Chapter X: Part 10

"How dare you! Oh! forgive me, Mr. Norval. I was only thinking of--of--the girl."

"Well, lately, I've been wondering. You see, Miss Walden, soon after I saw my friend safe, I got my baptism shock--gas and the rest. It flattened me out, but now I am beginning to feel, to suffer. Using my legs has brought me to myself."

"And you will go and keep your promise, Mr. Norval, you will?"

"Yes, that is what I've been turning over in my mind."

"You see," Donelle was holding herself tight, "that, that girl in Canada might be thinking, knowing her husband, that he had not played the man at the last. The truth might save so much. And don't you understand how he, that poor boy, had to save the dog? It was saving himself. Another could have afforded to see the folly of exposing himself, but he could not. Had he stayed in the hole he might have been a coward after!"

"I had not thought of that, Miss Walden. The deadly absurdity of the act made me bitter. I saw--just the dog part, you know."

"I believe the girl in Canada will see the man part." The words came solemnly. "Yes, it did pay; it did!"

"You have convinced me, Miss Walden. I must go and keep my promise.

"To-morrow they are going to make a big test of my eyes. After that I will start. I want you and Law to come, too."

"Oh! I----"

"Couldn't you do this just as a last proof of your good heartedness, Miss Walden?"

Donelle struggled with her tears. Her heart was beating wildly; beating for Tom and for the helpless man before her. She, sad little frail thing, stood between the dead and the pitiful living.

"Yes, I will go," she said at length.

"Thank you, Miss Walden."

Norval smiled in the darkness.

The next day the test came--the test to his eyes. Norval meant that his first look should rest upon Miss Walden!

He heard her moving about, getting books and tables out of the doctor's way. He heard Law excitedly directing her, and then--the bandages fell away. There was a moment of tense silence.

"What do you see, Norval?" the doctor asked.

Norval saw a slim, little black-robed back and a red head! But all he said was:

"I see Andy's ugly mug!"

The words were curiously broken and hoarse. Then:

"Andy, old man, get a hold on me; it's almost too good to be true!"

In July they went to Canada. By that time Norval could make quite a showing by walking between Law and Miss Walden. He wore heavy dark glasses and only had periods of "seeing things." At such moments Miss Walden was conspicuously absent.

The _River Queen_ swept grandly up to the dock in the full glory of high noon. Jean Duval was there on his crutches; he was at his old job, grateful and at peace.

"Where are we going?" Norval asked. He had hardly dared put the question.

"Mam'selle Jo Morey is going to take us in," Law replied. "At least she'll feed us. It's a cabin in the woods for us, Jim."

"That sounds good to me, Andy." Norval drew in his breath sharply.

"The pines are corking," he added. Then: "Miss Walden, how do you like the looks of the place?"

Donelle, under a heavy veil, was feasting her eyes on Point of Pines; on a blessed figure waiting by a sturdy cart.

"It looks like heaven!" replied the even voice of Mary Walden.

Jo Morey came to the gang plank, and found her own among the passengers. Then her brows drew close, almost hiding her eyes.

"Those are my boarders!" she proclaimed loudly, seizing Donelle. "This way, please."

Law was the only one who spoke on the drive up. Jo sat on the shaft, the others on the broad seat.

"I miss Nick," he remarked.

Mam'selle turned and gave him a stern look. Could he not know, the stupid man, that Nick would have given the whole thing away? Nick had a sense that defied red wigs and false voices. Nick was at that moment indignantly scratching splinters off the inside of the cow-shed door.

There was a sumptuous meal in the spotless and radiant living room. There was a gentle fire on the hearth, though why, who could tell?

And then, according to orders when the sun was not too bright, Norval announced that he was going to take off his "screens."

"I'm going to look about for a full hour," he said quietly, but with that tone in his voice that always made Donelle bow her head.

"Mam'selle!"

"Yes, Mr.----" Jo wanted to say Richard Alton, instead she managed the Norval with a degree of courtesy that put heart in the man who listened.

"Mam'selle, I haven't noticed Donelle's voice. Where is she?"

"She'll come, if you want her, Mr. Norval."

Want her? Want her? The very air throbbed with the want.

"She's upstairs," added Jo, looking grimmer than ever.

"I--I have something to tell her about Tom Gavot--her husband." Norval smiled strangely.

"I'll call her, Mr. Norval."

Then they all waited.

Law walked to the window and choked. In the distance he could hear the howling demands of the imprisoned Nick and the swishing of the outgoing tide.

Mam'selle stood by the foot of the little winding stairs. She was afraid of herself, poor Jo, afraid she was going to show what she felt!

Norval sat in the best rocker, his hands clasped rigidly. He had not removed his screens, he did not intend to until he heard upon the stairs the step for which he hungered.

And then Donelle came so softly that the listening man did not know she was there until she stood beside him. She had put on a white dress that Mam'selle had spun for her. The pale hair was twisted about her little head in the old simple way; the golden eyes were full of the light that had never shone there until love lighted it.

Law and Jo had stolen from the room.

"Here I am!"

Then Norval took down the screens and opened his arms.

"My love, my love," he whispered, "come!"

"Why----" Donelle drew back, her eyes widened.

"Donelle, Donelle, do you think you could hide yourself from me? Why, it was because I saw you that I wanted to live; wanted to make the most of what I had.

"Child, the day you got me out of the chair I was sure! Before that I hoped, prayed; then I knew! I drew the bandage off a little and I saw your eyes."

"My beloved!"

And Donelle, kneeling beside him, raised her face from his breast.

"I am going to kiss you now, Donelle," he said, "but to think that such as I am is the best that life has for you, is----!"

"Don't," she whispered, "don't! Remember the dear Dream of First Joy, my man. I never lost our First Joy. God let me keep her safe."

From across the road came the wild, excited yelps of the released Nick. Slowly, for Nick was old, he padded up the steps, into the room, up to the girl on the floor beside the chair. Donelle pressed the shaggy head to her.

"Nick always has kept First Joy, too," she whispered. And oh, but her eyes were wonderful.

"And you'll play again for me, Donelle?" Norval still held her, though he heard Law and Mam'selle approaching.

"Sometime, dear man, sometime I'll bring the fiddle to the wood-cabin. Sometime after I get strings. The strings, some of them, have snapped."

Late that evening, quite late, nine o'clock surely, Law and Jo stood near the hearth where the embers still glowed.

"Where are the children?" Law asked as if all the mad happenings of the day were bagatelles.

"Out on the road, the road!" Jo's face quivered. "The moonlight is wonderful, the road is as clear as day." She was thinking of Tom Gavot while her great heart ached with pity of it all.

"Queer ideas that young Gavot had about roads," Law said musingly, "Jim has told me."

"Poor boy, he got precious little for himself out of life," Jo flung back.

The bitterness lay deep in Mam'selle's heart. Almost her love for Donelle, her joy in her, were darkened by what seemed to Jo to be forgetfulness. That was unforgivable in her eyes.

"I wonder!" Law said gently; he was learning to understand the woman beside him.

"If this were all of the road, you might feel the way you do. But it's a mighty little part of it, Mam'selle. To most of us is given short sight, to a few, long. I would wager all I have that young Gavot always saw over the hilltop."

"That's a good thing to say and feel, Mr. Law." Jo tried to control her brows, failed, and let Law look full in her splendid eyes.

"Life's too big for us, Mam'selle," he said, "too big for us. There are times when it lets us run along, lets us believe we are managing it. Then comes something like this war that proves that when life needs us, it clutches us again.

"It needs those two out there on the road in the moonlight, one groping, the other leading; on and on! Life will use them for its own purposes. No use in struggling, Mam'selle; life has us all by the throat."

"You're a strange man, Mr. Law."

Jo was trembling.

"You're a strange woman, Mam'selle."

There was a pause. Out on the road Donelle was singing a little French song, one she had brought with her out of the Home at St. Michael's.

"You and I," Law continued, "have learned some of life's lessons in a hard school, Mam'selle. Many of our teachers have been the same; they've made us _hew_ where others have molded, but I'm thinking we have come to know the true values of things, you and I. The value of labour, companionship on the long road, a hearth fire somewhere at the close of the day."

And now Law held out his hand as a good friend does to another.

"I wish, Mam'selle," his voice grew wonderfully kind, "I wish you could bring yourself to--travel the rest of the way with me."

The door was wide open, the fair moonlight lay across the porch, but Jo was thinking of another night when the howling wind had pressed a warning against the door and Pierre Gavot defiled the shelter she had wrung from her life battle--Pierre the Redeemed!

"Are you asking me to marry you, Mr. Law?" Jo's deep eyes were seeking an answer in the look which was holding her. She was dazed, frightened.

"Will you honour me by bearing my name, Mam'selle? Will you let me help you keep the fire upon the hearth for them?"

Nearer and nearer came Donelle and Norval, Donelle still singing with the moonlight on her face.

"I have fought my way up from lonely boyhood, Mam'selle. I've lived a lonely man! And you, Mam'selle, I know your story. When all is said and done, loneliness is the hardest thing to bear."

Tears stood in Jo's eyes--tears!

"You are a strange man," she repeated.

"And you a strange woman, Mam'selle."

But they were smiling now, smiling as people smile who, at the turn of the road, see that it does not end, but goes on and on and on.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.