Argosy, Vol. 119, No. 2 — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. > KS Ss es : = a “a oan ie = . a - would go to you! STRONGER THAN IRON. ‘“T must not, my Etienne! If I am forced to this marriage I must go to it as I But pray, and I will pray!” ! : “You will not be!” he cried, with a sud- den stiffness in his slender but well muscled body. “Tl take you away—we'll elope!” A swift. brightness swept into her face as she lifted it; to be half obliterated imme- diately by doubt. After all she was hardly yet a woman, thought Dubois. Céuld he raise her to his fierce rebellion? To his defiance of the customs of their people and the opinion of the parish? | “ Would it be right, Etienne?” _ “More right than for you to marry with- out love! =. , ae “Eh bien!” Her eyes searched the deli- cate clouds of the horizon as though for wisdom. “I will ask le bon Dieu about that and we-will talk about it to-morrow.” She touched his hand with a movement light as air and walked swiftly away, toward the road that went twisting down to the vil- lage. He watched until her black head dis- appeared over the edge of the cliff. But there was no to-morrow for Etienne Dubois—no to-morrow for his hope or his happiness. The next evening at sunset Jeanne was not there, nor any evening after that for a week. She was not seen in the streets of the village and none of the frantic, although discreet, efforts that. he made to learn something of her availed. Only an indefinable gleam in the eyes of Jacques Bolduc gave any message to Dubois—and that he could not read. 7 Mile Jeanne Patry was seen again by the people of Visitation at the end of the week when she rode to the church to be married to Bolduc. The hard, unalterable fact that she came out of that sacred place bound to Jacques Bolduc until death, struck Etienne as simply and as horribly as though one of the rocks that he handled every day had risen up of its own volition and crushed him. - He noted the absence of the boss at the quarry, heard rumors, and was in time to see her bent head as she stepped into a carriage—Mme. Bolduc. | | Without-coat or hat or-so much as a piece of cold pork in his pocket Dubois set out for the shelter of the mountains, driven by an 185 instinct that made him hide the utter misery of his grief even from his own family. He went on that night until he fell—to get up again and go on, when a sudden madness of Tage against fate gave him the strength. Through the night and the day following he walked and fell, prayed and cursed, and — shook his fists at the world. It was late the third day when. he entered his own house. But when he did go back his head was held erect? his gaze met the questioning glances of his people without faltering, and the only weakness that was in him was that of the body. He had put the thought of Jeanne far away; he kept it within his mental vision still, but it was like — a gleaming white shrine, seen across inter- minable fields. : | So he moved through life for weeks; grave and self-possessed and immeasurably older than the boy who had gone into the mountains. Each day he met a flash of tri- umph in the face of Jacques Bolduc: and each day he looked calmly on that broad, square-jawed countenance with indifference. He had gone into the mountains hating Bolduc—now he pitied him. The foreman was now good natured-enough, but he drove —drove the men to a greater production of the quarried stone of Visitation and thus drove on toward the success which he now boasted would be his. He meant to be- come an owner within a year. Not until well toward the end of that summer did Etienne again meet Jeanne face to face. It happened without warning, when he turned a corner on his way home from work. He was very tired; and this was the great test of his power over himself, the test that he had been dreading and trying to prepare for. Her eyes flashed up from the boards of the narrow sidewalk and met his squarely. For a second they looked at each other, within an arm’s length, and read what had been written in eye and face. went on, without speaking, and Dubois found himself walking very straight. Now, indeed, was he sure that he was master of himself. He was certain of this notwithstanding what he had seen in the eyes of Jeanne Bol- duc. Deeper than any pain or surprise that - nin Then they — ,OOKS O) E(0) com