The late September afternoon held almost summer heat as it flooded St.
Angé. The breeze gave a promise of crispness as it passed fitfully
through the pines; but on the whole a calmness and silence pervaded
space which gave the impression of a summer Sunday when a passing
minister had been prevailed upon to "stop over."
However, it was not a summer Sunday, as St. Angé well enough knew, for
every able-bodied man in the place had that day signed a contract with
the Boss of Camp 7 for the lumber season; and the St. Angéans never
signed contracts on Sunday.
The calmness was accounted for by the fact that Joyce Birkdale was to be
married. The circumstances leading up to this event had been
sufficiently interesting to demand sobriety. St. Angé did not believe in
putting on airs, but it had its own ideas of decorum; things had sort of
dovetailed lately, and, according to Leon Tate, "it was up to them to
spread eagle and plant their banner for knowing a good thing from a
rotten egg."
Leon was above consistent figures of speech. He had power of his own
that controlled even language.
[Illustration: "ONCE I WENT SO FAR AS TO GO UP THERE WITH MY GUN"]
After Jared Birkdale had defied Leon in his own stronghold, and, instead
of agreeing with Tate that Joyce had come to Isa as to a mother, had
insisted upon bare, unglorified fact, he had betaken himself into
oblivion. Tate was confronted with the predicament of having a helpless
girl on his hands to do for--unless another man was forthcoming.
Jude rose to the occasion. He confided to Jock Filmer his desire for
immediate marriage, and good-natured Jock, his system permeated by
gossip, consented to send down to the Junction--since Joyce objected to
the hell-fire minister at Hillcrest--and bring a harmless wayfarer of
the cloth, who Murphy, the engineer of the daily branch train, had said,
was summering there.
"He's a lean, blighted cuss," Murphy had explained; "what God intended
for an engineer, but Nature stepped in and flambasted his constitootion,
and so he took to preaching--that not demanding no bodily strength.
"He comes pottering round the engine, using the excuse of saving my
soul, and I don't let on that I see through him. I give him pints about
the machinery; and if I tell him he can ride in the cab with me
anywhere, he'd marry a girl, or bury a tramp, if he had to go to hell to
do it."
So Jock detailed Murphy to decoy the side-tracked gentleman at the
Junction up to St. Angé.
The stranger was expected on the afternoon train, and Tate had the
guest room of the Black Cat in readiness.
Jock had lazed about the Station since noon. The wedding preparations
bored him, and the train's delay angered him.
"See here!" he exploded to Tom Smith, the agent, "ain't it stretching a
point too far when that gol-durned train gives herself four hours'
lee-way?"
Tom spat with dignity, and remarked casually:
"Long as she ain't likely to meet any train going down, seems to me
there ain't any use to git warmer than is necessary."
"If she keeps on," drawled Jock, "she'll have a head-on collision with
herself some day. Is that the dying shriek of the blasted hussy?"
Tom stopped the imminent expectoration.
"It be," he announced, and went out on the track to welcome the guest.
"She do look," he contemplatively remarked, "like she had an all-fired
jag on."
The train came in sight, swaying unsteadily on its rickety tracks.
Puffing, panting and hissing, it reached the platform and stopped
jerkily.
Murphy sprang from the engine; the conductor strode with dignity worthy
a Pullman official, to the one passenger coach behind the baggage car,
and assisted a very young and very sickly man to alight.
Tom Smith, with energy concentrated on this single activity of the
twenty-four hours, began hurling mail-bag and boxes about with the
abandon that marks the man whom Nature has fitted to his legitimate
calling.
Filmer eyed the passenger with disapproving interest; Murphy, after
looking at some part of the machinery, lolled up to Jock.
"Is that it?" Filmer nodded toward the stranger, who sat exhaustedly
upon a cracker-box, destined for the Black Cat, with his suit-case at
his feet.
"It ain't, then," Murphy returned. "It got on the Branch 'stead of the
Mountain Special, by mistake. It's a lunger bound for the lakes, and
some one gave him a twist as to the track an' we caught 'im. But shure,
the rale thing, the parson, when I was after tellin' 'im of the job what
was at this end of the game, he up and balked--divil take 'im!--an' said
he wasn't goin' to tie for time and eternity, two unknown quantities.
What do ye think of that?"
Jock thought hotly of it, and expressed his thought so fervidly that the
boy on the cracker-box gave attention.
"Say," Murphy continued, "give it straight, Filmer; does it be after
meanin' life or death for Birkdale's girl? What's the almighty hurry,
anyway?"
He leered unpleasantly. Jock squared himself, and faced the engineer.
"Come off with that guff!" he drawled. "What hurry there be is _my_
hurry, you blamed idiot! And my reasons are my own, confound you! I've
set my mind on having that affair come off to-morrow, gol durn it, and
I'm going to have a parson if I have to dangle down to the Junction on
that old machine of yours, myself."
A few added words of luridly picturesque intent gave force and colour to
this declaration.
The stranger on the cracker-box rose weakly and drew near.
"Excuse me," he began, in a voice of peculiar sweetness and earnestness,
"I wonder if I can be of any service? I am a minister!"
Filmer reeled before this announcement, took the stranger in from head
to foot, then remarked in an awed tone:
"The hell you are!"
"I am. My name's Drew, Ralph Drew."
Murphy beat a rapid retreat. The scene was too much for him. Filmer, in
doubt as to whether this was a joke or not, stood his ground.
The young fellow laughed good-naturedly.
"I know what you think," he said, and coughed sharply; "I got my
credentials all right. I nearly finished myself in getting them, but
they're all right. Graduated last June, went under soon after, got on my
feet two weeks ago, and am making for Green Lake. I got side-tracked at
the Junction through my own stupidity, and landed here. Perhaps you can
direct me to a quiet place for the night, and I'll be glad to help you
out in any way along my line, if I can."
This lengthy explanation was interrupted by short, hacking coughs, and
Filmer's eyes never dropped from the eager boyish face through it all.
Presently he leaned down and took the dress-suit case from the other's
hand.
"Drop that," he drawled, "and you follow me. There's the Black Cat
Tavern, but I guess that ain't your kind. Do you think you can make my
shack? It's a half-mile, and pretty uppish grade."
The boy began to thank Filmer.
"Hold on!" Jock commanded. "Keep your wind for the climb, and stop
gassing."
The two started on, and the climb was a silent one. Filmer
appreciatively strode ahead, speechless. Drew, panting, accepted the
situation gratefully, and made the most of his position and his leader's
silence.
Filmer's shack was a lonely place, standing on a little pine-clad knoll
facing the west. It had four small rooms, a broad piazza, and a thrifty
garden at the rear.
The room assigned to Drew had a cot-bed and rough, home-made toilet
accommodations that suggested comfort and a sense of refinement. When
Filmer made him welcome to it, he said quietly: "Now kid, you make
yourself trim and dandy. Come out on the piazza when you get good and
ready, and we'll have supper out there later." It was evident that
Jock's sympathies had been touched.
Once alone, Drew sank upon the low bed, and permitted the waves of
weakness and weariness to engulf him.
The young face grew pinched and blue, a faintness rose and conquered
him. The eyes closed, and the breath almost stopped. But it was only
momentary, and with returning consciousness came renewed hope and sudden
strength.
From the broad open window the boy could see the western hills, already
gay with glistening autumn colour, shining under the glowing sunset sky.
The tall pointed pines, standing here and there in clumps, rose sharply
dark in the early gloaming of the valley.
"It's my chance," thought the boy, his eyes widening with enjoyment of
the beauty; "and, by Jove, I believe I've caught on!"
He got to his feet. The giddiness was gone. He flung off his
dust-stained garments, as if they held all of his past weakness and
misery. He plunged his head into the clear, cold water in the big basin
on the pine table; when he emerged, colour had mounted to his pale face,
and depression was a thing of the past.
"Hang it!" he exclaimed, rubbing his face and head with the rough towel
that he took from the back of a chair; "this is good enough for me. No
Green Lake in mine! I'll send for my trunk"--he had begun to whistle in
the pauses of his thought--"and put up my fight right here. Filmer's
good stuff; and there's a job ready-made for me, I bet! This is where I
was sent, and no mistake. What's that?"
It was the odours of supper, and Drew stood still, inhaled the fragrance
and grinned broadly.
"Gee whiz!" he cried; "I'm as hungry as a ditch digger." He dashed over
to his suit-case, opened it and pulled out the contents. A pair of
flannel trousers, a heavy flannel shirt and thick shoes were selected,
and soon Drew, radiant and revived, went forth from the disorder he had
created, eager for the meal that he heard Filmer placing on the piazza
table.
Drew was to eat many of Filmer's meals in the future; he was to learn
that Jock was a master-hand at cooking, but he was never again to know
just the positive joy that he felt during that first meal; for he
brought to it an appetite made keen by the hope of recovered health--the
health he had squandered so foolishly, poor fellow, while he was making
for his goal at college.
At last he tilted his chair back and laughed.
"I haven't eaten like that," he said, "nor with such enjoyment, since I
went tramping up in the Maine woods when I was a youngster."
Filmer was removing the empty dishes. There was a sense of delicacy
about his host that was compelling Drew's notice. He watched him
passing from kitchen to piazza, and he saw that he was big, strong and
handsome, but with a certain weakness, of chin, and a shyness of
expression that came and went, marring the general impression.
Filmer's shyness was increasing. Never before in his life had he been
brought into close personal contact with "the cloth" as he termed it,
and even this "swaddling garment" was having a slow-growing hold upon
him.
Presently Jock came timidly out, after his last visit to the kitchen,
with pipes and a tobacco-box.
"I'm not certain," he began, "how your kind takes to tobacco, but if I
don't get my evening smoke, I get a bad spell of temper--so, if you
don't object--I'll light up."
"If you'll wait a moment," Drew returned, "I'll join you. I always smoke
my own pipe--I've got sort of chummy with it--but I'll share your
tobacco."
Filmer grinned, and the cloud passed from his face.
"I calculated," he said, "that your kind classed tobacco with cussing
and jags. Light up, kid."
They were soon lost in the fragrant smoke, the bliss of satisfied
appetite, and a peaceful scene. The sun went down, and left the hills
and valley in an afterglow of glory. The beauty was so touching that
even Filmer succumbed, shook the ashes from his pipe and delayed
refilling. Presently he looked at Drew's face. It had paled from
emotion, and shone white in the shadow of the porch.
"You look peaked." Filmer's words brought the boy back to earth. "Been
through a long siege, maybe?"
"Oh, overstudy and weak lungs!" Drew spoke cheerfully. "Bad combination,
you know, and I didn't pull in as soon as I should have. I crammed for
exams. Made them, and then collapsed. I'm all right now, though. All the
struggle's over. I've only to reap the reward. There was a big doctor
down in New York who told me that the air up here was my one chance. I'm
going to take it. A few months here, and a life anywhere else I may
choose, he said.
"What do you say to letting me have your room and company--you needn't
give any more of the latter than you want to, you know--for a spell?
You'll find me easy to get on with, I fancy, no one has ever complained
of me in that way. I don't care what Green Lake is like, I like _this_
better. I like this, way down to the ground. I've gone daffy over the
whole thing." He drew in a long, happy breath. "What do you say?"
"I'd like to ask, if it ain't too inquisitive," Jock inquired, ignoring
the boy's eagerness, while he put forth his own claims, "why in thunder
a chap like you took to the preaching business? Somehow you look like a
feller that might want to enjoy life."
Drew laughed heartily.
"Why, I mean to enjoy life," he replied, "and I chose this profession
because I like it. I believe in it. You see, I was born to be a fighter.
If I'd had a big, lusty body like yours, I might have been--anything. As
it is, I had to choose something where I could fight with other weapons
than bone, muscle and bodily endurance. I'm going into the fight of
helping men and women in the best way I can, don't you see? I suppose I
must sound cheeky and brazen to talk this way, but I'm full of the joy
of it all, and I've made the goal, you see, and for all the breakdown
I've come out ahead. It's enough to stir one, don't you think?
"The night I graduated, I don't mind telling this to you, I went down on
my knees when all the excitement was over and the lights were out, and I
said, 'I am here. I've got money; the good God need not have me on his
mind along that line; he can send me where he chooses, to do his work;
I'm ready.'
"It was like consecrating myself, you know. Well, when the sickness
came, I thought perhaps he didn't want me or my money either; but I came
out of the Valley and here I am now, and I tell you--it seems good."
Filmer folded his arms across his chest, and looked steadily ahead of
him.
"Do you know," he said at length--"and I hope you'll excuse me--I think
you're the most comical cuss that ever happened."
Drew met this frank opinion with the boyish laugh that was having the
effect of clearing up all the dull places in Filmer's character. He had
never heard that laugh equalled but once, and he rarely went back to
that memory--the path was too hard and lonely.
The reserves were down between the two. Without reason or cause,
perhaps, they had fallen into a confident liking.
"Have you done much marrying and burying yet?" The question startled
Drew, then he recalled the conversation on the Station platform.
"Well, no," he said, "practical demonstration comes after graduation
generally. I've substituted for ministers--preached a Sunday, now and
then, you know; but of course, I _can_ perform the marriage ceremony, or
read the burial service."
"You look pretty young," Jock spoke slowly; he was noting the strange
dignity of his guest. Any reference to his profession brought with it
this calm assurance that held levity in check; "but it's this way.
There's a wedding fixed for to-morrer. I've set my heart on it coming
off, and there ain't a durned parson to be had, that the girl favours.
Now under these circumstances, you can't afford to look a gift horse in
the mouth so to speak, and no offence intended. I can give you a tip or
two before you trot in, and as for you, why you know, there ain't
nothing equal to being thrown neck and crop into a job.
"The first time I went logging I got one leg broke and my head smashed,
but I haven't ever regretted it. That accident, and the incidental
scare, did more for me than any two successful seasons could have done.
Now, your plunging right into a marrying may prove providential. Sermons
and infant christenings will seem like child's play after. What do you
say?"
Drew was laughing and the tears stood in his eyes.
"I'll--I'll do my level best," he managed to say through his spasms of
mirth. "This seems like a horrible approach to anything so serious, but
it is the way you put it, you know, and--and the air, and the supper.
The laugh comes easy, you see."
"Oh! enjoy yourself." Filmer waved his pipe aloft. "I'm glad you _can_
take life this way, with the handicap of your trade, I don't quite see,
by thunder, how your future parish is going to account for you, but so
far as I'm concerned you can laugh till you bust."
Filmer was delighted. Not in years had he been so taken out of himself.
"Now this here town," he explained, "likes to have its buryings and
weddings set off with a sermon with the principal actor as text. They
like to get their money's worth. See? This girl, what I want spliced,
is a devilish--" he paused--"you don't mind _moderately_ strong
language, do you?" he asked. "We all get flowery up here. What is
lacking in events, talk makes up. I'll hold back when I can--in reason."
"Don't mind me!" Drew was trying to control his mirth.
Filmer nodded appreciatively.
"Well, as I was remarking--and I've got to be open with you--this here
girl will be safer married, and so will some other folks. I ain't much
of a reader of character, but I sense things like all creation, and I
_feel_ that getting the girl in harness as soon as possible is the only
plain common-sense method. She's mettlesome, you know, the kind that
kicks over the traces, and slams any one happening to be handy. She
ain't never done it yet--but she's capable of it."
"Is--is the girl a relation or----?"
Jock flushed.
"Neither. Nor the man. The feller--Jude Lauzoon is his name--I don't
care a durn for, but he's all gone over this girl, and if any one can
steer him straight she can, and when she gets the reins in her hands, I
believe she's going to keep her head, in order to steer straight.
"The girl's name is Joyce Birkdale. Mother dead; raised sort of
promiscuous on the instalment plan. Father an old buck who only keeps
sober because he want's to see what's going on. He lit out and made
himself scarce a time back, and this here Joyce took refuge after a hell
of--excuse me! after a row with the old man--up to the Black Cat. Leon
Tate acts the father-part to any one in a fix--it helps his trade--keeps
folks in his debt, you know, but he ain't going to hamper hisself past a
certain point, and if this here Jude Lauzoon should get a beckon from
old man Birkdale he'd skip as quick as thunder--that's what is troubling
Tate, and, by gosh! it's troubling me, but for another reason what
needn't enter into this here conversation.
"If it was trusting you with a funeral or a christening," Filmer felt
his way gingerly, "I wouldn't care a durn. You can't hurt the dead and
the kid might outgrow it; but when it comes to tying folks together
tight, it's a blamed lot like trusting something brittle in a baby's
hand. It mustn't be broke, you see, or there'll be h--I mean trouble, to
pay."
"See here!" Drew sat up straight, "I'm not much younger than you, if the
truth were known. So let us cut extreme youth out of the question."
"Maybe you are about my age, kid," Jock gazed indulgently upon him, "and
don't let your necktie choke you; but you're pretty raw material, and
I'm seasoned. That's the difference. It ain't anything against you. It's
the way you've been handled. Burying is looked upon by young _and_ old,
solemn-like; but I didn't know how you looked upon--marrying."
"It's the solemnest thing in life." Drew spoke clearly and impressively.
"I think death is a light matter in comparison. I've always thought
that--since, well--for several years."
"Now you're talking!" Jock leaned over and gave Drew a friendly slap on
the shoulder. "Now you're getting on the right course, and I want to
give you this tip. Lay it on thick with Jude. Tell him he'll be
everlasting blasted in kingdom-come if he don't act clean and hold on.
Specially slap it on about holding on. Jude's intentions are good
enough. He's powerful promising at the start, but he's the d----, the
gol-durndest quitter anywhere around.
"Every new boss bets on Jude when the season begins, but every man of
them would like to kick him out of camp before the spring sets in. All
the hell-fire threats that that religion factory of yours drilled in
you, you plank on Jude to-morrow, when you make him and Joyce man and
wife. How fervent was that factory of yours? There is a difference in
temperatures among them, I've heard."
"Oh! mine was mild," Drew was again helplessly convulsed, "so mild that
I'm afraid you'd call it frigid. But that doesn't matter. Future
damnation is a poor threat when every man among us knows that a present
hell is a much worse affair. It's the awakening of a soul to _that_
fact, that is going to save the world of men and women."
A full moon was sailing high in the heavens now, and Drew's animated
face showed clear in the pale gleam. Jock hitched his chair nearer.
"Do you mean to insinuate," he asked, "that you've been wasting your
time and health studying a line of preaching that hasn't got a red-hot
hell in the background for sinners?"
"I mean just that." Drew threw back his head proudly.
"What in thunder do you do with them, then?"
"We try--by God's help _I'm_ going to try--to take fear from them. Make
them _want_ to be decent. Make them _want_ to use the powers they have
in themselves. Make them want to work _with_ God, not alone _for_ God."
Jock's face was a puzzle. Admiration, pity, bewilderment, and a desire
to laugh, waged war. Finally he drawled:
"Well, I'll be eternally durned, if I ain't sorry that a bright chap
like you has wasted his youth, and pretty nearly drowned the vital
spark, in arriving at such a cold-storage conclusion as this here one
you've been airing. Why any one with half an eye can see that if
hell-fire can't stir sinners, a slow call to duty ain't going to get a
hustle on them. I swear if it wasn't so late, I'd get Gaston over here
to listen to your views. Gaston is open to all kinds of tommy-rot that
has a new mark on it. I'll be jiggered if I don't believe Gaston will
want to pay you a salary to keep you here just for a diversion. But take
my advice, and keep to old-fashioned lines, to-morrer 'specially, when
you come to the marrying. Lord! Lord! But Jude would be having a picnic
if he grasped that rose-coloured streamer of yours."
Drew made no reply. He was thinking, and his thoughts led where he knew
Jock could not follow.
Presently a thin, blue-veined hand stole out in the darkness and found
Filmer's.
"I--I--didn't know such men as you--such a place as this--existed," said
the low, eager voice. "It's like having died and awakened in a new
atmosphere, where even the people are different. It's--it's quite an
inspiration."
Jock kept the hand, delicate as a woman's, in his strong, rough palm.
"You're somewhat of an eye-opener yourself," he said. "I've always held
that mixing is learning on both sides. As long as you've got strength
and inclination to stretch out, you'll always find something stretching
out to you.
"And now as to that proposition of yours a time back, about bunking here
for a time. I'm agreed, with this understanding: I've got a devil of a
disposition, but it ain't ever going to be no better and them as don't
like it can find new quarters. I came here over ten years ago to indulge
my disposition, and I'm going to indulge it. When I don't want folks, I
take to the forest, or, if the weather is bad, I shut and lock my door.
If, after knowing this, you care to take that room I gave you this
afternoon, it's yours for as long as you want it. I like you. I'm sudden
in my likes, but I don't like your hell-less doctrine. I advise you not
to turn that loose in St. Angé. We're none too good now, but if a
soothing syrup was poured out, them as valued their lives would have to
navigate to the Solitudes."
"I don't believe it!" cried Drew. "As God hears me, I believe it is just
the place to try it."
"Oh! Get to bed." Jock stood up and laughed good-naturedly. "Go to bed
and get up steam for to-morrer. When you see the whole collection you'll
warm up your ideas. You're a terrible plucky kid to trust your own soul
on a trifling little raft like this religion of yours. You better not
overload it with more souls, though; the risk's too tremendous.
"Go sleep on your fairy story, boy. I don't see for the life of me how
your health could have broken studying such a mild mixture as that. You
must have been real run down at the start. But never mind, don't lay the
laugh up against me, kid, I ain't enjoyed myself so much in ten years as
I have to-night."
The two parted the best of friends. Drew fell quickly into a deep,
undisturbed sleep, but Filmer tossed about till morning. The grim Past
gripped him; he pulled the flask, that stood ever ready, nearer; but
the cowardice of the act swayed him, and he flung the bottle to the
floor.
Then he swore, and tried to sleep again, but the Spectre jeered him.
"The powers they have in themselves." The words struck again and again
on Filmer's aching brain.
What powers? Oh! he had had powers. He might have been--what? He might
have been where? If--if----
The sunrise of Joyce's wedding day was just breaking when Filmer's
Spectre gave up the struggle and sleep came. The only trophy of the
victory was the discarded flask, which lay untouched where the hand of
the master--for that time at least--had flung it.