Joyce of the North Woods Part 33

"Gosh!" Jock exploded; "excuse me; I always burst out that way when I'm--moved." He sat down on the end of the log, and clutched his knees in his strong arms. "Somehow you don't look like such a desperate character," he added blandly, "known sin and conquered it, and all the rest?"

Constance sniffed, but a little jocularity was not going to deter her from the luxury of confession.

"Money should only be regarded," she went on, "as a sacred trust, and a means of enriching one's life. And as for Society--that is a bore!

Dances, theatres, dinners and luncheons. Chaperons tagging around after you, suggesting by their mere presence that, unless you're watched, you'll do something desperate in the wild desire to break the monotony.

Well, I drank deep of _that_ life," Constance looked dreamily over the stretch of meadow and pine-edged woods, all dazzling with a shimmer of icy snow, "before I took to----"

"Crime?" Jock suggested. "It would seem that that was the natural sequence to such a career."

"Jock Filmer--I took to philanthropy."

"As bad as that?" Jock roared with laughter.

"I only tell you this to explain my present position." Constance drew her fur-clad shoulders up. "I became a Settlement worker; but,"

confidently, "that was worse than Society. It _was_ Society with another setting. 'Thanks be!' as Auntie says, I have a sense of humour and a remnant of Scotch canniness. It made me laugh--when it didn't make me ashamed--to put on a sort of livery--plain frock, you know, and go down to the Settlement in the most businesslike way to 'do' for those poor people. It cost an awful lot to run our Settlement, about two-thirds of all the money. One-third went to the poor. We had plenty of fun down there. All slummy outside and lovely things inside, you know. It was like making believe. You see," she paused impressively, "when you have a Mission like Settlement work, you don't have to have a chaperon."

"Ten to one, they're needed, though." Jock was keenly interested.

"Cutting loose from familiar ties and acting up sort of detached that way, must have a queer effect upon some."

"Well, I just got enough of it. Why, one Christmas, we at the Settlement House had a tree and gifts that cost hundreds of dollars. We had a big dance. Evening dress and all the rest. Young men and women who, had they been in their own homes, would have been under some one's watchful eye, were having a jolly, good fling down there that Christmas Eve, I can tell you.

"Right in the middle of the evening, a call came from a family in a tenement around the corner. I knew all about them--or I thought I did--so I went. I just flung a cloak about me and ran off alone. Somehow I did not want any one with me."

Constance's eyes grew dim, and her under lip quivered.

"It was awful." Her voice sank low. "You see, with all the preparations going on at the Settlement House, we had sort of forgotten this--this family. They were not the noisy, begging kind, but there was a pitiful, little sick girl whom I had taken a liking to and to _think_ that I should have forgotten her--and at that time, too! There was no tree in that home, Jock, there was nothing much, but the little dying girl and her mother.

"They didn't even blame me--oh, if they only had!" The honest tears ran down Constance's cheeks. "But they didn't. The mother said--and she apologized for troubling me, think of that!--that the baby wanted me to tell her a Christmas story. She just wouldn't go to sleep until I did, and she had been ailing all day. I--I forgot my dress, and tore off my cloak in that cold, empty room and I took that poor baby in my arms.

Then--then the hardest part came--she--she didn't know me. She got the queerest little notion in her baby head--she--she thought I was an--angel. Oh! oh! and I wanted her to know me."

Down went the girlish head in the open pages of the character sketches.

"Well of all gol-durned nonsense!" Jock blurted out. "The whole blamed show oughter been exposed. I reckon the best job the company ever had to its credit was that happening of yours--the dress and the--the--rest of the picter. Lord!" Jock's feelings were running over as he looked upon the bowed head. The story had got hold of his tender heart. "Lord above!

Just think of that sort of rum suffering going on back there. It's worse than what happens here. We've got wood to keep the kids warm in winter, and there's clean air and coolness in summer. I'm durned glad I cut it when"--he stopped short. Constance was looking at him with wide, questioning eyes.

"When I did," Jock added helplessly. "And now go on with that poor little child what you took to your bosom."

"That's all." Constance choked painfully. "The baby--died while I was telling her about the wonderful tree, and Santa Claus and the other joys she should have had, and never did have. I can see that hideous empty room, and--and that poor baby every time I shut my eyes."

"Here, look up now," Jock commanded, his feelings getting the best of him. "When life's so empty that you can't find things to do by opening your eyes, you better keep your eyes shut to all eternity. Calling up the past is the rottenest kind of folly in a world where things is happening."

Constance rallied to the stern call.

"And now," she said briskly, "I've given myself, heart and soul to--literature. I'll _write_ of what I have seen, and lived!

"Listen, I'll read you a sketch or so. But first I'll explain. The local colour of my novel is drawn from--here."

Jock pulled himself together.

"Well, I'll be blowed!" he sympathetically e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Here where there ain't, what you might say, enough local color to more than touch up the noses of the Black Catters."

"Jock! Now, see if you'd know it." She read a sc.r.a.ppy description of the village. "Would you recognize it?"

"With a footnote, it would go." Jock was all attention. "But I have my doubts as to whether Pete Falstar will take kindly to his place of residence being cla.s.sified as a human pig-sty. That's laying the local colour on, with a whitewash brush, don't you think? A little dirt and disorder don't seem to call for such language."

"That is artistic license." Constance explained.

"Well, you ought to pay high for that kind of license--but maybe you do.

Go on."

"I handle my subject without gloves," Constance began again.

"By gosh! I'd keep 'em on when I was tackling pig-stys and such; but don't mind me."

"And here; see if you can guess who this is?

"'The sleek, fat proprietor looked oily within and oily without. He oozed oil on the community that he was demoralizing with his poisonous whiskey and doctored beer.'"

"G.o.d bless and save us!" Jock rolled from side to side. "If you don't beat all for gol-durned sa.s.s. Why, Tate will sue you for damages if that great American novel ever strikes his vision. Oil! Thunderation; and poisonous whiskey, and doctored beer. Was it Society or Settlement what let light in on you, about such terms?"

"Neither. It's--inspiration."

"It's just plain imperdence, and it'll get you in trouble. Are you going to use names in that novel of yours?"

"Certainly not. Do you think I do not know my art? But you recognize Tate? Then he lives!"

"Good Lord! Know him? How under the everlasting firmament could I help knowing him? What other proprietor is there in St. Ange, you comical little bag of words? specially one as demoralizes the community with poisoned whiskey and doctored beer? b.a.l.l.s of fire! but this beats the band. Go on; go on."

When a man of thirty steps out of a starved exile and comes in contact with a girl like Constance Drew, it may be dangerous to "go on," but the exile will certainly _want_ to.

Nothing loath; all sparkling and radiant, Constance swept along.

"And I've got--you, but maybe you will never forgive me. I took you at your--your worst--for don't you see when I use you--later--I'm going to redeem you and have you come out truly splendid."

Jock's jaw dropped, and the laugh fled from his overflowing eyes.

"Me?" he gasped. Constance nodded, and waved a pointed pencil toward him.

"Wait!" she ran her eye down the page. "'Beautiful woman--with a--Past'--that's the girl up in the other Masquerader's shack, that girl Joyce, you know, and Gaston--and here's Peggy Falstar--'woman sunk to man's level and reproducing her kind'--brief note of Billy Falstar as 'impish child'--oh! here you are!

"'Village Bacchus. Tall, handsome, but lost, apparently, to shame.

Swaggering criss-cross down the road, laughing senselessly and shouting songs. Slave to appet.i.te. Controlled by his brutal pa.s.sions. When spoken to in this state, a.s.sumes manner of gentleman. Subconscious self--study in heredity.--Let a strong influence enter his life--handsome n.o.ble girl--redemption at end--splendid character.'"

"Good G.o.d!"

Constance dropped the book. The eyes that met her own had a look in them that drove the cold, which she had not felt before, to her very heart.

"What--what--is the matter?" she gasped.