Part 31 (2/2)

The Black Cat felt no resentment toward him after the first few months.

His English became blurred with regard to grammar; the local speech was good enough for him. When Jock's Past became troublesome, as it had done from the very first, the Black Cat had consolation for its latest recruit; and, while he did not sink quite so far as some of the natives, the shortcoming was attributed more to youth than to the putting on of airifications, as Tate said.

In a boyish, off-hand way, Filmer had always regarded Gaston as a sign-board in an unexplored country. If things ever pressed too close, Filmer believed Gaston would point him to safety.

A mystic something held them together. A common interest, consciously cast into oblivion, but perfectly tangible and not to be denied, was the unspoken pa.s.sport in their intercourse.

Later, during the building of Drew's bungalow and their joint sympathy for, and with, Joyce, Filmer had acknowledged Gaston, as a superior and, spiritually, regarded him as a leader in an interesting adventure.

Gaston, the night when he faced Jude and him with the pointed question, ”What you going to do about it?” had fallen from Jock's high opinion, and the crash had affected him to a painful extent.

”Oh! what's the good?” he had finally concluded.

Another friends.h.i.+p that had been formed in the lonely woods yet remained to him, and he made the most of that. Drew's personality had stirred Jock's emotions from the start. To look forward to a renewal of the companions.h.i.+p was a distinct pleasure in the time when the dust of Gaston's fallen image was blinding his eyes and smarting his heart.

Drew came, sick but unconquered. All the chivalry in Filmer rose to the call. He gave his time to the young minister. Using up the little money he had earned as builder, resigning his chance to go into camp, he devoted himself to Drew day and night. He became one of the family at the bungalow and a jocose familiarity was as much a part of Jock's liking for a person, as were his tireless patience and capacity for single-minded service.

Drew's maiden aunt, prim, proper and worldly-wise, was as much Aunt Sally to Filmer as she was to her niece and nephew. Jock jollied the aristocratic lady as freely as he did Drew, toward whom he held the tolerant admiration that he had given him from the beginning. But poor Jock was not to have his own easy planning of the new situation in all directions. Constance Drew took a hand in the game, and Jock, with trailing plume, plodded on behind her.

If _he_ could gibe and tease, she could bring him about with her cool audacity and comical dignity.

The girl's splendid physique, her athletic tendencies, her endurance and pluck, compelled Jock's masculine admiration. Her love for her brother, her tenderness and cheerfulness toward him, won his heart; but her mental make-up, her strange seriousness where her own private interests were concerned, caused the young fellow no end of amus.e.m.e.nt and delight.

He had never seen any one in the least like her, and the new sensation held him captive.

Poor Jock! He was never again to walk through life without a chain and ball; but little he heeded that while he had strength and spirit to drag them.

With Drew's partial recovery the bungalow household lost its head a little. Aunt Sally's grat.i.tude overflowed into every house in St. Ange.

She felt as if the natives, not the pine-laded air, had been instrumental in this regained health and joyousness.

”I can never thank you enough,” was her constant greeting; and so sincere was her grat.i.tude that eventually the back doors of the squalid houses opened to her unconsciously--and of true friends.h.i.+p there is no greater proof in a primitive village. Sitting in their kitchens, it was easy for her to reach down into their hearts, and many a St. Ange woman poured her troubles into Aunt Sally's ears, and went forever after with uplifted head.

”Why, my dear,” the old lady said to Ralph, after Peggy Falstar had taken her into her confidence, ”these people are much like others, only they have the rough bark on. They are a great deal more vital--the bark has, somehow, kept the sap richer.”

Drew laughed heartily.

”The polis.h.i.+ng takes something away, Auntie,” he replied. ”The bark is hard to get through; it's tough and p.r.i.c.kly and not always lovely, but it's the sap that counts in every case, and that's what I used to tell you and Connie. Every time I tapped these people up here, I saw and felt the rich possibilities.”

”Now, you go straight to sleep,” his aunt always commanded at that juncture.

She was not yet able to face the probability of a final settlement in these backwoods, but she saw with alarm that her nephew was planting his hopes deep and accepting the inevitable.

”It's all such a horrible sacrifice of his young life,” she confided to Constance.

”His young life!” the girl had returned with a straight, clear look.

”Why, I begin to think the only life he has, Auntie, is what St. Ange offers--he must take that or nothing. Oh! if only that little beast down there in New York had had the courage of a mouse, and the imagination of a mole, she might have made Ralph's life--this life--a thing to go thundering down into history! It's splendid up here! It's the sort of thing that makes your soul feel like something tangible. My!” And with that, on a certain mid-winter day, the young woman strode forth.

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