Read Ebook: The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525 by Weise Arthur James

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Ebook has 2353 lines and 136257 words, and 48 pages

From the southern edge of the meadow a tall man was swinging along with easy strides. He carried his broad-brimmed hat in his right hand and waved it as if in greeting. From the opposite direction a girl was approaching. She wore a blue-checked gown, and her pale hair seemed to shine in the dimming light. She wore no hat, and she walked with the quick freedom of a child who longed to reach something precious.

Midway of the meadow the girl and man met. He stretched out his arms, and they closed about the slim form.

Then he bent his head over the fair one on his breast--but he did not kiss it! Jude was burning and palpitating. He strained his hearing, forgetting time and space. They were talking, and he would never know what they said.

Presently the girl slipped from the enfolding arms, and, clinging to the man's hands, looked up into his face. Sometimes she bowed her head, and once she passed her hand across her eyes as if to wipe away tears. Then the man drew her close again. He raised the face that was crushed against his shoulder; he kissed the brow, the eyes, the chin--and then the lips.

Something blinded Jude. Something thick and hot like blood, and when he could see again, the two had parted. The man stood with bared head watching the slim, drooping figure as it retraced its steps with never a backward turn. When it was gone he replaced his hat and took his way--this time, toward the Black Cat.

Jude stood alone on his hilltop and watched the lights spring to life in cottage and tavern. The stars twinkled above him in the calm evening gloaming. The little river trilled a vesper hymn as it felt its way along the dark rocky path--and then tears came to Jude's relief, impotent, boyish, weak tears, such tears as he had not shed since his father and mother lay dead, and in childish fright and sorrow he had not known what to do next. But now, as then, he pulled himself together and set his teeth grimly.

He did the wisest thing he could have done. He went down the hill and strode toward the Birkdale house.

But he did not walk alone. Almost forgotten memories rose sharply and kept him company as he pushed on to meet his Fate.

Womankind in St. Ang? was monotonous. There was a shading of individuality in the girls and newly-wed women, but it faded soon into the dull drab that seemed the only possible wearing-colour of the place. Occasionally, though, the sameness had been relieved by a vivid touch, but only for a short hour. The Fate who snips the threads, had invariably clipped such colouring from the St. Ang? design, and tossed it aside as useless.

Jude remembered Marsena Riddall. What a woman she had been! What a menace to man's rights and woman's position.

She had demanded, and got her husband's wages as he returned from camp. She met him at the edge of the North Wood, and held him up, morally and physically. That she kept a clean and respectable house; that her children were well fed, clothed and cared for, had not counted to her credit one jot among the powers that be. Her husband was not safe on the man's side of the Black Cat screen. At ten o'clock, did Riddall brave his chances to that hour, Marsena would march boldly into the arena and claim her quarry. If a man rose to expostulate, Marsena was equal to him with tongue and wit. Masculine superiority trembled during Marsena's reign, which lasted five years; then Fate downed her.

Riddall was called away from his jailer by the command that even Marsena could not defy, and she and her children faced life in a village where a man was an absolute necessity unless there was money to take his place. Jude grimly smiled as he recalled how the men and boys gave Marsena and her brood a jeering send-off as the rattling train bore them away soon after Riddall had been laid behind the disused church.

So while Marsena was still in Jude's memory, he came upon the deserted and decaying cottage where once Lola Laval had sung her pretty French-Canadian song.

It was odd how Lola came always with that song accompaniment. Try as he might, even now, in this disordered moment, Jude heard the rippling little lark song rise and fall in the fragrant darkness.

Jude, while but a boy, liked to draw water for Lola and run her errands when young Pierre, the husband, was in camp. When the logging season was over, Lola's cottage vied with the Black Cat in popularity. Pierre was a noted card player, but, oh! Lola's song sounded above the slap of pasteboard and the click of glasses. How pretty she was--and how the women hated her! The men were eager to serve her. She had no need to command; her desires seemed granted before she voiced them--poor, pretty Lola!

Alouette, alouette, alouette, alouette. Oh, alouette, chantez alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai. Alouette, chantez alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai le bec, Je te plumerai le bec A le bec, A le bec, Alouette, Alouette.

Lola had not lasted long; only nineteen she was when Pierre in his jealousy struck the light from her eyes by a cruel blow, and the song fled from her lips; then taking warning from a well-directed signal from Beacon Hill, he had sought the Southern Solitude just before Justice, in the form of the Hillcrest constable, came stalking into St. Ang?.

But the song was not dead. Again and again a man or woman would revive it and so it had become a part of the place. To Jude, now, it was painfully evident as he again plunged forward; it followed him sweetly, mockingly as it used to when Lola sent it after him to keep him from being afraid as he left her for his lonely home; he, a neglected little boy.

And now here was Joyce! With a stinging consciousness Jude realized this new personality that heretofore he had not suspected. Even as jealous anger spurred him on, a vague something he knew awaited him, calmed him and made him cautious.

While he longed to grip and command the situation, he was aware of a power in Joyce--a power he had unconsciously, perhaps, 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 silence, and a white, hot light.

"Yes, by God, I do want to, and if yer that kind I'll take--my share and chance along with the rest of 'em."

It was his own voice, loud and brutal, that smote the better part of him that stood afar and alone; a something quite different from the beast who spoke, and which felt a mad interest in wondering how she would take the words.

"You go and sit down over there!"

No clash of steel or dash of icy water could have had the effect those quiet words had, combined with the immovable calm out of which they came.

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