Argosy, Vol. 119, No. 2 — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

STRONGER THAN IRON. _ over, there was a quality in this steel- hard, slender workman that awed him— made him feel that Etienne was watching over Jeanne and protecting her. That feeling of the watchfulness of Du- bois followed Jacques Bolduc and annoyed him_like a thousand devils; yet he managed to attend to his affairs, and they prospered as always. As the days went on, however, less and less of his mind was given to the quarry and to business, and more went to . turning over and over the problem of Jeanne. It was, in essence, this: how to conquer her? He thought of it constantly and his face grew black and set: In her unguarded moments Jeanne’s eyes now showed fear mingled with horror, and this began to give Bolduc a curious kind of satisfaction. Once or twice he found him- self chuckling over it. He’d teach her where the heart of a wife belonged! He did not know just how at the time, but he’d be able to beat this woman’s game sooner or later, One day, when he was in the tool-house at the quarry, the idea came to him. In looking, half indifferently, to the condi- tion of the drills his hand came in contact with a light bar of iron such as is used about a forge. His fingers closed around it. Two or three feet long and reasonably stout—it would bend a little under sufficient pressure, but it would not break. Not to the touch of unaided human strength. Into the twisted channels of his mind came an analogy between the metal and his will. He was iron! They could not break him! He set a hand to each end of the bar and bent it half double. Behold! It was not broken! And the picture of what he would do to hold his wife forever came to -him as clearly in all its details as any conception he had ever formed. He laughed so that the sound filled the little building—and went out with the bar swinging in his grasp. After that Bolduc -was neither at his house nor at the quarry through the after- noons of an unbroken week. He had been so erratic in his movements that no one ex- cept his wife noticed that he disappeared from the village. She saw that he went off along the main highway, making good prog- ress now that the autumn frosts had hard- ened the ground, and believed-that he was 189 walking for exercise, to clear his mind of the | miasmas which she had seen gathering there As the week passed his looks were still dark and he still kept his habit of laughing silently to-himself, but she thought that the relaxation had done him good and some of her fear went away. She began to believe that he was going to recover. Also she had more than once seen Etienne Duboise following after Jacques, keeping himself well out of sight: and she had the belief that Etienne was watching to see that no harm came to her. _In this double feeling of security she slept with the depth of exhaustion on the night that ended the week of her husband’s ap- parent improvement—so soundly that when she began to awake with a vague fear in her heart and a sense of physical distress it took what seemed an age to come back to con- sciousness. At last her eyes opened and her vision groped in the dimly-lighted bed- room. : _ She saw Jacques standing, fully dressed, beside the bed; he leaned upon his crutches, balancing himself with his thick arms hang- ing loose and his fingers drawing in and out. He laughed. She had heard such a laugh once when she visited the great asylum for the insane at Mastai. She tried to spring up, and found that bonds held her wrists and ankles. She tried to scream, but there was something bound into her mouth that held her tongue down and choked her ut- Be terance. Bolduc bent and flung her over his shoulder, as he would have carried a sack of flour, and passed a long leather strap under his arm and over her body so that she would not fall while his hands were attending to the crutches. Then he stumped out of the room and the house, and started purpose- fully through the village. It was near ddwn ——she knew that by the feeling and the hint in the sky—but Visitation had not yet awakened and no help would come forth to her from those dark and silent houses. Where was Etienne, whose watchfulness she had believed in? Surely he would come— it must be that God would send him! She closed her eyes and prayed; and mercifully ‘she went from prayer into temporary ob- livion. JOOKS.-GO com 2.