Joyce of the North Woods. Harriet T. Comstock
you do this thing?"
"I did."
Question and answer made up the vital happening in Gaston's life. Everything before led up to them, and all that had occurred since was the outcome.
They had admitted—or so he once thought—of no shading nor explanation. The questioner was not the type to deal unsteadily with a problem, and Gaston had been too simple and direct to note fine points or shadings. Perhaps neither of them had understood. Life had been so fair until the terrible thing had loomed up. It had come like a cataclysm—how could they, young and inexperienced as they had been, deal with the situation justly?
Suppose now she stood before him, wonder-eyes raised, seeking his soul's truth; hands resting in his until he should speak. Would he speak again those two crude, fatal words? Would she drop her hands letting his soul sink, by so doing, into the blackness which had engulfed it?
That was the torturing problem that Gaston was working out up in the lonely St. Angé woods; but he seemed no nearer the answer than when he had come to the place, by mistake, a few years back, and decided to stay there simply because it was as desirable as any other forsaken spot, while he was debarred from the Paradise of life.
The lamp flickered fretfully, and the spasmodic flare showed the rigid face torn with the emotions that were racking the soul laid bare before its God and its own consciousness.
What had the dreary, desolated years done for him? He was a fool. Why had he not taken what was possible, since the ideal was dashed from him?
This girl, way off there behind the hideous shadow, had been wiser. She had replaced his memory by living love; why should not he take the poor substitute that the Solitude offered, and warm the barren places of his heart and life with the faint glow?
It was a bad hour for Temptation to assail John Gaston.
The armour of self-wrought strength was off. Suffering was flaying the naked despair and yearning; and just then Temptation knocked softly and pitifully at the door of the outer room!
Gaston had done more while he had hidden in the woods than he was aware of. He had developed something akin to second sight. Loneliness and empty hours had strengthened this as blindness intensifies other senses to abnormal keenness. Gradually he had grown to believe that a man's life, complete and prearranged, lies stretched before, and occasionally some, when the circumstances are propitious and the soul has a certain detachment that ignores the bodily claims, can leap over the now and here, and catch a glimpse of the future and what it holds. This vague sense had come to Gaston more than once during the past year or two—the seeing and hearing of that which had held no part in what was, at the moment, occurring, but which he noted later had become a fact in his life.
That feeble knock dragged the man's consciousness away from the pictured face; away from his wavering indecision; away from the darkening room with its foul smell of oil: he knew who stood outside in the moonlighted, fragrant summer night, and he wondered if he were going to open that barred door to her. He waited for a glimpse of what was in store for them both.
But his spiritual sight was blinded by a firm, deadening blankness! Whatever was to be the outcome must be of his own choosing.
Again she knocked, that poor little temptress in the dark. What had Fate decreed that he was to do? Gaston knew as well as if Joyce had told him, why she had come. Her soul had revolted from her concession to Jude. In the bewitched hours of darkness, the primitive, savage instinct had driven the girl to the only one who could change her future. Worn, weary, defiant, she had come to him; not questioning further than her despair and his power.
Well, why not? Who would be the worse, and who the better—if he drew her within and closed the door upon—St. Angé?
Another tap—this time upon the wooden shutter of the bedchamber!
Gaston shivered and trembled. He was not outside; he was stifling in the dark room. The light had gone entirely, and he was struggling to free himself from an intangible enemy or friend; a thing that had, unknown to himself, evolved during those isolated years among the pines, and was restraining his lower nature now.
He battled to get to that little, insistent girl. He heard her sob, a childish sob, half desire, half fear. The veins stood out on his forehead and his hands gripped the edge of his desk as he got upon his feet.
The sob outside was echoed by a stifled groan from within—then all was still.
Slow retreating steps presently sounded without. She, that sad, broken, little temptress, was going to meet the fore-ordained future that lay before. There was nothing else left for her to do. All her reserves were taken.
Then Gaston, when all was beyond his power of recall or desire, opened the window.
Softly, sweetly, the fresh morning air entered. It was a young and good morning. A morning cool and faintly tinted, a morning to soothe a hurt heart, not to stimulate it too harshly.
Gaston's lined face smoothed under the caress. His armour arose as if unseen hands guided it, and placed it again upon him. Once more he was the strong, quiet man that St. Angé had taken upon faith, and accepted without question.
As he looked at the scene, his self-respect giving him courage to meet the day, Jude Lauzoon's soft-stepping figure materialized upon the edge of the pine woods.
The humour of the situation for a moment gripped Gaston's senses. Had all St. Angé stayed awake and been on guard while the night passed? But the smile faded. How long had Jude been there? Long enough to know all, or just long enough to know half?
What should he do? If Jude knew but half, no explanation could possibly avail. If he knew all; if he had been on guard before Joyce came—been camping out with no definite purpose, since his late talk in the shack—why, then it was simply a matter to be settled between Lauzoon and Joyce. God help her! He, Gaston, could serve best by retiring. This he did physically.
He put away his treasures and locked them fast; then, flinging himself upon the pine-bough bed, dressed as he was, he soon fell into a troubled sleep.
CHAPTER III
Jared Birkdale, with a contemplative eye, looked at his daughter through the haze of his tobacco smoke as if seeing her for the first time. In a way this was so. He was not one to take heed of time or happenings. When he was not obliged to work, he was enjoying himself in his own way, and so long as nothing jarred him, life slipped by comfortably enough.
When he worked he was away, as all St. Angé men were, in the camps. Occupation, outside of Leon Tate's profession, was the same for all the men after first boyhood was past. When the logging season was over Jared, more temperate, perhaps more cruel for that reason, settled down. When he was not occupying the chair of honour at the Black Cat—given him by common consent because of his superior mental endowments—he was lounging at home and idly appreciating the plain comfort for which Joyce was responsible; a comfort Jared neither understood nor questioned.
But little Billy Falstar, the day before, with the fiendish depravity of a mischief-making child, had set the match to a fuse of gunpowder all ready for it down at the Black Cat.
Resenting the treatment Jude had given him when he had voiced his observations about Gaston and Joyce, he had gone to the tavern to nurse his wounded feelings where company and safety abounded. His fear of Jude had departed.
Several men, Birkdale among them, were sitting about when Billy, sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of necessity notice must be taken, drew their attention.
"What's up, Billy?" asked Jock Filmer good-naturedly; "shingle struck a thin place in your breeches? Go around and buy a peppermint stick. Here's a cent. Peppermint ought to be as good for a pain in your hindquarters as it is for one in your first