Joyce of the North Woods Part 17

"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. Ange 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. Ange woman, and he a St. Ange 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. Ange. 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 pa.s.sed 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.

CHAPTER VIII

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.