Part 12

"I'd try. Come, sit here on this log. The sun strikes it and we will be warm."

Donelle stepped off the narrow path and reached the log, while Norval sat down beside her.

"Now tell me about that fiddle."

"Once," Donelle raised her eyes to his, "once, for a long time I stayed, you would not know if I told you where, but it was near here and yet so far away. Everything was different--I thought I belonged there and I was the happiest girl, and had such big dreams. They taught me to play; a wonderful old man said I could play and I did. A dear lady opened the way for me to go on! Then something happened. It was just a word, but it told me that I did not belong in that lovely place, and if I went on I would be--cheating somebody; somebody who had let me have my life and never asked anything, who never would, but who would go on, making the best of----" Donelle's eyes were full of tears, her throat ached.

"Of what, little girl?"

"The--the bits that were left."

"Perhaps," Norval, quite unconsciously laid his hand over Donelle's which were clasped on her knees, "perhaps that somebody could have made quite a splendid showing of the bits, dear girl. And you might have made the place yours, the one that did not seem quite your own. Places are not always inherited, you know. Often they are--conquered."

"You make me afraid," said Donelle as she looked down at the hand covering hers. "You see, I want to do the thing you say. I almost did it, but the dear lady died. I'm not very brave; I think I would gave gone."

"She may not be the only one, child."

"But I couldn't take anything unless I had it, clean and safe. I wouldn't want it, unless I, myself, made it sure first. I'm like that. Don't you think something you are afraid of being sometimes keeps you from being what you want to be?"

"Yes. But, little girl, come, some time, to the cabin in the woods and play for me; will you? I might help you. And you could help me, I am trying to find my place, too."

"You?"

"Yes, Donelle." Then, quite irrelevantly, as once Tom Gavot had done, he said: "Your eyes are glorious, child, do you know that? The soul of you shines through. Donelle, it is almost as bad to starve a soul as to kill it. Will you bring the fiddle some day?"

"Yes, some day."

She was very sweet and pretty sitting there with the autumn light on her face.

"Donelle!"

"Yes."

"Just Donelle. The name is like you. You will keep your promise?"

"Some day, yes."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*A CHOICE OF ROADS*

Day after day Donelle looked at her fiddle, but turned away. Day after day she sang the hours through, working beside Jo, or playing with Nick. Something was happening to her; something that frightened her, but thrilled her. She kept remembering the touch of Norval's hand upon hers! In the night, when she thought of it, she trembled. When she saw him she was shy.

"I wish Tom Gavot would come back," she said to herself, for Tom had been detained. Then, at last, one day she heard that he was on his way. He would leave the little train, five miles below Point of Pines, and would walk the rest of the way. She knew the path so she went to meet him.

It was mid afternoon when she saw him coming, swinging along in his rough corduroys and high boots, his cap on the back of his handsome head, his bag slung over his shoulder.

She stepped behind a tree, laughing, and when he was close she suddenly appeared and grasped his arm.

"Donelle, I thought----"

"Did I frighten you, Tom?"

"Well, you know there is always the bit of a coward in me. Why are you here?"

"I came to meet you, Tom."

"Has anything gone wrong?" His face darkened; poor Tom never expected things had gone right. His life had not been formed on those lines.

"No, but I wanted you, Tom. There are so many things to talk about, wonderful things. I've gone to your cabin, Tom, and made it ready for you. Every day I've lighted a fire the nights are cold. I thought you might come at night."

Donelle had lighted a fire of which she knew nothing, and Tom could not tell her!

"You're kind," was all he said as he looked at her. Then: "I never had a home until I got that cabin, Donelle. While I am away, I see the curtains you and Mam'selle made and the bedspread and all the rest. When I've been shivering in camp, I saw the fire on my own little hearth, and I was warm!"

Donelle smiled up to him.

"Tell me about your road," she said.

"Well, there's going to be one! I meant to come back ten days ago, but something happened and I decided to start work this fall, not wait for spring, so I stayed on. There was sickness at a settlement back in the woods. Many people almost died, some of them did, because they couldn't get a doctor and proper care. It's criminal to put women and children in such a hole; there's got to be a road connecting those places with--help! A man is a brute to take a woman with him under such conditions. What _he_ wants goes! He never thinks of _her_ part."

"But, Tom, maybe she, the woman, wants to go."

"He ought not to let her, he knows."

"But if she just will go, what then, Tom?"

"It doesn't make it right for him, he knows."

"But it might be worse to stay back, Tom. A woman might choose to go."

"But _she_ doesn't know; _he_ does."

"But she may want to know, and be willing to pay."

"Donelle, you're a crazy little know-nothing."

Tom looked down and laughed. He was wondrously happy. "Always wanting to pay for what isn't worth it."

"You're wrong, Tom. It is worth it."

"What?"

"Why, the thing that makes a woman want to go into the woods with a man, even when there are no roads; the thing that makes her willing to pay before she knows."

Tom breathed hard.

"I suppose it is--love, Tom."

"It's something worse, often!" Gavot turned his eyes away from the upturned face.

"Lately, Tom," Donelle came close to him and touched his arm as she walked beside him, "I've been thinking about such a lot of new things and love among them."

"Love!" And now Tom stood still, as if an unseen blow had stunned him.

"Yes, and I had no one to talk to. I couldn't speak to Mamsey. Always I think of you, Tom, whenever thoughts come. You see everything, just as you see your roads in the deep woods. Are you tired, Tom?"

"No," Gavot got control of himself, "no, not tired."

"You see," and now they were going on again, "the big feelings of life just come to everyone. They don't pick, and when you are young, you have young thoughts. That is the way it seems to me, and often, Tom Gavot, the very things that you ought to have an old head to think about come when you haven't any sense at all." This tremendous truth fell from the girlish lips quite irrelevantly. "And then you just take and pay what you must, but often you have to pay more than you ought, because--well, because you are young when you bought----"

Donelle sobbed. "I've been thinking of Mamsey," she ended pitifully. Tom stopped short. He flung his pack on the ground and laid his strong, work-hardened hands on Donelle's shoulders.

"You don't have to pay for Mam'selle," he said in a whisper; "she's paid, God knows."

"But I've got to pay for my father, Tom."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, you see, lately I've known that I must be like my father more than like, like Mamsey. She learned and stayed and paid, he ran away. Oh, Tom, it's good to be able to say this to you, out here under the trees, alone. It has been choking me for days and days. You see, Tom, a big feeling comes up in me that wants and wants. And, always, too, there is another feeling. I do not want to pay, as Mamsey did. It would be easier to run and hide! But, Tom, I'm not going to, I'm not! I'm going to pay for my father!"

"What ails you, Donelle? Has any one been talking?" Tom still held her, his hungry heart yearned to draw her close, but he held her at arm's length.

"No, it is only--thoughts that have been talking. I just cannot settle down by Mamsey, and know I'm to stay here without that running away feeling. Then I say: 'I don't care, I want to go and I'll go,' and then--why, I cannot, Tom, for I know I must pay for my father."

"Go where?"

"Go, Tom, where my fiddle would take me. Go where people do not know; go and learn things, and then if any one did find out--pay!"

Poor Tom was weary almost to the breaking point. Nights in rough camps, days of wood tramping had worn upon him, the fire of which Donelle knew nothing sent the blood racing through his veins. Her touch on his arm made him tremble.

"See here, Donelle," he said; "would you come along my road with me? Would you, could you, learn enough--that way?"

But Donelle smiled her vague smile, "I think I must have my own road, Tom. The trouble is I cannot see my road as you see roads. I only feel my feet aching. But, Tom, surely you must have seen life a little in Quebec, tell me: could a great big strong love keep on loving even if it knew about me and Mamsey?"

"Yes." The word was more like a groan.

"Even if it had to keep Mamsey from knowing that we know?"

"Yes."

"Why, Tom, dear Tom, you make me feel wonderful. You always do, you big, safe Tom. I just knew how it would be; that is why I had to come and meet you."

She rubbed her cheek against the rough sleeve of his jacket. "I think your mother would just worship you, Tom."

Then Gavot laughed, laughed his honest laugh, and picked up his pack.

"Donelle," he said presently, "you ought to make your music again. You have no right not to."

"You, you really mean that, Tom?"

"Yes, I do."

"Well, I think I'll get the fiddle out some day, soon, and come to your cabin. While you draw your roads on your paper, I'll see if the tunes will come back."

But Donelle did not speak of Richard Alton.

The autumn lingered in Point of Pines; even the gold and red clung to the trees to add to the delusion that winter was far off. The mid-days were warm, and only now and then did the frost nip.

Norval kept saying to himself, as he lay on that wonderful bed in Jo Morey's upper chamber, "I must go back!" But he made no move southward. The quiet of the woods, the lure of the river held him, and then he began to ask why he _should_ go back?

Law was still in Egypt, Katherine was undoubtedly in her bungalow; why not have what he always had wanted, a winter away from things?

Then a letter forwarded by his lawyer clarified his thoughts. It was from Katherine, who had discovered a new set of duties and was hot-footed to perform them.

She wrote:

JIM, until you are willing to die for something, you have never lived. In letting loose what really was never mine, my own came to me. I have a new book out. Shall I send you a copy? I've called it "The Soul Set Free." I do not want to be too personal, but I find the world loves the close touch.

You have not said one word, Jim, about a divorce and I have waited. I think you owe me assistance along this line, and now I must insist. For, Jim, with the rest of what is my own has come a startling realization, that love, understanding love, is to be mine, too. Until I hear from you I will not name the man who discovered my talent before he saw me. He read the manuscript of my first book, he had never heard of me then. Only recently has he come to California. He is my mate, Jim, I know that, and I owe him a great duty. I must go as I see duty, but I must go with a clear conscience. I owe him that, also.

Norval read this amazing letter lying on a couch before a blazing fire in his wood-cabin. He read and reread it. He felt as he might have felt had a toy dog--or a fluffy kitten, risen up and smitten him. Katherine had been giving him a series of tremendous thumps ever since she had shown him her awakened soul. Little by little she had receded from his understanding of her; but to come forth now in this stupefying characterization of the untrammeled woman, was---- Norval laughed, a hard, bitter laugh.

Then he went to his improvised desk, the cabin was filled with his attempts at furniture making; it was a remarkable place.

He wrote rather unsteadily:

KIT, do you remember the story of the mouse that ran in the whiskey drippings, licked his legs, got drunk, and then took his stand, crying, "Where's that damned cat I was so afraid of yesterday?" Well, you make me think of that. You were once, unless I was mistaken, a nice little mouse of a thing, pretty well scared of the conventional cat--the world, you know. Then came the whiskey lickings, your talent. I'm afraid you're drunk, child, drunk as a lord. But there you are, all the same, with your back up against the wall, defying the cat. Well, you're thirty-two, and although you were afraid of the cat, you certainly know something about the animal. I agree with you that we were not suited to one another, and I'm ready to let your soulmate have a show. I do not quite know how to do it, but if you think you will not be defrauding him too much--and if your sense of duty will permit, give me time to get my breath and I swear I'll think up some sort of "cause" that will set you free. Just now I am hidden away in the woods, painting as I used to paint when Andy stared and stared. I can tell quality now. I'm on the right road and do not want to be jerked back until I've made sure. Perhaps the law in California would make it easy for you. Anything short of making a villain of me, I'm willing to consider.

Then Norval, having written, stalked down to the Post Office, sent his ultimatum off with the Point of Pines official stamp on it, and went to Dan's Place for no earthly reason but to forget. He drank a little, scorned himself for taking that road out of his perplexity, drank a little more with old, grimy Pierre Gavot, and then started back to the wood-cabin. He did not want to face Jo Morey--or Donelle. He felt unclean; he was, in a befuddled way, paying for Katherine.

The sun was setting in a magnificent glory of colour and cloud banks. There was a flurry of snow in the clouds, and until it fell there would be that chill in the air that was vicariously cooling Norval's hot brain.

He wanted the seclusion of the cabin more than he wanted anything else just then. He had left a fire on the hearth, he could stretch himself on the couch for the night. He did not want food, but he was frantic to get to his canvas; he had begun a few days ago a fantastic thing, quite out of his ordinary style. While there was light enough he could work. So he pressed on.

The clouds quite unexpectedly gave up their burden, and Norval was soon covered with snow as he flew along, taking a short cut to the cabin. But having given up the snow, the clouds disappeared and the daylight was lengthened. Pounding the snow from his feet, shaking himself like a bear, Norval entered the cabin and saw--Donelle standing transfixed before the easel!

She did not turn as he came in; she was rigid, her hands holding her violin case.

"You--you said you were a painter!" she gasped when she felt Norval was near her.

"And you think I'm not?" Something in the voice startled her, she looked at him.

"You said you painted houses and barns and----"

"People sometimes and trees. I spoke the truth, but you think I'm no painter?"

"Why, I've been--I've been thinking I was dreaming until just now. See these woods," she was gazing at the unfinished thing on the easel, "They are my woods. I know the very paths, they are back of the lumber cutting. See! is there a face, somewhere in the dark, a face back of those silver birches, is there?"

Norval, with the Joan of Arc conception in mind, had painted those woods while Donelle's face had haunted him.

"Can you see a face?" he asked. He was close to the girl now, so close that her young body touched him.

"Is it only a fancy?"

"Look again, Donelle. Whose face?"

"I--I do not know!"

But she did know, and she looked mutely at him.

"Donelle, why did you come here?"

"I promised I was going to--to play for you."

"Then, in God's name, do it! See, go over there by the window." Norval had folded his arms over his breast. He was afraid of himself, of the madness that Katherine and Dan's Place had evolved. "Play, and I'll finish this thing."

"I can play best if I move about."

"Move, then, but fiddle!"

"You are sure you want me? I can come again. You are strange, I should not have stolen in, but once I had seen--I couldn't get away."

"Donelle, you are to stay. Do you hear? For your sake and mine you are to stay. Now, then."

He turned his back on her, flung off his coat, and fell to work.

Donelle tuned her violin, tucked it under her chin, and slowly walking to and fro, she played and played until the hunger in her heart grew satisfied. Like a little pale ghost she passed up and down the rude room, smiling and happy.

After half an hour Norval looked at her; he was haggard, but quite himself.

Then Donelle turned and, nodding over her bow, said:

"It's all right, the joy of it has come back and---- Oh! I see the face among the trees. What a beautiful picture! It's like a wood with a heart and soul; it's alive like Tom Gavot's road. Now we must go home, Mr. Richard Alton. We're tired, you and I.

"Home?" Norval laughed. "Home?"

"Yes, to Mamsey. I always am so glad of Mamsey when I'm tired."

"Donelle, I meant to stay here to-night."

"But instead, you are coming with me!" Donelle put out her hand, "Come!"

Norval raised the hand to his lips.

"You little, white wood-spirit," he said, "they did not teach you to play, they only let you free. Donelle, are you a spirit?"

"No," and now the yellow eyes sought and held his, "I'm a--woman, Mr. Richard Alton."

*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?"