CHAPTER VII
That Vance Corliss wanted to see more of the girl he had dividedblankets with, goes with the saying. He had not been wise enough tolug a camera into the country, but none the less, by a yet subtlerprocess, a sun-picture had been recorded somewhere on his cerebraltissues. In the flash of an instant it had been done. A wave messageof light and color, a molecular agitation and integration, a certainminute though definite corrugation in a brain recess,--and there itwas, a picture complete! The blazing sunlight on the beetling black; aslender gray form, radiant, starting forward to the vision from themarge where light and darkness met; a fresh young morning smilewreathed in a flame of burning gold.
It was a picture he looked at often, and the more he looked the greaterwas his desire, to see Frona Welse again. This event he anticipatedwith a thrill, with the exultancy over change which is common of alllife. She was something new, a fresh type, a woman unrelated to allwomen he had met. Out of the fascinating unknown a pair of hazel eyessmiled into his, and a hand, soft of touch and strong of grip, beckonedhim. And there was an allurement about it which was as the allurementof sin.
Not that Vance Corliss was anybody's fool, nor that his had been ananchorite's existence; but that his upbringing, rather, had given hislife a certain puritanical bent. Awakening intelligence and broaderknowledge had weakened the early influence of an austere mother, buthad not wholly eradicated it. It was there, deep down, very shadowy,but still a part of him. He could not get away from it. It distorted,ever so slightly, his concepts of things. It gave a squint to hisperceptions, and very often, when the sex feminine was concerned,determined his classifications. He prided himself on his largenesswhen he granted that there were three kinds of women. His mother hadonly admitted two. But he had outgrown her. It was incontestable thatthere were three kinds,--the good, the bad, and the partly good andpartly bad. That the last usually went bad, he believed firmly. Inits very nature such a condition could not be permanent. It was theintermediary stage, marking the passage from high to low, from best toworst.
All of which might have been true, even as he saw it; but withdefinitions for premises, conclusions cannot fail to be dogmatic. Whatwas good and bad? There it was. That was where his mother whisperedwith dead lips to him. Nor alone his mother, but divers conventionalgenerations, even back to the sturdy ancestor who first uplifted fromthe soil and looked down. For Vance Corliss was many times removedfrom the red earth, and, though he did not know it, there was a clamorwithin him for a return lest he perish.
Not that he pigeon-holed Frona according to his inherited definitions.He refused to classify her at all. He did not dare. He preferred topass judgment later, when he had gathered more data. And there was theallurement, the gathering of the data; the great critical point wherepurity reaches dreamy hands towards pitch and refuses to call itpitch--till defiled. No; Vance Corliss was not a cad. And sincepurity is merely a relative term, he was not pure. That there was nopitch under his nails was not because he had manicured diligently, butbecause it had not been his luck to run across any pitch. He was notgood because he chose to be, because evil was repellant; but because hehad not had opportunity to become evil. But from this, on the otherhand, it is not to be argued that he would have gone bad had he had achance.
He was a product of the sheltered life. All his days had been lived ina sanitary dwelling; the plumbing was excellent. The air he hadbreathed had been mostly ozone artificially manufactured. He had beensun-bathed in balmy weather, and brought in out of the wet when itrained. And when he reached the age of choice he had been too fullyoccupied to deviate from the straight path, along which his mother hadtaught him to creep and toddle, and along which he now proceeded towalk upright, without thought of what lay on either side.
Vitality cannot be used over again. If it be expended on one thing,there is none left for the other thing. And so with Vance Corliss.Scholarly lucubrations and healthy exercises during his college dayshad consumed all the energy his normal digestion extracted from awholesome omnivorous diet. When he did discover a bit of surplusenergy, he worked it off in the society of his mother and of theconventional minds and prim teas she surrounded herself with. Result:A very nice young man, of whom no maid's mother need ever be intrepidation; a very strong young man, whose substance had not beenwasted in riotous living; a very learned young man, with a Freibergmining engineer's diploma and a B.A. sheepskin from Yale; and, lastly,a very self-centred, self-possessed young man.
Now his greatest virtue lay in this: he had not become hardened in themould baked by his several forbears and into which he had been pressedby his mother's hands. Some atavism had been at work in the making ofhim, and he had reverted to that ancestor who sturdily uplifted. Butso far this portion of his heritage had lain dormant. He had simplyremained adjusted to a stable environment. There had been no call uponthe adaptability which was his. But whensoever the call came, being soconstituted, it was manifest that he should adapt, should adjusthimself to the unwonted pressure of new conditions. The maxim of therolling stone may be all true; but notwithstanding, in the scheme oflife, the inability to become fixed is an excellence par excellence.Though he did not know it, this inability was Vance Corliss's mostsplendid possession.
But to return. He looked forward with great sober glee to meetingFrona Welse, and in the meanwhile consulted often the sun-picture hecarried of her. Though he went over the Pass and down the lakes andriver with a push of money behind him (London syndicates are neverniggardly in such matters). Frona beat him into Dawson by a fortnight.While on his part money in the end overcame obstacles, on hers the nameof Welse was a talisman greater than treasure. After his arrival, acouple of weeks were consumed in buying a cabin, presenting his lettersof introduction, and settling down. But all things come in the fulnessof time, and so, one night after the river closed, he pointed hismoccasins in the direction of Jacob Welse's house. Mrs. Schoville, theGold Commissioner's wife, gave him the honor of her company.
Corliss wanted to rub his eyes. Steam-heating apparatus in theKlondike! But the next instant he had passed out of the hall throughthe heavy portieres and stood inside the drawing-room. And it was adrawing-room. His moose-hide moccasins sank luxuriantly into the deepcarpet, and his eyes were caught by a Turner sunrise on the oppositewall. And there were other paintings and things in bronze. Two Dutchfireplaces were roaring full with huge back-logs of spruce. There wasa piano; and somebody was singing. Frona sprang from the stool andcame forward, greeting him with both hands. He had thought hissun-picture perfect, but this fire-picture, this young creature withthe flush and warmth of ringing life, quite eclipsed it. It was awhirling moment, as he held her two hands in his, one of those momentswhen an incomprehensible orgasm quickens the blood and dizzies thebrain. Though the first syllables came to him faintly, Mrs.Schoville's voice brought him back to himself.
"Oh!" she cried. "You know him!"
And Frona answered, "Yes, we met on the Dyea Trail; and those who meeton the Dyea Trail can never forget."
"How romantic!"
The Gold Commissioner's wife clapped her hands. Though fat and forty,and phlegmatic of temperament, between exclamations and hand-clappingsher waking existence was mostly explosive. Her husband secretlyaverred that did God Himself deign to meet her face to face, she wouldsmite together her chubby hands and cry out, "How romantic!"
"How did it happen?" she continued. "He didn't rescue you over acliff, or that sort of thing, did he? Do say that he did! And younever said a word about it, Mr. Corliss. Do tell me. I'm just dyingto know!"
"Oh, nothing like that," he hastened to answer. "Nothing much. I,that is we--"
He felt a sinking as Frona interrupted. There was no telling what thisremarkable girl might say.
"He gave me of his hospitality, that was all," she said. "And I canvouch for his fried potatoes; while for his coffee, it isexcellent--when one is very hungry."
"Ingrate!" he managed
to articulate, and thereby to gain a smile, erehe was introduced to a cleanly built lieutenant of the Mounted Police,who stood by the fireplace discussing the grub proposition with adapper little man very much out of place in a white shirt and stiffcollar.
Thanks to the particular niche in society into which he happened to beborn, Corliss drifted about easily from group to group, and was muchenvied therefore by Del Bishop, who sat stiffly in the first chair hehad dropped into, and who was waiting patiently for the first person totake leave that he might know how to compass the manoeuvre. In hismind's eye he had figured most of it out, knew just how many stepsrequired to carry him to the door, was certain he would have to saygood-by to Frona, but did not know whether or not he was supposed toshake hands all around. He had just dropped in to see Frona and say"Howdee," as he expressed it, and had unwittingly found himself incompany.
Corliss, having terminated a buzz with a Miss Mortimer on the decadenceof the French symbolists, encountered Del Bishop. But the pocket-minerremembered him at once from the one glimpse he had caught of Corlissstanding by his tent-door in Happy Camp. Was almighty obliged to himfor his night's hospitality to Miss Frona, seein' as he'd benside-tracked down the line; that any kindness to her was a kindness tohim; and that he'd remember it, by God, as long as he had a corner of ablanket to pull over him. Hoped it hadn't put him out. Miss Frona'dsaid that bedding was scarce, but it wasn't a cold night (more blowythan crisp), so he reckoned there couldn't 'a' ben much shiverin'. Allof which struck Corliss as perilous, and he broke away at the firstopportunity, leaving the pocket-miner yearning for the door.
But Dave Harney, who had not come by mistake, avoided gluing himself tothe first chair. Being an Eldorado king, he had felt it incumbent toassume the position in society to which his numerous millions entitledhim; and though unused all his days to social amenities other than theout-hanging latch-string and the general pot, he had succeeded to hisown satisfaction as a knight of the carpet. Quick to take a cue, hecirculated with an aplomb which his striking garments and longshambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnectedfragments with whomsoever he ran up against. The Miss Mortimer, whospoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but heevened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of theCanadian _voyageurs_, and left her gasping and meditating over aproposition to sell him twenty-five pounds of sugar, white or brown.But she was not unduly favored, for with everybody he adroitly turnedthe conversation to grub, and then led up to the eternal proposition."Sugar or bust," he would conclude gayly each time and wander on to thenext.
But he put the capstone on his social success by asking Frona to singthe touching ditty, "I Left My Happy Home for You." This was somethingbeyond her, though she had him hum over the opening bars so that shecould furnish the accompaniment. His voice was more strenuous thansweet, and Del Bishop, discovering himself at last, joined in raucouslyon the choruses. This made him feel so much better that hedisconnected himself from the chair, and when he finally got home hekicked up his sleepy tent-mate to tell him about the high time he'd hadover at the Welse's. Mrs. Schoville tittered and thought it all sounique, and she thought it so unique several times more when thelieutenant of Mounted Police and a couple of compatriots roared "RuleBritannia" and "God Save the Queen," and the Americans responded with"My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "John Brown." Then big Alec Beaubien,the Circle City king, demanded the "Marseillaise," and the companybroke up chanting "Die Wacht am Rhein" to the frosty night.
"Don't come on these nights," Frona whispered to Corliss at parting."We haven't spoken three words, and I know we shall be good friends.Did Dave Harney succeed in getting any sugar out of you?"
They mingled their laughter, and Corliss went home under the auroraborealis, striving to reduce his impressions to some kind of order.