Joyce, waiting in the solitude of the shack under the pines, heard and
saw little of what was going on in St. Angé. She was living at high
pressure, and she had not even the relief of companionship to divert her
from her lonely vigils.
Naturally the exhilaration of the night that Gaston left her, passed and
the dull monotony of the daily tasks performed perfunctorily with no
charm of another's approbation and sharing, lost the power of holding
her thoughts.
She ate, and made tidy the little house in quite the old way, but the
large dreaming eyes looked beyond the narrow confines, and grew pathetic
as they searched the white fields and hidden trails off toward the
Northern and Southern Solitudes.
Which way had he gone? From which direction would he return? Everything
was ready for him--it always had been since the night he left--and she,
herself, once the daily routine was over, donned her prettiest garments,
not the golden gown! and waited either by the glowing fire or by the
little windows.
Early in the day following Gaston's departure, she had discovered the
key in the lock of the chest! The sight for a moment, made her tremble.
Had he left it by mistake? Had he left it designedly, now that he had
taken her completely into his confidence?
But had he? Joyce flushed and paled at the thought. After all, what had
he really told her? She did not know, even, his true name nor the place
from which he had come.
No; she knew very little. Shaken from his indifference by her beauty and
charm into a realizing sense of the woman he had helped to form, Gaston
had indeed broken his silence and voiced the one great tragedy of his
life to her--and she had superbly stood the test; but that was all!
In the chest lay, perhaps the rest! His name; the name of those who had
taken part in all that had gone before the terrible time of his trouble.
For a moment a paralyzing temptation came to Joyce to solve for herself,
by the means at hand, the mystery which still surrounded the man she
loved with a completeness and abandon that controlled every thought and
act of her life. But it was only a momentary weakness. Her love shielded
her from any shortcoming that could possibly lower her.
Bravely she walked up to the chest, and proved herself by trying the lid
to see if the chest were unlocked. It was. Gaston had not even taken
that precaution.
Joyce smiled--all was now safe with her. She would never feel tempted
again. It became a comfort to sit near the chest. She deserted the
living room and made a huge fire upon Gaston's hearth. Evenings she took
her book or sewing there, and the chest with its secrets seemed like a
friend who, from very nearness of comradeship, had no need to speak its
hidden thoughts.
In the desolation of the mid-winter loneliness, the pale woman grew to
feel, when in Gaston's room, a high courage and strength. Everything
would come out right. Details were not to be considered. Gaston had
always been all-powerful; he would conquer now. What did the waiting
count? He, meanwhile, was tracing Jude. Soon he would return, having
freed her from every evil thing of the past. He would find her as he had
left her--a woman fitted by a great love to follow whither he led.
And then--as the long evenings pressed silently cold and dark around the
shack, her fancy ran riot. All that she had yearned for; all, all that
the books had suggested, she was to see. Mountain peaks and roaring
ocean; strange people like, yet so unlike, Gaston. To think that all
this was going to happen to her--old Jared's little Joyce.
A few days after Gaston's departure Jock Filmer walked into the shack
quite as easily as if months had not passed without a sight of him; he
came almost daily afterward. It was like Jock to assume the new
relation in this easy, companionable way.
Joyce was grateful. This was but another proof of Gaston's greatness.
"Everything going straight, Joyce?" The question came one day while the
keen eyes were taking in the store of wood, water and other necessaries.
"Everything, Jock; and the store-room is stocked. Sit down--and tell me
the news."
Joyce was not particularly interested, but it would put Jock at ease.
Jock gracefully flung himself into Gaston's chair. The two were, of
course, in the living room.
"There's company up to the bungalow," he spoke from the fullness of his
heart; "a widder girl."
"A--a widow?" Joyce was for a moment perplexed.
"Yes. She don't look a day older than Drew's sister, and she's powerful
cheerful for an afflicted person. But maybe she ain't afflicted. They
ain't, always. She looks as if she was dressing up in them togs for fun,
and at first glimpse it strikes one as sacrilegious. Something like a
kid using holy words in its play."
Joyce smiled. After all it was good to have the dear human touch, even
if the vital spark were lacking.
"Is--the widow-girl pretty, Jock?" she asked in order to detain Filmer.
"Well," a line came between Jock's eyes, "that's the puzzler. Now Drew's
sister--" Jock spoke in this detached way of Constance Drew for
self-defense--"Drew's sister stands for what she is; a good, honest,
handsome girl. You own up to that and that's the end of it. This one
sets you thinking. Is she, or ain't she pretty? you keep putting to
yourself. Do you like her, or don't you? Is she thinking about what
you're saying, or ain't she? That's the way your mind works when you are
with her, till it seems a plain waste of time, and riles you way down to
the ground. I like a woman what, having passed up her personality, lets
you alone as to further guessing 'less you have a mind to guess. Joyce!"
"Yes, Jock."
"They want you up to the bungalow to help along with the Christmas
doings. I never saw such happenings in all my life. All St. Angé is
going to see what's what for once. Presents for everybody; big party at
the bungalow Christmas night; the overflow is going even to reach up to
the camps. Boxes and barrels arriving every day from down the State.
Lord, but you should see Tom Smith's curiosity! There are big doings.
They call it a kind of thanksgiving for the Reverend Kid's recovery; and
they want you."
Joyce started back. She was interested, but only as it was apart from
herself.
"Oh, Jock!" she cried. "I couldn't. I just couldn't."
"I thought you couldn't," Jock returned calmly; "and you shan't if you
don't want to."
"Thank you. Don't let them feel hurt, but I could not go."
Jock cast a sympathetic glance toward her; and changed the subject.
"It's wonderful the grip that weak little Reverend has already got on
this town," he went on. "He's a sly one. Preaching ain't in it with the
undercurrent he's let loose here. It's just sapping the foundations of
society. It's setting free a lot of good stuff, but it's striking Tate
an all-fired blow."
"Tell me about it, Jock. It seems as if I had been asleep a--long
while."
"Well there are sermons _and_ sermons." Jock was flattered by the look
in Joyce's large eyes. "If the Reverend Kid had opened shop in the
regular way, Tate and his pals would have downed him in no time; but
what you going to do about sermons that are slipped in with talks to
women over their wash-tubs, and what not?
"Him and me was going by Falstar's the other day, and Peggy was washing
uncommon hard. Drew, he steps close to the tubs and says he, 'I tell
you, Mrs. Falstar, I don't know no better religion than getting the
spots out instead of slighting them. It's like the little Scotch girl
who said she knew when she got religion, for she had to sweep under the
mats.' Peggy was all a-grin, and Lord! how she went at it. Later, she
attacked the mats. It had set her thinking. I saw 'em hanging out, and
she beating them as she must often feel like beating Pete." A real laugh
greeted this, and Jock glowed with approval.
"And then what does that young lunger do, but gather in all the floating
population in the kid line, and play games with 'em, and read thrillers
to 'em up at the bungalow every evening. He's teaching them as wants to
learn, too. He's got Tate flamgasted. You see, the old man depended, for
the future, on them youngsters that haunted the tavern and got the
drippings that fell from within. The Black Cat Tavern Kindergarten is
busted, and the Bungalow stock is going up."
"Kindergarten? What's that, Jock?"
"Oh, it's a new-fangled idea in the way of schools. Sort of breaking up
the ground for later planting."
"Who told you about it?"
"Why--Drew's sister." Jock's face looked stern and he gazed into space.
"It's a splendid idea, Jock." Joyce's interest was keen enough now.
"Some one, even St. Angé's folks, should have seen how fine it is to
keep the children away from the tavern. How we have let everything
drift! Why Jock, if the boys and girls learn to hate the Black Cat; if
they are given something good, why of course St. Angé is going to be
another kind of place. Does Miss Drew help in teaching?"
"Does she?" Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear
unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells
'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed
brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a
career of crime is concerned. Do you know, he went up to see her with
his red hair plastered down with lard until it was a dull maroon colour;
his square cotton handkercher was perfumed with kerosene, and I tell you
he was a sight and a smell to remember; but Drew's sister stood it
without a word. She told me afterward that it was a proof
conclusive--them's her words--of Billy's redemption.
"I saw the brat the day he started for camp. I tell you the ginger was
all out of Billy. When he was obliged to swear he did it in whispers."
"Poor Billy! He's pretty young to begin camp life. There's good in
Billy. I wish Mr. Drew would make Peter send him to school."
"That's what he's planning to do."
Soon after this, when Jock started to go, he said: "So everything's fit
for a spell?"
"Everything Jock, until--"
They looked at each other mutely. Then Jock put his hand out awkwardly
and took Joyce's.
"Good-bye," he said quietly. His manner puzzled the girl.
"Life's a queer jamboree," he laughed lightly. "It's a heap easier to
stand it if you give yourself the hope of cutting it if you find the
pace too fast. So 'good-bye' is always in order even if you're going to
drop in to-morrow. Good-bye."
Joyce walked with him to the door. "Good-bye," she said with a growing
doubt in her heart; "good-bye, Jock--and I can never tell you how I
thank you."
It was many a long day before Joyce was to see Filmer again, and she
always felt that she knew it as she saw him pass beyond the pines after
that "good-bye."
* * * * *
Perhaps it was the boyish longing for Christmas cheer that struck such a
deadly blow at the heart of Billy, the fiddler, in Camp 7. Perhaps it
was the arrow that smites all, sooner or later. Be that as it may, as
Christmas drew near the mournful tunes Billy managed to saw from his
fiddle got on to the nerves of the men.
From remarks aimed at his efforts, pieces of wood and articles of
clothing were aimed at him, and Billy's life became a burden in the
dull, deep woods.
"I can't make jigs come," he whined one evening, "when I'm chock full of
hymn tunes."
"You'll be chock full of cold lead if you fill this hull camp with them
death dirges," warned one man who was bearing about all he could anyway.
"I wish to--I just wish I was plugged full of lead--and done for," was
Billy's unlooked-for reply; and then, to the surprise of all, he bent
his red curls over the fiddle and wept as only a homesick youngster can
weep when the barriers of his fourteen years are down, and the flood has
its way.
That night, Billy in his bunk, sleepless and consumed with longing for
home and the excitement of the bungalow element, planned desertion. At
midnight he crept to the larder and packed enough food to last for a
couple of days, at four o'clock he stole from the sleeping-shed, and,
cheered by the unanimous snores that rang in his ears, he turned his
freckled, determined face toward St. Angé and the one absorbing passion
of his life.
The outlook of the Solitude at four in the morning was not an altogether
cheerful one even to ambitious youth. Indeed there was little, if any,
outlook.
Blackness around; cold starlight overhead. Snow and ice everywhere
except on the trail that a "V" plow had made through the forest.
It was cruelly still and lonely. "Gawd," said Billy raising his eyes to
the emptiness above him, "you see me to the end of this, and, by gosh!
I'll swear to go to Hillcrest to school."
From irreligious depravity, Billy had risen to reverent heights, and
Hillcrest restraint was beautiful in his thought, as a method of
preparing him for--Her.
A fear he had never known had birth in Billy's heart then as he slipped
and slid down the icy trail that had been flooded and frozen for the
passage of the logs. Even his unprotected boyhood had been shielded from
four-o'clock journeys in the wintry woods heretofore.
The only help Billy could draw from the situation was, that so far he
could refrain from whistling. When in this tense state a boy is reduced
to whistling all hope for strength is gone.
A distant groan; swish! ah! ah! and crash! rent the stillness. The boy
drew his breath in sharp.
"D---- blast that tree!" gurgled he, "what did it have to fall for now?"
Suddenly a deer darted across the trail and turned its wondering eyes on
the small brother of the woods. Billy's spirits rose. The wild things
were friends. The boy's depravity had always been redeemed by a lack of
cruelty.
A little farther on the way, Billy seated himself on a fallen log, and
cheered his inner man by a "bite of breakfast." Presently a shy, wild
creature drew near; took note and courage and scurried to Billy's feet.
With generous hand the boy shared his early meal, and made a familiar
noise that further won the little animal's confidence.
Billy had his plans well laid. There was a lumberman's hut a day's walk
from the camp; he must make that by night. There would be a rough bed
and chopped wood; he could sleep and rest and then, if all went well, he
ought to make St. Angé by the end of the following day, particularly if
he got a "lift," which was not impossible.
Just then, for the morning was beginning to show through the gaunt
trees, a bird-note sounded. Billy rose quickly--there was no time to
waste. Sometimes a bird sounded that warning when a storm was near. It
would never do for him to face a storm so far from shelter.
All that day Billy trudged on. Fortunately it was a constant, though
gradual, decline and the journey was made easier. He ate occasionally,
and gained courage and strength, but it was nearly nine o'clock--though
Billy was not aware of it--before the landmarks proved his hope
true--the woodman's hut was near at hand.
The boy had all the keenness of his age and environment. He knew that
others besides himself might avail themselves of the shelter, and he had
reason for choosing his company; so, before he reached the house, he
took to tip-toeing, and keeping clear of the underbrush.
The hut had one small window, before which hung a dilapidated shutter by
a rusty hinge. The door opened, Billy knew, into a little passage from
which the room door opened, and from which a rickety ladder led up to a
loft, unused and apparently useless.
As the boy neared the house his trained senses detected the smell of
fire and the sound of muffled voices. He crept to the window, and
through the broken shutter saw two figures crouching by the blazing
logs, but the faces were turned away, and the gloom of the room made it
impossible for Billy to decide whether the men were familiars or
strangers.
Meanwhile the wind was rising with a storm in its keeping; there was
nothing to do but seek refuge, for, until he could determine his further
course, Billy decided to take to the loft in order to reconnoitre.
Cautiously he made his way to the door, lifted the latch and gained the
entry. There he paused, for the voices had ceased speaking and the boy
feared that he had been heard. After a moment he concluded it was safer
to be in the loft in case the men were suspicious, so he hurriedly
mounted the ladder and crawled along the dusty floor of the space
overhead.
Gratefully, to his half-frozen form, the heat from below rose, and with
it came the odour of frying bacon, and the sound of sizzling fat.
Fortune was still further with Billy. There was a pile of discarded
bedding and clothing on the floor. If worst came he could stay where he
was and be partially comfortable.
As he reached this conclusion a voice from below caused his heart to
stand still.
"I thought I'd seen the last of yer. You got all I had--what more do you
want with me?"
It was Jude Lauzoon who spoke.
"See here, son"; and the smooth tones filled Billy with an old fear;
"that was all a big mistake. My hand was out of the game. St. Angé had
taken the nerve out of me. I've got my steam up now." It was Jared
Birkdale! and Billy had hoped he was never to see the man again. From
his babyhood up, a look from Jared had had power to quell him when a
blow from another might fail.
"Well, I ain't got nothing more to give you." Jude sounded sullen and
ugly.
Through a crack in the floor Billy could see that it was Jude who was
preparing the evening meal, while Jared, as usual, was taking his ease,
and discoursing at his leisure.
"You've got more to give than what you know Jude, my boy. What you doing
here, anyway?"
"You see what I'm doing. Here, take this hunk of bread, and come nearer
so I can flip the bacon on."
The sight and smell made Billy's mouth water, even while something in
him foretold danger.
"Now, see here, Jude." Jared spoke through a full mouth. "You and me
can't afford to work at cross purposes. Where we failed once, we are
going to succeed next time."
"You darsn't show your face down there beyond the woods again, and you
know it." Jude spoke doggedly. "They was after us both. Besides I can't
stand transplanting. It would be the death of me. It nearly was."
"Don't be white-livered, Jude. You see the laws have changed more than
any one could have thought, while I was browsing away in St. Angé.
That's where I made my mistake. I ought to have taken time and got the
lay of the land 'fore I beckoned to you; but it looked safe enough, and
I had to take, or leave the Joint, sudden. How could any man know it was
spotted, and so had to be got rid of? It was one on us and no mistake.
"Fill up my cup, Jude, you're a tasty one with cooking."
Jude obeyed and muttered as he did so: "Luck or no luck, I ain't got
nothing, nor ever will have again, so that's an end of it."
"Jude, where you going to?"
"Where be you?"
Up aloft Billy waited.
"I'm going to St. Angé." There was defiance in Jude's tone--defiance and
a sort of shame; Jude had again lost his grip.
"I've just come from there," said Jared.
And now Billy could see through his peephole that Jude started into
life.
"You been there?"
Jared gurgled assent.
"How is--she?"
"That's it, Jude. Now let's get down to business. Having to hide
somewhere after that little unpleasantness down State, I ran up to St.
Angé. Knowing the way about, it was a better place than some others, and
I could keep from sight and find things out. I stopped at Laval's
haunted shack." Billy shivered. "I kept clear of my place."
"Guess you wasn't disturbed none at Laval's," sneered Jude and he gave
an unpleasant laugh.
"'Twas blasted cold, and I had the devil's time getting enough at night
to keep me going by day; but I learned a heap, and I struck your gold
mine all right, sonny."
"What you mean? Spit it out."
Billy crouched closer, and his breath came thick and fast.
"He's--left her!"
"Gaston?" An ugly oath escaped Jude.
"Gaston. But not for what you think. Jude, he's after you." Jared paused
for effect.
"After me?" The ugliness gave place to a dull fear.
"You, my son. He wants you to free Joyce." Evidently this announcement
failed to reach Jude's intelligence.
"Free her? Me? What's got you, old man? Didn't she cut, herself?"
"You don't catch on, Jude. He wants to do the big, white thing by the
girl--marry her out of hand clean and particular, and he wants to get
your word that you won't make any trouble."
A silence followed this. Jude was struggling to digest it; but the
result was simple.
"Well, by thunder! Won't he have to pay high for it?"
There was excitement and feverish energy in Jude's voice now.
"Maybe he'll fling a bone to you--but don't you see, son, you can hold
off and make him pay, and pay and pay?
"Now tell me, so true as you live, what was _you_ going down to St. Angé
for?"
"I was going down to"--Jude hesitated. "Well, I was tired of being
hounded, and having to hide and starve. I was going down to get--what--I
could--and no questions asked." A foolish laugh followed. Beside Jared's
subtlety, Jude seemed a babbling infant with feeble aims.
Jared was contemptuous.
"Gosh darn it, Jude! It's good I fell across your path again. You might
have thrown away the one, great, shining opportunity of your life.
Listen to _my_ plans. You better stay where you are, and let me run this
here show. I got the tracks all laid out. I'm sort o' inspired where it
comes to plotting for them I love. I'm going to write a touching letter
to her. It's going to state that Gaston is laid up from an accident in a
hut, further up to the north. A lumberman is going to write the
letter--catch on? and she's wanted up to Gaston's dying bedside. The
lumberman is going to meet her at Laval's. When she's caught safe and
sure, Jock Filmer--he's the go-between in all this--will get that
information, or the part about her going away, to Gaston; then the
game's in our hands. If Gaston means business, he'll pay what _we_ say.
If he ain't sharp set as to a big figger, we've got Joyce; and by
thunder! who's got a better right? Then we'll make tracks, after the
spring freshet, to another place I know of where laws is stationary and
folks ain't over keen, and where a handsome woman like Joyce will help.
I've got money enough left from the wreck to tide us over, my
son--unless Gaston planks down."
All this completed Billy's demoralization. His teeth chattered louder,
and for the life of him he could not control an audible sound, half sob,
half sigh. But Jude was evidently as much overpowered as Billy, for the
boy suddenly heard him emit an oath, and then a volley of questions
designed to clear the air after Jared's storm of eloquence.
"She'll come, all right." Jared had his answers ready. "It's an
all-fired queer state of things down there to St. Angé. You and me ain't
never struck Gaston's kind before. Joyce'll go when he calls, and don't
you forget it--all I've got to do is to make the lumberman's letter real
convincing.
"Sure! I'm the lumberman, all right. Camp up north? Nothing. I'll land
her here where her rightful and loving husband will be waiting for her
till further developments. How did I find out the lay of the land? Gosh!
that was a tight squeeze. I found out he was over to Hillcrest, Gaston
you know; and I run up, after dark to his shack, planning to get a haul
from Joyce. I got into the back kitchen while she was outside, and
before I could get away--in walks Gaston. What I saw and heard that
evening, Jude, ain't necessary here, but it blazed our trail, boy, and I
cut later--taking more than I planned for." Birkdale breathed hard. "You
leave Gaston to me, curse 'im!
"Make trouble for us? How in thunder is a man to make trouble for a
husband who is taking his own wife to his dishonoured bosom? Lord! Jude,
you've got about as much backbone as an angle worm.
"What?" Some muttered words followed that Billy could not catch. Then--
"Trust me! Does any one know to this day, you blamed fool, who shot that
government detective that was snooping into that clearing you and me
made--five years back? Gaston'll pay or you'll take one of them
never-failing shots of yours, and----"
It had been a hard day for Billy, and he was only fourteen.
The low, smoke-filled loft seemed to draw close about him, and it
smothered the life out of him. He thought he screamed, but instead, an
unseen power laid a kindly hand upon his trembling mouth, and a pause
came in his troubled life. It was not sleep, nor was it faintness that
struck like death the frightened boy--but an oblivion, from which he
issued clear-headed and strengthened.
When he again realized his surroundings he was cramped and cold, and
hungry as a wolf. From below two deep, unmusical snores rose
comfortingly. There was but one thing to do--and Billy must prepare for
it.
He ate every crumb of food that remained in his bag; then he rubbed
himself until his numbness lessened. At last he was ready to set forth
for St. Angé, and, be it forever to his glory, Billy the Redeemed, had
only Joyce in mind when his grim little freckled face once more turned
toward home!
Christmas, the joys of the bungalow, all, all were forgotten. It was a
big and an awful thing he had on hand, but he must carry it out to the
end. Floating gossip gained strength in Billy's memory as he trudged
through the black morning of that second hard day.
Childhood was not much considered in St. Angé, but childhood protects
itself to a certain degree, and Billy had never fully understood what
the gossip about Joyce had meant. All at once he seemed to have become a
man; and, oh! thank God, a man with a warm heart. A kinship of suffering
and hope with Joyce made him wondrous tender. He'd stand by her. They
should all see what he could do. And that hated Jared Birkdale should be
driven forever from St. Angé.
It was a long, dreary journey which Billy took that day. The plentiful
morning meal had beggared the future, but it had given the boy power to
start well.
With daylight and home in view, although at a dim distance, Billy felt
that he controlled Fate.
It would be some days before Jared could possibly get the letter to
Joyce. Long before it came he, Billy, would be on the spot, and nothing
could pass unnoticed before his eyes.
At eight o'clock of that second day, the boy, worn to the verge of
exhaustion, staggered into his mother's kitchen, and almost frightened
Peggy to death by simply announcing:
"I've cut, and I'll be eternally busted if I ever go back, so there! And
I'm starved."
With the latter information Peggy could deal; the former was beyond her.
She prepared a satisfying repast for her son; noting, as she hovered
over him, the change that had come. He was no longer a child, therefore
he was to be respected. An awe possessed Peggy. The awe of Man as she
had ever known him. Her Billy was a man! Then she noticed how thin he
was, and how his mouth drooped, and how black the circles were under his
big eyes.
Had they been cruel to him in camp? They could be so cruel; but then,
Billy was a favourite.
What had happened?
It was proof of Billy's spiritual and physical change that Peggy did not
cuff him and demand an explanation.