Joyce of the North Woods Part 4

"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-a.s.sertion 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 superst.i.tious 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-fas.h.i.+on, 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. Ange 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 G.o.d 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. Ange? 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 s.h.i.+vered slightly.

"Jude," he continued after a moment, "they sometimes go to the devil, you know. Even St. Ange'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. G.o.d, how that woman is going to love--something!"

And just then Jude s.h.i.+fted 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 d.a.m.ned moons.h.i.+ne, and I ain't such a fool but what I know it. Such gaff ain't nouris.h.i.+ng.

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. Ange--"

"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 cla.s.s.

"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 G.o.dsend 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 pa.s.sion with Jude. A pa.s.sion 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. Ange 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 a.s.sistance, 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 d.a.m.nation.

"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 ma.s.ses 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.

Ange; 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?"