Joyce of the North Woods Part 12

"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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d'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_ G.o.d, not alone _for_ G.o.d."

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 h.e.l.l-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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 h.e.l.l-less doctrine. I advise you not to turn that loose in St. Ange. 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed along, and all St. Ange 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. Ange. 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 att.i.tude," broke in Tate, mixing a gla.s.s of vile dilution for Murphy's consumption. "I don't call it a _proper_ att.i.tude 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 a.s.sumed 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. Ange 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 gla.s.s 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 d.a.m.nation to do it. He's got his eye to a knothole somewhere, you bet your life on that."

By superhuman sacrifice St. Ange had kept itself sober the Sat.u.r.day 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.