Joyce of the North Woods

by Harriet T. Comstock

Her girlhood had been a brief pause before she had entered her fore-ordained womanhood—a mere waiting for the inevitable. Thus, Dale had last beheld her—so his photograph of her had fixed her in his mind. He saw her now the same, outwardly, and the placidity of the oft-repeated type held her afar from his rugged place.

Dale himself had been tossed into the fire of temptation, in the rough. He had fallen to the depths but to rise—a better and stronger man with the dross burned out. The strong, primitiveness of him was as alien to anything that was in Ruth as if the two had never seen each other before.

Like a man struggling with the recollections of a pre-incarnation, Dale sought to find a semblance of the old passion and fire this woman had once roused in him. Not even a reflection of them could he summon. Had she entered his life two years before she might still have been able to fan the embers into flame among the ashes; now she was powerless! Love, a great overpowering love, a love having its roots in the life of the woods and primitive things—held the man for its own.

Looking into the deep eyes that once had pleaded with hers, Ruth Dale, sitting in the lonely shack, wondered why she could not cope with this critical situation. It grieved and perplexed her—but it did not daunt her. Sweet and retiring as she was, and consciously self-forgetful as she believed herself, Ruth was what ages had made her. Had her subconscious self asserted itself, it would have boldly proclaimed its absolute superiority over other women of such make as poor Joyce Lauzoon. Not merely in the other's shocking lack of moral sense—but in very essence.

John Dale had suffered—and had tried, in weak man-fashion, to solace himself. The world had helped to train Ruth Dale. While not admitting that there should be any palliation for the double code—or even the appearance of it—such women as she recognized it, and were able, under sufficiently convincing circumstances, to deal with it. There were reasons, heaven knew, why she, Ruth Dale, should be lenient with this silent man across the hearth. The white-souled innocence in her thanked God, in this brief silence, that the man was not as evil as many a man, under the circumstances, might have been. She believed Joyce's statement. It was wonderful, it was most weirdly romantic—and it could be overlooked!

It would have been absolutely impossible for Ruth Dale to conceive that John Dale had so far outgrown her in the great human essentials of life, that he had no further need of her. The life of which she was a part, the life of which she was, she and her detached kind, the shining centre, had not enough vitality to hold this man of nature to it. But the pause was growing painful.

"John—I have come to tell you all."

He overleaped the poor past, and in his hunger to know of her part in the present, said eagerly:

"Ruth, I am waiting to hear. I might have known you would come."

Then, to his surprise, the pretty sleek head was bent upon the arm of the chair, and Ruth Dale wept, as the man opposite had forgotten women could weep. The sobs shook the slender form until pity for her moved him to touch and soothe her; while the savage in him held him back. Somehow, in a rough way, it seemed retribution. He was glad she could suffer. But presently the flood ceased, Ruth looked up, tear-dimmed and quivering. The torrent had borne away much sentiment; she was able to face reality.