Chapter XV The Look
And Donelle began to know what love was. Know it as passionate, daring natures know it. She thought of her father, of Mamsey, in a new light. She grew to understand her supposed mother with a tragic realization and she shuddered when she reflected upon her father.
“To go and leave love!” she thought. “Oh! how could he?”
Then Donelle took to gazing upon Jo with the critical eyes of youth, and yet with pity.
What manner of girl had Jo been? Had she always been plain?
The word caused Donelle pain. It sounded disloyal to Jo; but it sent her to her mirror in the little north chamber beside Mam’selle’s.
The face that looked back at Donelle puzzled her. Was it pretty? What was the matter with it?
The eyes were too large, they looked hungry. The mouth, too, was queer; it did things too easily. It smiled and quivered; it turned up at the corners, it drooped down, all too easily. The nose was rather nice as noses go, but it had tiny freckles on it that you could see if you looked close. Those freckles were, in colour, something like the eyes.
“I like my hair!” confessed Donelle, and she smoothed the soft, pale braids wound about her delicately poised head. “My throat is too long, but it’s white!”
Then she tried on her few dresses, one after the other, and chose a heavy dark blue one. Jo had woven the material, it was very fine and warm.
“I think I will take my fiddle and go up to the wood-cabin,” thought Donelle, and then her face grew bright and rose-touched.
But instead, Donelle went to Tom Gavot’s hut.
Once outside the house, she simply could not go to the wood-cabin. She knew Alton was there, he painted constantly when he was not tramping the sunny forests or sitting with Jo and Donelle, reading in the smothering heat of the overworked stove.
“Some time when he is away, then I’ll go.”
But oh! how she wanted to go. The very thought of Alton made her thrill. Sometimes she saw him looking at her, when Jo was bent over her loom or needles, and the look always called something out of Donelle; something that went straight to Alton and never returned!
On that winter day, a still white day, Donelle carried her violin under her long fur coat; she must play to somebody, and Jo had gone to the distant town for the day.
The door of Tom’s hut was closed, but a curl of smoke rose from the chimney so Donelle knocked rather formally.
Tom’s step sounded inside, he took down the bar which secured the door and flung it open. His eyes were dark and his brow scowling.
“Why, Tom,” laughed Donelle, “who are you locking and barring out? Maybe you do not want company?”
“I don’t, but I want you.”
“Tom, who do you call company?”
“Mam’selle’s boarder, that Mr. Alton.” Tom had run across Norval once or twice since his return.
“Don’t you like him, Tom?”
Donelle had come inside and taken a chair by the hearth, now she flung her coat aside and laid the violin on her knee.
“Yes, I like him well enough, and that’s the trouble. I don’t want to like people unless there is a reason. I can’t find a reason for this man.”
Donelle laughed.
“What is he here for anyway, Donelle?”
“Why don’t you go up to his wood-cabin and see, Tom? He’s asked you.” She had heard Norval do so rather insistently.
“Yes. But I’m not going.”
“Why, Tom?”
“I’m too busy.”
“I wish you would go, Tom. I wish you could see his pictures. Why, Tom, you’d feel like taking the shoes off your feet.”
Tom laughed grimly.
“Not while the weather’s so cold,” he said.
“But, Tom, that’s the reason for Mr. Alton. He is getting our woods and skies and river safe on his canvases. He’s going to take them back to people who have never seen such things.”
“Why don’t they come and board here, then, and see them for themselves?” Tom threw a log viciously on the fire. “You don’t mean he’s doing this to give a lot of people pleasure?”
“Tom, he sells his pictures; he gets a great deal of money for them.”
“Umph!” Then, “Has he ever put you in the pictures, Donelle?”
There was a slight pause. Remembering the faint suggestion in the first picture she had ever seen in the cabin, Donelle said softly:
“No, Tom.”
“I’m glad. I’d hate to have a lot of strangers staring at you.”
“Tom, you’re scrouchy. Let me play for you.”
And, while she played, growing more rapt and absorbed as she did so, Tom took his drawing board to the window and bent over his blueprints. Gradually the look of doubt and irritation left his face, a flood of happiness swept over him. He began to see roads. Always roads. He wanted to go to Quebec in the spring and tell his firm about something he had discovered lately; and it was on Mam’selle Morey’s land, too. If there were a road back among the hills over which to haul that which he had found, haul it by a short cut to the railroad, by and by Mam’selle and Donelle would not have to take objectionable strangers into their home and——
Donelle played on unheedingly, but Tom started as a knock fell on the door!
“I will not open it!” he thought savagely. “Let him think what he damn pleases.”
The tune ran glidingly on.
“You like this tune, Tom?” Donelle was far away from the still cabin.
“Yes, I like it, Donelle, but play something louder, faster.”
“Well, then, how about this?” and with a laugh Donelle swung into a new theme.
Again the knock! This time softer but more insinuating.
Then all was quiet, but the mad music was filling the warm room.
Just then the visitor at the door stepped around the house and came in full view of the window before which Tom sat, rigid and defiant. It was Norval, and he paused, came nearer and stood still. Tom got up, and the movement attracted Donelle’s attention. She turned and saw the two men glaring at each other, the glass between.
“Curse him!” muttered Tom, “curse him!”
Norval vanished instantly, but not before Donelle had caught the expression in his eyes.
“Tom,” she said affrightedly, “what did he think?”
“What does it matter what he thought?”
“But, Tom, tell me, what did he think to make him look like that? Perhaps, perhaps he thinks I should not be here, alone with you.”
“Damn him. What right has he to stare into my place?”
“But, Tom, his eyes, I cannot bear to think of the look in his eyes. It—it was laughing, but it hurt.”
“Who cares about what he thought?” Tom was savage.
“I do,” Donelle whispered. She was putting her violin away. “I do. I couldn’t stand having a man look at me like that. Why, Tom, it made me feel ashamed.”
Again Gavot cursed, but under his breath.
“You going?” he asked. “Wait, I’ll come with you. Wait, Donelle.”
But the girl did not pause.
“I’d rather go alone,” she called back.
But she did not go directly home, she took a round-about way and reached the hill back of the little white house. The tall pines rose black from the untrodden snow, the winter sky was as blue as steel, and as cold. In among the trees, where it was sheltered, Donelle sat down. There she could think!
The power of a look is mighty. The mere instant that Norval had gazed upon Donelle through the window was sufficient to carry the meaning in the man’s mind to the sensitive girl.
It took her some time to translate the truth as she sat under the trees on the hilltop, but slowly it all became clear.
“He does not know, but he thinks wrong of me.” Donelle spoke aloud as if repeating a lesson.
“Why should he think wrong?” questioned the hard teacher.
Then Donelle remembered her father and Jo, and the word with which Pierre Gavot had polluted her life.
“That’s why he laughed,” shuddered the girl. Her own secret interpreting the hurting look though knowing him only as Richard Alton, she had no reason to believe he knew her story.
Then the relentless teacher pointed her back to the look in Dan Kelly’s eyes, the look that had frightened her and had made Jo send her away to the Walled House.
“Unless I save myself,” moaned Donelle, “no one can keep people from looking—those looks!”
Quietly she got up and walked down the hill, a tall, slim, ghostly form, with eyes haunted by knowledge.
That night after the evening meal Norval stayed in the bright living room and tortured Donelle. He knew he was brutal, but something drove him on. He was suffering dumbly, suffering without cause, he believed. Why should he care that a girl about whom he knew too much should hide herself away with a rough young giant behind a locked door in a lonely hut?
Then he concluded it was because he knew how Alice Lindsay and Law might feel, that he suffered. They would be so shocked.
“After all,” Norval tried to reason himself into indifference, “blood will cry out. The world may be damned unjust to women, but there is something lacking when a girl like this makes herself—cheap.”
Then it was that Norval began his torture. Jo was in the kitchen at the moment, Donelle was clearing the table.
“Where were you this afternoon?” Norval was carefully filling his pipe, sitting astride his chair.
“Part of the time I was in the woods on the hill,” Donelle glanced at Jo through the open door.
“That’s odd!” Norval puffed slowly and Donelle’s eyes pleaded unconsciously. For no real reason she did not want Jo to know she had been with Tom. She was haunted by the look!
“Why don’t you come up to my cabin and play to me?” This in a tone so low that Mam’selle could not hear.
“I—I don’t know. I might be in the way while you work.”
“On the contrary. Come up to-morrow, Donelle, I’ll paint you with your fiddle. You’ll make the town stare, the town back home.”
The colour rose to Donelle’s face. She remembered Tom’s words.
“I do not want strangers staring at my face,” she said with some spirit.
“Why not? It’s a pretty face, Donelle.”
Then the girl crossed the room and stood before him.
“If you talk and look like that,” she warned in an undertone, “I’ll make Mamsey send you away.”
Norval laughed.
“I don’t believe you will,” he said, and reached out toward her.
And, for hours that night, after everything was still, Donelle lay in her dark room and cried while she struggled with her confused emotions.
“He shall go away! He shall not dare to look at me so, and whisper!”
Then she tossed about.
“But he must not go until I make him ashamed to look at me—so. But how can I? How can I?”
Toward morning sleep came and when Donelle awoke, Norval had had his breakfast and gone.
After the morning’s work was finished Jo asked Donelle to go on an errand. A poor woman back among the hills was ill and needed food of the right sort.
“I have a crick in my back, Donelle,” Jo explained, “I don’t believe I could walk there, and the road is unbroken. Molly is too old to force her way through. If you take the wood path, it won’t be too far.”
“I’d love to go, Mamsey. It’s such a still day, and did you ever see such sunlight?”
The release was welcome, poor Donelle still was thrashing about in her confused emotions. She was grateful that Alton was gone; she yearned to see him, and so it went.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, Mamsey. Is the basket packed?”
It was only eight o’clock when Donelle set forth. She wore her long, dark fur coat, a cowl-like hood of fur covered her pale hair, her delicate, white face shone sweetly in the soft, dusky setting. The eyes were full of sunlight but her mouth drooped pathetically.
Jo remembered the look long after the girl had departed.
“I mustn’t keep her here,” she reasoned; “I’m going to write again to that Mr. Law. I will wait until spring; he couldn’t come now. I’m going to ask him to come up here and talk things over.”
Then Mam’selle went to her loom and worked like a Fate; there were piles of wonderful things to sell. Surely they would help Donelle to her own! And so Jo worked and dreamed and feared, while Donelle made her way over the crusty snow, through the silent, holy woods, over the shining hill to the sick woman in her distant cabin.
For an hour the girl worked in the lonely house. She built a roaring fire, carried in a store of wood, fed and cheered the poor soul on her hard bed, and then turned her face toward Point of Pines.
Almost childishly she dallied by the way, trying to set her feet in the marks she had made on the way up. So interested did she become in this that it made her almost forget that queer, sad feeling in her heart.
“I’ll make a new path,” she decided, and that caused her to think of Tom Gavot and Alton and—the Look!
Then she forgot all else and drifted far away. She was unhappy as the young know unhappiness; no perspective, no comparison. Never had there been such a case as hers! Never had any one suffered as she was suffering because no one had ever had the same reason!
When Donelle recalled herself, she found that she was on the highway several miles beyond Point of Fines. The sun was sloping down, the west was golden, and a solemn stillness, almost deathly, pervaded space.
There was a tall cross close beside Donelle. Black it rose from the unsullied snow, white tipped it was and shining against the glowing sky. Beneath it someone had evidently knelt, for the crust of the snow was broken. What meaning all this had for Donelle, who could tell? But the confusion and hurt of the last few hours clutched at her heart, and she who had never been urged by Jo Morey to consider religion in any form went slowly to the cross and sank down!
The teachings of St. Michael’s claimed her, the memory of little Sister Mary with the lost look clung to her; then a peace entered into her soul.
“No one could hurt me there,” she sobbed. “No one could look at me—with that look.” Then, at the foot of the cross, her head bowed and her tears falling, Donelle shivered and prayed.
Presently she raised her face; it was calm and pale. There was a round teardrop on her cheek that had not fallen with the others. She turned and there by the roadside stood Norval. How long he had been there he could hardly have told himself.
When he had gone to the white house for his noon-day meal, Jo had told him, quite inconsequently, of Donelle’s errand and he had followed her, for what reason God only knew.
“Donelle!” he said, “Donelle!”
The terrible look in his eyes was gone, gone was the mocking smile of the night before. Pity, divine pity, moved him.
“Donelle!”
“Yes, Mr. Richard Alton.” The poor girl strove to be her teasing self, but her lips trembled and suddenly a strange, almost an awful, dignity and detachment overcame her. Standing with clasped hands, in her nun-like garb, she seemed to have taken farewell of the world that women crave.
“What are you doing, Donelle, by that cross?” Norval did not draw near, and a distance of several feet separated them.
“Thinking and praying.”
“Thinking what? And praying for what?”
The trouble in his eyes met the trouble in hers and called for simple truth.
“I was thinking of how you looked at me yesterday when I was in Tom Gavot’s hut and of how you made me suffer last night. And I was praying to God to help me, help me to stop loving you.”
So naïve and direct were the words that they made Norval breathe hard. In a flash he saw the true nature of the girl before him. She was old, gravely, inheritedly old; and she was, too, a young and pitiful child.
People had only touched the outer surface of her character and personality. Alone she had learned the primitive and desperate lessons of womanhood.
“Stop loving me?” Norval repeated the words slowly.
“Yes, I was beginning to love you very much, more than everything else. Then, when you looked as you did yesterday, I remembered and all night I was afraid. Oh! I am glad you did not get to loving me. It hurts so!”
“How do you know that I have not got to loving you? How do you know but that it was because I love you that I looked as I did yesterday?”
“Ah, no, Mr. Richard Alton, you couldn’t have looked so had you loved me.” Donelle tried to smile and made a pitiful showing.
“You don’t know men, Donelle.”
“But I know love.”
Now that she had taken her last leave of it, Donelle could talk of it as little Sister Mary might have done, for she had vowed beside the cross to go back to St. Michael’s. Long ago Sister Angela had said that she would find peace there. Then she spoke suddenly to Norval.
“You see, maybe you have heard something about Mamsey and me, but you did not quite understand and you felt you had a right to look as you did. I wonder why men want to make it harder for—for women, when women try to forget?”
Norval winced; the shaft had sunk into its rightful place.
And still the white-faced girl stood her distance, and tried to smile.
“I am going to tell you all about Mamsey and me,” she said. “I will tell you as we walk along.”