Joyce of the North Woods Part 51

"Tate--I can't."

"Can't, hey?"

"Well then"--and the declaration of independence rang out--"I won't!"

"What!" Brown Betty leaped under the lash.

"It don't belong to me."

"Do you know who owns it?"

"I can--guess."

"Guess then, by thunder!"

"It--belonged--to--Joyce's poor little dead young-un."

"How in"--then Tate blanched, for superst.i.tion held his dull wits. "How you 'spose it got there?"

"How can I tell, Tate? But I'll ask Joyce, to-morrer."

With that Leon had to be content.

The feast began at five. Long, long did the youth of St. Ange recall it with fulness of heart and stomach. Yearningly did St. Ange womankind hark back to it. It was the first time in their lives that they had not prepared, and were not expected themselves to serve, a meal. They forgot, in the rapture of repose, their new and splendid gowns--the comfort wrapped their every sense.

"I was borned," poor Peggy confided to her neighbour, "to be a const.i.tootional setter, I think; but circ.u.mstances prevented. It's curious enough how naterally I take the chance to set and set and enjoy setting."

Mrs. Murphy smoothed her dark-green cashmere with reverent and caressing hand.

"There's more than you, Mis' Falster," she said, "as is borned to what they don't get, sure! Now me, fur instant, I find it easier nor what you might think, to chew without my front teeth."

This made Billy Falstar laugh. It was the first genuine laugh the poor boy had had for many an hour. Constance Drew heard it, and it did her heart good. For Billy, pale, wide-eyed and laughless, was not in the order of things as they should be. She looked at Ruth Dale and whispered, "Billy is reviving with proper nourishment."

Ruth gave her a sympathetic smile. Ruth was, herself, working under pressure, but she was successfully playing her part.

"His face was the only grim one here," she said. "Just look at Maggie, Con!" To view Maggie was to forget any unpleasant thing.

Maggie Falstar was laying up for the future as a camel does for the desert. Food and drink pa.s.sed from sight under Maggie's manipulation like a slight-of-hand performance, and through the effort, and above it, the girl's expressionless face was bent over her plate.

The Christmas tree, later, was in the hall. The party staggered to it from the dining room with antic.i.p.ation befogged by a too, too heavy meal. But St. Ange digestions were of st.u.r.dy fibre, and fulfilled joy brought about quick relief.

Aunt Sally looked into the grateful eyes upturned toward the glittering tree, and her own kind eyes were like stars.

It was Ruth Dale who had taught the children to sing, "There's a Wonderful Tree," and the Christmas anthem now surprised and charmed the older people.

Above the shrill, exultant voices, Ruth's clear tones rang firm and true. Drew watched her from his place beside the tree, and his heart ached for her. And yet--what strength and power she had. She so slight and girlish. She had lost faith, and had had love wrenched from her. She was bent upon a martyr's course, and yet she sang, with apparent abandon of joy, the old Christmas song.

Constance Drew was an adept at prolonging pleasure and thereby intensifying it. With the tree bowed with fruit, standing glorified before them, the rapt company listened with amaze to Maggie Falstar as she sniffled and hitched through a poem so distorted that the only semi-intelligible words were: "An--snow--they--snelt--at--the manger, lost in--reverent--raw."

This part of the programme affected Leon Tate in a most unlooked-for manner.

"Say, Smith," he remarked to the station-agent, who was gazing at Constance Drew with his lower jaw hanging, "that beats anything I ever heard in the natural artistic line. Blood's bound to colour its victims--do you remember Pete's mother?"

Tom Smith had forgotten the old lady.

"Well, as sure as I'm setting here, old Mis' Falster uster come inter the Black Cat when she'd had more than was good for her out of the tea-pot, and recite yards of poetry standing on a chair and holding to the top of the screen. There hasn't been a hint of such a thing since then till--"

But _the_ moment had come. The moment when the heart leaped to meet its desire. The moment when the desire materialized, and the soul asked no more.

Workworn faces quivered with happiness. Things that vanity had yearned for, but stern necessity had denied, were held now in trembling hands: precious gifts that one _could_ do without, but were all the more sacred for that reason. Jewelry and pretty bits of useless neckwear, and gauzy handkerchiefs.

Useless? No. For they were to win admiration that was all but dead, and give sodden women an incentive to live up to them.

Little hungry-hearted children hugged dolls so beautiful, yet so human, that nothing more could be asked. Boys, awkward and red, shook like leaves as they fumbled with "buzzum pins" and gorgeous ties and fancy vests.

Sleds, skates and books abounded, and St. Ange, on that sacred day, revelled in the superfluous and the long-denied.

Constance Drew came upon Billy later, while games were in wild progress in the hall and study, seated in a dark corner of the dining room weeping as if his heart would break over a be-flowered vest and a rich red tie.

"Billy!"

"Yes'm." Billy was too far gone to make pretence.

"Don't you like--what you have?"

"Gosh! Yes."

"Are you happy, dear?" The gentlest of hands touched the red head.

"Happy?" Billy blubbered; "I'm busting with it."

"Billy!" and now Constance spoke slowly, impressively, "I want to tell you--something. It's something we have all thought out. It is, perhaps, another Christmas gift for you, dear. I--am--going--away!"

"Going away?" Poor Billy accepted this Christmas offering with horrified anguish.

"Going--"

"Wait, Billy, boy. When Christmas is all over and done with, I am--going back to my other--home until next--summer. But Billy--I want a part of St. Ange with me"--her eyes shone--"I have--been--so happy here--so glad--and so different. I want something to make me remember--if I ever _could_ forget. Billy, I want you to come with me. There are schools there, dear. Hard work, and a bigger life--but it will make a man of you, Billy, if the thing is in you, that I believe _is_ in you. It's your chance down there, Billy, your best chance, I think, dear--and I'll be there to help you--and to have you help me. Billy, will you come?"

Then Billy dropped the red tie and the be-flowered vest. Everything seemed to fall from him, but a radiance that grew and grew. He tried to speak, but failed. He put his hands out, but they trembled shamefully.

Then all in a heap Billy sank at Constance Drew's feet and hid his throbbing head in the folds of her white silk gown.

The pale moon peeped through the wide window, and cast a strange gleam over the tousled red head snuggled under the little, caressing hand. It transformed a girlish face that was looking far, far beyond St. Ange's calm and peace. The vision the girl saw was battle. Life's battle. Not little Billy's alone, though G.o.d knew that was to be no light matter.

Not even Filmer's lonely struggle, but her own. Her fight against Convention and Preconceived Ideas. Against all that Always Had Been with What Was Now To Be.

But as the far-seeing eyes gazed into the future, they softened until the tears mingled with Billy's on the already much-stained silken gown.

"Billy-boy, we're crying. I wonder--what for?"