Joyce of the North Woods | Page 8

couch near the hearth piled with pine cushions covered with odds and ends of material that had come into a man's possession from limited sources. A table, home-made, and some Hillcrest chairs completed the furnishings, except for the china and cooking utensils that ornamented shelves and hooks around the room.
An inner door opened into Gaston's bedchamber and sanctum. No one but himself ever entered there.
There was a broad desk below the one wide window of that room and a revolving chair before it. A boxed-in affair, filled with fragrant pine boughs, answered for a bed. This was covered with white sheets and a pair of fine, handsome, red blankets. An iron-bound chest stood by the bed with a padlock strong enough to guard a king's treasure, and around the walls of the room there were rows of books, interrupted here and there to admit a picture of value and beauty out of all proportion to the other possessions.
Over the window hung a large-faced clock that kept faultless time, and announced the fact hourly in a mellow, but convincing, voice. Just below the window and over the desk, was a pipe-rack with pipes to fit every mood and fancy of a lonely man. There were the short stumpy ones, with the small bowls for the brief whiff when one did not choose to keep company with himself for long, but was willing to be sociable for a moment. There were the comfortable, self-caring pipes that obligingly kept lighted between long puffs while the master was looking over old papers, or considering future plans. Then there were the long-stemmed, deep-bellied friends for hours when Memory would have her way and wanted the misty, fragrant setting for her pictures that so comforted or tormented the man who wooed them.
By the rude desk Gaston was sitting on the evening that Jude and Joyce were clinging to each other in the house under the maples. His hands were plunged deep in the pockets of his corduroy trousers, his long legs extended, and his head thrown back; he was smoking one of his memory-filled pipes, and his eyes were fixed upon the rafters of the room.
He was a good-looking fellow in the neighbourhood of thirty-five; browned by an out-of-door life, but marked by a delicacy of feature and expression.
The strength that was in Gaston's face might puzzle a keen reader of character as to whether it were native, or the result of years of well-fought battles. Once the will was off guard, a certain softness of the eyes, and a twitching of the mouth muscles came into play; but the will was rarely off guard during Gaston's waking hours.
An open book lay upon the desk, and the student lamp cast a full light upon the words that had caught the reader's thoughts after the events of the day and their outcome.
"In the life of every man there occurs at least one epoch when the spirit seems to abandon the body, and elevating itself above mortal affairs just so far as to get a comprehensive and general view, makes this an estimate of its humanity, as accurate as it is possible, under the circumstances, to that particular spirit. The soul here separates itself from its own idiosyncrasy, or individuality, and considers its own being, not as appertaining solely to itself, but as a portion of the universal Ego. All important good resolutions of character are brought about at these crises of life; and thus it 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