Kabanata Kabanata 49 · BOOK IV CHAPTER II

Berna on the dance-halls--words cannot convey all that this simple

phrase meant to me. For two months I had been living in a dull apathy of

pain, but this news galvanised me into immediate action.

For although there were many degrees of dance-hall depravity, at the

best it meant a brand of ineffaceable shame. She had lived with Locasto,

had been recognised as his mistress--that was bad enough; but the

other--to be at the mercy of all, to be classed with the harpies that

preyed on the Man with the Poke, the vampires of the gold-camp.

Berna-- Oh, it was unspeakable! The thought maddened me. The

needle-point of suffering that for weeks had been boring into my brain

seemed to have pierced its core at last.

When the Prodigal expostulated with me I laughed--a bitter, mirthless

laugh.

"I'm going to Dawson," I said, "and if it was hell itself, I'd go there

for that girl. I don't care what any one thinks. Home, society, honour

itself, let them all go; they don't matter now. I was a fool to think I

could ever give her up, a fool. Now I know that as long as there's life

and strength in my body, I'll fight for her. Oh, I'm not the

sentimentalist I was six months ago. I've lived since then. I can hold

my own now. I can meet men on their own level. I can fight, I can win.

I don't care any more, after what I've gone through. I don't set any

particular value on my life. I'll throw it away as recklessly as the

best of them. I'm going to have a fierce fight for that girl, and if I

lose there'll be no more 'me' left to fight. Don't try to reason with

me. Reason be damned! I'm going to Dawson, and a hundred men couldn't

hold me."

"You seem to have some new stunts in your repertoire," he said, looking

at me curiously; "you've got me guessing. Sometimes I think you're a

candidate for the dippy-house, then again I think you're on to yourself.

There's a grim set to your mouth and a hard look in your eyes that I

didn't use to see. Maybe you can hold up your end. Well, anyway, if you

will go I wish you good luck."

So, bidding good-bye to the big cabin, with my two partners looking

ruefully after me, I struck off down Bonanza. It was mid-October. A

bitter wind chilled me to the marrow. Once more the land lay stark

beneath its coverlet of snow, and the sky was wan and ominous. I

travelled fast, for a painful anxiety gripped me, so that I scarce took

notice of the improved trail, of the increased activity, of the heaps of

tailings built up with brush till they looked like walls of a

fortification. All I thought of was Dawson and Berna.

How curious it was, this strange new strength, this indifference to

self, to physical suffering, to danger, to public opinion! I thought

only of the girl. I would make her marry me. I cared nothing for what

had happened to her. I might be a pariah, an outcast for the rest of my

days; at least I would save her, shield her, cherish her. The thought

uplifted me, exalted me. I had suffered beyond expression. I had

rearranged my set of ideas; my concept of life, of human nature, had

broadened and deepened. What did it matter if physically they had

wronged her? Was not the pure, virgin soul of her beyond their reach?

I was just in time to see the last boat go out. Already the river was

"throwing ice," and every day the jagged edges of it crept further

towards midstream. An immense and melancholy mob stood on the wharf as

the little steamer backed off into the channel. There were uproarious

souls on board, and many women of the town screaming farewells to their

friends. On the boat all was excited, extravagant joy; on the wharf, a

sorry attempt at resignation.

The last boat! they watched her as her stern paddle churned the freezing

water; they watched her forge her slow way through the ever-thickening

ice-flakes; they watched her in the far distance battling with the

Klondike current; then, sad and despondent, they turned away to their

lonely cabins. Never had their exile seemed so bitter. A few more days

and the river would close tight as a drum. The long, long night would

fall on them, and for nigh on eight weary months they would be cut off

from the outside world.

Yet soon, very soon, a mood of reconciliation would set in. They would

begin to make the best of things. To feed that great Octopus, the town,

the miners would flock in from the creeks with treasure hoarded up in

baking-powder tins; the dance-halls and gambling-places would absorb

them; the gaiety would go on full swing, and there would seem but little

change in the glittering abandon of the gold-camp. As I paced its

sidewalks once more I marvelled at its growth. New streets had been

made; the stores boasted expensive fittings and gloried in costly goods;

in the bar-rooms were splendid mirrors and ornate woodwork; the

restaurants offered European delicacies; all was on a new scale of

extravagance, of garish display, of insolent wealth.

Everywhere the man with the fat "poke" was in evidence. He came into

town unshorn, wild-looking, often raggedly clad, yet always with the

same wistful hunger in his eyes. You saw that look, and it took you back

to the dark and dirt and drudgery of the claim, the mirthless months of

toil, the crude cabin with its sugar barrel of ice behind the door, its

grease light dimly burning, its rancid smell of stale food. You saw him

lying smoking his strong pipe, looking at that can of nuggets on the

rough shelf, and dreaming of what it would mean to him--out there where

the lights glittered and the gramophones blared. Surely, if patience,

endurance, if grim, unswerving purpose, if sullen, desperate toil

deserved a reward, this man had a peckful of pleasure for his due.

And always that hungry, wistful look. The women with the painted cheeks

knew that look; the black-jack boosters knew it; the barkeeper with his

knock-out drops knew it. They waited for him; he was their "meat."

Yet in a few days your wild and woolly man is transformed, and no longer

does your sympathy go out towards him. Shaven and shorn, clad in silken

underwear, with patent leather shoes, and a suit in New York style, you

absolutely fail to recognise him as your friend of the moccasins and

mackinaw coat. He is smoking a dollar Laranago, he has half a dozen

whiskies "under his belt," and later on he has a "date" with a lady

singer of the Pavilion Theatre. He is having a "whale" of a good time,

he tells you; you wonder how long he will last.

Not for long. Sharp and short and sweet it is. He is brought up with a

jerk, and the Dago Queen, for whom he has bought so much wine at twenty

dollars a bottle, has no recognition for him in her flashing eyes. He

has been "taken down the line," "trimmed to a finish" by an artist in

the business. Ruefully he turns his poke inside out--not a "colour." He

cannot even command the price of a penitential three-fingers of rye.

Such is one of the commonest phases of life in the gold-camp.

As I strolled the streets I saw many a familiar face. Mosher I saw. He

had grown very fat, and was talking to a diminutive woman with heavy

blond hair (she must have weighed about ninety-five pounds, I think).

They went off together.

A knife-edged wind was sweeping down from the north, and men in bulging

coonskin coats filled up the sidewalks. At the Aurora corner I came

across the Jam-wagon. He was wearing a jacket of summer flannels, and,

as if to suggest extra warmth, he had turned up its narrow collar. In

his trembling fingers he held an emaciated cigarette, which he inhaled

avidly. He looked wretched, pinched with hunger, peaked with cold, but

he straightened up when he saw me into a semblance of well-being. Then,

in a little, he sagged forward, and his eyes went dull and abject. It

was a business of the utmost delicacy to induce him to accept a small

loan. I knew it would only plunge him more deeply into the mire; but I

could not bear to see him suffer.

I went into the Parisian Restaurant. It was more glittering, more

raffish, more clamant of the tenderloin than ever. There were men

waiters in the conventional garb of waiterdom, and there was Madam,

harder looking and more vulturish. You wondered if such a woman could

have a soul, and what was the end and aim of her being. There she sat, a

creature of rapacity and sordid lust. I marched up to her and asked

abruptly:

"Where's Berna?"

She gave a violent start. There was a quality of fear in her bold eyes.

Then she laughed, a hard, jarring laugh.

"In the Tivoli," she said.

Strange again! Now that the worst had come to pass, and I had suffered

all that it was in my power to suffer, this new sense of strength and

mastery had come to me. It seemed as if some of the iron spirit of the

land had gotten into my blood, a grim, insolent spirit that made me

fearless; at times a cold cynical spirit, a spirit of rebellion, of

anarchy, of aggression. The greatest evil had befallen me. Life could do

no more to harm me. I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. I

cared for no man. I despised them, and, to back me in my bitterness, I

had twenty-five thousand dollars in the bank.

I was still weak from my illness and my long mush had wearied me, so I

went into a saloon and called for drinks. I felt the raw whisky burn my

throat. I tingled from head to foot with a strange, pleasing warmth.

Suddenly the bar, with its protecting rod of brass, seemed to me a very

desirable place, bright, warm, suggestive of comfort and

good-fellowship. How agreeably every one was smiling! Indeed, some were

laughing for sheer joy. A big, merry-hearted miner called for another

round, and I joined in.

Where was that bitter feeling now? Where that morbid pain at my heart?

As I drank it all seemed to pass away. Magical change! What a fool I

was! What was there to make such a fuss about? Take life easy. Laugh

alike at the good and bad of it. It was all a farce anyway. What would

it matter a hundred years from now? Why were we put into this world to

be tortured? I, for one, would protest. I would writhe no more in the

strait-jacket of existence. Here was escape, heartsease, happiness--here

in this bottled impishness. Again I drank.

What a rotten world it all was! But I had no hand in the making of it,

and it wasn't my task to improve it. I was going to get the best I could

out of it. Eat, drink and be merry, that was the last word of

philosophy. Others seemed to be able to extract all kinds of happiness

from things as they are, so why not I? In any case, here was the

solution of my troubles. Better to die happily drunk than miserably

sober. I was not drinking from weakness. Oh no! I was drinking with

deliberate intent to kill pain.

How wonderfully strong I felt! I smashed my clenched fist against the

bar. My knuckles were bruised and bleeding, but I felt no pain. I was so

light of foot, I imagined I could jump over the counter. I ached to

fight some one. Then all at once came the thought of Berna. It came with

tragical suddenness, with poignant force. Intensely it smote me as never

before. I could have burst into maudlin tears.

"What's the matter, Slim?" asked a mouldy mannikin, affectionately

hanging on to my arm.

Disgustedly I looked at him.

"Take your filthy paws off me," I said.

His jaw dropped and he stared at me. Then, before he could draw on his

fund of profanity, I burst through the throng and made for the door.

I was drunk, deplorably drunk, and I was bound for the Tivoli.