Joyce of the North Woods Part 19

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 a.s.suming 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 a.s.sured 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. Ange.

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 att.i.tude 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?