Joyce of the North Woods | Page 5

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. Ang�� 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