Joyce of the North Woods
by Harriet T. Comstock · English · Gutenberg #19225 · 505,610 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Joyce of the North Woods
Author: Harriet T. Comstock
Illustrator: John Harmon Cassel
Release date: September 9, 2006 [eBook #19225]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19225
Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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[Illustration: "YOU'VE GOT THE WINNING CARDS, MY GIRL ... IT'S ALL IN
THE PLAYING NOW"]
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JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS
BY
HARRIET T. COMSTOCK
AUTHOR OF JANET OF THE DUNES, TOWER AND THRONE, THE QUEEN'S HOSTAGE, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN CASSEL
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
LANGUAGES INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
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TO
EVELINA HEMINWAY SMITH
"SISTER--FRIEND"
Accept the dedication of this book of mine as a very slight recognition
of your encouragement in my work; your faith in me.
To you I first read the story; from you I received my first approval; I
believe its chances will be brighter in the book-world if your name and
good-will go with it.
HARRIET T. COMSTOCK
Flatbush--Brooklyn, N. Y. February, 1910
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I 3
CHAPTER II 24
CHAPTER III 46
CHAPTER IV 65
CHAPTER V 78
CHAPTER VI 98
CHAPTER VII 111
CHAPTER VIII 134
CHAPTER IX 154
CHAPTER X 177
CHAPTER XI 198
CHAPTER XII 212
CHAPTER XIII 231
CHAPTER XIV 251
CHAPTER XV 273
CHAPTER XVI 301
CHAPTER XVII 312
CHAPTER XVIII 334
CHAPTER XIX 350
CHAPTER XX 369
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PREFATORY NOTE
"Love is the golden bead in the bottom of the crucible." And the
crucible was St. Angé.
* * * * *
Fifty years before this story began, St. Angé was a lumber camp; the
first gash in that part of the great Solitude to the north, which lay
across Beacon Hill, three miles from Hillcrest.
When the splendid lumber had been felled within a prescribed limit,
Industry took another leap, left St. Angé scarred and blighted, with a
fringe of forest north and south, and struck camps farther back and
nearer Canada.
Then Nature began to heal the stricken heart of the Solitude. A second
growth of lovely tree and bush sprang to the call, and the only
reminders of the camp were the absences of the men during the logging
season, and the roaring and rushing of the river through Long Meadow
every spring, with its burden of logs from the distant camps.
In the beginning St. Angé had had her aspirations. A futile highway had
been constructed, for no other purpose apparently, than to connect the
north and south forests. A little church had been built--there had
never been any regular service held in it--and a small school-house
which promptly degenerated into the Black Cat Tavern, General Store, and
Post Office. A few modest houses met the highway face to face; a few
more turned their backs upon it and were content with an outlook across
Long Meadow and toward Beacon Hill, beyond which lay the village of
Hillcrest which grew in importance as St. Angé degenerated. There were
scattered houses among the clumps of maple and pine growths, and there
was a forlorn railroad station before which a rickety, single track
branch ended. Sometime during the day a train came in, and after an
uncertain period it departed; it was the only link with the outer world
that St. Angé had except what came by way of Hillcrest.
Toward Hillcrest, as the years went on, there grew in St. Angé a feeling
of envy and distrust. Its prosperity and decency were a reflection, its
very emphatic regard for law and order a menace and burden. St. Angéans
sent their aspiring youths to the Hillcrest school--it was never an
alarming constituency--it was cheaper to do that than to support a
school of their own. There were emergencies when the Hillcrest doctor
and minister were in demand, so it behooved St. Angé to keep up a
partial show of friendliness, but bitterly did it resent the
interference of Hillcrest justice during that season immediately
following the enforced sobriety and isolation of the lumber camp.
Were men not to have some compensation for the hardships of the
backwoods?
And just at that point in the argument Beacon Hill received its name and
significance. From its top a watcher could view the road leading to
Hillcrest, and by a well-directed signal give warning to any chance
wrongdoer on the St. Angé side. Many a culprit had thus been aided in
his plans of escape before Justice, striding over the western hill, bore
down upon the town.
Beautiful, unappreciated St. Angé! The trees grew, and the scar was
healed. The soft, pine-laden breezes touched with heavenly fragrance the
dull-faced women, the pathetic children, and the unambitious men.
Everything was run down and apparently doomed, until one day the endless
chain which encompasses the world, in its turning dropped the Golden
Bead of Love into St. Angé! Down deep it sank to the bottom of the
crucible. Jude Lauzoon was blinded by it and stung to life; Joyce
Birkdale through its power came into the heritage of her soul. Jock
Filmer by its magic force was shorn of his poor shield and left naked
and unprotected for Fate's crudest darts. John Gaston, working out his
salvation in his shack hidden among the pines, was burnt by the divining
rays that penetrated to his secret place and spared him not. And then,
when things were at their tensest, Ralph Drew came and tuned the
discordant notes into sweet harmony. St. Angé became in time a home for
many whom despair had marked for its own; a Sanctuary for devoted
service.
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ILLUSTRATIONS
"You've got the winning cards, my girl ... It's all in the
playing now" Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"Once I went so far as to go up there with my gun" 76
That pictured Mother and Child were moulding Joyce's character 114
Presently he opened his eyes ... and there sat the girl of
his dreams near him 188
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JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS
CHAPTER I
The man lying flat on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head
with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his
folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the stone and
moss.
The midsummer afternoon was sunny and hot, and the fussy little river
rambling through the Long Meadow was talking in its sleep.
Lazily it wound around young maples, and ferny groups--it would crush
them by and by, poor trusting things--then it would stumble against a
rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had
learned at its mother's breast, far up in the North Woods.
"I'm here! here! here! I'll be ready by and by, by, by, by." Then on
again, a little faster perhaps, but still dreamily. Children's laughter
sounded far below; a slouching man or woman making for the Black Cat
bent on business or pleasure, passed now and then; all else was still
and seemingly asleep.
Again Jude raised his head and gave that quick glance around.
Jude was awake at last. Little Billy Falstar had roused him two days
before and set the world in a jangle. The child's impish words had
struck the scales from Jude's eyes, and the blinding light made him
shrink and suffer.
"Him and her," the boy had whispered, hugging his bruised and dirty
knees as he squatted by Jude's door; "him and her is sparking some."
Then he laughed the freakish laugh of mischief.
Jude was polishing the gun which John Gaston had given him a year
before, and had trained him to use until he was second only to Gaston
himself for marksmanship. "Him and her--who?" he asked, raising his dull
eyes to Billy's tormenting face.
"Joyce and Mr. Gaston. Him and her is beaux, I reckon. She goes to his
shack; I listened outside the winder once--he reads to her and tells her
things. They walks in the Long Medder, too, and once I saw him kiss
her."
Again the teasing laugh that set every nerve tingling.
Then it was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his
canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against
brain and heart.
He stared at Billy as if the boy had given him a physical blow--then he
looked beyond him at the woods, the sky, the highway and the dejected
houses--nothing was familiar! They all seemed alive and alert. Unseen
happenings were going on--he must understand.
"You saw--him--kiss--her?" The gun fell limply across the man's knees.
"Yep," Billy whipped his dramatic sense into action. He arose and strode
before Jude with Gaston's own manner. "This way. His arms out, and him
a-laughing like, and Joyce she kinder run inter his arms and he held
her, like this--." The close embrace of the childish gesture seemed to
strangle Jude, and he gave a muffled cry. This acted like a round of
applause upon Billy.
"Yep, and he kept on hugging and kissing her like this--" Billy went
into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity,
for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand
trembling with new-born emotion.
"Take that, you impish brat," he had said, "and more like it if you
stand there another minute with your lying capers."
"They ain't lies," wailed Billy, edging away and nursing his smarting
face; "he did! he did! It was in his shack--I saw 'em!"
"Get out," yelled Jude, glowering darkly; "and you tell that to any one
else and," he came nearer to the shrinking child, "I swear I'll choke
yer till yer can't speak." So changed was Jude that Billy trembled
before him.
"I won't," he whispered, "I swear I won't, Jude; don't--don't hit me
again; I won't tell."
He was gone, but the old Jude was gone also. The new man finished the
gun cleaning, his breath coming hard and fast meanwhile, and then,
taking the gun with him, he went into the deep woods on the northern
edge of the village.
All the rest of the day he watched Gaston's shack from a distance; as
the darkness drew on he crept closer.
Joyce did not come near the place, and Gaston himself only returned when
the night was well advanced.
Jude watched him light his lamp, and prepare his supper. Watched him,
later, go into the inner room, and then he crept close to the broad
window to see what Gaston was doing in there where no foot but Gaston's
own, so it was said, ever entered. As he had raised his eyes to the
level of the casement, Gaston's calm gaze met his with a laugh in it.
"Hello, Jude," the voice was unshaken; "playing Indian Brave? Got your
gun, too? What you after, big game or--what?" Jude rose to his feet. He
was trembling violently. Gaston watched him closely. "Come in?" he asked
presently.
"No. I was only passing--thought I would look in. I'm going now."
"Hold on there, Jude, what's up?" Gaston leaned from the window. "Are
you alone?"
"Yes. There ain't anything the matter."
"All right." Gaston looked puzzled. "Good night." He watched Jude until
he was lost in the shadows, then he drew the heavy wooden shutters
close, bolted the door and placed his pistol near at hand.
All the next day Jude haunted the vicinity of Joyce Birkdale's home, but
he kept hidden, for Joyce was safe within doors and a drizzly rain was
falling. Night again found him on guard; and now he lay on Beacon Hill
in the hot sun, napping by snatches (for he was woefully tired) and
scanning the Long Meadow, with his feverish eyes, in between times.
In his dreams the scene Billy Falstar had so luridly described was
enacted again and again, until he felt as if he, Jude, had been the
onlooker.
The people whom he had taken for granted in the past now assumed new
meaning and importance. Gaston had slipped in among them three years
before, and after the first few months of observation he had aroused no
interest. He had minded his business, paid his way, taken his turn in
camp at greenhorn jobs, accounted for his presence on the ground of
seeking health, and that was all. Life went on as usual, sluggishly and
dully--but on.
Jude had, before Billy's illumination, been thinking that after the next
logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings--the
cabin, his dog and gun. The idea had not roused him much, but it had
been a pleasurable conclusion to arrive at; and now? Every nerve was
aching and the boy's heart was thumping heavily. Again he dropped his
head, and he cursed everything his thought touched upon--even the girl
he meant, in some way, still to have.
One, two, three hours passed. Jude's hilltop was touched by the sun, but
in the meadow the purpling shadows were gathering slowly.
Suddenly Jude sprang up--something was happening down there below.
Something in him had warned him.
From the southern edge of the meadow a tall man was swinging along with
easy strides. He carried his broad-brimmed hat in his right hand and
waved it as if in greeting. From the opposite direction a girl was
approaching. She wore a blue-checked gown, and her pale hair seemed to
shine in the dimming light. She wore no hat, and she walked with the
quick freedom of a child who longed to reach something precious.
Midway of the meadow the girl and man met. He stretched out his arms,
and they closed about the slim form.
Then he bent his head over the fair one on his breast--but he did not
kiss it! Jude was burning and palpitating. He strained his hearing,
forgetting time and space. They were talking, and he would never know
what they said.
Presently the girl slipped from the enfolding arms, and, clinging to the
man's hands, looked up into his face. Sometimes she bowed her head, and
once she passed her hand across her eyes as if to wipe away tears. Then
the man drew her close again. He raised the face that was crushed
against his shoulder; he kissed the brow, the eyes, the chin--and then
the lips.
Something blinded Jude. Something thick and hot like blood, and when he
could see again, the two had parted. The man stood with bared head
watching the slim, drooping figure as it retraced its steps with never a
backward turn. When it was gone he replaced his hat and took his
way--this time, toward the Black Cat.
Jude stood alone on his hilltop and watched the lights spring to life in
cottage and tavern. The stars twinkled above him in the calm evening
gloaming. The little river trilled a vesper hymn as it felt its way
along the dark rocky path--and then tears came to Jude's relief,
impotent, boyish, weak tears, such tears as he had not shed since his
father and mother lay dead, and in childish fright and sorrow he had not
known what to do next. But now, as then, he pulled himself together and
set his teeth grimly.
He did the wisest thing he could have done. He went down the hill and
strode toward the Birkdale house.
But he did not walk alone. Almost forgotten memories rose sharply and
kept him company as he pushed on to meet his Fate.
Womankind in St. Angé was monotonous. There was a shading of
individuality in the girls and newly-wed women, but it faded soon into
the dull drab that seemed the only possible wearing-colour of the place.
Occasionally, though, the sameness had been relieved by a vivid touch,
but only for a short hour. The Fate who snips the threads, had
invariably clipped such colouring from the St. Angé design, and tossed
it aside as useless.
Jude remembered Marsena Riddall. What a woman she had been! What a
menace to man's rights and woman's position.
She had demanded, and got her husband's wages as he returned from camp.
She met him at the edge of the North Wood, and held him up, morally and
physically. That she kept a clean and respectable house; that her
children were well fed, clothed and cared for, had not counted to her
credit one jot among the powers that be. Her husband was not safe on the
man's side of the Black Cat screen. At ten o'clock, did Riddall brave
his chances to that hour, Marsena would march boldly into the arena and
claim her quarry. If a man rose to expostulate, Marsena was equal to him
with tongue and wit. Masculine superiority trembled during Marsena's
reign, which lasted five years; then Fate downed her.
Riddall was called away from his jailer by the command that even Marsena
could not defy, and she and her children faced life in a village where a
man was an absolute necessity unless there was money to take his place.
Jude grimly smiled as he recalled how the men and boys gave Marsena and
her brood a jeering send-off as the rattling train bore them away soon
after Riddall had been laid behind the disused church.
So while Marsena was still in Jude's memory, he came upon the deserted
and decaying cottage where once Lola Laval had sung her pretty
French-Canadian song.
It was odd how Lola came always with that song accompaniment. Try as he
might, even now, in this disordered moment, Jude heard the rippling
little lark song rise and fall in the fragrant darkness.
Jude, while but a boy, liked to draw water for Lola and run her errands
when young Pierre, the husband, was in camp. When the logging season was
over, Lola's cottage vied with the Black Cat in popularity. Pierre was a
noted card player, but, oh! Lola's song sounded above the slap of
pasteboard and the click of glasses. How pretty she was--and how the
women hated her! The men were eager to serve her. She had no need to
command; her desires seemed granted before she voiced them--poor, pretty
Lola!
Alouette, alouette, alouette, alouette.
Oh, alouette, chantez alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai.
Alouette, chantez alouette,
Alouette, je te plumerai.
Je te plumerai le bec,
Je te plumerai le bec
A le bec,
A le bec,
Alouette,
Alouette.
Lola had not lasted long; only nineteen she was when Pierre in his
jealousy struck the light from her eyes by a cruel blow, and the song
fled from her lips; then taking warning from a well-directed signal from
Beacon Hill, he had sought the Southern Solitude just before Justice, in
the form of the Hillcrest constable, came stalking into St. Angé.
But the song was not dead. Again and again a man or woman would revive
it and so it had become a part of the place. To Jude, now, it was
painfully evident as he again plunged forward; it followed him sweetly,
mockingly as it used to when Lola sent it after him to keep him from
being afraid as he left her for his lonely home; he, a neglected little
boy.
And now here was Joyce! With a stinging consciousness Jude realized this
new personality that heretofore he had not suspected. Even as jealous
anger spurred him on, a vague something he knew awaited him, calmed him
and made him cautious.
While he longed to grip and command the situation, he was aware of a
power in Joyce--a power he had unconsciously, perhaps, sensed
before--that bade him stand afar until she beckoned him.
As he neared her little house, before even he saw the lights, he heard a
song. It was that song! It met the rhythm in his own heated fancy--he
and Joyce seemed to be singing it together:
Alouette,
Alouette.
The light was streaming through open window and door. Inside Joyce was
preparing the evening meal, stepping lightly between table and stove as
she sang. Jude dared not enter unannounced, and his pride held him
silent.
What was he afraid of? Was he not he, and Joyce but a girl? Still he
kept his distance.
"Joyce!" The song within ceased, and the singer stepped to the open
doorway.
"That you, father?" No answer came. "Father?"
Then Jude came into the light.
"You, Jude? Come in; father's late. I never wait for him and I am as
hungry as a wolf."
Joyce had been one of the few girls who had gone to the Hillcrest school
as long as paternal authority permitted, and she showed her training.
"I ain't come for no friendly call," muttered Jude, slouching in and
dropping on to a wooden chair beside the table.
Joyce turned and looked at him, and the glow from the hanging lamp fell
upon her.
She was tall and slim, almost to leanness, but there were no awkward
angles and she was as graceful as a fawn.
Her skin was pale, clear and smooth, her eyes wide apart and so dark as
to be colourless, but of a wondrous softness. Her hair was of that shade
of gold that suggests silver, and in its curves, where the sun had not
bleached it, it was full of tints and tones.
"What have you come for?" she asked, as a child might have asked it,
wonderingly and interestedly.
"I want to ask you something, and I want the truth."
"Oh!" Joyce sat opposite, and let her clasped hands fall upon the table
laid out for the evening meal with the brown bowl of early asters set in
the centre. She forgot her hunger, and the steaming pot on the stove
bubbled unheeded.
"What you want to know, Jude? You look mighty upset."
Jude saw with his new, keen vision that she was startled and was
sparring for time. "It's about," he leaned forward, "it's about you
and--and him. I saw you in the Long Medder. I saw him hold your hands
and--and kiss you." The words smarted the dry, hot lips. "I--I want to
know what it means."
Jude was trembling visibly as he finished, but Joyce's silence, her
apparent discomfort, gave him a kind of assurance that upheld him in his
position.
The girl across the table had been awakened several weeks ago in
Gaston's little shack among the pines. Since then she had been living
vividly and fervently. The question with her, now, was how best to voice
herself--the self that Jude in no wise knew. Womanlike, she did not want
to plunge into what might prove an abyss. She wanted to take her own
way, but with a half-unconscious coquetry she desired to drag her
captives whither she went.
In the old stupid life before her womanhood was roused, Jude had held no
mean part in her girlish dreams. He was the best of the St. Angé boyhood
and Joyce had an instinctive relish for the best wherever she saw it.
Whatever the future held she was not inclined to thrust Jude from it. In
success or failure she would rather have him with her than against her.
Not that she feared him--she had boundless belief in herself--but,
hearts to the woman, scalps to the savage, are trophies not to be
despised.
"I--I want to know what it means." Again Jude spoke, and this time a
tone of command rang through the words.
The corners of Joyce's mouth twitched--she had a wonderfully expressive
mouth. Suddenly she raised her eyes. They did not hold the expression
Jude might have expected from her disturbed silence. His growing courage
took a step back, but his passion rushed forward proportionately.
The witch-light danced in the steady glance she turned upon him; she
threw her head back and her slim throat showed white and smooth in the
lamp's glow.
"Suppose he did hold my hand and--and kiss me, Jude Lauzoon, you'd like
to do the same yourself, now wouldn't you?"
She was ignorantly testing her weak, woman's weapon on the man's metal.
Jude felt the mist rising in his eyes that once before that day had hid
this girl and Gaston from his sight. Like a mad mockery, too, Lola's
lark song sounded above the rush of blood that made him giddy. He got to
his feet and staggered around the table. He held to it, not so much to
steady himself as to guide him, but as he neared the girl the blindness
passed, and the tormenting song stopped--he stood in an awful silence,
and a white, hot light.
"Yes, by God, I do want to, and if yer that kind I'll take--my share and
chance along with the rest of 'em."
It was his own voice, loud and brutal, that smote the better part of him
that stood afar and alone; a something quite different from the beast
who spoke, and which felt a mad interest in wondering how she would take
the words.
"You go and sit down over there!"
No clash of steel or dash of icy water could have had the effect those
quiet words had, combined with the immovable calm out of which they
came.
The instinct of frightened womanhood was alive. If she could not down
the beast in the man by unflinching show of courage--she was lost.
They eyed each other for an instant--then Jude backed away and dropped
into the chair across the table.
Still, like animal and tamer they measured each other from the safer
distance. Presently the girl spoke, laying all the blame upon him for
the fright and suffering.
"What right have you, Jude Lauzoon, to come here insulting me?"
"What right had you," he blurted out, "to make me think you was
that--that sort?"
"I didn't make you think it--you thought it because you--wanted to think
it--it was in you."
The beast was quelled now, and a stifled sob rose to the boyish throat.
"I--I didn't want to think it--God knows I didn't, Joyce, it was that
that drove me mad."
"Can a man only think bad when he sees what he doesn't understand?"
Revulsion of feeling was making Joyce desperate. While her new power
brought her a delirious joy, it also, she was beginning to understand,
brought a terror she had never conceived before. She wished the house
were nearer the other human habitations.
"If you're that kind, Jude, you had better take yourself to the Black
Cat; you'll find plenty of your liking down there."
Jude was visibly cowering now.
"Why did he kiss you?" he pleaded.
"Suppose I gave him the right?"
"Then what am I to think? Have you given him the right? Does he want the
right? I mean the right first--and last?" Jude was gaining ground, but
neither he nor the girl to whom he spoke realized it yet. Joyce drew
back.
"What is that to you?" she murmured hanging her head. For the moment she
was safe--but she felt cornered.
Jude again bent toward her over his hands clenched close.
"It means everything," he panted, "and you know it. I've always liked
you best of anything on earth--ever since I went to school, to please
you, over to Hillcrest; ever since I tried to keep from the Black Cat,
because you asked me to. I've gone following after you kinder
heedless-like till--till he gave me a blow twixt the eyes, with his
hand-holding and kissing. It drove me crazy. I never thought of any one
else with you--least of all John Gaston and you. He didn't seem your
kind--I don't know why, but he didn't. Howsomever, if it's all
right--God knows I ain't in it--that's all."
A hoot of an owl outside made Joyce start nervously. She was unstrung
and superstitious--the fun of the game died in her, and she felt weak
and nauseated. She spoke as if she wanted to finish the matter and have
done with it forever.
"Well, I didn't give him the right. He didn't want it. I guess it was
all foolish--everything is foolish. When he found out how I liked books,
and how I wanted to know about things, he just naturally was kind and he
let me go to his shack to read. Sometimes he was there, sometimes he
wasn't. He just thought about me as if I was a little girl--Maggie
Falstar used to go sometimes--he told her fairy stories--it was all the
same to him, until--" the wonderful colour that very pale people often
have rose suddenly to Joyce's face, and the eyes became dreamy--"one day
a week ago."
"Well," Jude urged her on--he was sensing the situation from the man's
standpoint.
"It was nothing. I had been reading a book there by myself. It was the
kind of story that makes you feel like you was the woman it tells about.
Then Mr. Gaston came in, and stood looking at me from the doorway; he
seemed like the man in the book too. We looked at each other, and--and I
was frightened and I guess he was--for I was grown up all of a sudden.
Jude"--the girl was appealing to the familiar in him, the comradeship
that would stand with her and for her--"he took me in his arms
and--and--kissed me. Then he begged my pardon--and he pushed me away;
then he led me to the door and said he--he didn't understand, but I--I
mustn't come again to the shack alone, but to meet him in the Long
Meadow to-day."
"Curse 'im," muttered Jude; "curse 'im." But the move was a wrong one.
Joyce rose to her own defence and Gaston's.
"If you feel that way," she cried, "you can take yourself off."
"I--I don't feel that way," Jude returned illogically and meekly; "go
on."
"He's a good man, Jude Lauzoon; better than any one here in St. Angé;
and he isn't our kind--not mine, yours, or any one else's around here.
He just made me feel ashamed of myself out in the Meadow to-day. I felt
as if I had been bold and--and all wrong, but he wouldn't let me feel
that way. He acted like I was a little girl to him again--only
different; and--I'm going to tell you something." The pink flush dyed
even the white throat now. "He said he wished I would get married--it
was for the best. That's the way he wanted me for himself!" Joyce
laughed with a bitterness that changed suddenly as she recalled the
subtle power she had felt over Gaston even while he was forcing her out
of his life.
"He asked me about Jock Filmer."
"Jock Filmer?" Jude's jaw dropped. Was all St. Angé hurtling around
Joyce? "Jock Filmer--why--why--" Words failed him and he laughed
noisily.
"Oh, I don't know," Joyce tossed her head. "You seem to think nobody
would want me--I guess--they would--if I wanted them!" The girl was worn
out; racked by the emotions that were reflected from the new attitude of
others toward her.
And now Jude came around the table again. This time he walked steadily,
and he was quite himself. The best self he had ever yet been.
"I want you Joyce--God knows I do."
"He said you did."
"Who?"
"He--Mr. Gaston."
"He--said that? Then why in thunder did--he kiss you?"
That rock Jude dashed against at every turn.
"He didn't until--until I told him--I liked you."
Poor Joyce! She was never to tell any one that that admission had been
wrung from her in order to make Gaston think he himself had not been
deeply in her thoughts. It had been a difficult fencing match that
afternoon.
"You told him that?" A light came into Jude's handsome, heavy face,
which quickly vanished as the torturing jealousy, feeding upon a new
hope, rose, defiantly. "You told him you cared--and then he kissed you,
damn him! Maybe he thinks he'll get you to take me, and then he'll go on
with hand-holding and kissing all the safer."
"Take that back," cried Joyce harshly. "Take that back, Jude Lauzoon."
Yet as she resented the implied insult, the primitive woman in her
admired Jude as it had never admired him before.
"I didn't mean it against you, Joyce, I swear it. Can't you see how I
love yer and I don't want yer hurt? No one ain't going to hurt yer!" He
had clutched her to him roughly but tenderly. "Maybe he wouldn't want
ter, maybe I don't understand--but he can't, anyway!"
She was sobbing hysterically against his breast.
"You're mine, lass; you're just a little one; you don't know things.
You're no older than you was when you toted over to Hillcrest and--and
never felt afraid."
Jude tried to kiss the tear-stained face, but she pressed it closer
against him. He had to be content with the satin softness of her thick
hair.
Suddenly she sprang from him. A sickish odour was filling the room.
"Everything's burned," she gasped; "everything!" She drew the pot from
the stove and ruefully carried it outside. "Nothing left, Jude;" she
laughed nervously. "Nothing but crusts and leavings."
"You go to bed," commanded Jude authoritatively; "that's what you need
more than anything!"
"Yes, yes, that's what I need--sleep. I'm almost dead, I'm so tired."
Jude looked at her hungrily. The sudden happy ending of his torture gave
him an unreal, unsafe feeling.
He wanted to touch her again in the new, thrilling way, but she was
forbidding even in her sweet yielding.
"You go to bed," he said vaguely; "I'll go down to the Black Cat, and
see that your father gets home all right."
Joyce stepped backward to the chamber door beyond.
"Thank you," she murmured; "I certainly am dead tired."
CHAPTER II
There was only a path leading from the highway to John Gaston's shack. A
path wide enough for a single traveller, and the dark pointed pines
guarded it on either side until within ten feet of the house. The house
itself sat cosily in the clearing. It was a log house built by amateur
hands, but roughly artistic without, and mannishly comfortable within.
The broad door opened into the long living room, where a deep fireplace
(happily the chimney had drawn well from the first, or the builder would
have been sore perplexed) gave a look of hospitality to the otherwise
severe furnishings. The fireplace and mantel-shelf were Gaston's pride
and delight. Upon them he had worked his fanciful designs, and the
result was most satisfactory. There was a low, broad couch near the
hearth piled with pine cushions covered with odds and ends of material
that had come into a man's possession from limited sources. A table,
home-made, and some Hillcrest chairs completed the furnishings, except
for the china and cooking utensils that ornamented shelves and hooks
around the room.
An inner door opened into Gaston's bedchamber and sanctum. No one but
himself ever entered there.
There was a broad desk below the one wide window of that room and a
revolving chair before it. A boxed-in affair, filled with fragrant pine
boughs, answered for a bed. This was covered with white sheets and a
pair of fine, handsome, red blankets. An iron-bound chest stood by the
bed with a padlock strong enough to guard a king's treasure, and around
the walls of the room there were rows of books, interrupted here and
there to admit a picture of value and beauty out of all proportion to
the other possessions.
Over the window hung a large-faced clock that kept faultless time, and
announced the fact hourly in a mellow, but convincing, voice. Just below
the window and over the desk, was a pipe-rack with pipes to fit every
mood and fancy of a lonely man. There were the short stumpy ones, with
the small bowls for the brief whiff when one did not choose to keep
company with himself for long, but was willing to be sociable for a
moment. There were the comfortable, self-caring pipes that obligingly
kept lighted between long puffs while the master was looking over old
papers, or considering future plans. Then there were the long-stemmed,
deep-bellied friends for hours when Memory would have her way and wanted
the misty, fragrant setting for her pictures that so comforted or
tormented the man who wooed them.
By the rude desk Gaston was sitting on the evening that Jude and Joyce
were clinging to each other in the house under the maples. His hands
were plunged deep in the pockets of his corduroy trousers, his long legs
extended, and his head thrown back; he was smoking one of his
memory-filled pipes, and his eyes were fixed upon the rafters of the
room.
He was a good-looking fellow in the neighbourhood of thirty-five;
browned by an out-of-door life, but marked by a delicacy of feature and
expression.
The strength that was in Gaston's face might puzzle a keen reader of
character as to whether it were native, or the result of years of
well-fought battles. Once the will was off guard, a certain softness of
the eyes, and a twitching of the mouth muscles came into play; but the
will was rarely off guard during Gaston's waking hours.
An open book lay upon the desk, and the student lamp cast a full light
upon the words that had caught the reader's thoughts after the events of
the day and their outcome.
"In the life of every man there occurs at least one epoch when the
spirit seems to abandon the body, and elevating itself above mortal
affairs just so far as to get a comprehensive and general view, makes
this an estimate of its humanity, as accurate as it is possible, under
the circumstances, to that particular spirit. The soul here separates
itself from its own idiosyncrasy, or individuality, and considers its
own being, not as appertaining solely to itself, but as a portion of the
universal Ego. All important good resolutions of character are brought
about at these crises of life; and thus it is our sense of self which
debases and keeps us debased."
Poe and Gaston were great friends. The living man knew that had he known
Poe in the body he would have feared and detested him, but there was no
doubt he had left trails of glory in his wake, for the comfort of
struggling humanity, if only one could lose sight of the man, in the
spiritual effulgence of his genius.
Gaston, in his detached life, practised many arts upon his individuality
and character. He had time and to spare to "abandon the body," and he
was growing more and more confident, that in these self-imposed crises
he was gaining not only strength, but a keen and absorbing interest in
others. If the sense of self debased, then this detachment was his great
salvation.
The rings of smoke curled upward, lost shape and formed a haze of
blueness. The heat became intense, and the noises of the summer night
magnified. The windows and doors were set wide, Gaston's wood-trained
senses were alert even in this abstraction.
"What next?" That was the question. He had just come through a conflict
with flying colours. He was flushed with victory, but the after details
annoyed him. With the waning enthusiasm of achievement, from his point
of vantage of abandonment, he was trying to see beyond this confident
hour--see into the plain common days when a sense of self would control
him, tempt him, lure, and perhaps, betray him. What then?
The realization of Joyce Birkdale's womanhood a time back had shaken him
almost as much as it had the girl herself.
It had all been so peaceful, so elemental and satisfying before: that
companionship with the little lonely, aspiring, neglected child. She was
so responsive and joyous; so eager to learn, so childishly interested in
the fairy tales of another sort of existence that he kept from decay by
repeating to her. And then that sudden, upleaping flame in the
purple-black eyes. The fierce rush of hot, live blood to the pale face.
The grip of those small work-stained hands as they sought dumbly to stay
the trembling until he had taken them into his firm control.
Well, confronted by the blinding flash, he had acted the man. That was
good. He had not acted thoughtlessly, either. He had sent the quivering
little thing away quietly, and with no sense of bitterness, until he had
threshed the matter out. And then in the Long Meadow, he had set the
girlish feet upon the trail he had blazed out for them during the
nights of temptation and days of lonely self-abnegation.
It was a hard, stumbling way he had fixed upon. His heart yearned over
the girl even as he urged her on. But Joyce was demanding her woman's
rights. Demanding them none the less insistently, because she was
unconscious of their nature. He knew, and he must go before her; but
there was small choice of way.
When he had held her in his arms out there in the open, he had bidden
her farewell with much the same feeling that one has who kisses the
unconscious lips of a child, and leaves him to the doubtful issue of a
necessary surgical operation.
But the victory over self was his, and Joyce was on Life's table. There
was a sort of feverish comfort now in contemplating what might have
been. Many a man--and he knew this only too well--would have put up a
strong plea for the opposite course.
What was he resigning her to at the best? There was no conceit in the
thought that, had he beckoned, Joyce would have leaped into the circle
of his love and protection. Not in any low or self-seeking sense would
the girl have responded--of that, too, he was aware; but as a lovely
blossom caressed by favouring sun and light, forgetting the slime and
darkness of its origin, she might have burst into a bloom of beauty.
Yes, beauty! Gaston fiercely thought. Instead--there was honour! His
honour and hers, and the benediction of Society--if Society ever
penetrated to the North Solitude.
Joyce would forget her soul vision, she would marry Jock Filmer--no; it
was Jude Lauzoon who, for some unknown, girlish reason, she had
preferred when she had been cast out from the circle of his, Gaston's
protection.
Yes, she would marry Jude--and Jock might have made her laugh
occasionally--Jude, never! She would live in cramped quarters, and have
a family of children to drag her from her individual superiority to
their everlasting demands upon her. Perhaps Jude would treat her,
eventually, as other St. Angé husbands treated their wives. At that
thought Gaston's throat contracted, but a memory of the girl's strange,
uplifted dignity gave him heart to hope.
Again the reverse of the picture was turned toward him. He saw her
flitting about his home--who was there to hold her back, or care that
she had sought dishonour instead of honour?
He might have trained and guided that keen mind, and cultivated the
delicate, innate taste. Yes; he might have created a rare personality,
and brightened his own life at the same time--and the years and years
would have stretched on, and nothing would have interrupted the pure
passage of their lives until death had taken one or both. Gaston sat
upright, and flung the pipe away. Suppose he should choose to--go back?
Well, in that case it would have gone hard with Joyce. The soul he had
awakened and glorified would have to be flung back into the hell from
which its ignorance shielded it.
That was it. In giving the girl the best--yes, the best, in one
sense--he must forego his own soul's good; forego the hope that he might
some day choose to go back--and in that hope, lay Joyce's damnation.
Through dishonour--as men might have classified it--he might have lifted
Joyce up, but to save her soul alive from the hope he reserved for
himself--his open door--he must drive her back to squalor and even
worse.
He had chosen for her and for himself. He had his hope; Joyce was to
have her honour; and now, what next?
His renunciation had strengthened him. His good resolutions steadied
him; in the regained empire of his self-respect he contemplated the
loneliness of exile, self-imposed, but none the less dreary. He was so
human in his inclinations, so pitifully dependent upon his environment;
and since he had stepped from the train three years ago, these rough
people had taken him at his face value; desired nor cared for nothing
but what he chose to give. Desolate St. Angé was dear to him.
No, he would remain. There was really no reason why he should abdicate
the little that was his own. All should be as it was, except for Joyce,
and even she, now that he was sure of himself and had the rudder in
hand, even she might claim his friendship and sympathy in her new life.
He started. His quick ear detected the slow step outside.
"Hello, Jude," he called without getting up. "Step in; I'll fetch a
light."
"How did you know 'twas me?" Jude asked from the outer darkness. The
salutation made him feel anew the awe of constant supervision.
"I thought you'd drop in," Gaston carried the lamp into the living room
and set it upon the table.
Jude shambled in, drew a chair up to the table and sat down. Gaston took
his place opposite and kept his eyes upon his caller. Jude grew restless
under the calm inspection. He had come with a goodly stock of
self-assertion and sudden-gained dignity, but they withered under the
inquiring gaze.
"You've come from Joyce Birkdale's? I congratulate you, Jude."
So he knew that too! Jude felt a superstitious aversion to this man he
had but recently begun to have any feeling toward whatever outside the
ordinary give and take of village life.
Over the ground he had come laboriously to discuss, Gaston strode with
unerring instinct. There were no words ready for this friendly advance,
so Jude halted. He had meant to approach the announcement of his
engagement to Joyce by telling Gaston what he had seen from the hilltop
that afternoon and what he had gained since, and then he had intended,
in man-fashion, to warn Gaston off his preserves. Instead, he sat
twirling his cap and foolishly staring.
"Smoke?" Gaston felt his guest's discomfort and tried to ease the
strain. He pushed the tobacco-jar forward; no St. Angé man ever
travelled without his own pipe.
"Given it up," muttered Jude, "and cards likewise, and--and drink; I'm
going to get married right away."
This was rather startling. Gaston had expected some faltering on Joyce's
part, some dallying with the past. The smoke of his burning bridges was
still in Gaston's consciousness. He had lighted the fuse, to be sure,
but had not expected the demoralization to be so prompt.
For a minute his gaze faltered, then he said cordially:
"Good! And you won't drink to it--or smoke over it? Well, then, shake,
old man."
For the life of him Jude could not decline. So their hands met over the
bare table.
An awkward pause followed. Gaston took refuge in smoke. He drew the
inevitable pipe from his pocket, filled and lighted it, and during the
time of grace, got himself in hand.
"Jude," he said between puffs, "I want to see her married."
Jude's anger rose. The words and the tone brought back his suspicions
and jealousies.
"I want that girl to have a chance at life." Gaston looked over Jude's
head, and drew hard upon his pipe. "She's never really waked up. Just
got the call, you know. Before this, she's been dreaming, and God alone
knows where she got her dream material. Like the rest of us, until she
finds out, she's going to expect her dream to come true. In heaven's
name, Lauzoon, help her to make it true."
The import of all this touched Jude not at all, but the meddling of this
outsider did mightily stir him to depths he had never fathomed before.
Suddenly a kind of courage came to him, partly worthy, but wholly
unreasonable.
"I ain't no wooden-head, as some thinks I am," he blurted out, while his
dull eyes flashed; "and, by gosh, I want that darn well understood
between you and me, Mr. Gaston! I don't want any interference in my
affairs; but as to what you're drivin' at, perhaps, I'll say this. I'm
going to let Joyce have her head--in reason."
"You better," Gaston laughed unpleasantly. He rather liked Jude the
better for his uprising; but he had no intention of showing a flag of
truce now.
"Why?" asked Lauzoon; the laugh irritated him.
"Oh, it's plain common sense to be with her, instead of against her,
when she gets fully awake. Her kind goes well enough in harness if the
other one pulls a fair share--if he doesn't--why, the chances are--she'd
break the traces and--clip it alone."
"Alone, hey?" It was Jude's turn to laugh now. "You ain't got the lay of
the country yet, Mr. Gaston, not so far as the women is concerned. How
in thunder is a woman to go alone, I'd like to know, in St. Angé? Once
she's married, she's married, and she knows it. Go alone? I'd like to
know where she'd go to?"
A breeze was now stirring outside. Gaston felt it and he shivered
slightly.
"Jude," he continued after a moment, "they sometimes go to the devil,
you know. Even St. Angé's ideals do not prevent that, judging from
things I've heard."
"Not her kind," Jude muttered. He was harking back to Lola Laval. How
the girl rose and haunted him to-night! "Not her kind, Mr. Gaston."
"No, you're right, Jude--not her kind as she is now. That's just the
point. It's poor work, though, to draw on your bank account without
noting how your balance stands. If you do, you'll get a surprise some
day. Joyce wants the best she can get out of life. She's had a vision,
poor little girl, and she's making for that vision, believing it a
reality. We all do that, old man, and it's up to you to give her as much
of what she wants as you can. She's been building a place for her
soul"--Gaston was thinking aloud. Jude had vanished from his
horizon--"and she's going up to take possession some day. God, how that
woman is going to love--something!"
And just then Jude shifted into view again upon the line of Gaston's
perceptions. He had risen to his feet and was glaring at his companion.
There was an ugly look on his face, and his hands trembled with the
effort he made to restrain himself.
"Say, Mr. Gaston," he blurted out, "all that talk is damned moonshine,
and I ain't such a fool but what I know it. Such gaff ain't nourishing.
Now as to Joyce, I'm going to do the square thing by her. Her
book-learning is all right if she keeps it to herself, and don't let it
get mixed up with her duties 'long of me. And right here, Mr. Gaston,"
Jude choked miserably, "I guess her and me don't want no coaching from
you. No harm intended, understand, but just a clean showing."
Indignation and a realization of his own insignificance, had hurled Jude
along up to this point, but he was suddenly landed high and dry by the
calm, amused look in Gaston's eyes.
"Too bad you don't smoke, Jude," Gaston said quietly, refilling his
pipe. "But sit down, and loosen your collar. The room is infernally
close. I've been thinking some of leaving St. Angé--"
"When are you going?" Jude broke in with an eagerness that intensified
the smile on Gaston's face, and bade the devil in him awake. The same
devil that in boyhood days had made him such an irritant to the bullies
of his class.
"Oh, I'm not going," he replied, puffing luxuriously upon his pipe;
"I've changed my mind. All I wanted was new scenes and occupations. I've
decided to stay on awhile. But I've been thinking, Jude, you don't want
to take Joyce into your shack. Let's build her another up on the sunny
slope beyond the Long Meadow on the Hillcrest side. I'm gaining strength
each year; I like to keep myself busy and the work would be a godsend to
me. What do you say? I can lend you a little money, too, if you need
it."
Need it? Unconsciously Gaston had touched the spring that unlocked the
evilest part of Jude's nature. Jealousy, love, hate, were blotted out by
this unlooked-for suggestion. His dark face flushed and his dull eyes
gleamed. Money! Money! To handle it, spend it and enjoy it without great
bodily effort in earning it. This had ever been a consuming passion
with Jude. A passion that had remained smouldering because no favouring
chance had ever fanned it. Lazy and hot-blooded, Jude, in a prosperous
community, might have developed criminal tendencies young; in St. Angé
there had been nothing to tempt him--until now.
"Thank you," he said, and Gaston saw the change in him. "I--I may be
glad of a small loan--just at the start, you know, and before I get my
pay from the camp boss. It's almighty kind of you, Mr. Gaston, to think
of this here building and all. Me and Joyce will take it grateful, I can
tell you."
"Going?" Gaston asked, for Jude had risen and was awkwardly shifting
from foot to foot. "Well, so long! Good luck--and a speedy marriage."
Then the door closed upon the transformed Jude.
"Now, what in thunder," mused Gaston in the hot, smoky room, "has got
into that fellow, I wonder!" Could they know of his money? The amount,
and manner of getting it? Was he, in offering Jude this assistance,
letting the leak in upon his own safety?
A cloud gathered on Gaston's face. A sensation of coming evil possessed
him. He felt as if, in an unguarded moment, he had given an enemy a
power over him.
The memory of the look in Jude's face when the money cast a gleam over
his hate, repelled him. Gaston was as fully alive to the possibilities
now as Jude was--perhaps more so; but there stood the pale, innocent
girl between them. He recalled her hurt, quivering face when he had
urged her into Jude's keeping. It had seemed her only salvation--hers
and his! But it began to look now like a hideous damnation.
"Poor little devil," he murmured taking the lamp and going back into his
bedroom.
The window of this room he closed carefully, and set the lamp upon the
rude desk. He drew the pistol from the drawer, and laid it conveniently
at hand, then he turned to the chest with the mighty lock and, having
unfastened it, drew forth a small package and went back to the chair
before the desk.
The package contained a photograph and some letters. The letters were
tied together, and these the man placed beside the pistol. The
photograph he took from its various wrappings of tissue paper and braced
it against the lamp.
The big clock hanging over the window frame struck one. The heat in the
little room became stifling, and the lamp flickered in its duty--for the
oil was running low.
With arms folded before him Gaston gazed upon the pictured face. It
broke upon the senses like a revelation of womanhood. At the first
glance it seemed as if just that type had never been conceived before.
The artist had grasped that conception evidently, for with no shading or
background, with only a filmy scarf outlining the form from the
colourless paper, the compelling features started vividly upon the
vision, as the individuality of the girl did upon the imagination. An
irritation followed the first impression. Was this child, or woman? What
was she to become, or what had she become already? Was she a soul
reaching out for realization, or a well-developed personality, having
gained, with all its other attainments, a power of self-concealment from
the inquisitive eye?
The brow, low and broad, bespoke gracious womanhood and a possible
radiant maternity, rather than intellectuality. The masses of hair were
braided and wound coronet-style about the small uplifted head. The eyes,
deep, dark, and mystical gave no clue to the inner woman; but the mouth,
while it was tender in its curves, had a rigidity of purpose in its
expression that fixed the attention. A pretty, rounded chin, a slender,
slightly tilted nose, an exquisite throat set off by the cloud of
lace--such was the face that Gaston beheld, and presently it wrung a
groan from him.
"Ruth, Ruth, Ruth," he muttered, and then his mind took to the
memory-haunted highway that led back, back of the lonely years of St.
Angé; past a certain black horror that had stood, and would always
stand, as a thing that should not have existed; but which had been, and
would always remain, an object that cast a shadow before it and behind
it.
"Did you do this thing?"
"I did."
Question and answer made up the vital happening in Gaston's life.
Everything before led up to them, and all that had occurred since was
the outcome.
They had admitted--or so he once thought--of no shading nor explanation.
The questioner was not the type to deal unsteadily with a problem, and
Gaston had been too simple and direct to note fine points or shadings.
Perhaps neither of them had understood. Life had been so fair until the
terrible thing had loomed up. It had come like a cataclysm--how could
they, young and inexperienced as they had been, deal with the situation
justly?
Suppose _now_ she stood before him, wonder-eyes raised, seeking his
soul's truth; hands resting in his until he should speak. Would he speak
again those two crude, fatal words? Would she drop her hands letting his
soul sink, by so doing, into the blackness which had engulfed it?
That was the torturing problem that Gaston was working out up in the
lonely St. Angé woods; but he seemed no nearer the answer than when he
had come to the place, by mistake, a few years back, and decided to stay
there simply because it was as desirable as any other forsaken spot,
while he was debarred from the Paradise of life.
The lamp flickered fretfully, and the spasmodic flare showed the rigid
face torn with the emotions that were racking the soul laid bare before
its God and its own consciousness.
What had the dreary, desolated years done for him? He was a fool. Why
had he not taken what was possible, since the ideal was dashed from him?
This girl, way off there behind the hideous shadow, had been wiser. She
had replaced his memory by living love; why should not he take the poor
substitute that the Solitude offered, and warm the barren places of his
heart and life with the faint glow?
It was a bad hour for Temptation to assail John Gaston.
The armour of self-wrought strength was off. Suffering was flaying the
naked despair and yearning; and just then Temptation knocked softly and
pitifully at the door of the outer room!
Gaston had done more while he had hidden in the woods than he was aware
of. He had developed something akin to second sight. Loneliness and
empty hours had strengthened this as blindness intensifies other senses
to abnormal keenness. Gradually he had grown to believe that a man's
life, complete and prearranged, lies stretched before, and occasionally
some, when the circumstances are propitious and the soul has a certain
detachment that ignores the bodily claims, can leap over the _now_ and
here, and catch a glimpse of the future and what it holds. This vague
sense had come to Gaston more than once during the past year or two--the
seeing and hearing of that which had held no part in what was, at the
moment, occurring, but which he noted later had become a fact in his
life.
That feeble knock dragged the man's consciousness away from the pictured
face; away from his wavering indecision; away from the darkening room
with its foul smell of oil: he knew who stood outside in the
moonlighted, fragrant summer night, and he wondered if he were going to
open that barred door to her. He waited for a glimpse of what was in
store for them both.
But his spiritual sight was blinded by a firm, deadening blankness!
Whatever was to be the outcome must be of his own choosing.
Again she knocked, that poor little temptress in the dark. What had Fate
decreed that he was to do? Gaston knew as well as if Joyce had told him,
_why_ she had come. Her soul had revolted from her concession to Jude.
In the bewitched hours of darkness, the primitive, savage instinct had
driven the girl to the only one who could change her future. Worn,
weary, defiant, she had come to him; not questioning further than her
despair and his power.
Well, why not? Who would be the worse, and who the better--if he drew
her within and closed the door upon--St. Angé?
Another tap--this time upon the wooden shutter of the bedchamber!
Gaston shivered and trembled. He was not outside; he was stifling in the
dark room. The light had gone entirely, and he was struggling to free
himself from an intangible enemy or friend; a thing that had, unknown to
himself, evolved during those isolated years among the pines, and was
restraining his lower nature now.
He battled to get to that little, insistent girl. He heard her sob, a
childish sob, half desire, half fear. The veins stood out on his
forehead and his hands gripped the edge of his desk as he got upon his
feet.
The sob outside was echoed by a stifled groan from within--then all was
still.
Slow retreating steps presently sounded without. She, that sad, broken,
little temptress, was going to meet the fore-ordained future that lay
before. There was nothing else left for her to do. All her reserves were
taken.
Then Gaston, when all was beyond his power of recall or desire, opened
the window.
Softly, sweetly, the fresh morning air entered. It was a young and good
morning. A morning cool and faintly tinted, a morning to soothe a hurt
heart, not to stimulate it too harshly.
Gaston's lined face smoothed under the caress. His armour arose as if
unseen hands guided it, and placed it again upon him. Once more he was
the strong, quiet man that St. Angé had taken upon faith, and accepted
without question.
As he looked at the scene, his self-respect giving him courage to meet
the day, Jude Lauzoon's soft-stepping figure materialized upon the edge
of the pine woods.
The humour of the situation for a moment gripped Gaston's senses. Had
all St. Angé stayed awake and been on guard while the night passed? But
the smile faded. How long had Jude been there? Long enough to _know
all_, or just long enough to know half?
What should he do? If Jude knew but half, no explanation could possibly
avail. If he knew all; if he had been on guard before Joyce came--been
camping out with no definite purpose, since his late talk in the
shack--why, then it was simply a matter to be settled between Lauzoon
and Joyce. God help her! He, Gaston, could serve best by retiring. This
he did physically.
He put away his treasures and locked them fast; then, flinging himself
upon the pine-bough bed, dressed as he was, he soon fell into a troubled
sleep.
CHAPTER III
Jared Birkdale, with a contemplative eye, looked at his daughter through
the haze of his tobacco smoke as if seeing her for the first time. In a
way this was so. He was not one to take heed of time or happenings. When
he was not obliged to work, he was enjoying himself in his own way, and
so long as nothing jarred him, life slipped by comfortably enough.
When he worked he was away, as all St. Angé men were, in the camps.
Occupation, outside of Leon Tate's profession, was the same for all the
men after first boyhood was past. When the logging season was over
Jared, more temperate, perhaps more cruel for that reason, settled down.
When he was not occupying the chair of honour at the Black Cat--given
him by common consent because of his superior mental endowments--he was
lounging at home and idly appreciating the plain comfort for which Joyce
was responsible; a comfort Jared neither understood nor questioned.
But little Billy Falstar, the day before, with the fiendish depravity of
a mischief-making child, had set the match to a fuse of gunpowder all
ready for it down at the Black Cat.
Resenting the treatment Jude had given him when he had voiced his
observations about Gaston and Joyce, he had gone to the tavern to nurse
his wounded feelings where company and safety abounded. His fear of Jude
had departed.
Several men, Birkdale among them, were sitting about when Billy,
sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of
necessity notice must be taken, drew their attention.
"What's up, Billy?" asked Jock Filmer good-naturedly; "shingle struck a
thin place in your breeches? Go around and buy a peppermint stick.
Here's a cent. Peppermint ought to be as good for a pain in your
hindquarters as it is for one in your first cabin. Let up, kid, and get
cheerful!"
Billy accepted the coin, but turned a calculating eye on the others. If
his news had had power to rouse Jude, how would it act now? Billy,
freckled and sharp-eyed, was a born tragedian.
"'Tain't Ma," he said. "No more was it Pa; it was that Jude what beat me
most to a jelly."
This was startling enough to awaken a new interest. Jude was too lazy on
general principles to reduce any one to jelly unless the provocation had
been great.
"What divilment was you up to?" Filmer asked with a leer.
"I didn't do nothing! 'Pon my soul, I didn't. I swear!"
This Billy did, fervently and fluently. The children of St. Angé swore
with a guileless eloquence quite outside the sphere of wickedness. The
matter was in them. It must, of course, come out. So Billy swore now
with only an occasional hitch where his indignation muddled
pronunciation.
"Billy's got a fine flow of language," Birkdale put in amusedly. "For a
youngster, I don't think I ever heard it equalled." Birkdale was about
to urge Billy to renewed effort, when something the boy was wedging in
among his evil words caught his attention.
"I was just a-telling him--" more lurid expressions--"'bout Joyce and
Mr. Gaston. It didn't seem like nothing; just them two being beaux like
all girls and fellers, but Jude he did me dirt, he did!" Billy stopped
rubbing his eyes.
He was interested, himself, in the effect his words now had. For a
moment he feared all the men were going to rise up against him as Jude
had done. A silence fell upon the group. Filmer gave one keen glance at
the imp on the doorstep, and then refilled his pipe and leaned back in
his wooden chair.
Tom Smith, the ticket agent of the Station, looked as if some one had
dashed water in his face, so startled was he; and Jared Birkdale simply
stared open-mouthed at the spy in their midst. Then Tate, the
proprietor, with the tact for which he was noted, went to the bar and
began filling glasses.
St. Angé had received a shock; but St. Angé took its shocks in a
peculiar way. It reserved its opinion until it had drunk on them.
Soon after the revelation Birkdale went home without a word having been
spoken by any one on the subject so suddenly thrust upon their notice.
Jared had gone home to assure himself that Joyce had actually grown up
to the extent of making Billy Falstar's remarks possible.
The afternoon's contemplation had caused him some astonishment.
Joyce _was_ grown up! Then he had slept on the knowledge, and dreamed of
other days--a life apart, and beyond St. Angé.
St. Angé was a young place; it had no antiquity; almost all who lived
there had had a setting in some other time and environment.
Jared recalled, in his thoughts that night, the beginnings of things in
his life. Joyce's mother, and the babies who had come and gone like
little ghosts, each one taking more of the wife's and mother's beauty
and power.
Then that flight to the St. Angé lumber camp--it was really that,
nothing less--the attending discomfort and paralyzing reality of what
lay before!
Joyce was born the year after the settlement in the rough forest home,
and then poor Mrs. Birkdale gave up the struggle.
She told Isa Tate that had the baby been a boy she would not have felt
the way she did, but to face the life of another woman in her own life
was more than she could bear.
Isa had tried to hold her to her responsibility: Isa had more than her
own share of trouble--but Jane Birkdale had slipped away in the middle
of the severest winter St. Angé had known for many a year and Isa had
been obliged to have "an eye" to the baby Joyce. The small girl
responded in health and joyousness, and Jared, when he was himself, had
had the grace to be grateful.
As the years slipped by the fire of Jared's own little private hell
aroused him to a consciousness that he deserved anything but a happy
future.
He hoped, in due season, that he would forget the wrongs he had done his
wife, but they gathered strength with time. His sins walked with him
through the sober lumber season; their memory drove him to the Black
Cat; but his keener wit evolved a desire to "make good," as he termed
it, in his relations with his daughter.
He would so conduct himself with her that she, at least, should have
nothing against him; and when age, sickness or accident befell him, he
might turn to her and find refuge. Jared had always had some kind of
sanctuary to flee to when overtaken by the results of his own evil
nature.
And now, by the impish words of Falstar's Billy, he was brought face to
face with a possibility that staggered and unnerved him.
Joyce and Jude, or Joyce and Jock Filmer, had been possibilities in
Jared's distant future. But Joyce, already a woman, and that silent man
Gaston who had come from a Past that he rigidly reserved for his own
contemplation--Gaston, who lived among them as a traveller who might
depart with the day into a Future Birkdale instinctively knew would hold
no possible connection with St. Angé--Joyce and Gaston! Here was a
situation indeed.
Astonishment, anger, a dull fear and a determination to grip something
out of it all for himself, swayed Jared as he sat tilted back, eyeing
his daughter after the night's travail.
He had come from his troubled thought imbued with a forced strength and
singleness of purpose that made themselves felt by the quiet girl at the
window.
Joyce had brought no strength from her disturbed night. She was
ill-fitted for the encounter.
"By Jove," Jared suddenly ejaculated, "it's just struck me all of a
heap, Joyce, that you're more than ordinary handsome."
The girl raised her eyes with a dull show of surprise, then went on with
her sewing.
"With the learning I've given you over and above the other girls of the
place, you _ought_ to do pretty good for yourself--and me--and no
mistake. You always was a real grateful child, and you ain't one ever
to forget the fifth commandment, Joyce--the only one with a promise."
"The only one needing it," Joyce returned, with a bitterness for which
she was sorry the moment after. But when Jared turned to quoting
Scripture the girl grew rebellious. It was always distasteful to her to
see, or hear, her father parade his superior knowledge. For some reason
she always felt more ashamed of him then than at any other time.
"You've got a nasty bit of a temper, Joyce." Jared's eye gleamed. "I
hope you ain't going to take the first chance you get to shirk your duty
to me."
"I guess not, father, but I hate to be dragged to my duty; and I have a
headache."
"What give you that, Joyce?"
"I don't know." Again the fair head bent above the coarse sewing in the
trembling hands.
She had seen the light in the chinks of Gaston's shutter. She had felt
his nearness, but rigid aloofness. The memory of these things had
tortured her and left their trace in worn-out nerves and hurt pride. She
felt that she hated Gaston and in revolt her thought now clung to Jude.
She forgot her father.
"Joyce!"
"Oh, yes, father." How the insistent invasion of paternal intimacy
jarred.
"I've been thinking lately how you and me might do better than stick
here in St. Angé."
A sudden illumination flashed into the pale face. Was there a
possibility of escape that did not include Jude?
"Where could we go, father?" Joyce was all attention.
"Oh! there are several places. I wasn't always here by a long shot. I've
always meant to tell you some day, Joyce. It has sometimes struck me as
singular that you never asked."
"I never cared. I was here--and the rest didn't matter--or it never did,
until now."
"Well I was a handsome young buck once, my girl." Jared glanced at the
mirror hanging over Joyce's head, and smirked. "I ain't a bad looking
feller now. A little trimming of the beard, fashionable clothes, refined
surroundings and you'd have a father that any girl might be proud of!"
Joyce noted now, as she had more than once before, since Hillcrest
training had given her a certain power of discrimination, her father's
style of speaking.
"What happened, father, before you came here?" she asked quickly. Her
directness, and the slight she paid to his personal reflections, ruffled
Jared's complacency. He was not ready to confess more than was
absolutely necessary.
"Just one of them misunderstandings," he replied, slipping into St.
Angé's carelessness of speech, "that happens now and again to any young
man with a fine taste and slim purse. A matter of business! I always
calculated to go back and make it straight, after the first flash had
passed and I had money enough. I never give up or got discouraged. It
was your mother losing grip sort of set me back; and then your raising
and expenses here, kinder held me down. But the spirit in me has soared
nevertheless."
"Sometimes it seems to me," Joyce's eyes grew dreamy, "that every one in
St. Angé has something to keep still about. Every one seems to be here
because he has to, not because he wants to. People seem to drift in here
like logs after a spring freshet--and they get jammed."
Jared laughed. The idea caught his fancy.
"You've hit it, Joyce!" he said, "You've hit it all right. Jammed, by
damn! that's it; but to carry the simile further, when the jam is
loosened up, there's going to be some logs as gets away."
"_Where_ could we go, father, and how?"
The pleading intensity of the girl encouraged Jared. He refilled his
pipe, imagined himself in the mirror trimmed up and fashionably attired,
and then drove his axe to the heart of the matter.
"When all's said and done, girl," he began, "I've been a pretty good dad
to you. Given you years of schooling and stood by you when I might have
skipped and led my own life. Many a man with his wife dead, and a kid
on his hands, _has_ done it. I've worked for you, and given you the best
home in St. Angé; and now if you let me play the cards that you've got
in your hands, we'll get out of this and live in clover to the end o'
time."
"I don't know what you mean," Joyce gasped.
This was no idle talk. She was fascinated and frightened. It seemed as
if her father had his fingers on the rope that was strangling the life
out of her.
"You've got the winning cards, my girl, if I don't miss my guess. It's
all in the playing now. I've had one eye on you all along, Joyce. I've
seen, like any kind father might, that there ain't a young feller
between here and Hillcrest but would be glad to have you. But like a rap
on the _shut_ eye it has just been sprung on me that Myst. has had his
mind on you as well!"
Joyce's eyes dilated and the colour rose through her soft paleness, but
she did not speak.
"It's always the way. Them most concerned gits wind of scandal last.
Even the brats have caught on before me. But once your father has both
eyes open, folks better watch out."
"Who do you mean by Myst.?" asked Joyce, and her strained voice sounded
unnatural.
"Gaston, to be sure! I've got a wit of my own, Joyce. Myst.--short for
Mystery. That's what Gaston is. No one knows a damned thing about him."
"Well, that's to his credit, anyway." Joyce flung up a defence now. She
must fight, but she must keep herself out of sight.
Jared glared angrily. He did not like the tone.
"Oh! I ain't the one to object to you keeping your mouth shut," he
returned. "Jammed logs"--the phrase stuck in his mind--"jammed logs
don't creak any; but when it comes to joining forces, like two jams
together for instance, there's got to be, in the nature of things, some
demonstration. What I'm aiming at is this. Has this here Myst. meant
business or has he not? I'm a man of the world--so is Gaston--he ain't
never hoodwinked me. I had my reasons for coming here, and likewise, so
has he. That's my business and his, by thunder! but when _he_ meddles in
my affairs he's got to show his hand. Now is it, or ain't it, business
'twixt you and him?"
"What kind of business?" Joyce's voice was low and even. She was
approaching her father cautiously and fearfully.
"Honourable--or otherwise?"
A silence followed. Something was born, and something died in the
sunlighted room while that silence lasted.
The child's dependence upon its father fell, torn and quivering, before
the new-risen self-protection of the pitiful girlhood.
For the first time, consciously, Joyce experienced the soul-loneliness
for which there is no aid. Her deep eyes pleaded for help and mercy
where there was no help, and alas! no mercy. Birkdale had his answer
now, though no word had been uttered by those quivering lips.
"You can't be expected to act for yourself in these matters." Jared put
his pipe on the table and brought his chair to the floor. "You ain't the
first girl as has been game for such as Myst., but he's made a damned
mistake if he thought two couldn't play at his game here in St. Angé.
We'll make something out of him no matter which way you put it."
"Make something--out--of--what?" Joyce bent forward and real horror
filled her eyes. Was even the security of Jude to be wrenched from her?
"Out of Myst. He's got money, It comes in letters--checks. Tate has ways
of finding out. Myst. has a fat account over to Hillcrest. He thought we
took him on trust. We knowed what we wanted to know."
"And so, and so," panted Joyce, "what next?"
"Well, by the living God, if he wants to marry you, let him come out and
say so, and I won't hold back my presence nor my blessing."
It was quite plain now. Gaston was the target at which Jared aimed. In
some way she must shield him and shield him so effectually that no harm
could reach him. There was no escape for her. Every path was closed
through which she had hoped to go free and happy.
"I ain't going, though," Jared was whining in his semi-religious tone,
"to have my reputation smirched. Either he marries you, or he pays well,
and we'll get out. See?"
"Oh, yes, I see!" Joyce shivered in the hot room; "I see what you think,
but _why_ do you suppose I'd marry Mr. Gaston if he _did_ want me?
Sometimes girls don't--marry--men even when they are asked. Books are
full of such things." A heavy sob came after the pitiful words.
"Oh! that's your dodge, eh?" Jared laughed comfortably from the secure
position he had gained for himself from this misery. "Trying to shield
him, eh? It won't do, Joyce. Your daddy's too much a man of the world
for that. Now here it is in a nutshell: The boys at the tavern are back
of me. How do I know? You leave that to me. Now I calculate that Gaston
don't want any of the dust of his past stirred up by us. If he's been
playing with you, it's for _you_ to say whether you'd rather have him
forced to marry you, or have him pan out money enough to hush the matter
up. I'm willing to sacrifice something for you, Joyce. I'm willing to go
so far as to say I don't want the dust of _my_ past raised--I'm actually
willing to sacrifice--anything."
"Even me!" The words were a moan of fear and misery.
"Sure!" Jared did not catch the point. "This is an opportunity that
don't come often. Retribution for Myst., by thunder, and clear gain for
me and you! Out beyond the high trees, girl, there's better diggings for
us. God! how I've smothered, these long years. The end justifies the
means--you will say so, too, when you see what lies down to the south."
Jared laughed wildly as if the ambition of all the desolated years had
been achieved. Joyce, compelled by his delirious words and excitement,
almost felt a responsive sympathy; but her words, slow and hard, brought
her and Jared down to the bleakness of St. Angé again.
"You are wrong, terribly wrong. Mr. Gaston never wanted to marry me, and
I can take care of myself--I always have--taken care of myself!
Why--why, I'm engaged to Jude Lauzoon. I'm going to marry him right
away. We can't even wait for him to build a new shack. If a minister
doesn't happen this way, we're going over to Hillcrest. Oh, what a joke
we've played on you!"
Jared stared idiotically, and Joyce's laugh rang wildly out.
"Mr. Gaston and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us"--the
inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick
adaptability--"he's helping me and Jude--to what we want."
"The devil he is!" It was all that Jared could clutch from the rout.
"I--I believe it's a thundering lie," he added as an after-thought, and
as a cover to his retreat.
"It's no lie." Joyce had regained her calmness. She was panting, but she
had reached safety and she knew it. An unlovely, unhallowed safety, but
such as it was it was her salvation and Gaston's.
When she had stolen to him the night before it was her last ignorant
impulse to gain her own ends. From now on she must be on guard, or her
world would come clattering about her heart and soul. It took Jared some
minutes to digest the information that had been flung at him so
unexpectedly, and then anger and baffled hope swayed him. Joyce married
to Jude would make _his_, Jared's, future no securer than it now was.
Indeed it might complicate matters, for Jared had no belief in Jude
rising above the dead level of St. Angé standards.
"You're a durn fool!" he ejaculated at last, while the new impression of
his daughter's beauty stirred him painfully. "You are a durn fool to
fling yourself away on Jude when you might have done most anything with
yourself--if you was managed right."
Then in an evil moment Joyce laughed. Her lips parted in an odd little
way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in
cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at
what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost
hysterical.
"Daddy," she said, between ripples of laughter, "you thought you had me
then, didn't you? But being your daughter, you know, I had wit enough to
take care of myself."
Jared listened to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to
understand, in the least, what was passing over the girl before him, he
weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible
conclusion as Jude had done before him.
He looked steadily at Joyce, and he saw the colour and fire come to
cheek and eye. The ringing laughter struck through his brutality and
hurt something in him that was akin to paternal love; but so long had
that protecting tenderness been ignored by Jared, that now when it was
called upon to act, it did so in a savage rage.
"By heaven!" he thundered, "I catch your drift, you young divil. And if
that Myst. ain't a slick one! Going to use Jude is he, to pull his
chestnuts out of the fire?"
Then Jared strode forward with arm upraised as if to strike and, by so
doing, again command the situation. In like manner had he downed and
controlled Joyce's mother. But he paused before the pale undaunted girl.
Her laugh died suddenly, to be sure, so suddenly that the gleaming
teeth and pretty dimples outlived the mirth long enough to give a
stricken, death-like expression to the face, but the change brought no
fear; it brought something worse.
Joyce's moral sense was an unknown quantity in her present development.
Her father's true meaning affected her not at all; what she felt was--a
loathing disgust, and a conviction that if she was to hold even Jude for
herself against her father's anger and purpose, she must flee to other
shelter.
She drew herself up and cast a look upon Jared that he never forgot to
his dying day. It was an added faggot to that hell of his.
"Isa Tate," the even voice broke upon him, "Isa Tate said you killed my
mother. But I'm not afraid of you, and I'm going to live my life. You
can't kill me! I know when and where to go."
With that she gathered up the work that had fallen to the floor, and
almost ran into the little bedchamber beyond the kitchen, closing the
door after her.
Jared sat dumbly staring at the wooden barrier. He longed to call her,
but his tongue pricked with excitement.
He dared not go to her--so he waited. He heard her moving about inside
the room. A half-hour passed, then an hour. Noon came and went. The fire
was out, and dinner, apparently, was as distant as it had been two hours
before.
Jared fell asleep in his hard chair, his dishevelled head lying on his
arms folded on the bare table. When he awoke it was three o'clock and
Joyce stood before him.
She was very white, and the drawn look was still in evidence. She wore a
blue-and-white checked gown; short and scant it was, but daintily fresh
and sweet. She had her poor little best hat on--a hat with a bunch of
roses on the side--and she carried a large basket in her hand.
Jared stared at her as if she were part of a nightmarish dream.
"Where are you going?" he asked hoarsely, a new fear gripping him.
"It doesn't matter to you, father. I'm just--going."
Jared experienced a shock as he realized how far this girl had already
gone from him.
"Good-bye," she faltered; "good-bye, father."
She turned from him and walked to the door. Then a latent power for good
roused Jared.
"Joyce," he called after her; "there's twenty dollars left--take it all,
girl."
"No."
"Then for God's sake take half!" He was pleading, pleading with a woman
for the first time in his selfish, depraved life.
Joyce turned and looked at him, and the tears filled her eyes.
"No," she repeated, "I--I couldn't take it. I don't want it; but I'm
going to Isa Tate, father."
How frightfully still and lonely she had left the little house. Jared
looked at the old furniture and found it strange and unnatural. The
summer day grew dim as he waited there among the ruins of all that he
thought had been his own. No dinner; no probable supper--Jared thought
upon the physical discomfort, too, but he was sober enough, and shocked
enough to give heed to the graver side of the situation.
What he suffered as the afternoon faded and the ticking of the clock
thudded on his senses, no one could ever know.
We may leave retribution for sin out of our scheme of
things-as-they-should-be for others. Each sin takes care of itself, and
burns and blisters as it strikes in. Men may suffer without giving
outward sign. Justice is never cheated, and we may trust her workings
alone. Jared suffered. Suffered until nerves and body could bear no
more, and then he went down to the Black Cat to face the situation Joyce
had created and deal with it in his own fashion.
CHAPTER IV
When Joyce went with bowed head from the only semblance of a home that
had ever been hers, she carried with her, in the rough basket, all that
she could rightfully call her own in personal effects. The load was not
heavy and she scarcely noticed it as she walked rapidly through the
maple thicket which divided her father's garden-place and the Long
Meadow.
She felt like an exile, indeed. A friendless creature who had no real
hold upon any one.
She thought of Gaston--but he no longer suggested safety to her. She
thought of Lauzoon, and a wave of fear and repulsion swept over her. She
knew she was driven to him. She knew she must accept whatever fate he
offered, but with the remnant of her intuitive belief in her personal
charm and beauty, she paused at the edge of the wood, to plan some sort
of attitude that would secure Jude's admiration as well as his
protection. She must not call upon him in a moment of weakness and
defeat. That would be putting a weapon in his hand that no St. Angé man
could be trusted to wield mercifully.
She must hide all traces of outraged feeling; she must find a vantage
point from which Jude might take her. He must come to her; she must not
go to him. Thus she pondered. For one wild instant she turned her face
toward Hillcrest. There were those over the hill who might give her
work--what work? What could she do? But granting that she obtained work,
how long could she retain a position, with her father and Jude in
pursuit? No; she was a product of St. Angé and had all the faltering
distrust of other environments common to the shrinking childhood of the
poor village.
Down beside the last tree of the thicket the girl crouched with her
shabby basket beside her.
The elemental woman in her saw, as clearly as any cultivated sister
might have seen, that if she hoped for success in her married life, she
must not throw herself upon Jude crushed and downed. A brave front must
be the breastwork behind which she was to fight.
When she had told her father she was going to Isa Tate, she had spoken
wildly; but the inevitable closed upon her. Every one went to Leon Tate
in trouble. Leon, like the old gods, first made mad whom he wished to
destroy; for the trust that all St. Angé put in Leon's bland generosity
was nothing short of madness. When any difficulty arose, private or
public, it was carried to the Black Cat for adjustment and final
settlement. By putting every individual under deep obligation to him,
Leon controlled money, loyalty and obedience. Every man in St. Angé was
in his debt, and every woman had accepted, in some form or other, his
wife's services. The difference between Isa and her husband was,
however, vital. Tate was a friend to man in order that he might draw his
victims into his net. Isa had a woman's soul hidden under her rough
exterior and, while she played the part assigned her by her diplomatic
lord, she found comfort for her own lonely nature in giving comfort.
Joyce, in going to Isa for protection, would in no wise interfere with
her father's welcome at the tavern. Leon would arrange that, and bring
about a brilliant climax for himself; at least he always had done so in
emergencies.
Crouching under the tree, as the sun went down behind Beacon Hill, Joyce
saw the future unfold itself. There was nothing to do but go to Isa.
Then Leon would, by his subtlety, make it seem that she had come there
to get ready for her marriage to Jude. He'd even arrange, perhaps, the
marriage, and so clutch Jude and her closer to his power. He'd smooth
the way for her father, too, and hush tongues and smile--oh, how he
would smile on them all!--and no one would ever know.
The sun went down and the stars came out. Still the girl sat there; but
presently a healthy appetite was the call that roused her. She had not
eaten since noon of the day before. She was weak and suffering. She
thought with a kind of comfort that perhaps it was hunger alone that
was now causing her mental and physical agony. After she had eaten, all
would be well with her. She could control Jude and her own fate. She
would never let any one think--Gaston above all--that she was not
mistress of her own shabby little life.
She got up dizzily, and was shocked to find how heavy the basket was;
still, with a constant shifting from hand to hand, she could manage it.
Lola's giddy little lark song sprang to memory out of the ashes of her
hurt and pain, and rose and rippled in the fragrant darkness as she
entered the Long Meadow.
Beacon Hill stood gloomily to the west, and above it gleamed a
particularly bright star. Across Long Meadow the lights in the houses
flickered from open windows, and the Black Cat's glare seemed to control
her motions. It drew her on and on. It was to play a part in her future
as it did in the futures of all--sooner or later.
Wearily she mounted the steps of the tavern and went to the side door
that opened into whatever there was of privacy in Leon's establishment.
Isa was washing the supper dishes. She was a tall, gaunt woman with a
kindly glance that Nature had, for a safeguard, hidden under heavy black
brows.
"You, Joyce?" she said, going on with her task. "I thought maybe it was
some one else."
"Isa," the girl stepped cautiously forward, "I want to tell you
something."
The gathering hilarity in the tavern made this moment secure. Isa put
down her dish and faced the girl.
"What?" she asked bluntly.
Quickly, breathlessly the truth, with all its hideous colouring, truth
bald, and yet with a saving clause for Gaston, was whispered in Isa's
ear.
When the parting with Jared was confided, the woman put her arms about
the girl.
"Now you hush, Joyce, I've heard enough. This is a man's world, God help
us! Us women, when we can, must cling together. Me and Tate pull in
harness because we find it pays--we'll help you out--Tate in _his_ way,
me in mine, but, Lord a-mighty, don't I hope there'll be a heaven just
for women, some day!
"Sit down, you poor, little haggled thing, I don't believe you've eat a
morsel. You look fagged out. They ain't worth it, Joyce, men ain't.
Father, husband--not one of them. But since we've got to use them, we
must make out some kind of game. Here!"
She set food before the wan girl, and the readjustment of life, in her
masterful hands, seemed already begun.
It was comparatively easy, later on, to go into particulars with Isa.
With the roar and clatter growing hourly more deafening in the tavern,
Isa and Joyce, sitting on the back porch under the calm stars, spoke
freely to each other.
Isa, like a dutiful wife, had, while Joyce satisfied her hunger,
confided as much of the girl's trouble to Leon as she thought advisable.
Leon had recognized the opportunity as one by which to capture what was
left of Jared's independence, and rose to the emergency.
"Leave it to me," he said. "Everything will be blooming to-morrow
like--like a--garden--er--Eden."
So now Isa had only Joyce's sore little heart to deal with.
"Come, girl," she began at last; "tears never yet unsnarled a knot. Be
you, or be you not, going to marry Jude?"
"Yes--I am." There must be no doubt upon that score and Joyce sat up
stiffly and faced her helper.
"Well, then, look at the thing sensible. In a place like St. Angé, where
there ain't women to spare, you either got to be a decent married woman
or you ain't. Long as I've lived in St. Angé, and that's been more'n
twenty years, I ain't never yet seen a comfortable, respectable,
satisfied, old maid--they ain't permitted here, and you know it. In
season, of course, you'd marry--that's to be looked for. It chances to
be Jude--and after you get over the strangeness, he'll do as well as any
other. They are all powerfully alike when they have their senses. The
sameness lies in their having their faculties. The only man as was ever
different in St. Angé was Timothy Drake. He got smashed on the head by a
falling tree up to Camp 3, and his wits was crushed out of him. But do
you know, what was left of Tim was as gentle and decent and perticerlar
as you'd want to find in any human. He never drank again, never cussed
nor stormed, and I've laid it by as an item, that the badness and
sameness of men lies in their wits--if you want a companionable, safe
man, you've got to turn to sich as are bereft of their senses--and most
women is that foolhardy they prefer wits and diviltry, to senselessness
and decency."
Joyce smiled feebly at this philosophy.
"You are the one to decide," Isa went on. "Now see here, girl, I ain't
lived fifty years for nothing. I ain't been in and out of my neighbour's
houses, in times when all the closets are open, without learning a heap
about things. Men is men and there's no getting around that. So long as
you can, you better let them think they amounts to something even when
you own to yourself they don't. Private opinions ain't going to bring on
trouble; it's only when they ain't private. Now granting that man is
what we know he is--it's plain common sense to get as much out of him as
you can. Make the place you live in the best thing he's got; and just so
long as you can, keep yourself a little bit out of his reach--tantalize
him. There ain't nothing so diverting to a man as to claw after a woman,
when he's got the belief in himself that when he _wants_ to clutch her,
he can.
"I know the kind of naked feeling you've got when you sense your power
with men first; but that wears off when you get your bearings and find
out that it's only a shuffle in the game, anyway. Land of love! if man
and woman was _all_, then when they came face to face with life they
would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and
man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have
to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get
flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child;
after that all lives is pretty much the same."
Joyce had grown quieter as Isa's words droned on. It was, for all her
commotion, a very humdrum thing that had happened to her.
As it was she, Joyce, was going to be very respectable. She'd manage,
and Jude would always find her worth his while to be decent for. She
would wrench what she could from him and St. Angé and be a commonplace
married woman.
Now that all the fuss and fury were over, it seemed quite a silly
exhibition she had made of herself. She almost wished that she had
stayed at home.
"The little loft room is yours, Joyce, for as long as you want it," Isa
was saying, through the sobering silence. "I ain't going to side with
Jared Birkdale when a woman's sense of right has been roused. Jared's
wits are the keenest and the cruelest round here, and the poison in his
tongue is the deadliest; I guess _I_ know. Are you coming in, child? The
bed's made, but you best carry a pitcher of fresh water up with you."
"I'll be there in a minute, Isa, and the cracked pitcher's by the well,
isn't it?"
"Yes," Isa replied; "and I'll leave a lighted candle for you, the ile is
pretty low in the lamp. Good night, child, and don't fuss. I never saw
fussing hurt any one but the fusser."
Joyce rose stiffly and stood by the open door. She stretched her limbs
and winced at the pain in them. Then she clasped her aching hands above
her head and permitted her tired spirit one long, heavy sigh.
She stood for some time in that relieved state. The chill of the
deepening night soothed her, and the late new moon looked down through
the pines at her--then she turned sharply. Some one was near!
Her startled glance fell upon Jude Lauzoon. He was crouching upon the
step of the porch.
"I thought you was sleeping, standing up," he whispered hoarsely. "I
didn't want to scare you none."
"Why are you here?" Joyce's heart fluttered. Had he heard all?
"Why are you?" Jude turned the tables.
"Where else should I be--to--to--" she looked at him appealingly, "to
get ready to be married?"
Jude was master of the situation in a way Joyce did not know. He could
afford to be condescendingly gracious. He, of all who had taken part in
this poor little drama, now held the centre of the stage, and the
knowledge gave him a certain manliness highly becoming.
"Stay here until we get married--is that it?"
Joyce nodded.
Jude felt a pity for her that would have been contempt had not her
beauty and charm mastered him. He was going to clutch her once and for
all, but he was willing to let her see that he only meant, since he must
have her, to clutch close enough to bind her to him. He was not going to
strangle her: he meant only to stifle her. Jude was cool now, and alert.
"I've got something to say to you, Joyce, and it better be said and done
with. I slept on it last night and most of to-day. I went to your
father's this evening to have it out, but you wasn't there. I met Jock
Filmer in the Long Medder and he told me where you was, and why. Your
father had aired his affair in the tavern."
Joyce clasped her cold fingers nervously. There was nothing for her to
do but wait Jude's pleasure. Leon had not been able to overpower Jared's
personality evidently.
"I saw you go to Mr. Gaston's shack night before last! I'd been there
before you, and I was lying off in the pine grove when you came
a-visiting."
The widening eyes of the listener were the only sign that this
information was startling.
"Do you know," Jude gave a chuckle, "up to that minute when I saw you
a-knocking, and him taking no heed, I had thought 'twas him as had been
shining up to you. I was actually hard agin him, and once went so far as
to go up there with my gun!" Joyce shivered. "Yes, by gosh! with my
gun. Just suppose I'd killed him, and him not to blame either?
"Now there be some men, Joyce, that wouldn't have you after knowing what
I know, but I ain't one as goes off the handle without looking on both
sides. Since I know _he's_ all right, I can manage you proper
enough--and I own up to wanting you, and I'm willing to let bygones _be_
bygones, only--and you might as well know this--once I've had my eyes
open, I ain't going to shut them again. I'll always be within call if
you should forget yourself, and take to attracting Mr. Gaston's
attention. He's my _friend_ now, by gosh! He's going to stand by me.
He's the real stuff and shows up to me in the finest colours, never once
hinting that your seeking him had made you cheap. He's a bigger feller
than I ever thought, and I ain't going to have no foolishness. You
understand?"
"Yes; oh, yes; I understand!" Again the shivering seized Joyce.
"I should think to have a man turn a deaf ear to you like that, would
end any nonsense without more fuss."
"It--it will." The low voice shook.
"But you see, protecting a young girl agin herself is one thing. He
might feel different if a married woman wanted to turn fool. Now, Joyce,
I ain't ever going to say anything more about this, 'less it's
necessary. I know you're pretty and maybe a bit more flighty along of
that, but being married and having your own work, may tone you down. If
you'll stick by me, I'll stick by you; and in time Mr. Gaston can be a
friend to both of us and no harm done. You understand, don't you? I
ain't hard, I'm only letting light in on the whole thing."
"I--I understand, Jude."
"And now, as to marrying. Mr. Gaston is going to lend me money, and I'm
going to put up an addition to my shack, and get some fixings over to
Hillcrest. If you want, we'll get married over there and rough it
together before the buildin's done."
"I--I'd rather wait, Jude if you're willing. I want to get some--some
things." Joyce's teeth were chattering. "But if a minister should
happen in St. Angé in the meanwhile, I'd--I'd marry you." This seemed a
reasonable request--"I don't like the minister over at Hillcrest, he's
so fearful in his sermons, he makes me afraid."
"Well," Jude rose, "when the house gets along, we'll see. Things are
tight and trim now. Good night! Go to bed--and forget it."
He put his hands on her shoulders and bent and kissed the cold, upturned
face. Then he laughed: for he had got what he wanted, and she was very
sweet and pretty.
"Go to bed now--trot on!"
Joyce staggered indoors and hurriedly bolted the door behind her. She
took the spluttering candle and mounted the steep stairs. Once alone in
the small stifling room, she gasped, and put her hands to her throat as
if to remove a pressure that was there.
Presently she blew out the light, set the shutters wide to the pale
moonlight, and undressed herself quietly and methodically.
Already she seemed used to her lot. It was very ordinary, tame and
familiar.
She had received the first dash of cold water in the face, and had
accepted the new situation.
There was no longer even the excitement of trying to dangle a little
above Jude. He had her close in his grip. She must accept whatever he
doled out to her--and that was the fate of all respectable married women
in St. Angé.
CHAPTER V
The late September afternoon held almost summer heat as it flooded St.
Angé. The breeze gave a promise of crispness as it passed fitfully
through the pines; but on the whole a calmness and silence pervaded
space which gave the impression of a summer Sunday when a passing
minister had been prevailed upon to "stop over."
However, it was not a summer Sunday, as St. Angé well enough knew, for
every able-bodied man in the place had that day signed a contract with
the Boss of Camp 7 for the lumber season; and the St. Angéans never
signed contracts on Sunday.
The calmness was accounted for by the fact that Joyce Birkdale was to be
married. The circumstances leading up to this event had been
sufficiently interesting to demand sobriety. St. Angé did not believe in
putting on airs, but it had its own ideas of decorum; things had sort of
dovetailed lately, and, according to Leon Tate, "it was up to them to
spread eagle and plant their banner for knowing a good thing from a
rotten egg."
Leon was above consistent figures of speech. He had power of his own
that controlled even language.
[Illustration: "ONCE I WENT SO FAR AS TO GO UP THERE WITH MY GUN"]
After Jared Birkdale had defied Leon in his own stronghold, and, instead
of agreeing with Tate that Joyce had come to Isa as to a mother, had
insisted upon bare, unglorified fact, he had betaken himself into
oblivion. Tate was confronted with the predicament of having a helpless
girl on his hands to do for--unless another man was forthcoming.
Jude rose to the occasion. He confided to Jock Filmer his desire for
immediate marriage, and good-natured Jock, his system permeated by
gossip, consented to send down to the Junction--since Joyce objected to
the hell-fire minister at Hillcrest--and bring a harmless wayfarer of
the cloth, who Murphy, the engineer of the daily branch train, had said,
was summering there.
"He's a lean, blighted cuss," Murphy had explained; "what God intended
for an engineer, but Nature stepped in and flambasted his constitootion,
and so he took to preaching--that not demanding no bodily strength.
"He comes pottering round the engine, using the excuse of saving my
soul, and I don't let on that I see through him. I give him pints about
the machinery; and if I tell him he can ride in the cab with me
anywhere, he'd marry a girl, or bury a tramp, if he had to go to hell to
do it."
So Jock detailed Murphy to decoy the side-tracked gentleman at the
Junction up to St. Angé.
The stranger was expected on the afternoon train, and Tate had the
guest room of the Black Cat in readiness.
Jock had lazed about the Station since noon. The wedding preparations
bored him, and the train's delay angered him.
"See here!" he exploded to Tom Smith, the agent, "ain't it stretching a
point too far when that gol-durned train gives herself four hours'
lee-way?"
Tom spat with dignity, and remarked casually:
"Long as she ain't likely to meet any train going down, seems to me
there ain't any use to git warmer than is necessary."
"If she keeps on," drawled Jock, "she'll have a head-on collision with
herself some day. Is that the dying shriek of the blasted hussy?"
Tom stopped the imminent expectoration.
"It be," he announced, and went out on the track to welcome the guest.
"She do look," he contemplatively remarked, "like she had an all-fired
jag on."
The train came in sight, swaying unsteadily on its rickety tracks.
Puffing, panting and hissing, it reached the platform and stopped
jerkily.
Murphy sprang from the engine; the conductor strode with dignity worthy
a Pullman official, to the one passenger coach behind the baggage car,
and assisted a very young and very sickly man to alight.
Tom Smith, with energy concentrated on this single activity of the
twenty-four hours, began hurling mail-bag and boxes about with the
abandon that marks the man whom Nature has fitted to his legitimate
calling.
Filmer eyed the passenger with disapproving interest; Murphy, after
looking at some part of the machinery, lolled up to Jock.
"Is that it?" Filmer nodded toward the stranger, who sat exhaustedly
upon a cracker-box, destined for the Black Cat, with his suit-case at
his feet.
"It ain't, then," Murphy returned. "It got on the Branch 'stead of the
Mountain Special, by mistake. It's a lunger bound for the lakes, and
some one gave him a twist as to the track an' we caught 'im. But shure,
the rale thing, the parson, when I was after tellin' 'im of the job what
was at this end of the game, he up and balked--divil take 'im!--an' said
he wasn't goin' to tie for time and eternity, two unknown quantities.
What do ye think of that?"
Jock thought hotly of it, and expressed his thought so fervidly that the
boy on the cracker-box gave attention.
"Say," Murphy continued, "give it straight, Filmer; does it be after
meanin' life or death for Birkdale's girl? What's the almighty hurry,
anyway?"
He leered unpleasantly. Jock squared himself, and faced the engineer.
"Come off with that guff!" he drawled. "What hurry there be is _my_
hurry, you blamed idiot! And my reasons are my own, confound you! I've
set my mind on having that affair come off to-morrow, gol durn it, and
I'm going to have a parson if I have to dangle down to the Junction on
that old machine of yours, myself."
A few added words of luridly picturesque intent gave force and colour to
this declaration.
The stranger on the cracker-box rose weakly and drew near.
"Excuse me," he began, in a voice of peculiar sweetness and earnestness,
"I wonder if I can be of any service? I am a minister!"
Filmer reeled before this announcement, took the stranger in from head
to foot, then remarked in an awed tone:
"The hell you are!"
"I am. My name's Drew, Ralph Drew."
Murphy beat a rapid retreat. The scene was too much for him. Filmer, in
doubt as to whether this was a joke or not, stood his ground.
The young fellow laughed good-naturedly.
"I know what you think," he said, and coughed sharply; "I got my
credentials all right. I nearly finished myself in getting them, but
they're all right. Graduated last June, went under soon after, got on my
feet two weeks ago, and am making for Green Lake. I got side-tracked at
the Junction through my own stupidity, and landed here. Perhaps you can
direct me to a quiet place for the night, and I'll be glad to help you
out in any way along my line, if I can."
This lengthy explanation was interrupted by short, hacking coughs, and
Filmer's eyes never dropped from the eager boyish face through it all.
Presently he leaned down and took the dress-suit case from the other's
hand.
"Drop that," he drawled, "and you follow me. There's the Black Cat
Tavern, but I guess that ain't your kind. Do you think you can make my
shack? It's a half-mile, and pretty uppish grade."
The boy began to thank Filmer.
"Hold on!" Jock commanded. "Keep your wind for the climb, and stop
gassing."
The two started on, and the climb was a silent one. Filmer
appreciatively strode ahead, speechless. Drew, panting, accepted the
situation gratefully, and made the most of his position and his leader's
silence.
Filmer's shack was a lonely place, standing on a little pine-clad knoll
facing the west. It had four small rooms, a broad piazza, and a thrifty
garden at the rear.
The room assigned to Drew had a cot-bed and rough, home-made toilet
accommodations that suggested comfort and a sense of refinement. When
Filmer made him welcome to it, he said quietly: "Now kid, you make
yourself trim and dandy. Come out on the piazza when you get good and
ready, and we'll have supper out there later." It was evident that
Jock's sympathies had been touched.
Once alone, Drew sank upon the low bed, and permitted the waves of
weakness and weariness to engulf him.
The young face grew pinched and blue, a faintness rose and conquered
him. The eyes closed, and the breath almost stopped. But it was only
momentary, and with returning consciousness came renewed hope and sudden
strength.
From the broad open window the boy could see the western hills, already
gay with glistening autumn colour, shining under the glowing sunset sky.
The tall pointed pines, standing here and there in clumps, rose sharply
dark in the early gloaming of the valley.
"It's my chance," thought the boy, his eyes widening with enjoyment of
the beauty; "and, by Jove, I believe I've caught on!"
He got to his feet. The giddiness was gone. He flung off his
dust-stained garments, as if they held all of his past weakness and
misery. He plunged his head into the clear, cold water in the big basin
on the pine table; when he emerged, colour had mounted to his pale face,
and depression was a thing of the past.
"Hang it!" he exclaimed, rubbing his face and head with the rough towel
that he took from the back of a chair; "this is good enough for me. No
Green Lake in mine! I'll send for my trunk"--he had begun to whistle in
the pauses of his thought--"and put up my fight right here. Filmer's
good stuff; and there's a job ready-made for me, I bet! This is where I
was sent, and no mistake. What's that?"
It was the odours of supper, and Drew stood still, inhaled the fragrance
and grinned broadly.
"Gee whiz!" he cried; "I'm as hungry as a ditch digger." He dashed over
to his suit-case, opened it and pulled out the contents. A pair of
flannel trousers, a heavy flannel shirt and thick shoes were selected,
and soon Drew, radiant and revived, went forth from the disorder he had
created, eager for the meal that he heard Filmer placing on the piazza
table.
Drew was to eat many of Filmer's meals in the future; he was to learn
that Jock was a master-hand at cooking, but he was never again to know
just the positive joy that he felt during that first meal; for he
brought to it an appetite made keen by the hope of recovered health--the
health he had squandered so foolishly, poor fellow, while he was making
for his goal at college.
At last he tilted his chair back and laughed.
"I haven't eaten like that," he said, "nor with such enjoyment, since I
went tramping up in the Maine woods when I was a youngster."
Filmer was removing the empty dishes. There was a sense of delicacy
about his host that was compelling Drew's notice. He watched him
passing from kitchen to piazza, and he saw that he was big, strong and
handsome, but with a certain weakness, of chin, and a shyness of
expression that came and went, marring the general impression.
Filmer's shyness was increasing. Never before in his life had he been
brought into close personal contact with "the cloth" as he termed it,
and even this "swaddling garment" was having a slow-growing hold upon
him.
Presently Jock came timidly out, after his last visit to the kitchen,
with pipes and a tobacco-box.
"I'm not certain," he began, "how your kind takes to tobacco, but if I
don't get my evening smoke, I get a bad spell of temper--so, if you
don't object--I'll light up."
"If you'll wait a moment," Drew returned, "I'll join you. I always smoke
my own pipe--I've got sort of chummy with it--but I'll share your
tobacco."
Filmer grinned, and the cloud passed from his face.
"I calculated," he said, "that your kind classed tobacco with cussing
and jags. Light up, kid."
They were soon lost in the fragrant smoke, the bliss of satisfied
appetite, and a peaceful scene. The sun went down, and left the hills
and valley in an afterglow of glory. The beauty was so touching that
even Filmer succumbed, shook the ashes from his pipe and delayed
refilling. Presently he looked at Drew's face. It had paled from
emotion, and shone white in the shadow of the porch.
"You look peaked." Filmer's words brought the boy back to earth. "Been
through a long siege, maybe?"
"Oh, overstudy and weak lungs!" Drew spoke cheerfully. "Bad combination,
you know, and I didn't pull in as soon as I should have. I crammed for
exams. Made them, and then collapsed. I'm all right now, though. All the
struggle's over. I've only to reap the reward. There was a big doctor
down in New York who told me that the air up here was my one chance. I'm
going to take it. A few months here, and a life anywhere else I may
choose, he said.
"What do you say to letting me have your room and company--you needn't
give any more of the latter than you want to, you know--for a spell?
You'll find me easy to get on with, I fancy, no one has ever complained
of me in that way. I don't care what Green Lake is like, I like _this_
better. I like this, way down to the ground. I've gone daffy over the
whole thing." He drew in a long, happy breath. "What do you say?"
"I'd like to ask, if it ain't too inquisitive," Jock inquired, ignoring
the boy's eagerness, while he put forth his own claims, "why in thunder
a chap like you took to the preaching business? Somehow you look like a
feller that might want to enjoy life."
Drew laughed heartily.
"Why, I mean to enjoy life," he replied, "and I chose this profession
because I like it. I believe in it. You see, I was born to be a fighter.
If I'd had a big, lusty body like yours, I might have been--anything. As
it is, I had to choose something where I could fight with other weapons
than bone, muscle and bodily endurance. I'm going into the fight of
helping men and women in the best way I can, don't you see? I suppose I
must sound cheeky and brazen to talk this way, but I'm full of the joy
of it all, and I've made the goal, you see, and for all the breakdown
I've come out ahead. It's enough to stir one, don't you think?
"The night I graduated, I don't mind telling this to you, I went down on
my knees when all the excitement was over and the lights were out, and I
said, 'I am here. I've got money; the good God need not have me on his
mind along that line; he can send me where he chooses, to do his work;
I'm ready.'
"It was like consecrating myself, you know. Well, when the sickness
came, I thought perhaps he didn't want me or my money either; but I came
out of the Valley and here I am now, and I tell you--it seems good."
Filmer folded his arms across his chest, and looked steadily ahead of
him.
"Do you know," he said at length--"and I hope you'll excuse me--I think
you're the most comical cuss that ever happened."
Drew met this frank opinion with the boyish laugh that was having the
effect of clearing up all the dull places in Filmer's character. He had
never heard that laugh equalled but once, and he rarely went back to
that memory--the path was too hard and lonely.
The reserves were down between the two. Without reason or cause,
perhaps, they had fallen into a confident liking.
"Have you done much marrying and burying yet?" The question startled
Drew, then he recalled the conversation on the Station platform.
"Well, no," he said, "practical demonstration comes after graduation
generally. I've substituted for ministers--preached a Sunday, now and
then, you know; but of course, I _can_ perform the marriage ceremony, or
read the burial service."
"You look pretty young," Jock spoke slowly; he was noting the strange
dignity of his guest. Any reference to his profession brought with it
this calm assurance that held levity in check; "but it's this way.
There's a wedding fixed for to-morrer. I've set my heart on it coming
off, and there ain't a durned parson to be had, that the girl favours.
Now under these circumstances, you can't afford to look a gift horse in
the mouth so to speak, and no offence intended. I can give you a tip or
two before you trot in, and as for you, why you know, there ain't
nothing equal to being thrown neck and crop into a job.
"The first time I went logging I got one leg broke and my head smashed,
but I haven't ever regretted it. That accident, and the incidental
scare, did more for me than any two successful seasons could have done.
Now, your plunging right into a marrying may prove providential. Sermons
and infant christenings will seem like child's play after. What do you
say?"
Drew was laughing and the tears stood in his eyes.
"I'll--I'll do my level best," he managed to say through his spasms of
mirth. "This seems like a horrible approach to anything so serious, but
it is the way you put it, you know, and--and the air, and the supper.
The laugh comes easy, you see."
"Oh! enjoy yourself." Filmer waved his pipe aloft. "I'm glad you _can_
take life this way, with the handicap of your trade, I don't quite see,
by thunder, how your future parish is going to account for you, but so
far as I'm concerned you can laugh till you bust."
Filmer was delighted. Not in years had he been so taken out of himself.
"Now this here town," he explained, "likes to have its buryings and
weddings set off with a sermon with the principal actor as text. They
like to get their money's worth. See? This girl, what I want spliced,
is a devilish--" he paused--"you don't mind _moderately_ strong
language, do you?" he asked. "We all get flowery up here. What is
lacking in events, talk makes up. I'll hold back when I can--in reason."
"Don't mind me!" Drew was trying to control his mirth.
Filmer nodded appreciatively.
"Well, as I was remarking--and I've got to be open with you--this here
girl will be safer married, and so will some other folks. I ain't much
of a reader of character, but I sense things like all creation, and I
_feel_ that getting the girl in harness as soon as possible is the only
plain common-sense method. She's mettlesome, you know, the kind that
kicks over the traces, and slams any one happening to be handy. She
ain't never done it yet--but she's capable of it."
"Is--is the girl a relation or----?"
Jock flushed.
"Neither. Nor the man. The feller--Jude Lauzoon is his name--I don't
care a durn for, but he's all gone over this girl, and if any one can
steer him straight she can, and when she gets the reins in her hands, I
believe she's going to keep her head, in order to steer straight.
"The girl's name is Joyce Birkdale. Mother dead; raised sort of
promiscuous on the instalment plan. Father an old buck who only keeps
sober because he want's to see what's going on. He lit out and made
himself scarce a time back, and this here Joyce took refuge after a hell
of--excuse me! after a row with the old man--up to the Black Cat. Leon
Tate acts the father-part to any one in a fix--it helps his trade--keeps
folks in his debt, you know, but he ain't going to hamper hisself past a
certain point, and if this here Jude Lauzoon should get a beckon from
old man Birkdale he'd skip as quick as thunder--that's what is troubling
Tate, and, by gosh! it's troubling me, but for another reason what
needn't enter into this here conversation.
"If it was trusting you with a funeral or a christening," Filmer felt
his way gingerly, "I wouldn't care a durn. You can't hurt the dead and
the kid might outgrow it; but when it comes to tying folks together
tight, it's a blamed lot like trusting something brittle in a baby's
hand. It mustn't be broke, you see, or there'll be h--I mean trouble, to
pay."
"See here!" Drew sat up straight, "I'm not much younger than you, if the
truth were known. So let us cut extreme youth out of the question."
"Maybe you are about my age, kid," Jock gazed indulgently upon him, "and
don't let your necktie choke you; but you're pretty raw material, and
I'm seasoned. That's the difference. It ain't anything against you. It's
the way you've been handled. Burying is looked upon by young _and_ old,
solemn-like; but I didn't know how you looked upon--marrying."
"It's the solemnest thing in life." Drew spoke clearly and impressively.
"I think death is a light matter in comparison. I've always thought
that--since, well--for several years."
"Now you're talking!" Jock leaned over and gave Drew a friendly slap on
the shoulder. "Now you're getting on the right course, and I want to
give you this tip. Lay it on thick with Jude. Tell him he'll be
everlasting blasted in kingdom-come if he don't act clean and hold on.
Specially slap it on about holding on. Jude's intentions are good
enough. He's powerful promising at the start, but he's the d----, the
gol-durndest quitter anywhere around.
"Every new boss bets on Jude when the season begins, but every man of
them would like to kick him out of camp before the spring sets in. All
the hell-fire threats that that religion factory of yours drilled in
you, you plank on Jude to-morrow, when you make him and Joyce man and
wife. How fervent was that factory of yours? There is a difference in
temperatures among them, I've heard."
"Oh! mine was mild," Drew was again helplessly convulsed, "so mild that
I'm afraid you'd call it frigid. But that doesn't matter. Future
damnation is a poor threat when every man among us knows that a present
hell is a much worse affair. It's the awakening of a soul to _that_
fact, that is going to save the world of men and women."
A full moon was sailing high in the heavens now, and Drew's animated
face showed clear in the pale gleam. Jock hitched his chair nearer.
"Do you mean to insinuate," he asked, "that you've been wasting your
time and health studying a line of preaching that hasn't got a red-hot
hell in the background for sinners?"
"I mean just that." Drew threw back his head proudly.
"What in thunder do you do with them, then?"
"We try--by God's help _I'm_ going to try--to take fear from them. Make
them _want_ to be decent. Make them _want_ to use the powers they have
in themselves. Make them want to work _with_ God, not alone _for_ God."
Jock's face was a puzzle. Admiration, pity, bewilderment, and a desire
to laugh, waged war. Finally he drawled:
"Well, I'll be eternally durned, if I ain't sorry that a bright chap
like you has wasted his youth, and pretty nearly drowned the vital
spark, in arriving at such a cold-storage conclusion as this here one
you've been airing. Why any one with half an eye can see that if
hell-fire can't stir sinners, a slow call to duty ain't going to get a
hustle on them. I swear if it wasn't so late, I'd get Gaston over here
to listen to your views. Gaston is open to all kinds of tommy-rot that
has a new mark on it. I'll be jiggered if I don't believe Gaston will
want to pay you a salary to keep you here just for a diversion. But take
my advice, and keep to old-fashioned lines, to-morrer 'specially, when
you come to the marrying. Lord! Lord! But Jude would be having a picnic
if he grasped that rose-coloured streamer of yours."
Drew made no reply. He was thinking, and his thoughts led where he knew
Jock could not follow.
Presently a thin, blue-veined hand stole out in the darkness and found
Filmer's.
"I--I--didn't know such men as you--such a place as this--existed," said
the low, eager voice. "It's like having died and awakened in a new
atmosphere, where even the people are different. It's--it's quite an
inspiration."
Jock kept the hand, delicate as a woman's, in his strong, rough palm.
"You're somewhat of an eye-opener yourself," he said. "I've always held
that mixing is learning on both sides. As long as you've got strength
and inclination to stretch out, you'll always find something stretching
out to you.
"And now as to that proposition of yours a time back, about bunking here
for a time. I'm agreed, with this understanding: I've got a devil of a
disposition, but it ain't ever going to be no better and them as don't
like it can find new quarters. I came here over ten years ago to indulge
my disposition, and I'm going to indulge it. When I don't want folks, I
take to the forest, or, if the weather is bad, I shut and lock my door.
If, after knowing this, you care to take that room I gave you this
afternoon, it's yours for as long as you want it. I like you. I'm sudden
in my likes, but I don't like your hell-less doctrine. I advise you not
to turn that loose in St. Angé. We're none too good now, but if a
soothing syrup was poured out, them as valued their lives would have to
navigate to the Solitudes."
"I don't believe it!" cried Drew. "As God hears me, I believe it is just
the place to try it."
"Oh! Get to bed." Jock stood up and laughed good-naturedly. "Go to bed
and get up steam for to-morrer. When you see the whole collection you'll
warm up your ideas. You're a terrible plucky kid to trust your own soul
on a trifling little raft like this religion of yours. You better not
overload it with more souls, though; the risk's too tremendous.
"Go sleep on your fairy story, boy. I don't see for the life of me how
your health could have broken studying such a mild mixture as that. You
must have been real run down at the start. But never mind, don't lay the
laugh up against me, kid, I ain't enjoyed myself so much in ten years as
I have to-night."
The two parted the best of friends. Drew fell quickly into a deep,
undisturbed sleep, but Filmer tossed about till morning. The grim Past
gripped him; he pulled the flask, that stood ever ready, nearer; but
the cowardice of the act swayed him, and he flung the bottle to the
floor.
Then he swore, and tried to sleep again, but the Spectre jeered him.
"The powers they have in themselves." The words struck again and again
on Filmer's aching brain.
What powers? Oh! he had had powers. He might have been--what? He might
have been where? If--if----
The sunrise of Joyce's wedding day was just breaking when Filmer's
Spectre gave up the struggle and sleep came. The only trophy of the
victory was the discarded flask, which lay untouched where the hand of
the master--for that time at least--had flung it.
CHAPTER VI
The word had passed along, and all St. Angé knew that Jock Filmer had a
raw specimen of a parson up at his shack, in safe keeping for the Sunday
events. For Joyce's wedding-day fell upon a Sunday.
"He's fattening him up," said Tom Smith, "and the Lord knows he needs
it! Such a spindling youngster I _never_ saw--a parson!" The contempt
was too deep for Smith's expression, so he gave up. "And to think,"
added the train conductor, stretching his long legs in Tate's tavern,
"there he was on my car, and I never sensed his ideas. Talk about
entertaining angels unaware, it ain't in it! He even cussed mild when I
told him his ticket was punched for Green Lake, and he was headed for
St. Angé. I never would have took him for anything but a plain milksop
till he let forth his opinions."
"I don't call it a proper attitude," broke in Tate, mixing a glass of
vile dilution for Murphy's consumption. "I don't call it a _proper_
attitude for a parson to appear so much like other folks that you can't
tell 'im. It's suspicious, says I. How do we know as he _is_ a parson?"
This suggestion caused the company a moment's pause.
"He better be!" muttered Peter Falstar. "He'd better be what he claims
to be, even if it _is_ a parson. We don't stand for any tricks from
strangers."
This lifted the spirits somewhat. Looked at _that_ way, they had the
matter in their own hands.
"I wonder"--Tate's face assumed its cheerful placidity--"if his marrying
of Jude and Joyce would hold in any court o' law?"
At this the listeners laughed.
"Who ever heard of a marriage in St. Angé getting to a court o' law?"
asked Tom Smith.
"But Jared ain't never had a daughter married before." Tate nodded his
head sagely. "Jared's a deep one, and, taken off his guard, shows he
knows more about law and order than any one man I ever let my eyes fall
on."
"He must be all-fired off his guard," jeered Falstar, "when he talks
order of any kind. Where is he, anyway?"
"Exactly." Tate held his own glass high and firm. "_Where_ is he? Here
is his daughter's wedding day--Where is he? I tell _you_ if that
marriage ain't hard and fast, it's _my_ opinion Birkdale will trifle
with it to suit his own ends. Jude's taking chances when he annexes
Jared to his responsibilities, and don't you forget it! If that marriage
ain't hide-bound, or if Jude don't provide for Birkdale, it's going to
be broke if Jared has to raise all damnation to do it. He's got his eye
to a knothole somewhere, you bet your life on that."
By superhuman sacrifice St. Angé had kept itself sober the Saturday
night preceding the wedding but it did not sleep much. The male
population discussed the day's doings and the women searched their
meagre belongings for appropriate trappings for the next day's
festivities.
Their resources were limited, and the day being Sunday, added to the
difficulty.
"You can't," said draggled Peggy Falstar, "put on real gay toggings in a
church and on a Sunday."
Isa Tate, as leading lady in the place, solved the problem.
"We've got our mourning," she said to Peggy and the others gathered in
Peggy's dirty kitchen. "We always have that on hand. Now we can leave
off the long veils and put some false flowers on our bonnets--real
spruce ones. They will lighten up the black. Them as has black gloves
can wear them, but by carrying a clean handkercher real conspicuous, the
gloom will be brightened some."
"I ain't had a pair of gloves in seventeen years," moaned Peggy.
"Well, you can sort of wind yer handkercher around your hands,"
comforted Isa.
"My feelings may be overcome," said Peggy; "they generally is in
public, and then I'll have to use my handkercher and show my hands."
"You'll have to control yourself." Isa looked grim. "And, land o' love,
a wedding ain't no place for wailing. Tate and me has given Joyce a real
smart white dress, and she's trimmed her old hat all up with little
frost flowers. She's a dabster at fixin' things. She's going to look
real stylish. You know her mother was that way, though it was sorter
knocked out of her, but the last thing she said to me was, 'Isa, I want
you to put my grandmother's specs on me when I'm gone. Specs is dreadful
stylish, and I've always looked forward to my eyes giving out so I could
wear them. My eyes,' says she, 'has lasted better than me, but I want to
be buried in my specs'; and so she was!"
The women all wiped their eyes.
"She was a powerful impressive corpse," whimpered Peggy, "but them specs
gave me a terrible turn when I saw them first. The second look sorter
took away the shock. I do hope," Peggy sighed, "I do hope them specs was
long-distance ones. The good Lord knows Mrs. Birkdale had favourable
reasons for seeing as far off as possible!"
"They was," Isa nodded. "I tried 'em, and things was all blurred to me."
And then the women parted gloomily, to meet again at Joyce's wedding.
It was such a day as only the mountains know. A hushed, golden day with
a mysterious softness of outline on the distant hills.
The little crumbling church was open to the beauty of the morning, and
John Gaston had decked it within with every flowering thing he could
gather from wood and meadow.
Jock came early and stood in one of the narrow doors of the church,
opening upon the highway. His hands were plunged in his pockets, and a
look of concentration was on his handsome face.
He was going to "set," so he thought, his baby parson on to Jude. There
was excitement in the idea. While he stood there Gaston came and took
his stand at the other narrow door. The architect of the St. Angé church
had had ideas of propriety in regard to established rules.
"Looks--some! don't it?" Jock asked.
"Yes," Gaston replied; "I was bound to have it look as wedding-like as
possible."
"You did the decorating?" Jock asked, and a curious frown settled
between his eyes. "I thought it was the women."
"They're thinking of themselves. Is your parson on to the game, Filmer?"
"He's all right. Gone off to commune with Nater. There he is now."
Drew had entered the rear door, and went at once to the small bare
pulpit.
"Umph!" whispered Gaston. "Looks like a picture of John the Baptist."
"He don't act like it." Jock was in arms at once against any suspected
criticism. "He's got more sand than many a blasted heavyweight. You
ought to hear his gab--it's the newest thing in soul-saving. Sort o'
homeopathic doctrine. Tastes good, but bitter as pisen under the
coating. Real stuff inside, and all that. Get's working after it's
taken, and the sweet taste lasts in your mouth while your innards are
acting like--"
The people were gathering. They passed by Jock and Gaston without
recognition. Social functions in St. Angé ignored all familiar
intimacies.
Jude and Joyce came through the rear door, and sat in the front pew.
The girl moved with the absorption of a sleepwalker beside Jude whose
shufflings bespoke nervous tension. Every now and then he glanced
sheepishly at Joyce. Even to his senses, accustomed as they were to the
girl's beauty, there was a slight shock of surprise.
The little round hat was gracefully wound with frost flowers until it
looked like a wreath upon the pale gold of the glorious hair. The face
was white and luminous, and the eyes looked as if they were expecting a
vision to appear.
The white dress, home-made and cheap, had the unfailing touch that
innate taste always gives, and it fell in soft lines about the slim,
girlish figure. The little work-worn hands were folded loosely. They
were resting a moment before taking up the labour of the new, untried
life.
Drew glanced down as the two came in, and when he saw Joyce he started,
and leaned forward.
He tried to take his eyes from that pale, exquisite face, but could not.
It moved him powerfully not only by its beauty, but by its expression of
entranced expectation.
Could the crude fellow at her side inspire such emotion? It was puzzling
and baffling, but it roused Drew's sympathy, and held him captive. The
rough faces of the men, the pitiable, worn faces of the women, the
sprinkling of freckled, childish faces were blotted out for him. Like a
star in blank space shone that one sweet, waiting face with its wreath
of fairy-like flowers.
* * * * *
She was waiting for something she expected him to give. Drew became
obsessed with this thought. Not the consecration of marriage--No! but
something she--the soul of her--wanted.
Out among the pines in the early morning Drew had made a few notes,
these he clutched in his feverish right hand. When the hour fixed upon
arrived, he arose and stood beside the rickety pulpit stand. He made a
short prayer; he knew it was feeble and rambling.
"Scared to death," thought Gaston, and he heard Filmer breathe heavily.
Then Drew lifted his notes to the desk; tried to fix his eyes and
attention upon them, failed and gazed helplessly at that one face in the
appalling vacancy. Presently the bits of paper fell from his nerveless
hand and fluttered to the floor.
Back in his college days he had had his dream of the vital word he would
say to his people--_his_ people--on that first day when he was to come
to his own. Strangely enough he felt that his time had arrived. Called
only by God, to a people who would never think of desiring him, he must
say his word though only that pale, wonderful face thrilled to his
meaning. If only he could make _her_ understand, he would take it as a
sign from on high that his mission was not to be an unworthy one.
Drew always had the power, even in his weakest moments, to utilize his
panic to more intense concentration. It was the faculty that had made
his college president point to him on more than one occasion as a
success. Now, with the anchor of his notes fluttering in the September
breeze, he put out to sea.
"We brought nothing into this world, and it's certain we can carry
nothing out."
"He's mistaking this for a funeral," thought Gaston, and he struggled to
conquer his inclination to laugh.
But what was happening? The boy up aloft was refuting the statement. His
voice had a power wholly out of proportion to the frail body. He was
getting hold of the people, too, Peggy Falstar was crying openly, and
slow, hard-brought tears were dimming many eyes.
They were being told, those plain, dull people, and by a mere boy, too,
that they had brought something into the world. A heritage of strength
and weakness; of good and evil, bequeathed to them by those who had gone
on. From these fragments their souls must weave what is to be taken with
them when Death comes. The effort, the struggle, the success or failure,
will be the part that they leave behind for them who remain, or who are
to come later. In words strangely adapted to his listeners, that frail
boy, with glorified face, was beseeching them, as they valued their
future hope, as they desired to make better the ones who must live
later, to gain a victory over their heritage of weakness and sin by the
God-given elements of strength and goodness, and to blaze the trail for
themselves, and to leave it so free behind them that weak, stumbling
feet might easier find the way.
He was speaking to fathers and mothers for the sakes of their children.
He was urging the two about to marry to see to it that they prepare by
their own consecration, the _path on before_.
A silence filled the little church. The boy, pale and exhausted, was
asking Jude and Joyce to come forward.
Gaston saw them go, side by side, Jude shambling as usual, Joyce
stepping as if hastening to receive something long-desired.
It was the briefest of services. Simple, unadorned, but dignified and
solemn.
Amen!
It was over. Jude and Joyce were married! The people were stirring; were
moving about. The sodden, familiar life was awaiting every one of them.
No; something had happened in St. Angé. Gaston knew it. Filmer knew it.
Peggy Falstar had hold of her little Billy's hand, and Peter followed
with his little daughter Maggie drawn close to him.
Leon Tate was red in the face, and Isa looked stern and thoughtful. Yes;
something had happened in St. Angé. It would never be the same.
Drew went outside the church and joined Filmer. He had seen the uplifted
expression on Joyce's face. He had had his answer from on high; and he
was strangely moved.
He stood beside Filmer, motionless and flushed. Jock contemplated him
from his greater height as if he were a new and startling enigma.
"Say, kid," he drawled presently, striving to hide the excitement that
was causing the perspiration to stand on his forehead; "what got into
you?"
"I reckon it was something getting out of me," Drew replied with the
short cough.
"I don't know as them few words you spoke are capable of holding Jude
and Joyce eternally. What you think?"
"If they cannot, no others could." Again the quick, harsh cough.
"But that sermon!" Jock shrugged his shoulders nervously; "that's what's
shook the foundations of this here town. Leaving out the fact of you
being _you_, standing up there handling folks's feelings as you did, I
want to know if you stand by them ideas you passed out?"
"With all my mind!"
"Not elocuting and acting?"
"Surely not."
"Why, see here, kid, if what you said is true--which, by thunder it
ain't!--don't you see that doctrine, 'bout coming with an outfit, adding
to it, and taking away what you want, and leaving what you must; blazing
trails, clearing away underbrush and what not; why, don't you see that's
worse, by a confounded lot, than the old-fashioned hell?"
"Much, much more solemn." Drew leaned against a tree. His new strength
was exhausted. Jock was too absorbed to notice the weakness and pallor.
"Why," he went on excitedly, "when you know you're going to frizzle at
the end--just you, yourself, you can see the justice of it, and respect
what sent you there, but to eternally be thinking of others, and messing
up their lives--why that's durn rot."
"Filmer," the tone was low and faltering; "we're all one with God, no
matter how you put it. All working together; all bound on the same
journey. Think back; was there never one you loved who suffered with you
and for you? Have you ever considered how much of that one's life you
were hampering, when you dragged him--or her--down?"
Filmer's face twitched.
"Now, see here," he blurted out, and his eyes flashed, "the folks round
here ain't going to stand for this rot, and I don't blame 'em. When they
think it over, they'll get drunker than ever, and they'll even up with
you later. You've got to learn more than you've learned already.
Feelings are private property and outsiders better keep off. Come home
to dinner. You look like a pricked bladder. This here gassing 'bout
things what ain't worthwhile don't pay. Here, lean on me. It's all
gol-durned nonsense using yourself up so."
He took Drew firmly by the arm, and led him away.
Drew was too weak to continue, even had he desired to do so, the
conversation Filmer had forced upon him, but when they were smoking in
the late afternoon Jock returned to the subject.
"I was just wondering," he said, through the haze; "ain't there never no
let up to that new-fangled idea of yours?"
"None. That's the beauty of it."
"Beauty? Huh! Well, we'll drop it. Feel like toddling down to Gaston's?"
Drew rose at once.
They passed down the pine-covered path slowly, and as they neared
Gaston's shack, Filmer paused.
"Wherever you be," he began slowly, "as occasion permits, you're going
to air them sentiments?"
"I'm going to live them. I may never have a chance to preach them. I'm a
bit discouraged about the weakness that followed my first attempt."
"Oh, thunderation! You're going to pick up flesh and strength fast
enough--it's that slush you've got on board that's getting my grouch.
I'd rather you had a natural death, kid. I've taken a liking to you; and
you don't know St. Angé."
CHAPTER VII
Joyce stopped her wild little song, and stood still to listen. Then she
stepped to the window, drew aside the white muslin curtain, and looked
out upon the white, white world.
She had thought she heard a step on the crisp snow, but probably it was
the crackling of the protesting trees, for the weight of ice was almost
more than they could bear.
The lights in the scattered houses shone red and steady in the still
glitter. A full moon dimmed the stars, but a keen glance showed that
every one was in its place and performing its duty in the glorious plan.
A white, holy night! Only such a night as comes to high, dry places
where the cold is so subtle that its power is disguised; where the
green-black pines stand motionless in the hard whiteness, and where the
silence is only broken by mysterious cracklings and groanings, when
Nature stirs in the heart of the seeming Death, while she weaves the
robe of Spring.
Joyce was beginning to feel the wonders of her little world; she was
timidly feeling out the meaning of things. Sometimes the sensation hurt
and frightened her; often it soothed and thrilled her to deep ecstasy.
Presently she left the window, and turned to the warmth and glow inside.
Jude's old cottage had been transformed, and Joyce was developing into
one of those women who are inherent home-makers. Such women can
accomplish more with the bare necessities of life than others with the
world's wealth at their command. It is like personal magnetism,
difficult to understand, impossible to explain.
Comfort, grace, colour and that sweet disorder which is the truest
order. Chairs at the right angles, tables convenient, but never in the
way. A roaring wood fire on a dustless hearth; pictures hung neither too
high nor too low, and no sense of emptiness nor crowding. A room that
neither compelled attention, nor irritated the nerves--a place to rest
in, love in, and go out from, with a longing to return.
On the south side of the room, Jude, with Gaston's financial and
personal assistance, had added a bay window.
That innovation had quite stirred St. Angé. Ralph Drew had designed it
and, through the summer, while the building was in process, the
inhabitants had watched and expressed their opinions freely and
enjoyably.
"Up to Joyce's," Billy Falstar, that indefatigable gatherer and
scatterer of news, announced, "they are smashing a hole in the off side
of the house."
An hour later, a good-sized audience was occupying the open space on
the south side of the garden.
"Why don't you have it run _in_, instead of out?" Peter Falstar
suggested. "It's just tempting Providence to let out more surface to
catch the winter blasts."
"And it's wasteful as thunder," added Tom Smith. "Just so much more
heating of out-door space enclosed in that there semi-circle."
"There ain't nothing to see from that side, anyway," Leon Tate remarked,
as if possibly the others had not considered that. "If you want a more
extended, and rounded outlook, you'd better smash the north side out.
From that hole you could see the village, and what not."
"And the Black Cat," Jock Filmer drawled.
"It's no kind of an outlook at all that don't include the Kitty, eh,
Tate?"
Tate scowled. He held a grudge against Filmer. It was he who had
discovered, sheltered, and abetted the young minister who had so
interfered with trade a time back. Tate held his peace, but he had never
forgotten.
The laugh that followed Jock's interruption nettled the tavern-keeper.
But the pretty window had been finished before Drew and the autumn went.
It was Joyce's sanctuary and pride. In it stood the work-basket, a gift
from the mystical sister of Drew, who lived off somewhere beyond the
Southern Solitude, a girl about whom Drew never tired of talking, and
about whom events seemed to cluster as bees round a hive.
In that nook, too, hung the three wonderful pictures--Gaston's wedding
gift.
There were spaces between the sides and centre of the window, and in the
middle place hung a modern Madonna and Child. This Joyce could
comprehend. Gaston knew the older, rarer ones would be beyond her.
That pictured Mother and Child were moulding Joyce's character. Gaston
had wondered how they might affect her.
To the left of the Madonna was an ocean view. A stretch of sandy shore,
an in-rolling, white-crested wave--with a limitless beyond.
To the wood-environed mind of the girl this picture was simply a
breath-taking fairy fancy.
It existed, such a thing as that. Gaston had sworn it, but it was
incomprehensible. However, it led the new-born imagination to expand and
wander, and when Joyce was at peace, and the sun shone, she went to that
picture for excitement and worship.
To the right of the Madonna hung a photograph. Gaston had taken it
himself long ago. A foreground of rugged, cruel rock; black where age
had stamped it; white where snow traced the deep wrinkles of time. But
out of this rough light and shade, rose a glorious peak, sun-touched and
cloud-loved. A triumphant soul reaching up to heaven out of all the
time-racked rock.
[Illustration: THAT PICTURED MOTHER AND CHILD WERE MOULDING JOYCE'S
CHARACTER]
The dwarfish peaks, that had surrounded Joyce's outlook all her life,
made one understand the girl's love for this picture. As this was great,
compared to the small things she knew, so life held possibilities that
her life hinted--she might struggle with that ideal in mind.
The ocean scene was her fancy's fairy space; the towering peak, her
philosophy.
But Joyce knew nothing of all this, consciously. Marriage, as Isa had
foretold, brought its many cares and new interests. The strangeness and
importance dwindled. No one considered the matter different from any
other joining of St. Angé forces into a common life--the girl herself
grew to take it for granted and sometimes wondered why she _imagined_
her lot different.
She piled on more wood now, and laughed at the roar and glow. Then she
drew up the arm-chair that Jude liked; he would be cold and tired when
he returned. With a little laugh she pulled her own chair, a low, deep
rocker, from the bay window, out into the fire's warmth, opposite Jude's
spacious chair. Between them she placed a hassock--it was nearer her
rocker than Jude's chair.
This she evidently noticed after a moment's contemplation, for the smile
faded, and with strict impartiality she moved the stool to a position
exactly between the two chairs, and directly in front of the fire's
full light and heat.
"There!" she said, as if satisfied with her own sense of justice and
propriety. "That ought to suit everybody."
The smile returned, and the little neglected song was taken up where the
imagined footsteps had interrupted it.
The room was rosy and warm; even the window that was to tempt Providence
was cosily heated, and the box of plants that fringed its outer edge
stood in no danger of the frost's touch.
A plate of deep-red apples on the table sent forth a homely fragrance,
and they were almost as beautiful as a vase of roses would have been.
Presently there was no mistake--steps were approaching. The crusted snow
gave way under the heavy tread, the steps of the little porch creaked
under the weight of strong bodies. It was Gaston's voice that came first
to Joyce.
"It's too late, Jude. Past nine."
"Come in! Come in!" Jude was stamping noisily. "It ain't never too late,
when I say come. Maybe Joyce can tempt you with a mixture she's a
dabster at. After the walk you need it, and so do I."
The outer door was pushed back, the waiting cold rushed in with the two
men, but the home glow killed it as the kitchen door swayed inward, and
Jude and Gaston stepped toward Joyce.
She stood with her back to the fire, a pale straight figure against the
red light.
"Hello! Joyce." Jude was energetically pulling off his short, thick
jacket. "Get busy at that 'mix' of yours. Put plenty of the real thing
in and don't be sparing with the tasties. Off with your coat and hat,
Mister Gaston. Make yourself comfortable. To folks as is already up,
what's an hour or two?"
Gaston had taken Joyce's hands in welcome.
"It's too bad," he said, "to set you to work after your stint's over.
The room looks as if you'd bewitched it. I tell you, Jude, there never
was a man yet who could juggle with a house and put the soul in it."
Joyce flushed happily, and took Gaston's hat from him, as he pulled off
his coat.
"I'll have everything ready in a jiffy," she said briskly. "Sit down,
and tell me about it, while I mix the brew."
Jude sank, without giving Gaston a choice, into his own chair. Gaston
took Joyce's--he knew her fancy for the stool when he and Jude were both
present.
"Well," said Jude, stretching his legs out toward the blaze, and putting
his heavy, snow-covered boots so near the fire that an odour of
scorching leather filled the room; "we got some men over to Hillcrest,
and we've bargained for lumber and other materials; we're going to begin
at once, clearing, and soon as the cold lets up, we'll start building."
"Just think!" Joyce stirred the concoction in the jug jubilantly. "Just
think of Mr. Drew coming here and bringing folks with him. Isn't it
wonderful?"
She was all aglow with interest, excitement and pleasure. Gaston looked
at her musingly.
"I used to think," she went on, coming forward with the jug and setting
it on a low table near the hearth, "that nothing could ever happen here
in St. Angé. Nothing that hadn't already happened over and again. Isa
has always said the place would get a jog some day. She always seemed to
sense that," the girl smiled; "and she was right. Didn't you have to put
money down for men and things, Jude?"
"Sure!" Jude spoke from the depths of his mug.
"Did Mr. Drew send money?"
"Send nothing." Jude laughed foggily from the depths. "That's how I got
the deal so prompt, I told him I'd undertake the job without any
settlement till he got here to boss the doings."
"But where did you get the money, Jude?"
"It's partnership, Joyce," Gaston broke in. He set down his own emptied
mug, and drew a little farther from the fire's revealing light.
"Lauzoon, Filmer and Gaston, Contractors and Builders.' How does it
sound?"
"But the money?" There was a little line of care, now, between the
girl's deep eyes.
"Oh, that's all right! When Drew planks down the dollars, Mr. Gaston
will get them back." Jude wiped his heavy lips on the back of his hand.
"But--it must have taken--a good deal?"
"Come, Joyce," Jude scowled, "you creep back to your corner. When women
get to tangling up money with their own doings, it's the devil. You keep
to your business, girl, and leave deeper matters alone."
Gaston frowned. Something lay back of that care-traced line on Joyce's
forehead. Something lay back of her questioning--what was it? And Jude's
assumption of the male superiority over his young wife disturbed Gaston.
He had not noticed it so sharply before.
Presently Joyce took the low stool, and clasped her knees in her
enfolding arms. The two men had filled their pipes, and now, through the
dim haze, looked at the fair, dreamy face between them. Then Jude laid
his pipe aside--and snored. The clock ticked softly. The logs fell apart
in a red glow. In drawing away from the flying sparks, Joyce placed her
stool nearer Gaston, and the pretty bent head came within easy distance
of the hand lying inert on the chair arm.
"Jude gets awfully sleepy in the heat," Joyce whispered; "you don't
mind?"
"No, why should I? But I ought to be going. You are tired, too?"
"No." The sudden upward glance was all a-quiver with alertness. "I don't
ever seem tired now. Keeping one's own house--is great! and it seems
like everything is waking up every minute. Sometimes I hate to go to
sleep for fear I'll miss something."
And now Gaston's hand touched the heavy curves of pale, gold hair.
"You have made a _home_," he said; "I wonder if you know what a great
achievement that is? I wonder if Jude knows?"
Joyce winced.
"Oh! if he's a bit cross with me," she whispered softly, "don't you
mind. He thinks that's the way, you know. _I_ understand."
"I suppose you do," Gaston smoothed the silken hair, "but make _him_
understand, Joyce. It takes understanding on both sides, you know."
"And, Mr. Gaston"--the girl changed the subject as adroitly as a more
worldly wise woman might have done--"you helped me make this home. I
ain't _ever_ going to let you forget that. These pictures," her loving
glance took them all in, "and the books coming and going just fast
enough to keep me nimble. It seems like you'd opened a gate and let some
of the big world in."
"There's plenty of it on the other side of the two Solitudes, Joyce."
Gaston's hand fell gently along the warm throat and rested on the bent
shoulder.
Jude gave another gurgling snore. The two did not change their
positions, but there was silence for an instant.
"That mountain-top, all jagged and high--my! how it just makes me want
to climb; climb through my work all day long; climb to getting somewhere
out beyond. And that great empty picture with the awful white wave
coming from nowhere--it just makes me hold my breath. Sometimes it seems
as if it was going to swallow up everything and--me. It don't ever do
that, does it, Mr. Gaston?"
"It has done damage of that kind in its time; but generally it obeys
orders and stops at the safety line." Gaston smiled into the wondering
eyes.
"I like the--picture--I like it terribly," breathed the girl, "but I'd
_hate_ the real thing. I am sure it makes a terrific noise." Gaston
nodded, and old memories seemed beating in upon him. "It would wear me
out by its own----"
"Restlessness." Gaston's thought ran along with the cruder one. "Its
restlessness is at times--unbearable, unless--one is very young and
happy."
"But I am young--and happy." Joyce spoke lingeringly and her eyes grew
fixed upon the heart of the coals. "Still I would hate it--and be afraid
of it. It's beautiful--but it's awful. I don't like awful things. I
like to look up at that brave old mountain, and know--it will always be
the same no matter what happens down below."
Suddenly Gaston felt old, very old, beside this girl near him with her
intuitive soul-stretches and her hampered life.
"So the mountain is your favourite picture, Joyce?"
A grandfatherly tone crept into his voice, and the caressing hand
touched the round, pale outline of cheek and chin with the assurance of
age and superiority--but the girl tingled under it.
"No," she said, almost breathlessly, "I like _that_ best of all." And
she pointed a trembling finger toward the Madonna and Child.
Gaston was conscious of a palpitating meaning in the words and gesture.
"Why?" he asked softly.
"Because," the fair head was lowered, not in timidity, but in deep
thought, "because I want it--my baby--to look like that one. I look and
look at the picture, and I dream about it at night. I know every little
dimple and the soft curls--and all. I pray and pray, and if God
answers--then--" a gentle ferocity rang through the hurried words--"I'm
going to _keep_ it so. It's going to be different from any other little
child in St. Angé. And it all fits in, now that Mr. Drew is coming back.
It's just wonderful! It was Mr. Drew that set me thinking about leaving
something better for them as come after. He said terrible strange
things--but you can't forget them, can you? I've been--well, sort of
weeding out my life ever since he was here--and there can't be so
much--for my baby to do--if I clear out my own faults. Can there?"
The girl's absolute ignoring of any reason for withholding this
confidence from him at first staggered Gaston, and then steadied him.
Never before had Joyce so appealed to him, but the sacredness of the
position she had thrust upon him for a moment appalled him. He looked
intently at the girlish, innocent face. What he saw was a blind woman,
groping through the child, seeking a reality that evaded it.
Never greatly impressed with his own importance, Gaston became cruelly
aware, now, that in a marked way he still was the one being in the
girl's world to whom she looked for guidance. The knowledge made him
withdrawn for an instant.
Drew had appealed to her spirit--but he was elected Father Confessor,
Judge and General Arbiter of her daily life. For a moment Gaston's sense
of the ridiculous was stirred. Suppose they--those--people who
inhabited the Past, and peopled the possible Future--suppose they should
know of this? The eyes twinkled dangerously, but the girl in the glow of
the red fire was terribly in earnest.
"You are perfectly happy, Joyce?" It was an inane question, but like
some inane questions it touched a vital spark.
"Why, if I get on the top of the things that might make me unhappy if
they conquered me; and if I shut my ears and eyes--why, then, I guess
I'm perfectly happy. I won't _let_ myself feel sad any more, and I make
believe a lot--about Jude. You have to when you've been married long;
and I guess he has to about me. So you see, living that way it comes out
all right. And then when you have beautiful things, like this house, and
the books and pictures, and some one ready to help--like you--why
_those_ things I just hold up in the light all the time. Isn't _that_
being happy?"
"What a philosopher!" Gaston bent forward and again pressed the slim
shoulder. The piteousness of this young wife getting her happiness, all
unknowingly, by self-imposed blindness of the inner soul, clutched at
his heart.
"Hold hard to that, Joyce," he said. "Hold fast to that. Let all the
light in that you can upon your blessings, and as to other things, why,
don't acknowledge them! You're on the right track, though how you've
struck it so early in the game, beats me."
"Well," Joyce was all aglow, "Mr. Drew helped. He was so funny and
jolly. Just a big boy, but he had the queerest ideas about things. When
I think of him, sick and weak like he was, and yet living out all his
brave thoughts just as if he was a giant--why, sometimes I go off and
cry by myself."
Jude from his shadow and aloofness was staring dumbly at the pair
opposite while the low-spoken words sank into his drowsiness. Jude was
primitive. Actions were _things_ to him; things that admitted of no
shades of meaning. What the two were saying in no way modified the
situation. Gaston's hand was caressing his wife--his woman, Jude would
have expressed it--and the bald fact was enough.
A hot anger rose in him--an anger calculated to urge a personal assault
then and there, upon the two who dared, in his own house, set his
rights--his alone--aside.
The sleepy eyes widened and closed; the teeth showed through the rough
beard--and then, like a smarting blow, came the memory of all that
Gaston meant to him. Money! Gaston's money. There had been loans,
trifling, but many, and now Gaston stood ready to advance money for this
new building project. Money enough to make Jude master of the situation.
But with this thought came others that crushed and bruised him.
He had been wrong. It was not his wife's folly alone that stood between
him and her. Gaston _had_ been using him. He was lending him money--hush
money! And while he had gone his stupid way, thinking he held the whip
hand over Joyce, the two had had their laugh at him. Money has done
much for good and evil in this world, but it saved Gaston that night
from a desperate attack.
A low cunning crept into Jude's thoughts. Very well, two or three could
play at the same game.
More money! More! More! and who knew? Why he might make a choice in the
future--a choice for himself.
He settled back and snored long and deep. Then he stretched and yawned
and gave ample notice of his advance, in order that the conspirators
might cover their tracks.
When he opened his eyes, Gaston was leaning forward with clasped hands
stretched out toward the fading glow, and Joyce, crouched upon her stool
with huddled knees, gave no sign that confusion held part in her
thoughts.
"Say," Jude had already adopted the guise of the man with a purpose,
"you don't suppose, do you, that that young parson is coming up here
with any idea of saving souls?"
"Only his own, I fancy." Gaston replied, without turning. "He wants to
keep his soul and body together. Seeking his lost health, you know."
"What makes him fancy he lost it up here?"
"He doesn't. He lost it down there among books, bad air, and foolish
living. His physicians tell him his only chance for life is up in this
region. Some day more of the big doctors will shut down on drugs and
give Nature a try."
"Umph!" Jude shook himself. "Put a log on," he commanded Joyce. Then:
"He preached a durned mess of nonsense the last time he was visiting
us," he continued. "I didn't have any inclination to take his guff
myself, but I don't half like the idee, now that I've slept on it, of
his coming in here as a disturbing element, so to speak. Living and
minding your business, is one thing; interfering with other folks'
business is another. Filmer, he told me a time back that he ain't had a
comfortable spree since that young feller was here. He sort of upset
Jock's stomach with his gab. The women, too, was considerable taken with
him--he's the sort that makes fool women take notice. It ain't pleasant
to think of that sissy-boy actually setting up housekeeping here, and
reflecting upon old established ways, with any tommy-rot about clearing
trails and such foolishness."
Joyce smiled. So that thought rankled in more lives than her own?
"Going to retire from the contractorship, Jude?" Gaston got up and
crossed the room for his coat and hat.
"Not much!" Jude rose also. "Only beginning right is half the battle,
and I say for one, and Tate he was saying the same this morning, that
we'd better stamp out any upraisings in the start, now that it's likely
to be a staying on, 'stead of a visit. When I select a teacher," Jude
was following his guest to the outer door, "I ain't going to take up
with no white-livered infant. See you to-morrow, Mr. Gaston?"
"Oh, certainly. Good night, Jude. Good night, Joyce." Gaston looked back
at the little figure by the fire, and he saw that the upturned eyes were
fixed on the Madonna and Child.
"Why don't you speak, Joyce? Mr. Gaston is saying good night." Jude's
words reached where Gaston's had failed. The girl rose stiffly.
"Good night," she said slowly, and a great weariness was in her face.
When Jude returned she still stood in the middle of the room, her hands
hanging limply by her side.
Something had gone out from her life with Gaston's going. But she was
still thrilled and her soul was sensitive to impressions.
"What's up?"
Jude came close to her and stared boldly into the large, tired eyes.
"Nothing, Jude."
"You ain't so spry as when--there's company."
"It's late--you've had a nap. I'm dead tired."
"That's it," Jude laughed coarsely. "I've slept and kept out of
mischief--you've been too durned entertaining--you're feeling the
strain. See here, Joyce, maybe you better not be so--amusing in the
future. Maybe you better leave Gaston to me--business is business and I
guess we can do without petticoats in this camp."
He was losing control of himself.
"Jude," Joyce came close and tried to put her hands on her husband's
shoulders. "Jude, I want you to pay Mr. Gaston back as soon as you can.
It's been on my mind for quite a spell. We must owe him a lot. How much,
Jude?"
"None of your--durned business."
"And Jude--don't borrow any more. I know Mr. Drew would advance anything
for the building. His family is terribly rich. Mr. Gaston knows about
them. I'd rather owe Mr. Drew than Mr. Gaston. Please, Jude!"
For a moment the sweet, quivering face put forth its appeal to the lower
nature of the man. The girl was young enough, and new enough to sway
Jude after a fashion, but the charm died almost at birth.
"See here." Jude slipped from the clinging hands, and glared angrily.
"You ain't ever properly learned your place. You better let go any fool
idee that you can budge me with your wiles. I don't have to buy your
favours--they're mine. What I do, I do, and you take what I choose to
let you have. See? If you get more than what is rightfully yours, don't
get sot up with the notion I don't know what I'm permitting. I guess
I've got to let you see what you're up against a little plainer. I had
a kind of dim idee that your schooling and book-learning made you a bit
keener than most about the real facts of the case, but you're all alike.
Don't you question me in the future, girl, and you go your way--the way
I _let_ you go--and be thankful, but don't you forget you and me is
_man_ and _wife_, and that means just one durned thing in St. Angé and
only one."
Joyce staggered back as if the man before her had dealt her a blow.
What had happened? Then she remembered that Jude was always irritable
when he had been roused from sleep, or when he was hungry.
The blindness was mercifully clouding her soul now; but its duration was
brief. It only gave her time to stand upright.
"Did you think I was asleep to-night?" Jude almost hissed the words.
The suddenness of the question had all the evil power of reducing the
girl to an appearance of guilt.
"You were asleep," she whispered back.
Jude laughed cruelly.
"With my eyes opened," he snarled--"It pays to _seem_ asleep, when you
want to catch on to some kind of doings. Your old man, Joyce, ain't half
the fool you'd like him to be. I wasn't napping when Billy Falster
blabbed his warning. I wasn't napping when I saw that hand-holding and
kissing from the top of Beacon Hill. I wasn't snoozing that night when
you went crawling to Gaston's shack just after you'd given your word to
me, and"--Jude had worked himself into a quivering rage--"I wasn't
sleeping when you and him sat _there_ to-night, blast ye!"
The convincing knowledge broke upon Joyce with full force. She would
never be able to ignore the fact again. Try as she might, dream as she
could, she was but a St. Angé woman, and he a St. Angé man.
There was only one way. She must deal with the rudest of materials.
"Jude," she said slowly, "you pay Mr. Gaston back all that you owe
him--I'll stint here in the house--and I'll promise never to speak to
him again. Could anything be fairer than that?"
She was in deadly earnest; but Jude laughed in her face.
A fear grew in the girl's heart at the sound. Not even an appeal to his
selfishness could move him. She had lost the poor little power she once
possessed. He did not care! And when that happened with a man like
Jude--well, there was reason for fear.
"I'm the boss, girl, and you better hold to that knowledge. Keep your
books, your pictures and what not as long as I say you can, and let that
do you for what _I_ am getting out of it. See?"
"Yes--I see!" And so she did, poor girl; and it was a long barren
stretch on ahead that she saw. A stretch with hideous possibilities,
unless luck were with her.
"Don't you let on." Jude was striding toward the bedchamber beyond. "I
guess you're smart enough to hold your tongue, though. Pile on a log or
two, before you turn in; and you better draw the shutters to the north
window--it's getting splitting cold."
Joyce turned to obey the commands. Not slavishly; after all it was but
part of her woman-task. Jude feeling it necessary to tell her was the
lash. It was cruelly superfluous--that was all.
She laid two heavy logs on the red embers, and stooped to brush the
ashes from the hearth. Then she went to the north window and raised the
sash. Before she drew the shutters she stood and looked out into the
brilliant night.
Black and white. Sharp, clean and magically glittering it all looked;
and the keen cold cleared the fear and fever from her head and heart.
Yes, off there in the distance Gaston was entering the pine thicket
through which his private path ran. He must have walked slowly--or had
all this new knowledge come so rapidly?
Gaston stood still at the entrance to the woods. Was he looking back?
Then something occurred. Once or twice before Joyce had been conscious
of this. Something seemed to go out from her and follow Gaston. She, or
that strange something, escaped the fear and smothering closeness of the
little house. It was free and happy out there with Gaston in the night.
He was strong--stronger than anybody in St. Angé. Nothing could really
happen while _he_ was near. She saw his smile; felt his compelling
touch--no, not even Jude would dare hurt her, or go too far.
Gaston passed into the dim thicket. Joyce, too seemed to be going on
quite happily and lightly, when----
"I say, Joyce, shut that winder, can't you?"
A silence. As Joyce had followed a certain call the night she had
promised to marry Jude, and had gone to Gaston's house, so now she was
going on--and on--and----
"Joyce!" At last the real clutched the unreal. The girl, for the first
time, was conscious of the biting cold. She shivered and seemed to
travel back to that rough call over frozen distances. With stiff fingers
she drew the heavy wooden shutters together and lowered the sash. Then
feeling her way with outstretched hands, like a bewildered child, she
made her way to the inner chamber and Jude.
CHAPTER VIII
The following June Joyce's little boy was born. It was a most
inconvenient time for him to make his appearance.
The late spring had delayed the logging season. The winter had been a
long-continued, cold one; the men at the different camps had fretted
under the postponed ending of their jobs, and severe discipline had been
necessary in more than one camp. Hillcrest's ideas of decency had been
deeply outraged; its courts of justice had been kept busy by men, who,
unable to resist temptation after restraint had at last been removed,
carried lawlessness to an unprecedented excess.
The river, too, with the depravity of inanimate things, had taken that
occasion to leap all bounds and run wild where never before it had
ventured. Not being content in carrying its legitimate burden of logs to
the lower towns, it bore away, one black night, more than half of the
lumber that Jude had piled near the clearing for Ralph Drew's new house.
This occurrence sent Jude into one of the fits of sullen frenzy which
were becoming more and more common to him. He had been obliged to track
the stolen lumber many miles to the south, seize it there, and make
arrangements for bringing it back. This absence from the scene of his
life battle, turned Jude into a veritable fiend for the time being. He
had enough self-confidence to believe he could hold things in his own
hands, when his hands and eyes were on the spot, but with absence and
distance--bah!
Many a horse and man suffered that spring from Jude's evil temper.
Whether Gaston was aware of conditions or not, who could tell? He took a
keen delight in the manual labour of working on Drew's house. He and
Filmer, with or without Jude, hammered, sawed and made rough designs
that filled their days with honest toil and brought healthy sleep to
their tired bodies.
And just when the early wild flowers were timidly showing themselves,
after the winter's long reign, little Malcolm Lauzoon opened his eyes
upon the scene.
How could he know that the festivities at the Black Cat were interrupted
by Jude's necessary absences, and Isa Tate's voluntary visits to Joyce's
home?
Leon Tate, good-naturedly reaping a belated prosperity, had insisted
that his wife serve Joyce how and as she might.
Jude was becoming a man to be considered. He evidently had a future, and
the tavern's attractions had never held a sure power over Jude. Here
was Leon's opportunity for putting Jude under obligations.
Tate thought fit to place himself and his wife on a social equality with
the Lauzoons. So Isa was in command when small Malcolm arrived.
It was an early June morning, after a night of black horror, when Joyce
became aware of the singing of birds out of doors, and a strange, new
song in her heart.
The latter sensation almost stifled her. She tried to raise her head and
look about the room, but the effort made her faint. She waited a moment,
then slowly turned her head on the pillow and opened her eyes. There by
the low, open window sat Isa Tate, swaying back and forth in the
old-fashioned rocker, with something on her lap.
Again the strange faintness overpowered Joyce, and the big tears rolled
down her face. It had not, then, been all a hideous nightmare? Something
sweet and real had remained after the terror and agony had taken flight?
"Isa!" So low and trembling was the call that Isa, drowsing luxuriously
as she rocked to and fro, took no heed.
It was many a day since she, detached from the demands of home cares,
could make herself so comfortable.
"Isa!"--and then Isa heard.
"What is it?" she turned a steady glance toward the bed. She did not
intend that Joyce should be exacting. Women were apt to be unless the
nurse was rigid. "Do you want anything?"
"Oh! Isa is that--my baby?" There was such a thrill in the voice that
Isa was at once convinced that Joyce was delirious.
She was going to have her hands full. A mere baby, to Isa, was no cause
for that tone, and the glorified look.
"I guess there ain't any one else going to put in a claim for him," she
replied with a vague sense of humorously calming the patient.
"Him!" Joyce's tears again overflowed. "Did you say 'him' Isa?"
"There, there! do be still now, Joyce, and take a nap. You won't have
any too much time for lazing. You better make the most of it."
"It's a boy. Oh! It seems too, too heavenly. _My_ little boy! Isa,
is--is--he beautiful?"
And now no doubts remained in Isa's mind. She must pacify this very
trying case.
"'Bout as beautiful as they make 'em," she said slowly, and tried to
remember what was given to patients when they became unmanageable.
"Does--does he look--like--" the words came pantingly--"like the picture
in the other room?"
Isa was sitting opposite the door leading into the living room, and her
eyes fell, as Joyce spoke, upon the Madonna and Child.
Then, in spite of her anxiety and weariness, Isa laughed. The entire
train of events since her arrival the day before had appealed to her
latent sense of humour.
"Oh! exactly," she answered and rolling the baby in a blanket she strode
over to the bed, and placed him hastily beside Joyce.
"There," she said soothingly; "now lay still or you'll hurt the little
beauty. I'm going to fix something comforting to drink."
She was gone. In the mystery of the still room and the early morning,
Joyce was alone with her little son!
As she felt, so all motherhood, as God designed it, should feel. Before
the acceptance of the wonderful gift, motherhood stood entranced. Fear
and awe hold even love in abeyance. Into poor, loving, human hands a
soul--an eternal soul--was entrusted. No wonder even mother-love held
back before it consecrated itself to the sacred and everlasting
responsibility.
Joyce only dumbly felt this. All that she was conscious of was a fear
that her joy, when she looked upon the blessed little face, would kill
her, and so end what had but begun.
A new and marvellous strength came to her. She raised herself upon her
elbow and reverently drew the corner of the blanket from the tiny head.
Suddenly the birds ceased singing. The June morning was enveloped in a
black pall. The ominous stillness that precedes an outburst of the
elements held breath in check.
Joyce was perfectly conscious. In the hideous blackness she saw her
baby's face clear and distinct, and with firm fingers she tore the
wrappings from the small body--she must see all, all.
Misshapen and grim in its old, sinister expression of feature, the baby
lay exposed. The face was grotesque in its weazened fixity; the little
legs were twisted, and the thin body lay crooked among its blankets. The
big eyes stared into the horrified ones above them as if pleading for
mercy. The sight turned Joyce ill.
"In spite of all," the stare seemed to challenge, "can you accept me?"
In that moment when the bitter cup was pressed to motherhood's lips,
Joyce received the holiest sacrament that God ever bestows. In divine
strength she accepted her child. This little, blighted creature would
have no one but her to look to--to find life through. All that it was to
receive, until it went out of life, must come first through her. Should
she fail it?
With fumbling and untrained hands she drew it to her, and pressed it
against her breast. With the touch of the small body at her heart, the
dawn crept back into the room, and from afar the birds sang.
With all her striving, poor Joyce had not eliminated from the baby's
life the inheritance of others' sins. He had come, bearing a heavy load
of disease and deformity. All that was left for her to do now, was to
lift the cross as she might from this stunted and saddened life, and
walk beside him to the farther side.
The poor, little wrinkled mouth was nestling against the mother-breast.
Instinct was alive in the child. Joyce laughed. At first tremblingly,
then shrilly. Suddenly she began to sing a lullaby, and the tune was
interrupted by laughs and moans.
Higher and higher the fever rose. Isa Tate, beside herself with fright,
screamed for help, and for days Jude Lauzoon's house was the meeting
place of Life and Death; then Life triumphed, and people breathed
relievedly.
"A homely young-un often makes handsome old bones," comforted Isa. Now
that Joyce was creeping back from the dangers that had beset her, Isa
felt a glow of pride and interest. She was an honourable diploma to
Isa's skill as nurse. In the future, Mrs. Tate was to feel a new
importance. She was assuming the airs of a woman who has learned the
market value of her services. Tate was to reap the effect of this later.
"Oh! It doesn't matter much with boys," Joyce answered, indifferently.
"A girl would have been different."
"That's a sensible way to look at it," Isa agreed. "I often think that a
man with good looks has just that much temptation to be a bigger fool
than what he otherwise would be. It's one agin 'em whichever way you
take it. They don't _need_ looks. They gets what they wants, anyway, and
if they are side-tracked by their countenances, it's ten to one they
will get distracted in their aims, and make more trouble than usual.
"Now that I hark back, the only men as I can remember that amounted to
enough to make you willing to overlook their cussedness, was men as had
a handicap in looks.
"There was Pierre Laval's brother Damon. He was born with twelve toes,
twelve fingers--two extry thumbs they was--and four front teeth.
"He certainly was the most audacious ugly young-un I ever set eyes on. I
wasn't much more than a girl, to be sure, when I saw him first, but I
went into yelling hysterics, and took to my bed. Pierre was
handsome--and, you know how he ended? Damon, he gritted his teeth--and
in his case he could do that early--and made up his mind to make good
for his deficiencies--if you can say that 'bout one as had more rather
than less than Nature generally bestows. Land! the learning that child
was capable of absorbing! Hillcrest School just sunk into him like he
was a sponge. When he got all he could over there, he just walked off
as natural as could be, without a cent to his name--and they do say, so
I've heard, that down the state they set an awful store by his knowledge
of stars and moons and such-like. And Mick Falstar, cousin to Pete--"
"Never mind, Isa." Joyce looked wan and nerveless. These tales only
accentuated the agony she felt whenever she was forced to concentrate
her thoughts upon actualities.
When she was left to herself, she was beginning to regain the power of
ignoring facts and living among ideals. She was growing more and more
able to see a little spiritual baby at her breast--a beautiful child.
And with that vision growing clearer she felt her own spirit gaining
strength for flights into a future where this little son of hers, borne
aloft by her determined will and purpose, should hold his own among men.
Surely, she thought, God would not cripple mind, body and soul. God
would be content with testing her love by the twisted body. The mind and
soul would be--glorious!
Day by day, the young mother, creeping back into the warm, summer life,
watched for intelligence to awaken in the grim little face; the first
flying signal of the overpowering intellect that was to make recompense
for all that had been withheld.
The misshapen body was always swathed in disguising wrappings; even the
claw-like, groping hands were held under blankets when curious eyes
were near. Isa had won Joyce's everlasting gratitude by holding her
tongue regarding the child's bodily deformity; and the Hillcrest doctor,
who had been summoned when the fever grew, did not consider the
circumstance important enough to weigh on his memory when once the
payment for his services was, to his surprise, forthcoming.
But the sad, little old face with its fringe of straight black hair!
That must be public property, and its piteous appeal had no power beyond
the mother, to stay the cruel jest and jibe.
"Say, Jude," Peter Falstar had said in offering his maudlin
congratulations, "what's that you got up to your place--a baby or a
Chinese idol? That comes of having a handsome wife, what has notions
beyond what women can digest."
Jude did not take this pleasantry as one might suppose he would. His own
primitive aversion to the strange, deformed child made him weakly
sensitive. He recoiled from Falstar's gibe with a sneaking shame he
dared not defend by a physical outburst.
"He ain't a very handsome chap," he returned foolishly, "don't favour
either father or mother--hey?"
Gaston overheard this and other similar witticisms, and his blood rose
hot within him.
The cruelty and indelicacy of it all made him hate, where, heretofore,
he had but felt contempt.
He realized most keenly that in his lonely life among the pines the few
interests and friendships that he had permitted himself were deeper than
he had believed.
Jock Filmer, during the closer contact of daily labour, had become to
him a rude prototype of a Jonathan. They had found each other out, and
behind the screen that divided them from others, they held communion
sacred to themselves. They read together in Gaston's shack. They had, at
times, skimmed dangerously near the Pasts that both, for reasons of
their own, kept shrouded. After one of these close calls of confidence,
they would drift apart for a time--afraid of each other--but the growing
attraction they felt was strengthening after the three or four years
wherein an unconscious foundation had been laid.
Then Gaston, too, realized that he had banked much upon the marriage he
had brought about between Jude and Joyce. In saving himself from
temptation, he felt he had sacrificed the girl, unless he could bring
into her life an element that would satisfy her blind gropings.
To argue that in saving himself he had saved her, was no comfort. He had
not been called upon to elect himself arbiter of Joyce's future. No; to
put it baldly, in his loneliness he had dabbled in affairs that did not
concern him--and he must pay for his idiocy.
To that end he had, at first, put himself and his private funds at
Jude's disposal. He had had hopes that by so doing he might help Jude to
decent manliness. But that hope soon died. Jude, lazy with the inertness
of a too sharply defined ancestry, became rapidly a well-developed
parasite.
Even when he accepted the contract to build Ralph Drew's house, he had
done so from two motives. By this means he could, he found, command more
of Gaston's money than in any other way, and by assuming the
responsibility he placed himself on a social pinnacle that satisfied his
vanity. He became a man of importance. Gaston and Filmer, glad with the
intelligence of men who know the value of work, took the actual burden
upon themselves. Lauzoon had the empty glory; they had the blessing of
toil that brought their faculties into play, and gave them relief from
somberer thoughts. But Gaston was too normal a man not to consider the
gravity of conditions that were developing. His hopes of Jude had long
ago sunk into a contemptuous understanding of the shiftless fellow. He
had, however, believed that the hold he had upon him insured a
comparatively easy life for Joyce. This, too, he now saw was a false
belief.
He knew the girl. He knew that mere housing and assured food were little
to her, if deeper things failed.
It was this essentially spiritual side of Joyce that had interested him
and appealed to him from the beginning.
One by one he gave up his hopes for her happiness. He saw that Jude was
impossible long before Joyce did; then he put his faith in the little
child--and now that had failed! Poor girl! he thought; and in the inner
chamber of his shack with the doors and shutters barred, the pistol
lying at hand upon his desk, he cursed himself for a fool who had tried
to enrich his own wasted life with an interest in the lives of others
that had brought about as bad a state of affairs as any meddler could
well conceive.
Then he grew reckless. Things couldn't be much worse, anyway, and if he
might brighten that dull life in the little house, he'd brighten it and
Jude be--the laugh that Gaston laughed was perhaps better than the word
he might have used had he finished his sentence.
There was the regular income from the outer world; as long as that was
at Gaston's command he felt he could control Lauzoon, and who else
mattered, except Filmer? Well, Filmer had sense to keep his opinions to
himself--although the look in his eyes when he disapproved of anything,
was unpleasant and--impertinent.
A clam like Filmer had no right to personal opinions of other folks'
conduct. Unless he let light in upon his own excuse for being, he
should withhold condemnation.
So Gaston spent his days' ends on Jude's little piazza, or in the bay
window of the sitting room when the air was too cool for the baby
snuggling against the young mother's breast.
Gaston brought his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew
from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words
running along in monotone that yet kept time to the alluring strains.
Joyce smiled, and her ready tears came, but the colour was coming back
into her beautiful face; the brooding eyes once again had the glint of
sweet mischief in them, and the lip curled away from the pretty teeth.
She had never been so beautiful before. Living in the ideal where her
baby was concerned made it perilously easy for her to live ideally in
all other ways.
Jude became a blurred reality. He was, when she thought of him at all,
endowed with the graces and attractiveness of Gaston. Joyce did not
consider Jude as he really existed. She smiled vaguely at him--his
personality now, neither annoyed her nor appealed to her. While living
with him outwardly, she was to all intents and purposes, spiritually
living with Gaston. For she gave to Jude the attributes that made Gaston
her hero, just as she gave to her poor, twisted baby the beautiful
contours and heavenly beauty of the Madonna's exquisite Child.
The summer throbbed and glowed in St. Angé.
Was it possible that things were as they always had been? Jared Birkdale
kept his distance and silence; and Joyce grew to forget him.
The Black Cat flourished, and Jude made no attempt to curb his growing
desire for popularity there. He was developing a talent for instructing
his elders, and laying down the law. He was endeavoring to fill
Birkdale's place. Jared had always been the tavern orator. Some one has
to occupy that pedestal in all such places, while the others enjoy their
pipes and mugs in speculative contemplation.
But nothing was as it _had_ been with Joyce. She had the look of one on
the threshold of big happenings. Her pale beauty had a new glow. The
thinness of girlhood had given place to a slender womanhood, all grace
and charm.
She was rarely seen without her baby on her bosom. Even in her work she
managed to bear him on one arm.
Away from her, he wailed pitifully and almost constantly; while pressed
against the warm, loving heart he sank into comfort and peace. When he
was awake his elfish eyes were fixed in solemn stare upon the
mother-face. Not knowingly nor indifferently, but intently, as if from
the depths of past experience he was wondering and endeavouring to
understand.
One evening, and such an evening it was in late July, Joyce, in her low
rocker, the baby on her knees, sat on the piazza facing westward, when
Gaston came around the house, fiddle in hand.
"Alone, Joyce?" It was an idle question, but it would do.
"Yes; Jude seems to have a lot to do about Mr. Drew's house, you know."
Joyce still kept up a pretty defence of Jude. Not that it was in the
least necessary, or even sensible, but it had its part in her detached
and dreamy life.
"The house is about finished," Gaston replied, tuning up the fiddle.
"And then what?" he said, placing the instrument.
"I wonder?" Joyce looked down happily upon her child.
It did not greatly matter, for now Gaston had struck into one of those
compelling airs, so intensely sweet and melodious that it all but hurt;
and the red sunset trembled as the tear-dimmed eyes beheld it.
The tune changed. It danced elfishly, and trippingly--for very joy it
made one laugh. The tear rolled down Joyce's face, as the smile replaced
it, and dropped upon the thin cheek of the baby. He did not flinch, and
the staring eyes did not falter, but something drew the mother's
attention. As the final tripping notes died away, she said softly.
"Mr. Gaston, just look--at the baby."
The child had rarely drawn them together. It was to make her forget the
child--and other things--that Gaston called so often.
He came now, and bent over the two.
"Does--he--look--just the same to you?" she asked.
"Why, yes!" Gaston repressed the desire to laugh. "You see babies are
not much in my line. I don't think I ever saw such a little fellow
before. They look about the same for a long time, don't they?"
"Oh! no. They change every day, and many times during the day. I weighed
baby to-day," she faltered, "and do you know, he weighs _less_ than when
he was born!"
"The ungrateful little heathen!"
"I'm afraid--I'm not a good mother." The sweet face quivered. "And I
want to be that more than anything else on earth. You see if I can get
him through--through this awful time when I can't tell just what might
be the matter--it will be easy enough. But young babies are
so--so--unreal. You don't know whether you've got them to keep or not.
They seem to be kind of holding on to another life, while they clutch
this. A good mother knows how to unloose them from that other hold."
Gaston was touched by the yearning in the low voice, but the weazened
face of the child repelled him, even while it attracted him.
"Would it be so--so terrible if he did not let go that--other hold?"
It was a stupid thing to say, and Gaston despised himself for being so
brutal when he saw the look of horror on the upturned face.
"Terrible?" Joyce gasped. "Why, if--if he should leave me, I couldn't
live. You don't know how it seems to have him warm and little and soft
against your heart. The whole world would be empty--empty, until it
would kill me with the emptiness--and I'd always think, you know, he'd
found out I wasn't fit to be his mother. It's a foolish fancy, but you
know, Mr. Gaston, I think they come to try us mothers--if they find us
out--not fit--they don't stay. Such a lot of babies don't stay!"
"Why Joyce!" Gaston tried to turn his gaze from that awful baby-stare.
"Full of whim-whams and moonshine. You must get about more. You must
come up to Drew's house to-morrow. It's a palace of a place--and Filmer
had a letter from Drew to-day. He's coming before the autumn cold sets
in--he's going to bring an aunt and a sister--just get your idle fancy
on the doings, and let Master Malcolm jog along at his own pace. If he
doesn't like you for a mother, he isn't worth considering. Look at him
now--he sees the joke, the brazen little cuss, he's actually laughing in
our faces."
"Oh!" Joyce sat rigidly up, and her own face became transformed. The
moment she had lived and waited for had come! The blank stare gave place
to a broken, crinkling expression; the thin shapeless lips trembled over
the toothless gums, and into the big eyes a wonder broke. A light seemed
to shine forth--and the baby smiled into the adoring face looking down!
To Gaston, the sight was, in a sense, awful. The majesty of Joyce's
attitude toward the change in the child, was the only thing that saved
the occasion.
"Is--it hungry?" he asked with the same dense stupidity he had displayed
before.
"Oh, no!" Joyce laughed gleefully. "Don't you see, he--he knows me.
He--he--_does_ like--me--he's going to stay, and he takes this heavenly
way to show it."
"The deuce he does!" and now Gaston laughed. "He's going to be a comical
imp, if I don't miss my guess. See, he's calming down now, and
regulating his features."
"But--he--smiled!" And just then Jude came around the corner of the
house.
Gaston saw the expression of his face, and something stifled him for a
moment. He wondered if money was always going to be a check to Jude,
after all.
And if it should cease to hold him in leash--then what would happen?
He went away soon after, but he sat up until toward daylight, just
outside his shack. He feared something was going to occur. But nothing
did; and the next thing in Joyce's life story that tugged at his
heart-strings, was the sickness and sudden death of little Malcolm.
CHAPTER IX
It was the evening of the day that the baby had been laid under a slim,
tall young pine tree back of the little house.
Jude felt that he had borne himself heroically throughout the trying
episode.
Never having cared for the child in life, he considered himself a pretty
good father to hide his relief at its early taking off.
As a man of means--what mattered if they were Gaston's means?--he had
had a really impressive funeral for his son.
The Methodist minister from Hillcrest had preached for full an hour over
the tiny casket. Not often did the clergyman have so good an opportunity
to tell the St. Angéans what he thought of them.
He dealt with them along old and approved lines. He had heard of Drew's
religious views and he took this occasion to include a warning of the
damning influence that was about to enter the vicinity with the young
minister's return.
"I warn you now," he thundered over the dead baby, "to make the life of
this infidel, this God-hater, a burden to him."
Filmer from his rear corner, winked at Gaston at this. Gaston could see
nothing amusing in the service--it was all in the passing show--a
pitiful and added agony.
In that the show was a little grimmer than usual he found his resentment
rising. So Gaston did not return the pleasantry of Jock's wink.
After the service, Jude had insisted that there should be no unseemly
haste, and had instructed his chosen representatives to form a line and
walk from the house to the tavern and back twice with the tiny remains,
before they were finally laid to rest. This show of respect was talked
of in St. Angé for days.
Through all the bitter day Joyce had followed dumbly whatever others
did. It was like walking in her sleep, and she was grateful that she
felt no sorrow.
She had feared if the baby died it might kill her, and now that it was
dead she did not mind at all.
Her arms ached a little at times. She thought that was queer; they had
never ached when they bore the baby.
At last she and Jude were back in the awful, quiet house. It was more
awful now that Jude was there. For after the burial, and before the
evening meal, he had been lessening his tension with some boon
companions, down at the Black Cat, and Joyce had had the place to
herself.
Jude, having relaxed to the state of geniality, was willing to let
bygones be bygones in the broadest sense of the word. He had big plans
afoot--he had had them the night he came home and found Gaston and Joyce
hanging
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