The disease seemed so quiescent that Katrine began to hope more and more that she should be rewarded, and one morning a hurried note scribbled in pencil was brought in to Annie while Katrine was scrubbing the cabin floor, telling her in a few ill-spelt words that Will thought he might get in to town that night. A bright flame of colour leaped over the woman's pale face, and then the next moment faded as her hands with the note in them fell listlessly to her lap.
"He ain't made no strike yet," Katrine heard her mutter to herself.
"You don't know," rejoined Katrine, looking up flushed and warm from her hard work. "He may have some good news to tell you any way."
Annie merely shook her head and gazed out of the window.
"He'd have told me," she murmured, and that was all.
Katrine had a long and heavy round of visits to make that day, and for two long hours she sat motionless by a dying woman's bedside, fearing to withdraw her hand, to which the poor terrified enterer into the Valley of the Shadow was clinging. In her arms, and with her tired head on Katrine's young bosom, the woman drew her last breath; and Katrine, feeling her own soul wrenched asunder and her body aching with strain and shock, came round in the afternoon to Annie. She would not say a word to her of the death-bed from which she had come. With an effort she talkedof cheerful things, of the spring-time that was on its way to them, of the pleasure of seeing Will again, and so on, till her head ached. She did a few domestic offices for the girl, and then feeling she must break down herself if she stayed longer, she said she needed sleep, and if Annie could take care of herself for a time she would go and lie down. Annie noticed how heavy the lids were over her eyes and begged her to go at once, though a strange fear, like a child's of the dark, came over her.
"Will will be soon with you now—the best company," Katrine said, with a tired smile; "and if you want me, a knock on the wall here will bring me to you," and Annie was left alone.
As the afternoon closed in her cough seemed to grow more and more troublesome; the pain in her chest, too, had never been so bad; she had to keep her hand there all the time as she laboured round the room putting everythingto rights, making sure that the cabin was neat and tidy against Will's return. At last she sat down in the circle of hot light round the fire, and little Tim crawled into her lap. She put her arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said, "it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it. She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where she had scratched it out with eager fingers; only the last days had no mark against them. She had been too weary, too heart sick, to note them any longer. What did it matter to her when the Spring came? the almanac for her would have cometo an end before that. But now a fresh gleam of hope seemed to have entered her heart, and with a feverish movement she drew the old stump of pencil from her pocket and scratched off the unmarked days, and then stood gazing at the date of that day; they were still far, far from the Spring—too far. Oh, to go back in the Spring, to escape from this prison of darkness, this country of horror and starvation and misery, to be back once more in her home in the Spring! Her mind fled away from the dreary interior of the darkening cabin. She stood once more in the rich grassy meadow with the golden sunlight of an evening summer sky warm around her, the song of the birds in her ears, the hot scent of the meadow-sweet in her nostrils, before her the little narrow path leading to the cottage that seemed to bask sleepily in the yellow glow. She made a step forward with dilated eyes, then the cough seized her, the vision dissolved and fled.Again the cabin with its blackened rafters enclosed her. She turned from the calendar. What was the Spring's coming? It might come, but they would not go back. What right had she to think of it? They had made no strike, and had not Will sworn he would never go back without the gold? This accursed gold! If they could but have found it as others had! She put her hands to her head to drive away the thoughts, they were familiar and so useless. She had thought them over and over again so often. As she went back to the fire she noticed one of Will's woollen shirts lying on a chair. Why, that was the one she had meant to wash that morning! How could she have forgotten it? And now perhaps she would not get it done before he returned. Her heart began to beat, her limbs trembled. How weak and queer she felt this afternoon! Still, she would do it somehow. There was hot water on the fire that Katrine had put there. Shelifted with an effort the great iron kettle from the fire, and with that in one hand and the shirt in the other she went into the adjoining sloping roofed compartment that served as scullery, wood-shed, pantry, and wash-house. It was many degrees colder here, and the long iron nails that kept the boards together overhead had sparkling icicles on them that glittered as the firelight from the inner room touched them, and she could hardly draw her breath. Nevertheless she walked over to the wash-tub and poured in the water, and set to work with shaking hands. "Had ever shirt seemed so large?" she wondered vaguely, and her thin arms moved slowly, lifting it up and down with difficulty. It seemed getting so dark, too. She should have lighted the candles, it wouldn't look so cheery for Will if he came back to find the cabin dark. But was this only the twilight falling? No, it was in her eyes. She leaned heavily on the edge of the wooden tub,trembling, the floor unsteady beneath her, a strangling suffocation in her throat, a swimming darkness before her eyes. A sense of terrible loneliness pressed in upon her, and then suddenly she knew that in the chill of that dark twilight she was alone with Death. He had come for her at last.
Oh, to have had Will's strong arms round her, a human breast to lay her head down upon, and so die! A nameless terror possessed her, overwhelmed her; she started from the wash trestle. There was a sudden cry, "Will! Will!" and she fell forward on the damp flooring, a little eager scarlet stream of blood pouring out from the nerveless lips to stain the soap-suds under the trestle.
The child sitting playing in the ring of warm firelight in the adjoining room heard that last cry, and startled, dropped his toys, looking with round eyes to the blackness beyond the open door. He listened with one tiny finger inhis mouth for many minutes, but no further sound came to disturb him from the wash-house, and he went on playing.
An hour passed perhaps before Will set foot in Good Luck Row, and he tramped up it with a sounding pace. There was fire in his eyes, the blood ran hard in all his veins, his rubber boots had elastic springs in their soles. Yet he carried an extra weight with him. There was something in his pocket in a buckskin bag that burned his hand as if it had been red-hot iron when he touched it. As he came to No. 14 and saw the windows dark he merely hurried his pace, and hardly stayed to lift the door latch, but just burst through the half-opened door and brought his huge burly frame over the threshold.
"Well, Annie, my girl, we've struck it at last," he shouted at the top of his voice, "and you shall come home right away. Where are you, Annie? Didn't I say wait a bit for me?"
He had entered by the wash-house, but the darkness was thick, almost palpable, before his face and revealed nothing. He went forward to the open door, beyond which the burned-down fire gave only a faint red light, and his foot kicked something heavy on the floor. With a curious feeling gripping his heart, he stopped dead short where he stood and fumbled for a match. Then he struck it, and in its sickly glare looked down. "Annie, my dear!" he called in a shaking voice, and bent down holding the match close to the upturned face. The light played for an instant upon it and went out. "Annie!" he called again, and the word broke in his throat.
A thin wail went up from little Tim in the dusk of the inner room. Where the man stood was silence and darkness. His strike had come too late. His wife was dead.
Half-an-hour later a man burst into the "Pistol Shot." It was between hours, and the bar-tender was just going round lighting the lamps; the place was nearly empty, only a few miners were standing at the end of the counter, talking together. The new customer staggered across the floor as if already under the influence of drink, kicking up the fresh sawdust on the ground; then he reached the counter and demanded drink after drink. He tossed the whiskies handed to him down his throat, and then retreated to a bench that stood against the wall and sat down staring stupidly in front of him. The little group of men looked at him once or twice curiously, and then one said—
"Why, it's Bill Johnson, who's just made a strike. Come up, boys, let's congratulate him."
The men moved up to the motionless, staring figure, and one of them slapped him on the shoulder.
"Say, Bill, old man, you're in luck, and we'll all drink your health. Got any gold to show us?"
The sitting figure seemed galvanised suddenly out of its stupor. Will raised his head with a jerk, and the men involuntarily drew back from the glare of his bloodshot eyes. He put his hand to his pocket and drew out a small dirty buckskin bag. He dashed it suddenly on the ground with all his force, so that the sawdust flew up in a little cloud.
"Curse the gold!" he said, and got up and tramped heavily out of the saloon.
They buried Mrs. Johnson very soon. As one of the neighbours sensibly, if rather crudely, remarked, "Their cabins were too small for them to keep corpses knocking around in them." And so the second day after her death, in a flood of thin, sweet sunshine, they buried her who had so loved the light and the sun, and had longed so wearily for them through so many days.
Katrine and Talbot stood side by side at the open grave. He had been in the town that day and met Katrine on the street, learned from her where she was going, and accompanied her. He knew something of all she had done for the dead woman, and he watched her now with interest and surprise at her composure. Katrine's face was unmoved, and her eyes were dry through it all.
"Another that gold has killed," she said to him as they turned away, and her face looked grave and grey in the flood of the cold sunlight.
Will was not present. He was down at the "Pistol Shot." He had been on a big drunk for the past two days, not even returning to his cabin at night, and the body of his wife would have lain unguarded had not Katrine brought her fur bag and slept beside it each night on the deserted hearth. Little Tim had been taken in by a neighbour, all the mothers round seeming anxious for the honour after it was known that Will had "made his strike."
They walked in absolute silence for some time up the incline. Talbot was going back to the west gulch, and Katrine said she would walk a little of the way in that direction too. The afternoon was bright and clear, and theair singularly still, so still that the intense cold was hardly realised. The rays of sunshine struck warmly across the snow banks piled on each side of the narrow path they were treading. The sky was pale blue, and the points of the straight larches on the summit of the ridges cut darkly into it like the points of lances. There was something in the atmosphere that recalled a day in late autumn in England. They were nearing the top of the ridge, and both had their gaze bent on the narrow ascending path before them, when suddenly a tiny object darted into the middle of it and ran up the opposite bank. On the instant Katrine drew one of the pistols from her belt and fired. The little dark form rolled down the bank, dropped back into their path, and lay there motionless. It was a fine shot, for the tiny moving thing was fully thirty yards from them and looked hardly the size of a dollar. Talbot glanced at her with startled admiration. Hehimself never shot except for food or other necessity, and wanton killing rather annoyed him than otherwise, but here the skill and the correctness of wrist and eye were so obvious that they compelled him to an involuntary admiration.
"You are a good shot!" he exclaimed, looking at the bright, clear-cut face beside him, warmed into its warmest tints by the keen air and the continuous mounting of their steps.
"But not a good woman," she answered shortly, quickly reading the thoughts that accompanied his words. She did not look at him, but straight ahead.
"You might be both," he said, with a sudden impulse of interest and regret.
Katrine laughed.
"I don't know," she said lightly. "Good women are not usually good shots. You don't generally find them combined. But any way,what have I to do with goodness? I don't need it in my business."
He did not answer, and they walked on in silence till they came up to the little dark lump in the road. It was a small marmot. Katrine glanced at it and passed on. Talbot stooped and picked up the scrap of blood-stained fur.
"What did you do it for?" he asked curiously.
"Practice, that's all," she answered.
"Don't you feel sorry to kill merely for the sake of practice?"
"No. I should have been sorry if I had wounded it; but it's a good thing to be dead, I think. I wouldn't have shot unless I had been almost entirely sure I should kill it."
There was another silence, and then she said suddenly, "One must keep up one's practice here, going about as I do in all sorts of places and making my living as I do. These," and she tapped her pistols, "are my great protection. Only last night a great brute leaned over me and wanted to kiss me—would have done, only he saw I should shoot him if he did."
"Would you shoot a man for kissing you?" replied Talbot in an astonished tone, elevating his eyebrows.
"Yes. Why, I'd rather be shot than kissed!" exclaimed the girl fiercely, with an angry flush on her smooth cheek.
Talbot looked at the contemptuous, curling lips, at the whole beautiful hard face beside him, and walked on in silence, wondering. Her momentary anger was gone directly, and they were good comrades all the rest of the way.
At the point where she stopped to say good-bye to him, she held out her hand: "Thank you for coming to the burial with me, it was good of you," and she pressed his hand with a grateful smile.
It was about a fortnight later on, one ofthose dreary grey afternoons of late winter, nearly dark already, though still early by the clock, and the mercury in the thermometers had gone out of sight and stayed there. Katrine came tripping along a side street on her way back to the row, warm in her skin coat, and her face all aglow and abloom under her fur cap. She had turned into the "Swan and Goose" saloon on her way up, had put in half-an-hour over a game, and won a fat little canvas bag stuffed with gold dust; had thinned it out somewhat in hot drinks across the bar, and now, warmed through with rum, and light-hearted, she was returning with the bag still well lined in her waist-belt.
She had recovered from the great shock of Annie's death. Her nature, though essentially kind, was not of that soft, tender stamp that receives deep and painful impressions from other's sufferings. She would exert herself strenuously for another, as she had done forAnnie, but it was not in her nature to sorrow long or deeply for the irrevocable. There was a certain hardness and philosophy in her temperament that her life and surroundings and all her experience had tended to develop. And in Annie's death there was nothing striking or unusually sad in this corner of the world, so crowded with scenes of suffering, so filled with pathos of every form. There were women hoping and waiting, and longing and starving, in every street of the town, she knew; sickness and sorrow and death looked her in the eyes from some poor face at every corner. Annie had been but one poor little unit in the crowd of sufferers, but one example of the misery of the town, the plague-stricken town, the town stricken with a curse—the curse of the greed of gold.
Matters had brightened very much in Dawson lately, a new feeling of hope and fresh life had gone through the town. The weather wasless severe, the days were lengthening, the skies were brighter, the sickness had died out, and people went about their work looking cheerful again; and Katrine, freed from her anxieties and nursing, felt her elastic spirits bound upwards in response to the general brightness of the camp.
She came along humming behind her closed lips, and then suddenly turning a corner, stopped dead short with a horrified stare in her eyes. She had come round by one of the lowest dens in the city. Katrine knew it both inside and out, for there was no place from hut to hut in Dawson that she was afraid to enter. The door was standing open. It opened inwards, and there was a group of men, some inside and some outside, and amongst them they were forcing into the street a drunken woman. The entry to the place was beneath the level of the ground, and reached by a few uneven, miry steps, and up these the unfortunate was blindly stumbling under a rain of blows, pushes, and curses. She was old, and her hair streamed in ragged streaks across her bloodshot eyes, her tawdry skirt was long, and got under her unsteady feet. Just as she had managed to totter to the topmost step, a young man in the group behind her struck her a heavy blow between the shoulders. She tripped in the long skirt and trod on it, tearing it with a ripping sound from the waist, and fell forward, striking her face on the uneven frozen ground. Katrine sprang forward, but before she could reach her the woman had staggered to her feet and turned to face her tormentors, the blood streaming now from her cut lips, her trembling hands vaguely grasping at her torn skirt and trying to keep it to her waist. A roar of laughter burst from the men at the pitiful sight, and then died suddenly as they recognised Katrine. She stepped in front of the old woman, and faced them with a scorn in hereyes beyond all words. Then she turned in silence, put her arm round the helpless creature's waist, and supported her frail, tottering steps over the slippery, uneven ground. For an instant the men stood abashed and ashamed, then when the spell of those great fearless, scornful eyes was removed, their natures reasserted themselves, and a general laugh went round.
"Birds of a feather!" shouted one, mockingly, as the two retreating figures disappeared in the gathering darkness. Katrine heard it, and winced; but she did not relax the hold of her supporting arm, and by gentle and repeated questioning managed to elicit from the helpless old being where she lived. Katrine turned her steps in the given direction, and drawing out her handkerchief wiped the blood from the old woman's face, and smoothed her straggling grey hair back behind her ears. When they reached her cabin at last, Katrinesaw that the stove was black and empty. There was no light of any sort in the place, and the freezing darkness of the interior chilled her through. She would not leave the old woman until she had lighted a fire and candle for her and got her to bed; then, without waiting to listen to the mumbled and incoherent thanks showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place. She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.
"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all, really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her? What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance roundher. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any longer.
She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to him, gazingabsently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day, and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut, delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines, he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade, formed by her chair back, ran up beside andmingling with the other lines. It seemed to curve over towards her shoulder, and then a few seconds more, and to Stephen's drowsy gaze, the harsh line expanded into a hideous grotesque figure. Out of those few shades upon the wall there leaped a picture to his eyes: the girl, and at her side, bending over her, a hideous devil, a strange vampire, hovering nearer or farther, in blacker or lighter shades, as the flames in the fire rose and fell. Stephen watched in a fascinated stupor, and then suddenly, as the light died down in the grate and the shade leaped out nearer and blacker, he started to his feet with a sudden exclamation.
The girl started too, and looked up. "What is it?" she asked.
Stephen pointed to the wall. Katrine turned, the blaze sprang up on the hearth, the shadows were gone, the illusion vanished.
"What is it?" she said again, wonderingly.
"Oh, nothing—a hideous shape on the wall," stammered Stephen. "I was watching your shadow, and another seemed to come up and threaten it. Imagination, I suppose—perhaps I had fallen into a dream," he added hurriedly, fearing she would laugh at him.
But Katrine did not laugh: she looked at him gravely and in silence. In her mind she was pondering a question, hesitating, half fearing to speak to him, half impelled to, and half held back, and the equal opposite forces acting on her mind kept her silent.
Stephen, unused to her present mood, felt perhaps she was annoyed or wearied, and drew out his watch. It was past ten.
"I will say good-night," he said, rising.
Katrine got up too. Her face paled yet more, her bosom rose and fell quickly. "Take me away from here," she said abruptly and suddenly.
She had been thinking all the evening how she would approach the subject with him, and then at last his leave-taking had startled away all her circuitous phrases and left her only the crudest words at her command to express her meaning.
Stephen was startled and confused, but his voice was very tender as he took her hand in his and said, "I don't understand, dear; what do you mean?"
He felt her hand tremble in his. She looked up at him appealingly. Her eyes seemed frightened and uncertain. She was more womanly at this moment than she had ever been. To Stephen she was infinitely more fascinating than she had ever been. Accustomed to her bright, fearless independence, admire that as he might, in this weakness, whatever its cause, she was irresistible.
"Well, I mean," she said, speaking nervously, but with an effort to control her excitement, "the other day you spoke of our being married, and I said I couldn't stand a quiet life. Stephen, I will marry you now, and go anywhere with you. I will be content with any life, any monotony—only take me from here at once! I loathe this place, this life." She stopped suddenly, and a wave of crimson blood swept over the white face. "I want to be taken away," she repeated.
Stephen looked at her a moment in silence, with a sense of apprehension and alarm. He could not do as she asked; he was not free—his claim held him.
"I don't know quite what you mean," he said, a little stiffly, though he felt he did know. "It would be quite impossible for me to go away now; my whole heart's in the work, and I've sunk all I had in it."
"Yes; and your soul too," said Katrine suddenly, looking at him with shining eyes and a calm face. "You're a slave now to your gold,the same as we all are here—a community of slaves," and she laughed.
Stephen grew red, and looked confused, alarmed, and angry, all at the same time.
"Nobody would go now," he said, remonstratingly, "and leave ground like that. It would be insanity. Ask Talbot, ask anybody if they would."
"Talbot!" repeated Katrine, scornfully; "he's the worst slave of all; but then he never preached about his soul, and wanting to reform people."
"No one can reform you if you won't reform yourself," replied Stephen, coldly; and there he spoke the truth.
"Who was it who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown into evil. If I were not—" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange pathetic note in it. It ceased, and then there was silence.
Stephen felt as if a hand were laid on his lips and crushed down the voice that kept struggling from his heart. A second more, and then the girl laughed suddenly.
"Oh, I was stupid! I did not know what I was saying, did not mean it anyway. It's quite right for you to stick to your claim and the idea you started with, and so on. You will make a great success if you do, and that is all you want!"
Her tone was jesting and cynical as ever now—the usual hardness had come back to her face. The moment of submission, of confidence, of repentance, had passed—a moment when she could have been moved and won to any life he wished, and he had lost it. He felt it. Yet how could he have done otherwise?
"Forget what I said—quite," she added; "and go now. It's getting late, and I want to get down to the saloons."
A thrill of horror went through Stephen, asshe knew it would. He gazed at her blankly with a horrible feeling, as if he were murdering somebody, clutching at his heart.
"What are you waiting for?" she said, impatiently. "Why don't you hurry back to your claim?"
"Katrine ... I—" he stammered, staring at her, but even as he looked a great wall of gold seemed to rise between them and shut her from him. "Forgive me," he muttered brokenly; "I can't give it up now."
"Good-night," said Katrine, and he turned and fumbled for the door handle and went out.
When he was gone Katrine turned to her small square of looking-glass that hung beneath the lamp on the wall.
"What a fool I was to-night!" she said, looking at the sweet reflection and smiling lips.
A few minutes after Stephen had gone, a slight figure, muffled up to the eyes, slipped out of No. 13 and hurried with quick stepsdown the uneven footway of Good Luck Row.
That night Stephen climbed to his cabin with his head on fire and a singing in his ears. A terrific struggle was going on in his breast. He felt the path of duty was clear to him now, and equally that he did not want to follow it. He had tried to shut his eyes to it; tried to believe that it was not clear, that he did not know what was right or necessary to do, and therefore that he might be excused if he did not do it, but he could close his eyes no longer. They had been dragged open to-night, and he could not wilfully close them again. As he strode up the narrow little snow path leading to his cabin he felt that he knew his duty, and he groaned out aloud in the silent icy night.
To leave now meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, the million dollars that he felt in a month or two he could take out of his claim; and to stay meant to endanger, perhaps to sacrifice, a human soul! A million dollars, ahuman soul! These two ideas possessed him. A million dollars, a human soul! the two thoughts rang alternately through his brain until it seemed as if voices were crying them out upon the soundless air. According to his religion, spirits combated for the soul of man, and it seemed to Stephen that night as he mounted the solitary path under the far-seeing eyes of the frosty stars above him, that spirits really fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold, and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay he had not the strength and the fervour now that had broughthim through former battles. He was as a warrior that has fallen asleep and awakened to find his arms grown rusty while he has been sleeping.
Gradually for the last six months the lust for gold had been eating into his spirituality and destroying it. You cannot serve God and mammon: had he not entered into the services of mammon, and been held there by the rich rewards?
He thought of the rich pans he had been getting out. There was no claim like his in the camp. There was no man more envied nor considered more lucky than he. Yes, mammon had paid him well in the six months he had served it, showered upon him more than God had done in six-and-twenty years; and here was God's gift, a human soul, a sweet human life, he could save and make his own—and Stephen groaned again, for he felt that the gold was dearer to him. How could he haveso changed, he wondered. A year ago he would have laughed at the idea of a million dollars being a bribe for him to sin. He looked into his heart now and found there was nothing there but a passion for gold, gold! It was a yellow rust that had eaten into his Christian's sword.
Then his thoughts strayed to the girl he had just left, and her bright fresh face seemed to sway before him as he walked. His excited fancy painted it upon the snow banks at his side. She was so young, she seemed so fresh and lovely, it was impossible to think of her as tainted already with vice and sin. It was only if she were kept in this snow-bound prison, this mournful land of darkness and suffering, where, as she said, she had no place nor aim, that she would fall as those bright meteors were falling now far in the distant darkness. He could be her deliverer, her saviour, if—if he could.
In the icy cold of that arctic night, great drops of sweat broke out hotly on Stephen's forehead as his brain was wrenched to and fro in the struggle. He tried to bribe even himself, tried to let his thoughts dwell on his passion for the girl, tried to think of the mere human sweetness that would go hand in hand with his victory over evil. If he won that bright clean soul for God, would he not also win that loved human form for himself? But even the voice of passion was drowned in the clamour of the greater greed.
The next morning, as soon as it was light, Stephen went out to his claims. None of his men had come up to work yet. Stephen stood and looked over the stretch of ground beneath which he believed his fortunes lay. A light covering of snow had fallen on it during the night and lay about a foot deep in one unbroken sheet, not even the mark of a bird's foot disturbed its blank evenness: the claims lookedvery cold and drear in the dull dusky grey light of the dawn under that leaden sky. But Stephen's heart beat quickly as he gazed upon them. What did it matter that cold, dreary, surface, when the gold lay glowing underneath!
Stephen felt as only a man of his sensitive conscience could feel his defeat of the previous night. His heart, all his better nature was crushed under a sickening load of mortification, and he sought desperately to find relief and justification for himself in contemplating the treasure for whose sake he had accepted it. As in other circumstances a man would solace himself for all sacrifices by gazing on the face of a mistress for whom he had relinquished worldly ambitions, and find excuses for himself in her beauty, telling himself a hundred times she was worth it all; so Stephen now gazed upon his claims, for which he had given up his scruples, his principles, his conscience,and his God, and tried to hug to himself the comfort that they were worth it. After a few seconds he tramped across the frozen snow to the line marked out by the banks of gravel where they had been at work the previous day.
That evening he could not stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to make sure they were in good order for defence if he were attacked that night. Then he drew his fur cap tightly down on his forehead and went out. The stillness of his own cabin and the clamour of his own thoughts were unbearable. The night was still and starlit, theair keen and thin as a knife-blade. Stephen strode along the narrow frosty path, and took the road down into the town. On his way he passed Talbot's cabin. It was lighted up. The little window made a square of yellow light in the darkness; the blind over it was drawn only half-way down. Stephen stepped up over the bank of frosted snow and looked in. The great fire lighted up the whole of the small interior, and threw its red light up to the cross logs in the roof. In the centre of the room, at a table. Talbot sat working. There were some sheets of paper before him, and he held a pen in his hand with which he was checking off some figures. His face was turned to the window; it looked pale and tired, but there was a curious expression of extreme tranquillity upon it—a settled, serene patience that struck the onlooker. He sat there working on steadily, motionless, calm as a figure in stone; and poor Stephen, torn in the struggle of hisdesires, slipping into the cold slough of self-condemnation, and burnt with the fever of greed, groaned aloud as he stood outside. Then he turned from the window and plunged back through the snow to the path that led to the town. He wanted to see Katrine, and yet he hated the thought of facing her after their parting of last night. What must she think of him? With her quick mental perceptions she would have seen through and through his miserable mind; seen that the gold had got hold of him, held him now, and that his boasted religion had no power against it. No, he thought, he could not face her—he was still some distance from the town; then as he drew nearer, the unappeasable desire to see her and hear her fresh bright voice came over him. When he reached Good Luck Row he went straight to No. 13. He might have saved himself the trouble of his decisions. Katrine had decided for him whether he should see her thatnight or not. The window was dark; he tried the door, it was fastened; she was evidently not there. A chill ran over Stephen from head to foot, and then he recognized how much he had really wanted to see her. He stood outside the door a long time; the row was quiet, there were few passers. He waited, hoping to see her come up each minute—perhaps she had only gone out on some errand; but the minutes passed and he grew cold standing there, still she did not come. At last Stephen moved away from the door and wandered disconsolately down the row. He went on mechanically, not heeding where his footsteps took him, and found suddenly that he had reached the main street down by the river. There was no darkness nor quiet here, all the stores had their windows wide open, and the light from them poured out upon the black slippery mass of ice and melted snow that lay over the frozen ground. The saloons were in full blast, brilliantly lighted and filled with noisy crowds of miners. The dance halls, of which there were some dozen along the street, seemed doing a good business. A shooting gallery that had been fixed up in a tent was not only filled inside, but a crowd of men and some women were gathered round the tent entrance, pushing and pressing each other in their efforts to get in; the glare from the flaming lights inside fell on their faces, and Stephen glanced eagerly over them to see if Katrine was amongst them. He passed on, disappointed. There was another tent a little farther on, where a cheap band was playing, and a board outside announced in pen-and-ink characters the attraction of a "Catherine Wheel Dance." The crowd here was even larger, and lights were fixed outside flaring merrily in the frosty air. Stephen walked on, past the stores and warehouses, past the noisy crowded saloons, past the brilliant dance halls and the variety showtents. It was to him all a hideous, tawdry, glaring mockery of merriment; and on the other side of him was the sullen blackness of the frozen river. He walked on until he had outwalked the town front, outwalked the straggling tents, till he had left the noise, and light, and laughter behind him. When he glanced round he saw he had nothing but the river and a waste of darkness beside him. There was an old log in his path; he sat down upon it and looked back to the mist of light that hung over the town, then his gaze wandered back disconsolately and rested on the ice-bound river.
Katrine had passed that day wretchedly too. She had been down idling in one of the saloons through the afternoon, but the old resorts seemed to have lost their charm. The old pleasure had gone, and the stimulus would not come back. The cards looked greasy and dirty and revolted her, and the drink seemed to turnto carbolic acid in her mouth. She left at last, and went home to her lonely cabin and flung herself down in the dark in the chimney corner and tried to sleep, but horrible faces danced before her, and women with grey hair and wrinkles, with her own face, stared at her from the walls.
She was still lying face downwards on the skins, half dozing now after that long conflict with horrible visions, when a light and very timid tap came on the door outside. She got up and went straight to it; her face was flushed and tear-stained, and her hair ruffled and in disorder, but she never thought to go first to the little square mirror that hung in the corner to improve her appearance before admitting visitors. As she threw open the door, the stream of hot light showed Stephen upon the threshold white as a spectre, chilled almost to death by his vigil at the river, with a strained smile on his lips and a great hunger in his eyes.His conscience reproached him: he knew he had not come bravely with his hands full of the sacrifice, having conquered himself, and ready to lay down all for her sake; but like a coward, still in the thrall of his money-lust and yet longing to attain her too, unable to give her up. He knew all this, and stood timidly as the friendless dogs will gaze through an open hut-door, wistfully, expecting to be driven away with blows; but Katrine met him with neither harsh words nor looks, she just simply put out both her warm hands and drew him in over the threshold. The welcome, the smile, the warm touch overcame him.
"Katrine," he muttered suddenly, as she closed the door and barred it, "if I—if—I gave—up," and then the words died, strangled in his throat. Katrine held up her hand.
"Don't begin to talk about anything like that," she said, gently pushing him down on the chair by the hearth, "till you are warmagain. Where have you been freezing yourself like this?"
She was busy lighting the lamp and setting her little old blackened coffee-pot over the flames. Stephen told her of his long lonely tramp by the river, and watched her with keen eager eyes as she made the coffee and poured him out a cup.
"Now drink it all quick," she said imperatively, handing him the boiling mixture, from which the steam came furiously.
"It's like the ordeal by fire," answered Stephen, meekly taking the cup. With a heroic effort he swallowed three parts of it, and colour began to come back to his face.
Katrine observed this, and sat down contentedly on the floor in front of the ambitious fire, that seemed trying to leap up the chimney through the roof.
"Stephen," she said very slowly and gently after a minute, "it was selfish of me to ask youto leave your claims. I've been thinking of it all day. I won't do it, and I will come and help you work them."
Stephen felt the room whirl round him as he heard. Was he not in some rich, warm dream that would dissolve and leave him suddenly? His claims, those golden claims! and Katrine too—he seemed to see her dressed in gold, framed in gold, gold in her eyes and hair. Her movement, as she turned to look at him, brought him back to realities.
"Do you mean it?" he said, stooping over her and catching her hands almost roughly in his. She met his feverish eyes with a bright, tranquil smile. He looked at her keenly for an instant, and involuntarily an exclamation broke from his lips: "Katrine! it's too much happiness for any man!"
Perhaps the gods above, who eye jealously the lives of mortals, here made a note of this remark in their pocket-books.
Katrine knitted her brows angrily. "I don't think so," she said. "You had better hear what sort of girl I am."
Stephen turned pale, and leaned down over her as she sat on the hearth, her head against his knees. The cabin was full of the warm red firelight, that leaped over the walls and up to the rough blackened rafters above them. It glistened on the silky dark hair beneath his hand, and fell ruddily over the smooth oval face turned up to him. Stephen looked down at her and felt content.
"No, no," he said hastily; "never mind anything in the past; we will efface it all; we make a fresh start from to-night." He would have stooped and silenced her with a kiss, but an arrogant look came over her pale face, and she pushed him back with her hand.
"No, I don't like that idea. We must have things cleared up and tidy before we marry. You must know the truth from me, and thenyou will know how to meet any one who comes to you with talk about me afterwards; and they may come, for I'm known in all the saloons of Dawson."
Stephen shuddered.
"If they keep to the truth about me, you must just accept it; if they tell lies, you'll just shoot them."
Again a cold thrill passed through her lover. To talk of shooting—taking a human life—murder—as though it were no more than a snapping of the fingers! His mind flew on a sudden bound of remembrance back to the little school teacher in the village of Arden, who could not bear the sight of a rabbit's blood on the trap, and whose quiet days were spent between the village schoolroom and the village church; yet he knew he had never loved that little teacher as he loved Katrine, that she could never rouse him as this woman did whom he believed to be an epitome of evil, who, as shelay now in the firelight by his feet, reminded him of the emblem of sin that crept into man's Eden. Yet it was a pleasure—what pleasure to be near her, to touch that smooth skin! But what was this pleasure?—was it also evil? What was this passion? His thoughts flew onward feverishly, and then Katrine's voice struck across them and brought him back to outer consciousness again.
"Listen," she was saying, "while I tell you all, andthenwe can start afresh, as you say."
Stephen put his hand over his eyes, and waited in silence. He dreaded unspeakably what he thought he was going to hear, and with a man's moral cowardice would have deferred her confession, slurred over and tried to forget her wrong-doing, rather than hear and forgive it. They had changed places since he had asked her that morning in his cabin to confide in him.
"Well, to begin with," went on her clear, soft voice, "I drink—I like drinking. You think it wrong to drink anything but water; I like wine and spirits, anything that excites me, and I can drink with any man in town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble," Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love excitement, I love the winning and raking in the gold dust. I spend all my nights playing; it's what I live for in this awful place."
There was silence, then Katrine's voice broke it again—
"Now you think that so wicked, I bet you don't want to marry me now."
There was a half laugh with a sad ring in it as she looked up to his covered face. Now Stephen heard, but the words fell on his ears dully; he was waiting in strained painful tension for what was to come. It was true he loathed gambling as a hated vice, and but for the apprehension that gripped his mind her confession so far would have been horrible to him. Still it was as a Christian that he abhorred these things. What he expected to hear he would have abhorred as a man and a lover; and the former abhorrence is considerably milder than the latter.
"Go on," he said at last, in a stifled voice.
"There is nothing more," returned Katrine, dejectedly.
She thought she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bentover, clasping his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing, and drew her up to him.
"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing more to confess to me?"
Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never known.
"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him, and a tremor ran through his whole frame.
"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity of growing passion.
"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking straight up to his.
Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of "Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except that she was loved and very happy.
The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.
For the following week both men were busy preparing Stephen's cabin for her reception and trying to impart to it a bridal appearance. The hands were left to do the work on the claims, and Talbot and Stephen were too busy indoors to even oversee them. The cabin was large and well built. It stood looking across the gulch, and half-way down it, over the tops of the dark green pines and facing towards the western horizon, where the pink lights playedand the little sundogs gambolled in the fall of the short grey snowy afternoons. Stephen was down in town once in the week, and came back with his pony laden with mysterious packages, and when Talbot came in in the evening he found Stephen on his knees, tacking down strips of carpet by the bed in the inner room. Narrow curtains had also been nailed up beside the window, and altogether the cabin presented a luxurious appearance.
"This is quite magnificent," remarked Talbot, strolling about with an admiring air.
"D'ye think so?" replied Stephen in a pleased tone, lifting a flushed face from his tacks and sitting back on his boot heels. "She's awfully handsome, isn't she? Say, it's strange to come to a hole like this and meet the handsomest girl you've ever seen!"
"She is very handsome," assented Talbot, sitting down by the stove and stretching out his frozen feet before it. He was in the otherroom, but close to the open door leading into the bedroom, and facing Stephen as he sat on the floor with the screw of tacks by his side that had been paid for in gold.
"And good, too, eh? good at heart, don't you think? Only not exactly religious, of course," he continued.
"No, she's not very religious," returned Talbot, with the dry, hard tone in his voice that his subordinates knew and hated.
"But it's not every one who says, 'Lord, Lord, that shall enter the kingdom of heaven,'" quoted Stephen; "you remember, Christ said that," he pursued in an anxious tone, peering up at the other for encouragement.
Talbot gave his slight, quiet laugh.
"You've got the handsomest girl in the place," he said, "and a very nice, charming one, too. I don't see what more you want."
To his strong, determined character this perpetual straining after a religion that was cast to the winds first at the temptation of gold, and then at a saloon-keeper's daughter's smile, was rather contemptible.
"And 'there's more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' etc.," Stephen continued, anxious to persuade himself into a comfortable frame of mind.
"Has Miss Poniatovsky repented?" asked Talbot, still more dryly.
"Why, yes; I told you all she said. She won't gamble any more."
Talbot was silent; through his mind was running a line of Latin to the effect that wool once dyed scarlet can never recover its former tint, but he said nothing.
It did not take Katrine long to prepare for her wedding. There was no such thing as buying a trousseau in Dawson. She gathered together her coarse woollen underclothes, her stout short dresses, and thick boots, and packedthem in two flat cases, such as can be strapped to a burro's side, and these were to be all she would take up to the cabin in the gulch besides her wealth of natural beauty. She did go to many of the stores around, buying trifles such as might happen to find themselves there and suit her: a small looking-glass here, a ribbon or a piece of lace there, and as she leaned across the rough trestle counter she generally remarked to the storekeeper, "I'm going to be married." She said it in the shyest, happiest tone imaginable, and a little blush stole over her smooth cheeks. In this way the news got round to Katrine's old friends and associates. She would have liked to have told them herself, but the old hunting grounds were forbidden to her now, and Stephen's wishes made a barrier between her and the entrance of all the saloons. He had tried to make her give him a solemn promise never to enter one again, but this Katrine would not do.
"I can't be tied like that," she had said. "Something might occur to make it necessary for me to go into one of those places; and if I had promised you in this way, I could not. You have said you don't wish me to go; I have said I won't. Isn't that enough?" And Stephen had looked into the clear dark eyes and had said "Quite."
The day of Stephen's marriage, the day when Katrine was to arrive as a bride at the west gulch, was calm and still. There was no wind and no snow falling. The sky stretched black and gloomy above the plains of snow; it was a day of the Alaskan winter, but still a good day for that. Stephen had gone down the previous day, and slept the night in Dawson. Talbot was waiting at the cabin to receive them on their return. As he stood at the little window that overlooked the trail, waiting for the first glimpse of them, and staring across the dismal waste that ran into grey and drearymist in the distance, a great revolt stirred in his usually calm and philosophic breast—a sudden longing swept over him for the blue skies and warm air of the lands he was accustomed to, and a wilder longing still for a glimpse of the sunlight held in two eyes that were fairer than any sky. He shut his teeth hard, and his hand closed tightly on the window frame. "Only a little longer," he muttered to himself, and then far in the distance came a soft silvery tinkle of bells. Recalled to himself, he relaxed his face in a pleasant smile, and went to the door and opened it. In a second or two they came in sight, riding single file up the narrow trail, the girl first and Stephen following. She wore a large skin coat of some shaggy fur which concealed her figure, though not its splendid upright pose, and on her head was a small fur cap of some light colour, white fox or rabbit. Beneath showed her dark glossy hair curling upwards over the brim, and herglowing face rich and fresh as a Damascus rose.
Talbot was greatly struck. The realisation of her beauty came home to him very forcibly in this cold, envious light of open day. "Stephen's not such a fool, after all," was his inward comment as he went forward to meet them. As he lifted her from her pony and bade her welcome to the cabins and the west gulch, she smiled down upon him. What a mysterious, magic thing human beauty is, and the human smile! It seems to light the dreariest sky, people the loneliest landscape. Where there is a human smile to reflect one's own, not even a desert seems desolate, not even a prison cell seems cold. Talbot felt this very strongly in that moment. As the warm, bright, laughing, youthful face looked into his, the sun seemed to have suddenly burst out upon that dreary snowy plain, and as the two men escorted her over the threshold it seemed toboth that they were throwing open the door not only to her concrete self but to the abstracts, warmth and light, and gaiety and laughter, and that these all flowed in with her into the simple rough interior, transforming and illumining it.
Katrine was delighted with her new home; she walked about examining every detail and showing her joy and pleasure in each little trifle that had been prepared for her. She had a very soft voice and manner when she chose,—she was too young yet for her gambling, drinking, and rough associates to have spoiled,—and Stephen stood in the centre of the room, flushed and silent with the fulness of his pleasure, following her eagerly with his eyes. After all, in this world of ours, everything stands in such close relation to its surrounding objects and circumstances that there is no absoluteness left. Or you may consider it the other way, that the feelings are absolute and always the same. A millionaire bridegroom could not receive morepleasure from the pleasure of his bride when viewing the mansion he had prepared for her, than Stephen did now from Katrine's approval of his log hut, and her thanks and smiles were as sweet over a little wooden shelf tacked against the wall, as if a two thousand dollar chandelier had called them forth.
Then Stephen took her arm and drew her into the next room, and here she was so shy and nervous she could not look about at all. Stephen took off her cloak and all her outer wraps, and then made her come and see her reflection in a little square looking-glass that he had obtained for her at quite a high price; but Katrine could not face the mirror, and hid her blushing cheeks and downcast eyes on his shoulder instead. Stephen put his arm round her. "You don't regret what you have done?" he asked in alarm, pressing her close to him.
"No, oh no, dear Steve, only it's all so strange; let's go back to the other room."
They returned, as she wished, and found that Talbot had laid the dinner for them,—a dinner he had spent all the morning in preparing,—and they sat down to it with a gaiety that made up for the shortness of supplies. After dinner they drew close round the fire and prolonged the roasting and eating of chestnuts and drinking whisky throughout the afternoon,—for whisky was there, strongly as Stephen objected to see her drink it; still it was their wedding day, and he let it pass. As darkness came down a whirling snow-storm swept through the gulch; they could see the thin sharp flakes fly past the window on the cutting wind, and hear the whistling roar of the storm as it struck and beat upon the cabin. They only flung more logs into the stove, and gave a backward glance over their shoulders from time to time towards the window. By nine in the evening, when Talbot was leaving them to go to his own cabin, it had calmed downa little, though the wind still moaned in the hollows of the gulch.
Stephen and Katrine stood at the window a second after he had gone, looking out into the curious misty whiteness and blackness commingled of the night.
"I am sorry there should be such a storm the first day you are here, darling," said Stephen softly, putting his arm round her waist.
"Why, what does that matter? I do not mind, I have you to protect me. You will always now, Steve, won't you, from everything? I don't want ever to go back to that gambling life again."
He drew her into his arms.
"Of course, of course I will," he said, kissing her. "I will always take care of you."
Her arms were interlaced about his neck, they looked into each other's eyes, and neither knew any more whether it was a storm or a calm in the night outside.
For the first few weeks after their marriage Katrine was more than happy, and it seemed to those lonely beings, sheltered from the savage siege of Nature only by those frail little cabins built by their own hands on the edge of the snow-filled gulch, that a new life had blossomed for them suddenly—a perfect spring in winter. The girl's wonderful health and unfailing spirits were in themselves a delight, and she was possessed of such a sweet and even temper, that it seemed to smooth out and round off the hard edges of their rough, comfortless existence. Nothing seemed to have the power to disturb her, the most irritating and annoying incident never even brought a frown to her face; it filled her with consternation for the men, and an immediate desire to smooth it over for them, if possible to prevent their being ruffled by it. For herself, she seemed above the reach of any circumstance to disconcert. One morning the men had an instance of this.They were all three living together in Stephen's cabin now. That is to say, Talbot took all his meals there, and used it as his own home in every way, except that he still went back to his cabin to sleep. It had seemed cheerless to both Katrine and Stephen for Talbot to be eating alone a few yards from them, and though it gave the girl more work, and for that reason Talbot was slow to accept the arrangement, she herself coaxed him into it. They came in late from the claims to lunch, and found her bending over the fire, with flushed cheeks and happy eyes. She was stirring a great saucepan of inviting looking and smelling stew, that she had spent the whole morning in preparing. The large handle of the pan projected from the stove some distance, and as Stephen threw off his overcoat he managed in some way to tip up the saucepan with a sudden jerk that sent the contents half into the fire, half over the girl's bare arm,from which her sleeve was rolled to the elbow. She did not utter a sound as the scalding liquid ran burning over her flesh, but Talbot saw her face grow deadly pale with the sickening pain. After a second of agony, when she found her voice, and Stephen was remorsefully spreading fat over the blistered, cracking flesh, the first thing she said, with her eyes full of disappointed tears, was, "Oh dear! how unlucky! Now you won't get anything hot for lunch." And as soon as a bandage was twisted round her scalded arm, she was over at the cupboard collecting all the best of her cold supplies and laying them out on the table.
There was not a word of anger or reproof to Stephen for his carelessness, not a word of her own pain. The great sorrow that she was anxious to smooth over and atone for to them was that they would have to put up with a cold luncheon!
Her one idea, the sole thought that occupiedher, was to make these two men happy, at any cost to herself. All day she studied how she could make their life, so hard and rough smoother for them, how she could alleviate the labour and monotony of it. She rose in the morning long before either was awake, and had the fires blazing, wood brought in, water melted out, and the coffee made by the time they came into the sitting-room, looking white and sleepy in the flare of the common candles. All the house work they had formerly found hard, when counted in addition to their outside labour, she took entirely upon herself, and insensibly they both felt the relief very great. There was no coming home now, worn out and frozen, to a cheerless cabin, and being obliged to chop wood and light fires and split ice before they could get warm and rested. A glowing hearth, a laid table, a smiling face, always awaited them. Often coming up from the dump at the lower end of the claim, they couldsee the square patch of red light flung out from the window on the snow, bidding them hurry in to the welcome warmth and light inside.
The daylight only lasted them now from ten to two, and for these hours the men worked out of doors. During their absence the girl went out on shooting expeditions of her own. She had invented a modified snow-shoe, broad and short, with slightly curved-up ends, and with these strapped on to her lithe feet, her fur coat fastened up to her chin, and her fur cap drawn over her ears and to her brows, she defied the fall of the mercury, and skimmed over the snow as silently and swiftly as a shadow moving.
She enjoyed these long, lonely excursions, with her heart kept warm by the hope of discovering something she could bring down with her pistol or her shot-gun, and carry back as a surprise and a treat for the men for supper.There was not much indeed to be found; but a small breed of snow-bird was prevalent, and quite a flock of these would very often follow or precede a snow-storm, and whenever Katrine's keen eye caught sight of the little dark patch that a cluster of them made against the snow, she would glide swiftly over in that direction, and have eight or ten of them swinging at her belt to take home. They were small, but cooked as she knew how to cook them, they were a delicacy beyond price to the men who for months had tasted little but beans and hard bacon. Katrine felt quite happy if she could return through the suddenly falling gloom of the afternoon and cross the darkened threshold just as the men came back, half frozen, from the creek, and show her cluster of victims swinging by their long-necked heads from her waist.
She thought of them, planned for their comfort, and worked for them all day; while to herhusband she was absolutely devoted, and one would think that for such devotion a few smiles, a kiss, and some kind words was a small price to pay. Yet after the first few weeks, and even during them, Stephen, who worked all day to secure his mining gains, would not even exert himself to that degree to return the affection that was worth all his claims put together. One kiss given before he went out to his work in the morning would have made Katrine happy all day, one tender inquiry on his return would have amply rewarded her for all her labours, yet he invariably went out to the claims without bestowing the one, and returned without making the other. Hard work, privations, loneliness, even the absence of all the amusements she had delighted in, would not have broken her spirits; she would have accepted them all cheerfully, if her husband had only thrown over them the little light and warmth of his affection that she longed for.Each day she hoped it might be different; but no, he grew more and more absorbed by the gold fever that was eating away his heart and brain, and the girl grew more and more depressed and resentful. "It would be no trouble to him," she murmured to herself over and over again, as she stood at the wash-tub, wringing out his shirts, or knelt on the floor of the cabin scrubbing the boards, "just a kiss or a smile."
She did not in the meantime relax any of her attention to him. Her smile for him was always as sweet when he returned, her efforts to please him as untiring, but in her heart her thoughts turned more and more constantly day by day to the idea of leaving him, of returning to her own life, where at least she had not been tormented by this perpetual hope and expectation and disappointment.
Stephen never dreamed that the girl's thoughts were as they were; though if he had done so, he probably would not have alteredhis own course—for Katrine in several angry outbursts had appealed to him, had told him how she hungered after, not great and difficult proofs of his love, but the little ones, the trifles, how he was starving and killing her love for him by his neglect of it, and he either could not, or would not, understand. But that she contemplated ever leaving him never crossed his brain, any more than the conception of the passionate hate she felt for him at times when he left undone some trifling thing, that if done, would have roused an equally passionate access to her love. He, jaundiced with this mental yellow fever, thought his rich claims, his great wealth, had probably had some influence on the daughter of the Polish Jew when she accepted him. He relied, in fact, on his wealth, and on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more for Stephen's wealth and for hisclaims than if they had been ash heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only, and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud, independent, reckless will.