Joyce of the North Woods Part 14

"Why, see here, kid, if what you said is true--which, by thunder it ain't!--don't you see that doctrine, 'bout coming with an outfit, adding to it, and taking away what you want, and leaving what you must; blazing trails, clearing away underbrush and what not; why, don't you see that's worse, by a confounded lot, than the old-fashioned h.e.l.l?"

"Much, much more solemn." Drew leaned against a tree. His new strength was exhausted. Jock was too absorbed to notice the weakness and pallor.

"Why," he went on excitedly, "when you know you're going to frizzle at the end--just you, yourself, you can see the justice of it, and respect what sent you there, but to eternally be thinking of others, and messing up their lives--why that's durn rot."

"Filmer," the tone was low and faltering; "we're all one with G.o.d, no matter how you put it. All working together; all bound on the same journey. Think back; was there never one you loved who suffered with you and for you? Have you ever considered how much of that one's life you were hampering, when you dragged him--or her--down?"

Filmer's face twitched.

"Now, see here," he blurted out, and his eyes flashed, "the folks round here ain't going to stand for this rot, and I don't blame 'em. When they think it over, they'll get drunker than ever, and they'll even up with you later. You've got to learn more than you've learned already.

Feelings are private property and outsiders better keep off. Come home to dinner. You look like a p.r.i.c.ked bladder. This here ga.s.sing 'bout things what ain't worthwhile don't pay. Here, lean on me. It's all gol-durned nonsense using yourself up so."

He took Drew firmly by the arm, and led him away.

Drew was too weak to continue, even had he desired to do so, the conversation Filmer had forced upon him, but when they were smoking in the late afternoon Jock returned to the subject.

"I was just wondering," he said, through the haze; "ain't there never no let up to that new-fangled idea of yours?"

"None. That's the beauty of it."

"Beauty? Huh! Well, we'll drop it. Feel like toddling down to Gaston's?"

Drew rose at once.

They pa.s.sed down the pine-covered path slowly, and as they neared Gaston's shack, Filmer paused.

"Wherever you be," he began slowly, "as occasion permits, you're going to air them sentiments?"

"I'm going to live them. I may never have a chance to preach them. I'm a bit discouraged about the weakness that followed my first attempt."

"Oh, thunderation! You're going to pick up flesh and strength fast enough--it's that slush you've got on board that's getting my grouch.

I'd rather you had a natural death, kid. I've taken a liking to you; and you don't know St. Ange."

CHAPTER VII

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 a.s.sistance, had added a bay window.

That innovation had quite stirred St. Ange. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cl.u.s.ter as bees round a hive.

In that nook, too, hung the three wonderful pictures--Gaston's wedding gift.

There were s.p.a.ces 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 sh.o.r.e, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THAT PICTURED MOTHER AND CHILD WERE MOULDING JOYCE'S CHARACTER]

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.