The Trail of 98 (34 page)

"That's a 'live one,'" said the Youth. "He's just come in from Dominion with
a hundred ounces, and it won't last him over the night. Amber, there, will get
it all. She won't let the other girls go near. He's her game."

Between dances the men promenaded to the bar and treated their companions to
a drink. In the same free, trusting way they threw over their pokes to the
bartender and had the price weighed out. The dances were very short, and the
drinks very frequent.

Madder and madder grew the merriment. The air was hot; the odour of patchouli
mingled with the stench of stale garments and the reek of alcohol. Men dripping
with sweat whirled round in wild gyrations. Some of them danced beautifully;
some merely shuffled over the floor. It did not make any difference to the
girls. They were superbly muscular and used to the dragging efforts of novices.
After a visit to the bar back they came once more, licking their lips, and fell
to with fresh energy.

There was no need to beg the crowd now. A wave of excitement seemed to have
swept over them. They clamoured to get a dance. The "live one" whooped
and pranced on his wild
career, while Amber steered him calmly through the mazes of the waltz.
Touch-the-button-Nell was talking to a tall fair-moustached man whom I
recognised as a black-jack booster. Suddenly she left him and came over to us.
She went up to the Youth.

She had discarded her blond wig, and her pretty brown hair parted in the
middle and rippled behind her ears. Her large violet-blue eyes had a devouring
look that would stir the pulse of a saint. She accosted the Youth with a smile
of particular witchery.

"Say, kid, won't you come and have a two-step with me? I've been looking at
you for the last half-hour and wishing you'd ask me."

The Youth had advised me: "If any of them asks you, tell them to go to the
devil;" but now he looked at her and his boyish face flushed.

"Nothing doing," he said stoutly.

"Oh, come now," she pleaded; "honest to goodness, kid, I've turned down the
other fellow for you. You won't refuse me, will you? Come on; just one,
sweetheart."

She was holding the lapels of his coat and dragging him gently forward. I
could see him biting his lip in embarrassment.

"No, thanks, I'm sorry," he stammered. "I don't know how to dance. Besides,
I've got no money."

She grew more coaxing.

"Never mind about the coin, honey. Come on, have one on me. Don't turn me
down, I've taken
such a
notion to you. Come on now; just one turn."

I watched his face. His eyes clouded with emotion, and I knew the psychology
of it. He was thinking:

"Just onesurely it wouldn't hurt. Surely I'm man enough to trust myself, to
know when to quit. Oh, lordy, wouldn't it be sweet just to get my arm round a
woman's waist once more! The sight of them's honey to me; surely it wouldn't
matter. One round and I'll shake her and go home."

The hesitation was fatal. By an irresistible magnetism the Youth was drawn to
this woman whose business it ever was to lure and beguile. By her siren strength
she conquered him as she had conquered many another, and as she led him off
there was a look of triumph on her face. Poor Youth! At the end of the dance he
did not go home, nor did he "shake" her. He had another and another and another.
The excitement began to paint his cheeks, the drink to stoke wild fires in his
eyes. As I stood deserted I tried to attract him, to get him back; but he no
longer heeded me.

"I don't see the Madonna to-night," said a little, dark individual in
spectacles. Somehow he looked to me like a newspaper man "chasing" copy.

"No," said one of the girls; "she ain't workin'. She's sick; she don't take
very kindly to the business, somehow. Don't seem to get broke in easy. She's
funny, poor kid."

Carelessly they went on to talk of other things,
while I stood there gasping, staring, sick at heart.
All my vinous joy was gone, leaving me a haggard, weary wretch of a man,
disenchanted and miserable to the verge ofwhat? I shuddered. The lights seemed
to have gone blurred and dim. The hall was tawdry, cheap and vulgar. The women,
who but a moment before had seemed creatures of grace and charm, were now
nothing more than painted, posturing harridans, their seductive smiles the leers
of shameless sin.

And this was a Dawson dance-hall, the trump card in the nightly game of
despoliation. Dance-halls, saloons, gambling-dens, brothels, the heart of the
town was a cancer, a hive of iniquity. Here had flocked the most rapacious of
gamblers, the most beautiful and unscrupulous women on the Pacific slope. Here
in the gold-born city they waited for their prey, the Man with the Poke. Back
there in the silent Wild, with pain and bloody sweat, he toiled for them. Sooner
or later must he come within reach of their talons to be fleeced, flouted and
despoiled. It was an organised system of sharpers, thugs, harpies, and birds of
prey of every kind. It was a blot on the map. It was a great whirlpool, and the
eddy of it encircled the furthest outpost of the golden valley. It was a vortex
of destruction, of ruin and shame. And here was I, hovering on its brink, likely
to be soon sucked down into its depths.

I pressed my way to the door, and stood there staring and swaying, but
whether with wine or weakness I knew not. In the vociferous and flamboyant
street I could hear the
raucous voices of the spielers, the jigging tunes of the orchestras, the click
of ivory balls, the popping of corks, the hoarse, animal laughter of men, the
shrill, inane giggles of women. Day and night the game went on without
abatement, the game of despoliation.

And I was on the verge of the vortex. Memories of Glengyle, the laughing of
the silver-scaled sea, the tawny fisher-lads with their honest eyes, the herring
glittering like jewels in the brown nets, the women with their round health-hued
cheeks and motherly eyes. Oh, Home, with your peace and rest and content, can
you not save me from this?

And as I stood there wretchedly a timid little hand touched my arm.

It is odd how people who have been parted a weary while, yet who have thought
of each other constantly, will often meet with as little show of feeling as if
they had but yesterday bid good-bye. I looked at her and she at me, and I don't
think either of us betrayed any emotion. Yet must we both have been infinitely
moved.

She was changed, desperately, pitifully changed. All the old sweetness was
there, that pathetic sweetness which had made the miners call her the Madonna;
but alas, forever gone from her was the fragrant flower of girlhood. Her pallor
was excessive, and the softness had vanished out of her face, leaving there only
lines of suffering. Sorrow had kindled in her grey eyes a spiritual lustre, a
shining, tearless brightness. Ah me, sad, sad, indeed, was the change in
her!

So she looked at me, a long and level look in which I could see neither love
nor hate. The bright, grey eyes were clear and steady, and the pinched and
pitiful lips did not quiver. And as I gazed on her I felt that nothing ever
would be the same again. Love could no more be the radiant spirit of old, the
prompter of impassioned words, the painter of bewitching scenes. Never again
could we feel the world recede from us as we poised on bright wings of fancy;
never again compare our
joy with that of the heaven-born; never again welcome that pure ideal that comes
to youth alone, and that pitifully dies in the disenchantment of graver days. We
could sacrifice all things for each other; joy and grieve for each other; live
and die for each other,but the Hope, the Dream, the exaltation of love's dawn,
the peerless white glory of ithad gone from us forever and forever.

Her lips moved:

"How you have changed!"

"Yes, Berna, I have been ill. But you, you too have changed."

"Yes," she said very slowly. "I have beendead."

There was no faltering in her voice, never a throb of pathos. It was like the
voice of one who has given up all hope, the voice of one who has arisen from the
grave. In that cold mask of a face I could see no glimmer of the old-time joy,
the joy of the season when wild roses were aglow. We both were silent, two
pitifully cold beings, while about us the howling bedlam of pleasure-plotters
surged and seethed.

"Come upstairs where we can talk," said she. So we sat down in one of the
boxes, while a great freezing shadow seemed to fall and wrap us around. It was
so strange, this silence between us. We were like two pale ghosts meeting in the
misty gulfs beyond the grave.

"And why did you not come?" she asked.

"ComeI tried to
come."

"But you did not." Her tone was measured, her face averted.

"I would have sold my soul to come. I was ill, desperately ill, nigh to
death. I was in the hospital. For two weeks I was delirious, raving of you,
trying to get to you, making myself a hundred times worse because of you. But
what could I do? No man could have been more helpless. I was out of my mind,
weak as a child, fighting for my life. That was why I did not come."

When I began to speak she started. As I went on she drew a quick, choking
breath. Then she listened ever so intently, and when I had finished a great
change came over her. Her eyes stared glassily, her head dropped, her hands
clutched at the chair, she seemed nigh to fainting. When she spoke her voice was
like a whisper.

"And they lied to me. They told me you were too eager gold-getting to think
of me; that you were in love with some other woman out there; that you cared no
more for me. They lied to me. Well, it's too late now."

She laughed, and the once tuneful voice was harsh and grating. Still were her
eyes blank with misery. Again and again she murmured: "Too late, too late."

Quietly I sat and watched her, yet in my heart was a vast storm of agony. I
longed to comfort her, to kiss that face so white and worn and weariful, to
bring tears to those hopeless eyes. There seemed to
grow in me a greater hunger for the girl than ever
before, a longing to bring joy to her again, to make her forget. What did it all
matter? She was still my love. I yearned for her. We both had suffered, both
been through the furnace. Surely from it would come the love that passeth
understanding. We would rear no lily walls, but out of our pain would we build
an abiding place that would outlast the tomb.

"Berna," I said, "it is not too late."

There was a desperate bitterness in her face. "Yes, yes, it is. You do not
understand. Youit's all right for you, you are blameless; but I"

"You too are blameless, dear. We have both been miserably duped. Never mind,
Berna, we will forget all. I love you, Oh how much I never can tell you, girl!
Come, let us forget and go away and be happy."

It seemed as if my every word was like a stab to her. The sweet face was
tragically wretched.

"Oh no," she answered, "it can never be. You think it can, but it can't. You
could not forget. I could not forget. We would both be thinking; always, always
torturing each other. To you the thought would be like a knife thrust, and the
more you loved me the deeper would pierce its blade. And I, too, can you not
realise how fearfully I would look at you, always knowing you were thinking of
THAT
, and what an agony it would be to me to watch your
agony? Our home would be a haunted one, a place of ghosts. Never again can there
be joy between you and me. It's too late, too late!"

She was choking back
the sobs now, but still the tears did not come.

"Berna," I said gently, "I think I could forget. Please give me a chance to
prove it. Other men have forgotten. I know it was not your fault. I know that
spiritually you are the same pure girl you were before. You are an angel, dear;
my angel."

"No, I was not to blame. When you failed to come I grew desperate. When I
wrote you and still you failed to come I was almost distracted. Night and day he
was persecuting me. The others gave me no peace. If ever a poor girl was hounded
to dishonour I was. Yet I had made up my mind to die rather than yield. Oh, it's
too horrible."

She shuddered.

"Never mind, dear, don't tell me about it."

"When I awoke to life sick, sick for many days, I wanted to die, but I could
not. There seemed to be nothing for it but to stay on there. I was so weak, so
ill, so indifferent to everything that it did not seem to matter. That was where
I made my mistake. I should have killed myself. Oh, there's something in us all
that makes us cling to life in spite of shame! But I would never let him come
near me again. You believe me, don't you?"

"I believe you."

"And though, when he went away, I've gone into this life, there's never been
any one else. I've danced with them, laughed with them, but that's all. You
believe me?"

"Yes, dear."

"Thank God for that!
And now we must say good-bye."

"
Good-bye?
"

"I saidgood-bye. I would not spoil your life. You know how proud I am, how
sensitive. I would not give you such as I. Once I would have given myself to you
gladly, but nowplease go away."

"Impossible."

"No, the other is impossible. You don't know what these things mean to a
woman. Leave me, please."

"Leave youto what?"

"To death, ruinI don't know what. If I'm strong enough I will die. If I am
weak I will sink in the mire. Oh, and I am only a girl too, a young girl!"

"Berna, will you marry me?"

"No! No! No!"

"Berna, I will never leave you. Here I tell you frankly, plainly, I don't
know whether or not you still love meyou haven't said a word to show itbut I
know I love you, and I will love you as long as life lasts. I will never leave
you. Listen to me, dear: let us go away, far, far away. You will forget, I will
forget. It will never be the same, but perhaps it will be better, greater than
before. Come with me, O my love! Have pity on me, Berna, have pity. Marry me. Be
my wife."