Chapter XXII Norval Comes Back
Anderson Law was sawing wood behind Mam’selle’s little white house. He was mighty proud of his success in manual labour; to help Jo with her wood pile was a delight, altruistically and vaingloriously.
The summer with its heart throbs had made people indifferent to the winter on ahead, but the days were growing colder and shorter and even the most careless were aware that some provision must be made at once if one were to escape needless suffering.
Law was thinking as he worked, and occasionally wiped the perspiration from his brow. There were so many things to think about in Point of Pines; to think about, smile about tenderly, and grieve about.
There was old Pierre, the Redeemed, he was called now. Since Tom’s going the wretched father had ceased drinking, was housed by Father Mantelle, and had fallen into a gentle, vague state that called forth pity and tolerance.
Early and late he was on the highway with his shovel or rake making the road easy for the feet of his boy!
If any one came over the hill into Point of Pines the wandering, bleary eyes would be raised and the one question would break from the trembling lips: “Have you seen my Tom?”
If any one went away over the hill, Pierre had a message:
“Tell my Tom I’m filling in the ruts. He won’t find it such hard travelling when he comes back.”
Anderson Law often kept old Gavot company—for Tom’s sake. Even Mam’selle had forgiven him and, quite secretly, helped the priest in his generous support.
The Longvilles, the Captain at least, had forsaken Pierre. Marcel, poor soul, gave what, and when, she could.
As Law bent to his task at the wood pile, the priest hailed him from the road.
“I go now,” he explained as he declined the invitation to enter, “to pray for rain. The forest fires are bad, but until the crops were in I would not pray.”
So simply did the curé say this that Law refrained from smiling, but he did say, looking afar to where the heavy smoke-cloud hung above the trees:
“Ah! well, Father, now that the harvest is in, you had better give the Lord a free hand or there will be a sad pay-day on ahead.”
“I go to pray,” Mantelle rejoined and passed on.
Amused and thoughtful, Law looked after the tall, thin, bent figure. He recalled how the patient old soul taught and encouraged the children, held the older ones—children too, in their simplicity and superstition—to the plain, common paths of life with what success he might; remembered how day or night he travelled near and far to watch with the dying or comfort those from whom death had torn their sacredest and best.
“At such,” Law thought, “one cannot scoff.”
And just then a fragrant odour came to Anderson Law. Pleasant and welcome it was. He looked up and, at a little distance, saw Mam’selle at her outdoor oven, pushing into its yawning mouth a tray of noble loaves of bread.
Down went Law’s saw, out came his sketching pad; Jo before that oven was a sight for the reverent.
“Eighteen loaves!” called Mam’selle, not realizing that she was becoming immortal, “eighteen loaves at a lick, Mr. Law, and but a drop in the bucket. The boys, whatever else was knocked out of them over there, managed to keep their stomachs. There’s no filling the lads up, but the good Lord knows that it’s little enough for us to do, trying to fill them.”
“To-morrow will be Friday,” cried a cheery young voice from the highway, “so we must fish to-day, Mam’selle. I’m off to the river, but I swear I cannot get past the smell of your oven. And I wanted to tell you, I have my old job back. Hereafter I swing the light from the dock.”
Law and Jo turned. A boy in the garb of a great country stood leaning on his crutches, smiling; smiling, but with that look in his eyes that was never to depart. The look the trenches had put there; the hall mark of the world’s wrong to its young.
“Ah! it’s that nice boy, Jean,” laughed Jo eagerly. “Wait, son,” the wounded and sick were all “sons” to Mam’selle now, “wait, here is a large, brown, hot loaf. Take it along to munch while you catch your fish. And it’s glad I am about the job, Jean. No one ever swung the lantern as you did. The River Queen will perk up when she sees you back.”
Jean laughed and patted his hot loaf of bread.
“Ah! Mam’selle. And to think I used to run from you when I was a silly lout of a kid. I did not know your great heart then, Mam’selle,” he said.
The boyish eyes were lifted to Jo’s face as she pressed the crisp loaf in his bag.
“It’s my turn to run after you now,” she said softly. “It is worth the run, though, son. You’re good sorts, the lot of you.”
Law was watching and listening. Jo affected him strangely. Lately he was aware of a glow whenever he got to thinking of her. If he meant ever to escape from Point of Pines he had better make a hasty retreat. That was what the glow meant. As if to challenge this state of mind Jo now came toward him.
“It’s a noble pile you’ve cut, Mr. Law,” she said. “For a painter-man you’re not the useless truck one might expect. Mr. Law, I’ll think of you often when I burn this wood. And now that I’m rather soft in my feelings for your sex—those hurt boys have pleaded for you—I might as well tell you that I’m going to put my stove in the outhouse and open up the chimney in the living room.”
“Mam’selle! This is surrender indeed! A triumph of soul over matter!” cried Law.
“This winter you can think of me toasting my shins and shivering up the back, Mr. Law.” Jo smiled broadly.
Anderson Law threw his head back and laughed. Jo’s plain, unvarnished Anglo-Saxon was like a northwest wind to his mind.
And just then the postman jogged in sight, reading the postcards with relish and letting his old horse find his own way along the road.
“Where is Donelle?” Law was asking as the mail man paused at the gate. Jo’s eyes darkened.
“Knitting and thinking down in the river-cabin. Nick’s with her. Mr. Law, there are times when I think that dog has a soul.”
“I never doubt it, Mam’selle. One look in his eyes is enough. But what, now, about Nick?”
“When he thinks the child has been alone long enough he goes after her. She says he tugs at her skirt until she follows. He cries if she holds back. Mr. Law, I fear Donelle is—is—taking to Tom’s road.”
Poor Jo turned away.
“Nonsense, Mam’selle.”
Law often thought this, too, so his denial was doubly intense.
“We’ll find a way yet to get Donelle on the road that belongs to her. Ah! a letter,” he broke in, seeing the postman waving an envelope from the cart.
Law went forward and took the letter, tore it open, and read the few words enclosed. It was from his lawyer. For a moment Anderson Law could not speak. The bright day seemed suddenly to darken. Then he said slowly, though his thoughts were swift:
“Mam’selle, Jim Norval is back in New York. He’s not able to see just now; something’s gone wrong with his eyes, and his legs, too. There’s hope, but I must go.” Then, as if inspired, “Mam’selle, I must take Donelle.”
“No!” Jo sprang back as if Law had hit her.
“Mam’selle, I must take Donelle. Have these hurt boys, here, not taught you a lesson?”
“But, Mr. Law, this is not decent.”
“Norval’s wife died last summer, Mam’selle. He went abroad because there was nothing else for him to do. Now may I have Donelle?”
Jo reflected.
“But it will kill her,” she said half-heartedly, “the strangeness. And what may happen.”
“It will cure her,” Law went on; “no matter what happens. She’s part of it all; she must bear what is hers.”
“Mr. Law——”
“Ah! Mam’selle,” and here Anderson Law took Jo’s hand, “there is so little, after all, that we older ones can do for them. May I have Donelle?”
“Yes. God help us all, Mr. Law.” And poor Jo bowed her head.
“Thank you, Mam’selle. The conventions have all crumbled, we’re all stripped down to our bare souls. We cannot afford to waste time looking forward or back. Keep that fire burning on the opened hearth, Mam’selle. Some of us will come back to you, God willing, soon. We must hurry. See! there is the child coming up the Right of Way, Nick clinging to her skirt. Donelle!”
Law called to her and went to meet her.
“Child, I’m going to take you to the States with me. Norval needs you!”
Just for an instant the white face twitched and the yellow eyes darkened.
“When do we go?” was all the cold lips said. Never a doubt; never a pause.
“What did I tell you?” Law turned to Jo. “Conventions be damned!
“To-day we start, Donelle. And, Mam’selle, just you ’tend to that fire!”
When Norval had been landed in New York he was taken to a hospital—to die. But he did not die, though he tried hard enough, and gave no end of trouble to his doctors and nurses.
“Whom shall we send for?” he was asked when, helpless and blinded, he lay in the small, quiet, white room.
“Am I going west?” The phrase clung like an idiom of a foreign language.
“Good Lord, man, no! You’re getting on rippingly.” The young house doctor was tireless in his service to this stricken man.
“Then send for no one. I’m not eager to have a chance acquaintance gaping at my useless legs and sightless eyes.”
“But you’re going to come around all right. It’s the effect of shock, you know. How about your relatives?”
“Haven’t got any, thank the Lord.” Norval’s chin stiffened. The young doctor gripped the clasped hands on the counterpane.
“I wish you’d try a bit to buck up,” he said.
“What for?”
“Well, just for your country’s sake.”
“My country! Why isn’t my country where I have been, helping to lower the temperature of hell?”
The bitter tone rang through the words. Norval was glad for the company of this young doctor; glad to have someone, who, really did not matter, share with him the moments when the memory of horrors he had witnessed overwhelmed him.
“Our country is going to be there soon!” The doctor’s voice was strained. “A big country like this has to go slow.”
“Slow be damned! This is no time to put on brakes. Are they, are they actually steaming up, Burke? You’re not saying this to—to quiet my nerves?”
“No. Your nerves are settling into shape. Yes, our country is heaving from the inside.”
“Thank God!” Norval sighed.
“And you bet, Mr. Norval, I’m going on the first ship if I have to go as a stoker. If there’s one blessed trick of my trade that can help fellows like you, lead me to it!”
“Burke, you’re a devilish good tonic.”
A week later Norval had young Burke again to himself.
“Old man, I feel that I am not going west. It’s rotten bad form for me to be holding down this bed any longer. I suppose I could be moved?”
“Yes, Mr. Norval. It would do you good, I think you ought to make an effort.
“I don’t see why, old chap, but—here goes! Send for this man,” he named Law’s lawyer. “There is only one person in God’s world I care to have see me now. Let them send for him.”
So the lawyer came to the hospital, viewed Norval with outward calm; felt his heart tighten and his eyes dim, then wrote the short, stiff note that reached Anderson Law by Mam’selle’s wood pile.
From that moment events moved rapidly. Taken from the still place where death seemed to have crushed everything, Donelle aroused herself slowly. She simply could not realize the wonderful thing that was happening; the marvellous fact that life still persisted and that she was part of it.
“He—he will not die?” she asked Law over and over again, apparently forgetting that she had put the question before.
“Die? Jim Norval? Certainly not,” vowed Law with energy born of fear and apprehension.
“And,” here Donelle’s eyes would glow, “he did his duty to, to the last! I am so glad that he stayed with her, Man-Andy, until she needed him no longer. Then I’m glad he went over there to help. There will be nothing to be sorry for now. It was worth waiting for. And does he know about Tom, my husband?”
The word husband seemed to justify the rest.
“He does not, Donelle. And see here, child, we’ve got to go slow. Norval is going to come around all right and God knows he needs you, though he may not know it himself.”
“But why, Man-Andy? And what is the matter with him, exactly? You have not told me.”
There had been so much to say and do that details had been artistically eliminated.
“Well, his legs are wobbly.” Law sought for the least objectionable symptoms.
“Wobbly? But he has them, hasn’t he?” Donelle thought of the boys of Point of Pines who—had not.
“Legs? Jim Norval? Well, I should say so! But they’ve rather gone back on him for the moment. And his eyes——”
“His eyes?” Donelle clutched Law. “What about his eyes?”
“Now, see here, Donelle. I’m taking you to Norval because I believe you alone can cure him; make him want to live, but you’ve got to behave yourself. My girl, I don’t know much myself, they’ve simply sent for me.”
The river steamer was nearing New York. It was early morning and the gray mysterious mists were hiding the mighty, silent city. It was like a dream of a distant place. A solemn fear that strengthened and hardened Donelle rose in her at Law’s words. She groped for, found, and held his hand like a good comrade.
“Whatever it is, Man-Andy,” she whispered, “I’m ready. If—he never walks again, I can fetch and carry. If—if his dear eyes can never see the—the things he loved, he shall use my eyes, always.”
Law then understood that the girl near him drew her strength and force from hidden sources. He knew that he could depend upon her. He tightened his clasp of the little hand.
“And now,” he explained, gulping unvoluntarily, “you’ll understand why I cannot take you right to Norval.”
“Yes, Man-Andy.” The white face grew set.
“I’m going to have him moved from the hospital to my studio. I’ve got plenty of room and he’d like it there.”
“Yes, have him moved, have him moved.” Donelle said the words over as if learning a lesson. She was trying to visualize the helpless man.
“As for you, little girl, I’m going to send you to Revelle. He’s waiting for you. I telegraphed from Quebec. There’s a nice young body keeping house for him, a Mary Walden, who once mistook love of art for art. She got saved and is now making a kind of home for—well, people like you and old Revelle. She’s found her heaven in doing this and you’ll be safe and happy with her until you can come to Norval.”
“Yes. Quite safe and happy, Man-Andy.”
And through the days that followed Donelle made no complaint; no demands. She kept near Revelle; listened to his music with yearning memories; grew to love Mary Walden, who watched over her like a kind and wise sister.
Law came daily with his happy reports. Norval was gaining fast; had been overjoyed at the change from hospital to the studio; had borne the moving splendidly.
But still there was no mention of Donelle going to him, and the girl asked no questions.
At last Law was driven into the open. He was in despair. He’d got Norval to the studio, but there he seemed to find himself up against a wall.
He took Donelle into his confidence.
“Perhaps if we could get him to Point of Pines,” she suggested, her own longing and homesickness adding force to the words. The noise and unrest of the city were all but killing her.
“No,” Law shook his head. “I touched on that but he said he’d be hanged, or something to that effect, if he’d be carried like a funeral cortege to Point of Pines.”
“Doesn’t he ever speak of me?” The question was heavy with heartache and longing.
“No, and I wonder if you can get any happiness out of that? You ought to.”
The deep eyes were raised to Law’s.
“Yes. I see what you mean,” Donelle smiled. Then: “Man-Andy, there are times when I think I must go to him. Fling everything aside and say ‘here I am!’”
“There are times when I’ve wished to God you could, Donelle, but I asked the doctor and he said a shock would be a bad thing. No, we must wait.”
Then he turned to Mary Walden, who was quietly sewing by the window. The plain, comfortable little woman was like a nerve tonic.
“Mary,” he said, “I’m going to ask you to do something for me.”
“Yes, Mr. Law.” The voice in itself restored poise to the poiseless.
“I’m tuckered out, I want you to come for two or three hours each day and read to Norval. My voice gets raspy and he absorbs books like a sponge. Besides, I want to paint. I’ve got an idea on my chest. Revelle can take care of Donelle while you are with me.”
And then, so suddenly that Law fell back before the onslaught, Donelle rushed to him.
“Why can’t I go?” she demanded. No other word could describe the look and tone. “He could not see me!”
“But, good Lord, he still has his hearing, devilish sharp hearing.”
“I could talk like Mary Walden! Why, Man-Andy, always I could act and talk like others, if I wanted to. Mamsey could tell you. I used to make her laugh. Please listen——”
And then in a kind of desperation Donelle made an effort, such a pitiful one, to speak in the calm, colourless tones of Mary Walden. They all wanted to laugh, even Revelle who, at the moment, entered the room, but the strained, tense look on the girl’s face restrained them.
But a week later Donelle made a test. From another room she carried on quite a conversation with Law and, until she showed herself, he could have sworn he was talking to Mary Walden.
“Now, then!” Donelle exclaimed, confronting him almost fiercely, “you’ve got to let me try. Mary Walden and I have worked it all out. I’m to wear a red wig and a black dress with white collar and cuffs. If the bandages should slip, and he happened at that moment to see, he wouldn’t know me. My voice is—is perfect, Man-Andy, and besides,” here Donelle quivered, “I’m going to him, anyway!”
“In that case,” and Law shrugged his shoulders, “I’ll surrender. You’re a young wonder, Donelle.”
Then Law laughed, and laughs were rare treats to him those days.
And that night he broke the plan to Norval in the following manner:
“See here, boy, I’m willing to go on with this job of getting you on your feet provided I have my usual half holidays.”
“I know I’m using you up, Andy. Why not put me in a home for incurables?”
“Nothing doing, Jim. They’d discover you even in this disguise.”
“It’s a sin not to have a law that permits the demolishing of derelicts.” Norval’s chin looked grim.
“So it is, but there you are!”
There was a pitiful pause. Then Law brought forth his suggestions as to a certain Mary Walden.
“She could read you to sleep while I daub, Jim.”
“She? Good heavens! What is it, a pretty young female thing yearning to do her bit?”
“On the other hand, she’s as plain as a pipe stem and is an equal wage advocate. She’s red-headed,” Law had seen the new wig, “dresses for her job, and is warranted to read without stopping for three hours at a stretch.”
“Good Lord.” Norval moved uneasily.
“Shall we corral her, Jim?”
“Yes, run her in mornings, I can smoke and snooze afternoons, and the evenings are your best times, Andy. You’re almost human then. Yes, engage the red head.”
So Donelle, after a few days of further practice in mimicking Mary Walden’s calm, even voice, went to Norval.