The Courage of Marge O'Doone. James Oliver Curwood
a beautiful character in the eyes of nature, and there's pretty sure to be a cog loose somewhere in his makeup. I'm a grub-scientist, David. I warn you of that before we get off at Thoreau's. I love to eat, and the Frenchman knows it. That's why I can smell things in that cabin, forty miles away."
He was rubbing his hands briskly and his face radiated such joyous anticipation as he talked that David unconsciously felt the spirit of his enthusiasm. He had gripped one of Father Roland's hands and was pumping it up and down almost before he realized what he was doing.
"I'll get off with you at Thoreau's," he exclaimed, "and later, if I feel as I do now, and you still want my company, I'll go on with you into the north country!"
A slight flush rose into his thin cheeks and his eyes shone with a freshly lighted enthusiasm. As Father Roland saw the change in him his hands closed over David's.
"I knew you had a splendid stomach in you from the moment you finished telling me about the woman," he cried exultantly. "I knew it, David. And I do want your company—I want it as I never wanted the company of another man!"
"That is the strange part of it," replied David, a slight quiver in his voice. He drew away his hands suddenly and with a jerk brought himself to his feet. "Good God! look at me!" he cried. "I am a wreck, physically. It would be a lie if you told me I am not. See these hands—these arms! I'm down and out. I'm weak as a dog, and the stomach you speak of is a myth. I haven't eaten a square meal in a year. Why do you want me as a companion? Why do you think it would be a pleasure for you to drag a decrepit misfit like myself up into a country like yours? Is it because of your—your code of faith? Is it because you think you may save a soul?"
He was breathing deeply. As he excoriated himself and bared his weakness the hot blood crept slowly into his face.
"Why do you want me to go?" he demanded. "Why don't you ask some man with red blood in his veins and a heart that hasn't been burned out? Why have you asked me?"
Father Roland made as if to speak, and then caught himself. Again for a passing flash there came that mysterious change in him, a sudden dying out of the enthusiasm in his eyes, and a grayness in his face that came and went like a shadow of pain. In another moment he was saying:
"I'm not playing the part of the good Samaritan, David. I've got a personal and a selfish reason for wanting you with me. It may be possible—just possible, I say—that I need you even more than you will need me." He held out his hand. "Let me have your checks and I'll go ahead to the baggage car and arrange to have your dunnage thrown off with mine at the Frenchman's."
David gave him the checks, and sat down after he had gone. He began to realize that, for the first time in many months, he was taking a deep and growing interest in matters outside his own life. The night and its happenings had kindled a strange fire within him, and the warmth of this fire ran through his veins and set his body and his brain tingling curiously. New forces were beginning to fight his own malady. As he sat alone after Father Roland had gone, his mind had dragged itself away from the East; he thought of a woman, but it was the woman in the third coach back. Her wonderful eyes haunted him—their questing despair, the strange pain that seemed to burn like glowing coals in their depths. He had seen not only misery and hopelessness in them; he had seen tragedy; and they troubled him. He made up his mind to tell Father Roland about her when he returned from the baggage car, and take him to her.
And who was Father Roland? For the first time he asked himself the question. There was something of mystery about the Little Missioner that he found as strange and unanswerable as the thing he had seen in the eyes of the woman in the third car back. Father Roland had not been asleep when he looked in and saw him hunched down in his corner near the window, just as a little later he had seen the woman crumpled down in hers. It was as if the same oppressing hand had been upon them in those moments. And why had Father Roland asked him of all men to go with him as a comrade into the North? Following this he asked himself the still more puzzling question: Why had he accepted the invitation?
He stared out into the night, as if that night held an answer for him. He had not noticed until now that the storm had ceased its beating against the window. It was not so black outside. With his face close to the glass he could make out the dark wall of the forest. From the rumble of the trucks under him he knew that the two engines were making good time. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter of twelve. They had been travelling for half an hour and he figured that the divisional point ahead would be reached by midnight. It seemed a very short time after that when he heard the tiny bell in his watch tinkle off the hour of twelve. The last strokes were drowned in a shrill blast of the engine whistle, and a moment later he caught the dull glow of lights in the hollow of a wide curve the train was making.
Father Roland had told him the train would wait at this point fifteen minutes, and even now he heard the clanging of handbells announcing the fact that hot coffee, sandwiches, and ready-prepared suppers were awaiting the half-starved passengers. The trucks grated harshly, the whirring groan of the air-brakes ran under him like a great sigh, and suddenly he was looking down into the face of a pop-eyed man who was clanging a bell, with all the strength of his right arm, under his window, and who, with this labour, was emitting a husky din of "Supper—supper 'ot an' ready at the Royal" in his vain effort to drown the competition of a still more raucous voice that was bellowing: "'Ot steaks an' liver'n onions at the Queen Alexandry!" As David made no movement the man under his window stretched up his neck and yelled a personal invitation, "W'y don't you come out and eat, old chap? You've got fifteen minutes an' mebby 'arf an 'our; supper—supper 'ot an' ready at the Royal!" Up and down the length of the dimly lighted platform David heard that clangor of bells, and as if determined to capture his stomach or die, the pop-eyed man never moved an inch from his window, while behind him there jostled and hurried an eager and steadily growing crowd of hungry people.
David thought again of the woman in the third coach back. Was she getting off here, he wondered? He went to the door of the smoking compartment and waited another half minute for Father Roland. It was quite evident that his delay was occasioned by some difficulty in the baggage car, a difficulty which perhaps his own presence might help to straighten out. He hesitated between the thought of joining the Missioner and the stronger impulse to go back into the third coach. He was conscious of a certain feeling of embarrassment as he returned for the third time to look at her. He was not anxious for her to see him again unless Father Roland was with him. His hesitancy, if it was not altogether embarrassment, was caused by the fear that she might quite naturally regard his interest in a wrong light. He was especially sensitive upon that point, and had always been. The fact that she was not a young woman, and that he had seen her dark hair finely threaded with gray, made no difference with him in his peculiarly chivalric conception of man's attitude toward woman. He did not mean to impress himself upon her; this time he merely wanted to see whether she had roused herself, or had left the car. At least this was the trend of his mental argument as he entered the third coach.
The car was empty. The woman was gone. Even the old man who had hobbled in on crutches at the last station had hobbled out again in response to the clanging bells. When he came to the seat where the woman had been, David paused, and would have turned back had he not chanced to look out through the window. He was just in time to catch the quick upturn of a passing face. It was her face. She saw him and recognized him; she seemed for a moment to hesitate; her eyes were filled again with that haunting fire; her lips trembled as if about to speak; and then, like a mysterious shadow, she drifted out of his vision into darkness.
For a space he remained in his bent and staring attitude, trying to pierce the gloom into which she had disappeared. As he drew back from the window, wondering what she must think of him, his eyes fell to the seat where she had been sitting, and he saw that she had left something behind.
It was a very thin package, done up in a bit of newspaper and tied with a red string. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It was five or six inches in width and perhaps eight in length, and was not more than half an inch in thickness. The newspaper in which the object was wrapped was worn until the print was almost obliterated.
Again he looked out through the window. Was it a trick of his eyes, he wondered, or did he see once more that pale and