lips and slowly shook his colorless locks.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said Cheviot, feeling his way. “How long do -they keep them tied up?”</p> - -<p>“Till dey confesses, or till dey dies.”</p> - -<p>There was need then of the missionary in this savage -place, where Hildegarde’s father had had to spend a year -of his life.</p> - -<p>“And if they confess, it’s all right, is it?” asked Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“If dey confess, and if dey go and get a piece of de -fur, or vhatever it is, dat dey’ve cut off de clo’es of de -person dey been vitching, and if dey give it back, and -promise ‘never again.’”</p> - -<p>“And then they’re forgiven?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Sometimes dey’re stoned, sometimes dey’re -yoost spit at and den let to vander avay—but dey’re -forgiven.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, like that? Well, I wonder they trouble to confess.”</p> - -<p>“Dey like it better dan to be dead.”</p> - -<p>“Dead?”</p> - -<p>“Burnt.”</p> - -<p>“Really? They went as far as that? But now, you -mission people, I suppose, have put a stop to such goings -on!”</p> - -<p>“Ve are not greater at Kwimkuk dan Saul at Endor.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot stared.</p> - -<p>“But Mr. Mar,” the missionary went on, “he vill be -viser dan de Prophets. He tink dere are no more any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -vitches. Not even vhen he see dat Yakutat girl dey call -Omilik—not even vhen he see vhat she have done. But -von day Mr. Mar hear some noise, and he go down to de -beach, and he see de girl tied to de tall stone ve fastens -our boats to. He see dey been beating her, and now dey -pile up de driftwood round, and he, not understanding”—the -missionary explained, with an air of forbearance—“he, -not understanding, he try to interfere. Dey very -mad of course. Dey send for me. I tell Mr. Mar I -<em>know</em> dis girl have vitched a baby and two men. De -vomen all know it—everybody but Mr. Mar know it quite -vell. Mr. Mar get very excited and say he not believe it. -Dey bring de baby; he say, ‘Dat a sick baby, anyhow.’ -He not understand at all. Dey go on vid making de fire. -Mr. Mar yoost goin’ to do someting foolish, vhen de girl -cry out, ‘I confess. Yes, yes, I do all dem tings!’ ‘Dere, -you <em>see</em>!’ I tell Mr. Mar. So dey make de vitch go and -bring de little pieces vhat she cut off de baby coat, and -off de men’s clo’es for to vitch dem vid. Dey all holla -vhen dey see dose tings. All but Mr. Mar. He say de -natives dey all done dat; dey all steals pieces off everybody -in the settlemint; cause dey so ’fraid anybody get -sick, dey be called vitches; and if dey not got any pieces -to give up, dey know dey shall be burnt. ‘So dey all -keeps plenty ’gainst de evil day,’ says Mr. Mar.</p> - -<p>“He mek so great foos, I tell dem yoost to tie de girl -so she not wriggle out, and leave her dere like dey done -Chuchuk last year. So dey does dat. Ve all goes avay.</p> - -<p>“Von day and night. Two day and night. Tree -day and night. Dat girl yoost de same. Dey cooms to -me and says, ‘Somebody gif dat vitch to eat.’ I say -nobody vill do a ting like dat. Dey say dey sure. Next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> -night dey vatch. Dey see Mr. Mar go down vid bread -and vater. You can tink dey are mad. It is good I am -dere. I say, ‘Vait! I vill talk vid Mr. Mar.’ I do dat.”</p> - -<p>His faded white-lashed eyes grew sterner still as he -recalled the interview.</p> - -<p>“Well, what happened?”</p> - -<p>“It vas for me a moment of great responsibeeleetee. -De more ve talk, de more I see it ees for Mr. Mar a matter -of sentiment. <em>No</em>! of <em>nairves</em>! For os it ees a matter -of religion. Ve live vid dose people. Ve teach dem. Ve -feed dem in time of famine. Ve nurse dem ven dey are -sick. But ven dey do vat the Yakutat voman haf -done—”</p> - -<p>His low, booming voice went out across the surf, leaving -behind a trail of menace like the deadened roll of a -distant gun.</p> - -<p>“What then?”</p> - -<p>Cheviot’s eyes were held by the fiery look on the -rugged face. Impossible to doubt the burning sincerity -that gave its ugliness that moment of almost uncanny -power.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Mar see it no good to say dere is no more any -vitches vid dat Yakutat voman at our door. So he say -ve shall not be crool even to a vitch. Den I tell him, ‘A -man also or a voman dat haf a familiar spirit or dat is a -vizard shall surely be put to death; dey shall stone dem -vid stones; dere blood shall be upon dem. For all dat -do dese tings are an abomination unto de Lord.’”</p> - -<p>After a silence, “What did he say to that?” Cheviot -asked.</p> - -<p>“Hein—hn—hn!” Christianson shook back the -square cut hanks of tow that fell from under his hat.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -“Not even Mr. Mar,” he said, with an air of triumph, -“not even Mr. Mar talk back to Moses!”</p> - -<p>But the good man’s satisfaction seemed short-lived. -He was grave enough as he went on, “Big storm in de -night. Next day no vitch dere.” He waved a great -bony hand toward Kamchatka.</p> - -<p>“Vitch gone off vid de vind.”</p> - -<p>Then, lowering his voice as though out there in the sea -hollows listeners might be lurking, he bent forward: “If -dey vas to know Mr. Mar go down in de storm, and cut -de raw hide for let dat vitch go!—” Again, with grim -foreboding, he shook the hanks of tow.</p> - -<p>“Ve all like your friend, but ve sorry see any yentleman -tink he know better as de Bible.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-c.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Cheviot found Hildegarde’s father practically -a prisoner.</p> - -<p>His board and lodging had been too welcome -a source of revenue to the mission for -Christianson to feel called upon to smooth the -way for his departure, and Mar had been some time in -grasping the fact that his plan of hiring a boat and a -couple of natives to go up the coast for a “look at the -country,” was hopelessly knocked on the head since his -interference in the matter of the Yakutat witch. Not -a native in the community who felt safe with him since -that episode. The lame man was in league with the -powers of darkness.</p> - -<p>Mar’s pleasure at seeing Cheviot was genuine, but not -as unmeasured as you might expect. And when, almost -before the first shower of questions and answers had begun -to abate, Cheviot flung in information as to when the -next ship was leaving St. Michaels, Mar assumed the -subject to be of interest only to Cheviot. Pressed further -about his own plans, the elder man said evasively they -were not very settled, and changed the subject! Cheviot -was nonplussed. Was Mar only waiting till they were -clear of the Mission House? No, for they were out fishing -the whole of the next day, and most of the days -following, and still Mar talked of any and everything -save of going home. Was he waiting for funds? Surely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -not now that Cheviot was at hand. He seemed inexplicably -satisfied to sit all day over a trout pool up the -river (despite the pestilential mosquito), or in a boat -in the bay fishing for tom-cod; and all the evening playing -chess in the bare mission parlor, in the midst of a -company sufficiently singular. Shady fellows from the -Galena camp above White mountain; prospectors expelled -from Cook’s Inlet, lousy, filthy-smelling natives -come upon one pretext or another, weird missionaries -dropped down from places no man but themselves seemed -ever to have heard of; a reindeer-herder in the Government -service, though a “Scandahoojian,” like the majority -at the Golovin Mission, and highly welcome albeit -hardly on the score of his piety. For “Hjalmar,” as -Christianson called him, was the one who jibed most at -the morning and evening prayers, and particularly at -the long grace before meat, with its delicate proposals to -the Almighty that He should induce those present to save -their souls by giving to the Golovin Mission. With the -same breath that thanked Him for “dis dy bounty,” -the Omnipotent was reminded that if this agreeable state -of things was to continue, people must pay not only for -the meal, but for the Cause.</p> - -<p>Mar listened, or didn’t listen, with an air of respectful -quiescence, and ate his meals unabashed. But he -commiserated Cheviot, “How this must make you long -for your Valdivia luxuries. Well, when do you go -back?”</p> - -<p>“Whenever you’re ready.”</p> - -<p>Mar showed as little gratitude as pleasure.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t think of waiting for me,” he answered -shortly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p> - -<p>Cheviot was profoundly perplexed as to what he ought -to do. Mar was not a man that any one could comfortably -catechize, but to go away and leave him here with -public opinion so against him; for Cheviot to present -himself to Hildegarde, knowing he had left her father -on this inhospitable shore, to all intents and purposes a -prisoner—it was not to be thought of.</p> - -<p>Mar’s favorite scheme for a good day’s fishing was to -row across to the river mouth where some Englishmen, -several years before, had made a camp.</p> - -<p>In the sheltered hollow a little way up the stream they -had built a cabin, so well, that although long deserted it -still offered refuge from the drenching rain, or from the -unshut eye of the sun, and even from the greater torment -of mosquitoes. For Mar had learnt the value of the Esquimau -use of a “smudge.” On the way to the cabin -he would gather two handfuls of arctic moss, of straw -and some aromatic smelling herb, twist all together in -two wisps and set one alight on the flat stone that -formed the threshold and the other smoldering in a rusty -pan upon the sill of the single window, with the result -that the mosquitoes fled. In great comfort Mar and -Cheviot would proceed to make tea, and eat their sandwiches—at -least, Cheviot ate his. He noticed that although -his friend never disposed of a third of what he -brought, he did not the next time bring any less. Quite -suddenly one day it dawned upon Cheviot why. For -although the crackers and cheese and sandwiches that -were left were always carefully put away in a tin -cracker-box, the box on their return was invariably -empty.</p> - -<p>And Mar never seemed the least surprised.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p> - -<p>Was it that he could not bring himself to abandon the -poor wretch he had rescued; could that be at the root of -his delay? But why did he not take Cheviot into his confidence -and get the girl out of the country if she were in -hiding hereabouts? Was it conceivable that Mar—</p> - -<p>Cheviot got little further in his speculations till the -morning when Mar, in the act of making a cast, said -under his breath and without moving a muscle, “There’s -that fellow again!”</p> - -<p>Cheviot turned just in time to see Björk’s head disappear -behind a bunch of tall reeds that grew in the hollow -by the little fresh water stream below the cabin. -“What’s he lurking about like that for?”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid he’s on the track of a poor, wretched -girl,” and Mar told the story of the Yakutat witch, but -with additions not creditable to Mr. Björk.</p> - -<p>“It’s usually an old woman, here as elsewhere, that’s -accused and set upon, but this girl can’t be above seventeen, -for she hadn’t been long out of the Bride’s House.”</p> - -<p>“The what?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the horrible igloo where they confine the marriageable -girls for half a year. They stay in there, in the -dark all that time, never seeing the face of man; and -they come out cowed, and fat, and pallid; and then they’re -for sale as wives. Those that no man takes are looked -down upon, and left to shift for themselves and must -earn their own living. The Yakutat girl was pounced -on instantly by a man she hated for some reason. He -took her off, but she escaped and made her way to the -mission. Nobody was at home at the time but Björk and -me. I saw her come in, and I saw her come flying out -of the mission parlor wilder even than she’d entered it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -and go tearing down to the village. She found shelter -there, for a while, with the woman who had brought her -up. But public opinion was all against her; and when -it was found that the reason her ‘husband,’ Peddykowchee, -didn’t come and get her, was that he was ill, -they said she had bewitched him. His younger brother -said she’d done the same to him, and then a miserable -little baby—oh, it was a ghastly business. ’Sh—” and -Mar fished in silence for a full hour, with occasional -sharp glances through the alder thicket behind him, -down among the reeds by the deserted cabin.</p> - -<p>The next day the store left in the cracker-box was -found to be untouched.</p> - -<p>“She’s seen Björk!” said Mar under his breath. -“She’s afraid to come any more.”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you help her to get out of the country?” -Cheviot asked, setting alight the smudge on the window-sill.</p> - -<p>“I was planning that when you came, but I don’t want -to mix you up in any such ticklish business.”</p> - -<p>“It’s no more ticklish for me than for you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m blown upon already. The people here have -been red hot about it. They haven’t cooled down yet.”</p> - -<p>“They never will,” said Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“No,” agreed Mar, “but I’ve made the cause mine, -you see. After you’re gone—”</p> - -<p>“I’m not going till you do.”</p> - -<p>“That’s nonsense.”</p> - -<p>“If you like,” said Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“It’s on account of that letter of Hildegarde’s?”</p> - -<p>“Whatever the reason is, I’m going to stay if you are, -and you may as well let me in for my share of the fun.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Your ‘share!’” repeated Mar reflectively, and -stroked his long gray mustache.</p> - -<p>“I was arranging to get the girl away,” he went on -presently, “when you came. I had bought this boat and -made a habit of being out all day.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly! All we need is provisions.”</p> - -<p>“No, I sent Christianson to St. Michaels for provisions. -They’re at the mission now.”</p> - -<p>“Of course, we brought them up with us! Then we’ve -nothing to do but to get the stuff into the boat.”</p> - -<p>“Without exciting suspicion.”</p> - -<p>“And pick the girl up somewhere on the coast.”</p> - -<p>“—before they realize we’re gone for good.”</p> - -<p>“Surely you and I could start off on an excursion together -without exciting suspicion. Why, you told them -when you first came, you were going up the coast, ‘to -have a look at the country,’” he added, remembering -Christianson’s phrase.</p> - -<p>Mar studied him an instant with uncommon intentness.</p> - -<p>“What is it?” laughed Cheviot. “You look as if you -couldn’t make up your mind to trust me.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’m making up my mind I will.” Again he -paused for a moment, and then, “I am too old to do the -thing alone,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Well, I can manage the boat, anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the girl can row as well as a man, but I must -have a partner.” And sitting there in the deserted -cabin Nathaniel Mar, for the last time, told how a hundred -and odd miles further up the coast he had panned -out gold with a dead man’s help when he himself was -young.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p> - -<p>And when he had said it, that thing befell him that -overtook any enthusiast in talking to Louis Cheviot. -Mar saw his story on a sudden in a comic light. Clear -now, its relationship to twenty “tall stories,” fit matter -for a twitch of the humorous lip, a hitch of the judicial -shoulder.</p> - -<p>The unconscious Cheviot had choked off many a confidence -just by that look of cool amusement.</p> - -<p>“I’ve always said,” Mar wound up, preparing hastily -to withdraw again into his shell, “I’ve always said it -would ‘keep,’ and it <em>has</em> kept close on thirty years.”</p> - -<p>“Well, it won’t keep much longer,” said Cheviot -briskly.</p> - -<p>“Why not?” A tremor shot through the man with the -secret.</p> - -<p>“Why? Because it’s in the air.”</p> - -<p>Mar clasped and unclasped his big walking-stick as if -about to rise.</p> - -<p>“Before another year,” Cheviot went on, “the whole -of Alaska will swarm with prospectors.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think so?”</p> - -<p>“Sure. Why, it’s begun. I don’t believe there’s a -single Yukon tributary where there isn’t a man wandering -about this minute with a shovel and a pan.”</p> - -<p>“The Yukon! Well, that’s a good way to the south!”</p> - -<p>“Those men that stopped at the mission last night—they -were miners.”</p> - -<p>“They—they were after galena!” said Mar, almost -angrily. “They knew that fairly good ore had been -brought down Fish River off and on since ’81.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot laughed. “Well, if you imagine they won’t -so much as look for gold, let’s smuggle your witch to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -St. Michaels and take the first steamer home. <em>I’ve</em> had -enough of the North.”</p> - -<p>“You say that because you don’t really believe I’ve -discovered a second Klondike.”</p> - -<p>“Why shouldn’t I believe it? And haven’t I turned -my back on the Klondike we all know exists?”</p> - -<p>“Those men that came to the mission yesterday,” Mar -said hurriedly, “they—they were going to Fish River, -weren’t they? Not—not up the coast?”</p> - -<p>“No, no, that’s all right,” Cheviot reassured him. -“All I meant was that somebody hereabouts had only to -whisper ‘Gold!’ for this whole country to swarm.”</p> - -<p>“I know—I know. But we’ll have the start, Cheviot.”</p> - -<p>Mar pulled himself up by the aid of his stick, and -dragged the rude soap box table out of its shady corner, -into the light nearer the window, a light but little obscured -by the faint smoke wreaths that curled about the -pan and sent abroad a slightly pungent breath, agreeably -acrid, except to the summer pest. Mar’s excitement -found little expression in his face, but, so to speak, came -out at his finger tips. He could hardly hold the piece -of paper he had pulled from his pocket. Up to ten -minutes ago he had felt almost as far from his ancient -purpose as though he still sat on the high stool in the -inner room of the Valdivia bank. Now, and within the -last few seconds more especially, fulfilment seemed -breathlessly near. Sitting on one side of the soap box, -with Cheviot opposite, Mar traced on the back of an -envelop the land-locked inner Bay of Golovin, the outer -bay, and from Rocky Point a broken line on up the coast.</p> - -<p>“This,” he said, shading a little strip bordering the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -shore, “this is the sand-spit where I found the Esquimau -camp. Here’s the crooked river, with its mouth full of -wood. Only six or seven miles to the north is the anvil-shaped -mountain.”</p> - -<p>The two men, bending low over the soiled envelop, -were too absorbed to notice the glitter just above the window-sill; -eyes narrowed to evade the smoke; two mere -points of light to the right of the rusty pan with its haze -of smoldering incense.</p> - -<p>Mar’s pencil whispered over the paper in the silence.</p> - -<p>Then he spoke. “From this broken range on the north -three or four streams come trickling down to the coast. -The one on the west here winds round from the north -side of the Anvil, and it was just at this point, as I remember—just -here,” and the pencil shook as if in doubt, -or refusing to commit itself, till Mar planted the point so -firmly on the paper it made a dent as well as a mark. -“<em>Just here I found the gold.</em>”</p> - -<p>When finally Cheviot raised his eyes the glitter was -gone from the sill.</p> - -<p class="tb">While the two in the cabin laid their plans and made a -list of provisions and requirements, a man was creeping -on hands and knees, through willow scrub and reeds, -down to the boat that lay moored in the cove below the -cabin.</p> - -<p>Christianson sat talking to Hjalmar the herder, of the -Government project of introducing reindeer among the -Alaskan natives, when the door of the private office was -flung wide. They looked round and saw Björk standing -there.</p> - -<p>On the sallow mask a strange light shining. The hard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> -lips twitched in a recurrent rictus, showing a dog-like -gleam of sharp eye-tooth, while the rest of the mouth -held rigid. If the tremendous force that locked the lean -jaws was lost upon the onlooker, it must have been the -insane light in Björk’s eyes that made the reindeer-herder -whisper, “He’s got a fit.”</p> - -<p>But Christianson had only flung back his long, straight -hair, and grasped the rude arms of his big chair.</p> - -<p>“Björk,” he said, “iss it a visshun?”</p> - -<p>“Ye—h—h!” Björk answered through shut teeth. -An instant longer he stood silent, with his hairy hands -clenched, and a barely perceptible forward and backward -swaying of the tense body. Then, with an effort as -of forcing steel to part, he opened his welded lips and -said rapidly in Swedish, “Have we not fed the hungry?”</p> - -<p>“Aye,” said Christianson.</p> - -<p>“Have we not nursed the sick? Have we not preached -the Gospel to every creature?”</p> - -<p>“Aye, aye,” from Christianson.</p> - -<p>“Have we not kept the law?” With each question -nearer and nearer Björk brought the black menace of his -face.</p> - -<p>“Have we not had the faith that moveth mountains? -Have we not served in hardship? Have we not waited in -poverty till this hour?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Till</em> this hour?” said Christianson, getting up slowly -out of his chair.</p> - -<p>Björk arrested his own dreamlike advance with a suddenness -that seemed to wake him. He stopped, looked -round, and clutched at the back of a chair.</p> - -<p>“Shut the door,” he commanded.</p> - -<p>His chief obeyed. When Christianson turned round<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> -again, Björk was staring over the reindeer-herder’s head, -piercing the infinite depths of space, while he held tight -to every-day existence by the back of a chair.</p> - -<p>“Brethren,” he said, “the angel of the Lord has been -with me. He has shown me great riches.”</p> - -<p>Hjalmar the herder pulled himself together and shook -off his growing nervousness. There was nothing uncanny -in this after all. A vision of riches was only too common -since the Klondike had crazed men’s brains. Björk saw -that even Christianson looked less moved.</p> - -<p>“I tell you,” the seer burst out, “this is the answer to -all our prayer, the reward of all our work. The angel -took me westward up the coast. I see it now!” He unlocked -his clutching hands, raised them outstretched on -a level with his eyes and with hypnotic slowness moved -the right hand east, the left one west.</p> - -<p>“A sand-spit,” he said, “where the heathen gather. -Beyond—a flat country, where no tree grows. But the -river mouth is choked with sea-drift. A strange shaped -hill. One of old Thor’s workshops. Where <em>he</em> hammered -the sword of the gods, <em>we</em> shall forge weapons -against the ungodly. Weapons of gold. For the river of -that country—the angel showed me the sands of it! And -the sands, Christianson, the sands were full of gold!”</p> - -<p>The herder looked at Christianson and Christianson -looked at the herder. The herder shook his head.</p> - -<p>Christianson sat down again in his great chair.</p> - -<p>“I tell you,” said Björk solemnly, “I see that ‘promised -land’ plainer than ever I saw Kwimkuk. Plainer”—he -raised his voice—“than I see you two.”</p> - -<p>But he saw them very plainly. His look leaped from -one face to the other, and rage gathered on his own.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You sit there like stone. You are deaf. You are like -dead men. I—I—” He looked about the room wildly -as if he had forgotten where the door was. “I would go -alone, but I must have provisions. I must have help -with the boat—help with the—”</p> - -<p>“Y—yes, yes,” stuttered the old missionary.</p> - -<p>“And the angel said, ‘Go first to Christianson.’”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes. Of course, I—”</p> - -<p>“‘But tarry not,’ said the voice. ‘If Christianson receive -not the good tidings, go take the news to another.’” -He seemed now to locate the door. He made two steps in -that direction, saying, “Me—I obey the voice.”</p> - -<p>“I, too, obey,” said Christianson hurriedly. “I will -come Saturday.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Saturday!</em>” Björk’s burning impatience blew the -end of the week to the end of the world. “I tell you <em>to-morrow</em> -will be too late! It must be to-day. It must be -this hour.”</p> - -<p>“Why?” demanded the herder, but he, too, was on his -feet.</p> - -<p>“Ha! You will ask questions! No wonder the angel -comes to me.” Again he turned about and rushed at the -door. Christianson intercepted him. Björk, with a convulsive -movement, flung him off.</p> - -<p>“The voice said, ‘This is the hour you have prayed for, -but if it passes in idleness, pray no more—<em>pray no -more</em>!’” Björk’s voice rang out with a tragic authority. -“‘For this is the hour when your feet should be shod -with swiftness and your hands be full of cunning.’ It -was the voice said so.” Björk’s fingers were on the -latch. “Me—I obey.” He opened the door.</p> - -<p>“Come, Hjalmar,” said Christianson.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus5"> -<img src="images/illus5.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“‘Brethren,’ he said, ‘the angel of the Lord has been with me. -He has shown me great riches’”</p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-h.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Hildegarde’s sense of anxious responsibility -had grown with every month that -passed after her father sailed out of San -Francisco harbor. Bound for—“the Klondike!” -people exclaimed with envy, rather -than asked in any doubt.</p> - -<p>“No—no,” he had said, and then hastily—to keep outsiders -off the track—“well, perhaps. Who knows?” -Who <em>didn’t</em> know! And, after all, why should any man -stay at home who wasn’t obliged?</p> - -<p>It was natural that no one else should take Mr. Mar’s -enterprise as seriously from the start as did his daughter. -For she knew how large had been her share in it. She -had been the first, the only one, to cheer him on. She it -was who had got “the boys” to finance the undertaking. -She who had broken the fact to her mother. But for his -daughter, Nathaniel Mar would not now be—where was -he? How faring? Many a time Hildegarde’s heart contracted -sharply, as in silence she framed the question. -Her own fault that she couldn’t answer—her fault that -half Valdivia could no longer set their clocks by the big, -lame man’s passing—her doing that he sat no more of a -morning in the warm, sunny room of the San Joaquin, -sending out smoke and absorbing news. Others sat there -in peace and safety, discussing their absent townsman;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> -and Hildegarde sat at home trying to keep at bay the -thought: if anything dreadful should happen to him!</p> - -<p>It had eased her a little to write to Cheviot, and beg -him to look out for her father. She was tempted to say, -“Bring him back safe and there’s nothing I won’t gladly -do to prove—” But she had pulled herself up in time, -and only promised an unending gratitude.</p> - -<p>The steamer <i>President</i>, which had taken Mar north, -brought on her return trip a brief letter from him, saying -merely that the journey was safely accomplished as -far as St. Michaels. His family knew they would probably -not hear again till the following summer.</p> - -<p>Life was easier when Bella was there. To her one -might say, “Will he come back by the first boat in June, -or shall we only have letters, do you think?” And say -it in one form or another so often that, but for reasons -unavowed, the speculation would have wearied friendship.</p> - -<p>But Bella was full of sympathy and tonic suggestion, -always prepared to pore over northern maps, always -ready to discuss probable conditions “up there.”</p> - -<p>What a friend was Bella! “I’ve <em>talked</em> of a standard,” -Hildegarde thought humbly, “but she lives up to -it—in these days.” It was a shame ever to remember the -lapses long ago.</p> - -<p>And how intelligent she was! How curiously well -informed! But Bella was always surprising you.</p> - -<p>“I keep thinking about him in the night. I lie awake -wondering if he’s cold,” Hildegarde confessed, and -Bella, why, to look at her face you’d think she knew all -about that lying awake and wondering—did the same -herself. “Father does so love a fire. Don’t you remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> -when all of us would be baking he used to draw closer -to the hearth?”</p> - -<p>“That was only because he lived so much indoors. -He’ll be <em>quite</em> warm in that beautiful furry sleeping-bag. -He’ll probably sleep better than he’s done since -he was a child. They all do.”</p> - -<p>“Who do?”</p> - -<p>“Oh—a—people who—go to the Klondike.”</p> - -<p>Another time, “I am haunted by the certainty that he -didn’t take enough provisions. Trenn says that in intense -cold people eat a great deal more than—”</p> - -<p>“That’s true,” said Bella sagely, “but it’ll be all -right. People are very good to one another in such out-of-the-way -places. They always share with anybody who -runs short.”</p> - -<p>“How do you know?”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s what the accounts all say.”</p> - -<p>“What accounts?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, in the—the papers.”</p> - -<p>“I never see any such accounts. It’s all horrors—freezing -and starving to death. Besides, father will be -the one to do the sharing and then have to go without. -Oh, <em>why</em> did I help him to—”</p> - -<p>“Don’t be absurd,” Bella said, almost angrily. “In -any case <em>he’s</em> not gone beyond the reach of supply depots.” -Neither met the other’s eye.</p> - -<p>“But suppose his money gives out—it will give out if -it’s true they charge two dollars for a potato. He never -could keep any money in his pockets. Oh, it’s all very -well for you, <em>your</em> father isn’t sitting on an iceberg -starving to death.”</p> - -<p>A queer look came into Bella’s little face. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -there, now and then, and gone like a ghost, leaving a -troubled tenderness behind.</p> - -<p>“It’s not as if he were near a settlement, as the Klondikers -are to Dawson City,” Hildegarde went on, yearning -for reassurance. “The place father was going to is -quite uninhabited, except by a few Esquimaux. Often I -can hardly eat for thinking—thinking”—her voice -caught—“maybe he is hungry.”</p> - -<p>“That’s impossible. He’s much too sensible and -clever.”</p> - -<p>“What good is it to be sensible and clever if you’ve -got nothing to eat?”</p> - -<p>“But being sensible and clever will help him to find -things to eat.”</p> - -<p>“How do you make that out?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, as far south as that—”</p> - -<p>As far <em>south</em>? Was she out of her mind?</p> - -<p>“There are plenty of ptarmigan and rabbits and -things, where Mr. Mar is.”</p> - -<p>“Are there? But he’s lame. How can he go shooting—”</p> - -<p>“Other people can, especially the natives, and you may -be sure your father will have his share. Besides, he’ll -fish. Mr. Mar’ll like that part of it.”</p> - -<p>“How <em>can</em> you be so heartless!”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“How is my father to fish in rivers frozen hard as -iron?”</p> - -<p>“Through holes in the ice, of course!” Bella defended -the idea warmly. “You’ll see,” she spoke as if -she’d personally tested the efficacy of the device; -“you’ll see they’ll get fish all winter that way.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p> - -<p>“How <em>do</em> you know? Now don’t say you get it out of -the newspapers, for I never see these things, and I look -for nothing else.”</p> - -<p>“No, I found that in a book.”</p> - -<p>“What book?”</p> - -<p>It turned out to be a two-year-old volume upon Arctic -Exploration. On the fly-leaf Bella’s name and the date, -1896. A whole year before Cheviot went to the Klondike, -or Mr. Mar to Alaska. The year that—</p> - -<p>The light that had glimmered broke in a flood.</p> - -<p>“Let us read it together, Bella,” said Hildegarde -softly.</p> - -<p>“No, there’s a newer one I’ve just sent for. We’ll -read that if you like.”</p> - -<p>They finished it at the Waynes’ country place. “I -wish,” said Hildegarde, “we had another book about—”</p> - -<p>“There are plenty more.” Bella unlocked a little -chest. It was full of nothing but books, and the books -were about nothing but arctic life and exploration. For -nearly two years, Bella had been buying and reading -everything she could hear of published on the subject in -America or Europe.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde hung above the store. “We must go -through them all together. It is the most fascinating -reading in the world.”</p> - -<p>“It is the most horrible in the world. The most -ghastly, it makes you ill. But, yes; I agree with you one -can’t <em>not know</em>.”</p> - -<p>They read the books together. Even the honest-hearted -Hildegarde, who began with her father agonizingly -present in her mind, abandoned him presently to his -probably less terrible fate, and pushed forward with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -strange men on their farther journey; fitting each new -fortune or mischance to the One on the other side of the -world, never mentioned either by her or Bella. Though -Hildegarde kept her oath not to speak Galbraith’s name, -she felt a strange new excitement now in saying “He” -as for her father, yet thinking of the One who had gone -farther afield even than Cheviot, and much, much farther -than Mr. Mar. Each girl played with the ruse. It gave -to reading and speculation a subtilty—a spirit—that -never flagged.</p> - -<p>And now spring was here. Although still far too -early for such forecasting, both felt the need of returning -to Valdivia, to be within easier reach of papers, of -telegrams, and of returning travelers. For all the -world knew when once the spring was come up yonder, -the summer followed hard. How natural it was to be -looking forward to something great and wonderful that -was to happen in June! Hildegarde and her father had -done that as long ago as when the girl was in her early -teens and Jack Galbraith expected back from his first -arctic enterprise. What more natural than that Hildegarde -and Bella should be doing very much the same -to-day. To call their expectation by Mar’s name, merely -gave it manageability. For, apart from Bella’s interdiction, -the word “Galbraith” was, in this, like a hot -iron. If it were to be touched in safety, some shield -must come between you and the too ardent metal. “Galbraith” -would scorch. But wrap “Mar” about the forbidden -name, and you could use it to significant ends.</p> - -<p>Summer and Mr. Mar! Oh, Mr. Mar served well as -symbol of that mightier issue, that both dared hope for -out of this year’s opening of the ice gates of the North.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p> - -<p>And yet the month of wonder, June, went by without -a word or a sign coming down from the top of the world.</p> - -<p>July brought a letter from the Klondike—Cheviot’s -second. He had done well, and he was coming home. -Hildegarde might look to see him by the next boat. No -word of Mar; plain he hadn’t had Hildegarde’s news -when he wrote. Not the next boat, however, nor the -next, brought Cheviot, nor any word of Mr. Mar.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know how I should get through this time -but for you, Bella.” Hildegarde and she were seldom -apart.</p> - -<p>Not till mid-August came the sign from Mar, a letter -written from a queer-sounding place in early June, a -letter strangely short and non-committal. He had -reached St. Michaels too late the previous autumn to go -any further than Golovin Bay, before navigation closed. -He would push on as soon as travel was practicable. -He was well. He sent his love. And no more that summer. -No more up to the time the boats stopped running -in the autumn.</p> - -<p>Cheviot had not come after all. And silence, like the -silence of the grave, wrapt the fate of that Other, on the -far side of the world.</p> - -<p>“I shall burn a joss to those who travel by land or by -sea, by snow or by ice,” said Bella, one day in December, -and she lit the stick of incense on the flower altar, -whence no heathen smoke of prayer had risen for a -couple of years now. But more prayers than ever before -had been offered up in the little white room. And what -need of a face on the wall above the roses? The picture -was not really shut away in a drawer. Vivid in each -girl’s mind, it was borne about as faithfully, as in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -old days, when on Hildegarde’s breast in a setting of -silver it hung on a velvet string.</p> - -<p>Now and then Bella remembered Cheviot, and when -she remembered him, she spoke of him. Sometimes she -spoke of him when she was thinking of him little enough. -As on the night when she wasn’t well, and Hildegarde, -sleeping on the sofa in her friend’s room, had waked in -misery over a dream she’d had. Bella was lying wide-eyed -in the dark, “A dream about—?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” Hildegarde said hurriedly, “a snow-storm in -the night, in the wind; a slipping down into blackness. -I thought I saw him fall, and I knew it was the end.”</p> - -<p>“They go by contraries. Your father’s quite well -and happy.” Hildegarde had not said the dream concerned -her father, but she offered no correction.</p> - -<p>“Still,” Bella went on, “for the moment it makes one -feel—I’ll tell you! we must have a little light to -comfort us.”</p> - -<p>“No, no; it will hurt my eyes,” Hildegarde was surreptitiously -crying. But Bella was already up, and before -Hildegarde could forestall her, she had opened the -door across the hall leading into the opposite room, and -there she was striking a light. Hildegarde followed her, -still a little dazed by the vivid horror of the dream, and -when her eyes fell upon her own little white bed, she -flung herself down there, and buried her face in the cool -pillow.</p> - -<p>“You aren’t crying, are you, Hildegarde, over a silly -dream? Look here, I’m lighting a joss for Mr. Mar.”</p> - -<p>A little silence.</p> - -<p>“I’ve lit another,” said Bella’s hurried voice, still -over there by the table, “one for Louis.” Hildegarde,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -with face half-hidden, imagined rather than saw, that -three slender smoke feathers were curling above the -flowers, drowning the meeker fragrance of the roses.</p> - -<p>She lay there feeling the oppression of the dream fading, -and a waking oppression take its place. Yes, they -“went by contraries.” Galbraith hadn’t fallen and -been swallowed in the gaping maw of a crevasse; but -when he came back, what was going to happen? He -belonged to Bella. But he had left Bella. And he had -belonged first of all to Hildegarde. What would befall -friendship in that coming wrench!</p> - -<p>“Go back to bed, Bella; you’ll be worse.”</p> - -<p>“You must come, too.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde made no answer.</p> - -<p>“You can’t lie there with all these flowers in the -room. I didn’t know you hadn’t set them out. The -doors can’t be left open either.”</p> - -<p>“The windows can.”</p> - -<p>“I shan’t go unless you come, too.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde forced herself to get up. Bella put out -the comforting light. But some things show plainer in -the dark. Those symbols on the altar, they were only -tendrils of smoke by day, or in the glare of gas. Now -they were sparks of fire puncturing the blackness of the -scented room. One fiery eye to watch over the fortunes -of Nathaniel Mar, one to shine for Cheviot, and an unnamed -third to pierce the darkness that shrouded the -fate of that Other. Even when the two girls turned -their backs, and groped their way to Bella’s room clinging -hold of each other in the dark, the third spark not -only shone before their inner vision still, it pricked each -bosom with its point of fire.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p> - -<p>What would happen when he came back?</p> - -<p>Each wondered, and each held faster to the other -with fear in the bottom of her heart.</p> - -<p class="tb">Meanwhile, life outwardly went on pretty much the -same. With Trenn and Harry, Eddie Cox and other -swains, the girls went to parties and picnics, to concerts, -and the theater, and did all the usual things. The one -unusual thing those days brought was the Charles Trennor -fancy ball. It was going to be a great affair, and -Valdivia conversation for weeks had begun by some -such statement as, “I’m going as the Goddess of Liberty. -What shall you be?”</p> - -<p>Of course Trenn and Harry were coming up for the -great occasion, and their costumes called for endless consultation -with that great authority, Bella. They had, -moreover, told their sister she might on this occasion be -as glorious as ever she liked, and they would “foot the -bill.” Hildegarde deeply appreciated such generosity, -but what was more to the point, did Bella?</p> - -<p>She only said: “Yes, Hildegarde’s going to be -glorious. But I don’t think it’s the kind of glory you -can buy.”</p> - -<p>Even before the Mar boys had come forward in this -magnificent way, Bella had decided that Hildegarde -must go as Brunhild. Her gown was to be white cloth, -embroidered with silver dragons—strictly adapted from -an ancient Norse design. She was to wear silver sandals -on her feet; on one bare arm would be a buckler, a spear -in her right hand, and on her fair hair a silver helmet.</p> - -<p>Bella was going as Amy Robsart, and that was easy -enough. It was those dragons of Hildegarde’s that took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> -the time; and, as Bella had said, they wouldn’t have -been easy to buy. She and Hildegarde were embroidering -them every spare minute, day and night. Even -now, though almost, they were not quite done, which -was a pity. Trenn and Harry were coming up from -Siegel’s again this evening—the excuse, the necessary -inspection of Brunhild, at Bella’s express invitation. -For this had been the one costume not ready in time for -the “dress-rehearsal” two nights before, when Bella and -“the boys” had put on their Elizabethan finery, and -peacocked about in great spirits.</p> - -<p>“I want your brothers to be what they call ‘knocked -silly’ when they first see you, Hildegarde. You must -be all dressed and ready, and we can turn up the bottom -of the skirt and work at that last dragon while we’re -waiting.”</p> - -<p>In pursuance of this plan, the two girls had gone up-stairs -directly after supper, though it was hardly probable -the boys could get there before half-past nine.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar sat waiting for them in the parlor, on that -side of the center table where the book rest supported -an open volume. She rocked while she waited, and she -crocheted while she rocked. At times she glanced at the -clock—not once at the open book. Not for her own -edification was the volume there, but for the enlargement -of Hildegarde’s literary horizon, while she and -Bella stitched at silver dragons. But this latest choice -in standard works had not pleased any one. Victor -Hugo was much too fond of fiery love-scenes to prosper -with Mrs. Mar, but the miserable man had become a -classic, and after all, Hildegarde was old enough not to -be infected. Bella—she read everything, the minx!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> -Although Hildegarde was in her twenty-fifth year, Mrs. -Mar knew her so little, she felt no assurance that the -girl would keep up her languages, or read “the best -things” in any tongue, without her mother’s dragging -her by main force across the flowery fields of belles -lettres—as though over stubble and through brake.</p> - -<p>Listening to Mrs. Mar’s reading of a classic was an -experience of some singularity. For if she macerated -descriptive bits with a chin-chopper despatch, to get -them out of the way (not disguising the fact that she -considered these passages in the light of the salutary -self-torture that no disciplined life should evade, any -more than vaccination or a visit to the dentist), she did -far deadlier things to scenes of sentiment or passion. -These she approached with a sturdy determination not -to give in to their nonsense, to make them at all events -<em>sound</em> like sanity by sheer force of her own impregnable -common-sense—a force so little to be withstood, that it -could purge the most poetic page ever written. It made -even Victor Hugo sound as reasonable as the washing -list. If you didn’t inwardly curse or secretly weep, -you must have laughed to see how effectually she could -clip fancy’s wings, slam the door on sentiment, bring -high passion down to a sneaking shame, and effectually -punish a great reputation. In short, listening to Mrs. -Mar reading romance was so sure a way, not only to -strip it bare of its traditional glory, but to rob it of -every chance of “going home,” that Hildegarde, as soon -as she got wind of what was the next work to be attacked, -hastened to borrow it of Bella, devoured it alone, -and so got a first impression that could more or less hold -its own against the maternal onslaught. It is but fair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> -to say that to any comedy passage Mrs. Mar gave excellent -effect, and, by way of appreciation, a grim smile -peculiarly her own; while for a spirited encounter between -wits sharp and merciless, she had open approval.</p> - -<p>“That’s something like!” she would say. “Old -Dumas” (or whoever it might be), “he can do it when -he likes!” and the great one was patted on the back: -“<em>This</em> man’s going to live.”</p> - -<p>Bella had known that Mrs. Mar would sit in the half-light -till even she could see no longer. But Hildegarde -was not suffered to make her entrance in the dusk. Bella -ran in first and “lit up.” She did not stop to draw the -blinds, she was in too great a hurry; besides, it was nice -to let in the mild and beautiful night. “Now, Hildegarde! -Look, Mrs. Mar,” and Bella ushered in a living -page from an old Icelandic Saga; “isn’t she glorious?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar pecked at the regal figure with her hard, -bright eyes, “White doesn’t make her any slimmer,” -she said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, it wouldn’t do for Brunhild to be a mean, -little, narrow creature.”</p> - -<p>“That helmet, too! It makes her look ten feet high.”</p> - -<p>“She wants to look high!—<em>and</em> ‘mighty!’ and she -does. No, no, stop Hildegarde, you <em>mustn’t</em> take it -off.”</p> - -<p>“Just till we hear the boys coming. It—it’s—” -Hildegarde contracted her broad brows under the helmet’s -weight.</p> - -<p>But Bella flew to the rescue. “Don’t, don’t! Hands -off! What does it matter if it <em>is</em> heavy? You must get -used to it. You’ve got to be a heroine!” she wound up -severely, “so don’t expect to be comfortable!” and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> -Bella pulled a chair under the drop-light. “Sit here -where Trenn and Harry can see you the minute they -open the door. Now we can go on with the last dragon -while we’re waiting.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar cleared her throat, “‘Acte Cinquième. La -Noce.’” And the two girls, raising their eyes from -the work, saw through the open window, in front of -them, not the close-massed syringa underneath, nor the -soft Californian night above, but “une terrasse du palais -d’Aragon,” in the town of Saragossa, four hundred -years ago. And no sense visited them of any jarring -contrast between the picture of the world in the yellow-backed -book, and the picture of life as they knew it best. -Thanks to the poet that lives in most young hearts, even -Victor Hugo’s gallant vision of a civilization that was -old before California was discovered, brought no envious -sense of the difference between then and now—rather -a naïve surprise that those others so far away, so long -ago, should have understood so well.</p> - -<p>Older, more self-critical, they might have lost this -sense of comradeship—might have gone over to the gray -majority that insists only the past is picturesque, or that -if any grace remains unto this day, it must needs be far -removed from places we know well, precariously surviving -under other skies, speaking an alien tongue. -Those who would persuade us there is no scene in our -every-day life but what is sordid, barren, or at best -(and worst) meanly commonplace—stuff unfit for poetry -or even for noble feeling—what do the carpers by such -comment on our times but confess an intellect abject, -slavish, blind. To find the beauty and the dignity that -lie in the difficult familiar days that we ourselves are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> -battling through, to detect high courage in the common -speech, to get glimpses of the deathless face of romance -as we go about the common streets, is merely to know -life as it is, and yet to walk the modern world as gloriously -companioned as any Viking or Hidalgo of the past.</p> - -<p>So true is early youth’s apprehension of these things, -that not even Mrs. Mar could make wide enough for -envy or embarrassment the gulf in the two girls’ minds -between an Old World bandit chief, and a New World -soldier of fortune. The transition, that to the sophisticated -seems grotesque, between the Hernani of 1519 -and the modern American pursuing perilous ways to the -Pole—this feat was accomplished without misgiving, although -in Saragossa, “on entend des fanfares éloignées,” -and in Valdivia an indefatigable woman, on the other -side of the street, was strumming the old tune, renamed, -“The Boulanger March”; and now Mrs. Mar was beginning -Scene III with an air of cold distrust, that Bella -foresaw would mount by well-known degrees to a climax -of scorn.</p> - -<p>The lady turned the page.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent15">“‘Mon âme</div> -<div class="verse">Brûle—Eh! dis au volcan qu’il étouffe sa flamme,’—</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“How long are they going on like this, I wonder?” she -interrupted herself to durchblätter the pages.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“‘Ah! qui n’oublierait tout à cette voix celeste!’”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And more fingering of the leaves. “Four more solid -pages of this sort of thing,” she announced. “Well, if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> -the rest of the world has stood it, I suppose we must.” -And she went on—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“‘Ta parole est un chant où rien d’humain ne reste—’”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>And on, in a measured staccato, exactly as if she were -adding up a column of figures, or telling off yards of -tape.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent7">“‘Doña Sol.</div> -<div class="verse indent10">Viens, ô mon jeune amant,</div> -<div class="verse">Dans mes bras.’”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Bella dropped the silver dragon, and with, “Wait, -Mrs. Mar, <em>dearest</em> Mrs. Mar!” she seized the book.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter with you?”</p> - -<p>“This is <em>my</em> part!” said Bella, shutting the volume -convulsively. “I know it every bit.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“‘Voilà notre nuit de noces commencée!</div> -<div class="verse">Je suis bien pâle, dis, pour une fiancée?’”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">And on to—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“‘Mort! non pas! nous dormons,</div> -<div class="verse">Il dort! c’est mon époux, vois-tu, nous nous aimons,</div> -<div class="verse">Nous sommes couchés là. C’est notre nuit de noce.</div> -<div class="verse">Ne le réveillez pas, seigneur duc de Mendoce,</div> -<div class="verse">Il est las. Mon amour, tiens-toi vers moi tourné.</div> -<div class="verse">Plus près—plus près encore—’”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Hildegarde, with tears, put out her hand and took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> -Bella’s. No word, just the clasp of hands, till they fell -apart to work.</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Mrs. Mar dryly. “I suppose you’ve -seen Sarah Bernhardt go on like that.”</p> - -<p>“No, oh, no. I don’t like Sarah in this. I do it much -better.”</p> - -<p>“A good many people seem to be able to put up with -the other lady.”</p> - -<p>But Bella, smiling, shook her head, as she drew a new -strand of silver thread through her needle. “I don’t -like seeing her make dear Doña Sol so—so snaky, and so -wildly unnatural.”</p> - -<p>“Well, if you think Doña Sol’s <em>natural</em>—”</p> - -<p>Bella laughed. “You’d think she was nature itself -compared to Sarah.”</p> - -<p>“People said the same thing about Curly what’s-his-name.”</p> - -<p>“Curly?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, the Englishman who acted with the red-haired -woman.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you mean Kyrle—”</p> - -<p>“Curl! Is that how he calls himself? Well, I’m -sure I’ve no objection. I liked him. But people went -about saying <em>he</em> wasn’t natural.”</p> - -<p>Bella looked up. “Did you think he was?”</p> - -<p>“Certainly not. But I’m a person who likes <em>acting</em>. -I don’t want them natural.” She wound up in a tone -of delicious contempt, “I can see people being natural -every day of my life, without paying for it.”</p> - -<p>Bella laughed. “Oh, I’m <em>so</em> glad I know you, dear -Mrs. Mar!” That lady, unmoved by the tribute, began -to do her duty by the notes. Bella never listened to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> -notes, and by and by her little face took on again the -tragic look with which she had declaimed, “La fatalité -s’accomplit.”</p> - -<p>Bella was a good deal changed in this last year. Hildegarde, -looking at her paling beauty, was sometimes -stricken with fear. “What should I do without her!”</p> - -<p>The postman’s ring. Bella jumped up without ceremony -in the middle of Note 2, and ran out to see what -had come. Only a paper. It wasn’t the postman. -Merely the little boy outrageously late with “The Evening -News.”</p> - -<p>Bella returned to her dragon—Mrs. Mar read on.</p> - -<p>After all, who could be sure but what that paper lying -there—how did Bella know but it had a Norwegian -telegram in it, saying word had come of the rescue in the -arctic of a party of Russians under an American leader? -Or no, the leader had done the rescuing—against awful -odds. Not Bella alone, but two entire continents were -celebrating his name. For this was the intrepid explorer -of whom nothing had been heard for nearly four years—who -had been given up for dead, by all but Bella -Wayne.</p> - -<p>And this man—oh, it made the heart beat—this man -had discovered the Pole. That was why he’d been so -long away. It took four years to discover the Pole. But -it was done. The whole civilized world was ringing with -his name. And natural enough. It was the greatest -achievement since Columbus’ own, and the hero’s name -was—</p> - -<p>No, no, it wouldn’t be like that at all. He would -want Bella to be the first to know. The next ring at the -door would be a telegram for her. Or no, he would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> -hardly want to break so long a silence in that brusque -way. No, he would write her a beautiful long letter—telling -her—explaining— No! Far more like him just -to appear. Without writing—without telegraphing. -Just take the swiftest steamer across the Atlantic, and -the fastest train across the Continent, and some evening -like this, she, little thinking it the hour that should bring -such grace, she would lift up her eyes and there he -would be!—standing before her. Not only without a -long explanatory letter, without words, her face would -be hidden in his breast.</p> - -<p>“There!” Mrs. Mar interrupted an alternative soliloquy -of Don Carlos, and Bella started. “They’re early! -There are the boys, now!”</p> - -<p>“I don’t hear them.” But as Hildegarde spoke the -words she was conscious of steps on the graveled path, -that wound its rather foolish way round this side of the -house, leading nowhere. No one ever walked there but -Hildegarde herself, cutting or tending flowers. She -glanced at Bella, and saw in the wide hazel eyes a light -she knew.</p> - -<p>On the step came crunching gravel. Bella’s needle -arrested half through a stitch, and all Bella’s face saying, -“John! John Galbraith!”—and only Hildegarde, -through her eyes, hearing. But even Mrs. Mar was under -some spell of silence and strained expectation. Now -the firm tread paused, and there—there, in front of the -low uncurtained window, above the syringas, showed the -head and shoulders of a man. Not Trenn, not Harry. -Who? Hildegarde held her breath.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">“Was it—<em>could</em> it be?” Bella asked mutely, -with wildly beating heart.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, too, was wide-eyed and pale, -though even in the dusk, plain to see the -vigorous upstanding figure was not a bent -old man’s. Bella felt the happy blood come flooding -back about her heart; only to ebb again with a suddenness -so mighty, that it seemed to withdraw from her, not -gladness only, but volition and all feeling—seemed to -want to carry out life itself upon its backward tide.</p> - -<p>For the man had trodden down the flowers in the border, -and pushed his way through the syringa thicket. -He stood at the open window, looking in.</p> - -<p>“Well, Mr. Louis Cheviot,” said Mrs. Mar, with an -affectation of calmness, “where did <em>you</em> drop from?” -And then Hildegarde’s helmeted figure rose up like -some spirit of woman out of another time. But she -stood quite still, and she looked as if she knew she was -dreaming.</p> - -<p>Cheviot vaulted over the low sill, and came toward -her with eyes of wonder. “What’s all this for? Why -are you like that?”—but he had grasped her hand.</p> - -<p>“That absurd thing on her head? It was to show the -boys,” explained Mrs. Mar. “A ball—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Are you <em>sure</em> you are you?” Hildegarde found her -voice at last.</p> - -<p>“Much surer than I am that you are you. I saw your -light from the street, and I felt I couldn’t possibly wait -to go round and ring the bell. I thought I must come -and look in and see what you were like, though I must -say I didn’t expect—” He was shaking hands with -Mrs. Mar now, but he glanced over his shoulder at the -tall white figure and past it to Bella. “I believe I’ve -succeeded in scaring at least one of the party. How do -you do, Bella? Feel me. I’m not a ghost!”</p> - -<p>“My dear boy,” interrupted Mrs. Mar, speaking in -her most matter of fact tone, “sit down and tell us all -about it.” She at all events was not too agitated to put -her marker in the book before she closed it, and she took -up her crochet.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was still standing there, but she had taken -off the helmet and held it in her hand. “Are you—are -you alone?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes, alone.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose you’ve heard nothing of Mr. Mar?” said -Mrs. Mar, who had never in her life been heard to refer -to that gentleman in any more intimate fashion.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, I have.” Cheviot sat down. Hildegarde -still stood there. “I was with him between five and six -months.”</p> - -<p>“With father! Has he been to the Klondike, too?”</p> - -<p>“No; but I’ve been to Golovin.”</p> - -<p>“Your last letter, nine months ago, said you were -coming by the next boat,” Mrs. Mar arraigned him.</p> - -<p>“Yes, but I hadn’t heard from Hildegarde when I -wrote that.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What difference did that make?”</p> - -<p>“The difference of my following her suggestion to -look out for Mr. Mar. I had to go to Golovin to do it.”</p> - -<p>“Is that where he is now?” demanded his wife. -“Why on earth hasn’t he written?”</p> - -<p>Cheviot felt in his inner pocket, as he said, “No, Mr. -Mar’s at Nome.”</p> - -<p>“At Nome!”</p> - -<p>“He—he’s not ill?” faltered Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“No, on the contrary, he’s better than he’s been for -years.”</p> - -<p>“Then what on earth’s he doing at Nome?” demanded -Mrs. Mar. “Why didn’t he go to the place -he’s been talking about for all these—”</p> - -<p>“He did.”</p> - -<p>“Well?” and then, with her peculiar incisiveness, -“What’s he got to show for it all?”</p> - -<p>Cheviot did not wonder that Mar would rather not -return to face that particular look in the polished onyx -eyes. “I don’t know,”—he hesitated—“that there’s -very much to show—as yet.”</p> - -<p>“It oughtn’t to surprise anybody.” The lady turned -the highly polished stones in her head with an added -glitter.</p> - -<p>“When is he coming home?” asked Hildegarde, with -a pitiful lip.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps next summer.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps!” echoed the girl.</p> - -<p>Even Mrs. Mar stopped crocheting a moment. “Hush, -Hildegarde. Let him tell us.” But she must not be -supposed to be over-anxious. “Have you just come? -Have you had anything to eat?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Oh, thank you—in the train. First of all, I must -give you the letters he’s sent.” He handed one to -Mrs. Mar, and one to Hildegarde. Another he laid on -the table under the lamp. It was addressed to Messrs. -Trennor and Harry Mar. Mother and daughter hurriedly -read and exchanged letters.</p> - -<p>“Well, Miss Bella, how’s the world treating you?” -and Cheviot talked on in his old half-ironic fashion to -the pale girl putting away a heap of tangled silver -thread in a work-box.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar’s eye, grown even harder and brighter in -the last moments, fell upon the envelop under the lamp. -She did not scruple to tear it open. But there was little -enlightenment even in the epistle to “the boys.”</p> - -<p>“He says you’ll give us the particulars.” Mrs. Mar -flung the notice at Cheviot as if plainly to advertise her -intention to hold him responsible if those same particulars -were not reassuring.</p> - -<p>Cheviot told briefly how he had found Mr. Mar at the -mission, how an eavesdropper had overheard their private -talk, and how Mr. Mar reached his journey’s end -only to find that the thirty-year-old secret had been -filched from him, and other men (who hadn’t known it -but three days), how they had gathered in the harvest.</p> - -<p>“Not all—surely father got <em>something</em>?”</p> - -<p>“By the time he reached Anvil Creek he found it -staked from end to end.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar was plying the crochet-needle with a rapidity -superhuman. “Of course he’d be too late,” she said, -with a deadly quietness. “Give him thirty years’ start, -and he’ll be too late.”</p> - -<p>“It was an outrage that a handful of men should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> -have been able to gobble the entire creek,” said Cheviot -hurriedly. “The laws will be changed, beyond a doubt. -They’re monstrous. Every miner has been able to take -out a power of attorney, and he could locate for his entire -family, for all his friends—even for people who -don’t exist.”</p> - -<p>“And those missionaries took it all!”</p> - -<p>“Not the missionaries. They were chivvied out of the -game by a reindeer herder they’d let into the secret. -It’s too long a story to tell you now, but the herder -gave the missionaries the slip, and got word to some -friends of his. The rascals formed a district and -elected a recorder. By the time we got there, there -wasn’t an inch left for the man who’d discovered the -gold.”</p> - -<p>In the pause Hildegarde hunted wildly in her mind -for something to say—something that would prevent her -mother from speaking—but the girl’s tongue could find -no word, her mind refused to act.</p> - -<p>Fortunately, the story had reduced even Mrs. Mar to -silence.</p> - -<p>“In the end Christianson and Björk didn’t fare -much better than Mr. Mar, though I believe they got -something. But the herder and his friends are millionaires.”</p> - -<p>It was more than one of the company could bear. Mrs. -Mar got up and left the room.</p> - -<p>Cheviot met Hildegarde’s eyes. There was that in his -face that gave her the sense of leaning on him in spirit—of -being in close alliance with him.</p> - -<p>“Poor, poor father!” she said, in a half whisper. -“Does he take it dreadfully to heart?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, you can imagine it wasn’t an easy thing to -bear.”</p> - -<p>“No, but why isn’t he here—we’ll all help him to -bear it.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot looked at the door through which Mrs. Mar -had disappeared. His eyes said plain as print, “Will -she?”</p> - -<p>“But father must come home!” Hildegarde broke in -on the eloquent silence, as though upon some speech of -Cheviot’s. “What is he thinking of—he doesn’t -mean—”</p> - -<p>Her agitation was so great she hardly noticed that -Bella had finished putting the things away in the work-box, -and was leaving the room. The moment she had -shut the door, “He can’t face it,” said Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“Oh, but that’s madness. He must be told that we—that -I—he <em>must</em> come home. Why, it’s the most dreadful -thing I ever heard of in my life, his bearing it all -alone.” Her tears were falling. “Tell me—there’s -nothing in the letters—Louis,”—she leaned forward—“you -and I always tell each other the truth, don’t we?”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid we do,” he said, with his old look.</p> - -<p>“Then tell me <em>what’s in father’s mind</em>. What has he -said to you?”</p> - -<p>“That he will stay up there till—somehow—he has -either made his pile, or made his exit.”</p> - -<p>The girl laid her head down beside the shining helmet -on the table, and wept convulsively.</p> - -<p>“I had to tell you.” Cheviot had come close to her, -and his voice was half indignant, half miserable.</p> - -<p>Blindly she put out a hand and grasped his arm. -“Thank you—you—you have been good. His letter to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> -me says that you—that you—Louis!” Suddenly she -lifted her wet face, “I <em>am</em> ‘unendingly grateful.’”</p> - -<p>“Well, I hope you’ll get over it.” He drew his arm -out of her grasp, and walked about the room.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde followed him with tear-wet eyes that grew -more and more bewildered. “I can’t understand how -you’re here. I thought navigation wouldn’t be open -for a month.”</p> - -<p>“Nearer two.”</p> - -<p>“Then, how—how—”</p> - -<p>“I came out with dogs over the ice.”</p> - -<p>She stared incredulous. “<em>How</em> did you come?”</p> - -<p>“Round the coast of Norton Bay, down across the -Yukon, and over to the Kuskoquim, and then by the old -Russian route to Kadiak Island.”</p> - -<p>“How in the world did you know the way?”</p> - -<p>“Part of the time I had native guides.”</p> - -<p>“Wasn’t it a very terrible journey?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know that I’d do it again.”</p> - -<p>“And when you got down to Kadiak Island?”</p> - -<p>“I waited a week for the boat.”</p> - -<p>“They run in winter!”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Kadiak comes in for a swing eastward of the -warm Japanese current. The boats ply regularly to -Sitka.”</p> - -<p>“It must have taken you a long time to do all that -first part on your own two feet.”</p> - -<p>He didn’t answer.</p> - -<p>“When did you see father last?”</p> - -<p>“On the morning of the 8th of December, when I -cracked my whip over my dog-team and turned my back -on Nome.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Heavens! Why, that’s—”</p> - -<p>“Over three months ago.” Most men would have -paused a moment for contemplation of their prowess or -at least of their hardships, but Cheviot was ready to put -his achievement at once and for ever behind him—ready, -not only to imagine the general interest somewhere -else, but to lead the way thither. “To be exact, -it was three months and sixteen days ago; but your -father was all right when I left him, and he had supplies.”</p> - -<p>“Has he any friends?”</p> - -<p>“He’s got a dog he’s very thick with, and he’s got a -comfortable tent.”</p> - -<p>“A tent, in that climate!”</p> - -<p>“It’s all anybody has. No lumber for cabins; little -even for sluices, hardly enough for rockers—to rock out -the dust, you know. Wood is dearer than gold.”</p> - -<p>“<em>A tent!</em>”</p> - -<p>“I assure you there was only one thing he was really -in want of.”</p> - -<p>“What was that?”</p> - -<p>“Some way to get word to you. He knew you’d be -anxious. He wants you not to take his failure to heart. -He thinks a great deal about that, because he says you -helped—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes.”</p> - -<p>“He wanted me to make it quite clear to you that in -spite of everything he wasn’t sorry he’d tried it. And -you mustn’t be sorry either. You must write to him, -Hildegarde, and reassure him.”</p> - -<p>She nodded and turned away her face, but she put up -her hand like one who cannot bear much more.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p> - -<p>“He was <em>afraid</em> you were fretting about him. I never -saw him more awfully pleased and glad than when I -made up my mind to come out over the ice.”</p> - -<p>“That appalling journey! You did it for him?”</p> - -<p>“No, I didn’t.”</p> - -<p>He waited, as if for a sign, and then, speaking almost -surlily, “I did it for myself,” he said. “I’d been away -long enough.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Hildegarde, “yes, indeed.”</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t bear it any longer, sitting there in the -dark and cold, and the”—she raised her eyes—“the—oh, -it’s not such a bad place as people make out; if you -aren’t eating your heart out to know—”</p> - -<p>“What’s father doing?” she asked hastily.</p> - -<p>“Waiting to hear from you. Waiting, like everybody -else, for the ice to go out.”</p> - -<p>“What will he do when the ice goes out?”</p> - -<p>“He’s got some claims,” Cheviot lowered his voice -to say. “He doesn’t want anybody but you to know, -for fear there’s nothing in them. But as soon as the -frost is enough out of the ground to yield to pick and -shovel, he means to rock out a few tons of gravel and <em>see</em>.”</p> - -<p>“Do it himself!”—then, as Cheviot did not answer at -once, “It’s simply dreadful! It’s—I can’t bear it.” -She hid her face.</p> - -<p>“Don’t, Hildegarde. I wish you wouldn’t cry.”</p> - -<p>“Are you going back there?”</p> - -<p>“No, oh, no; I’m not even going back to the Klondike.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar opened the door behind them. “It must be -hours since you made that miserable meal in the train,” -she said. “Come in here and have some supper.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p> - -<p>Cheviot would have declined but that he knew he must -some time submit to a tête-à-tête. Best get it over.</p> - -<p>After the dining-room door shut behind her mother -and Cheviot, Hildegarde still sat there. The only -movement about the white figure under the lamp was -the salt water that welled up constantly and constantly -overflowed the wide, sad eyes. The handle -of the other door turned softly—a girl’s face looked -in.</p> - -<p>“Bella”—the motionless figure rose out of the chair -and the one at the threshold came swiftly in. “Bella”—the -voice was muffled—“my father—my father -doesn’t mean ever to come home.”</p> - -<p>The incoming figure stopped. “Do the letters say -that?” Bella asked, awestruck.</p> - -<p>“No, Louis says so.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I think it was very heartless of him.”</p> - -<p>“No, it wasn’t. I made him. It would have been -infinitely worse to be always waiting.”</p> - -<p>“To be always waiting <em>is</em> perhaps the worst,” said -Bella, with lowered eyes.</p> - -<p>“Yes, worst of all.”</p> - -<p>Bella roused herself and came nearer to her friend. -“But for Mr. Mar—why, it’s impossible—don’t you believe -it, dear. It’s absurd to think—”</p> - -<p>“He’ll never come back. You’ll see he’ll never -come back, unless—”</p> - -<p>“Unless?”</p> - -<p>“Unless”—Hildegarde cleared her tear-veiled voice—“unless -some one goes and brings him home.”</p> - -<p>“Louis Cheviot?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you see, he’s failed. He’s been enormously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> -kind;—he’s been wonderful, but he couldn’t get my -father to come home.”</p> - -<p>“Are you thinking one of the boys might?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde shook her head. “They couldn’t make -him.”</p> - -<p>“Who could?”</p> - -<p>She looked round the room with eyes that again were -filling. But they came back to Bella’s face. “Father -would do it for <em>me</em>,” she said; “don’t you know he -would?”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said the other, staring, “if not for you, for -no one.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, he’d do it for me!” Hildegarde moved -about the room with a restlessness unusual in her. She -went to each window in turn, pulled down the blinds -and drew the curtains; and still she moved about the -room. Excitement had drunk her tears. Her face was -full of light.</p> - -<p>Bella did not stir, but no look or move of Hildegarde’s -escaped her. She fixed her eyes on the gleaming dragons -that crawled at the hem of Hildegarde’s skirt. The -voices in the next room were audible, but not the -words.</p> - -<p>Across the street the tireless female had again struck -up her favorite march.</p> - -<p>“You’d have to go alone,” Bella said presently.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’d have to go alone.”</p> - -<p>“It’s an awful journey.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose so.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and the people—the roughest sort of people.”</p> - -<p>“I wouldn’t be afraid—at least, not much.”</p> - -<p>“<em>I</em> shouldn’t dare to.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p> - -<p>“No, no, you’re younger. And besides, even if I were -the younger, I’m the one who could do it.” Not often -that Hildegarde laid herself open to a charge of arrogance. -“Yes,” she said, with rising excitement, “<em>I</em> -could do it, only”—and the high look fell—“it costs a -great deal.” She stood quite still looking down upon -Brunhild’s shield, that showed on the dark carpet like -a tiny circular pool of gleaming water. Still that maddening -piano over the way! “The boys wouldn’t help -me,” Hildegarde thought out loud, “they’ve already—they’ll -be disgusted enough as it is.” She sat down, -still with her eyes on the shield, as if she didn’t dare -lose sight of it a moment. “Of course mother wouldn’t -dream—” After a little pause, “And Louis would say -I was mad. But I must think—I must think!” She -leaned her tilted chin on her hand, and still like one -hypnotized she stared at the metal disk shining there in -the shadow. “I must find a way. Father shall not be -left up there another winter.”</p> - -<p>Nothing more, till Bella brought out quite low the -words, “I could get you the money.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Bella!</em>” Hildegarde dropped her hand and sat -back. “Would you?”</p> - -<p>Instead of answering, “I wouldn’t dare to go myself,” -Bella said.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>you</em> couldn’t possibly.” (Had Bella really meant -that she might lend—) “Even if there were any need -of it, <em>you</em> couldn’t go.” Hildegarde’s lips only were -saying words, her mind was already faring away on an -immense and wonderful journey, that she—<em>she</em> was competent -to undertake. “You aren’t the kind, anyway,” -she wound up bluntly, coming back.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Nobody would think you were the kind either—nobody -but me.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes. You’ve always understood that I wasn’t -a bit like what people thought,” and, indeed, few who -supposed they knew Hildegarde Mar but would have -been surprised at the look in her face to-night, for once -betraying not alone a passionate partizanship with her -father’s stranded and embittered existence, but the glow -that even the thought of “going to the rescue” may -light in a generous heart, and reflect in the quietest face.</p> - -<p>“You could do anything you meant to,” said Bella, -marveling a little at the new beauty in her friend, “anything. -But this—you’d have to be very brave to go on -such a—”</p> - -<p>“No, I wouldn’t. I <em>long</em> to go.”</p> - -<p>No great surprise to Bella after all, this admission -that Hildegarde, the reticent, the cold, was really burning -with all sorts of eagerness that had never been suffered -expression.</p> - -<p>But there was something more here to-night. Like -many another, Hildegarde could have gone through -hardship and suffering for the sake of any one she loved, -but the look on her face as she sat there under the light, -revealed the fact that this journey Bella shrank from -even thinking of, that Hildegarde herself had called -“appalling,” made yet its own strange appeal to the -girl, apart from love of her father, independent of the -joy of service.</p> - -<p>“You think if I did it, it would be because I’m brave -and a good daughter, and things like that. No, it’s -none of those things. It’s because, while other people -have been going to New York and to Mexico, to London<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> -and to Paris, and—and—the farthest places, while they -traveled north, south, east, west, I’ve sat here in this -little house in Valdivia, and sewed and planted a garden -and heard everybody else saying good-by, and listened -to that woman over the way playing ‘Partant pour la -Syrie,’ and have still stayed here, and sewed, and gardened, -and only <em>heard</em> about the world. I’ve done it -long enough! I’m going to the North, too!” Hildegarde -stood up with eyes that looked straight forward -into space. A movement from the other seemed to bring -the would-be traveler back. “If anybody will help me,” -she said, turning her eyes on Bella’s face.</p> - -<p>The younger girl was on her feet. In the silence the -two moved toward each other. Bella lifted her arms and -threw them about Hildegarde’s neck. “I’ve told you -I’ll help you.”</p> - -<p>“I love you very much already, but if you’d do that -for me—” The shining eyes pieced out the broken -phrase.</p> - -<p>Bella turned her graceful little head toward the dining-room -door. Cheviot had raised his voice. But they -couldn’t hear the words.</p> - -<p>“There’s only one thing”—Bella spoke in a whisper—“just -think a moment; all those hundreds of miles -with a dog team over the ice, in an arctic winter. If -anybody else had done such a thing we should never -have heard the last of it. The world wouldn’t be long -in having another book on heroism in high latitudes. -But we all know <em>that</em> man”—she moved her head in the -direction of the voice—“we’ll never hear of it again. -He’s done that gigantic journey just for you,”—Hildegarde -disengaged herself—“and to be with you again.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> -And here you are planning to go away. It isn’t my -business, but I think you’ll be making a terrible mistake, -Hildegarde, if you—”</p> - -<p>Her friend turned from her with unusual abruptness.</p> - -<p>“He’s nicer than ever,” Bella persisted. “He’s -charming. I always said so.”</p> - -<p>“And I always said”—Hildegarde stopped and looked -at Bella with an odd intentness. “You’re a nicer girl -than you used to be.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” said the other, smiling faintly, but she -saw that she had failed.</p> - -<p>“And I don’t mean because you’re willing to help -me in this.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“There’d be only one thing that could prevent my -letting you lend me the money.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you certainly needn’t worry about paying it -back.”</p> - -<p>“It would take two or three years, but that could be -managed now that Trenn and Harry want to give me an -allowance. It isn’t that.”</p> - -<p>Bella waited wondering.</p> - -<p>“It is that I couldn’t take a great, great help from -you, and go so far away, carrying anything in my heart -that—that I’d kept hid—anything that concerned you.”</p> - -<p>A quick fear leapt into Bella’s face.</p> - -<p>“For one mightn’t come back, you know,” the other -added.</p> - -<p>“There’s only one thing we’ve never straightened -out,” said Bella, “and that’s <em>my</em> tangle.”</p> - -<p>“I have my share in the thing, I mean. But as I said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> -you couldn’t do now—what you did—when you were -little.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Bella drew a sharp breath of relief. “When -I was little I know I was a beast.”</p> - -<p>“You told Louis Cheviot about the altar, and the -patron saint; about—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Bella hastily. “It was pretty mean of -me, but I was only twelve.”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t only when you were twelve.” Gratitude, -common prudence, should have bridled Hildegarde’s -tongue, but there was something of the judgment day -about this hour. Hearts must needs be opened and secrets -known. “It was after,” she went on, driven by -this new necessity to leave nothing hidden if she was to -take Bella’s help, “it was six years after—when you -were eighteen. You had gone away knowing quite well -how—how I was feeling about—You knew how I was -feeling. Yet you could write pretty heartlessly, considering -all things. That gay letter about your engagement. -You could write with that insincere air of expecting -me to be as happy as you were.”</p> - -<p>“You surely see it would have been unpardonable of -me to have sympathized with you. I <em>had</em> to assume you -didn’t care. You would have done the same.”</p> - -<p>“No, I wouldn’t.”</p> - -<p>Bella looked at her. “That’s true,” she said, quite -low. “You would have shown that you were sorry for -me, even in the middle of being happy yourself. You -could have done it and not hurt. But I couldn’t. I -didn’t know how. The nearest I could come to it was -just to pretend I thought you’d got over it—that you -didn’t care any longer.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></p> - -<p>They looked at each other a moment without speaking. -Bella with quivering face glided forward.</p> - -<p>“Dearest, dearest”—she took Hildegarde’s hand, she -caught it to her breast. “You aren’t going to let him—the -Other—spoil <em>two</em> lives!”</p> - -<p>“At least I’m ready to risk what’s sure to happen.”</p> - -<p>“What’s sure to happen?”</p> - -<p>“His coming while I’m away.” Hildegarde flung -out the words with a passion Bella had never seen in her -before. “Yes, that’s what will happen. I shall have -waited for him at home here all my life <em>till</em> this summer. -And this summer, while I’m gone, he’ll come to -Valdivia. You’ll see! He’ll come.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-n.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">No prevision of Hildegarde’s as to Cheviot’s -disapproval of her plan approached the degree -to which he fought against her going -to the North.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar, secretly dismayed at her husband’s -willingness to stay away indefinitely, was not ill-content -for once to see the “stolid Hildegarde” stirred -to action. It satisfied a need in the mother, that the -daughter had never ministered to before. Hildegarde -was the sort of girl who could take excellent care of -herself, and her health was superb. She had no important -concerns such as the boys had to chain them at home. -She was not the mother of a family, nor even president -of the Shakspere Society. The welfare of the Hindus -would be wholly unaffected by her departure. The journey -was quite unlike that terrible one involved in going -to the Klondike. It could be made in a comfortable -ship; the whole of it by sea. Her mother would go with -her to the steamer, and Hildegarde would stay on board -till her father met her at the Alaskan port.</p> - -<p>But they had all reckoned without Cheviot.</p> - -<p>He refused to take the idea seriously at first, and when -he did—oh, he was serious enough then!</p> - -<p>“The maddest scheme that ever entered a sane head!” -Hildegarde had no conception of what such a journey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> -was like. The ships were the most uncomfortable in the -world. Freight boats, with no accommodation for -women. The food appalling. The company—oh, it -didn’t even bear talking about!</p> - -<p>But Cheviot did talk of it, to Bella, when he discovered -her complicity, and so effectually he talked that she -withdrew her support.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was speechless with indignation. What -spell had he cast that Bella could “go back” on her -word. Truly a thing to depend upon—Bella’s friendship.</p> - -<p>“Oh, please try to understand. I was always frightened -at the idea, even before Louis told me—”</p> - -<p>“Why should you be frightened,” said Hildegarde -sternly. “It isn’t as if I were a rescue party and my -little journey were to the other side of the world. I -shouldn’t sail from Norway, and I shouldn’t catch up -with anybody in Franz Josef Land.”</p> - -<p>“Hildegarde! You’ve never spoken to me like that -before in your life.”</p> - -<p>“No, I’ve never admitted before that you’d failed -me.”</p> - -<p>Bella, with flushed face, got up to leave the room. -“You think I’m backing out only because of what Louis -says. But I meant to tell you it would have been terrible -to me to be responsible for your going, after what you -said that night Louis came home.”</p> - -<p>“What did I say?”</p> - -<p>“That this summer, while you’re gone—”</p> - -<p>“Well?”</p> - -<p>“There will be news.”</p> - -<p>“You mean from—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes,” Bella steeled herself. “As soon as I’d got -you out of the way—”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde winced; rather dreadful that she should -have said that to Bella—too like what the average male -critic would expect. “Did I say <em>you</em>, Bella? I only -meant fate.”</p> - -<p>“You were sure he would come this summer. Stay -and see.”</p> - -<p>“It’s only if I’m not here that John Galbraith will -come.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had a final interview with the arch culprit, -Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“I had no idea you could be like this,” she said, toward -the close.</p> - -<p>“Then it’s as well you should know.”</p> - -<p>It ended in a breach. He came no more to the -house. Hildegarde passed him in the street with lowered -eyes.</p> - -<p>And Bella had gone home.</p> - -<p class="tb">The spring went creeping by.</p> - -<p>Now June was gone. Even July. Still no news.</p> - -<p>“You see,” said Hildegarde dully, “father isn’t coming -back.”</p> - -<p>August was waning—not even a letter. And from -that other more terrible North, no syllable of the tidings, -that to reach those two waiting in California, must -come round by the old world, and all across the new.</p> - -<p>“He is dead,” Hildegarde said to herself, and it was -not of Nathaniel Mar that she was thinking.</p> - -<p>The boys had generously sent their father both money -and advice. He was recommended to use the sight draft<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> -on the Alaska Commercial Company, for the purpose of -buying his home passage by the very next ship.</p> - -<p>At last, when the season was drawing to a close—news!</p> - -<p>Not that expected—but something no man had looked -for.</p> - -<p>Gold had been discovered in the sands of the Nome -beach.</p> - -<p>Men who had been stranded there—arriving too late -for a claim on the creeks—a broken and ragged horde, -were now persons of substance and of cheerful occupation, -that of “rocking out” fifty to a hundred dollars a -day upon the beach at Nome. The gold was not here -alone, but under the moss and the coarse grass of the -tundra. It clung to the roots when you pulled up the -sedgy growths. It was everywhere. What was the contracted -little valley of the Klondike compared to this!</p> - -<p>“The greatest of all the new world gold-fields has been -found. A region, vaster than half a dozen Eastern -States, sown broadcast with gold-dust and nuggets. -Easy to reach and easy to work.”</p> - -<p>Here was the poor man’s country. If you didn’t -want to rock out a fortune for yourself, you could earn -fifteen dollars a day working for others.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The beach for miles is lined with miners’ tents. Anvil -City (hereafter to be called Nome) is booming.</p> - -<p>“Building lots that six months ago were worth nothing, -to-day bring thousands of dollars.</p> - -<p>“Where a year ago was only a bare, wind-swept beach -on Bering Sea—one of the most desolate places to be -found on earth and beside which the Yukon country has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> -a fine climate—there is to-day a city of several thousand -people, surrounded by the richest placer-diggings the -world has seen.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>The gold-laden miners returning to Seattle by the last -boats of the autumn, told the reporters with a single -voice, “The world has known nothing like Cape Nome.”</p> - -<p>Tongues went trumpeting the mighty news, pens flew -to set it down, and telegraph operators flicked the tidings -from one end of the earth to the other.</p> - -<p>The word “Nome,” that had meant nothing for so -long to any man but Mar—it became a syllable of strangest -portent; stirring imaginations that had slept before, -heralding hope to despairing thousands, setting in motion -a vast machinery of ships and of strange devices, -and of complicated human lives.</p> - -<p>New lines of steamships bought up every craft that -could keep afloat; companies were formed to exploit the -last new gold-saving device; men who had fallen out of -the ranks, returned to the struggle saying, “After all, -there’s Nome!”</p> - -<p>“And this is the moment Mr. Mar will naturally -choose for turning his back on the North.” It was so -that his wife successfully masked her secret anxiety for -his return. It was as if she resented so sorely her growing -uneasiness about him—fought so valiantly against -the slow-dawning consciousness of the share she had in -his exile, that she must more than ever veil secret self-criticism -by openly berating him. Above all she must -disguise the impatience with which she awaited his return -“this autumn, at the latest.” “Now,” she would -say, “now that even he couldn’t fail to make a good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> -thing by staying, he—oh, yes, to be sure, <em>he’ll</em> come -hustling home!” If only she had been the man!</p> - -<p>One of the last boats brought a letter. There <em>was</em> gold -in the beach sand, Mar wrote, but every inch was being -worked over and over, and its richness had been exaggerated. -The place was overrun with the penniless and -the desperate. The United States military post established -there was powerless to maintain law and order. -Drunkenness, violence, crime, were the order of the day. -The beach was a strange and moving spectacle.</p> - -<p>“Spectacle! He goes and looks on!” was Mrs. Mar’s -way of disguising her dismay. He returned the boys’ -money, “since it was sent for a purpose so explicit.” He -was “staying in.”</p> - -<p>Other letters, brought by the same steamer, told what -Mr. Mar had omitted to mention: that typhoid fever was -at work as well as those gold-diggers on the famous -beach.</p> - -<p>Men were dying like flies.</p> - -<p class="tb">The third winter came down, and the impregnable ice -walls closed round “the greatest gold-camp on the -globe.”</p> - -<p>“Typhoid! Even if he escapes the fever, he will stay -up there till he dies, unless—” Hildegarde was glad -she had not yet bought anything for the coming season. -In spite of her brothers’ allowance she would become a -miser—hoarding every coin that came her way. She -would make her old gowns do, even without Bella’s -transforming fingers. She thought twice even about -spending car fare. To eke out her resources she would -sell Bella’s beautiful presents, and the first boat that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> -went north in the spring should carry Hildegarde to -her father—or to his grave.</p> - -<p>It was gray business waiting for this first summer of -the century. What news might one expect from a man -lost four years ago between Norway and Franz Josef -Land? What from that other in the nearer-by North, -where men dug gold and fought typhoid? What fatality -was it that made of all hope and all desire a magnetic -needle? Hildegarde remembered how Bella, to the question, -“Why do you suppose there’s this mania among -us for the North?” had answered, “I don’t know, unless -it is that we have the South at home. Perhaps Hudson -Bay people and Finlanders dream of the tropics. I -don’t know. But I’ve heard nothing so afflicts a -Canadian as hearing his country called ‘Our Lady of -the Snows.’ I think there never was such a beautiful -name. But it may be because I live with orange blossoms -all about me.”</p> - -<p>Certainly it was harder waiting without Bella. Together -each year they had hoped for news. Now apart, -they feared it.</p> - -<p>Oddly enough, what helped Hildegarde through the -heavy time was the establishment of an understanding, -half incredulous, wholly unavowed, between her and -her mother. It appeared she had Mrs. Mar on her side—else -why did that lady save up every newspaper reference -to the new gold-camp to read aloud as Hildegarde -sat at her sewing. The most transcendent classic ever -penned would be put aside for—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“‘Extracts from the note-book of Mr. McPherson, the -third man to strike pay on the beach.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘(They are absolutely correct, as I saw his diary and -the mint returns for the gold, which were at the rate -$19 an ounce, yielding him nearly $10,000.)</p> - -<p>‘Aug. 11th.—Macomber and Levy: about a mile and a -half from Anvil City. Here I got a nugget weighing -$4. The nugget was found in the sand, about 250 feet -from low tide. Jim Dunsmuir and William Bates told -me that they had averaged $40 per day rocking. They -were about eleven miles south of Anvil. Price, on No. 8 -Anvil, Sunday, 20th of August, sluiced out $6,400 in -seven hours, with six men. Lindblom took out $18,000 -in eighteen hours, with six men, August 14th.</p> - -<p>‘Aug. 29th.—Leidley made a wooden caisson and sunk -it about 250 ft. beyond low tide, and got from fifteen to -fifty cents per shovel. I did not see this experiment, but -I believe firmly that the richest part of the beach is -beyond low tide.</p> - -<p>‘There will be more money come out from Nome than -came from the Klondike.’”</p> - -</div> - -<p>“Here’s a column headed—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="center">“‘A REGION RICHER THAN PIPE-DREAMS</p> - -<p>“‘Nome defies all theories and every precedent. Its -greatest mines have been found, and its greatest fortunes -have been made by men who knew nothing of mining. -Gold has been discovered by lawyers and doctors, dry-goods’ -clerks, plow-boys, barbers, fiddlers and politicians, -in a thousand places where old miners would -have sworn, and did swear, it was impossible. Millions -of dollars in glittering dust and nuggets have been -thawed out of frozen rubble and moss, and washed from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> -ocean beaches and other unheard-of depositories by -young divinity students, country printers, piano professors -and didapper dandies, whom nobody ever suspected -of knowing grindstones from thousand-dollar quartz, or -iron pyrites from free gold.’”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Mrs. Mar read on, intoxicating herself. “Here’s a -woman who was up there in the summer when the beach -gold was found. She’s brought home $15,000, and a -claim she refused to take $38,000 for.”</p> - -<p>But if there was anything about typhoid in the paper -Hildegarde had to find it out for herself. Little by little -she knew that however deterred her mother had been by -Cheviot’s onslaught the spring before, she was either -consciously or unconsciously coming to look favorably -on Hildegarde’s old plan.</p> - -<p>What the inexperience of the girl could not guess was -that Mr. Mar’s absence had taught his wife several -things. And that lady had no inclination to gather another -year’s harvest of the bitter fruit. If Hildegarde -could get him to come home, Hildegarde ought to be supported -in spite of Cheviot and the boys. But real confidence -between them was so little easy, that the girl said -nothing to her mother of her plan to raise money by selling -the beautiful necklace and the other things that Bella -had from time to time brought home to her from abroad. -Hildegarde would go to a man she could trust—“the -family jeweler,” as they called the individual whose -high office had been to restore the pins to brooches that -Mrs. Mar’s energetic fingers had wrenched off, and to -mend Mr. Mar’s grandfather’s watch-chain when it -broke, as it used, two or three times every year.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p> - -<p>To the family jeweler, then, Hildegarde took her box -of treasures. “What are they worth?”</p> - -<p>The little man screwed a glass in his eye, and examined -rare stones and renaissance enamel with an -omniscient air.</p> - -<p>“I know you’ll do your best for me,” Hildegarde said -anxiously.</p> - -<p>“Of course—certainly, Miss Mar. Not very new, are -they?”</p> - -<p>“New! Oh, no—they’re so old they’re very valuable.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. H’m. Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I need all you can possibly get me for them, Mr. -Simonson.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll examine them thoroughly, Miss Mar, and let -you know.”</p> - -<p>As she went out, there was Bella coming down the -street. Acting on an impulse, Hildegarde turned off the -main thoroughfare, pretending not to see. But it made -her heart sore to think, “Bella in Valdivia, and not with -us! I not even to know!”</p> - -<p>Miss Wayne went into the familiar Simonson’s. -“Was that Miss Mar who was here a moment ago?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, is it broken? That’s the necklace I got for her -in Rome.”</p> - -<p>“No, not broken. I suppose you don’t remember what -you gave for it?”</p> - -<p>Miss Bella put on her most beguiling air, and took the -old man into her confidence. She would buy the things -herself and pay him a commission, and he was not to say -but what a San Francisco dealer had made the two-hundred-dollar -offer.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus6"> -<img src="images/illus6.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“‘I know you’ll do your best for me,’ Hildegarde said, anxiously”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p> - -<p>When she got back to her hotel she telephoned to -Cheviot.</p> - -<p>The next day that young gentleman had an interview -with Hildegarde’s brothers down at the ranch. They -were even boisterously of Cheviot’s opinion. They -would simply refuse their consent to their sister’s undertaking -such a journey. But to Cheviot’s anxious sense -they spoke too airily. Too certain they could prevent -the abomination.</p> - -<p>“Don’t antagonize her, you know,” warned Cheviot. -“Make her see the reasonableness of our—of your objection.” -And the boys agreed.</p> - -<p>Even before Cheviot had made money in the Klondike, -and come home to be made a partner in the bank; the -Mar boys had looked upon him, not only as a probable, -but as a highly desirable brother-in-law.</p> - -<p>They soothed his natural indignation at Hildegarde’s -foolishness, and they told him they’d meet him at the -bank after giving her a talking to.</p> - -<p>They were late for the appointment, and the moment -they appeared in the room behind the public offices, -Cheviot saw they had not prospered.</p> - -<p>“Hildegarde’s the most pig-headed creature in the -universe!”—and a few more illuminating details.</p> - -<p>“But why didn’t you tell her—”</p> - -<p>“Told her everything. Water on a duck’s back.”</p> - -<p>“But what did she say?”</p> - -<p>“‘Women have done it before.’”</p> - -<p>“It’s not true!” cried Cheviot, jumping up. “The -world has never seen anything comparable to what this -year’s rush to Nome will be. The mob that will be -going—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p> - -<p>“She quotes the Klondike, ‘That was worse,’ she says, -‘yet there were women among the men who got there, lived -there, and came home.’ Damn it! it’s true, you know!”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t true. The Klondike was a totally different -proposition. The people who got to the Klondike the -year of the rush were all picked men—a few women, yes, -I admit, a few women—God help them. But the mob—a -rascally crew enough, lots of them—but they were -men of some means, men of brawn and muscle and -mighty purpose or, simply, they didn’t survive. If they -weren’t like that, they turned back as thousands did, -from Juneau, from Skagway, from Dyea—or they fell -out a little further on. Didn’t I see them on the Dalton -trail and the Chilcoot Pass, glad to lie down and die? -I tell you, only the hardiest attempted it, and only the -toughest survived. <em>That’s</em> the sort of pioneer that -peopled the Klondike. Nome’s another story. Nome’s -accessible by sea. Any wastrel who can raise the paltry -price of his passage can reach the American gold-fields. -Any family disgrace can be got rid of cheap by shipping -him to Nome. Any creature who’s failed at everything -else under the sun has this last chance left. Be sure -he’ll go to Nome—<em>with Hildegarde</em>! Good God! -Drunkards, sharpers, men—and women, too (oh, yes, -that sort!), and people hovering on the border line of -crime or well beyond it—<em>they’ll</em> fill the north-bound -ships. Hildegarde alone with such a crew!” Cheviot -jumped to his feet. “I’d infinitely rather a sister of -mine were struggling with a pack on her back over the -Chilcoot Pass along with the Klondike men of ’97, than -see her shut up on board a ship with the horde that will -go to Nome.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p> - -<p>He walked up and down the little inner office, his eyes -bright with anger and with fear. And he added terrors -not to be put before the girl herself, but for the mother, -if Hildegarde should be obdurate. “Make her understand -that Nome this summer will be the dump-heap of -the world.”</p> - -<p>“I did,” said Trenn, distractedly. “I gave her my -opinion of what they were like—those other women she -quoted who had gone. It wasn’t even news to her!”</p> - -<p>“What! She accepted that?”</p> - -<p>Trenn looked profoundly humiliated. Any nice girl -would have pretended she couldn’t credit such a state -of things, even if she’d heard them hinted. But Hildegarde -had said gravely, “Yes, I know what you mean, -miserable women have done it for horrible ends. It’s -that that makes me ashamed to hesitate. Can’t a girl -venture as much for a good end as those others for—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Hildegarde’s mad!” said Trenn, with a flush -on his handsome face.</p> - -<p>“Nevertheless, she’ll go,” said Harry.</p> - -<p>“But Mrs. Mar! What’s she about?”</p> - -<p>Cheviot went to see.</p> - -<p class="tb">“You surely don’t mean to let her go?”</p> - -<p>“My good man, I’d like nothing better than to go -myself.”</p> - -<p>“Then why don’t you?” demanded Cheviot rudely.</p> - -<p>Another woman might have pointed out that she was -in her sixty-second year. No one would have expected -such an excuse from Mrs. Mar. There was something in -her face Cheviot had never seen there before, as with -obvious unwillingness she brought out the answer, “Hildegarde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> -can do this errand best. At least, as far as concerns -her father. Of course”—she recovered some of -her native elasticity—“if <em>I</em> went I’d get a claim, too. -You’d see! I’d come home with a fortune. I doubt if -Hildegarde does, though she has more in her than I’ve -sometimes thought. Hildegarde won’t come to any -harm.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot, too outraged for the moment to speak, got up -and looked blindly for his hat. When he found that, he -had also found his tongue. “The only comfort I can -see in the miserable affair is that she’ll find two hundred -dollars isn’t nearly enough. There isn’t a place -on the globe where living costs as much as it does at -Nome.”</p> - -<p>“She’s been saving up her allowance for a year.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot threw down his hat. “I tell you it would be -mad for an able-bodied man to go with less than a thousand -dollars margin.”</p> - -<p>“Hildegarde can’t raise anything like that. But -she’ll have enough to get her there, and something -over.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot looked at her. “You mean she’s ready to go -without even enough for her return expenses?”</p> - -<p>“She says she can leave the question of returning.”</p> - -<p>“She knows we—her brothers will send out funds to -get her back!” groaned Cheviot, beginning to walk up -and down. “And she, <em>Hildegarde</em>, is willing to embarrass -her father by being a charge on him?”</p> - -<p>“She won’t stay long. And Nome lots are selling for -thousands. Her father has at least the land his tent -stands on.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot struck his hands together in that startling if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> -infrequent way of his. It made even Mrs. Mar rather -nervous. “Go and argue with her yourself,” said the -lady, with raised voice and a red spot glowing on either -cheek. “I shouldn’t be able to move her. I never have -been able to move Hildegarde. That’s the worst of -these quiet people.”</p> - -<p>“You say that, and yet you aren’t really opposing -her.”</p> - -<p>“Me? No,” said Mrs. Mar, fixing him with unflinching -eyes. “I’m making up the deficit.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot had never before longed to murder a fellow -creature. “You realize, of course,” he said quietly, -“she isn’t even sure of finding her father alive.” Angry -as he was, when he saw the look that thrust brought -to Mrs. Mar’s face, he was sorry he had presented it so -mercilessly. “What she’ll probably find,” he hurried -on to say, “is that Mr. Mar has gone to the Casa da -Paga. That was his plan. Or the Fox River—or God -knows where.”</p> - -<p>“If she goes as far as Nome, she’ll be able to go still -further,” said Hildegarde’s mother, though her voice -wasn’t as steady as her words implied.</p> - -<p>“I understand you, then, at last!” Cheviot stopped -before her with anger-lit eyes. “You are ready to see a -young girl—”</p> - -<p>“Not every girl.”</p> - -<p>“A girl like Hildegarde.”</p> - -<p>“Precisely, one like Hildegarde. She can do it.”</p> - -<p>“Poor Hildegarde!” burst from his lips, and the implication, -“to have a mother like you,” would have -pierced many a maternal breast. But it glanced off Mrs. -Mar’s armor and fell pointless.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Hildegarde Mar”—with an air of defending her -daughter from Cheviot’s low opinion of her—“is a person -of considerable dignity of character.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think it necessary to tell me that?”</p> - -<p>“Singularly enough, yes. And to add that I who -know her best, have never yet seen her show any sign of -not being able to take proper care of herself.”</p> - -<p>“Under ordinary conditions. But, as I told the -boys—”</p> - -<p>“A woman who can’t take care of herself under conditions -out of the ordinary, can’t take care of herself at -all.”</p> - -<p>Again Cheviot opened his lips, but Mrs. Mar, grasping -the arms of her rocking-chair, indoctrinated the purblind -man. “The truth is, that a girl in good health, -who hasn’t been kept in cotton, and who hasn’t been -seared by men’s going on as you’re doing, is far abler -to cope with life than—than—” She pulled herself up -an instant, seeming to feel that after all man is hardly -worthy to know the whole truth upon these high themes. -But she thought extremely well of Cheviot, or she would -never have permitted him to speak to her as he had -done. And he loved Hildegarde. “The truth is,” she -went on, “Hildegarde is quite right about this. There’s -no reason why she <em>shouldn’t</em> go half as strong as the -reason why she should.”</p> - -<p>“The reason! You think it’s on account of Mr. Mar. -It isn’t. Bella will tell you Hildegarde <em>wants</em> to go on -this degrading journey. She said everybody had traveled -about and seen the world but her. She had never -been farther than Seattle to see Madeleine Somebody.”</p> - -<p>“That’s true.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You see! Hildegarde is full of curiosity about—things.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, why indeed! But the fact opened my eyes to -how much—how little Mr. Mar’s welfare has to do with -her crazy scheme.”</p> - -<p>“It hasn’t opened your eyes very wide, Louis.” Mrs. -Mar shook her head with the air of one looking back over -a long road painfully traversed. “Nobody shrinks more -from a fuss and a falling-out than Hildegarde. This -winter, without Bella, and without you, and without—It -hasn’t been easy for Hildegarde. She would have -given in about Nome long ago, but for—” Mrs. Mar -suddenly leaned forward again, and speaking hurriedly, -“Somehow or other Hildegarde <em>knows</em>. I believe she’s -known all along.”</p> - -<p>“Knows what?”</p> - -<p>“What her father meant to do.”</p> - -<p>“About not coming home?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“She knows that because I told her.”</p> - -<p>“You knew it!”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“And yet”—she gripped the arms of the rocking-chair, -and her eyes shone—“you come here to get me to -prevent the only step being taken—”</p> - -<p>“No! Only to protest against Hildegarde’s taking it. -Good heavens!”—he was losing his self-control—“Hildegarde -is—”</p> - -<p>“Well and strong, and no such fool as you seem to -think.”</p> - -<p>He set his square jaw. “A little young for such a—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Twenty-six.”</p> - -<p>“You forget or don’t know she’s also—attractive.”</p> - -<p>“Attractive!” Mrs. Mar repeated with a weight of -contemptuous meaning. “Since what you imply is so -little a credit to your sex, I may be allowed to say she -has shot at a mark with her brothers, and if it’s necessary, -she can carry a revolver.”</p> - -<p>“Good God! And you’re her mother!”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar sprang to her feet. “Yes, I’m her mother, -and that I didn’t myself suggest her going to get her -father to come home, is only that I’m under the spell of -the old foolishness about women. The fact is, that -we’re much better able to look out for ourselves than -men are—yes, stare as much as you like! It’s so. -You’re all <em>babies</em>, I tell you, and if the women didn’t -look after you, you’d be <em>dead</em> babies!”</p> - -<p>Cheviot snatched up his hat a second time and walked -to the door. Mrs. Mar, seeing him going off like that -with never another word, and with that fixed wretchedness -on his face, quickly crossed the room and took hold -of his arm, as his hand was on the door knob. “Hildegarde -is only going to do in a more open way what -women are always doing,” she said.</p> - -<p>Cheviot turned angrily, but so astonished was he to -see tears on her face that he stood speechless.</p> - -<p>“Some woman said it in a magazine the other day,” -she went on, “but every woman who’s good for anything -is doing it.”</p> - -<p>“Going to Nome!”</p> - -<p>“Going out to the battlefield in the evening to look -after the wounded.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-h.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Hildegarde wrote to Madeleine Smulsky, -now Mrs. Jacob L. Dorn. Madeleine’s husband, -being a Pacific Coast importer in a -large way, might be able to advise in which -of the fleet of steamers advertised to sail -from San Francisco, and certain to be the first boat of -the year to reach Nome—in which should a traveler put -trust.</p> - -<p>The answer brought Mr. Dorn’s somewhat scornful -profession that he knew nothing whatever about the -hastily formed San Francisco lines, and little good -about the mushroom companies of his own city, but if -Hildegarde thought of sailing from Seattle he would -look into the matter for her. Seattle was the better port, -being the natural gateway to the North (Hildegarde -could hear Mr. Dorn saying that), in witness whereof -the bustling, booming city swarmed already with more -prospective passengers than there were ships to float -them—all wisely laying in their provisions, buying machinery -and outfit in that best of all places—San Francisco? -oh, dear, no! in Seattle, the City of the Future! -Hildegarde must at all events come and visit the Dorns. -Under the guidance of Madeleine’s husband, she would -probably find out that, at best, the journey to Nome was -impracticable for a lady.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p> - -<p>The middle of April found Miss Mar a guest of the -Dorns. Jacob L. seemed presently to abandon all idea of -dissuading his wife’s friend from carrying her wild -scheme into execution, but he pointed out the little need -there was to rush blindly into avoidable difficulties. -Better ships were in process of being chartered for the -northern service, in view of the undreamed-of demand. -The season, moreover, was late this year. Those earlier, -inferior vessels (schooners and what not) that were to -get off before the middle of May would only spend the -time “knocking about the North Pacific, among the icebergs.”</p> - -<p>So Hildegarde waited while Mr. Dorn looked thoroughly -into the question. Even looking into it seemed -perilous. It told on the gentleman’s health, as one might -suppose. When Hildegarde had been only a few days -under his roof, her host took to his bed with congestion -of the lungs.</p> - -<p>Madeleine absorbed in nursing the husband had little -time for the friend. Hildegarde was suddenly thrown -on her own resources. But she felt it would be impolitic -to write that fact to Valdivia. From one shipping office -to another, from Southwick’s Great Outfitting Emporium -to the Baumgarten Brothers’ Wholesale Provision -House, she went in quest of information; threading -her way through the bustling streets, where among -the featureless thousands, day by day she often saw the -figure of the frontiersman in broad-brimmed hat and -brown boots, laced to the knee; or the weather-beaten -miner, in “waders” and brown duck or mackinaw. -“<em>They’re</em> coming to Nome!” she would say to herself, -looking on them already as fellow-travelers. One feeling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> -much with her is perhaps really rather new in -woman’s experience, among the many things called -“new” that are yet so old. It seems as if never before -her generation could it have been a matter of course to a -girl like Hildegarde Mar, that she should feel instinctively -it would be as absurd to treat these bearded frontiersmen -with condescension, as to be terrified of them. -Not that she analyzed the situation. It was too simple -for that. Her feeling was merely that these uncouth -fellow-creatures were possible friends of hers. As she -met and passed them, or in imagination “placed” them -in her coming experience, her mental attitude was singularly -untarnished by the age-old anxiety of the unprotected -female casting about for a champion. Something -less self-centered than that, something kindlier, less the -child of fear. Cheviot might have qualms, but man was -not for Hildegarde her natural enemy. A woman alone -was not obliged to peep furtively about for shelter, or -for some coign of vantage, like one pursued in a hostile -land. Not his immemorial prey, she; but like him the -possible prey of circumstance, with ignorance for her -arch-enemy as well as his. Those booted and sombreroed -men—some of them at least—had already met and overcome -the common enemy. They would be masters of the -situation up there. Herself the mere ignorant human -being, eager to learn, innocent of class-illusion, intensely -alive to “differences,” yet knowing which of them were -only skin-deep, or rather education-deep; young, yes; -attractive, too; a girl going into a strange new world -who yet goes fearlessly, hopefully, carrying faith in -human nature along for her shield and her buckler. If -this is an apparition new upon the earth, then perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> -the modern world has something to be proud of beyond -the things it has celebrated more.</p> - -<p>Not that she encountered no difficult moments. She -was stared at, and she could see that she was speculated -about. Well, that was no killing matter. Perhaps it -was because she was so tall. When in the thronged and -noisy offices she was crowded and pushed by an excited -horde—though shown no special disrespect as a woman—she -was certainly not comfortable, and was even a -little forlorn. When a brow-beating passenger-agent -vented his ill-temper upon her refusal to buy a ticket -forthwith without waiting “to inquire further,” she felt -the man’s rudeness keenly, absurdly. But it was not -till some “masher” of a clerk spoke to her with a vulgar -familiarity that discomfort went down before humiliation -in the thought, “What would Louis say if he -knew?” However, the clerk soon saw his error, and the -tall, quiet girl was taken at a different valuation. Men, -even the most ignorant men, learn these lessons more -quickly than is supposed. But, oh, it wasn’t easy to do -the work of preparation alone! comparing, eliminating, -deciding all by oneself. For at every step, upon every -question, one encountered conflicting testimony. Every -store-window that one passed displayed things “Indispensable -for Nome.” Every ship that sailed was the -best, and bound to be first at the goal. Now and then to -some one of the besieging hundreds at the offices, Hildegarde -would put a question. The women looked askance. -The men answered civilly enough. But if they -knew little more than Hildegarde, they entertained -darker fears. And still, and always, testimony was in -conflict. The firm that impressed her most favorably,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> -whose office she had just left “to think it over”—why -they, it seemed, were a set of thieves. Passage on one of -their ships meant ten to twenty days’ starvation on short -rations of sour bread and salt horse. Heavens, what an -escape! But that other firm she was on her way to interrogate—they -were traffickers in human life! Didn’t -she know they had been buying disabled craft of every -description, even hauling up abandoned wrecks out of -the sea, sweeping the entire Pacific for derelict and -rotten craft that they might paint and rename, and make -a fortune out of crowding such crazy vessels full of -ignorant human cattle for Cape Nome?</p> - -<p>But these people, proprietors of the New Line, in -whose offices they stood—their ships if starting later -were at least seaworthy. Seaworthy? ’Sh! Their ships -didn’t so much as exist. These men only waited, postponing -sailing dates on one pretext or another, till they -had got your money and filled, and over-filled, the lists -of their phantom ships. When they’d done that, you’d -see! They’d pocket their thousands and abscond into -Canada.</p> - -<p>While Hildegarde waited hesitating, even on the -smallest and least faith-inspiring boats the passenger -lists rapidly filled. And still every train that thundered -into the Seattle station disgorged its hundreds clamoring -to be taken to Nome. Already, since Hildegarde’s arrival, -a number of schooners and several steamers, with -flags flying and bands playing, had gone forth to meet -the early ice floes. Would these daring ones get any -further, after all, than the Aleutian Islands before June? -“You’ll see they’ll have to put in at Dutch Harbor -for a month!” Hildegarde saw men; standing in dense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> -crowds on the wharves, shake their heads, as they -watched each ship go forth on the great adventure.</p> - -<p>“All my life,” thought the girl, “I shall remember -the port of Seattle, when the first boats went to Nome.”</p> - -<p>There were those who might seem to have more cause -than Hildegarde Mar to remember that unprecedented -spectacle. For to the wonderful “Water Front” sooner -or later every creature in Seattle found his way—commonly -to suffer there some strange, malignant change. -Even the quiet ones began to emit strange sounds, and to -tear about as if afflicted with rabies; the most self-controlled -went mad among the rest. They fought their way -through the barriers, men and women alike; they -screamed about their freight upon the docks; hurrahing -and gesticulating, they saw maniac friends off, on ships -whose decks were black with people, whose rigging, even, -swarmed with clotted humanity, like bees clinging in -bunches to the boughs of a tree.</p> - -<p>In the “orderly” streets of a great city, a girl like -Hildegarde would have been remarked, followed, probably -accosted. She had had experience of that even in -Valdivia, where nearly every creature knew who she -was. In the vast and eager crowd on the Seattle water -front she passed with little notice and wholly unmolested. -Every one had business of his own. If the man -who pushed against you till he nearly knocked you down -was not an excited passenger rushing for the next ship, -he was a company agent seeing off a hundred thousand -dollars’ worth of machinery; or he was the gentleman in -a smaller way of business, who was beating up trade in -the neighborhood of the Last Chance Bazaar. Here and -there on a tiny temporary platform, nearly swamped by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> -the crowd, or standing insecurely on a jostled barrow, -merchants whose ages ranged from eight to eighty, offered -you something you’d bless them for every hour of -your life at Nome. Here an improved sort of prospecting -pan—you had only to carry it up to lat. 62° to fill it -full of gold all day long. There was a Nome mosquito-mask, -fastened like a gallows’-cap on the face of a stiff, -pale figure of wax, lifted high in air, rigid, travestying -death—horribly arresting. There was every kind of -waterproof—hat, coat and boot; for, that summer at -Nome meant nothing but rain, was the one point upon -which every one agreed. By way of object lesson, -“rockers” for separating Nome gold from Nome sand -are being jogged to and fro upon the wharves; vendors -of patent medicine are crying one another down; a different -concentrated food is proclaimed at every corner, -a new gold “process” every ten feet and bedlam all -around you. Copper plates; pickaxes; shovels; and—“Here -y’are! The last thing out! Compound-corkscrew-screw-driver-monkey-wrench, -’n’ can-opener. All -y’ grub goes to Nome in cans. Y’ll starve to death -right plumb in the middle o’ plenty, ’nless y’ get this -yer noo compound-corkscrew-screw-driver-monkey—” -The rest is drowned by the <i lang="fr">dernier cri</i> in “Nome -sto-o-o-ves! Burn-oil-burn-wood-burn-coke-burn-anything-in-hell-and-never-burn-the-dinner! -Nome -sto-o-o-ves!” Other hawkers so hoarse you heard nothing -but “Nome! Nome!” as if they had it there—a -nostrum you might buy at home.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde’s mind went back to the old reconnaissance -map in the dining-room. She so little she must climb -upon a chair to read in her father’s fine, clear writing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> -the name opposite a tiny projection in the coast line. It -had been a place only he seemed to know about. Now -on every sign, on every lip, Nome! Nome! Nome!</p> - -<p>Overheard fragments among new-comers at the shipping -offices, no more “Which boat?” but “Can you, even -by paying some feller a bonus, get anything in the shape -of a ticket before June?”</p> - -<p>The element of chance was not to be eliminated. It -must be faced. On her way to the office of the Line she -had first affected, she saw swinging on in front of her, -hands in overcoat pockets, shouldering his way through -the throng, one of those same high-booted, wide-hatted -men of whom she had said at first, “He’s going, too!” -But this man had been marked out by his air of enjoying -the enterprise. Most people, even away from the -maddening water front, bore about with them a harassed, -or at best, preoccupied countenance, the majority sallow -and seamed and weary. This wide-mouthed young -giant with the fresh complexion—he was one of whom -you felt not only “he knows,” but “he knows it’s all -right.” Now, if he should be on his way to secure a -passage at this same office, Hildegarde would take it as -a lucky omen. But he carried his tall figure swinging -by. His back seemed to say, “No, thank you. I know -too much to be taken in by the <em>Golden Sands Company</em>.” -Hildegarde went past the Golden Sands Company herself, -without quite intending to. The ruddy-complexioned -one was stopped by a fussy little, middle-aged -man, who said, “Wonder if you can tell me where the -Centrifugal Pump Company’s offices are?”</p> - -<p>“What?” says the red-cheeked giant as Hildegarde -went by. “You mean Mitchell, Lewis and Starver?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Y-yes,” said the fussy man. “Are they all right, -do you think?” and the rest was lost. What a pity she -couldn’t go up as simply as that, and ask his Giantship -about the boats. But no. He was a rather young giant, -and a little too enterprising-looking. No, better not. He -stared at people. That wasn’t the sort of man she’d -ever spoken to.</p> - -<p>She hadn’t analyzed it, but with all her simplicity -and all her sense of freedom, she was acutely sensitive -about making any avoidable move that might be misconstrued. -The unfortunate women of the world had -spoiled things. Not only for themselves—for others, too. -She crossed the street and went back toward the “Golden -Sands.” Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the giant -part from his interlocutor and disappear in the office of -Hankin & Company. So that was the best line! -Slowly she retraced her steps, turning over in her mind -all she’d heard about Hankin & Company. Perhaps -even without this last indication the evidence did point -Hankinward. She went in. Craning over heads, and -peering across shoulders she saw the huge young man -talking to the agent. She edged her way nearer.</p> - -<p>“You’ll have plenty o’ time to load your stuff. The -<i>Congress</i>’ll be at the docks Toosday.”</p> - -<p>“Sure?”</p> - -<p>“Dead certain.”</p> - -<p>The giant nodded and strode out on seven-league -boots. A moment later Hildegarde had laid $125 down -before the alcohol-reeking, red-eyed, nervous agent, who -seemed to feel called on to explain that he’d been up all -night “on the water front, seeing off the <i>Huron</i>.” -While he made out the voucher, huskily he congratulated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> -the young lady that an intending passenger by this best -of all ships had had a fit on the water front the night -before, and was probably dying now “over at the Rainier -Grand.” His wife had been in half an hour ago about -reselling the ticket. And that was it. Number twenty-one. -He handed Hildegarde the slip of gray-blue paper -which transferred to her the dying man’s right to a first-class -berth on Hankin & Company’s Steamer <i>Congress</i>, -sailing from Seattle to Cape Nome on the 19th of May.</p> - -<p>Now for a decision amongst the contending outfitters -and provision dealers.</p> - -<p>She had studied well the prospectuses, the “folders” -and the hand-books. She had made notes and lists. She -knew she must provide herself with:</p> - -<p>“<i>A tent and two pair dark blue Hudson Bay blankets.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Water boots.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Several yards stout netting.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Leather gaiters.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Cowboy’s hat.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Canvas bag, with shoulder strap.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Oil stove, and oil.</i>”</p> - -<p>To this, upon her mother’s initiative, she proposed to -add a pistol; on her own, four pounds of chocolate and a -handsome supply of peppermints.</p> - -<p>She had culled from newspapers, books, and advertisements -at least six different lists of the kind and quantity -of food one would need. Already she had ordered several -cases of mineral water, but she was still pondering -“evaporated eggs,” “desiccated potatoes,” “malted -milk tablets,” and “bouillon capsules,” as she stood in -one of the great provision houses that very day she had -got her ticket.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p> - -<p>The place was crowded. Here, as elsewhere, a few -women among the many men; both sexes equally bent on -business. While she waited in the throng, a clerk who, -with difficulty, had been making his way to her, interrupted -a query modestly preferred by a little weather-beaten -woman in black. As if he had not heard the one -who spoke, of the one who had said nothing he asked, -“Is anybody looking after you?”</p> - -<p>“As soon as the lady has finished—” began Hildegarde. -The rusty one glanced at her fellow-woman in -some surprise, and said again to the clerk, “I just -stepped in to ask you to be sure to have a keg of witch-hazel -ready to go out with our stuff. You ran out of it -last year.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, are you Mrs. Blumpitty?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Have you given your order?” The clerk’s manner -had changed, he had plenty of time now.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Blumpitty will step in to-morrow about it. He -is quite a little rushed to-day, hunting around for a place -to sleep in.”</p> - -<p>“There’s a good many doing that,” said the clerk. -“There hasn’t been a room vacant at a hotel for a -week.”</p> - -<p>“I guess that’s right. And we got a party of twenty-eight -this time. I only wanted to jog you about that -witch-hazel.” She was moving off.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde stood in the way. “Are you going to -Nome?” asked the girl.</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Do you mind telling me what you are going to do -with witch-hazel, up there?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p> - -<p>“A person wants witch-hazel everywhere.”</p> - -<p>“Why do they?”</p> - -<p>“Best doctor in the world.”</p> - -<p>“What’s it good for?” Typhoid was in the ignorant -mind.</p> - -<p>“Good for anything. Burns, cuts, bruises, anything.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Down at the foot of the list, after peppermints, -went witch-hazel. Again the little woman showed -signs of moving on. But she looked back at Hildegarde -over her shoulder and, as if to imply: this much I leave -you, even if you <em>are</em> too good-looking to inspire confidence. -“Witch-hazel ain’t like those noo things they -advertise. It’s been tested.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, has it?”</p> - -<p>She didn’t know much, this young lady. “Guess it -<em>has</em>,” said the little woman. “In every country store -in my part of the world, you’ll find a keg of witch-hazel!” -and with that she would have been gone but that -the crowd pressed her back.</p> - -<p>“What is your part?” asked Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>The woman looked round at her suspiciously. -“Maine.”</p> - -<p>“You come all the way from Maine to go to Nome?”</p> - -<p>She nodded. “Guess everybody here but you is goin’ -straight to Nome.” Her eye fell on Hildegarde’s pencil, -suspended above the list held too high for the little -woman to know its exact nature. “Noospaper woman?” -she said, putting the most charitable construction on the -presence here among the hard-featured horde of a person -like this.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had been asked that question before. -“No,” she said, and saw her credit fall in the rusty one’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> -eyes. “But I’m going to Nome, too,” the girl hastened -to add, wishing to recover ground. But it was plain she -had only further damaged herself.</p> - -<p>“Oh,” said the witch-hazel advocate, moving off with -some precipitation through a momentary opening.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde found the clerk who had seemed to know -Mrs. Blumpitty. “Have you heard what boat she’s -going by?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said the clerk, “but she’ll go by the best, I bet.”</p> - -<p>“Why do you say that?”</p> - -<p>“Well, she’s one o’ the few that knows the ropes. -She was there last year.” And he was called away.</p> - -<p>She might know Hildegarde’s father!</p> - -<p>Early the next day the girl reappeared at Baumgarten’s. -No, she wasn’t going to give her order just yet. -She was waiting to see Mrs. Blumpitty. So the Baumgarten -Brother turned from her to advise a customer -against taking saccharine instead of sugar. “You’ll -come to hate the taste even in tea and coffee, and, as for -eating it sprinkled on anything, you’ll find you simply -can’t.” A group of people were hotly discussing vegetables, -and whether to take them desiccated or “jest as -they are.” The new ones “not in yet,” the Baumgarten -Brother admitted; “and the old ones sure to sprout,” -said some one else. A Klondiker gave his views: “Take -’em dried. Lot less freight on the boat. Lot easier -packed about afterwards.” A babel of voices rose: -“Tasteless,” “No good left in ’em,” “No feeding -power.” Another voice: “Who cares about how easy it -is to take somethin’ that’s no good?” “People go on -about evaporated food jest as if it was the Klondike and -the Chilcoot Pass all over ag’in. ’Tain’t. Nome’s a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> -different proposition.” The Baumgarten Brother was -instructed to put down half the order in dried and half -in fresh. Then a detachment went away to see opened -and to taste a new brand of canned cooked sausages. -People stood about with pickles and shavings of -“chipped beef” and cheese samples in their hands, nibbling -and looking thoughtful. Others ate butter off the -end of a penknife, and said, “It ain’t no better ’n margarine, -an’ costs more.” When for two hours and ten -minutes Hildegarde had stood there against the low -columnar wall of piled tomato cans (a kind of basaltic -formation, showing singularly regular “fracture” and -wide range of color-stain), the clerk of yesterday gave -her a stool to perch on in the corner. Many of the -crowding faces were grown already familiar. There was -the fresh-complexioned giant. He came in with a pleasant -towering briskness, and stood talking to one of the -Baumgartens. As Hildegarde watched him, she told -herself she was glad that man was going on “her” ship. -Then reflecting, “Why, I’m staring at <em>him</em> now!” she -turned away her eyes, and there suddenly was Mrs. -Blumpitty, with a thick-set, dun-colored husband—his -face a grayish-yellow, his hair a yellow-gray, his eyes -yellow, with pale gray irises.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde descended from the high stool and made -her way to the couple. “Is it true you were at Nome -last summer?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.” Mrs. Blumpitty drew closer to the dun-colored -husband, as if more than ever mistrustful of the tall -young lady.</p> - -<p>But Hildegarde took no notice of that. “I wonder,” -she said, “if you met a Mr. Mar up there?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p> - -<p>The woman looked at her husband, and he looked -straight along his nose. It was a long nose, and it -seemed to take him a great while to get to the end of it.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde couldn’t wait. “Yes, Mr. Mar,” she said -eagerly, “Mr. Nathaniel Mar.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think—” began the woman.</p> - -<p>“Oh, please try to remember. He is very thin and -tall, with bushy hair. I feel sure you’d remember him -if you thought a moment. He is the kind people remember.”</p> - -<p>Something in the trembling earnestness of a person -who looked as self-possessed as Hildegarde had its effect.</p> - -<p>“You can know people up there pretty well and never -hear their names. Nome is like that. I may have seen -him.”</p> - -<p>Oh, how close it brought him to hear the dun-colored -husband saying, “I may have seen him!”</p> - -<p>“A young man?” asked the wife.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Hildegarde, and she was shaking with excitement. -“He is gray, and he—he is very lame.” This -bald picture of her own drawing suddenly overcame her. -“Try,”—she found herself catching at the rusty arm—“try -to remember. He is my father.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, your father,” said the woman in a different -tone, and the vague man turned his pale eyes on Hildegarde -as though only now fully aware of her.</p> - -<p>“Lame! There was a lame man. No, I never spoke -to him.”</p> - -<p>“We weren’t much in Nome,” the woman explained. -“Our claims are out on Glaysher River, and we were at -our camp there most of the time.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde leaned against the brilliant dado of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> -Delicious Tomato Soup, and she looked so disheartened -the man said, “Was you thinkin’ o’ goin’ out?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m going to him.”</p> - -<p>“Big party?”</p> - -<p>“No, no party at all.”</p> - -<p>“You’re not goin’ alone?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’m the only one of my family who has time.”</p> - -<p>The pale eye fell on Hildegarde’s list, which she still -had in her hand. “If your father’s there you won’t -have to take supplies.”</p> - -<p>“I must go prepared for—anything.” And she -turned her face away.</p> - -<p>After a pause, “You got anybody to advise you?” -said the man.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>The rusty woman looked at the vague man, and the -vague man looked at Van Camp’s Soup.</p> - -<p>“Where are you at?” he said presently.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde stared.</p> - -<p>He pushed back his black slouch hat and sadly mopped -his yellow-gray brow. It was warm to-day. The crowd -at Baumgarten’s made it seem warmer still. “Which -hotel?” asked Mr. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“I’m not at any hotel. I am at Mr. Jacob Dorn’s.”</p> - -<p>“Jacob L. Dorn’s?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, do you know him?”</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t know him, but I know his firm.” It was -plain the name had impressed both Blumpittys.</p> - -<p>“What boat you goin’ in?” asked the yellow-gray -man.</p> - -<p>“The <i>Congress</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What’s the matter with the <i>Congress</i>?”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty shook his head, murmured, “—pretty hot,” -and slowly divested himself of his overcoat. That done -he stood revealed in black from head to heel. Something -inexpressibly funereal about him now, that the dun-colored -coat had masked. “Pity you didn’t know about the -<i>Los Angeles</i>,” he said dolefully.</p> - -<p>“What is there to know about her?”</p> - -<p>“She’s goin’ to be fitted up in style.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I shan’t mind style.”</p> - -<p>“We’re goin’ on the <i>Los Angeles</i>,” said the little -wife.</p> - -<p>“I do mind that—not going with you.” Hildegarde -looked into the woman’s weather-beaten face, and -felt regret deepen.</p> - -<p>From columns of Van Camp Mr. Blumpitty raised -his weary eyes and they fell on an acquaintance in the -crowd. You saw that even the teeth of the dun-colored -husband were yellow-gray. But the effect of his watery -smile was altogether gray, and without suspicion of any -hue less somber. It made you think of a dripping day -in November, with winter all before you. But lo! it was -the cheerful giant Blumpitty had recognized. How long -had he been there at Hildegarde’s elbow.</p> - -<p>“What’s that I heard you sayin’ against the <i>Congress</i>?” -he demanded of Blumpitty. “<i>Congress</i> is the -best boat goin’.”</p> - -<p>“We couldn’t get passage for all of us on the <i>Congress</i>,” -said Blumpitty meekly.</p> - -<p>“And we didn’t want to be divided,” contributed -Mrs. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“We’re sure the <i>Los Angeles</i> is all right.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What makes you sure?”</p> - -<p>“Becuz she’s just fresh from the Gover’mint service.”</p> - -<p>The giant laughed, and took out a big silver watch. -Hildegarde saw with a start of surprise that it was past -luncheon time.</p> - -<p>“They <em>do</em> keep you hangin’ around here.” Blumpitty -looked wearily at the crowd. “Guess I’ll go and -make an appointment with Baumgarten for right away -after breakfast to-morrer.” He moved off with the -giant at his side and the small wife at his heels.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde hurried back to Madeleine’s, where behold -Mrs. Mar and Harry!</p> - -<p>“The boys began to fuss when they read in the papers -about Mr. Dorn being ill.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it’s all right—about me, I mean,” said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“I told you it would be,” Mrs. Mar said to Harry. -“Now, here we are in a town where every hotel is full to -overflowing, and Jacob Dorn dying—to judge by the way -Madeleine behaves. But she always was a little theatrical—that -girl.”</p> - -<p>“No, her husband is very ill. I feel I oughtn’t to be -here myself, really.” Obvious enough Hildegarde’s dismay -at the apparition of her family. Ignorant as she -was, already she had learned how little help the average -person could be about this undertaking. The Blumpittys -were different. She told about them.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar no sooner heard of their existence than she -said: “Now, if you could travel with a respectable -couple—” In vain Hildegarde pointed out she was -going on another ship. Anyhow, those people could tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> -Hildegarde things—they could advise. Anybody but -Hildegarde would have had them here and pumped them -well. The girl, in a subdued voice, reminded her mother -that it was a house whose owner lay dangerously ill.</p> - -<p>“The very reason! Mr. Dorn isn’t advising you, as he -promised. You must find some one who will. Oh, you -<em>are</em> slow-witted! Where are those people staying with -their foolish name? You don’t even know their address? -Well, upon my soul, it’s a good thing we did -come, after all! How you’ll ever be able to get on by -yourself, <em>I</em> don’t know.” In a trice Mrs. Mar had -despatched Harry to scour Seattle, to ransack every hotel -register in the place, “And don’t come back here without -those Blumpittys.”</p> - -<p>When, at four o’clock, there was no news either of -Harry or them, Hildegarde and her mother set out together—having -told the Japanese servant to keep anybody -who called, as they’d be gone only half an hour. -If the Blumpittys, Mrs. Mar said, were not among the -crowds in the principal street, they’d very probably be -on that water front Hildegarde had written about.</p> - -<p>But no, not a Blumpitty to be seen. On their way -home—the giant. “He might know—he’s a friend of -theirs,” Hildegarde said.</p> - -<p>Without an instant’s hesitation Mrs. Mar accosted -him.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-m.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">“My daughter thinks you know a man and his -wife of the name of Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ma’am,” said the giant, pulling off -his broad hat.</p> - -<p>“Do you know where they are to be -found?”</p> - -<p>“I just now left Blumpitty up in the Stevens House -bar.”</p> - -<p>“In the bar! The man drinks?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, not to say <em>drinks</em>,” said the cheerful one, -smiling broadly.</p> - -<p>“What’s he doing in the bar then?”</p> - -<p>“Just talkin’ to the boys.”</p> - -<p>“Then will you go right away and ask him—”</p> - -<p>“There’s Harry!” Hildegarde was making signals.</p> - -<p>“Well, <em>you’re</em> not much good at finding people,” his -mother greeted him. “But we’ve got Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, how d’you do,” said Harry, prepared to accept -the giant in this rôle. Hildegarde explained, and -the final move in the mission was committed to her -brother. The ladies were to go home and trust Harry to -“bring Blumpitty along.” They were reassured when -they saw the giant disposed to accompany the expedition.</p> - -<p>Within an hour, there was Blumpitty haled before -Mrs. Mar, like a criminal before his judge.</p> - -<p>“Well!” Mrs. Mar glanced from her son to the clock.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> -“And you wouldn’t have found him even at this hour -but for Hildegarde and me.” Harry’s answer to this -(and to Hildegarde’s, “Remember, we must speak low, -Mr. Dorn’s room is just above”) was to whisper, as if -divulging some tremendous secret, “Mr. Blumpitty.” -Then, still more significantly, “<em>My mother.</em>” My -mother fastened her bright eyes upon the stranger who -had obliged her by responding to her call. Plainly she -was not prepossessed. The giant had either been wrong, -and Blumpitty <em>did</em> drink (in which case Mrs. Mar was -wasting her time), or else the man naturally looked -“logy”—a fatal way of looking.</p> - -<p>“Please sit down, Mr. Blumpitty,” said Hildegarde, -speaking very low. Mr. Blumpitty, more than ever with -the air of a mute at a funeral, deposited himself on the -extreme edge of a chair.</p> - -<p>“You see,” said Harry, by way of breaking the chill of -his mother’s reception, “you see, Mr. Blumpitty wasn’t -on any hotel register.”</p> - -<p>“Why weren’t you?” demanded Mrs. Mar, as though -this were a damning charge.</p> - -<p>“No room anywhere,” said Blumpitty sadly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I hope you found a place to sleep in—” began -Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, yes, after huntin’ around two whole days.”</p> - -<p>“Two days!” says Mrs. Mar, ready to nail him for a -liar at the start, and so save time. “There’s a night in -the middle of two days.”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as. We wished they wusn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Where did you sleep?”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t sleep much.”</p> - -<p>“Where did you stay?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p> - -<p>“In the station.”</p> - -<p>“Station!” Visions of his being “run in” assailed -Mrs. Mar. “What station?”</p> - -<p>“The G. N. W.,” he said indistinctly.</p> - -<p>“The Great North Western Railroad Station,” Harry -translated, with a reassuring look at the man.</p> - -<p>“You slept in the waiting-room?”</p> - -<p>“Some of us slept.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear, I hope you’ve got nice quarters at last?” -said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, we got three rooms. But,” gloomier than -ever, “we got to pay for ’em.”</p> - -<p>“What do you want of three?” demanded Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Three ain’t too many fur twenty-eight people.”</p> - -<p>“Twenty-eight! What are you doing with so many?”</p> - -<p>“Takin’ ’em to Nome.” Had the destination been the -nether regions, he couldn’t have said it more as one who -had left hope behind.</p> - -<p>“Bless my soul!” said Mrs. Mar, with a vision of the -crowded train she’d come by, and the yet more crowded -streets she’d hunted through for this same Blumpitty. -“What are they all going to do there?”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty smiled a faint world-weary smile. “They -kind o’ think they’d jest natchrully like to get a share -o’ this gold that’s layin’ around up there.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’re a prospecting party.”</p> - -<p>“I guess we’ll do some lookin’ around.”</p> - -<p>“Twenty-eight of you!” exclaimed Hildegarde under -her breath. “In three rooms!”</p> - -<p>The man nodded slowly, and his yellow-gray eyes -seemed to have a vision of them. “Layin’ in rows,” he -said sadly.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p> - -<p>“How dreadful!” breathed Hildegarde. In truth it -had a morgue-like sound.</p> - -<p>“No—o,” he drawled. “No—o. Me and Mrs. Blumpitty, -we do kind o’ miss it, not havin’ any winder. It’s -only a closet though,” he said, as if not wishing to hurt -the feelings of anything so small and unpretentious. -“And the rest of our people are all right. Some parties -have had to mix up, but I been able to get a room for -the men, <em>and</em>”—he spoke with a weary pride—“<em>and</em> -one for the ladies.”</p> - -<p>“Ladies in your party!” exclaimed Harry.</p> - -<p>“Ya-as. Five, not countin’ Mrs. Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“What kind?” demanded Mrs. Mar, at the same moment -as Harry asked, “What are <em>they</em> going to do up -there?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, they’re all right,” said Blumpitty, thinking he -answered both. “Miss Leroy Schermerhorn’s goin’ to -keep the books, and be secretary and business woman to -the Company.”</p> - -<p>“What company?” says Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Blumpitty & Co.,” says Mr. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“Bless my soul!” says Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Remember Mr. Dorn,” whispered Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Do I understand your wife is going along—” Mrs. -Mar began on a lower note.</p> - -<p>“Yes, oh, yes. I couldn’t do it without Mrs. Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“Where does she come in?”</p> - -<p>“Everywhere. Little bit o’ woman, so high. You’ve -seen her.” He turned to Hildegarde. She nodded, -smiling. “Don’t weigh more’n ninety-six pounds. -Worth twenty or’nary size people.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What does <em>she</em> do up there?”</p> - -<p>“Everything. Keeps it all together.” He looked -round with a melancholy wistfulness, as if he felt keenly -the need of Mrs. Blumpitty to keep the present situation -together.</p> - -<p>“And the other women?” said Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Well, Mrs. Tillinghast is the wife of the baker.”</p> - -<p>“What baker?”</p> - -<p>“The Company’s.”</p> - -<p>“Blumpitty & Co.’s?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ma’am. Then there’s Miss Cremer. She’s a -tailor—goes along to keep us mended up till our clo’es -get wore out. Then she’ll make us noo things. Mrs. -Blumpitty had to do it all last year. Pretty heavy fur -a little woman no bigger’n—”</p> - -<p>“The baker’s wife and the tailoress, that makes two -besides Mrs. Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, ma’am. An’ there’s Miss Estelle Maris. Very -nice young lady. She <em>says</em> she can cook.” He sighed, -and then recovered himself. “Even if she can’t, Mrs. -Blumpitty can. Yes”—he allowed a pale eye to wander -toward Miss Mar—“we got very nice ladies along, and -I mean ’em all to have claims.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar glinted at him, as much as to say, “Oh, -that’s the bait—poor wretches!”</p> - -<p>“It’ll be very nice for them,” said Hildegarde a little -hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“How do you expect them to get claims?” asked Mrs. -Mar with severity.</p> - -<p>“The Company’s got some valyerble property up on -Glaysher Crick.”</p> - -<p>“What company has?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Blumpitty & Co.”</p> - -<p>“And are they giving claims away?”</p> - -<p>He looked at Mrs. Mar, quite unruffled by her tone. -“The Company’s got more’n it can work. And the -Company knows where there’s good property nobody’s -taken up yet.”</p> - -<p>“Who’s in the Company?”</p> - -<p>“Me and Mrs. Blumpitty, and her folks, and my folks, -and most of our party.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, just a family affair,” said Mrs. Mar, with a -slighting intonation.</p> - -<p>“Very few besides jest ourselves. We didn’t want a -lot of outsiders.”</p> - -<p>From Harry’s covert smile you gathered this was a -new view of the way to float a mining company. “Why -don’t you?”</p> - -<p>“We seen what happens too often,” said Blumpitty -warily.</p> - -<p>“What does happen?” asked Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“The people that’s the first to locate ain’t often the -ones that gets the benefit.”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t they?”</p> - -<p>“They get froze out. I mean to hold on to the bulk -o’ the stock myself jest as long’s ever I can. Keep -things in my own hands.” He looked anxious.</p> - -<p>“Not let other people take up the stock, you mean?” -inquired Harry, smiling openly now.</p> - -<p>“It’s the only way,” said Mr. Blumpitty, and then, -as though to change a dangerous topic, “We got a nice -party.” He looked toward Hildegarde. “Pretty near -all the perfessions. We got a smart young lawyer and -two practical miners. We got a nengineer an’ a noospaper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> -man. An’ we got a nex-motor man—used to drive -a ’Frisco street car, and a very bright feller. Ya-as, we -got a carpenter, too, an’ three doctors an’ a boat-builder -an’ a dentist. We got pretty near everything.”</p> - -<p>“How long were you up there before?” asked Mrs. -Mar, still feeling her way with this queer character, who, -with his wife, might after all be decent fellow-passengers -for Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“We was in two summers an’ one winter.”</p> - -<p>“Your wife, too?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, she kep’ us alive. If y’ wus to see her y’ -wouldn’t think she looked like she—”</p> - -<p>The discreet Jap servant opened the door, and seemed -to whisper, “Mis’ Bumble Bee.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, how do you do?” Hildegarde went quickly forward -and shook hands with a tiny, weather-beaten -woman.</p> - -<p>“I heard on the water front you wus askin’ for me,” -said the new-comer, looking very shy and embarrassed.</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Mrs. Mar was on her feet. “Is this Mrs. -Blumpitty?” Before that little person knew what had -happened, she was on the other side of the room, shrinking -into the extreme corner of a big, red satin sofa—not -unlike some sort of insect hiding in the heart of a poppy. -But it was idle trying to escape from Mrs. Mar. She -prodded her prisoner with pointed questions, and there -was no manner of doubt but “Mis’ Bumble Bee” was -intensely frightened. But she must have come out of -the ordeal uncommon well, for the catechist rose at the -end of a quarter of an hour (breaking in upon Harry’s -glib exposition of the huge difficulty in these days of -floating a gold mining scheme). “Your wife and I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> -been arranging things,” said Mrs. Mar, with a suddenness -that made Blumpitty blink. “My daughter must -go on your ship.”</p> - -<p>“But, mama—”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Blumpitty says she will look after you on -board.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” agreed the rusty wife, a little breathless. -“And if she doesn’t find her father just at first she can -stay with us, can’t she?”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty, thus appealed to, said, “Ya-as,” so entirely -without enthusiasm, that his wife added, “He said -to me after we’d talked with your daughter, ‘It’s a pity -she ain’t goin’ on the <i>Los Angeles</i>. We could ’a’ helped -her.’”</p> - -<p>“Well, she is going on the <i>Los Angeles</i>.”</p> - -<p>“No, mama, the <i>Congress</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t be pig-headed, Hildegarde. Why should you -insist on the <i>Congress</i> when here are Mr. and Mrs. Blumpitty -ready to look after you on the <i>Los Angeles</i>?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t exactly insist, but I’ve paid $125—”</p> - -<p>“You can change your ticket, if that’s all, can’t she?” -Mrs. Blumpitty appealed to the repository of wisdom on -the edge of the chair.</p> - -<p>“Oh, ya-as,” said Mr. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“Why are you so sure?” said Hildegarde. “Is it because -the <i>Congress</i> is so much the better boat, as your -big, tall friend said?”</p> - -<p>“He ain’t right about that, though he’s a mighty -smart feller. Been to Harvard College,” he said, for -Mrs. Mar’s benefit. Then, as one adducing a destiny -higher still, “The <i>Los Angeles</i> has been a Manila transport.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p> - -<p>“But why does everybody seem to want to go in the -<i>Congress</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Sails four days earlier,” said Blumpitty unmoved. -“But”—he glanced, or no, Blumpitty never glanced; -with apparent difficulty he rolled his pale eye heavily -over to Mrs. Mar—“settin’ out’s one thing, gettin’ in’s -another. ’Tain’t likely the <i>Congress</i>’ll see Nome ’fore -we do.”</p> - -<p>“Anyhow, what are four days compared to—?” Mrs. -Mar turned briskly upon her daughter. “Mrs. Blumpitty -is going to see that you have all the necessary -things, and if you’re sick she’s going to look after -you.”</p> - -<p>As Mrs. Blumpitty did not instantly corroborate this -result of the fifteen minutes in the red satin corner, -“You promised me that,” said Mrs. Mar, with a suddenness -that sounded less like maternal solicitude than -truculence, “and <em>I</em> promised you shouldn’t be a loser -by it.”</p> - -<p>“Yes—oh, yes, ma’am, I’ll do all I said.” Merely -looking at Mrs. Mar seemed to galvanize Mrs. Blumpitty -into heroic mastery of her shyness. She clasped her thin -hands in their gray cotton gloves tightly together, and -felt herself called upon instantly to prove her present -knowledge and prospective usefulness.</p> - -<p>“H-have y’ got a boy’s rubber coat, comin’ to the -knees?” she inquired of the younger lady.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Hildegarde. “Ought I—?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you must have that, mustn’t she?”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as.”</p> - -<p>“And waterproof boots?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got them.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p> - -<p>“With asbestos soles?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“They’re the best.”</p> - -<p>“Get them,” commanded Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“And one thing you can’t do without is a blue denim -prospecting dress.”</p> - -<p>“I think I have something that would do, though I -don’t expect to go—”</p> - -<p>“Has your dress got knickerbockers and skirt to the -knee?” She saw Miss Mar and her mother exchange -glances, but she felt instinctively the elder lady would -see the reasonableness of the provision.</p> - -<p>“No,” said the young lady, “my skirts are ankle-length.”</p> - -<p>“Oughtn’t to be a hairbreadth below the knee,” said -Mrs. Blumpitty, with more firmness than she had yet -shown.</p> - -<p>“No skirt at all is best,” observed Mr. Blumpitty -dryly.</p> - -<p>“What!” said Harry Mar, whom every one had forgotten.</p> - -<p>“Jest full knickerbockers,” said Blumpitty, without -so much as looking at the objector.</p> - -<p>“Oh, that won’t be necessary for me,” said Miss Mar.</p> - -<p>“’Twill, if you want to go prospectin’.” Valiantly -Blumpitty supported his wife’s view. “You can’t wear -a skirt on the trail.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think I shall go on the trail,” said the pusillanimous -Hildegarde, “unless my father—”</p> - -<p>“Better be ready,” said Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“What else do you advise?” said Mrs. Mar, glancing -at the clock.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p> - -<p>“She ought to have a sou’wester, don’t you think?” -says Mrs. Blumpitty to Mr. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“Ya—as, and a tarpaulin to lie on in the swamp.”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Mar, “nobody can accuse you two -of over-coloring the delights of life up there.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a splendid place, Alaska is, if you go with the -right things,” said Mrs. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“And if you come away with the right things,” supplemented -Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Oh, she must bring back a claim, mustn’t she?” -Mrs. Blumpitty appealed to her husband.</p> - -<p>Harry and his mother exchanged looks.</p> - -<p>“Well, never mind about that,” said Mrs. Mar. “But -if you see after my daughter and do what you said, you -won’t be losers by it.”</p> - -<p>“No, indeed,” said Harry, with emphasis.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Blumpitty,” quoted Mrs. Mar, “Mrs. Blumpitty -says she’ll see that Hildegarde is properly cooked -for up there, and she’ll even get her washing done.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, I can do that myself. I’m used to it.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t look very strong,” said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“I wasn’t before I went to Alaska,” she answered -proudly.</p> - -<p>“Ya—as,” agreed her husband. “Always terrible -sickly till she went up there. Ruth’s jest the same.”</p> - -<p>“Who’s Ruth?” demanded Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“That’s my niece,” said Mrs. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“You had her along last year?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and she’s comin’ again. She wouldn’t miss -comin’ fur anything. Ruth’s twenty-five,” Mrs. Blumpitty -explained to Miss Mar. “Reel nice girl. Been a -nurse. You’ll like Ruth.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p> - -<p>It was as if the “reel nice” Ruth finally settled things.</p> - -<p>“Give Harry your <i>Congress</i> ticket, Hildegarde, and -he’ll see about changing it. Even if he can’t, I’ve made -up my mind you must go on Mrs. Blumpitty’s ship. -Don’t let the grass grow, Harry, we must catch the night -train home.”</p> - -<p>When Harry had ceased to cultivate grass in Jacob -Dorn’s parlor, the Blumpittys seemed to think their -audience, too, was at an end. They stood close together -and muttered embarrassed leave-taking.</p> - -<p>“Wait till my son gets back,” interrupted Mrs. Mar. -“He oughtn’t to be more than twenty minutes. There -are one or two things I’d like to know.” The fact did -not elude Mrs. Mar that when she had headed off their -escape, Mrs. Blumpitty had taken refuge in the chair -nearest her husband, and was edging it as close to him as -she could conveniently get—for protection, it would -appear. And Blumpitty himself, as feebly he resumed -his perch, looked more than ever depressed and vague. -Mrs. Mar needed no reminder that few husbands and -wives are as communicative together as either may be -apart. “Hildegarde,” she said, “take Mrs. Blumpitty -up to your room and see how much of your outfit’s -right. Show her your list and take notes of what she -tells you.”</p> - -<p>Having cleared the deck, Mrs. Mar by a cross fire of -questions drew forth a story, no—queer fragments, -rather, of the history of the Blumpittys’ fight for existence -during sixteen months spent in a tent upon the icy -tundra, with a few Esquimau neighbors and no white -soul for many a mile. Mrs. Mar forgot to look at the -clock, even grew strangely friendly with Blumpitty, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> -her absorption in so congenial an occupation as drawing -out and clarifying an inarticulate, rather muddled male. -Finally, “The papers,” quoted Mrs. Mar, “the papers -say that all the claims are staked.”</p> - -<p>Without the smallest emphasis, “I know that ain’t -so,” said the man dully.</p> - -<p>“How do you know?”</p> - -<p>“I been there.” Mrs. Mar digested this. “I know,” -Blumpitty went on, “a place where no white man but -me and one other has set foot—rich in gold.”</p> - -<p>“Where’s that other man?”</p> - -<p>“Under the tundra ’long o’ the gold.”</p> - -<p>She tried not to betray her interest. She even succeeded. -“And that’s the place you’re going up now to -work?”</p> - -<p>“No, ma’am, I ain’t talked to folks about <em>that</em> place.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar waited to hear why.</p> - -<p>But Blumpitty seemed to have no intention of enlightening -her. “The property we’re goin’ to work this -summer is the nineteen claims belongin’ to Blumpitty -& Co., up on Glaysher Crick. They’re already located, -an’ recorded, an’ surveyed, an’ a year’s assessment -work done.”</p> - -<p>“How much have people put into this company of -yours?”</p> - -<p>“Right smart,” he said cryptically. “What with -my folks and my wife’s folks an’ our party—had to give -<em>them</em> a look in—only fair. But we’re goin’ to keep it -among ourselves ’s much as possible. They ain’t any of -us rich, not <em>now</em>, but”—he smiled a pale, pale smile all -to himself, that seemed to say the future was beyond -peradventure golden. “We all been workin’ people,” he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> -said, grave again as ever. “But we’ve all saved a little -somethin’.”</p> - -<p>“And you’re putting your savings into this?”</p> - -<p>“Every cent. We know $250 put into Blumpitty & -Co.’s this spring’ll be a thousand ’fore long.” Instead -of rejoicing, he sighed. “We’ve worked mighty hard, -but we got our chance now.” He rested on the thought -a moment. “They’s a fortune fur us up on Glaysher -Crick—’nough fur us all.” His pale eyes seemed inadvertently -to take in Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>That lady presented her most baffling surface. Absolutely -nothing you could take hold of. Whether her -aspect discouraged Mr. Blumpitty or not, certainly he -seemed to have no more conversation.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar was obliged herself to break the silence. -“So <em>you’re</em> pretty well satisfied, anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as,” he said, “if only I can keep out o’ the hands -o’ the fy-nance-eers.”</p> - -<p>“What’s to prevent you?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I guess it’s all right”—but his look was dubious. -“I got a good many mouths to feed an’ a lot o’ developin’ -to do.”</p> - -<p>“You mean you haven’t got enough capital.” She -felt she had caught him. She was both disappointed and -rather relieved.</p> - -<p>“I got <em>some</em> capital, like I told you. An’ I could get -plenty more if I wasn’t so afraid o’—” He paused, and -seemed to envisage afresh some subtle and merciless -foe. Mrs. Mar’s sharp eyes pecked him all over. If they -had left a mark wherever they had been, Blumpitty -would have presented no surface the size of a cent that -was not pitted as with virulent smallpox. It might well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> -have inspired confidence that he bore up as well as he -did.</p> - -<p>“What is it you’re ‘afraid’ of?” demanded Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Losin’ personal control. But I’m all right s’ long ’s -I keep hold o’ fifty-one per cent. o’ the stock.”</p> - -<p>“Why fifty-one per cent.?” She must understand this.</p> - -<p>“So’s to have the decidin’ vote. So’s I can do the -directin’ myself. Watch it”—his pale eyes brooded—“an’ -manage it, an’ make a reel success of it.” You got -the impression that the scheme was bound up not only -with his fortune but with his pride. “If I’m at the -head o’ the thing I can see that the ’riginal investors -don’t get froze out by the fy-nance-eers.”</p> - -<p>“Well, haven’t you kept fifty-one per cent. of the -stock?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I got more’n that <em>now</em>. Blumpitty & Co.’s -only jest started.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar had a moment’s thrill out of the sensation of -being there “at the start.” But she sternly repressed -any glimmer of betrayal. “I suppose,” she said, with an -intention of irony, “that you’re ready to let in a few -more private subscribers?”</p> - -<p>“I’m in favor o’ lettin’ in one or two.” He fell into -thought undisturbed by Mrs. Mar’s silent pursuit, pecking -here, pecking there. “I wus thinkin’ I’d like your -daughter to have somethin’.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, my daughter’s putting all she has into her -trip.”</p> - -<p>But Mr. Blumpitty was doing some more thinking. -Gravely he brought out the result. “It ain’t many -young ladies would want to take that journey jest to -nurse their fathers.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar looked at him coldly. “She hasn’t got anything -to invest in gold mines.” And then she was sorry -she had admitted this. If the man thought of Miss Mar—or, -say Mrs. Mar—as a probable investor, it might -make a difference.</p> - -<p>But apparently quite unchilled, Mr. Blumpitty was -drawling, “Wa-al, if she comes with us, I could very -likely help her to locate a claim of her own.”</p> - -<p>Even that handsome offer seemed not to “fetch” -Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>And still he was not daunted. “I said to Mrs. Blumpitty, -‘That’s the kind o’ young lady I’d like to -help.’”</p> - -<p>No sort of direct acknowledgment out of the young -lady’s mother. But presently, “Just at this juncture -I want to give my daughter all I can spare, or I -wouldn’t mind putting something into your company -myself.”</p> - -<p>You might think he heard only the end of the sentence. -“It’s a good investment,” he said.</p> - -<p>“It’s quite possible that <em>later</em>—” Mrs. Mar threw -in, feeling herself very diplomatic. “Just at present -the only funds I have in hand are what my eldest son -has sent to supplement his sister’s.”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as, I wus thinking,” said Blumpitty, as though -in complete agreement, “when she buys her stuff at -Baumgarten’s she’d better get it through me, and then -she’ll pay only wholesale rates. That’ll be a savin’. I -could save her freight charges, too.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t she getting wholesale rates anyhow?”</p> - -<p>“No. They won’t make no difference fur a little six -weeks’ order for one person. I’m gettin’ food and camp<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> -outfit fur twenty-eight people fur two years. They -make a reduction fur that.”</p> - -<p>It seemed reasonable; and really, these simple people -were disposed to be very serviceable.</p> - -<p>She thought of Trenn’s brotherly letter of good-by -and his handsome contribution of $300, reposing at that -instant in the yellow bag that hung at her belt. Well, -suppose she used “the money for Hildegarde” in a -double sense. Suppose she got some stock in Hildegarde’s -name. It was all my eye about Blumpitty’s -wanting to help “that kind of young lady” just because -she—fudge! Mrs. Mar was “from Missouri!” But it -very probably <em>would</em> help the girl with her new friends -that they should look upon her as financially interested -in their enterprise—should think of her obliged and -grateful family as a probable source of further revenue. -Odd if it were Mrs. Mar after all who should be the cause -of the Mar family’s profiting by the gold discovery at -Nome. But she would do nothing upon impulse.</p> - -<p>“I think I could send you two or three hundred before -you sail,” she said.</p> - -<p>Mr. Blumpitty looked on the floor, and made no manner -of response.</p> - -<p>“How would that do?” and she repeated the offer.</p> - -<p>“I can’t promise they’ll be any o’ the margin left by -the time we sail.”</p> - -<p>“Why can’t you?”</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, I got to keep fifty-one per cent. fur myself.”</p> - -<p>She’d heard all that. “How much a share is your -stock?”</p> - -<p>“It’s only $25 now. But I guess it won’t ever be as -low again. This time next year—” He felt for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> -watch. When he saw what time it was this year, slowly -he pulled his slack figure together and stood up.</p> - -<p>“You’re going to wait—” began Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>“I promised t’ meet a man about now.”</p> - -<p>“Somebody who wants to join your company?” said -Mrs. Mar, with a pang.</p> - -<p>“I guess so.”</p> - -<p>“I <em>could</em> take twelve shares to start with, only—”</p> - -<p>“I guess y’ better talk it over with y’ son.” Blumpitty -had stooped and was feeling under the chair for his -hat.</p> - -<p>“It isn’t that,” said Mrs. Mar a little sharply, for the -idea of taking counsel with her son appealed to her much -less now that Blumpitty recommended it. “But I’m not -sure I won’t have to buy a second ticket for my daughter.”</p> - -<p>“No danger o’ that.”</p> - -<p>“And how do I know there’s a good berth left on -your steamer?”</p> - -<p>“I got twenty-eight first-class accommodations. The -young lady can have the pick o’ them.” He seemed to -be coming slowly toward Mrs. Mar with a motion of -offering his hand, whether to reassure her as to the -solemnity of his given word on the subject of the berth, -or in mere good-by.</p> - -<p>She arrested him with her eye. “If I get my daughter -these twelve shares”—Mrs. Mar’s hand was on the -yellow bag—“I do it on my own responsibility. I shall -not consult my sons.”</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, it’s a good chance,” he admitted, but in the -tone of one not disposed to deny that “all flesh is grass.” -“I’d like your daughter to have her share. They ain’t -many young ladies would want to take that journey jest -to—”</p> - -<p>“You’d better make out a receipt for those twelve -shares straight away, before anybody comes in and interrupts.” -Mrs. Mar opened the yellow bag.</p> - -<p>Blumpitty looked vaguely at the floor. “I don’t know -as I got any blanks along.”</p> - -<p>“Blanks! I don’t want any blanks.”</p> - -<p>“Certificate forms.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—well, look and see,” she said peremptorily, with -her glance at the clock.</p> - -<p>Out of his breast pocket Blumpitty slowly took some -papers. “Only a dirty one,” he said sadly.</p> - -<p>“Well, fill it out. There’s pen and ink on that -table.” She was counting bills on her lap.</p> - -<p>Blumpitty stood vaguely looking round in a lost sort -of way, just as though time weren’t priceless and -Harry’s return at any moment likely to complicate, if -not checkmate, “the deal.”</p> - -<p>“Here.” Mrs. Mar jumped up and put a chair in -front of the little writing-table. Then smartly she -tapped the silver-topped ink-bottle, as though she -doubted his having the sense to know what it was unless -she made some sort of demonstration in its neighborhood. -She even illustrated the fact that the lid lifted up. -Slowly Blumpitty had come over to the spindle-legged -table, and now sat in a heap in front of it, looking into -the ink. Mrs. Mar whisked a pen out of the rack and -pushed it into Blumpitty’s slow fingers. “And here in -this envelop is $300.” She took it out and counted it -over, under his dull eyes. “But I’ll keep it till Harry -comes back and says it’s all right about the ticket. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> -can just exchange envelops without saying anything -further. Understand?” She felt a well-nigh irresistible -impulse to shake Blumpitty, but instead of doing that, -there she was signing a paper, after taking care to read -it twice, in spite of the pressure of time. And now, -although she still held both this document and the three -hundred dollars in her own hands, she was conscious of -qualms.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus7"> -<img src="images/illus7.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">Hildegarde’s mother and Mr. Blumpitty</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I suppose you’ll be sinking a deal of good hard -money in that creek of yours this summer, whether you -get any out or not.”</p> - -<p>“They’s plenty of work there,” he said, foggier than -ever, “but I got more’n that to do this summer.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>He looked at her with that curious sort of vagueness -that gives one an impression of hearing a man talk in -his sleep. You feel it would be unfair to hold him quite -responsible. “When I’ve got the work started all right -on Glaysher, I got to take two or three people I c’n trust -an’ go up to a place northwest o’ Nome.”</p> - -<p>“What place?”</p> - -<p>“Polaris.”</p> - -<p>“What do you want to go there for, when you’ve got -nineteen claims to look after on Glacier—”</p> - -<p>“Them nineteen claims is valyerble property, and -Blumpitty & Co.’s goin’ to pay handsome dividends. -This time next year—”</p> - -<p>“Well, what do you want more than that?”</p> - -<p>He paused, and then in that same somnambulist tone, -“I wusn’t lookin’ fur it,” he said, “I jest tumbled on -it.”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p> - -<p>“A great big thing up by Polaris. Bigger’n anything -Blumpitty & Co. have got on Glaysher. Bigger’n anything -any company’s got anywhere.”</p> - -<p>Impossible to think a man boastful or even over-sanguine, -who spoke so wearily, with yellow-gray face so -unlit, with air and attitude so joyless. “It’ll make millionaires -of a good many people.”</p> - -<p>There was silence in Jacob Dorn’s parlor. Mrs. Mar -had refused to credit a story of this sort once before. -Her unbelief had not only cost her a great fortune; it -had cost her happiness. She sat in silence, reflecting. -But she gave no sign.</p> - -<p>“People have got so’s they don’t take much stock in -any feller’s talkin’ ’bout the Mother Lode. I don’t -blame ’em myself.”</p> - -<p>“It turns out as stupid sometimes to be too skeptical -as to be too credulous,” quoth Mrs. Mar.</p> - -<p>Mr. Blumpitty did not applaud the sentiment. He -looked sadly at the lady and then, as though the effort to -hold up his eyelids were too great, he rested his heavy -eyes on the silver rim of the ink-pot. “Everybody knows -they must <em>be</em> a Mother Lode some’ers around up there.”</p> - -<p>“Why must there?”</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, <em>I</em> don’t know,” said Blumpitty impartially. -“P’raps the gold come down from Heaven.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t talk nonsense.”</p> - -<p>“Well, if it don’t come from Heaven, the gold they’re -findin’ at Nome an’ in the Klondike, and the noo camps—all -the loose placer gold o’ the North,” he reflected, -“if it ain’t come down from Heaven, it’s been washed -an’ weathered and glayshered out o’ some reef or range, -or great natchrul store-house.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes. I’ve read about that.”</p> - -<p>He nodded faintly. “Ya-as, that’s what they all -say. Every man <em>believes</em> in a Mother Lode. But what -no man likes to believe is that another man’s found -her.”</p> - -<p>Again silence.</p> - -<p>Vivid description would have failed to picture for this -particular auditor what Blumpitty’s slow and clumsy -words conveyed as though by chance. So little did he -play the game in the usual way that Mrs. Mar felt the -satisfaction of the discoverer in getting at the story -through barriers and in despite of veils.</p> - -<p>In the silence, up above—in Jacob Dorn’s sick chamber—some -one was heard opening the window.</p> - -<p>“And you think,” Mrs. Mar spoke very low, “you -think you know where the Mother Lode is?”</p> - -<p>“Pretty near every miner in the Northwest <em>thinks</em> he -knows.”</p> - -<p>“You mean you are sure?”</p> - -<p>“I’m forty-eight,” said Blumpitty mournfully. -“It’s twenty years since I liked sayin’ I was sure.”</p> - -<p>“But” (he was the sort of man that needed reassuring) -“you’ve got good ground for believing—” She -waited.</p> - -<p>“Last fall”—he looked round the red satin room as -though for possible haunts of eavesdroppers, and then -he further interrupted himself—“you mustn’t think -I found it myself,” he said modestly. “I got a tip—a -straight tip.”</p> - -<p>“From the man that’s dead.”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as. Leastways, they said he hadn’t more’n a -few days to live. Ya-as, dyin’ up there at Polaris!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> -Everybody in the camp knoo he’d struck it rich. Nobody -could find out where.”</p> - -<p>“How did they know he’d struck—”</p> - -<p>“Becuz he wus so secret about everything. Where -he’d come from. Where he wus goin’ if he got well, -and most of all”—Blumpitty looked round and sunk his -low voice—“where he got his nuggets and dust from.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, he <em>had</em> nuggets—”</p> - -<p>“Yes, nuggets and dust, too. Good and plenty.”</p> - -<p>“He showed it to you?”</p> - -<p>“No. He wus terrible secret about it. Terrible -afraid somebody’d rob him. Kind o’ sick you know -about it.” Slowly Blumpitty tapped his yellow-gray -forehead. “But he allowed he’d found something -worth while an’ he never let his bundle o’ dust out o’ -sight. Day an’ night he kep’ it jest under his hand. -Everybody nosin’ around, tryin’ to be friends with him. -One day I wus passin’, an’ his dawg went fur me. I -picked up a stone. ‘Don’t y’ do it,’ he calls out o’ the -sod cabin, where he wus layin’ with the door open. -‘Don’t y’ do nothin’ to that dawg,’ he says. I explained -the dawg wus doin’ things to me. ‘Come in here,’ he -said, ‘an’ she won’t touch you.’ So I did, an’ we talked -a while.”</p> - -<p>“Well?”</p> - -<p>“He asked me kind o’ sarcastic, was I ‘lookin’ fur the -Mother Lode?’ I said I guessed I wusn’t no different -from other men, except that I wusn’t hangin’ round a -sick man fur to get his secrets out o’ him. ‘No,’ he said, -‘I ain’t never seen you hangin’ round.’ An’ then he -told me.”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I says, ‘I’m figurin’ on findin’ the Mother Lode up -in them hills yonder.’ ‘That’s right,’ he said, an’ his -eyes wus kind o’ wild an’ glassy. ‘Up over yonder?’ I -said. ‘Yes,’ says he; ‘up North. That’s where the -Mother Lode is.’ An’ I think from what he said, he’d -called his discovery-claim ‘The Lode Star.’”</p> - -<p>“What made you think—”</p> - -<p>“Course he wus kind o’ queer—out of his head, y’ -know, fur he called it the ‘Mother Lode Star.’ An’ he -wus terrible secret about it. All the time gettin’ away -from the subject and talkin’ about the dawg.”</p> - -<p>“Well—”</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, they wusn’t more’n half a dozen people at -Polaris then, an’ nobody’d found anything to make a -boom out of. But they all hung on. And they made -presents to that feller, took him grub regillar. An’ -other folks kep’ comin’ jest becuz that man wus there. -An’ they all knoo he’d struck it rich. An’ they all -knoo he wus dyin’. That was what they wus waitin’ -for. I didn’t wait, even them few days they said he -had to live. The snow wus beginning t’ fly an’ I had -to go back to Glaysher and get Mrs. Blumpitty an’ our -party out before navigation closed. But I said to myself, -‘I’ll risk it—fur the Mother Lode!’ An’ I did. -Went up over the hills to the north, in a bee line from -that cabin o’ his till I come ter—” Blumpitty’s voice -dropped still lower and he hesitated, while, like one who -scarce dares move lest he break some spell, slowly he -looked round, and seemed to forget how to turn back. -He remained so, sitting awry, listening.</p> - -<p>“It’s only some one moving about in Mr. Dorn’s -room overhead. You found the Mother Lode?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p> - -<p>He found he was able to twist himself back by dint of -drawing out his watch. “When I get t’ thinkin’ about -it I clean forget the time.” He stood up. “I guess I -got t’ be goin’.”</p> - -<p>Footsteps and low subdued voices in the hall. Hildegarde -had seen her brother from an upper window, and -had come down with Mrs. Blumpitty to let Harry in.</p> - -<p>There would be no trouble in selling “Berth 21” for -the third time.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mar, about to hand an envelop to Mr. Blumpitty, -wondered to herself, “How much of a fool am I? Well, -I haven’t done fool-things all along the line, like most -people. If I must commit foolishness before I die, -I’ll do it all in a lump and be done with it.” Whereupon -she handed Mr. Blumpitty the envelop. He -seemed to be giving Harry his address. Mrs. Blumpitty -was making an appointment to meet Miss Mar “at ten -o’clock to-morrow, at Baumgarten’s.”</p> - -<p>For the third time Mrs. Mar was reading through a -paper she held in her hand. When she came to the ill-written -signature, “How do you spell your name?” she -demanded of Mr. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“B-l-u-m-p-i-t-t-y,” said the gentleman mournfully.</p> - -<p>“Humph,” said Mrs. Mar, head on one side and eyes -fixed so critically on the name that Mrs. Blumpitty -hastened to the defense. “It’s French,” says she.</p> - -<p>“French!” echoes Mrs. Mar. “How do you make -that out?”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s what his grandmother always told him. -She said it was originally Blank Peed.” Wherewith, -having vindicated the family, she shook hands and led -the way out. Harry was opening the outside door for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> -them. No one spoke above a whisper, on account of -Mr. Dorn.</p> - -<p>“Good-by, Mr. Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“Good-by, ma’am.”</p> - -<p>“Look here”—Mrs. Mar detained him for a last aside—“you’ve -got twenty-eight people to see after, and a -company to manage, and nineteen claims to develop, -why can’t you be content with that?”</p> - -<p>He looked at her. “Would you be?” he asked simply.</p> - -<p>Her face told tales. “You mean”—she hesitated—“if -I’d got on the track of the Mother Lode?”</p> - -<p>“Jest so,” said Blumpitty, and slowly he followed his -wife out of the Great Importer’s house.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-h.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Hildegarde learned other things the next -morning besides how to do your marketing -for two years in an hour. She brought -away from Baumgarten’s the renewed impression -that Mrs. Blumpitty was a person -of some practical sense, and that Mr. Blumpitty, though -he might be an authority upon the Mother Lode and an -estimable character to boot, did in reality himself need a -good deal of looking after. It is impossible to say just how -the “unlogical” feminine mind—in this case young and -ignorant as well—may arrive at so definite a conclusion -out of a small assemblage of apparently trifling data. -For Hildegarde’s judgment was not founded merely -upon the outer man. Nor was it contributed to very -largely by Mr. Blumpitty’s indifference to small economies, -as shown in his readiness to order gallons of expensive -“olive” when cotton-seed oil was as cheap as -wholesome to cook with, and Mr. Blumpitty convicted -by his wife of inability to detect any difference in taste. -It was not merely that Mrs. Blumpitty was the one to -offer reasons why methylated spirit, though cheap on -the bill, was dearer in actual use than alcohol. It was -not that he had forgotten after sixteen months’ experience, -“what a cravin’ you get up there fur sweet and -fur sour,” and what a failure the California dried fruit -had turned out the year before. <em>Had</em> he complained he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> -couldn’t eat such insipid stuff till Mrs. Blumpitty had -“livened” it with a dash of vinegar as well as sugar and -spice? Wa-al, p’raps he had!</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t give me dried apples from any place -nearer here than Michigan,” said Mrs. Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>The Baumgarten Brother had smiled a little, and said, -“She knows.”</p> - -<p>The upshot of the morning was to give Hildegarde an -inkling that the chief use of Mr. Blumpitty, so far as she -was concerned, might be that he would keep her family -soothed by the illusion that this respectable man, pledged -to her service, was “going to see that everything was all -right.” For the rest, should she not perhaps do well to -imitate his spouse, and not expect any one to be wide -awake in her interest who was half asleep before his -own? Although he had said, “Ya-as, it’s all right -about the ticket,” Miss Mar interviewed the steamship -people on her own behalf. “Quite right!” they indorsed -Mr. Blumpitty’s account of the matter. And as -to the berths, Mr. Blumpitty already had twenty-eight, -and had sent word he wanted a twenty-ninth, “a pertickler -good one fur a lady.” “Noospaper woman I -presoom,” said the agent politely. It seemed to be only -the press that inspired such respect. She was more glad -than ever of the offer that had come that morning from -Eddie Cox, editor, now, of the “San Miguel Despatch.” -“Yes,” she told the agent, “I am to be a Regular Correspondent.” -In all sorts of ways she saw her status -incomparably improved by falling in with Eddie Cox’s -suggestion. It appeared to be necessary to stand well -with a “noospaper” woman. “What accommodation -can I have?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Why, the best we got.”</p> - -<p>“Is there much choice?”</p> - -<p>“We put you down here, with Mr. Blumpitty’s -party.” A number was indicated.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to see the cabin.”</p> - -<p>“<em>See</em> it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, before I decide.”</p> - -<p>Impossible. If she didn’t take and pay for the berth -now, in an hour it would be in other hands. But seeing -her quite unhustled by this horrid alternative, the agent -said he would make a great, an unheard-of exception in -her case, and promised to take her over the ship as soon -as the <i>Los Angeles</i> came up from Tacoma, where she was -being elaborately refitted, “new paint, electric light, -everything.” It would be a pity for a “noospaper” -woman to go in any meaner vessel.</p> - -<p>The crowds that composed the sailing list besieged the -offices day by day, wildly impatient at the date of departure -being “a little postponed” while the <i>Los Angeles</i> -was further embellished for their reception. -“Style’s all very well. But gettin’ there’s the thing.”</p> - -<p>And among them this girl, with only half her ticket -paid for, coming in twice a day to keep track of events.</p> - -<p>At last, after a night of riot, when the office was very -nearly pulled about the company’s ears, all Seattle -knew that the much-heralded steamer had been brought -up from Tacoma and was at the Seattle wharf. The -crowds on the water front could see her, glaring and -white and respect-inspiring, but guarded like the gate -of Paradise.</p> - -<p>“Let’s go and see our quarters,” Hildegarde suggested, -meeting Mr. Blumpitty in the street.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Wish we could,” said Blumpitty sadly. “No one -allowed aboard till sailin’ time, nine o’clock to-morrer.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde spoke of the agent’s promise.</p> - -<p>“Promise! Oh, yes, promise anything.” And Blumpitty -moved gloomily away in the crowd.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde found the agent without loss of time. He -was overwhelmed with work. Didn’t she see!</p> - -<p>What she saw was a clay-faced individual, with a -slight bulge in one lean jaw where he stored his tobacco—red-eyed, -unwashed, and obviously irritated by her reappearance. -His promise—quietly she insisted. The -anæmic visage twitched, and he attended to another customer. -But she stood waiting, and she looked as if she -were prepared to camp there till she’d had her way. -Oh, these women! They wus always like that—fussin’ -and naggin’ and goin’ on!</p> - -<p>He attended to two other customers. <em>They</em> didn’t -expect such things of him. But there she still stood -with her eyes fixed upon the agent, blockin’ up the way, -waitin’, waitin’. “What’d I do if they all expected me -to go runnin’ round the wharves with ’em!” he demanded -in an angry undertone.</p> - -<p>“You promised,” she began, glancing at the fact that -there were three other clerks in the office.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Blumpitty’s satisfied!” he said severely, pointing -out the lamentable contrast. And he’d taken her for a -lady. A lady would believe a gentleman when he told -her it was all right—and not worry him. But though -she must have seen plainly how she was still further -lowering the agent’s lofty ideal of how a lady should behave, -there she stood looking at him with a grave steadiness -that held no hope of her yielding her point. “Promise!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> -promise!”—why, it was damned good-natured of -him to make a promise, but to expect him to— He bent -toward her. “Look yere,” he said in an angry whisper, -“I ain’t got a special permit yet.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll wait till you get it.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t have it yere before three.”</p> - -<p>“Very well, I’ll come at three, but you must please -not disappoint me again, or else I—” He jerked away. -As he saw her going out—Now what did she mean?—“or -else she—” You never know what pull these noospaper -women have got.</p> - -<p>He had forgotten all about her when— O Lor! -There she was upon the stroke, like fate.</p> - -<p>Well, well, did she promise not to tell none o’ the rest -o’ the passengers? All right, then. Come ahead.</p> - -<p>He led the way to the docks with every circumstance -of secrecy; dodging through back streets, lying to acquaintances -as to where he was going, and gradually -growing cheerfuller, pausing to exchange humorous -asides with friends along the wharf. Hildegarde, waiting, -silent, patient, during these passages, was entirely -aware of the curious looks bent upon her, and saw that -her expedition with this little rat of a man was held by -some to have a “larky” aspect (save the mark!). She -saw it was incredible to these people that the agent -should take this trouble for any other reason than that -she was an attractive young woman who had smiled -upon this poor little drink-sodden creature, and was -giving him the rare sensation of being “a sad dog with -the ladies.” Even playing at the idea had quite transformed -the agent. Poor little misery! She knew instinctively -she had nothing to fear from him, and even -if he had been a different type she had no doubt but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> -what she would have known how to keep him in his place -when they were alone. But before these pals of his the -agent put on sly looks, carried himself rakishly, and -tipped his hat very far back on his head. Well, it was -an odd world evidently, but Hildegarde Mar had come -out to see it. Now, after various formalities, they were -going on board.</p> - -<p>“See! paint’s wet yet. That’s why I didn’t want y’ -to come. Spoil y’ clo’es, sure ’s a gun.” Apparently to-morrow -the paint would be dry as a bone. Past the -strangely few decent, though cramped, state-rooms of the -first saloon, each ticketed with the names of prospective -occupants, down into the dim region of the second saloon, -down into the intermediate, further down, clinging -on to ladders, down, down, into the bowels of the ship, -Hildegarde and the ferret-faced agent went, looking for -Mr. Blumpitty’s quarters. And lo! though that gentleman -had paid for first-class accommodation—as the agent -admitted—he’d been “glad to get the only accommodation -left,” and that was in the hold! The twenty-nine -berths were twenty-nine sections of deal shelves, ranged -in tiers five deep, and set so close one on top of the other -you could not believe it possible for a good-sized man to -insert his body between the unsheeted ticking of his -chuck-mattress and the board above his head. Hildegarde -stood stooping in the awful hole and staring as one -not crediting her eyes.</p> - -<p>“It’ll look better,” says the agent, a little shamefaced, -“when the beds are made. The company supplies -a piller each, and a pair o’ blankets.”</p> - -<p>No ventilation. No light of day. One electric burner -to illumine the horror of the gloom.</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean to say—” began Hildegarde, turning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> -such a look upon the agent that he said hurriedly: -“No, no. This won’t do for a noos—fur a lady.” And -they climbed the ladders back to day.</p> - -<p>He found the lady up-stairs quarters on the saloon deck.</p> - -<p>“But there are only five berths here.”</p> - -<p>“Best cabin on the ship,” said he, spitting with decision -through the port.</p> - -<p>“But on this card on the door there are five names -already.”</p> - -<p>“One’s comin’ out,” and he saw to that by the simple -process of drawing an indelible pencil across “Miss -Tillie Jump,” and substituting “Miss H. Mar.”</p> - -<p>Still the young lady studied the card. “Look at -this.”</p> - -<p>He looked.</p> - -<p>“Here, at the very top.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t see nothin’.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t see <em>Mr.</em> and Mrs. David M. Jones.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, I see them.”</p> - -<p>“Surely that’s a mistake.”</p> - -<p>“Mistake? No. I ’tended to them folks myself.” -As the young lady stared incredulous, he reassured her. -“They’re comin’ all right. Tip-top folks. He wus -governor of—”</p> - -<p>“They’re not coming in here?”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Mr.</em> Jones?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, David M. He wus governor of—”</p> - -<p>“In here, with all these—ladies!”</p> - -<p>“Well, one’s his wife. Don’t you be afraid. <em>He’s</em> -all right.”</p> - -<p>“He can’t possibly come in here.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p> - -<p>“He’s got to. No other place. Him an’ his wife wus -almost the first passengers on the list.”</p> - -<p>“Well, give them a cabin to themselves.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, see here! There ain’t room fur no style like -that on <em>this</em> trip.”</p> - -<p>“Then put back Miss Jump and take out Mr. Jones.”</p> - -<p>She saw the agent blink at such cool juggling. “Mr. -Jones must go in a man’s cabin,” she explained.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you know they’re all full?”</p> - -<p>“He can’t come in here,” said the young lady inflexibly.</p> - -<p>“He’s got to, that’s all there is about it. I can’t go -playin’ no monkey tricks with David M. Jones.”</p> - -<p>“Then please find me some other place.”</p> - -<p>“Ain’t I already told you? They ain’t no—”</p> - -<p>“You mean you can’t, after all, accommodate me on -this ship?”</p> - -<p>“Lord! Lord!” The agent seemed to pray for patience -and for light.</p> - -<p>“You were prepared to make Miss Tillie Jump—” -and in spite of herself, gravity went by the board. But -the agent’s smile was wan.</p> - -<p>“That was different,” he assured her. “Well, here -goes!” With the air of one who has cast the last shred -of prudence to the winds, he wrote out a new card from -which you might gather that David M. Jones had not -been reëlected for this berth. And so, exit the former -governor!</p> - -<p>“<em>Now</em> you can’t say we ain’t done everything.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” said Hildegarde. “There’s only one -thing more. I should like to bring my steamer trunk in -to-day and get settled.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p> - -<p>The agent gaped, and then, with a gesture of comic -feebleness before the spectacle presented by this young -lady, he sat down on the edge of the berth labeled, “T. -Jump,” and grinned.</p> - -<p>“The paint’s nearly dry up here,” urged Miss Mar, -as one meeting the only possible objection.</p> - -<p>It must be because she was on a “noospaper.” Nothing -else could give a woman a nerve like this. Well, it -was positively refreshin’! Out of pure gaiety of heart -the agent added a little new tobacco to the store already -accumulated in his cheek. “’Tain’t a bad idear,” he -said. “More’n you’d like to try it on. But it wouldn’t -hardly do.”</p> - -<p>“Why?”</p> - -<p>“Make a nawful rumpus.” As still she seemed not to -understand the enormity of her proposal. “’Twouldn’t -be fair to let some and not let others.”</p> - -<p>She could see that. “But why not let them all?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, haw! haw!” The thing was somehow deliciously -comic. But a compromise might be possible—“fur -a noos—” Luckily the purser happened to be on -deck. Hildegarde, to her stark astonishment, heard the -agent reply confidentially to some question, “Well, y’ -wouldn’t think so, but from one or two things she let -drop, I guess she’s one o’ ——’s hustlers, an’ special -correspondent fur the ‘New York Herald,’ I guess, an’ -Gawd knows what else.” She was forthwith presented -to Mr. Brown, and it was arranged that the “noospaper” -woman should send her baggage down to the -purser’s care, and herself be allowed to come on board -a couple of hours before the mob—say at seven o’clock -in the evening.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p> - -<p class="tb">At a quarter before that hour the street near the wharf -where the <i>Los Angeles</i> lay was dense with packed humanity. -So much time and tact it took to worm one’s -way through the mass, that Madeleine, who had come -down to see her friend off, began to despair. Already -she had been longer away from her invalid than she -had meant. Hildegarde urged her to turn back now. -Madeleine looked about with anxious eyes. “It’s -worse even than I imagined. It’s terrible to leave you -here.”</p> - -<p>“It’s much more terrible for you to leave Mr. Dorn.”</p> - -<p>Madeleine didn’t deny that.</p> - -<p>“And if you come further there’s no telling <em>when</em> -you’ll get out. It will be worse going back against the -tide.”</p> - -<p>But Madeleine hesitated, with harassed face.</p> - -<p>“I’d much rather you went now,” Hildegarde urged, -taking her suit-case from her friend. “Good-by.”</p> - -<p>Madeleine clung to her with filling eyes. “I <em>hate</em> -leaving you.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde kissed her. “Good-by, dear. And thank -you a thousand times.”</p> - -<p>In the act of going, Madeleine whispered, “Oh, I <em>hope</em> -nothing will happen to you. But I’m frightened to -death. Good-by. Oh <em>dear</em>!”</p> - -<p>And that was the last of the old familiar life.</p> - -<p class="tb">As slowly Hildegarde got herself and her suit-case -through the crowd, it was borne in upon her that perhaps -she had been wrong to insist that neither of her -brothers should come and see her off, as each had nobly -suggested, in spite of their unwavering opposition to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> -enterprise. She had made a point of their trusting her -“to do it alone.”</p> - -<p>Besides, she wasn’t alone. In every letter she flourished -the Blumpittys. Where were those Blumpittys -now? No sign of them since yesterday. Anyhow, she -had prevented the boys from coming. Her fear, not of -course formulated to them, had been that if they came, -somehow, at the last moment they would try to prevent -her going. Well—she looked about—they probably -would. She pressed on, inwardly exulting, outwardly -modest and asking pardon. And all the time she kept a -sharp lookout, as if, in spite of everything, she was expecting -some one. A Blumpitty? Not a bit of it.</p> - -<p class="tb">“It’s no use,” said a red-faced man, with a wheezy -voice, “not a <em>bit</em> o’ use yer tryin’ to get through yere.”</p> - -<p>“There would be,” said the young lady, “if you -helped me a little.”</p> - -<p>That was different. But, “Ye’ll only get to stand a -yard or two further on till nine o’clock. They wouldn’t -open them gates fur President McKinley.”</p> - -<p>“I want to see if my baggage got here all right. I -sent it hours and hours ago.”</p> - -<p>“Same bright idear’s occurred to the rest of us,” said -a sharp-faced youth. But they let the young lady pass. -And in the uncertain light they looked after the tall, -striking figure, dressed in close-fitting dark green, wearing -a perfectly plain green felt hat, which was somehow -more distinguishable and more distinguished set upon a -head like that than if it had been furbelowed after the -fashion of the other feminine headgear that flowered and -feathered in the throng. Public opinion would have set<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> -her down as “stuck up,” from the way she carried herself, -had it not been for something too gentle in the face -to support that view. The delicately molded chin, -with the end softly turned up, gave an almost childish -look to the face, and the long-lashed eyes, at once eager -and abstracted, why were they always looking, looking? -“Lost her party, I guess.”</p> - -<p>On she went, changing her suit-case from one tired -hand to the other, looking here, looking there, just as she -had done in the Seattle streets. She had gone about all -these last days consciously braced for a final encounter -with Cheviot—a last attempt on his part to make her -abandon the undertaking. That, of course, was the reason -he had not written, nor even telegraphed, to say -good-by. There was nothing surly, or even sullen, about -Cheviot. Though they had parted “like that,” he -wouldn’t be willing she should go without his making -some sign. Not having done so could only mean—Oh, -she knew what it meant.</p> - -<p>She dramatized the coming scene—saw herself being -“quite firm,” defeating, utterly routing him. But in -order to carry out the program she mustn’t let him take -her by surprise. And as now over this shoulder, now -over that, she scrutinized the faces in the crowd, she -felt her heart beat as she thought of the coming conflict. -And the pink color rose in her face. She had -been afraid “the boys” might want to turn her back. -In her heart of hearts she was afraid that Louis, in -some way not clearly foreseen, would succeed. She -went forward with the sense of one escaping from a -definite peril. At last, rather out of breath, she dropped -her suit-case before the door of the brightly lighted baggage-room.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> -Just inside was a man in his shirt-sleeves, -and beyond him—</p> - -<p>“<em>There’s</em> my trunk!” she cried out, with the cheerful -air of one descrying a valued friend.</p> - -<p>“Want it checked?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, please.”</p> - -<p>“Where’s it goin’?”</p> - -<p>“To Nome, of course,” answered Hildegarde, panting -a little and straightening her hat. “Nobody is going -anywhere else, are they?” she added, a little impatient -at the man’s staring and delay.</p> - -<p>“N-no. I guess not. But—” He grinned good-humoredly. -“I didn’t think you looked like a Nomer.”</p> - -<p>Here was a blow at the very start. Hildegarde -glanced down at her plain clothes, and decided the man -was mistaken. But he checked her trunk, her provision-box, -her bag, her deck-chair, and her roll of wraps, and -she, declining to give up the suit-case, turned about to -make her way among the people, massed thicker than -ever in this direction. For over yonder, hidden by the -crowd, was the gate whose opening would give access to -the <i>Los Angeles</i>. Progress here more difficult than ever.</p> - -<p>Courage! Now if Louis were somewhere in the crush, -if those critical blue-gray eyes were on her, he would be -wondering to see how well she made her way, keeping -her footing and her temper, gaining inch by inch her -goal. She went the more unflinching as under the gray-blue -eye. When it became obvious that this pink and -white gentle-looking girl was intent, if you please, on -working her way to the barrier in front of people who -had been there an hour, she was treated to an experience -of unyielding backs, sharp elbows, and surly looks. Why<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> -shouldn’t she wait her turn? Yes, Hildegarde reflected, -it was natural they should feel that, especially the -women. Why, how many women there were! But no -Mrs. Blumpitty, and no— Hildegarde looked at her -watch. How the time had flown. It really was rather -odd about Cheviot. He might, of course, come still later, -but suppose he didn’t. It was almost incredible, and -yet—</p> - -<p>If he did come, he’d see, at all events, there were some -quite nice-seeming women here. But perhaps they weren’t -going. This one, with the white, white face under the -orange hat—what little young voice was that beside her? -Why, the woman was holding a boy by the hand. He -reminded Hildegarde of Cheviot’s small nephew, Billy. -She smiled down into the solemn little face. “Are you -seeing some one off?”</p> - -<p>“Nop!” said the Curlyhead sturdily. “Goin’ to -Nome meself.” And the crowd cheered. Either that -demonstration frightened him, or he was tired and -indifferent to popular approval. He began to fret and -then to whimper. Was it his father who spoke so roughly -and so thickly? Curlyhead’s whimper blossomed into -wailing. His father began to shake him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, wait a minute,” said the tall young lady, as if -meaning only to delay the operation for a second. She -set down the suit-case on her own toes, and out of a -pocket in the close-fitting green jacket came a cake of -chocolate, all glorious in silver foil. Hildegarde held it -before the child’s distorted little face. The features -righted themselves as by magic. The youngest pioneer -no longer took a gloomy view of his prospects.</p> - -<p>The father’s been drinking heavily, Hildegarde said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> -to herself as she went on. Poor wife. Poor little boy. -She would know Curlyhead better on the ship.</p> - -<p>How strange if Louis were to harbor such deep resentment -as not to write and not to appear. That <em>he</em> should -be the only one of her familiar circle that had not to be -dissuaded from coming to see her off! If suddenly now -in the crowd she should see him she would be almost -glad. After all, he couldn’t prevent her sailing. What -was he thinking of to let her go off like this, without—Had -her mother been right? Just then a woman, in a -sealskin jacket and with diamonds twinkling in her ears, -not only refused flatly to let Hildegarde pass but angrily -admonished the men about her to stand firm.</p> - -<p>The tall young lady only changed her course a little, -and made obliquely for the barrier, but the encounter -with that woman affected her more unpleasantly than -the elbowing and jostling of the others. She had a distinct -vision of Louis Cheviot’s face as he had said “the -kind of woman that goes to Nome.” It had been horrible -to him that Hildegarde was not daunted. For she -hadn’t let him see that she was. And now that woman, -with the hard face and the diamond ear-rings!—and -Louis too disgusted to want to come and see his old -friend off, or even to send her a message of good-by.</p> - -<p>She began to see how foolish it was to expect to see -him here. He had washed his hands of her.</p> - -<p>And still, in the back of her head, she thought he -might come—even built upon it. She looked back. No, -he wasn’t in sight; but a tall, grizzled man had given -the youngest pioneer a seat on his shoulder. That was -nice of the grizzled man.</p> - -<p>But it was saddening to go on so great a journey without -the good-will of so close a friend as—</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p> - -<p>There was something very hard about Louis. He -could enjoy himself quite comfortably, since he had -washed his hands of her. Her mother—(why was -this man in front of her dressed in oilskins?) Yes—washed -his hands of her. Her mother had told her as -much. Bella and Mrs. Wayne had come up from the -country to the Valdivia G. H. Charity Ball. They had -stayed at the great new hotel. Bella had worn pink at -the ball, and danced constantly with Louis Cheviot. She -stayed on for several days, and they drove together every -evening. People had begun to talk. Well, it had -seemed very possible once. Why not? And here was -Hildegarde actually expecting he might have left Bella -and come all that way from Valdivia just to wish Hildegarde -God-speed on a journey he had loathed the very -mention of. Idiocy. Of course he was out driving with -Bella this soft, beautiful evening. He would be thinking: -“Bella could never do anything so unfeminine as to go -to a horrible place like Nome!” Bella and Louis. Why -did she, the girl struggling here in the crowd, feel this -half-incredulous aching at the thought? Bella and -Louis. Natural enough. Even inevitable. The reason -that she, Hildegarde, felt like this was that she wasn’t -accustomed yet to being alone, and it was so hard to -reach the barrier yonder. Jack Galbraith. Would he, -too, join them—the sensible stay-at-home folk? Curiously, -Jack was grown as dim as last year’s dreams. For -weeks she had felt him fading out of the old picture. -And in the new he had no place at all. Why was -that? Perhaps he was dead. It seemed hardly to matter. -Should she ever get to the barrier?</p> - -<p>Oh, how they pushed and crowded upon her. It made -her feel quite angry. Not so much with these poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> -struggling people. But with Cheviot. If he were here -now, instead of driving about with Bella, if those broad -shoulders of his were between Hildegarde and— “Oh, -please, please, you’re crushing me.”</p> - -<p>“Then stand back,” said a man angrily.</p> - -<p><em>And he wasn’t even drunk.</em></p> - -<p>Over an hour it had taken her to penetrate from the -outer fringes of the crowd, by way of the baggage-room, -to this gate in the barrier, chained and barred. On the -other side of it, an irate dragon on guard, ready to -breathe fire and brimstone at the mere notion of letting -anybody by. When Hildegarde signed to him, he only -roared out over the heads of the people, “Nine o’clock’s -the time everybody was told to come on board. If -you don’t like waitin’ outside till the proper time you -can go home.” Hildegarde tried to convey across the -barrier that she was acting under instructions. “Keep -back,” roared the dragon, quite as if he feared the tall -figure might contemplate vaulting over.</p> - -<p>“It is a special arrangement,” she said quite low, -“made by the purser himself.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, very likely.”</p> - -<p>“I assure you the purser—”</p> - -<p>“God A’mighty, what purser?”</p> - -<p>Still Hildegarde spoke as confidentially as possible. -“The purser of this ship.”</p> - -<p>“What’s the name o’ the purser who could do a thing -like that?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Brown is his name.”</p> - -<p>“Brown ain’t the name o’ the purser o’ this ship. -Guess again!”</p> - -<p>The crowd exulted. The dodge had failed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Isn’t this the <i>Los Angeles</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, by—!” A gush of oaths before which the girl -gasped as if a bowl of ice-cold water had been, dashed in -her face. “Oh-h!—if Louis heard that! Luckily he will -never know. He’s out driving with Bella.”</p> - -<p>She took her courage in both hands. “I shall report -you if you don’t let me by. Your own agent introduced -me to the <i>Los Angeles</i> purser, and called him Mr. -Brown.”</p> - -<p>“Purser, purser”—more blasphemy—“I wouldn’t -let the <em>owner</em> of this ship on board before nine o’clock.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Brown said—”</p> - -<p>“Brown! Brown!” shouted the man, goaded to -frenzy by this feminine obstinacy. “Look yere, if he -was Black and the devil himself I wouldn’t let ye in -after the orders I’ve had.”</p> - -<p>The crowd chuckled and swayed.</p> - -<p>The tall girl craned her neck over the barrier in the -uncertain light. She had caught sight of a lurking figure -uncommonly like the fat purser’s, seeming to seek shelter -behind a bale of merchandise. “Why, there he is now,” -she said quite low. “Mr. Brown!” No answer, and the -figure vanished. “Mr. Brown!” she called, in a clear, -penetrating voice. “I’m here, as you told me to be. -Mr. B—”</p> - -<p>Hurriedly the tun-bellied figure reappeared and whispered -to the dragon. A brief low-voiced altercation between -the two men. Only one word distinguishable to -the girl on the other side of the barrier, “noospaper.” -A growling menace of “trouble sure” from the dragon, -and then the gate opened a cautious crack. The noospaper -woman and her suit-case were plucked from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> -murmuring crowd and set upon the ship. She turned to -thank her rescuer. For all his amplitude he had melted -into air. On the far side of the barrier, under the electric -light, the crowd murmured and swayed, coupling -the name of Brown with opprobrium.</p> - -<p>The ship was badly lit and silent as the grave. Hildegarde -felt her way down into the saloon, where a single -light was burning. She found her cabin, and she put -a jacket and a suit-case in her berth. On reflection, to -make it look the more occupied, she added a green felt -hat with her card stuck in the narrow band. Then out -into the dim saloon. How strange for her to be in this -place. So strange, she had a fleeting notion she would -presently wake up and find herself in the little white -room at home. But no, for the purser, who appeared -and disappeared like some incorporeal essence, was -standing at the door of the saloon with a pile of letters -and telegrams, and little packets, saying: “There’s -flowers, too, an’ a box o’ fruit an’ a basket. When the -steward comes, I’ll send them to your room.”</p> - -<p>Last letters from the few who had been allowed to -know the name of her ship, from her mother and the -boys, from Bella, from Eddie Cox—no one had forgotten -her except— He might come yet. Even Bella’s mother -had sent a telegram, saying she hoped Hildegarde would -find the traveling tea-basket a slight solace. Bella sent -fruit, and wrote: “Come back as much the same Hildegarde -as you can. You won’t be quite the same I know. -No one is after a great journey. Too much happens. No, -I shan’t ever see you again, dearest of all my friends, -but let the Hildegarde that you bring home be as much -like the old Hildegarde as you can manage.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p> - -<p>These letters, the last echo of the old voices. Why did -she hear plainest of all the one who was silent.</p> - -<p>What was this! Homesick already, and the anchor -not yet weighed?</p> - -<p>She would go on deck. At the foot of the companionway -she took heart of grace, breathing in gratefully the -whiff of fresh air that came down to greet her. But half-way -up she paused. What was that—that sound like the -deep groundswell of the sea? Why, that must be the -crowd—those people on the other side of the barrier and -the ever-augmenting legions all along the water front. -It was the sharp-featured youth, with the shifty little -eyes, who had called her wish to check her baggage “a -brilliant idear”; it was the drunken man who had -shaken his little tired child; the woman with the white, -white face; that other woman with the ear-rings, who -hated anybody who went in front of her—all the people -who had jostled and elbowed and tried to force her back. -Soon they would be here, her daily companions. No -escape. They were to become as familiar as people she -had known all her life, as those home people who already -seemed as far off as the dead folk are. But the home -people weren’t dead; they were driving and dancing, -and they had nothing more in common with Hildegarde -Mar. She was henceforth to be companioned by that -hungry crowd out there, with its vague murmuring, like -the sea at Monterey. Dancing and merrymaking fell -back into that far-off world that she had left so long -ago, before she came all by herself to Seattle, all by herself -was setting sail for Nome. Even when she reached -the top of the companionway the noises on the wharf still -sounded muffled for the most part and seemed to come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> -from afar. But every now and then a single anger-sharpened -note—or a cheer it might be—went up into the -still air as startling as a rocket, and like a rocket seemed -to burst in that higher region and come falling down to -earth in a shower of sharp broken cries and strange, -unnerving noises. She remembered the man who had -set the child on his shoulder, and a woman with gray -hair. She seemed to see them trampled under foot. The -woman in the sealskin jacket looked on. Something -menacing even in the muted cries, as though they presaged -some mighty uprising of a trampled people. Had -there been sounds like these abroad in Paris streets in -the days of the Revolution? The solitary girl lent herself -for a moment to that terror of the mob which dimly -feels that no physical danger on the earth can match the -peril you may stand in before the fury of the mass. Any -single creature, however angry or debased, is a human -being. But the mass!—the mass is a monster, and the -monster was at the gate.</p> - -<p>Along the deserted deck she went, making hardly any -noise, and listening with tense nerves.</p> - -<p>How strange for her to be in this place alone.</p> - -<p>Oh, Louis! Louis! and suddenly she had stopped. She -was leaning her head against a stanchion, and the tears -were running down her face.</p> - -<p>But very soon she was ashamed.</p> - -<p>Drying her eyes, she went aft on the upper deck. The -air was soft and wooing. All the harbor full of shipping; -and lights—lights everywhere. The arch of heaven -was very wide and filled with an infinite dusk. It was -like some soothing and benignant presence. She faced -about, still looking up, and saw the keen little crescent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> -of the young moon hanging aslant, seeming to bend down -over the <i>Los Angeles</i>. The sight of the little moon comforted -the girl curiously. It seemed to be shining so -hopefully, so gallantly, setting its tiny horns for a signal -just over Hildegarde’s ship. She turned a silver -coin in her pocket while she wished, and in the dusk she -curtsied to her Moonship. Feeling a little less forlorn -after performance of these rites, she walked the silent -deck with firmer step and the hornèd moon for company, -trying not to listen to those sounds down there upon the -wharf—trying to recapture her early zest in this enterprise. -Now there were dim figures moving about the -shadowy deck, and in the smoking-room a light was -turned on. Through the window she could see a group -of four men. They stood before a big sheet of paper -laid upon the table, and they argued some point with -anger. Why, one of the men was the little agent! “I -swear it’s all right”—he raised his voice excitedly—“all -quite regillar an’ legal.”</p> - -<p>A snigger near where the girl stood made her aware -of the presence of two men behind her there in the dusk, -one indifferent, half turned away; the other, through -spectacles that caught the smoking-room light, looked in -over Hildegarde’s shoulder at the angry group.</p> - -<p>“What are they arguing so about?” asked the girl, a -little anxiously. If either of the men outside answered -she didn’t hear, for the noise below on the wharf had -been growing louder. Surely there was a riot going on! -“Oh, what is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter down -there?”</p> - -<p>“The matter is it’s close on ten o’clock,” said the -man with the spectacles.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p> - -<p>“But they promised to let the people in at nine!”</p> - -<p>“That’s the trouble.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t they?”</p> - -<p>“That’s why.” The spectacled face nodded toward -the smoking-room window. The voices in there were -held down now, but three of the faces were angrier than -ever. The fourth was sullen and set.</p> - -<p>“Won’t you tell me what is happening?”</p> - -<p>“Only a little false swearing.”</p> - -<p>“What about?”</p> - -<p>“The size of the passenger list. The <i>Los Angeles</i> is -chartered to carry three hundred. They’ve sold over -five hundred first-class tickets.”</p> - -<p>“Is that the inspector in there?”</p> - -<p>The spectacles moved up and down, making “Yes” -with flashes of light, and the lowered voice said: “He’s -refused to sign our clearance papers.”</p> - -<p>“Then we won’t get off?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, probably.” The reply rang so cynical, as the -spectacled stranger walked after his silent companion, -that Hildegarde stared the more earnestly through the -window at the drama going on within.</p> - -<p>Did they “square” the inspector? She only knew the -party broke up and melted away, and a few minutes -after, a change came over the crowd below. A sudden -animation that exploded in yells. Was it triumph? Or -was it rage? Or was it pain? Yes, surely some one was -crying “Help,” and a woman shrieked, and now a sound -like a flood breaking all barriers and deluging the world. -The lights went up on a sudden all over the ship, and -down below the gates gave way. In an incredibly short -time the ship that had seemed so lonely—it was full.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> -And the torrent of humanity that swept in looked so -wild-eyed and disheveled, angry, and possessed by evil -passion, that Hildegarde turned and fled down the companionway, -and hid herself in her cabin. Ah, yes, she -wasn’t much of a heroine. It had been the work of a -few seconds to turn the dim and silent ship into a howling, -flaring pandemonium, hundreds of angry voices -clamoring, complaining, threatening, shouting questions, -muttering hoarse abuse. “The company”—everybody -was blaming the company. Dozens of people tried to -force their way into the cabin for five, at the foot of -whose authorized list of occupants stood the name of -“Miss H. Mar,” and in one of whose berths that intrepid -adventurer was sitting in the midst of her possessions, -cross-legged like a Turk, staring, listening, wondering -what was going to happen when Governor David M. -Jones appeared. Was this he? No, only a huge young -woman, in a man’s hat and ulster, who growled and -muttered unintelligibly—a foreigner, who seemed to be -cursing in Dutch. But this other, breathing American -fire and biblical brimstone, this must be Mrs. Governor -Jones, holding up her skirt, half torn out of its gathers. -Would she wreak vengeance for that as well as for -graver misfortunes on the Turk in the upper berth? As -the night wore on the people sorted themselves. Hildegarde -came to distinguish between the interlopers and -the women who belonged in here; battered and breathless -and worn out, but held together by a common bond of -fearsome experience in getting on board, and agreed, -besides, in regarding none too benevolently the person -who sat up there in the farther top berth, staring with -wide eyes at the stories of what the others had suffered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> -and herself saying never a word, till some one came to -the door to ask if Miss Mar was “there all right.” “<em>I</em> -don’t know,” said the nearest woman crossly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, yes,” said the Turk, tumbling out of the top -berth. “Is that you, Louis?” Now she knew how sure -she had been, and how hugely glad of his coming. But -there at the door only the fat purser, who seemed to have -gone mad. He stared vacantly at the young lady, pulled -off his cap, and polishing his shining crown with a large -handkerchief, muttered abstractedly: “Oh—a—<em>that’s</em> -all hunky-dory!” and hurried away. As soon as she recovered -her breath, Hildegarde caught up her hat and -went after him to explain and to inquire.</p> - -<p>But he was swallowed in the crowd. She made a tour -of the deck. But no, one couldn’t stay long, and anyhow -Cheviot wasn’t there. Not even the Blumpittys -seemed to be there. Curlyhead was refusing to come and -be put to bed, refusing in terms incredibly sulphurous -for one of such tender years. It turned you sick to hear -such language from baby lips.</p> - -<p>“Where you off to?” said one man to another just in -front of Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Goin’ to report to the authorities.”</p> - -<p>“Report what?”</p> - -<p>“The rat hole they’re askin’ me to sleep in.”</p> - -<p>“Plenty o’ time. We ain’t goin’ to get off till to-morrer, -anyway.”</p> - -<p>“<em>What!</em> Why, we’re a week late a’ready.”</p> - -<p>“Some of us’ll be later’n that. The authorities are -goin’ to hold back a couple of hundred fur the next -ship.”</p> - -<p>“Who says so? <em>I</em> ain’t goin’ to wait.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well”—he lowered his voice—“there’s inconvenient -questions about over-crowdin’.”</p> - -<p>The raging malcontent of the moment before was -straightway tamed. You saw in his face that he would -do his share in hushing up the conditions under which -he was to make the voyage.</p> - -<p>As Hildegarde sped along the last stretch of the deck -before going below, her astonished eyes fell upon the -giant. Then he hadn’t got off by the <i>Congress</i>! She -was about to ask him if he’d seen the Blumpittys, but -some one else was surprised to find the giant on board -the <i>Los Angeles</i>—a puffing, excited individual, with a -red beard, in the act of pushing past, stopped, stared, -and then clapped the giant on the back. “Gawd A’mighty! -Is that you!”</p> - -<p>“No,” says the giant calmly. “I’m Ford O’Gorman.”</p> - -<p>Again Hildegarde hurried down the companionway, -and very much as an agitated tabby seeks refuge in the -attic, she clambered into the top berth furthest from the -door.</p> - -<p>And Cheviot had never come!</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">When she waked the next morning it was to a -sensation of strange silence and gentle motion. -Why, they had got off, then, after all!</p> - -<p>She was on her way to Nome.</p> - -<p>She sat up and looked about at the wreck -of wardrobe and the prostrate bodies of women. One -made a noise like a half-suppressed moan. After a moment -the owner of the little sound of misery got up and -tried to put on a pink flannel jacket. For some reason -that simple operation appeared to be painful. She was -about to abandon it. Hildegarde, half-way down from -her berth, said, “I’ll help you.” But the other shrank -away. “No, no.” She leaned her forehead against the -upper berth.</p> - -<p>“You aren’t sick already, are you?”</p> - -<p>“No, it’s only—they nearly broke my arm in the -crush last night.”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h!”</p> - -<p>“I think it’s just strained, that’s all.”</p> - -<p>As she turned round to sit on the edge of her berth, -there, hanging outside the nightgown’s split sleeve, was -the injured arm, bare to the shoulder, swollen, discolored.</p> - -<p>“Oh! What have you been doing for it?”</p> - -<p>“I was thinking of going out to get some cold water.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Is the water here hot?” Hildegarde asked, bewildered.</p> - -<p>The woman didn’t trouble to answer.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was investigating. “Why, there’s no -water at all!”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>After more looking about, “Have you discovered -where the bell is?”</p> - -<p>The woman lifted sleepless eyes and gave her an odd -look. “I don’t expect bells on this ship.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I didn’t know.” Hildegarde put on her dressing-gown, -took the tin ewer and sallied forth. After a -variety of adventures she came back. The woman lifted -her face out of the pillow when she heard the sound of -water splashing into the tin basin. “Oh, they got it for -<em>you</em>.”</p> - -<p>“No, I got it for myself. Come and hold your arm -over, won’t you? I’ll bathe it.”</p> - -<p>A little surprised—a little doubtful, the woman got -up, saying, “Thank you.” What a nice voice said it! -But this fine-skinned, delicate-faced traveler was disposed -to be reserved. Hildegarde could feel that for -some reason she was suspicious of such ready friendliness.</p> - -<p>“It’s most dreadfully bruised. How did you do it?”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t do it.”</p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, a man.”</p> - -<p>“How in the world—?”</p> - -<p>“Against the barrier. He was trying to get in front of -me. I told him he was breaking my arm, but he—” -She left the sentence unfinished.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p> - -<p>Hildegarde’s eyes followed the last trickle of cool -water over the vivid purple and yellow and green of the -swollen bruise. No doubt the hurt showed the ghastlier -for the natural whiteness of the skin. “Well, whoever -did it would be sorry, I think, if he saw your arm this -morning.”</p> - -<p>“Sorry?” She moistened the end of a towel and -Hildegarde helped her to arrange a loose compress.</p> - -<p>“Yes; sorry and ashamed.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t know them as I do.”</p> - -<p>“Know who?”</p> - -<p>“Men.” Then, as Hildegarde made no instant rejoinder, -“<em>I</em> was alone,” the woman added, so pointedly -that Hildegarde hastened to say, “I’m alone, too.”</p> - -<p>But the other seemed not to believe this, or, at least, -to take no account of it. “Last night wasn’t my first -battle,” she said; “I’ve been in the wars all my life,” -and with a weary superiority she went back to her berth.</p> - -<p>Ah, she was one of those women with a standing grievance! -Hildegarde felt for her the cheerful forbearance -of the person who unconsciously takes his own immunity -from rancor as a tribute to his nice disposition or his -balanced judgment.</p> - -<p>Up on deck a flood of sunshine, a dazzling sea, a green -shore not yet very far away, a distant background of -snowcapped mountains.</p> - -<p>On board the <i>Los Angeles</i> few people yet afoot. There -was Curlyhead dashing about, responding to Hildegarde’s -good-morning with a cheerful oath. She took -hold of him. “Listen to me,” she said, “you are not to -say such horrible things.”</p> - -<p>“Shut up!” and more of the same sort. She dropped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> -the child with precipitation and walked to the ship’s side. -Those two men just there by the life-boat, had they heard -the dreadful words? She was hot at the thought. They -seemed to be talking about the boy now, that spectacled -man and his friend. The friend must have a cold or -something wrong with him, for even on this glorious -morning he kept his arctic cap pulled down over his -neck, and his overcoat “storm collar” turned up above -his ears. Instead of taking a constitutional before breakfast, -there he was lounging behind the life-boat. The -spectacled man got tired of so sluggish a companion. He -left the muffled-up figure and began to tramp about by -himself. Hildegarde passed him with “good-morning.” -There was her steamer-chair in the corner. She ought to -get it out and place it before the deck overflowed.</p> - -<p>The spectacled man lent a hand.</p> - -<p>“Well, we did get off,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Yes. When was it?”</p> - -<p>“About half past four, they say.”</p> - -<p>“Then this is Puget Sound?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Those are the Cascade Mountains on that side. -The Olympics on the other.”</p> - -<p>Just then the giant came swinging down the breezy -deck.</p> - -<p>“Oh, do you know,” Hildegarde asked him, “if Mr. -and Mrs. Blumpitty got on board all right?”</p> - -<p>“Well,” said the smiling Hercules, “they got on -board.” He waited a moment. When the spectacled -gentleman had taken himself off. “Got your seat?” he -asked.</p> - -<p>“Won’t this be a good place?”</p> - -<p>“I mean for meals.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Must I see about that?”</p> - -<p>“If you don’t want to eat scraps at the second table or -the third.”</p> - -<p>“My ticket is first-class.”</p> - -<p>“That’s got nothing to do with it. Shall I go and see -they keep you a place?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, will you?”</p> - -<p>When she went down to breakfast she was bidden to -a vacant seat on the giant’s left. The other belonged to -one of the two ex-governors on board. But this particular -excellency was not up yet. Beyond the place reserved -was a lean lathe of a man, with a voracious appetite. -Opposite, sat a big, shy individual, to whom -people spoke deferentially as “Senator Cochrane.” -Next him a slim, attractive-looking woman, with fair -hair, too young, you would have said, to be the mother -of the girl beside her; but this pretty little person in her -teens was Mrs. L’Estrange’s daughter, so said the giant. -What on earth could be taking people like that? The -giant didn’t know. Neither did the person next him, a -gentleman with a white “goatee,” who told the company -that, as for himself, though, like everybody else, he -expected to get a claim, he was taking sixty dozen chickens -to Nome, and was “dead sure to make a good thing -of it.” He longed to talk more about chickens, and was -obviously disturbed by his stout friend further down, -who would keep shouting remarks to the chicken-merchant -about thirty-eight horses he had on board, and -whose conveyance to Nome was costing the fat gentleman -$100 apiece; and he didn’t grudge it. Indeed, the -horses’ quarters were so superior to the fat gentleman’s -own, that he’d “been thinkin’.” There wus one o’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> -them horses—a daisy lot they were—but there wus one -of ’em he’d taken a dislike to. Didn’t know why, quite -groundless—but the fat man was like that. His wife -said he was notional. Perhaps she was right. He never -contradicted a lady. But, anyways, he was goin’ to give -up his own first-class accommodation. In future he -would bunk with the horses. And the one he had a “pick -on,” the mare with one white stocking and a star on her -forehead, she should have berth 147. If you had a quite -groundless but deadly spite against any one, that was a -sure way to fix her, just put her in berth 147. “Anyways—ladies -first,” he wound up, handing to the pretty -mother of the young girl a vast dish, in which slabs of -fat bacon floated in an inch of grease.</p> - -<p>Not only the horse-dealer and the giant were attentive -to the supposed wants of the three women who appeared -at breakfast. Two of the roughest-looking of the men -had stood aside on Hildegarde’s entrance to let her go -first, and there were those who warmly recommended the -cold bully-beef, and yet others who urged upon her the -excellence of the hot buckwheats. Could these be the -wild animals who had roared and ravened outside the -night before?</p> - -<p>At Hildegarde’s end of the table sat a group of three -who seemed to have interests in common. “Mining -men,” the giant said. They talked of the difficulty in -getting all their machinery on board. They and the -giant had stayed up till the <i>Los Angeles</i> left the port of -Seattle, mounting guard over their “stuff.” They aired -their views about the ship. Plenty of white paint on her -(or had been before so much of it came off on the passengers)—but -the <i>Los Angeles</i> was a whited sepulchre.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Hasn’t she just been an army transport?” ventured -Hildegarde, with the average American’s unquestioning -respect for anything indorsed by the Government.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, pressed into the service during the Spanish-American -war. But the <i>Los Angeles</i> is nothing more -nor less than an antiquated Cunarder from ‘way back,’ -known to our grandfathers in the sixties as the rolling -<i>Roumelia</i>. She got such a bad name even in those days -of primitive ocean travel, that she had to clear out of -the Atlantic. They rechristened her, brought her round -the Horn and turned her on to the Japan trade. Except -for taking those Johnnies to Manila, she hadn’t carried -passengers for thirty years until this company got hold -of her, crowded in ten berths where there’d been two -before, or none at all, and lied about the number of people -they’d sold tickets to.”</p> - -<p>In the act of shoveling in Boston beans with his knife, -the lean individual next Hildegarde paused to remark: -“If a man had committed the worst crime in the calendar, -it’d be a brutal punishment to make him sleep in -the suffocatin’ black hole they’ve put me in.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly—” began one of the three financiers, assuming -the lean one to be agreeing with him.</p> - -<p>“But,” interrupted the bean-feaster, “when they says -t’ me they wusn’t no more room, I says, ‘Lookee here, -it’s worth anywheres from fifty to sixty thousand dollars -to me to be among the first to git there. You can put me -in <em>any</em>wheres,’ I says. ‘Y’ can do anything in hell,’ I -says, ‘except leave me behind.’ An’ b’ gosh they done -it.” He champed his beans with a look that betokened -renewed relish at having given the conversation an unexpected -turn. Accomplished as this person was, he, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> -a plate full of Boston beans and a knife, could do nothing -as original with his food as the passenger on the other -side of the table next to the pretty girl. After one fascinated -stare in his direction, Hildegarde felt it wiser to -look away. It was not, however, that moment’s astonishing -vision that prevented her from eating her own breakfast. -The giant was charitably concerned. Try this, -and that. But Hildegarde disposed of a little of the -sticky gray porridge and condensed milk, a sip of the -muddy coffee, and then she played with the sour bread -while she listened to the conversation. Suddenly, whirling -round her pivoted chair, she returned with ardor to -the sunshine-flooded upper regions.</p> - -<p>It looked as though every soul who wasn’t at the first -breakfast must be on deck. In this clear and searching -light Miss Mar’s traveling companions stood revealed—a -strange, an unexampled crew. Scraps of German, of -Swedish, of French, and of tongues to which she had no -key, floated past her ear. In this new world of the <i>Los -Angeles</i>, no color line discoverable, no alien labor law in -force. Her eye fell upon the cryptic faces of the Japanese, -and on familiar types of negro and mulatto, cheek -by jowl with lawyers, clergymen, and senators. There -were raw, red Irishmen, and overdone brown Hebrews. -The captain went by talking broad Scotch to the English -doctor, and the pig-tailed crew pulled at the cordage in -unison to an uncouth Chinese chant.</p> - -<p>And never was such sunshine, never shores so green, -never before mountain ranges so ethereal, so softly -touched with snow or wreathed in cloud.</p> - -<p>But the people—the people!</p> - -<p>The girl wandered about, all eyes, or sat in her long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> -chair, for which there was hardly room now on the -swarming deck. She held in one hand a little volume in -which never a page was turned, for here, moving up and -down before her, was matter more wonderful than any -history written in any book. The thought she found -coming up oftenest: What on earth takes him—or her—to -Nome? For Louis, it seems, was in one thing right. -Here was no Klondike company of sturdy pioneers, all -men of brawn, or Amazonian women. Some such were -in the throng, but the majority, weedy clerks and dyspeptic -nondescripts. There went a man with only one -arm to dig his gold. Several smartly dressed ladies -flashed by with an air of being on their way to a garden -party. Here was a hollow-chested youth with a corpse-like -face, crawling painfully about with the aid of a cane. -There were other children besides Curlyhead, and a number -of quite old men—one grizzled creature with both -feet “club.” What are <em>they</em> going to do in such a place -as Nome? Hildegarde seemed to be the only one to wonder. -Every face shining, every heart seemed lifted up. -One and all were well-assured they had only to see Nome -to “obtain joy and gladness.” “Nome is the place,” -their faces said, “where sorrow and sighing shall flee -away.”</p> - -<p>Here were the Blumpittys, looking a good deal battered, -but he, at least, no gloomier than common, and she -beaming like all the rest. Hildegarde got up to greet -them. “I looked for you at breakfast.”</p> - -<p>“We are having ours later,” quoth Mrs. Blumpitty, -as one admitting habits luxurious. But since the second -table had been summoned some time before it was patent -that to be of the Blumpitty party meant you must eat at -the third.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Are you comfortable where you are?” inquired the -rusty one solicitously.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, quite, thank you,” said Hildegarde, a little -ashamed at being so infinitely better off than poor Mrs. -Blumpitty. But that lady, with an air of subdued pride, -was presenting, “One of our party, Dr. Daly,” an important-looking -man of thirty or so, with a highly impressive -manner. “Ruth, Ruth, please come here! My -niece, Miss Sears.” “My niece” was little and shy and -brown. Hildegarde felt instantly that she was a nice -niece. “And this is Mr. Tobin. Dr. Merton”—about -nineteen this last gentleman, with the complexion of a -lucky girl. “And Dr. Thomas.” Why, it rained doctors! -Which was the dentist? Hildegarde on reflection -decided they were all dentists. “Oh, and here comes -Miss Leroy Schermerhorn!” Mrs. Blumpitty spoke in -the tone of a chamberlain announcing “Her Majesty the -Queen!” Through the crowd advanced the heralded -“business woman to Blumpitty & Co.,” a lady of twenty-eight -or thirty, with a somewhat defiant face under the -shadow of a fuzzy black bang, and a ruthless eye. When -it had pierced Miss Mar in many a vital spot, it fell upon -the only deck-chair on the ship, with its “robe” and -scarlet cushion. “Well, you’re making yourself pretty -comfortable,” said Miss Leroy Schermerhorn. “Like -your room?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was in no haste to reply.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Blumpitty bridged the chasm. “I was so glad -when I heard you’d got a berth up-stairs.”</p> - -<p>“I guess it cost you a lot,” said Miss Schermerhorn, -with a snap of her eyes.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Hildegarde. “It was a piece of luck.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m that glad and relieved,” said Mrs. Blumpitty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> -as the haughty Schermerhorn retired a few paces -to whisper conclusions in Dr. Thomas’ ear, while surreptitiously -both pursued their study of Miss Mar. But -Mrs. Blumpitty’s eye still angled among the sea creatures -that swarmed upon the waters of Puget Sound. -With a little jerk of satisfaction she landed yet another -big fish.</p> - -<p>“Miss Estelle Maris.”</p> - -<p>Oh, yes, the lady with the languid air, the rakish hat -and red velveteen blouse; this was the one who “said” -she could cook.</p> - -<p>“Any more of our party up yet?” Mrs. Blumpitty -asked her.</p> - -<p>“Guess the rest’s asleep,” answered Miss Estelle -Maris.</p> - -<p>“Guess so, too,” said Mr. Blumpitty, with benevolence. -“We wus all pretty tired.” And that was the -sole reference to the battle of the night before. Neither -then nor later from any member of Blumpitty’s staunch -party a syllable of complaint at their quarters on the ship.</p> - -<p>Mr. Blumpitty himself, during these amenities and -some further conversation, had stood by the ship’s side, -looking sadly toward Vancouver Island.</p> - -<p>“There goes our breakfast horn,” said his wife at last, -as one who offers substantial cheer.</p> - -<p>The Blumpitty party melted away; only the leader -remained. “Guess everybody that ain’t on deck’s either -eatin’ or asleep.” He offered it as a general comment -upon existence.</p> - -<p>“I suppose so,” said Miss Mar.</p> - -<p>“And the smokin’-room’ll be empty. Will you step -in there a minute?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes.” (What on earth—?)</p> - -<p>“Little matter o’ business,” he said, leading the way.</p> - -<p>Two men in one corner puffed bad cigars while they -bent over a glazed paper, whereon a certain property -was outlined in red ink. No one else there. Hildegarde -and Mr. Blumpitty took the opposite corner.</p> - -<p>“I got t’ give y’ $25,” said Blumpitty, as one who -has studied every alternative.</p> - -<p>“What in the world for?” asked the young lady.</p> - -<p>“Bonus on the <i>Congress</i> ticket.” He had pulled a -roll of bills out of his pocket, and the breeze in the -transit from open porthole to open door paused on its -way to toy with greenbacks of a goodly denomination.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know there was a bonus,” said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Naw,” said Blumpitty vaguely, as he handed her the -money. He got up murmuring “breakfast.” But when -he found himself on his feet he glanced with slow caution -at the absorbed faces opposite, still bent over the map -of a mining district, and lowering his voice, “Did Mrs. -Mar say anything to you touchin’ the Mother Lode?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Well, don’t mention it, will yer?”</p> - -<p>As Hildegarde looked up to say, “Oh, no, indeed,” -there was the spectacled man’s friend at the porthole. -At least it looked like his cap and his high collar, for -that was all of him that any one could see. Even that -much vanished the moment Hildegarde raised her eyes. -When she and Mr. Blumpitty reached the deck the -arctic cap was nowhere to be seen. How had he disappeared -so quickly in such a crowd?</p> - -<p>Mr. Blumpitty paused a moment before going below, -muttering to himself, “I jest been talkin’ to a gentleman”—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> -yellow-gray eyes went over the heads of the -throng—“a gentleman that thinks <em>he</em> knows where it -is.”</p> - -<p>“The Mother Lode?”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty’s pale visage relaxed to something remotely -like a smile as he answered, “But he don’t.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose,” said Hildegarde, “all these people in one -way or another hope to find it—the Mother Lode, you -know.”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty’s vague eyes came back from the snowcapped -range of the Cascades, and dwelt with a ruminant -sympathy upon the passing faces. “Ya-as, they -think they’re headin’ straight fur it. But they ain’t.”</p> - -<p>“Nobody on all this ship, or on all the other ships is -really heading straight but you.”</p> - -<p>“Wa-al”—he seemed to wish to be strictly, punctiliously -accurate—“I got to go to Snow Gulch first.”</p> - -<p>“But after that?”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as. After that!” And Blumpitty went to the -third breakfast-table on his way to millionairedom and -the Mother Lode.</p> - -<p>The girl lay back in her long chair and stared at the -crowd, thinking how strange it was that Hildegarde Mar -should be among them, and even while she wondered the -sense of strangeness was wearing away.</p> - -<p>And these purblind, trustful creatures, filled with -their pathetic hopes, was it of them she had been afraid? -She smiled at the absurdity. They were rough and -crude, but not in the least alarming—except at a distance. -She pondered this, catching glimpses of a truth -of wider application. When the motley throng had stood -without the gate struggling and crying to be allowed on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> -board this enchanted ship, when Hildegarde had stood -apart from them, not enlightened by sharing in their lot, -she had had her moments of misgiving, or rather she had -been seized by a quite childish panic.</p> - -<p>And, after all, what harm can they do me? Poor -little Curlyhead, they might teach him a few more bad -words (though even that was open to doubt)—one or two -ignorant girls in their teens, they might suffer. But -Hildegarde Mar—how could they hurt a person twenty-six -years old, who is among them for a few days out of -a lifetime. What’s the good of me and my better advantages -if I can be injured by this sort of thing?</p> - -<p>It was something to get back her courage to be alone -among these people. Last night she had been under an -illusion about them. Yes, she had had some bad moments, -but they had come chiefly because she had so -set her heart on seeing—yet no, let her be honest. -Louis’s neglect had put her out of tune, disheartened her -quite unaccountably, but the worser moments had come -through positive fear. And the fear had come—oh, it -was clear now—it had come through having her mind -filled with foreboding by the people who cared most for -her. There was always that potency in evil prophecy—it -went a long way toward bringing about its own fulfilment. -If good were foretold you were afraid to believe -it. If evil you were afraid not to believe.</p> - -<p>There was that much truth in the fabled power of the -Evil Eye. Her expedition had been so frowned on, eyed -so askance; small wonder she had failed to keep her -courage quite untarnished. Well, she had found out one -thing on the threshold of the journey. It is the fear felt -for us by the men who love us that makes cowards of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> -womankind; it is others’ shrinking that goes far to make -us quail.</p> - -<p>She took a sheet of folded note-paper out of her little -Tennyson and her pencil traced the words: “On board -the <i>Los Angeles</i>, May 31, 1900. My dear Louis—” Yes, -she would write him a long, long letter, and tell him how -little ground there was for fear. But she would write -very gently, even humbly, and get him to understand -and to forgive her. She would show him how much -better his fellow-men were than he had given out.</p> - -<p>She remembered with an instant’s loss of enthusiasm -her room-mate’s account of the matter. But she decided -that lady was of a carping and a gloomy nature—she -looked on the dark side. Perhaps Hildegarde would -feel less cheerful herself if she’d had her arm nearly -broken—but an accident could happen anywhere.</p> - -<p>“And the stoop-shouldered man is the father.” It -was Mrs. Locke, Hildegarde’s room-mate, who said the -words, her eyes on Curlyhead. That person, in a towering -rage, stood in a group of laughing men. They were -plaguing him just to hear him swear. Mrs. Locke was -still very white, her arm in a sling. But what a nice -face she had!</p> - -<p>“<em>Do</em> sit here,” Hildegarde urged, and finally prevailed. -The new-comer said very little. Others stopped in passing -and talked to Hildegarde. Mrs. Locke sat and looked -at the sea. Before one o’clock a stiff breeze sprang up. -It cleared the deck as if the people had been so many -mosquitoes, for the <i>Los Angeles</i> began to roll. “I am a -fair sailor,” said Mrs. Locke. “I shan’t mind.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, this is where you are!” some one was saying -familiarly just behind them, Hildegarde thought to Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> -Locke. But on looking round she met the purser’s fascinating -smile. Mrs. Locke got up instantly, murmuring -something about feeling the need of a walk. The purser -dropped comfortably into the vacant chair.</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear, and how do you find yourself this -morning?” As Miss Mar did not instantly respond, -“Goin’ to be a good sailor?” he said, with a great display -of teeth.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde looked at him and decided he was a little -idiotic, but that she must have dreamed the “dear.” She -answered him upon that supposition. Still he talked -rather queerly, she thought, till the first horn sounded -for dinner.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got a place for you at my table,” he said, getting -up.</p> - -<p>“Oh, thank you, but I have a seat already.”</p> - -<p>“That don’t matter, it won’t go beggin’. I’m lookin’ -out for you all right,” he assured her, as though he had -heard himself accused of neglect. “I was up till five -this mornin’, so I slept late, or I’d been around before.”</p> - -<p>“It is very good of you, but I’ve got quite a good -place. I won’t change, thank you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, come now, don’t be huffy. How could I tell -you’d be up at breakfast? Come along, my dear.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde stared at him, and then she said quite -gently: “I’m not the least huffy, but I’ll keep the seat -I have, thank you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, very well! <em>Very well!</em>” and he took himself off -in a state that might, perhaps, be described in his own -words as “huffy”—oh, but very huffy indeed.</p> - -<p>Before Vancouver’s Island faded out of sight everybody -was greatly intrigued to see the men of the British<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> -post there signaling the passing ship. What were they -doing that for? People ran about the decks asking one -another, “What’s happened?” It was an exciting moment, -for this communication, whatever it was, would be -the last the <i>Los Angeles’</i> passengers would know for -many a day of the great world’s happenings. A boom -of cannon came across the water. The news filtered -down from the bridge: “Lord Roberts has entered Pretoria!”</p> - -<p>“And that’s the last human sign,” said ex-Governor -Reinhart, “till we sight the ships at Nome.”</p> - -<p>“Or, better still,” amended one of the first table -financiers, “the last till we signal to the Nomites: The -fleet’s behind! We’ve won the race. ’Rah! for the -<i>Los Angeles</i>!” The betting had already begun. The -run was to be anything from a week to a month.</p> - -<p class="tb">Losing sight of land meant losing sunshine and calm -seas, almost, it would appear, losing the vast majority of -the passengers.</p> - -<p>The next few days saw a surprisingly deserted deck. -The <i>Los Angeles</i>, however antiquated, had lost none of -her pristine capacity for rolling. At least ninety per -cent. of the people were laid low. Most of the stewards -(all green hands working their passage to Nome), instead -of ministering to others on the way, were making -the voyage on their backs.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, the only one of her cabin to leave it, -dragged herself on deck early every morning to find -fortitude by dint of staying out in the air. It was not -solely the awful pitching of the ship, not even the added -discomfort of the dank, cold weather, that made up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> -sum of her discomfort. The purser had got on her -nerves. Still she didn’t like snubbing him any more -than was strictly necessary—not from fear of reprisals -(though, beyond a doubt, he was a power in this tiny -kingdom), but because it was hideous to her even to see -any one’s self-respect hurt, let alone be the one to deal -the wound. Nor could she help sympathizing with him. -He must be under a ludicrous and rather pathetic illusion -about himself to “go on” like this. Whenever he -could be spared from his duties, there, wherever Miss -Mar turned, was the fat purser, practising his most killing -smiles, and proffering aid and companionship. In -these gray and dripping days of nearly abandoned -decks, her sole refuge was in the society of the giant, -who discoursed pleasantly of sea-birds, and in any moment’s -lifting of the fog pointed out more whales. And -he piloted Hildegarde’s see-sawing steps fore and aft till -she found her sea-legs. She was vaguely conscious that -at a pinch she might count on the spectacled man.</p> - -<p>Three days, now since she had had a sign from the -Blumpittys or any of their party except Dr. Daly. He -had laughed and said: “They’re all very busy. Guess -they don’t want to be disturbed.”</p> - -<p>It was a relief when in the middle of a rainy afternoon -Ruth Sears came to the surface. She was very wan and -looked pathetic, childish, and attractive, too, in a skirt -to her knees, stout boots and long gaiters. And she had -come to ask Miss Mar for a little meat extract for Mrs. -Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had not waited for that moment to be glad -she had disregarded the warm recommendation not to -bother with ship supplies of her own, but to help herself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> -out of the Blumpittys’ and pay at the end of the -voyage.</p> - -<p>Ruth said sadly: “There’s been some mistake. Our -grocery box can’t be found.” Down the two girls and -the giant went to the regions behind the dining-saloon -to open the provision-box whose contents had been Miss -Mar’s daily solace. There, in the swaying dingy murk, -where the figures of Chinamen flitted, they opened the -padlocked box and drew forth jars of Liebig, crackers, -cheese, and silver packets of tea.</p> - -<p>“Oh, it <em>is</em> kind of you!” Ruth’s gentle eyes were shining. -“She hasn’t had anything for forty-eight hours, -but she’ll be able to eat <em>now</em>.”</p> - -<p><em>Poor</em> Mis’ Bumble Bee!</p> - -<p>“I’ll lend you my alcohol lamp,” said Hildegarde. -“I make tea every afternoon when it isn’t too rough. -Won’t you come and have some?”</p> - -<p>The wan little niece going off with her hands full, -paused an instant. “If—if I’m able, thank you.”</p> - -<p>“You ought to be more on deck. Of course you’re -ill if you stay down there.”</p> - -<p>“I couldn’t take care of them if I didn’t,” and she -was gone.</p> - -<p>The next day the fat purser was so all-pervading that -Hildegarde felt herself making up her mind that really -something must be done. She had scant patience with -girls who complained at this order of infliction. Her firm -conviction, “It’s their own fault”; though just how the -purser’s foolishness was hers she could not determine.</p> - -<p>The afternoon was wild and rough, the smoking-room, -packed and noisy. The overflow of men, with a few -very subdued-looking women, sat below in the “Ladies’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> -Saloon”—a feebly-lit, ill-smelling little room, where an -aged upright piano kept company with a hurly-burly of -freight and three rickety chairs. Hildegarde’s fortitude -threatened to give way after two minutes of the foul, -close air. But up on deck the purser! and not a soul -beside, except the bean-feaster, Mr. Isaiah Joslin, trudging -up and down in oilskins, and the arctic cap driven -off the bridge by the inclement weather. He sat in the -most sheltered corner of the upper deck, obviously -asleep, with arms folded and head withdrawn into his -collar. The wind rose and the rain swept down upon -the place where Hildegarde and the giant (with intervals -of purser) had spent the morning. Oh, where was -that giant now? She moved her chair to the better -shelter near the arctic cap. At least, the purser did it -for her, and was altogether so oppressive with his poor -little gallantries and what the giant called his “toothsome -smile,” that Hildegarde felt, whatever the penalty -of his worst displeasure, in another moment she would -be doing something more drastic than throwing out -broad hints which he either disregarded or affected to -consider humorous. She wished now that before moving -she had said something even he couldn’t misunderstand. -With another man by it would make the purser mad -with fury. In any case, hardly fair to subject him -publicly to a snubbing as effectual as she saw was going -to be necessary. The arctic cap, for all the seeming -blindness and deafness of his hidden face, might be -listening. So Miss Mar merely drew her tartan plaid -up about her shoulders and observed with some gravity -that she was going to sleep. The purser took up a romantic -attitude at her feet, saying, “Good-night.” Hildegarde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> -jumped up. “I’ll go and see how Mrs. Blumpitty -is.”</p> - -<p>Getting rid of the purser lent a rapture even to going -below. And as she went she smiled, remembering how -her mother was comforting herself with the thought of -the Blumpittys (“splendid sailors” both of them!) -pledged to watch over Miss Mar, and if she were laid -low to bring her sustenance on deck out of their private -supplies. Four days and no glimpse of either of her -guardian angels till this moment, when, rolling through -the second saloon on her way to smooth Mrs. Blumpitty’s -pillow, Hildegarde, pitching from side to side, clutching -at anything within reach to steady herself, caught -sight of her stand-by, her protector, the man who was -going to minister to her and “see her through,” Blumpitty, -with ghastly visage, clinging to the knob of a -cabin door like a shipwrecked mariner to a spar. In -these days of seclusion poor Mr. Blumpitty had sadly -altered, wearing now a yellow-gray beard of some five -days’ growth, bristling upon a countenance pea-green -and pitiful.</p> - -<p>“Oh, is that you?” says the young lady, holding on to -the rough board that covered with newspapers at meal -time, did duty down here for a dining-table. “How do -you do?”</p> - -<p>“How—” Blumpitty stopped at that and devoted -his entire attention to keeping hold of the knob.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde didn’t quite like to go away and leave -him to his fate, at a moment so abject in the Blumpitty -history, nor did she quite know how to conduct a conversation -under these conditions. She decided frankness -was best. So, as her friend still clutched and tried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> -to steady himself, she gave way a little to smiling. “I -thought you were a seasoned old salt, Mr. Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>He only rolled his yellow eyes—but no, that statement -is misleading, for Blumpitty rolled his entire economy. -Yet never a word rolled out. Hildegarde, wishing to -spare his feelings, added, as she turned to go, “A great -many people seem to have been bowled over by the -pitching of <em>this</em> ship.”</p> - -<p>“No ship,” said Blumpitty in a sepulchral whisper, -“no <em>ship</em> could make a man feel like this.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was alarmed. Was Mr. Blumpitty about -to be snatched from them by some fell disease?</p> - -<p>“Wh-what do you think it is?” she inquired, with another -lurch, but much sympathy.</p> - -<p>He clung now with both hands to his savior-knob, -while the rolling <i>Roumelia</i> worked her own wild will -upon Mr. Blumpitty’s contorted frame. “It’s the -cook,” he groaned.</p> - -<p>“The <em>cook</em>!” This was indeed terrible! His brain -was giving way!</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he went on hoarsely in an interval of comparative -steadiness, “I know these fellows. If a sea-cook -thinks he’s got too many people to feed—he—oh, -Gawd!—he puts stuff in the coffee, or soap in the bread—and—people -don’t want to eat any more.”</p> - -<p><i>Roumelia</i> resented this aspersion upon her son. She -shot Mr. Blumpitty forward with extreme violence, and -he, entirely without volition, found himself going on -deck. But perhaps the same force that took him up -brought him down and put him to bed, for Hildegarde -saw him no more.</p> - -<p>Over her further descent into that part of the ship she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> -had been intended to occupy, it is considerate to draw a -veil.</p> - -<p>She reappeared like a mourner at a funeral, following -at Ruth’s side in the wake of a figure borne on a -mattress between a steward and the giant. The prostrate -form of poor Mis’ Bumble Bee, speechless, blind, -deaf, was laid in the one sheltered corner of the deck. -Ruth, very weak and unsteady, went back to that fetid -under-world that beggared description, ministering to -miserable men and women lying helpless on shelves, tier -above tier to the ceiling. Even to be down there for five -minutes was a thing to be remembered shuddering as -long as one lived.</p> - -<p>After putting her cushion under Mrs. Blumpitty’s -head, Hildegarde glanced round.</p> - -<p>“Lookin’ fur the purser?” said Mr. Isaiah Joslin, -grinning and holding on to a stanchion.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Hildegarde, with some dignity.</p> - -<p>Mr. Joslin accepted a graver view of life’s possibilities. -“That feller’ll get a thrashin’ if he don’t look out.”</p> - -<p>“The purser?”</p> - -<p>“Yep.”</p> - -<p>“Why—who will—?”</p> - -<p>“That man up there’ll be attendin’ to it.” Mr. Joslin -nodded toward the bridge. The Arctic Cap was -scanning the misty world through Captain Gillies’ -glass.</p> - -<p>“Why should he? Besides, I thought he was an -invalid.”</p> - -<p>“Wa-al, maybe that’s it. P’raps he thinks it’d be -good fur his health.”</p> - -<p>“What would?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span></p> - -<p>“W’y wallopin’ the purser.”</p> - -<p>“What’s <em>he</em> got against the purser?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Says</em> he don’t like the color of his hair. But as the -purser ain’t got no hair, it’s my private opinion the -gentleman up there don’t like his fascinatin’ ways.” He -looked significantly at the tall girl. Hildegarde bent -down to tuck the tartan round Mrs. Blumpitty. Now, -why on earth should the Arctic Cap care how the purser -behaved to—other people?</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">When Mrs. Blumpitty found herself being -taken below that first evening, she revived -sufficiently to protest, and so frustrated the -giant’s amiable design of carrying her off -to bed. The invalid stayed on deck day and -night, and instead of dying as the captain and all the -passengers confidently expected, she got well and “lived -happy ever after” on that voyage upon Miss Mar’s supplies, -sharing even the fresh eggs which the giant, by -some means, acquired daily from the Nome-bound hens. -Hildegarde was sorry she lacked courage to share Mrs. -Blumpitty’s new quarters. But the “queerness” of -sleeping out of your bed—in the public eye, too!—almost -the immodesty of it (in the passenger mind), if unpalliated, -as in Mrs. Blumpitty’s case, by threatened dissolution—no, -it was too daunting. Since Mrs. Locke -could “stand it” in the cabin, Hildegarde must. Even -Mrs. Locke’s seamanship had gone down before the <i>Roumelia’s</i> -roll, but she was getting better. She made fitful -appearances on deck. But there was something odd -about her. You never knew whether it was sea-sickness -or distrust of her kind that would carry her suddenly -below when a fellow-passenger stopped to speak to her.</p> - -<p>Fresh from a raid upon the provision-box, Hildegarde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> -coming on deck one evening, found Mrs. Locke in an -hour of clearing weather between showers. There was -even a strip of ruddy sunset to gladden the voyager’s -heart.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde looked round for her chair.</p> - -<p>“It rained two drops a little while ago,” observed -Mrs. Locke, “and the man you call the giant moved your -things.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, did he?” Hildegarde stood at the ship’s side, -looking at the fading red.</p> - -<p>By and by, “Sit on half my stool,” suggested Mrs. -Locke.</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” said Hildegarde, feeling that coming -from such a source this invitation was immensely cordial. -“It’s very kind of you.”</p> - -<p>“No, that isn’t it.”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“You’re the sort of person everybody wants to do -things for.” She seemed to point it out as a fault on -Miss Mar’s part.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde looked at her curiously. “I should have -thought <em>you</em> were more that kind of person, except -for—” The cameo-like face must have been beautiful -before it grew so white and set. You felt that a touch -of color even now, a little happiness, would make it irresistible.</p> - -<p>“Except?” Mrs. Locke echoed.</p> - -<p>“Well, you know you <em>do</em>—Shall I say it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“You do receive friendliness a good deal at the point -of the sword.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve learnt my lesson.” As Hildegarde said nothing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> -“Wait till <em>you</em> are—” But any inclination to be -more explicit vanished.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde thought she had intended to say, “Wait -till you’re as old as I.” “I have a feeling you -know immensely more than I do,” said the girl, “but I -don’t believe you’re much older.”</p> - -<p>“I’m thirty-two.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’m twenty-six.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t look that much.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose it’s having eyes so wide apart.”</p> - -<p>“No, I think it’s your childish chin and your air of -believing everything. But, anyhow, my thirty-two -counts double.” Then, as if again to turn the conversation -away from herself, “You’re an infant, but rather a -wise infant, after all,” she added, relenting a little. -“Only what takes you to Nome?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde told her. “And what are you going for?”</p> - -<p>“Money.”</p> - -<p>“Not beach gold,” said the girl smiling.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been sent for. I shall be bookkeeper to one of -the large companies.”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h.” Hildegarde’s big eyes were so obviously uncongratulatory -that Mrs. Locke said firmly, “It’s work -I’m used to.”</p> - -<p>“But—up there, won’t it be very rough and difficult -for—for any one like you—all alone?”</p> - -<p>“They pay three times what I’ve been getting. I’m -very lucky to have the offer, at least as I count luck now. -I used to think—to have ambitions.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t wonder,” said Hildegarde, betraying a flattering -confidence in the other’s powers.</p> - -<p>“I know my measure now. I’m a failure.” And still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> -there was no weakness, no repining in her tone. Level -and courageous, but without comfort, wholly without -anticipation.</p> - -<p>“What shall you do with the money you make?”</p> - -<p>“Buy freedom.” Was she thinking of divorce? Apparently -not, for she went on, “No woman’s free who -hasn’t enough to live on without asking anybody for it. -So I’m going to Nome to avoid slavery.”</p> - -<p>“Your husband doesn’t mind?”</p> - -<p>“He’s dead.” No trace of emotion in the low voice. -But yielding to the invitation in the girl’s eyes, she told -in brief outline of a hard life. The last six years of it -alone. “But as to that, I was alone before. Only people -didn’t know it, and so things were easier.”</p> - -<p>“How easier?”</p> - -<p>“There are always people to help the women who -don’t need help”—and then something of the disillusion -that followed upon her husband’s death; of difficult -bread-winning; of inforced close relations with men -through her work, and what she thought of them. “Exceptions? -Well, I suppose so. I’ve once or twice -thought the exception had come my way.”</p> - -<p>“And were you wrong—<em>always</em> wrong?”</p> - -<p>“You see the kind of men a bookkeeper in a western -town is thrown with—oh, you have to walk very warily, -to hold yourself down, to seem to misunderstand—not to -let your disgust cost you your bread and butter.” Hildegarde -looked at the pure outline of the profile again. -It was all very well to talk of having learnt lessons and -of being over thirty, thought the girl. Mrs. Locke’s -troubles aren’t over yet.</p> - -<p>But perhaps she would find something better than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> -money on this journey, a real friend, or even—Several -of the passengers were disposed to be conspicuously civil. -There was that lawyer with the clever face. He was -walking the deck now in the giant’s company, and every -time he passed he looked at Mrs. Locke.</p> - -<p>“I’m sure that man wants to come and talk to you,” -said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“If you get up, I shall go below.”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t you like Mr. Meyer?”</p> - -<p>“Why should I like Mr. Meyer?”</p> - -<p>“Well, he likes you. Doesn’t that a little—just a -little—No? Well, then, there’s another reason. He -told me he thought you were so plucky that you ought to -be helped.” As even this generous sentiment seemed -not to melt the lady, “You’d better be nice to him,” -said Hildegarde lightly, smiling in her effort to make -her companion a little cheerfuller. “He told me he -could get you a Nome lot that you could sell by and by -for $2000.”</p> - -<p>“Did he say what I was to pay for it?”</p> - -<p>“You don’t pay anything, that’s what’s so beautiful.”</p> - -<p>“Really! Why doesn’t he get it for himself?”</p> - -<p>“He’ll have one, too. Everybody will who knows—as -he does—which are the forfeited ones. The thing is, you -must live on the lot. Then you acquire squatter’s sovereignty, -and you can sell it for $2000.”</p> - -<p>“I see; and how much am I to give Mr. Meyer?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you <em>are</em> suspicious! He takes a real interest. -He wants to ‘put you on to’ some unrecorded mining -property he knows about.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Has he told you?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p> - -<p>“He didn’t tell me why a busy man like Meyer should -stop to think of me.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think men never help women?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, when they see some advantage for themselves.” -And then dark histories. The general effect of her experience, -the sum total of that knowledge she had -brought out of commerce with men, and which was always -ready to rise up and menace her—it seemed almost -incredible to the sheltered woman. But it was not all -narrow, personal repining. Mrs. Locke had theories. -She had lived once in a state where women voted. She -told stories of going to the polls. In spite of the opposition -of male politicians she had once herself held office.</p> - -<p>“Well, how did you like being a notary public?”</p> - -<p>“I hated it, but it taught me things.”</p> - -<p>“Unless my life’s a failure,” she said, with an unconscious -loftiness, “I don’t expect to have time to -bother about politics.”</p> - -<p>“You’d feel differently if you didn’t belong to the -privileged class.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, but I don’t. I belong to quite plain people. And -we’ve been very poor.”</p> - -<p>“Have you ever worked for your living?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. Intelligent and able-bodied, and yet -you’ve—”</p> - -<p>“I’ve helped at home.”</p> - -<p>“You may have saved the wages of a housekeeper or -a sewing woman, but you’ve taken what was given you -as a dole; and you haven’t a notion what you’d do if -the men of your family died or cast you off. Or—<em>have</em> -you?”</p> - -<p>“I never thought about it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s what I mean. You belong to what they call -the privileged class. The ‘privilege’ is to know as little -of life as a pet canary.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde only laughed.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, you sing very sweetly, and the song says -you’ve got all the rights you want. All it means is that -through some man living or dead the singer has what -material comforts she needs. And the burden of the -song is, ‘Look how contented and feminine I am. <em>I’m</em> -all right. With the mass of womankind it’s different, -but I shan’t bother.’”</p> - -<p>“You think it’s different with the mass?”</p> - -<p>“You know it is. Never mind”—she made a little -impatient move of the head as though to free her brain -from some thorny contact—“I’ve had my time of trying -to help the rest. From this on I have just one object. -I’ve made up my mind to put up with any and -everything till I’ve bought my freedom. That’s why -I’m here.”</p> - -<p>“How long will it take you to buy freedom?” asked -Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke clasped one hand over the other on the -railing of the ship and leaned her chin down on the -whitened knuckles. She fixed her steady eyes upon the -wave-fretted, glaucous-looking waste, less like water than -like vast fields of molten lead, falling into furrows, forever -shifting and forever shaped anew. “I say to myself -that if I slave and rough it for five years more, I -shall be able to buy a little home in the country and know -some peace before I die.”</p> - -<p>It seemed a gray existence, and Hildegarde, with the -hopeful self-sufficiency of happy youth, felt in her heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> -that the woman must somehow be to blame. Men were -not always or usually what Mrs. Locke gave out. Even -in the crush at the wharf, though the rougher people -had pushed and jostled and sworn, nobody had tried to -break Hildegarde’s arm. Mrs. Blumpitty had roughed -it, but she didn’t complain of men, though Blumpitty -must be a trial. No, poor Mis’ Bumble Bee, on her pallet -of straw in the corner of the deck, was by the side of this -other woman an enviable object even in the worst weather, -and the statement may stand although it lack its -true significance to that portion of mankind which happened -not to be in the North Pacific or the Bering Sea in -the first June of this century. Even when the weather -was not doing anything spectacular, the dank chill was -of the sort that searched the marrow. The fogs penetrated -tweed and mackinaw and even leather, till people’s -apparel wilted, and conducing less to warmth than -shivering, clung to their figures as clammily as a half-dried -bathing dress. The rugs and “robes” and wraps -weighed each a ton—the very bedclothes seemed never to -be dry. Day and night the fog-horn hooted, or, when -the all-enveloping grayness lifted for a little, it was only -to loosen the great rains, as if most mighty Jupiter -Pluvius, thinking to use the ship for his tub, had pulled -the shower-bath string just above it, discharging a waterspout -over the <i>Los Angeles</i>. And after that, sleet, mist -drizzle, and fog again.</p> - -<p>Every man on board began to suffer visibly and audibly -from the national complaint. In vain they hawked -and spat and trumpeted; the great American Cold had -them by the nose. All they could do in their misery was -to reduce companionway and deck to a condition best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> -left undescribed. But it was this more than any other -thing that made the heart of the unhappy Hildegarde to -falter and grow faint.</p> - -<p>There were moments when, too chilled to sit still, worn -out with tramping up and down, wet, and yet more miserable -by reason of certain sights and sounds, she, nevertheless, -rather than face the greater horror below, would -stay on deck all day, wondering a little sometimes that -she could suffer so much acute physical misery and yet -not rue her coming. For even now, the moment she envisaged -a possible escape—a passing yacht that should -take her luxuriously home, or any pleasant miracle of -rescue—she discovered that come what would, she was -not only bound to keep on, but as determined to see it -through as she had been that night of Louis’s return, -when, innocent of most that it implied, she had said she -would go and bring her father home.</p> - -<p>In the carrying out of her resolution there was nothing, -as yet, to be afraid of in the sense she vaguely had -supposed her brothers and Louis Cheviot to mean, but of -sheer physical wretchedness and soul-sickness, enough -and to spare for the chastening of any spirit.</p> - -<p>There had been a good deal of heavy drinking in the -last day or two. As for Curlyhead’s father, he seemed -never to be sober, and yet he had wits enough left, as well -as cash, to bear a hand in endless games of poker. At -first there had been little card-playing. But now, as -people began to grow used to the motion, they crawled -out of their berths to look at the world from the upper-deck, -shiver and go below. Down there, what was there -to do but the one thing? If you played once, you played -every day, and all day, and more than half the night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> -People who couldn’t as yet sit at the table to eat, sat -there between meals breakfasting, dining, supping off -“chips” and bits of pasteboard—not missing fleshpots, -since always a jackpot graced the board. There were -those who grudged the meal hours. Glowering upon the -people who used the tables for mere eating, they stood -about impatient till a place was cleared and the real -business of poker might begin.</p> - -<p>The same thing went on straight through the ship. -According to the giant, they were as hard at it in the -second-class as they were in the first, and on down as far -as the horrible berths went, wherever men could get a -board or a barrel-head, there they were with cards in -their hands.</p> - -<p>Not men only. And not only the woman with the -sealskin jacket and the diamond ear-rings (did she sleep -as well as eat and play in these adornments?); other -women, too, sat at the absorbing game.</p> - -<p>“Are they really gambling?” Hildegarde had asked -the giant, the first time he found her in a group looking -on.</p> - -<p>The giant had laughed and said, “Don’t they look it?”</p> - -<p>“No. They are so—so quiet.”</p> - -<p>“That’s when they’re plunging worst.”</p> - -<p>“You mean they’re making large sums of money -here now, and take it like that?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and losing, too, and take it just the same. It’s -only in books that gamblers gurgle and gasp.”</p> - -<p>But even the cheerful giant had seemed to feel this -was no place for Miss Mar. “Aren’t you coming up-stairs?” -As she still lingered fascinated, “I’ve been -getting some oranges for you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></p> - -<p>“How?”</p> - -<p>“Out of a crate that’s bust.”</p> - -<p>“Your crate?”</p> - -<p>“Everybody’s crate.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde laughed. He was so exactly like a great -school-boy proposing a raid on an orchard. “I’ve got -oranges of my own,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Yes, but these are tangerines,” and he led the way.</p> - -<p>Very few people up there in comparison with the -crowds in saloon and smoking-room. Mrs. Blumpitty -asleep under sodden blankets; a group of men, tarpaulin -over their knees, crouched in a sheltered corner smoking -pipes and talking plans; a furry apparition sitting near -the edge of the deck on a bollard—Ruth Sears in a long -wolfskin coat, barely out of reach of the rain, a very -solitary little figure bent over a book. Hildegarde went -by unsteadily, and as the ship lurched Ford O’Gorman -caught and saved her from falling. He kept hold of her -till he had anchored her safely aft among the crates of -fruit.</p> - -<p>“I’m very glad you didn’t, but how was it,” said -Hildegarde, stripping off the loose jacket of a purloined -tangerine, “how was it you didn’t go by the <i>Congress</i>, -after all?”</p> - -<p>To her astonishment the red of the sunburnt cheek -above her shoulder deepened and spread all over O’Gorman’s -face, but he spoke quite naturally, and even offhand. -“Oh, I was afraid I wasn’t going to get all my -freight on board the <i>Congress</i>.”</p> - -<p>But that sudden red in so stalwart a visage lit a danger -signal. It was ridiculous to suppose, and yet, was -this going to be the trouble Louis Cheviot had dreaded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> -for her? She had up till then suffered no check in the -comfort of the giant’s cheerful companionship; but was -she being too much with him? She recalled Ruth Sears’ -gentle but speculative eyes, raised a moment from “The -Little Minister,” to follow the pair as they passed.</p> - -<p>“I’m going to talk with Mrs. Blumpitty’s niece -awhile,” Miss Mar announced suddenly. The giant -stared. With a conscious effort and a letting down of -spirits, Hildegarde turned from him, encountering Mr. -Matt Gedge, the sharp-faced young man who had been in -the crowd on the Seattle wharf and had satirized her -“bright idear” of looking after her baggage.</p> - -<p>“Is O’Gorman,” he began, and then looking past her, -“—<em>thought</em> if the lady was here you wouldn’t be far. -Say!” he arrested Miss Mar. “Has he told you there’s -robbers aboard this ship?”</p> - -<p>“Robbers? No! What makes you think—”</p> - -<p>“There’s a woman down in the second saloon—all -she’s got in the world’s been swiped.”</p> - -<p>“But they’ve started a collection for her,” said -O’Gorman.</p> - -<p>“Yep, we’ve fixed up the collection and we’ve fixed -up a Vigilance Committee. Come along, it was your -idear, so let’s go and give her the money.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you can do that,” said O’Gorman. “But hold -on a minute. Make it sixty-six for luck.” He fished in -his pocket. “I guess she’s spent more than a dollar’s -worth of worry.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde stopped by the immobile figure still reading. -“That’s a good warm coat you’ve got,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Yes”—Ruth looked up with absent eyes—“but it’s -too long.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Is it! I should think it kept your ankles good and -warm.”</p> - -<p>“Y-yes.” She looked at the unspeakably filthy deck, -and tucked the skirts of her coat tighter round her.</p> - -<p>“I see the good of a short skirt here,” Hildegarde’s -eyes followed hers, “and it looks very nice on -you, too.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad,” said the girl, “if you don’t think it’s too -short.” Then she told Hildegarde about her life up in -Alaska, how she had traveled, and cooked, and nursed, -and hunted, and cured skins, and followed the trail; and -did each and everything the better for wearing a skirt -to the knee.</p> - -<p>“But it’s hard after we’ve worked so, my aunt and -me, to see men looking at us in that way as if they -thought we were—were, you know, the wrong kind. Just -because we try to adapt ourselves to the life.”</p> - -<p>“Some people might not understand; but surely these -men—”</p> - -<p>With her head Ruth Sears made a little motion of -negative. Slight as it was, it admitted no supposition -of there being any doubt about the matter. “They’d -rather we all wore trailing skirts and diamond ear-rings.”</p> - -<p>“It’s really rather nice of them, in a way,” said Miss -Mar.</p> - -<p>But the one who had had the experience was less free -to discover in the charge a survival of the starved spirit -of romance. “That Mr. Tod,” Ruth went on, “he was -up there last year. I’ve cooked him many a dinner. -Only yesterday I heard him agreeing with a lot of men -that he wouldn’t like to see <em>his</em> daughter going about in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span> -such a short dress, and all the while he was talking he -was spitting on the deck.”</p> - -<p>More here for the eye that could see than a base-mannered -churl discussing feminine attire. He, in his way, -was dealing with one of the important questions of the -age. Also he had on his side many a learned and fastidious -critic of society, for all that the great current of -the future was set the other way. Some inkling of this -last reached Hildegarde, and it reached her through a -dawning sense of her own unfitness. She would never be -in the vanguard with skirts kilted high for action. She -was one of those who would cling to the outworn modes. -For all that, she would for the rest of her life understand -some things better because of these strange days -in the microcosm of the ship.</p> - -<p>While the third dinner was being cleared away, Hildegarde -looked into the music-room. A dilapidated -young woman, at the dilapidated piano, singing a comic -song, and the cross-eyed man accompanying on the flute. -A number of people sat about on the few rickety chairs -and the many boxes and bundles, listening in a kind of -painful trance, or passing back and forth over the -wooden lattice of the raised flooring between which and -the boards below escaped bilge-water slopped about with -the motion of the ship and too frequently came to the -surface.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke was not there at all events. As Hildegarde -turned away from the noisome-smelling place a well-dressed -woman of about forty, who had been leaning on -the piano (undisturbed, apparently, by the highly abnormal -sounds it gave forth), followed Miss Mar to ask: -“How is the sick lady in your room?” Miss Mar knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> -her interlocutor to be Mrs. David M. Jones, but they -had not spoken before.</p> - -<p>“There are two still sick,” Hildegarde answered.</p> - -<p>“I mean the one they’re afraid’s got smallpox?”</p> - -<p>Miss Mar opened her wide eyes very wide indeed. -Even Louis had never thought of that chance. “I -hadn’t heard about it,” she said. And presently, “Do -you know where Mrs. Locke is?”</p> - -<p>“I think she’s gone to get the doctor,” answered the -ex-governor’s wife. “I had meant to be in the room you -and she are in. Pretty satisfied now to be out of it.” -With which she returned to the festive scene.</p> - -<p>Even Hildegarde, who was so little nervous, would -ordinarily have found her self-possession shaken by the -news that she had been sleeping for nearly a week within -two feet of so contagious and foul a disease; but she took -the information more quietly than can well be credited -by any one who has never cut the ties that bind us to -resourceful yet care-filled civilized life.</p> - -<p>Those who have once severed the thousand threads find -not only some hardship and heartsoreness, but certain -natures find, too, the larger calm that only perfect acquiescence -gives. It is not all loss to be unable to run -from danger. You gain a curious new sense of the inevitableness -that lies at the roots of life, a sense smothered in -the country and forgotten in the town. And this calm -that walks the perilous places of our earth with its front -of untroubled dignity and its steadfast eyes, this gain -amongst many losses was not denied the girl faring North -for knowledge and for old devotion’s sake.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” the steward said, Mrs. Locke was in her cabin. -As she went toward it, Hildegarde wondered if it were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> -written among the things to be that she herself should -die there, and would Louis be hearing one day how -they’d buried her in Bering Sea. She opened the door, -and there was the object of her quest looking on at a -strange and sufficiently horrible spectacle. Stretched -full length upon the floor, in her nightgown, lay the -Dutch woman speechless, with a face swollen and scarlet. -The ship’s doctor, standing astride of her huge hulk, bent -over and peering under the heavy eyelid, which he had -forced back with his thumb, looked into the rolled-up -eye. Hildegarde, with noiseless lips, made the question, -“Smallpox?” Mrs. Locke answered, in a low voice, -“Smallpox! No. Lack of self-control.” How this -worked out Hildegarde did not wait to inquire. It was -too ugly to see that big woman lying there under such -conditions, and the place smelt of alcohol.</p> - -<p>But outside it was hardly better. The card players -had gathered like flies settling down upon the remains of a -feast, and at the end of the saloon three men were quarreling. -Through an atmosphere thick, horrible, rose the -angry voices. Was there going to be a fight? One -might face death, even from smallpox, and yet not know -quite how to accept life among sights and sounds like -these.</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter?” said Mrs. Locke, catching -Hildegarde just outside their door. “You’re not afraid! -I tell you it isn’t smallpox.”</p> - -<p>“I know. That’s not it.” The girl leaned against the -wall. Two of the angry men had combined against the -third. His chief means of defense seemed to be blasphemy. -They hurt the ears, those words. She felt an -inward twist of humiliation as she remembered that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> -Louis had said rather than see a sister of his go to Nome -with the gold rush he’d see her—</p> - -<p>“Then what <em>is</em> the matter?” asked the woman at her -side, watching her with an odd intentness. “I suppose -this isn’t the first time you’ve heard a man swear.”</p> - -<p>“The matter is—I feel as if what I’d seen and heard -here would leave some sort of lasting stain. As if I’d -gone through filth and some of it would stick to me for -ever.”</p> - -<p>“No, you don’t. You’re only thinking of what some -man might think.” Hildegarde caught her breath with -the surprise of guilty recognition, as Mrs. Locke’s soft -voice insisted: “Knowing doesn’t hurt a woman. Not -the right sort of woman. But it does change us. You’ll -find life will always look a little different to you after -this.”</p> - -<p>Bella had said something like that!</p> - -<p>“It’s curious,” the woman went on, “how hard we -struggle to live up to men’s standard of our ignorance. -After all, their instinct about it is quite right.”</p> - -<p>“Instinct about what?”</p> - -<p>“That if we knew the truth, the truth would make us -free.”</p> - -<p>“The truth might make frightened slaves of some of -us.”</p> - -<p>“Only of the meanest.”</p> - -<p>“And you think men don’t want us free?” Hildegarde -asked wearily.</p> - -<p>“A very few may. There are more of the other sort.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I know one man,” said the girl, cleansing consciousness -with the vision, “one man who is the kind -you’d say was an exception. I’m sure his not wanting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> -me to come on this journey was just a natural shrinking -from seeing any girl face hardships.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke set her fine little face like marble. “This -entire ship might have been full of girls facing hardships, -and it wouldn’t have cost him a pang. But I can -well believe your coming did.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, you see, you don’t know him.”</p> - -<p>The other shook her head. “Even the best men -haven’t got so far as to want to respect <em>all</em> women. -Their good-will, their helpfulness, are kept in watertight -compartments, reserved for particular women. The -rest may go to the everlasting bonfire.”</p> - -<p>“No, no, no.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it seems even to help them in being specially -nice to some—”</p> - -<p>“What helps them?”</p> - -<p>“To have been brutes to others.” Mrs. Locke turned -to go back into the horrible little cabin. “The best -fellow I ever met told me that no man knew how to treat -a woman who hadn’t stood over the grave of one he’d -loved.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I say again, you don’t know the sort of man -I—Why, even that dreadful Matt Gedge—even he goes -and collects money for the poor woman in the second -class.”</p> - -<p>“I never said they wouldn’t show kindness when the -notion took them. It’s justice they don’t understand.” -And with that she went back to the woman who was having -a fit on the floor.</p> - -<p>Up on deck Hildegarde found a gale blowing. Where -was the giant? The chicken-merchant, joining Miss Mar -at the door, held on to his slouch hat while he inquired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> -significantly after the health of the purser. Miss Mar -had not heard he was indisposed? “Oh, yes, you ought -to go and see him. It’s nothin’ catchin’—calls it bronchitis. -Reckon it’s heart trouble,” and he cackled like -the most elated of his hens.</p> - -<p>Again she came down-stairs, wandering aimlessly -about, and then stopping by a little knot of lookers-on -at the eternal game. In that childish mood, that may -once in a while fall upon even a reasonable girl, she -thought vaguely that if she stood long enough before this -spectacle held to be unfit for feminine eyes, the giant -would certainly come again and take her away. But -the giant did nothing of the kind, and presently she forgot -him. She usually forgot things when she watched -this particular group of players. She had been arrested -just here, unbeknown to the giant, a couple of nights -before on her way to bed. In front of where Hildegarde -stood, Governor Reinhart was giving up his seat to an -eagerly waiting claimant. “They are beginning to play -too high for me,” his Excellency observed affably to Miss -Mar.</p> - -<p>“Who is winning?”</p> - -<p>“That woman over there. She’s a holy terror.”</p> - -<p>“Not that one with the gentle face and the pointed -chin?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Very pleasant and soft-spoken, too. Wife of -the man next—playing with the professional gambler -gang. They don’t tackle <em>her</em>. She’s a corker with the -cards!”</p> - -<p>It was incredible that he should be speaking of that -singularly modest and well-bred-looking woman, who followed -the game with eyes that never lifted but once all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span> -the while Hildegarde stood there. It was when the last -of her husband’s shrinking pile of chips was swept from -him by the man opposite, that the woman, playing her -own stiff game, not looking right nor left, must still have -been acutely conscious of the full extent of the disaster -at her side. The loser’s only comment was “My deal!” -as he picked up the cards afresh. Then it was that she -turned the white wedge on her pointed face, laid a hand -on the dealer’s arm, and quite low, <em>“Don’t</em> Jim!” she -said, as though she hoped to influence him with her own -hand full of cards. Naturally, he paid no heed, and -each in the death-like silence, each went on with the -game. There was something almost unnerving to the onlooker -in the strained quiet of the woman. Was she -winning or losing now? No hint of which in the pointed -white mask, while she sat a little droop-shouldered, her -arms lying on the table as if paralyzed, moving only her -long supple fingers, gathering in or throwing out—unless -she dealt, and even then moving about a tenth as much -as any one else on either side up or down the long board. -After what Governor Reinhart had said, each night on -her way to bed, Hildegarde had paused a fascinated instant -watching this woman; or by a group lower down -where Curlyhead’s father was, often with his little boy -on his knee. While the elders played, the five-year-old -would sit quiet as a mouse staring wisely at his father’s -cards, seeing in them his first picture-book, learning -them for his earliest lesson.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had watched it all before, but on this particular -wet evening the spectacle assailed an unpanoplied -spirit. It was horrible. She would never get the picture -out of her head. Even when she should be at home again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span> -doing delightful things with dear and happy people, -she would remember this and the light would go out of -the day. For it would be going on still. Somewhere, -there would be people like these wasting and besmirching -the flying, irrecoverable hours. Women, too, <em>women</em>! -Something choked in her throat. She felt that she must -strike the table and cry out: “Listen, listen! You -haven’t ever heard. Life is beautiful and good, and -you’ve never known that—poor, poor people. But I -have come to tell you. Stop playing with those pieces -of painted paper and listen to my good news!”</p> - -<p>But of course they’d only think she was mad. Oh, -why had she come! With a tension as of tears, crowding, -straining the muscles of her throat, she turned -away to face again the wind-driven sleet of the deck. -She dragged her steps to the dirty companionway. From -the smoking-room above came the giant’s great laugh, -punctuating some one’s story, and what so melancholy -to certain moods as the sound of distant merriment! It -becomes for us the symbol of all that greater gladness -out of our reach, attainable to happier men. No light -as yet, except in the saloon behind her. All the rest of -the ship shrouded in the early-gathering shadows of a -stormy evening. A passion of loneliness swept over her. -As her foot touched the first step, some one came close -behind.</p> - -<p>“Is that you?” said a voice she did not recognize. A -touch, a whisky breath blowing foul in her face, and -without lifting her eyes or even uttering a sound she fled -up the stair, meaning to make straight for Mrs. Blumpitty’s -rain-soaked pallet. Half-way up she saw in the -gloom above her the blaze of a match, and there was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> -Arctic Cap, his back turned to her, holding up the -lighted match to read the run on the notice board. As -Hildegarde’s eyes fell in that vivid instant on the square -shoulders, something in outline or attitude set her heart -to beating so wildly, that, still flying on, she stumbled. -With a little cry she put out a hand and felt herself -steadied as the match fell to darkness. In a turmoil of -wonder and wild hope her cheek had brushed the coat -sleeve one lightning instant before she recovered firm -footing and stood erect with apology on her lips.</p> - -<p>The ship’s doctor and the purser came hurriedly out -of the smoking-room. But the Arctic Cap was turned -away when the sudden light streamed out. A banging -door, hurrying steps, and Hildegarde was peering in the -dark after an indistinguishable face, hoping things she -knew both impossible and mad, only to find herself standing -there alone, with thumping pulses.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">The Arctic Cap had vanished from the ship. -Every one else able to be afoot appeared on -deck the next morning in the clear and -strangely milder weather. Even the purser -was abroad, passing by with averted eye, receiving -haughtily the homage of the fair who hastened to -inquire after his health, thereby further emphasizing -Miss Mar’s neglect. She sat watchful but silent in the -sunshine, drinking in the air that seemed to bring a blessing -with it from some golden land that yesterday had -been far off, and that to-day was very near. Mrs. Blumpitty -had resumed the perpendicular and her most cheerful -air. All the Blumpitty “outfit” in the best of spirits. -The business woman to the company was exhibiting her -vaunted competency in “dealing with men” and “affairs” -by industrious prosecution of her flirtation with -the oldest dentist. Shifting groups of lawyers, “judges,” -senators, were cheerfully objurgating the mining laws. -The lean bean-feaster, who between meals was for ever -chewing gum, paused in his nervous pacing of the deck, -though not in his labor of mastication, to assure ex-Governor -Reinhart that he was “dead wrong.” This -seemed, on the face of it, improbable. But Reinhart -condescended to remind him, “Nome isn’t like any other -camp. Wait till you see the state of things <em>there</em>.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Have.”</p> - -<p>“Been there?”</p> - -<p>The bean-feaster had an audience before you could -wink, for he had nodded, chewing harder than ever. Then -a pause long enough for him to say modestly, “I’m the -man appointed by the Nome miners to go in the commission -to Washington and report.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t you go?”</p> - -<p>“Did. Coming back now.” With immense respect all -within earshot listened to the disquisition on Alaskan -mining laws, and the bean-feaster’s modest assurance -that through his exertions they were being amended.</p> - -<p>Some one aft in the steerage was playing the fiddle, -and a couple of darkies were dancing. The older woman -is Mrs. L’Estrange’s cook, and Mrs. L’Estrange is the -Southern lady of fallen fortunes who is going, with a -store of fine damask and all her family silver, to open a -high-class boarding-house at Nome! She had read of -Mrs. Millicent Egerton Finney, who, in the Klondike, by -this means, had made a “pile.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke’s admirer, Mr. Meyer, was displaying a -small working model of a superfine contrivance, only to -discover that every man on the ship had a superfine -contrivance of his own which was the grandest thing -on earth in the way of gold-saving. Many of the people, -as they moved from group to group, greeted Mrs. Locke -and Miss Mar; but to Hildegarde’s intent eye all other -faces were just merely not the one under the arctic cap.</p> - -<p>Her companion watched the whale birds that swarmed -so low this morning over the water. Every now and -then a fountain spouted up into the sunshine.</p> - -<p>But when Hildegarde, distracting herself an instant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span> -from her own watch, said, “Do you suppose it’s true -those birds feed off barnacles on the whale’s back?”—Mrs. -Locke’s little concern for what she stared at was -evident in her answering, “There’s one thing I don’t -understand.”</p> - -<p>“What’s that?”</p> - -<p>“You don’t seem to have much to say to your friend, -the purser.”</p> - -<p>“My friend?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“He isn’t my friend.”</p> - -<p>“Oh.”</p> - -<p>“What made you think—”</p> - -<p>“Merely that he seemed to be when you came on -board.”</p> - -<p>“You mean because he let me get into my room before -the crowd came?”</p> - -<p>“Well, that was real friendliness, but it wasn’t what -I meant.”</p> - -<p>“What did you mean?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I only thought, since you called him by his Christian -name, he might be a friend.” The tone conveyed -the widest latitude—the most varied experience of other -women’s vagaries, or their weakness.</p> - -<p>“<em>I</em> called him by his Christian name!” ejaculated -Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“When in the world?”</p> - -<p>“That very first night.”</p> - -<p>“You must be dreaming.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke shook her head. “Of course it’s no crime. -I didn’t mean that.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Crime? No. It would have been lunacy. But I -never did it.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke opened a little book that lay in her lap.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde leaned forward. For the first moment -since waking she forgot the Arctic Cap. “Do help me to -understand. What did I say?”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke’s clear brown eyes looked into the earnest -face of the girl, and then a little unwillingly, “It wasn’t -in the least my business,” she added.</p> - -<p>“What did you think you heard?”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t the purser come to the door asking if Miss -Mar was ‘all right’? And didn’t you call out, ‘Is that -you, Louis?’ and didn’t you run after him?” As Hildegarde’s -perplexed face yielded to a gleam of horrified -enlightenment, “Of course it wasn’t any business of -mine,” Mrs. Locke repeated, and looked intently at the -sea-birds flocking in a new place.</p> - -<p>“Do you—do you mean you think his name is—”</p> - -<p>“I don’t think. I know his name is Louis Napoleon -Brown.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde gasped out, “Then that was why!”</p> - -<p>“Why—”</p> - -<p>“Why he was so—surprising. <em>His</em> name daring to be -Louis! The <em>purser</em>! Oh, dear. Oh, <em>dear</em>,” and the girl -began suddenly to laugh, and grew more and more convulsed -the longer she thought about it, till she became -hysterical. Mrs. Locke looked gravely at her, even -frowning slightly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. He thought I meant him. Oh! oh!”</p> - -<p>“You didn’t?”</p> - -<p>“And you think you know the world. You called me -an infant.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I own I never could make it square with the -rest of you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I must make you understand. You see I was expecting -a great friend of mine—an old friend of all our -family was coming to see me off; at least, I hoped he was. -When I heard that somebody was asking for me, I was -sure it was—” Up and down the deck her eye went -roving. She lowered her voice—“a man called Louis -Cheviot.” And she told Mrs. Locke what he was like, -this old friend. “You see the reason I jumped so quickly -to the conclusion he was asking for me, is that he never -before failed me. He’s been a quite uncommon sort of -friend. He’s the man I’ve once or twice mentioned.” -(Mrs. Locke kept her lips from smiling, “once or -twice!”) “Though I never said what his name was. I -told you about his hunting up my father and staying -with him all those months; about his coming out with -dogs over the ice, just to bring us word; and that kind -of thing. He’s a very particular friend of all of us. -And then he’s the most wonderful company. He makes -you always see the fun of things. And you—Yes, life -is always more interesting, somehow, when he’s there. -Did you ever know anybody like that?”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t, after all, come to see you off. Yes, I’ve -known some one like that.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde turned her head suddenly. Up the deck -and down the deck the wide eyes vainly traveled. How -had it come that she had felt so sure? What had she to -go on? A likeness in the shoulder outline. Something -the same trick in the carriage of the head. A pang -shot through her. “Yes,” she said, as though agreeing -that he had failed her, “I’ve often said to myself, ‘To<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> -think of his never even saying good-by.’” (Yet she had -been imagining—A dullness fell upon her that was -worse than acute disappointment.) “He was angry,” -she went on. “We had quarreled, because I would go -to Nome.”</p> - -<p>“He was right and you were wrong,” said Mrs. Locke.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde smiled. She rather liked this woman for -veering round and taking his part. “Well, all the same, -I thought it wasn’t very nice of him not to send me any -sign of forgiveness at the last. And the odd thing is” -(her spirits revived a little in the act of talking about -this old friend) “it was so unlike Louis Cheviot. He can -be rather severe, but he never sulks. He’s the kind of -person” (Hildegarde had no idea how often she had said -“he is the kind of person”), “the kind that always looks -after his friends. And no matter how badly they treat -him he goes on looking after them. He was like that -even when he was little. His sister once told me a thing -about him that just shows you what kind of—He was -seven years old, Barbara said, and the most fiery little -patriot you ever heard of. And in other ways, yes, I’ve -often thought there could never have been a little boy -so like the grown man as this child was like the Louis -Cheviot I know.” She said it with an air of one making -an effective point.</p> - -<p>“Is that so?” said Mrs. Locke, telling herself she -hadn’t realized how handsome the girl was until this -morning.</p> - -<p>“Just to give you an idea. He had a perfect passion, -his sister says, for making a noise. Yes, but more than -any boy she ever knew. You had only to say fire-crackers -to make Louis explode with enthusiasm. The only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span> -reason he wanted to grow up was so that he could get a -gun, and he’d rather let off torpedoes than eat pie. No -picnic or birthday or holiday of any sort was the real -thing unless he could make a fearful rumpus. And the -day he lived for the year round was the Fourth of July. -Yes, yes, I know most American boys are like that, only -Louis was more so than any boy you ever heard of. So -his sister says. Well, I forgot to tell you when he was -two his father died awfully in debt. For years the Cheviots -were so poor they didn’t always have enough -bread. So they were naturally pretty short of fire-crackers. -And for those early years poor little Louis -had to get his fun out of other boys’ noise.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, the thing is to make it yourself.” Mrs. Locke -spoke with the accent of one who makes the wider application.</p> - -<p>“Of course.” Hildegarde nipped the generalization -in the bud. “Well, he learned very early that if he was -to have even a little Fourth of July he had to save up for -it. And he did. When he got a nickel or two he -wouldn’t waste it on candy, and he didn’t even buy -chewing-gum. Just saved up for July. The year he was -seven his mother had to give up trying to live in part of -their nice big house. They moved into a very small cottage -on the other side of the garden. But Louis and his -cousins, and the rest of the little boys of the neighborhood, -were going to have the greatest and most glorious -Fourth they’d any of them ever known. The others had -toy pistols and rockets and little cannon. Louis had -saved up and had got some fire-crackers and two little -flags, and he was going to make things hum. Well, there -was a man who had just moved into the Cheviots’ big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> -house and nobody liked him, but I expect they wouldn’t -have liked anybody who lived in that house without being -a Cheviot. And he had a little boy about Louis’s -age. And the little boy was very ill. Scarlet fever. -Well, on the evening of the third (you know they never -can wait till the Fourth), the boys all over town began -to celebrate, but they were going to celebrate most just -in front of Louis’s house, for that was where the great -fight was to be—the battle, you know, where they were -going to beat the British all over again. It was always -more fun, and lots more noise and slaughter if Louis -was one of the generals. So they came trooping down -the street after supper, letting off torpedoes by the way. -And when Louis heard them he tore out with his flags -and his crackers, wild with excitement. And he lined -the boys up and told them where the red-coats were in -ambush behind the wood house. Louis had lit some -punk, and the new neighbor came rushing out just as a -big cracker went off with a bang. Barbara Cheviot was -on her side of the laurel and she saw the man throw up -his hands as though he’d been shot, and then make for -Louis exactly as if he meant to strike him. Barbara was -scared for a moment. But by the time the new neighbor -got to where the boys were he was holding himself down -pretty well. Barbara heard him speaking quite kindly. -What were they going to do, and that kind of thing. -And when they told him, Barbara says a sound like a -little groan came out of his tight lips, and he looked up -at the window where the curtains were drawn. But he -asked the boys how many more crackers they had. And -when he saw what a lot there were, he only said that was -fine to have so many. When he was a little boy he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> -to share one pack with three brothers. And he said he -hoped they knew what the Fourth of July meant and -why they had a right to be proud and make a noise. -Louis answered up and told him. The man said ‘Good, -good!’ He didn’t want to put a stop to the fun, he -said. He was only thinking about the little boy up in -that room there, who wasn’t having any Fourth of July -at all this year. He was ill. So ill he might never see -another July. Yes, he was probably dying, and Barbara -says, he couldn’t go on for a minute. He had to wait. -And all the little boys looked down at the ground. -‘There’s just a chance, I think,’ the father said, ‘if he -sleeps to-night, just a little chance—if you boys would -celebrate on the other side of the town. And I’d be -very much obliged to you,’ he said. As he was going off -he turned to Louis and asked him if he’d tell all the -boys he saw, and try to keep them from coming into -this street. Louis said, Yes, he would, and the man -went back to his child. But he didn’t go to bed—just -sat in the sick-room and watched. The oddest thing -about that third of July was that Mrs. Cheviot and the -girls slept the whole night through. It was the only year -of their lives <em>that</em> ever happened. There wasn’t a -sound in their street. But the man in the big house was -too anxious and miserable about the sick child to notice -or remember anything outside that room where they -were all watching. Just before sunrise the crisis was -passed, and the doctor, who’d been sent a long way for, -and had been watching, too, said the fever had gone -down and the boy was saved. The father came out for -a breath of air. In the grayness he saw something moving -down by the fence. ‘Who’s that?’ he called out,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> -and when he got close up he saw a little figure patroling -the dim street. ‘Why, aren’t you the boy—’ he began -to say. ‘Yes,’ Louis told him, ‘I’m doin’ what I said.’ -‘What you said?’ The man didn’t remember even then. -‘Yes,’ Louis said, ‘I’m bein’ a sort o’ watchman to see -the boys don’t make a noise just here.’ And he had a -bunch of fire-crackers in his hand and two little flags in -his hat.”</p> - -<p>With suffused eyes the girl looked out across the shining -water. The old story had a new significance for her, -if none at all for Mrs. Locke.</p> - -<p>“It was, as I began by saying, more exactly like the -Louis Cheviot I know than a whole book of biography -might be. It’s because he’s precisely like that to this -day that I was so surprised when he let me go off without -a word, because, you see, he’d been ‘sort o’ watchman’ -for us, too. It’s easier to believe that nothing else -will do for him but just to see you through.” She turned -her head, and her grasp on the railing tightened—nothing -else had done! For that figure outlined against the -sky—no use any longer that he turns his collar up above -his ears, no efficient mask any more the arctic cap. That -was the “watchman” yonder on the bridge, standing -guard over the fortunes of Hildegarde Mar!</p> - -<p>“What’s the matter? What <em>is</em> it?” asked Mrs. Locke.</p> - -<p>“Only—only that the most wonderful thing that ever -happened is happening right now.”</p> - -<p>“What’s happening?”</p> - -<p>“The man I’ve been telling you about—he’s there!”</p> - -<p>“Not that one on the bridge!”</p> - -<p>“Hush. ’Sh. Don’t stir. I must be very quiet.”</p> - -<p>“Because you aren’t sure?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Because I am. Oh-h—”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke looked steadily into Hildegarde’s face for -an instant, before she turned away.</p> - -<p>The girl leaned forward. “No, no. It’s not <em>that</em>,” -she said, and from under the brim of her hat she sent -another glance to the figure against the sky. “He’s -made a lot of money in the North—he has all kinds of -business interests up here.”</p> - -<p>“How long have you known he was on board?”</p> - -<p>“I almost think that in the back of my head I suspected -before, but I didn’t know till last night. And I -wasn’t <em>sure</em> till this minute,” she added, with girl’s -logic.</p> - -<p>“You haven’t spoken at all—you two?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde shook her head.</p> - -<p>“Why do you think he wants to spy on you?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Louis doesn’t want to <em>spy</em>.” Her tone convicted -the suggestion of rank absurdity. “I told you -he’s been dreadfully angry. Too angry to write. Perhaps -too angry to speak.” Was that it? Again the upward -glance. “But”—she clutched at the inalienable -comfort—“it’s Louis Cheviot.”</p> - -<p>“Well, don’t be too certain this time, that’s all.”</p> - -<p>Not be certain? But that was just what she must be. -Another quick look, and lo! the bridge was empty. -“I’m quite, quite sure—but I—I’ll just go and see.”</p> - -<p>He was standing near the door of the chart-room. As -Hildegarde’s head came up the figure vanished. When -she reached the threshold there it was, back turned to the -door, cap bent over a map. Incredible to her now that -she hadn’t known him all along; but, nevertheless, she -stood wavering, seized by something else than mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> -excitement—a wholly unexpected shyness. Was he indeed -nursing that old anger against her? Was it conceivable -he wanted to avoid her the whole voyage? She half -turned back, telling herself that at all events something -was the matter with her tongue—it was a physical impossibility -for her to speak. Then the next thing was, she -heard her own voice saying quite steadily, with even a -faint ring of defiance, “It’s no use! I’ve found you out!”</p> - -<p>The figure flashed about, and Hildegarde caught the -shine in the black-fringed eyes as he pulled off the cap, -leaving his hair ruffled. He held out his hand, laughing, -but, as it would almost seem, a little shamefaced. -“Well, it took you long enough.”</p> - -<p>“No wonder!” She felt an imperative need to prevent -her gladness from appearing excessive. “You can’t -ever say again there’s nothing of the actor in you.”</p> - -<p>“Why can’t I?”</p> - -<p>“After masquerading all these days?”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t mean to masquerade.”</p> - -<p>“Why did you go about in that horrid cap then, and -never speak to me, or—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I never meant to stay incog. I was only waiting—”</p> - -<p>“What for?”</p> - -<p>“My opportunity; and it never came.”</p> - -<p>“What opportunity?”</p> - -<p>“Well”—he leaned against the lintel, and he was -smiling in that old whimsical way of his—“I suppose -what I was waiting for was your getting into some sort -of scrape.”</p> - -<p>“You were hoping for that!” but while she denounced -him, she, too, was smiling.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I had prophesied it. I suppose a prophet usually -has a weakness for seeing his wisdom verified.”</p> - -<p>She laughed out as light-heartedly as though the journey -had been without care or cloud. “And you didn’t -like your prophecy not to come true. Poor false prophet! -No wonder you hid your face.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, as for pretending—no, it isn’t any earthly use. -The truth is, I expected that very first evening to step -in at some psychological moment.”</p> - -<p>“Save-my-life sort of thing?”</p> - -<p>“Well, save you some anxiety or discomfort at the -least. But you were the one passenger on the ship who -didn’t suffer the one or the other.”</p> - -<p>(Ah, he didn’t know! And she wasn’t going to tell -him. Oh, dear, no!)</p> - -<p>“I go to see about your baggage. It’s checked, and -on the ship. I curry favor with the captain, so as to get -you a seat at the first table. You’ve got one for yourself.”</p> - -<p>“No. <em>I</em> didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Well, whoever got it, you sit in it. Same thing on -deck. While I’m looking for a sheltered place for your -chair you are established. I bring special provisions to -keep you from starvation. You are somehow as well -supplied and with as exactly the right things as though -you’d made the trip twenty times.”</p> - -<p>“It was the Blumpittys,” Hildegarde began.</p> - -<p>“The whattatys? Never mind. Call it any name you -like. <em>I</em> couldn’t have promised you new-laid eggs every -morning for breakfast a thousand miles from land. I -could only hang about ready to save you from unpleasantness. -But, God bless me, unpleasantness never comes -within a league of you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The purser,” Hildegarde prompted, with a gleam of -eye.</p> - -<p>But he tossed the suggestion aside with, “A little -over pleasantness that you’re able to check for yourself.”</p> - -<p>“It’s plain I’m not the stuff romantic heroines are -made of.”</p> - -<p>He didn’t contradict that. “You certainly haven’t -given me much excuse for coming along.”</p> - -<p>She was glad he wasn’t looking her way at that moment. -It was like him to declare his mission so simply, -and yet he stood there in the sunshine, smiling philosophically, -as he turned down his collar, saying, “The -merest superfluity. That’s what I am. Except,” he -added more seriously, “that if I hadn’t come I should -never have believed I was so little needed. So it turns -out that what I’ve come for is my own enlightenment.”</p> - -<p>“Not only your enlightenment,” and her eyes invited -him to understanding of a friend’s gratefulness to a -friend. But he lifted his bare head to the breeze that -swept in with the sunshine at the open door, as though, -having delivered himself of his grievance, he could think -of nothing now but the comfort of being free of that all-enveloping -cap. His eyes seemed to shine only for joy -in the sun, as he stood there ruffling still more his short, -wavy hair—the hair that did, as Bella said, “fit” him so -uncommonly well. And he certainly looked as little sentimental -as some sturdy mountain pine.</p> - -<p>“Some people,” Hildegarde remarked in a detached -tone, “would think it was a waste for two old friends—we -might have had all these days together.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I give you my word I never meant—” He -seemed to intend an apology as though he assumed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> -deprivation to be chiefly, if not solely, hers. “The very -first time I passed you I thought, of course, you’d find -me out. Then, as you didn’t. I kept putting off—Morning, -Captain.”</p> - -<p>“Morning!”</p> - -<p>“I should think you did keep putting off!”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t want you to”—he lowered his voice—“I -didn’t want to take you by surprise before people.”</p> - -<p>“You thought the joy might be too much for me?” -she demanded.</p> - -<p>Cheviot looked at her with the swift speculation in his -eye of the man who is thinking: “Now, is she going to -insist on quarreling with me?” “This is the lady I was -talking to you about, Captain. Pretty cool of me having -her up here without asking you! Miss Mar—Captain -Gillies. Now, the least I can do is to take her down,” -and, in spite of the captain’s gruff civility, that was -what Cheviot proceeded to do. “Don Quixote’s signaling. -Let’s go and see what’s up.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had not perceived that the gaunt old person -below was making any unusual demonstration. He -was always waving his arms and addressing the multitude. -“I’ve been rather afraid of that one,” she confided.</p> - -<p>“Afraid? Then it’s only because you don’t know -him. He’s the most interesting person on the ship.”</p> - -<p>“No, my Blumpitty’s the most interesting.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you show me your blumpitty and I’ll show -you mine. Mine’s got an invention for pumping water -for the placers.”</p> - -<p>“Mine’s got something far more wonderful.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t believe you. Wait till you know about Don<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span> -Quixote’s ‘systems of windmills’; they’re the greatest -ever. I don’t say his windmills will work at the mines; -but they’ve gone without a let-up, straight through the -North Pacific and the Bering Sea. Windmills all the -morning. Windmills every night. You must have heard -as you passed him on the deck, ‘Windmills,’ ‘Windmills.’ -No? Well, come along.”</p> - -<p>Rather nice to be “coming along” with Louis once -more. It was going to make a difference in this expedition.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde got a compliment to her seamanship out of -the fantastic old Alabaman. “I’ve watched this young -lady,” he informed Cheviot. “She’s as happy in a -‘norther’ as one o’ my windmills.” And he sent a rattling -laugh after them as they two went down the -swinging deck.</p> - -<p>“How different everybody looks to-day—it’s the sunshine.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I think they <em>do</em> look different.” But he did -not say it was the sunshine.</p> - -<p>“I don’t see my Blumpitty, nor, what’s more important, -Mrs. Locke.”</p> - -<p>“That’s the woman you’re so much with?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. It looks as if she’d gone below.” What did it -matter? Nothing mattered now. Miss Mar had a distinct -sense of repressing a quite foolish sense of radiant -content, not to say elation. How this having a friend -along lit up the rude and sordid ship! Not the first -time this particular friend had wrought this particular -miracle in her sight. The fact that Louis’s eyes rested -on things constrained them to reveal an “interestingness” -unsuspected before.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span></p> - -<p>“There are my three financiers,” she whispered. -“They aren’t as splendid as your Don Quixote, but -they’re very nice to me at table.”</p> - -<p>“I’m relieved to hear you’ve found some one who -contrives to be ‘nice’ there. I’ve wondered how you -were getting on,” he chuckled.</p> - -<p>The temptation to confess was strong upon her. But -no. Even Louis would be obliged to say, “I told you -so.”</p> - -<p>“At first,” she said, with the detached air of the investigator, -“I watched my neighbors, because <em>everything</em> -they did was so surprising. But by and by I got so I -could see nice distinctions and fine shades. Some of the -roughest-looking haven’t by any means the roughest -manners.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’ve discovered that, have you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. This man here”—it was necessary to draw -close and to whisper again—“he’s Mr. Simeon Peters, -from Idaho. He shouted across the table to me at dinner -yesterday to pass the butter. He was just plunging his -own knife into it as everybody at our table does.”</p> - -<p>“As everybody at every table does,” Cheviot corrected.</p> - -<p>“Well, but wait. You don’t know how elegant we are -down at our end. Mr. Sim Peters hesitated, and you -could see a misgiving dawning behind his spectacles. -He drew back just before he reached the butter-dish, and -carefully and very thoroughly he licked his knife the -whole length of the blade. Yes! Then he felt quite -happy about plunging it in the public butter.” She was -able to laugh now at what had driven her from the table -in that dark yesterday. Louis laughed, too; he even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> -carried his genial good-will the excessive length of joining -in the conversation of those same financiers.</p> - -<p>“Did you succeed in getting your plant on board?” -he asked the nearest of the trio.</p> - -<p>“Yes. But we had to pay another fellow to take off -half his stuff to make room for ours,” said financier -number two.</p> - -<p>“What process have you got?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the McKeown,” said number three.</p> - -<p>“And it’s the greatest ever?”</p> - -<p>“That’s right,” said all three together.</p> - -<p>But why, Hildegarde wondered, why did he talk to -financiers, when he might talk to her?</p> - -<p>“Them innercents think that about the McKeown,” -said a grizzled man across Cheviot’s shoulder, “only -jest becuz they ain’t never seen the Dingley workin’.”</p> - -<p>“You got the Dingley?” Cheviot asked; just as though -it mattered.</p> - -<p>“No good goin’ to Nome ’nless y’ <em>have</em> got the Dingley.” -And while Cheviot lingered to hear just why it was the -Dingley could “lick creation,” Hildegarde leaned against -the stanchion, watching him with that interest the better-born -American woman commonly feels in seeing something -of what she has less opportunity for than any -member of her sex in Europe, viz., the way her men folk -bear themselves with men. She had the sense that -again the American enjoys in its quiddity, of making -acquaintance with a new creature, while observing her -old friend in this new light. Cheviot was not only at his -ease with these people, he put them at ease with him. -They were content to reveal themselves, even eager before -the task. Was it because he looked “a likely customer,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> -or did men commonly turn to him? Now Mr. Isaiah -Joslin and his sour-dough friend were pushing in between -Hildegarde and the group where Cheviot had been -buttonholed. Joslin was scoffing at the Dingley as well -as the McKeown. “Yes, <em>sir</em>!”—he demanded Cheviot’s -attention by striking his fist in his palm under that gentleman’s -nose—“I’ll do more with a plain rocker that -any feller can make for himself out of a store box and -three sticks, than all these cheechalkers and their new-fangled -machines.”</p> - -<p>“Maybe that’s so,” said a broad, squat Ohioan, the -man Hildegarde had noticed before, going about the -ship with a tiny bottle, a little square of sheet copper, -and a deal of talk. “Maybe that’s right. But you old -sour-doughs lost a terrible lot o’ leaf and flour gold -whenever you didn’t use amalgam plates in your rockers.”</p> - -<p>“’Tain’t so easy gittin’ plates.”</p> - -<p>“’Tis now!” said the Ohioan, producing, as it were, -automatically, his little square of copper and his bottle -of fluid.</p> - -<p>“Quicksilver, isn’t it?” Hildegarde came nearer -Cheviot to ask.</p> - -<p>“Quacksilver, I guess,” but still he followed the discussion -about the McKeown “process” as though Hildegarde -had been a hundred miles away.</p> - -<p>“Now, you just time me,” the Ohioan was challenging -Cheviot. “I can silver-plate this copper in twenty seconds -by the watch.” And he did it. The only person -there who was not a witness to the triumph was the girl -whose clear eyes seemed to follow the process with a look -of flattering interest. Should she, after all, tell Louis,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> -not how glad, but just that she was glad of his coming? -Hadn’t he earned that much? Not that he seemed to -care greatly about acknowledgments from her. He -seemed to have forgotten her existence already, and they -hadn’t been together twenty minutes. All the simpler, -then!</p> - -<p>“I tell you what!”—the Ohioan had raised his voice -and enlarged his sphere of influence—“I tell you there’s -a lot o’ poor prospectors would have been rich men to-day -if only I’d discovered sooner how to make amalgam -plates this easy and this cheap.”</p> - -<p>“Cheap, is it?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, a damned lot cheaper than losin’ half your gold. -Cheaper than linin’ your rockers—yes, and your sluices, -too, with silver dollars as some fellers did. Now, this -little piece of copper”—he produced a new bit—“a -child can turn that into an amalgam plate by my process. -Here, let the lady show you.” Before Hildegarde -knew what was happening, the fragment of metal was in -her hand and the owner had tipped the tiny bottle till a -drop of the liquid ran out on the copper. “Quick! Rub -it all over.”</p> - -<p>As she did so, she saw that Cheviot’s attention was -now undividedly hers. He did not look as if he altogether -approved her acting as show woman. But not -to disappoint the inventor, Hildegarde rubbed the silvered -tip of her finger lightly and evenly over the copper. -“Why, yes!” she cried out. “Look!” And as she held -up the miraculous result the Ohioan roared with satisfaction, -“Ain’t I been tellin’ you?” The copper was -turned into a sheet of silver. “Rub and rub as hard as -you like now”—he passed the object-lesson round—“you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span> -can no more budge a particle of that stuff than -you can rub off triple plate. And <em>that’s</em> what you want -to line your rockers with!”</p> - -<p>“Looks like that silverin’ business might be worth -somethin’.”</p> - -<p>“Worth a clean million,” says the Ohioan, as he -pocketed his bottle of miracle and walked jauntily away -in the sunshine.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde and Cheviot, exchanging smiles, went on -down the deck in his wake. But suddenly the Ohioan -stopped and wheeled about in the direction of a voice -that had just said: “No, siree, I ain’t worrittin’ with no -Dingley and no nothin’ I ain’t never tried.” The inventor -of amalgam-plated copper, as though he’d heard -himself called by name, retraced his steps with a precipitation -that nearly capsized Miss Mar. The gentleman -who had just declined Dingley squared his shoulders -and announced to all and sundry: “No, siree! Y’ -got to <em>show</em> me. I’m from Missoura.” Hildegarde -caught at Cheviot’s arm. “They’ve got hold of our -saying!”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that’s everybody’s saying now,” he answered. -“I’ve heard it twenty times since I came on board.” -She waited, incredulous, listening. “If I got any minin’ -to do,” the man from Missouri went on, “give <em>me</em> -Swain’s Improved Amalgamator every time. D’ye -know what they done to test Swain’s Improved Amalgamator?”</p> - -<p>“Nop.”</p> - -<p>“Well, lemme tell yer. They took a gold dollar and -they pulverized it.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve pulverized many a dollar in my day,” says a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> -gloomy and familiar voice. While the deck chuckled -with sympathy. Hildegarde whispered, “That’s my -Blumpitty.”</p> - -<p>“Well, sir,” the other went on unmoved, “they passed -that dollar in gold dust that I’m tellin’ y’ ’bout, they -passed it through a sixty-mesh sieve, and they mixed it -good and thorough with a ton—a ton, sir, of gravel and -sand. And they run that through Swain’s Improved -Gold Amalgamator, and what do you think they -got?”</p> - -<p>“Guess,” says Mr. Blumpitty, “they got to know that -any feller can pulverize a dollar—”</p> - -<p>“Haw, haw.”</p> - -<p>“—but it’s the daisy that can pick one up.”</p> - -<p>“Well, sir, Swain’s Improved Amalgamator’s jest -that kind of a daisy. It picked up jest exactly ninety-eight -cents out of that gold dollar.” And every owner -of a rival invention roared with derision.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mr. Purser!” Louis Napoleon Brown was -hailed with a suddenness that arrested his steps, but did -not deprive him of his haughty mien. “I find I owe you -an apology,” said Miss Mar.</p> - -<p>His sternness of visage relaxed slightly. “Well, you -have treated me mighty mean,” he admitted in a low -voice.</p> - -<p>Cheviot was staring and making his way to the girl.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said, with a subdued air that might, to the -purser, have seemed to be penitential, but she spoke so -that Cheviot could hear, “You must have thought it -very forward of me to call you ‘Louis,’ that first evening. -I meant this gentleman, who is an old friend of -mine. I’ve only just realized how mystified you must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> -have been.” Wherewith she took Cheviot’s arm, and -away the two went, leaving the purser transfixed.</p> - -<p>Oh, the sun-warmed wind blowing in your face! Oh, -this seeing the brave world, with a friend at your side!</p> - -<p>“I don’t remember you at meals,” she said to him.</p> - -<p>“I never was at meals.”</p> - -<p>“Where did you eat?”</p> - -<p>“Up in the captain’s room.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you won’t any more, will you?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“You want us to eat apart!”</p> - -<p>“I don’t ‘want.’ But I can’t turn anybody out of his -seat, and they’re all taken.”</p> - -<p>Well, if he were content with this arrangement it -hardly behooved her to protest. “Come and be introduced -to my Blumpitty. I can tell from the look on his -face exactly what he’s talking about.”</p> - -<p>“What?”</p> - -<p>“Come and listen.”</p> - -<p>“Ya-as,” Blumpitty was saying, ostensibly to Governor -Reinhart, but really to a distinguished and rapidly -increasing circle, “Ya-as, queerest feller ever I see.”</p> - -<p>“Who was?”</p> - -<p>“Why, the feller I found dyin’ on the coast up above -Cape Polaris. The man that gave me the tip. I can see -that feller now. Couldn’t get his face out o’ my head -fur months. His eyes—used t’ see them eyes in my -sleep.” Blumpitty paused, and seemed to struggle -feebly with an incubus. “Never see such eyes in any -man’s head ’fore nor since.” Again he paused an instant -to think out something. “Reckon it makes a man -look like that.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What does?” demanded the Governor.</p> - -<p>“Knockin’ up agin the Mother Lode.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the Mother Lode!” said Reinhart, slightingly.</p> - -<p>“Ya-as; those of us that’s practical miners”—his -look weeded out the Governor—“guess we all know that -every bit o’ gold that’s found its way to the creek bottoms -and the coast, it’s all come from the Mother Lode, -off there in them low ground—down hills to the -North.”</p> - -<p>The breathless respect with which this information -was received by the rest, was broken in upon by the Governor’s -roaring a great infidel laugh. “Why, Joslin, -here, tells me the gold comes out o’ the sea!”</p> - -<p>“Maybe he believes it,” says Blumpitty, sympathetically.</p> - -<p>“Believe it!” bellowed Isaiah, sticking his head over -Dr. Daly’s shoulder. “So’ll you believe it when you -get to Nome. The further out you go at low tide the -richer you’ll find it.”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty’s pale-eyed pity for his delusion seemed to -get on Joslin’s nerves.</p> - -<p>“Wasn’t I <em>there</em> when Jake Hitz and Tough Nut -went way out with a wheelbarra’?”</p> - -<p>“Any man can go out with a wheelbarra’,” said -Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“Yes, but it ain’t every man can come back with pay -dirt and rock out what they did.”</p> - -<p>Blumpitty just smiled.</p> - -<p>“Twenty-two hundred dollars, sir!”</p> - -<p>“Guess you weren’t watchin’ which way they went for -that dirt?” said one of the capitalists.</p> - -<p>“That’s right!” laughed his partner. “Tough Nut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span> -must have got that twenty-two hundred out of the tundra.”</p> - -<p>“Hope that isn’t where you fellows count on findin’ -gold,” said Joslin, sympathetically.</p> - -<p>“We just about are.”</p> - -<p>“Why, don’t you know the tundra’s froze the year -round?”</p> - -<p>“That’s why we’re takin’ up thawin’ machines—$90,000 -worth.”</p> - -<p>“Might as well take up ninety thousand pianners and -play toons to the tundra.”</p> - -<p>As though this idea had some special significance for -him, a poorly-dressed boy detached himself from the -group with a cheerful whistling of the eternal Boulanger -march.</p> - -<p>“There’s a hell of a lot o’ machinery goin’; I ain’t -sorry I’m takin’ in chickens m’self,” observed Hildegarde’s -table companion.</p> - -<p>Cheviot caught the eye of the whistling boy as he went -by. “What are <em>you</em> taking in?”</p> - -<p>The boy held up a banjo. “This!” he laughed, and -went briskly back to the dancers in the steerage.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde smiled into Cheviot’s eyes. “Wasn’t -that nice?” How easily he made people say amusing, revealing -things. “Do you notice how happy everybody -looks to-day?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he admitted. “The <i>Los Angeles</i> is a pretty -dismal place, but most of these people have been happier -on this horrible ship than they’ve been for years. Happier, -some of them, than they’ve ever been before.”</p> - -<p>She didn’t quite like him to speak so of the <i>Los Angeles</i>. -Yesterday she would have agreed. But to-day—“How<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span> -do you know they’re happier here?” (Shame -on him if <em>he</em> wasn’t. But it was just as well. Oh, much -simpler!)</p> - -<p>“Talk to them and you’ll see. Everybody on the ship -has had the worst luck you ever heard of; and all -through ‘circumstances over which’!” His voice made -a period, with that old trick of assuming a phrase complete, -when you could finish it for yourself. “Even -those that look prosperous like you and me, they’ve all -failed at the main business of life.”</p> - -<p>So far as she was concerned in this review she felt -only impatience at his going back upon old loss and -pain. What if you have been sorry and sad. It wasn’t -the part of a friend to remind you of it. But if Louis -must talk of failure here was a ship-load of it! She told -herself this thought was the hag that was riding her happiness -down. She looked round her. The world was a -pretty terrible place, after all, “for the mass,” that Mrs. -Locke had taunted her with not caring about. The wind -blew out a wisp of straight, fair hair till it played like a -golden flame above the brim of her hat of Lincoln-green.</p> - -<p>“A whole ship-load of failure!” she said aloud. A -sense of the grim business life was for “the mass” pressed -leaden, and the scarlet mouth closed pitiful upon the -words, “Poor, poor people!” But Cheviot, with his -eyes on that beguiling little flame of gold, was ready to -reassure her. It didn’t matter if every soul on board -<em>had</em> seen unmerciful disaster follow fast and follow -faster, up to the hour he set foot upon the ship. Hildegarde -needn’t waste her pity. Look at their faces, listen -to them making incantations with McKeown and Dingley. -Anything would do to work the spell. Why? Because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span> -the place they were bound for had the immense -advantage of being unknown. No one could say of any -of these contrivances, “It’s been tried.” “Not a soul -on the ship but has his thawing machine or his banjo, -or—”</p> - -<p>“Or her black cook.”</p> - -<p>He nodded. How well they understood each other, -“<em>Some</em> talisman.”</p> - -<p>“What’s ours?” said the girl quickly.</p> - -<p>“Our what?”</p> - -<p>“Our talisman.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of us.”</p> - -<p>“Think now.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I know what mine is.”</p> - -<p>“You won’t tell me, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?” She spoke lightly, even a little teasingly. -“It’s a sort of rough diamond, my talisman. -Or”—her sunny look flashed in his face—“perhaps it’s -adamant. Which is the most unyielding?” Then, with -sudden gravity, “It’s a wonderful thing, the trust you -make people feel. Nothing can shake it.”</p> - -<p>“I thought we were talking about talismans.”</p> - -<p>“It makes every difficult thing seem easy. And it -makes every dangerous thing seem safe.”</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s the very last effect I intend to produce!”</p> - -<p>She swept his declaration aside. “Impossible to feel -anything can go very wrong now that you’re here.”</p> - -<p>His face was so unmoved by this handsome tribute that -she found herself venturing further. “I don’t know -why I should pretend I don’t appreciate. I’ve been so -afraid these last days—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span></p> - -<p>He caught at that. “Afraid, were you?”</p> - -<p>“Afraid that one of us two would die before I had a -chance to tell you.” Should she go on? She had meant -to write—it was different saying it.</p> - -<p>“Tell me what?”</p> - -<p>“That I’ve got over minding your having opposed -me so.” If she expected any outburst of joy on his part -she was denied the spectacle. “I’ve come to understand -such a lot of things on board this ship.” She waited an -instant, but he leaned over the railing quite silent, staring -down into the water. “Among other things,” she -went on, “I see when I look back that you’ve always -been the one to bring me strength. A feeling that I’d -set my feet upon the rock—”</p> - -<p>“And it wasn’t rock, after all, what you set your feet -on,” he said quietly.</p> - -<p>She tightened her hands on the railing, and something -like veiled warning crept into the words: “You’ve -made me feel <em>safer</em>, Louis, than any one else in the -world. I owe you a great deal for that.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>owe</em>!” He turned away impatiently.</p> - -<p>Not the sea-birds sweeping so low over the water that -their white feather brooms raised a dust of silver in the -sunlight; not the motley crew upon the ship half as clear -to the girl’s vision as that little figure with the flags in -his hat patroling a deserted street in the dawn. “One -reason people depend on you so is, I suppose, because -they see as I do, it isn’t only that you’re good to some -particular one. You’d be good to anybody.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, would I!”</p> - -<p>“Just as you gave up your Fourth of July to be -watchman for the neighbor’s boy.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span></p> - -<p>“How did you get hold of that yarn?”</p> - -<p>“Barbara—”</p> - -<p>“Well, look here”—he moved his square shoulders -uneasily, like one in an ill-fitting coat. “Look here, if -you’re thinking of trying to make a hero out of me—it -isn’t any earthly—”</p> - -<p>“Hero? Nonsense. We were talking about talismans,” -she said, with recovered gaiety. “I haven’t -brought along a machine of any sort, and I haven’t got -a black cook. Not even a banjo! But I’ve got a friend!” -she triumphed. “So I can’t be scared now any more -than the rest of the wild adventurers.”</p> - -<p>“Then you were scared?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, here she is! Mrs. Locke! This is ‘the sort o’ -watchman’ I was telling you about.”</p> - -<p>In the act of holding out her hand, the woman’s delicate -face took on that marble look that once or twice -Hildegarde had seen there. And the hand dropped before -it reached Cheviot’s.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde looked from one to the other. “Why, -what is it?”</p> - -<p>“We have met before,” said Mrs. Locke.</p> - -<p>“When was that?”</p> - -<p>“On the Seattle wharf.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I didn’t remember.”</p> - -<p>“I do. You are the man who nearly broke my arm.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-m.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Mrs. Locke had gone below and left them -staring at one another.</p> - -<p>“I haven’t the smallest recollection of -the woman.”</p> - -<p>She clutched at hope. “You couldn’t -have been the one.”</p> - -<p>“<em>She</em> doesn’t seem to have much doubt about it.”</p> - -<p>“But you didn’t—I’m sure you didn’t.”</p> - -<p>“I certainly did push my way about in that crowd.”</p> - -<p>“So did everybody.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid it stands to reason a man does that kind -of thing more effectually than a woman. Your Mrs. -What’s-her-name may be right.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Louis!”</p> - -<p>“If she is, I’m sorry.”</p> - -<p>“You simply <em>couldn’t</em> have—”</p> - -<p>“Well, I don’t know. I remember perfectly, I was -frantic at not finding you.”</p> - -<p>Ashamed of the warmth his words brought welling up -about her heart—“And you didn’t think much of the -women you did find. Yes, I remember what you said -about the women who go on this sort of journey. But -you’re wrong, you see. I know them now.”</p> - -<p>He made no answer. Just stood there, hands in pockets, -arctic cap rolled back, so that it sat turban-like on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span> -the crown of his head; the perplexity in the face giving -way to a somewhat dogged good-temper that declined to -be ruffled by the incident.</p> - -<p>“Some of the women are just as—are more deserving -of being treated well than I am.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I dare say some of them are all right.” He -leaned against the railing, his square chin lifted, and he -studied the man in the crow’s-nest—but he went on saying -in that cool way, “I’m not denying that I would -have broken any number of bones rather than not get to -you in time to save you from coming to harm.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>don’t</em> say it! That’s exactly what Mrs. Locke -thinks.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mrs. Locke!”—he moved his shoulders impatiently—“I’m -sorry if she got hurt. But in my opinion -neither of you ought to have been there. Don’t think -my view about that is altered by your having come off -scot free so far. You see somebody did suffer.”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Locke.”</p> - -<p>“It’s just a chance it wasn’t you.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you see that it wouldn’t be a chance if men -treated all women as well as you’d have treated me?”</p> - -<p>“Men would have to feel about all women as I feel -about you before that could come about, and that -wouldn’t even be desirable. It certainly isn’t practical -politics.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I wish I were clever and could argue. I know -there are things to say only I don’t see how to put -them.”</p> - -<p>“There’s this to say”—he stood up, a little impatiently—“I’ve -never posed as a passive individual. If I -see things in my way I”—he made an expressive little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span> -gesture—“I set them aside. If I hurt Mrs. Locke in -setting her aside, I’m sorry. But women have no business -being in the way at such times.”</p> - -<p>“I am glad to think you aren’t in your heart taking -it as lightly as you pretend.”</p> - -<p>But the incident rather spoilt things. Instead of -being able to yield unreservedly to the comfort, yes, the -joy of his being there, a counter influence was at work. -A watchfulness, critical, even painful. Not so much of -Cheviot as of herself. <em>Was</em> she the kind of girl Mrs. -Locke had meant?—the kind who said, “I’m all right. -What does it matter about other women.” Something -in her soul revolted at the charge. In other moods she -was conscious only of a blind rebellion against this evil -trick fate had played her—perversely thrusting into the -foreground a thing so little representative of the man. -Offering this, forsooth, as a symbol of all that lay behind. -A lying symbol. He wasn’t like that. <em>Was</em> he? -He had been “frantic” about her. Ah, the subtle danger -of that solace, feeding self-love, divorcing her from -her less fortunate sisters.</p> - -<p>Few people minded the lowering weather the next day, -since it brought a sight of land. Yet one had need to be -at sea for a week and a half to find comfort in this -vision of a dim gray rock rising out of a gray sea to -starboard; or on the port side, a range of snow-flecked -hills, with clouds hanging low over the crater of an extinct -volcano. How bleak the world up here in the -Aleutians! Then suddenly, for Hildegarde, the chill -vision warmed and glowed. “This is the kind of thing -John Galbraith is looking at on the other side of the -globe!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span></p> - -<p>To every one’s huge satisfaction the <i>Los Angeles</i>, -skirting Ounalaska, showed no sign of pausing. Instead -of turning off toward Dutch Harbor to learn if the ice -had yielded up yonder and the way was clear, boldly the -ship took the short cut through Unimak Pass into the -Bering Sea. What splendid time they were making -under the convoy of this best of all captains! People -went about boasting, “Nome by Sunday!”</p> - -<p>“We’ll make the record trip!”</p> - -<p>“—Make the big fortunes!”</p> - -<p>“We’ll beat creation!”</p> - -<p>“Splendid fellow, our captain!”</p> - -<p>Never such luck before in this bedeviled course.</p> - -<p>Toward three o’clock the next morning Hildegarde -was waked by the noise of hurrying feet above her head -and a great hubbub in the saloon.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Locke?” Her berth was empty.</p> - -<p>In the narrow cabin two half-dressed women were -agitatedly hunting their belongings, while the dressmaker, -Miss Tillie Jump, screamed through the door to -know if there was any danger.</p> - -<p>“What’s happened?” asked Hildegarde, tumbling -down out of her berth.</p> - -<p>“We are in the ice.”</p> - -<p>“Masses all round us high as the ship.”</p> - -<p>Certainly Mrs. Locke had vanished. “I’m very -calm,” said Miss Mar to herself, with a certain admiring -surprise. And then her self-esteem fell from her -with the realization that in the back of her head she -knew there could not possibly be any immediate danger, -or Cheviot would have made some sign. All the same, -her tranquillity did not prevent her from picturing a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span> -shipwreck, in which the clearest impression was that of -Cheviot saving Mrs. Locke’s life at risk of his own. The -lady’s heartfelt acknowledgments and tableau.</p> - -<p>On deck, in the gray milky light, a different picture. -No Cheviot and no discernible danger. Plenty of broken, -moving ice, but nothing like the towering bergs of saloon -rumor. Going forward at low pressure the <i>Los Angeles</i> -was picking her way among the water-worn shapes that -stood dazzling white, each on a pale green base, submerged -yet partly visible. Strange sculpture of the sea, -that, like a Rodin statue, gained meaning as you gazed. -This rough-hewn mass was a crouching polar bear; that -a saurian, antediluvian, vast. Some of the ice-cakes, -flat, featureless, were mere lonely white rafts drifting -from nowhere, bound nowhere; others manned by dwarf -snowmen, misshapen, spectral.</p> - -<p>Though so unlike report, there was something here expected, -hauntingly familiar, like a single surviving impression -out of a vanished life. From a long, long -distance O’Gorman’s voice recalled her as he came down -the deck with Mrs. Locke. “What do you think of this -for a change?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was still looking round for Cheviot, as -she answered, “It’s all much flatter and less tremendous -than I expected.”</p> - -<p>“Three fourths of the ice is under water. I’m afraid -you’ll find it quite tremendous enough.”</p> - -<p>Here at last was Louis! “What’s going to happen?” -Hildegarde hailed him.</p> - -<p>He only pulled off his cap for her benefit. It was to -O’Gorman he said, half aside, “We’ll have to get out -of this.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span></p> - -<p>While the two men stood there looking gravely out, -the ship put her nose into the ice-pack, shivered, and -drew back.</p> - -<p>“What’s happening?”</p> - -<p>“They’re reversing engines.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had put her question with a dawning -sense of obscurer energies here at work than she had -apprehended, and with that the thought of Galbraith -took on a sudden something like its old ineluctable hold -on her imagination. These the forces that had fashioned -life for him. Yes, and for others, too.</p> - -<p>The whole of that raw morning she haunted the upper -deck, for the most part alone. If Mrs. Locke avoided -her, it would seem that Cheviot was inclined to do the -same. He had struck up a friendship with O’Gorman. -They walked about or sat together in the smoking-room. -The feeling of tension that pervaded the <i>Los Angeles</i> -was manifest even in the Kangaroo Court. No livelier -precinct hitherto on the <i>Los Angeles</i> than this part of -the fo’c’sle, where, from the eminence of the judge’s -bench (a great coil of rope), Mr. Gedge imposed upon -his much-diverted public a parody of those forms of -legal procedure learned in his experience as a shorthand -reporter of “cases,” or, as he called himself, a court -stenographer. Gedge modeled his style upon those administrators -of justice who think because a man has -disobeyed one law, his fellow-creatures may with respect -to him (or rather without “respect”) break all rules -governing human intercourse. With the aid of unlimited -audacity and a ready tongue, Mr. Matthew Gedge -made things lively within the precincts of the Kangaroo -Court. And with impunity, for an unwritten law ordains<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span> -that no one, however great a personage, shall dare -to defy the authority of the mock court, or can safely -set aside its judgments. Woe betide any one who seriously -persists in so unpopular a course. Whatever the -case being tried, no bystander, no unwary passer even, -but goes in peril of being summoned. If he know himself -unable to beat Gedge at the sharp word game, it -behooves the witness to bear himself meekly. If he -thinks to flee, let him expect to hear Gedge roar with -grim zest, “Constable! Do your duty. Arrest that -man!” and sometimes half way to cover the offender is -caught and haled back amid a general hilarity, to find -himself, however confused, speechless or unwilling, -clapped into the witness-box (a big iron boiler) and kept -stewing there while he meets as best he may a fire of merciless -questions and the bubbling merriment of the deck.</p> - -<p>But to-day the sittings of the Court were suspended. -The loungers who came to Gedge for diversion or enlightenment, -got only a grumbled, “I pass!” or “Guess -we’re euchred!” And even such popularity as Gedge’s -was threatened with eclipse for putting into words the -silent misgivings of all men. The very sky looked evil. -The ragged gray-brown clouds had been racing across -the heavens like tatterdemalions hearing of mischief -afoot and eager for a share. Now they were massed -there in the southwest, a dirty, featureless mob, in which -the ineffectual units were lost and the whole fused into -a vast somber-hued menace.</p> - -<p>The faithful Blumpitty sought out Miss Mar. -“No—o,” he drawled, rolling his eye among the fantastic -ice shapes. “No—o, it don’t look good to me, this don’t.” -But Blumpitty had news. “That feller who discovered—yes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span> -And wus dyin’ as hard as he could last fall. -Well, he’s alive yet.”</p> - -<p>“How do you know?”</p> - -<p>“Joslin says so. He had a letter at Seattle from a -man who’d come down to Nome from Polaris over the -ice at Christmas. Not that it matters much. The sick -feller don’t seem to have let on to them others. Anyways, -they’s good and plenty in the Mother Lode. -What I don’t see is how he managed it.”</p> - -<p>“Managed what?”</p> - -<p>“To hang on. If ever I see death in a man’s face! -But I always said they wusn’t like anything I ever -seen before.”</p> - -<p>“What wasn’t?”</p> - -<p>“<em>Them eyes.</em>”</p> - -<p>“Near Nome, is it—the place where he—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no, a good ways north.”</p> - -<p>“Heavens, north even of Nome?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, it’s the farthest north camp they is. Think o’ -him hangin’ on all through the winter. In that place!” -Blumpitty’s pale gaze sought vainly for enlightenment -among the moving ice masses.</p> - -<p>“People do get through in worse places than that,” -said his companion.</p> - -<p>“They ain’t no worse places than Polaris.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, there’s Franz Josef Land.”</p> - -<p>“Never heard o’ that camp.”</p> - -<p>“I wish <em>I</em> were going as far as Polaris.”</p> - -<p>“Why, come right along.”</p> - -<p>She laughed. “I only wish I could. I’d like to know -a man who’d lived in the farthest north camp of all—the -farthest on our side. What’s that?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Where?”</p> - -<p>“Out there.” She pointed to a ghostly something, -faint as smoke against the high light of the ice rim on -the far horizon.</p> - -<p>Blumpitty stared. “Reckon it’s a cloud. They’s -two more! And another. No, by gum, it’s ships!”</p> - -<p>And ships they were, five of them, the first seen since -leaving Vancouver!—spectacle to stir the chilled blood -of watchers on the <i>Los Angeles</i>. For these dreamlike -apparitions were vessels such as theirs, threatened like -them with ice-pack and with storm. A detachment of -the Nome fleet! None came any nearer, except the <i>Ohio</i> -and the little <i>Charles Nelson</i>. They spoke and passed, -the Ohio speedily to vanish; <i>Charles Nelson</i> to tack -about, hunting an outlet, and then, discouraged, turn -south as the bigger <i>Los Angeles</i> pushed valiantly -through the ice to the North. “Turn back! No use!” -<i>Charles Nelson</i> warned, and then, quicker than ever you -saw in your life, the fog swooped down and wiped everything -off the ocean except the nearer ice. The <i>Los Angeles</i> -turned and tacked about to the tune of the fog-horn, -trying to find a way through the heavier floe, only to -be headed off by bigger masses looming through the haze, -majestic slow-sailing ice-ships, some like white gondolas, -some like sturdy, low-built castles set fantastically on a -field of fleece, for the exposed parts of the berg had -rotted in the sun, and in the wind been rippled, so that -a nearer sight showed the surfaces honeycombed, disintegrate. -And again to Hildegarde Mar came that sense of -its all being familiar, as though she had been here before. -So she had, in spirit. With a thrilling sense of recognition -she discovered the original of more than one picture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span> -in that book of Galbraith’s that she and Bella had pored -over in their school-days.</p> - -<p>When, early in the afternoon, the fog lifted a little, a -message came from the captain inviting Miss Mar to the -bridge that she might have a better view. By the time -she had obeyed the summons the wind had risen. The -captain was looking through his glass, and Mrs. Locke -was at his side. He left both visitors with harassed face -and called down to Cheviot walking below with O’Gorman. -And now Louis stood beside the captain on the -bridge, looking to the northeast, and talking in an undertone.</p> - -<p>“What does he know,” said Mrs. Locke, referring to -Cheviot for the first time, “about navigation?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing, I should think,” said Hildegarde serenely, -yet with that stirring of pride that visits a woman when -the man she is interested in is called to counsel. “You -see Louis has been up here before, and so few people -have.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” Mrs. Locke turned indifferently away and looked -out over the white-patched water. The girl felt anew -and keenly the embarrassment that had come of the confrontation -of these two. Impossible for her to think it -didn’t matter. No vulgarity of soul helped her to meet -the issue with, “Mrs. Locke’s ‘nobody,’—a little book-keeping -woman we shall never see again!” She could -not even, as a feebler nature would, simply ignore the -incident of the day before, accepting for Louis Mrs. -Locke’s evil opinion, accepting for Mrs. Locke his -professed regret but real indifference, verging on dislike.</p> - -<p>“Of course,” Hildegarde drew closer, “I’ve thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span> -a great deal about what happened yesterday—I mean -what happened on the wharf.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, put it out of your head.”</p> - -<p>“It’s hardly been out of my head a minute, except -the two hours I slept this morning.”</p> - -<p>“I ought to have held my tongue.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad you didn’t. Because now I know something -more than that he hurt you.”</p> - -<p>“What do you know?”</p> - -<p>“How much he can hurt <em>me</em>,” was on her tongue, but -the only answer she made was, “I mustn’t let you think -that I’m going to turn a cold shoulder on my friend -because—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, no.” It was said not scornfully—just accepting -it.</p> - -<p>“I think a month ago I would either not have believed -it or I would have explained it all away to myself. I’d -have said he didn’t know what he was doing. He—he -was—Oh, there are a dozen excuses I might have made -for him.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, dozens.”</p> - -<p>“But now I don’t make one. I say, ‘Yes, he did it, -and he doesn’t even realize how terrible it was.’”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke glanced at her curiously. “It’s true a -good deal has to happen before men and women can -treat each other fairly.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde nodded. “I’m beginning to see that. -Louis hasn’t begun—not yet. But about other things -he’s always been the one who’s helped and taught me. -Done it for lots of other people, too, of course,” she -hastened to add. “I’d never once thought of him as a -person I could help.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span></p> - -<p>“And now—”</p> - -<p>“Now—” Her grave look went as far as that of the -blind who seem to descry Truth riding on the viewless -air, or sitting on the round world’s uttermost rim. Certainly -Hildegarde had been given such extension of -vision in these hours that plainly enough she saw that -it was not till a cloud settled on Cheviot’s fame that she -knew how much its fairness meant to her. Acceptance -of that had brought her acquainted with yet another -new aspect of experience. Here was a man that had -everybody and everything to recommend him—<em>up to -yesterday</em>. Since yesterday she knew not only that his -nature and his outlook were on one side defective, she -had glimpses of a faith that, precisely because of this, -he had a need of her beyond the one he had been used to -urge. A light shone in the thought that there was something -she could do for him that perhaps no other creature -could. A perception this of infinite significance to -such as Hildegarde Mar, belonging as she did to the -bigger of the two camps into which womankind are -naturally divided. For, <i lang="la">pace</i> the satirists, those of her -sex who make most stir in the world and cause most -commotion in the hearts of men—those daughters of the -horse leech, whose unappeased hunger cries ever “More, -more! Give! and give again!” they are in the minority. -To the larger, if less striking army, those whose primal -passion is to give—of them was Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“It looks as if—for all Louis is so wonderfully clear-headed -and I’m so—the other way, there are some things -I can see plainer than he. But it seems to me that’s -only a reason for”—her voice dropped a little—“for—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Mrs. Locke.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde flushed faintly. “For trying, I don’t -mean by preaching, but trying to help him to see—well, -some of the things you’ve given me an inkling of.” -She laid her hand gently on the older woman’s. Mrs. -Locke’s fingers closed round the girl’s, but she said -nothing. “So, though he nearly broke your arm, you -will have done him a service.”</p> - -<p>The white face smiled its enigmatic little smile. But -presently, “I’m glad I know you,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Are you? Then let’s be friends!”</p> - -<p>As though some tangible barrier had been beaten -down they went nearer the two men. The captain was -ending, “—and if the ice closes in behind us we’ll be -trapped.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, is that all!” said Cheviot, glancing toward Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“No, it isn’t all. We’d be carried wherever the floe -goes—and that’s not Nome.” Gillies lowered the glass, -and his strained-looking eyes fell on the two he had forgotten. -“Sorry, ladies, you must go below.”</p> - -<p>Not only rather snubbed, but feeling now the gravity -of affairs, Hildegarde and her companion departed with -some precipitation, while the captain’s hoarse shout -rang out in an indistinguishable order to some invisible -officer.</p> - -<p>A few minutes later, standing on bales of merchandise -for’ard on the upper deck, they watched the altering of -the course and the race for that single opening, narrow -and ever narrower in the close-packed ice. It was exciting -enough, for they got out just in time. Thirty-four -hours afterward the <i>Los Angeles</i> was still beating about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span> -on the edge of the pack, looking for another break in the -long white line.</p> - -<p>The spirits of the passengers steadily sank. To their -jealous imagining all those phantom ships, and the score -unseen, were now forging ahead. Only the <i>Los Angeles</i> -besieged the ice in vain. Men stood in knots discussing -the captain’s mistakes and airing their own knowledge. -They had expected this state of things if he persisted in -keeping so far to the east. Hour by hour Gillies’s credit -fell.</p> - -<p>The only break in the dead monotony of the afternoon -was suggested in the general invitation to come -for’ard and hear Gedge roast the captain. It went ill -that day with any witness in Gillies’s favor.</p> - -<p>In the middle of dinner people looked up from their -plates and said: “What’s that?”</p> - -<p>The bean-feaster was the first to find his tongue. -“By ——,” he said, “we’ve stopped!” The passengers -dropped their knives and forks and rushed on deck. -The bean-feaster was right. In trying to get round the -eastern shoulder of the floe, the <i>Los Angeles</i> had run -aground in Norton Sound, thirty miles from the mainland. -The engines were reversed, and the water round -the propeller was set boiling. The ship never budged. -The deck resounded to the uproar of many tongues. -To waste thirty-six hours feeling her way round the -floe was bad enough, but to be “hung up on a sand-bar,” -a hundred and fifty miles from Nome, with a wicked-looking -ice-pack bearing down on you from the west—! -And here comes the <i>Charles Nelson</i> once more, very -perky this time, profiting by the object lesson and steering -clear of the bar. The <i>Los Angeles</i> humbled her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span> -pride to ask for a line. “Can’t get near enough,” the -word came back. “I’m in three fathom now!” and -away <i>Charles Nelson</i> goes, leaving the big steamer to -her fate.</p> - -<p>“What’s that feller calls himself a captain, what’s -he goin’ to <em>do</em>?” demanded Mr. Gedge of his satellites. -“‘Wait for the tide!’ Yah! He’s got the most high-spirited -idears of any man I ever—‘Wait!’ After -wastin’ two days and nights a’ready! ‘Wait!’ While -the other fellers are knockin’ the bottom out o’ -Nome!”</p> - -<p>This was a harassing thought, but the captain still -had his apologists, even in the Kangaroo Court. It was -O’Gorman’s friend with the fiery beard who dared to -point out, “Mr. Gedge told us on Friday and Saturday -the captain was ‘incompetent and foolhardy.’ On Sunday -and Monday he’s ‘over-cautious and damnably -slow.’ To-night Mr. Gedge tells us—”</p> - -<p>“To-night,” that gentleman shouted, “I’m tellin’ -you still more about this —— captain. Did they or did -they not say to us in Seattle that Gillies was a first-rate -seaman?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and so he is!”</p> - -<p>“Did they or did they not tell us he knew his job?”</p> - -<p>“Right! Knows this ship as you know the way to -your mouth.”</p> - -<p>“Yah! Knows what she can do on the Japan route. -But this, gentlemen and ladies, ain’t the road to Manila. -And do you know what? This here is Captain Gillies’s -first trip to Alaska!” Gedge brought it out with a -sledge-hammer effect. The audience felt they were expected -to be dumfounded. They complied.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span></p> - -<p>But a voice was heard: “It’s most people’s first trip -to Alaska.”</p> - -<p>“I tell you,” said Gedge, judicially, “he knows as -little about these northern seas as that boy there with -the banjer.”</p> - -<p>“This self-appointed judge,” Cheviot’s voice rose -steadily above the growing murmur, “hasn’t heard apparently -that <em>nobody</em> knows these waters.”</p> - -<p>“Would you mind repeatin’ that, sir?”</p> - -<p>“Not at all. In the first place, the Bering is a practically -uncharted sea. That may be a disgrace to our -Coast Survey, but it’s hardly the captain’s fault.”</p> - -<p>Gedge looked stumped for a moment. If this were -true it wouldn’t do for him not to know it.</p> - -<p>Cheviot was making good the diversion in the captain’s -favor, when Gedge interrupted: “Does the captain’s -friend pretend to say that the whalers and sealers -and fellers who’ve been up here before gold was -thought of—that none o’ <em>them</em> don’t know enough to -keep off a damned sand-bank?” Looking his wiliest: -“Now, if we had one o’ them sort here—” Then, with -a highly effective coup: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got -him!”</p> - -<p>“Here on this ship?”</p> - -<p>“Right here on board the <i>Los Angeles</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Where? Who, who? Name?” Everybody but -Cheviot and a few women were shouting themselves -hoarse.</p> - -<p>“What y’ got to say to that, Mr.— You, there, -with the arctic cap and the tender heart fur captains?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got this to say. That even the men who sailed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span> -along here last fall, don’t know Norton Sound this summer.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Wot?</em>”</p> - -<p>“Can’t know it.”</p> - -<p>“And why not?”</p> - -<p>“For the good reason that new sand-bars are formed -up here every spring. Not a ship that sails for any port -on the northwest coast but goes on what’s practically an -exploring expedition. That’s our true danger. The -captain’s no less than ours.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, we all know you’re in with his nibs, but -what my friends don’t know is that Billings & Co. sent a -pilot aboard this ship.”</p> - -<p>“Why, then,” roared half-a-dozen voices, “why ain’t -he pilotin’!”</p> - -<p>“Why?” Mr. Gedge shouted above the din. “<em>I</em> can -tell—” His sentence was jerked to an abrupt close. -“What in hell’s up?”</p> - -<p>Two or three women had uttered little shrieks, and, -“What was that?” people asked one another. Men -turned and looked in each other’s faces. “What <em>was</em> -it?”</p> - -<p>The sudden jar and vibration of the ship lent added -force to Mr. Gedge’s charge. “The reason the pilot -ain’t pilotin’ is because the captain ordered him off the -bridge the second day out.”</p> - -<p>“Now I know what it means when the papers say, -‘Sensation in the court’!” a little Canadian hospital -nurse whispered to Mrs. Locke. But in another second -she was clinging to that lady and her eyes were scared -and wide; for, as if under the assault of a battering-ram, -the <i>Los Angeles</i> was shaking from stem to stern.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span></p> - -<p>Hildegarde felt a warm hand laid on her two, tight-clasped -and cold. Cheviot had put an arm through the -outer fringe of the group where she and Mrs. Locke -were standing. “Come for’ard,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Was that the ice?” Mrs. Locke whispered, allowing -herself to be drawn along.</p> - -<p>All the rest of the people stood hushed for a moment -as if stunned by the concussion. The three who alone in -those first instants seemed to retain power of movement -quietly made their way out of the throng, while every -ear was filled with the horrible secondary sounds of that -mighty impact—a slow grinding, a horrible gritting, as -of granite jaws reducing the bones of prey to powder.</p> - -<p>“I want you to stay here till I come back.” Cheviot -left the two women under the bridge. As Hildegarde -listened with beating heart to the sound of the ice -against the ship, she said to herself: “These are moments -Jack Galbraith has known. After to-night I shall -understand better. I shall be closer to a part of his life -than Bella ever will.” Every sense was set to note the -change that in the last few minutes had come over the -spirit of the ship. No wild commotion, a hush rather. -But a thing of eery significance. No more shrill harangues -in the Kangaroo Court. No dancing on the upper -deck. No <em>tink-a-tink</em> of banjo in the steerage. Men -gathering in groups, talking for the most part quite -quietly, but agreed that “the old sea tramp” wouldn’t -stand much of this kind of thing. With a single mind -the women, as soon as they had pulled themselves together, -hastened down below.</p> - -<p>“I think I’ll go down, too, and see—” Hildegarde began. -“I won’t be two minutes.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Where are you going?”</p> - -<p>“To the cabin. Do you want anything brought -up?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>The girl was longer than two minutes, but she was no -less surprised when, upon her reappearance with a small -hand-bag, she found Cheviot talking to Mrs. Locke. -“The current is carrying the ice out all right. Probably -the only danger is the passengers making fools of themselves. -But if they’ll only go quietly to bed—”</p> - -<p>“They won’t,” said Mrs. Locke. The two discussed -this quite in the tone of being allies. “Nobody will go -to bed to-night,” she assured him.</p> - -<p>“What do they want to do?” he demanded.</p> - -<p>“Sit up till one in the morning,” Mrs. Locke answered, -“and see the tide float us off the bar.”</p> - -<p>“Well, the women at all events”—Cheviot looked -about with an air of relief—“the women have gone to -bed already.”</p> - -<p>“No, indeed,” said Hildegarde. “They’re tumbling -over one another down in the saloon, in and out of the -state-rooms collecting their things. Some are saying -their prayers, and some—”</p> - -<p>“Do you sing?” Cheviot demanded.</p> - -<p>“I?” Mrs. Locke stared. “No.”</p> - -<p>“Who does?” he appealed to Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I heard a woman yesterday—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that awful Miss Pinckney, you know, with the -draggled feathers!”</p> - -<p>“Well, go and find her and get her to sing now.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Sing?</em>”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes, sing. It may make just all the difference.” -Cheviot was in the act of bolting back to the captain.</p> - -<p>“She can’t sing.” Hildegarde followed him a step.</p> - -<p>He misunderstood it for an untimely musical criticism. -“Then let her make a noise of some sort.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, she’s doing that—screaming with hysterics -down in the saloon.” Cheviot flashed back to say confidentially, -not to Hildegarde, but to Mrs. Locke: “Go -and see if you can’t get up a concert.” With which cool -and apparently crazy suggestion he vanished.</p> - -<p>Twenty minutes later a woman, wearing diamond ear-rings -and a sealskin jacket, paused in her flight up the -companionway and leaned an instant, panting, against -the music-room door. Now she was lifting her head with -a slow incredulity, as an unsteady voice near by began -to quaver out a rag-time ballad, highly offensive to sensitive -ears, but a tune familiar and to many on the ship -most dear. The woman peered round the half-open door, -staring from one to the other of those callous creatures -within, making merry on the brink of destruction—Miss -Mar at the piano, and at her side the draggled -Miss Pinckney. Ah, no, that red-eyed woman wasn’t -callous. She sang the inane words with lips that trembled. -Now she was breaking down.</p> - -<p>“No, no. Go on,” Miss Mar insisted. “Think of the -others.”</p> - -<p>“They’ll never listen. Everybody’s too—too—”</p> - -<p>“Well, let’s see. Now!” and very ineffectually Hildegarde -took up the second verse. Miss Pinckney -plucked the strain away as two men looked in. There -was nothing especial to take them up or down. They -stood near the woman with the diamond ear-rings, hardly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span> -knowing that they listened. In that first twenty minutes, -every time the ice struck the ship, Miss Pinckney would -hesitate and her voice would fly off the scale in a faint -scream.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>please</em>! That’s enough to scare anybody!” and -Hildegarde played doggedly on. “Now, let’s try -again!” It was, however, as if not Miss Mar’s admonishing, -but the rude insistence of the tune dragged Miss -Pinckney along, pulling her out of the pit of her fears -and landing her “Down along the Bowery,” or “In Gay -Paree,” or some place equally remote from the sand-bar -in the Bering Sea.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Locke, with the Blumpittys and a brace of doctors -in tow, appeared in the act of descending for a -muster of “the company.” Cheviot came flying down -behind them, two steps at a time. He was about to turn -in at the music-room, when a woman pushed past him, -showing a panic-stricken face above the sleeping child -that she carried clutched tight against her breast. A -sudden jar made the sleeper lift a cropped head and -look about with wide eyes.</p> - -<p>“Hello!” said Cheviot reassuringly, in a cheerful and -commonplace voice. “This is a passenger I haven’t -seen before. Aren’t you rather too big, sir, to be carried?”</p> - -<p>—“hasn’t been well!” muttered the woman, taking -breath to recommence the ascent.</p> - -<p>“Look here, where are you going?” And without -waiting to know, “Some of us can carry—” He was -taking the burden out of the thin arms.</p> - -<p>“No,” remonstrated the woman, as Cheviot turned in -at the music-room, “we must go up to father.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’ll send him down to you.”</p> - -<p>“No, no. We’ve got to go up and—be ready.”</p> - -<p>“Ready for what?” He fixed upon the woman a pair -of faith-inspiring eyes so unclouded that she stared.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you want to listen to the singing?” Cheviot -bent smiling to the little person who lay quite content in -his arms, studying the man’s face with the solemn absorption -of childhood.</p> - -<p>Not many there besides him, but because Cheviot had -come in the concert had begun. Others besides Hildegarde -felt this quickening of life in any room he entered. -Miss Pinckney remembered she had the music of a “reel -pretty song” out of the “Belle of New York.” She’d -go and get it.</p> - -<p>“Do you hear that?” Cheviot said, depositing the -child on one of the rickety chairs. “You’ve just come -in time,” and he stood a moment talking to the mother. -The child sat askew, with its father’s great waterproof -cape hitched up on one side and trailing on the other. -When the little figure made the slightest movement the -lop-sided chair wobbled and threatened collapse. Instantly -the child desisted and became nervously engrossed -in the problem of a nice equilibrium. The little -face took on a look of tense uneasiness. It was plain -that courage was lacking so much as to pull a good deep -breath lest it draw ruin down. Cheviot, still talking -with the mother, turned to take in his the small child -hand that clutched the chair. Was it the look of heavy -responsibility in the small face, or was it another onslaught -of ice against the ship that made him say, -“Music’s soon going to begin, little—what’s your -name?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span></p> - -<p>The child opened thin lips and emitted a careful -sound.</p> - -<p>“Joseph? Well, I hope you’ll like the concert, -Joseph.” That was too much for the occupant of the -<i lang="fr">siege perilous</i>. There was a howl above the mother’s -reproachful correction. “Her name’s Josephine,”—a -general giving way to overstrain, and chair and child -were in ruins on the floor.</p> - -<p>Miss Mar, glancing over her shoulder, shaking with -hysterical laughter, saw that Louis, gathering up the -sobbing Josephine, bit his lip as though in mere dismay, -forbearing to wound the luckless one by laughing at -her discomfiture.</p> - -<p>“Yes, that’s like him, too,” Hildegarde said to herself, -as one welcoming one more of a cloud of witnesses. -She fell upon the piano with redoubled vigor. Loud and -fast she hammered out the wildest jig she could remember. -Miss Pinckney coming back, music in hand, stopped -with a scream. Bang! Bang! Grit! Grind! went the ice. -Josephine shrieked without intermission till Cheviot, -having found a chair with more than three legs, anchored -her securely in that haven. With the first words of Miss -Pinckney’s song, Cheviot was flying back to the deck.</p> - -<p>Bang! Grit! Grind! Was she awake, Hildegarde -asked herself, or was this fetid room and were these -harsh, assailing sounds a form of nightmare? Steadily -she played on. Cheviot looked in again, but it was to -Mrs. Locke he whispered: “We must break up the -Kangaroo Court. Musical talent going to waste there.” -She followed him out. In passing Hildegarde he had -bent his head. “Keep it up,” he said. “Whatever you -do, don’t stop.” She reflected a little enviously that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span> -she could be quite as happy running about the deck with -Louis as pinned to the moth-eaten music-stool, grinding -out cheap airs. Then she found herself smiling. Not -the least strange part of this strange evening that Louis -should be sending Mrs. Locke on errands, and that Mrs. -Locke should be going. The room was filling. Upon -the lady’s reappearance with the banjo boy and the -cross-eyed flute-player, the concert was in full swing. Now -Mrs. Locke was telling Hildegarde to play the “Battle -Hymn,” and presently several of the men were helping -Miss Pinckney to send John Brown’s soul marching on. -Oh, for a little air! Surely there wasn’t room for any -more people in this overcrowded space. But still they -came. It was curious to watch the new faces at the door -peering over the shoulders of those who stood about the -piano. Little by little you could see the strain going -out of the tense features. Not that their anxieties vanished, -but they were softened, humanized through the -humble agency of a ramshackle piano and an untrained -voice in a song. Even the steps, from the very top to -the bottom of the companionway, were crowded now. -That fact of itself made for quiescence on the decks. -People could no longer run freely up or down. While -they paused and wormed their way, they were laid hold -of by their ears. The little room was packed to suffocation. -Deserted by his audience, even Gedge came down -to see what was up. Thicker and more stifling grew the -air. In a pause between songs a scrap of conversation -floated over Hildegarde’s shoulder, “Lucky there’s no -wind.”</p> - -<p>“God, yes! If there was wind—”</p> - -<p>“Shut up!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span></p> - -<p>“What then, if there was wind—?” a third insisted, -barely audible.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>then</em>, we’d get off the bar.” Clear enough to -one of those for whose weaker sake the truth was veiled—clear -enough what the ironic comfort meant. If behind -the ice were wind as well as current, the ship -wouldn’t live an hour. Steadily the girl played on. -Wasn’t the onslaught of the ice heavier that last time? -Was the wind rising then? Yes, surely, surely, the wind -had risen. Well, one must play the louder. But her -tranced eyes turned now right, now left. Some faces -clearer than others in the haze. Gedge, with his pasty -visage bleached to chalk, and of his cheap but heady -eloquence never a word. Others here that Hildegarde -had seen night after night, gambling, drinking, quarreling—and -now ...!</p> - -<p>These rude fellow-creatures, little admirable as they -might show themselves in happier hours, wore something -very like dignity to-night. How still they were! -It did not escape Hildegarde that all these many pairs of -eyes were either lowered or fixed on space, as if each one -forebore to read in his fellow’s face confirmation of his -own grim knowledge. Each avoiding the other’s eyes, -they stood there listening to those sounds the puny piano -was ineffectual to drown—the crash of impact and the -yet more horrible crunching, vicious and prolonged, as -though man’s arch-enemy of the deep, after battering -vainly for admission, would gnaw his admission to this -strange concert on the ice-beleaguered bar. While the -nerves of the people still vibrated under the bombardment, -some one started “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” -Strangest of all on that strange evening was the revelation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span> -that in this particular company hardly one but -seemed to know the hymn, and few that were not singing -it with abandon to the thunderous bass of the ice. Whatever -your own thoughts might be, you read in more than -one of these faces that of a certainty God was “nearer” -this night than He had often been before. At the beginning -of the last verse, the loudest crash of all, as if a -hundred tons of iron had been hurled at the <i>Los Angeles</i>. -The people, led by one unfaltering voice, kept on -singing. Only Hildegarde’s flying fingers stumbled as -the ship shrank and cowered under the blow. Had it -ended like this for Galbraith, too? Would he and she -meet down there in the kind sea caves?</p> - -<p>Cheviot’s face looked in through the haze. Of course -she had known he would come for her at the last. When -those firm lips opened she would hear him saying: “Stop -your playing. We’ve done what we could—you down -here, I on deck. Let us go now and meet the end.” Oh, it -was well that he was here! Through the haze his face -swam nearer, and what he was really saying was: “Good -girl! If only you can keep it up a little longer!” And -with that the face grew dim.</p> - -<p>“A little longer!” Faintness, like sleep, stole over -the good girl. As a peculiar throbbing went through the -ship, Hildegarde felt the hulk of the <i>Los Angeles</i> open, -and knew vaguely that she was falling.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus8"> -<img src="images/illus8.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“Nearer, my God, to Thee”</p> -</div> - -<p>When she opened her eyes Louis was lifting her up. -She was not clinging to a berg, nor even sitting on a -cake of ice. Still in the noisome little room, and still -that throbbing was shaking the ship. The people who -had been so quiet were pushing, jostling, shouting, frantic -to get— Where? To the boats, of course! All except<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span> -Louis and Mrs. Locke. Noble souls, they were -ready to stay and die with Hildegarde Mar! She must -exert herself.</p> - -<p>“Now I can go.”</p> - -<p>“There’s no hurry,” says Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, come. We must try—we, too.”</p> - -<p>“Try what?”</p> - -<p>“Why, to—to save ourselves.”</p> - -<p>He laughed. “Poor girl, do you feel dreadfully shipwrecked?”</p> - -<p>“What, then, are they all running for?” She looked -round bewildered.</p> - -<p>“The engines have started. Tide’s nearly flood. Can -you walk? That’s right.” They helped her to the -deck. Long after midnight—and the world so bright! -Oh, the blessing of the pure, cold air! While she -breathed it in, O’Gorman stopped to whisper in Cheviot’s -ear: “By George, you’ve saved a panic!”</p> - -<p>“No,” says Cheviot, “it wasn’t my concert.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-i.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">In those last hours the great body of the floe -had swung away to westward. It was -the very rear-guard of the outgoing ice that -had assisted at the concert. By this unfailing -daylight you could see, an hour after -midnight, the shining stretch of smooth water that lay -between the <i>Los Angeles</i> and the invisible mainland. -People hung over the ship’s side to watch the flood-tide -swirl and churn under the propeller, while the “old -sea tramp,” mustering every pound of energy, struggled -to get free. Yes, it was exciting enough, but to the tall -girl bending her hatless head over the railing at Cheviot’s -side, not half as exciting as certain discoveries -she was making without the aid of steam. Not alone in -Norton Sound was the tide at flood. She drew closer to -her companion with a mingled joy and shyness. Just -that little nearer drawing, how strange that it should -be the stuff of which so great happiness is made! Was -he feeling it, too? Was he realizing? Or was all his -soul down there in the turgid water foaming under the -propeller’s beat. She remembered enviously how Louis’s -little nephew would pat you on the arm if you grew -abstracted, and remind you: “I’m here.” She longed -to do the same. She even did it in a less direct fashion -with the words: “I should think, by the feel of the air, -there must be more icebergs on their way down.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Hard work,” he said, all his sympathies with the -propeller.</p> - -<p>“Brrr!” remarked Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Nearly as much mud as water,” he went on, with -equal irrelevance.</p> - -<p>“It certainly <em>is</em> a great deal colder,” she persisted, as -though he had denied that fact.</p> - -<p>“Less than two fathoms at low tide—”</p> - -<p>“Brrr! Brrr!”</p> - -<p>Ah, that had brought him back. From the overcoat -he was wearing he hurriedly unbuttoned the tweed cape, -and when he got it off put it round Hildegarde’s shoulders.</p> - -<p>“Are you sure you won’t miss it?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“It won’t keep you warm if it isn’t buttoned.” With -a droll preoccupied air and a pursed lip, less like a lover -paying graceful attentions to his lady than like a clumsy -nurse with a small child to look after, Cheviot laboriously -buttoned up the cape. Only, a nurse, however -little skilled, would not have begun at the bottom, nor, -having at last buttoned her way to the top, would she -have so nearly buttoned in her charge’s chin. Hildegarde -laughed, and considering she’d been so short a -time in the cape, grew miraculously warm. To avoid -looking at Cheviot she looked down to see how the propeller -might be getting on.</p> - -<p>“You must be still just half a minute, you know,” he -admonished her, and they found themselves laughing -into each other’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“I ought to go and get my own things,” she said. -“Brrr!”</p> - -<p>He took off his arctic cap and dropped it on the -blonde head. “<em>Now</em> will you be good!” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span></p> - -<p>They seemed to be the only people on the <i>Los Angeles</i> -to know a moment’s intermission in the stark suspense -of hanging over the ship’s side waiting for the blessed -moment that should see them, by aid of flood and steam, -floated off the bar.</p> - -<p>At last! the throbbing modified by a new motion. -Slowly the ship swayed fore and aft with a faint see-sawing -effect. A great cheer, “She’s off!” was cut short -by the excitement of watching how the boast was being -made good. Ten seconds’ breathless waiting for that -final pull out of the mud-trap, while idle muscles grew -taut as though to help the ship in her labor, and then -slowly, unwillingly, relaxed. Despair fell upon the -crowd as the <i>Los Angeles</i> grounded again more firmly -than before. In vain her engines pulled and throbbed, -breathing into the delicate dawn-flushed air inky bursts -of smoke.</p> - -<p>Some one called out, “She’s canted to starboard,” -and another described the dilemma as “a righteous -judgment for the overloading.”</p> - -<p>“If we’re stuck here because there’s so many of us -aboard, we can get off for the same reason.” Gedge’s -“brilliant idear” was that the people should be massed -for’ard, and then, upon a signal, should tear as hard as -legs could carry them to the other end of the ship. The -sudden shifting of “ballast” would work the keel free. -The game was entered into with immense spirit. Any -one who, from a balloon, could have looked down on the -scampering horde would have taken the scene for one of -frenetic lunacy. Whether by such an effect as Gedge -anticipated, or by some other agency, just once the tall -mast swayed like some strong-rooted pine in a passing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span> -breeze. The people shrieked with triumph, and tore -madly back again from stem to stern. But they and the -engines and the foaming water might rage as they would. -“The keel’s grown fast to the bottom of the ocean,” -Hildegarde whispered.</p> - -<p>Louis turned and looked into the face that was so -close to his own. “Never mind—” he began.</p> - -<p>“I am never-minding.” She smiled back into his -grave eyes.</p> - -<p>But he seemed to feel that, nevertheless, she must need -reassuring. “We’ll get off all right <em>somehow</em>.”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow?” she asked, quite without eagerness.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know about to-morrow.” He looked past his -companion at harassed, disappointed faces. “It’s a -plain case for a little patience.”</p> - -<p>“Do I strike you as impatient?”</p> - -<p>“You strike me as—” He seemed to pull himself -up, and yet he allowed himself to say it slowly: “You -were splendid to-night.”</p> - -<p>She glowed inwardly. “Louis!”</p> - -<p>“Yes.” They were leaning far over the railing again, -shoulder to shoulder.</p> - -<p>“Louis.”</p> - -<p>“Well. You got that far before. What comes next?”</p> - -<p>“I let you say all that about my not needing you. -But if you knew how I’ve been blessing you for—for -your forbearance with my stubbornness about coming—for -your forgiveness—”</p> - -<p>“Don’t talk nonsense.”</p> - -<p>“You are far too good—to <em>me</em>.”</p> - -<p>He seemed not to feel the prick of any point in her -emphasis. “I can’t have you talking of goodness as between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span> -you and me—it’s foolishness,” he said lightly. -Then as she opened her lips, “I forbid you even to think -of it.”</p> - -<p>“I think of nothing else,” she answered gently.</p> - -<p>Instead of giving her proper credit for that, Louis -sent a wandering eye over his shoulder. Actually, he -was making an excuse of listening to that blatant Gedge -bellowing about the “damnable delay.”</p> - -<p>She looked at Cheviot with a frank perplexity that -before she knew it had gone over into longing. Is he going -to decline to make the least little bit of love to me -because I’m away from home? Is that the “sort o’ -watchman” he’s going to be? Oh, <em>dear</em>!</p> - -<p>“Do you know what time it is?” The watchman -pulled out his watch.</p> - -<p>“I don’t care the very least in the world what time -it is.”</p> - -<p>“That’s just what always happens when the sun -shines all night. It’s very demoralizing.”</p> - -<p>Demoralizing! That after all those hours of strain in -the foul atmosphere below, that she should be willing -to stand here awhile in the crisp and radiant morning -talking to him; talking more gratefully than ever she -had done in her life—“demoralizing!” He wasn’t -even now attending to her. “Why do you allow Gedge -to bother you so? It isn’t like you,” she said. Still -he wore that tantalizing air of listening to the orator on -the rope coil. “What difference can it make to you anything -a man like that may say?”</p> - -<p>“It might make a difference to more than me—if he -wasn’t looked after. I believe I’ll go and do it. Good-night, -Good Girl!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span></p> - -<p>The couple of hours of chill sunshine after breakfast -showed a waveless sea. Far off against the eastern horizon -were single icebergs, that looked like the white tents -pitched on the glassy surface of the sound.</p> - -<p>To the passengers on the grounded ship the calm -weather was only a goad to rage. The rest of the Nome -fleet—<em>they</em> were profiting by open water and absence of -head winds! But as for us of the <i>Los Angeles</i>, we’ve -left our families, sold our farms, risked all we have on -earth for the pleasure of sitting on a sand-bank a hundred -and fifty miles from the gold-fields!</p> - -<p>From hour to hour the disaffection spread. Every -one on board had a remedy for the disaster. Where it -had been thought were miners, attorneys, doctors, politicians, -it turned out they were navigators to a man.</p> - -<p>No glimpse of Cheviot till an hour after breakfast. -Even then only a nod and “Good-morning,” as he went -by deep in talk with the chief engineer. Toward ten -o’clock a little wind sprang out of the northeast and -brought down a thin veil of fog. The air took on a -keener edge, yet no one left the deck or even seemed to -feel the cold, for a rumor had run about the ship like -fire over dry stubble: “The captain says we’ll never -get off this —— bar till we unload.”</p> - -<p>“Unload! Unload what?”</p> - -<p>Pat the answer: “First, the coal.”</p> - -<p>“Throw away <em>coal</em>!”</p> - -<p>Such a counsel of despair struck grave enough on the -ears of men who knew the fabulous sums paid in Nome -for fuel. But not the coal, it was the little word “first” -that presented the keenest barb to each man’s consciousness. -Just as though the immense sacrifice of the coal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span> -were not fit and sufficient climax to the misadventure! -“First!” What possible second? Why, after the coal, -overboard with McKeown and Dingley and the rest of -the heavy stuff!</p> - -<p>“Just let the Cap’n lay a finger on my Dingley,” -warned a bystander, black as thunder.</p> - -<p>“That’s what he’s figurin’ on,” Gedge assured the -irate one. “And after the machinery”—people crowded -aghast to hear—“if we ain’t light enough by then, why, -overboard with every darn thing we got!”</p> - -<p>“If he tries throwin’ out our stuff he’ll have a riot -on his hands—that’s all!”</p> - -<p>Things began to look black for the captain.</p> - -<p>But if he were aware of the fact, it had no effect on -his policy. Hardly ten minutes later Gedge was obliged -to interrupt the indignation meeting by calling out to a -couple of blue China boys, struggling to get some of the -lighter baggage out of the hold: “Hi, you! Stop that, -you pig-tailed heathen. That’s mine. Drop it, I say, -or I’ll knock the stuffin’ out o’ you!”</p> - -<p>The agitated Celestials would have abandoned their -task, but for O’Gorman’s: “Say! They’re only getting -your stuff up into a safe place so they can reach the coal-bunkers. -Here, put the gentleman’s box over by mine.”</p> - -<p>In a couple of hours the deck was piled high with -miscellaneous baggage, and a derrick, hurriedly rigged, -was hauling up the heavier things out of the bowels of -the ship. As they came swinging out of the darkness -into the chill gray light, people recognized their belongings -with an anxiety hardly allayed by the temporary -stowage of their all upon the deck—too palpably a possible -half-way station to the bottom of the sea.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span></p> - -<p>Gedge’s following was now so great as to be unwieldy. -They blocked the narrow gangway, they settled like flies -on the freight. He drew off a chosen few, and retired -out of the bitter wind to the shelter of the smoke-stack -to hold a private session.</p> - -<p>“If that fellow had some education,” said Governor -Reinhart, “he’d be helping to guide the ship of state -at Washington.”</p> - -<p>“He seems likely to guide this ship into trouble -enough,” Cheviot answered crisply.</p> - -<p>“What is he doing now?” Hildegarde asked.</p> - -<p>“He’s—” Reinhart began and hesitated.</p> - -<p>Under his breath O’Gorman finished the sentence. -“Trying to incite a lot of fools to mutiny.”</p> - -<p>“What does he want them to do?”</p> - -<p>“Put the captain in irons.”</p> - -<p>“What!”</p> - -<p>“And turn the ship over to the pilot and first officer—that -fellow coming off the bridge now.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde followed Louis’s eyes and saw they were -fixed not on the dapper officer descending, but were on -the square figure of the captain standing motionless on -the bridge, looking down at the coolies busy as ants -about the hold. But he looked, not as if he saw them. -The hard face was red and angry. Hildegarde, with -her genius for sympathy, divined something in it infinitely -miserable, too. “How lonely the man looks,” -she said aside to Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“You can’t be at the head of things and not be -lonely.”</p> - -<p>The words deepened her sense of commiseration. -“You don’t think he knows about Gedge’s wild talk?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Oh, probably.”</p> - -<p>“I wish he could be reminded he has friends among -us as well as enemies.”</p> - -<p>“I was just going up,” Louis said.</p> - -<p>“Do you think I might come? Just for a moment?”</p> - -<p>“Well, if he fires you out you aren’t to complain.”</p> - -<p>“Complain? No. But I shall still believe it’s a pity -that men think whoever is to know the truth about a -danger or a difficulty, it mustn’t be a woman. Don’t -you see it would be a gain to both sides that we should -know?”</p> - -<p>“Nonsense. It would scare most women and bore -the rest. Besides, they’d be in the way.”</p> - -<p>“If that’s so it’s only because they’ve been kept so -ignorant. Louis”—the voice dropped softly—“do you -know what I’ve been thinking about often and often?”</p> - -<p>He waited a moment before he said: “Since we got -into the ice?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose I do.” But he said it so stonily she -stopped half-way up the companionway and looked back -at him. “I’ve been thinking I should never have known -you if I hadn’t come on this journey.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, found me out, have you?”</p> - -<p>Hearing Cheviot’s short laugh, Gillies jerked his head -angrily over his shoulder. Hildegarde hesitated at the -top of the companionway. “It looks like a dreadful -breach of discipline,” she said, “but it isn’t. You told -me I might come again.”</p> - -<p>“In here, then,” said Gillies gruffly, and took them to -his room. He was shaking like one in an ague, but he -seemed not so ill pleased to see some one from the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span> -below. He gave the girl a chair. “It’s all right,” he -said. “Only it’s no good for others to see you up -here.” He fell into the remaining seat with a heavy -thud, and his bullet head hung forward. “Well?” he -demanded, with a forced laugh, turning bloodshot eyes -on Cheviot. Hildegarde saw plainer now what an unnatural -color Gillies was. Did the shivering and the -purple and scarlet stains mean a sickening for fever, or -only a horrible anxiety and an all-night watch in the -cold?</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid you didn’t get much sleep,” she began.</p> - -<p>“Not for two nights now,” he said, and then looking -at Cheviot: “This’ll be all over the coast, from Nome to -’Frisco.” As he spoke the hard face twitched.</p> - -<p>“What will?” Cheviot answered. “That the floods -have made a new bar in Norton Sound this spring?”</p> - -<p>The captain uttered an inarticulate sound, something -between a grunt and a groan. “First trip, too! Ship -full of damned newspaper people. Land rats, starving -for a story.” He choked, and stood up stamping his -cold feet, and while he did so, through the port he forced -the sleep-defrauded eyes to reconnoiter the sharp, white -outline of the distant icebergs.</p> - -<p>“There are people on board who’ll get the story -right,” said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t care! Let ’em say what they like—if -only the wind doesn’t bring the floe down on us again.” -Cheviot made a move as if to go. “The trouble is,” -said Gillies, “I’m short of hands. However hard they -keep at it those China boys can’t shift five hundred tons -of coal before the tide’s flood.”</p> - -<p>“Well, you’ve got a lot of white men on board—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes,” growled the captain, “and a lot of help I’ll -get out of them.”</p> - -<p>“What I came up for”—Cheviot drew nearer—“was -really to tell you there are men on board this ship who -propose to stand by you.”</p> - -<p>Gillies, leaning against the locker, neither said nor -looked a syllable of thanks. Never even took his bloodshot -eyes off the ice line. But the hard face twitched -again. A sense of the devouring anxiety he was obviously -laboring under made the girl quick to relieve him of any -added strain or restraint that he might feel in an unfamiliar -presence at such a crisis. Even Louis might be -thinking “a woman was in the way.” She stood up, -murmuring an excuse for going.</p> - -<p>The captain, unheeding, went on in that hoarse, muffled -voice: “I’ve just sent an officer below to see if I can -get some volunteers.”</p> - -<p>“What officer?” said Cheviot. “Not the first?”</p> - -<p>“Why not? Yes, the first.” And there was a silence -so significant that Hildegarde was glad she had not -waited for that to tell her she should leave the men to -themselves. But at the threshold she had to stand back -an instant to let the cabin-boy pass. As he was in the -act of darting in with some food, the wind whisked a -paper napkin off the tray. He stooped in the doorway, -clutched after the elusive object with skinny, yellow -fingers, and as he did so the soup slid off the tray and -cascaded over the threshold.</p> - -<p>The captain swore, and the China boy gabbled as he -mopped wildly with the ineffectual paper napkin. “God -forgive me if ever I go to sea again with a lot of damned -Chinamen. I’d have tried kedging before this, if I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span> -a crew that could understand anything but routine -orders. As it is I’ll be lucky if I get the coal out in -time.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t promise you sailors, but say the word, and -I’ll get you some sort of volunteers. How many?”</p> - -<p>“Well, just to get the coal overboard we’ll need two -or three shifts. And if I have to kedge, after all—it’s -no fun!—but with eight <em>good men</em> I could do it.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll undertake to get you the best twenty on the -ship, and you can hold a dozen in reserve.”</p> - -<p>As the girl, at last able to get out dryshod, was going -down the companionway, a bird’s-eye view of the upper -deck gave fresh meaning to the scrap of conversation she -had just heard. Out of the black square of the hold the -blue-cotton coolies crawled up the ladder with vast burdens -to add to the chaos of trunks, crates, and machinery, -piled already so perilously high about the deck, and leaving -so narrow a gangway for people to crowd through -that the able-bodied swarmed over the obstructions.</p> - -<p>There was Mrs. Locke reading in a sheltered nook, -walled in by towering crates, and just the other side, to -leeward of the smoke-stack, Gedge, in close conclave with -his body-guard.</p> - -<p>When Hildegarde, with some difficulty, reached Mrs. -Locke, that lady held up her hand for silence, but, behold, -she wasn’t reading at all. As the girl sank quietly -down, Gedge’s voice reached her clear, although it was -lifted with more than common caution. For ten, fifteen, -twenty minutes he must have gone on airing his seditious -notions; when Mrs. Locke, half rising, whispered, “If -there’s nobody else I think I must go round and talk to -those men myself.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span></p> - -<p>Just then a sound of some one flying over the crates -on the wings of haste, and Cheviot’s voice: “Gedge, are -you there?”</p> - -<p>“You bet I’m here,” was the surly answer. “And -not likely to get away in a hurry, so far’s I see.”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s in our own hands.”</p> - -<p>“Just what I’ve been tellin’ the boys.” But there -was a challenge in the voice.</p> - -<p>“Your head’s level,” said Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’re gettin’ tired, too! Comin’ round, are -you?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve had about enough of this sitting on the bar, if -that’s what you mean.”</p> - -<p>“Then why don’t we <em>do</em> something?”</p> - -<p>“Just what I was going to propose,” said Cheviot -briskly. “Trouble is there aren’t enough hands to get -the coal out before—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, we know that’s his excuse.”</p> - -<p>“His? It’s yours and mine. And a pretty lame excuse, -too.”</p> - -<p>“Was it you,” demanded Gedge truculently, “that -put it into his empty cocoanut to ask us to lend a hand -at pitchin’ our own stuff overboard?”</p> - -<p>“At present it’s a question of pitching out other -fellows’ coal.” Then lower: “See here, Gedge, I want -two words with you.”</p> - -<p>“No you don’t. None of us didn’t come up here for -‘words.’ No, nor to try and patch up the captain’s mistakes -by turnin’ ourselves into beasts o’ burden.” Cheviot -lowered his voice and argued a moment or two, -Gedge bursting in with remarks intended to assure his -satellites that he wasn’t being “got at.” But Cheviot -pressed him hard.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 700px;" id="illus9"> -<img src="images/illus9.jpg" width="700" height="450" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“Coolies crawled up the ladder with vast burdens”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. If we ain’t goin’ -to get out of this fix without we turn to and help that -fool captain—tell you what we’ll do, boys. If we got -to work, we’ll work for Nome wages. Hey, boys? Ten -dollars an hour.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, see here!” said Cheviot, “the captain can’t play -up to that lead.”</p> - -<p>“Any feller,” shouted Gedge, “that works for a penny -less’n ten dollars an hour is lowerin’ the market. He’s -an enemy to society. He’s a—”</p> - -<p>“He’s simply a fellow with a notion he’d like to get -to Nome. I thought you were a pretty sharp customer, -Gedge, but you’re just an every-day sort of ass after -all.” With which Cheviot climbed back over the crates -whistling, as though his momentary concern were at an -end.</p> - -<p>“Hello!” O’Gorman called out. Cheviot turned -aside, when he caught sight of the giant towering over -the nook where the two women sat out of the wind.</p> - -<p>“What luck?” said O’Gorman, under his breath.</p> - -<p>“Four. And you?”</p> - -<p>“Only two.” O’Gorman motioned with his head toward -the smoke-stack, and lowered his voice to a whisper: -“He’s got hold of an awful lot of the men.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot nodded. “Yes. We’re up against that fellow -everywhere we turn.”</p> - -<p>“Always two leaders in every crowd,” O’Gorman -said. “One to lead up, t’other to lead down. I’m -ready to bet on you!”</p> - -<p>They talked in undertones. Only Gedge could be -heard distinctly. He was growing hoarse. His increasing -audience was taking on the proportions of a mass -meeting. But the voice of the popular leader was showing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span> -wear. He ended his oration with some abruptness. -“Come along, Joslin. Let’s go and licker up.”</p> - -<p>“Now! Nail him now!” whispered Cheviot, and -vaulting over a prodigious pile of machinery he disappeared -with Blumpitty and several others into the hold, -while O’Gorman darted out in the opposite direction -just in time to intercept Gedge and Joslin.</p> - -<p>“There’s got to be two shifts. You fellows comin’ to -help?”</p> - -<p>“Help!” Gedge rolled out a brace of handsome -oaths. “<em>Help!</em> that—captain?”</p> - -<p>“No, help us, help yourselves out of this fix.” Then, -before Gedge could get a word of disclaimer over his -lips: “I hear you are worrying about wages. But this -isn’t a question of money. Lives are at stake. See that -ice over yonder? And look here, I’ve got more on board -this ship than any other one man. Fifteen thousand -dollars is what the freight alone has cost me. But to -save your life”—he took hold of Gedge’s arm—“to save -<em>your</em> life, every ounce of mine may go overboard, and -I’ll help shift it at nothing an hour.”</p> - -<p>Gedge looked round rather sheepishly, as if he didn’t -know the answer to this. But suddenly one occurred to -him. “I’m from Missoura,” he said. “You got to -show me. That other feller, too, the one that was givin’ -me such a lot of hot air little while ago, why ain’t you -an’ him—”</p> - -<p>“You come along with me. I’ll ‘show’ you.” -O’Gorman carried the ringleader and Joslin down into -the hold. Two hours later Hildegarde, peering over the -edge of the square pit, saw among the group engaged in -shoveling coal, Gedge, with the face of a blackamoor and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span> -the sweat pouring down. His surplus energy was at last -being utilized.</p> - -<p>Three hundred and fifty tons were flung overboard -before the tide was flood; and again at midnight the -muddy water was set boiling, and the big yellow stack -belched out clouds of smoke. The stranded ship moved a -little, heavily, grudgingly, like a monster half awakened, -and then settled down to finish a second night on the bar.</p> - -<p>The captain was not the only man who didn’t sleep. -More than one “sort o’ watchman” showed signs of -strain the next morning. For the fog was thicker than -the day before, the wind veering and no assurance how -far away the ice. It was partly the fever of anxiety -that found vent in sneers, hardly to be called covert, -when it was known the captain meant to take steps to -free the ship that afternoon.</p> - -<p>“That glass-eyed idiot don’t even yet know there ain’t -but one tide in this part of the world, and that one’s -near midnight!” was the discarded pilot’s contribution. -That Gillies was prepared for the eccentricities of northern -tides was credited by few.</p> - -<p>Open jeers followed his putting off in a small boat, -with the second officer, to sound for deep water. -“What’s the good of deeper water a hundred yards -from the ship?”</p> - -<p>The possible good appeared upon the captain’s return. -The anchor that the small boat was to carry back (with -buoys to mark the place selected) looked big enough to -landsmen’s eyes, till they saw the lowering of the one to -be lashed underneath the long boat. This mighty two-and-a-half-ton -iron-grappler, so the rumor ran, was to -be used to “kedge” the steamer off the bar.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span></p> - -<p>But where were the sailors coming from to man a boat -of this size, let alone to carry out successfully so ticklish -an affair?</p> - -<p>“It’s all right,” Cheviot had said.</p> - -<p>Just how it had been made “right” didn’t appear. -There was no oratory, no public appeal. But three times -as many as the captain wanted were offering to go out -in the fog and plant the great anchor in the choppy sea.</p> - -<p>“I—<em>me</em>. You haf bromise I shall go! Not?” A -great muscular German was squeezing his way to Cheviot’s -side.</p> - -<p>“All right. No hurry. They’ll be a while yet, getting -those buoys right.”</p> - -<p>The general attention was riveted to the second boat -hanging high over the monster anchor that was destined -to be bound lengthwise along the keel. How was any -craft to make her way mounted in so strange a fashion? -How could anybody hope it wouldn’t sink?</p> - -<p>“No, the weight will be too well distributed,” Cheviot -had said.</p> - -<p>“Yes, till you start layin’ the anchor out yonder,” the -pilot commented darkly.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde made a sign to Cheviot. He came to her -across the chain barrier, newly established to keep back -the crowd.</p> - -<p>Before the girl could speak, “Those heavy ropes,” -said Mrs. Locke, “that are to lash the big anchor along -the bottom of the boat, how will you ever get them undone -out there in the choppy water?”</p> - -<p>“Cut them,” answered Cheviot shortly. “What did -you want, Hildegarde?”</p> - -<p>She looked at him appealingly, and then, as though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span> -abandoning some quite different point, “My Blumpitty -is very sore that you are taking the big German instead -of him.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t help that.”</p> - -<p>“Why didn’t you want Blumpitty?”</p> - -<p>“Too old.”</p> - -<p>“Why, he’s only forty something.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve got to have young men for this job.”</p> - -<p>“Then you think it’s very—”</p> - -<p>“No.” Cheviot cut her short. “Not if the right men -are doing it—a mere matter of precision,” and he was -going back.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Locke kept him yet a moment. “I’ve just -heard if one of those ropes is cut the fraction of a second -before the others the boat’ll be dragged under?”</p> - -<p>“It’s got to be done simultaneously, of course, on a -signal,” he answered quietly. “I’ve just been explaining -to Hildegarde it isn’t a job for bunglers.”</p> - -<p>“They say it oughtn’t to be attempted unless by a disciplined -crew.”</p> - -<p>“But there isn’t any disciplined crew,”—he was in -the act of stepping across the chain—“and there isn’t -any other way of getting off the bar.”</p> - -<p>“There are <em>other men</em>,” said Mrs. Locke, quite low.</p> - -<p>“Oh, plenty,” and he was on the other side. But so -was Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“You aren’t allowed over here,” Cheviot said. She -was looking up at the captain and making him a little -signal for permission. He nodded, and without a word -to Cheviot she went up to Gillies on the bridge. In a -few minutes she came down again, but instead of joining -the passengers on the other side of the chain, she made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span> -her way to where, a little apart from the group of volunteers, -Cheviot stood watching the small boat which, -manned by the first officer, O’Gorman, and two others, -was bobbing about dimly on the roughened water.</p> - -<p>Just as Louis caught sight of her one of the volunteers -stepped between them. “What makes those fellows so -devilish slow?”</p> - -<p>“Doing the best they can,” said Cheviot, with an air -of not meaning to notice the girl.</p> - -<p>“No, they aren’t doing the best they can. They -aren’t even getting our boat lowered.”</p> - -<p>“They’ve had to knock off work a minute. The -wind’s playing the mischief with the head-sails.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and if we don’t look sharp the wind’ll play the -mischief with more than the head-sails.”</p> - -<p>The volunteer looked across Cheviot’s shoulder an instant -into the thicker fog. Through that veil no man -might yet discover if the ice were being driven back -against the bar, but all could feel that the need for quick -action might be greater than the fog would let them see.</p> - -<p>The instant the volunteer went back to the waiting -group, Hildegarde drew close to the solitary figure at the -railing. “Louis!”</p> - -<p>Whether at something new in the girl’s low voice, or -at a simultaneous shrill dissonance in the thick, chill air, -Cheviot started and looked round. “Oh, it’s those -Chinamen!” he said, his eyes on the blue-cotton crew -hauling at a rope with a kind of wicked hilarity as they -sang their barbaric, disquieting chant.</p> - -<p>But it was a new experience to find that anything -could get on Louis’s nerves!</p> - -<p>“Is it true you’ve been up all night?” Hildegarde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span> -said hurriedly, scanning his face. He nodded, and -turned seaward again to watch the little boat planting -out bright-colored buoys in the mist.</p> - -<p>“Louis, the captain says I may speak to you. Only -five minutes, so we mustn’t waste time pretending. It’s -dangerous what you mean to do. Oh, don’t be afraid! -I’m not going to try to prevent your going. Only, if -you don’t come back, Louis”—her voice fell—“I shan’t -know how to go on living.”</p> - -<p>For a moment he made no answer, and then, with his -eyes still on the dim boat dancing in the mist: “You’re -only rather frightened,” he said. “Wait till all this -has gone by.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, can’t you see? Why is it so hard for you to believe?”</p> - -<p>“Because,” he said very low, “I know if I did, it -would be the signal for the old barrier to rise up again.”</p> - -<p>“What barrier? You aren’t thinking—”</p> - -<p>“I’m thinking this isn’t the place for you to—” He -checked himself.</p> - -<p>“For me to do what?”</p> - -<p>“To get rid of your old—” Again he stopped, and -then, with an effect of rather bitter patience, “Of course -for you he’s the dominating thought up here among the -ice.”</p> - -<p>“No!”</p> - -<p>“Do you mean to say he hasn’t been in your mind a -hundred times? Continually?”</p> - -<p>“Not continually, because—”</p> - -<p>“Well, a hundred remembrances would satisfy most -men,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Would it satisfy you, Louis?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span></p> - -<p>“No, I should want all, and I know there’s no chance -of getting all here.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose this isn’t the time for me to tell you—”</p> - -<p>He turned on her almost roughly. “You can’t suppose -I need to be told what was in your mind when we -got caught in the ice? And when that first ship showed -on the horizon—” He stopped again, and turned away -as one who has said all.</p> - -<p>“You”—the mere suggestion took away her breath—“you -didn’t think it might be—”</p> - -<p>“<em>You</em> did.”</p> - -<p>“No, no. I knew, dead or alive, he was on the other -side of the world. Or, at nearest, in California.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t tempt him by being sure.” The rigid line of -his lips looked less like firmness than an effort at control. -“If I were to be sure again, especially here, the fog -there would open and a ship come sailing through. And -it would be his ship. And in a moment your ship, too.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t you know for him to be up here is physically -impossible, even if he’s alive?”</p> - -<p>Cheviot shook his head. “There are some men—even -their ghosts can fight their battles. <em>His</em> did, once before.”</p> - -<p>“I could never have believed you were superstitious.”</p> - -<p>“Mayn’t I have even that much imagination?”</p> - -<p>“You’ve forgotten it was all just a dream of mine. -Why”—she couldn’t help giving out a little miserable -laugh—“you’ve forgotten, just as I used to, that I’ve -never seen him?”</p> - -<p>“I remember I used to wish you had.”</p> - -<p>“Well, there’s one thing you can’t remember, because -you never knew it. And that is that I had never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span> -seen <em>you</em> in the Valdivia days. It was partly my fault, -but not altogether. Men’s lives are so hidden from girls. -How is it possible for us to know them? We never see -them doing things that are worth while. We haven’t -a notion what they’re like when they’re at work. -Only, about <em>one</em> man’s work I used to think I knew. Of -course I didn’t, but just to imagine it was something. -I was the kind of girl who isn’t ambitious for herself. -But for the man she—The reason that old ‘obsession,’ -as you called it, took such hold of me, was that <em>there</em> was -a man who was ‘doing things’! I’d heard all my life -about the things he’d done and the things he meant to -do. They seemed already made immortal in a book. But -now I’ve seen it isn’t only he—”</p> - -<p>The contrast in achievement cut too cruelly. Cheviot -struck the damp railing with his open palm, and laughed -out loud.</p> - -<p>Though his action dashed her into trembling she -drew closer, she pressed against his arm. “Besides, I’ve -come at last to care for some one in the only true way—quite -apart from anything he may do. I—I love you, -Louis.”</p> - -<p>The look he turned upon her was very beautiful to the -girl. As his hand moved toward her along the railing, -under cover of the cape, her own slipped into it.</p> - -<p>The wild chant of the Chinamen abruptly ended, and -now that nearer, more intelligible sound, the creaking -of the falls as the long boat sank from the davits to the -sea.</p> - -<p>Cheviot, with an effort, turned his eyes away from the -girl’s face. Together they watched the boat floated over -the great anchor that was suspended lengthwise a little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span> -under the surface of the water; together saw the binding -fast of the anchor to the boat. And now the two made -one were ready. Cheviot took off his overcoat and flung -it over the railing. “Will you have an eye to that?”</p> - -<p>Her heart was beating painfully. “Do you think I’ll -have an eye to spare?”</p> - -<p>“Well, keep this in your pocket then.” He took off -his watch. “And here’s this.” He put a little leather -case in her hand, smiling and saying hurriedly, under -his breath: “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” -Then facing about he signaled to his volunteers.</p> - -<p>In the undisciplined fashion of her sex, Hildegarde, -forgetting to go back behind the barrier, stood at gaze. -Cheviot, carrying with him something quick and quivering -out of the heart of the girl (something that kept her -linked to him not by eye and mind alone, but as by a -bond that established oneness of the very flesh, faithfully -reporting effort and transmitting feeling), he disappeared -over the ship’s side after the officer, followed by the six -volunteers. With steady eyes the girl watched the buffeting -of the heavy-weighted boat, and watched the fog -blur it till it looked like something seen in a dream. Cheviot -at the bow, by the uniformed figure, less distinct -both of them than the big German with his black-and-yellow -cap at the stern.</p> - -<p>Now the “kedgers” were passing the small boat, and -now they had gained the buoys. Hildegarde saw the -officer turn, and knew he was giving some direction. -Now they were trying to steady the pitching boat directly -over the selected site, shown by a buoy faintly -vermilion, bobbing to right and to left.</p> - -<p>No easy affair to keep the boat there long enough to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span> -plant the great anchor. The officer stood up, and in a -sudden lurch all but capsized, steadied himself and -seemed to wait. There was a shipping of oars; the picture -danced and then dissolved.</p> - -<p>No, no, there it was! But what had happened, why -did it look so strange? The men! there wasn’t one in -the boat. And so many dim buoys—no, <em>heads</em>! Lord, -Lord, have mercy! The boat was turned completely -over and drowning men were clinging to the keel. Were -they all there! Which was Louis? One couldn’t even -count, for the waves would wash over a man and wipe -him out. A moment, and there he was again! That, -<em>that</em> was Louis! Could he keep hold on the plunging -keel? (Lord God, be kind!) But he seemed not to have -been washed away. He was swimming to the place -where a man had been and was no more. Now Louis had -hold of him. And there was the other boat—the little -one, as though she’d dropped from the skies, or risen -from the bed of the ocean; and she was taking a man on -board! Not Louis, but the one who had once gone down—the -huge German. Two men! Three were hauled in. Not -one of them Louis! He kept a hand on the gunwale -of the overcrowded little boat, and swam with it toward -the buoys. Why was he and those others still struggling -in the water, what were they trying to do? To right -the long boat? Oh, let it alone and come back!</p> - -<p>After endless moments, Louis and the rest, with the -help of the men in the small boat, had got the other right -side up again. Now both crews were coming back.</p> - -<p>When at last in a shower of cheers, Cheviot, the last -of the volunteers, climbed the swinging ladder and -smiled up at the face bending over—not till then did<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span> -it seem to Hildegarde that the something he had taken -away was restored to her, and her body and her soul -made whole again.</p> - -<p>The people broke through the barrier and pressed -round the dripping figures, hurrahing too loud at first -to hear how everything was “all right now.” They’d -got the anchor where they wanted it, and they hadn’t -lost an inch of cable, and had got a ducking only because -a few strands of the confounded rope hung up -the falling anchor a fraction of a second longer on one -side than on the other.</p> - -<p>Very quickly Cheviot seemed to have enough of public -enthusiasm. “You might just let us by, so we can get -into dry things.” But the horde pressed closer. How -was this, and how was that? And how the onlookers -felt in that awful moment when the boat capsized. In -vain Cheviot assured them, “Nobody’s a penny the -worse, and the kedging can begin as soon as the tide -comes in.” Nobody the worse? Yes, one man was. -Since he couldn’t get away, Cheviot created a diversion -by laughing at the wet and angry German, who stood -outside the press, oblivious of other people’s excitement, -his own face working with emotion, stretching out his -arms and apostrophizing his black-and-yellow cap that -floated like some gay sea-bird on the troubled waters. -He appealed to the officer to let him go back in the -small boat and rescue the precious object.</p> - -<p>“You’d better go and get dry, Guggenheim, for the -sake of your family,” Cheviot called out, and then to -those nearest, “You talk about grit. I tell you we had -<em>one</em> hero in our crew and one fool, and both together -made one large-sized Dutchman.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Guggenheim?”</p> - -<p>“Guggenheim. What do you think? That fellow volunteered -without being able to swim!”</p> - -<p>There was a roar of laughing amazement.</p> - -<p>“Yes, and when we were out there, and the waves -were playing battledore with our boat, the fellow says, -quite calmly, ‘Ob ve go opsot you fellows yoost most -safe me.’ ‘Save yourself?’ says the officer. ‘I not can -svim,’ says the volunteer, and then he told us quite -firmly, ‘You shall safe me for dat I haf a vife and four -childs wid a baby. You vill know me,’ he says, ‘from -my cap.’”</p> - -<p>As Cheviot at last pushed his way out of the crush, -Hildegarde, close in his wake, still carrying the overcoat, -followed him down the companionway. Near the -deserted music-room door she slipped her hand in his.</p> - -<p>“I’m too wet for you to come near.” But his eyes -said nothing of the sort, and dripping as he was, he had -her in his arms.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-l.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Late the next evening, standing with Louis -and Captain Gillies on the bridge, Hildegarde -saw ships on the western horizon. -The fleet at last! anchored two miles off -from Nome. It was bedtime, but quite impossible -to sleep, though there would be no landing till -next day. They said “Good-night” to the captain, and -found their way to a corner of the deck, where alone -together they might see the belated sun setting, and -watch a pale-gold moon of enormous size riding portentously -the clear-colored sky, too bright for stars. Hand -in hand, hidden among the freight, they talked of the -future, arranging it in the high fashion of the young, -as though they two had been gods seated on Olympus. -And as they talked the faint flush over yonder turned -the purest rose, then deepened as each beautiful moment -sped, till the sun, gone but now, hastened back like one -who abandons a projected journey, and on the heels of -his good-by comes shamefaced home. What would it be -like, this day that he was bringing? What was waiting -over yonder in that mysterious land, still in shadow, -that skirts the hills of Nome? Just a little longer the -weary passengers hung about the decks, while the blood-red -sun peered at them over a violet sea, ready, when the -shadow-curtain lifted, to clothe the naked truth of -Nome with a final splendor. Whatever might come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[441]</a></span> -after, in this first actual vision of the place people had -fared so far to find, it was to wear the hues of heaven. -For the “boat-load of failure,” the dream they had -called “Nome” was to die in a glory of gold and fire.</p> - -<p>The decks that had swarmed with excited people were -falling silent. Men and women, whose whole lives hung -upon what they should find waiting for them yonder, -must be in bed betimes, that they might be ready to go -ashore in the first boat. Soon only Hildegarde and Cheviot -remained. But they were silent, watching all those -white sails turn pink against the purple distance—sea -and sky alike dyed deep, and still the honey-colored -moon hanging there, immense, unreal. Whichever way -they looked, this northern world was like something -seen in a dream, spectral, uncanny, fitly ushered in by -the sunrise in the night.</p> - -<p>To Hildegarde, as though given in that hour some -gift of prophecy, it seemed that after all her journeying -the land she looked on was still beyond the reach of -sober day, fated to be for ever outside the experience of -waking hours.</p> - -<p>Yet this incredible country for two years had been her -father’s home!</p> - -<p>Louis would go ashore in the first boat and prepare -Nathaniel Mar for his daughter’s coming.</p> - -<p>“If I were alone I should be imagining he might be -dead.” Even as she said “if,” an inward dread clutched -at her.</p> - -<p>“If you were alone I should be imagining things worse -than death.” They drew together. As he held her, -looking down into her eyes, a new gravity came into his -own. “Are you sure <em>at last</em>?” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[442]</a></span></p> - -<p>“You know I am. But I don’t scold you for asking. -It’s the more beautiful of you to have quite realized -and yet—yet not despise me for all that romantic feeling -about some one I’ve never seen.”</p> - -<p>“Your mother once helped me there.”</p> - -<p>“My mother! What does she know about—”</p> - -<p>“More than you might think. When I’d lost patience -one day, she told me the only difference between you -and other girls was that you were honester and stubborner -than most.”</p> - -<p>“I can hear her saying ‘stubborner.’”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but it was curious to hear her saying few -women, if they remember their youth, can truthfully -say it went by without some such—well—she called it -names—”</p> - -<p>“I know one of them. Some such silly ‘infatuation.’” -Hildegarde smiled, but not he. “I wonder if my mother -ever—Oh, it’s a wild idea!”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. She said it was usually either a -great soldier or a clergyman, often an actor, sometimes -a poet, or ‘even a bachelor statesman.’ And she said -that last with such an edge in her voice I wondered at -the time what American statesman was still unmarried -when Mrs. Mar was in her ’teens.” And their own -cloud was dispersed in smiling at another’s.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde, coming on deck at six o’clock, found sunshine -whitening all the thousand tents of Nome. Frame -dwellings, too, the eye found out—one standing boldly -forth with flag flying. That, Blumpitty said, was the -hospital. Was her father there? Courage! Louis was -at her side, with confident looks and shining eyes that -saw no shadow save the purple splotch in the sea to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[443]</a></span> -left—“Sledge Island.” Had she noticed the snow-seamed -hills? She must take his glass and look at that -higher lift in the low, undulant line; could she see a -queer knob? “<em>Anvil Rock!</em>” But the main impression -up the beach, and down the beach, and away over -the tundra, was tents, tents. And between the <i>Los Angeles</i> -and the surf-whitened shore, sails, sails! Ships of -every size and kind. Big steamers from Seattle, from -San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver, smart sailing -vessels, lumbering freight boats, whalers, and among -them—darting back and forth like a flock of brown -sparrows under the gleaming wings of seagulls—were -myriads of little skiffs, dories, lighters, canoes, and here -and there a steam launch, bobbing, swarming, surrounding -“the last boat in,” and ready to take all and sundry -to Nome for dazzling sums.</p> - -<p>While the more enterprising of the <i>Los Angeles’</i> contingent -(swallowing their resentment at the captain’s -failure to set them instantly ashore) bargained with the -owners of the small craft, a rumor ran about the ship -that not even a millionaire might leave till certain formalities -had been complied with. But Cheviot had in -some way got a special permit to go ashore with one of -the officers.</p> - -<p>While Hildegarde waited after breakfast for his return, -she tried to deaden fear of the news he might bring -back, listening to the scraps of talk between the touting -boatmen and the passengers longingly suspended over the -<i>Los Angeles’</i> side.</p> - -<p>Some old acquaintance called out “Howdy” to the -bean-feaster, and after hearing what the Commission -had settled in far away Washington, screamed back<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[444]</a></span> -Nome news in return. They were “havin’ a red hot -roarin’ boom,” and Jolly Haley had made a million. -One of the great steamers was spoken as she moved -majestically by. Others, besides the <i>Los Angeles</i>, were -overdue, the captain of the <i>Akron</i> said. Those haggard -wrecks down there toward Cape Nome—they were only -two, but the Bering Sea was full of ships disabled or -gone down in these last days. Gillies asked for news of -friends and rivals. The <i>Congress</i> had put into Dutch -Harbor “for repairs,” he was told, and the men exchanged -grim smiles. The <i>Santa Ana</i> was burned to -within two feet of the water. The passengers on the -<i>Chiquita</i> had been all but starved to death, and the <i>St. -John</i> had made escape from the ice-pack only to go to -pieces on the rocks. Then, like some sentient thing exulting -in her enviable fate, the <i>Akron</i> steamed away in -the sunshine.</p> - -<p>Popular interest shifted to starboard when the whaler -<i>Beluga</i> drew ’longside. Her captain, a hard-looking -customer, came on board the <i>Los Angeles</i> to talk to Gillies. -O’Gorman discovered a man he knew on board the -whaler. “Going to Nome?” he asked him. “No, better -than that. Gettin’ out.” Where was the ex-Nomite off -to? “Up the coast.” The <i>Beluga</i> was to meet some -south-bound whalers up in Grantley Harbor in a day or -two—might come south herself afterward, or might go -still farther north to Kotzebue. O’Gorman’s friend -didn’t care where, just so it wasn’t Nome. The people -of the <i>Los Angeles</i> only laughed. Clear that fellow was -a hoodoo. The more luck in Nome, since he was leaving -it!</p> - -<p>“He might be able to give you news about your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[445]</a></span> -father,” O’Gorman said aside to Miss Mar. But before -she answered he saw, from the sudden fear in the girl’s -face, that she couldn’t risk having bawled at her in -public tidings that more and more she dreaded.</p> - -<p>“He—Mr. Cheviot will soon be back,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Has he been in Nome all winter?—your <i>Beluga</i> -friend?” Mrs. Locke asked O’Gorman.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I guess so.”</p> - -<p>“I’d like to inquire about my firm, Dixon and Blumenstein.” -O’Gorman called out the question for -her.</p> - -<p>“Lots o’ folks inquirin’ ’bout Dixon and Blumenstein,” -the man on the whaler roared back.</p> - -<p>“How so?”</p> - -<p>“Lit out.”</p> - -<p>“Gone away?”</p> - -<p>“You bet.”</p> - -<p>“What for?”</p> - -<p>“Busted.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mrs. Locke, what shall you do?” While Hildegarde, -vaguely aware of the unusual sound of a dog -howling distractedly, stood beside the woman who in -those seconds had seen her hoped-for home, her very -bread swept from her, Louis’s voice was audible over -the girl’s shoulder. Hildegarde turned to find herself -in her father’s arms. She did not notice how wet he -was with sea-water. “Oh, you are ill!” she faltered.</p> - -<p>“My child! My child!” he kept repeating, and -then: “What a journey!”</p> - -<p>“But you see I’ve got to Nome all right.”</p> - -<p>“To Nome! God forbid!”</p> - -<p>“But God hasn’t forbidden,” said the girl, swallowing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[446]</a></span> -the sob that sight of the haggard face had brought -into her throat. She was conscious, too, that her fellow-travelers -were eagerly listening to the colloquy.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been telling Cheviot I can’t think how he could -allow you—” Mr. Mar caught himself up and laid his -hand affectionately on the young man’s shoulder. “Of -course Louis didn’t really know. The Nome he left was -bad enough, but that Nome has passed away. To-day -it isn’t a place for a girl to stay in an hour.”</p> - -<p>“’Sh! father! You’ll scare my friends. This is Mrs. -Blumpitty. She thinks very highly of Nome. And this -is Mr. Blumpitty. Mother put me under their care, -and they’ve been <em>so</em> kind. They’ve brought a big party -up again this year. We’ve all come believing great -things of the new camp.”</p> - -<p>The moment the handshaking was over, “This way,” -Cheviot said, and while the talk buzzed, and the dog -somewhere down yonder among the swarming rowboats -howled dismally, and questions showered on the man -from Nome, Louis was leading Mr. Mar toward the companionway.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes,” said Hildegarde, “my suit-case and things. -But father needn’t trouble to come below. I’ve had -everything packed and ready <em>for hours</em>!” She smiled -at Cheviot across the halting figure. “What kept you -so, Louis? Couldn’t you find him?”</p> - -<p>“You can’t get along very fast over there,” Cheviot -answered.</p> - -<p>“<em>You</em> couldn’t?”</p> - -<p>“Nobody can. There’s a wall of stuff piled higgledy-piggledy -for a mile along the shore.”</p> - -<p>“Dingleys and McKeowns, and—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[447]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes, and grub. Tons of it. Hundreds of barrels of -whisky. Thousands of bags of flour and beans piled -higher than my head. Lumber—acres of it. Furniture -and bedding, engines and boilers, mixed up with sides -of bacon and blankets, and a sprinkling of centrifugal -pumps and Klondike thawers. How they’ll ever sort -that chaos—”</p> - -<p>“The next high tide will save them the trouble,” said -Nathaniel Mar.</p> - -<p>“Well, it’s a queer sight. Hundreds and hundreds -of people, Hildegarde, sitting on top of their worldly -goods, looking as if they’d never stir again. Like so -many Robinson Crusoes, each one on his own desert -island, among the wreck of his possessions.” Hildegarde -smiled. Louis was only pointing out that Nome justified -his prophecy. A form of “I told you so.” But he was -speaking to her father. “And the faces! You’re used -to them, but I—” He caught Hildegarde’s significant -little smile and deliberately changed the tune. “Of -course there’s a lot of hustling, too,” he ended, stopping -by the smoking-room door.</p> - -<p>“Yes, the old story,” said Hildegarde’s father, wearily. -“All land there free and equal from the common -life of the ships. Twenty minutes, and some are masters -and others are slaves.”</p> - -<p>“I thought there’d be no one here!” Cheviot said -with satisfaction, as he held open the door.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t the boat ready to take us back?” Hildegarde -asked.</p> - -<p>“I suppose,” said her father, leaning heavily on his -stick and looking at her from under his bushy eyebrows, -“you think we’ve got hotels over yonder.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[448]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Oh, no.”</p> - -<p>“There isn’t even a boarding-house—”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. L’Estrange <em>will</em> be glad! She’s going to set -up the very thing, and make her everlasting fortune.”</p> - -<p>“Well, <em>I’m</em> glad”—Mar dropped into the nearest -seat—“very glad you’re a sensible girl and take it like -that.”</p> - -<p>Imagine his thinking she’d come expecting a hotel -and all the comforts of home! That was why he seemed -so harassed. “Poor father!” She put an arm about his -crooked shoulders. It had been hard for him to make -his way over the chaos of the beach, and he had got so -wet coming out. How thoughtful of that dear Louis -to bring him in here to rest before undertaking the return -trip.</p> - -<p>The old man crossed his wrinkled hands on the knob -of his heavy stick and slowly shook his head. “No, -Nome wasn’t Paradise before, but since the invasion it’s -a hell upon earth.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, father!”</p> - -<p>“Well, think of it! Something like forty thousand -homeless people stranded over yonder on the beach.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad <em>you</em> haven’t been one of the homeless -ones,” she said gently.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know how glad you’d be if you saw my one-roomed -tent on the boggy tundra.”</p> - -<p>“Dearest.” She took off his big soft hat that impeached -his dignity with an absurd operatic air, and she -stroked the whitened hair. “It’s well I”—she looked -across at her lover—“<em>we’ve</em> come to look after you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m one of the fortunate Nomites! I tell you a -man with <em>any</em> sort of shelter over his head is in luck.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[449]</a></span> -Hundreds are sleeping on the beach in the cold and -rain.”</p> - -<p>“Silly people not to buy a tent.”</p> - -<p>“Most of them did, and can’t get it landed or can’t -find it in the hurly-burly.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I hope mine won’t get lost!”</p> - -<p>“<em>Yours!</em>”</p> - -<p>“Yes, father, I’ve got a tent and two pairs of Hudson -Bay blankets, waterproof boots, stout netting—for the -mosquitoes, you know. Oh, I have heard all about those -mosquitoes! I’ve got a canvas knapsack and an oil-stove, -and oceans of oil, and a pistol and plenty of chocolates -and six weeks’ provisions.” With a little encouragement -she would have told him every item in that six -weeks’ provision. She was distinctly proud of her list. -Many people on the <i>Los Angeles</i> had complimented her -upon its judicious selection.</p> - -<p>But Nathaniel Mar’s face showed no pride—showed -something even like horror. “I can’t think what you -were about, Cheviot,” he said almost sharply.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde was still incredulous that Louis had been -able to resist the natural temptation of “telling on her,” -and saving his own credit. “Doesn’t father know—anything?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, I told him—about us.”</p> - -<p>“It’s the one redeeming feature in the present situation,” -said Mr. Mar.</p> - -<p>“Father!” She was really wounded by that.</p> - -<p>“But as I’ve told you already”—he turned his melancholy -eyes on the young man—“I’d take more comfort -in the intelligence if you hadn’t brought her up -here!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[450]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Does he say he brought me?”</p> - -<p>“He can’t say he prevented you.”</p> - -<p>“I <em>would</em> come. I was afraid we’d never get you -back.” She was on the verge of tears.</p> - -<p>“Well, well,” said Cheviot briskly, “it’s no use -spilling milk.”</p> - -<p>“No,” agreed the old man. “It might be worse. After -all, the ship is going back in a week and I’ll make -arrangements for you to live on board till then.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde withdrew her arm. She came and stood in -front of the bowed old man. “You can’t mean that -while I <em>am</em> here, I’m not to stay with you—or in my -own tent near—”</p> - -<p>“Your tent!” Mr. Mar lifted one hand, calling -heaven to witness his offspring’s folly. “As to ‘near’ -<em>me</em>, I’m sleeping in a ghastly lodging-house myself at -the moment. We pay ten dollars a night for floor space. -Spread a blanket on filthy boards, and try to get some -rest in spite of drunken rows and vermin.”</p> - -<p>“I should think even a tent in the bog was better than -that.”</p> - -<p>“Much. I’ve lent mine for a few nights to a miserable -woman and her daughter, who’d slept a week on -the beach. Like Hildegarde here, they ‘bought a tent!’ -It’s on that steamer we passed. There are half a dozen -ships that can’t get unloaded.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know that I like those other women living in -your tent,” said Hildegarde, with frank envy.</p> - -<p>“Some of us are arranging to get the daughter home.”</p> - -<p>“Not the mother?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“She’s going to stay?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[451]</a></span></p> - -<p>“She’s got consumption.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!”</p> - -<p>“They came in the steerage. No, the mother won’t go -home, and won’t need my tent long, I think.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde stroked his hand. “It was like you, father, -to give them shelter.”</p> - -<p>“It’s been pretty much as you saw it this morning”—Mar -turned to Louis—“for two weeks now. People are -paralyzed. The fall from the height of their anticipations -has stunned them. The women sit and wait. For -what, they don’t know. The men drink and play high, and -when they’re cleaned out and can’t think of anything -else to do, they shoot. There were two men killed last -night in a fight over a lot. In the last week there have -been six suicides. Nobody minds. What’s the spilling -of a little blood? A thing far more important is the -scarcity of water. You buy it by the small bucketful -and carry it home yourself. If you don’t boil it, you -get typhoid. The mayor told somebody that, after all, -we lacked only two things here—water and good society. -The stranger said: ‘It’s all the damned lack.’” It -was as striking to ears that heard the retort then for the -first time as though the saying had not grown hoary. -“You’ll see,” Mar said, as though Cheviot had denied -such a possibility, “it’ll be worse here than ever Dawson -was in the toughest times. We haven’t got any such -body of men to keep the peace as the mounted police.”</p> - -<p>“And to think it’s all your fault, father.”</p> - -<p>Mar stared at her.</p> - -<p>“Two years ago and nobody cared a pin to go to -Nome. You couldn’t induce the boys to come. You -had to bribe even Louis. Now forty thousand people,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[452]</a></span> -and all that tangle on the beach.” Her eyes were eager. -“Nome, at this minute, must be the most wonderful -sight in the world.”</p> - -<p>“It’s the dump-heap of the nations! I’ll tell you -what happened a week ago.” Mr. Mar was almost voluble -in his anxiety to convince his daughter of the unfitness -of Nome as a subject of feminine curiosity. “I’d -been to the A.C. store and got a small draft cashed. -Then I went up to Penny River and was gone all day. -As I came back, behind the big Music Hall tent, I was -held up. Two men turned out my pockets and made off -with my thirty dollars. It was no use reporting the -robbery. I was very tired, and I went to bed. I was -waked up by some one rummaging about. But before I -realized what was happening inside, I saw there were -holes cut in the off wall of my tent, and two pairs of eyes -were watching me. A little lower down the bores of a -couple of pistols were sticking through. I lay perfectly -still, and presently the man inside, who’d been going -through my grip-sack, threw it down. ‘Where do you -keep your stuff, anyhow?’ he said, and then I recognized -him. ‘You’re not in luck. You’ve got hold of the -same person twice,’ I said. ‘Think we didn’t know -that?’ he said. ‘We made such a devilish poor haul we -thought we’d give you another chance. Come along,’ -he said, ‘where do you keep the rest?’ And when he -found there wasn’t anything in the tent but a match -and a pistol—well, he was good enough to tell me his -opinion of me.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t understand—isn’t it daylight all night?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but some of the honest people try to sleep, and -then the crooks take over the town. The place is full of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[453]</a></span> -the professional criminal class. And if it weren’t, -Nome, as it is to-day, would breed them. My next-door -neighbor says if he owned all the Nome district and -owned hell, he’d sell Nome and live in hell.”</p> - -<p>“But the thing that brought everybody here—the -gold!”</p> - -<p>“The sour-doughs are getting some out of the creeks. -But there aren’t any more windfalls for late comers, -since the beach was worked out.”</p> - -<p>“I did see one or two cheechalkers rocking in a hole -here and there,” said Cheviot.</p> - -<p>“Go back to-morrow; you won’t see the same faces. -‘Poor man’s country!’—where bread costs more than -luxuries anywhere else on earth! Any business that’s -done in Nome to-day is buying and selling and brokerage -precisely as it is in Wall Street. For the moneyless mass -there isn’t only disappointment, there isn’t only hardship; -there’s acute suffering down on the beach. I don’t -know, for my part, where it’s going to end.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mind not staying <em>long</em>,” said Miss Mar -obligingly, “in a place where you wake up to find -pistols and eyes peering in at you; but I wouldn’t, <em>for all -the world</em>, I wouldn’t miss just seeing it.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Mar moved his stick impatiently.</p> - -<p>“<em>I’d</em> be willing enough to miss seeing it,” said Cheviot, -“and I’m not squeamish either. But, Lord! some -of those faces!”</p> - -<p>The old man nodded. “I keep away from the water -front as much as I can. Can’t stand it. I’ve never -seen such despair in human eyes. If there are lost -souls on the earth, I’ve seen them on the beach at -Nome.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[454]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Well, I dare say a little of it will go a long way with -me, too.”</p> - -<p>“Hildegarde, you’re growing very like your mother.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you, father,” said the girl, imperturbably.</p> - -<p>“The trouble is if you insisted on having ‘a little’ of -Nome, you might have to take a great deal,” Cheviot -said.</p> - -<p>“Why might I?”</p> - -<p>He exchanged a look with Mr. Mar. “Come out here, -Hildegarde, and I’ll show you.”</p> - -<p>As she followed to the ship’s side, “What makes the -dog howl so?” she asked. “Look! he’ll be out of that -little boat in a minute—he’ll be drowned.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot leaned over. “Shut up!” he called down. -“Say, <em>Red</em>! D’you hear? Shut up, I tell you!”</p> - -<p>The dog looked critically at Cheviot, ears cocked, nose -pointed, forefeet on the gunwale of the lighter, which -was bobbing about at the foot of the <i>Los Angeles’</i> ladder.</p> - -<p>“Louis, is that father’s Reddy? Oh, I do so want to -make friends with him! Red! Red! how d’you do? Be -a good dog, we’re coming down in a minute.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll get one of the sailors to bring him up. Here”—Cheviot -adjusted his glass for her—“now look off there -to the right—farther, beyond the wreck of the <i>Pioneer</i>. -Do you see that big tent with the flag?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Can you see what flag it is?”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t Stars and Stripes. It looks all yellow.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Who are the people who have a yellow flag?”</p> - -<p>“The people who have smallpox. That’s the pest-house.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[455]</a></span></p> - -<p>On their way back they met Blumpitty asking, sadder -than ever, if anybody knew how soon quarantine was -going to be declared. “Pretty rough on the people who -get shut out,” murmured Blumpitty.</p> - -<p>“Rougher on those who get shut in,” said Cheviot.</p> - -<p>Joslin was furious at either prospect. “Damned nonsense,” -he said, “spoilin’ the finest boom since ’49, all -on account of a little smallpox.”</p> - -<p>They found Mr. Mar in the smoking-room, in the same -weary attitude, head hung over his wide breast, hat -hung on the sound knee, wooden leg stiffly slanting, eyes -among the cigar ashes on the floor.</p> - -<p>“Whatever else I do, father, I can’t go home without -<em>you</em>.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’ll take you home, my dear,” said Mar, with -alacrity. “I’ve nothing to keep me here now, except my -claims at Polaris.”</p> - -<p>“Oh,” said the girl, losing some of her gloom, “have -you got a share in the Mother Lode?”</p> - -<p>He smiled faintly at miners’ superstition on his -daughter’s lips. “I’ve got something worth looking -after,” he said, “though, as I told Louis, I wish my good -luck wasn’t always so inaccessible. Only two boats -touched Polaris last year. I don’t know how it will be -this summer. I wasn’t able to go in either of those -that have set off so far. But I sent up a man to do the -assessment work.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll find a way of seeing what he’s made of his -job.” Cheviot seemed to ratify some arrangement. -Then turning to Hildegarde: “And I’ll follow you in -the first ship.”</p> - -<p>“Follow? Can’t you go and get back in a week?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[456]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I might, if there should happen to be a boat.” He -was touchingly pleased at Hildegarde’s unwillingness to -go home without him.</p> - -<p>Quite suddenly she remembered O’Gorman’s loud-voiced -friend of the whaler. “I’ve got an inspiration,” -she said gaily. “Why shouldn’t we all three go up to -Polaris in the bark <i>Beluga</i>? Yes, yes, that whaler -alongside is going north in a day or two. Now, don’t -say it’s impossible till you see.” Quickly she outlined -a delightful plan. They could all come back in one of -the boats waiting about in Grantley Harbor. Or why -shouldn’t they (after they’d attended to the Mother -Lode), why shouldn’t they go in the <i>Beluga</i> as far as -Kotzebue? Nobody realized in the very least, she said, -her immense interest in all this queer northern world. -And after what she’d gone through to get here, they -wanted to forbid her Nome! Adroitly she spoke, as -though their success were still a matter of doubt. <em>If</em> -she didn’t see Nome, oh, how she’d be laughed at in -Valdivia! But <em>if</em> she didn’t, why shouldn’t she be a -little compensated for so huge a disappointment? But -that wasn’t the main consideration. How could anybody -expect her to go away in this very same horrible -boat that had brought her, and go <em>without</em> Louis? Was -her father grown so hard-hearted up here as to expect -to part them when they’d only just found each other? -Half-smiling, but serious enough in reality, as Mar could -see, she pleaded for her plan. Louis was plainly a convert, -though he did say in a feeble and highly unconvinced -fashion, that if he hadn’t used up all his credit -with her on the subject of travel, he’d point out that -the accommodation on board these coasting vessels—</p> - -<p>“Oh, <em>don’t</em> be so careful of me—you two!” she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[457]</a></span> -wailed. “The reasons why I mustn’t see Nome surely -don’t apply to Polaris. Why mayn’t I have a look at -that miraculous Mother Lode? Besides, Polaris! why, -that’s where Blumpitty’s hermit lives! Dearest father, -I’ve been dying to see the hermit. Was it he who told -you, too, where to get claims?”</p> - -<p>“Certainly not. I wouldn’t go near the imposter! -Living on people’s greedy hopes. That’ll come to an -end, too, some fine day!”</p> - -<p>“Well, if it hasn’t come to an end yet, you won’t -mind my seeing him, will you, dearest? It isn’t just idle -curiosity. You really ought to sympathize a little. I must -have got it from you—all this interest in the North, that -we used to think was left out of the rest of the family. -Don’t you remember, I never wondered at the hold it -had on you? Even when I was quite little—” She -pulled herself up suddenly, with an anxious glance at -Cheviot’s averted face. But he turned briskly at that -first pause and said: “I’ll leave you to butter the -parsnips, Hildegarde, while I tackle the captain.”</p> - -<p>When Cheviot had gone, “What’s the news?” said -Mar.</p> - -<p>“Oh, they’re all well, and the boys are getting on -splendidly. Mother sends you—”</p> - -<p>“Nothing yet from Jack Galbraith?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing, up to the day I left. Father, it bores -Louis dreadfully, hearing about—arctic exploration. -We won’t talk about Jack Galbraith before Louis. But -I’ve often thought, while I’m crawling up this side of -the round world, Jack is probably sliding down the -other.”</p> - -<p>“It’s one of the reasons for going home,” said the old -man, thinking aloud.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[458]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-i.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">It was after some delay through fogs that, -on a clear July morning to Hildegarde for -ever memorable, the small whaling vessel -<i>Beluga</i> anchored below the cape called -Prince of Wales, that looks across the narrow -Strait of Bering to the Siberian shore. The girl, -with her new friend Reddy at her side, overheard with -inattentive ear her father’s final instructions. Mar, -whose difficulty in getting about was obviously increased -in these months of absence, had agreed to remain on -board. Cheviot’s the task of making the most of the -brief span granted by the surly captain for inquiry into -the condition of the gold camp two miles across the surf, -and two more inland up Polaris Creek.</p> - -<p>But if the talk between the men about possible claim-jumpers, -treatment of “tailings,” increase of water-power, -double shifts, and clean-ups—if such matters -held but a modified interest for the girl on this golden -morning, not so the scene itself. Even in the gray light -of yesterday, when, toward bedtime, the thicker fog-veils -lifted enough to show how far the <i>Beluga</i> had gone -out of her course, the girl had thrilled at the misty -vision of the Diomede Islands. For one of these showed -the fringe of Asia. Hildegarde had reached that place -in her journeying where the East was become the West,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[459]</a></span> -and where to find the farthest limit of the immemorial -Orient you must needs look toward the setting sun.</p> - -<p>To-day, coming on deck before she broke her fast, -something in the girl had cried out greeting at her first -glimpse of the coast-line bluffs of extreme northwestern -Alaska, drawn in purple against a radiant east, to the -south receding a little from the shore and fainting into -the blue of snow-flecked hills having a strip of tundra -at their feet.</p> - -<p>There, upon that narrow coastwise margin, directly -in front of what from the deck of the <i>Beluga</i> seemed the -highest point in the background, the sunshine picked out -boldly the intense white of the handful of tents that -stood for the settlement of Polaris and the port for the -Polaris mining-camp.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had won her father’s consent, reluctant -though it was, that she should go ashore with Cheviot. -Gaily she assured him it was little compensation enough -to a girl who had foregone the fearful joys of Nome. The -visit of inspection to the Polaris claims would not take -long. As the old man looked at his “two children,” with -the sunshine on their faces, he wondered who would -have the heart to steal from them a single one of those -early hours of enchantment.</p> - -<p>Not Nathaniel Mar.</p> - -<p>But neither he nor they had bargained for Reddy’s -bearing them company. He announced his intention -unmistakably, when Cheviot went over the ship’s side -into the small boat that was to take him and Hildegarde -through the surf. Mar tried in vain to quiet the beast. -So unnerving were Mr. Reddy’s demonstrations, when -he saw Hildegarde preparing to follow Cheviot, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[460]</a></span> -Mar called out, Hildegarde must wait till the dog could -be shut up; the sailors could hardly hold him. But the -men below, bobbing about on the rough water, were with -difficulty preventing the boat from being battered -against the ship’s side, and Cheviot was shouting, “No -time to worry with the dog!”</p> - -<p>At the same moment, Hildegarde, hanging suspended -between her two counselors on the swinging ladder, saw -a big wave sweeping askew the boat beneath her. From -above her father, and Cheviot from below, called out -“Hold tight,” while Louis supplemented the vain efforts -of the two other men, unable by themselves to -steady the clumsy craft in such a sea. But Hildegarde, -with a conviction that Reddy, escaping out of a sailor’s -arms, was in the act of coming down on her head, -jumped from the ladder and landed in the boat with -the dog and a twisted ankle. Instantly she called up to -her horrified father, “I’m all right, and so is Reddy.” -Whereupon the boat was swung out into open water. -They had gone half a mile before Cheviot discovered -something was amiss. “Nothing the least serious,” she -said, though it would be serious enough for her if she -were cheated of the two or three hours’ wandering -at Louis’s side on this heaven-sent morning through -the wild, sunshiny land across the surf. Cheviot -was for turning round at once and taking -her back to the steamer, but that would be -to prolong by a mile a sufficiently difficult transit. -He would send her back after the boat had landed -him.</p> - -<p>“No, no,” she pleaded. “If I can’t walk, I’ll wait -for you on shore.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[461]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Cheviot was giving the sailors directions about -getting her safely back to the <i>Beluga</i>.</p> - -<p>Then, for the first time, the girl spoke of the stark -discomfort that reigned aboard the whaler, how she -longed for a little respite, and how she longed—But the -landward-looking eyes could not, down here in the deep -sea furrows, pick out the far-shining tents toward which -the lighter was plunging, down the watery dales and up -on foamy hills, and down again to shining green deeps -that shut out ship and shore—holding the small boat -hugged an uneasy instant in the rocking lap of the sea. -Yet the girl clung to the memory of that early morning -vision from the deck, of violet headlands and snow-filled -hollows, and as the boat rode high again on the top of -the next big breaker, she drew in rapturous breath, saying -softly of the land beckoning her across the furious -surf, “The ‘farthest North’ that I shall know!” But -in the end she owed it to Reddy’s companionship that -Cheviot let her have her way.</p> - -<p>“Oh, what an old-fashioned <em>Turk</em> of a man I shall -have to spend my life with!” But she laughed for joy -at the prospect.</p> - -<p>As Cheviot, sharply scrutinizing the harborless shore, -directed the boat above the settlement: “Some better -landing-place round the point?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“I don’t expect a landing-place on this coast, but I -don’t see even the tumble-down sod hut your father -talked about.”</p> - -<p>The boat shot up out of a boiling hollow, and as it -climbed the slippery back of a great wave, Hildegarde -called out, “I see it!”</p> - -<p>“The hut? Where?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[462]</a></span></p> - -<p>“All alone, over yonder. Just beyond those rocks. -That’s where you and I will sit and wait, won’t we, -Red? Those rocks are farther north than where the tents -are shining—‘farther north,’ do you hear, Mr. Red?”</p> - -<p>Beyond the chaos of boulders, in a cloud of spray, the -boat was not so much beached as daringly run in and her -passengers ejected, all in that breathless instant before -the turbulent water withdrew, carrying out the clumsy -craft as lightly as it would a cork. And now already the -toiling sailors were some yards on their way back, disappearing -round the point. Hildegarde was safe on a -temporary perch, and Reddy much occupied in howling -defiance at each thunderous onslaught of the surf. Cheviot, -thinking to combine the girl’s appeal for “a good -observatory” with his own notion of an easy niche safe -beyond the tide’s reach, went to spy out the land over -there where some mighty storm had piled the rocks. At -sight of a man skulking among the boulders, Cheviot -called out, “Hello!”</p> - -<p>With a certain reluctance the bearded figure shuffled -into fuller view. “Hello!” he said, without enthusiasm.</p> - -<p>“Do you belong here?” he was asked.</p> - -<p>“Sort o’.”</p> - -<p>“Oh—a—anything doing?”</p> - -<p>“Where?”</p> - -<p>“Why, here.”</p> - -<p>“<em>Here?</em> What d’ y’ expect anybody to do <em>here</em>?”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t there a camp just over yonder?”</p> - -<p>“Up in the hills. Yep, there’s a camp there all -right.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing in it, though?”</p> - -<p>“Plenty. Things are boomin’ out there. Thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[463]</a></span> -you meant <em>here</em>.” And he looked past the new arrivals -in an unpleasant, shifty fashion.</p> - -<p>They exchanged glances. Hildegarde was so sure -Louis wouldn’t go away and leave such an individual -hanging about that she felt no surprise at hearing him -offered money “to come along and show the way.”</p> - -<p>When the two had agreed on the price of this service, -Cheviot said: “I’ll be ready in a minute. I want to find -a more comfortable seat for this lady,” and off he -bolted toward the rocks.</p> - -<p>The man eyed Hildegarde askance, and made some -observation.</p> - -<p>“I can’t hear you,” she called, above the noise of the -surf.</p> - -<p>He shuffled nearer. “Ain’t you goin’, too?”</p> - -<p>“Out to the mines? No.”</p> - -<p>“What y’ goin’ t’ do?” he asked.</p> - -<p>The girl laughed. “Oh, just stay here and look at -things.”</p> - -<p>“What things?” The uneasy eye shot out a sudden -alert beam.</p> - -<p>She only smiled, as her own glance wandered to the -wider vision.</p> - -<p>“I got some ‘things’ to see after m’self,” he said in a -surly tone. “Guess I ain’t got time to go to no gulch -to-day.”</p> - -<p>The girl fell a prey to misgiving lest this incident -should end in dissuading Louis from leaving her at all. -Was her insistence upon coming to result in defeat of -the expedition?</p> - -<p>The shifty man had drawn a trifle nearer still and -lowered his voice. “What made yer land here?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[464]</a></span></p> - -<p>“It didn’t seem to matter where we landed. There’s -no harbor.”</p> - -<p>“But here yer so—” It occurred to Hildegarde, for -some inexplicable reason, he was going to add, “so near -that hut,” instead of what he did say, “so fur from -town.”</p> - -<p>At the obvious suspicion on the man’s face, Hildegarde -smiled to herself. If this uncouth apparition had inspired -distrust in the new arrivals, their appearance had -precisely the same effect on him.</p> - -<p>“Y’ might ’a’ come and gone before anybuddy in the -town knowed we’d had visitors,” he said, with an air -indescribably sly.</p> - -<p>“Well, you see, our business isn’t in the town. -We’re nearer the diggings here, aren’t we?”</p> - -<p>“Guess yer been here afore.”</p> - -<p>“No, neither of us.”</p> - -<p>“Then yer better come along with me and him, an’ -have a look at the gulch.”</p> - -<p>So he didn’t, after all, want to remain behind and -murder her for her watch!</p> - -<p>“No, I shall stay here, and while you and my friend -are gone, I’ll practise shooting at a mark.” As she -drew her little revolver out of her pocket, and the silver -mounting caught the sunlight, she recognized -herself for a very astute person. Louis, if no one -else, might quite well need reminding that she was -armed.</p> - -<p>“Y’ won’t go?” the man persisted. “Well, I guess I -ain’t got time fur it neither. I ought to see a man up at -the store.”</p> - -<p>In the act of going forward to meet Cheviot with this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[465]</a></span> -information, the unaccountable creature paused to say -over his shoulder: “Yer sure to git a nugget if yer go to -the gulch.”</p> - -<p>“I’d go quick enough if I could walk.”</p> - -<p>He faced about. “Y’ can’t <em>walk</em>!” It seemed somehow -to make a difference, but he narrowed his little eyes.</p> - -<p>“Why can’t yer?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve sprained my ankle.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! Bad?”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid so. I’ve been told not to put my foot to -the ground—or else I’d hobble to the town and hunt up -a man I’ve heard lives hereabouts.” Ah, <em>that</em> interested -the disreputable one quite as much, apparently, -as it did Miss Mar. “I wonder if <em>you</em> know him! A -queer, hermit sort of person who discovered the—What’s -the matter?”</p> - -<p>“I knowed all along what ye’d come fur.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, we didn’t <em>come</em> for that—it was only my idea—but -it’s not much good now I’m crippled.”</p> - -<p>“What did yer want to see him fur?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, just to hear him talk.”</p> - -<p>“Ye-es. I been told they’s a lot would ’a’ liked to -hear him talk, only it’s no go. And people gits tired o’ -feedin’ a feller with such a parshallity fur keepin’ his -mouth shut.”</p> - -<p>Cheviot had come back with, “Put that away!” as he -caught sight of the revolver. “I’ve made a kind of -chair for you, and lined it with overcoat.” He half carried -her over to the rocks, while she clung to him, sparing -the hurt foot. The man with the long, lank chin-beard, -like the last nine inches of a cow’s tail, watched -proceedings with a critical eye.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[466]</a></span></p> - -<p>“There now!” Louis had established her to his satisfaction. -“And Red’ll take care of you since he’s -grown such a gentleman. You hear, Red?” he admonished -the cock-eared dog.</p> - -<p>“Reddy hears, and Reddy’ll do it, but if I weren’t so -hopelessly happy I’d be rather miserable at finding -myself a prisoner. <em>This</em> day of all days in the year!” -And, in spite of Cheviot’s assurance that he wasn’t -going to be long, she looked a little wistfully after her -lover.</p> - -<p>“It’s all right,” his queer guide hung back a moment -to assure her. “It don’t reely matter as much as you -think.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, it <em>doesn’t</em>!”</p> - -<p>“No, fur he ain’t here.”</p> - -<p>“Who? The—”</p> - -<p>“Yep—feller y’ come to see.”</p> - -<p>She humored him. “You mean the—”</p> - -<p>“Yep.”</p> - -<p>“Come along, Father Christmas,” shouted Cheviot, -taking the tundra on a run.</p> - -<p>“Father Christmas! D’ ye hear wot he’s callin’ -me?”</p> - -<p>“Where is he, then?” Hildegarde persisted.</p> - -<p>“Dead.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m disappointed to hear that. You <em>are</em> too -young for Father Christmas, but I was beginning to -hope you might be the hermit.”</p> - -<p>She took her disappointment so light-heartedly that -the odd creature grinned.</p> - -<p>“Golly, don’t I wish I <em>wus</em> ‘the hermit,’” he muttered, -as he scrambled up the tundra after Cheviot.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[467]</a></span></p> - -<p class="tb">What nonsense to talk of being a prisoner! Her eyes -were free to roam, and her heart was light as a bird’s -homing across the shining world toward the shining -future. She must remember always in the happiness -that was coming, how she first had seen it at its vividest -from a throne of rocks, sitting between the tundra and -the sea. Oh, but she was glad she had come! If it was -Cheviot’s mission to see how work went on at the gold -camp, hers no less to see with her own eyes—to get by -heart and keep for ever—the aspect of the world up here -where you touch the skirts of the uttermost North. -Happy, happy chance that vouchsafed the vision on one -of those unmatched days of the short arctic summer -that she’d heard about so long ago—a day that made -you feel never before have you seen the sunshine showering -such a glory on the world, never known such color -on the sea, never felt the sweet wind bringing influence -so magical. You unfurl the banner of your spirit, and -you carry the splendid hour like a flag, looking abroad -and saying: “This is what it is, then, to be alive. And -I—I am still among the living!”</p> - -<p>In that same hour, a few yards from where Hildegarde -sat waiting, a man was saying farewell to sun and sea -and all the shining ways of all the world; and this man, -dying in the peat hut at the tundra’s edge, was that one -of all who heap up riches having most to leave behind.</p> - -<p>There was nothing about the solitary hovel that specially -arrested the girl’s attention. She had seen several -such on the way, during the delay at Grantley Harbor—rude -makeshift shelters, deserted in favor of the booming -camp at Nome. But Reddy found the sod hut somehow -interesting, even suspicious. He had gone away to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[468]</a></span> -snuff at the threshold. He tore back to Hildegarde to -report, then off again. Now he had set his sharp nose -against the door, and now he howled softly. In the -momentary lull of surf drawn seaward, to Hildegarde’s -surprise, a responsive whine came weakly forth from the -hut. Whereat Red’s excitement was so great that the -girl forgot her ankle and stood up to quiet him. Why, -the ankle hardly hurt at all! She might have gone—could -she, even now, catch up with Louis? She picked -her way across the rocks with scarce a twinge of pain, -and she climbed upon the thick moss carpet of the -tundra. Of course she could have gone! But Louis was -out of sight. To say sooth, she was in a mood too happy -to be cast down. For, as she had just been feeling, it -was one of those hours when all life seems to be waiting -for one to come and claim it, when a girl feels she has -just this little time for pausing at the gate, to give the -glad eyes full possession before she enters in. She takes -the sunshine on her face, and all her being melts to gold, -and has its little share in making the wide earth shine. -Even her secret dreams are dissolved in the universal -sea. Instead of hoping, fearing, her heart floats like an -idle boat in that shifting iridescence. In the air, instead -of trumpet-call and battle-cry only a long, low singing -on the beach. No; one thing beside—a faint whining -from within a deserted hovel. Again, from without, the -beast before the desolate threshold woke the hill-born -echoes with his howling. Surely a stray dog had got -in there and been unable to get out. She would open -the door barely wide enough to throw him some of the -pilot bread she’d brought in her pocket for luncheon. -She lifted a hand to the rude latch, but, instead of opening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[469]</a></span> -the door outright, sheer habit, with nothing in it of -reflection, made her first of all knock. “Come in,” said -a voice. She started back, and held her breath. Again -that low: “Come in.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to her that she must run, and at the same -time even more that she must obey the voice. Oh, why -had she come? Taking uncertain hold of her courage -she pushed the door ajar. Red flung it wide by bounding -in before her. She had time only to see that a man, -half-sitting up on a camp bed, with a gray army blanket -over his knees, was whittling away at a long, narrow -bit of flat wood. She hardly noticed at the moment, -though she remembered later, that when he saw a -stranger at his door, he dropped his knife and made an -automatic action to lay protecting hands on a dingy -bundle, half out, half under the low bed. Hildegarde’s -attention was of necessity centered in the dogs; his, -shaky and half-blind, conducting defense from the foot -of the bed. The girl laid hold on Red’s collar and -dragged him back, although it was plain now she had -done so, that he considered the decrepit animal, half-muffled -in the blanket, as vanquished already and quite unworthy -of more consideration than could be conveyed in -a final volley of scornful howls. After which relief to his -feelings, Hildegarde’s fellow-intruder pointedly turned -his back and went sniffing about the forlorn little room.</p> - -<p>“I am sorry we disturbed you,” the girl said to the -hollow-eyed, unkempt being on the bed. There were -curious scars on the wasted face set in its frame of wild, -tawny hair and wilder, tawnier beard. No scattering -of silver here and there, but just at the temples the hair -was white as wool. As she saw plainer now, being used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[470]</a></span> -to the dimness, the face, striking as it was, impressed her -chiefly through that quality of special ghastliness produced -by a pallor that shows clay-like under tan. “I -thought,” she said, winding up her apology—“I thought -the dog was shut up here alone—forgotten.”</p> - -<p>“It might come to be like that,” he said, and paused -an instant, as if for breath. When he spoke again it -was less to his visitor than as if to soothe the ruffled -feelings of the miserable beast at his feet. “It won’t -be my fault, though,” he said. “I’ll forget most things -before I forget you, shan’t I, Ky?”</p> - -<p>“That is how his master feels about this dog, too, -though <em>he’s</em> nothing but a mongrel,” Hildegarde said. -She was thinking, “The man is very ill.”</p> - -<p>“His master—some one prospecting hereabouts?”</p> - -<p>Briefly Hildegarde explained. As she moved toward -the door, she caught an expression on the sunken face -so arresting that straightway she said to herself: “What -is a starving dog more than a dying man, that I should -come to help the one and flee the other?”</p> - -<p>“I am afraid you are very ill.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he answered quietly.</p> - -<p>“There’s someone at the settlement who looks after you?”</p> - -<p>He smiled faintly. “They’ve given me up as a bad -investment.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” broke from the girl’s lips, as she leaned forward -and then caught herself up. Was the hermit not -dead after all! Was she face to face at last with the discoverer -of the Mother Lode? If so, she mustn’t seem to -know. “Isn’t there any doctor here?” she added hurriedly.</p> - -<p>“There’s a fellow they <em>call</em> ‘doctor.’”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[471]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Then let me go for him.”</p> - -<p>“He’s off prospecting.”</p> - -<p>“When will he be back?”</p> - -<p>“After I’m gone, I guess.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you are leaving here?” and the moment she said -it she felt the cruelty of the question.</p> - -<p>But he only answered “Yes,” and left her to miss or -to divine his meaning. Looking in his face she forgot -his character of hermit, and fell to wondering whom he -had in the world to care about his leaving it. Instinctively -she knew that a man with such a spirit looking -out of eyes like those—for a man like this to die, meant -to some one far away the worst that could befall. And -suddenly she felt that she was enviable, being there, if -in some way she could help him. What was there she -might do?</p> - -<p>He glanced at the foot of the bed, where the old dog -lay at his feet. “When did you say you were going back -to your ship?”</p> - -<p>“Not for an hour or so,” she said. “More than long -enough for me to—when did you eat last?”</p> - -<p>“If you’d give me a little water,” he spoke huskily.</p> - -<p>She went to a zinc bucket that stood in the corner. -“I’m afraid this isn’t fresh,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Yes. An old fellow brought it only an hour ago. -There’s the cup.”</p> - -<p>She followed his eyes to a rusty condensed-milk can, -which she filled and rinsed, saying cheerfully: “Then -some one <em>does</em> look after you?”</p> - -<p>“No, it isn’t after me the old scoundrel looks.” With -great eyes darkening, he lowered his voice: “Is he hanging -about still? A sort of tramp with—”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[472]</a></span></p> - -<p>“No, the man I think you mean has gone out to the -gulch.”</p> - -<p>“H’m! Tired of waiting! We saw that in his face -when he brought in the water, didn’t we, Ky?” The -dog raised her head. “Yes, he wasn’t anything like as -afraid of you, Ky, as he used to be. Time’s short.” He -pulled himself up and fell to work with a knife upon -the piece of wood that lay on the gray blanket.</p> - -<p>Suspiciousness has made him brain-sick, thought the -girl. She dried the dripping can on her handkerchief -as she looked over at the dog. “Poor Ky. What happened -to her eye?”</p> - -<p>“Left it up yonder.” He glanced through the open -door to the white surf curling up above the tundra, and -with his wild head he made a little motion to the north. -But not even long enough to drink did he stop his feverish -whittling. As she put the cup on a tin cracker-box, -set within his reach, she saw there was a little heap of -shavings and splinters in the hollow of the blanket between -the man’s gaunt knees, and she noticed that he -held his knife with grotesque awkwardness. Then, with -an inward shrinking, saw that to every finger but two, -the final joint or more was lacking. “How dreadfully -you’ve been hurt.”</p> - -<p>He looked up and then followed the direction of her -glance. “Yes, I got a good deal mauled”—only half-articulate -the iterated burden—“up yonder.”</p> - -<p>His voice made her heart ache for pity of such utter -weakness. The task he had set himself looked as painful -as impossible. Yet remembering the solace whittling -seems to be to certain backwoodsmen: “Do you do that -for amusement?” she asked diffidently.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[473]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If that’s what it is, I shan’t lack entertainment.”</p> - -<p>She looked wonderingly in his face.</p> - -<p>“I was weeks before cutting up a little wood. But -somebody stole it. Scarcer than gold up here.”</p> - -<p>Oh, yes, the discoverer of the Mother Lode had stores -of the precious metal hidden away somewhere. The -skulker among the rocks—<em>he</em> knew!</p> - -<p>“Let me help.” She went closer with outstretched -hand. But he started and dropped the clumsily held -wood. It all happened in an instant. Hildegarde, following -the look on the wild face he was bending down, -saw that his concern was not for the precious and sole -piece of timber in the hut, but for the oilskin bundle -under the bed, which her dog was in the act of investigating. -The half-blind beast on the blanket saw, too. -She made one bound and fell upon Hildegarde’s companion -with a fury that filled the narrow space with -noise of battle. The sick man called off his dog, while -Hildegarde reviled hers and tugged at his collar.</p> - -<p>When peace was again restored, “I must take him -away,” said his mistress. “He’s behaving very badly.”</p> - -<p>“No, it will be all right if I—” The sick man leaned -still further over the side of the narrow bed, and fastened -the hand Hildegarde couldn’t bear to look at under the -knotted oilskin.</p> - -<p>As she saw him feebly straining to lift it: “Oh, let -me,” she said, and bent to help him.</p> - -<p>Again his dog flew to the rescue, while the man himself, -with a desperate final effort, almost snatched the -bundle from under her fingers. “I—I beg your pardon,” -he said panting, and again he made his dog lie -down.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[474]</a></span></p> - -<p>But Hildegarde’s feelings were a little hurt. The -normal miner, she had always understood, showed people -his gold—even trusted them to handle it.</p> - -<p>“Poor old Ky,” the sick man went on apologetically; -“she has got so used to guarding this”—he was himself -positively hugging the unsavory bundle—“she can’t see -any other creature come near it without—”</p> - -<p>“You’re quite as bad,” Hildegarde said to herself, -but a glance at the face, with the look of doom in the -eyes, made her set down his excitement, and the failure -in fairly judging her, to the darkening of all things in -the gathering shadow.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you think I have something very valuable -here?” he said, suspiciously.</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t be the first time in Alaska that something -valuable has been wrapped in rags and left lying -in a corner.”</p> - -<p>“Something like what I’ve got here?” he asked, as -he took tighter hold on the oilskin.</p> - -<p>He should not think she was curious about his gold -dust and his nuggets. She looked at Ky climbing with -difficulty back to her place at the foot of the bed, and -pointedly changed the subject. “Your dog is very -lame.”</p> - -<p>He nodded. “Got one of her paws crushed.”</p> - -<p>To distract him from his brain-sick anxiety about the -bundle, “How was that?” Hildegarde asked. No answer -this time, only that same northward motion. “She -must be very old,” Hildegarde pursued.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Your dog, I mean. Surely she is old.”</p> - -<p>“No. She got like that—up—”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus10"> -<img src="images/illus10.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“‘I suppose you think I have something very valuable here?’”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[475]</a></span></p> - -<p>He still clutched the oilskin with such anxious hands -that Hildegarde felt it mere humanity to win him to -forget his fears. So she looked away from the gaunt -figure, over the threshold and over the surf to where the -white sails of the <i>Beluga</i> shone.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been ‘up yonder,’ too,” she said.</p> - -<p>“<em>What!</em>”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’ve seen the North Siberian shore quite plain. -I’ve been as far as the Bering Straits.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, the Bering Straits!” he echoed, as one inwardly -amused at a traveler who should boast of getting as far -as the adjoining county.</p> - -<p>“Yes, and—and I’d like to go further still.”</p> - -<p>“Better not—better not.”</p> - -<p>“But, of course, I would!” She put her hand in the -pocket of her long cloak and drew out the “latest map” -of extreme northwestern Alaska. “I’m like the rest. -The more I see up here, the more I want to see.” She -sat down on the earthen floor just inside the threshold, -and spread out the yard square tinted paper. As she -bent over it, “What part of the map lures you most?” -she asked, wandering if she would hear where was the -home of this curious being dying up here alone.</p> - -<p>As he did not answer at once, she looked up, laying -her hand on the paper and saying, “This for me.”</p> - -<p>She saw him take surer hold on the packet he was -guarding, and he leaned across it to see precisely what -portion of the earth’s surface her hand was covering.</p> - -<p>“You want to know the name of the most interesting -country in the world?” she asked smiling.</p> - -<p>“Well, what do you say?” He seemed to humor her.</p> - -<p>“The name of the most interesting country on the face<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[476]</a></span> -of the globe is under my hand.” She lifted it. He -peered down. She pushed the rustling paper across the -uneven floor, till leaning over he could read, in big black -letters, the word “UNEXPLORED.”</p> - -<p>“Ah!” he said softly, with as great a light in his face -as if those letters had indeed spelled home. “<em>You</em> feel -that? I didn’t know that women—” He broke off, and -absently took a fresh hold on the bundle, as though -anticipating some adroit attempt upon his treasure.</p> - -<p>His foolishness about that packet had got upon Hildegarde’s -nerves. “People who don’t know them think -Chinamen are all alike. Men who know little of women -think the same of us.”</p> - -<p>He smiled. “Do you mean you realize how precious -those blank spaces are?” Again he craned weakly over -the bundle and stared down at the map. The thought -again occurred to her that his look was like the look -a wanderer turns home. Wondering about him she hardly -listened to the words he was saying, how the kingdom -of the unknown shrinks and shrinks and soon shall -vanish from the maps—worse still, own no dominion -any more over the minds of men.</p> - -<p>Whether he was indulging some fantasy of fever -she could not tell, but the scarred face wore a look so -high and sorrowful that she found herself saying, -“Surely the only value of the empty space is that some -man may one day set a name there.”</p> - -<p>He threw her a pitying look. And he stroked the -oilskin as a child might caress a kitten.</p> - -<p>“I see,” she said, trying in self-defense to be a little -superior, “<em>you</em> don’t, after all, sympathize with the explorer -spirit.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[477]</a></span></p> - -<p>At which the strange eyes rewarded her with sudden -smiling. “If you mean you do,” he said, “think for a -moment what a power the unknown has been in history. -Think what it’s done for people—a mere empty space -upon the map—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she threw in, “it has made heroes.”</p> - -<p>“It has made men.” But for all the restrained quietness -of tone his look evoked a glorious company.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she agreed. “It made Columbus, and it made -Cortez. It made Magellan, Drake, and Cook, Livingstone -and—”</p> - -<p>“And all the millions more,” he interrupted, still on -that quiet note, “who only planned or dreamed.” But -while he spoke his maimed fingers wandered over the -oilskin—a brain-sick miser guarding his gold. And -though she listened to what he said, her eyes, against her -will, kept surreptitiously revisiting the uncouth bundle -he was fondling with abhorrent hands.</p> - -<p>“I feel like a son of that land”—one hand left the -bundle an instant and pointed down at the map—“<em>The -Unexplored</em>. Like a man who sees his mother country -filched from him bit by bit, parceled out and brought -under subjection. Yes”—he raised his voice suddenly -to such a note as set the girl’s nerves unaccountably to -thrilling—“yes, I resent the partition of that empire. -It is the oldest on the earth. I am glad I shall not see -its passing.” He leaned back, and a grayness gathered -on his face as he ended: “Many a man will be without -a country, many a soul will be homeless when the last -province of that kingdom yields.”</p> - -<p>She only nodded, but he suddenly began afresh, as -though she had contributed something convincing. “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[478]</a></span> -have never talked of these things to a woman, but since -you seem to feel the significance of—” He broke off, -and then slowly, “It might be you could help me,” he -said.</p> - -<p>“How could I—”</p> - -<p>Still clinging feverishly to the knotted oilskin, he -dragged himself with difficulty to an upright posture -and craned forward to stare through the open door. -Not this time northward solely, but down the beach as -well as up.</p> - -<p>“What are you looking for?” asked the girl.</p> - -<p>As he sat there huddled, silent, she became conscious -that he was listening—listening with that sort of strained -intentness that almost creates sound, does create it to the -sense accessible to hypnotic influence.</p> - -<p>“Who is that outside?” he said very low.</p> - -<p>“No one,” she answered, though it seemed to her, too, -there must be some one there.</p> - -<p>“Look out and see.”</p> - -<p>As she got up to obey him, “But you won’t go away,” -he said suddenly.</p> - -<p>“No, only as far as—”</p> - -<p>“Don’t go out of sight!” There was an excitement in -his voice that gave her a moment’s fear of him. Out of -the dank little hut his voice followed her into the sunshine: -“Is he there again?”</p> - -<p>“No one,” she answered, “no one at all! Except—”</p> - -<p>To the south, on the edge of the tiny settlement, a -group of Esquimaux. It must have been their voices his -quick ear had caught now and then above the surf.</p> - -<p>Northward, up the curving beach, two men calking a -boat. But though they stood out vivid in that wonderful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[479]</a></span> -light, Hildegarde knew they must be half a mile away; -and so she told him.</p> - -<p>“Is that all?”</p> - -<p>Nothing more. Not a creature on the treeless hill -rising behind the hovel. In front of where the girl -stood no soul nearer than where the bark <i>Beluga</i> set her -transfigured sails against the western limit of the world. -Between her and that sole link with her own life, only -the long barrier of the battling surf. From within, the -feeble voice saying indistinguishable words that yet conveyed -some feverish purpose. A sudden temptation -seized the girl to call her dog and run.</p> - -<p>“You are sure”—the weak voice came to meet her as -she turned back—“sure there isn’t an old man about—fellow -with a hungry face and a long, lank beard?”</p> - -<p>“And an hour-glass and a scythe,” she filled out the -picture to herself. Yes. One like that is lurking here at -the door, and no man can bar him out and none refuse -to follow at his call. But aloud, “No one,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Then come in and shut the door.” And again she -thought of flight, and again put the impulse by. But -she said if the door were shut she must go, and made her -excuse the need to keep an eye out for her friend. Then -she sat down as before, where she could command the -beach.</p> - -<p>The sick man was obviously ill-pleased and not a little -scornful. “You will understand why I don’t want to be -overheard when I tell you—” Again he sent the searching -glance into that square of the world the driftwood -lintel framed, and his voice was half a whisper. -“You’ll understand when I tell you I have a legacy to -leave.” He waited.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[480]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Hildegarde.</p> - -<p>“How did you know!” he demanded, and the eyes -were less friendly.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I didn’t <em>know</em>.”</p> - -<p>“You suspected—”</p> - -<p>“Well, most people, however poor, have something to -leave, however little.”</p> - -<p>He lifted his hand to silence the platitude, and his -whisper reached her clear and sharp: “I am leaving -more than ever a man left before.”</p> - -<p>It was true then about the Mother Lode. She -waited, hardly breathing. He had said she could -help him. He wanted a letter written or witness -to a will, but he had fallen back upon that -strained listening. “You have children?” Hildegarde -asked.</p> - -<p>He made a barely perceptible motion, no.</p> - -<p>“Brothers and sisters?” She tried to help his memory.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“Who, then?”</p> - -<p>“My legacy’s too great to leave to any individual.” -Hildegarde’s eyes kindled with excitement. All the -talk about Nome had given her a sense of living in an -atmosphere of mighty enterprise, of giant losses, and of -fabulous gain. She was primed to hear of lucky millions -stumbled on by chance.</p> - -<p>“You want to make a bequest to the nation?” Why -was he hesitating, she wondered impatiently, as he flung -again that same intent look out of doors? She knew he -could see nothing but the wild, white horses climbing the -rocky shore to look across the tundra. She knew he could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[481]</a></span> -hear nothing but the thunder of their hoof-beats on the -beach.</p> - -<p>At last he spoke. “They said my trouble was ambition.” -And still his ears waited for some sound beyond -Hildegarde’s hearing, and still his eyes saw more than -hers.</p> - -<p>He was silent so long she adventured in the dark, “Did -you leave ambition ‘up yonder,’ too?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, up yonder!” But he brought out the words -triumphantly, and he paused upon a broken breath still -listening. “Ky,” he whispered, “the lady likes exploring, -but she’s afraid to shut the door. Go out, Ky, and -see if that old villain’s hanging about. <em>Ky!</em>”</p> - -<p>The beast took her nose out of the blanket, and seemed -to implore him to reconsider his command.</p> - -<p>“Go out and explore! Go—<em>once more</em>!” There was -a curious gentle note in the weak voice.</p> - -<p>“Don’t send her out,” Hildegarde pleaded. “My -dog’s out there now. Poor Ky.” She was conscious -that her kindness for the maimed beast pleased the -owner.</p> - -<p>“Have you ever cared about a dog?” he said.</p> - -<p>“Well, if I haven’t, I know some one who has, and -that’s Red’s master. Why do you ask me?”</p> - -<p>“Because I find myself with all my wealth wanting -two things at the last.”</p> - -<p>“What things?”</p> - -<p>“A little fire that I haven’t strength to make, and a -friend for Ky.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll help you about the fire.” She reached out and -picked up the fallen pieces of wood.</p> - -<p>While she was opening her knife, “I believe,” he said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[482]</a></span> -“yes, I believe you would help me about Ky—if you -knew.”</p> - -<p>“Help you, how?”</p> - -<p>He fastened his eyes on the girl’s face. “Ky is one -of us,” he said very low.</p> - -<p>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“Only she is better at the game.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde leaned nearer to catch the husky words. -“No one who ever braved the North, no one who ever -grappled with the ice, not one of them all has done it -more courageously than Ky.” The shadow-ringed eyes -sought the girl’s again. “Nobody could be quite indifferent -to Ky who cared about—who—” He broke off, -exhausted by his fruitless effort to sit upright. He -dropped forward on his elbows and rested his bearded -chin in his hands. The tawny tide poured in streams -through his fingers, and hid the horror of them. “To-morrow,” -he said, with his eyes on Hildegarde, “to-morrow -Ky will be the sole survivor of the only expedition -that ever reached the Pole.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[483]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-s.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">Silent the girl sat there. But senses less -alert than the hermit’s would have felt the -passion of wonder that held her motionless. -For all the world of difference between these -two, the same light was shining in each face.</p> - -<p>“How does the time go?” He made a movement toward -his pocket, and then dropped his hand. “Curious -how I still forget—I left it—” Again the motion. -“Will you put your watch where I can see it?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, go on; go on!” she urged. “My companion -won’t go back without me.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, you have plenty of time. But for me there’ll -be barely enough,” and the face that he turned an instant -toward the ship— Oh, beyond doubting, his time -was short!</p> - -<p>Out of her cow-boy hat she drew a long pin, and going -to the foot of the bed she thrust the hatpin several inches -into the peat wall above where the dog lay. But her near -presence was so resented by the great explorer, Ky, that -before the watch could be hung upon the pin, Hildegarde -must needs retreat. She remembered the luncheon in -her pocket, and offered Ky a share. No; Ky wanted -nothing of a stranger.</p> - -<p>“Throw it down by the door,” said her master, and it -was done. When Hildegarde had retired, the dog came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[484]</a></span> -down, and when he turned his blind eye about again, lo, -a shining thing upon the wall.</p> - -<p>“So!” the sick man sank back satisfied. “Now to get -you to help me about Ky, I must put twenty years into -an hour. More than twenty, for I can’t remember when -I began to think about finding the Pole. I played at it -all my boyhood. I’ve worked at it ever since.” An instant -Hildegarde dropped her shrinking eyes. For he -was putting out that maimed hand for the cup. She -heard the grate of rusty tin on the cracker-box, as his -cleared voice went on, “I began by going in a revenue -cutter to Port Barrow; and I had been in two arctic -expeditions before the one I’m telling you about. But -on both of those others I was the one man who wasn’t -going for the Pole. I was going for experience. I never -believed my chiefs would get there, but I always believed -I would—later. I had theories.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, I wish you had known a friend of ours—”</p> - -<p>“I had a friend of my own. The year after I got back -from the second voyage, I met one night, at a club in -New York, a young Russian-American who was nearly -as keen about polar problems as I was. We talked arctic -exploration all that winter of ’95 and ’96. We both -believed tremendously in Nansen.”</p> - -<p>“So did he—<em>our</em> friend.”</p> - -<p>“We agreed we’d have given ten years of life to have -had the honor of going along with the Norwegian. But -he had been away now nearly three years. How far had -he got? What had happened? Even experts began to -say: ‘Another expedition crushed in the arctic ice.’ But -neither my Russian nor I believed that Nansen was dead, -and we began privately to discuss a rescue-party. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[485]</a></span> -agreed that if we carried out our idea, and if we found -Nansen unsuccessful, we’d offer him our ship to come -home in and <em>we</em>—we’d push straight on. Ours -shouldn’t be any trumpeted ‘dash for the Pole’—how we -loathed the cheap gallantry of the phrase!” The voice -that had flared up an instant fell again as he said: “We -knew something, even then, of the snail’s pace of that -laboring on; that doing battle for every yard; that nightmare -of crawling forward inch by inch—only so, we -knew, might a man make his ‘dash for the Pole.’ But -the plan of setting off without saying to any one what it -was we were hoping to do supplied my Russian and me -with our first condition for making the attempt.”</p> - -<p>Was it indeed only water in the cup, that after another -draught of it he should seem to throw off weakness -as you might a burdensome cloak? “My friend had -money, so had I. No need of a public appeal. No need -to beat the big drum and talk tall. Both of us had felt -the irony of each explorer’s coming back to assure the -world that he had never meant to find the Pole. What -he had gone for was exploration of the ice-fields this -side. Ha! Ha!” It was strange that such a feeble little -laugh could give out such a world of irony. “Or else, -what he’d gone for was to ascertain the salinity of the -polar seas, or to determine the trend of arctic currents. -Or to explain”—again that hardly audible laughter—“how -the <i>Jeanette’s</i> oilskin breeches got to the Greenland -coast; anything under heaven, except reaching the -paltry Pole. So as we knew we were made of no better -stuff, if as good, as our predecessors, we said that we, -too, if we came back with only some deep sea dredgings, -a few photographs of ice-pressure effects—sketches of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[486]</a></span> -Aurora Borealis, and a store of polar bearskins and -walrus tusks, we, too, would find ourselves pointing to -these as the treasures we’d staked life and reputation -for. So hard it is to suffer the extremity and still have -to say ‘I failed’!”</p> - -<p>He lay silent so long that Hildegarde quoted Cheviot. -“They say it’s harder for an American.”</p> - -<p>“What is?”</p> - -<p>“To accept defeat. Harder for us than for the -others.”</p> - -<p>“Why do they say that?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve heard it’s because we make such a fetish of -success.” Still he lay there silent. It was as if the oil -in the lamp had failed. “Yes, yours was a good plan,” -she said. “Even those others, the Old-World people, -that they say are soberer than we—” She saw that he -turned his hollow eyes toward her, listening. “If -even they made excuses, and shirked saying they’d -failed—yours was the best— Oh, it was a splendid -plan!”</p> - -<p>“Are you saying we’re a nation of boasters?”</p> - -<p>Good! that had roused him. “Do you say we are -not?”</p> - -<p>“We are everything under the sun: most vain and -braggart; most discreet and self-effacing; most childish -and obvious; most subtle and complex. The extreme of -anything, good or evil, that’s the American.” His eyes -found out the tiny watch face on the peat wall. Ah, that -was the tonic that was acting like a cordial mixed with -magic. Right or wrong, he was under the dominion of -a terror that this last flickering up of energy would fail -before he had turned it to account. Even to remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[487]</a></span> -that small shining disk seemed to nerve him anew. Each -look a lash. It whipped him on.</p> - -<p>“As I’ve said, my Tatar and I laid our heads together -and agreed. ‘For fear we fall into the old snare, -we won’t say we’re going at all,’ not even to find Nansen, -for fear we should promise too much. We would -make the great attempt under the guise of a whaling -expedition. My Russian had already sent out two, and -had once gone along with one of them. I had spent a -winter with the Samoyedes.”</p> - -<p>“What! <em>You</em> did that?” His eyes, though not his -mind, took in the girl’s breathless agitation. He paused, -but his thoughts were too far away. “I thought only -one man had ever—” began the girl trembling, and then: -“Go on; go on!”</p> - -<p>“We were both still young. Yes, six years ago I was -young; and hard as a husky. But not so hard as a man -need be who goes exploring in the mild climate of the -drawing-room.”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde bent toward him, with wildly beating -heart.</p> - -<p>“We were just on the point of chartering our ship, -when one evening—” He looked through the peat wall -a thousand leagues.</p> - -<p>“One evening—what?”</p> - -<p>“I saw a face. A girl’s soft face, but it cut the cables -of my ship and set her afloat—drifting, derelict, for all -I cared. A little doll’s face. But it shut out everything -else under the skies!”</p> - -<p>Oh, Bella, Bella, was it yours—that face? “Go on,” -breathed the girl at the door.</p> - -<p>“When her people said she should never marry a man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[488]</a></span> -who might any day go off on one of these protracted -voyages, I looked at the face, and I said I would never -explore again.” The glazed eyes turned to Hildegarde, -but it was the old bright vision they saw, not this newer, -softer presence, with wet cheeks, by the door.</p> - -<p>“I told my Russian to draw on me for half the funds, -and to find another fellow-traveler. But she was too -young to marry, they said. We must wait a year. I -said I would wait. When the year was half gone, I was -in London—because the face was there.” Still looking -through the wall he groped for the cup. Hildegarde -rose, and put it in his hands. Oh poor, poor hands! No -need to turn shuddering away. They were softly -wrapped from her sight in a mist of pitiful tears.</p> - -<p>He gave her back the cup. “We had been to a skating -party,” he said. Something grotesque conjured by -the contrast of that light phrase wafted out of a butterfly -world to fall in such a place at such an hour made for -the unreality, not of far-off London, nor of parties -where pretty ladies play at being in a world of ice—the -conjuration merely lifted the dim hut and its wild -occupant into the realm of the phantasmagoric. The -girl saw all in a wavering dimness, shot dazzlingly with -splinters of sunshine. But the man went on in that -level tone: “I remember her saying it was the first party -given in London on artificial ice—an absurd affair. But -she said: ‘Wasn’t it nice of me to get you an invitation, -too? It will seem quite like going to your horrid -North Pole.’”</p> - -<p>How plain Bella’s voice sounded in the room. That -was why he was smiling. Bella could always bring that -look into the eyes of men.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[489]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I said, ‘quite like the North Pole.’ And I went and -skated with her. Afterward, at the door, I had just -seen her and her mother into the carriage, when my eye -fell on the orange-colored bill of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette.’ -And three words printed there blared out like -trumpets.</p> - -<p class="center">‘NEWS FROM NANSEN.’</p> - -<p>‘He’s found it!’ I said to myself—‘Nansen’s found -the Pole!’ and I could have flung up my hat and cried -hurrah in the sober street. As I called to the newsboy -I was ashamed of my voice. I thought people would -notice how it shook. When I pulled my hand out of my -pocket it trembled so I dropped the coin and it rolled -away into the street. The boy ran after it, and I damned -him for his pains. ‘Never mind! Give me a paper!’ I -called out. But the boy ran on. As I stood there waiting -for him to disentangle himself from the traffic and -come back, I seemed to live a lifetime. How had he -done it, that splendid fellow, Nansen? What had it -been like? Well, soon I should know. The knowledge -that had cost so much, soon I should have it in my hand—for -a penny! The awful majesty of the upper regions -fell away.”</p> - -<p>With a growing excitement painfully the sick man -lifted himself up. “It was then,” he said, “then—a -queer thing happened.” He seemed to wait for something. -Turning to the girl, “You see, this was the -moment I’d been living for in a way.”</p> - -<p>“Of course; of course.”</p> - -<p>“And yet, now that it had come, my spirit had gone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[490]</a></span> -down like the sounding lead on a deep-sea bottom. I -stood there in the street with a sense of unmitigable loss. -Something so sudden and acute that I didn’t myself -understand at first what was going on in me. For it -was something quite apart from any feeling that I’d -like to have been the one to do the thing. There had -been for months no question of that. No. It was just -a poignant realization that almost the last of the jealous -old world’s secrets had been forced out of her keeping. -This thing that men had dreamed about before ever -they’d girdled the globe—it was no more the stuff of -dreams. The thought of Captain Cook and Franklin -flashed across my mind, and I remembered the men of -the <i>Jeanette</i>. But it wasn’t till I remembered the men -unborn that I measured the full extent of the disaster. -The generations to come would never know what it had -stood for—this goal the Norwegian had won. They -wouldn’t have to spend even a penny to hear all about -it. It would be thrust at them, this shining and terrible -thing men had died to gain—one leaden fact the -more, conned in a heavy book, stripped to the lean -dimensions of a date! Discovery of America, discovery -of the Pole—who thrills over these things when they -are done? And now the newsboy was coming slowly -back, rubbing the mud off my half-crown. In a second -I should be reading how the last great stronghold of -wonder was destroyed. ‘Well, the world’s grown -poorer!’ I said to myself, and I counted my change, -thinking less of Nansen’s news than of those men of the -future. He had taken from them the finest playground -ever found for the imagination—the last great field for -grim adventuring.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[491]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I opened the paper and read that Nansen had turned -back before reaching the eighty-seventh parallel.</p> - -<p>“The Pole was still to be found.”</p> - -<p class="tb">Ah, Bella, when you saw that look go traveling so far, -so far, you must have known that he would follow. Poor -little Bella!</p> - -<p>Under those vision-filled eyes, the crippled dog, still -sleeping, made a muffled sound. “Ky is dreaming,” -said the sick man, absently, “that she hears a seal crying -‘Ho-o-o,’ with his nose above the ice. Or she thinks -she hears the ‘Kah! kah! sah! sah!’ of the auks. So do -I, sometimes.”</p> - -<p>“But you promised ‘the face’ you wouldn’t think of -the arctic any more.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” and weakness of the flesh or weight of memory -held him a moment silent. “She always said that if the -Norwegian had been successful she and I would never -have quarreled. She wrote that in every letter after I -left her. I don’t know. She was very young. She never -understood”—he glanced at Hildegarde—“never understood -what was the most interesting place on the map. -She thought it was Paris.” He smiled. “Maybe she -was right. I don’t know. All I do know is”—and a -subtle animation invaded voice and air—“a few weeks -after I read Nansen’s news in the London street, Borisoff -came across from Christiana to talk things over. All -this time that I had been looking at the face he had been -building a ship as good, he said, as the <i>Fram</i>. No man -would dare say more. He had made agreements with -a crew and company of picked men, some of them his -old whaling people. He had news that the Finlander<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[492]</a></span> -we’d sent the year before to Siberia, after Olenek dogs, -would be waiting with the pack up there on that bleak -shore, between Chelyuskin and the Kara Sea—‘waiting -for you and me,’ said Borisoff.” The sick man’s eyes -were shining. “Borisoff was a tremendous fellow! I -never knew but one person who didn’t believe in -Borisoff. You couldn’t expect a girl—” he broke off. -“But the great bond between him and me was that we -both had that passion for the North, that is like nothing -else on earth in the way of land love. Talk of the -South! A man loves the South as he loves a soft bed and -the warm corner by the fire. But he loves the North as -he loves his prey.” He brought one hand away from his -beard and he fastened it afresh in the knotted oilskin at -his side, with an air of one about to rise up and continue -his journey. “Well, one day I said to Borisoff, ‘Of -course <em>we</em> can’t do the damned thing if Nansen couldn’t—so -come along, and let’s try!’</p> - -<p>“We sailed from Tromsö that July.</p> - -<p>“But we didn’t call ourselves arctic explorers, and -we never once said Pole—not even after we reached the -edge of the ice-pack, north of Sannikof Island. It -wasn’t till we got into north latitude 78° that we called -a council of war. By that time we knew our men and -they knew us. We were sure of six, but we put it to the -other four as well. We engaged to extricate the ship -from the floe and send her home, if any man of them -wanted to turn back. What were Borisoff and I going -to do? one of the doubtful four asked. Well, we had our -famous steel launch, and we had sledges, dogs, kyacks, -provisions, and—we had—an idea we’d like to see what -it was like—<em>farther on</em>. I’ve always believed our not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[493]</a></span> -saying anything about ‘a dash,’ or so much as naming the -great goal, gave Borisoff’s words their most compelling -eloquence. If we’d said then that we wanted to try for -the Pole, some one would have felt himself obliged to -object and talk prudence. As it was, we twelve sat there -as one man in the little saloon of the <i>Narwhal</i>, with the -loose ice grinding against the ship’s sides. And no one -said, but every one was thinking, ‘We’ll find the Pole.’ -Borisoff was a born leader. Not a soul on the ship but -believed Borisoff would do anything he set out to do. -They all knew by now how extraordinarily well equipped -we were. Borisoff showed again and again how we -should profit by the failure of our forerunners. Well, -that was in September. We were frozen in, and we -drifted with the ice all that winter and following summer—drifted -in the dark, with bears prowling round the -ice-shrouded ship—drifted in the midnight sun with -guillemots and fulmars circling about our rigging.”</p> - -<p>He sat there some seconds staring through the peat -wall, never seeing the open watch, forgetting the irrevocable -hour. As though she, too, shared in some chill -vision, the dog shivered.</p> - -<p>To bring the master back, “Ky is cold,” said Hildegarde, -and would have thrown over her a trailing end of -blanket.</p> - -<p>“No, no, she’s not cold <em>here</em>,” the sick man answered, -but in a voice so faint and far Hildegarde wondered if -he would ever speak again.</p> - -<p>To mask her creeping fear and bridge the silence, -“Why does she shiver, if she’s not cold?”</p> - -<p>His absent eyes came slowly back to where the dog -was uneasily dozing. “Thinks we’re crossing the ice-moraines,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[494]</a></span> -thinks she can’t go on, then remembers the -whip. The whip that flies out when you least expect it, -eh, Ky?—and bites the hair off clean.” He bent forward, -and gently laid his distorted hands on the scarred -and trembling hide. The dog was quiet again.</p> - -<p>“That first winter,” he went on, “one of our men was -killed by a bear, and one died from a natural cause. He -would have died at home. Early in the summer came -the day when the ice gripped us. Our tough ship might -have been an egg-shell. But we were ready.”</p> - -<p>“You had to abandon her?”</p> - -<p>He gave a short nod. “Sledges out on the ice away -from the pressure area, packed, and kyack-loaded. We -had kept the dogs in condition by short journeys, and -we knew they were as splendid animals for work as they -were terrible for fighting. We couldn’t prevent them -from tearing each other to pieces, but between whiles -they carried us on. Eh, Ky? You carried us on, for -you carried our means of life. Or maybe we carried you, -with our whips and clubs and curses. It’s horrible to -look back, that’s why I do it, to save Ky any more—” -His eyes implored the dumb creature’s pardon. “Those -days and months of forcing the dwindled pack over the -pressure ridges!—and when the patient beasts stopped -from sheer exhaustion, shouting at them till our own -voices tore our nerves and burst our very ear-drums, -hardening our hearts, beating the splendid animals, till -they lay down one by one on those desolate ice-plains -and died. Well, well, well,”—he made sure of the bundle -again,—“the dogs had the best of it. <em>We</em> blood-marked -many a mile of the polar ice, we stumbled -from floe to floe, we stormed the pressure ridges, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[495]</a></span> -when the teams had dwindled and the ice opened in long -reaches, we took the remaining dogs into our canvas -boats and along the water lanes we sailed and sailed.”</p> - -<p>“To the Pole? You <em>did</em> find the—”</p> - -<p>“Lord!” he interrupted, “finding the Pole isn’t a -patch on hunting for it! That’s what the men of the -future will never know. You can read the kind of thing -we went through in any arctic book. You can read it all, -and then know nothing about it. We did impossible -things—things any man will say he can’t do. And then -he does them because he must, and because human endurance -is the one miracle left in the world.”</p> - -<p>An instant he stopped for breath. “Good men, all -our fellows. But their bones are up yonder. Good dogs, -too. Ky’s the one that’s left.”</p> - -<p>There was a long silence in the dim little room.</p> - -<p>“But you reached the Pole, Borisoff and you!”</p> - -<p>Slowly he shook his wild head. “Not Borisoff.” -There was silence for a while.</p> - -<p>“It must have been very horrible for you when he—”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said the sick man, and Hildegarde saw the -mouth set harder yet under the tawny cloud. “The day -he died we came upon a great piece of timber frozen -aslant in the ice. Borisoff had been queer, wandering -all those last days. But that great shaft that had come -from some land where the trees grow glorious and tall, -the sight of it excited him so that it cleared his head. -He said it was Siberian spruce, and had come from his -own forests of the Yenisei. And he talked about the -currents that had carried it so far—talked rationally. -We found initials carved on one end: ‘F. N.—H.’ If -ever there had been more the record was frayed out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[496]</a></span> -existence by the timber catapulting against the ice. ‘I’ll -rest here,’ Borisoff had said, and”—a long time seemed -to go by—“I’ve no doubt he rests well. Splendid fellow, -Borisoff.</p> - -<p>“The next day I cut his name on the great log, and I -went on alone.”</p> - -<p>“You and Ky!”</p> - -<p>He nodded. “Ky and the dogs that were left, fighting -our way over the ice-moraines in a hard, fierce light, -that seemed to come from every point of the compass at -once. I remember a curious optical delusion overtook -me. I lost all faculty of seeing the snow-covered ice I -walked on. I could feel it, of course, at every step. I -could see my snow-shoes sharp as if they’d been silhouettes -poised in air. But the terrible white light that -bathed the universe seemed to be flooding up from under -my feet as well as beating on my head. Round that -white bossed shield of the frozen sea the sun moved in -his shrunken circle, with no uprising and no setting, -abhorring shadow. Like that, day and night, night and -day.”</p> - -<p>“For how long?”</p> - -<p>“For a thousand years. A dog killed to feed the rest, -and still on, ‘for miles on miles on miles of desolation—leagues -on leagues on leagues, without a change.’ In a -world as dead and white as leprosy.” He closed his -eyes, as if the midnight glare still dazzled him.</p> - -<p>In her sleep again the dog had been moving and -moaning.</p> - -<p>“Ky is in pain,” said the girl, very softly, hardly -daring to whisper.</p> - -<p>The sick man opened his eyes and faintly shook his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[497]</a></span> -head. “Only dreaming. I do the same myself. Wake -in the dark, and think the pressure has sent the ice towering -above us. And while we try to get across the -broken blocks, suddenly they begin to grind and growl -and to writhe and thunder, as if moved to hatred of us. -Ky lost a yoke-fellow in such a place, crushed between -the shrieking boulders. Quiet, Ky! The exploring’s -all done. At least”—he looked up—“I’d like to think—”</p> - -<p>“You may.”</p> - -<p>“Thank you,” said the sick man.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Ky,” Hildegarde spoke with a little break in -her voice. “The exploring’s all done.” As if the dog -had heard and comprehended, and so been delivered from -evil dreams, she got up, came shakily down from the bed, -and stood for a moment at the door, looking out.</p> - -<p>“What’s ahead of us, Ky?” he asked, dreamily. -“An ice sky or a water sky?”</p> - -<p>“How was it you could tell?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you learn. The field-ice reflection is the brightest, -a little yellow; drift ice, purer white; new ice, gray. -And where there’s open water the ‘blink’ is slatey, -isn’t it, Ky? Or blue, like the skies of California.”</p> - -<p>“But the Pole?” The word brought a startled look -into his face, and his eyes guarded the threshold so -fiercely she sunk her voice to meet his humor. “What -was it like?” she whispered.</p> - -<p>“Ky knows,” he answered, warily. “Ky got there.”</p> - -<p>With a supreme humility, or was it a high indifference -on her part, the great explorer crossed the threshold and -sat outside in the sun.</p> - -<p>“I’ve wondered about it a good deal, as I’ve lain -here,” said the sick man. “It almost seems as if nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[498]</a></span> -in the world-scheme were so precious as suffering. Men -feel that when they recall their early hardships. Dimly -they see that nothing they’ve found later was of such -value to them. Yes, yes, beside, the days of the struggle -the days of the harvest are dull. And it’s this”—he -crouched over the oilskin, and dropped his voice—“this -incentive to the greatest struggle that men can embark -upon—this is the Great Legacy I shall leave behind!”</p> - -<p>“But what,” she pointed to the thing he was hugging -between gaunt arms, “what is in that?”</p> - -<p>“<em>The proofs</em>,” he whispered, and started when the -word was out. It seemed to Hildegarde that he held the -weather-beaten bundle tighter still, and still he put off -telling what she wanted most to know. As if he couldn’t -bring himself, after all, to yield the secret up. “Think,” -he whispered. “We could set the world ringing with it, -Ky. Only we mustn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, but you must!” Hildegarde half started -to her feet.</p> - -<p>“No. Not after—I swore an oath, you see.”</p> - -<p>“To—”</p> - -<p>That motion of the wild head: “The One up yonder.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[499]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">“What One up yonder?” Hildegarde’s voice -was as hushed as his own.</p> - -<p>“Kyome.”</p> - -<p>“Who is that?”</p> - -<p>“The god of the unknown North. Hadn’t -you heard that in all the old lands, from Greece to -Mexico, there was always an altar to the unknown god?”</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>“When men in their foolishness threw down those -temples, the old gods fled to the farther countries. Last -of all to the world’s waste places.” He held up one -horrible hand, and made a grotesque motion of “Come -nearer.”</p> - -<p>She obeyed.</p> - -<p>“The greatest of these gods of the unknown—he sat -on a throne of ice at the top of the world. The others—they -had found no rest from the men of the West. Behind -the Great Wall of China we hunted them out. We -forced our way to them through Japan ports. We let -the garish day into the dim temples of Korea, and the -gold terraces of holy Lhasa are trod by alien feet. But -the uttermost North was all inviolate till I came. I -made the kingdom mine. But now”—he lifted the -maimed right hand like one taking oath—“now I abdicate. -I will destroy my title-deeds. Fire! a little fire!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[500]</a></span> -His hands fumbled among the shavings in the blanket, -and feverishly he caught up the knife.</p> - -<p>“No, no. Let me,” she said. “I’ll do it for you. -See, I can split the kindling straight down.” She -strained to make good the boast. “Just a moment! Oh, -but this kind of wood is tough! What is it? Not a -piece of drift—so flat and smooth?”</p> - -<p>“Piece of a broken skee—my snow-shoe.” While she -forced the sharp blade down, he was calling out, “Ky! -D’you hear that fellow laughing at us?”</p> - -<p>The dog turned obedient, and both her pointed ears -seemed to be pricking at the silence.</p> - -<p>“Whenever I begin to hope, I hear that walrus guffaw.” -Ky’s master was listening with all his shrinking -soul, and his eyes looked straight through the wall, but -he spoke as quietly as before. Hildegarde shivered a -little. Death itself could hardly remove him further -than he had wandered in those few seconds. “Oh, come -back!” she said in her heart, and then aloud, “Tell me, -please tell me, how I shall manage about Ky?”</p> - -<p>“Ky?” His eyelids fluttered as he obeyed the call.</p> - -<p>“Yes, how am I to make her follow me?”</p> - -<p>“Give her more of your pilot bread.”</p> - -<p>“Will she leave you at the last for that?”</p> - -<p>“She won’t know it’s the last, and she is hungry. -Aren’t you, Ky?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde laid down the knife an instant, took a -fragment from her pocket and held it out to the dog.</p> - -<p>Very doubtfully Ky came nearer. But still she -couldn’t make up her mind to trust the new friend’s -hand. So Hildegarde laid the coveted morsel down.</p> - -<p>When Ky had cautiously snapped it up, she hobbled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[501]</a></span> -to the bedside and turned her dim eyes to the old familiar -bundle.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’ve got it safe.” He circled it with an arm, -still looking down at the dog.</p> - -<p>Would he ever let it go of his own free will? What -vain notion was this of a fire!</p> - -<p>Now he was muttering absently, as he smoothed the -oilskin: “Our harvest, yours and mine. Whatever we -went through in the sowing, it was all nothing, wasn’t -it, Ky?—just nothing to bringing the harvest home.”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t possible for coming to be worse than -going!”</p> - -<p>“Borisoff would have said no. But Borisoff only tried -one way. <em>We</em> know—Ky and I.” In the pause the eyelids -closed over lusterless eyes. It was only while he -spoke of the journey that he seemed alive. As she -looked again at the face, as blank and cold as a grate -without a fire, horror fell upon her lest he should die -before Cheviot came back.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde’s little store of splinters and shavings had -grown into a heap. “If I make kindling for the fire, I -deserve to be told—things—don’t I? Besides, then I -can tell her—the face.”</p> - -<p>“How could you do that?”</p> - -<p>She must break it gradually. “Wouldn’t it be possible -for me to find her out and tell her?”</p> - -<p>He looked at Hildegarde dreamily an instant. “I -wonder,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do it, if only you’ll go on—go on.”</p> - -<p>He made a faint “no,” with the wild head, smiling -dimly. “Any one may have a nightmare. No one has -ever told a nightmare, so it didn’t sound absurd. It’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[502]</a></span> -a thing you can’t pass on, fortunately. You can’t recover -it even for yourself. Of all those last weeks, only -three things stand out clear: one was the day I saw the -first fox track in the snow.”</p> - -<p>“You were glad of that?”</p> - -<p>“Glad of the first sign of life?”</p> - -<p>“And the second thing?”</p> - -<p>“The day when I looked south and saw the sky was -yellow.”</p> - -<p>“What did that mean?”</p> - -<p>“Land. All the rest’s a blur. And in the blur two -shadows—Ky and I, on the homeward journey—the -journey that I knew even then wouldn’t end at home. -Ky and I. All our companions dead. The last dog, -even our infinitesimal rations of pemmican, gone. -Everything gone, but Ky and my title-deeds.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t see how you bore it—how you kept alive.”</p> - -<p>“<em>I</em> don’t know. Later we fed on the small crustaceans -in the ice-channels, then the narwhal. But in the strain -I think my wits went. Mercifully I can’t recover much -in that blur of agony till the moment that stands out -clear as conflagration in the dark—that moment when -I set our course by the shadow my staff cast, and saw—” -He dropped his hollow jaw, staring at some horror unspeakable.</p> - -<p>“What was it you—”</p> - -<p>“I saw that while we were stumbling blindly toward -the blessed South—faster still the ice that we were on -was drifting north.”</p> - -<p>“Carrying you back to—”</p> - -<p>“<em>Back to the Pole.</em>”</p> - -<p>Her fingers lost their hold upon the knife.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[503]</a></span></p> - -<p>He didn’t even notice that she was no longer keeping -her part of the compact. “Talk of Sisyphus! Talk of -torture! Ky and I, like half-frozen flies crawling over -the roof of the world, while the greater forces carried -us calmly back to the North! It remains burnt into my -memory as the final type of hopeless human striving. -Each day I would read the message of the shadow on -the ice, till I began to say to myself: the penalty for -having reached the Pole is that you must stay there. No -use to struggle. You are surrounded, captured, brought -back. The spirit of the violated place won’t allow a man -to carry his victory home. It was then I understood.” -Palm across palm he laid his fumbling hands, but his -faint-moving lips brought no sound forth.</p> - -<p>“You prayed?”</p> - -<p>“Prayed? Something of the sort. I made a vow. -By the unknown god I swore if I were allowed to get -back alive no soul should ever know—except just one -among all the living. Strange it should be you!”</p> - -<p>“Of course you were thinking of little—of—”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I’d tell nobody, I swore, but a girl. I meant -a girl with a little doll face—a girl who wouldn’t understand. -Our national phrase for any sort of success kept -running in my head. I still felt I’d like her to know -I hadn’t failed ‘to get there.’ Foolishness, of course. -What I really wanted was that she should have a share -in that vision no man’s eyes but mine had seen. I -meant to show her these.”</p> - -<p>It was terrible to see his hands trying to undo the -treasure. But while again she hacked at the unyielding -wood, Hildegarde followed fascinated each grotesque -move the sick man made. At last the tight-drawn knots<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[504]</a></span> -had yielded. Between the four corners of the ancient -oilskin, creased and twisted and stained, the harvest of -John Galbraith’s life lay open in the hollow between -his knees. Hildegarde stood up with knife caught in a -cleft of the skee, staring. He turned over the little hoard -of discolored papers that lay on a flat chart-box, a -theodolite, a pocket sextant, and a record cylinder.</p> - -<p>“Notes, sketches, tables of temperature and magnetic -variation, casual phenomena. Oh, I found out strange -secrets! The whole story’s here. I’d sooner have left -my bones up yonder than not bring her back the proofs.” -He opened out the chart and hung over the grimy, tattered -sheet as though it were some work of art triumphant—a -perfection of beauty unimagined in the -world before. As he sat there hugging the shabby heap -between his knees, you would have thought that stained -and sea-soaked store must be splendid with color, or -resonant with the organ music of the deep and of great -winds harping in the waste—fit record of a pilgrimage -no soul had made before.</p> - -<p>“In my heart,” he said, “I hoped, when I took her -these, she might, at last, realize—”</p> - -<p>A torn and dirty book, with corners worn round and -curling, and a look about its tough, discolored pages as -though it had come down a thousand years. “My -diary.” He turned a page. “She couldn’t have read -it, wouldn’t want so much as to touch it. Still, it was -for her that even at the last I carried it rather than -food.”</p> - -<p>Opening the other side of the shallow chart-box that -was fitted with grooves in which sheets of stout drawing-paper -were slipped and firmly held in place, he drew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[505]</a></span> -what that first glance seemed to reveal as a meaningless -smudge of violent color. “<em>There it is!</em>” and no sooner -had he said the words, than nervously he was sheltering -the thing behind one knee. “You are sure that old fellow -isn’t hanging about?”</p> - -<p>She glanced out. “Quite sure.”</p> - -<p>Cautiously he brought the paper up from its moment’s -hiding, but his low voice dropped to a deeper register, -“<em>That’s what it’s like!</em>”</p> - -<p>From the hoarse triumph in the tone she knew that -however clear before his actual eyes had been once this -picture in his hand, they saw it now no more.</p> - -<p>“That’s what Borisoff and the rest died to have a -glimpse of. This is what I found, instead of the palæocrystic -sea. Here is where the ice-hills rise. There’d -been a storm. The low cloud-masses—they were incredible! -Like that! And the zenith clear, except for the -banners of light.”</p> - -<p>Plain he had no guess that the colored crayon was -both marred and bettered; that the picture he had set -down, with some fair skill, had been less moving, less -poetic, even less true than this, that chance had wrought -with a blind but faithful artistry. For as Hildegarde -stared at the prismatic haze, a kind of wild meaning -dawned there upon the paper. Yes, surely, chance had -craftier hands than any but the greatest among the sons -of men. For the picture brought that almost religious -conviction of the truth that great art gives. Just so, -and no otherwise, must this thing have been. The dome -of the sky up yonder was an inverted bowl of brass. -And in the heavenward hollow of it a giant brood of -serpents flamed and writhed above a wild white waste,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[506]</a></span> -warmed here with violet, cooled there with silver and -pearl.</p> - -<p>“And that,” she said, only to have assurance of his -voice again, “that’s what the world is like up there?”</p> - -<p>“Do you think men go so far, and walk through hell, -to bring home a lie?”</p> - -<p>Looking no longer at the orgy of color on the paper, -but at the reflection of the actual scene in the dying -face, “It was like the Day of Judgment,” said the girl.</p> - -<p>“You can see that!” The craftsman’s pleasure in his -handiwork brought out a gleam, and then, with a sudden -passion, he tore the paper across and across, while Hildegarde -cried out:</p> - -<p>“Ah, don’t! Let me take it to—her!”</p> - -<p>“Take it to the fire!—and leave the great legacy unencumbered. -Fire, fire!” He was gathering up the -splinters and shavings that he had whittled from the -skee in the hours before Hildegarde’s coming. “Here! -Here!”</p> - -<p>A sense of impotency shackled her spirit as well as -lamed her tongue. Blindly she took the fragments over -to the embrasure of some blackened stones, just inside -and to windward of the threshold.</p> - -<p>“No one is about?”</p> - -<p>“No one.”</p> - -<p>“This is to start it, then.” He held out something. -“This will catch easiest.”</p> - -<p>“I have some thin paper here.” She twisted a wisp -of her own map of the North, with a vague instinct of -putting off an evil hour.</p> - -<p>But the sick man followed with eager eyes the laying -of every crosswise stick, his gaunt frame huddled over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[507]</a></span> -his treasure while he watched the making of the sacrificial -fire that should devour it. If his eyes left Hildegarde’s -hands a moment, it was only that they might -guard the door against surprise.</p> - -<p>Once again, “Look out,” he said, “and see—”</p> - -<p>“There’s no one. But wouldn’t you <em>like</em> somebody -to come in? Some face out of the past—”</p> - -<p>“To come <em>now</em>!”</p> - -<p>“Some one who could bring you news of—that girl -you—”</p> - -<p>“Remember wood’s worth more than gold up here! -Keep a little back.”</p> - -<p>“Keep some back?”</p> - -<p>“Paper like this burns slow. As you say some one -might interrupt—” No hospitality in the look he sent -to the door. “Before you light it, have everything over -there, ready to feed the fire.” His thin arms gathered -up the store. Ky growled uneasily as Hildegarde drew -near, the girl wondering what was best for Galbraith’s -peace, what was of any avail.</p> - -<p>He made a motion to give her all he held, but what -he actually handed over was the torn crayon, and even -in the act of giving up that he set one fragment against -another, looking his last.</p> - -<p>“Oh, keep it—let me keep it—for her. Could you -bear to hear—”</p> - -<p>But that mysterious arctic current, about which the -greatest geographers are not agreed, it had carried him -back again to the Pole! With vacant eyes on the colored -paper, “We left him a feather for his ice-cap, -didn’t we, Ky?”</p> - -<p>“A feather.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[508]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Or a ribbon. Didn’t you see?”</p> - -<p>“See—?”</p> - -<p>“This. You didn’t notice we planted the stars and -stripes there?”</p> - -<p>“Oh-h. You see I thought you said no one was ever -to know—”</p> - -<p>“—and I carved a B. on the flagstaff. It was Borisoff’s -snow-shoe staff. But the B.—it didn’t stand for -Borisoff.”</p> - -<p>“No?”</p> - -<p>“No. The bamboo stood up there so light and slender—” -Again the look that only one remembrance could -bring into his eyes.</p> - -<p>“It must have seemed like Bella upholding our country’s -flag.”</p> - -<p>His whole face warmed into smiling. The death -shadows fled for that moment of his saying, “Had I -told you her name? Yes, I brought the record cylinder -away, and left there only something that would perish.”</p> - -<p>“You make a fetish of that oath you swore!”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t because of the oath. Why should I take an -empty fame out of the world with me? Should I rest the -better?”</p> - -<p>“You think only of yourself. But there’s the gain to -science. What right have you to deprive the world of -that?”</p> - -<p>He smiled. “You speak like a green girl, or like a -newspaper. Forgive me! But you don’t realize. The -gain to science is the by-product. The true gain is to -the human soul. You don’t believe me? Read the most -inspiring books ever written about the arctic.”</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I have. Who wrote them?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[509]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Franklin, Greely, and De Long—the three who -failed. Here’s to them!” He lifted up the cup, -emptied it, and dropped it with a ringing of rusty tin, -an eye cleared and preternaturally bright. “In the past -it was all different, you know. Enough and to spare in -the physical world to be conquered. But the things to -be conquered in the future, do you know what they -are?”</p> - -<p>Voiceless she shook her head.</p> - -<p>“Moral weakness and physical self-indulgence. In -America we are all so comfortable we are all like to be -damned!”</p> - -<p>She could have wept aloud to hear the half-whimsical, -half-delirious tone of the wreck upon the camp-bed -deprecating comfort.</p> - -<p>“If Borisoff had lived—I don’t know. But Borisoff -is sleeping in the lee of that great shaft of Siberian pine, -and I—if I know anything in the hereafter, I shall be -glad that I left the hope behind me for other men.”</p> - -<p>“Left it for some new Norse Viking maybe, or some -sea-faring Briton. And America will never know—”</p> - -<p>“’Sh. I’m not sure whether I’m more sorry that -America shouldn’t know she was first at the goal, or -whether I’m not more proud that it should be an American -who wins the race and refrains from making the -world resound with it. That it should be an American, -after all, to do just that. One, too,”—he smiled with a -curious sweetness,—“one as guilty of boasting as his -brothers are. So you see I keep some spark of vanity to -light me—out. Here!” He gathered the hoard in his -arms an instant, and held it half-hidden under his -beard.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[510]</a></span></p> - -<p>But it seemed as hard for him to loose his arms from -about his treasure as for a mother to part from her child.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde made a tender, half-unconscious motion of -protecting both the broken man and the toys his dying -hands still clung to. But he, not comprehending, said -faintly: “I’ve carried this little bundle of papers across -the crown of the world to—to give it to a strange woman -at last!”</p> - -<p>“No, no.” She fell on her knees by the bed. “I am -not strange! I am Hildegarde.”</p> - -<p>His blazing eyes looked over her bowed head at the -little heap among the blackened stones. “Here!” he -whispered.</p> - -<p>“What’s this?”</p> - -<p>“A wind-match. Careful! there’s only one more.”</p> - -<p>She rose unsteadily, with a sense of the utter uselessness -of any help now for this man who had been Jack -Galbraith. But as she struck the match, and the fire -caught among the sticks, once more the life leaped up in -the man. He sat erect, exultant, horrible to look upon, -tearing the leaves of a book, holding them up in sheaves, -and crying out: “Here, take the rest! I keep my word. -I give the Kingdom back to the oldest of the gods!” -And with that he fell together and lay with eyes hidden, -breathing hoarsely.</p> - -<p>When she saw that the last pages, not even smoldering -any more, lay charred among the stones, she turned -again to the bedside. Was he dead? A long time she -stood there. What sound was that above the surf? -Again the long shrilling note. She went to the door. -Again! Of course; the steam whistle of the <i>Beluga</i>, calling -the travelers back. And this other traveler, had he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[511]</a></span> -heard a call? Was he, too, gone home? With trembling -knees she made her way back to the low bed. Again the -strident sound. It set the nerves a-shake. Painfully the -gaunt figure moved. It lifted up its face. It sent little-seeing -eyes to the stony altar. They seemed to search -among the ashes.</p> - -<p>Again the wind bore over the water that harsh summons -to be gone. “Everything is burned,” said the -girl, and with a little strangled cry of “Bella! Bella!” -Hildegarde buried her face in her hands, sobbing: “Oh, -I think I was mad to help you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”</p> - -<p>“I’m glad.”</p> - -<p>She dropped her hands.</p> - -<p>“Glad ... haven’t spoiled ... finest game in the -world ... the men who come after. Don’t know—what -they’ll do—when they’ve found it—but—hunting the -Pole—will last them ... good while yet. Ky—won’t -tell!”</p> - -<p>Again the <i>Beluga’s</i> piercing call.</p> - -<p>It carried Hildegarde to the door. Where was any -counsel? Where was Cheviot? Ah, yes! From the -heights behind the hut, he must have made the signal -agreed on before leaving the <i>Beluga</i>. Hildegarde could -see the small boat putting off now from the whaler. -What was she to do? If, after Cheviot’s promise, there -were delay, who could doubt the choleric captain would -not scruple to leave his undesired passengers behind. Or -if there were only threat of that—her father’s bewilderment -and misery. What to do! As she turned her eyes -away from the shining world without the door, her dazzled -vision found only shadows in the hut. She had -dreamed it all! No; that voice again: “—Still heels four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[512]</a></span> -degrees to starboard! One point? No; only a motion of -the floe in azimuth. I tell you we’re locked fast.”</p> - -<p>“Please listen. I’m Bella’s friend. I—oh, come back -a moment.”</p> - -<p>“Tell Borisoff—can’t hear with this infernal shrieking -of the boulders. By the Lord!”—he raised himself on -an elbow—“ten yards of this living, moving ice would -hold Goliath back. And it’s sixty miles to the sea!”</p> - -<p>She turned her wet face to the door again. The tossing -boat out yonder seemed to go down before her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Don’t let any one in!”</p> - -<p>“No, no.” There it was again, like a toy boat dancing -wildly before destruction.</p> - -<p>“What I mind most,” the faint voice whispered, “is -not holding out till—I got across to Alaska. All those -months—all that sacrifice—all that suffering—and fail -in such a little thing!”</p> - -<p>“Why,” interrupted the girl, “why did you want to -get to Alaska?”</p> - -<p>“Why? I—I don’t seem to remember. There was a -reason. But it’s too far.”</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean—”</p> - -<p>“I shall never get there now. Do you hear the music, -Ky?”</p> - -<p>“The music?”</p> - -<p>“Screaming of the ptarmigan. Music to us, wasn’t -it?” In a changed voice, rational, but weak: “I can’t -see you, Ky.”</p> - -<p>“She’s here, with me, at the door.”</p> - -<p>“Then she’s dim as she used to be when she plodded -on in front, wrapped in her cloud of frost-smoke.”</p> - -<p>“Please try to listen. I—see the sailors bringing the -little boat through the surf.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[513]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That’s easy. Let ’em try the ice!”</p> - -<p>“They’re coming for me.”</p> - -<p>“You—you?”</p> - -<p>“You don’t remember.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I do.”</p> - -<p>“I am—”</p> - -<p>“Ky’s friend. Thank you.” Feebly he put out his -hand. But he would have drawn it back, if hers had not -closed trembling over it.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Jack! Jack!” she cried to herself, conscious of an -anguished impulse to hide the marred hands in her breast -to see if pity might not heal them!</p> - -<p>“I think whatever comes of it,” she said brokenly, “I -mustn’t go.”</p> - -<p>The glazed eyes looked at her in faint wonder.</p> - -<p>“Because I am Hildegarde.”</p> - -<p>“That wasn’t her name.”</p> - -<p>“No, no. I am <em>Hildegarde Mar</em>.”</p> - -<p>“A nice name.”</p> - -<p>“But you’ve heard it before.”</p> - -<p>“Hildegarde—?” The faintest motion of the wild -head making “No.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes.” She was on her knees by the bed. “My -father was your friend. My father is Nathaniel Mar.”</p> - -<p>He said nothing for a moment. She thought he was -trying to coördinate the memories her words recalled. -But when he spoke it was to say, “No one must know but -Bella—only Bella in all the world.”</p> - -<p>“Only Bella,” said the girl, and rose upright. But -through her tears she saw that his lips still moved.</p> - -<p>“Will you—” he whispered. She bent down again to -catch the words. “Will you stand at the door—till the -boat is beached?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[514]</a></span></p> - -<p>Hoping, with a catch at the heart, that old association -dimly stirred by the name Mar had brought him some -warmth of her presence in this chill hour, she tried to -find a voice to ask why he wanted her to wait those few -poor minutes at the door. But she had no need to put -the question. His eyes made answer, trying to follow -Ky, as the dog left the threshold and went with her -slow, halting gait, aimless, half across the little strip of -tundra to the sea.</p> - -<p>“Don’t say—anything to me. And don’t”—the wild -face twitched with pain—“<em>don’t look at me</em>. Just—stand -there, with Ky—till the boat’s ready. And when -you go—don’t speak.” Again the dimming eyes sought -on the tundra for that vague shadow that was his fellow-explorer -and his friend. “I shall watch you, Ky—till -the whaler—takes you—South.”</p> - -<p>As Hildegarde, bending lower, tried to form speech -with her quivering lips, “No,” he whispered. “You’ve -done—all—you—can. All, but this last thing. I’d like—to -see her as long as ever—But don’t speak, and—<em>don’t—look—back</em>.”</p> - -<p>His eyes went past the girl, went straining after the -dog, as though Ky were in truth as dim to-day as on -that gray morning when he saw her first, standing in -front of the pack, wrapped in mist, nose to the north, -waiting for him “up yonder” by the Kara shore.</p> - -<p>Out there, on the tundra edge again, the great explorer, -Ky, stood like some old coastguard reading the -signs of the sea.</p> - -<p>Behind, at the door of the hut, Hildegarde Mar. But -though the girl, too, looked straight across the surf, -toward the islands named for those in the Adriatic after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[515]</a></span> -the Argive king, what she saw was not the nearer Diomede -and not the little boat fighting its way through the -surf; not even her lover running along the shore and -looking among the high-piled rocks; not John Galbraith, -dying behind her there in the shadow. Clearer than if -she’d held it in her hand, she saw the colored crayon -sketch that lay charred among the ashes. So it was like -that!—the terrible, beautiful place that would still go -luring men with its lying legend on all the maps, crying -out in every tongue in Europe—</p> - -<p class="center"><em>UNEXPLORED REGION!</em></p> - -<p class="center">COME AND FIND ME!</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[516]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> - -<div> -<img class="dropcap" src="images/dropcap-a.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="dropcap">At last! After fruitless, heart-sickening -search among the boulders, Cheviot had -caught sight of Hildegarde breasting easily -the risen wind, stepping lightly and without -the least inconvenience down from the -tundra to the beach. Over the rocks he came running, -making signals for haste. Red, too, a long way behind, -went racing along the shore, back and forth, barely out -of the spray; running seaward when the breakers retreated, -fleeing from them on their return, howling at -the sailors as they bent over their oars, hardly fifty -yards from the foam-line.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde made her way blindly, stumbling among -stones, scattering bits of pilot bread in her wake, and -casting backward looks.</p> - -<p>“Hurry! Hurry!” Cheviot was shouting.</p> - -<p>“She’s so lame!” Hildegarde couldn’t hear his -next words, but she caught the quick gesture of one who -reproachfully reminds himself. And he was flying forward -to her aid.</p> - -<p>“I’m all right—but the dog—”</p> - -<p>Without slackening pace, a hand at either side of his -mouth, he called: “They can’t hold the boat in that -surf.”</p> - -<p>“Ky—the dog—”</p> - -<p>“Red’s all right. He’s there.” Louis was near<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[517]</a></span> -enough now for her to see the heat of the race in his face -as he called out: “The captain will be furious—” The -rest was caught away by the wind, till quite near: “I’ll -pull you along. Here, catch hold of my hand.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Louis, I’ve got something to tell—”</p> - -<p>“—ankle giving out again?”</p> - -<p>“No, not that.”</p> - -<p>He turned sharply to signal the sailors that the lady -would be there in time.</p> - -<p>“Louis!”</p> - -<p>“Don’t waste breath! Come on!”</p> - -<p>“Something’s happened. It’s about Jack Galbraith.”</p> - -<p>Had he heard? What was he going to do? It hadn’t -occurred to her so much as to wonder before. Did he -think there was no hurry about this news she had picked -up concerning the long-lost traveler, or had the wind -carried the name away? Or—</p> - -<p>“I must tell you about it, Louis. Wait a moment!”</p> - -<p>“You’re asking the tide to wait!” And far from -gently his own momentum was carrying her on. Was -there then one service he would refuse her? I Well—well—she -steeled herself. He couldn’t refuse to take the -dog in any case.</p> - -<p>“We—we can’t go so fast.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, we can. We’ve got to.”</p> - -<p>“No. I must wait for—the dog.”</p> - -<p>A flying look of astonishment sent over shoulder shot -from her to Ky. “<em>That</em> dog?” But impatience drove -even wonderment out. “Can’t you see how close—” He -flung an arm toward the laboring boat, as with hot face -turned seaward to the wind he hurried on.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[518]</a></span></p> - -<p>“If the dog goes back he’ll think I failed him—” -The wind and the surf took the rest. In the turmoil of -her mind the first thing needful to assure seemed to be -Ky’s safe conveyance to the ship. While Louis, without -slackening speed, snatched her arm through his, compelling -her to keep his pace, still the girl looked back as -she held behind her the last of the lure. Ky was making -her way better than her new friend, for Hildegarde’s -weakened ankle turned more than once, and now she was -almost down. Cheviot had swung back and had her on -her feet again.</p> - -<p>“Louis—” But the pain had turned her faint.</p> - -<p>“It’s horrible to hurt you, but there mayn’t be -another boat this year,” he jerked out, starting on -again.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had no real fear of their being left. -Wasn’t “the watchman” with her? But Ky! The sailors -might refuse to wait for a dog.</p> - -<p>“Here!” He shook off her slack hand and grasped -her by the arm. “I must help you more.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes. Help me to get her down there in time.”</p> - -<p>“All right!” But he was shouting the reassuring -words across the surf. “Come on!” he encouraged the -sailors. “Coming on” was easier said than done. An -instant the boat had fallen back.</p> - -<p>“We’ll be there as soon as you!” Cheviot’s shout -dropped hoarsely: “We won’t if you can’t do better -than this.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll have to tell father—”</p> - -<p>“If you stop to talk we’ll simply be left behind.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;" id="illus11"> -<img src="images/illus11.jpg" width="450" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">“Hildegarde’s ankle turned more than once, and now she was -almost down”</p> -</div> - -<p>Ah, well, if he took it like that, why should she go any -further with him? “You’d better hurry on with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[519]</a></span> -dog,” she said. “Tell father he must manage somehow -to come.”</p> - -<p>“Are you out of your head!” He seemed to be carrying -her forward without volition of hers. She offered -no physical resistance but, “I’m not coming with you to -the ship,” she said. “I’ve got to go back.”</p> - -<p>“Go where, for God’s sake?”</p> - -<p>“Back to the hut.”</p> - -<p>“Go—what for?”</p> - -<p>“Because Jack Galbraith is there.” For just an instant -his fingers slackened hold. The shadow of a fear -she had never seen in those clear eyes darkened the fine -candor of his face, and then, with firmer grasp, he was -once more hurrying her on.</p> - -<p>“I’m not going crazy. It’s sober truth. Louis, -Louis, what are we to do?”</p> - -<p>“Prevent that boat from leaving us behind.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, you don’t care! It’s nothing to you!”</p> - -<p>The hand on her arm tightened in such a grip she -could hardly keep from crying out with the pain of it, but -faster than ever the two were flying along the stony beach.</p> - -<p>“Oh Louis, help me!” she said passionately, and holding -back by main force she brought down the pace. -“You wouldn’t want me to—oh, tell me what’s to be -done!”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know.” Suddenly all that energy of his -seemed spent. “Perhaps nothing can be done.”</p> - -<p>She had never before seen hopelessness in his face. It -pierced through all her preoccupation and excitement. -“Yes, yes, something can be done. You needn’t take it -as you’re doing. Oh, Louis, don’t you see, <em>you</em> might -go back.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[520]</a></span></p> - -<p>“<em>I?</em>” He looked at her with eyes that made her draw -a breath of pain. “It is true,” he said; “I might go -back.”</p> - -<p>“Will you?” she faltered.</p> - -<p>“To Galbraith, you say! You <em>want</em> me to go back?”</p> - -<p>“Do you ‘want’ to leave him here friendless, sick. Oh, -it was well I came! I must have had an inkling; yes, -yes, a presentiment.”</p> - -<p>“<em>That’s</em> why you came! Why you waited here!”</p> - -<p>The sailors might abandon their dangerous task and -leave those two there on the beach, for all it seemed to -matter to Louis Cheviot, since he had halted on the -words: “Galbraith behind these days, too!”</p> - -<p>The shouting of the sailors made him turn his eyes. -The boat out there, baffled again, was driven back in a -third effort to make the final run. Cheviot with his free -hand shaped a trumpet, and through it shouted across -the surf, “Try up here!”</p> - -<p>The men in the boat called out something that was -drowned in the clamor of the waves, and Cheviot was -running Hildegarde faster than ever down that last -stretch of the stony beach. Would he never stop and let -her get back her voice? Oh, this carrying a hot ball of -lead in your breast, and having to lift it every time you -strained for breath.</p> - -<p>“Louis, wait! Ky, Ky, come on!” Why was he hurrying -her more than ever? Did he imagine— Her -power to think seemed to be leaving her. A wavering -vision off there in the sunshine of Louis’s late guide hurrying -down from the settlement with several other men, -two were natives. And the boat, where was the boat? -Beaten back again, and that time all but swamped. Yes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[521]</a></span> -now it was gone—down behind the white breakers, or -further down among the rocks? The look on Louis’s -face—it gave her a new measure of loneliness. It was -like the door of one’s own home locked and barred -against one. But she couldn’t see well, for the loosened -hair, blown into her eyes, was blinding her. Tears, too. -On and on over the water-worn stones with that harsh -hand grasping her. If her feet slipped they were not -suffered to falter, if they stumbled they were harshly -steadied. On and on with this constriction at the breast, -and at her side this face of granite. A moment’s memory -of the arctic current, and the picture that had stood -to Galbraith for the type of helpless human striving. -Something of the same sense of futility visited her as her -feet followed the stronger will. Did nothing matter then, -except this on and on? Death up yonder on the tundra. -Death down there in the surf. Pain wherever there was -life. Pain only to draw the breath. She got hers in -great, clutching gasps that stabbed her. Now they were -down near the foam-line. They were running in the wet -sand. The rage of the surf in her ears, the taste of the -brine on her lips. John Galbraith found, and John Galbraith -dying. Everything changing, Louis most of all. -The fabric of her world dissolving before her dazed eyes -to the sound of sea-born thunder.</p> - -<p>“You’ve got to make a rush—and not mind a ducking!” -It was one of the sailors shouting. The big fellow -in the hip-boots had leaped out of the plunging boat -into the surf. He was hurled headlong, recovered footing, -and, streaming with sea water, buffeted his way out -of the foam, while he roared angrily, “Come on, if yer -comin’. Cap’n’s orders, bring ye or leave ye.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[522]</a></span></p> - -<p>“The dog first,” Hildegarde cried out. “No, the lame -one.”</p> - -<p>The sailor hesitated, swore, and then, on Cheviot’s -word, obeyed. His late guide panting, breathless, appeared -with the other men at his heels, all but the Esquimaux -with letters to send out. Cheviot thrust them in -his pocket.</p> - -<p>“Now, Hildegarde.”</p> - -<p>“Not both of us,” she said, meeting his eye. -“Which?” Each looked deep in that swift instant, neither -flinching.</p> - -<p>“If you aren’t coming of your own accord—” he said.</p> - -<p>“What then?”</p> - -<p>He made a sign to the blaspheming sailor. The two -lifted her in their arms and carried her through the surf, -just as hours before they had carried her out.</p> - -<p>“Now, sir,” said the sailor, “in with you.” Cheviot -stood with the foam swirling above his long boot tops. -“You want me to stay behind?” he called.</p> - -<p>“If I could do it myself,” Hildegarde began.</p> - -<p>Without a word he turned his back on her, strode out -of the water and up the stony beach.</p> - -<p class="tb">If, upon his return home, Mr. Mar was surprised at the -warmth of his reception, he was yet more perplexed to -find himself never once called upon to state the value of -his Polaris mining interests.</p> - -<p>When he sufficiently recovered from his astonishment -at this oversight on Mrs. Mar’s part, he tried once or -twice to introduce the subject of his claims into the family -circle. But his wife firmly changed the conversation, -as one who insists that painful bygones shall be bygones<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[523]</a></span> -forever. Mar smiled inwardly, for Cheviot’s report had -been glowing, and for Cheviot to write like that—well, it -was, as the sage said, significant of much. But Cheviot -was still “in Alaska, looking after things,” and Mar -kept his own counsel.</p> - -<p>It was plain that these last years had left their mark -upon his wife. He laid the change at first to the disintegrating -action of time upon even that hard, bright surface. -He never knew the secret rage he caused by attributing -to the weakness of age what was due to a hard-won -self-mastery, a realized and ripened affection. Only little -by little did he become aware that the alteration, so far -from being a sign of letting-go, was evidence of a fresh -taking-hold; a courageous determination not to shrink -from making unpleasant discoveries about herself merely -because she was of an age when most people cease to -make discoveries of any sort.</p> - -<p>Whatever pains her late-won knowledge cost Mrs. Mar, -her family, and especially her old and broken husband, -reaped some benefit of that lady’s ability to go on learning -at a time of life when the majority think it rather noble -if they make so much as an effort to teach.</p> - -<p>It is probable that, failing Hildegarde, Mar might -never have grasped the full meaning of the enlightenment -that had come to his life’s partner during these -three years of his absence. Upon that first glimpse of -him, as he came limping in at the door, his wife had -looked at him with a face no one who saw could forget. -“It’s been hard for you, too,” she said.</p> - -<p>“For me, too?” he echoed, wondering.</p> - -<p>But she had no other word, either then or after—no -gift of tender apology, nor even of explanation. Her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[524]</a></span> -task, as she conceived it, was not to talk about a long -past that was irrevocable, but to “show” the possibility -of a brief future that she felt to be still within their -reach.</p> - -<p>For Hildegarde all life had come to a standstill.</p> - -<p>Weeks must go by before Bella, at her old friend’s urgent -summons, could get back from abroad.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde’s soreness of heart, her hopelessness of the -greater gladness for herself, left her the freer to think of -it as only half an achievement—this bringing her father -back in the flesh. She must see his spirit “at home” before -her task was ended. No discreet opportunity was -lost to set her mother in an explanatory light. When the -neighbors chorused admiration of the girl’s pluck and -resourcefulness on the great journey, oh-ing and ah-ing, -and “How on earth did you manage?”—“It was never -the least difficult,” Hildegarde would interrupt. -“When I was at a loss I always thought how my mother -would take hold of the matter, and when I had imagined -her into my perplexity it wasn’t a perplexity any longer. -I saw just what she would do, and I saw it was just -right.”</p> - -<p>Only once, with her father alone, did she venture -openly to suggest a corrected judgment of the past.</p> - -<p>They had been talking of Mrs. Locke. Mar, who had -failed so signally in getting a post for himself, had succeeded -in getting one for his daughter’s friend.</p> - -<p>“You <em>have</em> been good about it!” Hildegarde said. -“I’m so grateful. So is she.”</p> - -<p>“So is the firm. She’s a success.”</p> - -<p>“It just shows!”</p> - -<p>“Shows what?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[525]</a></span></p> - -<p>“That the reason women aren’t more use in the world -is because they don’t have a chance.”</p> - -<p>“H’m!” said Mr. Mar.</p> - -<p>“No. Not a real chance, father.”</p> - -<p>“Good heaven! They have everything.”</p> - -<p>“No. They don’t have education. I don’t mean out -of books. It’s just as Mrs. Locke says. They stand as -little chance of knowing about life as kings and queens -do. They are still a class apart.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, she talks like that—your Mrs. Locke?” said Mar, -with an obvious uneasiness.</p> - -<p>“Not of herself. Of the rest of us—unless”—she -smiled—“unless we’ve been to Nome; or, like mother, -to Mecca.”</p> - -<p>“To Mecca?”</p> - -<p>With a face more serious the girl went on: “I’ve only -just begun to notice who among the women I know are -the most successful and the most sensible. They’re the -ones that have had the most experience, gone about most, -or”—her voice sunk—“had some great trouble, <em>known</em> -about life somehow by knocking up against it. It looks -as if the only way to get judgment is by having to judge. -Men, of course—you’re always practising. You’re <em>in</em> -things. You aren’t an outsider.”</p> - -<p>“Who is an outsider?”</p> - -<p>“Every woman, when she comes out of her own front -door. Now”—before he could answer she hurried on—“now, -there’s mother” (she spoke as if she had only just -remembered her). “A clever person like mother—why, if -she’d had ten times as much to do, she’d have done it -ten times better. And she wouldn’t have had time to -think about—a—the cracks in the china. Yes, father,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[526]</a></span> -you may depend upon it, it’s the women that haven’t -got much in them that fit best into the small places. -Mother’s always been crowded.”</p> - -<p>When Bella came back from England that September, -Mar and his daughter had been already six weeks at -home. Although given full credit for having so happily -reconstituted the domestic circle, for Hildegarde herself -the devouring loneliness that had invaded existence -showed its first sign of yielding when Bella’s childish -face appeared at the door. None the less for Bella’s -friend a shrinking of the heart as she held close the -slight figure in its smart French gown. What a butterfly -to be broken on the wheel of life!</p> - -<p>“But Louis!” Twenty minutes after her arrival, -Bella, as she followed Hildegarde up-stairs, put the question -for the second time. Why had he stayed behind?</p> - -<p>Hildegarde’s only answer was to hold open the door of -her room and, when the new-comer had passed through, -to shut it softly behind them both. Still in silence she -laid down Bella’s hat and gloves, and then came and -stood beside her friend, who sat watching her from the -old nook of the cushioned window-seat.</p> - -<p>“You might have told me something, even in a cable. -What happened up there?” Bella said softly.</p> - -<p>“What happened?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. About Louis.”</p> - -<p>“I came to realize him. There’s nothing like that -wonderful north light for making you see truly.”</p> - -<p>“Well, what did you find he was like when you saw -him—like that, in a north light?”</p> - -<p>“I found that he was—the man I wanted to go -through life with.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[527]</a></span></p> - -<p>“I’ve been hoping for that,” said Bella quietly.</p> - -<p>“Ah, but I didn’t only find him up there. I lost him, -too.”</p> - -<p>Bella leaned forward and took Hildegarde’s hand. -Very gently she drew her down on the cushioned seat.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde had turned her filling eyes away, but she -faced her friend for the moments of that low crying, -“Oh, Bella, Bella, when you think what a miracle it is to -find the right one in the maze, how is it that we ever let -the right one go?”</p> - -<p>Bella released the hand she had taken and turned her -head, looking out of the window.</p> - -<p>But Hildegarde’s thrilling voice went on: “I wonder -we don’t watch at the gate of the Beloved from dawn till -night, waiting till he comes. I wonder he doesn’t lie all -night at her door, for fear in a dream she may steal -away.”</p> - -<p>“And yet,” said the other, “in broad daylight each -lets the other go.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, and with an air of being willing. Of being able -to bear their going. And we can’t bear it!” Her -dimmed eyes fell on Bella’s beautiful face. “At least, I -can’t bear it—or—if I do, it will be because you help me, -Butterfly Bella. For you’ve learned how.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I’ve learned how.”</p> - -<p>Strange, wonderful little Bella. Hildegarde stared at -the slight creature, half-stoic and half-sprite.</p> - -<p>“How was it? Why couldn’t Louis see?”</p> - -<p>“I tried his patience again and again.”</p> - -<p>“You didn’t wait till you got him in a north light for -that.”</p> - -<p>“—and he was strong and kind and immovable in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[528]</a></span> -goodness, no matter what I did or said. And his faithfulness -to my father—there aren’t any words for that. -But you remember—Bella, sit close—mother told you -about the hermit.”</p> - -<p>“The hermit?”</p> - -<p>“The strange man they all thought had found the -Mother Lode.”</p> - -<p>Step by step, moment by moment, she went through -those hours at Polaris, though there was little need to -take Bella farther than the threshold of the hut.</p> - -<p>She held up two shaking hands, and, “I know! I -know!” she whispered. “Before you open the door, before -you knock—I know.”</p> - -<p>“How do you know?”</p> - -<p>“Go on,” said Bella, with an intensity of quietness. -And like that to the end—looking more than ever a -spirit, and like a spirit seeming to have no human heart -for breaking, Bella listened with wide, far-looking eyes -that half the time were tearless.</p> - -<p>It was Hildegarde who broke down when she told how -at the last, Ky and she had left him. When her choked -voice failed: “Of course, I know the end,” said Bella, -and they held each other fast, sitting there a long time -with no word spoken.</p> - -<p>At last Hildegarde felt the small hands loose their -hold. Bella stood up. And now she was walking up and -down the room. At last, as by a chance, her eyes found -Hildegarde, and a great gentleness came into the little -face. She came back to the window and stood close -against her friend.</p> - -<p>Hildegarde lifted her head. “You say you know the -end, but you don’t quite. Louis came calling me to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[529]</a></span> -hurry,” and she told of those few minutes on the beach. -“I didn’t realize I was ruining my life. I went on insisting. -Yes, Jack Galbraith didn’t die deserted, for I -sent him in his last hour my best chance of happiness. -I clung to the side of the boat and watched Louis cross -the beach with Reddy at his heels. Ky was crouching at -the stern with her black muzzle turned to the shore, -howling, howling. The men were angry, the dog was in -their way. “She is hungry,” I said. She had begun to -gnaw the glove I had dropped in the bottom of the boat. -Then it suddenly flashed over me! If there was nothing -in the hut to feed a hungry dog, neither was there any -food for a man.”</p> - -<p>Bella hid her face.</p> - -<p>With fresh tears Hildegarde went on, “And Louis -wouldn’t know. It hadn’t occurred to me at all while I -was there. I found myself sobbing, and saying half out -loud, ‘Oh, God, oh, God, is <em>that</em> why Jack is dying?’ The -sailors were staring. I leaned over and said to the big -Dane, ‘Do you want to make some money, you and these -others? I’ll pay you, pay you well, if you’ll give me -just five minutes more on shore.’ No, no. They were -all of one mind. ‘I’ll pay you ten dollars a minute,’ I -said, and I’d have gone on offering more if they hadn’t -turned back for that. It’s risking life, they said, and -they told me how the captain—But they thought I was -distracted at leaving Louis, and that all I wanted was to -get him. They liked Louis. They turned back. Just -then the whistle screamed out from the <i>Beluga</i> very angrily. -But they ran the boat in on a great wave, and I -flung out through the surf and ran up on the tundra -calling Louis. He was standing at the door of the hut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[530]</a></span> -with the man who’d shown him the way to the mines. -Louis turned round when he heard my voice, and oh, -Bella, the look on his face! ‘So you couldn’t leave it to -me <em>even to bury him</em>,’ he said.” She hid her eyes in -Bella’s lap. “And that was the end.”</p> - -<p>There was a long, long silence. At last a hand on -Hildegarde’s hair, and Bella’s voice saying: “For <em>you</em> it -wasn’t the end.”</p> - -<p>The other lifted her face. “Yes, for me, too. -‘There’s nothing to be done,’ Louis repeated that. I -was to go back, he said, for my father’s sake. And I did. -I was quite dazed. But for me, too, it was the end.”</p> - -<p>“Where is Louis now?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since.”</p> - -<p>“Nor heard?”</p> - -<p>“I got a letter to him, but—”</p> - -<p>“Wasn’t there time for an answer?”</p> - -<p>“I got an answer. But there was nothing in the letter.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing, but how they’d buried John Galbraith. -Oh, <em>Bella</em>!” Hildegarde’s horror-struck eyes besought -forgiveness.</p> - -<p>But Bella spoke with a strange steadiness. “Louis -didn’t say any of the things you wanted him to say?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde shook her head. “We waited, father and -I. We lived on board first one and then another steamer. -And two ships went away without us. Father was so -good, so good. He moved heaven and earth to get another -message to Polaris to say that we were waiting. -And Louis never came. I have hurt him so much he -can’t bear even to see me.” They sat in the silence, crying.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[531]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Bella.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“You and I will never let each other go.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Bella.</p> - -<p>“You and I alone together till the end.”</p> - -<p>“And Ky.”</p> - -<p>“Ky, of course,” Hildegarde amended. “Where is -she now?”</p> - -<p>“Down there, in the shade of the redwood. There, -don’t you see?”</p> - -<p>Hildegarde shook her head. “Not very well.” She -wiped away her tears. “But that’s how I kept seeing -life all the way home. You and the great discoverer -and I.”</p> - -<p>Bella had stood up. “You’re as blind as Ky!”</p> - -<p>“Why do you say that?” Hildegarde asked miserably, -with a sudden sense of desertion. “What do <em>you</em> see, -then?”</p> - -<p>“Louis Cheviot coming across the lawn.”</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Come and Find Me, by Elizabeth Robins - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COME AND FIND ME *** - -***** This file should be named 61932-h.htm or 61932-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/9/3/61932/ - -Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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