II

Floyd Vanderlip was a strong man, apparently.  Hard work and hard grub had no terrors for him, as his early history in the country attested.  In danger he was a lion, and when he held in check half a thousand starving men, as he once did, it was remarked that no cooler eye ever took the glint of sunshine on a rifle-sight.  He had but one weakness, and even that, rising from out his strength, was of a negative sort.  His parts were strong, but they lacked co-ordination.  Now it happened that while his centre of amativeness was pronounced, it had lain mute and passive during the years he lived on moose and salmon and chased glowing Eldorados over chill divides.  But when he finally blazed the corner-post and centre-stakes on one of the richest Klondike claims, it began to quicken; and when he took his place in society, a full-fledged Bonanza King, it awoke and took charge of him.  He suddenly recollected a girl in the States, and it came to him quite forcibly, not only that she might be waiting for him, but that a wife was a very pleasant acquisition for a man who lived some several degrees north of 53.  So he wrote an appropriate note, enclosed a letter of credit generous enough to cover all expenses, including trousseau and chaperon, and addressed it to one Flossie.  Flossie?  One could imagine the rest.  However, after that he built a comfortable cabin on his claim, bought another in Dawson, and broke the news to his friends.

And just here is where the lack of co-ordination came into play.  The waiting was tedious, and having been long denied, the amative element could not brook further delay.  Flossie was coming; but Loraine Lisznayi was here.  And not only was Loraine Lisznayi here, but her cosmopolitan reputation was somewhat the worse for wear, and she was not exactly so young as when she posed in the studios of artist queens and received at her door the cards of cardinals and princes.  Also, her finances were unhealthy.  Having run the gamut in her time, she was now not averse to trying conclusions with a Bonanza King whose wealth was such that he could not guess it within six figures.  Like a wise soldier casting about after years of service for a comfortable billet, she had come into the Northland to be married.  So, one day, her eyes flashed up into Floyd Vanderlip’s as he was buying table linen for Flossie in the P. C. Company’s store, and the thing was settled out of hand.

When a man is free much may go unquestioned, which, should he be rash enough to cumber himself with domestic ties, society will instantly challenge.  Thus it was with Floyd Vanderlip.  Flossie was coming, and a low buzz went up when Loraine Lisznayi rode down the main street behind his wolf-dogs.  She accompanied the lady reporter of the “Kansas City Star” when photographs were taken of his Bonanza properties, and watched the genesis of a six-column article.  At that time they were dined royally in Flossie’s cabin, on Flossie’s table linen.  Likewise there were comings and goings, and junketings, all perfectly proper, by the way, which caused the men to say sharp things and the women to be spiteful.  Only Mrs. Eppingwell did not hear.  The distant hum of wagging tongues rose faintly, but she was prone to believe good of people and to close her ears to evil; so she paid no heed.

Not so with Freda.  She had no cause to love men, but, by some strange alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,—to women whom she had less cause to love.  And her heart went out to Flossie, even then travelling the Long Trail and facing into the bitter North to meet a man who might not wait for her.  A shrinking, clinging sort of a girl, Freda pictured her, with weak mouth and pretty pouting lips, blow-away sun-kissed hair, and eyes full of the merry shallows and the lesser joys of life.  But she also pictured Flossie, face nose-strapped and frost-rimed, stumbling wearily behind the dogs.  Wherefore she smiled, dancing one night, upon Floyd Vanderlip.

Few men are so constituted that they may receive the smile of Freda unmoved; nor among them can Floyd Vanderlip be accounted.  The grace he had found with the model-woman had caused him to re-measure himself, and by the favor in which he now stood with the Greek dancer he felt himself doubly a man.  There were unknown qualities and depths in him, evidently, which they perceived.  He did not know exactly what those qualities and depths were, but he had a hazy idea that they were there somewhere, and of them was bred a great pride in himself.  A man who could force two women such as these to look upon him a second time, was certainly a most remarkable man.  Some day, when he had the time, he would sit down and analyze his strength; but now, just now, he would take what the gods had given him.  And a thin little thought began to lift itself, and he fell to wondering whatever under the sun he had seen in Flossie, and to regret exceedingly that he had sent for her.  Of course, Freda was out of the running.  His dumps were the richest on Bonanza Creek, and they were many, while he was a man of responsibility and position.  But Loraine Lisznayi—she was just the woman.  Her life had been large; she could do the honors of his establishment and give tone to his dollars.

But Freda smiled, and continued to smile, till he came to spend much time with her.  When she, too, rode down the street behind his wolf-dogs, the model-woman found food for thought, and the next time they were together dazzled him with her princes and cardinals and personal little anecdotes of courts and kings.  She also showed him dainty missives, superscribed, “My dear Loraine,” and ended “Most affectionately yours,” and signed by the given name of a real live queen on a throne.  And he marvelled in his heart that the great woman should deign to waste so much as a moment upon him.  But she played him cleverly, making flattering contrasts and comparisons between him and the noble phantoms she drew mainly from her fancy, till he went away dizzy with self-delight and sorrowing for the world which had been denied him so long.  Freda was a more masterful woman.  If she flattered, no one knew it.  Should she stoop, the stoop were unobserved.  If a man felt she thought well of him, so subtly was the feeling conveyed that he could not for the life of him say why or how.  So she tightened her grip upon Floyd Vanderlip and rode daily behind his dogs.

And just here is where the mistake occurred.  The buzz rose loudly and more definitely, coupled now with the name of the dancer, and Mrs. Eppingwell heard.  She, too, thought of Flossie lifting her moccasined feet through the endless hours, and Floyd Vanderlip was invited up the hillside to tea, and invited often.  This quite took his breath away, and he became drunken with appreciation of himself.  Never was man so maltreated.  His soul had become a thing for which three women struggled, while a fourth was on the way to claim it.  And three such women!

But Mrs. Eppingwell and the mistake she made.  She spoke of the affair, tentatively, to Sitka Charley, who had sold dogs to the Greek girl.  But no names were mentioned.  The nearest approach to it was when Mrs. Eppingwell said, “This—er—horrid woman,” and Sitka Charley, with the model-woman strong in his thoughts, had echoed, “—er—horrid woman.”  And he agreed with her, that it was a wicked thing for a woman to come between a man and the girl he was to marry.  “A mere girl, Charley,” she said, “I am sure she is.  And she is coming into a strange country without a friend when she gets here.  We must do something.”  Sitka Charley promised his help, and went away thinking what a wicked woman this Loraine Lisznayi must be, also what noble women Mrs. Eppingwell and Freda were to interest themselves in the welfare of the unknown Flossie.

Now Mrs. Eppingwell was open as the day.  To Sitka Charley, who took her once past the Hills of Silence, belongs the glory of having memorialized her clear-searching eyes, her clear-ringing voice, and her utter downright frankness.  Her lips had a way of stiffening to command, and she was used to coming straight to the point.  Having taken Floyd Vanderlip’s measurement, she did not dare this with him; but she was not afraid to go down into the town to Freda.  And down she went, in the bright light of day, to the house of the dancer.  She was above silly tongues, as was her husband, the captain.  She wished to see this woman and to speak with her, nor was she aware of any reason why she should not.  So she stood in the snow at the Greek girl’s door, with the frost at sixty below, and parleyed with the waiting-maid for a full five minutes.  She had also the pleasure of being turned away from that door, and of going back up the hill, wroth at heart for the indignity which had been put upon her.  “Who was this woman that she should refuse to see her?” she asked herself.  One would think it the other way around, and she herself but a dancing girl denied at the door of the wife of a captain.  As it was, she knew, had Freda come up the hill to her,—no matter what the errand,—she would have made her welcome at her fire, and they would have sat there as two women, and talked, merely as two women.  She had overstepped convention and lowered herself, but she had thought it different with the women down in the town.  And she was ashamed that she had laid herself open to such dishonor, and her thoughts of Freda were unkind.

Not that Freda deserved this.  Mrs. Eppingwell had descended to meet her who was without caste, while she, strong in the traditions of her own earlier status, had not permitted it.  She could worship such a woman, and she would have asked no greater joy than to have had her into the cabin and sat with her, just sat with her, for an hour.  But her respect for Mrs. Eppingwell, and her respect for herself, who was beyond respect, had prevented her doing that which she most desired.  Though not quite recovered from the recent visit of Mrs. McFee, the wife of the minister, who had descended upon her in a whirlwind of exhortation and brimstone, she could not imagine what had prompted the present visit.  She was not aware of any particular wrong she had done, and surely this woman who waited at the door was not concerned with the welfare of her soul.  Why had she come?  For all the curiosity she could not help but feel, she steeled herself in the pride of those who are without pride, and trembled in the inner room like a maid on the first caress of a lover.  If Mrs. Eppingwell suffered going up the hill, she too suffered, lying face downward on the bed, dry-eyed, dry-mouthed, dumb.

Mrs. Eppingwell’s knowledge of human nature was great.  She aimed at universality.  She had found it easy to step from the civilized and contemplate things from the barbaric aspect.  She could comprehend certain primal and analogous characteristics in a hungry wolf-dog or a starving man, and predicate lines of action to be pursued by either under like conditions.  To her, a woman was a woman, whether garbed in purple or the rags of the gutter; Freda was a woman.  She would not have been surprised had she been taken into the dancer’s cabin and encountered on common ground; nor surprised had she been taken in and flaunted in prideless arrogance.  But to be treated as she had been treated, was unexpected and disappointing.  Ergo, she had not caught Freda’s point of view.  And this was good.  There are some points of view which cannot be gained save through much travail and personal crucifixion, and it were well for the world that its Mrs. Eppingwells should, in certain ways, fall short of universality.  One cannot understand defilement without laying hands to pitch, which is very sticky, while there be plenty willing to undertake the experiment.  All of which is of small concern, beyond the fact that it gave Mrs. Eppingwell ground for grievance, and bred for her a greater love in the Greek girl’s heart.