Chapter XVI The Story
How little she really knew of life! But how the last year of suffering and renunciation had filled the void with a young but terrible philosophy. Norval did not speak. With bowed head, hands clasped behind him, he walked beside Donelle as she went along, bearing her cross and poor Jo’s.
“You see I could not let Mamsey know that I knew. I could not hurt her so. She would have made me go away, and always I would have remembered her here alone where my father left her. And Tom Gavot has helped me keep the people still. He stays here, and he wanted to go way, way off, and be something so different. That is why I can play for Tom in his cabin. He knows and understands; he couldn’t hurt Mamsey and me, he couldn’t! Women like Mamsey and me feel a hurt terribly, that’s why I am telling you this, I want you to be kind. Don’t make things harder, they are bad enough!”
“Donelle, for God’s sake, spare me!”
The words were wrung from Norval, but he did not look up.
“I’m sure now that you know, you never will hurt us again,” Donelle’s voice soothed and caressed unconsciously. “I!—I wanted to be happy just as if nothing had happened, before I was born, to keep me from being happy. I thought about love, just as girls will. They cannot help it. Then you came and I wanted you!”
A quivering fierceness shot through the words. Norval gave a quick glance at the face near him and saw that the purest, most primitive statement of a mighty truth held the girl’s thought. If she had said, she, the first woman, to him, the first man:
“You are mine, I want you,” she could not have said it more divinely.
“I wanted to make you happy; to play for you while you painted your beautiful pictures, and then when you were tired and I was tired, why, our big love would bring us more and more happiness. Then, well, then you looked at me through Tom Gavot’s window and somehow I understood!”
Donelle and Norval were nearing the little white house, they could see the smoke rising from the chimney. Norval’s thoughts were racing madly ahead, crowding upon him, choking him. He meant to make the future safe for this young girl, safe from himself and the sacredest passion of his life which, he now acknowledged, had mastered him. Reason, world-understanding, had no part in it, he wanted her. He must have her, and was prepared to clear the path leading to an honest love. But he could not tell her of Katherine, of himself, there was no time; no time and her experience could not possibly have prepared her for bearing it.
“I am going to tell you a great secret,” Donelle half whispered, “back there by the cross I remembered what the Sisters at the Home used to tell me. They knew, but I did not—then. For girls like me—well, I am going back to St. Michael’s-on-the-Rocks and teach the babies. That’s why I could tell you what I have just told you.”
Then Norval turned and took her in his arms. So swiftly, so overpoweringly did he do this, that Donelle lay quiet and frightened, her white face pressed against his breast, her wonderful eyes searching his stern, strange face.
“No, by God! You are not going back to St. Michael’s!” he whispered. “You little white soul, can’t you see I love and adore you? Can’t you see it was because I couldn’t bear another man to—to have you, that I was a brute to you? Do you think that any wrong others have done can keep you from me, from letting me take you where you belong? Donelle! Donelle, kiss me, child.”
Only the deep eyes moved; they widened and grew dark.
“May I—kiss you?”
“No.” And Norval did not kiss her!
“But you are mine, Donelle, and all the powers in the world cannot alter that. I am going to make you believe me. What do I care for anything but this? You have driven everything but yourself from sight. When you play, great heavens, Donelle, when you play to me, moving about as you did that first and only time in my cabin, you took me into a Great Place. Don’t tremble, little girl, don’t. Every quiver hurts me. I am going to make you forget the brute in me; I’m going to meet your love, dear heart, with one as fine, so help me God! Trust me, Donelle, trust me and when you can tell me that you do trust me, we will go to Mam’selle. She will understand, she has the mighty soul. Oh, Donelle!”
Norval leaned over the tender face, almost touched it with his lips, but did not.
“My little white love!” he whispered. “But you will come and play for me?” he pleaded.
“Yes.”
“And you will, you will give me a fair show?” She smiled wanly.
“If I ever give you cause again to fear me, I hope——”
Then Donelle raised her hand and laid it across his lips.
“I am so afraid of this wonderful thing that is happening to me,” she said, “and you mustn’t say—well! what you were going to say just then.”
“Don’t fear the love, my darling. It’s the sacredest thing in the world.” Norval had taken the hand from his lips and now held it in his own. “And we’ll keep it holy, Donelle. That is our part.”
“Yes, yes; but to think, to think!”
“Don’t think, sweet, here. Come close and try to—to—love for a moment without remembering.”
“Why, how can I?”
“Try.”
And so they stood with the golden light of the west on their faces. Norval did the thinking. He thought of the quickest possible method of setting Katherine free and making it right for him to kiss Donelle. He thought of the wild realization of his true nature—a nature that had been distorted and contracted by inheritance and training. He did not want the beaten tracks, that had always been the trouble. He wanted the unbroken trails, God! how he had thirsted and hungered for just what this little, wild, sweet thing in his arms represented. Love, simple, primitive love, music, understanding! And then Norval thought of Anderson Law! Thought of him, longed for him at that moment as a blind man might long for guiding, not to the right path, but on it.
“You may kiss me now!” This in a whisper.
The quick surrender startled Norval. He bent his head, still thinking of Law.
“My woman,” he said to that uplifted face, “when I have the right, that somehow I forfeited, I will kiss you.”
“But you said we were not to think; when you think, you remember.”
“Yes, Donelle, we remember and we look ahead with faith.”
Gently Norval let her free. He smiled at her, and the look in his eyes made her stand very straight, but she smiled back.
“I am so happy,” she said simply. “And I thought I was never to be happy again.”
“And I—why, Donelle, you’ve taught me what happiness means. And you will keep your promise about coming to the wood-cabin?”
“Yes, Mr. Richard Alton.” Donelle made a courtesy.
“And you’ll bring the fiddle?”
“Of course.”
“And Donelle, before you, dear child, I beg the pardon and forgiveness of Tom Gavot.”
“I wish he could know that you are what you are,” Donelle’s eyes saddened.
“He shall, child. That, I swear. Next to Mam’selle,” here, almost unconsciously Norval raised his cap, “next to Mam’selle, Tom Gavot shall know. Come, little girl, here’s home!”
And together they went up to Jo’s house. It was marvellous how they managed the great thing that had happened. Never outwardly did it overcome them.
The winter grew still and hard, the people shrank into their houses. There were trodden paths, like spokes of a wheel, leading from most of the houses to the hub, which was Dan’s Place; there were more or less broken paths reaching to the river, where, under the ice, fish were obtainable.
Tom Gavot just at that time was called to duty and left his father with money enough to keep him silent; and food and fuel enough to keep him safe.
Jo, with a growing content and happiness, cooked for her boarder, revelled in his society during the long evenings, and was perfectly oblivious of the stupendous thing that was going on under her very eyes.
Norval sent for books, many of them. Books of travel; Jo grew breathless over them.
“I can sit in this rocker,” she often said to Marcel Longville, “shut my eyes, and there I am in those far places. I see palm groves and I hear the swishing of the sea. Mercy! Marcel, just fancy a body of water as long as the St. Lawrence and as wide as it is long!”
“I can’t,” said Marcel. “And I wouldn’t want to. Water isn’t what I take to most. But I do like the palm countries, Mam’selle. They are, generally speaking, warm. Sometimes I feel as if I never would be warm again as long as I live.”
While Norval read aloud to Jo and Donelle, he would often lift his eyes to find Donelle looking at him. Over the gulf of silence that separated them they smiled and trusted.
Norval wrote to his lawyer, instructed him to take legal steps at once, upon whatever ground he could, legitimately, select. “Leave my wife and me free,” he said; “with as decent characters as our stupid laws permit. I don’t see why society should feel more moral if we are sullied.”
But Norval did not write to Katherine. He left that for his lawyers to do. He did, however, send a pretty fair statement of the case of himself and his wife to Anderson Law who, at that time, was basking under Egypt’s calm skies, wandering in deserts, forgetting, and pulling himself together.
And according to her promise Donelle went often to the cabin in the woods. Because it was winter and Point of Pines in a subnormal state, no one knew of the secret visits. Not even the joyous notes of the violin attracted attention. Norval painted as he never had in his life before. His genius burned bright. He knew the difference now; it made him humble and grateful. He painted the winter woods with an inspired brush. They were asleep, but not dead. His sunlight was alive; his moonlight, pure magic. He caught the frozen river with its strange, shifting colours; he dealt appealingly with the lonely, scattered houses; they seemed, under his hand, to ask for sympathy in their isolation.
Guided by Donelle’s interpretation, he painted a road full of mystery and delight. A long road leading to a hilltop.
“Oh!” Donelle cried when she stood close and beheld the picture. “Now I see what Tom saw long ago, but you had to teach me. The road is alive, it is a—a friend! You just would not want to hurt it or make it ashamed. Oh! how the sunlight lies on it. I believe it moves!”
Norval lifted his face, his yearning eyes claimed the love he saw in Donelle’s.
“Sweetheart, trot around and play for me,” he would suddenly say, his lips closing firm, “play and play while I make Tom Gavot’s road ready for him. Child, when I give Tom Gavot this picture, I’ll make him understand many things.”
“And you will give him the Road? He’ll be so happy.” Donelle was moving about, her eyes dreamy.
“I wonder!” breathed Norval.
“Wonder what?” Donelle paused.
“About a thousand things, my sweet.”
By and by Norval painted his love; painted it in the splendid picture that afterward hung in a distant gallery and was known as “Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight.”
In it sat Donelle where the western glow fell upon her. With a rapt expression in her yellow eyes, her violin poised, the bow ready, she was looking and smiling at the vision that had caught and held her.
“I seem to be looking at you,” Donelle whispered as, standing beside him, she gazed at the canvas. “Waiting for you to tell me what to play. I believe, I believe you are saying to me, ‘play our pretty little French song.’ Shall I play it now?”
“Yes, my beloved, and then,” Norval was sternly intent upon his brushes, “then we’ll go for a tramp with Nick. That infernal little scamp is like an alarm clock. Look, Donelle, he’s coming up the path, coming to tell us the evening meal is ready. Sometimes I wonder if Mam’selle guesses?”
After some delay a letter came from Norval’s lawyer.
It said:
I think by summer we can bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion. I can take no definite steps at present because Mrs. Norval’s lawyer writes that she has been quite ill and has gone to the mountains to recuperate.
Norval frowned, he was getting impatient of delay, he wanted to take Donelle to Egypt in the early summer. He wanted Law to set his seal of approbation upon her.
But Donelle saw no reason for perplexity; she existed in so glorious a state that no disturbing thing ever entered. It was enough for her to waken in the morning and to know that her love was in Jo’s upper chamber, safe and near. It was joy for her to look at Jo herself and think that the world could no longer hurt her. How could it, with the big love holding them all?
When Norval touched her, Donelle felt the thrill of trust and understanding. She never doubted now and often she would laugh as she remembered her vow by the cross and thought of St. Michael’s-on-the-Rocks.
“Oh! but it is the magic that has caught me!” she whispered to herself, hugging her slim body and wishing, with happy tears, that all the world, her little world, could know.
She wanted Jo to know, and Tom Gavot! She couldn’t bear to have Tom nursing a hate while he was away making his roads. She wanted everyone in Point of Pines to know, even old Pierre.
She wished, almost pathetically, that Mrs. Lindsay and Professor Revelle could know.
“For they made me just a little more like my dear love,” She said to herself. “They brightened me and gave me the music. My dear loves me to be pretty and he loves my music.”
But it was not all so easy for Norval. There were times when, alone with Donelle in the wood-cabin, the crude side of love made its tremendous claim.
How desirable Donelle was when, casting her violin aside, she flung herself in a chair by the hearth and said:
“Come, put the paints away and wipe the brushes carefully. Come tell me a story and then, dear man, I’ll stir you some maple and put in a lot of nuts. Oh! but I will make it good.”
Norval, at such commands, felt his strength departing.
“There’s one story I’d like to tell you, little woman,” he once flung back to her desperately.
“And that is what?”
“A story of a man and woman.”
“Go on, go on,” Donelle urged. “That will be the best of all.”
“You bet it will!” Then Norval tossed his brushes aside.
“I’m coming over to take you in my arms and kiss you, sweet!” he warned, but did not move.
“Well, why don’t you? And then we can tell Mamsey.”
Norval frowned.
“Shall I come to you, dear man?”
Oh! how she lured and tempted from her safe, innocent love. “I trust you now. I beg your pardon because I once did not. I will come half the way.”
“My sweet, when I take you in my arms to tell you the story I mean to tell you, I will come all the way! Now stir the syrup, you hard little bargainer. Throw in an extra handful of nuts for the crimes you commit but know not of.”
“And now you are laughing!” cried Donelle.
“Far from it, I’m thinking of swearing.”
“At what?” Donelle was cracking the nuts.
“At the absolute stupidity of——Good Lord, child”—Norval sprang toward her—“your skirt was on fire! He crushed the sparks and held her for a moment.
“If anything happened to you,” he muttered.
“What would you do?” Donelle trembled a little in his arms.
“I’d go—don’t look at me that way, Donelle—I’d go to St. Michael’s-on-the-Rocks.”