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.
And in this way things went along for a month,--Mrs.Eppingwell striving to withhold the man from the Greek dancer's blandishments against the time of Flossie's coming; Flossie lessening the miles each day on the dreary trail; Freda pitting her strength against the model-woman; the model-woman straining every nerve to land the prize; and the man moving through it all like a flying shuttle, very proud of himself, whom he believed to be a second Don Juan.
It was nobody's fault except the man's that Loraine Lisznayi at last landed him.The way of a man with a maid may be too wonderful to know, but the way of a woman with a man passeth all conception; whence the prophet were indeed unwise who would dare forecast Floyd Vanderlip's course twenty-four hours in advance.
Perhaps the model-woman's attraction lay in that to the eye she was a handsome animal; perhaps she fascinated him with her old-world talk of palaces and princes; leastwise she dazzled him whose life had been worked out in uncultured roughness, and he at last agreed to her suggestion of a run down the river and a marriage at Forty Mile.In token of his intention he bought dogs from Sitka Charley,--more than one sled is necessary when a woman like Loraine Lisznayi takes to the trail, and then went up the creek to give orders for the superintendence of his Bonanza mines during his absence.
He had given it out, rather vaguely, that he needed the animals for sledding lumber from the mill to his sluices, and right here is where Sitka Charley demonstrated his fitness.He agreed to furnish dogs on a given date, but no sooner had Floyd Vanderlip turned his toes up-creek, than Charley hied himself away in perturbation to Loraine Lisznayi.Did she know where Mr.