"Well, I should say so! And women is queer creatures, Drew. Now any one with an open mind would have been blamed glad when that poor little cuss cut loose. It never would have had a show in life; it was a big mistake from the beginning, but after it went, and was comfortably planted behind the shack, what do you think? Why, she came back one night and dug him up and put him—" In his endeavour to keep Drew from more unsafe topics, Filmer had plunged straight into an abyss.
"Put him where?" Drew felt the gripping of life. It hurt, but it stimulated him. He was suffering with his people—his people! Joyce's lovely face, as he remembered it, pleaded with him for sympathy. It was her face that had first given him assurance. She should not call in vain.
"Oh! back of where she is stopping now. They've made the spot quite a little garden plot, and—"
"Filmer, see here, tell me all about it!"
"Well, by thunder, then, here is the yarn. You see in the first place, you didn't marry Jude and Joyce as tight as an older and more experienced hand would have done. I ain't blaming you, but I've used the thought to help me to be more Christian in my views about what happened. The knot you tied was a slipknot all right."
A shadow passed over the sick man's face.
"You mean—" he began.
"I certainly do. There was a hell of a—excuse me—there was a rumpus of some sort the night the kid was buried. It ended up with a general smash-a-reen of furniture, pictures and such—and I guess Joyce came in for a share of bruises, from what has leaked out since. But the outcome was, she walked up to Gaston's shack that same evening, and what happened there hasn't got into the society news yet; but when Jude and me and Tate went up to straighten out what I thought was a drunken lie of Lauzoon's, there she was all right, wrapped up in Gaston's red blanket, his arm around her, and him asking what we was going to do about it?"
"What have you—done?" the even words came slowly.
"Nothing. Jude evaporated. I got a bit of a jog about Gaston; I ain't over virtuous, but Gaston was a sort of pattern to me, and I'd got him into my system while we was working on your house. He made me—believe in something clean and big—and I didn't enjoy seeing him spattered with mud of his own kicking up. But Lord! It ain't any of my business."