Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [200]
She looked in the closet and saw his bag of tools was gone too. Jack had always been a sucker for a hard luck story, and if someone had asked for his help last night, he would’ve found it hard to refuse. But what she didn’t understand was why, if he came back here for old clothes and his tools, he hadn’t either woken her to tell her where he was going or left her a note.
She felt nauseous again, but decided that was due to hunger, and went downstairs to have some breakfast, hoping there might be a note from Jack at the reception desk.
But there was no note, and she had to rush out of the dining room to be sick after just smelling the coffee.
Back in the room, she sat by the open window looking down at the men trooping past the hotel, and suddenly her heart contracted with fear. Could Jack have left for Nome?
That seemed an absurd thought, for he’d shown nothing more than amusement and curiosity about the gold strike. He’d even said that if prospecting for gold here was hard, it would be even worse there, for Nome was almost in the Arctic Circle.
Yet a cold chill ran down her spine, for this whole town wouldn’t exist but for the irrationality and greed which gold brought out in men. She couldn’t even say that there was only one kind who would succumb to the lure of it, for she knew they came from every walk of life, and honest, decent men were far more common than crooks and swindlers.
She also knew that how much money a man already had made no difference, for she’d seen men with fortunes lose it all at the turn of a card. Theo had his dream come true when he got the Golden Nugget, yet he’d sold it behind her back and disappeared with the money. Why should she think Jack was any different?
She turned from the window and looked at the bed. They’d put the money in a cloth bag under the mattress after they got it from the bank. Jack had only kept back about a thousand dollars, and five hundred of that he’d given to her. If the bag was gone, so was he, just like Theo.
Shaking with nerves, she gingerly approached the bed and lifted the mattress. She slid her hand under it, but could feel nothing. An involuntary cry of despair came from deep within her. She ran her hands right round the bed, and on finding nothing, grabbed the mattress and tossed it on to the floor. But there was nothing beneath it, just the thin horsehair padding above the springs.
The shock made her reel, for however much she had rationalized that Jack was no different to other men, in her heart she’d felt he could never do anything so low.
He’d claimed he didn’t come here for the gold, only to be near her, and she’d believed that.
The betrayal was too much to bear, far worse than what Theo had done, for she’d always known he was a wild card. But Honest Jack, the man she had trusted implicitly for so many years, her comforter, her friend, how could he do this to her?
Sobbing hysterically, she flung herself down on to the bedding. She remembered how he’d pressed those five hundred dollars into her hands and said she couldn’t arrive in Vancouver looking like a pauper.
The rat must have been planning his escape then, and only gave her that money to salve his conscience so she wouldn’t be utterly destitute.
How could he do that to her?
Chapter Thirty-seven
Beth lay crying on the heap of bedding for hours. As the tickets were still there on the dressing table it seemed obvious to her that Jack wanted her to leave on the boat in the morning. That way he’d be free to go with that deranged brotherhood of men who would rather spend their lives in stinking shacks in remote places, dreaming of finding gold, than have a wife and family who loved them.
She relived the past few weeks, trying to see if she’d ignored something which might have been a hint that Jack wasn’t as deeply committed to her as she’d believed him to be.
There was the moment when she said she loved him and he had stalled