"I have heard," Jo said and her throat grew dry.
"I—I have come back because my husband seems more here than anywhere, now. He loved the Walled House so much; he loved his Canada, Mam'selle."
Jo was thinking of two bleak, lonely weeks in her own past when she had stolen away and gone to Langley's deserted cabin because he, the he that she had known and loved—seemed more there than anywhere else. She had buried her hatred and bitterness toward him there. She knew it, now, as she had never known it before. The two women were drawing close by currents of sympathy.
They had tea together, they talked of future linens and wools, and then Jo told her story, taking small heed of the impression she was giving. She was blindly thinking only of Donelle, and Mrs. Lindsay did not hurt her by question or voiced doubt.
That night, when a great silence reigned over the Walled House, broken only by the soft, tender tones of a violin played at a distance in the moonlit garden, Alice Lindsay wrote a long letter to Anderson Law, her father's oldest friend, her own faithful advisor and closest confidant.
Law was an artist and critic. Old Testy he was called by those whom he often saved from the folly of their false ambitions; The Final Test, by those who came humbly, tremblingly, faithfully to him with their great hopes. To a few he was Man-Andy, the name that Alice Lindsay had given to him when she was a little child.
MAN-ANDY: I have had a wonderful day. I have waited to tell you that your advice as to my coming here was good. I know it is cowardly to run away from one's troubles, dear. Troubles, as you say, have their divine lessons, but I could not believe, at first, that I would find Jack here. I dreaded the emptiness and loneliness, but you were right, right! I am not desolate here and I have the blessed feeling of peace that can only come when one has chosen the right course.
I felt that everything worth while had been taken: Jack, my babies. Only the money remained, and that I hated, because it could not keep what I wanted. But you were splendid when you said, "make the thing you despise a blessing!" I've tried, Man-Andy, to make it a blessing to others, and it is becoming a blessing to me. I feel I am using it for Jack and for the babies and that they are making it sacred. I feared that in this big, empty house the ghosts would haunt me; not the strange old history ghosts of great ladies and dashing men who used to forget their homesickness for their mother-countries by revelling in this shelter in the New World. I did not think of them, for do you not remember Jack's comical ghost hunts? How he joked about it, saying that he'd yet lure some old English or French aristocrat to stay and sanctify our presence by his sponsorship? But oh! I did fear the memories of my man's dear, jovial ways, the pretty babble of my little babies.
And then—I know I am rambling shamefully, but I cannot sleep, the moonlight is flooding the garden—I hear Professor Revelle's violin. Andy, he has actually recovered to the extent of music when he thinks I do not know. As I look at the dear old soul, so like a gentle wraith, I remember how you and father and Jack adored his music and how Jack grieved when illness and poverty stilled it. But you found him, Man-Andy, and you lent him to me to save, and his music at least has been given back to him. Not with its old fire and passion—I think if any demand were made upon him he might be aroused. I may take lessons myself some day. But he plays dreamily, softly when he is alone, generally in the garden and at night. He forgets his blindness then.
But to-day I had a caller. I wonder if you remember the nice Mam'selle Jo Morey that Jack and I used to talk about? You have some of her linens in your studio. You may recall the incident of the summer when we told you of her troubles; her desertion by a man of the place and the death of her imbecile sister? I had almost forgotten it myself, so much has happened since then, but it all came back to me to-day when she came with her story.