Joyce of the North Woods | Page 9

is our sense of self which debases and keeps us
debased."
Poe and Gaston were great friends. The living man knew that had he
known Poe in the body he would have feared and detested him, but
there was no doubt he had left trails of glory in his wake, for the
comfort of struggling humanity, if only one could lose sight of the man,
in the spiritual effulgence of his genius.
Gaston, in his detached life, practised many arts upon his individuality
and character. He had time and to spare to "abandon the body," and he
was growing more and more confident, that in these self-imposed crises
he was gaining not only strength, but a keen and absorbing interest in

others. If the sense of self debased, then this detachment was his great
salvation.
The rings of smoke curled upward, lost shape and formed a haze of
blueness. The heat became intense, and the noises of the summer night
magnified. The windows and doors were set wide, Gaston's
wood-trained senses were alert even in this abstraction.
"What next?" That was the question. He had just come through a
conflict with flying colours. He was flushed with victory, but the after
details annoyed him. With the waning enthusiasm of achievement,
from his point of vantage of abandonment, he was trying to see beyond
this confident hour--see into the plain common days when a sense of
self would control him, tempt him, lure, and perhaps, betray him. What
then?
The realization of Joyce Birkdale's womanhood a time back had shaken
him almost as much as it had the girl herself.
It had all been so peaceful, so elemental and satisfying before: that
companionship with the little lonely, aspiring, neglected child. She was
so responsive and joyous; so eager to learn, so childishly interested in
the fairy tales of another sort of existence that he kept from decay by
repeating to her. And then that sudden, upleaping flame in the
purple-black eyes. The fierce rush of hot, live blood to the pale face.
The grip of those small work-stained hands as they sought dumbly to
stay the trembling until he had taken them into his firm control.
Well, confronted by the blinding flash, he had acted the man. That was
good. He had not acted thoughtlessly, either. He had sent the quivering
little thing away quietly, and with no sense of bitterness, until he had
threshed the matter out. And then in the Long Meadow, he had set the
girlish feet upon the trail he had blazed out for them during the nights
of temptation and days of lonely self-abnegation.
It was a hard, stumbling way he had fixed upon. His heart yearned over
the girl even as he urged her on. But Joyce was demanding her
woman's rights. Demanding them none the less insistently, because she

was unconscious of their nature. He knew, and he must go before her;
but there was small choice of way.
When he had held her in his arms out there in the open, he had bidden
her farewell with much the same feeling that one has who kisses the
unconscious lips of a child, and leaves him to the doubtful issue of a
necessary surgical operation.
But the victory over self was his, and Joyce was on Life's table. There
was a sort of feverish comfort now in contemplating what might have
been. Many a man--and he knew this only too well--would have put up
a strong plea for the opposite course.
What was he resigning her to at the best? There was no conceit in the
thought that, had he beckoned, Joyce would have leaped into the circle
of his love and protection. Not in any low or self-seeking sense would
the girl have responded--of that, too, he was aware; but as a lovely
blossom caressed by favouring sun and light, forgetting the slime and
darkness of its origin, she might have burst into a bloom of beauty.
Yes, beauty! Gaston fiercely thought. Instead--there was honour! His
honour and hers, and the benediction of Society--if Society ever
penetrated to the North Solitude.
Joyce would forget her soul vision, she would marry Jock Filmer--no; it
was Jude Lauzoon who, for some unknown, girlish reason, she had
preferred when she had been cast out from the circle of his, Gaston's
protection.
Yes, she would marry Jude--and Jock might have made her laugh
occasionally--Jude, never! She would live in cramped quarters, and
have a family of children to drag her from her individual superiority to
their everlasting demands upon her. Perhaps Jude would treat her,
eventually, as other St. Angé husbands treated their wives. At that
thought Gaston's throat contracted, but a memory of the girl's strange,
uplifted dignity gave him heart to hope.
Again the reverse of the