Part 5

"Well?" was all she said, but her plain, haggard face startled the Captain. He had formulated no special errand; he had trusted to developments, and this unlooked-for welcome to his advances threw him back upon a flimsy report of Tom Gavot's sore throat.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Jo said, "but I'm not able to do anything to help. There's no reason why you shouldn't get a doctor. If it's a case of money, I'll pay the bill for the sake of the poor boy and his dead mother."

"Mam'selle, you're not yourself," Longville retorted.

"I'm just myself," Jo flung back. "I've just found myself. But I'm going off for a few days, Captain, so good-bye."

Longville retreated from the house in a sadly befuddled state. Surely something serious was the matter with Jo Morey. She looked ill and acted queer, almost suspiciously queer. And she was going away! No one went away from Point of Pines unless dire necessity drove them. Why should people ever go away from anywhere unless forced?

Then Longville's thoughts drifted back to the time when Mam'selle had gone away before and came back so bedraggled and spent.

It was all very odd and unsettling.

"Surely Mam'selle needs watching," mumbled Longville and he decided to watch.

Night favoured his schemes. He forsook the tavern and made stealthy trips to the little white house, only to be greeted by blank darkness, except for a dim gleam at the edges of the curtain at the window of the small north chamber.

"Mam'selle has not yet gone," concluded Longville, but that was little comfort. Then one night he got bolder and crept close to the rear and listened under the chamber window.

Jo was talking to---- At that instant the kitchen door was flung open and out dashed Nick.

"At him!" commanded Mam'selle, standing in the panel of light, laughing diabolically, "It's a skunk, no doubt; drive him off, Nick; don't touch him!"

Longville escaped, how, he could not tell, for Nick sniffed at his retreating heels well down the highway.

Three or four nights after, Longville, discreetly keeping to the road, where he had a perfect right to be, paused before the white house again. It was a dark night, with occasional flashes of moonlight as the wind scattered the clouds.

Presently the house door opened and Mam'selle came out with Nick close beside her. They stood quite still on the little lawn, their faces turned upward. And just then Longville could have sworn he heard a sob, a deep, smothered sob, and Nick certainly whined piteously. Then the two went back into the house and Longville, with a nervous start, turned and faced--Gavot!

"What do you make of it?" whispered Pierre.

"Make of what?" demanded Longville.

"Oh, I've done some watching myself," Gavot replied, "I've watched you _and_ her! A man doesn't keep to the night when the tavern has a warm place for him. I've kept you company, Longville, when you didn't know it."

"Well, then, what's the meaning that you make out, Pierre?"

"The Mam'selle Morey is up to--to tricks," Gavot nodded knowingly, "and she's not going to escape me."

"'Tis not the first caper she has cut," Longville snorted, "and she will well need an eye kept on her."

Then the two went amicably arm in arm to Dan's Place.

"Four eyes, brother Longville," said Gavot who always grew nauseously familiar when he dared. "Four eyes on Mam'selle and four _such_ eyes!"

*CHAPTER VI*

*MAM'SELLE HEARS PART OF THE TRUTH*

Jo Morey came out of her house quite boldly and locked the door!

She had left Nick inside, a most unusual proceeding. Then she harnessed Molly to the caliche, also an unusual proceeding, for the picturesque carriage was reserved for the use of summer visitors and brought a good price when driven by one of the young French-Canadians from the settlement a few miles away. Openly, indeed encouraging nods and conversation, Jo started toward St. Michael's in her Sunday best and nicely poised on the high seat.

"Good morning, Captain," she greeted as she passed Longville on the road; "I'm off at last, you see! So you can take a rest from watching."

"When do you return, Mam'selle?" asked the Captain, quite taken aback by the sight.

"That depends," and Jo smiled, another rare proceeding, surely; "the roads are none too good and time is my own these days."

Then she bobbed along, the high feather on her absurd hat waving defiance.

But Jo was quite another person to young Tom Gavot whom she met a mile farther on. The boy was a handsome, shabby fellow and at present his throat was bound close in a band of red flannel. His clothing was thin and ragged and his bare hands rested upon the handle of a shovel which he held. He leaned slightly on it, as he paused to greet Mam'selle Morey.

"Tom, you've been sick," said Jo, stopping short and leaning toward him. "I hated not to come to you--but I couldn't."

"'Tis all right, now, Mam'selle. I went to the cure when my throat was the worst and the good Father took me in and sent for the doctor."

"I'll remember that, Tom, when the cure asks for help this winter. And, Tom, how goes life?"

The boy's clear, dark eyes looked troubled. "I want to get away, Mam'selle Jo. I can never make anything of myself here. Sometimes," the boy smiled grimly, "sometimes I find myself--longing to forget everything in----"

"No, Tom, not the tavern! Remember what I've always told you, boy, of the night your mother went. She said you paid for all she had suffered! Tom, when you get down and things look black, just remember and keep on being worth what she went through. It was worse than anything you'll ever be called upon to bear."

The boy's eyes dimmed.

"I'm holding close," he said grimly. "Holding close to--I don't know what."

"That's it, Tom, we don't know what; but it's something, isn't it?"

"Yes, Mam'selle."

"Now listen, Tom. How old are you? Let me see----"

"Sixteen, Mam'selle."

"To be sure. And you study hard at the school, the cure has told me. And you mend the roads in the summer with the men?"

"Yes, Mam'selle," Tom grinned, "and get a bit of money and hide it well. There's nearly twenty dollars now."

"Good! Well, Tom, this winter, study as you never have before and next summer, if the men come, work and save. You shall go away some day, that I swear. I'll promise that, but it must be a secret. You shall have your chance."

"Mam'selle!" Tom instinctively took off his hat and stood beside Jo like a ragged and forlorn knight.

"You've got to pay for all your mother suffered!" Jo's lips quivered. "It's the least you can do."

Then with a nod and a cheery farewell, Jo bobbed along while Tom Gavot returned to his self-imposed task of filling in the ruts on the road. Occasionally a traveller tossed him a coin, and the work kept him occupied, but best of all it assumed the dignity of a job and made him capable of helping intelligently when the real workers came in the late spring.

Just after midday Jo Morey drew up before the Home of St. Michael's-on-the-Rocks. She was very quiet, very dignified and firm, but her heart was pounding distractedly against her stiffly boned waist. She was to learn, at last, all there was to learn about the girl who, at that moment, was locked in the white house behind drawn shades, with instructions to remain hidden until Jo's return.

There was little doubt now in Mam'selle's mind but that the fantastic conclusions she had drawn during the strenuous hours of illness were mere figments and not to be relied upon. They could all be easily explained, no doubt.

Poor Jo!

But, no matter what she was to hear, and undoubtedly it would be most prosaic, she meant to keep the girl even if she had to threaten in order to do so! She, plain, unlovable Jo Morey, had developed a sudden and violent fancy for the girl she had rescued. Jo was almost ashamed of her emotions, but she could not, inwardly, control them. Outwardly, she might scowl and glower, but her heart beat quick at the touch of the girl's hands, her colour rose at the tones of the low voice; some women are thus moved by little children. Jo, repressed and suppressed, was like a delicate instrument upon which her own starved maternal instinct now played riotously.

She was led to the bare little reception room of the Home and left to her own devices while a small maid scurried away to summon the Sister in charge.

Alone, Jo sat on the edge of a hard chair and tried to believe that she was prepared for anything--or nothing, but all the time she was getting more and more agitated. When things were at the tensest she always looked the sternest, so when Sister Angela entered the room, she was rather taken aback by the face Mam'selle turned toward her soft greeting. Sister Angela was the older of the two nuns who had questioned Jo while the lost girl lay hidden under the straw in the cart that first day.

"Ah, it's Mam'selle Morey! A good day to you, Mam'selle."

"Have you found that girl yet?" bluntly spoke Jo.

The manner and question took the Sister off her guard.

"Oh! the girl! I remember, Mam'selle. We met you while we were looking for her. The child is quite safe, thank you. We have long wanted to find a good home for her."

"So you found her?"

Mam'selle was struggling with the fragments of French at her command and making poor work with them. The Sister pretended not to understand.

"The girl," Jo was losing what little control she had, "is over at my house; she's been terribly ill."

Sister Angela's face grew ashy and she drew her chair close. "And now?" she whispered.

"She's going to get well." Jo settled back.

"And--and she has talked? She had an illness here once, the physician told us another shock might restore her memory. That sometimes does happen. Mam'selle, the girl has remembered and--talked?"

"She's talked, yes!" Jo was groping along. "I want her story, Sister."

"What is there to tell, Mam'selle?" Sister Angela took a chance. "We always give the sinning mothers an hour in which to consider whether they will keep their children or not. We try to make them see their duty, if they will not, we assume it. And the past is dead. You know our way here, we do the best we can for the children. 'Tis wiser to forget--much."

"Sister Angela, I said the girl talked and she remembered!"

Under Jo's lowering brows the dark eyes gleamed.

"Then, Mam'selle, if the girl remembered and talked surely you can see why it was best to hush her story?"

The colour again receded from Sister Angela's face. She did not look guilty, but she looked anxious.

She had circulated a report that the missing girl was on probation in a good home; she had carried on a still hunt untiringly; and now if Mam'selle Jo Morey could be prevailed upon to adopt the girl, how perfectly everything would work out. And there was to be a meeting of the managers in a week!

"Sister, I mean to take this girl if it can be done legally and quietly, but I will not unless I hear all I can from you, all there is to know."

"Very well, Mam'selle, we only have the girl's good at heart, I assure you. Our Sister Mary was the one who brought the girl to us four years ago. I will send her to you. As to the legal steps, they are practical and easy, and when one of our fold goes to another, that is the end! We have educated this girl carefully; she is well trained. We had always her interest at heart. And now I will send Sister Mary."

Left alone again, Jo clasped her hands close and stiffened as for an ordeal.

The door opened and closed. A very pale little Sister took a chair near Mam'selle and, holding to her crucifix as to an anchor, she said gently:

"I am to tell you of the little girl, Marie. 'Tis not much of a story. We know very little, but the little were best forgot; it is not a pretty story.

"Four years ago word came from a tavern back in the hills that a man and child were very ill there and I went over to nurse them. The girl had fallen and hurt her head. She was quite out of her mind and I decided to bring her here; the doctor said she could be moved. The man, he was the father of the child, was dying. I sent for a priest and waited until the priest came.

"The man was a bit delirious and talked wildly, but at every question he hushed suddenly as if he were mortally afraid of something.

"He said he wanted no priest, insisted that he was able to start on. He was taking the child to someone who, he kept repeating, would believe him and understand.

"When I asked him what there was to believe and to whom he was taking the child, he looked at me strangely and laughed! He died before the priest came. I brought the girl away and somehow the report got around that she, too, had died, and we thought it best to let the matter rest there.

"A year later two men came to hear what we had to tell about the man who had died; he was wanted for--murder!"

To Morey sprang to her feet.

"Not--that!" she panted. Then quickly regaining her self-control, "I see now why you felt you must keep the story secret," she continued, and sank back limply in her chair.

"Exactly," nodded Sister Mary, then glanced about the room and lowered her voice.

"I told the men about the father's death--and--I said the girl had died later. Mam'selle, I took that course because one of the men, he said he had known the dead man, wanted the girl, and I could not trust the man; his eyes were bad. I feared for the child. 'Twas better that she stayed where she was, shielded, cared for. I had grown to be fond of her. I taught her carefully, she was a great help with the younger children. I hoped she would come into the Sisterhood, but perhaps it is best she should have a safe home."

"Is that all? Did those men tell you nothing of the past?" Jo's words came like hard, quick strokes.

The waxen face of Sister Mary did not change expression. She had left life's sordid problems so far behind that they were mere words to her.

"Oh! they had their story," she said. "The dead man had shot his wife because he discovered that she had a lover. He shot her in the presence of the little girl and the lover. Mam'selle, I believe the man with the officer was the lover. He wanted the child for reasons of his own; that was why I said--she was dead.

"That's all, Mam'selle."

Jo Morey felt a strange sympathy with the pale little Sister and a deep gratitude.

"You're a good woman!" she said to Sister Mary.

"I did my best for the girl," the Sister went on, still holding to her crucifix, "she never recovered her memory for that, God be praised! But she had a bright mind and I trained that carefully. She knows much from books; all that I could get for her. She never took kindly to--religion, and that is why Sister Angela was thinking of finding a home for her; the girl was not happy here, but we did our best."

"I am sure you did, Sister!" Jo looked grateful. "I understand. But those men, did they not mention the name of the man they sought?"

Sister Mary drew her brows together. "The name? Yes, but it has escaped me. It was an English name if I recall rightly, something like--Long--no--yes--it was Longley or Longdon, something sounding like that."

Never in her life had Jo fainted, but she feared she was going to do so now. The bare little room was effaced as though a huge, icy blackness engulfed it. In the darkness a clock on a shelf ticked madly, dashingly, like blow upon blow on iron.

"Here is a glass of water, Mam'selle, you are ill."

Sister Mary pressed the glass to Jo's lips and she drank it to the last drop.

"I have nursed this girl through a long sickness," she explained. "I am tired. But I will keep her. Tell Sister Angela to make arrangements and let me know."

"Very well, Mam'selle. And the girl, Marie; she remembers, Sister Angela says. 'Tis a miracle. I shall miss her, but God has been kind to her."

"She will remember only what I tell her, from now on!" Jo set her teeth over her tingling tongue. "And now, I must go."

Mam'selle almost expected to find it dark when she went out from the dim room, but it was broad daylight, and when she looked at the clock in the church tower she saw that she had been but an hour inside.

In all the years of her life she had never experienced half so much as she had during the space of time with the two Sisters. She was conscious of trying to keep what she had heard in the Home, out of her mind; she was afraid to face it in the open. There were children playing about; a Sister or two looked at her curiously; she must be alone before she dared take her terrible knowledge into consideration. Gravely she went to the caleche, stiffly she took the reins and clicked to Molly. A mile from St. Michael's, much to Molly's disgust, they turned from the main road and struck into a wood trail where the snowy slush made travel difficult. Jo did not go far, she merely wanted to hide from any chance passerby. Then she let the reins drop in her lap and staring straight ahead--thought!

It was growing cold, that dead cold that comes when the mercury is dropping. But Jo was back in the summer time of her life, she was studying Langley, and the woman who had lured him, with the mature power that suffering years had later evolved in Jo herself. By some psychic force she seemed able to follow them far, far. So far she went in imagination that she saw the "white high-tops" changing from shade to shade. Jo, who had never been fifty miles from her birthplace, went far in that hour!

She understood Langley as she never had before. She suffered with him, no longer because of him. The dreadful scene in the lonely wood-cabin; the stranger man who had told his story! And against that story who could prevail? But would Langley have been coming to her with his child had he been guilty of the crime with which he was charged? And Donelle's words: "They will believe me. Let me tell, I saw how it was."

Mam'selle, stiff with cold, smiled with rare radiance as one might who, considering her dishonoured dead, knows in her heart that he is innocent.

"If the child ever remembers, then I can speak," thought poor Jo. "I believe the man who came to the Home is the guilty one. He wanted the girl, wanted to hush her story. He must think her dead, dead, unless she can prove--the truth."

The black tragedy into which poor Mam'selle had been plunged quickened every sense. Her one determination was to hide Langley's child, not only for her own safety, but in order that the horrible story of the crime might be stilled. Langley was dead, he must rest in peace. But that man might be alive; the merest suspicion of Donelle's existence would bring about the greatest disaster. He might claim the girl, by pretending relationship, and then go to any lengths to insure her silence. No; come what might, all must be hidden.

It was dark when Mam'selle Jo reached Point of Pines. She took Molly to the stable and fed her, then silently made her way to the little house. Not a gleam of light shone from the windows; all was quiet and safe.

But was it? As Jo reached the lowest step of the porch she saw a black figure crouching under the living-room window. So absorbed was the watcher that he had not heard Jo's approach; neither did he notice when, on tiptoes, she mounted and stood behind him, the better to see what might be the object of his spying.

The shade of the broad window was lowered, but the bottom rested on the pots of flowers, and there was a space through which one might look into the room. The fire was burning brightly and its radiance clearly showed Donelle on the couch by the window, fast asleep, Nick crouching beside her, his eyes glaring at the intruder outside and his teeth showing!

"Well, Captain!"

Longville jumped up as if he had been shot. For an instant Jo had the master position, but only for an instant; then Longville spoke.

"So that's what you have been hiding!" he said.

"And this is the way you take to find out?" Jo looked dangerous. She was thinking quickly. She had meant to guard the future by safe courses, but she had little choice now. Only one thing was clear, she must save the secret she had just learned. In reaching this conclusion Jo did not consider how badly she was plunging into dangerous depths. For herself she gave no thought, her innocence and ignorance made her blind; she stood before her persecutor and answered blankly like one who must reply, and does not count the cost.

"Whose girl is that?"

"Mine."

"Yours and Langley's, by God! And you have the shamelessness to stand there and tell me so to my face. So that's what you went away for, the summer Langley turned you adrift. All these years you've kept your disgrace hidden--where?"

Horrified, Jo staggered back and confronted Longville with desperate eyes. She had meant to tell him that she had adopted the girl; had even felt she might go so far as to mention the Home, but now! What was she to do? This mean and suspicious mind had fastened on an explanation of the child's presence in her house that had not even occurred to her. No matter what she said she doubted if Longville would believe her. She stood in the dark, face to face with the Captain, while her mind battled with the question. "Shall I say the child is my own?" thought Jo. "That will stop all further questions, no one need ever know about the murder, and Donelle can be kept safe from the hateful suspicion that I----" she could not even say the horrible thing to herself.

"Answer me!" Longville, feeling that his victim feared, flung all disguise aside.

Still she stared and debated with herself. She knew that if she said that she had adopted Donelle, Longville would not believe her mere statement; she would have to bare this whole awful story to this scandal-monger; the man would expect proofs, he would ferret out the last detail. Everyone in the village would know it next day, the child would be questioned, her house would be the centre of the curious.

The other horn of the dilemma would be safer for the child; they would be let alone, she could live the evil name down. Sometime the truth would come out.

Jo had decided. She faced Longville, her head up, her jaws clamped, silent.

"Answer me--you--harlot!"

The word stung Jo Morey and she sprang forward. Longville thought she was going to strike him and like the coward he was, he dodged.

"You dare not speak for yourself," he snarled.

Then Jo laughed. The sound frightened her. She did not feel like laughing, heaven knew; but the relief of it steadied her. Then, as one does who sees a struggle is useless, she let herself go.

"Oh! yes; I can speak for myself, Captain. The girl is mine. Where I've kept her is my business, and you and I have finished business together. That--that brother-in-law of yours came after my money; was willing to marry me for it, and flung some hateful words in my face. But he set me thinking. Why should a woman do without a child because a man will have none of her, or only that which he wants? If I could not have my own in man's way, I take it in my own. I have my child, and now--what will you do? If you make my life and hers a hell here I have money and can go elsewhere. Go so far that your black words will not be heard. On the other hand, if you mind your business and leave me and mine alone, we'll stay. And now get off my property."

Longville was so utterly dumbfounded that he slunk from the porch and was in the road before he regained his self-control. Then he started back, but Jo had gone inside, locked the door noisily, and was pulling the shade down to its extreme limit!

*CHAPTER VII*

*MARCEL TAKES HER STAND BY JO*