The Courage of Marge ODoone | Page 2

had not looked up
when the train-man thrust in his head. They seemed, as one leaned over
toward the other, wholly oblivious of the storm.
It was the older man who bent forward. He was about fifty. The hand
that rested for a moment on David Raine's knee was red and knotted. It
was the hand of a man who had lived his life in struggling with the
wilderness. And the face, too, was of such a man; a face coloured and
toughened by the tannin of wind and blizzard and hot northern sun,
with eyes cobwebbed about by a myriad of fine lines that spoke of
years spent under the strain of those things. He was not a large man. He
was shorter than David Raine. There was a slight droop to his shoulders.
Yet about him there was a strength, a suppressed energy ready to act, a
zestful eagerness for life and its daily mysteries which the other and
younger man did not possess. Throughout many thousands of square
miles of the great northern wilderness this older man was known as
Father Roland, the Missioner.
His companion was not more than thirty-eight. Perhaps he was a year
or two younger. It may be that the wailing of the wind outside, the
strange voices that were in it and the chilling gloom of their little
compartment made of him a more striking contrast to Father Roland
than he would have been under other conditions. His eyes were a clear
and steady gray as they met Father Roland's. They were eyes that one
could not easily forget. Except for his eyes he was like a man who had
been sick, and was still sick. The Missioner had made his own guess.
And now, with his hand on the other's knee, he said:

"And you say--that you are afraid--for this friend of yours?"
David Raine nodded his head. Lines deepened a little about his mouth.
"Yes, I am afraid." For a moment he turned to the night. A fiercer
volley of the little snow demons beat against the window, as though his
pale face just beyond their reach stirred them to greater fury. "I have a
most disturbing inclination to worry about him," he added, and
shrugged his shoulders slightly.
He faced Father Roland again.
"Did you ever hear of a man losing himself?" he asked. "I don't mean in
the woods, or in a desert, or by going mad. I mean in the other
way--heart, body, soul; losing one's grip, you might call it, until there
was no earth to stand on. Did you?"
"Yes--many years ago--I knew of a man who lost himself in that way,"
replied the Missioner, straightening in his seat. "But he found himself
again. And this friend of yours? I am interested. This is the first time in
three years that I have been down to the edge of civilization, and what
you have to tell will be different--vastly different from what I know. If
you are betraying nothing would you mind telling me his story?"
"It is not a pleasant story," warned the younger man, "and on such a
night as this----"
"It may be that one can see more clearly into the depths of misfortune
and tragedy," interrupted the Missioner quietly.
A faint flush rose into David Raine's pale face. There was something of
nervous eagerness in the clasp of his fingers upon his knees.
"Of course, there is the woman," he said.
"Yes--of course--the woman."
"Sometimes I haven't been quite sure whether this man worshipped the
woman or the woman's beauty," David went on, with a strange glow in

his eyes. "He loved beauty. And this woman was beautiful, almost too
beautiful for the good of one's soul, I guess. And he must have loved
her, for when she went out of his life it was as if he had sunk into a
black pit out of which he could never rise. I have asked myself often if
he would have loved her if she had been less beautiful--even quite plain,
and I have answered myself as he answered that question, in the
affirmative. It was born in him to worship wherever he loved at all. Her
beauty made a certain sort of completeness for him. He treasured that.
He was proud of it. He counted himself the richest man in the world
because he possessed it. But deep under his worship of her beauty he
loved her. I am more and more sure of that, and I am equally sure that
time will prove it--that he will never rise again with his old hope and
faith out of that black pit into which he sank when he came face to face
with the realization that there were forces in life--in nature perhaps,
more