It was a curious mating—the light-haired, moon-faced, slow-witted Saxon, and the dark, keen Jew with his intellectual face and his deep-burning eyes in which glowed the misery and mystery of the ages.
John Marvel soon became well known; for he was one of the slowest men in the college. With his amusing awkwardness, he would have become a butt except for his imperturbable good-humor. As it was, he was for a time a sort of object of ridicule to many of us—myself among the number—and we had many laughs at him. He would disappear on Saturday night and not turn up again till Monday morning, dusty and disheveled. And many jests were made at his expense. One said that Marvel was practising preaching in the mountains with a view to becoming a second Demosthenes; another suggested that, if so, the mountains would probably get up and run into the sea.
When, however, it was discovered later that he had a Sunday-school in the mountains, and walked twelve miles out and twelve miles back, most of the gibers, except the inveterate humorists like myself, were silent.
This fact came out by chance. Marvel disappeared from college one day and remained away for two or three weeks. Wolffert either could not or would not give any account of him. When Marvel returned, he looked worn and ill, as if he had been starving, and almost immediately he was taken ill and went to the infirmary with a case of fever. Here he was so ill that the doctors quarantined him and no one saw him except the nurse—old Mrs. Denny, a wrinkled and bald-headed, old, fat woman, something between a lightwood knot and an angel—and Wolffert.
Wolffert moved down and took up his quarters in the infirmary—it was suggested, with a view to converting Marvel to Judaism—and here he stayed. The nursing never appeared to make any difference in Wolffert's preparation for his classes; for when he came back he still stood easily first. But poor Marvel never caught up again, and was even more hopelessly lost in the befogged region at the bottom of the class than ever before. When called on to recite, his brow would pucker and he would perspire and stammer until the class would be in ill-suppressed convulsions, all the more enjoyable because of Leo Wolffert's agonizing over his wretchedness. Then Marvel, excused by the professor, would sit down and mop his brow and beam quite as if he had made a wonderful performance (which indeed, he had), while Wolffert's thin face would grow whiter, his nostrils quiver, and his deep eyes burn like coals.
One day a spare, rusty man with a frowzy beard, and a lank, stooping woman strolled into the college grounds, and after wandering around aimlessly for a time, asked for Mr. Marvel. Each of them carried a basket. They were directed to his room and remained with him some time, and when they left, he walked some distance with them.
It was at first rumored and then generally reported that they were Marvel's father and mother. It became known later that they were a couple of poor mountaineers named Shiflett, whose child John Marvel had nursed when it had the fever. They had just learned of his illness and had come down to bring him some chickens and other things which they thought he might need.
This incident, with the knowledge of Marvel's devotion, made some impression on us, and gained for Marvel, and incidentally for Wolffert, some sort of respect.