FullReads

McGill was plucking feebly at the end of his envelope, tearing off tiny bits, dropping the fragments at his feet. Now and then he stopped, and when he did he shuddered.

“Buck up, old pal,” I said.

Then, recognizing me, he thrust the missive into my hand.

“Tell me–for God’s sake–tell me quick. I can’t–No, no–wait! Not yet. Don’t tell me. I’ll know from your face. They said she couldn’t live–“

But she had, and he watched me so fiercely that when the light came into my face he snatched the letter from me like a madman.

“Ah-h! Give it to me! Give it to me! I knew it! I told you they couldn’t fool me. No, sir. I felt all the time she’d make it. Why, I knew it in my marrow!”

“What’s the date?” I inquired.

“September thirtieth,” he said. Then, as he realized how old it was, he began to worry again.

“Why didn’t they write later? They must know I’ll eat my heart out. Suppose she’s had a relapse. That’s it. They wrote too soon, and now they don’t dare tell me. She–got worse–died–months ago, and they’re afraid to let me know.”

“Stop it,” I said, and reasoned sanity back into him.

Monty had taken his mail and run off like a puppy to feast in quiet, so I went over to Eckert’s and had a drink.

Sam winked at me as I came in. A man was reading from a letter.

“Go on. I’m interested,” said the proprietor.

The fellow was getting full pretty fast and was down to the garrulous stage, but he began again:

“DEAR HUSBAND,–I am sorry to hear that you have been so unfortunate, but don’t get discouraged. I know you will make a good miner if you stick to it long enough. Don’t worry about me. I have rented the front room to a very nice man for fifteen dollars a week. The papers here are full of a gold strike in Siberia, just across Bering Sea from where you are. If you don’t find something during the next two years, why not try it over there for a couple?”

“That’s what I call a persevering woman,” said Eckert, solemnly.

“She’s a business woman, too,” said the husband. “All I ever got for that room was seven-fifty a week.”

It seems I’d missed Montague at the store, but when the crowd came out Ollie Marceau found him away in at the back, having gone there to be alone with his letters. She saw the utter abandon and grief in his pose, and the tears came to her eyes. Impulsively she went up and laid her hand on his bowed head. She had followed the frontier enough to know the signs.

“Oh, Mr. Prosser,” she said, “I’m so sorry! Is it the little mother?”

“Yes,” he answered, without moving.

“Not–not–” she hesitated.

“I don’t know. The letters are up to the middle of December, and she was very sick.”

Then, with the quick sentiment of her kind, the girl spoke to him, forgetting herself, her life, his prejudice, everything except the lonely little gray woman off there who had waited and longed just as such another had waited and longed for her, and, inasmuch as Ollie had suffered before as this boy suffered now, in her words there was a sweet sympathy and a perfect understanding.

It was very fine, I think, coming so from her, and when the first shock had passed over he felt that here, among all these rugged men, there was no one to give him the comfort he craved except this child of the dance-halls. Compassion and sympathy he could get from any of us, but he was a boy and this was his first grief, so he yearned for something more, something subtler, perhaps the delicate comprehension of a woman. At any rate, he wouldn’t let her leave him, and the tender-hearted lass poured out all the best her warm nature afforded.