Jared Birkdale, with a contemplative eye, looked at his daughter through
the haze of his tobacco smoke as if seeing her for the first time. In a
way this was so. He was not one to take heed of time or happenings. When
he was not obliged to work, he was enjoying himself in his own way, and
so long as nothing jarred him, life slipped by comfortably enough.
When he worked he was away, as all St. Angé men were, in the camps.
Occupation, outside of Leon Tate's profession, was the same for all the
men after first boyhood was past. When the logging season was over
Jared, more temperate, perhaps more cruel for that reason, settled down.
When he was not occupying the chair of honour at the Black Cat--given
him by common consent because of his superior mental endowments--he was
lounging at home and idly appreciating the plain comfort for which Joyce
was responsible; a comfort Jared neither understood nor questioned.
But little Billy Falstar, the day before, with the fiendish depravity of
a mischief-making child, had set the match to a fuse of gunpowder all
ready for it down at the Black Cat.
Resenting the treatment Jude had given him when he had voiced his
observations about Gaston and Joyce, he had gone to the tavern to nurse
his wounded feelings where company and safety abounded. His fear of Jude
had departed.
Several men, Birkdale among them, were sitting about when Billy,
sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of
necessity notice must be taken, drew their attention.
"What's up, Billy?" asked Jock Filmer good-naturedly; "shingle struck a
thin place in your breeches? Go around and buy a peppermint stick.
Here's a cent. Peppermint ought to be as good for a pain in your
hindquarters as it is for one in your first cabin. Let up, kid, and get
cheerful!"
Billy accepted the coin, but turned a calculating eye on the others. If
his news had had power to rouse Jude, how would it act now? Billy,
freckled and sharp-eyed, was a born tragedian.
"'Tain't Ma," he said. "No more was it Pa; it was that Jude what beat me
most to a jelly."
This was startling enough to awaken a new interest. Jude was too lazy on
general principles to reduce any one to jelly unless the provocation had
been great.
"What divilment was you up to?" Filmer asked with a leer.
"I didn't do nothing! 'Pon my soul, I didn't. I swear!"
This Billy did, fervently and fluently. The children of St. Angé swore
with a guileless eloquence quite outside the sphere of wickedness. The
matter was in them. It must, of course, come out. So Billy swore now
with only an occasional hitch where his indignation muddled
pronunciation.
"Billy's got a fine flow of language," Birkdale put in amusedly. "For a
youngster, I don't think I ever heard it equalled." Birkdale was about
to urge Billy to renewed effort, when something the boy was wedging in
among his evil words caught his attention.
"I was just a-telling him--" more lurid expressions--"'bout Joyce and
Mr. Gaston. It didn't seem like nothing; just them two being beaux like
all girls and fellers, but Jude he did me dirt, he did!" Billy stopped
rubbing his eyes.
He was interested, himself, in the effect his words now had. For a
moment he feared all the men were going to rise up against him as Jude
had done. A silence fell upon the group. Filmer gave one keen glance at
the imp on the doorstep, and then refilled his pipe and leaned back in
his wooden chair.
Tom Smith, the ticket agent of the Station, looked as if some one had
dashed water in his face, so startled was he; and Jared Birkdale simply
stared open-mouthed at the spy in their midst. Then Tate, the
proprietor, with the tact for which he was noted, went to the bar and
began filling glasses.
St. Angé had received a shock; but St. Angé 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 assure 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. Angé.
St. Angé 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. Angé 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. Angé 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 hell
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. Angé--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 ejaculated, "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 shirk 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 coarse sewing in the
trembling hands.
She had seen the light in the chinks 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. Angé."
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 trimming of the beard, fashionable 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.
Angé'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
passed 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. Angé 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
damn! 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 fashionably 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. Angé; 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!"
Joyce's eyes dilated and the colour rose through her soft paleness, but
she did not speak.
"It's always the way. Them most concerned gits wind of scandal last.
Even the brats have caught on before me. But once your father has both
eyes open, folks better watch out."
"Who do you mean by Myst.?" asked Joyce, and her strained voice sounded
unnatural.
"Gaston, to be sure! I've got a wit of my own, Joyce. Myst.--short for
Mystery. That's what Gaston is. No one knows a damned thing about him."
"Well, that's to his credit, anyway." Joyce flung up a defence now. She
must fight, but she must keep herself out of sight.
Jared glared angrily. He did not like the tone.
"Oh! I ain't the one to object to you keeping your mouth shut," he
returned. "Jammed logs"--the phrase stuck in his mind--"jammed logs
don't creak any; but when it comes to joining forces, like two jams
together for instance, there's got to be, in the nature of things, some
demonstration. What I'm aiming at is this. Has this here Myst. meant
business or has he not? I'm a man of the world--so is Gaston--he ain't
never hoodwinked me. I had my reasons for coming here, and likewise, so
has he. That's my business and his, by thunder! but when _he_ meddles in
my affairs he's got to show his hand. Now is it, or ain't it, business
'twixt you and him?"
"What kind of business?" Joyce's voice was low and even. She was
approaching her father cautiously and fearfully.
"Honourable--or otherwise?"
A silence followed. Something was born, and something died in the
sunlighted room while that silence lasted.
The child's dependence upon its father fell, torn and quivering, before
the new-risen self-protection of the pitiful girlhood.
For the first time, consciously, Joyce experienced the soul-loneliness
for which there is no aid. Her deep eyes pleaded for help and mercy
where there was no help, and alas! no mercy. Birkdale had his answer
now, though no word had been uttered by those quivering lips.
"You can't be expected to act for yourself in these matters." Jared put
his pipe on the table and brought his chair to the floor. "You ain't the
first girl as has been game for such as Myst., but he's made a damned
mistake if he thought two couldn't play at his game here in St. Angé.
We'll make something out of him no matter which way you put it."
"Make something--out--of--what?" Joyce bent forward and real horror
filled her eyes. Was even the security of Jude to be wrenched from her?
"Out of Myst. He's got money, It comes in letters--checks. Tate has ways
of finding out. Myst. has a fat account over to Hillcrest. He thought we
took him on trust. We knowed what we wanted to know."
"And so, and so," panted Joyce, "what next?"
"Well, by the living God, if he wants to marry you, let him come out and
say so, and I won't hold back my presence nor my blessing."
It was quite plain now. Gaston was the target at which Jared aimed. In
some way she must shield him and shield him so effectually that no harm
could reach him. There was no escape for her. Every path was closed
through which she had hoped to go free and happy.
"I ain't going, though," Jared was whining in his semi-religious tone,
"to have my reputation smirched. Either he marries you, or he pays well,
and we'll get out. See?"
"Oh, yes, I see!" Joyce shivered in the hot room; "I see what you think,
but _why_ do you suppose I'd marry Mr. Gaston if he _did_ want me?
Sometimes girls don't--marry--men even when they are asked. Books are
full of such things." A heavy sob came after the pitiful words.
"Oh! that's your dodge, eh?" Jared laughed comfortably from the secure
position he had gained for himself from this misery. "Trying to shield
him, eh? It won't do, Joyce. Your daddy's too much a man of the world
for that. Now here it is in a nutshell: The boys at the tavern are back
of me. How do I know? You leave that to me. Now I calculate that Gaston
don't want any of the dust of his past stirred up by us. If he's been
playing with you, it's for _you_ to say whether you'd rather have him
forced to marry you, or have him pan out money enough to hush the matter
up. I'm willing to sacrifice something for you, Joyce. I'm willing to go
so far as to say I don't want the dust of _my_ past raised--I'm actually
willing to sacrifice--anything."
"Even me!" The words were a moan of fear and misery.
"Sure!" Jared did not catch the point. "This is an opportunity that
don't come often. Retribution for Myst., by thunder, and clear gain for
me and you! Out beyond the high trees, girl, there's better diggings for
us. God! how I've smothered, these long years. The end justifies the
means--you will say so, too, when you see what lies down to the south."
Jared laughed wildly as if the ambition of all the desolated years had
been achieved. Joyce, compelled by his delirious words and excitement,
almost felt a responsive sympathy; but her words, slow and hard, brought
her and Jared down to the bleakness of St. Angé again.
"You are wrong, terribly wrong. Mr. Gaston never wanted to marry me, and
I can take care of myself--I always have--taken care of myself!
Why--why, I'm engaged to Jude Lauzoon. I'm going to marry him right
away. We can't even wait for him to build a new shack. If a minister
doesn't happen this way, we're going over to Hillcrest. Oh, what a joke
we've played on you!"
Jared stared idiotically, and Joyce's laugh rang wildly out.
"Mr. Gaston and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us"--the
inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick
adaptability--"he's helping me and Jude--to what we want."
"The devil he is!" It was all that Jared could clutch from the rout.
"I--I believe it's a thundering lie," he added as an after-thought, and
as a cover to his retreat.
"It's no lie." Joyce had regained her calmness. She was panting, but she
had reached safety and she knew it. An unlovely, unhallowed safety, but
such as it was it was her salvation and Gaston's.
When she had stolen to him the night before it was her last ignorant
impulse to gain her own ends. From now on she must be on guard, or her
world would come clattering about her heart and soul. It took Jared some
minutes to digest the information that had been flung at him so
unexpectedly, and then anger and baffled hope swayed him. Joyce married
to Jude would make _his_, Jared's, future no securer than it now was.
Indeed it might complicate matters, for Jared had no belief in Jude
rising above the dead level of St. Angé standards.
"You're a durn fool!" he ejaculated at last, while the new impression of
his daughter's beauty stirred him painfully. "You are a durn fool to
fling yourself away on Jude when you might have done most anything with
yourself--if you was managed right."
Then in an evil moment Joyce laughed. Her lips parted in an odd little
way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in
cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at
what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost
hysterical.
"Daddy," she said, between ripples of laughter, "you thought you had me
then, didn't you? But being your daughter, you know, I had wit enough to
take care of myself."
Jared listened to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to
understand, in the least, what was passing over the girl before him, he
weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible
conclusion as Jude had done before him.
He looked steadily at Joyce, and he saw the colour and fire come to
cheek and eye. The ringing laughter struck through his brutality and
hurt something in him that was akin to paternal love; but so long had
that protecting tenderness been ignored by Jared, that now when it was
called upon to act, it did so in a savage rage.
"By heaven!" he thundered, "I catch your drift, you young divil. And if
that Myst. ain't a slick one! Going to use Jude is he, to pull his
chestnuts out of the fire?"
Then Jared strode forward with arm upraised as if to strike and, by so
doing, again command the situation. In like manner had he downed and
controlled Joyce's mother. But he paused before the pale undaunted girl.
Her laugh died suddenly, to be sure, so suddenly that the gleaming
teeth and pretty dimples outlived the mirth long enough to give a
stricken, death-like expression to the face, but the change brought no
fear; it brought something worse.
Joyce's moral sense was an unknown quantity in her present development.
Her father's true meaning affected her not at all; what she felt was--a
loathing disgust, and a conviction that if she was to hold even Jude for
herself against her father's anger and purpose, she must flee to other
shelter.
She drew herself up and cast a look upon Jared that he never forgot to
his dying day. It was an added faggot to that hell of his.
"Isa Tate," the even voice broke upon him, "Isa Tate said you killed my
mother. But I'm not afraid of you, and I'm going to live my life. You
can't kill me! I know when and where to go."
With that she gathered up the work that had fallen to the floor, and
almost ran into the little bedchamber beyond the kitchen, closing the
door after her.
Jared sat dumbly staring at the wooden barrier. He longed to call her,
but his tongue pricked with excitement.
He dared not go to her--so he waited. He heard her moving about inside
the room. A half-hour passed, then an hour. Noon came and went. The fire
was out, and dinner, apparently, was as distant as it had been two hours
before.
Jared fell asleep in his hard chair, his dishevelled head lying on his
arms folded on the bare table. When he awoke it was three o'clock and
Joyce stood before him.
She was very white, and the drawn look was still in evidence. She wore a
blue-and-white checked gown; short and scant it was, but daintily fresh
and sweet. She had her poor little best hat on--a hat with a bunch of
roses on the side--and she carried a large basket in her hand.
Jared stared at her as if she were part of a nightmarish dream.
"Where are you going?" he asked hoarsely, a new fear gripping him.
"It doesn't matter to you, father. I'm just--going."
Jared experienced a shock as he realized how far this girl had already
gone from him.
"Good-bye," she faltered; "good-bye, father."
She turned from him and walked to the door. Then a latent power for good
roused Jared.
"Joyce," he called after her; "there's twenty dollars left--take it all,
girl."
"No."
"Then for God's sake take half!" He was pleading, pleading with a woman
for the first time in his selfish, depraved life.
Joyce turned and looked at him, and the tears filled her eyes.
"No," she repeated, "I--I couldn't take it. I don't want it; but I'm
going to Isa Tate, father."
How frightfully still and lonely she had left the little house. Jared
looked at the old furniture and found it strange and unnatural. The
summer day grew dim as he waited there among the ruins of all that he
thought had been his own. No dinner; no probable supper--Jared thought
upon the physical discomfort, too, but he was sober enough, and shocked
enough to give heed to the graver side of the situation.
What he suffered as the afternoon faded and the ticking of the clock
thudded on his senses, no one could ever know.
We may leave retribution for sin out of our scheme of
things-as-they-should-be for others. Each sin takes care of itself, and
burns and blisters as it strikes in. Men may suffer without giving
outward sign. Justice is never cheated, and we may trust her workings
alone. Jared suffered. Suffered until nerves and body could bear no
more, and then he went down to the Black Cat to face the situation Joyce
had created and deal with it in his own fashion.