Joyce of the North Woods Part 11

At last he tilted his chair back and laughed.

"I haven't eaten like that," he said, "nor with such enjoyment, since I went tramping up in the Maine woods when I was a youngster."

Filmer was removing the empty dishes. There was a sense of delicacy about his host that was compelling Drew's notice. He watched him pa.s.sing from kitchen to piazza, and he saw that he was big, strong and handsome, but with a certain weakness, of chin, and a shyness of expression that came and went, marring the general impression.

Filmer's shyness was increasing. Never before in his life had he been brought into close personal contact with "the cloth" as he termed it, and even this "swaddling garment" was having a slow-growing hold upon him.

Presently Jock came timidly out, after his last visit to the kitchen, with pipes and a tobacco-box.

"I'm not certain," he began, "how your kind takes to tobacco, but if I don't get my evening smoke, I get a bad spell of temper--so, if you don't object--I'll light up."

"If you'll wait a moment," Drew returned, "I'll join you. I always smoke my own pipe--I've got sort of chummy with it--but I'll share your tobacco."

Filmer grinned, and the cloud pa.s.sed from his face.

"I calculated," he said, "that your kind cla.s.sed tobacco with cussing and jags. Light up, kid."

They were soon lost in the fragrant smoke, the bliss of satisfied appet.i.te, and a peaceful scene. The sun went down, and left the hills and valley in an afterglow of glory. The beauty was so touching that even Filmer succ.u.mbed, shook the ashes from his pipe and delayed refilling. Presently he looked at Drew's face. It had paled from emotion, and shone white in the shadow of the porch.

"You look peaked." Filmer's words brought the boy back to earth. "Been through a long siege, maybe?"

"Oh, overstudy and weak lungs!" Drew spoke cheerfully. "Bad combination, you know, and I didn't pull in as soon as I should have. I crammed for exams. Made them, and then collapsed. I'm all right now, though. All the struggle's over. I've only to reap the reward. There was a big doctor down in New York who told me that the air up here was my one chance. I'm going to take it. A few months here, and a life anywhere else I may choose, he said.

"What do you say to letting me have your room and company--you needn't give any more of the latter than you want to, you know--for a spell?

You'll find me easy to get on with, I fancy, no one has ever complained of me in that way. I don't care what Green Lake is like, I like _this_ better. I like this, way down to the ground. I've gone daffy over the whole thing." He drew in a long, happy breath. "What do you say?"

"I'd like to ask, if it ain't too inquisitive," Jock inquired, ignoring the boy's eagerness, while he put forth his own claims, "why in thunder a chap like you took to the preaching business? Somehow you look like a feller that might want to enjoy life."

Drew laughed heartily.

"Why, I mean to enjoy life," he replied, "and I chose this profession because I like it. I believe in it. You see, I was born to be a fighter.

If I'd had a big, l.u.s.ty body like yours, I might have been--anything. As it is, I had to choose something where I could fight with other weapons than bone, muscle and bodily endurance. I'm going into the fight of helping men and women in the best way I can, don't you see? I suppose I must sound cheeky and brazen to talk this way, but I'm full of the joy of it all, and I've made the goal, you see, and for all the breakdown I've come out ahead. It's enough to stir one, don't you think?

"The night I graduated, I don't mind telling this to you, I went down on my knees when all the excitement was over and the lights were out, and I said, 'I am here. I've got money; the good G.o.d need not have me on his mind along that line; he can send me where he chooses, to do his work; I'm ready.'

"It was like consecrating myself, you know. Well, when the sickness came, I thought perhaps he didn't want me or my money either; but I came out of the Valley and here I am now, and I tell you--it seems good."

Filmer folded his arms across his chest, and looked steadily ahead of him.

"Do you know," he said at length--"and I hope you'll excuse me--I think you're the most comical cuss that ever happened."

Drew met this frank opinion with the boyish laugh that was having the effect of clearing up all the dull places in Filmer's character. He had never heard that laugh equalled but once, and he rarely went back to that memory--the path was too hard and lonely.

The reserves were down between the two. Without reason or cause, perhaps, they had fallen into a confident liking.

"Have you done much marrying and burying yet?" The question startled Drew, then he recalled the conversation on the Station platform.

"Well, no," he said, "practical demonstration comes after graduation generally. I've subst.i.tuted for ministers--preached a Sunday, now and then, you know; but of course, I _can_ perform the marriage ceremony, or read the burial service."

"You look pretty young," Jock spoke slowly; he was noting the strange dignity of his guest. Any reference to his profession brought with it this calm a.s.surance that held levity in check; "but it's this way.

There's a wedding fixed for to-morrer. I've set my heart on it coming off, and there ain't a durned parson to be had, that the girl favours.

Now under these circ.u.mstances, you can't afford to look a gift horse in the mouth so to speak, and no offence intended. I can give you a tip or two before you trot in, and as for you, why you know, there ain't nothing equal to being thrown neck and crop into a job.

"The first time I went logging I got one leg broke and my head smashed, but I haven't ever regretted it. That accident, and the incidental scare, did more for me than any two successful seasons could have done.

Now, your plunging right into a marrying may prove providential. Sermons and infant christenings will seem like child's play after. What do you say?"

Drew was laughing and the tears stood in his eyes.

"I'll--I'll do my level best," he managed to say through his spasms of mirth. "This seems like a horrible approach to anything so serious, but it is the way you put it, you know, and--and the air, and the supper.

The laugh comes easy, you see."

"Oh! enjoy yourself." Filmer waved his pipe aloft. "I'm glad you _can_ take life this way, with the handicap of your trade, I don't quite see, by thunder, how your future parish is going to account for you, but so far as I'm concerned you can laugh till you bust."

Filmer was delighted. Not in years had he been so taken out of himself.

"Now this here town," he explained, "likes to have its buryings and weddings set off with a sermon with the princ.i.p.al actor as text. They like to get their money's worth. See? This girl, what I want spliced, is a devilish--" he paused--"you don't mind _moderately_ strong language, do you?" he asked. "We all get flowery up here. What is lacking in events, talk makes up. I'll hold back when I can--in reason."

"Don't mind me!" Drew was trying to control his mirth.

Filmer nodded appreciatively.

"Well, as I was remarking--and I've got to be open with you--this here girl will be safer married, and so will some other folks. I ain't much of a reader of character, but I sense things like all creation, and I _feel_ that getting the girl in harness as soon as possible is the only plain common-sense method. She's mettlesome, you know, the kind that kicks over the traces, and slams any one happening to be handy. She ain't never done it yet--but she's capable of it."

"Is--is the girl a relation or----?"

Jock flushed.

"Neither. Nor the man. The feller--Jude Lauzoon is his name--I don't care a durn for, but he's all gone over this girl, and if any one can steer him straight she can, and when she gets the reins in her hands, I believe she's going to keep her head, in order to steer straight.

"The girl's name is Joyce Birkdale. Mother dead; raised sort of promiscuous on the instalment plan. Father an old buck who only keeps sober because he want's to see what's going on. He lit out and made himself scarce a time back, and this here Joyce took refuge after a h.e.l.l of--excuse me! after a row with the old man--up to the Black Cat. Leon Tate acts the father-part to any one in a fix--it helps his trade--keeps folks in his debt, you know, but he ain't going to hamper hisself past a certain point, and if this here Jude Lauzoon should get a beckon from old man Birkdale he'd skip as quick as thunder--that's what is troubling Tate, and, by gosh! it's troubling me, but for another reason what needn't enter into this here conversation.

"If it was trusting you with a funeral or a christening," Filmer felt his way gingerly, "I wouldn't care a durn. You can't hurt the dead and the kid might outgrow it; but when it comes to tying folks together tight, it's a blamed lot like trusting something brittle in a baby's hand. It mustn't be broke, you see, or there'll be h--I mean trouble, to pay."

"See here!" Drew sat up straight, "I'm not much younger than you, if the truth were known. So let us cut extreme youth out of the question."

"Maybe you are about my age, kid," Jock gazed indulgently upon him, "and don't let your necktie choke you; but you're pretty raw material, and I'm seasoned. That's the difference. It ain't anything against you. It's the way you've been handled. Burying is looked upon by young _and_ old, solemn-like; but I didn't know how you looked upon--marrying."

"It's the solemnest thing in life." Drew spoke clearly and impressively.

"I think death is a light matter in comparison. I've always thought that--since, well--for several years."

"Now you're talking!" Jock leaned over and gave Drew a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Now you're getting on the right course, and I want to give you this tip. Lay it on thick with Jude. Tell him he'll be everlasting blasted in kingdom-come if he don't act clean and hold on.

Specially slap it on about holding on. Jude's intentions are good enough. He's powerful promising at the start, but he's the d----, the gol-durndest quitter anywhere around.

"Every new boss bets on Jude when the season begins, but every man of them would like to kick him out of camp before the spring sets in. All the h.e.l.l-fire threats that that religion factory of yours drilled in you, you plank on Jude to-morrow, when you make him and Joyce man and wife. How fervent was that factory of yours? There is a difference in temperatures among them, I've heard."

"Oh! mine was mild," Drew was again helplessly convulsed, "so mild that I'm afraid you'd call it frigid. But that doesn't matter. Future d.a.m.nation is a poor threat when every man among us knows that a present h.e.l.l is a much worse affair. It's the awakening of a soul to _that_ fact, that is going to save the world of men and women."

A full moon was sailing high in the heavens now, and Drew's animated face showed clear in the pale gleam. Jock hitched his chair nearer.