Joyce of the North Woods

The man lying flat on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the stone and moss.

The midsummer afternoon was sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking in its sleep.

Lazily it wound around young maples, and ferny groups-it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things-then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the North Woods.

"I'm here! here! here! I'll be ready by and by, by, by, by." Then on again, a little faster perhaps, but still dreamily. Children's laughter sounded far below; a slouching man or woman making for the Black Cat bent on business or pleasure, passed now and then; all else was still and seemingly asleep.

Again Jude raised his head and gave that quick glance around.

Jude was awake at last. Little Billy Falstar had roused him two days before and set the world in a jangle. The child's impish words had struck the scales from Jude's eyes, and the blinding light made him shrink and suffer.

"Him and her," the boy had whispered, hugging his bruised and dirty knees as he squatted by Jude's door; "him and her is sparking some." Then he laughed the freakish laugh of mischief.

Jude was polishing the gun which John Gaston had given him a year before, and had trained him to use until he was second only to Gaston himself for marksmanship. "Him and her-who?" he asked, raising his dull eyes to Billy's tormenting face.

"Joyce and Mr. Gaston. Him and her is beaux, I reckon. She goes to his shack; I listened outside the winder once-he reads to her and tells her things. They walks in the Long Medder, too, and once I saw him kiss her."

Again the teasing laugh that set every nerve tingling.

Then it was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against brain and heart.

He stared at Billy as if the boy had given him a physical blow-then he looked beyond him at the woods, the sky, the highway and the dejected houses-nothing was familiar! They all seemed alive and alert. Unseen happenings were going on-he must understand.

"You saw-him-kiss-her?" The gun fell limply across the man's knees.

"Yep," Billy whipped his dramatic sense into action. He arose and strode before Jude with Gaston's own manner. "This way. His arms out, and him a-laughing like, and Joyce she kinder run inter his arms and he held her, like this-." The close embrace of the childish gesture seemed to strangle Jude, and he gave a muffled cry. This acted like a round of applause upon Billy.

"Yep, and he kept on hugging and kissing her like this-" Billy went into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity, for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand trembling with new-born emotion.

"Take that, you impish brat," he had said, "and more like it if you stand there another minute with your lying capers."

"They ain't lies," wailed Billy, edging away and nursing his smarting face; "he did! he did! It was in his shack-I saw 'em!"

"Get out," yelled Jude, glowering darkly; "and you tell that to any one else and," he came nearer to the shrinking child, "I swear I'll choke yer till yer can't speak." So changed was Jude that Billy trembled before him.

"I won't," he whispered, "I swear I won't, Jude; don't-don't hit me again; I won't tell."

He was gone, but the old Jude was gone also. The new man finished the gun cleaning, his breath coming hard and fast meanwhile, and then, taking the gun with him, he went into the deep woods on the northern edge of the village.

All the rest of the day he watched Gaston's shack from a distance; as the darkness drew on he crept closer.

Joyce did not come near the place, and Gaston himself only returned when the night was well advanced.

Jude watched him light his lamp, and prepare his supper. Watched him, later, go into the inner room, and then he crept close to the broad window to see what Gaston was doing in there where no foot but Gaston's own, so it was said, ever entered. As he had raised his eyes to the level of the casement, Gaston's calm gaze met his with a laugh in it.

"Hello, Jude," the voice was unshaken; "playing Indian Brave? Got your gun, too? What you after, big game or-what?" Jude rose to his feet. He was trembling violently. Gaston watched him closely. "Come in?" he asked presently.

"No. I was only passing-thought I would look in. I'm going now."

"Hold on there, Jude, what's up?" Gaston leaned from the window. "Are you alone?"

"Yes. There ain't anything the matter."

"All right." Gaston looked puzzled. "Good night." He watched Jude until he was lost in the shadows, then he drew the heavy wooden shutters close, bolted the door and placed his pistol near at hand.

All the next day Jude haunted the vicinity of Joyce Birkdale's home, but he kept hidden, for Joyce was safe within doors and a drizzly rain was falling. Night again found him on guard; and now he lay on Beacon Hill in the hot sun, napping by snatches (for he was woefully tired) and scanning the Long Meadow, with his feverish eyes, in between times.

In his dreams the scene Billy Falstar had so luridly described was enacted again and again, until he felt as if he, Jude, had been the onlooker.

The people whom he had taken for granted in the past now assumed new meaning and importance. Gaston had slipped in among them three years before, and after the first few months of observation he had aroused no interest. He had minded his business, paid his way, taken his turn in camp at greenhorn jobs, accounted for his presence on the ground of seeking health, and that was all. Life went on as usual, sluggishly and dully-but on.

Jude had, before Billy's illumination, been thinking that after the next logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings-the cabin, his dog and gun. The idea had not roused him much, but it had been a pleasurable conclusion to arrive at; and now? Every nerve was aching and the boy's heart was thumping heavily. Again he dropped his head, and he cursed everything his thought touched upon-even the girl he meant, in some way, still to have.

One, two, three hours passed. Jude's hilltop was touched by the sun, but in the meadow the purpling shadows were gathering slowly.

Suddenly Jude sprang up-something was happening down there below. Something in him had warned him.

From the southern edge of the meadow a tall man was swinging along with easy strides. He carried his broad-brimmed hat in his right hand and waved it as if in greeting. From the opposite direction a girl was approaching. She wore a blue-checked gown, and her pale hair seemed to shine in the dimming light. She wore no hat, and she walked with the quick freedom of a child who longed to reach something precious.

Midway of the meadow the girl and man met. He stretched out his arms, and they closed about the slim form.

Then he bent his head over the fair one on his breast-but he did not kiss it! Jude was burning and palpitating. He strained his hearing, forgetting time and space. They were talking, and he would never know what they said.

Presently the girl slipped from the enfolding arms, and, clinging to the man's hands, looked up into his face. Sometimes she bowed her head, and once she passed her hand across her eyes as if to wipe away tears. Then the man drew her close again. He raised the face that was crushed against his shoulder; he kissed the brow, the eyes, the chin-and then the lips.

Something blinded Jude. Something thick and hot like blood, and when he could see again, the two had parted. The man stood with bared head watching the slim, drooping figure as it retraced its steps with never a backward turn. When it was gone he replaced his hat and took his way-this time, toward the Black Cat.

Jude stood alone on his hilltop and watched the lights spring to life in cottage and tavern. The stars twinkled above him in the calm evening gloaming. The little river trilled a vesper hymn as it felt its way along the dark rocky path-and then tears came to Jude's relief, impotent, boyish, weak tears, such tears as he had not shed since his father and mother lay dead, and in childish fright and sorrow he had not known what to do next. But now, as then, he pulled himself together and set his teeth grimly.

He did the wisest thing he could have done. He went down the hill and strode toward the Birkdale house.

But he did not walk alone. Almost forgotten memories rose sharply and kept him company as he pushed on to meet his Fate.

Womankind in St. Angé was monotonous. There was a shading of individuality in the girls and newly-wed women, but it faded soon into the dull drab that seemed the only possible wearing-colour of the place. Occasionally, though, the sameness had been relieved by a vivid touch, but only for a short hour. The Fate who snips the threads, had invariably clipped such colouring from the St. Angé design, and tossed it aside as useless.

Jude remembered Marsena Riddall. What a woman she had been! What a menace to man's rights and woman's position.

She had demanded, and got her husband's wages as he returned from camp. She met him at the edge of the North Wood, and held him up, morally and physically. That she kept a clean and respectable house; that her children were well fed, clothed and cared for, had not counted to her credit one jot among the powers that be. Her husband was not safe on the man's side of the Black Cat screen. At ten o'clock, did Riddall brave his chances to that hour, Marsena would march boldly into the arena and claim her quarry. If a man rose to expostulate, Marsena was equal to him with tongue and wit. Masculine superiority trembled during Marsena's reign, which lasted five years; then Fate downed her.

Riddall was called away from his jailer by the command that even Marsena could not defy, and she and her children faced life in a village where a man was an absolute necessity unless there was money to take his place. Jude grimly smiled as he recalled how the men and boys gave Marsena and her brood a jeering send-off as the rattling train bore them away soon after Riddall had been laid behind the disused church.

So while Marsena was still in Jude's memory, he came upon the deserted and decaying cottage where once Lola Laval had sung her pretty French-Canadian song.

It was odd how Lola came always with that song accompaniment. Try as he might, even now, in this disordered moment, Jude heard the rippling little lark song rise and fall in the fragrant darkness.

Jude, while but a boy, liked to draw water for Lola and run her errands when young Pierre, the husband, was in camp. When the logging season was over, Lola's cottage vied with the Black Cat in popularity. Pierre was a noted card player, but, oh! Lola's song sounded above the slap of pasteboard and the click of glasses. How pretty she was-and how the women hated her! The men were eager to serve her. She had no need to command; her desires seemed granted before she voiced them-poor, pretty Lola!

Alouette, alouette, alouette, alouette.

Oh, alouette, chantez alouette,

Alouette, je te plumerai.

Alouette, chantez alouette,

Alouette, je te plumerai.

Je te plumerai le bec,

Je te plumerai le bec

A le bec,

A le bec,

Alouette,

Alouette.

Lola had not lasted long; only nineteen she was when Pierre in his jealousy struck the light from her eyes by a cruel blow, and the song fled from her lips; then taking warning from a well-directed signal from Beacon Hill, he had sought the Southern Solitude just before Justice, in the form of the Hillcrest constable, came stalking into St. Angé.

But the song was not dead. Again and again a man or woman would revive it and so it had become a part of the place. To Jude, now, it was painfully evident as he again plunged forward; it followed him sweetly, mockingly as it used to when Lola sent it after him to keep him from being afraid as he left her for his lonely home; he, a neglected little boy.

And now here was Joyce! With a stinging consciousness Jude realized this new personality that heretofore he had not suspected. Even as jealous anger spurred him on, a vague something he knew awaited him, calmed him and made him cautious.

While he longed to grip and command the situation, he was aware of a power in Joyce-a power he had unconsciously, perhaps, sensed before-that bade him stand afar until she beckoned him.

As he neared her little house, before even he saw the lights, he heard a song. It was that song! It met the rhythm in his own heated fancy-he and Joyce seemed to be singing it together:

Alouette,

Alouette.

The light was streaming through open window and door. Inside Joyce was preparing the evening meal, stepping lightly between table and stove as she sang. Jude dared not enter unannounced, and his pride held him silent.

What was he afraid of? Was he not he, and Joyce but a girl? Still he kept his distance.

"Joyce!" The song within ceased, and the singer stepped to the open doorway.

"That you, father?" No answer came. "Father?"

Then Jude came into the light.

"You, Jude? Come in; father's late. I never wait for him and I am as hungry as a wolf."

Joyce had been one of the few girls who had gone to the Hillcrest school as long as paternal authority permitted, and she showed her training.

"I ain't come for no friendly call," muttered Jude, slouching in and dropping on to a wooden chair beside the table.

Joyce turned and looked at him, and the glow from the hanging lamp fell upon her.

She was tall and slim, almost to leanness, but there were no awkward angles and she was as graceful as a fawn.

Her skin was pale, clear and smooth, her eyes wide apart and so dark as to be colourless, but of a wondrous softness. Her hair was of that shade of gold that suggests silver, and in its curves, where the sun had not bleached it, it was full of tints and tones.

"What have you come for?" she asked, as a child might have asked it, wonderingly and interestedly.

"I want to ask you something, and I want the truth."

"Oh!" Joyce sat opposite, and let her clasped hands fall upon the table laid out for the evening meal with the brown bowl of early asters set in the centre. She forgot her hunger, and the steaming pot on the stove bubbled unheeded.

"What you want to know, Jude? You look mighty upset."

Jude saw with his new, keen vision that she was startled and was sparring for time. "It's about," he leaned forward, "it's about you and-and him. I saw you in the Long Medder. I saw him hold your hands and-and kiss you." The words smarted the dry, hot lips. "I-I want to know what it means."

Jude was trembling visibly as he finished, but Joyce's silence, her apparent discomfort, gave him a kind of assurance that upheld him in his position.

The girl across the table had been awakened several weeks ago in Gaston's little shack among the pines. Since then she had been living vividly and fervently. The question with her, now, was how best to voice herself-the self that Jude in no wise knew. Womanlike, she did not want to plunge into what might prove an abyss. She wanted to take her own way, but with a half-unconscious coquetry she desired to drag her captives whither she went.

In the old stupid life before her womanhood was roused, Jude had held no mean part in her girlish dreams. He was the best of the St. Angé boyhood and Joyce had an instinctive relish for the best wherever she saw it. Whatever the future held she was not inclined to thrust Jude from it. In success or failure she would rather have him with her than against her. Not that she feared him-she had boundless belief in herself-but, hearts to the woman, scalps to the savage, are trophies not to be despised.

"I-I want to know what it means." Again Jude spoke, and this time a tone of command rang through the words.

The corners of Joyce's mouth twitched-she had a wonderfully expressive mouth. Suddenly she raised her eyes. They did not hold the expression Jude might have expected from her disturbed silence. His growing courage took a step back, but his passion rushed forward proportionately.

The witch-light danced in the steady glance she turned upon him; she threw her head back and her slim throat showed white and smooth in the lamp's glow.

"Suppose he did hold my hand and-and kiss me, Jude Lauzoon, you'd like to do the same yourself, now wouldn't you?"

She was ignorantly testing her weak, woman's weapon on the man's metal.

Jude felt the mist rising in his eyes that once before that day had hid this girl and Gaston from his sight. Like a mad mockery, too, Lola's lark song sounded above the rush of blood that made him giddy. He got to his feet and staggered around the table. He held to it, not so much to steady himself as to guide him, but as he neared the girl the blindness passed, and the tormenting song stopped-he stood in an awful silence, and a white, hot light.

"Yes, by God, I do want to, and if yer that kind I'll take-my share and chance along with the rest of 'em."

It was his own voice, loud and brutal, that smote the better part of him that stood afar and alone; a something quite different from the beast who spoke, and which felt a mad interest in wondering how she would take the words.

"You go and sit down over there!"

No clash of steel or dash of icy water could have had the effect those quiet words had, combined with the immovable calm out of which they came.

The instinct of frightened womanhood was alive. If she could not down the beast in the man by unflinching show of courage-she was lost.

They eyed each other for an instant-then Jude backed away and dropped into the chair across the table.

Still, like animal and tamer they measured each other from the safer distance. Presently the girl spoke, laying all the blame upon him for the fright and suffering.

"What right have you, Jude Lauzoon, to come here insulting me?"

"What right had you," he blurted out, "to make me think you was that-that sort?"

"I didn't make you think it-you thought it because you-wanted to think it-it was in you."

The beast was quelled now, and a stifled sob rose to the boyish throat.

"I-I didn't want to think it-God knows I didn't, Joyce, it was that that drove me mad."

"Can a man only think bad when he sees what he doesn't understand?"

Revulsion of feeling was making Joyce desperate. While her new power brought her a delirious joy, it also, she was beginning to understand, brought a terror she had never conceived before. She wished the house were nearer the other human habitations.

"If you're that kind, Jude, you had better take yourself to the Black Cat; you'll find plenty of your liking down there."

Jude was visibly cowering now.

"Why did he kiss you?" he pleaded.

"Suppose I gave him the right?"

"Then what am I to think? Have you given him the right? Does he want the right? I mean the right first-and last?" Jude was gaining ground, but neither he nor the girl to whom he spoke realized it yet. Joyce drew back.

"What is that to you?" she murmured hanging her head. For the moment she was safe-but she felt cornered.

Jude again bent toward her over his hands clenched close.

"It means everything," he panted, "and you know it. I've always liked you best of anything on earth-ever since I went to school, to please you, over to Hillcrest; ever since I tried to keep from the Black Cat, because you asked me to. I've gone following after you kinder heedless-like till-till he gave me a blow twixt the eyes, with his hand-holding and kissing. It drove me crazy. I never thought of any one else with you-least of all John Gaston and you. He didn't seem your kind-I don't know why, but he didn't. Howsomever, if it's all right-God knows I ain't in it-that's all."

A hoot of an owl outside made Joyce start nervously. She was unstrung and superstitious-the fun of the game died in her, and she felt weak and nauseated. She spoke as if she wanted to finish the matter and have done with it forever.

"Well, I didn't give him the right. He didn't want it. I guess it was all foolish-everything is foolish. When he found out how I liked books, and how I wanted to know about things, he just naturally was kind and he let me go to his shack to read. Sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn't. He just thought about me as if I was a little girl-Maggie Falstar used to go sometimes-he told her fairy stories-it was all the same to him, until-" the wonderful colour that very pale people often have rose suddenly to Joyce's face, and the eyes became dreamy-"one day a week ago."

"Well," Jude urged her on-he was sensing the situation from the man's standpoint.

"It was nothing. I had been reading a book there by myself. It was the kind of story that makes you feel like you was the woman it tells about. Then Mr. Gaston came in, and stood looking at me from the doorway; he seemed like the man in the book too. We looked at each other, and-and I was frightened and I guess he was-for I was grown up all of a sudden. Jude"-the girl was appealing to the familiar in him, the comradeship that would stand with her and for her-"he took me in his arms and-and-kissed me. Then he begged my pardon-and he pushed me away; then he led me to the door and said he-he didn't understand, but I-I mustn't come again to the shack alone, but to meet him in the Long Meadow to-day."

"Curse 'im," muttered Jude; "curse 'im." But the move was a wrong one. Joyce rose to her own defence and Gaston's.

"If you feel that way," she cried, "you can take yourself off."

"I-I don't feel that way," Jude returned illogically and meekly; "go on."

"He's a good man, Jude Lauzoon; better than any one here in St. Angé; and he isn't our kind-not mine, yours, or any one else's around here. He just made me feel ashamed of myself out in the Meadow to-day. I felt as if I had been bold and-and all wrong, but he wouldn't let me feel that way. He acted like I was a little girl to him again-only different; and-I'm going to tell you something." The pink flush dyed even the white throat now. "He said he wished I would get married-it was for the best. That's the way he wanted me for himself!" Joyce laughed with a bitterness that changed suddenly as she recalled the subtle power she had felt over Gaston even while he was forcing her out of his life.

"He asked me about Jock Filmer."

"Jock Filmer?" Jude's jaw dropped. Was all St. Angé hurtling around Joyce? "Jock Filmer-why-why-" Words failed him and he laughed noisily.

"Oh, I don't know," Joyce tossed her head. "You seem to think nobody would want me-I guess-they would-if I wanted them!" The girl was worn out; racked by the emotions that were reflected from the new attitude of others toward her.

And now Jude came around the table again. This time he walked steadily, and he was quite himself. The best self he had ever yet been.

"I want you Joyce-God knows I do."

"He said you did."

"Who?"

"He-Mr. Gaston."

"He-said that? Then why in thunder did-he kiss you?"

That rock Jude dashed against at every turn.

"He didn't until-until I told him-I liked you."

Poor Joyce! She was never to tell any one that that admission had been wrung from her in order to make Gaston think he himself had not been deeply in her thoughts. It had been a difficult fencing match that afternoon.

"You told him that?" A light came into Jude's handsome, heavy face, which quickly vanished as the torturing jealousy, feeding upon a new hope, rose, defiantly. "You told him you cared-and then he kissed you, damn him! Maybe he thinks he'll get you to take me, and then he'll go on with hand-holding and kissing all the safer."

"Take that back," cried Joyce harshly. "Take that back, Jude Lauzoon." Yet as she resented the implied insult, the primitive woman in her admired Jude as it had never admired him before.

"I didn't mean it against you, Joyce, I swear it. Can't you see how I love yer and I don't want yer hurt? No one ain't going to hurt yer!" He had clutched her to him roughly but tenderly. "Maybe he wouldn't want ter, maybe I don't understand-but he can't, anyway!"

She was sobbing hysterically against his breast.

"You're mine, lass; you're just a little one; you don't know things. You're no older than you was when you toted over to Hillcrest and-and never felt afraid."

Jude tried to kiss the tear-stained face, but she pressed it closer against him. He had to be content with the satin softness of her thick hair.

Suddenly she sprang from him. A sickish odour was filling the room.

"Everything's burned," she gasped; "everything!" She drew the pot from the stove and ruefully carried it outside. "Nothing left, Jude;" she laughed nervously. "Nothing but crusts and leavings."

"You go to bed," commanded Jude authoritatively; "that's what you need more than anything!"

"Yes, yes, that's what I need-sleep. I'm almost dead, I'm so tired."

Jude looked at her hungrily. The sudden happy ending of his torture gave him an unreal, unsafe feeling.

He wanted to touch her again in the new, thrilling way, but she was forbidding even in her sweet yielding.

"You go to bed," he said vaguely; "I'll go down to the Black Cat, and see that your father gets home all right."

Joyce stepped backward to the chamber door beyond.

"Thank you," she murmured; "I certainly am dead tired."

* * *