Joyce of the North Woods Part 49

"Anything happened up to Camp 7?" Tate was uneasy.

"Lord! It's further back than 7." Filmer set his gla.s.s down. "It's a new cut--started late, but it's worth trying. So long!"

The others stared after him.

When the door had closed upon the tall, swinging figure, the company turned upon themselves.

"Things are going to--" Tate did not designate the locality. After all, it was needless for him to go into particulars.

An hour later Jock, sitting in his own shack before the warm fire, eyed with satisfaction the preparations for his journey. They consisted of certain comforts in the way of sleeping-bag, provisions, gun and a bag of necessary clothing; and a general ma.s.s of debris, in the form of smashed bottles and jugs. A vile smell of liquor filled the room, and there were little streams of fluid running down any available slope leading away from the rubbish. Jock, sitting before the fire, his long legs stretched out and his hands clasped behind his head, eyed these rivulets in a dazed, helpless way, while the foul odour made him half mad with longing. His face was terrible to see, and his form was rigid.

A knock on the outer door made no impression upon him, but a second, louder, more insistent one brought a, "Why in thunder don't you come in, and stop your infernal racket?" from his overwrought nerves.

Drew entered. His fur coat had snow flakes on it. A coming storm had sent its messengers.

For a moment Filmer looked at his visitor with unseeing eyes, then his consciousness travelled back from its far place, and a soft welcome spread over the drawn face. So glad was he to see Drew that he forgot to be patronizing. He was weakly overjoyed.

Drew, with a keen, comprehensive glance, took in the scene and something of what it meant. He smiled kindly, and pulled a chair up before the hearth.

"Been away Filmer, or going?" he asked as he sat down and flung off his coat and fur hat.

"Both," Filmer returned, and although his voice was hard and strained, Drew detected a welcome to him in the tone.

"I wanted you up at the bungalow," he said quietly; "the girls cannot get along without you. It's Christmas Eve," he added quietly, "to-morrow's the big day, you know."

"I shan't be here." The words came harshly. "See here, Drew," Jock flung himself about and leaned toward his guest, his long, thin hands clasped closely and outstretched. "I wanted you to-night more than any one, but G.o.d, could know. I couldn't come to you--but you've come to me at the right moment."

"I'm glad of that, Filmer."

"I'm not much of a hand for holding back what I want to give out," Jock rushed on, "and I ain't much of an orator. What I'm going to tell you, Drew, has been corked up for over ten years--it's ripe for opening--will you share it?"

"Can you ask that, Filmer?" The two men looked steadily at each other.

"Did you ever hear of Jasper Filmer on the Pacific Coast?" Jock asked suddenly.

"Yes; he died a week ago. The papers were full of it. We noticed the name--" Drew bent forward--"and wondered."

"I'm his son. There ain't much to tell. It's a common enough yarn. The world's full of the like. It's only when you tackle the separate ones that they seem to differ. The old man--made himself. That kind is either hard as nails or soft as mush. My governor had the iron in his. He banked everything on--me--and I wasn't up to the expectation. I was made out of the odds and ends that were left out of his const.i.tution--and we didn't get on. My mother--" Jock pulled himself together; "she was the sort those self-made men generally hanker after, all lady, and pretty and dainty. You know the kind?"

Drew nodded. His face was ashen.

"I wish you could have seen her, Drew, I've seen a good many, but none, no, not _one_, who ever came up to her for softness, and fetching ways.

Lord! how I loved her. The old man might have known that if I could have gone straight I'd have done it for--mother. She never lost faith in me.

Every time I went wrong--she just stopped singing for a time." Filmer gulped. "Then when I pulled myself together, after a while she'd begin again, singing as she went about, and smiling and laughing a laugh that keeps ringing, even now.

"At last the governor got tired of the lapses. I don't blame him; just remember that. He thought if I went off and nibbled--what is it--husks?

that I'd come around. He didn't understand that it was the _motive power_ that was lacking in me.

"Good G.o.d, Drew! I've been hungry and cold and homesick until I've thought death was the next step; but I couldn't _stick_ to anything long enough to make good. Such men as my father never know what h.e.l.l-suffering men like me go through--before they fall, and fall, and fall!

"I wrote--lies, home. I wanted to keep mother singing and laughing. I was always doing fine, you know. Coming home in a year or so. I was in Chicago, then New York; but I was getting lower all the time. I put up in those haunted houses--the lodging dives, but I kept those letters going to her, always cheerful.

"Then I made another struggle. I cut for the woods. I got to Hillcrest--when word came--that she had--died!" A dumb suffering stopped the words. Drew laid his hot hand over Filmer's, which were clenched, until the finger-tips were white.

"It was the hope--of making myself fit to go home and hear her sing and laugh that had brought me to Hillcrest. Well, I wrote the old man--that I was going further north. You see, he blamed me. Said the longing for me, the disappointment and the rest, had weakened her heart. I couldn't bear the thought of ever going back--then; so I tramped over the hill and--St. Ange adopted me. It's been a tame plot since then, but it's never been as bad as it was before. I dropped into their speech and ways, and things sank to a dead level. I got word from Hillcrest the other day." Filmer looked blankly into the red embers. "The governor has left--it all to me with this saving clause: if I have any honour I am not to take the money until I can use it as my parents would desire. You see, the old man had what I never suspected--a soft place in his heart for me, and a glimmer of hope. It might not have made any difference--but I wish to G.o.d I had known it before."

Drew could not stand the misery of the convulsed face. He turned his eyes away.

"Drew!" Filmer had risen suddenly and now confronted his companion with deep, flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "Drew, I'm not going to take the fortune unless--I'm fit to handle it. I've been a tramp long enough to know that I can keep on being a tramp, but I'm going to make one more almighty try before I succ.u.mb. I may be all wrong, but lately I've thought the--the motive power has--come to me." A strange, uplifting dignity seemed to fall upon Filmer. Drew tried to speak; to say the right thing, but he merely smiled feebly and rose unsteadily to his feet.

"I wouldn't blame you if you--cut me after this, Drew, but it's got to be said. It's--your--sister."

"My--sister? Connie?" Drew was never so surprised and astounded in his life before.

"Connie?" he gasped again. "Connie?"

"If--if--I was what I might be? If I come into my own, Drew, do you think she--could care--for me?"

"How under heaven can I tell?" Drew said slowly; "she has never--how could she? shown--" he paused.

"How indeed, could she?" Filmer laughed a hard, bitter laugh.

"It would be a poor sort of reformation, Jock--" Drew was getting command of himself--"if it were only to get--her! You've got to get yourself, old man, before you'd dare ask any woman to care for you. I often think the best of us ask a good deal--on trust; but at least a man must know himself before he has a right to expect even--faith."

"Oh! I've worked all that out, Drew, I've been to Hillcrest to talk the beginnings over with a little lawyer fellow who's had my confidence all along. I'm going back where I fell, Drew, in the start. I'm going back there where the loss of her--the mother's laugh and song--will grip the hardest and where the antidote will be the easiest to get. I'm going to take only enough of the governor's money to keep me out of the filth of the gutter until I can climb on to the curb or--go to the sewer, see?

But always there is going to be your sister above me. Just remember that--and if you can help her to think of me, once in--a while--"

"Filmer, until you climb up, you must not ask me to hold even one thought of my sister's for you; except--" and here Drew looked frankly in the anxious face--"except as the good fellow of--our Solitude."

"Thank you! That's all I meant. And if I pull up--and stay up--she, not I, will know how to use the money. She's got the heart that can reach down to the suffering, and hold little dying kids on her breast. If I go under, Drew, the money is going to her--anyway."

"Filmer!"

"That's all right, Drew. I know what I'm about. She'll brighten up all the dark places--and remember me in that way if in no other."

Long the two men looked at each other; then Drew extended his hand. Jock took it in a firm grip.

"Good night, Filmer, and G.o.d be with you!"

"I'm ready to start, I'll tramp back with you as far as the bungalow."

Jock dashed the crumbling, glowing logs with his foot, and left the fire dying, but safe. Then, gathering his travelling things together, he went out with Drew, closing the door behind him.

It was a snowy night now, white and dry. In silence the two trudged on to the bungalow, then Drew said, "and you won't come in, Filmer, just for a word?"

"Thanks; no."

"Where are you going now?"