Joyce of the North Woods Part 1

Joyce of the North Woods.

by Harriet T. Comstock.

PREFATORY NOTE

"Love is the golden bead in the bottom of the crucible." And the crucible was St. Ange.

Fifty years before this story began, St. Ange was a lumber camp; the first gash in that part of the great Solitude to the north, which lay across Beacon Hill, three miles from Hillcrest.

When the splendid lumber had been felled within a prescribed limit, Industry took another leap, left St. Ange scarred and blighted, with a fringe of forest north and south, and struck camps farther back and nearer Canada.

Then Nature began to heal the stricken heart of the Solitude. A second growth of lovely tree and bush sprang to the call, and the only reminders of the camp were the absences of the men during the logging season, and the roaring and rushing of the river through Long Meadow every spring, with its burden of logs from the distant camps.

In the beginning St. Ange had had her aspirations. A futile highway had been constructed, for no other purpose apparently, than to connect the north and south forests. A little church had been built--there had never been any regular service held in it--and a small school-house which promptly degenerated into the Black Cat Tavern, General Store, and Post Office. A few modest houses met the highway face to face; a few more turned their backs upon it and were content with an outlook across Long Meadow and toward Beacon Hill, beyond which lay the village of Hillcrest which grew in importance as St. Ange degenerated. There were scattered houses among the clumps of maple and pine growths, and there was a forlorn railroad station before which a rickety, single track branch ended. Sometime during the day a train came in, and after an uncertain period it departed; it was the only link with the outer world that St. Ange had except what came by way of Hillcrest.

Toward Hillcrest, as the years went on, there grew in St. Ange a feeling of envy and distrust. Its prosperity and decency were a reflection, its very emphatic regard for law and order a menace and burden. St. Angeans sent their aspiring youths to the Hillcrest school--it was never an alarming const.i.tuency--it was cheaper to do that than to support a school of their own. There were emergencies when the Hillcrest doctor and minister were in demand, so it behooved St. Ange to keep up a partial show of friendliness, but bitterly did it resent the interference of Hillcrest justice during that season immediately following the enforced sobriety and isolation of the lumber camp.

Were men not to have some compensation for the hardships of the backwoods?

And just at that point in the argument Beacon Hill received its name and significance. From its top a watcher could view the road leading to Hillcrest, and by a well-directed signal give warning to any chance wrongdoer on the St. Ange side. Many a culprit had thus been aided in his plans of escape before Justice, striding over the western hill, bore down upon the town.

Beautiful, unappreciated St. Ange! The trees grew, and the scar was healed. The soft, pine-laden breezes touched with heavenly fragrance the dull-faced women, the pathetic children, and the unambitious men.

Everything was run down and apparently doomed, until one day the endless chain which encompa.s.ses the world, in its turning dropped the Golden Bead of Love into St. Ange! Down deep it sank to the bottom of the crucible. Jude Lauzoon was blinded by it and stung to life; Joyce Birkdale through its power came into the heritage of her soul. Jock Filmer by its magic force was shorn of his poor shield and left naked and unprotected for Fate's crudest darts. John Gaston, working out his salvation in his shack hidden among the pines, was burnt by the divining rays that penetrated to his secret place and spared him not. And then, when things were at their tensest, Ralph Drew came and tuned the discordant notes into sweet harmony. St. Ange became in time a home for many whom despair had marked for its own; a Sanctuary for devoted service.

JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS

CHAPTER I

The man lying flat on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the stone and moss.

The midsummer afternoon was sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking in its sleep.

Lazily it wound around young maples, and ferny groups--it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things--then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the North Woods.

"I'm here! here! here! I'll be ready by and by, by, by, by." Then on again, a little faster perhaps, but still dreamily. Children's laughter sounded far below; a slouching man or woman making for the Black Cat bent on business or pleasure, pa.s.sed now and then; all else was still and seemingly asleep.

Again Jude raised his head and gave that quick glance around.

Jude was awake at last. Little Billy Falstar had roused him two days before and set the world in a jangle. The child's impish words had struck the scales from Jude's eyes, and the blinding light made him shrink and suffer.

"Him and her," the boy had whispered, hugging his bruised and dirty knees as he squatted by Jude's door; "him and her is sparking some."

Then he laughed the freakish laugh of mischief.

Jude was polishing the gun which John Gaston had given him a year before, and had trained him to use until he was second only to Gaston himself for marksmanship. "Him and her--who?" he asked, raising his dull eyes to Billy's tormenting face.

"Joyce and Mr. Gaston. Him and her is beaux, I reckon. She goes to his shack; I listened outside the winder once--he reads to her and tells her things. They walks in the Long Medder, too, and once I saw him kiss her."

Again the teasing laugh that set every nerve tingling.

Then it was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against brain and heart.

He stared at Billy as if the boy had given him a physical blow--then he looked beyond him at the woods, the sky, the highway and the dejected houses--nothing was familiar! They all seemed alive and alert. Unseen happenings were going on--he must understand.

"You saw--him--kiss--her?" The gun fell limply across the man's knees.

"Yep," Billy whipped his dramatic sense into action. He arose and strode before Jude with Gaston's own manner. "This way. His arms out, and him a-laughing like, and Joyce she kinder run inter his arms and he held her, like this--." The close embrace of the childish gesture seemed to strangle Jude, and he gave a m.u.f.fled cry. This acted like a round of applause upon Billy.

"Yep, and he kept on hugging and kissing her like this--" Billy went into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity, for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand trembling with new-born emotion.

"Take that, you impish brat," he had said, "and more like it if you stand there another minute with your lying capers."

"They ain't lies," wailed Billy, edging away and nursing his smarting face; "he did! he did! It was in his shack--I saw 'em!"

"Get out," yelled Jude, glowering darkly; "and you tell that to any one else and," he came nearer to the shrinking child, "I swear I'll choke yer till yer can't speak." So changed was Jude that Billy trembled before him.

"I won't," he whispered, "I swear I won't, Jude; don't--don't hit me again; I won't tell."

He was gone, but the old Jude was gone also. The new man finished the gun cleaning, his breath coming hard and fast meanwhile, and then, taking the gun with him, he went into the deep woods on the northern edge of the village.

All the rest of the day he watched Gaston's shack from a distance; as the darkness drew on he crept closer.

Joyce did not come near the place, and Gaston himself only returned when the night was well advanced.

Jude watched him light his lamp, and prepare his supper. Watched him, later, go into the inner room, and then he crept close to the broad window to see what Gaston was doing in there where no foot but Gaston's own, so it was said, ever entered. As he had raised his eyes to the level of the cas.e.m.e.nt, Gaston's calm gaze met his with a laugh in it.

"h.e.l.lo, Jude," the voice was unshaken; "playing Indian Brave? Got your gun, too? What you after, big game or--what?" Jude rose to his feet. He was trembling violently. Gaston watched him closely. "Come in?" he asked presently.

"No. I was only pa.s.sing--thought I would look in. I'm going now."

"Hold on there, Jude, what's up?" Gaston leaned from the window. "Are you alone?"

"Yes. There ain't anything the matter."

"All right." Gaston looked puzzled. "Good night." He watched Jude until he was lost in the shadows, then he drew the heavy wooden shutters close, bolted the door and placed his pistol near at hand.

All the next day Jude haunted the vicinity of Joyce Birkdale's home, but he kept hidden, for Joyce was safe within doors and a drizzly rain was falling. Night again found him on guard; and now he lay on Beacon Hill in the hot sun, napping by s.n.a.t.c.hes (for he was woefully tired) and scanning the Long Meadow, with his feverish eyes, in between times.

In his dreams the scene Billy Falstar had so luridly described was enacted again and again, until he felt as if he, Jude, had been the onlooker.

The people whom he had taken for granted in the past now a.s.sumed new meaning and importance. Gaston had slipped in among them three years before, and after the first few months of observation he had aroused no interest. He had minded his business, paid his way, taken his turn in camp at greenhorn jobs, accounted for his presence on the ground of seeking health, and that was all. Life went on as usual, sluggishly and dully--but on.

Jude had, before Billy's illumination, been thinking that after the next logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings--the cabin, his dog and gun. The idea had not roused him much, but it had been a pleasurable conclusion to arrive at; and now? Every nerve was aching and the boy's heart was thumping heavily. Again he dropped his head, and he cursed everything his thought touched upon--even the girl he meant, in some way, still to have.