The Courage of Marge O'Doone by James Oliver Curwood (10 best books of all time TXT) 📕

had kept pace with his physical improvement, and if at the end of these ten days Father Roland had spoken of the woman who had betrayed him--the woman who had been his wife--he would have turned the key on that subject as decisively as the Missioner had banned further conversation or conjecture about Tavish. This was, perhaps, the best evidence that he had cut out the cancer in his breast. The Golden Goddess, whom he had thought an angel, he now saw stripped of her glory. If she had repented in that room, if she had betrayed fear even, a single emotion of mental agony, he would not have felt so sure of himself. But she had laughed. She was, like Tavish, a devil. He thought of her beauty now as that of a poisonous flower. He had unwittingly touched such a flower once, a flower of wonderful waxen loveliness, and it had produced a pustular eruption on his hand. She was like that. Poisonous. Treacherous. A creature with as little soul as that flower had perfume. It was this change in him, in his conception and his memory of her, that he would have given much to have Father Roland understand.
During this period of his own transformation he had observed a curious change in Father Roland. At times, after leaving Tavish's cabin, the Little Missioner seemed struggling under the weight of a deep and gloomy oppression. Once or twice, in the firelight, it had looked almost like sickness, and David had seen his face grow wan and old. Always after these fits of dejection there would follow a reaction, and for hours the Missioner would be like one upon whom had fallen a new and sudden happiness. As day added itself to day, and night to night, the periods of depression became shorter and less frequent, and at last Father Roland emerged from them altogether, as though he had been fighting a great fight, and had won. There was a new lustre in his eyes. David wondered whether it was a trick of his imagination that made him think the lines in the Missioner's face were not so deep, that he stood straighter, and that there was at times a deep and vibrant note in his voice which he had not heard before.
During these days David was trying hard to make himself believe that no reasonable combination of circumstances could have associated Tavish with the girl whose picture he kept in the breast pocket of his coat. He succeeded in a way. He tried also to dissociate the face in the picture from a living personality. In this he failed. More and more the picture became a living thing for him. He found a great comfort in his possession of it. He made up his mind that he would keep it, and that its sweet face, always on the point of speaking to him, should go with him wherever he went, guiding him in a way--a companion. He found that, in hours when the darkness and the emptiness of his life oppressed him, the face gave him new hope, and he saw new light. He ceased to think of it as a picture, and one night, speaking half aloud, he called her Little Sister. She seemed nearer to him after that. Unconsciously his hand learned the habit of going to his breast pocket when they were travelling, to make sure that she was there. He would have suffered physical torment before he would have confided all this to any living soul, but the secret thought that was growing more and more in his heart he told to Baree. The dog came into their camps now, but not until the Missioner and Mukoki had gone to bed. He would cringe down near David's feet, lying there motionless, oblivious of the other dogs and showing no inclination to disturb them. He was there on the tenth night, looking steadily at David with his two bloodshot eyes, wondering what it was that his master held in his hands. From the lips and eyes of the Girl, trembling and aglow in the firelight, David looked at Baree. In the bloodshot eyes he saw the immeasurable faith of an adoring slave. He knew that Baree would never leave him. And the Girl, looking at him as steadily as Baree, would never leave him. There was a tremendous thrill in the thought. He leaned over the dog, and with a tremulous stir in his voice, he whispered:
"Some day, boy, we may go to her."
Baree shivered with joy. David's voice, whispering to him in that way, was like a caress, and he whined softly as he crept an inch or two nearer to his master's feet.
That night Father Roland was restless. Hours later, when he was lying snug and warm in his own blankets, David heard him get up, and watched him as he scraped together the burned embers of the fire and added fresh fuel to them. The flap of the tent was back a little, so that he could see plainly. It could not have been later than midnight. The Missioner was fully dressed, and as the fire burned brighter David could see the ruddy glow of his face, and it struck him that it looked singularly boyish in the flame-glow. He did not guess what was keeping the Missioner awake until a little later he heard him among the dogs, and his voice came to him, low and exultingly, and as boyish as his face had seemed: "We'll be home to-morrow, boys--_home_!" That word--home--sounded oddly enough to David up here three hundred miles from civilization. He fancied that he heard the dogs shuffling in the snow, and the satisfied rasping of their master's hands.
Father Roland did not return into the tent again that night. David fell asleep, but was roused for breakfast at three o'clock, and they were away before it was yet light. Through the morning darkness Mukoki led the way as unerringly as a fox, for he was now on his own ground. As dawn came, with a promise of sun, David wondered in a whimsical sort of way whether his companions, both dogs and men, were going mad. He had not as yet experienced the joy and excitement of a northern homecoming, nor had he dreamed that it was possible for Mukoki's leathern face to break into wild jubilation. As the first rays of the sun shot over the forests, he began, all at once, to sing, in a low, chanting voice that grew steadily louder; and as he sang he kept time in a curious way with his hands. He did not slacken his pace, but kept steadily on, and suddenly the Little Missioner joined him in a voice that rang out like the blare of a bugle. To David's ears there was something familiar in that song as it rose wildly on the morning air.
"Pa sho ke non ze koon,
Ta ba nin ga,
Ah no go suh nuh guk,
Na quash kuh mon;
Na guh mo yah nin koo,
Pa sho ke non ze koon,
Pa sho ke non ze koon,
Ta ba nin go."
"What is it?" he asked, when Father Roland dropped back to his side, smiling and breathing deeply. "It sounds like a Chinese puzzle, and yet ..."
The Missioner laughed. Mukoki had ended a second verse.
"Twenty years ago, when I first knew Mukoki, he would chant nothing but Indian legends to the beat of a tom-tom," he explained. "Since I've had him he has developed a passion for 'mission singing'--for hymns. That was 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.'"
Mukoki, gathering wind, had begun again.
"That's his favourite," explained Father Roland. "At times, when he is alone, he will chant it by the hour. He is delighted when I join in with him. It's 'From Greenland's Icy Mountains.'"
"Ke wa de noong a yah jig,
Kuh ya 'gewh wah bun oong,
E gewh an duh nuh ke jig,
E we de ke zhah tag,
Kuh ya puh duh ke woo waud
Palm e nuh sah wunzh eeg,
Ke nun doo me goo nah nig
Che shuh wa ne mung wah."
At first David had felt a slight desire to laugh at the Cree's odd chanting and the grotesque movement of his hands and arms, like two pump handles in slow and rhythmic action, as he kept time. This desire did not come to him again during the day. He remembered, long years ago, hearing his mother sing those old hymns in his boyhood home. He could see the ancient melodeon with its yellow keys, and the ragged hymn book his mother had prized next to her Bible; and he could hear again her sweet, quavering voice sing those gentle songs, like unforgettable benedictions--the same songs that Mukoki and the Missioner were chanting now, up here, a thousand miles away. That was a long time ago--a very, very long time ago. She had been dead many years. And he--he must be growing old. Thirty-eight! And he was nine then, with slender legs and tousled hair, and a worship for his mother that had mellowed and perhaps saddened his whole life. It was a long time ago. But the songs had lived. They must be known over the whole world--those songs his mother used to sing. He began to join in where he could catch the tunes, and his voice sounded strange and broken and unreal to him, for it was a long time since those boyhood days, and he had not lifted it in song since he had sung then--with his mother.
* * * * *


It was growing dusk when they came to the Missioner's home on God's Lake. It was almost a chateau, David thought when he first saw it, built of massive logs. Beyond it there was a smaller building, also built of logs, and toward this Mukoki hurried with the dogs and the sledge. He heard the welcoming cries of Mukoki's family and the excited barking of dogs as he followed Father Roland into the big cabin. It was lighted, and warm. Evidently some one had been keeping it in readiness for the Missioner's return. They entered into a big room, and in his first glance David saw three doors leading from this room: two of them were open, the third was closed. There was something very like a sobbing note in Father Roland's voice as he opened his arms wide, and said to David:
"Home, David--your home!"