Joyce of the North Woods. Harriet T. Comstock
and Joyce's laugh rang wildly out.
"Mr. Gaston and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us"—the inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick adaptability—"he's helping me and Jude—to what we want."
"The devil he is!" It was all that Jared could clutch from the rout. "I—I believe it's a thundering lie," he added as an after-thought, and as a cover to his retreat.
"It's no lie." Joyce had regained her calmness. She was panting, but she had reached safety and she knew it. An unlovely, unhallowed safety, but such as it was it was her salvation and Gaston's.
When she had stolen to him the night before it was her last ignorant impulse to gain her own ends. From now on she must be on guard, or her world would come clattering about her heart and soul. It took Jared some minutes to digest the information that had been flung at him so unexpectedly, and then anger and baffled hope swayed him. Joyce married to Jude would make his, Jared's, future no securer than it now was. Indeed it might complicate matters, for Jared had no belief in Jude rising above the dead level of St. Angé standards.
"You're a durn fool!" he ejaculated at last, while the new impression of his daughter's beauty stirred him painfully. "You are a durn fool to fling yourself away on Jude when you might have done most anything with yourself—if you was managed right."
Then in an evil moment Joyce laughed. Her lips parted in an odd little way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost hysterical.
"Daddy," she said, between ripples of laughter, "you thought you had me then, didn't you? But being your daughter, you know, I had wit enough to take care of myself."
Jared listened to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to understand, in the least, what was passing over the girl before him, he weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible conclusion as Jude had done before him.
He looked steadily at Joyce, and he saw the colour and fire come to cheek and eye. The ringing laughter struck through his brutality and hurt something in him that was akin to paternal love; but so long had that protecting tenderness been ignored by Jared, that now when it was called upon to act, it did so in a savage rage.
"By heaven!" he thundered, "I catch your drift, you young divil. And if that Myst. ain't a slick one! Going to use Jude is he, to pull his chestnuts out of the fire?"
Then Jared strode forward with arm upraised as if to strike and, by so doing, again command the situation. In like manner had he downed and controlled Joyce's mother. But he paused before the pale undaunted girl. Her laugh died suddenly, to be sure, so suddenly that the gleaming teeth and pretty dimples outlived the mirth long enough to give a stricken, death-like expression to the face, but the change brought no fear; it brought something worse.
Joyce's moral sense was an unknown quantity in her present development. Her father's true meaning affected her not at all; what she felt was—a loathing disgust, and a conviction that if she was to hold even Jude for herself against her father's anger and purpose, she must flee to other shelter.
She drew herself up and cast a look upon Jared that he never forgot to his dying day. It was an added faggot to that hell of his.
"Isa Tate," the even voice broke upon him, "Isa Tate said you killed my mother. But I'm not afraid of you, and I'm going to live my life. You can't kill me! I know when and where to go."
With that she gathered up the work that had fallen to the floor, and almost ran into the little bedchamber beyond the kitchen, closing the door after her.
Jared sat dumbly staring at the wooden barrier. He longed to call her, but his tongue pricked with excitement.
He dared not go to her—so he waited. He heard her moving about inside the room. A half-hour passed, then an hour. Noon came and went. The fire was out, and dinner, apparently, was as distant as it had been two hours before.
Jared fell asleep in his hard chair, his dishevelled head lying on his arms folded on the bare table. When he awoke it was three o'clock and Joyce stood before him.
She was very white, and the drawn look was still in evidence. She wore a blue-and-white checked gown; short and scant it was, but daintily fresh and sweet. She had her poor little best hat on—a hat with a bunch of roses on the side—and she carried a large basket in her hand.
Jared stared at her as if she were part of a nightmarish dream.
"Where are you going?" he asked hoarsely, a new fear gripping him.
"It doesn't matter to you, father. I'm just—going."
Jared experienced a shock as he realized how far this girl had already gone from him.
"Good-bye," she faltered; "good-bye, father."
She turned from him and walked to the door. Then a latent power for good roused Jared.
"Joyce," he called after her; "there's twenty dollars left—take it all, girl."
"No."
"Then for God's sake take half!" He was pleading, pleading with a woman for the first time in his selfish, depraved life.
Joyce turned and looked at him, and the tears filled her eyes.
"No," she repeated, "I—I couldn't take it. I don't want it; but I'm going to Isa Tate, father."
How frightfully still and lonely she had left the little house. Jared looked at the old furniture and found it strange and unnatural. The summer day grew dim as he waited there among the ruins of all that he thought had been his own. No dinner; no probable supper—Jared thought upon the physical discomfort, too, but he was sober enough, and shocked enough to give heed to the graver side of the situation.
What he suffered as the afternoon faded and the ticking of the clock thudded on his senses, no one could ever know.
We may leave retribution for sin out of our scheme of things-as-they-should-be for others. Each sin takes care of itself, and burns and blisters as it strikes in. Men may suffer without giving outward sign. Justice is never cheated, and we may trust her workings alone. Jared suffered. Suffered until nerves and body could bear no more, and then he went down to the Black Cat to face the situation Joyce had created and deal with it in his own fashion.
CHAPTER IV
When Joyce went with bowed head from the only semblance of a home that had ever been hers, she carried with her, in the rough basket, all that she could rightfully call her own in personal effects. The load was not heavy and she scarcely noticed it as she walked rapidly through the maple thicket which divided her father's garden-place and the Long Meadow.
She felt like an exile, indeed. A friendless creature who had no real hold upon any one.
She thought of Gaston—but he no longer suggested safety to her. She thought of Lauzoon, and a wave of fear and repulsion swept over her. She knew she was driven to him. She knew she must accept whatever fate he offered, but with the remnant of her intuitive belief in her personal charm and beauty, she paused at the edge of the wood, to plan some sort of attitude that would secure Jude's admiration as well as his protection. She must not call upon him in a moment of weakness and defeat. That would be putting a weapon in his hand that no St. Angé man could be trusted to wield mercifully.
She must hide all traces of outraged feeling; she must find a vantage point from which Jude might take her. He must come to her; she must not go to him. Thus she pondered. For one wild instant she turned her face toward Hillcrest. There were those over the hill who might give her work—what work? What could she do? But granting that she obtained work, how long could she retain a position, with her father and Jude in pursuit? No; she was a product of St. Angé