Joyce of the North Woods Part 2

"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 pa.s.sed, and the tormenting song stopped--he stood in an awful silence, and a white, hot light.

"Yes, by G.o.d, 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--G.o.d 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--G.o.d knows I ain't in it--that's all."

A hoot of an owl outside made Joyce start nervously. She was unstrung and superst.i.tious--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 comrades.h.i.+p 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. Ange; 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. Ange 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 n.o.body 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 att.i.tude 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--G.o.d 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, d.a.m.n 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.