Part 11

"You are selfish, you are an egotist, Jim. Your talent, your freedom to develop it have made you callous, brutal. There are more ways of killing a woman than to--beat her. Now that I am sure I have a sacred spark that must be kept alive, I shall demand my rights; freedom equal to your own!"

"Of course, Kit, if you've gone in for this sort of thing, we'll have to shift our bases a little. I know that."

"Jim, we're not fitted for each other!" The sob rose triumphant and because in his soul Norval knew that she spoke the truth, he was furious and ready to fight.

"Rot!" he cried. "Now see here, Kit, don't get the temperament bug; there's nothing in it! You can do your job and yet keep clean and safe; do it best by playing the game honest. Good God! I haven't smutted up my life along with my canvas, you don't have to. It's the fashion, thank the Lord, to be decent, although gifted. Your book has run you down, old girl. Let's cut and forget it!"

The indignation of the narrow, weak, and stubborn swayed Katherine Norval.

"Jim," she said, gulping and holding desperately to "The Awakened Soul," "I think we should be--be--divorced."

"Punk!" Norval snapped his fingers. "Unless you've given cause, there isn't any."

"I--I cannot live under present conditions, Jim."

"All right, we'll get a new set."

"You are making fun and I am deadly in earnest."

"You mean you want to chuck me?" Norval frowned, but something was steadying him.

"I mean that I must live my life."

"Of course, Katherine, this all sounds as mad as a March hare, and it's August, you know. Why, we couldn't get free if we wanted to, we're too decent."

"But you're not happy, Jim."

"Well, who is, all the time?"

"And, Jim, you do your best work when you are leaving me horribly alone. I've noticed." This was another hideous truth and it stung.

"I've done my best, Kit," he said lamely.

"And it hasn't worked, Jim. I will not stand in your way. Though I die, I will do my duty, now I seek!"

"Don't, Kit, for heaven's sake, don't."

"I mean every word that I say. I will not submit longer to being--being eliminated. I must have reality of some kind. Jim, you don't fit into home life. Our baby died. You can forget me, and I have had to forget you. I want my freedom."

For a full moment they stared helplessly over the chasm that for years had been widening without their knowing it. They could not touch each other now, reach as they might.

"I--why--I'm stunned," said Norval.

"I alone have seen it coming," Katherine went on. "If my staying made you happier, better, I would stay even now; but it does not, Jim."

And Norval continued to stare.

"I feel I am doing you and--and your Art a great service by letting you go." Katherine looked the supreme martyr.

"On what grounds?" mumbled Jim, "'An Awakened Soul'?"

This was most unfortunate.

"I'm leaving for California to-morrow!" Katherine spoke huskily, she no longer cried.

"Everything ready, only good-bye, eh? Well, Kit, you've worked efficiently once you began."

They looked at each other like strangers.

"I shall not follow you. When you want me, come to me. My soul has not been awakened as yours has, I'll keep on right here and fly the flag over the ruins. My God! This _is_ a shot out of a clear sky."

"Jim, I've seen the clouds gathering ever since----"

"When, Kit?"

"That first picture that Andy said meant genius, not plain talent, and since the baby went."

"Poor girl."

"But not so poor as I might have been," Katherine again clutched her book proudly.

"It's the heat, Kit. By autumn we'll be rational. A vacation apart will fill up the cracks."

"Until then, Jim, we'll be friends?"

"Friends, Kit, friends!" Norval clutched the straw. On this basis a sense of relief came.

And so Katherine went to California--and Jim Norval?

*CHAPTER XIII*

*THE INEVITABLE*

Jim Norval took to the Canadian north-west.

He had meant to be quite tragic and virtuous. He had meant to stay in the studio and fight out the biggest problem of his life, but he did not. Undoubtedly the shock Katherine had given him stunned him at first. But, as he revived, he was the victim of all sorts of devils which, during his life, had been suppressed by what he believed was character.

Perhaps if the season had been less humid and Anderson Law had been near with his plain ideals and picturesque language, things might have been different. But the humidity was infernal and Law obliterated.

The man is the true conservative. Realizing how cramping this is, he has verbally relegated the emotion to woman; but he has not escaped actuality. No matter how widely a man's fancy may wander, his convictions must be planted on something. Norval, having married, believing himself in love, took root. Now that he was confronted by the possibility of either shrivelling or clutching to something else, he found he could make no decision in the old environment. For a week he contemplated following Katherine, it would be easier than floundering around without her. The next week he decided to telegraph. He grew calm as he wondered whether it would be wiser to capitulate; take the position of an outraged but masterful husband, or to say he was on the verge of death?

Then something over which Norval had no control calmed and held him.

"A summer apart will hurt neither of us," he concluded, and took the train for Banff. Mentally and physically, he let go. He kept to the silent places, the deep woods and big rivers. He took no note of time.

Once a letter was forwarded from Anderson Law. Law wrote:

When I came to, I found myself on the way to Egypt. It was too late to turn back, Jim, or I would have done so and got you to come with me, I can bear folks now. If you think well of it, come along anyway. And, by the way, in the general jamboree do you know I completely forgot the little girl of Alice Lindsay's, fiddling away up in Canada. I do not usually forget such things, and I'm deeply ashamed. If you don't come to Egypt, perhaps you would not mind looking her up and explaining. I'll be back in a year or so.

Norval smiled. It was his first smile in many a day. It was mid September then and, though he did not realize it, he was edging toward home. Home! After all, it was good for a man and woman to know the meaning of home. Of course you had to pay for it, and he was ready to pay. It's rather shocking to drift about and have no place to anchor in. That side of the matter had been uppermost in Norval's mind for weeks. He meant to make all this very clear to Katherine; he wondered if she, too, were edging across the continent. There must be hours in the studio, of course. He and Katherine had enough to live on, but a man ought to have something definite in the way of work. Painting was more than play to Norval, it was a profession, a job! If he made Katherine look at it as a job, everything would smooth out. Then, too, he meant to focus on her newly discovered talent. Perhaps she was gifted and he had been brutally blind. No wonder she had resented it. And, thank God, he was not one of the men who wanted the world for themselves. It would really be quite jolly to have Katherine write about Awakened Souls and things of that sort while he painted. Then, after business hours, they would have a common life interest, maybe they could adopt children. Norval adored children. Yes, it was as he had hoped; a summer apart had brought them together!

And just then Katherine's letter came.

It ran:

JIM, I am not coming back. Here in my little bungalow I have found myself and I mean to keep myself!

I feel very kindly. All the hurt is gone now or I would not write. I see your genius, I really do, and I also see that it would be impossible for me to help you. I tried and failed horribly. Had you married a woman, the waiting, thankful sort, the kind of woman who would always be there when you came back, always glad to have you making your brilliant way and basking in your light, all would have been well. But, Jim, I want something of my own out of life, and I wasn't getting it. I was starving. I feared I would starve here, but I haven't and---- Well, Jim, I don't know how divorces are managed when people are as respectable as we, but unless you want to leave things as they are, do try to help me out. After all, you must be just enough to admit that there is something to be said for me?

The last feeling of security died in Norval's heart as he read. He had been flung into space when his wife had first spoken. He was not angry now. He was not really grieving, but he felt as a man might who, in falling, had been clutching to what he thought was a sturdy sapling only to find it a reed.

He had been falling ever since Katherine had shown him the "Awakened Soul," but he had reached out on the descent for anything that might stop him, even the partial relinquishing of his ambition. And here he was with nothing! Falling, falling.

Then, as one notices some trivial thing when one is most tense and shocked, Norval thought of that little girl of Alice Lindsay's fiddling away in Canada!

"I'll get down to Chicoutimi and take to the river; Point of Pines is on the way and I can do this for old Andy. It's about the only thing for me to do anyway, just now."

There were forest fires all along the route and travel was retarded. When Point of Pines was seen in the distance, its location marked by a twinkling lantern swung from a pole on the dock, the captain of the _River Queen_ was surly because one lone traveller was determined to be put ashore.

"Why not go on to Lentwell?" he argued; "we're late anyway. You could get a rig to bring you back to this God-forsaken hole to-morrow. It's only six miles from Lentwell."

But Norval insisted upon his rights.

"What in thunder do you want to go for?" the captain grew humorously fierce. "No one ever goes to Point of Pines."

"I'm going to surprise them," Norval rejoined. "Give them a shock, make history for them."

"Your luggage is at the bottom of the pile," this seemed a final argument, "you didn't say you were going to get off."

"I didn't know just where the place was; but chuck the trunks at Lentwell, I'll send for them."

So the _River Queen_ chugged disgustedly up to the wharf and in the gloom of the early evening Norval, with a couple of bags, was deposited on it.

A man took in the lantern that had made known to the captain of the departing boat that Point of Pines was doing its duty. Then a voice, not belonging to the hand, called from a short distance back of the wharf:

"Jean Duval, did a box come for us?"

"No, Mam'selle."

"Didn't anything come?"

"Nothing, Mam'selle."

"Why, then, did the boat stop?"

"To make trouble, Mam'selle, for honest people."

With this the unseen man departed, grumbling. He had either not seen Norval or had decided not to court further trouble.

Norval laughed. The sound brought a young girl into evidence. She was a tall, slight thing, so fair that she seemed luminous in the dim shadow caused by the hill which rose sharply behind her.

"Well!" she said, coming close to Norval. "Well! How did you get here?"

"The _River Queen_ left me," Norval explained, "probably instead of the box you expected."

"Why?" asked the girl.

"Heaven knows! I rather insisted, to be sure, but I don't know why. I wonder if any one could give me a bed for the night? Do you know?"

"Perhaps Mam'selle Morey could. All her life she's been getting ready for a boarder."

Norval started.

"Mam'selle Morey?" he said slowly; "and you----?"

"I'm Donelle Morey. I have Molly and the cart here. We can try, if you care to."

So Norval put his bags in the cart and stretched out his hand to help the girl.

"Thanks," she said; "I will ride beside Molly on the shaft."

"But--why, that's absurd, you know. The seat is wide enough for us both."

"I prefer the shaft."

The air, manner, and voice of the girl were proofs enough of Alice Lindsay's work, but Norval was determined to keep his own identity, for the time being, secret.

"I'm Richard Alton," he said, as the little creaking cart mounted the Right of Way.

"Good evening, Mr. Richard Alton," came the reply from the shaft. It was improbable that the slip of a girl sitting there was laughing at him, but the man on the seat had his doubts.

"I'm a painter," he added.

"A painter? Do you paint houses?"

"Oh! yes, and barns and even people and trees."

This seemed to interest the voice in the gloom, for they had entered the woods and it was quite dark.

"You are making fun?"

"Far from it, Mam'selle."

"I am not Mam'selle. I'm Donelle."

How childish the words and tones were!

"Excuse me, Donelle."

"And here's home!" Suddenly Molly had emerged from the trees and stood stock still in the highway in front of the little white house.

"Would you rather wait until I let Molly into the stable, or will you go in?" Standing in the road, with the moonlight touching her, Donelle looked like nothing so much as a silver birch in the shadowy woods.

"I'd much rather wait. I'm horribly afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"That Mam'selle Morey may not approve of me as a boarder."

"Then she will say so," comforted the girl, turning to open the gate across the road for the horse. "Molly," she said, "you trot along and make yourself easy, I'll be back in a few minutes." Then she turned to Norval. "We'd better go right in. If you are not to stay here you'll have to try Captain Longville's and that is a good three miles."

"Good Lord!" muttered Norval, and began to straighten his tie and hat in a desperate attempt at respectability.

As long as he lived Norval was to remember his first glimpse of Jo Morey and the strangely home-like room that greeted him. Perhaps because his need was great the scene touched his heart.

The brilliant stove was doing its best. The hanging lamp was like electricity for clearness. The brightness, comfort, and Jo at her loom made a picture upon which the tired, heartsore man looked reverently.

Jo lifted her glad face to welcome Donelle and saw the stranger!

Instantly the protecting brows fell, but not until Norval had seen the worship that filled the eyes.

"Mamsey!" Donelle went quickly forward and half whispered.

"This--this is a boarder! Now, don't----" Norval could not catch the rest, but it was a warning to Jo not to put her price too high.

"A boarder?" Jo got upon her feet, plainly affected. She took life pretty much as it came, but this unexpected appearance of her secret desire almost stunned her.

"Where did you get him, Donelle?"

Then the girl told her story while her yellow eyes danced with childish amusement.

"He's just like an answer to prayer, isn't he, Mamsey?"

"And I'm quite prayerful in my attitude," Norval put in. "Anything in the way of a bite and a bed will be gratefully received. Name your price, Mam'selle."

Now that the hour had come Jo's conscience and her sense of justice rose in arms against each other.

"He looks as if he could pay," she mused.

"But see how tired he looks--and interesting!" Conscience and inclination pushed Jo to the wall. However, she was hard-headed.

"How about five dollars a week?" she ejaculated.

"Oh!" gasped Donelle to whom money was a dead language; "Mamsey, that is awful."

Norval was afraid he was going to spoil everything by roaring aloud. Instead he said:

"I can stand that, Mam'selle. I suppose you'll call it a dollar if I'm put out to-morrow?"

"Surely."

Then Jo bustled about preparing food while Donelle went back to Molly, with Nick hurtling along in the dark beside her.

And so Norval, known as Alton, occupied the upper chamber of Jo Morey's house. His artist's eye gloated over the rare old furniture; he touched reverently the linen and the woollen spreads; he laid hands as gentle as a woman's on the dainty curtains; and he gave thanks, as only a weary-souled man can, for the haven into which he had drifted. He was as nervous as a girl for fear he might be weighed and found wanting by Mam'selle Morey. He contemplated, should she give him notice, buying her. Then he laughed. He had not been in the little white house twenty-four hours before he realized that his landlady was no ordinary sort and to view her in the light of a mercenary was impossible.

But Jo did not dismiss her boarder. His adaptability won her from the start and, although she frowned upon him, she cooked for him like an inspired creature and hoped, in her heart, that she might prove worthy of the fulfilment of her dreams. To Donelle's part in the arrangement she gave, strangely enough, little thought except that the money would ease the future for the girl. Perhaps poor Jo, simple as a child in many ways, believed that it was inherent in a boarder to be exempt from the frailties of other and lesser men. She never thought of him in terms of sex, and Donelle was still to her young, very young.

Alton had been with her a week when Marcel Longville, embodying the sentiments of the village, came deprecatingly into Jo's kitchen and sat dolefully down on a hard yellow chair. She sniffed critically. Marcel was a judge of cooking, but no artist. She cooked of necessity, not for pleasure. Jo revelled in ingredients and had visions of results.

"Crullers and chicken!" said Marcel. "You certainly do tickle the stomach, Mam'selle."

"He pays well and steady," Jo answered, attending strictly to business. "And such a relisher I've never seen. Not even among your best payers, Marcel. They always ate and thought afterward if they wanted to, or had to; mine thinks while he eats. I've watched him pause a full minute over a mouthful, getting the flavour."

"That's flattering to a woman, certainly," Marcel sighed. Then: "Father Mantelle says your boarder is handsome, Mam'selle, and young."

"Tastes differ," Jo basted her chicken with steady hand; "he's terrible brown and lean. As to age, he wasn't born yesterday."

"What's he doing here, Jo?"

"Eating and sleeping, mostly eating. He wanders some, too. He's partial to woods."

"Hasn't he any excuse for being here?"

"Marcel, does any one have to have an excuse for being in Point of Pines? What's the matter with the place?"

"The Captain argues that he is a prospector." Marcel brought the word out carefully.

"What's that?" Mam'selle dipped out her crullers from the deep fat.

"Sensing about timber or land, or something that someone secret wants to buy, and has sent him to spy on."

"Well, I don't believe the Captain has shot the right bird," Jo laughed significantly, "the Captain isn't always a good shot. My boarder is a painter."

"A painter? What does he think he can get to do here? We leave our houses to nature."

"He's going to fix up the wood-cabin." Jo spoke indifferently, but her colour rose. The wood-cabin was Langley's deserted house. Years ago she had bought it, for a song, and then left it alone.

"He goes there every day. I shouldn't wonder if he was going to paint that. It will take gallons, for the knotholes will just drink paint."

"Mam'selle," here Marcel panted a bit, "you don't fear for Donelle?"

Jo stood still, wiped her hands on her checked apron, and stared at Marcel.

"Why should I?" she asked.

"Jo, a strange man and Donelle growing wonderful pretty, and----"

Still Jo stared.

"Mam'selle, the men have fixed the world for themselves; you know that. They have even fixed the women. Some are to labour and bend under their loads until they break, then the scrap heap! Others, the pretty ones, are to be taken or bought as the case may be. And young girls innocent and longing do not count the cost. Oh! Mam'selle, have you thought of Donelle?"

Poor Marcel's eyes were tear-filled.

Jo looked dazed and helpless. Presently she said, with that slow fierceness people dreaded:

"Marcel, I haven't lived my life for nothing. No man fixes my life for me nor labels me or mine. Donelle is nothing but a child. Why, look at her! When she's a woman, if a man wants her, he's going to hear something that I'm keeping just for him, and unless he believes it, he's not fit for the girl. In the meantime, my boarder is my boarder."

With this Marcel had to be content, and the others also. For they were waiting for the result of the interview like hungry animals afraid to go too near the food supply, but full of curiosity.

Yet for all her scornful words, Jo watched the man within her house. She realized that he was still young and for all his leanness and brownness, handsome, in a way. He had a habit, after the evening meal was done, of sitting astride a chair, and, while smoking, laughing at Donelle.

"He'd never do that if he saw in her a woman," thought Jo with relief. "She amuses him."

And that surely Donelle did. Her mimicry was delicious, her abandon before Alton most diverting. She knew no shyness, she even returned his teasing with a quick pertness that disarmed Jo completely.

"Well, Mr. Richard Alton," Donelle said one night as she watched him puff his pipe, "I went up to the wood-cabin to-day to see how much painting you'd done and I found it locked. I looked into the window and there was something hung inside."

"Little girls mustn't snoop," said Alton.

Donelle twisted her mouth and cocked her head.

"Very well," she said, "keep your old cabin. I know another that is never locked against me."

"Meaning whose?"

"You'll have to hunt and find, Mr. Richard Alton."

Norval laughed and turned to Jo.

"Why don't you spank her, Mam'selle?" he asked. "She's a little rascal." Then: "Whose fiddle is that?" for Donelle never played.

Donelle's eyes followed his and rested upon the case standing against the wall.

"How did you know it was a fiddle?" she asked.

"Well, it's a fiddle case. Of course, Mam'selle may keep cheese in it!"

"It's--it's my fiddle," Donelle's gaiety fled, "but I don't play it any more."

"Why?"

"Well, everything that went with the fiddle has gone! I'm trying to forget it."

"Mam'selle," Norval frowned his darkest, "have you ever heard of a bird who could sing and wouldn't?"

"No, Mr. Alton, never!" Jo was quite sincere. Her boarder was always giving her interesting information.

"It can be made to, Mam'selle. Again, I advise spanking."

Surely there was no fear that her boarder and Donelle might come to grief! Jo laughed light heartedly. Her own bleak experience in the realm of love and danger was so far removed that it gave her no guidance. She might have felt differently had she seen what happened the following day. But at that time she was diligently building her wood pile while Donelle, among the trees on the hilltop, was supposed to be instructing a couple of boys in sawing wood.

But Donelle had finished her instructions, the boys were working intelligently, and she had wandered away with her heart singing within her, she knew not why. Then she threw back her head and laughed. She knew the reason at last, Tom Gavot was coming back! Tom had been seeing roads in the deeper woods for nearly three weeks, but he was coming back. Marcel had said so. Of course that was why Donelle was happy.

And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple keeping time; The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by.

Over and over Donelle said the words in a kind of chant which presently degenerated into words merely strung together.

"Like a rhyme--keeping time--like a cry--going by----" and then suddenly she heard her name.

"Donelle!" Standing under a flaming maple was Norval.

"I have been following you," he said, and his eyes, dark, compelling, were holding hers.

"Why, Mr. Richard Alton?"

"Because I am going to make you promise to play your fiddle again."

"No, I am happier when I forget my fiddle."

"Why, Donelle Morey, are you happier?"

"You would not understand."