Joyce of the North Woods Part 6

St. Ange had received a shock; but St. Ange took its shocks in a peculiar way. It reserved its opinion until it had drunk on them.

Soon after the revelation Birkdale went home without a word having been spoken by any one on the subject so suddenly thrust upon their notice.

Jared had gone home to a.s.sure himself that Joyce had actually grown up to the extent of making Billy Falstar's remarks possible.

The afternoon's contemplation had caused him some astonishment.

Joyce _was_ grown up! Then he had slept on the knowledge, and dreamed of other days--a life apart, and beyond St. Ange.

St. Ange was a young place; it had no antiquity; almost all who lived there had had a setting in some other time and environment.

Jared recalled, in his thoughts that night, the beginnings of things in his life. Joyce's mother, and the babies who had come and gone like little ghosts, each one taking more of the wife's and mother's beauty and power.

Then that flight to the St. Ange lumber camp--it was really that, nothing less--the attending discomfort and paralyzing reality of what lay before!

Joyce was born the year after the settlement in the rough forest home, and then poor Mrs. Birkdale gave up the struggle.

She told Isa Tate that had the baby been a boy she would not have felt the way she did, but to face the life of another woman in her own life was more than she could bear.

Isa had tried to hold her to her responsibility: Isa had more than her own share of trouble--but Jane Birkdale had slipped away in the middle of the severest winter St. Ange had known for many a year and Isa had been obliged to have "an eye" to the baby Joyce. The small girl responded in health and joyousness, and Jared, when he was himself, had had the grace to be grateful.

As the years slipped by the fire of Jared's own little private h.e.l.l aroused him to a consciousness that he deserved anything but a happy future.

He hoped, in due season, that he would forget the wrongs he had done his wife, but they gathered strength with time. His sins walked with him through the sober lumber season; their memory drove him to the Black Cat; but his keener wit evolved a desire to "make good," as he termed it, in his relations with his daughter.

He would so conduct himself with her that she, at least, should have nothing against him; and when age, sickness or accident befell him, he might turn to her and find refuge. Jared had always had some kind of sanctuary to flee to when overtaken by the results of his own evil nature.

And now, by the impish words of Falstar's Billy, he was brought face to face with a possibility that staggered and unnerved him.

Joyce and Jude, or Joyce and Jock Filmer, had been possibilities in Jared's distant future. But Joyce, already a woman, and that silent man Gaston who had come from a Past that he rigidly reserved for his own contemplation--Gaston, who lived among them as a traveller who might depart with the day into a Future Birkdale instinctively knew would hold no possible connection with St. Ange--Joyce and Gaston! Here was a situation indeed.

Astonishment, anger, a dull fear and a determination to grip something out of it all for himself, swayed Jared as he sat tilted back, eyeing his daughter after the night's travail.

He had come from his troubled thought imbued with a forced strength and singleness of purpose that made themselves felt by the quiet girl at the window.

Joyce had brought no strength from her disturbed night. She was ill-fitted for the encounter.

"By Jove," Jared suddenly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "it's just struck me all of a heap, Joyce, that you're more than ordinary handsome."

The girl raised her eyes with a dull show of surprise, then went on with her sewing.

"With the learning I've given you over and above the other girls of the place, you _ought_ to do pretty good for yourself--and me--and no mistake. You always was a real grateful child, and you ain't one ever to forget the fifth commandment, Joyce--the only one with a promise."

"The only one needing it," Joyce returned, with a bitterness for which she was sorry the moment after. But when Jared turned to quoting Scripture the girl grew rebellious. It was always distasteful to her to see, or hear, her father parade his superior knowledge. For some reason she always felt more ashamed of him then than at any other time.

"You've got a nasty bit of a temper, Joyce." Jared's eye gleamed. "I hope you ain't going to take the first chance you get to s.h.i.+rk your duty to me."

"I guess not, father, but I hate to be dragged to my duty; and I have a headache."

"What give you that, Joyce?"

"I don't know." Again the fair head bent above the coa.r.s.e sewing in the trembling hands.

She had seen the light in the c.h.i.n.ks of Gaston's shutter. She had felt his nearness, but rigid aloofness. The memory of these things had tortured her and left their trace in worn-out nerves and hurt pride. She felt that she hated Gaston and in revolt her thought now clung to Jude.

She forgot her father.

"Joyce!"

"Oh, yes, father." How the insistent invasion of paternal intimacy jarred.

"I've been thinking lately how you and me might do better than stick here in St. Ange."

A sudden illumination flashed into the pale face. Was there a possibility of escape that did not include Jude?

"Where could we go, father?" Joyce was all attention.

"Oh! there are several places. I wasn't always here by a long shot. I've always meant to tell you some day, Joyce. It has sometimes struck me as singular that you never asked."

"I never cared. I was here--and the rest didn't matter--or it never did, until now."

"Well I was a handsome young buck once, my girl." Jared glanced at the mirror hanging over Joyce's head, and smirked. "I ain't a bad looking feller now. A little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the beard, fas.h.i.+onable clothes, refined surroundings and you'd have a father that any girl might be proud of!"

Joyce noted now, as she had more than once before, since Hillcrest training had given her a certain power of discrimination, her father's style of speaking.

"What happened, father, before you came here?" she asked quickly. Her directness, and the slight she paid to his personal reflections, ruffled Jared's complacency. He was not ready to confess more than was absolutely necessary.

"Just one of them misunderstandings," he replied, slipping into St.

Ange's carelessness of speech, "that happens now and again to any young man with a fine taste and slim purse. A matter of business! I always calculated to go back and make it straight, after the first flash had pa.s.sed and I had money enough. I never give up or got discouraged. It was your mother losing grip sort of set me back; and then your raising and expenses here, kinder held me down. But the spirit in me has soared nevertheless."

"Sometimes it seems to me," Joyce's eyes grew dreamy, "that every one in St. Ange has something to keep still about. Every one seems to be here because he has to, not because he wants to. People seem to drift in here like logs after a spring freshet--and they get jammed."

Jared laughed. The idea caught his fancy.

"You've hit it, Joyce!" he said, "You've hit it all right. Jammed, by d.a.m.n! that's it; but to carry the simile further, when the jam is loosened up, there's going to be some logs as gets away."

"_Where_ could we go, father, and how?"

The pleading intensity of the girl encouraged Jared. He refilled his pipe, imagined himself in the mirror trimmed up and fas.h.i.+onably attired, and then drove his axe to the heart of the matter.

"When all's said and done, girl," he began, "I've been a pretty good dad to you. Given you years of schooling and stood by you when I might have skipped and led my own life. Many a man with his wife dead, and a kid on his hands, _has_ done it. I've worked for you, and given you the best home in St. Ange; and now if you let me play the cards that you've got in your hands, we'll get out of this and live in clover to the end o'

time."

"I don't know what you mean," Joyce gasped.

This was no idle talk. She was fascinated and frightened. It seemed as if her father had his fingers on the rope that was strangling the life out of her.

"You've got the winning cards, my girl, if I don't miss my guess. It's all in the playing now. I've had one eye on you all along, Joyce. I've seen, like any kind father might, that there ain't a young feller between here and Hillcrest but would be glad to have you. But like a rap on the _shut_ eye it has just been sprung on me that Myst. has had his mind on you as well!"