Part 2

Longville turned the affairs of Jo Morey over and over in his scheming mind as he walked home. He had made the suggestion as to buying a husband from a mistaken idea of pleasantry, but its effect upon Jo had caused him to take the idea seriously, first as a lash, then as purpose. By the time he reached home he had arrived at a definite conclusion, had selected Jo's future mate, and had all but settled the details.

He ate his evening meal silently, sullenly, and watched his wife contemplatively.

There were times when Longville had an uncomfortable sensation when looking at Marcel. It was similar to the sensation one has when he discovers that he has been addressing a stranger instead of the intimate he had supposed.

He was the type of man who among his own sex sneers at women because of attributes with which he endows them, but who, when alone with women, has a creeping doubt as to his boasted conclusions and seeks to right matters by bullying methods.

Marcel had been bought and absorbed by Longville when she was too young and ignorant to resist openly. What life had taught her she held in reserve. There had never been what seemed an imperative need for rebellion so Marcel had been outwardly complacent. She had fulfilled the duties, that others had declared hers, because she was not clear in her own mind as to any other course, but under her slow outward manner there were currents running from heart to brain that Longville had never discovered, though there were times, like the present, when he stepped cautiously as he advanced toward his wife with a desire for cooeperation.

"Marcel," he said presently with his awkward, playful manner, "I have an idea!"

He stretched his long legs toward the stove. He had eaten to his fill and now lighted his pipe, watching his wife as she bent over the steaming pan of dishes in the sink.

Marcel did not turn; ideas were uninteresting, and Longville's generally involved her in more work and no profit.

"'Tis about Pierre, your good-for-nothing brother."

"What about him?" asked Marcel. Blood was blood after all and she resented Longville's superior tone.

"Since Margot died he has had a rough time of it," mused the Captain, "caring for the boy and shifting for himself. It has been hard for Pierre."

"You want him and Tom--here?" Marcel turned now, the greasy water dripping from her red hands. She had small use for her brother, but her heart yearned over the motherless Tom.

"God forbid," ejaculated Longville, "but a man must pity such a life as Pierre's."

"Pierre takes his pleasures," sighed Marcel, "as all can testify."

"You mean that a man should have no pleasure?" snapped the Captain. "You women are devilish hard."

"I meant no wrong. 'Tis no business of mine."

"'Tis the business of all women to marry off the odds and ends"; and now Longville was ready. He launched out with a clear statement of Jo Morey's finances and the absolute necessity of male control of the same. Marcel listened and waited.

"Mam'selle Jo Morey must marry," Longville continued. He had his pipe lighted and between long puffs blinked luxuriously as he outlined the future. "She has too much money for a woman and--there is Pierre!"

"Mam'selle Jo and Pierre!" Almost Marcel laughed. "But Mam'selle is so homely and Pierre, being the handsome man he is, detests an ugly woman."

"What matters? Once married, the good law of the land gives the wife's money to her master. 'Tis a righteous law. And Pierre has a way with women that breaks them or kills them--generally both!"

This was meant jocosely, but Marcel gave a shudder as she bent again over the steaming suds.

"But Mam'selle with money," she murmured more to herself than to Longville. "Will Mam'selle sell herself?"

This almost staggered Longville. He took his pipe from his lips and stared at the back of the drudge near him. Then he spoke slowly, wonderingly:

"Will a woman marry? What mean you? All women will sell their souls for a man. Mam'selle, being ugly, must buy one. Besides----" And here Longville paused to impress his next words.

"Besides, you remember Langley?"

For a moment Marcel did not; so much had come and gone since Langley's time. Then she recalled the flurry his going with one of the summer people had caused, and she nodded.

"You know Langley walked and talked with Mam'selle before that red and white woman from the States caught him up in her petticoat and carried him off?"

It began to come back to Marcel now. Again she nodded indifferently.

"And some months after," Longville was whispering as if he feared the cat purring under the stove would hear, "some months later, what happened then." Marcel rummaged in her litter of bleak memories.

"Oh! Cecile died!" She brought forth triumphantly.

"Cecile died, yes! And Mam'selle went away. And what for?" The whispered words struck Marcel's dull brain like sharp strokes.

"I do not know," she faltered.

"You cannot guess--and you a woman?"

"I cannot."

"Then patch this and this together. Why does a woman go away and hide when a man has deserted her? Why?"

Marcel wiped the suds from her red, wrinkled hands. She stared at her husband like an idiot, then she sat down heavily in a chair.

"And that's why Mam'selle will buy Pierre."

For a full moment Marcel looked at her husband as if she had never seen him before, then her dreary eyes wandered to the window.

Across the road, in the growing darkness, lay three small graves in a row. Marcel was seeking them, now, seeking them with all the fierce love and loyalty that lay deep in her heart. And out of those pitiful mounds little forms, oh! such tiny forms, seemed to rise and plead for Jo Morey.

Who was it that had shared the black hours when Marcel's babies came--and went? Whose understanding and sympathy had made life possible when all else failed?

"I'll do no harm to Mam'selle Jo Morey!" The tone and words electrified Longville.

"What?" he asked roughly.

"If what you hint is true," Marcel spoke as from a great distance, her voice trailing pitifully; "I'll never use it to hurt Mam'selle, or I could not meet my God."

"You'll do what I say!"

But as he spoke Longville had a sense of doubt. For the second time that day he was conscious of being baffled by a woman; his purposes being threatened.

"You may regret," he growled, "if you do not help along with this--this matter of Pierre. There will come a time when Pierre will lie at your door. What then, eh?"

"Is that any reason why I should throw him at the door of another woman?" Marcel's pale face twitched. "Why should a man expect any woman's door to open to him," she went on, "when he has disgraced himself all his life?"

Longville stirred restlessly. Actually he dared not strike his wife, but he had all the impulse to do so. He resorted to hoary argument.

"'Tis the unselfish, the noble woman who saves--man!" he muttered, half ashamed of his own words.

At this Marcel laughed openly. Something was rising to the surface, something that life had taught her.

"It's a poor argument to use when the unworthy one is the gainer by a woman's unselfishness," retorted Marcel. "Unless she, too, gets something out of her--her nobleness, I should think a man would hate to fling it always in her teeth."

Longville half rose; his jaw looked ugly.

"'Tis my purpose," he said slowly, harshly, "to marry Mam'selle and Pierre. I have my reasons, and if you cannot help you can keep out of the way!"

"Yes, I can do that," murmured Marcel. She had taken up her knitting and she rarely spoke while she knitted. She thought!

But if Longville's suggestion seemed to die in the mind of his own woman, it had no such fate in that of Jo Morey. When she went into her orderly house, after leaving the Captain, she put her papers on the table and stood staring ahead into space. She seemed waiting for the ugly thought he had left to follow its creator, but instead it clung to her like a stinging nettle.

"Buy a husband!" she repeated; "buy a husband."

Into poor Jo's dry and empty heart the words ate their way like a spark in the autumn's brush. The flame left a blackened trail over which she toiled drearily back, back to that one blessed taste she had had of love and happiness. Memories, long considered dead, rose from their shallow graves like spectres, claiming Mam'selle for their own at last.

She had believed herself beyond suffering. She had thought that loneliness and hard labour had secured her at least from the agony she was now enduring, but with the consciousness that she could feel as she was feeling, a sort of terror overcame her.

Her past days of toil had been blessed with nights of exhausted slumber. But with the newly-won freedom there would be hours when she must succumb to the tortures of memory. She could not go on slaving with no actual need to spur her, she must have a reason, a motive for existence. Like many another, poor Jo realized that while she had plenty to retire on, she had nothing to retire to, for in her single purpose of freeing herself from Longville, she had freed herself from all other ties.

But Jo Morey would not have been the woman she was if obstacles could down her. She turned abruptly and strode toward the barn across the road. Nick, her dog, materialized at this point. Nick had no faith in men and discreetly kept out of sight when one appeared. He was no coward, but caution was a marked characteristic in him and unless necessity called he did not care, nor deem it advisable, to display his feelings to strangers.

Jo felt for Nick an affection based upon tradition and fact. His mother had been her sole companion during the darkest period of her life and Nick was a worthy son of a faithful mother. Jo talked to the dog constantly when she was most troubled and confused. She devoutly believed she often received inspiration and solution from his strange, earnest eyes.

"Well, old chap," she said now as she felt his sturdy body press against her knee. "What do you think of that?"

Nick gave a sharp, resentful yelp.

"We want no man planting his tobacco in our front yard; do we, sir? He might even expect us to plant it!"

Jo always spoke editorially when conversing with Nick. "And fancy a man sitting by the new stove, Nick, spitting and snoring and kicking no doubt _you_, my good friend, if not me!"

Nick refused to contemplate such a monstrous absurdity. He showed his teeth in a sardonic grin and, to ease his feelings, made a dash after a giddy hen who had forgotten the way to the coop and was frantically proclaiming the fact in the gathering darkness.

"If that hussy," muttered Jo, "don't stick closer to the roost, I'll have her for dinner!" Then a light broke upon Jo's face. From trifles, often, our lives are turned into new channels. "I declare, I'll have her anyway! I'll live from now on like folks."

States' folks, Jo had in mind, the easy-going summer type. "Chicken twice a week, hereafter, and no getting up before daybreak."

Nick had chased the doomed hen to the coop and was virtuously returning when his mistress again addressed him.

"Nick, the little red cow is about to calve. What do you think of that?"

Nick thought very little of it. The red cow was a nuisance. She calved at off times of the year and had an abnormal affection for her offspring. She would not be comforted when it was torn from her for financial reasons. She made known her objections by kicking over milk pails and making nights hideous by her wailing; then, too, she had a way of looking at one that weakened the moral fibre. Nick followed his mistress to the cow shed and stood contemplatively by while Jo smoothed the glossy head of the offending cow and murmured:

"Poor little lass, you cannot understand, but you do not want to be alone, do you?" The animal pressed close and gave a low, sweet sound of appreciation.

"All right, girl. I'll fill Nick up and take a bite, then I'll be back and bide with you."

The mild maternal eyes now rested upon Nick and his grew forgiving!

"Come, Nick!" called Jo. "We'll have to hurry. The little red cow, once she decides, does not waste time. It's a snack and dash for us, old man, until after the trouble is over. But there's no need of early bed-going to-night, Nick, and before we sleep we'll have the fire in the stove!"

So Nick followed obediently, ate voraciously but rapidly, and Jo took her snack while moving about the kitchen and planning for the celebration that was to follow the little red cow's accouchement.

It must be a desolate life indeed, a life barren of imagination, that has not had some sort of star to which the chariot of desire has been hitched. Jo Morey had a vast imagination and it had kept her safe through all the years of grind and weariness. Her star was a stove!

Back in the time when her relations with Longville were growing less strained and she could look beyond her obligations and still see--money, she had closed the fireplace in the living room and bought, on the instalment plan, a most marvellous invention of iron, nickle, and glass, with broad ovens and cavernous belly, and set it up in state.

Jo's conception of honesty would not permit her to build a fire in the monster until every cent was paid, but she had polished it, almost worshipped before it, and had silently vowed that upon the day when she was free from all debt to man she would revel in such warmth and glory as she had never known before.

"No more roasted fronts and frozen backs,"

Mam'selle had secretly sworn. "No more huddling in the kitchen and scrimping of fires. From the first frost to the first thaw I'll have two fires going. The new stove will heat the north chamber and perhaps the upper room as well. 'Tis a wondrous heater, I'm told."

But the red cow's affairs had postponed the thrilling event. Still neither Jo nor Nick ever expected perfection in fulfillment and they took the delay with patient dignity.

Later they again started for the cow shed, this time guided by a lantern, for night had fallen upon Point of Pines.

Jo took a seat upon an upturned potato basket with Nick close beside her, and so they waited. Waited until all need and danger were past; then, tenderly stroking the head of the newly-made mother, Jo spoke in the tone that few ever heard. Margot Gavot had heard it as she drifted out of life, her hungry eyes fastened on Jo and the sobbing boy--Tom. Marcel Longville had heard it as she clung to the hard, rough hand that seemed to be her only anchor when life and death battled for her and ended in taking her babies. The little red cow had heard it once before and now turned her grateful eyes to Mam'selle.

"So! So, lass," murmured Jo; "we don't understand, but we had to see it through. Brave lass, cuddle the wee thing and take your rest. So, so!"

Then back to the house went Jo and Nick, the lantern swinging between them like a captured star.

A wonderful, uplifted feeling rose in Jo Morey's heart. She was unlike her old, unheeding self, she heeded everything; she started at the slightest sound and drew her breath in sharply. She was almost afraid of the sensation that overcame her. Depression had fled; exhilaration had taken its place. A sense of freedom, of adventure, possessed her. She was ready at last to fling aside the bonds and go forth! Then Nick stopped short and strained forward as if sensing something in the dark that not even the lantern could disclose.

"So, Nick!" laughed Jo, "you feel it, too? It's all right, old man. The mystery of the shed has upset us both. It's always the same, whether it comes to woman or creature. Something hidden makes us see it, but our eyes are blind, blind to the meaning."

Then Jo resorted to action. She carried a load of wood from the pile to the living room; with bated breath she placed it in the stove.

"Suppose it shouldn't draw?" she whispered to Nick, and struck a match. The first test proved this fear ungrounded. The draw was so terrific that it threatened to suck everything up.

In a panic Jo experimented with the dampers and soon had the matter in control. She was perspiring, and Nick was yelping and dashing about in circles, when the fire was brought to a sense of its responsibility, ceased roaring like a wild bull, and settled down into a steady, reliable body of glowing heat.

Then Jo drew a chair close, pulled up her absurd skirts, put her man-shod feet into the oven, and gave a sigh of supreme content.

Nick took the hint. Since this was not an accident but, apparently, a permanent innovation, it behooved him to adapt himself as his mistress had done. Behind the fiery monster there was a space, hot as Tophet, but commanding a good view. It might be utilized, so Nick appropriated it.

"There seems no end to what this stove can do," muttered Jo, twisting about and disdaining the smell of overheated leather and wool. "No more undressing in the kitchen and freezing in bed in the north chamber. I've never been warm in winter since I was born, but that's done with now! I shouldn't wonder if I might open the room upstairs after a bit--I shouldn't wonder!"

Then Jo caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror over the stove! As she looked, her excitement lessened, the depression of the afternoon overcame her. She acknowledged that she looked old and ugly. A woman first to be despised, then ridiculed, by men. "Buy a husband!" She, Jo Morey, who had once had her vision and the dreams of a woman. She, who had had so much to offer in her shabby youth, so much that was fine and noble. Intelligence that had striven with, and overcome, obstacles; a passion for service, passion and love. All, all she had had except the one, poor, pitiful thing called beauty. That might have interpreted all else to man for her and won her the sacred desires of her soul.

She had had faith until Langley betrayed it. She had scorned the doubt that, what she lacked, could deprive her of her rights.

Through a never-to-be-forgotten spring and early summer she had been as other girls. Love had stirred her senses and set its seal upon the man who shared her few free hours. He had felt the screened loveliness of the spirit and character of Jo Morey; had revelled in her appreciation and understanding. He had loved her; told her so, and planned, with her, for a future rich in all that made life worth while. That was the spring when Jo had first noticed how the sand pipers, circling against the blue sky, made a brown blur that changed its form as the birds rose higher or when they dipped again, disappearing behind the tamarack pines on the hilltop.

That was the spring when the swift, incoming tide of the St. Lawrence made music in the fragrant stillness and she and Langley had sung together in their queer halting French "A la Claire Fontaine" and had laughed their honest English laughs at their clumsy tongues struggling with the rippling words.

And then; the girl had come, and--the end!

Jo believed that something had died in her at that time, but it had only been stunned. It arose now, and in the still, hot room demanded its own!

"Fifteen years ago!" murmured Jo and looked about at the evidences of her toiling years: the quaint room and the furnishings. The floor was painted yellow and on it were islands of gay, tinted rugs all woven by her tireless hands. There were round rugs and square rugs, long ones and short ones. In the middle of the room was a large table covered by a cloth designed and wrought by the same restless hands. Neatly painted chairs were ranged around the walls, and beneath the low broad window stood a hard, unyielding couch upon which lay a thick blanket and several bright pillows stuffed with sweet-grass.

At the casement were spotless curtains, standing out stiffly like starched skirts on prim little girls, and behind them rows of tin cans in which were growing gorgeous begonias and geraniums pressed against the glistening glass, like curious children peering into the black outer world. So had Jo's inarticulate life developed and expressed itself in this home-like room, while her mind had matured and her thoughts deepened. Then her eyes travelled to the winding stairway in the farthest corner. Her gaze kept to the strip of yellow paint in the middle of the white steps. It mounted higher and higher. Above was the upper chamber, the Waiting Room!

Long years ago, while serving in Madame Longville's home, Jo had conceived an ambition that had never really left her through all the time that had intervened. Some day she would have a boarder! Not upon such terms as the Longvilles accepted, however.

Her boarder was not merely to pay and pay in money, but he would be to her an education, a widening experience. She, alone, would reap the reward of the toil she expended upon him. And so with this in mind she had furnished the upper chamber, bit by bit, and had calculated over and again the proper sum to charge for the benefits to be derived and given.

"And now," said Jo, panting a little as if her eyes mounting the stairs had tired her. "Come summer I will get my boarder, but love of heaven! What price shall I set?"

The wind was rising and the pine trees were making that sound that always reminded Jo of poor Cecile's wordless moan.

Something seemed to press against the door. Nick started and bristled.

"Who's there?" demanded Mam'selle. There was no reply--only that tense pressure that made the panels creak.

*CHAPTER III*

*MAM'SELLE DOES NOT BUY A HUSBAND*

The tall clock in the kitchen struck eight in a sharp, affrighted way much as a chaperone might have done who wished to call her heedless charge to the demands of propriety.

Eight o'clock in Point of Pines meant, under ordinary conditions, just two things: house and bed for the respectable, Dan's Place--a reeking, dirty tavern--for the others.

And while Jo Morey's door creaked under the unseen pressure from without, Pierre Gavot and Captain Longville smoked and snoozed by the red-hot stove at Dan's, occasionally speaking on indifferent subjects.

These two men disliked and distrusted each other, but they hung together, drank together; for what reason who could tell? Gavot had eaten earlier in the day at the Longville house and during the meal the name of Jo Morey had figured rather prominently. However, Gavot had paid little heed, he had little use for women and no interest, whatever, in an ugly one. A long past French ancestry had given Gavot as it had Longville a subtle suavity of manner that somewhat cloaked his brutality, and he was an extremely handsome man of the big, dark type.

Suddenly now, in the smoky drowsiness of the tavern, Mam'selle Morey's name again was introduced.

"Mam'selle! Mam'selle!" muttered Pierre impatiently; "I tire of the mention of the black Mam'selle. Such a woman has but two uses: to serve while she can, to die when she cannot serve."

"But her service while she can serve, that has its value," Longville retorted, puffing lustily and blowing the smoke upward until it quite hid his eyes, no longer sleepy, but decidedly keen.

"The Mam'selle has money, much money," he went on, "that and her service might come in handy for you and Tom."

And now Pierre sat a little straighter in his chair.

"Me and Tom?" he repeated dazedly. "You mean that I get the Mam'selle to come to my--my cabin and work?"

Somehow this idea made Longville laugh, and the laugh brought a scowl to Pierre's face.

"Tom will be going off some day," the Captain said irrelevantly, "then what?"

"Tom will stick," Gavot broke in, "I'll see to that. Break the spirit of a woman or child and they stick."