Joyce of the North Woods Part 31

"Stop!" The little cold hand was pressed against his lips, "you shall not! It was I who tempted you--you would have remembered--everything. It is you who must forgive me--I am going--now!"

The slow, pitiful words fell lingeringly.

"Going--where can you go?" Gaston stared dumbly at her.

"I think Mr. Drew will help me. I am going to tell him everything--and he will--find a way."

"You shall not!" Gaston drew her to his breast. The primitive rose within him.

"There is another way. The only way. Drew shall not meddle in my affairs--nor yours. You will stay right here in your home until I return. I'm going to Filmer; he's the only one we need, he'll act for us both."

"But--what then?" Joyce felt her heart stand still.

"Then? why I'm going to find Jude. I'm going to buy him off--if necessary. He shall free you--and then--then!"

Gaston held the pale face off from him and searched the wide, startled eyes.

"And then?" The words fell into a question.

"But how"--Joyce panted; "how could I feel sure this great thing you plan is not another--unselfish act? Suppose, oh! suppose--_she_, that--that other girl--should come back--what then?"

"Hear me, Joyce. There is never going to be any one else. We are going back together--into that other life. Why, the possibility almost blinds me.

"They shall see what I've brought out of my experience. We'll make a place for ourselves and redeem the past. They shall seek us, my darling, and they shall see at last that I am master of my life!"

His enthusiasm and exaltation carried Joyce along with him.

"Dare I trust--not you--but myself?" she whispered. "After everything is said--I am--what I am!"

"Yes--you are what you are!" Gaston pressed his lips against her trembling mouth. "And now, good-bye!" he released her, and led her toward her door. "I must make a few preparations--then get to Filmer.

It's all very wonderful, but it is more true than wonderful. Until I come, then--and it may take time, dear--you will remember?"

"Always--until you come--and after!"

Gaston bent again, but this time he only pressed his lips to the soft, pale hair.

When the door closed behind her; he stood for a moment dazed and bewildered. Mechanically he turned to the first task that lay at hand.

He rebuilt the dead fire. It seemed symbolic, somehow, and he smiled.

Then holding to the fancy that touched him, he piled on log after log.

There should be no lack of warmth and glow in the new reincarnation.

An hour later he left the house, with the needful things for his possible, long absence packed in a grip and flung across his shoulder.

He had attended to so many small comforts for Joyce--the fire, the writing out of directions, where to find money, etc.--that he had been hurried in the details of his own affairs; he had forgotten to take the key from the lock of the chest!

CHAPTER XIII

Jock Filmer was coming to the belief that there was a Destiny shaping _his_ ends _roughly_, smooth-hew them as he had ever tried to do. Jock was pursued, there was no doubt of that. For reasons of his own he had drifted into St. Ange when very young. Most conveniently and soothingly memory and old habits dropped from him--they had clung tenaciously to Gaston. Jock adapted himself to circ.u.mstances and new environment with flattering promptness.

The Black Cat felt no resentment toward him after the first few months.

His English became blurred with regard to grammar; the local speech was good enough for him. When Jock's Past became troublesome, as it had done from the very first, the Black Cat had consolation for its latest recruit; and, while he did not sink quite so far as some of the natives, the shortcoming was attributed more to youth than to the putting on of airifications, as Tate said.

In a boyish, off-hand way, Filmer had always regarded Gaston as a sign-board in an unexplored country. If things ever pressed too close, Filmer believed Gaston would point him to safety.

A mystic something held them together. A common interest, consciously cast into oblivion, but perfectly tangible and not to be denied, was the unspoken pa.s.sport in their intercourse.

Later, during the building of Drew's bungalow and their joint sympathy for, and with, Joyce, Filmer had acknowledged Gaston, as a superior and, spiritually, regarded him as a leader in an interesting adventure.

Gaston, the night when he faced Jude and him with the pointed question, "What you going to do about it?" had fallen from Jock's high opinion, and the crash had affected him to a painful extent.

"Oh! what's the good?" he had finally concluded.

Another friendship that had been formed in the lonely woods yet remained to him, and he made the most of that. Drew's personality had stirred Jock's emotions from the start. To look forward to a renewal of the companionship was a distinct pleasure in the time when the dust of Gaston's fallen image was blinding his eyes and smarting his heart.

Drew came, sick but unconquered. All the chivalry in Filmer rose to the call. He gave his time to the young minister. Using up the little money he had earned as builder, resigning his chance to go into camp, he devoted himself to Drew day and night. He became one of the family at the bungalow and a jocose familiarity was as much a part of Jock's liking for a person, as were his tireless patience and capacity for single-minded service.

Drew's maiden aunt, prim, proper and worldly-wise, was as much Aunt Sally to Filmer as she was to her niece and nephew. Jock jollied the aristocratic lady as freely as he did Drew, toward whom he held the tolerant admiration that he had given him from the beginning. But poor Jock was not to have his own easy planning of the new situation in all directions. Constance Drew took a hand in the game, and Jock, with trailing plume, plodded on behind her.

If _he_ could gibe and tease, she could bring him about with her cool audacity and comical dignity.

The girl's splendid physique, her athletic tendencies, her endurance and pluck, compelled Jock's masculine admiration. Her love for her brother, her tenderness and cheerfulness toward him, won his heart; but her mental make-up, her strange seriousness where her own private interests were concerned, caused the young fellow no end of amus.e.m.e.nt and delight.

He had never seen any one in the least like her, and the new sensation held him captive.

Poor Jock! He was never again to walk through life without a chain and ball; but little he heeded that while he had strength and spirit to drag them.

With Drew's partial recovery the bungalow household lost its head a little. Aunt Sally's grat.i.tude overflowed into every house in St. Ange.

She felt as if the natives, not the pine-laded air, had been instrumental in this regained health and joyousness.

"I can never thank you enough," was her constant greeting; and so sincere was her grat.i.tude that eventually the back doors of the squalid houses opened to her unconsciously--and of true friendship there is no greater proof in a primitive village. Sitting in their kitchens, it was easy for her to reach down into their hearts, and many a St. Ange woman poured her troubles into Aunt Sally's ears, and went forever after with uplifted head.

"Why, my dear," the old lady said to Ralph, after Peggy Falstar had taken her into her confidence, "these people are much like others, only they have the rough bark on. They are a great deal more vital--the bark has, somehow, kept the sap richer."

Drew laughed heartily.

"The polishing takes something away, Auntie," he replied. "The bark is hard to get through; it's tough and p.r.i.c.kly and not always lovely, but it's the sap that counts in every case, and that's what I used to tell you and Connie. Every time I tapped these people up here, I saw and felt the rich possibilities."

"Now, you go straight to sleep," his aunt always commanded at that juncture.

She was not yet able to face the probability of a final settlement in these backwoods, but she saw with alarm that her nephew was planting his hopes deep and accepting the inevitable.

"It's all such a horrible sacrifice of his young life," she confided to Constance.

"His young life!" the girl had returned with a straight, clear look.

"Why, I begin to think the only life he has, Auntie, is what St. Ange offers--he must take that or nothing. Oh! if only that little beast down there in New York had had the courage of a mouse, and the imagination of a mole, she might have made Ralph's life--this life--a thing to go thundering down into history! It's splendid up here! It's the sort of thing that makes your soul feel like something tangible. My!" And with that, on a certain mid-winter day, the young woman strode forth.