CHAPTER XIITHE HIDDEN CURRENT TURNSThe winter passed and spring came. Point of Pines awoke late but very lovely. Mam'selle and Donelle had at last burned the old clothes of the long-dead Morey. That phase, at least, was done with and much else had been laid on the pyre with them."And you came just because you wanted to, child?" Jo often asked when she even yet doubted her right to happiness."Yes, Mamsey, just for that. Wasn't I a silly?" And then Donelle would look into Jo's deep, strange eyes and say:"You never run and hide any more, Mamsey. I see how glad you are; how you love me! Kiss me, Mamsey. Isn't it strange that I had to teach you to kiss me? Now don't keep thinking you mustn't be happy, it's our duty to be happy." Donelle gloried in her triumph.Jo dropped a good many years in that winter and Nick inherited his second puppyhood. He no longer doubted, he no longer had a struggle of choice, for Mam'selle and Donelle kept close.They read and worked together, and sometimes while Jo worked Donelle played those tunes that made Nick yearn to howl. But he saw they did not understand his feelings so he controlled himself."And when spring comes, child, you will go to Mrs. Lindsay, won't you?"Jo played her last card."You see, it has all been going out and nothing coming in for years. You cost a pretty figure, Donelle, though I never grudged a cent, God knows! But you must help now, I'm seeing old age in the distance.""Come spring," whispered Donelle, and she struck into the Spring Song, "we'll see, we'll see! But, Mamsey, we can always keep boarders. I should love that and you have always dreamed of it. That room upstairs," the lovely tones rose and fell, "I can just see how some tired soul would look into that room and find peace. We'd make good things for him to eat, we'd play the fiddle for him, and——""A man's so messy," Jo put in, "I'd hate to have the room messed after all these years.""Well, there are women boarders," Donelle was adaptable to possibilities. "We'd be firm about messiness; man or woman. How much are you going to charge, Mamsey?"This was a joke between them.Longville's rapacity disgusted Jo. On the other hand, she felt that what one got for nothing he never valued. It was a nice question."I'm figuring about the price, child. The Longvilles never count what the boarders give them besides money.""What do they give, Mamsey?""Rightly handled, they give much. Think, Donelle," Jo's eyes lighted, "they come from here, there, and everywhere! If they are treated right, they can let you share what they know. Why once, when I was waiting on table at the Longvilles', there was a man who had been around the world! Around the world, child, all around it. One day he got talking, real quiet, to the man next to him and I'll never forget some things he said. I got so interested I stood stock still with a dish in my hands. I stood until——""Until what, Mamsey?""Until the Captain called from the kitchen.""Oh! my poor, Mamsey. Well, dear, our boarder shall talk and we'll not stop him and you shall not be called from the kitchen.""You are laughing, Donelle.""No, Mamsey, just planning.""But you must go away, child. You must learn, and then perhaps they'll take you at the St. Michael's Hotel. Someone always plays there summers, you know. Could folks dance to your tunes, Donelle?"The girl stared."Anyway you could learn," Jo sought to comfort."Perhaps I could, Mamsey, but I'd rather take boarders.""We could do both, Donelle," Jo was all energy. "Old age is within eye shot, but I'm long sighted. There's a good bit of power in me yet, child, and I'm eager for you to go with Mrs. Lindsay when she comes."Poor Jo, having had the glory of Donelle's choice, was almost desperate now in her desire to send the girl forth. She had not been blind; she was wise, too, and she realized that if the future were to be secure and her own place in it worthy of love and respect, she must refuse further sacrifice. And sacrifice it would be, a dull, detached life in Point of Pines.It was May when a letter came to Jo from Anderson Law. It was a brief letter, one written when the man's heart was torn with grief and shock. It told of Mrs. Lindsay's sudden death just when she was preparing for her return to the Walled House.It dwelt upon Law's knowledge of the affection and ambition of Mrs. Lindsay for her protégée, and while her will did not provide for the carrying out of her wishes, Law, himself, would see to it that everything should be done that was possible.He would come to Canada later and consult with "Mam'selle Morey."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 daughtersaidshe 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 shedidrecover 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! Thisisa 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 XIIITHE INEVITABLEJim 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 theRiver Queenwas 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 theRiver Queenchugged 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?""TheRiver Queenleft 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 cryOf 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 XII
THE HIDDEN CURRENT TURNS
The winter passed and spring came. Point of Pines awoke late but very lovely. Mam'selle and Donelle had at last burned the old clothes of the long-dead Morey. That phase, at least, was done with and much else had been laid on the pyre with them.
"And you came just because you wanted to, child?" Jo often asked when she even yet doubted her right to happiness.
"Yes, Mamsey, just for that. Wasn't I a silly?" And then Donelle would look into Jo's deep, strange eyes and say:
"You never run and hide any more, Mamsey. I see how glad you are; how you love me! Kiss me, Mamsey. Isn't it strange that I had to teach you to kiss me? Now don't keep thinking you mustn't be happy, it's our duty to be happy." Donelle gloried in her triumph.
Jo dropped a good many years in that winter and Nick inherited his second puppyhood. He no longer doubted, he no longer had a struggle of choice, for Mam'selle and Donelle kept close.
They read and worked together, and sometimes while Jo worked Donelle played those tunes that made Nick yearn to howl. But he saw they did not understand his feelings so he controlled himself.
"And when spring comes, child, you will go to Mrs. Lindsay, won't you?"
Jo played her last card.
"You see, it has all been going out and nothing coming in for years. You cost a pretty figure, Donelle, though I never grudged a cent, God knows! But you must help now, I'm seeing old age in the distance."
"Come spring," whispered Donelle, and she struck into the Spring Song, "we'll see, we'll see! But, Mamsey, we can always keep boarders. I should love that and you have always dreamed of it. That room upstairs," the lovely tones rose and fell, "I can just see how some tired soul would look into that room and find peace. We'd make good things for him to eat, we'd play the fiddle for him, and——"
"A man's so messy," Jo put in, "I'd hate to have the room messed after all these years."
"Well, there are women boarders," Donelle was adaptable to possibilities. "We'd be firm about messiness; man or woman. How much are you going to charge, Mamsey?"
This was a joke between them.
Longville's rapacity disgusted Jo. On the other hand, she felt that what one got for nothing he never valued. It was a nice question.
"I'm figuring about the price, child. The Longvilles never count what the boarders give them besides money."
"What do they give, Mamsey?"
"Rightly handled, they give much. Think, Donelle," Jo's eyes lighted, "they come from here, there, and everywhere! If they are treated right, they can let you share what they know. Why once, when I was waiting on table at the Longvilles', there was a man who had been around the world! Around the world, child, all around it. One day he got talking, real quiet, to the man next to him and I'll never forget some things he said. I got so interested I stood stock still with a dish in my hands. I stood until——"
"Until what, Mamsey?"
"Until the Captain called from the kitchen."
"Oh! my poor, Mamsey. Well, dear, our boarder shall talk and we'll not stop him and you shall not be called from the kitchen."
"You are laughing, Donelle."
"No, Mamsey, just planning."
"But you must go away, child. You must learn, and then perhaps they'll take you at the St. Michael's Hotel. Someone always plays there summers, you know. Could folks dance to your tunes, Donelle?"
The girl stared.
"Anyway you could learn," Jo sought to comfort.
"Perhaps I could, Mamsey, but I'd rather take boarders."
"We could do both, Donelle," Jo was all energy. "Old age is within eye shot, but I'm long sighted. There's a good bit of power in me yet, child, and I'm eager for you to go with Mrs. Lindsay when she comes."
Poor Jo, having had the glory of Donelle's choice, was almost desperate now in her desire to send the girl forth. She had not been blind; she was wise, too, and she realized that if the future were to be secure and her own place in it worthy of love and respect, she must refuse further sacrifice. And sacrifice it would be, a dull, detached life in Point of Pines.
It was May when a letter came to Jo from Anderson Law. It was a brief letter, one written when the man's heart was torn with grief and shock. It told of Mrs. Lindsay's sudden death just when she was preparing for her return to the Walled House.
It dwelt upon Law's knowledge of the affection and ambition of Mrs. Lindsay for her protégée, and while her will did not provide for the carrying out of her wishes, Law, himself, would see to it that everything should be done that was possible.
He would come to Canada later and consult with "Mam'selle Morey."
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 daughtersaidshe 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 shedidrecover 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! Thisisa 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 theRiver Queenwas 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 theRiver Queenchugged 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?"
"TheRiver Queenleft 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 cryOf bugles going by.
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 cryOf bugles going by.
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple keeping time;
With the yellow and the purple keeping time;
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
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."