The Virgin raised her head, her loosened hair streaming about her like a Fury"s. "Wot is she?" she sneered. "Sweet"eart?"
Corliss whirled upon her savagely, face white and voice shaking with pa.s.sion.
The Virgin cowered down and instinctively threw up her hands to protect her face. "Don"t "it me, sir!" she whined. "Don"t "it me!"
He was frightened at himself, and waited till he could gather control.
"Now," he said, calmly, "get into your things and go. All of you.
Clear out. Vamose."
"You"re no man, you ain"t," the Virgin snarled, discovering that physical a.s.sault was not imminent.
But Corliss herded her particularly to the door, and gave no heed.
"A-turning ladies out!" she sniffed, with a stumble over the threshold;
"No offence," Jake Cornell muttered, pacifically; "no offence."
"Good-night. Sorry," Corliss said to Blanche, with the shadow of a forgiving smile, as she pa.s.sed out.
"You"re a toff! That"s wot you are, a bloomin" toff!" the Virgin howled back as he shut the door.
He looked blankly at Del Bishop and surveyed the sodden confusion on the table. Then he walked over and threw himself down on his bunk.
Bishop leaned an elbow on the table and pulled at his wheezy pipe. The lamp smoked, flickered, and went out; but still he remained, filling his pipe again and again and striking endless matches.
"Del! Are you awake?" Corliss called at last.
Del grunted.
"I was a cur to turn them out into the snow. I am ashamed."
"Sure," was the affirmation.
A long silence followed. Del knocked the ashes out and raised up.
""Sleep?" he called.
There was no reply, and he walked to the bunk softly and pulled the blankets over the engineer.
CHAPTER XXI
"Yes; what does it all mean?" Corliss stretched lazily, and c.o.c.ked up his feet on the table. He was not especially interested, but Colonel Trethaway persisted in talking seriously.
"That"s it! The very thing--the old and ever young demand which man slaps into the face of the universe." The colonel searched among the sc.r.a.ps in his note-book. "See," holding up a soiled slip of typed paper, "I copied this out years ago. Listen. "What a monstrous spectre is this man, this disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown up with hair like gra.s.s, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming. Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent; savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives. Infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down to debate of right or wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to battle for an egg or die for an idea!"
"And all to what end?" he demanded, hotly, throwing down the paper, "this disease of the agglutinated dust?"
Corliss yawned in reply. He had been on trail all day and was yearning for between-blankets.
"Here am I, Colonel Trethaway, modestly along in years, fairly well preserved, a place in the community, a comfortable bank account, no need to ever exert myself again, yet enduring life bleakly and working ridiculously with a zest worthy of a man half my years. And to what end? I can only eat so much, smoke so much, sleep so much, and this tail-dump of earth men call Alaska is the worst of all possible places in the matter of grub, tobacco, and blankets."
"But it is the living strenuously which holds you," Corliss interjected.
"Frona"s philosophy," the colonel sneered.
"And my philosophy, and yours."
"And of the agglutinated dust--"
"Which is quickened with a pa.s.sion you do not take into account,--the pa.s.sion of duty, of race, of G.o.d!"
"And the compensation?" Trethaway demanded.
"Each breath you draw. The Mayfly lives an hour."
"I don"t see it."
"Blood and sweat! Blood and sweat! You cried that after the rough and tumble in the Opera House, and every word of it was receipt in full."
"Frona"s philosophy."
"And yours and mine."
The colonel threw up his shoulders, and after a pause confessed. "You see, try as I will, I can"t make a pessimist out of myself. We are all compensated, and I more fully than most men. What end? I asked, and the answer forthcame: Since the ultimate end is beyond us, then the immediate. More compensation, here and now!"
"Quite hedonistic."
"And rational. I shall look to it at once. I can buy grub and blankets for a score; I can eat and sleep for only one; ergo, why not for two?"
Corliss took his feet down and sat up. "In other words?"
"I shall get married, and--give the community a shock. Communities like shocks. That"s one of their compensations for being agglutinative."
"I can"t think of but one woman," Corliss essayed tentatively, putting out his hand.
Trethaway shook it slowly. "It is she."
Corliss let go, and misgiving shot into his face. "But St. Vincent?"
"Is your problem, not mine."
"Then Lucile--?"
"Certainly not. She played a quixotic little game of her own and botched it beautifully."
"I--I do not understand." Corliss brushed his brows in a dazed sort of way.