Joyce of the North Woods Part 35

Joyce was grateful. This was but another proof of Gaston's greatness.

"Everything going straight, Joyce?" The question came one day while the keen eyes were taking in the store of wood, water and other necessaries.

"Everything, Jock; and the store-room is stocked. Sit down--and tell me the news."

Joyce was not particularly interested, but it would put Jock at ease.

Jock gracefully flung himself into Gaston's chair. The two were, of course, in the living room.

"There's company up to the bungalow," he spoke from the fullness of his heart; "a widder girl."

"A--a widow?" Joyce was for a moment perplexed.

"Yes. She don't look a day older than Drew's sister, and she's powerful cheerful for an afflicted person. But maybe she ain't afflicted. They ain't, always. She looks as if she was dressing up in them togs for fun, and at first glimpse it strikes one as sacrilegious. Something like a kid using holy words in its play."

Joyce smiled. After all it was good to have the dear human touch, even if the vital spark were lacking.

"Is--the widow-girl pretty, Jock?" she asked in order to detain Filmer.

"Well," a line came between Jock's eyes, "that's the puzzler. Now Drew's sister--" Jock spoke in this detached way of Constance Drew for self-defense--"Drew's sister stands for what she is; a good, honest, handsome girl. You own up to that and that's the end of it. This one sets you thinking. Is she, or ain't she pretty? you keep putting to yourself. Do you like her, or don't you? Is she thinking about what you're saying, or ain't she? That's the way your mind works when you are with her, till it seems a plain waste of time, and riles you way down to the ground. I like a woman what, having pa.s.sed up her personality, lets you alone as to further guessing 'less you have a mind to guess. Joyce!"

"Yes, Jock."

"They want you up to the bungalow to help along with the Christmas doings. I never saw such happenings in all my life. All St. Ange is going to see what's what for once. Presents for everybody; big party at the bungalow Christmas night; the overflow is going even to reach up to the camps. Boxes and barrels arriving every day from down the State.

Lord, but you should see Tom Smith's curiosity! There are big doings.

They call it a kind of thanksgiving for the Reverend Kid's recovery; and they want you."

Joyce started back. She was interested, but only as it was apart from herself.

"Oh, Jock!" she cried. "I couldn't. I just couldn't."

"I thought you couldn't," Jock returned calmly; "and you shan't if you don't want to."

"Thank you. Don't let them feel hurt, but I could not go."

Jock cast a sympathetic glance toward her; and changed the subject.

"It's wonderful the grip that weak little Reverend has already got on this town," he went on. "He's a sly one. Preaching ain't in it with the undercurrent he's let loose here. It's just sapping the foundations of society. It's setting free a lot of good stuff, but it's striking Tate an all-fired blow."

"Tell me about it, Jock. It seems as if I had been asleep a--long while."

"Well there are sermons _and_ sermons." Jock was flattered by the look in Joyce's large eyes. "If the Reverend Kid had opened shop in the regular way, Tate and his pals would have downed him in no time; but what you going to do about sermons that are slipped in with talks to women over their wash-tubs, and what not?

"Him and me was going by Falstar's the other day, and Peggy was washing uncommon hard. Drew, he steps close to the tubs and says he, 'I tell you, Mrs. Falstar, I don't know no better religion than getting the spots out instead of slighting them. It's like the little Scotch girl who said she knew when she got religion, for she had to sweep under the mats.' Peggy was all a-grin, and Lord! how she went at it. Later, she attacked the mats. It had set her thinking. I saw 'em hanging out, and she beating them as she must often feel like beating Pete." A real laugh greeted this, and Jock glowed with approval.

"And then what does that young lunger do, but gather in all the floating population in the kid line, and play games with 'em, and read thrillers to 'em up at the bungalow every evening. He's teaching them as wants to learn, too. He's got Tate flamgasted. You see, the old man depended, for the future, on them youngsters that haunted the tavern and got the drippings that fell from within. The Black Cat Tavern Kindergarten is busted, and the Bungalow stock is going up."

"Kindergarten? What's that, Jock?"

"Oh, it's a new-fangled idea in the way of schools. Sort of breaking up the ground for later planting."

"Who told you about it?"

"Why--Drew's sister." Jock's face looked stern and he gazed into s.p.a.ce.

"It's a splendid idea, Jock." Joyce's interest was keen enough now.

"Some one, even St. Ange's folks, should have seen how fine it is to keep the children away from the tavern. How we have let everything drift! Why Jock, if the boys and girls learn to hate the Black Cat; if they are given something good, why of course St. Ange is going to be another kind of place. Does Miss Drew help in teaching?"

"Does she?" Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells 'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a career of crime is concerned. Do you know, he went up to see her with his red hair plastered down with lard until it was a dull maroon colour; his square cotton handkercher was perfumed with kerosene, and I tell you he was a sight and a smell to remember; but Drew's sister stood it without a word. She told me afterward that it was a proof conclusive--them's her words--of Billy's redemption.

"I saw the brat the day he started for camp. I tell you the ginger was all out of Billy. When he was obliged to swear he did it in whispers."

"Poor Billy! He's pretty young to begin camp life. There's good in Billy. I wish Mr. Drew would make Peter send him to school."

"That's what he's planning to do."

Soon after this, when Jock started to go, he said: "So everything's fit for a spell?"

"Everything Jock, until--"

They looked at each other mutely. Then Jock put his hand out awkwardly and took Joyce's.

"Good-bye," he said quietly. His manner puzzled the girl.

"Life's a queer jamboree," he laughed lightly. "It's a heap easier to stand it if you give yourself the hope of cutting it if you find the pace too fast. So 'good-bye' is always in order even if you're going to drop in to-morrow. Good-bye."

Joyce walked with him to the door. "Good-bye," she said with a growing doubt in her heart; "good-bye, Jock--and I can never tell you how I thank you."

It was many a long day before Joyce was to see Filmer again, and she always felt that she knew it as she saw him pa.s.s beyond the pines after that "good-bye."

Perhaps it was the boyish longing for Christmas cheer that struck such a deadly blow at the heart of Billy, the fiddler, in Camp 7. Perhaps it was the arrow that smites all, sooner or later. Be that as it may, as Christmas drew near the mournful tunes Billy managed to saw from his fiddle got on to the nerves of the men.

From remarks aimed at his efforts, pieces of wood and articles of clothing were aimed at him, and Billy's life became a burden in the dull, deep woods.

"I can't make jigs come," he whined one evening, "when I'm chock full of hymn tunes."

"You'll be chock full of cold lead if you fill this hull camp with them death dirges," warned one man who was bearing about all he could anyway.

"I wish to--I just wish I was plugged full of lead--and done for," was Billy's unlooked-for reply; and then, to the surprise of all, he bent his red curls over the fiddle and wept as only a homesick youngster can weep when the barriers of his fourteen years are down, and the flood has its way.

That night, Billy in his bunk, sleepless and consumed with longing for home and the excitement of the bungalow element, planned desertion. At midnight he crept to the larder and packed enough food to last for a couple of days, at four o'clock he stole from the sleeping-shed, and, cheered by the unanimous snores that rang in his ears, he turned his freckled, determined face toward St. Ange and the one absorbing pa.s.sion of his life.

The outlook of the Solitude at four in the morning was not an altogether cheerful one even to ambitious youth. Indeed there was little, if any, outlook.

Blackness around; cold starlight overhead. Snow and ice everywhere except on the trail that a "V" plow had made through the forest.