The Courage of Marge O'Doone Part 4

Against the wall, a little in shadow, so that she would not be a part of their company or whatever conversation they might have, Marie had seated herself, her round chin in the cup of her brown hand, her dark eyes shining at this comfort and satisfaction of men. Such scenes as this amply repaid her for all her toil in life. She was happy. There was content in this cabin. David felt it. It impinged itself upon him, and through him, in a strange and mysterious way. Within these log walls he felt the presence of that spirit--the joy of companionship and of life--which had so terribly eluded and escaped him in his own home of wealth and luxury. He heard Marie speak only once that night--once, in a low, soft voice to Th.o.r.eau. She was silent with the silence of the Cree wife in the presence of a stranger, but he knew that her heart was throbbing with the soft pulse of happiness, and for some reason he was glad when Th.o.r.eau nodded proudly toward a closed door and let him know that she was a mother. Marie heard him, and in that moment David caught in her face a look that made his heart ache--a look that should have been a part of his own life, and which he had missed.

A little later Th.o.r.eau led the way into the room which David was to occupy for the night. It was a small room, with a sapling part.i.tion between it and the one in which the Missioner was to sleep. The fox breeder placed a lamp on the table near the bed, and bade David good-night.

It was past two o'clock, and yet David felt at the present moment no desire for sleep. After he had taken off his shoes and partially undressed, he sat on the edge of his bed and allowed his mind to sweep back over the events of the last few hours. Again he thought of the woman in the coach--the woman with those wonderful, dark eyes and haunting face--and he drew forth from his coat pocket the package which she had forgotten. He handled it curiously. He looked at the red string, noted how tightly the knot was tied, and turned it over and over in his hands before he snapped the string. He was a little ashamed at his eagerness to know what was within its worn newspaper wrapping. He felt the disgrace of his curiosity, even though he a.s.sured himself there was no reason why he should not investigate the package now when all ownership was lost. He knew that he would never see the woman again, and that she would always remain a mystery to him unless what he held in his hands revealed the secret of her ident.i.ty.

A half minute more and he was leaning over in the full light of the lamp, his two hands clutching the thing which the paper had disclosed when it dropped to the floor, his eyes staring, his lips parted, and his heart seeming to stand still in the utter amazement of the moment!

CHAPTER V

David held in his hands a photograph--the picture of a girl. He had half guessed what he would find when he began to unfold the newspaper wrapping and saw the edge of gray cardboard. In the same breath had come his astonishment--a surprise that was almost a shock. The night had been filled with changes for him; forces which he had not yet begun to comprehend had drawn him into the beginning of a strange adventure; they had purged his thoughts of _himself_; they had forced upon him other things, other people, and a glimpse or two of another sort of life; he had seen tragedy, and happiness--a bit of something to laugh at; and he had felt the thrill of it all. A few hours had made him the bewildered and yet pa.s.sive object of the unexpected. And now, as he sat alone on the edge of his bed, had come the climax of the unexpected.

The girl in the picture was not dead--not merely a lifeless shadow put there by the art of a camera. She was alive! That was his first thought--his first impression. It was as if he had come upon her suddenly, and by his presence had startled her--had made her face him squarely, tensely, a little frightened, and yet defiant, and ready for flight. In that first moment he would not have disbelieved his eyes if she had moved, if she had drawn away from him and disappeared out of the picture with the swiftness of a bird. For he--some one--had startled her; some one had frightened her; some one had made her afraid, and yet defiant; some one had roused in her that bird-like impulse of flight even as the camera had clicked.

He bent closer into the lampglow, and stared. The girl was standing on a flat slab of rock close to the edge of a pool. Behind her was a carpet of white sand, and beyond that a rock-cluttered gorge and the side of a mountain. She was barefooted. Her feet were white against the dark rock.

Her arms were bare to the elbows, and shone with that same whiteness. He took these things in one by one, as if it were impossible for the picture to impress itself upon him all at once. She stood leaning a little forward on the rock slab, her dress only a little below her knees, and as she leaned thus, her eyes flashing and her lips parted, the wind had flung a wonderful disarray of curls over her shoulder and breast. He saw the sunlight in them; in the lampglow they seemed to move; the throb of her breast seemed to give them life; one hand seemed about to fling them back from her face; her lips quivered as if about to speak to him. Against the savage background of mountain and gorge she stood out clear-cut as a cameo, slender as a reed, wild, palpitating, beautiful. She was more than a picture. She was life. She was there--with David in his room--as surely as the woman had been with him in the coach.

He drew a deep breath and sat back on the edge of his bed. He heard Father Roland getting into his creaky bed in the adjoining room. Then came the Missioner's voice.

"Good-night, David."

"Good-night, Father."

For a s.p.a.ce after that he sat staring blankly at the log of his room.

Then he leaned over again and held the photograph a second time in the lampglow. The first strange spell of the picture was broken, and he looked at it more coolly, more critically, a little disgusted with himself for having allowed his imagination to play a trick on him. He turned it over in his hands, and on the back of the cardboard mount he saw there had been writing. He examined it closely, and made out faintly the words, "Firepan Creek, Stikine River, August...." and the date was gone. That was all. There was no name, no word that might give him a clue as to the ident.i.ty of the mysterious woman in the coach, or her relationship to the strange picture she had left in her seat when she disappeared at Graham.

Once more his puzzled eyes tried to find some solution to the mystery of this night in the picture of the girl herself, and as he looked, question after question pounded through his head. What had startled her?

Who had frightened her? What had brought that hunted look--that half-defiance--into her poise and eyes, just as he had seen the strange questing and suppressed fear in the eyes and face of the woman in the coach? He made no effort to answer, but accepted the visual facts as they came to him. She was young, the girl in the picture; almost a child as he regarded childhood. Perhaps seventeen, or a month or two older; he was curiously precise in adding that month or two. Something in the _woman_ of her as she stood on the rock made it occur to him as necessary. He saw, now, that she had been wading in the pool, for she had dropped a stocking on the white sand, and near it lay an object that was a shoe or a moccasin, he could not make out which. It was while she had been wading--alone--that the interruption had come; she had turned; she had sprung to the flat rock, her hands a little clenched, her eyes flashing, her breast panting under the smother of her hair; and it was in this moment, as she stood ready to fight--or fly--that the camera had caught her.

Now, as he scanned this picture, as it lived before his eyes, a faint smile played over his lips, a smile in which there was a little humour and much irony. He had been a fool that day, twice a fool, perhaps three times a fool. Nothing but folly, a diseased conception of things, could have made him see tragedy in the face of the woman in the coach, or have induced him to follow her. Sleeplessness--a mental exhaustion to which his body had not responded in two days and two nights--had dulled his senses and his reason. He felt an unpleasant desire to laugh at himself.

Tragedy! A woman in distress! He shrugged his shoulders, and his teeth gleamed in a cold smile at the girl in the picture. Surely there was no tragedy or mystery in her poise on that rock! She had been bathing, alone, hidden away as she thought; some one had crept up, had disturbed her, and the camera had clicked at the psychological moment of her bird-like poise when she was not yet decided whether to turn in flight or remain and punish the intruder with her anger. It was quite clear to him. Any girl caught in the same way might have betrayed the same emotions. But--Firepan Creek--Stikine River.... And she was wild. She was a creature of those mountains and that wild gorge, wherever they were--and beautiful--slender as a flower--lovelier than....

David set his lips tight. They shut off a quick breath, a gasp, the sharp surge of a sudden pain. Swift as his thoughts there had come a transformation in the picture before his eyes--a drawing of a curtain over it, like a golden veil; and then _she_ was standing there, and the gold had gathered about her in the wonderful mantle of her hair--shining, dishevelled hair--a bare, white arm thrust upward through its sheen, and _her_ face--taunting, unafraid--_laughing at him_! Good G.o.d! could he never kill that memory? Was it upon him again to-night, clutching at his throat, stifling his heart, grinding him into the agony he could not fight--that vision of her--_his wife?_ That girl on her rock, so like a slender flower! That woman in her room, so like a golden G.o.ddess! Both caught--unexpectedly! What devil-spirit had made him pick up this picture from the woman's seat? What....

His fingers tightened upon the photograph, ready to tear it into bits.

The cardboard ripped an inch--and he stopped suddenly his impulse to destroy. The girl was looking at him again from out of the picture--looking at him with clear, wide eyes, surprised at his weakness, startled by the fierceness of his a.s.sault upon her, wondering, amazed, questioning him! For the first time he saw what he had missed before--that _questioning_ in her eyes. It was as if she were on the point of asking him something--as if her voice had just come from between her parted lips, or were about to come. And for _him;_ that was it--for _him!_

His fingers relaxed. He smoothed down the torn edge of the cardboard, as if it had been a wound in his own flesh. After all, this inanimate thing was very much like himself. It was lost, a thing out of place, and out of home; a wanderer from now on depending largely, like himself, on the charity of fate. Almost gently he returned it to its newspaper wrapping.

Deep within him there was a sentiment which made him cherish little things which had belonged to the past--a baby's shoe, a faded ribbon, a withered flower that _she_ had worn on the night they were married; and memories--memories that he might better have let droop and die.

Something of this spirit was in the touch of his fingers as he placed the photograph on the table.

He finished undressing quietly. Before he turned in he placed a hand on his head. It was hot, feverish. This was not unusual, and it did not alarm him. Quite often of late these hot and feverish spells had come upon him, nearly always at night. Usually they were followed the next day by a terrific headache. More and more frequently they had been warning him how nearly down and out he was, and he knew what to expect.

He put out his light and stretched himself between the warm blankets of his bed, knowing that he was about to begin again the fight he dreaded--the struggle that always came at night with the demon that lived within him, the demon that was feeding on his life as a leech feeds on blood, the demon that was killing him inch by inch. Nerves altogether unstrung! Nerves frayed and broken until they were bleeding!

Worry--emptiness of heart and soul--a world turned black! And all because of _her_--the golden G.o.ddess who had laughed at him in her room, whose laughter would never die out of his ears. He gritted his teeth; his hands clenched under his blankets; a surge of anger swept through him--for an instant it was almost hatred. Was it possible that she--that woman who had been his wife--could chain him now, enslave his thoughts, fill his mind, his brain, his body, _after what had happened?_ Why was it that he could not rise up and laugh and shrug his shoulders, and thank G.o.d that, after all, there had been no children? Why couldn't he do that? _Why? Why?_

A long time afterward he seemed to be asking that question. He seemed to be crying it out aloud, over and over again, in a strange and mysterious wilderness; and at last he seemed to be very near to a girl who was standing on a rock waiting for him; a girl who bent toward him like a wonderful flower, her arms reaching out, her lips parted, her eyes shining through the glory of her windswept hair as she listened to his cry of "_Why? Why?_"

He slept. It was a deep, cool sleep; a slumber beside a shadowed pool, with the wind whispering gently in strange tree tops, and water rippling softly in a strange stream.

CHAPTER VI

Sunshine followed storm. The winter sun was cresting the tree tops when Th.o.r.eau got out of his bed to build a fire in the big stove. It was nine o'clock, and bitterly cold. The frost lay thick upon the windows, with the sun staining it like the silver and gold of old cathedral gla.s.s, and as the fox breeder opened the cabin door to look at his thermometer he heard the snap and crack of that cold in the trees outside, and in the timbers of the log walls. He always looked at the thermometer before he built his fire--a fixed habit in him; he wanted to know, first of all, whether it had been a good night for his foxes, and whether it had been too cold for the furred creatures of the forest to travel. Fifty degrees below zero was bad for fisher and marten and lynx; on such nights they preferred the warmth of snug holes and deep windfalls to full stomachs, and his traps were usually empty. This morning it was forty-seven degrees below zero. Cold enough! He turned, closed the door, shivered.

Then he stopped halfway to the stove, and stared.

Last night, or rather in that black part of the early day when they had gone to bed, Father Roland had warned him to make no noise in the morning; that they would let David sleep until noon; that he was sick, worn out, and needed rest. And there he stood now in the doorway of his room, even before the fire was started--looking five years younger than he looked last night, nodding cheerfully.

Th.o.r.eau grinned.

"_Boo-jou, m'sieu_," he said in his Cree-French. "My order was to make no noise and to let you sleep," and he nodded toward the Missioner's room.

"The sun woke me," said David. "Come here. I want you to see it!"

Th.o.r.eau went and stood beside him, and David pointed to the one window of his room, which faced the rising sun. The window was covered with frost, and the frost as they looked at it was like a golden fire.

"I think that was what woke me," he said. "At least my eyes were on it when I opened them. It is wonderful!"

"It is very cold, and the frost is thick," said Th.o.r.eau. "It will go quickly after I have built a fire, m'sieu. And then you will see the sun--the real sun."

David watched him as he built the fire. The first crackling of it sent a comfort through him. He had slept well, so soundly that not once had he roused himself during his six hours in bed. It was the first time he had slept like that in months. His blood tingled with a new warmth. He had no headache. There was not that dull pain behind his eyes. He breathed more easily--the air pa.s.sed like a tonic into his lungs. It was as if those wonderful hours of sleep had wrested some deadly obstruction out of his veins. The fire crackled. It roared up the big chimney. The jack-pine knots, heavy with pitch, gave to the top of the stove a rosy glow. Th.o.r.eau stuffed more fuel into the blazing firepot, and the glow spread cheerfully, and with the warmth that was filling the cabin there mingled the sweet scent of the pine-pitch and burning balsam. David rubbed his hands. He was rubbing them when Marie came into the room, plaiting the second of her two great ropes of shining black hair. He nodded. Marie smiled, showing her white teeth, her dark eyes clear as a fawn's. He felt within him a strange rejoicing--for Th.o.r.eau. Th.o.r.eau was a lucky man. He could see proof of it in the Cree woman's face. Both were lucky. They were happy--a man and woman together, as things should be.

Th.o.r.eau had broken the ice in a pail and now he filled the wash-basin for him. Ice water for his morning ablution was a new thing for David.

But he plunged his face into it recklessly. Little particles of ice p.r.i.c.ked his skin, and the chill of the water seemed to sink into his vitals. It was a sudden change from water as hot as he could stand--to this. His teeth clicked as he wiped himself on the burlap towelling.

Marie used the basin next, and then Th.o.r.eau. When Marie had dried her face he noted the old-rose flush in her cheeks, the fire of rich, red blood glowing under her dark skin. Th.o.r.eau himself blubbered and spouted in his ice-water bath like a joyous porpoise, and he rubbed himself on the burlap until the two apple-red spots above his beard shone like the glow that had spread over the top of the stove. David found himself noticing these things--very small things though they were; he discovered himself taking a sudden and curious interest in events and things of no importance at all, even in the quick, deft slash of the Frenchman's long knife as he cut up the huge whitefish that was to be their breakfast. He watched Marie as she wallowed the thick slices in yellow corn-meal, and listened to the first hissing sputter of them as they were dropped into the hot grease of the skillet. And the odour of the fish, taken only yesterday from the net which Th.o.r.eau kept in the frozen lake, made him hungry. This was unusual. It was unexpected as other things that had happened. It puzzled him.

He returned to his room, with a suspicion in his mind that he should put on a collar and tie, and his coat. He changed his mind when he saw the photograph in its newspaper wrapping on the table. In another moment it was in his hands. Now, with day in the room, the sun shining, he expected to see a change. But there was no change in her; she was there, as he had left her last night; the question was in her eyes, unspoken words still on her lips. Then, suddenly, it swept upon him where he had been in those first hours of peaceful slumber that had come to him--beside a quiet, dark pool--gently whispering forests about him--an angel standing close to him, on a rock, shrouded in her hair--watching over him. A thrill pa.s.sed through him. Was it possible?... He did not finish the question. He could not bring himself to ask whether this picture--some strange spirit it might possess--had reached out to him, quieted him, made him sleep, brought him dreams that were like a healing medicine. And yet....

He remembered that in one of his leather bags there was a magnifying gla.s.s, and he a.s.sured himself that he was merely curious--most casually curious--as he hunted it out from among his belongings and scanned the almost illegible writing on the back of the cardboard mount. He made out the date quite easily now, impressed in the cardboard by the point of a pencil. It was only a little more than a year old. It was unaccountable why this discovery should affect him as it did. He made no effort to measure or sound the satisfaction it gave him--this knowledge that the girl had stood so recently on that rock beside the pool. He was beginning to personalize her unconsciously, beginning to think of her mentally as the Girl. She was a bit friendly. With her looking at him like that he did not feel quite so alone with himself. And there could not be much of a change in her since that yesterday of a year ago, when some one had startled her there.

It was Father Roland's voice that made him wrap up the picture again, this time not in its old covering, but in a silk handkerchief which he had pawed out of his bag, and which he dropped back again, and locked in. Th.o.r.eau was telling the Missioner about David's early rising when the latter reappeared. They shook hands, and the Missioner, looking David keenly in the eyes, saw the change in him.

"No need to tell me you had a good night!" he exclaimed.

"Splendid," affirmed David.

The window was blazing with the golden sun now; it shot through where the frost was giving way, and a ray of it fell like a fiery shaft on Marie's glossy head as she bent over the table. Father Roland pointed to the window with one hand on David's arm.

"Wait until you get out into _that_," he said. "This is just a beginning, David--just a beginning!"

They sat down to breakfast, fish and coffee, bread and potatoes--and beans. It was almost finished when David split open his third piece of fish, white as snow under its crisp brown, and asked quite casually:

"Did you ever hear of the Stikine River, Father?"