Chapter X Pierre Gets His Revenge
The first year passed, with those blessed weekends coming now, not as the only bright spots, but always loved.
“The girl may not have the great genius,” Revelle told Mrs. Lindsay, “she may not go much further, but as she goes, she goes radiantly. Her tone it is pure, her ear it is true, and her soul, it is a hungry soul, a waiting soul. She will suffer, but she will be the better for that. If she is ever to be great it will be when she has learned to know suffering.”
Donelle had a strange habit that amused them all; she played best when she could move about. Gropingly, painstakingly, she practised with the old, blind man beside her. At times she would wander under the trees on the lawn, her violin tucked lovingly under her chin.
“Pretty, little pale thing,” Alice Lindsay often said. “What is life going to do with her?”
When three years had passed, Donelle was no longer a simple girl. Point of Pines was as detached from her real interests as St. Michael’s was. She loved to be with Jo and Nick, but the luxury and comfort of the Walled House had become part of her life. She wished it might be that Jo and Nick could come to her; not make it necessary for her to go to them. She was not more selfish or ungrateful than the young usually are, but she was artistic and temperamental and her mind and soul were full of music and beauty. Unconsciously, she was pressing on into life by the easiest way. Life, she must have; life to the full, that had always been her ambition, but she had yet to learn, poor child, that the short, direct path that stretched so alluringly from the Walled House was not the best one for her own good.
For Mrs. Lindsay she had a deep affection; for Revelle a passion of gratitude and yearning. He it was who had opened her heaven for her; he it was who subtly developed her. With no set purpose, but with the insistence that Art always demands, he brought to bear upon Donelle the arguments of devotion to her gift, her God-given gift, he reiterated. She must not let anything, any one stand in its path. She was not worthy of it unless she forsook all else for it.
Donelle had accepted what was offered to her. She believed Jo Morey had the best of reasons for burying the past. As she grew older, she saw the wisdom of forgetting much and in proving herself worthy of becoming what Jo, what Mrs. Lindsay, and most of all Revelle, hoped for her.
The St. Michael days were blotted out, they were but an incident at best. Jo was giving her every advantage, she must do her part. She saw the Point of Pines people on the road as she drove with Mrs. Lindsay or Jo and they were like shadows to her, they had no place in her sheltered, beautiful life. She heard indirectly from Tom Gavot, he was bravely hewing and hacking his road, poor chap. He was helping to support his unworthy father; he was coming home some day to show himself, but the time went by and he did not come!
And then, quite suddenly, Mrs. Lindsay decided to close the Walled House and go abroad. Professor Revelle’s health was restored and Anderson Law had obtained employment for him.
“I want to take Donelle with me,” Alice Lindsay said. “She’s quite your own, Mam’selle; you stand first with her, so I can take her with a clear conscience and give her all the advantages she should have. She will come back to you in the end, or you will come to her.”
Jo’s lips drew close.
“Will my linens pay for this?” she asked.
“They will help, Mam’selle, and you have no right to stand in Donelle’s way now that we have gone so far. Some day Donelle can repay me herself, she has great gifts.”
Jo thought hard and quickly. In her heart she had always felt this day would come, lately she had been haunted by it. It was inevitable. Only God knew how she dreaded the separation, but she would not withhold her hand.
“I suppose, Mam’selle, this is what Motherhood means?” Alice Lindsay spoke the fact boldly, splendidly.
“It’s all right,” said Jo, “it’s all it should mean. I’m glad I do feel as I do about her.”
“And, Mam’selle, this girl loves you very tenderly. Sometimes I think we ought to tell her——’
“No, no, Mrs. Lindsay.” Jo started and flushed.
“When she’s found her place and made it sure: when she has so much that this won’t matter, then she shall know everything. I haven’t overlooked this, but I couldn’t stand it now. I want her to be able to understand.”
“All right, Mam’selle. And now it is your part to make her feel that it is your desire that she should make the most of her gifts. Send her forth happy, Mam’selle, that will mean much to her.”
So Jo began the new role and actually made Donelle unhappy in the effort to achieve the reverse. Alone, in the white house at Point of Pines, Jo found her father’s old clothes and contemplated them gravely. She was slipping back, poor soul, to her empty life.
Donelle had not accepted the proposed plans without a struggle. She was wonderfully sensitive and compassionate and her quick imagination made it possible for her to understand what the future would mean to poor Jo. Then, too, she shrank from the uprooting. Her dreams of what lay before were exciting and thrilling, but with sincere kinship she loved the quiet hills, the marvellous river, and the peace, freedom, and simplicity which were her birthright.
“Sometimes I fear,” she said to Mrs. Lindsay, “that it will deafen me, hush me, kill me!”
“It will not, dear; and I will always be near.”
“Unless you were, I would not dare. You are the only hope, Mrs. Lindsay.”
“That’s not so, Donelle. The real hope is your gift. You are taking it there to make it perfect.”
“I hope so. And when I have learned, I must get Mamsey into my new life, quick.”
“Indeed, yes!” Mrs. Lindsay nodded cheerfully.
“Isn’t it queer how some people are part of you? Mamsey is part of me, Mrs. Lindsay.” Then softly, “I suppose you know how Mamsey got me and from where?”
Alice Lindsay started.
“Yes, Mam’selle told me,” she said.
“I never speak of it. Mamsey thought best that I should not; but I do not forget! Often, when we are driving past St. Michael’s—I remember.”
“Donelle, why do you tell me this now?”
“Just because I want you to understand how I feel about Mamsey. She didn’t have to do things for me, she chose to, and I know all about her spinning and weaving and—the rest. I have cost her a good deal, and I mean to make it all up.”
Proudly, happily Donelle stood. And looking at her, Mrs. Lindsay fervently wished the real truth might be kept away from the girl. Better the uncertainty of birth to such a spirit than the ugly fact. Safer would her relations with Mam’selle be if she could keep her present belief.
“Come,” she said suddenly, “take your violin and stand—so! This is the way my good friend Anderson Law is to paint you.”
Donelle took the violin; she tucked it under her chin and drew her bow lovingly across it. The uplifted face smiled serenely. Donelle was no longer afraid; something bigger than herself caught her and carried her to safety.
Alice Lindsay’s eyes grew dim.
“Life is not all that is lying in wait for the child,” she thought. “What is love going to do with her?”
And then, it was two days before they were to start for the States, Donelle went for a walk along the quiet highway! She had bidden Jo good-bye! Her heart ached with the haunting fear that she had not been quite sure about Mamsey. Was it enough that she was going to prepare for life? Were her purpose and joy quite unselfish? How about those long empty days, when the Walled House would be but a memory?
And Nick! The dog had acted so strangely. His awful eyes, yes, they were quite awful, had been fixed upon her a long, long time, then he had gone—to Jo! After that he could not be lured from her. It was as if he said:
“Very well, think what you choose, I will never desert Mamsey!”
Jo had tried to force the dog from her; had scolded him sharply, but he would not stir.
His silent protest had angered Donelle, and she remembered it now, walking on the road. She felt her tears rising.
It was a day of calm and witchery. Never had the trees been more splendid, never the river more changing and beautiful. And the quiet, was there in all the world so sacred and safe a place as this?
And just then, toward Donelle, came a staggering, wretched figure. The girl stopped short and the man, seeing her, stopped also, not twenty feet away.
“It’s Tom Gavot’s terrible father,” thought Donelle. She had never been so close to anything so loathesome before. She was not really frightened, the day made things safe enough, but she estimated the best chances of getting by the ugly thing and escaping from it.
Gavot knew her. All Point of Pines knew her and snapped their hateful remarks about her at Dan’s Place. They were like a pack that had been defeated. Even Father Mantelle had the feeling that he had been incapable of coping with a situation that should not exist. It was putting a premium on immorality.
“Ha!” Pierre Gavot reeled and laughed aloud. When he was in the first stages of drunkenness he was diabolically keen. His senses always put up a revolt before they surrendered.
“So!” he called in his thick voice and with that debauched gallantry that marked him, “So! it is Mam’selle’s bastard dressed and ready to skip out as her damned father did before her, leaving the Mam’selle to make the most of the broken bits. Curse ye, for what ye are!”
The veins swelled in Gavot’s face, a confused, bestial desire for revenge on somebody, somehow, possessed him.
“Ye’ve taken all she had to give, as your father did before ye, blast him! And now, like him, ye kick her out of your way. Her, who spent herself.”
The words were scorching into Donelle’s soul, but they numbed sensation as they went. It was later the hurt would come! Now, there was but one thing to do, pass the beast in the road and get behind the walls of safety.
And so Donelle darted forward so suddenly that Gavot staggered aside in surprise. She gave him one horrified look and was gone!
No one saw her enter the house. She was breathing hard, her face was like a dead face, set and waxen. In the great hall was a book stand. On it was a dictionary.
Donelle was repeating over and again in her mind a word. A strange, fearful word, she must know about that—word. It would explain something, perhaps.
The trembling hands found it, the wide eyes read it once—twice—three times.
Slowly, then, the heavy feet mounted the shallow stairs. As old, blind Revelle used to grope in the upper hall, so Donelle groped now. She reached her room, closed the door and locked it. Then she sat down by the window and began to—suffer. The safe ground upon which she had trodden for the last few years crumbled. At last she managed to reach St. Michael’s. Yes, she remembered St. Michael’s, but how long she had been there before Jo found her she could not remember!
But it was clear: Jo, not her father, had put her there. Jo had made up the sad story to save her, Donelle! She bore Jo’s name, and that was to save her, too. And her father had deserted poor Mamsey long ago and she had made the most of the bits that were left!
That is what the horrible man had said. And they had all known, always. That was why people never came to the little white house; that was why Jo had put her in the Walled House, to save her. And Jo had stayed outside as she always had done, outside, making the most of the bits!
At last, a wild, hot fury smote the girl, a kind of fury that resented the love that placed her in a position which unfitted her for the only part she could decently play. Of course they must have realized that she would know some day, and have to give up! She could not go on with the sham and be happy. They had defrauded her of life while thinking they had saved her for life. It was cruel, wicked! The yellow eyes blazed and the slender hands clenched.
“What have they done to me?” she moaned.
And so through the afternoon, alone and driven to bay, Donelle suffered. The sun went down, leaving its benediction on the wonderful river which glistened and throbbed as it swelled with the high, full tide, but there was no peace for Donelle. A shame she could not understand overcame her. Her unawakened sex battled with the grim spectre.
Then memory helped the girl and she became a woman as she sat alone in the still room; a woman so pure and simple that Jo was saved.
How great poor Jo’s love must have been, always! How little she had asked, how bravely she had borne her punishment!
The care and devotion of the long nights, when Donelle was so ill, returned like dreams and haunted the girl. That was the beginning of Jo, and this was the end? But was it?
It was all in her, Donelle’s, hands, to decide. She could keep still! She could take her life, make it beautiful, and by and by she could come back to Mamsey. Then she would say, “This I have done for you! But I could not do it then! I could not give up then,” Donelle murmured.
Then the present held the girl, drove away the temptation. There was the little, lonely white house under the hill at Point of Pines and Mamsey who that morning had said:
“Child, I’m gladder than you know to be able to give you your chance.”
Her chance!
Just then a maid tapped at the door and gave her a message.
Mrs. Lindsay would be detained for dinner and would not be home until late.
“We are to start to-morrow,” the girl said, “very early.”
And again Donelle was alone with her chance!
Later she ate her dinner quietly in the dim oak dining room. Candles burned; there was an open fire on the hearth and pale yellow hothouse roses on the table. Never was the girl to forget that last meal in the Walled House. And then, she was once more alone upstairs with—her chance!
She went to the window and looked out. A rising moon was lighting the road, The Road!
Suddenly Tom Gavot seemed to stand in the emptiness and beckon her from that road with which he had played when he was a sad and neglected child. How clean and fine he had made it seem; he who had come from such a father! In that moment Pierre Gavot shrank from sight, he had polluted the road, but Tom had sanctified it.
The road was open now for Donelle to choose. Should she go over the hill to life or—— And so she struggled. She heard Mrs. Lindsay return, but it did not occur to her to confide in any one. The shame was only bearable if she bore it in secret, but where should she bear it? Out, over the hill, where no one knew; where Mrs. Lindsay and Jo would keep people from knowing? Could she be happy and forget?
Donelle took up her violin. She clutched it to her. It could make her forget, it must! Even if she wakened the household she felt she must play.
But she could not play! Her hand was heavy, her brain dull.
Then something Revelle had once said to her flashed into her mind.
“Always live right, child. You can never have your gift at its best unless you keep its place holy. No matter what any one may tell you, keep the place clean and right in which your gift lives!”
Then it was that Donelle dressed herself in a plain, warm suit, packed a little bag, took her violin, left a note on her dressing table, and went on—Tom Gavot’s Road! Just for a moment she stood outside the tall gates and looked wistfully up the hill, then she turned as if relinquishing all the joy and promise of life, and set her face toward Point of Pines.