Mam'selle JoComstock, Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa)
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Mam'selle Jo
Comstock, Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa)
Saint Lawrence River Valley -- Fiction; Self-sacrifice -- Fiction; Single women -- Fiction
"Donelle you _are_ daft. Marcel felt she had to do something to make it
her war, too, and she’s too busy to weave and knit. Why"—and here Jo
turned to Law whose eyes were twinkling through the smoke that nearly
hid his face—"in old times the people around here used to light fires on
St. John’s Day in front of their houses, to show there had been a death.
I told Marcel about that and she herself thought of the flags. She
would have given her children if they had lived; she’s brought herself,
like the rest of us, to see there is nothing else to do but give and
give!"
Mam’selle choked over her hurried words and Law suddenly changed the
subject.
"Mam’selle," he asked, "is there a chimney place behind this red-hot
monster?" he kicked the stove.
"There is, Mr. Law, one about twice too large for the house."
"Let’s take the stove down and have the chimney place!"
"Take the stove down?" Jo dropped ten stitches. "Take that stove down!
Why, you don’t know what it cost me! I—I am proud of that stove."
"Really, Mam’selle?"
"Well, I used to be prouder than I am now. It is a heap of trouble to
keep clean, but it’s going to stay where it is. When things cost what
that did, they stay. It’s like Nick and the little red cow——"
"And me!" put in Donelle softly.
"You ought to be ashamed, Donelle," Jo turned indignant eyes upon her,
"putting yourself beside stoves and dogs and cows."
"And other things that cost too much. Oh! Mamsey."
And still Law stayed on, the peace in his eyes growing each day deeper,
surer. He felt, in a vague way, as Norval had, the sense of _living_
for the first time in his life. The wood-cabin he called the
co-operative workshop. In time he got Donelle to play there for him.
At first she tried and failed. Weeping, she looked at him helplessly and
put her violin aside.
"You have no right," he said to her with infinite tenderness, "to let
any earthly thing kill the gift God gave you."
The philosophy that had upheld poor Law had given him courage to pass it
on to others. It now drove Donelle to her duty.
Old Revelle had prophesied that suffering would develop her and her
talent; and it was doing so. Her face became wonderfully strong and fine
as the months dragged on and the Fear grew in waiting hearts. In
forgetting herself she made place for others and they came to her
faithfully. Her music was heard in many a hill cabin; down by the
river, where the older men worked, while their thoughts were overseas.
She taught little children, helped make the pitiful black dresses which
meant so much to the lonely poor who had given their all and had so
little with which to show respect to their sacred dead.
Jo watched her girl with eyes that often ached from unshed tears.
"It will be the death of her," she confided to Anderson Law. "She’ll
break."
"No," Law returned, "she will not break. She’s as firm and true as
steel; she’s getting ready."
"Ready for what?" Jo’s voice shook.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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