Joyce stopped her wild little song, and stood still to listen. Then she stepped to the window, drew aside the white muslin curtain, and looked out upon the white, white world.
She had thought she heard a step on the crisp snow, but probably it was the crackling of the protesting trees, for the weight of ice was almost more than they could bear.
The lights in the scattered houses shone red and steady in the still glitter. A full moon dimmed the stars, but a keen glance showed that every one was in its place and performing its duty in the glorious plan.
A white, holy night! Only such a night as comes to high, dry places where the cold is so subtle that its power is disguised; where the green-black pines stand motionless in the hard whiteness, and where the silence is only broken by mysterious cracklings and groanings, when Nature stirs in the heart of the seeming Death, while she weaves the robe of Spring.
Joyce was beginning to feel the wonders of her little world; she was timidly feeling out the meaning of things. Sometimes the sensation hurt and frightened her; often it soothed and thrilled her to deep ecstasy.
Presently she left the window, and turned to the warmth and glow inside.
Jude's old cottage had been transformed, and Joyce was developing into one of those women who are inherent home-makers. Such women can accomplish more with the bare necessities of life than others with the world's wealth at their command. It is like personal magnetism, difficult to understand, impossible to explain.
Comfort, grace, colour and that sweet disorder which is the truest order. Chairs at the right angles, tables convenient, but never in the way. A roaring wood fire on a dustless hearth; pictures hung neither too high nor too low, and no sense of emptiness nor crowding. A room that neither compelled attention, nor irritated the nerves—a place to rest in, love in, and go out from, with a longing to return.
On the south side of the room, Jude, with Gaston's financial and personal assistance, had added a bay window.
That innovation had quite stirred St. Angé. Ralph Drew had designed it and, through the summer, while the building was in process, the inhabitants had watched and expressed their opinions freely and enjoyably.
"Up to Joyce's," Billy Falstar, that indefatigable gatherer and scatterer of news, announced, "they are smashing a hole in the off side of the house."
An hour later, a good-sized audience was occupying the open space on the south side of the garden.
"Why don't you have it run in, instead of out?" Peter Falstar suggested. "It's just tempting Providence to let out more surface to catch the winter blasts."
"And it's wasteful as thunder," added Tom Smith. "Just so much more heating of out-door space enclosed in that there semi-circle."
"There ain't nothing to see from that side, anyway," Leon Tate remarked, as if possibly the others had not considered that. "If you want a more extended, and rounded outlook, you'd better smash the north side out. From that hole you could see the village, and what not."
"And the Black Cat," Jock Filmer drawled.
"It's no kind of an outlook at all that don't include the Kitty, eh, Tate?"
Tate scowled. He held a grudge against Filmer. It was he who had discovered, sheltered, and abetted the young minister who had so interfered with trade a time back. Tate held his peace, but he had never forgotten.
The laugh that followed Jock's interruption nettled the tavern-keeper.
But the pretty window had been finished before Drew and the autumn went. It was Joyce's sanctuary and pride. In it stood the work-basket, a gift from the mystical sister of Drew, who lived off somewhere beyond the Southern Solitude, a girl about whom Drew never tired of talking, and about whom events seemed to cluster as bees round a hive.
In that nook, too, hung the three wonderful pictures—Gaston's wedding gift.
There were spaces between the sides and centre of the window, and in the middle place hung a modern Madonna and Child. This Joyce could comprehend. Gaston knew the older, rarer ones would be beyond her.
That pictured Mother and Child were moulding Joyce's character. Gaston had wondered how they might affect her.
To the left of the Madonna was an ocean view. A stretch of sandy shore, an in-rolling, white-crested wave—with a limitless beyond.
To the wood-environed mind of the girl this picture was simply a breath-taking fairy fancy.
It existed, such a thing as that. Gaston had sworn it, but it was incomprehensible. However, it led the new-born imagination to expand and wander, and when Joyce was at peace, and the sun shone, she went to that picture for excitement and worship.
To the right of the Madonna hung a photograph. Gaston had taken it himself long ago. A foreground of rugged, cruel rock; black where age had stamped it; white where snow traced the deep wrinkles of time. But out of this rough light and shade, rose a glorious peak, sun-touched and cloud-loved. A triumphant soul reaching up to heaven out of all the time-racked rock.
The dwarfish peaks, that had surrounded Joyce's outlook all her life, made one understand the girl's love for this picture. As this was great, compared to the small things she knew, so life held possibilities that her life hinted—she might struggle with that ideal in mind.
The ocean scene was her fancy's fairy space; the towering peak, her philosophy.
But Joyce knew nothing of all this, consciously. Marriage, as Isa had foretold, brought its many cares and new interests. The strangeness and importance dwindled. No one considered the matter different from any other joining of St. Angé forces into a common life—the girl herself grew to take it for granted and sometimes wondered why she imagined her lot different.
She piled on more wood now, and laughed at the roar and glow. Then she drew up the arm-chair that Jude liked; he would be cold and tired when he returned. With a little laugh she pulled her own chair, a low, deep rocker, from the bay window, out into the fire's warmth, opposite Jude's spacious chair. Between them she placed a hassock—it was nearer her rocker than Jude's chair.
This she evidently noticed after a moment's contemplation, for the smile faded, and with strict impartiality she moved the stool to a position exactly between the two chairs, and directly in front of the fire's full light and heat.
"There!" she said, as if satisfied with her own sense of justice and propriety. "That ought to suit everybody."
The smile returned, and the little neglected song was taken up where the imagined footsteps had interrupted it.
The room was rosy and warm; even the window that was to tempt Providence was cosily heated, and the box of plants that fringed its outer edge stood in no danger of the frost's touch.
A plate of deep-red apples on the table sent forth a homely fragrance, and they were almost as beautiful as a vase of roses would have been.
Presently there was no mistake—steps were approaching. The crusted snow gave way under the heavy tread, the steps of the little porch creaked under the weight of strong bodies. It was Gaston's voice that came first to Joyce.
"It's too late, Jude. Past nine."
"Come in! Come in!" Jude was stamping noisily. "It ain't never too late, when I say come. Maybe Joyce can tempt you with a mixture she's a dabster at. After the walk you need it, and so do I."
The outer door was pushed back, the waiting cold rushed in with the two men, but the home glow killed it as the kitchen door swayed inward, and Jude and Gaston stepped toward Joyce.
She stood with her back to the fire, a pale straight figure against the red light.
"Hello! Joyce." Jude was energetically pulling off his short, thick jacket. "Get busy at that 'mix' of yours. Put plenty of the real thing in and don't be sparing with the tasties. Off with your coat and hat, Mister Gaston. Make yourself comfortable. To folks as is already up, what's an hour or two?"
Gaston had taken Joyce's hands in welcome.
"It's too bad," he said, "to set you to work after your stint's over. The room looks as if you'd bewitched it. I tell you, Jude, there never was a man yet who could juggle with a house and put the soul in it."
Joyce flushed happily, and took Gaston's hat from him, as he pulled off his coat.
"I'll have everything ready in a jiffy," she said briskly. "Sit down, and tell me about it, while I mix the brew."
Jude sank, without giving Gaston a choice, into his own chair. Gaston took Joyce's—he knew her fancy for the stool when he and Jude were both present.
"Well," said Jude, stretching his legs out toward the blaze, and putting his heavy, snow-covered boots so near the fire that an odour of scorching leather filled the room; "we got some men over to Hillcrest, and we've bargained for lumber and other materials; we're going to begin at once, clearing, and soon as the cold lets up, we'll start building."
"Just think!" Joyce stirred the concoction in the jug jubilantly. "Just think of Mr. Drew coming here and bringing folks with him. Isn't it wonderful?"
She was all aglow with interest, excitement and pleasure. Gaston looked at her musingly.
"I used to think," she went on, coming forward with the jug and setting it on a low table near the hearth, "that nothing could ever happen here in St. Angé. Nothing that hadn't already happened over and again. Isa has always said the place would get a jog some day. She always seemed to sense that," the girl smiled; "and she was right. Didn't you have to put money down for men and things, Jude?"
"Sure!" Jude spoke from the depths of his mug.
"Did Mr. Drew send money?"
"Send nothing." Jude laughed foggily from the depths. "That's how I got the deal so prompt, I told him I'd undertake the job without any settlement till he got here to boss the doings."
"But where did you get the money, Jude?"
"It's partnership, Joyce," Gaston broke in. He set down his own emptied mug, and drew a little farther from the fire's revealing light. "Lauzoon, Filmer and Gaston, Contractors and Builders.' How does it sound?"
"But the money?" There was a little line of care, now, between the girl's deep eyes.
"Oh, that's all right! When Drew planks down the dollars, Mr. Gaston will get them back." Jude wiped his heavy lips on the back of his hand.
"But—it must have taken—a good deal?"
"Come, Joyce," Jude scowled, "you creep back to your corner. When women get to tangling up money with their own doings, it's the devil. You keep to your business, girl, and leave deeper matters alone."
Gaston frowned. Something lay back of that care-traced line on Joyce's forehead. Something lay back of her questioning—what was it? And Jude's assumption of the male superiority over his young wife disturbed Gaston. He had not noticed it so sharply before.
Presently Joyce took the low stool, and clasped her knees in her enfolding arms. The two men had filled their pipes, and now, through the dim haze, looked at the fair, dreamy face between them. Then Jude laid his pipe aside—and snored. The clock ticked softly. The logs fell apart in a red glow. In drawing away from the flying sparks, Joyce placed her stool nearer Gaston, and the pretty bent head came within easy distance of the hand lying inert on the chair arm.
"Jude gets awfully sleepy in the heat," Joyce whispered; "you don't mind?"
"No, why should I? But I ought to be going. You are tired, too?"
"No." The sudden upward glance was all a-quiver with alertness. "I don't ever seem tired now. Keeping one's own house—is great! and it seems like everything is waking up every minute. Sometimes I hate to go to sleep for fear I'll miss something."
And now Gaston's hand touched the heavy curves of pale, gold hair.
"You have made a home," he said; "I wonder if you know what a great achievement that is? I wonder if Jude knows?"
Joyce winced.
"Oh! if he's a bit cross with me," she whispered softly, "don't you mind. He thinks that's the way, you know. I understand."
"I suppose you do," Gaston smoothed the silken hair, "but make him understand, Joyce. It takes understanding on both sides, you know."
"And, Mr. Gaston"—the girl changed the subject as adroitly as a more worldly wise woman might have done—"you helped me make this home. I ain't ever going to let you forget that. These pictures," her loving glance took them all in, "and the books coming and going just fast enough to keep me nimble. It seems like you'd opened a gate and let some of the big world in."
"There's plenty of it on the other side of the two Solitudes, Joyce." Gaston's hand fell gently along the warm throat and rested on the bent shoulder.
Jude gave another gurgling snore. The two did not change their positions, but there was silence for an instant.
"That mountain-top, all jagged and high—my! how it just makes me want to climb; climb through my work all day long; climb to getting somewhere out beyond. And that great empty picture with the awful white wave coming from nowhere—it just makes me hold my breath. Sometimes it seems as if it was going to swallow up everything and—me. It don't ever do that, does it, Mr. Gaston?"
"It has done damage of that kind in its time; but generally it obeys orders and stops at the safety line." Gaston smiled into the wondering eyes.
"I like the—picture—I like it terribly," breathed the girl, "but I'd hate the real thing. I am sure it makes a terrific noise." Gaston nodded, and old memories seemed beating in upon him. "It would wear me out by its own——"
"Restlessness." Gaston's thought ran along with the cruder one. "Its restlessness is at times—unbearable, unless—one is very young and happy."
"But I am young—and happy." Joyce spoke lingeringly and her eyes grew fixed upon the heart of the coals. "Still I would hate it—and be afraid of it. It's beautiful—but it's awful. I don't like awful things. I like to look up at that brave old mountain, and know—it will always be the same no matter what happens down below."
Suddenly Gaston felt old, very old, beside this girl near him with her intuitive soul-stretches and her hampered life.
"So the mountain is your favourite picture, Joyce?"
A grandfatherly tone crept into his voice, and the caressing hand touched the round, pale outline of cheek and chin with the assurance of age and superiority—but the girl tingled under it.
"No," she said, almost breathlessly, "I like that best of all." And she pointed a trembling finger toward the Madonna and Child.
Gaston was conscious of a palpitating meaning in the words and gesture.
"Why?" he asked softly.
"Because," the fair head was lowered, not in timidity, but in deep thought, "because I want it—my baby—to look like that one. I look and look at the picture, and I dream about it at night. I know every little dimple and the soft curls—and all. I pray and pray, and if God answers—then—" a gentle ferocity rang through the hurried words—"I'm going to keep it so. It's going to be different from any other little child in St. Angé. And it all fits in, now that Mr. Drew is coming back. It's just wonderful! It was Mr. Drew that set me thinking about leaving something better for them as come after. He said terrible strange things—but you can't forget them, can you? I've been—well, sort of weeding out my life ever since he was here—and there can't be so much—for my baby to do—if I clear out my own faults. Can there?"
The girl's absolute ignoring of any reason for withholding this confidence from him at first staggered Gaston, and then steadied him.
Never before had Joyce so appealed to him, but the sacredness of the position she had thrust upon him for a moment appalled him. He looked intently at the girlish, innocent face. What he saw was a blind woman, groping through the child, seeking a reality that evaded it.
Never greatly impressed with his own importance, Gaston became cruelly aware, now, that in a marked way he still was the one being in the girl's world to whom she looked for guidance. The knowledge made him withdrawn for an instant.
Drew had appealed to her spirit—but he was elected Father Confessor, Judge and General Arbiter of her daily life. For a moment Gaston's sense of the ridiculous was stirred. Suppose they—those—people who inhabited the Past, and peopled the possible Future—suppose they should know of this? The eyes twinkled dangerously, but the girl in the glow of the red fire was terribly in earnest.
"You are perfectly happy, Joyce?" It was an inane question, but like some inane questions it touched a vital spark.
"Why, if I get on the top of the things that might make me unhappy if they conquered me; and if I shut my ears and eyes—why, then, I guess I'm perfectly happy. I won't let myself feel sad any more, and I make believe a lot—about Jude. You have to when you've been married long; and I guess he has to about me. So you see, living that way it comes out all right. And then when you have beautiful things, like this house, and the books and pictures, and some one ready to help—like you—why those things I just hold up in the light all the time. Isn't that being happy?"
"What a philosopher!" Gaston bent forward and again pressed the slim shoulder. The piteousness of this young wife getting her happiness, all unknowingly, by self-imposed blindness of the inner soul, clutched at his heart.
"Hold hard to that, Joyce," he said. "Hold fast to that. Let all the light in that you can upon your blessings, and as to other things, why, don't acknowledge them! You're on the right track, though how you've struck it so early in the game, beats me."
"Well," Joyce was all aglow, "Mr. Drew helped. He was so funny and jolly. Just a big boy, but he had the queerest ideas about things. When I think of him, sick and weak like he was, and yet living out all his brave thoughts just as if he was a giant—why, sometimes I go off and cry by myself."
Jude from his shadow and aloofness was staring dumbly at the pair opposite while the low-spoken words sank into his drowsiness. Jude was primitive. Actions were things to him; things that admitted of no shades of meaning. What the two were saying in no way modified the situation. Gaston's hand was caressing his wife—his woman, Jude would have expressed it—and the bald fact was enough.
A hot anger rose in him—an anger calculated to urge a personal assault then and there, upon the two who dared, in his own house, set his rights—his alone—aside.
The sleepy eyes widened and closed; the teeth showed through the rough beard—and then, like a smarting blow, came the memory of all that Gaston meant to him. Money! Gaston's money. There had been loans, trifling, but many, and now Gaston stood ready to advance money for this new building project. Money enough to make Jude master of the situation. But with this thought came others that crushed and bruised him.
He had been wrong. It was not his wife's folly alone that stood between him and her. Gaston had been using him. He was lending him money—hush money! And while he had gone his stupid way, thinking he held the whip hand over Joyce, the two had had their laugh at him. Money has done much for good and evil in this world, but it saved Gaston that night from a desperate attack.
A low cunning crept into Jude's thoughts. Very well, two or three could play at the same game.
More money! More! More! and who knew? Why he might make a choice in the future—a choice for himself.
He settled back and snored long and deep. Then he stretched and yawned and gave ample notice of his advance, in order that the conspirators might cover their tracks.
When he opened his eyes, Gaston was leaning forward with clasped hands stretched out toward the fading glow, and Joyce, crouched upon her stool with huddled knees, gave no sign that confusion held part in her thoughts.
"Say," Jude had already adopted the guise of the man with a purpose, "you don't suppose, do you, that that young parson is coming up here with any idea of saving souls?"
"Only his own, I fancy." Gaston replied, without turning. "He wants to keep his soul and body together. Seeking his lost health, you know."
"What makes him fancy he lost it up here?"
"He doesn't. He lost it down there among books, bad air, and foolish living. His physicians tell him his only chance for life is up in this region. Some day more of the big doctors will shut down on drugs and give Nature a try."
"Umph!" Jude shook himself. "Put a log on," he commanded Joyce. Then: "He preached a durned mess of nonsense the last time he was visiting us," he continued. "I didn't have any inclination to take his guff myself, but I don't half like the idee, now that I've slept on it, of his coming in here as a disturbing element, so to speak. Living and minding your business, is one thing; interfering with other folks' business is another. Filmer, he told me a time back that he ain't had a comfortable spree since that young feller was here. He sort of upset Jock's stomach with his gab. The women, too, was considerable taken with him—he's the sort that makes fool women take notice. It ain't pleasant to think of that sissy-boy actually setting up housekeeping here, and reflecting upon old established ways, with any tommy-rot about clearing trails and such foolishness."
Joyce smiled. So that thought rankled in more lives than her own?
"Going to retire from the contractorship, Jude?" Gaston got up and crossed the room for his coat and hat.
"Not much!" Jude rose also. "Only beginning right is half the battle, and I say for one, and Tate he was saying the same this morning, that we'd better stamp out any upraisings in the start, now that it's likely to be a staying on, 'stead of a visit. When I select a teacher," Jude was following his guest to the outer door, "I ain't going to take up with no white-livered infant. See you to-morrow, Mr. Gaston?"
"Oh, certainly. Good night, Jude. Good night, Joyce." Gaston looked back at the little figure by the fire, and he saw that the upturned eyes were fixed on the Madonna and Child.
"Why don't you speak, Joyce? Mr. Gaston is saying good night." Jude's words reached where Gaston's had failed. The girl rose stiffly.
"Good night," she said slowly, and a great weariness was in her face.
When Jude returned she still stood in the middle of the room, her hands hanging limply by her side.
Something had gone out from her life with Gaston's going. But she was still thrilled and her soul was sensitive to impressions.
"What's up?"
Jude came close to her and stared boldly into the large, tired eyes.
"Nothing, Jude."
"You ain't so spry as when—there's company."
"It's late—you've had a nap. I'm dead tired."
"That's it," Jude laughed coarsely. "I've slept and kept out of mischief—you've been too durned entertaining—you're feeling the strain. See here, Joyce, maybe you better not be so—amusing in the future. Maybe you better leave Gaston to me—business is business and I guess we can do without petticoats in this camp."
He was losing control of himself.
"Jude," Joyce came close and tried to put her hands on her husband's shoulders. "Jude, I want you to pay Mr. Gaston back as soon as you can. It's been on my mind for quite a spell. We must owe him a lot. How much, Jude?"
"None of your—durned business."
"And Jude—don't borrow any more. I know Mr. Drew would advance anything for the building. His family is terribly rich. Mr. Gaston knows about them. I'd rather owe Mr. Drew than Mr. Gaston. Please, Jude!"
For a moment the sweet, quivering face put forth its appeal to the lower nature of the man. The girl was young enough, and new enough to sway Jude after a fashion, but the charm died almost at birth.
"See here." Jude slipped from the clinging hands, and glared angrily. "You ain't ever properly learned your place. You better let go any fool idee that you can budge me with your wiles. I don't have to buy your favours—they're mine. What I do, I do, and you take what I choose to let you have. See? If you get more than what is rightfully yours, don't get sot up with the notion I don't know what I'm permitting. I guess I've got to let you see what you're up against a little plainer. I had a kind of dim idee that your schooling and book-learning made you a bit keener than most about the real facts of the case, but you're all alike. Don't you question me in the future, girl, and you go your way—the way I let you go—and be thankful, but don't you forget you and me is man and wife, and that means just one durned thing in St. Angé and only one."
Joyce staggered back as if the man before her had dealt her a blow.
What had happened? Then she remembered that Jude was always irritable when he had been roused from sleep, or when he was hungry.
The blindness was mercifully clouding her soul now; but its duration was brief. It only gave her time to stand upright.
"Did you think I was asleep to-night?" Jude almost hissed the words.
The suddenness of the question had all the evil power of reducing the girl to an appearance of guilt.
"You were asleep," she whispered back.
Jude laughed cruelly.
"With my eyes opened," he snarled—"It pays to seem asleep, when you want to catch on to some kind of doings. Your old man, Joyce, ain't half the fool you'd like him to be. I wasn't napping when Billy Falster blabbed his warning. I wasn't napping when I saw that hand-holding and kissing from the top of Beacon Hill. I wasn't snoozing that night when you went crawling to Gaston's shack just after you'd given your word to me, and"—Jude had worked himself into a quivering rage—"I wasn't sleeping when you and him sat there to-night, blast ye!"
The convincing knowledge broke upon Joyce with full force. She would never be able to ignore the fact again. Try as she might, dream as she could, she was but a St. Angé woman, and he a St. Angé man.
There was only one way. She must deal with the rudest of materials.
"Jude," she said slowly, "you pay Mr. Gaston back all that you owe him—I'll stint here in the house—and I'll promise never to speak to him again. Could anything be fairer than that?"
She was in deadly earnest; but Jude laughed in her face.
A fear grew in the girl's heart at the sound. Not even an appeal to his selfishness could move him. She had lost the poor little power she once possessed. He did not care! And when that happened with a man like Jude—well, there was reason for fear.
"I'm the boss, girl, and you better hold to that knowledge. Keep your books, your pictures and what not as long as I say you can, and let that do you for what I am getting out of it. See?"
"Yes—I see!" And so she did, poor girl; and it was a long barren stretch on ahead that she saw. A stretch with hideous possibilities, unless luck were with her.
"Don't you let on." Jude was striding toward the bedchamber beyond. "I guess you're smart enough to hold your tongue, though. Pile on a log or two, before you turn in; and you better draw the shutters to the north window—it's getting splitting cold."
Joyce turned to obey the commands. Not slavishly; after all it was but part of her woman-task. Jude feeling it necessary to tell her was the lash. It was cruelly superfluous—that was all.
She laid two heavy logs on the red embers, and stooped to brush the ashes from the hearth. Then she went to the north window and raised the sash. Before she drew the shutters she stood and looked out into the brilliant night.
Black and white. Sharp, clean and magically glittering it all looked; and the keen cold cleared the fear and fever from her head and heart.
Yes, off there in the distance Gaston was entering the pine thicket through which his private path ran. He must have walked slowly—or had all this new knowledge come so rapidly?
Gaston stood still at the entrance to the woods. Was he looking back?
Then something occurred. Once or twice before Joyce had been conscious of this. Something seemed to go out from her and follow Gaston. She, or that strange something, escaped the fear and smothering closeness of the little house. It was free and happy out there with Gaston in the night. He was strong—stronger than anybody in St. Angé. Nothing could really happen while he was near. She saw his smile; felt his compelling touch—no, not even Jude would dare hurt her, or go too far.
Gaston passed into the dim thicket. Joyce, too seemed to be going on quite happily and lightly, when——
"I say, Joyce, shut that winder, can't you?"
A silence. As Joyce had followed a certain call the night she had promised to marry Jude, and had gone to Gaston's house, so now she was going on—and on—and——
"Joyce!" At last the real clutched the unreal. The girl, for the first time, was conscious of the biting cold. She shivered and seemed to travel back to that rough call over frozen distances. With stiff fingers she drew the heavy wooden shutters together and lowered the sash. Then feeling her way with outstretched hands, like a bewildered child, she made her way to the inner chamber and Jude.
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.