Cover art
"Jo Morey was forty and as dark as a midwinter day deprived of the sanctifying warmth of the sun. She was formed for service, not charm."
MAM'SELLE JO
BY
HARRIET T. COMSTOCK
Illustrated
By
E. F. Ward
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK CO.
LIMITED
1918
PRINTED IN GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
DEDICATION
Beside each cradle—so an old legend runs—Fate stands
and with just scale weighs the sunshine and shadow to
which every life is entitled. But if Dame Fate is in a
kindly mood 'tis said she throws in a bit of extra
brightness for the pure joy of giving.
BARBARA WILSON COMSTOCK
you are
"THE EXTRA BIT"
To you I dedicate this book
HARRIET T. COMSTOCK.
Flatbush—Brooklyn, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
- [Mam'selle Jo Is Set Free]
- [Mam'selle Must Buy a Husband]
- [Mam'selle Does Not Buy a Husband]
- [But Mam'selle Makes a Vow]
- [Enter Donelle]
- [Mam'selle Hears Part of the Truth]
- [Marcel Takes Her Stand by Jo]
- [The Priest and the Road Mender]
- [Woman and Woman]
- [Pierre Gets His Revenge]
- [The Great Decision]
- [The Hidden Current Turns]
- [The Inevitable]
- [A Choice of Roads]
- [The Look]
- [The Story]
- [The Blighting Truth]
- [Tom Gavot Settles the Matter]
- [The Confession]
- [Gavot Gets His Call]
- [Donelle at Last Sees Tom]
- [Norval Comes Back]
- [Both Norval and Donelle—See]
- [The Glory Breaks Through]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
["Jo Morey was forty and as dark as a midwinter day deprived of the sanctifying warmth of the sun. She was formed for service, not charm"] . . . Frontispiece
["At the foot of the cross, her head bowed and her tears falling, Donelle shivered and prayed"]
LIST OF CHARACTERS
This is a story of a woman who having no beauty of face or form was deprived for a time of the beautiful things of life.
Then she prayed to the God of men and He gave her material success. Having this she raised her eyes from the earth which had been her battlefield and made a vow that she would take what was possible from the odds and ends of happiness and weave what she could into love and service.
Through this she won a reward far beyond her wildest dreams and found peace and joy.
"You are a strange man"—she said to him who discovered her.
"You are a very strange woman, Mam'selle"—he returned.
Besides these two there are:
Captain Longville—and his wife Marcel.
Pierre Gavot—and his wife Margot who found life paid because of her boy Tom.
Old Father Mantelle—more friend than priest who helped them all.
But Dan Kelly—of Dan's Place—better known as The Atmosphere—made life difficult for them all.
Then after a time the Lindsays of the Walled House drew things together and opened a new vista. Here we find:
Man-Andy; called by some, The Final Test, or Old Testy.
James Norval—who had some talent and an occasional flash of genius.
Katherine Norval, his wife, who from the highest motives nearly drove him to hell.
There are Sister Angela with the convenient memory and Little Sister Mary with the Lost Look.
Mary Maiden who happened into the story for a second only.
And lastly: Tom Gavot who dreamed of roads, played with roads, made roads, and at last found The Right Road which led him to the top, from that high point he saw—who can tell what?
And—Donelle who early prayed that she might be part of life and vowed that she was willing to suffer and pay. Life took her at her word, and used her.
MAM'SELLE JO
CHAPTER I
MAM'SELLE JO IS SET FREE
One late afternoon in September Jo Morey—she was better known in the village of Point of Pines as Mam'selle Jo—stood on the tiny lawn lying between her trim white house and the broad highway, lifted her eyes from the earth, that had long been her battlefield, and murmured aloud as lonely people often do,
"Mine! Mine! Mine!"
She did not say this arrogantly, but, rather, reverently. It was like a prayer of appreciation to the only God she recognized; a just God who had crowned her efforts with success. Not to a loving God could Mam'selle pray, for love had been denied her; not to a beautiful God, for Jo had yet to find beauty in her hard and narrow life; but to the Power that had vindicated Itself she was ready to do homage.
"Mine! Mine! Mine!"
Jo was forty and as dark as a midwinter day deprived of the sanctifying warmth of the sun. She was short and muscular, formed for service, not charm. Her mouth was the mouth of a woman who had never known rightful self-expression; her nose showed character, but was too strong for beauty; heavy brows shaded her eyes, shielding them from the idly-curious, but when those eyes were lifted one saw that they had been in God's keeping and preserved for happier outlooks. They were wonderful eyes. Soft brown with the sheen of horsechestnut.
Mam'selle's attire was as unique as she was herself. It consisted, for the most part, of garments which had once belonged to her father who had departed this life fifteen years before, rich in debts and a bad reputation; bequeathing to his older daughter his cast-off wardrobe and the care of an imbecile sister.
Jo now plunged her hands in the pockets of the rough coat; she planted her feet more firmly in the heavy boots much too large for her and, in tossing her head backward, displaced the old, battered felt hat that covered the lustrous braids of her thick, shining hair.
Standing so, bare headed, wide eyed, and shabby, Jo was a dramatic figure of victory. She looked at the neatly painted house, the hill rising behind it crowned with a splendid forest rich in autumn tints. Then her gaze drifted across the road to the fine pastures which had yielded a rare harvest; to the outhouses and barns that sheltered the wealth chat had been lately garnered. The neighing of Molly, the strong little horse; the rustling of cows, chickens, and the grunting of pigs were like sounds of music to her attentive ears. Then back to the house roved the keen but tender eyes, and rested upon the massive wood pile that flanked the north side of the house beginning at the kitchen door and ending, only, within a few feet of the highway.
This trusty guardian standing between Jo and the long, cold winter that lurked not far off, filled her with supreme content. Full well she knew that starting with the first log, lying close to her door, she might safely count upon comfort and warmth until late spring without demolishing the fine outline of the sturdy wall at the road-end!
That day Jo had paid the last dollar she owed to any man. She had two thousand dollars still to her credit; she was a free woman at last! Free after fifteen years of such toil and privation as few women had ever known.
She was free—and——
Just then Mam'selle knew the twinge of sadness that is the penalty of achievement. Heretofore there had been purpose, necessity, and obligation but now? Why, there was nothing; really nothing. She need not labour early and late; there was no demand upon her. For a moment her breath came quick and hard; her eyes dimmed and vaguely she realized that the struggle had held a glory that victory lacked.
Fifteen years ago she had stood as she was standing now, but had looked upon a far different scene. Then the house was falling to decay, and was but a sad shelter for the poor sister who lay muttering unintelligible words all day long while she played with bits of bright coloured rags. The barns and outhouses were empty and forlorn, the harvest a failure; the wood pile dangerously small.
Jo had but just returned from her father's funeral and she was wondering, helplessly, what she could do next in order to keep the wretched home, and procure food and clothing for Cecile and herself. She was thankful, even then, that her father was dead; glad that her poor mother, who had given up the struggle years before, did not complicate the barren present—it would be easier to attack the problem single handed.
And as she stood bewildered, but undaunted, Captain Longville came up the highway and paused near the ramshackle gate. Longville was the power in Point of Pines with whom all reckoned, first or last. He was of French descent, clever, lazy, and cruel but with an outward courtesy that defied the usual methods of retaliation. He had money and capacity for gaining more and more. He managed to obtain information and secrets that added to his control of people. He was a silent, forceful creature who never expended more than was necessary in money, time, or words to reach his goal—but he always had a definite goal in view.
"Good day, Mam'selle," he called to Jo in his perfect English which had merely a trace of accent, "it was a fine funeral and I never saw the father look better nor more as he should. He and you did yourselves proud." Longville's manner and choice of words were as composite as were his neighbours; Point of Pines was conglomerate, the homing place of many from many lands for generations past.
"I did my best for him," Jo responded, "and it's all paid for, Captain."
The dark eyes were turned upon the visitor proudly but helplessly.
"Paid, eh?" questioned Longville. This aspect of affairs surprised and disturbed him. "Paid, eh?"
"Yes, I saved. I knew what was coming."
"Well, now, Mam'selle, I have an offer to make. While your father lived I lent, and lent often, laying a debt on my own land in order to save his, but pay day has come. This is all—mine! But I'm no hard and fast master, specially to women, and in turning things about in my mind I have come to this conclusion. Back of my house is a small cabin, I offer it to you and Cecile. Bring what you choose from here and make the place homelike and, for the help you give Madame when the States' folks summer with us, we'll give you your clothing and keep. What do you say, eh?"
For full a minute Jo said nothing. She was a woman whose roots struck deep in every direction, and she recoiled at the idea of change. Then something happened to her. Without thought or conscious volition she began to speak.
"I—I want the chance, Captain Longville, only the chance."
"The chance, eh? What chance, Mam'selle?"
"The chance to—to get it back!" The screened eyes seemed to gather all the old, familiar wretchedness into their own misery.
Longville laughed, not brutally, but this was too much, coming as it did from Morey's daughter.
"Why, Mam'selle," he said, "the interest hasn't been paid in years."
"The interest—and how much is that?" murmured Jo.
"Oh, a matter of a couple of hundreds." This was flung out off-handedly.
"But if—if I could pay that and promise to keep it up, would you give me the chance? My money is as good as another's and the first time I fail, Captain, I'll fetch Cecile over to the cabin and sell myself to you."
This was not a gracious way to put it and it made Longville scowl, still it amused him mightily. There was a bit of the sport in him, too, and the words, wild and improbable as they were, set in motion various ideas.
If Jo could save from the wreck of things in the past enough money to pay for the funeral might she not, the sly minx, have saved more? Stolen was what Longville really thought. Ready money, as much as he could lay hands on, was the dearest thing in life to him and the fun of having any one scrimping and delving to procure it for him was a joy not to be lightly thrown away. And might he not accomplish all he had in mind by giving Jo her chance? He did not want the land and the ramshackle house, except for what they would bring in cash; and if Mam'selle must slave to earn, might she not be willing to slave in his kitchen as well as in another's? To be sure he would have, under this new dispensation, to pay her, or credit her, with a certain amount—but he could make it desirably small and should she rebel he would threaten her, in a kindly way, with disinclination to carry on further business relations with her.
So Longville pursed up his thin lips and considered.
"But the money, the interest money, Mam'selle, the chance depends upon that."
Jo turned and walked to the house. Presently she came back with a cracked teapot in her hands.
"In this," she said slowly as if repeating words suggested to her, "there are two hundred and forty-two dollars and seventy-nine cents, Captain. All through the years I have saved and saved. I've sold my linens and woollens to the city folks—I've lied—but now it will buy the chance."
A slow anger grew in Longville's eyes.
"And you did this, while owing everything to me?" he asked.
"It was father who owed you; your money went for drink, for anything and everything but safety for Cecile and me. The work of my own hands—is mine!"
"Not so say our good laws!" sneered Longville, "and now I could take it all from you and turn you out on the world."
"And will—you?" Jo asked.
She was a miserable figure standing there with her outstretched hands holding the cracked teapot.
Longville considered further. He longed to stand well in the community when it did not cost him too much. Without going into details he could so arrange this business with Jo Morey that he might shine forth radiantly—and he did not always radiate by any means.
"No!" he said presently; "I'm going to give you your chance, Mam'selle, that is, if you give me all your money."
"You said—two hundred!"
"About, Mam'selle, about. That was my word."
"But winter is near and there is Cecile. Captain, will you leave me a bit to begin on?"
"Well, now, let us see. How about our building up your wood pile; starting you in with potatoes, pork, and the like and leaving say twenty-five dollars in the teapot? How about that, eh?"
"Will you write it down and sign?" Jo was quivering.
"You're sharp, devilishly sharp, Mam'selle. How about being good friends instead of hard drivers of bargains?"
"You must write it out and sign, Captain. We'll be better friends for that."
Again Longville considered.
The arrangement would be brief at best, he concluded.
"I'll sign!" he finally agreed, "but, Mam'selle, it's like a play between you and me."
"It's no play, Captain, as you will see."
And so it had begun, that grim struggle which lasted fifteen long years with never a failure to meet the interest; and, in due time, the payments on the original loan were undertaken. Early and late Jo slaved, denying herself all but the barest necessities, but she managed to give poor Cecile better fare.
During the second year of Jo's struggle, two staggering things had occurred that threatened, for a time, to defeat her. She had known but little brightness in her dun-coloured girlhood, but that little had been connected with Henry Langley the best, by far, of the young men of the place. He was an American who had come from the States to Canada, as many others had, believing his chance on the land to be better than at home. He was an educated man with ambitions for a future of independence and a free life. He bought a small farm for himself and built a rude but comfortable cabin upon it. When he was not working out of doors he was studying within and his only extravagances were books and a violin.
Jo Morey had always attracted him; her mind, her courage, her defiance of conditions, called forth all that was fine in him. Without fully understanding he recognized in her the qualities that, added to his own, would secure the success he craved. So he taught her, read with her, and made her think. He was not calculating and selfish, the crude foundation was but the safety upon which he built a romance that was as simple and pure as any he had ever known. The plain, brave girl with her quiet humour and delicate ideals appealed mightily to him. His emotions were in abeyance to his good common sense, so he and Jo had planned for a future—never very definite, but always sincere.
After the death of Morey, Jo, according to her bargain with Longville, went to help in the care of the summer boarders who, that year, filled Madame Longville's house to overflowing and brought in a harvest that the Captain, not his womankind, gathered. That was the summer when poor Jo, over-worked, worried at leaving Cecile alone for so many weary hours, grew grim and unlovely and found little time or inclination to play the happy part with Langley that had been the joy and salvation of their lives. And just then a girl from the States appeared—a delicate, pretty thing ordered to the river-pines to regain her health. She belonged to the class of women who know no terminals in their lives, but accept everything as an open passage to the broad sea of their desires. She was obliged to work for her existence and the effort had all but cost her her life; she must get someone, therefore, to undertake the business for the future. Her resources were apparently limited, while the immediate necessity was pressing. Since nothing was to her finite and binding, she looked upon Henry Langley and beheld in him a possibility; a stepping stone. She promptly began her attack, by way of poor Jo, who, she keenly realized, was her safest and surest course to Langley's citadel. She made almost frantic efforts to include the tired drudge in the summer frivolities; her sweet compassion and delicate prettiness were in terrific contrast to Jo's shabbiness and lack of charm. While Langley tried to be just and loyal he could but acknowledge that Jo's blunt refusals to accept, what of course she could not accept, were often brutal and coarse. Then, as his senses began to blind him, he became stupidly critical, groping and bungling. He could not see, beneath Jo's fierce retorts to his very reasonable demands, the scorching hurt and ever-growing recognition of defeat.
It was the old game played between a professional and an amateur—and the professional won!
Quite unbeknown to poor Jo, toiling in Madame Longville's kitchen, Langley quietly sold his belongings to the Captain and, taking his prize off secretly, left explanations to others.
Longville made them.
"Mam'selle," he said, standing before Jo as she bent over a steaming pan of dishes in the stifling kitchen, "we've been cheated out of a merry wedding."
"A wedding?" asked Jo listlessly, "has any one time to marry now?"
"They made time and made off with themselves as well. Langley was married last night and is on his way, heaven knows where!"
Jo raised herself and faced Longville. Her hair was hanging limply, her eyes were terror-filled.
"Langley married and gone?" she gasped. Then: "My God!"
That was all, but Longville watching her drew his own evil conclusions and laughed good-naturedly.
"It's all in the day's work, Mam'selle," he said, and wondered silently if the slave before him would be able to finish out the summer.
Jo finished out the summer efficiently and silently. In September Cecile simply stopped babbling and playing with rags and became wholly dead. After the burial Jo, with her dog at her heels, went away. No one but Longville noticed. Her work at his house was over; the last boarder had departed.
Often Jo's home was unvisited for weeks at a time, so her absence, now, caused no surprise. Two weeks elapsed, then she reappeared, draggled and worn, the dog closely following.
That was all, and the endless work of weaving and spinning was resumed. Jo invented three marvellously beautiful designs that winter.
But now, this glorious autumn day, she stood victoriously reviewing the past. Suddenly she turned. As if playing an appointed part in the grim drama, Longville again stood by the gate looking a bit keener and grayer, but little older. In his hands, signed and properly executed, were all the papers that set Jo free from him forever unless he could, by some other method, draw her within his power. That money of hers in the bank lay heavy on his sense of propriety.
"Unless she's paying and paying me," he pondered, "what need has she of money? Too much money is bad for a woman—I'll give her interest."
And just then Jo hailed him in the tone and manner of a free creature.
"Ah, Captain, it's a good day, to be sure. A good day!"
"Here are the papers!" Longville came near and held them toward her.
"Thanks, there was no hurry."
"And now," Longville leered broadly. "'Tis I as comes a-begging. How about those hundreds in the bank, Mam'selle? I will pay the same interest as others and one good turn deserves another."
But Jo shook her head.
"No. I'm done with borrowing and lending, Captain. In the future, when I part with my money, I will give it. I've never had that pleasure in my life before."
"That's a course that will end in your begging again at my door." Longville's smile had vanished.
"If so be," and Jo tossed her head, "I'll come humbly, having learned my lesson from the best of teachers."
Jo plunged her hands deeper in the pockets of her father's old coat.
"A woman and her money are soon parted," growled Longville.
"You quote wrong, Captain. It is a fool and money; a woman is not always a fool."
Longville reserved his opinion as to this but assumed his grinning, playful manner which reminded one of the antics of a wild cat.
"Ah, Mam'selle, you must buy a husband. He will manage you and your good money."
A deep flush rose to Jo's dark face; her scowling brows hid her suffering eyes.
"You think I must buy what I could not win, Captain?" she asked quietly. "God help me from falling to such folly."
The two talked a little longer, but the real meaning and purpose that had held them together during the past years was gone. They both realized this fully, for the first time, as they tried now to make talk.
They spoke of the future only to find that they had no common future. Jo retreated as Longville advanced.
They clutched at the fast receding past with the realization that it was a dead thing and eluded them already.
The present was all that was left and that was heavy with new emotions. Longville presently became aware of a desire to hurt Jo Morey, since he could no longer control her; and Jo eyed the Captain as a suddenly released animal eyes its late torturer: free, but haunted by memories that still fetter its movements. She wanted to get rid of the disturbing presence.
"Yes, Mam'selle, since you put it that way," Longville shifted from one foot to the other as he harked back to the words that he saw hurt, "you must buy a husband."
"I must go inside," Jo returned bluntly, "good afternoon, Captain." And she abruptly left him.
It was rather awkward to be left standing alone on Jo Morey's trim lawn, so Longville muttered an uncomplimentary opinion of his late victim and strode toward home.
CHAPTER II
MAM'SELLE MUST BUY A HUSBAND
Longville turned the affairs of Jo Morey over and over in his scheming mind as he walked home. He had made the suggestion as to buying a husband from a mistaken idea of pleasantry, but its effect upon Jo had caused him to take the idea seriously, first as a lash, then as purpose. By the time he reached home he had arrived at a definite conclusion, had selected Jo's future mate, and had all but settled the details.
He ate his evening meal silently, sullenly, and watched his wife contemplatively.
There were times when Longville had an uncomfortable sensation when looking at Marcel. It was similar to the sensation one has when he discovers that he has been addressing a stranger instead of the intimate he had supposed.
He was the type of man who among his own sex sneers at women because of attributes with which he endows them, but who, when alone with women, has a creeping doubt as to his boasted conclusions and seeks to right matters by bullying methods.
Marcel had been bought and absorbed by Longville when she was too young and ignorant to resist openly. What life had taught her she held in reserve. There had never been what seemed an imperative need for rebellion so Marcel had been outwardly complacent. She had fulfilled the duties, that others had declared hers, because she was not clear in her own mind as to any other course, but under her slow outward manner there were currents running from heart to brain that Longville had never discovered, though there were times, like the present, when he stepped cautiously as he advanced toward his wife with a desire for coöperation.
"Marcel," he said presently with his awkward, playful manner, "I have an idea!"
He stretched his long legs toward the stove. He had eaten to his fill and now lighted his pipe, watching his wife as she bent over the steaming pan of dishes in the sink.
Marcel did not turn; ideas were uninteresting, and Longville's generally involved her in more work and no profit.
"'Tis about Pierre, your good-for-nothing brother."
"What about him?" asked Marcel. Blood was blood after all and she resented Longville's superior tone.
"Since Margot died he has had a rough time of it," mused the Captain, "caring for the boy and shifting for himself. It has been hard for Pierre."
"You want him and Tom—here?" Marcel turned now, the greasy water dripping from her red hands. She had small use for her brother, but her heart yearned over the motherless Tom.
"God forbid," ejaculated Longville, "but a man must pity such a life as Pierre's."
"Pierre takes his pleasures," sighed Marcel, "as all can testify."
"You mean that a man should have no pleasure?" snapped the Captain. "You women are devilish hard."
"I meant no wrong. 'Tis no business of mine."
"'Tis the business of all women to marry off the odds and ends"; and now Longville was ready. He launched out with a clear statement of Jo Morey's finances and the absolute necessity of male control of the same. Marcel listened and waited.
"Mam'selle Jo Morey must marry," Longville continued. He had his pipe lighted and between long puffs blinked luxuriously as he outlined the future. "She has too much money for a woman and—there is Pierre!"
"Mam'selle Jo and Pierre!" Almost Marcel laughed. "But Mam'selle is so homely and Pierre, being the handsome man he is, detests an ugly woman."
"What matters? Once married, the good law of the land gives the wife's money to her master. 'Tis a righteous law. And Pierre has a way with women that breaks them or kills them—generally both!"
This was meant jocosely, but Marcel gave a shudder as she bent again over the steaming suds.
"But Mam'selle with money," she murmured more to herself than to Longville. "Will Mam'selle sell herself?"
This almost staggered Longville. He took his pipe from his lips and stared at the back of the drudge near him. Then he spoke slowly, wonderingly:
"Will a woman marry? What mean you? All women will sell their souls for a man. Mam'selle, being ugly, must buy one. Besides——" And here Longville paused to impress his next words.
"Besides, you remember Langley?"
For a moment Marcel did not; so much had come and gone since Langley's time. Then she recalled the flurry his going with one of the summer people had caused, and she nodded.
"You know Langley walked and talked with Mam'selle before that red and white woman from the States caught him up in her petticoat and carried him off?"
It began to come back to Marcel now. Again she nodded indifferently.
"And some months after," Longville was whispering as if he feared the cat purring under the stove would hear, "some months later, what happened then." Marcel rummaged in her litter of bleak memories.
"Oh! Cecile died!" She brought forth triumphantly.
"Cecile died, yes! And Mam'selle went away. And what for?" The whispered words struck Marcel's dull brain like sharp strokes.
"I do not know," she faltered.
"You cannot guess—and you a woman?"
"I cannot."
"Then patch this and this together. Why does a woman go away and hide when a man has deserted her? Why?"
Marcel wiped the suds from her red, wrinkled hands. She stared at her husband like an idiot, then she sat down heavily in a chair.
"And that's why Mam'selle will buy Pierre."
For a full moment Marcel looked at her husband as if she had never seen him before, then her dreary eyes wandered to the window.
Across the road, in the growing darkness, lay three small graves in a row. Marcel was seeking them, now, seeking them with all the fierce love and loyalty that lay deep in her heart. And out of those pitiful mounds little forms, oh! such tiny forms, seemed to rise and plead for Jo Morey.
Who was it that had shared the black hours when Marcel's babies came—and went? Whose understanding and sympathy had made life possible when all else failed?
"I'll do no harm to Mam'selle Jo Morey!" The tone and words electrified Longville.
"What?" he asked roughly.
"If what you hint is true," Marcel spoke as from a great distance, her voice trailing pitifully; "I'll never use it to hurt Mam'selle, or I could not meet my God."
"You'll do what I say!"
But as he spoke Longville had a sense of doubt. For the second time that day he was conscious of being baffled by a woman; his purposes being threatened.
"You may regret," he growled, "if you do not help along with this—this matter of Pierre. There will come a time when Pierre will lie at your door. What then, eh?"
"Is that any reason why I should throw him at the door of another woman?" Marcel's pale face twitched. "Why should a man expect any woman's door to open to him," she went on, "when he has disgraced himself all his life?"
Longville stirred restlessly. Actually he dared not strike his wife, but he had all the impulse to do so. He resorted to hoary argument.
"'Tis the unselfish, the noble woman who saves—man!" he muttered, half ashamed of his own words.
At this Marcel laughed openly. Something was rising to the surface, something that life had taught her.
"It's a poor argument to use when the unworthy one is the gainer by a woman's unselfishness," retorted Marcel. "Unless she, too, gets something out of her—her nobleness, I should think a man would hate to fling it always in her teeth."
Longville half rose; his jaw looked ugly.
"'Tis my purpose," he said slowly, harshly, "to marry Mam'selle and Pierre. I have my reasons, and if you cannot help you can keep out of the way!"
"Yes, I can do that," murmured Marcel. She had taken up her knitting and she rarely spoke while she knitted. She thought!
But if Longville's suggestion seemed to die in the mind of his own woman, it had no such fate in that of Jo Morey. When she went into her orderly house, after leaving the Captain, she put her papers on the table and stood staring ahead into space. She seemed waiting for the ugly thought he had left to follow its creator, but instead it clung to her like a stinging nettle.
"Buy a husband!" she repeated; "buy a husband."
Into poor Jo's dry and empty heart the words ate their way like a spark in the autumn's brush. The flame left a blackened trail over which she toiled drearily back, back to that one blessed taste she had had of love and happiness. Memories, long considered dead, rose from their shallow graves like spectres, claiming Mam'selle for their own at last.
She had believed herself beyond suffering. She had thought that loneliness and hard labour had secured her at least from the agony she was now enduring, but with the consciousness that she could feel as she was feeling, a sort of terror overcame her.
Her past days of toil had been blessed with nights of exhausted slumber. But with the newly-won freedom there would be hours when she must succumb to the tortures of memory. She could not go on slaving with no actual need to spur her, she must have a reason, a motive for existence. Like many another, poor Jo realized that while she had plenty to retire on, she had nothing to retire to, for in her single purpose of freeing herself from Longville, she had freed herself from all other ties.
But Jo Morey would not have been the woman she was if obstacles could down her. She turned abruptly and strode toward the barn across the road. Nick, her dog, materialized at this point. Nick had no faith in men and discreetly kept out of sight when one appeared. He was no coward, but caution was a marked characteristic in him and unless necessity called he did not care, nor deem it advisable, to display his feelings to strangers.
Jo felt for Nick an affection based upon tradition and fact. His mother had been her sole companion during the darkest period of her life and Nick was a worthy son of a faithful mother. Jo talked to the dog constantly when she was most troubled and confused. She devoutly believed she often received inspiration and solution from his strange, earnest eyes.
"Well, old chap," she said now as she felt his sturdy body press against her knee. "What do you think of that?"
Nick gave a sharp, resentful yelp.
"We want no man planting his tobacco in our front yard; do we, sir? He might even expect us to plant it!"
Jo always spoke editorially when conversing with Nick. "And fancy a man sitting by the new stove, Nick, spitting and snoring and kicking no doubt you, my good friend, if not me!"
Nick refused to contemplate such a monstrous absurdity. He showed his teeth in a sardonic grin and, to ease his feelings, made a dash after a giddy hen who had forgotten the way to the coop and was frantically proclaiming the fact in the gathering darkness.
"If that hussy," muttered Jo, "don't stick closer to the roost, I'll have her for dinner!" Then a light broke upon Jo's face. From trifles, often, our lives are turned into new channels. "I declare, I'll have her anyway! I'll live from now on like folks."
States' folks, Jo had in mind, the easy-going summer type. "Chicken twice a week, hereafter, and no getting up before daybreak."
Nick had chased the doomed hen to the coop and was virtuously returning when his mistress again addressed him.
"Nick, the little red cow is about to calve. What do you think of that?"
Nick thought very little of it. The red cow was a nuisance. She calved at off times of the year and had an abnormal affection for her offspring. She would not be comforted when it was torn from her for financial reasons. She made known her objections by kicking over milk pails and making nights hideous by her wailing; then, too, she had a way of looking at one that weakened the moral fibre. Nick followed his mistress to the cow shed and stood contemplatively by while Jo smoothed the glossy head of the offending cow and murmured:
"Poor little lass, you cannot understand, but you do not want to be alone, do you?" The animal pressed close and gave a low, sweet sound of appreciation.
"All right, girl. I'll fill Nick up and take a bite, then I'll be back and bide with you."
The mild maternal eyes now rested upon Nick and his grew forgiving!
"Come, Nick!" called Jo. "We'll have to hurry. The little red cow, once she decides, does not waste time. It's a snack and dash for us, old man, until after the trouble is over. But there's no need of early bed-going to-night, Nick, and before we sleep we'll have the fire in the stove!"
So Nick followed obediently, ate voraciously but rapidly, and Jo took her snack while moving about the kitchen and planning for the celebration that was to follow the little red cow's accouchement.
It must be a desolate life indeed, a life barren of imagination, that has not had some sort of star to which the chariot of desire has been hitched. Jo Morey had a vast imagination and it had kept her safe through all the years of grind and weariness. Her star was a stove!
Back in the time when her relations with Longville were growing less strained and she could look beyond her obligations and still see—money, she had closed the fireplace in the living room and bought, on the instalment plan, a most marvellous invention of iron, nickle, and glass, with broad ovens and cavernous belly, and set it up in state.
Jo's conception of honesty would not permit her to build a fire in the monster until every cent was paid, but she had polished it, almost worshipped before it, and had silently vowed that upon the day when she was free from all debt to man she would revel in such warmth and glory as she had never known before.
"No more roasted fronts and frozen backs,"
Mam'selle had secretly sworn. "No more huddling in the kitchen and scrimping of fires. From the first frost to the first thaw I'll have two fires going. The new stove will heat the north chamber and perhaps the upper room as well. 'Tis a wondrous heater, I'm told."
But the red cow's affairs had postponed the thrilling event. Still neither Jo nor Nick ever expected perfection in fulfillment and they took the delay with patient dignity.
Later they again started for the cow shed, this time guided by a lantern, for night had fallen upon Point of Pines.
Jo took a seat upon an upturned potato basket with Nick close beside her, and so they waited. Waited until all need and danger were past; then, tenderly stroking the head of the newly-made mother, Jo spoke in the tone that few ever heard. Margot Gavot had heard it as she drifted out of life, her hungry eyes fastened on Jo and the sobbing boy—Tom. Marcel Longville had heard it as she clung to the hard, rough hand that seemed to be her only anchor when life and death battled for her and ended in taking her babies. The little red cow had heard it once before and now turned her grateful eyes to Mam'selle.
"So! So, lass," murmured Jo; "we don't understand, but we had to see it through. Brave lass, cuddle the wee thing and take your rest. So, so!"
Then back to the house went Jo and Nick, the lantern swinging between them like a captured star.
A wonderful, uplifted feeling rose in Jo Morey's heart. She was unlike her old, unheeding self, she heeded everything; she started at the slightest sound and drew her breath in sharply. She was almost afraid of the sensation that overcame her. Depression had fled; exhilaration had taken its place. A sense of freedom, of adventure, possessed her. She was ready at last to fling aside the bonds and go forth! Then Nick stopped short and strained forward as if sensing something in the dark that not even the lantern could disclose.
"So, Nick!" laughed Jo, "you feel it, too? It's all right, old man. The mystery of the shed has upset us both. It's always the same, whether it comes to woman or creature. Something hidden makes us see it, but our eyes are blind, blind to the meaning."
Then Jo resorted to action. She carried a load of wood from the pile to the living room; with bated breath she placed it in the stove.
"Suppose it shouldn't draw?" she whispered to Nick, and struck a match. The first test proved this fear ungrounded. The draw was so terrific that it threatened to suck everything up.
In a panic Jo experimented with the dampers and soon had the matter in control. She was perspiring, and Nick was yelping and dashing about in circles, when the fire was brought to a sense of its responsibility, ceased roaring like a wild bull, and settled down into a steady, reliable body of glowing heat.
Then Jo drew a chair close, pulled up her absurd skirts, put her man-shod feet into the oven, and gave a sigh of supreme content.
Nick took the hint. Since this was not an accident but, apparently, a permanent innovation, it behooved him to adapt himself as his mistress had done. Behind the fiery monster there was a space, hot as Tophet, but commanding a good view. It might be utilized, so Nick appropriated it.
"There seems no end to what this stove can do," muttered Jo, twisting about and disdaining the smell of overheated leather and wool. "No more undressing in the kitchen and freezing in bed in the north chamber. I've never been warm in winter since I was born, but that's done with now! I shouldn't wonder if I might open the room upstairs after a bit—I shouldn't wonder!"
Then Jo caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror over the stove! As she looked, her excitement lessened, the depression of the afternoon overcame her. She acknowledged that she looked old and ugly. A woman first to be despised, then ridiculed, by men. "Buy a husband!" She, Jo Morey, who had once had her vision and the dreams of a woman. She, who had had so much to offer in her shabby youth, so much that was fine and noble. Intelligence that had striven with, and overcome, obstacles; a passion for service, passion and love. All, all she had had except the one, poor, pitiful thing called beauty. That might have interpreted all else to man for her and won her the sacred desires of her soul.
She had had faith until Langley betrayed it. She had scorned the doubt that, what she lacked, could deprive her of her rights.
Through a never-to-be-forgotten spring and early summer she had been as other girls. Love had stirred her senses and set its seal upon the man who shared her few free hours. He had felt the screened loveliness of the spirit and character of Jo Morey; had revelled in her appreciation and understanding. He had loved her; told her so, and planned, with her, for a future rich in all that made life worth while. That was the spring when Jo had first noticed how the sand pipers, circling against the blue sky, made a brown blur that changed its form as the birds rose higher or when they dipped again, disappearing behind the tamarack pines on the hilltop.
That was the spring when the swift, incoming tide of the St. Lawrence made music in the fragrant stillness and she and Langley had sung together in their queer halting French "A la Claire Fontaine" and had laughed their honest English laughs at their clumsy tongues struggling with the rippling words.
And then; the girl had come, and—the end!
Jo believed that something had died in her at that time, but it had only been stunned. It arose now, and in the still, hot room demanded its own!
"Fifteen years ago!" murmured Jo and looked about at the evidences of her toiling years: the quaint room and the furnishings. The floor was painted yellow and on it were islands of gay, tinted rugs all woven by her tireless hands. There were round rugs and square rugs, long ones and short ones. In the middle of the room was a large table covered by a cloth designed and wrought by the same restless hands. Neatly painted chairs were ranged around the walls, and beneath the low broad window stood a hard, unyielding couch upon which lay a thick blanket and several bright pillows stuffed with sweet-grass.
At the casement were spotless curtains, standing out stiffly like starched skirts on prim little girls, and behind them rows of tin cans in which were growing gorgeous begonias and geraniums pressed against the glistening glass, like curious children peering into the black outer world. So had Jo's inarticulate life developed and expressed itself in this home-like room, while her mind had matured and her thoughts deepened. Then her eyes travelled to the winding stairway in the farthest corner. Her gaze kept to the strip of yellow paint in the middle of the white steps. It mounted higher and higher. Above was the upper chamber, the Waiting Room!
Long years ago, while serving in Madame Longville's home, Jo had conceived an ambition that had never really left her through all the time that had intervened. Some day she would have a boarder! Not upon such terms as the Longvilles accepted, however.
Her boarder was not merely to pay and pay in money, but he would be to her an education, a widening experience. She, alone, would reap the reward of the toil she expended upon him. And so with this in mind she had furnished the upper chamber, bit by bit, and had calculated over and again the proper sum to charge for the benefits to be derived and given.
"And now," said Jo, panting a little as if her eyes mounting the stairs had tired her. "Come summer I will get my boarder, but love of heaven! What price shall I set?"
The wind was rising and the pine trees were making that sound that always reminded Jo of poor Cecile's wordless moan.
Something seemed to press against the door. Nick started and bristled.
"Who's there?" demanded Mam'selle. There was no reply—only that tense pressure that made the panels creak.
CHAPTER III
MAM'SELLE DOES NOT BUY A HUSBAND
The tall clock in the kitchen struck eight in a sharp, affrighted way much as a chaperone might have done who wished to call her heedless charge to the demands of propriety.
Eight o'clock in Point of Pines meant, under ordinary conditions, just two things: house and bed for the respectable, Dan's Place—a reeking, dirty tavern—for the others.
And while Jo Morey's door creaked under the unseen pressure from without, Pierre Gavot and Captain Longville smoked and snoozed by the red-hot stove at Dan's, occasionally speaking on indifferent subjects.
These two men disliked and distrusted each other, but they hung together, drank together; for what reason who could tell? Gavot had eaten earlier in the day at the Longville house and during the meal the name of Jo Morey had figured rather prominently. However, Gavot had paid little heed, he had little use for women and no interest, whatever, in an ugly one. A long past French ancestry had given Gavot as it had Longville a subtle suavity of manner that somewhat cloaked his brutality, and he was an extremely handsome man of the big, dark type.
Suddenly now, in the smoky drowsiness of the tavern, Mam'selle Morey's name again was introduced.
"Mam'selle! Mam'selle!" muttered Pierre impatiently; "I tire of the mention of the black Mam'selle. Such a woman has but two uses: to serve while she can, to die when she cannot serve."
"But her service while she can serve, that has its value," Longville retorted, puffing lustily and blowing the smoke upward until it quite hid his eyes, no longer sleepy, but decidedly keen.
"The Mam'selle has money, much money," he went on, "that and her service might come in handy for you and Tom."
And now Pierre sat a little straighter in his chair.
"Me and Tom?" he repeated dazedly. "You mean that I get the Mam'selle to come to my—my cabin and work?"
Somehow this idea made Longville laugh, and the laugh brought a scowl to Pierre's face.
"Tom will be going off some day," the Captain said irrelevantly, "then what?"
"Tom will stick," Gavot broke in, "I'll see to that. Break the spirit of a woman or child and they stick."
But as he spoke Gavot's tone was not one of assurance. His boy Tom was not yet broken, even after the years of deprivation and cruelty, and lately he had shown a disposition for work, work that brought little or no return. This worried Gavot, who would not work upon any terms so long as he could survive without it.
"You can't depend upon children," Longville flung back, "a woman's safer and handier, and while the Mam'selle, having money, might not care to serve you for nothing, she might——" here the Captain left an eloquent pause while he leered at his brother-in-law seductively. Gradually the meaning of the words and the leer got into Gavot's consciousness.
"Good God!" he cried in an undertone, "you mean I should—marry the ugly Mam'selle Morey?" But even as he spoke the man gripped the idea savagely and, with a quickness that always marked the end of his muddled conclusions, he began to fix it among the possibilities of his wretched life.
"She needs a man to handle her money," Longville was running on. He saw the spark had ignited the rubbish in Gavot's mind. "And she's a powerful worker and saver. She cooks like an angel; she studies that art as another might study her Bible. She has a mind above most women, but properly handled and with reason——"
"What mean you, Longville, properly handled and with reason? Would any man marry Mam'selle?"
"A wise man might—yes," Longville was leading his brother-in-law by the most direct route, but he smiled under cover of the smoke. The Morey money in Gavot's hands meant Longville control in the near future. So the Captain smiled.
"She'd marry quick enough," he rambled on, refilling his pipe. "A man of her own is a big asset for such a woman as the Mam'selle. And then the law stands by the husband; woman's wit does not count."
Gavot was not heeding. His inflamed imagination had outstripped Longville's words. Once he had mastered the physical aspect of the matter, the rest became a dazzling lure. Never for an instant did he doubt that Jo Morey would accept him. The whole thing lay in his power if——
"She's old and ugly," he grunted half aloud.
"What care you?" reassured Longville, "ugliness does not hamper work, and her age is an advantage."
"But, what was that Langley story——?" Pierre was groping back helplessly.
Point of Pines had its moral standards for women, but it rarely gossiped; it stood by its own, on general principles, so long as its own demanded little and was content to take what was offered.
"That? Why, who cares for that after all this time?" Longville spoke benignly. "If Langley left the Mam'selle with that which no woman, without a ring, has a right to, she was keen enough to rid herself of the burden and cut her own way back to decent living. She has asked no favours, but she'd give much for a man to place her among her kind once more."
A deep silence followed, broken only by the guzzling and snoring of the other occupants of Dan's Place.
Suddenly Gavot got to his feet and reached for his hat. His inflamed face gave evidence of his true state.
"Back to Mastin's Point?" Longville asked, stretching himself and yawning.
"No, by heaven! but to Mam'selle Jo Morey's."
This almost staggered Longville. He was slower, surer than his wife's brother.
"But your togs," he gasped, "you're not a figure for courting."
"Courting?" Gavot laughed aloud. His drinking added impetus to every impulse and desire. "Does Mam'selle have to have her pill coated? Will she not swallow it without a question?"
"But 'tis late, Gavot——"
"And does the chaste Mam'selle keep to the early hours of better women?"
"But to-morrow—the next day," pleaded Longville, seeking to control the situation he had evolved. He feared he might be defeated by the force he had set in motion.
"No, by heaven, to-night!" fiercely and hoarsely muttered Gavot, "to-night or never for the brown and ugly Mam'selle Jo. To-night will make the morrows safe for me. If I stopped to consider, I could not put it through."
With that Gavot, big, handsome, and breathing hard, strode from the tavern and took to the King's Highway.
The wind rushed past him; pushed ahead; pressed at Jo's door with its warning. But she did not speak, and only when Gavot himself thumped on the panel was Jo roused from her revery and Nick from his puppy dreams.
"Who's there?" shouted Mam'selle, and clumped across the floor in her father's old boots. She slipped on one of the rugs and slid to the entrance before regaining her balance.
"It is I, Mam'selle, I, Pierre Gavot."
Jo opened the door at once.
"Well," she said with a calmness and serenity that chilled the excited man, "it's a long way from here to Mastin's and the hour's late, tell your business and get on your way, Pierre Gavot. Come in, sit by the fire. My, what a wind is stirring. Now, then—out with it!"
This crude opening to what Pierre hoped would be a dramatic scene, sweeping Jo Morey off her feet, nonplussed the would-be gallant not a little. He sat heavily down and eyed Nick uneasily. The dog was sniffing at his heels in a most suspicious fashion. Every hair of his body was on guard and his eyes were alert and forbidding.
"Well, Pierre Gavot, what is your errand?"
This did not improve matters and a shuffling motion toward Nick with a heavy boot concluded the investigation on the dog's part. Nick was convinced of the caller's disposition; he showed his teeth and growled.
"Come, come, now," laughed Mam'selle, whistling Nick to her, "you see, Pierre Gavot, I have a good care-taker. That being settled, let us proceed." Then, as Gavot still shuffled uneasily, she went on:
"Maybe it is Tom. I heard the other day that 'twas whispered among your good friends that unless you did your duty by Tom, there would be a sum raised to give the poor lad a chance—away from his loving father." Jo laughed a hard laugh. She pitied Tom Gavot with her woman-heart while she hated the man who deprived the boy of his rights.
Gavot shut his cruel lips close, but he controlled the desire to voice his real sentiments concerning the bit of gossip.
"Indeed there is no need for my neighbours showing their hate, Mam'selle. Tom's best good is what I'm seeking. He's young, young enough to be cared for and watched. I'm thinking more of Tom than of myself, and yet I ask nothing for him from you, Mam'selle Jo."
"So, Gavot! Well, then, I am in the dark. Surely you could ask nothing of me for yourself!"
Again Pierre was chilled and inclined to anger. All his fire and fury were deserting him; his intention of taking Jo by storm was disappearing; almost he suspected that she was getting control of the situation. He slyly looked at her dark, forbidding face and weighed the possibilities of the future. Jo, he realized, was secure now in her unusual independent position. Once let him, backed by the good law, which covers the just and the unjust husband with its mantle of authority, get possession of her future and her body, he'd manage—ah! would he not—to utilize the one and degrade the other!
"Mam'selle, I come to you as a lone and helpless man. Mam'selle, I must—Mam'selle, I want that you should live the rest of the time of our lives—with me!"
Jo was aroused, frightened. She turned her luminous eyes upon the man.
"You—you are asking me to marry you, Pierre Gavot?"
Gavot, believing that the meaning of his visit had at last brought her to his feet at the first direct shot, replied with a leer:
"Well, something like that, Mam'selle."
And now Jo's brows drew close; the eyes were darkened, the lips twitched ominously. As if to emphasize the moment, Nick, abristle and teeth showing, snarled gloomily as he eyed Gavot's feet.
"Something like that?" repeated Jo with a thrill in her tones. "You insult me, Gavot! Something like that. What do you mean?"
"God of mercy, Mam'selle," Gavot was genuinely alarmed, "I ask you to—be—my wife."
Jo leaned back in her chair. "I wish you'd talk less of the Almighty, Gavot. I reckon the Lord can speak for himself, if men, specially such men as you, get out of his way. It sickens me to have to find the meaning of God through—men. And you ask me to be your wife? You. And I was with Margot when she died!"
Gavot's eyes, for an instant, fell.
"Margot was out of her head," he muttered. "She talked madness."
"It was more truth than fever, Gavot. Her tongue ran loose—with truth. I know, I know."
"Well, then, Mam'selle, 'tis said a second wife reaps the harvest the first wife sowed. I have learned, Mam'selle Jo."
"Almost it is a greater insult than what I first thought!" Jo sighed sadly. "But 'tis the best you have to offer—I should not forget that—and some women would lay much stress on the chance you are offering me. One thing Margot said, Gavot, has never passed my lips until now—though often I've thought of it. When she'd emptied her poor soul of all that you had poured into it, when she had shriven herself, and was ready to meet her God, the God you had never let her find before because you got in between, she looked at Tom. The poor lad sat huddled up on the foot of the bed watching his mother going forth. 'Jo,' she whispered, 'when all's said and done, it paid because of Tom! When I tell God about Tom and what Tom meant, He'll forgive a lot else. He does with women.'"
Gavot dared not look up, and for a moment a death-like silence fell in the hot, tidy room. Jo looked about at her place of safety and freedom and wondered how she could hurry the disturbing element out.
Just then Gavot spoke. He had grasped the only straw in sight on the turgid stream.
"Mam'selle, you're not too old yet to bear a child, but you'll best waste no time." And then he smiled a loathsome smile that had its roots in all that had soiled and killed poor Margot Gavot's life. Jo recoiled as if something unclean were, indeed, near her.
"Don't," she shuddered warningly, "don't!" Then quite suddenly she turned upon the man, her eyes blazing, her mouth twisted with revolt and disdain.
"I wonder—if you could understand, if I showed you a woman's heart?" she asked with a curious break in her voice. "Long, long years I've ached to show the poor, dead thing lying here," she put her work-hardened hands across her breast, "to someone. There have been times when I have wondered if the telling might not help other women in Point of Pines; might not make men see plainer the wrong they do women; but until now there has never been any one to tell."
Expression was crying aloud, and the incongruity of the situation did not strike Jo Morey in her excitement.
"You've got to hear me out, Pierre Gavot," she went on. "You've come, God knows why, to offer me all that you have to give in exchange for—well! I'm going to give you all that I have to give you—all, all!
"There was a time, Gavot, when I longed for the thing that most women long for, the thing that made Margot take you—you! She knew her chances, poor soul, but you seemed the only way to her desires, so she took you!
"'Tis no shame to a woman to want what her nature cries out for, and the call comes when she's least able to understand and choose. Here in Point of Pines a girl has small choice. It is all well enough for them who do not know to talk of love and the rest. The burning desire in man and woman is there with or without love; it's the mercy of God when love is added. I knew what I wanted, all that counted to me must come through man, and love—my own love—sanctified everything for me. I did not understand, I did not try to, I was lifted up——"
Jo choked and Gavot twisted uneasily in his chair. This was all very boring, but he must endure it for the time being.
"I—I was willing to play the game and take my chances," Jo had got control of herself, "and I never feared, until it was forced upon me, that my ugliness stood in the way. All that I had to offer, and I had much, Gavot, much, counted as nothing with men because their eyes were held by this face of mine and could not see what lay behind.
"Perhaps that was God's way of saving me. I thought that for the first when I saw Margot dying.
"I had my love killed in me, but the desire was there for years and years; the longing for a home of my own and—children, children! After love was gone, after I staggered back to feeling, there were times when I would have bartered myself, as many another woman has, for the rights that are rights. But, since they must come by man's favour, I was denied and starved. Then the soul died within me, first with longing, then with contempt and hatred. By and by I took to praying, if one could call my state prayer. I prayed to the God of man. I demanded something—something from life, and this man's God was just. He let me succeed as men do, and this, this is the result!"
Jo flung her arms wide as if disclosing to Gavot's stupid eyes all that his greed ached to possess: her fields and barns; her house and her fat bank account. But the man dared not speak. He seemed to be confronting an awful Presence. He looked weakly at Jo Morey, estimating his chances after she had had her foolish way with him. Vaguely he knew that in the future this outburst of hers would be an added weapon in his hand; not even yet did he doubt but what he would gain his object.
"It's all wrong," Jo rushed on, seemingly forgetting her companion, "that women should have to wait for what their souls crave and die for until some man, looking at their faces, makes it possible. A pretty face is not all and everything: it should not be the only thing that counts against the rest. Why, the time came, Gavot, when a man meant nothing to me compared with—with other things."
The fire and purpose died away. The outbreak, caused by the day's experience, left Jo weak and trembling. She turned shamed and hating eyes upon Gavot. She had let loose the thought of her lonely years.
"And now you come, you!" she said, "and offer me, what?"
Pierre breathed hard, his time had come at last.
"Marriage, Mam'selle. I'm willing to risk it."
"Marriage! My God! Marriage, what does that mean to such as you, Pierre Gavot? And you think I would give up my clean, safe life for anything you have to offer? Do men think so low of women?"
Gavot snarled at this, his lips drew back in an ugly smile.
"God made the law for man and woman, Mam'selle——"
"Stop!" Jo stood up and flung her head back. "Stop! What do such as you know of God and his law? It's your own law you've made to cover all your wickedness and selfishness and then you—you label it with God's mark. But it's not God's fault. We women must show up the fraud and learn the true from the false. Oh! I've worked it out in my mind all these years while I've toiled and thought. But, Gavot, while we've been talking something has come to me quite clear. Not meaning to, you've done me a good turn.
"There's one way I can get something of what I want, and it's taken this scene to show me the path. Come to-morrow. You shall see, all of you, that I'm not the helpless thing you think me. Thinking isn't all. When we've thought our way out, we must act. And now get along, Gavot, the Lord takes queer ways and folks to work out his plans. Good-night to you and thank you!"
Pierre found himself on his feet and headed toward the door which Jo was holding open.
Outraged and flouted, knowing no mercy or justice, he had only one thing to say:
"Curse you!" he muttered; "curse and blast you."
Then he slunk out into the wild, black night.
A woman scorned and a man rejected have much in common, and there was the explanation to the Longvilles to be faced!
CHAPTER IV
BUT MAM'SELLE MAKES A VOW
After Mam'selle was certain that Gavot was beyond seeing her next move, she flung the door wide open, letting the fresh, pure night air sweep through the hot room.
Nick sprang to his feet but, deciding that the change in temperature had nothing to do with the late guest, he sidled over to Jo who stood on the threshold and pushed his questioning nose into her hand.
"Come, old fellow," she said gently, "we do not want sleep; let us go out and have a look at the sky. It will do us both good."
Quietly they went forth into the night and stood under a clump of pine trees back of the house and near the foot of the hill.
The clouds were splendid and the wind, like a mighty sculptor, changed their form and design moment by moment. They were silver-edged clouds, for a moon was hidden somewhere among them; here and there in the rifts stars shone and the murmuring of the pines, so like Cecile's cry, touched Mam'selle strangely. It seemed to her, standing there with Nick beside her, that something of the old, happy past was being given back to her. She smiled, wanly, to be sure, and tears, softer than had blurred her eyes for many a year, wet her lashes. In a numb sort of way she tried to understand the language of the night and the hour; it was bringing her peace—after all her storms. It was like having passed from a foul spot in a dark valley, to find oneself in a clear open space with a safe path leading——? With this thought Jo drew in her breath sharply. As surely as she had ever felt it in her life, she now felt that something new and compelling was about to occur. The meaning and purpose of her life seemed about to be revealed. Jo was a mystic; a fatalist, though she was never to realize this. Standing under the wind-swept sky she opened her arms wide, ready to accept! And then it came to her in definite form, the thought that had arisen during her talk with Gavot. She had said that she could have done without man if only the rest had been vouchsafed.
Well, then, what remained? She had house and lands and money. She might be denied the travail and mystery of having a child, but there were children; forgotten, disinherited children. They were possible, and if she accepted what was hers to take, her life need not be aimless and cheerless. She might yet know, vicariously, what her poor soul had craved.
A wave of religious exaltation swept over Jo Morey. Such moments have been epoch-making since the world began. The shepherds on Judea's plains, caught in the power of this emotion, lifted their eyes and saw the guiding star that led them to the Manger and the world's salvation! Down the ages it has turned the eyes of lesser men and women to their rightful course, and it now pointed Jo Morey to her new hope!
"I will adopt a child!" she said aloud and reverently as if dedicating herself. "A man child."
And then, in imagination, she followed the star.
Over at St. Michael's-on-the-Rocks there was a Catholic institution where baby driftwood was taken in without question. St. Michael's was a harbour town boasting a summer colony. Women there, as elsewhere, paid for too much faith or unsanctified greed, and the institution was often the solution of the pitiful outcome.
Jo had repeatedly contributed to the Home. She had no affiliation with the church that supported it, but the priest of Point of Pines had gained her respect and liking, and for his sake she had secretly aided causes that he approved. Tom Gavot, for instance, and the St. Michael's institution.
"Come, Nick," she said presently, "we'll sleep on it."
All night Mam'selle tossed about on her bed trying to argue herself into common sense. When she came down from the heights her decision appeared wild and unreasonable.
What would people say?
Rarely did Jo consider this, but it caught and held her now. Her hard, detached life had set her apart from the common conditions of the women near her. She was in many ways as innocent and guileless as a child although the deepest meanings of suffering and sorrow had not been hidden from her. That any one suspected her of being what she was not, had never occurred to her. She had shrunk from everyone at the time of Langley's desertion, because she neither wanted, nor looked for, sympathy and understanding. She was grateful for the indifference that followed that period of her life, but never for a moment had she known of that which lay hidden in the silence of her people.
Poor Jo! What Point of Pines was destined to think was impossible for her to conceive, because her planning was so wide of the reality that was to ensue. Tossing and restless, Jo tried to laugh her sudden resolve to scorn, but it would not be scorned either by reason or mirth.
"Very well!" she concluded for the second time, "I'll adopt a child, a man child! No girl things for me. I could not watch them straining out for their lives with the chance of losing them. A man can get what he wants and I'll do my best, under God, to make him merciful."
Toward morning Jo slept.
The next day she cooked and planned as calmly as if she were arranging for an invited guest. All her excitement and fire were smothered, but she did not falter in her determination. She explained to Nick as she tossed scraps to him. Nick was obligingly broad in his appetite and tastes, bones and bits of dough were equally acceptable, and he patted the floor thankfully with his sturdy little tail whenever Jo remembered him.
"We'll take it as a sign, Nick," she said, "that what I'm trying to do is right if there is at St. Michael's a man-thing, handsome and under a year old. We must have him handsome, that's half of the battle, and he must be so young that he can't remember. I want to begin on him.
"Now I'll bet you, Nick, that the Home is bristling with girl children and we'll have none of them."
Nick thumpingly agreed to all this but kept his eye on a plate of cookies that Mam'selle was lavishly sugaring. Nick did not spurn scraps but, like others, he yearned for tidbits.
All day Jo worked, cooking and setting her house in order.
Late in the afternoon she contemplated cutting a door between the two north chambers, her own and the one her father had used, which had never been occupied since.
"The child will soon need a place of his own," mused Jo, already looking ahead as a real mother might have done. Suddenly she started, recalling for the first time since before Pierre Gavot's diverting call her ambition concerning a boarder.
"Well, the boarder will have to wait," she thought, "they hate babies, and boys are terribly noisy and messy. I'll take a boarder when the lad goes away to school. I'll need company then."
By nightfall the little white house was spotless and in order. The fragrance of cooking mingled with the odour of wood fire was soothing to Jo's tired nerves; it meant home and achievement.
"I'll not let on about the child," she concluded just before she went to sleep. "When the doors of St. Michael's close on a child going in or out, they close, and that is the end of it. If folks care to pry it will give them something to do and keep them alive, but it's little they'll get from the Sisters or me.
"I'm a fool, a big fool, but I can pay for my folly and that's more than many women can do."
Early on the following morning Jo set forth in her broad-bellied little cart in which were a hamper of goodies for the waifs of St. Michael's, and a smaller basket containing Jo's own midday meal. Jo, herself, sat on the shaft beside the fat Molly and bobbed along in the best of spirits.
"You're to watch the place, Nick," she commanded, "and if he returns, you know who, just save a nip of him for me, that's a good beastie."
With this possibility of adventure, Nick had to be content.
Madame Longville saw Jo pass and remarked to the Captain who was eating the pancakes his wife was making:
"There goes Mam'selle, and so early, too; somehow she doesn't look as if she had taken up with Pierre."
"How does she look?" asked the Captain with his mouth full.
"Sort of easy and cheerful."
"Fool," muttered Longville and reached for more cakes. "Is she afoot?"
"No. She's in the little cart and it's empty."
"She's going to fetch Gavot, bag and baggage." Longville felt that he had solved the problem. "It takes a woman like Mam'selle to clinch a good bargain."
Then Longville laughed and sputtered.
"It was a good turn I did for your rascal brother when I turned him on to Mam'selle," he continued. "I took the matter in my own hands."
"I'm glad you did," Marcel returned, "but all the same Jo Morey doesn't look as if she had taken up with Pierre."
The repetition irritated Longville and again he muttered "fool!" then added "damn fool" and let the matter rest.
But Jo was out of sight by that time and seemed to have the empty world to herself. And what a world it was. The wind of the past few hours had swept the sky clear of clouds and for that time of year the day was warm.
Presently Jo found herself singing: "A la Claire Fontaine" and was surprised that it caused her no heartache. So grateful was she for this, that she dismounted and stood under one of the tall crosses by the wayside and prayed in her silent, wordless fashion, recalling the years that were gone as another might count the beads of a rosary. Her state of mind was most perplexing and surprising, but it was wonderful. What did it matter, the cause that resulted in this sense of freedom, and, at the same time, of being used and controlled? Jo felt herself a part of a great and powerful plan. Surely there is no truer freedom than that. At noon the roofs of St. Michael's were in plain sight over the pastures; by the road was a delectable pine grove with an opening broad enough to drive in, so in Jo drove. She unhitched Molly and fed her, then taking her own food to a log lying in the warm sunlight, she laid out her feast and seated herself upon the fragrant pine needles. She was healthfully hungry and thirsty and, for a few minutes, ate and drank without heeding anything but her needs. Then a stirring in the bushes attracted her attention. She raised her eyes and noted that the branches of a crimson sumach near the road were moving restlessly. Thinking some hungry but shy creature of the woods was hiding, Jo kept perfectly still, holding a morsel of food out enticingly.
The branches ceased trembling, there was no sound, but suddenly Jo realized that she was looking straight into eyes that were holding hers by a strange magnetism.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Who are you?"
There was no reply from the flaming bush, only that stare of fright and alertness.
"Come here. I will not hurt you. No one shall hurt you."
Either the words, or actual necessity, compelled obedience: the branches parted and out crawled a human figure covered by a coarse horse blanket over the dingy uniform of St. Michael's.
For a moment Jo was not sure whether the stranger were a boy or girl, for a rough boyish cap rested on the head, but when the form rose stiffly, tremblingly she saw it was that of a girl. She was pale and thin, with long braids of hair known as tow-colour, a faintly freckled face, and marvellous eyes. 'Twas the eyes that had caught and held Jo from the start, yellow eyes they were and black fringed. They were like pools in a wintry landscape; pools in which the sunlight was reflected.
"I—I am starving to death," said the girl advancing cautiously, slowly.
"Sit down and eat, then," commanded Jo, and her throat contracted as it always did when she witnessed suffering. "After you've had enough, tell me about yourself."
For a few minutes it seemed as if there were not enough food to satisfy the hungry child. She ate, not greedily or disgustingly, but tragically. At last, after a gulp of milk, she leaned back against a tree and gave Jo a grateful, pitiful smile.
"And now," said Jo, "where did you come from?"
"Over there," a denuded chicken bone pointed toward the Home.
"You live there?"
"I used to. I ran away last night. I've run away many times. They always caught me before."
The words were spoken in good, plain English. For this Jo was thankful. French, or the composite, always hampered her.
"Where were you last night?" she asked.
"Here in the woods."
Remembering the manner of night it was, Jo shivered and her face hardened.
"Were they cruel to you over there?" she said gruffly.
"Do you mean, did they beat me? No, they didn't beat my body, but they beat something else, something inside of me, all out of shape. They tried to make me into something I am not, something I do not want to be. They, they flattened me out. They were always teaching me, teaching me."
There was a comical fierceness in the words. Jo Morey recognized the spirit back of it and set her jaw.
"I never saw you at the Home," she said; "I've often been there."
"They only show the good ones—the ones they can be sure of. I took care of the babies when I wasn't being punished, locked up, you know. You see, I learned and could teach."
"They locked you up?" Mam'selle and the child were being drawn close by ties that neither understood.
"Yes, to keep me from running away. You're not going to tell them about me, are you?"
The wonderful eyes seemed searching Jo's very soul.
"No. But where are you going?"
"I'm, I'm looking for someone." As she spoke the light vanished from the yellow eyes, a blankness spread over the pale, thin face.
"Looking for whom?"
"I do not know."
"What is your name?" Jo was struck by the change in the girl, she had become listless, dull.
"I do not know. Over there they call me Marie, but that isn't my name."
"I can't let you go off alone by yourself," Jo was talking more to herself than to the girl.
"Then, what are you going to do with me? Please try to help me. You see I was very sick once and I—I cannot remember what happened before that, but it keeps coming closer and closer and pressing harder and harder—here." The girl put her hand to her head. "Once in awhile I catch little bits and then I hold them close and keep them. If I could be let alone I think soon I would remember."
The pleading eyes filled with tears, the lips trembled.
Now the obvious thing to do, Jo knew very well: she ought to bundle the girl into the cart and drive as fast as possible to the Home. But Mam'selle Jo knew that she was not going to do the obvious thing, and before she had time to plan another course she saw two black-robed figures coming across the pasture opposite. The girl saw them, too, and rushed to Jo. She clung to her fiercely and implored:
"God in heaven, save me! If they get me, I will kill myself."
The appeal turned Jo to stone.
"Get in the cart," she commanded, "and cover up in the straw."
The two Sisters from the Home were in the road as Jo bent to gather up the debris of the meal.
"Ah, 'tis the Mam'selle Morey," said the older Sister. "You were coming to St. Michael's perhaps, with your goodly gifts?" The words were spoken in pure French.
"I was coming, Sister—to—to adopt a child!"
The blunt statement, in bungling words, made both Sisters stare.
"'Tis like your good heart to think of this thing, Mam'selle Morey. Another day we will consider it."
"Why not to-day, Sister? My time is never empty. I want a boy, very young and—and good to look at."
"Oh, but Mam'selle Morey, one does not adopt a child as one does a stray cat. Another day, Mam'selle, and we will consider gladly, but to-day——"
"What of to-day, Sister?"
"Well, one of our little flock has strayed, a child sadly lacking but dearly loved; we must find her."
"She has been gone long?" Jo was moving to the cart with her basket and bottles.
"She has just been missed. We will soon find her."
Jo's hand, searching the straw, was patting the cold one that trembled beneath her touch. "May I give you a lift along the road?" she asked grimly, the humour of the thing striking her while she reassured the hidden girl by a whispered word.
"Thanks, no, Mam'selle. We will not keep to the roads. The lost one loved the woods. She'd seek them."
Jo waited until the Sisters had departed, her hand never having left the trembling one beneath hers.
"You are going to—to take me with you?" The words came muffled, from the straw.
"Yes."
"And where?"
"To Point of Pines."
"What a lovely name. And you, what may I call you?"
"Jo, Mam'selle Jo."
"Mam'selle Jo. That is pretty, too, like Point of Pines. How kind you are and good. I did not know any one could be so good."
"Lie down now, child, and sleep."
Jo was hitching Molly to the cart; her hands fumbled and there was a deep fire in her dark eyes.
"We're going home," she said presently, but the girl was already asleep.
Through the autumn sunset and under the clear stars the little cart bobbed along to Point of Pines. The stirring in the straw, the touch, now and then, of a small, groping hand were all that disturbed Jo's troubled thoughts. When she reached her darkened house, Nick met her at the gate. Very solemnly Jo dismounted and took the dog's head in her hands.
"Nick," she explained, "Nick, it's a girl, and an ugly one at that. She's old enough to remember, too, but she don't—she don't, Nick. God help me! I'm a fool, but I could do nothing else."
CHAPTER V
ENTER DONELLE
Many times during the next few weeks Jo Morey repeated that "I could do nothing else." It was like a defense of her action to all the opposing forces.
Poor Jo! She, who had stood before Longville a free woman but a short time ago; she who had flouted Gavot and sworn to have something of her own out of life in spite of man, was now held in the clutch of Fate.
The girl she had brought into her home was raving with fever and tossing restlessly on Jo's own bed in the little north chamber. No one ever sent for a doctor in Point of Pines until the need of one was practically past. Every woman was trained to care for the sick, and Mam'selle Jo was a master of the art, so she watched and cared for the sufferer, mechanically dazed by conditions and reiterating that she could have done nothing else.
The sweet autumn weather had changed suddenly, and winter came howling over the hills sheathed in icy rain that lashed the trees and houses and flooded the roads. No one came to disturb Jo Morey, and her secret was safe for the time being. But the long, dark, storm-racked nights; the dull days filled with anxiety and hard work, wore upon Jo. Constant journeys to the wood pile were necessary in order to keep the fires to their full duty; food had to be provided and the animals cared for.
Nick grew sedate and nervous; he followed his mistress closely and often sat by the bed upon which lay the stranger who had caused all the disturbance.
And so the storm raged, and in the loneliness poor Jo, like Nick, developed nerves.
She moved about, looking over her shoulder affrightedly if she heard an unusual sound. She forced herself to eat and when she could, she slept, lying beside the sick girl, her hand upon the hot body. At such times the flesh looses its hold upon the spirit and strange things happen. At such times, since the world began, miracles have occurred, and Jo became convinced, presently, that she had been led to do what she had done, by a Power over which she had no control and which she had no longer any desire to defy. She submitted; ceased to rebel; did not even reiterate that she could have done nothing else.
At first she listened to the sick girl's ravings, hoping she might learn something of the past, but as no names or places entered into the confused words she lost interest. Nevertheless, the words sank into her subconsciousness and made an impression. The fevered brain was groping back past the St. Michael days, groping in strange, distant places, but never finding anything definite. There seemed to be long, tiresome journeys, there were pathetic appeals to stop and rest. More than once the hoarse, weak voice cried: "They'll believe me if I tell. I saw how it was. Let me tell, they'll believe me."
But when Jo questioned as to this the burning eyes only stared and the lips closed. At other times the girl grew strangely still and her face softened.
"The white high-top is all pink," she once whispered looking toward the north window against which the sheet of icy rain was dashing; "it is morning!"
Jo grew superstitious; she felt haunted and afraid for the first time in her life and finally she decided to call in Marcel Longville and let her share the secret vigil.
The night of the day she decided upon this, something remarkable happened. Toward evening the rain ceased and the wind took to sobbing remorsefully in long, wearied gasps. The girl in the north chamber lay resting with lowered temperature and steadier pulse. "The crisis is past," murmured Jo, and when all was made comfortable, she went to the living room, put her feet in the oven, and looked at her weary, haggard face in the glass. The reflection did not move her, she was too utterly worn out, but she did think of the morrow and the coming of Marcel.
"Now that there is no need," she muttered, "I must have someone. I'm all but done for. I cannot think straight, and there has got to be some straight thinking from now on."
She was still looking at her plain face in the glass when she heard the clock in the kitchen strike ten and heard the even breathing of the girl in her north chamber. She was still looking in the glass, still hearing—what? Why, footsteps coming up the little white-shell path! Familiar steps they were, but coming from, oh! such a distance, and out of the many years! They caused no surprise nor alarm, however, and Jo smiled. She saw, quite distinctly, the face in the glass smiling, and now it was no longer old and haggard, and it seemed right that those steps should be near. Jo's smile broadened.
The steps came close; they were at the door. There was a quick, sharp knock as if the comer were hurrying gladly. Mam'selle sprang up and—found herself standing in the middle of the room, the fire all but burned out, the lamp sputtering!
"I've been dreaming!" murmured Jo, pushing her hair back from her face.
"Nick!"
Mam'selle was fully roused by now and her eyes were riveted upon her dog. He stood near the door all a-bristle, as if awaiting the entrance of one he knew and loved. Then he whined and capered about for all the world as if he were fawning at the feet of someone.
"Nick, come here!"
But Nick paid no heed.
"None of that, sir!"
The cold sweat stood on Jo Morey's face. "None of that!" Then, with a gasp, "You, too, heard the steps, the steps that have no right here. Nick!"
And now the dog turned and came abjectly toward his mistress. He looked foolish and apologetic.
"We're both going mad!" muttered Jo, but bent to soothe poor Nick before she turned to the north chamber.
Under the spell of her dream she trembled, and was filled with apprehension. How quiet the sick room was! The candle sputtering in its holder made flashes of light and cast queer shadows. The girl was not sleeping, her eyes were wide open, her hands groping feebly.
"Father," she moaned as Jo bent over her, "father, where are you? I'll remember, father. The name—Mam'selle Jo Morey, and she will understand!"
Then—all was still, deadly, terribly still. During the past weeks of strain and watching a door had been gradually opening into a darkened room, but now a sudden light was flashed and Jo saw and understood!
Undoubting, stunned, but keenly alive, she believed she was looking upon Henry Langley's child and felt that she had always known! It was most natural, Langley had been coming home to her: because he could trust her; knew that she would understand. Understand—what? But did that matter? Something had happened, Jo meant to find all that out later. Now she must act, and act quickly. The crisis had not passed; it was here. Jo set to work and for hours she fought death off by primitive but effective means. She knew the danger; counted the chances and strained every nerve to her task. When morning came she saw she had saved the girl and she dropped by the bedside, faint and listless, but lifting up her soul, where another woman would have prayed, to the Power that she acknowledged and trusted.
Mam'selle did not send for Marcel Longville, she was given strength to go on alone for a little longer. The sick girl rallied with wonderful response to Jo's care which now had a new meaning. She was docile, sweet, and pathetically grateful, but she did not want Jo long out of her sight.
"It is queer, Mam'selle," she sometimes said, "but when you go out of the door it seems as if something, a feeling, got me. And when you come in again, it goes."
"What kind of a feeling, child?"
"I do not know, but I am afraid of it and It is afraid of you. You're like a light, making the darkness go. When I was sickest, sometimes I felt I was lost in the blackness. Then I touched your hand, and I found my way back."
After awhile the "Mam'selle" was shortened to "Mam'sle," then, and quite unconsciously, to Mamsey. To that the girl clung always. And Jo, for no reason but a quaint whim, disdained the Marie by which the girl had been known and called her Donelle after poor Mrs. Morey who had died at Cecile's birth.
The winter after the ice storm settled down seriously. It had no more tantrums, but grew still and white and lonely. The snow was deep and glistening, the sky blue and cloudless and the pines cracked in the cold like the rifles of hunters in the woods. Donelle crept, a little, pale ghost, from the north chamber to the sunny living room. By putting her hand on Nick's head she walked more steadily and laughed at the progress she made. Jo tucked her up on the hard couch under the glowing begonias and geraniums.
"Good Mamsey! It's like coming back from a far, far place," whispered the girl. As strength returned Donelle grew often strangely thoughtful.
"I thought," she confided one night to Jo, "that when I was left alone I could remember, but I cannot."
Then Jo took things in her own hands. She was always one to muster all the help in sight, and not be too particular. She was developing a deep passion for the girl she had rescued; she meant to see the thing through and well through. As soon as she could she meant to go to St. Michael's and learn all that the Sisters knew of the girl's past. She felt she had a power over them that might wring the truth from their frozen silence. Then she meant to use her last dollar in procuring the proper medical skill for the girl. There was a big doctor every summer at St. Michael's Hotel; until summer Jo must do her best.
As her nerves grew calm and steady the experiences of the night of Donelle's crisis lost their hold.
"She heard my name at the Home," Jo argued, "and I myself spoke it when she was the most frightened and on the verge of fever. In the muddle and confusion of delirium it came to the surface with the rest of the floating bits. That's all."
Still there was a lurking familiarity about the girl that haunted Jo's most prosaic hours. It lay about the girl's mouth, the way she had of looking at Jo as if puzzled, and then a slow smile breaking. Langley had that same trick, back in the spring and summer of the past. He would take a long look, then smile contentedly as if an answer to a longing had come. But something else caught and held Jo Morey's attention as she watched the girl. That charm of manner, that poise and ease; how like they were to—but Jo dared not mention the name, for the hurt had broken out afresh after all the years!
"But such things do not happen in real life," she argued in her sane, honest mind. "She wouldn't have been hiding in those bushes just when I stopped to eat! I'm getting wild to fancy such things, wild!"
So Jo turned from the impossible and attacked the possible, but as often happens in life, she confused the two.
"See here, child," she said one day when Donelle was brooding and sad, "You've been very sick and you're weak yet, but while you were at the worst you remembered, and it will all come back again soon."
The girl brightened at once.
"What did I remember, Mamsey?" she asked.
Jo, weaving a new design, puckered her brow. "Oh, you told of travels with your father," then with inspiration, "they must have been in far-off places, for you spoke about high-tops white with snow and the sun making them pink. They must have been handsome."
Donelle's eyes widened and grew strained.
"Yes," she said dreamily; "they must have been handsome. But my father, Mamsey, what about my father?"
"Well, child, he died." Jo made the plunge and looked for the results.
"Yes, I think I knew he was dead. Did you know my father, Mamsey?"
Again Jo plunged.
"Yes, child, long ago. He must have been bringing you to me when something happened. Then you were ill and the Sisters took you——"
"But why did they not bring me to you?" Donelle was clinging to every word.
"I think they did not know. You forgot what had happened. Your father was dead——"
"Yes, I see. But always I was trying to get away. Many times I did get out of the gates, but always they found me until the time when I found you. Things happen very queer sometimes."
Then, quickly changing the subject;
"Mamsey, did you know my mother, too?"
"Yes, child." And now poor, honest, simple Jo Morey bent her head over the loom.
"Was she a good—mother?"
For the life of her Jo could not answer. The wide sunny eyes of the girl were upon her, the awful keenness of an awakening mind was searching her face and what lay behind her troubled eyes.
The moment of silence made the next harder; conclusions had been reached by the girl. She came toward Jo, stood before her, and laid her hands upon her shoulders,
"Mamsey," she faltered; "we will not talk about my mother if it hurts you." The quick gratitude and sympathy almost frightened Jo.
And they did not for many a year after that speak of Donelle's mother.
"But, child," Jo pleaded, "just do not push yourself, it will all come back to you some day. You must trust me as your father did. And another thing, Donelle, you are to live with me now, and—and it was your father's wish, it is best that you take my name. And you must not let on about—about—the Home at St. Michael's."
Donelle shivered.
"I will not!" she said. "Do they know where I am?"
"No. But when you are able to be left, I am going to tell them!" This came firmly. "They will be glad enough to forget you and leave the rest to me. They have great powers of forgetting and remembering, when it pays. But they are through with you, child, forever."
"Oh! Mamsey, thank God!"
Donelle folded her thin arms across her breast and swayed to and fro. This gesture of hers was characteristic. When she was glad she moved back and forth; when she was troubled she moved from side to side, holding her slim body close.
"I will mind nothing Mamsey, now. I will begin with you!"
"And I," murmured Jo gruffly, "I will begin with you, Donelle. You and I, you and I."
But of course the outside world soon had to be considered. People came to Jo Morey's door on one errand or another, but they got no further.
"I cannot make Mam'selle out," Marcel Longville confided to the Captain, "she has always been quick to answer a call when sickness was the reason. Now here is poor Tom laid up with a throat so bad that I know not what to do and when I went she opened her door but halfway and said, 'send for a doctor!'" Longville grunted. He had his suspicions about Mam'selle and Gavot, but he could get nothing definite from Pierre and surely there was nothing hopeful about Jo Morey's attitude.
"I'll call myself," he decided. But to his twice-repeated knocks he got no response; then he kicked on the door. At this Jo opened a window, risking the life and health of her begonias and geraniums by so doing.
"Well?" was all she said, but her plain, haggard face startled the Captain. He had formulated no special errand; he had trusted to developments, and this unlooked-for welcome to his advances threw him back upon a flimsy report of Tom Gavot's sore throat.
"I'm sorry, Captain," Jo said, "but I'm not able to do anything to help. There's no reason why you shouldn't get a doctor. If it's a case of money, I'll pay the bill for the sake of the poor boy and his dead mother."
"Mam'selle, you're not yourself," Longville retorted.
"I'm just myself," Jo flung back. "I've just found myself. But I'm going off for a few days, Captain, so good-bye."
Longville retreated from the house in a sadly befuddled state. Surely something serious was the matter with Jo Morey. She looked ill and acted queer, almost suspiciously queer. And she was going away! No one went away from Point of Pines unless dire necessity drove them. Why should people ever go away from anywhere unless forced?
Then Longville's thoughts drifted back to the time when Mam'selle had gone away before and came back so bedraggled and spent.
It was all very odd and unsettling.
"Surely Mam'selle needs watching," mumbled Longville and he decided to watch.
Night favoured his schemes. He forsook the tavern and made stealthy trips to the little white house, only to be greeted by blank darkness, except for a dim gleam at the edges of the curtain at the window of the small north chamber.
"Mam'selle has not yet gone," concluded Longville, but that was little comfort. Then one night he got bolder and crept close to the rear and listened under the chamber window.
Jo was talking to—— At that instant the kitchen door was flung open and out dashed Nick.
"At him!" commanded Mam'selle, standing in the panel of light, laughing diabolically, "It's a skunk, no doubt; drive him off, Nick; don't touch him!"
Longville escaped, how, he could not tell, for Nick sniffed at his retreating heels well down the highway.
Three or four nights after, Longville, discreetly keeping to the road, where he had a perfect right to be, paused before the white house again. It was a dark night, with occasional flashes of moonlight as the wind scattered the clouds.
Presently the house door opened and Mam'selle came out with Nick close beside her. They stood quite still on the little lawn, their faces turned upward. And just then Longville could have sworn he heard a sob, a deep, smothered sob, and Nick certainly whined piteously. Then the two went back into the house and Longville, with a nervous start, turned and faced—Gavot!
"What do you make of it?" whispered Pierre.
"Make of what?" demanded Longville.
"Oh, I've done some watching myself," Gavot replied, "I've watched you and her! A man doesn't keep to the night when the tavern has a warm place for him. I've kept you company, Longville, when you didn't know it."
"Well, then, what's the meaning that you make out, Pierre?"
"The Mam'selle Morey is up to—to tricks," Gavot nodded knowingly, "and she's not going to escape me."
"'Tis not the first caper she has cut," Longville snorted, "and she will well need an eye kept on her."
Then the two went amicably arm in arm to Dan's Place.
"Four eyes, brother Longville," said Gavot who always grew nauseously familiar when he dared. "Four eyes on Mam'selle and four such eyes!"
CHAPTER VI
MAM'SELLE HEARS PART OF THE TRUTH
Jo Morey came out of her house quite boldly and locked the door!
She had left Nick inside, a most unusual proceeding. Then she harnessed Molly to the caliche, also an unusual proceeding, for the picturesque carriage was reserved for the use of summer visitors and brought a good price when driven by one of the young French-Canadians from the settlement a few miles away. Openly, indeed encouraging nods and conversation, Jo started toward St. Michael's in her Sunday best and nicely poised on the high seat.
"Good morning, Captain," she greeted as she passed Longville on the road; "I'm off at last, you see! So you can take a rest from watching."
"When do you return, Mam'selle?" asked the Captain, quite taken aback by the sight.
"That depends," and Jo smiled, another rare proceeding, surely; "the roads are none too good and time is my own these days."
Then she bobbed along, the high feather on her absurd hat waving defiance.
But Jo was quite another person to young Tom Gavot whom she met a mile farther on. The boy was a handsome, shabby fellow and at present his throat was bound close in a band of red flannel. His clothing was thin and ragged and his bare hands rested upon the handle of a shovel which he held. He leaned slightly on it, as he paused to greet Mam'selle Morey.
"Tom, you've been sick," said Jo, stopping short and leaning toward him. "I hated not to come to you—but I couldn't."
"'Tis all right, now, Mam'selle. I went to the curé when my throat was the worst and the good Father took me in and sent for the doctor."
"I'll remember that, Tom, when the curé asks for help this winter. And, Tom, how goes life?"
The boy's clear, dark eyes looked troubled. "I want to get away, Mam'selle Jo. I can never make anything of myself here. Sometimes," the boy smiled grimly, "sometimes I find myself—longing to forget everything in——"
"No, Tom, not the tavern! Remember what I've always told you, boy, of the night your mother went. She said you paid for all she had suffered! Tom, when you get down and things look black, just remember and keep on being worth what she went through. It was worse than anything you'll ever be called upon to bear."
The boy's eyes dimmed.
"I'm holding close," he said grimly. "Holding close to—I don't know what."
"That's it, Tom, we don't know what; but it's something, isn't it?"
"Yes, Mam'selle."
"Now listen, Tom. How old are you? Let me see——"
"Sixteen, Mam'selle."
"To be sure. And you study hard at the school, the curé has told me. And you mend the roads in the summer with the men?"
"Yes, Mam'selle," Tom grinned, "and get a bit of money and hide it well. There's nearly twenty dollars now."
"Good! Well, Tom, this winter, study as you never have before and next summer, if the men come, work and save. You shall go away some day, that I swear. I'll promise that, but it must be a secret. You shall have your chance."
"Mam'selle!" Tom instinctively took off his hat and stood beside Jo like a ragged and forlorn knight.
"You've got to pay for all your mother suffered!" Jo's lips quivered. "It's the least you can do."
Then with a nod and a cheery farewell, Jo bobbed along while Tom Gavot returned to his self-imposed task of filling in the ruts on the road. Occasionally a traveller tossed him a coin, and the work kept him occupied, but best of all it assumed the dignity of a job and made him capable of helping intelligently when the real workers came in the late spring.
Just after midday Jo Morey drew up before the Home of St. Michael's-on-the-Rocks. She was very quiet, very dignified and firm, but her heart was pounding distractedly against her stiffly boned waist. She was to learn, at last, all there was to learn about the girl who, at that moment, was locked in the white house behind drawn shades, with instructions to remain hidden until Jo's return.
There was little doubt now in Mam'selle's mind but that the fantastic conclusions she had drawn during the strenuous hours of illness were mere figments and not to be relied upon. They could all be easily explained, no doubt.
Poor Jo!
But, no matter what she was to hear, and undoubtedly it would be most prosaic, she meant to keep the girl even if she had to threaten in order to do so! She, plain, unlovable Jo Morey, had developed a sudden and violent fancy for the girl she had rescued. Jo was almost ashamed of her emotions, but she could not, inwardly, control them. Outwardly, she might scowl and glower, but her heart beat quick at the touch of the girl's hands, her colour rose at the tones of the low voice; some women are thus moved by little children. Jo, repressed and suppressed, was like a delicate instrument upon which her own starved maternal instinct now played riotously.
She was led to the bare little reception room of the Home and left to her own devices while a small maid scurried away to summon the Sister in charge.
Alone, Jo sat on the edge of a hard chair and tried to believe that she was prepared for anything—or nothing, but all the time she was getting more and more agitated. When things were at the tensest she always looked the sternest, so when Sister Angela entered the room, she was rather taken aback by the face Mam'selle turned toward her soft greeting. Sister Angela was the older of the two nuns who had questioned Jo while the lost girl lay hidden under the straw in the cart that first day.
"Ah, it's Mam'selle Morey! A good day to you, Mam'selle."
"Have you found that girl yet?" bluntly spoke Jo.
The manner and question took the Sister off her guard.
"Oh! the girl! I remember, Mam'selle. We met you while we were looking for her. The child is quite safe, thank you. We have long wanted to find a good home for her."
"So you found her?"
Mam'selle was struggling with the fragments of French at her command and making poor work with them. The Sister pretended not to understand.
"The girl," Jo was losing what little control she had, "is over at my house; she's been terribly ill."
Sister Angela's face grew ashy and she drew her chair close. "And now?" she whispered.
"She's going to get well." Jo settled back.
"And—and she has talked? She had an illness here once, the physician told us another shock might restore her memory. That sometimes does happen. Mam'selle, the girl has remembered and—talked?"
"She's talked, yes!" Jo was groping along. "I want her story, Sister."
"What is there to tell, Mam'selle?" Sister Angela took a chance. "We always give the sinning mothers an hour in which to consider whether they will keep their children or not. We try to make them see their duty, if they will not, we assume it. And the past is dead. You know our way here, we do the best we can for the children. 'Tis wiser to forget—much."
"Sister Angela, I said the girl talked and she remembered!"
Under Jo's lowering brows the dark eyes gleamed.
"Then, Mam'selle, if the girl remembered and talked surely you can see why it was best to hush her story?"
The colour again receded from Sister Angela's face. She did not look guilty, but she looked anxious.
She had circulated a report that the missing girl was on probation in a good home; she had carried on a still hunt untiringly; and now if Mam'selle Jo Morey could be prevailed upon to adopt the girl, how perfectly everything would work out. And there was to be a meeting of the managers in a week!
"Sister, I mean to take this girl if it can be done legally and quietly, but I will not unless I hear all I can from you, all there is to know."
"Very well, Mam'selle, we only have the girl's good at heart, I assure you. Our Sister Mary was the one who brought the girl to us four years ago. I will send her to you. As to the legal steps, they are practical and easy, and when one of our fold goes to another, that is the end! We have educated this girl carefully; she is well trained. We had always her interest at heart. And now I will send Sister Mary."
Left alone again, Jo clasped her hands close and stiffened as for an ordeal.
The door opened and closed. A very pale little Sister took a chair near Mam'selle and, holding to her crucifix as to an anchor, she said gently:
"I am to tell you of the little girl, Marie. 'Tis not much of a story. We know very little, but the little were best forgot; it is not a pretty story.
"Four years ago word came from a tavern back in the hills that a man and child were very ill there and I went over to nurse them. The girl had fallen and hurt her head. She was quite out of her mind and I decided to bring her here; the doctor said she could be moved. The man, he was the father of the child, was dying. I sent for a priest and waited until the priest came.
"The man was a bit delirious and talked wildly, but at every question he hushed suddenly as if he were mortally afraid of something.
"He said he wanted no priest, insisted that he was able to start on. He was taking the child to someone who, he kept repeating, would believe him and understand.
"When I asked him what there was to believe and to whom he was taking the child, he looked at me strangely and laughed! He died before the priest came. I brought the girl away and somehow the report got around that she, too, had died, and we thought it best to let the matter rest there.
"A year later two men came to hear what we had to tell about the man who had died; he was wanted for—murder!"
To Morey sprang to her feet.
"Not—that!" she panted. Then quickly regaining her self-control, "I see now why you felt you must keep the story secret," she continued, and sank back limply in her chair.
"Exactly," nodded Sister Mary, then glanced about the room and lowered her voice.
"I told the men about the father's death—and—I said the girl had died later. Mam'selle, I took that course because one of the men, he said he had known the dead man, wanted the girl, and I could not trust the man; his eyes were bad. I feared for the child. 'Twas better that she stayed where she was, shielded, cared for. I had grown to be fond of her. I taught her carefully, she was a great help with the younger children. I hoped she would come into the Sisterhood, but perhaps it is best she should have a safe home."
"Is that all? Did those men tell you nothing of the past?" Jo's words came like hard, quick strokes.
The waxen face of Sister Mary did not change expression. She had left life's sordid problems so far behind that they were mere words to her.
"Oh! they had their story," she said. "The dead man had shot his wife because he discovered that she had a lover. He shot her in the presence of the little girl and the lover. Mam'selle, I believe the man with the officer was the lover. He wanted the child for reasons of his own; that was why I said—she was dead.
"That's all, Mam'selle."
Jo Morey felt a strange sympathy with the pale little Sister and a deep gratitude.
"You're a good woman!" she said to Sister Mary.
"I did my best for the girl," the Sister went on, still holding to her crucifix, "she never recovered her memory for that, God be praised! But she had a bright mind and I trained that carefully. She knows much from books; all that I could get for her. She never took kindly to—religion, and that is why Sister Angela was thinking of finding a home for her; the girl was not happy here, but we did our best."
"I am sure you did, Sister!" Jo looked grateful. "I understand. But those men, did they not mention the name of the man they sought?"
Sister Mary drew her brows together. "The name? Yes, but it has escaped me. It was an English name if I recall rightly, something like—Long—no—yes—it was Longley or Longdon, something sounding like that."
Never in her life had Jo fainted, but she feared she was going to do so now. The bare little room was effaced as though a huge, icy blackness engulfed it. In the darkness a clock on a shelf ticked madly, dashingly, like blow upon blow on iron.
"Here is a glass of water, Mam'selle, you are ill."
Sister Mary pressed the glass to Jo's lips and she drank it to the last drop.
"I have nursed this girl through a long sickness," she explained. "I am tired. But I will keep her. Tell Sister Angela to make arrangements and let me know."
"Very well, Mam'selle. And the girl, Marie; she remembers, Sister Angela says. 'Tis a miracle. I shall miss her, but God has been kind to her."
"She will remember only what I tell her, from now on!" Jo set her teeth over her tingling tongue. "And now, I must go."
Mam'selle almost expected to find it dark when she went out from the dim room, but it was broad daylight, and when she looked at the clock in the church tower she saw that she had been but an hour inside.
In all the years of her life she had never experienced half so much as she had during the space of time with the two Sisters. She was conscious of trying to keep what she had heard in the Home, out of her mind; she was afraid to face it in the open. There were children playing about; a Sister or two looked at her curiously; she must be alone before she dared take her terrible knowledge into consideration. Gravely she went to the caleche, stiffly she took the reins and clicked to Molly. A mile from St. Michael's, much to Molly's disgust, they turned from the main road and struck into a wood trail where the snowy slush made travel difficult. Jo did not go far, she merely wanted to hide from any chance passerby. Then she let the reins drop in her lap and staring straight ahead—thought!
It was growing cold, that dead cold that comes when the mercury is dropping. But Jo was back in the summer time of her life, she was studying Langley, and the woman who had lured him, with the mature power that suffering years had later evolved in Jo herself. By some psychic force she seemed able to follow them far, far. So far she went in imagination that she saw the "white high-tops" changing from shade to shade. Jo, who had never been fifty miles from her birthplace, went far in that hour!
She understood Langley as she never had before. She suffered with him, no longer because of him. The dreadful scene in the lonely wood-cabin; the stranger man who had told his story! And against that story who could prevail? But would Langley have been coming to her with his child had he been guilty of the crime with which he was charged? And Donelle's words: "They will believe me. Let me tell, I saw how it was."
Mam'selle, stiff with cold, smiled with rare radiance as one might who, considering her dishonoured dead, knows in her heart that he is innocent.
"If the child ever remembers, then I can speak," thought poor Jo. "I believe the man who came to the Home is the guilty one. He wanted the girl, wanted to hush her story. He must think her dead, dead, unless she can prove—the truth."
The black tragedy into which poor Mam'selle had been plunged quickened every sense. Her one determination was to hide Langley's child, not only for her own safety, but in order that the horrible story of the crime might be stilled. Langley was dead, he must rest in peace. But that man might be alive; the merest suspicion of Donelle's existence would bring about the greatest disaster. He might claim the girl, by pretending relationship, and then go to any lengths to insure her silence. No; come what might, all must be hidden.
It was dark when Mam'selle Jo reached Point of Pines. She took Molly to the stable and fed her, then silently made her way to the little house. Not a gleam of light shone from the windows; all was quiet and safe.
But was it? As Jo reached the lowest step of the porch she saw a black figure crouching under the living-room window. So absorbed was the watcher that he had not heard Jo's approach; neither did he notice when, on tiptoes, she mounted and stood behind him, the better to see what might be the object of his spying.
The shade of the broad window was lowered, but the bottom rested on the pots of flowers, and there was a space through which one might look into the room. The fire was burning brightly and its radiance clearly showed Donelle on the couch by the window, fast asleep, Nick crouching beside her, his eyes glaring at the intruder outside and his teeth showing!
"Well, Captain!"
Longville jumped up as if he had been shot. For an instant Jo had the master position, but only for an instant; then Longville spoke.
"So that's what you have been hiding!" he said.
"And this is the way you take to find out?" Jo looked dangerous. She was thinking quickly. She had meant to guard the future by safe courses, but she had little choice now. Only one thing was clear, she must save the secret she had just learned. In reaching this conclusion Jo did not consider how badly she was plunging into dangerous depths. For herself she gave no thought, her innocence and ignorance made her blind; she stood before her persecutor and answered blankly like one who must reply, and does not count the cost.
"Whose girl is that?"
"Mine."
"Yours and Langley's, by God! And you have the shamelessness to stand there and tell me so to my face. So that's what you went away for, the summer Langley turned you adrift. All these years you've kept your disgrace hidden—where?"
Horrified, Jo staggered back and confronted Longville with desperate eyes. She had meant to tell him that she had adopted the girl; had even felt she might go so far as to mention the Home, but now! What was she to do? This mean and suspicious mind had fastened on an explanation of the child's presence in her house that had not even occurred to her. No matter what she said she doubted if Longville would believe her. She stood in the dark, face to face with the Captain, while her mind battled with the question. "Shall I say the child is my own?" thought Jo. "That will stop all further questions, no one need ever know about the murder, and Donelle can be kept safe from the hateful suspicion that I——" she could not even say the horrible thing to herself.
"Answer me!" Longville, feeling that his victim feared, flung all disguise aside.
Still she stared and debated with herself. She knew that if she said that she had adopted Donelle, Longville would not believe her mere statement; she would have to bare this whole awful story to this scandal-monger; the man would expect proofs, he would ferret out the last detail. Everyone in the village would know it next day, the child would be questioned, her house would be the centre of the curious.
The other horn of the dilemma would be safer for the child; they would be let alone, she could live the evil name down. Sometime the truth would come out.
Jo had decided. She faced Longville, her head up, her jaws clamped, silent.
"Answer me—you—harlot!"
The word stung Jo Morey and she sprang forward. Longville thought she was going to strike him and like the coward he was, he dodged.
"You dare not speak for yourself," he snarled.
Then Jo laughed. The sound frightened her. She did not feel like laughing, heaven knew; but the relief of it steadied her. Then, as one does who sees a struggle is useless, she let herself go.
"Oh! yes; I can speak for myself, Captain. The girl is mine. Where I've kept her is my business, and you and I have finished business together. That—that brother-in-law of yours came after my money; was willing to marry me for it, and flung some hateful words in my face. But he set me thinking. Why should a woman do without a child because a man will have none of her, or only that which he wants? If I could not have my own in man's way, I take it in my own. I have my child, and now—what will you do? If you make my life and hers a hell here I have money and can go elsewhere. Go so far that your black words will not be heard. On the other hand, if you mind your business and leave me and mine alone, we'll stay. And now get off my property."
Longville was so utterly dumbfounded that he slunk from the porch and was in the road before he regained his self-control. Then he started back, but Jo had gone inside, locked the door noisily, and was pulling the shade down to its extreme limit!
CHAPTER VII
MARCEL TAKES HER STAND BY JO
Apparently Longville decided to mind his business, but that, he declared did not exclude Mam'selle's. Greed, curiosity, and indecision caused him to refrain from persecution. Indeed the psychology of the situation was peculiar. For the first time in her life Jo Morey became interesting. A woman with a past may, or may not be happy, but she certainly affords speculation and conjecture. Point of Pines, when it had considered Jo before, felt an amused sort of pity for her and, since she asked nothing of it, left her completely alone. But now, at this late day, she sailed into the open in such an unlooked-for manner that she inspired awe rather than the contempt or outraged scorn of Point of Pines. Without stir or fuss she simply annexed the child, and went the even gait that she had heretofore gone alone.
She was a mystery, and the men, generally in the fragrant atmosphere of Dan's Place, discussed her smartness and independence with resentment, and a—smothered—admiration! The women, especially those with whom Jo had shared hours of pain and sorrow, wondered where she had been when her own hour overtook her; whose hands had helped her who never refused help to others. And who had kept Jo's child? That question stirred in Dan's Place and in the houses roundabout.
"Perhaps some hill woman has kept the child," whispered the women over their work; but to hunt among the hills would be futile. Besides, Mam'selle's money had undoubtedly closed any lips which might be able to furnish facts.
It was a thrilling situation. One not to be despised by the lonely hamlet. Some were for, some against, Mam'selle Morey; but no one wanted, or dared, to ignore her utterly. Marcel Longville issued forth from the cloud of indecision, girded on her armour, and struck a blow for Jo Morey.
In order to make known her position, she wrapped herself in a shawl one day, and boldly walked to Jo's house in the middle of the afternoon, when several men, her husband among them, were sitting about the stove in the tavern, their faces turned to the highway.
"A woman like Mam'selle Morey can corrupt a town unless—" It was Gavot who spoke, and he sniffed disagreeably, looking down the road. Longville was watching his wife pass; he grew hot with anger, but made no reply.
"Marcel can cut her up with her tongue. It takes a woman to slash a woman," Pierre continued.
The proprietor, Dan Kelly, came to the fore. He rarely took part in conversation. He was like a big, silent, congenial Atmosphere. He pervaded his Place, but did not often materialize in conversation. Now he spoke.
"Queer, ain't it," he drawled, "how we just naturally hate to get our women mixed up? Lord knows we must have both kinds—we've fixed things that way—but when they edge toward each other we get damned religious and moral, don't we? Why?"
The words rolled around the stifling room like a bomb. Every man dodged, not knowing whether the thing was aimed at him or not, and everyone was afraid it might explode.
"Why?" continued Dan.
Then, getting no verbal answer, he went to the chair behind the bar, his throne, and became once more an Atmosphere.
But by that time Marcel was sitting in a rocker in the middle of Jo Morey's cheerful living room, watching Donelle asleep upon the couch. Jo was at her loom and both women whispered as they talked.
"I had to come, Mam'selle," said Marcel, "not because you need me or because I want to act a part, making myself better or different; it isn't that. I just want to stand a bit closer because I feel you are a good woman. I've always felt that, and my opinion hasn't changed, only I want you to know."
Jo tried not to smile; she felt she was taking of Marcel's best under false pretences. Had she been what they all thought, this neighbourly act would have bowed her with gratitude. As it was she felt a deeper sympathy for Marcel than she had ever felt, and she yearned to confide in her—but she dared not.
"Nights I get to thinking," Marcel droned on while Jo's busy fingers flew at her task, "how it was with you when she came," Marcel nodded toward the couch.
And now Jo's face twitched. How little any one guessed, or could guess, how it had been with her at the time when another woman gave birth to the girl.
"I got through somehow," she replied vaguely.
"We never get to a wall without finding an opening to crawl through, Marcel. It may be a pretty tight squeeze, but we get through."
"God knows those times are hard for a woman, Mam'selle."
"They are, bitter hard."
"And men folks don't take them into account."
"How can they, Marcel? It wouldn't be reasonable to expect it."
"It's queer, Mam'selle, how this—this thing that makes women willing to go through it, goes on and on. It means one thing to a woman; another to a man, but it seems to pay, though the Lord knows why, or how."
Jo was thinking of the subtle something that she, poor Tom Gavot, Marcel, and all the rest clung to. The thing that none of them understood.
"I'm glad you've got her!" Marcel suddenly broke in fiercely, again nodding toward the sleeping girl. "It just proves that you, Mam'selle, had the woman's reason, not the man's. That makes the difference. A woman cannot, a decent woman I mean, forgive a woman for acting like a man; casting off her young and all that, but she can understand—this! And isn't she fine and rare, Mam'selle. It's another queer thing, how many a child that comes in the straight and narrow way isn't half what it should be. Sometimes they just haven't spirit enough to stay, mine didn't, and then such children as—as yours, Mam'selle, seem to have God's blessing shining all over them."
So firmly and simply had Marcel accepted what, in reality, did not exist that poor Jo felt the uselessness of confession drawing closer and closer about her. For some days past she had been considering Marcel as a recipient for the truth, for Jo hated to accept, without some protest, the belief that she felt was spreading among her silent people. It might ease her own conscience to confide in Marcel; it might be a bit of proof in the future, but unless she told all the truth she could hardly hope to impress even the kindly Marcel, for she saw that the shabby, down-trodden woman was accepting her as the most vital and absorbing thing that had ever happened in her life. Jo, in her real self, had never inspired Marcel. Jo, in her present guise, not only claimed interest, but aroused purpose. She brought to life the struggling nobility that was inherent in Marcel but which life had never before utilized.
"I'm going to stand by her," Marcel nodded toward the couch, "by her and you—so help me God!"
Jo went to the quivering woman and laid her hand on the thin, drooping shoulder. She was mutely thanking Marcel in the name of all women who sadly needed such support.
"I'd rather have been a—a bad woman," Marcel quivered, using the term almost reverently, "and have had such as this to comfort me, than be the thing men think I ought to be, and have——" She did not finish, but Jo knew she meant those piteous little graves on the hillside.
"It don't pay to be good, Mam'selle!"
"Yes; it does, Marcel, it does." Jo's voice shook. "It pays to do your best with the things that are, as you see them. It's when we try to do what others think is good, others who haven't our problems, that we get lost. We women folks have got to blaze our own way and stick to it. No man, or man's God, is ever going to side-track me. And, Marcel, I thank you for what you came to do for me. There may be a time coming when you can serve me, and I'm sure you will. But if ever I did you a good turn, you've more than paid me back to-day."
Long after Marcel had gone to her cheerless home Jo Morey thought and thought, and as her heart grew soft her head grew hard. While her lips trembled her eyes glowed with fire, and from that moment she was able, in a strange, perplexed way, to project herself into the position that was falsely forced upon her. As she accepted it, Langley's wife was largely eliminated. It was Jo, herself, who had followed Langley to the far places; it was she who had borne and reared his child out of her great love. It was she, Jo Morey, who had stood by him, shielded him to the end, and was now determined to fill his place and her own toward the girl!—and to keep the secret! Langley had loved fine things, books, music. Jo recalled how he could fiddle and whistle, why, he could imitate any bird that sang in the summer woods. Well, somehow Donelle should have those things! Jo went later to the attic, and brought down books, long-hidden books, among them one Langley had given her because he loved some verses in it. Donelle should have learning, too. Jo meant to consult the priest about that. In short, the girl should have her chance. Poor Jo; even then she did not take into consideration the harm she was unconsciously doing the girl. She felt all-powerful. Her starved and yearning affection went out to Donelle and met no obstacle, for the girl, her health regained, was the sunniest, most grateful creature that one could imagine. No need to warn her to silence concerning St. Michael's, that experience was apparently as if it never had been.
The legal steps had been taken, and Jo was in complete control. The gates of St. Michael's were closed forever upon the girl known as Marie. She now faced the world, though she did not know it, as Mam'selle's illegitimate child.
Sometimes this fact frightened Jo, but she knew her people fairly well. The ugly belief about herself had been so silently borne that she trusted that when Donelle went among them her advent would not loose tongues. For the rest; she meant constantly to guard the girl, meant, in time, to send her away to school. Jo dreamed long dreams and, mentally keen and wise, was stupid in her ignorance of the more sordid aspects of life.
"If they'll only keep still!" she fervently hoped. And she based her present life on that.
In the meantime Donelle, in a marvellous fashion, had appropriated everything about her, Jo included. Nick was the girl's abject slave. Sometimes he'd turn his eyes on his mistress remorsefully, as he edged toward Donelle; his affections were sorely torn. The animals all learned to watch for Donelle, Molly, the horse, was foolishly sentimental. The house rang with girlish laughter and song. In the once-still rooms a constant chatter went on whenever Jo and the girl were together. Donelle, especially, had much to say and she said it in a strange, original way that set Jo thinking on many new lines.
How was she to keep this girl from knowing the truth, once she mingled with others? And how was she to keep her apart? Donelle had a passion for friendliness. To Jo, who had lived her life alone, the girl's constant desire for conversation and companionship was little less than appalling. Then, too, Donelle was a startling combination of precociousness and childishness. Her mind had been well-trained; early she had been utilized in teaching the younger children of the Home. She had absorbed all the books at her command; her imagination was ungoverned, and some of the Sisters had shared confidences with her that had added fuel to the inquisitive, bright mind.
There were times when Jo Morey felt absurdly young compared with Donelle, young and crude. Then suddenly the light would fade from the girl's face, something, probably her incapacity to go back of her life in the Home, would make her helpless, weak, and appealing.
So far, the little white house, Jo, and the animals, supplied Donelle's every need, but Mam'selle sensed complications for the future. She watched and listened while Donelle read and then enlarged romantically upon what she read; she felt lost already in the face of the problem.
"Mamsey," Donelle suddenly exclaimed one night, "I want you to take off those horrid old man-things. Let us burn them."
Jo was rigged out in her father's ancient garments; she had been to the outhouses working long and hard.
"What's the matter with them?" she asked half-guiltily.
"They're ugly and they're smelly." This was true. "Besides, they hide you and most folks wouldn't find you. They go with your scrouchy frown," here Donelle mimicked Jo's most forbidding manner, "and your tight mouth. Why, Mamsey, it took, even me, a long while to find you behind these things. I had to keep remembering how you looked while I was so sick in the long, dark nights; how you looked when you kept—It—away."
The vague look crept to Donelle's eyes, she rarely beat against the wall that hid her past. For that, Jo was hourly thankful.
"But of course now I can always find you, Mamsey. I just say to the thing you put up in front of you, 'Get out of the way' and then I see you, my kind, my dear, faithful, blessed Mamsey, shining!"
Poor Jo as a shining object was rather absurd; but the colour rose to her dark face, as it might have at the tones of a lover.
"You're a beautiful Mamsey when you don't hide. I suppose my father could find you, and that's why he wanted to bring me to you. Mamsey, did you love my father?"
Poor Jo, standing by the stove, her ugly garments steaming and hot, looked at the girl as a frightened culprit might; then she saw that the question was put from the most primitive viewpoint and so she said:
"Yes, I loved him."
"Of course. Well, now, Mamsey, will you let me burn those ugly old, smelly clothes?"
"No; but I'll put them in the attic, child."
"That's a good Mamsey. And the scowl and the tight mouth, will you put them in the attic, too?"
Jo grinned. The relaxation was something more complete than a smile.
"You're daft," was all she said, but her deep, splendid eyes met the clear, golden ones with pathetic surrender.
And then, later on toward spring, when Jo was revelling in the richness of her life and putting away the thoughts that disturbed her concerning Donelle's future, several things occurred that focussed her upon definite action.
She and the girl were sitting in the living room one evening while a soft, penetrating rain pattered against the windows.
"That rain," Jo remarked, her knitting needles clicking, "will get to the heart of things, and make them think of growing." Donelle looked up from her book. Her eyes were full of warmth and sunlight.
"You say beautiful things sometimes, Mamsey." Then quite irrelevantly, "Why doesn't any one ever come here? I should think everyone would be here all the time, other places are so ugly and other people so—so—well, so snoozy."
What Jo had feared rose to the surface. She stopped knitting and gazed helplessly at Donelle.
"At first," the girl went on musingly, "I thought there were no folks; it was so empty outdoors. Then I saw people once in a while crawling along. Why do they crawl, Mamsey? You and I don't. And then I ran around a bit, when no one was looking, and there are some horrid places, one place where only men go. It is nasty, dirty, and bad. It sort of makes all the houses seem smudgy. There was a big man at the door, and he saw me and he said, 'So you're Mam'selle Jo Morey's girl!'" just like that. And with this Donelle impersonated Dan Kelly so that his merest acquaintance would have recognized him. "And I made a very nice bow," to Jo's blank horror, Donelle showed how she had done it, "and I said 'I am, sir; and who are you?' And he put his hand in his pockets, so! and he said, 'I'm Dan, Dan Kelly, and any time you want a little chat, come to the side door. Mrs. Kelly and I will make you welcome.' And—what is the matter, Mamsey?"
For Jo's knitting had fallen to the floor, and her face was haggard.
"You—you must never go near that place again," she gasped.
"I never will, Mamsey, for the smell kept coming back to me for days and days. And the man's eyes—I saw them in my sleep, they were dirty eyes!"
"My God!" moaned Jo, but Donelle was off on another trail.
"But Mamsey, why don't we have folks in our lives. Is it because it is winter, and the roads bad?"
"Yes——" this was said doubtfully; but something had to be said.
"Well, I'm glad of that, for I love people. I even liked some of the Sisters. There was one who made me guess whenever I saw her, it was Sister Mary, she was little and pretty and had a sorry face as if she was lost and couldn't find the way out. Almost I wanted to ask her to run away with me every time I tried to do it myself. And the babies were so jolly, Mamsey. I used to play that I could make nice, happy little lives for them. There was one," Donelle's eyes dimmed, "Patsy I called her, her name was Patricia—such a big, hard name for such a cunning little tot. I fixed up a perfectly dear life for Patsy, but poor Patsy didn't seem to want any kind of a life. She'd rather lie in my arms and rock. I used to sing to her. Then she died!"
The tragedy touched Jo strangely. She had heard little of the details of Donelle's institution life; but those details, few as they were, had been vital and impressive.
"Yes, Patsy died. I missed her terribly. Oh! Mamsey, I couldn't do without folks. Why, I want to tell you something; you like to have me tell you everything, don't you, Mamsey?"
"Yes; yes." Jo took up her knitting, dropped two stitches, made an impatient remark under her breath, and caught them up. "If you didn't tell me everything I'd feel pretty bad," she went on lamely.
"Well, it's this way, Mamsey. I don't cry any more because I can't remember. I begin with you and me. You see what I don't remember is like the preface in a book; I never read it and it doesn't matter, anyway. So we begin—you and I, and everyone is supposed to know about us without telling; and the things that happened before are just helps to get us into the first chapter. Then, after that, folks come along and we don't ask them any questions, they just get mixed up with our story and on we all go until that stupid old word End, brings us up with a jolt. Mamsey, dear, I want to get all tangled with stories and stories and people and people; I want to be part of it. I'm willing to pay, you have to, all the books show that. I'll suffer and struggle along, and fall and get up again, but I must be part of it all."
Jo had drawn a full needle out, leaving all the helpless stitches gaping. "Lord!" she murmured under her breath, and at the moment decided to go to Father Mantelle on the morrow and get what help she could.
Aloud she said, quite calmly, very tenderly for her, poor soul:
"I wish you'd take that old book," it was the one Langley had given her; there was no name or date in it, "and read me some of those verses that sort of make you feel good, good and—sleepy."
"I just love this," Donelle said, quick to fall into Jo's mood:
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills.
"Why, you don't like the words? Your eyes are wet, Mamsey!"
"I'm tired, my eyes ache with the knitting and weaving. The winter always gets me." Jo was gathering up her work. "We must go to bed, child. I'm glad spring is coming and we can work in the open."
But Donelle was singing, to a tune of her own, other lines of the interrupted poem:
And my heart is like a rhyme
With the yellow and the purple keeping time.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PRIEST AND THE ROAD MENDER
The following day was warm. Jo went to the upper pasture early in the day to make plans for the spring sowing. It was a day full of promise; winter seemed almost a memory.
Donelle had been left to finish the work about the house. It should have taken her until Jo returned, but things flew through the girl's hands, she was so eager to get out of doors. She sang and gavotted with Nick who, by the way, had sneaked into hiding rather than make a choice as to whether he should follow Jo or remain with Donelle. When he came forth all responsibility was ended. He remained with Donelle!
"Nick," she said presently, "how would you like to take a walk?"
A frantic thump gave proof of Nick's feelings.
"All right, come on! We've got to find folks if folks won't find us, Nick. I'm pretty nearly starved to death for folks!"
Donelle made a wide sweep back of Dan's Place. Jo's words were in her mind, but more, the memory of Dan's "dirty eyes" warned her. She took to the woods on the river side, and was soon fascinated by the necessity of jumping from rock to rock in order to escape the mushy, mossy earth. Nick was frantic with delight. Jo never would jump or nose around among the trees where such delectable scents lurked.
Finally the two emerged on the highway a mile beyond the little cluster of houses which was Point of Pines, and nothing was in sight but a lonely, boyish figure apparently carrying mud from one place on the road and depositing it in another.
"That's an awfully funny thing to do," Donelle mused. "Maybe he's a moon calf."
Donelle had seen Marcel and Longville, had even talked with Marcel and liked her. She had heard Jo speak of others, the Gavots among them, but they were mere names to which, occasionally, Jo had added an illuminating description.
"That low-down beast, Gavot," Mam'selle had picturesquely said to Marcel once when not noticing Donelle's presence, "ought to have Tom taken from him. That boy will be driven to Dan's, if we don't look out. We ought to raise money and give the boy a start."
"I shouldn't wonder," mused Donelle, now, standing in the road and eyeing the only other figure on the landscape, "I shouldn't wonder if that was Gavot's Tom. I'll just see!" So she walked on sedately and came upon her quarry unexpectedly.
"I believe," she said, showing her teeth in a friendly smile, "I believe you must be Tom Gavot."
The boy turned abruptly, spilling as he did so the shovelful of soft earth he was carrying.
"And—you—are Mam'selle's girl!"
Tom was very handsome with a frank, appealing look that seemed to deprecate the rags and sordidness that hampered his appearance.
"Yes. What are you doing?"
"Mending the roads. And you?"
"Taking a walk on the road you mend."
They both laughed at this, Tom flinging his head back, Donelle folding her arms over her slim body.
"How did you know me?" asked Tom.
"Why—why, I heard Mamsey talk about your father."
Tom's face clouded. His father, like his rags, hampered his very thoughts.
"How did you know me?" Donelle was growing shy.
"I think maybe you won't like it if I tell you."
Tom felt very old compared to this girl in her short skirts and long, light braids. He had never felt young in his life, but he had inherited that ease and grace of manner which his father abused so.
"I should just love to hear," Donelle was fingering Nick's ears nervously.
"Well, then, I spied on you. All winter, I spied. I heard them talking about you, and I had to see for myself. I always have to know things for myself."
"So do I. But after you spied," Donelle laughed, her yellow eyes shining, "what did you think?"
"Oh! I don't know." Tom shifted his position. "I thought you were all right."
They both laughed again at that.
"Are you mostly on the roads?" Donelle asked presently. Nick was growing restless under her hands.
"Yes, when I'm not somewhere else. I fish some, and Father Mantelle teaches me and I read a lot, but I'm on the road a good deal."
"I think," Donelle beamed, "I think your Father Mantelle is going to teach me. I heard Mamsey talking about it. Does he keep school?"
"No. He's the curé. He teaches only a few. He knows everything in the world. He once lived in Quebec. He's old so they sent him here."
"Well!" Donelle suddenly turned. "I'm going now, but I shall often walk on the road." She flung this back mischievously. At a distance her shyness disappeared.
A few days later she met Tom again, this time she was more at her ease. They were young, lonely, and the spring helped thaw the superficial crust of convention.
It was after they had seen each other several times that Tom confided to Donelle his feeling about roads.
"They're like friends," he said, blushing and laughing.
"A road doesn't mean anything to me," Donelle replied, "but something to walk or ride on, something that gets you somewhere."
"Yes, it does get you somewhere, but you don't always have to ride or walk on it. If you think about it, it gets you somewhere," said Tom.
Donelle paused to whistle Nick back, the dog was after something in the bushes.
"You're very queer," she said at last eyeing Tom furtively. "Now I think about dogs and cats and birds as real, but I never thought about a road being real."
Donelle was looking at the ground as if it were something alive upon which she had stepped inadvertently.
"Tell me more about roads," she said.
"There isn't much, I've never told any one before—they would laugh."
"I will not laugh." And indeed Donelle was very serious.
"It began when I was a little chap. I didn't have much to play with and a boy has to have something. I used to wonder where the road went and when I was only five I got to the top of the hill and looked beyond. My father walloped me for running away. I wasn't really running away, but of course he wouldn't have understood, and my mother was frightened. I didn't go again for a long time. I was always a bit of a coward and I remembered the whipping."
"I don't believe you are a coward, Tom Gavot."
"I am, a little. You see, I hate to be hurt, I sort of—dread it, but once I make the start, I forget and go on like everyone else."
"I think that's being braver than most people. If you are afraid and still do things, that's not cowardly." Donelle spoke loyally and Tom gave her a long side glance of gratitude.
The spring was in Tom's blood, this lately-come friend was developing him rapidly.
"Well, anyway, by the time I was seven I managed the hill again. From that time on I went every day. I think there must be a dent in a rock where I used to sit, playing with the road."
"Playing with the road! Playing with the road!" Donelle repeated. "Oh! but you are queer. What did you play, Tom Gavot?"
"Oh! I sent people up and down it. The people I did not like I sent down and never let them come back."
"That is perfectly lovely. Go on, Tom."
"And then I made up my mind that when I was big enough I'd run away with my mother. I always meant to explain to her about the road, but I didn't. Sometimes I fancied that people would come over the road bringing to me the things I wanted."
"What things, Tom?"
"Oh! all sorts of things that boys want and don't get. After I grew older and Father Mantelle began to teach me, I still felt as if the road was a friend, but I did not play with it any more. Then one summer some surveyors and engineers came and one man, he was a great sort, let me talk to him and he made me think about roads in quite another way. I tell you, my road had got pretty rutty, so I began filling in the holes. It was the only decent thing I could do when I'd used it so; and besides it kept me near the men and they helped me to know things that I really wanted."
"What, Tom Gavot?"
"Why, I want to learn how to make roads. When I can, I am going away and I'm not coming back until I can do more than fill in holes."
"I shall miss you dreadfully when you go!" said Donelle. It all seemed imminent and real to her now. "Of course you must go, but—well, the road will be pretty lonely until you come back." Then the girl looked up.
"I sort of feel," she said whimsically, "that I ought to be the right kind—of a girl to walk on your road, Tom Gavot."
"Well, you are."
"No, I haven't told Mamsey that I know you. I've come with Nick when Mamsey was off on the farm. She thinks I'm spinning or weaving, but I hurry through and get out. I've hoped that someone would tell her, but they haven't."
"Would she mind if she knew?" asked Tom, and his dark face reddened.
"I don't know, but I think I must think she would or I would have told. She and I talk of everything right out; everything but you."
For a moment the two walked on in silence. Then Tom spoke.
"You'd better tell her," he said. Then with a brave attempt at cheerfulness: "When I come back, Donelle, all the world can see us walking on the road and it won't matter."
"I'm going to tell Mamsey to-day," murmured Donelle. Somehow she felt as if she had wronged Tom. "This very day."
Gavot looked into her face. He suddenly felt old and detached as if he had got a long way ahead of her on the road.
"Your eyes are a strange colour," he said, "they look as if there was a light behind them shining through."
They both laughed at that, and then Donelle whistled Nick to her and turned.
"I'm going to tell Mamsey," she said, "good bye."
Tom looked after her and his eyes grew hard and lonely.
"Good-bye," he repeated. "Good-bye," but the girl was out of sight.
That afternoon she told Jo, but she advanced toward her confession by so indirect a route that she mislead Mam'selle.
"I wish you'd tell me about Tom Gavot," she said.
"Why? What does Tom matter? Poor lad, he's got a beast of a father."
"Was his mother a beast?"
"No. She was a sad, hunted soul."
"It is too bad she died, if she had waited Tom would have taken her on his road."
Jo looked up from her sewing.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"Tom Gavot. He used to play with the road and now he mends it. Some day he's going to make roads. They'll be splendid roads, I'm sure, and——"
"What do you know of Tom Gavot, Donelle?"
Jo started as she had when Donelle had told her of Dan Kelly.
"Mamsey, don't be angry, I know I should have told you. I don't know why I didn't, but while you were away I hurried and got through my work and then I was so lonely. I went out on the road—Nick and I, and I found Tom Gavot."
"You've seen him—often?"
And now Jo's eyes were stern and frightened.
"Why, yes, I suppose so. I didn't count. It seems as if I had always known him. He's wonderful. Besides knowing about roads, he knows books, all kinds. Father Mantelle teaches him. I'd like to go, too, and learn from Father Mantelle."
"Well, you'll not study with Tom Gavot!" Jo was perplexed. She decided to go the very next day to the priest.
"Why not, Mamsey?"
"One sort of learning for girls; another for boys." Jo snapped her thread.
"I wonder why, Mamsey! They both travel the same road."
The word made Jo nervous.
"No, they do not!" she said sharply.
"Well, I shall. You can choose your road, can't you, Mamsey? I mean the sort of things you learn?"
"No."
"It's all wrong then."
"Stop asking stupid questions, child, about things you do not know," Jo broke in.
"But that's why I ask questions, because I don't know. Are they stupid?"
"Yes, very. Now come, Donelle, and help me get supper."
It was mid-afternoon of the next day when Jo started for Father Mantelle's. Her errand was a very simple one: she wanted the old man to teach Donelle. Not while he was instructing Tom Gavot, however!
As she walked along the muddy road, picking her way as she could, Jo was thinking of how much or how little she should tell of her relations with Donelle. She had grown to accept what she felt people believed and it no longer caused her indignation; there were graver problems. But the incident that Donelle had related of her conversation with Dan Kelly had thoroughly aroused her. Her consciousness of injustice could not save her from the shock of the brutal meaning of Dan's attitude.
"They'll get to think the girl's common property if I don't set her above their reach," muttered Jo, and then wondered whether it would be safer to lay the truth bare to Father Mantelle. Would it be safer for Donelle to come forth in her true character, as the daughter of a supposed murderer, or to remain as she was, the supposed love-child of a deserted woman? For herself Jo Morey took little heed; the self-respect that had always upheld her came to her support now. Had Donelle been hers, she believed her inheritance would have been better than that which was rightfully hers from her real mother.
"A minister's words can't make or mar these things," she muttered, "and since my blood doesn't flow in the girl's veins, my common sense can save her, God helping me!"
As she plodded on poor Jo thought of Langley himself. She had never believed the accusation brought against him. She could not, but what proof had she to support her belief? And somewhere, in the world, possibly, that man was still alive who had brought forth the charge. Might he not at this late day materialize and menace Donelle were she, Jo, to let the full light of truth on her?
What reason was there for that strange man to want to get possession of Langley's child? Was he afraid of her? Did he want to silence her, or—and here poor Jo stopped in the road and breathed hard—had he believed that Donelle was his?
For a moment Jo grew dizzy. Suppose he did think so. How could she prove the contrary? Would her insistence as to resemblance or her innate belief in her love going true, weigh against any proof which that unknown man might have?
Less and less did Jo believe that Donelle would ever recall the past. And if she did, what would it avail?
"I think I will have to let the poor child stagger along with me tacked to her past," she concluded, "her chances for safety are better, though she may never know it. I may be able to keep her from hearing, people do forget, and my money and her learning may help." Jo sighed and trudged on.
The relations between Father Mantelle and Mam'selle were very peculiar. The old priest admired her intelligence and was amused by her keen wit and independence. He simply could not account for her and that added to his interest. He had not been in Point of Pines long, he rarely left it, and never had company unless a passing father stopped for refreshment or a report. In short, Mantelle was as much a mystery as Mam'selle, and for that very reason they unconsciously respected each other.
They never discussed religion, but Mantelle's attitude toward Jo had been always one of esteem and neighbourliness.
"In loneliness the poor soul has worked out her own redemption," Mantelle had decided. At first he had pondered upon Mam'selle's loneliness, but had never questioned it, having much sympathy for any one who, for any reason, could not mingle freely with his fellows.
When Jo entered the priest's house his servant, an old Indian woman, showed her to a rear room in which she had never been before.
It surprised Jo by its comfort and even luxury. Books lined the walls, rugs covered the rude board flooring; there were comfortable chairs, broad tables, and a clear fire burning on the spotless hearth.
The old man sat before the fire, and as he looked up and saw Jo his delicate face flushed. Something in his manner caught her attention at once. Subtle as it was, she was keenly sensitive of it.
"He's heard!" thought Jo, and stiffened.
Father Mantelle had heard and he thought, he certainly hoped, that the erring daughter had come to confess. It was not in the church, but that did not matter; more was dragged out of heavily-burdened souls in that comfortable room than was ever got in the small church on the hill.
The priest meant to be very kind, very tolerant; he knew the world outside Point of Pines and was extremely human when men and women deserved his kindness. But until they were brought to the proper state of mind, mercy must be withheld, and this disclosure of Jo's past had shaken him tremendously. Certainly whatever he had thought about her, he had not thought this! He felt that he, in his office and character, had been grossly deceived. He had been permitted to associate on equal terms with a woman outside the pale. It was outrageous.
Something intangible, but strangely like Dan Kelly's manner toward Donelle, marked Mantelle's attitude at the present moment. A half-concealed familiarity, an assumption of authority.
"Well, well, you have come, daughter," he said, and pointed Jo to the chair across the hearth. He thought Jo had been driven to him in her extremity, he had never addressed her as "daughter" before.
"Father," Jo began bluntly, "I've come to ask your help with this young girl I've adopted."
The priest thought Mam'selle hard. Indeed Longville had told him, in strict privacy, that she was hard and defiant. For the good of her own soul and the soul of other women likely to defy the laws of God and man, she must be brought to a repentant state. Now that he understood conditions, Mantelle was prepared to reduce Jo to that desirable state. He smiled kindly, blandly; he was a bit daunted but he realized that, erring as Mam'selle was, she was no ordinary woman.
He kindly led her on.
"Though you have seen your duty late, daughter," he said gently, "there is still time to strive for the child's best good."
Then Jo told him quite concisely of her desires for Donelle.
"I want to have her learn all that you can teach her, Father," she said, "and after that—well, I have no plans, but my money and life will be devoted to the girl."
There was a suspicion of defiance and bitterness in Mam'selle's tone.
Now Mantelle had only seen Jo's adopted daughter at a distance. Having no authority over the parish of St. Michael's he had not connected the girl's past with the institution there. He had asked Longville whence Mam'selle Morey had brought the girl, but as Longville did not know, he had let the matter drop as non-essential, but it puzzled him.
"You think it wise to keep the child in Point of Pines?" he asked. "You think it for her good, after all these years, to—to bring the unfortunate past to the—the surface?"
"Yes," Jo answered and her lips drew close. She was thinking of Dan Kelly, but she believed Father Mantelle and she could outwit him.
"My daughter, do you think this would be fair to the girl?"
"Why not?"
"Is it right, or just, that she should suffer for the wrong of a—another?"
"No, it is not right." Jo said this as a general truth.
"But you think your money can buy favour? Mam'selle, you are wrong. There are some things money, not even years of blameless life, can buy.
"Your people, I am sure, have treated you kindly, compassionately, and they will continue to do so, if you show the proper spirit. But you must not, daughter, think that gold can wipe away the result of defiance to the laws of God and man. You must be repentant, prove that you have the best interests of this girl at heart, and then, then only can the future be secure."
The thin, delicate face was pale and stern, the deep eyes burned. Not only the sanctity of Mantelle's authority, but his position among men was being questioned by the woman before him. And Jo was defiant, there was no doubt about that.
"Your kind heart, daughter, has betrayed you into error. Before bringing this child here you should have consulted me. Much might have been saved for us all."
"What would you have advised?" Mam'selle dropped her eyes and the forbidding brows seemed to hide every kindly expression of her face.
"I should have strongly advised against letting the innocent suffer for the guilty!" Mantelle's voice was stern.
"Yes, but she had to have a home; care, the best possible."
"To give that, daughter, is not in your power. In violating the most sacred emotions of life, in spurning the very safeguards of society, you put yourself outside the pale, as far as the child's best good is concerned. Women should fully understand this before they take the fatal step. The price must be paid! If, by assuming your duty at this late day you could condone the past, I would help you, but I cannot advise keeping this girl here. For her truest good, she should be saved, where only such unfortunates can be saved."
"And that is?" Mam'selle's voice was slow and even.
"In the bosom of the church, daughter. Send the child to St. Michael's; let them train her there for a life of devotion and service in a field where temptation, inherited weakness——"
Mantelle got no further for Jo—laughed!
The priest rose in his chair, white with anger.
"You laugh?" he said as if his hearing had betrayed him.
"Forgive me, Father, but it struck me as being rather hard on the girl that, for a wrong she never committed, she should be condemned to—to exile; not even given a chance of her own."
"You stole that from her, daughter!"
"I? Why, how could I? And is the Church able to accept whatever service, my—this young girl might give, while the world is unable to do so?"
"It can."
Then Mam'selle stood up. Her patient, work-worn hands were folded before her, she raised her deep, sad eyes.
"Father," she said calmly, "you feel that you have a right to assume this attitude toward me, without even hearing my side? My life, as you know it, has done nothing to save me from this—this mistake of yours. You have taken my money, what help I could give, and I believed that you were my friend."
"I am; your real and only friend." Mantelle was deceived by the tone and words.
"You have shown me that a man cannot be a friend to a woman! He cannot give her justice."
"You are not speaking to a man, daughter!"
The desire to laugh again consumed Jo, but she mastered it.
"In that capacity alone did I regard you, Father Mantelle, and you have failed me. For the rest, I let no one stand between my conscience and my God! No. If I ask help again it will be from a woman; she at least can understand."
"A woman is hardest upon women in such cases as yours, Mam'selle!"
Jo was thankful that at last the priest had dropped the objectionable "daughter."
"She will be the first who will turn against you."
"And was it a woman who came to you, Father, with my—my trouble?"
Mantelle's face flushed and Jo shook her head sadly.
"I see it was not. So the first and second who have turned against me have been men. Good day, Father, and"—Mam'selle stopped at the door—"if you ever need help in giving that poor Tom Gavot his chance, I stand ready to do what I have always promised to do, and I do it for the sake of his mother."
Condemnation and contempt rang in Jo's voice. It was her last arrow and it sank home.
The priest was practical and having done his Christian duty he could afford to be human.
"It speaks well for your good sense, Mam'selle," he said; "that you do not utterly shut yourself away from your people." Then Mantelle paused, "Mam'selle!" he said.
"Yes, Father." Jo turned and lifted her deep eyes to his face.
"I wonder if you have something to tell me that I should know in justice to you?"
"You should have thought of that first, Father. It is too late now."
"We may"—the man's recent manner fell from him like an unnecessary garment—"be friends, still?"
Again Jo laughed. She felt that she had by some kindly power regained something of her lost position with this lonely old man. Since he could not understand her, save her, he was willing to accept her.
"Father, I have too few friends to cast them off heedlessly."
And then she went out, more of a mystery than ever to Mantelle.
CHAPTER IX
WOMAN AND WOMAN
It was early June when Mam'selle heard that the Walled House, the country place of some rich people from the States, was to be opened.
It had been closed for many years, but recently the master had died and his wife, with a staff of servants and an old, blind, white-haired man, had returned.
The moment Jo heard that, her spirits rose. Here was a most unlooked-for opportunity for advice and, perhaps, assistance.
The Lindsays of the Walled House had always mingled freely with their neighbours; Mr. Lindsay was a Canadian. Jo, in her earlier days, had often served them; had sold her linens and wools to them at, what seemed to her, fabulous prices. Mrs. Lindsay, having taken a fancy to Mam'selle, often tried to annex her to her establishment, but to that the independent Jo would not consent.
"Well, Mam'selle," Alice Lindsay had said during the last interview they had had, "if I ever can help you, please let me."
"I'll go to her now!" decided Mam'selle.
A week later, dressed in her absurd best, she made the journey in her caliche. Her days of sitting on the shaft by Molly, her economies in clothes, were over, she was living up to her ambitions for Donelle and her defiance of Point of Pines' morality. Outwardly, Jo was fairly awe-inspiring and even Dan Kelly was impressed; inwardly, Jo was a good deal chastened by her visit to Father Mantelle.
There were doubts now in her heart as to the role she had assumed for Donelle's sake. Perhaps it would be better to let the girl shoulder her father's possible crime and her foolish mother's wrongdoing, rather than the disguise which Jo had self-sacrificingly wrought for her.
And yet, even now she could not bring herself to lay the dead Langley open to a charge she did not believe, but could not disprove, and the girl, herself, to danger. And so as she drove to the Walled House she was very quiet, very subdued, but her faith was strong. She meant to give as much as she dared of the past to the woman whose sympathies and assistance she was about to interest. She was ready to put all her future wools and linens at Mrs. Lindsay's disposal in return for any help she could obtain for the betterment of Donelle. Poor Jo was ready to abdicate, if that were best. After her months of happiness with the girl, after living in the dear companionship and love of the sunny young nature, she was willing to stand aside for the girl's future good.
"She shall not be condemned to death!" Jo snorted, and Molly reared. "St. Michael's shall not get her. But there must be a place for her, and I love her well enough to get out of her way. I only took her for the best, her best, and if I cannot keep her, I can let her go!"
Jo found Mrs. Lindsay on the beautiful shaded porch, found her changed, but none the less lovely and kindly.
"Why, it is the dear Mam'selle of the wonderful linens!" Alice Lindsay cried, stretching out her slim hands in welcome. "I have been thinking of you. How glad I am to see you. You have heard?" Mrs. Lindsay looked down at the thin black gown she wore.
"I have heard," Jo said and her throat grew dry.
"I—I have come back because my husband seems more here than anywhere, now. He loved the Walled House so much; he loved his Canada, Mam'selle."
Jo was thinking of two bleak, lonely weeks in her own past when she had stolen away and gone to Langley's deserted cabin because he, the he that she had known and loved—seemed more there than anywhere else. She had buried her hatred and bitterness toward him there. She knew it, now, as she had never known it before. The two women were drawing close by currents of sympathy.
They had tea together, they talked of future linens and wools, and then Jo told her story, taking small heed of the impression she was giving. She was blindly thinking only of Donelle, and Mrs. Lindsay did not hurt her by question or voiced doubt.
That night, when a great silence reigned over the Walled House, broken only by the soft, tender tones of a violin played at a distance in the moonlit garden, Alice Lindsay wrote a long letter to Anderson Law, her father's oldest friend, her own faithful advisor and closest confidant.
Law was an artist and critic. Old Testy he was called by those whom he often saved from the folly of their false ambitions; The Final Test, by those who came humbly, tremblingly, faithfully to him with their great hopes. To a few he was Man-Andy, the name that Alice Lindsay had given to him when she was a little child.
MAN-ANDY: I have had a wonderful day. I have waited to tell you that your advice as to my coming here was good. I know it is cowardly to run away from one's troubles, dear. Troubles, as you say, have their divine lessons, but I could not believe, at first, that I would find Jack here. I dreaded the emptiness and loneliness, but you were right, right! I am not desolate here and I have the blessed feeling of peace that can only come when one has chosen the right course.
I felt that everything worth while had been taken: Jack, my babies. Only the money remained, and that I hated, because it could not keep what I wanted. But you were splendid when you said, "make the thing you despise a blessing!" I've tried, Man-Andy, to make it a blessing to others, and it is becoming a blessing to me. I feel I am using it for Jack and for the babies and that they are making it sacred. I feared that in this big, empty house the ghosts would haunt me; not the strange old history ghosts of great ladies and dashing men who used to forget their homesickness for their mother-countries by revelling in this shelter in the New World. I did not think of them, for do you not remember Jack's comical ghost hunts? How he joked about it, saying that he'd yet lure some old English or French aristocrat to stay and sanctify our presence by his sponsorship? But oh! I did fear the memories of my man's dear, jovial ways, the pretty babble of my little babies.
And then—I know I am rambling shamefully, but I cannot sleep, the moonlight is flooding the garden—I hear Professor Revelle's violin. Andy, he has actually recovered to the extent of music when he thinks I do not know. As I look at the dear old soul, so like a gentle wraith, I remember how you and father and Jack adored his music and how Jack grieved when illness and poverty stilled it. But you found him, Man-Andy, and you lent him to me to save, and his music at least has been given back to him. Not with its old fire and passion—I think if any demand were made upon him he might be aroused. I may take lessons myself some day. But he plays dreamily, softly when he is alone, generally in the garden and at night. He forgets his blindness then.
But to-day I had a caller. I wonder if you remember the nice Mam'selle Jo Morey that Jack and I used to talk about? You have some of her linens in your studio. You may recall the incident of the summer when we told you of her troubles; her desertion by a man of the place and the death of her imbecile sister? I had almost forgotten it myself, so much has happened since then, but it all came back to me to-day when she came with her story.
Andy, her story is quite the most tragic a woman can have; such things happen even here. She did not cringe or whine, I would have hated her if she had; you know how I feel about such things. My Mam'selle Jo does not whine!
There was a child, and now that Mam'selle can afford to do well by it, she has taken it. She has done this so quietly and simply that it has shocked the breath out of the very moral Point of Pines. Still, before the breath left the body of the hamlet, it hissed! And when it recovers its breath it is going to hound this poor Mam'selle, whose shoes it is not worthy to touch. It's going to hound and snarl and snap, two of its inhabitants have done it already, and the Mam'selle Morey is not going to have her child harried for what she is innocent of!
Isn't this a situation?
The Mam'selle knows her world, however, and all worlds are pretty much alike, Andy, and she is prepared, in exchange for her child's happiness, to renounce her! It almost broke my heart as she told me; she saw no other way and she fiercely demands that justice be shown the girl. I tell you it takes the fine, large courage to renounce, when love tempts. Mam'selle loves this child as such children often are loved, passionately because they cost so much.
And this Mam'selle Morey came to me. She felt I could understand, advise. Well, I do understand because of Jack's attitude toward such things, and yours and father's. Thank God, the men I have known have helped me uphold my standard, and I understand because of my dear, dear babies, who left so much of themselves with me when they had to go away.
I grew hot and cold as I listened, Man-Andy, and I grew puffed up and chesty, too. How I gloried, for the moment, in my power. It's all right to have power if you keep it in its proper place.
I kept saying to myself, "Mam'selle, you and I will win out! And you shall not be the sacrifice, either! Together we can play the game; two women ought to be able to see that one innocent child has its rights!"
Man-Andy, I rolled up my sleeves, then and there, and that dear old poem you love came to my mind, it often does; that one about tears:
By every cup of sorrow that ye had
Loose us from tears and make us see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep
Homer, his sight; David, his little lad?
I thought of dear old blind Revelle; he has something back, even though much is withheld. He has safety, and his fiddle. And then I vowed that this brave, strong Mam'selle Morey should have her little lass. She shall not be taken from her; I will help, and give the girl her chance, I am quite fierce about it. And my Mam'selle shall keep her in the end, somehow I'll manage that. With other things, this girl shall get a comprehension of—her mother!
Man-Andy, tell me what you think of all this and tell me of yourself; of the Norvals, and the rest of the folks I love but do not need just now. And tell me of your sad duty, dear man. Do you go every week to the Lonely Place? Some day, when it is all past, you will come here to this Walled House. You and I will go out on the highway and kneel under one of the tall black and white-tipped crosses and give thanks! Man-Andy, to-night I can give thanks that I am being used, that the power my money can give is being used, and that I am not left to my tears.
To this long outpouring of the heart Anderson Law replied within the month.
MY GIRL: you have only proved yourself. It took a little time, but I knew you were not the sort to hide your face and run. Revelle and his fiddle are about the best combination I know, I certainly hadn't counted on the fiddle. I thought with care and safety he'd find peace and I knew he would be good for you; but I feared his blindness would kill his music.
It's a great thing, too, girl, that your children did not shut the door of your motherhood when they went out. You'd hardly have been worthy of them if you had not learned the lesson they taught.
As for us here: Jim Norval is doing some good things in his moments of genius. When plain talent grips him, he's not so good. Katherine, from perfectly exalted motives, is driving him to hell. It's the most puzzling situation I ever saw. You cannot advise a man to leave a high-natured, moral, devoted wife just because she's pushing him to perdition and depriving him of his birthright, but that's the situation in the Norval family. Their child somehow did not get its lesson over!
The Lonely House still holds my duty, but if the time ever comes when I can stand beside you under the cross, there will be many things, hard to bear now, that will then make thanks possible. ANDY.
Law's letter came after Donelle had entered the Walled House where she was to stay from Monday till Friday of each week. The week-ends belonged to Mam'selle Jo!
"For awhile, Mam'selle," Alice Lindsay had said, holding Jo's hands as she had made plain her understanding, "I will teach the child myself and learn to know her. We need not plan far ahead. There is a dear, old, blind musician living with me; if the girl has any inclination for music, she will be a god-send to him."
"I am sure she will have, Mrs. Lindsay," Jo's plain face was radiant, "her father had, and she sings the day through."
"You must bring her at once, Mam'selle, and believe me, whatever comes or does not come, she will always be yours. She is your recompense."
And within the week Donelle Morey came to the Walled House.
Her entrance was dramatic and made a deep impression upon Mrs. Lindsay.
There had been a struggle between Jo and Donelle before the matter had been arranged, so, while not sullen, the girl was decidedly on guard.
Propelled by Jo she came into the great, sunny hall. She was very pale and her yellow eyes were wide and alert.
"My dear," Alice Lindsay had said, "I hope you are going to be very happy here."
"I did not come to be happy, I came to learn," Donelle returned, and her voice saved the words from rudeness.
"Perhaps you can be both, dear," but Donelle looked her doubts.
Still from the first she played her part courageously. She studied diligently and, when she was given the freedom of the library, she showed a keen and vital interest.
She was not indifferent, either, to the kindness and consideration shown her, but the wildness in her blood reasserted itself and she often felt, as she had felt at St. Michael's, a desire to fly from restraint; even this kindly restraint. Point of Pines had given her a sense of liberty that was now lacking. The refinements and richness of the Walled House oppressed her, she yearned for Jo, for the hard, unlovely tasks, for the chance talks with Tom Gavot. But, oddly enough, it was the thought of Tom that kept her to her duty. Somehow she dared not run away and hope to keep his approval. Something of her struggle Alice Lindsay saw, and she considered it seriously. To win the girl wholly from her yearnings just then might mean winning her from Mam'selle. While not a child, Donelle was very unformed and might easily, if she were conquered, be lost to Jo whom she regarded simply in the light of an adopted guardian. She was grateful, she loved Jo, but the secret tie that Alice Lindsay believed existed held no part in her thoughts.
"But she shall be saved for Mam'selle," Alice Lindsay vowed. "I will not permit any other solution. If the time ever comes when she understands she shall know the splendour of this dear soul."
So Alice Lindsay took Jo into her confidence.
"You must not, Mam'selle," she said, "even think yourself renouncing her. She is yours and you ought not to forget that, nor deprive her of yourself. Take things for granted; let her see you as I see you!"
Jo's face twitched.
"There's no earthly reason," Alice Lindsay went on, "for blotting you out. Why, the girl will never know another woman as fine as you, Mam'selle. Think of how you have studied and thought yourself into a place that many a woman with untold advantages has not attained!"
"Donelle's father was a scholar," Jo faltered, not knowing how to act in the strained moment. "He taught me, not only books, but how to think."
"Yes, and to suffer, Mam'selle," Alice Lindsay controlled her true emotions. Then:
"Mam'selle, Donelle must learn to appreciate her inheritance from you. She shall, she shall! Now throw off your usual manner with her; let her see you!"
"She always has, Mrs. Lindsay."
"Very well, don't let go of her now!"
And so Jo permitted herself the luxury of doing what her heart longed to do, she put off her guarded manner and played for the first time in her life.
It was during Donelle's week-end visits home that she first came forth in her new character of comrade. In an especially fine spell of weather she suggested camping out in the woods. Donelle and Nick were beside themselves with delight, for Mam'selle was a genius at camping. Never had she so truly revealed herself as she did then, and Donelle looked at her in amazement.
"Mamsey," she said, "is it because I'm away from you so much that you seem different? You are wonderful and you know about the loveliest wood things and stars. It's like magic."
It was like magic, and Jo rightly concluded that something in Donelle's early life responded to these nights in the woods. She recalled the girl's delirium, her references to weary wanderings.
"It seems," Donelle once said, hugging her knees beside the glowing fire, "it seems as if I'd been here before."
"One often feels that way," Jo replied as she prepared a fragrant meal, "and I'm not saying but what we do pass along the same way more than once. It may take more than one little life to learn all there is to know."
And then Donelle talked of a book she had been reading and they grew very chummy. Once Jo suggested—it was when Donelle told her how she lived through the weeks, only because the week-ends were in view—that Nick should stay at the Walled House.
"Nick, would you leave Mamsey?" Donelle held the dog's face in her hands. It was an awful moment for Nick. He actually slunk.
"I'd hate you if you would!" Donelle continued. "Now, sir, who is your choice?"
Nick saved the day, he ambled over to Jo and licked her hand.
"There!" exultingly cried Donelle; "that shows his blood."