Jo looked at Donelle blankly.
What the two had thought, dreamed, and hoped they, themselves, had not
fully realized until now. In the passing of Alice Lindsay they felt a
door closing upon them.
Donelle was crying bitterly. At the moment she felt only the personal
loss, the sense of hurt; later the conviction grew upon her that what
had unconsciously been upholding her was taken away. She had been
hoping, hoping. The blow given her by Pierre Gavot, the paralyzing
effect of it, had worn away during the secluded winter months; she was
young, the world was hers, nothing could really take it away. Nothing
had really happened in Point of Pines and they all knew! The larger
world would not care, either. She had adjusted herself and in silence
the fear and shame had departed, she had even grown to look at Jo as
if--it were not true! But now, all was different.
"This man, this Mr. Law," Jo comforted, "will have some plan. And there
are always my linens, Donelle, and if there is a boarder----"
But Donelle shook her head; a little tightening of her lips made them
almost hard.
"This Mr. Law does not come, Mamsey," she said, "and besides, what could
I do in that big, dreadful city with just him?"
"There would be that Professor Revelle," Jo's words were mere words, and
she, herself, knew it. Donelle again shook her head.
But what humiliated her most of all was that she had let Jo see the
truth! All the fine courage that had borne her from the Walled House to
Point of Pines; where was it? She had meant to make up to poor Jo for
the bitter wrong that was a hideous secret between them, and all the
time there had been the longing for release; the expectation of it.
"I am like my father," shuddered the girl, "just as that awful Pierre
said--only I did not run away."
With this slight comfort she began her readjustment, but her hope was
dead. She struggled to forget that it had ever existed, and she put her
violin away.
This hurt Jo cruelly, but she did not speak. Instead she wrote, in her
queer, cramped handwriting, to Anderson Law.
It was a stilted, independent letter, for poor Jo was struggling between
the dread of losing her self-respect and her fear that Donelle should
lose her opportunity.
Law received the letter and read it while young James Norval was in his
studio.
"Jim, do you remember that girl that Alice Lindsay discovered up in
Canada?" he said; he was strangely moved and amused by Jo's words.
"The little Moses?" Norval was standing in front of an easel upon which
rested one of his own pictures, one he had brought for Law's verdict.
"What?" Law stared at Norval.
"Oh! wasn't that the girl that some woman said she had adopted out of a
Home?"
"Yes. What of it?"
"Only a joke, Andy. You remember Pharaoh's daughter _said_ she took
Moses out of the bulrushes. Don't scowl, Andy; you don't look pretty."
"Listen to this letter, Jim, and don't be ribald." Law read the letter.
"What are you going to do, Andy?" Norval was quite serious now.
"As soon as I can I'm going up there, and take a look at things."
"You are going to help the girl?"
"Yes, if I can."
"After all, Andy, can you? Could Alice? The girl would have to be
rather large-sized to overcome her handicaps, wouldn't she?"
"Alice had faith."
"I know, but a man might muddle things."
"I shall run up, however." Law was still scowling.
Then Norval changed the subject.
"How's Helen?" he asked, deep sympathy in his eyes. The insane wife of
Anderson Law was rarely mentioned, but her recent illness made the
question necessary.
"Her body grows stronger, her mind----" Law's face was grim and hard.
"Andy, can't you be just to yourself? Have the years taught you
nothing? There can be but one end for Helen and if you see to her
comfort, you have every right to your freedom."
"Jim, I cannot do it! God, Man! I've had my temptations. When I saw
her so ill, I saw--Jim, I saw hope; but while she lives I cannot cast
her off. It would be like stealing something when she wasn't looking."
"But Lord, Andy! Helen can never come back. They all tell you that."
"It seems so, but while life remains she might. She loved me, Jim. The
woman I loved in her died when our child came but I cannot forget. I'm
a fool, but when I've been most tempted the thought has always come: how
could I go on living if she _did_ recover and found that I had deserted
her?"
"You're worn to the edge, Andy, better chuck the whole thing and come
off for a vacation with me. But first look at this, tell me what you
think."
Law's face relaxed. He shifted his burden to where it belonged, and
walked over to the easel.
"Umph!" he said, and stepped to the right and to the left, his head
tilted, his eyes screwed up.
"Another, eh?"
"Yes."
"Jim, what in thunder ails you to let a woman play the devil with you?"
"You ask that, Andy?"
"Yes. Our cases are quite different, Helen's dead, but Katherine knows
damned well what she is doing."
"She doesn't, Andy. In one way she's as dead as Helen, she hasn't waked
up."
"And you think she will? You think the time will come when she can see
your genius and get her little carcass out of the way?"
"Hold up, Andy! I came to have you criticise my picture, not my wife."
But Law did not pay any attention.
"She ought to leave you alone, if she cannot understand. No human being
has a right to twist another one out of shape."
Norval retreated; but he was too distraught to refuse any haven for his
perplexity.
"After all," he said, "there's no more reason for my having my life than
for Katherine having hers. She wanted a husband and we were married. If
I had known that I couldn't be--a husband, I might have saved the day,
but I didn't, Law, I didn't. Getting married seemed part of the game,
nearly everyone does get married. And then, well, the trouble began.
There are certain obligations that go with being a husband. Katherine
has never exacted more than her due only----"
"Only, her husband happened to be a genius and Katherine doesn't know a
genius when she sees one. From the best intentions she's driving you to
hell, Jim."
"Oh! well, I may be able to get the best of it, Andy, and paint even if
I do keep to the well-trodden paths of husbands. A fellow can't call
himself a genius to his own wife, you know, especially when he hasn't
proved it. One hates to be an ass. You see, Andy, when all's said and
done, I can wring a thing or two out. This is good, isn't it?"
The two men looked at the picture.
"It's devilish good, but it has been wrung out! Jim, it's no use. The
home-loving, society-trotting, movie-show husband role will be the end
of you."
"Well, if I slam my studio door in Katherine's face and leave her to go
about alone, or sit by herself, that would be the end of her. Andy, the
worst of it is that when she puts it up to me, I see she's right. We're
married and she only wants her share."
"I suppose this meant," Law was gravely contemplating the picture,
"nights of prowling and days when you felt as if you'd kill any one who
spoke to you?"
"Something like that, and all the while Katherine was entertaining and
I'd promised to help. I didn't go near them once."
"Umph!"
"So you see, Testy, it isn't Katherine's fault. The two roles don't
jibe, that's the long and short of it."
"And your love," Law was thinking aloud. "Your love and sense of
right----"
"I'm not a cad, Andy."
"Leave this thing here for a day or two, Jim," Law raised the picture
and carried it to the window. "I never saw such live light," he said.
"Where did you get it."
"I--I was lying under the Palisades one night and just at daybreak I saw
it. It's a home product, though it looks Oriental, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does."
There was silence for a few moments, then Norval asked in quite his
natural manner, "And you won't come away for a clip, Andy?"
"Not until autumn, Jim, then I'm going to run up into Canada."
"All right. Having got the--the live light out of my system, and if you
won't play with me, I'm going to coax Katherine to take me to any summer
orgy she wants to. I owe it to her, she hasn't had a good dance for
ages."
"Jim, you're a fool or----"
"A modest reflection of yourself, Testy."
But something snapped that summer which sent the Norvals and Anderson
Law whirling in widely different directions. In the upheaval Donelle
and her small affairs were forgotten.
Mrs. Law died suddenly.
The doctors sent for Law and he got there in time.
"She may, toward the end," they told him, "have a gleam of
consciousness. Such things do happen. You would want to be with her."
"Yes, in any case," Law replied and he took his place by the bed. In
his heart was that cold fear which many know in the presence of death.
The long afternoon hours drifted by. The face on the pillow, so
tragically young because it did not show the tracings of experience,
scarcely moved. Toward evening Law went to the west window to raise the
shade, there was a particularly splendid sky. When he came back he saw
that a change had come; the change, but instead of blotting out
expression in his wife's eyes, it was giving expression, meaning, to
what had been, for so long, vacuous. Law wanted to call for help, but
instead he sank limply into the chair and took the hand that was groping
toward his.
"I'm glad you're here----" said the strained, hoarse voice.
"I am glad, too, Helen."
For years Law had not addressed his wife by name. That would have seemed
sacrilege.
"Have you been here all the time?"
"Yes, dear."
"That was like you! And the baby; it is all right?"
"Yes, quite all right."
"It is a boy?"
Law struggled, then said:
"Yes, Helen, a boy."
"I'm glad. I want him to be like his father."
She smiled vaguely; the light went out of her eyes, she drifted back.
There were a few hours more of blank waiting, then it was over.
A week later Law left a note for Norval.
"I'm sorry, old chap, that I could not see you. Pass my regrets along.
I'm off for the ends of the earth, and I've neglected buying a return
ticket."
And just when Norval was most sensitive to shock; just when Law's
trouble and desertion left him in the deepest gloom, Katherine
devastated the one area, which he believed to be sane and impregnable,
by a most unlooked-for assault.
She was the sort of woman who comes slowly and secretively to
conclusions. She was as unconscious of this herself as others were.
Apparently she was a most conservative, obvious person, a person with an
overwhelming sense of duty and obligation and untiring in her efforts to
prove this.
Since Helen Law's death, Norval had gone as little to his studio as
possible; had devoted himself to Katherine; had condoned her coldness
and indifference.
"I deserve all she gives," he thought and rose to greater effort. He
even got to the point of noticing her beauty, her grace, and concluded
that they, and what they represented, meant more than paint pots and
canvases.
"A man cannot have everything," he confessed, "he must make a choice."
Virtually Norval had made his choice, when Katherine blotted out, for
the time being, all his power to think straight.
He was trying to plan for the summer, he was patiently setting forth the
charms of the watering places he loathed but which promised the most
dissipation.
"I am not going away with you, Jim." Katharine's soft face grew hard.
"I have a duty to myself, I see it at last. All my life I have
sacrificed everything for you, Jim."
This was humiliating, but Norval assented.
"Even my talent!" Katherine flung this out defiantly.
They were in their home, having one of their endless get-no-where talks.
Norval meant to do his full part, but the trouble was that he had no
part in the actual life of his pretty, commonplace wife.
"Your talent, Katherine, your talent?"
Norval did not question this derisively, but as if she had told him of
having an eye in the middle of her forehead.
"You have not even been interested enough to notice." This with
bitterness.
Norval, for some idiotic reason, or lack of it, stared at the middle of
her smooth, white brow.
"I've written this; I did not tell you until it was between covers."
Norval took a book she offered as he might have taken a young and very
doubtful baby.
"It looks ripping!" he said.
"It--it is well spoken of," Katherine's eyes were tear-dimmed.
Norval gingerly handed the book back.
"You--you don't even care, now! You won't open it. I have dedicated it
to you. The first copy is yours. I don't believe you'll even read it."
"I will, Kit," Norval grabbed the book back fiercely. He was so stunned
that he could not think at all.
Katherine writing a book! It would be as easy to think of her riding
the circus ring.
"I'll sit up nights reading it, Kit. That's what folks always do, they
don't lay it down until the last word, even if it takes all night! What
is it about?"
"It is called 'The Awakened Soul.'" Katherine tried to repress a sob.
Her anger, too, was rising.
"Good God!" gasped Norval, forgetting his wife's hatred of profanity.
Katherine reached for the book and held it to her hurt heart.
"You are selfish, you are an egotist, Jim. Your talent, your freedom to
develop it have made you callous, brutal. There are more ways of
killing a woman than to--beat her. Now that I am sure I have a sacred
spark that must be kept alive, I shall demand my rights; freedom equal
to your own!"
"Of course, Kit, if you've gone in for this sort of thing, we'll have to
shift our bases a little. I know that."
"Jim, we're not fitted for each other!" The sob rose triumphant and
because in his soul Norval knew that she spoke the truth, he was furious
and ready to fight.
"Rot!" he cried. "Now see here, Kit, don't get the temperament bug;
there's nothing in it! You can do your job and yet keep clean and safe;
do it best by playing the game honest. Good God! I haven't smutted up
my life along with my canvas, you don't have to. It's the fashion,
thank the Lord, to be decent, although gifted. Your book has run you
down, old girl. Let's cut and forget it!"
The indignation of the narrow, weak, and stubborn swayed Katherine
Norval.
"Jim," she said, gulping and holding desperately to "The Awakened Soul,"
"I think we should be--be--divorced."
"Punk!" Norval snapped his fingers. "Unless you've given cause, there
isn't any."
"I--I cannot live under present conditions, Jim."
"All right, we'll get a new set."
"You are making fun and I am deadly in earnest."
"You mean you want to chuck me?" Norval frowned, but something was
steadying him.
"I mean that I must live my life."
"Of course, Katherine, this all sounds as mad as a March hare, and it's
August, you know. Why, we couldn't get free if we wanted to, we're too
decent."
"But you're not happy, Jim."
"Well, who is, all the time?"
"And, Jim, you do your best work when you are leaving me horribly alone.
I've noticed." This was another hideous truth and it stung.
"I've done my best, Kit," he said lamely.
"And it hasn't worked, Jim. I will not stand in your way. Though I
die, I will do my duty, now I seek!"
"Don't, Kit, for heaven's sake, don't."
"I mean every word that I say. I will not submit longer to being--being
eliminated. I must have reality of some kind. Jim, you don't fit into
home life. Our baby died. You can forget me, and I have had to forget
you. I want my freedom."
For a full moment they stared helplessly over the chasm that for years
had been widening without their knowing it. They could not touch each
other now, reach as they might.
"I--why--I'm stunned," said Norval.
"I alone have seen it coming," Katherine went on. "If my staying made
you happier, better, I would stay even now; but it does not, Jim."
And Norval continued to stare.
"I feel I am doing you and--and your Art a great service by letting you
go." Katherine looked the supreme martyr.
"On what grounds?" mumbled Jim, "'An Awakened Soul'?"
This was most unfortunate.
"I'm leaving for California to-morrow!" Katherine spoke huskily, she no
longer cried.
"Everything ready, only good-bye, eh? Well, Kit, you've worked
efficiently once you began."
They looked at each other like strangers.
"I shall not follow you. When you want me, come to me. My soul has not
been awakened as yours has, I'll keep on right here and fly the flag
over the ruins. My God! This _is_ a shot out of a clear sky."
"Jim, I've seen the clouds gathering ever since----"
"When, Kit?"
"That first picture that Andy said meant genius, not plain talent, and
since the baby went."
"Poor girl."
"But not so poor as I might have been," Katherine again clutched her
book proudly.
"It's the heat, Kit. By autumn we'll be rational. A vacation apart will
fill up the cracks."
"Until then, Jim, we'll be friends?"
"Friends, Kit, friends!" Norval clutched the straw. On this basis a
sense of relief came.
And so Katherine went to California--and Jim Norval?
*CHAPTER XIII*
*THE INEVITABLE*
Jim Norval took to the Canadian north-west.
He had meant to be quite tragic and virtuous. He had meant to stay in
the studio and fight out the biggest problem of his life, but he did
not. Undoubtedly the shock Katherine had given him stunned him at first.
But, as he revived, he was the victim of all sorts of devils which,
during his life, had been suppressed by what he believed was character.
Perhaps if the season had been less humid and Anderson Law had been near
with his plain ideals and picturesque language, things might have been
different. But the humidity was infernal and Law obliterated.
The man is the true conservative. Realizing how cramping this is, he
has verbally relegated the emotion to woman; but he has not escaped
actuality. No matter how widely a man's fancy may wander, his
convictions must be planted on something. Norval, having married,
believing himself in love, took root. Now that he was confronted by the
possibility of either shrivelling or clutching to something else, he
found he could make no decision in the old environment. For a week he
contemplated following Katherine, it would be easier than floundering
around without her. The next week he decided to telegraph. He grew
calm as he wondered whether it would be wiser to capitulate; take the
position of an outraged but masterful husband, or to say he was on the
verge of death?
Then something over which Norval had no control calmed and held him.
"A summer apart will hurt neither of us," he concluded, and took the
train for Banff. Mentally and physically, he let go. He kept to the
silent places, the deep woods and big rivers. He took no note of time.
Once a letter was forwarded from Anderson Law. Law wrote:
When I came to, I found myself on the way to Egypt. It was too late to
turn back, Jim, or I would have done so and got you to come with me, I
can bear folks now. If you think well of it, come along anyway. And,
by the way, in the general jamboree do you know I completely forgot the
little girl of Alice Lindsay's, fiddling away up in Canada. I do not
usually forget such things, and I'm deeply ashamed. If you don't come
to Egypt, perhaps you would not mind looking her up and explaining.
I'll be back in a year or so.
Norval smiled. It was his first smile in many a day. It was mid
September then and, though he did not realize it, he was edging toward
home. Home! After all, it was good for a man and woman to know the
meaning of home. Of course you had to pay for it, and he was ready to
pay. It's rather shocking to drift about and have no place to anchor
in. That side of the matter had been uppermost in Norval's mind for
weeks. He meant to make all this very clear to Katherine; he wondered
if she, too, were edging across the continent. There must be hours in
the studio, of course. He and Katherine had enough to live on, but a
man ought to have something definite in the way of work. Painting was
more than play to Norval, it was a profession, a job! If he made
Katherine look at it as a job, everything would smooth out. Then, too,
he meant to focus on her newly discovered talent. Perhaps she was
gifted and he had been brutally blind. No wonder she had resented it.
And, thank God, he was not one of the men who wanted the world for
themselves. It would really be quite jolly to have Katherine write
about Awakened Souls and things of that sort while he painted. Then,
after business hours, they would have a common life interest, maybe they
could adopt children. Norval adored children. Yes, it was as he had
hoped; a summer apart had brought them together!
And just then Katherine's letter came.
It ran:
JIM, I am not coming back. Here in my little bungalow I have found
myself and I mean to keep myself!
I feel very kindly. All the hurt is gone now or I would not write. I
see your genius, I really do, and I also see that it would be impossible
for me to help you. I tried and failed horribly. Had you married a
woman, the waiting, thankful sort, the kind of woman who would always be
there when you came back, always glad to have you making your brilliant
way and basking in your light, all would have been well. But, Jim, I
want something of my own out of life, and I wasn't getting it. I was
starving. I feared I would starve here, but I haven't and---- Well,
Jim, I don't know how divorces are managed when people are as
respectable as we, but unless you want to leave things as they are, do
try to help me out. After all, you must be just enough to admit that
there is something to be said for me?
The last feeling of security died in Norval's heart as he read. He had
been flung into space when his wife had first spoken. He was not angry
now. He was not really grieving, but he felt as a man might who, in
falling, had been clutching to what he thought was a sturdy sapling only
to find it a reed.
He had been falling ever since Katherine had shown him the "Awakened
Soul," but he had reached out on the descent for anything that might
stop him, even the partial relinquishing of his ambition. And here he
was with nothing! Falling, falling.
Then, as one notices some trivial thing when one is most tense and
shocked, Norval thought of that little girl of Alice Lindsay's fiddling
away in Canada!
"I'll get down to Chicoutimi and take to the river; Point of Pines is on
the way and I can do this for old Andy. It's about the only thing for
me to do anyway, just now."
There were forest fires all along the route and travel was retarded.
When Point of Pines was seen in the distance, its location marked by a
twinkling lantern swung from a pole on the dock, the captain of the
_River Queen_ was surly because one lone traveller was determined to be
put ashore.
"Why not go on to Lentwell?" he argued; "we're late anyway. You could
get a rig to bring you back to this God-forsaken hole to-morrow. It's
only six miles from Lentwell."
But Norval insisted upon his rights.
"What in thunder do you want to go for?" the captain grew humorously
fierce. "No one ever goes to Point of Pines."
"I'm going to surprise them," Norval rejoined. "Give them a shock, make
history for them."
"Your luggage is at the bottom of the pile," this seemed a final
argument, "you didn't say you were going to get off."
"I didn't know just where the place was; but chuck the trunks at
Lentwell, I'll send for them."
So the _River Queen_ chugged disgustedly up to the wharf and in the
gloom of the early evening Norval, with a couple of bags, was deposited
on it.
A man took in the lantern that had made known to the captain of the
departing boat that Point of Pines was doing its duty. Then a voice,
not belonging to the hand, called from a short distance back of the
wharf:
"Jean Duval, did a box come for us?"
"No, Mam'selle."
"Didn't anything come?"
"Nothing, Mam'selle."
"Why, then, did the boat stop?"
"To make trouble, Mam'selle, for honest people."
With this the unseen man departed, grumbling. He had either not seen
Norval or had decided not to court further trouble.
Norval laughed. The sound brought a young girl into evidence. She was
a tall, slight thing, so fair that she seemed luminous in the dim shadow
caused by the hill which rose sharply behind her.
"Well!" she said, coming close to Norval. "Well! How did you get here?"
"The _River Queen_ left me," Norval explained, "probably instead of the
box you expected."
"Why?" asked the girl.
"Heaven knows! I rather insisted, to be sure, but I don't know why. I
wonder if any one could give me a bed for the night? Do you know?"
"Perhaps Mam'selle Morey could. All her life she's been getting ready
for a boarder."
Norval started.
"Mam'selle Morey?" he said slowly; "and you----?"
"I'm Donelle Morey. I have Molly and the cart here. We can try, if you
care to."
So Norval put his bags in the cart and stretched out his hand to help
the girl.
"Thanks," she said; "I will ride beside Molly on the shaft."
"But--why, that's absurd, you know. The seat is wide enough for us
both."
"I prefer the shaft."
The air, manner, and voice of the girl were proofs enough of Alice
Lindsay's work, but Norval was determined to keep his own identity, for
the time being, secret.
"I'm Richard Alton," he said, as the little creaking cart mounted the
Right of Way.
"Good evening, Mr. Richard Alton," came the reply from the shaft. It
was improbable that the slip of a girl sitting there was laughing at
him, but the man on the seat had his doubts.
"I'm a painter," he added.
"A painter? Do you paint houses?"
"Oh! yes, and barns and even people and trees."
This seemed to interest the voice in the gloom, for they had entered the
woods and it was quite dark.
"You are making fun?"
"Far from it, Mam'selle."
"I am not Mam'selle. I'm Donelle."
How childish the words and tones were!
"Excuse me, Donelle."
"And here's home!" Suddenly Molly had emerged from the trees and stood
stock still in the highway in front of the little white house.
"Would you rather wait until I let Molly into the stable, or will you go
in?" Standing in the road, with the moonlight touching her, Donelle
looked like nothing so much as a silver birch in the shadowy woods.
"I'd much rather wait. I'm horribly afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"That Mam'selle Morey may not approve of me as a boarder."
"Then she will say so," comforted the girl, turning to open the gate
across the road for the horse. "Molly," she said, "you trot along and
make yourself easy, I'll be back in a few minutes." Then she turned to
Norval. "We'd better go right in. If you are not to stay here you'll
have to try Captain Longville's and that is a good three miles."
"Good Lord!" muttered Norval, and began to straighten his tie and hat in
a desperate attempt at respectability.
As long as he lived Norval was to remember his first glimpse of Jo Morey
and the strangely home-like room that greeted him. Perhaps because his
need was great the scene touched his heart.
The brilliant stove was doing its best. The hanging lamp was like
electricity for clearness. The brightness, comfort, and Jo at her loom
made a picture upon which the tired, heartsore man looked reverently.
Jo lifted her glad face to welcome Donelle and saw the stranger!
Instantly the protecting brows fell, but not until Norval had seen the
worship that filled the eyes.
"Mamsey!" Donelle went quickly forward and half whispered.
"This--this is a boarder! Now, don't----" Norval could not catch the
rest, but it was a warning to Jo not to put her price too high.
"A boarder?" Jo got upon her feet, plainly affected. She took life
pretty much as it came, but this unexpected appearance of her secret
desire almost stunned her.
"Where did you get him, Donelle?"
Then the girl told her story while her yellow eyes danced with childish
amusement.
"He's just like an answer to prayer, isn't he, Mamsey?"
"And I'm quite prayerful in my attitude," Norval put in. "Anything in
the way of a bite and a bed will be gratefully received. Name your
price, Mam'selle."
Now that the hour had come Jo's conscience and her sense of justice rose
in arms against each other.
"He looks as if he could pay," she mused.
"But see how tired he looks--and interesting!" Conscience and
inclination pushed Jo to the wall. However, she was hard-headed.
"How about five dollars a week?" she ejaculated.
"Oh!" gasped Donelle to whom money was a dead language; "Mamsey, that is
awful."
Norval was afraid he was going to spoil everything by roaring aloud.
Instead he said:
"I can stand that, Mam'selle. I suppose you'll call it a dollar if I'm
put out to-morrow?"
"Surely."
Then Jo bustled about preparing food while Donelle went back to Molly,
with Nick hurtling along in the dark beside her.
And so Norval, known as Alton, occupied the upper chamber of Jo Morey's
house. His artist's eye gloated over the rare old furniture; he touched
reverently the linen and the woollen spreads; he laid hands as gentle as
a woman's on the dainty curtains; and he gave thanks, as only a
weary-souled man can, for the haven into which he had drifted. He was
as nervous as a girl for fear he might be weighed and found wanting by
Mam'selle Morey. He contemplated, should she give him notice, buying
her. Then he laughed. He had not been in the little white house
twenty-four hours before he realized that his landlady was no ordinary
sort and to view her in the light of a mercenary was impossible.
But Jo did not dismiss her boarder. His adaptability won her from the
start and, although she frowned upon him, she cooked for him like an
inspired creature and hoped, in her heart, that she might prove worthy
of the fulfilment of her dreams. To Donelle's part in the arrangement
she gave, strangely enough, little thought except that the money would
ease the future for the girl. Perhaps poor Jo, simple as a child in
many ways, believed that it was inherent in a boarder to be exempt from
the frailties of other and lesser men. She never thought of him in
terms of sex, and Donelle was still to her young, very young.
Alton had been with her a week when Marcel Longville, embodying the
sentiments of the village, came deprecatingly into Jo's kitchen and sat
dolefully down on a hard yellow chair. She sniffed critically. Marcel
was a judge of cooking, but no artist. She cooked of necessity, not for
pleasure. Jo revelled in ingredients and had visions of results.
"Crullers and chicken!" said Marcel. "You certainly do tickle the
stomach, Mam'selle."
"He pays well and steady," Jo answered, attending strictly to business.
"And such a relisher I've never seen. Not even among your best payers,
Marcel. They always ate and thought afterward if they wanted to, or had
to; mine thinks while he eats. I've watched him pause a full minute
over a mouthful, getting the flavour."
"That's flattering to a woman, certainly," Marcel sighed. Then: "Father
Mantelle says your boarder is handsome, Mam'selle, and young."
"Tastes differ," Jo basted her chicken with steady hand; "he's terrible
brown and lean. As to age, he wasn't born yesterday."
"What's he doing here, Jo?"
"Eating and sleeping, mostly eating. He wanders some, too. He's
partial to woods."
"Hasn't he any excuse for being here?"
"Marcel, does any one have to have an excuse for being in Point of
Pines? What's the matter with the place?"
"The Captain argues that he is a prospector." Marcel brought the word
out carefully.
"What's that?" Mam'selle dipped out her crullers from the deep fat.
"Sensing about timber or land, or something that someone secret wants to
buy, and has sent him to spy on."
"Well, I don't believe the Captain has shot the right bird," Jo laughed
significantly, "the Captain isn't always a good shot. My boarder is a
painter."
"A painter? What does he think he can get to do here? We leave our
houses to nature."
"He's going to fix up the wood-cabin." Jo spoke indifferently, but her
colour rose. The wood-cabin was Langley's deserted house. Years ago
she had bought it, for a song, and then left it alone.
"He goes there every day. I shouldn't wonder if he was going to paint
that. It will take gallons, for the knotholes will just drink paint."
"Mam'selle," here Marcel panted a bit, "you don't fear for Donelle?"
Jo stood still, wiped her hands on her checked apron, and stared at
Marcel.
"Why should I?" she asked.
"Jo, a strange man and Donelle growing wonderful pretty, and----"
Still Jo stared.
"Mam'selle, the men have fixed the world for themselves; you know that.
They have even fixed the women. Some are to labour and bend under their
loads until they break, then the scrap heap! Others, the pretty ones,
are to be taken or bought as the case may be. And young girls innocent
and longing do not count the cost. Oh! Mam'selle, have you thought of
Donelle?"
Poor Marcel's eyes were tear-filled.
Jo looked dazed and helpless. Presently she said, with that slow
fierceness people dreaded:
"Marcel, I haven't lived my life for nothing. No man fixes my life for
me nor labels me or mine. Donelle is nothing but a child. Why, look at
her! When she's a woman, if a man wants her, he's going to hear
something that I'm keeping just for him, and unless he believes it, he's
not fit for the girl. In the meantime, my boarder is my boarder."
With this Marcel had to be content, and the others also. For they were
waiting for the result of the interview like hungry animals afraid to go
too near the food supply, but full of curiosity.
Yet for all her scornful words, Jo watched the man within her house.
She realized that he was still young and for all his leanness and
brownness, handsome, in a way. He had a habit, after the evening meal
was done, of sitting astride a chair, and, while smoking, laughing at
Donelle.
"He'd never do that if he saw in her a woman," thought Jo with relief.
"She amuses him."
And that surely Donelle did. Her mimicry was delicious, her abandon
before Alton most diverting. She knew no shyness, she even returned his
teasing with a quick pertness that disarmed Jo completely.
"Well, Mr. Richard Alton," Donelle said one night as she watched him
puff his pipe, "I went up to the wood-cabin to-day to see how much
painting you'd done and I found it locked. I looked into the window and
there was something hung inside."
"Little girls mustn't snoop," said Alton.
Donelle twisted her mouth and cocked her head.
"Very well," she said, "keep your old cabin. I know another that is
never locked against me."
"Meaning whose?"
"You'll have to hunt and find, Mr. Richard Alton."
Norval laughed and turned to Jo.
"Why don't you spank her, Mam'selle?" he asked. "She's a little
rascal." Then: "Whose fiddle is that?" for Donelle never played.
Donelle's eyes followed his and rested upon the case standing against
the wall.
"How did you know it was a fiddle?" she asked.
"Well, it's a fiddle case. Of course, Mam'selle may keep cheese in it!"
"It's--it's my fiddle," Donelle's gaiety fled, "but I don't play it any
more."
"Why?"
"Well, everything that went with the fiddle has gone! I'm trying to
forget it."
"Mam'selle," Norval frowned his darkest, "have you ever heard of a bird
who could sing and wouldn't?"
"No, Mr. Alton, never!" Jo was quite sincere. Her boarder was always
giving her interesting information.
"It can be made to, Mam'selle. Again, I advise spanking."
Surely there was no fear that her boarder and Donelle might come to
grief! Jo laughed light heartedly. Her own bleak experience in the
realm of love and danger was so far removed that it gave her no
guidance. She might have felt differently had she seen what happened
the following day. But at that time she was diligently building her
wood pile while Donelle, among the trees on the hilltop, was supposed to
be instructing a couple of boys in sawing wood.
But Donelle had finished her instructions, the boys were working
intelligently, and she had wandered away with her heart singing within
her, she knew not why. Then she threw back her head and laughed. She
knew the reason at last, Tom Gavot was coming back! Tom had been seeing
roads in the deeper woods for nearly three weeks, but he was coming
back. Marcel had said so. Of course that was why Donelle was happy.
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple keeping time;
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
Over and over Donelle said the words in a kind of chant which presently
degenerated into words merely strung together.
"Like a rhyme--keeping time--like a cry--going by----" and then suddenly
she heard her name.
"Donelle!" Standing under a flaming maple was Norval.
"I have been following you," he said, and his eyes, dark, compelling,
were holding hers.
"Why, Mr. Richard Alton?"
"Because I am going to make you promise to play your fiddle again."
"No, I am happier when I forget my fiddle."
"Why, Donelle Morey, are you happier?"
"You would not understand."
"I'd try. Come, sit here on this log. The sun strikes it and we will
be warm."
Donelle stepped off the narrow path and reached the log, while Norval
sat down beside her.
"Now tell me about that fiddle."
"Once," Donelle raised her eyes to his, "once, for a long time I stayed,
you would not know if I told you where, but it was near here and yet so
far away. Everything was different--I thought I belonged there and I was
the happiest girl, and had such big dreams. They taught me to play; a
wonderful old man said I could play and I did. A dear lady opened the
way for me to go on! Then something happened. It was just a word, but
it told me that I did not belong in that lovely place, and if I went on
I would be--cheating somebody; somebody who had let me have my life and
never asked anything, who never would, but who would go on, making the
best of----" Donelle's eyes were full of tears, her throat ached.
"Of what, little girl?"
"The--the bits that were left."
"Perhaps," Norval, quite unconsciously laid his hand over Donelle's
which were clasped on her knees, "perhaps that somebody could have made
quite a splendid showing of the bits, dear girl. And you might have
made the place yours, the one that did not seem quite your own. Places
are not always inherited, you know. Often they are--conquered."
"You make me afraid," said Donelle as she looked down at the hand
covering hers. "You see, I want to do the thing you say. I almost did
it, but the dear lady died. I'm not very brave; I think I would gave
gone."
"She may not be the only one, child."
"But I couldn't take anything unless I had it, clean and safe. I
wouldn't want it, unless I, myself, made it sure first. I'm like that.
Don't you think something you are afraid of being sometimes keeps you
from being what you want to be?"
"Yes. But, little girl, come, some time, to the cabin in the woods and
play for me; will you? I might help you. And you could help me, I am
trying to find my place, too."
"You?"
"Yes, Donelle." Then, quite irrelevantly, as once Tom Gavot had done,
he said: "Your eyes are glorious, child, do you know that? The soul of
you shines through. Donelle, it is almost as bad to starve a soul as to
kill it. Will you bring the fiddle some day?"
"Yes, some day."
She was very sweet and pretty sitting there with the autumn light on her
face.
"Donelle!"
"Yes."
"Just Donelle. The name is like you. You will keep your promise?"
"Some day, yes."
*CHAPTER XIV*
*A CHOICE OF ROADS*
Day after day Donelle looked at her fiddle, but turned away. Day after
day she sang the hours through, working beside Jo, or playing with Nick.
Something was happening to her; something that frightened her, but
thrilled her. She kept remembering the touch of Norval's hand upon hers!
In the night, when she thought of it, she trembled. When she saw him
she was shy.
"I wish Tom Gavot would come back," she said to herself, for Tom had
been detained. Then, at last, one day she heard that he was on his way.
He would leave the little train, five miles below Point of Pines, and
would walk the rest of the way. She knew the path so she went to meet
him.
It was mid afternoon when she saw him coming, swinging along in his
rough corduroys and high boots, his cap on the back of his handsome
head, his bag slung over his shoulder.
She stepped behind a tree, laughing, and when he was close she suddenly
appeared and grasped his arm.
"Donelle, I thought----"
"Did I frighten you, Tom?"
"Well, you know there is always the bit of a coward in me. Why are you
here?"
"I came to meet you, Tom."
"Has anything gone wrong?" His face darkened; poor Tom never expected
things had gone right. His life had not been formed on those lines.
"No, but I wanted you, Tom. There are so many things to talk about,
wonderful things. I've gone to your cabin, Tom, and made it ready for
you. Every day I've lighted a fire the nights are cold. I thought you
might come at night."
Donelle had lighted a fire of which she knew nothing, and Tom could not
tell her!
"You're kind," was all he said as he looked at her. Then: "I never had a
home until I got that cabin, Donelle. While I am away, I see the
curtains you and Mam'selle made and the bedspread and all the rest.
When I've been shivering in camp, I saw the fire on my own little
hearth, and I was warm!"
Donelle smiled up to him.
"Tell me about your road," she said.
"Well, there's going to be one! I meant to come back ten days ago, but
something happened and I decided to start work this fall, not wait for
spring, so I stayed on. There was sickness at a settlement back in the
woods. Many people almost died, some of them did, because they couldn't
get a doctor and proper care. It's criminal to put women and children
in such a hole; there's got to be a road connecting those places
with--help! A man is a brute to take a woman with him under such
conditions. What _he_ wants goes! He never thinks of _her_ part."
"But, Tom, maybe she, the woman, wants to go."
"He ought not to let her, he knows."
"But if she just will go, what then, Tom?"
"It doesn't make it right for him, he knows."
"But it might be worse to stay back, Tom. A woman might choose to go."
"But _she_ doesn't know; _he_ does."
"But she may want to know, and be willing to pay."
"Donelle, you're a crazy little know-nothing."
Tom looked down and laughed. He was wondrously happy. "Always wanting
to pay for what isn't worth it."
"You're wrong, Tom. It is worth it."
"What?"
"Why, the thing that makes a woman want to go into the woods with a man,
even when there are no roads; the thing that makes her willing to pay
before she knows."
Tom breathed hard.
"I suppose it is--love, Tom."
"It's something worse, often!" Gavot turned his eyes away from the
upturned face.
"Lately, Tom," Donelle came close to him and touched his arm as she
walked beside him, "I've been thinking about such a lot of new things
and love among them."
"Love!" And now Tom stood still, as if an unseen blow had stunned him.
"Yes, and I had no one to talk to. I couldn't speak to Mamsey. Always
I think of you, Tom, whenever thoughts come. You see everything, just
as you see your roads in the deep woods. Are you tired, Tom?"
"No," Gavot got control of himself, "no, not tired."
"You see," and now they were going on again, "the big feelings of life
just come to everyone. They don't pick, and when you are young, you have
young thoughts. That is the way it seems to me, and often, Tom Gavot,
the very things that you ought to have an old head to think about come
when you haven't any sense at all." This tremendous truth fell from the
girlish lips quite irrelevantly. "And then you just take and pay what
you must, but often you have to pay more than you ought, because--well,
because you are young when you bought----"
Donelle sobbed. "I've been thinking of Mamsey," she ended pitifully.
Tom stopped short. He flung his pack on the ground and laid his strong,
work-hardened hands on Donelle's shoulders.
"You don't have to pay for Mam'selle," he said in a whisper; "she's
paid, God knows."
"But I've got to pay for my father, Tom."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, you see, lately I've known that I must be like my father more than
like, like Mamsey. She learned and stayed and paid, he ran away. Oh,
Tom, it's good to be able to say this to you, out here under the trees,
alone. It has been choking me for days and days. You see, Tom, a big
feeling comes up in me that wants and wants. And, always, too, there is
another feeling. I do not want to pay, as Mamsey did. It would be
easier to run and hide! But, Tom, I'm not going to, I'm not! I'm going
to pay for my father!"
"What ails you, Donelle? Has any one been talking?" Tom still held
her, his hungry heart yearned to draw her close, but he held her at
arm's length.
"No, it is only--thoughts that have been talking. I just cannot settle
down by Mamsey, and know I'm to stay here without that running away
feeling. Then I say: 'I don't care, I want to go and I'll go,' and
then--why, I cannot, Tom, for I know I must pay for my father."
"Go where?"
"Go, Tom, where my fiddle would take me. Go where people do not know;
go and learn things, and then if any one did find out--pay!"
Poor Tom was weary almost to the breaking point. Nights in rough camps,
days of wood tramping had worn upon him, the fire of which Donelle knew
nothing sent the blood racing through his veins. Her touch on his arm
made him tremble.
"See here, Donelle," he said; "would you come along my road with me?
Would you, could you, learn enough--that way?"
But Donelle smiled her vague smile, "I think I must have my own road,
Tom. The trouble is I cannot see my road as you see roads. I only feel
my feet aching. But, Tom, surely you must have seen life a little in
Quebec, tell me: could a great big strong love keep on loving even if it
knew about me and Mamsey?"
"Yes." The word was more like a groan.
"Even if it had to keep Mamsey from knowing that we know?"
"Yes."
"Why, Tom, dear Tom, you make me feel wonderful. You always do, you big,
safe Tom. I just knew how it would be; that is why I had to come and
meet you."
She rubbed her cheek against the rough sleeve of his jacket. "I think
your mother would just worship you, Tom."
Then Gavot laughed, laughed his honest laugh, and picked up his pack.
"Donelle," he said presently, "you ought to make your music again. You
have no right not to."
"You, you really mean that, Tom?"
"Yes, I do."
"Well, I think I'll get the fiddle out some day, soon, and come to your
cabin. While you draw your roads on your paper, I'll see if the tunes
will come back."
But Donelle did not speak of Richard Alton.
The autumn lingered in Point of Pines; even the gold and red clung to
the trees to add to the delusion that winter was far off. The mid-days
were warm, and only now and then did the frost nip.
Norval kept saying to himself, as he lay on that wonderful bed in Jo
Morey's upper chamber, "I must go back!" But he made no move southward.
The quiet of the woods, the lure of the river held him, and then he
began to ask why he _should_ go back?
Law was still in Egypt, Katherine was undoubtedly in her bungalow; why
not have what he always had wanted, a winter away from things?
Then a letter forwarded by his lawyer clarified his thoughts. It was
from Katherine, who had discovered a new set of duties and was
hot-footed to perform them.
She wrote:
JIM, until you are willing to die for something, you have never lived.
In letting loose what really was never mine, my own came to me. I have
a new book out. Shall I send you a copy? I've called it "The Soul Set
Free." I do not want to be too personal, but I find the world loves the
close touch.
You have not said one word, Jim, about a divorce and I have waited. I
think you owe me assistance along this line, and now I must insist.
For, Jim, with the rest of what is my own has come a startling
realization, that love, understanding love, is to be mine, too. Until I
hear from you I will not name the man who discovered my talent before he
saw me. He read the manuscript of my first book, he had never heard of
me then. Only recently has he come to California. He is my mate, Jim,
I know that, and I owe him a great duty. I must go as I see duty, but I
must go with a clear conscience. I owe him that, also.
Norval read this amazing letter lying on a couch before a blazing fire
in his wood-cabin. He read and reread it. He felt as he might have
felt had a toy dog--or a fluffy kitten, risen up and smitten him.
Katherine had been giving him a series of tremendous thumps ever since
she had shown him her awakened soul. Little by little she had receded
from his understanding of her; but to come forth now in this stupefying
characterization of the untrammeled woman, was---- Norval laughed, a
hard, bitter laugh.
Then he went to his improvised desk, the cabin was filled with his
attempts at furniture making; it was a remarkable place.
He wrote rather unsteadily:
KIT, do you remember the story of the mouse that ran in the whiskey
drippings, licked his legs, got drunk, and then took his stand, crying,
"Where's that damned cat I was so afraid of yesterday?" Well, you make
me think of that. You were once, unless I was mistaken, a nice little
mouse of a thing, pretty well scared of the conventional cat--the world,
you know. Then came the whiskey lickings, your talent. I'm afraid
you're drunk, child, drunk as a lord. But there you are, all the same,
with your back up against the wall, defying the cat. Well, you're
thirty-two, and although you were afraid of the cat, you certainly know
something about the animal. I agree with you that we were not suited to
one another, and I'm ready to let your soulmate have a show. I do not
quite know how to do it, but if you think you will not be defrauding him
too much--and if your sense of duty will permit, give me time to get my
breath and I swear I'll think up some sort of "cause" that will set you
free. Just now I am hidden away in the woods, painting as I used to
paint when Andy stared and stared. I can tell quality now. I'm on the
right road and do not want to be jerked back until I've made sure.
Perhaps the law in California would make it easy for you. Anything short
of making a villain of me, I'm willing to consider.
Then Norval, having written, stalked down to the Post Office, sent his
ultimatum off with the Point of Pines official stamp on it, and went to
Dan's Place for no earthly reason but to forget. He drank a little,
scorned himself for taking that road out of his perplexity, drank a
little more with old, grimy Pierre Gavot, and then started back to the
wood-cabin. He did not want to face Jo Morey--or Donelle. He felt
unclean; he was, in a befuddled way, paying for Katherine.
The sun was setting in a magnificent glory of colour and cloud banks.
There was a flurry of snow in the clouds, and until it fell there would
be that chill in the air that was vicariously cooling Norval's hot
brain.
He wanted the seclusion of the cabin more than he wanted anything else
just then. He had left a fire on the hearth, he could stretch himself
on the couch for the night. He did not want food, but he was frantic to
get to his canvas; he had begun a few days ago a fantastic thing, quite
out of his ordinary style. While there was light enough he could work.
So he pressed on.
The clouds quite unexpectedly gave up their burden, and Norval was soon
covered with snow as he flew along, taking a short cut to the cabin.
But having given up the snow, the clouds disappeared and the daylight
was lengthened. Pounding the snow from his feet, shaking himself like a
bear, Norval entered the cabin and saw--Donelle standing transfixed
before the easel!
She did not turn as he came in; she was rigid, her hands holding her
violin case.
"You--you said you were a painter!" she gasped when she felt Norval was
near her.
"And you think I'm not?" Something in the voice startled her, she
looked at him.
"You said you painted houses and barns and----"
"People sometimes and trees. I spoke the truth, but you think I'm no
painter?"
"Why, I've been--I've been thinking I was dreaming until just now. See
these woods," she was gazing at the unfinished thing on the easel, "They
are my woods. I know the very paths, they are back of the lumber
cutting. See! is there a face, somewhere in the dark, a face back of
those silver birches, is there?"
Norval, with the Joan of Arc conception in mind, had painted those woods
while Donelle's face had haunted him.
"Can you see a face?" he asked. He was close to the girl now, so close
that her young body touched him.
"Is it only a fancy?"
"Look again, Donelle. Whose face?"
"I--I do not know!"
But she did know, and she looked mutely at him.
"Donelle, why did you come here?"
"I promised I was going to--to play for you."
"Then, in God's name, do it! See, go over there by the window." Norval
had folded his arms over his breast. He was afraid of himself, of the
madness that Katherine and Dan's Place had evolved. "Play, and I'll
finish this thing."
"I can play best if I move about."
"Move, then, but fiddle!"
"You are sure you want me? I can come again. You are strange, I should
not have stolen in, but once I had seen--I couldn't get away."
"Donelle, you are to stay. Do you hear? For your sake and mine you are
to stay. Now, then."
He turned his back on her, flung off his coat, and fell to work.
Donelle tuned her violin, tucked it under her chin, and slowly walking
to and fro, she played and played until the hunger in her heart grew
satisfied. Like a little pale ghost she passed up and down the rude
room, smiling and happy.
After half an hour Norval looked at her; he was haggard, but quite
himself.
Then Donelle turned and, nodding over her bow, said:
"It's all right, the joy of it has come back and---- Oh! I see the
face among the trees. What a beautiful picture! It's like a wood with
a heart and soul; it's alive like Tom Gavot's road. Now we must go
home, Mr. Richard Alton. We're tired, you and I.
"Home?" Norval laughed. "Home?"
"Yes, to Mamsey. I always am so glad of Mamsey when I'm tired."
"Donelle, I meant to stay here to-night."
"But instead, you are coming with me!" Donelle put out her hand,
"Come!"
Norval raised the hand to his lips.
"You little, white wood-spirit," he said, "they did not teach you to
play, they only let you free. Donelle, are you a spirit?"
"No," and now the yellow eyes sought and held his, "I'm a--woman, Mr.
Richard Alton."
*CHAPTER XV*
*THE LOOK*
And Donelle began to know what love was. Know it as passionate, daring
natures know it. She thought of her father, of Mamsey, in a new light.
She grew to understand her supposed mother with a tragic realization and
she shuddered when she reflected upon her father.
"To go and leave love!" she thought. "Oh! how could he?"
Then Donelle took to gazing upon Jo with the critical eyes of youth, and
yet with pity.
What manner of girl had Jo been? Had she always been plain?
The word caused Donelle pain. It sounded disloyal to Jo; but it sent
her to her mirror in the little north chamber beside Mam'selle's.
The face that looked back at Donelle puzzled her. Was it pretty? What
was the matter with it?
The eyes were too large, they looked hungry. The mouth, too, was queer;
it did things too easily. It smiled and quivered; it turned up at the
corners, it drooped down, all too easily. The nose was rather nice as
noses go, but it had tiny freckles on it that you could see if you
looked close. Those freckles were, in colour, something like the eyes.
"I like my hair!" confessed Donelle, and she smoothed the soft, pale
braids wound about her delicately poised head. "My throat is too long,
but it's white!"
Then she tried on her few dresses, one after the other, and chose a
heavy dark blue one. Jo had woven the material, it was very fine and
warm.
"I think I will take my fiddle and go up to the wood-cabin," thought
Donelle, and then her face grew bright and rose-touched.
But instead, Donelle went to Tom Gavot's hut.
Once outside the house, she simply could not go to the wood-cabin. She
knew Alton was there, he painted constantly when he was not tramping the
sunny forests or sitting with Jo and Donelle, reading in the smothering
heat of the overworked stove.
"Some time when he is away, then I'll go."
But oh! how she wanted to go. The very thought of Alton made her
thrill. Sometimes she saw him looking at her, when Jo was bent over her
loom or needles, and the look always called something out of Donelle;
something that went straight to Alton and never returned!
On that winter day, a still white day, Donelle carried her violin under
her long fur coat; she must play to somebody, and Jo had gone to the
distant town for the day.
The door of Tom's hut was closed, but a curl of smoke rose from the
chimney so Donelle knocked rather formally.
Tom's step sounded inside, he took down the bar which secured the door
and flung it open. His eyes were dark and his brow scowling.
"Why, Tom," laughed Donelle, "who are you locking and barring out?
Maybe you do not want company?"
"I don't, but I want you."
"Tom, who do you call company?"
"Mam'selle's boarder, that Mr. Alton." Tom had run across Norval once
or twice since his return.
"Don't you like him, Tom?"
Donelle had come inside and taken a chair by the hearth, now she flung
her coat aside and laid the violin on her knee.
"Yes, I like him well enough, and that's the trouble. I don't want to
like people unless there is a reason. I can't find a reason for this
man."
Donelle laughed.
"What is he here for anyway, Donelle?"
"Why don't you go up to his wood-cabin and see, Tom? He's asked you."
She had heard Norval do so rather insistently.
"Yes. But I'm not going."
"Why, Tom?"
"I'm too busy."
"I wish you would go, Tom. I wish you could see his pictures. Why,
Tom, you'd feel like taking the shoes off your feet."
Tom laughed grimly.
"Not while the weather's so cold," he said.
"But, Tom, that's the reason for Mr. Alton. He is getting our woods and
skies and river safe on his canvases. He's going to take them back to
people who have never seen such things."
"Why don't they come and board here, then, and see them for themselves?"
Tom threw a log viciously on the fire. "You don't mean he's doing this
to give a lot of people pleasure?"
"Tom, he sells his pictures; he gets a great deal of money for them."
"Umph!" Then, "Has he ever put you in the pictures, Donelle?"
There was a slight pause. Remembering the faint suggestion in the first
picture she had ever seen in the cabin, Donelle said softly:
"No, Tom."
"I'm glad. I'd hate to have a lot of strangers staring at you."
"Tom, you're scrouchy. Let me play for you."
And, while she played, growing more rapt and absorbed as she did so, Tom
took his drawing board to the window and bent over his blueprints.
Gradually the look of doubt and irritation left his face, a flood of
happiness swept over him. He began to see roads. Always roads. He
wanted to go to Quebec in the spring and tell his firm about something
he had discovered lately; and it was on Mam'selle Morey's land, too. If
there were a road back among the hills over which to haul that which he
had found, haul it by a short cut to the railroad, by and by Mam'selle
and Donelle would not have to take objectionable strangers into their
home and----
Donelle played on unheedingly, but Tom started as a knock fell on the
door!
"I will not open it!" he thought savagely. "Let him think what he damn
pleases."
The tune ran glidingly on.
"You like this tune, Tom?" Donelle was far away from the still cabin.
"Yes, I like it, Donelle, but play something louder, faster."
"Well, then, how about this?" and with a laugh Donelle swung into a new
theme.
Again the knock! This time softer but more insinuating.
Then all was quiet, but the mad music was filling the warm room.
Just then the visitor at the door stepped around the house and came in
full view of the window before which Tom sat, rigid and defiant. It was
Norval, and he paused, came nearer and stood still. Tom got up, and the
movement attracted Donelle's attention. She turned and saw the two men
glaring at each other, the glass between.
"Curse him!" muttered Tom, "curse him!"
Norval vanished instantly, but not before Donelle had caught the
expression in his eyes.
"Tom," she said affrightedly, "what did he think?"
"What does it matter what he thought?"
"But, Tom, tell me, what did he think to make him look like that?
Perhaps, perhaps he thinks I should not be here, alone with you."
"Damn him. What right has he to stare into my place?"
"But, Tom, his eyes, I cannot bear to think of the look in his eyes.
It--it was laughing, but it hurt."
"Who cares about what he thought?" Tom was savage.
"I do," Donelle whispered. She was putting her violin away. "I do. I
couldn't stand having a man look at me like that. Why, Tom, it made me
feel ashamed."
Again Gavot cursed, but under his breath.
"You going?" he asked. "Wait, I'll come with you. Wait, Donelle."
But the girl did not pause.
"I'd rather go alone," she called back.
But she did not go directly home, she took a round-about way and reached
the hill back of the little white house. The tall pines rose black from
the untrodden snow, the winter sky was as blue as steel, and as cold.
In among the trees, where it was sheltered, Donelle sat down. There she
could think!
The power of a look is mighty. The mere instant that Norval had gazed
upon Donelle through the window was sufficient to carry the meaning in
the man's mind to the sensitive girl.
It took her some time to translate the truth as she sat under the trees
on the hilltop, but slowly it all became clear.
"He does not know, but he thinks wrong of me." Donelle spoke aloud as
if repeating a lesson.
"Why should he think wrong?" questioned the hard teacher.
Then Donelle remembered her father and Jo, and the word with which
Pierre Gavot had polluted her life.
"That's why he laughed," shuddered the girl. Her own secret interpreting
the hurting look though knowing him only as Richard Alton, she had no
reason to believe he knew her story.
Then the relentless teacher pointed her back to the look in Dan Kelly's
eyes, the look that had frightened her and had made Jo send her away to
the Walled House.
"Unless I save myself," moaned Donelle, "no one can keep people from
looking--those looks!"
Quietly she got up and walked down the hill, a tall, slim, ghostly form,
with eyes haunted by knowledge.
That night after the evening meal Norval stayed in the bright living
room and tortured Donelle. He knew he was brutal, but something drove
him on. He was suffering dumbly, suffering without cause, he believed.
Why should he care that a girl about whom he knew too much should hide
herself away with a rough young giant behind a locked door in a lonely
hut?
Then he concluded it was because he knew how Alice Lindsay and Law might
feel, that he suffered. They would be so shocked.
"After all," Norval tried to reason himself into indifference, "blood
will cry out. The world may be damned unjust to women, but there is
something lacking when a girl like this makes herself--cheap."
Then it was that Norval began his torture. Jo was in the kitchen at the
moment, Donelle was clearing the table.
"Where were you this afternoon?" Norval was carefully filling his pipe,
sitting astride his chair.
"Part of the time I was in the woods on the hill," Donelle glanced at Jo
through the open door.
"That's odd!" Norval puffed slowly and Donelle's eyes pleaded
unconsciously. For no real reason she did not want Jo to know she had
been with Tom. She was haunted by the look!
"Why don't you come up to my cabin and play to me?" This in a tone so
low that Mam'selle could not hear.
"I--I don't know. I might be in the way while you work."
"On the contrary. Come up to-morrow, Donelle, I'll paint you with your
fiddle. You'll make the town stare, the town back home."
The colour rose to Donelle's face. She remembered Tom's words.
"I do not want strangers staring at my face," she said with some spirit.
"Why not? It's a pretty face, Donelle."
Then the girl crossed the room and stood before him.
"If you talk and look like that," she warned in an undertone, "I'll make
Mamsey send you away."
Norval laughed.
"I don't believe you will," he said, and reached out toward her.
And, for hours that night, after everything was still, Donelle lay in
her dark room and cried while she struggled with her confused emotions.
"He shall go away! He shall _not_ dare to look at me so, and whisper!"
Then she tossed about.
"But he must not go until I make him ashamed to look at me--so. But how
can I? How can I?"
Toward morning sleep came and when Donelle awoke, Norval had had his
breakfast and gone.
After the morning's work was finished Jo asked Donelle to go on an
errand. A poor woman back among the hills was ill and needed food of
the right sort.
"I have a crick in my back, Donelle," Jo explained, "I don't believe I
could walk there, and the road is unbroken. Molly is too old to force
her way through. If you take the wood path, it won't be too far."
"I'd love to go, Mamsey. It's such a still day, and did you ever see
such sunlight?"
The release was welcome, poor Donelle still was thrashing about in her
confused emotions. She was grateful that Alton was gone; she yearned to
see him, and so it went.
"I'll be back as soon as I can, Mamsey. Is the basket packed?"
It was only eight o'clock when Donelle set forth. She wore her long,
dark fur coat, a cowl-like hood of fur covered her pale hair, her
delicate, white face shone sweetly in the soft, dusky setting. The eyes
were full of sunlight but her mouth drooped pathetically.
Jo remembered the look long after the girl had departed.
"I mustn't keep her here," she reasoned; "I'm going to write again to
that Mr. Law. I will wait until spring; he couldn't come now. I'm
going to ask him to come up here and talk things over."
Then Mam'selle went to her loom and worked like a Fate; there were piles
of wonderful things to sell. Surely they would help Donelle to her own!
And so Jo worked and dreamed and feared, while Donelle made her way over
the crusty snow, through the silent, holy woods, over the shining hill
to the sick woman in her distant cabin.
For an hour the girl worked in the lonely house. She built a roaring
fire, carried in a store of wood, fed and cheered the poor soul on her
hard bed, and then turned her face toward Point of Pines.
Almost childishly she dallied by the way, trying to set her feet in the
marks she had made on the way up. So interested did she become in this
that it made her _almost_ forget that queer, sad feeling in her heart.
"I'll make a new path," she decided, and that caused her to think of Tom
Gavot and Alton and--the Look!
Then she forgot all else and drifted far away. She was unhappy as the
young know unhappiness; no perspective, no comparison. Never had there
been such a case as hers! Never had any one suffered as she was
suffering because no one had ever had the same reason!
When Donelle recalled herself, she found that she was on the highway
several miles beyond Point of Fines. The sun was sloping down, the west
was golden, and a solemn stillness, almost deathly, pervaded space.
There was a tall cross close beside Donelle. Black it rose from the
unsullied snow, white tipped it was and shining against the glowing sky.
Beneath it someone had evidently knelt, for the crust of the snow was
broken. What meaning all this had for Donelle, who could tell? But the
confusion and hurt of the last few hours clutched at her heart, and she
who had never been urged by Jo Morey to consider religion in any form
went slowly to the cross and sank down!
The teachings of St. Michael's claimed her, the memory of little Sister
Mary with the lost look clung to her; then a peace entered into her
soul.
"No one could hurt me there," she sobbed. "No one could look at
me--with that look." Then, at the foot of the cross, her head bowed and
her tears falling, Donelle shivered and prayed.
[Illustration: "At the foot of the cross, her head bowed and her tears
falling, Donelle shivered and prayed."]
Presently she raised her face; it was calm and pale. There was a round
teardrop on her cheek that had not fallen with the others. She turned
and there by the roadside stood Norval. How long he had been there he
could hardly have told himself.
When he had gone to the white house for his noon-day meal, Jo had told
him, quite inconsequently, of Donelle's errand and he had followed her,
for what reason God only knew.
"Donelle!" he said, "Donelle!"
The terrible look in his eyes was gone, gone was the mocking smile of
the night before. Pity, divine pity, moved him.
"Donelle!"
"Yes, Mr. Richard Alton." The poor girl strove to be her teasing self,
but her lips trembled and suddenly a strange, almost an awful, dignity
and detachment overcame her. Standing with clasped hands, in her
nun-like garb, she seemed to have taken farewell of the world that women
crave.
"What are you doing, Donelle, by that cross?" Norval did not draw near,
and a distance of several feet separated them.
"Thinking and praying."
"Thinking what? And praying for what?"
The trouble in his eyes met the trouble in hers and called for simple
truth.
"I was thinking of how you looked at me yesterday when I was in Tom
Gavot's hut and of how you made me suffer last night. And I was praying
to God to help me, help me to stop loving you."
So naive and direct were the words that they made Norval breathe hard.
In a flash he saw the true nature of the girl before him. She was old,
gravely, inheritedly old; and she was, too, a young and pitiful child.
People had only touched the outer surface of her character and
personality. Alone she had learned the primitive and desperate lessons
of womanhood.
"Stop loving me?" Norval repeated the words slowly.
"Yes, I was beginning to love you very much, more than everything else.
Then, when you looked as you did yesterday, I remembered and all night I
was afraid. Oh! I am glad you did not get to loving me. It hurts so!"
"How do you know that I have not got to loving you? How do you know but
that it was because I love you that I looked as I did yesterday?"
"Ah, no, Mr. Richard Alton, you couldn't have looked so had you loved
me." Donelle tried to smile and made a pitiful showing.
"You don't know men, Donelle."
"But I know love."
Now that she had taken her last leave of it, Donelle could talk of it as
little Sister Mary might have done, for she had vowed beside the cross
to go back to St. Michael's. Long ago Sister Angela had said that she
would find peace there. Then she spoke suddenly to Norval.
"You see, maybe you have heard something about Mamsey and me, but you
did not quite understand and you felt you had a right to look as you
did. I wonder why men want to make it harder for--for women, when women
try to forget?"
Norval winced; the shaft had sunk into its rightful place.
And still the white-faced girl stood her distance, and tried to smile.
"I am going to tell you all about Mamsey and me," she said. "I will
tell you as we walk along."
*CHAPTER XVI*
*THE STORY*
How little she really knew of life! But how the last year of suffering
and renunciation had filled the void with a young but terrible
philosophy. Norval did not speak. With bowed head, hands clasped
behind him, he walked beside Donelle as she went along, bearing her
cross and poor Jo's.
"You see I could not let Mamsey know that I knew. I could not hurt her
so. She would have made me go away, and always I would have remembered
her here alone where my father left her. And Tom Gavot has helped me
keep the people still. He stays here, and he wanted to go way, way off,
and be something so different. That is why I can play for Tom in his
cabin. He knows and understands; he couldn't hurt Mamsey and me, he
couldn't! Women like Mamsey and me feel a hurt terribly, that's why I am
telling you this, I want you to be kind. Don't make things harder, they
are bad enough!"
"Donelle, for God's sake, spare me!"
The words were wrung from Norval, but he did not look up.
"I'm sure now that you know, you never will hurt us again," Donelle's
voice soothed and caressed unconsciously. "I!--I wanted to be happy
just as if nothing had happened, before I was born, to keep me from
being happy. I thought about love, just as girls will. They cannot
help it. Then you came and I wanted you!"
A quivering fierceness shot through the words. Norval gave a quick
glance at the face near him and saw that the purest, most primitive
statement of a mighty truth held the girl's thought. If she had said,
she, the first woman, to him, the first man:
"You are mine, I want you," she could not have said it more divinely.
"I wanted to make you happy; to play for you while you painted your
beautiful pictures, and then when you were tired and I was tired, why,
our big love would bring us more and more happiness. Then, well, then
you looked at me through Tom Gavot's window and somehow I understood!"
Donelle and Norval were nearing the little white house, they could see
the smoke rising from the chimney. Norval's thoughts were racing madly
ahead, crowding upon him, choking him. He meant to make the future safe
for this young girl, safe from himself and the sacredest passion of his
life which, he now acknowledged, had mastered him. Reason,
world-understanding, had no part in it, he wanted her. He must have her,
and was prepared to clear the path leading to an honest love. But he
could not tell her of Katherine, of himself, there was no time; no time
and her experience could not possibly have prepared her for bearing it.
"I am going to tell you a great secret," Donelle half whispered, "back
there by the cross I remembered what the Sisters at the Home used to
tell me. They knew, but I did not--then. For girls like me--well, I am
going back to St. Michael's-on-the-Rocks and teach the babies. That's
why I could tell you what I have just told you."
Then Norval turned and took her in his arms. So swiftly, so
overpoweringly did he do this, that Donelle lay quiet and frightened,
her white face pressed against his breast, her wonderful eyes searching
his stern, strange face.
"No, by God! You are not going back to St. Michael's!" he whispered.
"You little white soul, can't you see I love and adore you? Can't you
see it was because I couldn't bear another man to--to have you, that I
was a brute to you? Do you think that any wrong others have done can
keep you from me, from letting me take you where you belong? Donelle!
Donelle, kiss me, child."
Only the deep eyes moved; they widened and grew dark.
"May I--kiss you?"
"No." And Norval did not kiss her!
"But you are mine, Donelle, and all the powers in the world cannot alter
that. I am going to make you believe me. What do I care for anything
but this? You have driven everything but yourself from sight. When you
play, great heavens, Donelle, when you play to me, moving about as you
did that first and only time in my cabin, you took me into a Great
Place. Don't tremble, little girl, don't. Every quiver hurts me. I am
going to make you forget the brute in me; I'm going to meet your love,
dear heart, with one as fine, so help me God! Trust me, Donelle, trust
me and when you can tell me that you do trust me, we will go to
Mam'selle. She will understand, she has the mighty soul. Oh, Donelle!"
Norval leaned over the tender face, almost touched it with his lips, but
did not.
"My little white love!" he whispered. "But you will come and play for
me?" he pleaded.
"Yes."
"And you will, you will give me a fair show?" She smiled wanly.
"If I ever give you cause again to fear me, I hope----"
Then Donelle raised her hand and laid it across his lips.
"I am so afraid of this wonderful thing that is happening to me," she
said, "and you mustn't say--well! what you were going to say just then."
"Don't fear the love, my darling. It's the sacredest thing in the
world." Norval had taken the hand from his lips and now held it in his
own. "And we'll keep it holy, Donelle. That is our part."
"Yes, yes; but to think, to think!"
"Don't think, sweet, here. Come close and try to--to--love for a moment
without remembering."
"Why, how can I?"
"Try."
And so they stood with the golden light of the west on their faces.
Norval did the thinking. He thought of the quickest possible method of
setting Katherine free and making it right for him to kiss Donelle. He
thought of the wild realization of his true nature--a nature that had
been distorted and contracted by inheritance and training. He did not
want the beaten tracks, that had always been the trouble. He wanted the
unbroken trails, God! how he had thirsted and hungered for just what
this little, wild, sweet thing in his arms represented. Love, simple,
primitive love, music, understanding! And then Norval thought of
Anderson Law! Thought of him, longed for him at that moment as a blind
man might long for guiding, not to the right path, but on it.
"You may kiss me now!" This in a whisper.
The quick surrender startled Norval. He bent his head, still thinking
of Law.
"My woman," he said to that uplifted face, "when I have the right, that
somehow I forfeited, I will kiss you."
"But you said we were not to think; when you think, you remember."
"Yes, Donelle, we remember and we look ahead with faith."
Gently Norval let her free. He smiled at her, and the look in his eyes
made her stand very straight, but she smiled back.
"I am so happy," she said simply. "And I thought I was never to be
happy again."
"And I--why, Donelle, you've taught me what happiness means. And you
will keep your promise about coming to the wood-cabin?"
"Yes, Mr. Richard Alton." Donelle made a courtesy.
"And you'll bring the fiddle?"
"Of course."
"And Donelle, before you, dear child, I beg the pardon and forgiveness
of Tom Gavot."
"I wish he could know that you are what you are," Donelle's eyes
saddened.
"He shall, child. That, I swear. Next to Mam'selle," here, almost
unconsciously Norval raised his cap, "next to Mam'selle, Tom Gavot shall
know. Come, little girl, here's home!"
And together they went up to Jo's house. It was marvellous how they
managed the great thing that had happened. Never outwardly did it
overcome them.
The winter grew still and hard, the people shrank into their houses.
There were trodden paths, like spokes of a wheel, leading from most of
the houses to the hub, which was Dan's Place; there were more or less
broken paths reaching to the river, where, under the ice, fish were
obtainable.
Tom Gavot just at that time was called to duty and left his father with
money enough to keep him silent; and food and fuel enough to keep him
safe.
Jo, with a growing content and happiness, cooked for her boarder,
revelled in his society during the long evenings, and was perfectly
oblivious of the stupendous thing that was going on under her very eyes.
Norval sent for books, many of them. Books of travel; Jo grew
breathless over them.
"I can sit in this rocker," she often said to Marcel Longville, "shut my
eyes, and there I am in those far places. I see palm groves and I hear
the swishing of the sea. Mercy! Marcel, just fancy a body of water as
long as the St. Lawrence and as wide as it is long!"
"I can't," said Marcel. "And I wouldn't want to. Water isn't what I
take to most. But I do like the palm countries, Mam'selle. They are,
generally speaking, warm. Sometimes I feel as if I never would be warm
again as long as I live."
While Norval read aloud to Jo and Donelle, he would often lift his eyes
to find Donelle looking at him. Over the gulf of silence that separated
them they smiled and trusted.
Norval wrote to his lawyer, instructed him to take legal steps at once,
upon whatever ground he could, legitimately, select. "Leave my wife and
me free," he said; "with as decent characters as our stupid laws permit.
I don't see why society should feel more moral if we are sullied."
But Norval did not write to Katherine. He left that for his lawyers to
do. He did, however, send a pretty fair statement of the case of
himself and his wife to Anderson Law who, at that time, was basking
under Egypt's calm skies, wandering in deserts, forgetting, and pulling
himself together.