The following June Joyce's little boy was born. It was a most
inconvenient time for him to make his appearance.
The late spring had delayed the logging season. The winter had been a
long-continued, cold one; the men at the different camps had fretted
under the postponed ending of their jobs, and severe discipline had been
necessary in more than one camp. Hillcrest's ideas of decency had been
deeply outraged; its courts of justice had been kept busy by men, who,
unable to resist temptation after restraint had at last been removed,
carried lawlessness to an unprecedented excess.
The river, too, with the depravity of inanimate things, had taken that
occasion to leap all bounds and run wild where never before it had
ventured. Not being content in carrying its legitimate burden of logs to
the lower towns, it bore away, one black night, more than half of the
lumber that Jude had piled near the clearing for Ralph Drew's new house.
This occurrence sent Jude into one of the fits of sullen frenzy which
were becoming more and more common to him. He had been obliged to track
the stolen lumber many miles to the south, seize it there, and make
arrangements for bringing it back. This absence from the scene of his
life battle, turned Jude into a veritable fiend for the time being. He
had enough self-confidence to believe he could hold things in his own
hands, when his hands and eyes were on the spot, but with absence and
distance--bah!
Many a horse and man suffered that spring from Jude's evil temper.
Whether Gaston was aware of conditions or not, who could tell? He took a
keen delight in the manual labour of working on Drew's house. He and
Filmer, with or without Jude, hammered, sawed and made rough designs
that filled their days with honest toil and brought healthy sleep to
their tired bodies.
And just when the early wild flowers were timidly showing themselves,
after the winter's long reign, little Malcolm Lauzoon opened his eyes
upon the scene.
How could he know that the festivities at the Black Cat were interrupted
by Jude's necessary absences, and Isa Tate's voluntary visits to Joyce's
home?
Leon Tate, good-naturedly reaping a belated prosperity, had insisted
that his wife serve Joyce how and as she might.
Jude was becoming a man to be considered. He evidently had a future, and
the tavern's attractions had never held a sure power over Jude. Here
was Leon's opportunity for putting Jude under obligations.
Tate thought fit to place himself and his wife on a social equality with
the Lauzoons. So Isa was in command when small Malcolm arrived.
It was an early June morning, after a night of black horror, when Joyce
became aware of the singing of birds out of doors, and a strange, new
song in her heart.
The latter sensation almost stifled her. She tried to raise her head and
look about the room, but the effort made her faint. She waited a moment,
then slowly turned her head on the pillow and opened her eyes. There by
the low, open window sat Isa Tate, swaying back and forth in the
old-fashioned rocker, with something on her lap.
Again the strange faintness overpowered Joyce, and the big tears rolled
down her face. It had not, then, been all a hideous nightmare? Something
sweet and real had remained after the terror and agony had taken flight?
"Isa!" So low and trembling was the call that Isa, drowsing luxuriously
as she rocked to and fro, took no heed.
It was many a day since she, detached from the demands of home cares,
could make herself so comfortable.
"Isa!"--and then Isa heard.
"What is it?" she turned a steady glance toward the bed. She did not
intend that Joyce should be exacting. Women were apt to be unless the
nurse was rigid. "Do you want anything?"
"Oh! Isa is that--my baby?" There was such a thrill in the voice that
Isa was at once convinced that Joyce was delirious.
She was going to have her hands full. A mere baby, to Isa, was no cause
for that tone, and the glorified look.
"I guess there ain't any one else going to put in a claim for him," she
replied with a vague sense of humorously calming the patient.
"Him!" Joyce's tears again overflowed. "Did you say 'him' Isa?"
"There, there! do be still now, Joyce, and take a nap. You won't have
any too much time for lazing. You better make the most of it."
"It's a boy. Oh! It seems too, too heavenly. _My_ little boy! Isa,
is--is--he beautiful?"
And now no doubts remained in Isa's mind. She must pacify this very
trying case.
"'Bout as beautiful as they make 'em," she said slowly, and tried to
remember what was given to patients when they became unmanageable.
"Does--does he look--like--" the words came pantingly--"like the picture
in the other room?"
Isa was sitting opposite the door leading into the living room, and her
eyes fell, as Joyce spoke, upon the Madonna and Child.
Then, in spite of her anxiety and weariness, Isa laughed. The entire
train of events since her arrival the day before had appealed to her
latent sense of humour.
"Oh! exactly," she answered and rolling the baby in a blanket she strode
over to the bed, and placed him hastily beside Joyce.
"There," she said soothingly; "now lay still or you'll hurt the little
beauty. I'm going to fix something comforting to drink."
She was gone. In the mystery of the still room and the early morning,
Joyce was alone with her little son!
As she felt, so all motherhood, as God designed it, should feel. Before
the acceptance of the wonderful gift, motherhood stood entranced. Fear
and awe hold even love in abeyance. Into poor, loving, human hands a
soul--an eternal soul--was entrusted. No wonder even mother-love held
back before it consecrated itself to the sacred and everlasting
responsibility.
Joyce only dumbly felt this. All that she was conscious of was a fear
that her joy, when she looked upon the blessed little face, would kill
her, and so end what had but begun.
A new and marvellous strength came to her. She raised herself upon her
elbow and reverently drew the corner of the blanket from the tiny head.
Suddenly the birds ceased singing. The June morning was enveloped in a
black pall. The ominous stillness that precedes an outburst of the
elements held breath in check.
Joyce was perfectly conscious. In the hideous blackness she saw her
baby's face clear and distinct, and with firm fingers she tore the
wrappings from the small body--she must see all, all.
Misshapen and grim in its old, sinister expression of feature, the baby
lay exposed. The face was grotesque in its weazened fixity; the little
legs were twisted, and the thin body lay crooked among its blankets. The
big eyes stared into the horrified ones above them as if pleading for
mercy. The sight turned Joyce ill.
"In spite of all," the stare seemed to challenge, "can you accept me?"
In that moment when the bitter cup was pressed to motherhood's lips,
Joyce received the holiest sacrament that God ever bestows. In divine
strength she accepted her child. This little, blighted creature would
have no one but her to look to--to find life through. All that it was to
receive, until it went out of life, must come first through her. Should
she fail it?
With fumbling and untrained hands she drew it to her, and pressed it
against her breast. With the touch of the small body at her heart, the
dawn crept back into the room, and from afar the birds sang.
With all her striving, poor Joyce had not eliminated from the baby's
life the inheritance of others' sins. He had come, bearing a heavy load
of disease and deformity. All that was left for her to do now, was to
lift the cross as she might from this stunted and saddened life, and
walk beside him to the farther side.
The poor, little wrinkled mouth was nestling against the mother-breast.
Instinct was alive in the child. Joyce laughed. At first tremblingly,
then shrilly. Suddenly she began to sing a lullaby, and the tune was
interrupted by laughs and moans.
Higher and higher the fever rose. Isa Tate, beside herself with fright,
screamed for help, and for days Jude Lauzoon's house was the meeting
place of Life and Death; then Life triumphed, and people breathed
relievedly.
"A homely young-un often makes handsome old bones," comforted Isa. Now
that Joyce was creeping back from the dangers that had beset her, Isa
felt a glow of pride and interest. She was an honourable diploma to
Isa's skill as nurse. In the future, Mrs. Tate was to feel a new
importance. She was assuming the airs of a woman who has learned the
market value of her services. Tate was to reap the effect of this later.
"Oh! It doesn't matter much with boys," Joyce answered, indifferently.
"A girl would have been different."
"That's a sensible way to look at it," Isa agreed. "I often think that a
man with good looks has just that much temptation to be a bigger fool
than what he otherwise would be. It's one agin 'em whichever way you
take it. They don't _need_ looks. They gets what they wants, anyway, and
if they are side-tracked by their countenances, it's ten to one they
will get distracted in their aims, and make more trouble than usual.
"Now that I hark back, the only men as I can remember that amounted to
enough to make you willing to overlook their cussedness, was men as had
a handicap in looks.
"There was Pierre Laval's brother Damon. He was born with twelve toes,
twelve fingers--two extry thumbs they was--and four front teeth.
"He certainly was the most audacious ugly young-un I ever set eyes on. I
wasn't much more than a girl, to be sure, when I saw him first, but I
went into yelling hysterics, and took to my bed. Pierre was
handsome--and, you know how he ended? Damon, he gritted his teeth--and
in his case he could do that early--and made up his mind to make good
for his deficiencies--if you can say that 'bout one as had more rather
than less than Nature generally bestows. Land! the learning that child
was capable of absorbing! Hillcrest School just sunk into him like he
was a sponge. When he got all he could over there, he just walked off
as natural as could be, without a cent to his name--and they do say, so
I've heard, that down the state they set an awful store by his knowledge
of stars and moons and such-like. And Mick Falstar, cousin to Pete--"
"Never mind, Isa." Joyce looked wan and nerveless. These tales only
accentuated the agony she felt whenever she was forced to concentrate
her thoughts upon actualities.
When she was left to herself, she was beginning to regain the power of
ignoring facts and living among ideals. She was growing more and more
able to see a little spiritual baby at her breast--a beautiful child.
And with that vision growing clearer she felt her own spirit gaining
strength for flights into a future where this little son of hers, borne
aloft by her determined will and purpose, should hold his own among men.
Surely, she thought, God would not cripple mind, body and soul. God
would be content with testing her love by the twisted body. The mind and
soul would be--glorious!
Day by day, the young mother, creeping back into the warm, summer life,
watched for intelligence to awaken in the grim little face; the first
flying signal of the overpowering intellect that was to make recompense
for all that had been withheld.
The misshapen body was always swathed in disguising wrappings; even the
claw-like, groping hands were held under blankets when curious eyes
were near. Isa had won Joyce's everlasting gratitude by holding her
tongue regarding the child's bodily deformity; and the Hillcrest doctor,
who had been summoned when the fever grew, did not consider the
circumstance important enough to weigh on his memory when once the
payment for his services was, to his surprise, forthcoming.
But the sad, little old face with its fringe of straight black hair!
That must be public property, and its piteous appeal had no power beyond
the mother, to stay the cruel jest and jibe.
"Say, Jude," Peter Falstar had said in offering his maudlin
congratulations, "what's that you got up to your place--a baby or a
Chinese idol? That comes of having a handsome wife, what has notions
beyond what women can digest."
Jude did not take this pleasantry as one might suppose he would. His own
primitive aversion to the strange, deformed child made him weakly
sensitive. He recoiled from Falstar's gibe with a sneaking shame he
dared not defend by a physical outburst.
"He ain't a very handsome chap," he returned foolishly, "don't favour
either father or mother--hey?"
Gaston overheard this and other similar witticisms, and his blood rose
hot within him.
The cruelty and indelicacy of it all made him hate, where, heretofore,
he had but felt contempt.
He realized most keenly that in his lonely life among the pines the few
interests and friendships that he had permitted himself were deeper than
he had believed.
Jock Filmer, during the closer contact of daily labour, had become to
him a rude prototype of a Jonathan. They had found each other out, and
behind the screen that divided them from others, they held communion
sacred to themselves. They read together in Gaston's shack. They had, at
times, skimmed dangerously near the Pasts that both, for reasons of
their own, kept shrouded. After one of these close calls of confidence,
they would drift apart for a time--afraid of each other--but the growing
attraction they felt was strengthening after the three or four years
wherein an unconscious foundation had been laid.
Then Gaston, too, realized that he had banked much upon the marriage he
had brought about between Jude and Joyce. In saving himself from
temptation, he felt he had sacrificed the girl, unless he could bring
into her life an element that would satisfy her blind gropings.
To argue that in saving himself he had saved her, was no comfort. He had
not been called upon to elect himself arbiter of Joyce's future. No; to
put it baldly, in his loneliness he had dabbled in affairs that did not
concern him--and he must pay for his idiocy.
To that end he had, at first, put himself and his private funds at
Jude's disposal. He had had hopes that by so doing he might help Jude to
decent manliness. But that hope soon died. Jude, lazy with the inertness
of a too sharply defined ancestry, became rapidly a well-developed
parasite.
Even when he accepted the contract to build Ralph Drew's house, he had
done so from two motives. By this means he could, he found, command more
of Gaston's money than in any other way, and by assuming the
responsibility he placed himself on a social pinnacle that satisfied his
vanity. He became a man of importance. Gaston and Filmer, glad with the
intelligence of men who know the value of work, took the actual burden
upon themselves. Lauzoon had the empty glory; they had the blessing of
toil that brought their faculties into play, and gave them relief from
somberer thoughts. But Gaston was too normal a man not to consider the
gravity of conditions that were developing. His hopes of Jude had long
ago sunk into a contemptuous understanding of the shiftless fellow. He
had, however, believed that the hold he had upon him insured a
comparatively easy life for Joyce. This, too, he now saw was a false
belief.
He knew the girl. He knew that mere housing and assured food were little
to her, if deeper things failed.
It was this essentially spiritual side of Joyce that had interested him
and appealed to him from the beginning.
One by one he gave up his hopes for her happiness. He saw that Jude was
impossible long before Joyce did; then he put his faith in the little
child--and now that had failed! Poor girl! he thought; and in the inner
chamber of his shack with the doors and shutters barred, the pistol
lying at hand upon his desk, he cursed himself for a fool who had tried
to enrich his own wasted life with an interest in the lives of others
that had brought about as bad a state of affairs as any meddler could
well conceive.
Then he grew reckless. Things couldn't be much worse, anyway, and if he
might brighten that dull life in the little house, he'd brighten it and
Jude be--the laugh that Gaston laughed was perhaps better than the word
he might have used had he finished his sentence.
There was the regular income from the outer world; as long as that was
at Gaston's command he felt he could control Lauzoon, and who else
mattered, except Filmer? Well, Filmer had sense to keep his opinions to
himself--although the look in his eyes when he disapproved of anything,
was unpleasant and--impertinent.
A clam like Filmer had no right to personal opinions of other folks'
conduct. Unless he let light in upon his own excuse for being, he
should withhold condemnation.
So Gaston spent his days' ends on Jude's little piazza, or in the bay
window of the sitting room when the air was too cool for the baby
snuggling against the young mother's breast.
Gaston brought his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew
from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words
running along in monotone that yet kept time to the alluring strains.
Joyce smiled, and her ready tears came, but the colour was coming back
into her beautiful face; the brooding eyes once again had the glint of
sweet mischief in them, and the lip curled away from the pretty teeth.
She had never been so beautiful before. Living in the ideal where her
baby was concerned made it perilously easy for her to live ideally in
all other ways.
Jude became a blurred reality. He was, when she thought of him at all,
endowed with the graces and attractiveness of Gaston. Joyce did not
consider Jude as he really existed. She smiled vaguely at him--his
personality now, neither annoyed her nor appealed to her. While living
with him outwardly, she was to all intents and purposes, spiritually
living with Gaston. For she gave to Jude the attributes that made Gaston
her hero, just as she gave to her poor, twisted baby the beautiful
contours and heavenly beauty of the Madonna's exquisite Child.
The summer throbbed and glowed in St. Angé.
Was it possible that things were as they always had been? Jared Birkdale
kept his distance and silence; and Joyce grew to forget him.
The Black Cat flourished, and Jude made no attempt to curb his growing
desire for popularity there. He was developing a talent for instructing
his elders, and laying down the law. He was endeavoring to fill
Birkdale's place. Jared had always been the tavern orator. Some one has
to occupy that pedestal in all such places, while the others enjoy their
pipes and mugs in speculative contemplation.
But nothing was as it _had_ been with Joyce. She had the look of one on
the threshold of big happenings. Her pale beauty had a new glow. The
thinness of girlhood had given place to a slender womanhood, all grace
and charm.
She was rarely seen without her baby on her bosom. Even in her work she
managed to bear him on one arm.
Away from her, he wailed pitifully and almost constantly; while pressed
against the warm, loving heart he sank into comfort and peace. When he
was awake his elfish eyes were fixed in solemn stare upon the
mother-face. Not knowingly nor indifferently, but intently, as if from
the depths of past experience he was wondering and endeavouring to
understand.
One evening, and such an evening it was in late July, Joyce, in her low
rocker, the baby on her knees, sat on the piazza facing westward, when
Gaston came around the house, fiddle in hand.
"Alone, Joyce?" It was an idle question, but it would do.
"Yes; Jude seems to have a lot to do about Mr. Drew's house, you know."
Joyce still kept up a pretty defence of Jude. Not that it was in the
least necessary, or even sensible, but it had its part in her detached
and dreamy life.
"The house is about finished," Gaston replied, tuning up the fiddle.
"And then what?" he said, placing the instrument.
"I wonder?" Joyce looked down happily upon her child.
It did not greatly matter, for now Gaston had struck into one of those
compelling airs, so intensely sweet and melodious that it all but hurt;
and the red sunset trembled as the tear-dimmed eyes beheld it.
The tune changed. It danced elfishly, and trippingly--for very joy it
made one laugh. The tear rolled down Joyce's face, as the smile replaced
it, and dropped upon the thin cheek of the baby. He did not flinch, and
the staring eyes did not falter, but something drew the mother's
attention. As the final tripping notes died away, she said softly.
"Mr. Gaston, just look--at the baby."
The child had rarely drawn them together. It was to make her forget the
child--and other things--that Gaston called so often.
He came now, and bent over the two.
"Does--he--look--just the same to you?" she asked.
"Why, yes!" Gaston repressed the desire to laugh. "You see babies are
not much in my line. I don't think I ever saw such a little fellow
before. They look about the same for a long time, don't they?"
"Oh! no. They change every day, and many times during the day. I weighed
baby to-day," she faltered, "and do you know, he weighs _less_ than when
he was born!"
"The ungrateful little heathen!"
"I'm afraid--I'm not a good mother." The sweet face quivered. "And I
want to be that more than anything else on earth. You see if I can get
him through--through this awful time when I can't tell just what might
be the matter--it will be easy enough. But young babies are
so--so--unreal. You don't know whether you've got them to keep or not.
They seem to be kind of holding on to another life, while they clutch
this. A good mother knows how to unloose them from that other hold."
Gaston was touched by the yearning in the low voice, but the weazened
face of the child repelled him, even while it attracted him.
"Would it be so--so terrible if he did not let go that--other hold?"
It was a stupid thing to say, and Gaston despised himself for being so
brutal when he saw the look of horror on the upturned face.
"Terrible?" Joyce gasped. "Why, if--if he should leave me, I couldn't
live. You don't know how it seems to have him warm and little and soft
against your heart. The whole world would be empty--empty, until it
would kill me with the emptiness--and I'd always think, you know, he'd
found out I wasn't fit to be his mother. It's a foolish fancy, but you
know, Mr. Gaston, I think they come to try us mothers--if they find us
out--not fit--they don't stay. Such a lot of babies don't stay!"
"Why Joyce!" Gaston tried to turn his gaze from that awful baby-stare.
"Full of whim-whams and moonshine. You must get about more. You must
come up to Drew's house to-morrow. It's a palace of a place--and Filmer
had a letter from Drew to-day. He's coming before the autumn cold sets
in--he's going to bring an aunt and a sister--just get your idle fancy
on the doings, and let Master Malcolm jog along at his own pace. If he
doesn't like you for a mother, he isn't worth considering. Look at him
now--he sees the joke, the brazen little cuss, he's actually laughing in
our faces."
"Oh!" Joyce sat rigidly up, and her own face became transformed. The
moment she had lived and waited for had come! The blank stare gave place
to a broken, crinkling expression; the thin shapeless lips trembled over
the toothless gums, and into the big eyes a wonder broke. A light seemed
to shine forth--and the baby smiled into the adoring face looking down!
To Gaston, the sight was, in a sense, awful. The majesty of Joyce's
attitude toward the change in the child, was the only thing that saved
the occasion.
"Is--it hungry?" he asked with the same dense stupidity he had displayed
before.
"Oh, no!" Joyce laughed gleefully. "Don't you see, he--he knows me.
He--he--_does_ like--me--he's going to stay, and he takes this heavenly
way to show it."
"The deuce he does!" and now Gaston laughed. "He's going to be a comical
imp, if I don't miss my guess. See, he's calming down now, and
regulating his features."
"But--he--smiled!" And just then Jude came around the corner of the
house.
Gaston saw the expression of his face, and something stifled him for a
moment. He wondered if money was always going to be a check to Jude,
after all.
And if it should cease to hold him in leash--then what would happen?
He went away soon after, but he sat up until toward daylight, just
outside his shack. He feared something was going to occur. But nothing
did; and the next thing in Joyce's life story that tugged at his
heart-strings, was the sickness and sudden death of little Malcolm.