Joyce of the North Woods Part 3

"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, la.s.s; 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs. 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 companions.h.i.+p 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. Ange 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 pa.s.sage 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 h.e.l.l from which its ignorance s.h.i.+elded 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 d.a.m.nation.

Through dishonour--as men might have cla.s.sified 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. Ange 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 friends.h.i.+p and sympathy in her new life.

He started. His quick ear detected the slow step outside.

"h.e.l.lo, Jude," he called without getting up. "Step in; I'll fetch a light."