Eleanor was most free to motor across the valley—where now a double magnet drew her—while Mrs. Hetherbee still slumbered in the mornings. Since the first day when Tim's little hand had reached up to touch her cheek, she had yearned towards the boy. Rosamund laughingly accused her of coming to see him instead of herself; Eleanor, in reply, held the mite to her heart, smiling over his curls through gathering tears, at Rosamund.
The summer had done much for Timmy. The pain in his hip was disappearing, and by the end of August there were pink baby curves where the skin had been white and drawn over his little bones. There were times, when he was cuddling against Eleanor or tumbling about in the sun, that he was almost pretty. He was glad enough of ministrations from Rosamund or Mother Cary, but Eleanor was the bright lady of his adoration.
"My White Lady," he called her, taking great pains always to pronounce every consonant of the beloved name, though he usually discarded most of them as not at all necessary to intelligent conversation. With the inquisitiveness of childhood, he soon discovered that she had once had a little boy of her own.
"Where is your little boy?" he asked one day with infantile directness.
"He is gone away," she told him.
But that was not enough. "Didsomebody 'dopt your little boy?" he persisted.
Eleanor looked at Rosamund; the same thought was in the minds of both. How many times had little Tim been offered for inspection to would-be adopters, and refused? How much of it had he understood? What had it all meant, to his poor little lonely heart? Eleanor drew him more closely to her.
"W'y don't you tell Timmy? Did somebody 'dopt your little boy?"
She gave him the simplest answer. "Yes, dear," she said.
Timmy was thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, "I guess he must have been aprettylittle boy!"
Neither Eleanor nor Rosamund could speak, but Tim was oblivious of their emotion. A new idea, an entrancing one, had presented itself. He climbed upon Eleanor's lap, took her face between his palms, and said, smiling divinely,
"If I was a great big man, White Lady,Iwould 'dopt you!"
It seemed to Rosamund that Eleanor, while reaching out with all the ardor of her loneliness, was being daily wrung by seeing him; she spoke of it to Ogilvie, after Eleanor herself had denied it. But he was inclined to agree with Mrs. Reeves that it could not harm her.
"Women find comfort in strange things," he said. "Let her have her own way."
Rosamund sighed. "It does not seem to me that her summer here has helped her at all," she said. "She is more a 'White Lady' than ever. I wish you would tell me what you think of her, Doctor Ogilvie!"
"I cannot tell you any more than I have," he replied. "There is no incurable fault of vision, no defect of the eye itself. If I could prescribe a large dose of happiness for her, she would get well. As it is—nerves have very elusive freaks sometimes, you know!"
"Then she will—she will be—oh! Don't say that! Not my Eleanor!"
"Now you are taking too much for granted. I donotsay it. Her eyes are no worse than when she came here. If she were strong they would recover; if she were happy she would quickly become strong! As it is—who can say?"
"Oh, how helpless you all are!" she cried.
He ran his fingers through his hair—his cap was apt to be anywhere but on his head. "Helpless! Good Lord, yes!"
As the weeks passed, they had become very good friends, spending many hours together, driving about the countryside as he made his rounds. Knowing Eleanor to be there in the mornings, Ogilvie fell into the way of making Mother Cary's his first house of visitation in the afternoon. They were always waiting for him at the gate—the now inseparable three; and if Rosamund left all show of eager greeting to Yetta and little Tim, the doctor seemed never to notice the omission. It was enough to find her there.
Hitherto, John Ogilvie had passed his life, first, in study, and later in investigation and service. Women had appeared as people who cooked his meals, or as nurses trained to careful obedience, or as those who, more or less ill, were apt to be more or less querulous. There were one or two who had seemed to possess different characteristics, especially here in the mountains. There was Mother Cary, who had helped him on more than one occasion when more trained assistance, if not assistance more experienced, was not to be had; he warmly loved Mother Cary, whose indulgent affection persisted in regarding him as a boy—a clever boy, to be sure, but not by any means one who had outgrown the need of maternal attention. And there were Grace Tobet, and a few other of the mountaineers' wives, who stood out from the mass of women as he had known them.
Miss Randall was of still another sort, already beginning to inspire him with emotions new and different. But he was too far past the introspective phase that is a part of early youth to analyze his emotions. He was less concerned with the phenomenon of his own heart throbs than with the happily recurring hours of their being together, and the increasingly dreary intervals when his duties carried him away from her.
He knew very well to what world she belonged. He had had enough experience of it among his patients, the overfed, overwrought women who came to Bluemont in the summer to be near him—near the young doctor of high scientific attainments, who remained in this out-of-the-way place of his own choice, "Who can be just as disagreeable and firm, my dear, as if his sign hung two doors from Fifth Avenue, and whose fees are only one-fifth as high as Dr. Blake's," as one of them wrote home. Even if she had not come into the valley as one of Flood's guests, he would have known of what class she was a part. Mrs. Hetherbee, in her overflowing complaisance after Rosamund's call, had poured out to his bored and impatient ears, in a torrent that was not to be stemmed, the facts of the girl's inheritance and position.
"Witherspoon Randall's only daughter! He made all his money, millions, they say, in Georgia pine—only had to go out on the land he had inherited and cut down trees! Think of it! And left every penny to this girl, nothing to the mother, nothing to the mother's daughter by her first marriage, nothing to charity—everything, everything to this girl! And you know she is just the smartest of the smart, in town; thanks to her sister's marriage, in the very heart of the most exclusive——"
So he had, in spite of himself, been told what she was, given some idea of what she possessed; yet so wholly did he discard as immaterial the material things, and measure her only by the weight of personality, that Rosamund was deceived into thinking that he knew nothing about her.
The friends she made while at Mother Cary's had not questioned her; she had dropped among them from an automobile, and later her sister had sent her some clothes of deceptive simplicity. Their seeming to accept her as she tried to appear deceived her into believing that they were not curious; as a matter of fact their code of good manners forbade their showing curiosity; nothing could prevent their having it. She believed that Ogilvie, also, had been deceived in like manner. During their drives together she carefully avoided any reference to her possessions; it amused her to imagine how surprised he would be when he knew.
Yet she found herself becoming more and more contented that he did not know. In her own world she had been unable to ignore her wealth; she could read knowledge of it on every face, deference to it in every courtesy, and the very fact that it had set her apart was largely the cause of her old discontent. She would not voluntarily have discarded it, but she would have welcomed an escape from all but its agreeable consequences.
The other men she had known might have been able to command riches larger than her own, or possessed that which weighed equally in the social scales; yet they remained conscious of what her very name signified, and invariably showed it. Even Mr. Flood, or so she believed, although he could have bought all she owned without missing what it cost him, showed her the usual deference.
Therefore, there was something fresh and unaccustomed in her growing friendship with Ogilvie. It amused and piqued her; in her ignorance of his real state of mind it even touched her. She found herself eager to be real with him, to show him depths of heart and mind which she herself had scarcely suspected. Other men saw only the social glaze which hid her real self and reflected themselves; Ogilvie had a way of looking at her which pierced the surface, although, because of his obvious sincerity, it caused her no resentment. So, during the glowing summer, while the hot noons ripened the corn in the valley and the cold nights left early beacons of flame in the young maples on the mountains, they grew to know each other; she serene in her belief in his unsuspecting simplicity, he ignoring in her what other men would so greatly have valued. As far as the things of the world affected them, they might, on their drives, have been alone in a deserted land, or at least in one peopled only by aborigines.
For always he had as an objective point some mountain cottage where his aid was needed. At first she was inclined to be curious about the mountaineers; theoretically they ought to have been interesting, quaint, amusing. But in reality she scarcely saw them; when she did, she found nothing appealing in their lank figures, and faces hidden in the depths of slat bonnets or under large straw hats pulled down over their eyes.
"They all seem to avoid me," she told Ogilvie one day when he had come out of a house with a tiny child in his arms, which had slid down and run away at sight of her. "Do they think I'm the bogey-man or the plague?"
He laughed aloud at her petulance. "They don't stop to think," he said. "They are as timid as chipmunks, or as any other hunted woodland creatures."
"Oh, hunted!" she cried, as if to repudiate what he implied. "I've heard you talk like that before! Do you still believe in that nonsense about the secret stills and the Government spies, and all that?"
"Yes, I believe in it."
"I have been here eight weeks, and I have not heard another soul speak of it!"
"How many of the 'natives,' as you call them, have you met?"
She pursed her lips. "I don't believe there are many to see!"
"Allow me to remind you again of my feeble simile of the chipmunks!" he laughed. "And believe me, it is more apt than you think. For instance, have you seen the little Allen children?"
"What, the queer little animals that bend their arms over their eyes when you meet them, and live in that shanty back of Father Cary's pasture?"
He smiled at her description. "Precisely! The Carys' nearest neighbors, scarcely a mile away. And have you seen their mother?"
She seemed to be trying to remember.
"Come now," he teased, "don't tell me you don't believe they have a mother! The eldest child is not yet six, and the youngest of the five is two months old!"
She laughed and gave in. "No, I have not seen the mother, nor the father, nor the aunts, nor any of the rest of the family! But that is only one instance."
"There are many; you really may take my word for it, if it interests you to. But if you were to be here after the summer people go, then you'd see. They come out into the open then."
She still looked skeptical, and he pointed up the mountain. "Do you see that path?" he asked.
"No. Where?"
He laughed. "Caught, Miss Randall! A path is there, invisible though it is to you—to us. All through these woods there are paths, often little more than trails, well known to the mountaineers and often used. Sometimes they run for a mile or more beside the road, screened by the undergrowth; sometimes they keep higher up, or cross where a road could not, or follow the courses of the streams; but they are there. It is only one of the evidences of the mountaineers' secretiveness."
"Your simile was a good one! What animals they are!"
"So are we all."
"Oh, of course, you are the doctor, saying that! But you could scarcely class these creatures with ourselves!"
He turned on the seat to look at her, and she met his gaze a little defiantly, on the defensive, for she knew him well enough by now to guess what his reply would be. For the first time she encountered in his eyes a look of appraisement as if he were weighing her value, even questioning it. Suddenly there arose between them the antagonism of their opposite points of view, of those differences in their minds and characters which must always arise between a man and a woman, and be settled by conquest or compromise, before happiness can be secure between them.
As he looked at her, more beautiful in her sudden proud defiance than he had ever before seen her, it flashed upon him who and what she was, and that what he had chosen to ignore might be none the less placing her beyond him. In his inexperience he was unprepared for the swift pain of the idea; instinctively defending himself, his defense was cruelly sharp.
The irony of his words stung her cheeks to a quick crimson.
"I am not capable of judging of your class, Miss Randall!" he said.
She might have understood, from the tremor in his voice, but she heard nothing but the meaning of the words. As she still looked into his eyes her own widened, and with the widening of their pupils seemed to grow black. For an instant they looked at one another so; but the moment was too tense to be one of revelation. Then she drew a gasping breath so sharp that it almost seemed to be a wordless cry of pain, and turned away.
Instantly he was filled with shame of having hurt her, and greater shame of having doubted her.
"Oh, forgive me," he cried. "Forgive me! Won't you forgive me?"
She lifted her head a little, still turned from him, but did not speak.
"Rosamund!" he cried. "Forgive me!"
It was now unmistakably a cry of pain, appealing and revealing; it steadied her, as a woman is always steadied by that tone in a man's voice, until the moment when she is prepared to welcome it. On the instant, she was no longer the woman of the past weeks, simple, companionable, revealing herself as naturally as a child; she was once more the Miss Randall the world knew, haughty, reserved, aloof. Even her eyes, as she turned to smile at him, were not those he had known.
"There is nothing in the world to forgive! I think we have been a little absurd!"
It was his turn to feel how words could lash.
"I am glad you see it so," he said, and wondered, during the rest of their drive, filled as it was with the commonplace of small talk, how he could have forgotten her likeness to the vapid, futile, fashionable women at the Summit; while she, hurt and bewildered, was wondering what he had meant, whether he had known her all along for the person she was, Colonel Randall's daughter and only heir, and in the stupidity of a countryman had failed in the observance due to her position.
When White Rosy stopped at the little red gate, willingly, as always, the two children were there to welcome them. Ogilvie, in spite of Timmy's beseeching arms, would not stay to supper, as he often did.
Tim sat down on the brick path and lifted his voice in a wail. "Oh, ev'rybody's gonin' away!" he cried; and his anguish increased by his own words, he further declared, "Ev'rybody has went away!"
Rosamund picked up the boy, but he wriggled down from her arms. In spite of her care for him, and the good-fellowship there was between her and both the children, who were ordinarily devoted enough, nothing of the maternal had as yet been aroused in her; and in the moments when he needs the only comfort that satisfies childhood, a child knows instinctively whether there is aught of the mother in the arms that hold him.
But Rosamund was in need of love to-day. "Why, Timmy," she cried, still holding him to her, "Iam here!Ihave not gone away!"
"I don't want my White Lady to go away! I want my White Lady!" was Timmy's cry. "Ev'rybody's gonin' away!"
Now Yetta became voluble in explanation of his cry. "She is going away! She came over while you were gone, 'cause she said maybe she won't be able to come to-morrow. She says she's got to pack, 'cause the old one's going back to town. Lots o' people have gone already, it's so cold; and the old one thinks it's going to set in to rain, so she's going home, an' Mis' Reeves has got to go with her."
"My White Lady's gonin' away!" Tim wailed again, with a concentration of thought that might have been admirable under other circumstances. "Ev'rybody's gonin' away!"
Rosamund had been overwrought on the drive, and the boy's persistent cry was rasping her nerves. "Oh, for goodness' sake, Timmy, don't say that again! It is not true, Tim! I am here, and Yetta's here, and Mother Cary's here. Aren't we enough!"
"No, she ain't," Yetta cried, still informing. "She's gone down to her daughter's, 'cause the baby's sick. Pap took her, and maybe he'll stay all night, if it rains, an' he says it's going to for sure. And I know what to get for supper, and it's corn puddin' and jam!"
At last they had found the silencing note for Timmy. "'Ikes jam!" he announced. Then, apparently warming towards Rosamund, he encircled her knees with his arms. "'Ikes you, too!" he declared. '"Ikes ev'rybody!"
Rosamund was glad to laugh, to carry him, with swings and bounces and kisses stolen from the tangle of his curls, into the house, glad to make a 'party' out of the simple supper and a ceremony out of the lighting of Mother Cary's nightly beacon, glad to hold him up to the window to see the trees bend under the wind that came with Father Cary's predicted rain, and glad to hold his little warm body to her while she undressed him, and to hear him repeat after her, in unison with Yetta, the prayer that she was, somewhat shyly, teaching them. She was glad when Yetta claimed the privilege of her fifteen years to sit up a while longer; glad of anything that might postpone the moments when she should be alone with her own thoughts.
The storm was increasing; each gust of wind shrieked louder than the last, sending the rain against the little house in sheets that broke with a sound as of waves on a shore. Rosamund, answering Yetta's demand for a story, regaled her with the tale of Rip Van Winkle, and then, somewhat unwisely, with the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, so that when the girl's bed-time could no longer be put off she pleaded to stay downstairs with Timmy and herself.
But at last Rosamund must be alone with herself and the storm. At first she could not think of Eleanor's message, and what it might mean to her. She had forgotten that the summer was almost over, forgotten that Eleanor's inevitable departure must leave her alone, as far as old friends were concerned, in the mountains. She had even forgotten that she herself must return; and now she had to remember that Cecilia's clamor might begin again with any letter. The summer was over. It had warmed into growth some part of her which had laid dormant before; but, after this afternoon, she was in no mood to dwell upon that. She thought again of Eleanor, of her parting with the boy. There must, of course, be something provided for the poor little waif, and for Yetta; that would be easy enough; she had only to write a check or two. Yet, in spite of the obviousness of that way, something else, quite different, seemed to be struggling to formulate itself in her mind; for once the writing of a check did not appear to be an adequate solution.
But the sum of it all, for her, seemed to be that she was just where she had left her old self, two months before. The old restlessness, the old discontent, swept back upon her with accumulated force, only increased by her life here. The summer had taught her something, given her something; how much she was unwilling to admit.
Suddenly there came back to her the sound of Ogilvie's voice, when he had called her by name, out of his shame and pain; and with the memory there came the reality of his voice, only now it was muffled by the storm, and by the sound of his knocking on the door.
Startled though she was at its coming in apparent answer to her thoughts, she sprang to the door and opened it. Then, in a quick heat of shame, she realized that he was far from calling upon her.
He stood under the overhang of the upper story, water dripping from him onto the brick paving, hatless as usual, tossing the rain from his eyes. He was exceedingly far from being a beautiful figure as he stood there; rather, he seemed a creature of the storm, wind-swept, rain-soaked, forceful, insistent.
"Mother Cary!" he demanded almost before Rosamund had opened the door. "Mother Cary! Where is she?"
Rosamund drew back, as if repelled from the dripping figure. Unconsciously she had, expected something else.
"Mother Cary is not here," she said, coldly.
"Not here?" he cried. Then, like a man who finds himself suddenly stopped, repeating, "Not here? To-night?"
"She went to her daughter's, before the storm broke. The baby is sick."
"Then Father Cary—I must have someone!"
"He is with her," said Rosamund, and made as though she would close the door, although, if truth be told, no power on earth would have made her do so. But Ogilvie stepped, still dripping, across the threshold, while she stood before him in her dress of thin blue, silhouetted against the lamp-light.
For a moment they faced each other, again, as earlier on that day, their natures and all the difference in their training and traditions ranged in opposing forces.
The appeal of her beauty, the memory of their hours together, swept over him like the breath of a dream; but the doctor in him was uppermost.
"It's the Allen woman," he said. "That boy, six years old, came all the way to my house to tell me. Jim Allen is in the woods, and there's no telling how long she's been that way. The baby is starving; and if I don't operate now she will die, and the baby, too."
The words had poured out. He barely paused, hesitated only to give her a glance more piercing. Yet when he spoke again he voiced a new insistence.
"I havegotto have help. Get on your things," he commanded.
"I?" she gasped.
"Yes, you! And quickly. I have no time to lose."
The haste of his words only made her own seem slower. "Then you will certainly have to go for someone else. You are losing time waiting for me."
He came a step or two closer. "You have got to come," he said, clearly, speaking his words very distinctly, as if trying to make himself understood beyond question. "There is no time to go for someone else. And I have got to operate on that woman at once,at once, or she will die." As Rosamund still stood, head up, eyes upon him coldly, he repeated: "Don't you understand? The woman will die, and then the baby will starve...."
Her eyes seemed to darken; Cecilia would have recognized the sign of wrath. "Certainly I understand," she said. "But you must see that it is perfectly impossible for me—me—to help you! I don't know what you can be thinking of!"
"Impossible? I say you have got to help me! I can't wait for anyone else!"
"I? Help you—help you—operate—cut—oh!"
She shrank farther back towards the table. "Oh, I think you are perfectly brutal!"
He watched her in silence for a moment, a silence that burned, so charged with meaning was it. Then he said,
"I am asking you to help me save a woman's life!"
"It would killmeto see it!"
He threw his hand out towards her. "Then live!" he cried. "Live on, and shield your pretty eyes from the beautiful works of the Almighty, draw your dainty skirts aside from the contamination of suffering humanity, cover your ears against the cries of those little children whose mother is dying. Dance with your friends, laugh your life away; live for yourself—yourself! My God! What kind of a thing are you? Do you call yourself a woman?"
He did not wait to see what effect his words would have upon her. He rushed across the door sill, and the door, which he drew behind him, was slammed by the wind as from the force of a blow.
For a moment she stood watching the door, lips parted, eyes opened wide in horror. It seemed as if the blood pulsing in her throat would choke her; or was it the wild hammering of her heart?
She looked around Mother Cary's little room as if she had never seen it before. Was the whole world different, or was it only herself? Was she still dreaming, or was she awake? Had he come at all, had he called her, had he—had he thrown his bitter scorn at her——?
Was that the wind? Her hand rose from her heart to her white cheek. Was that the voice of the storm, or the voice of children, children—calling—crying for——
From her frozen horror she sprang to life. She ran to the room where Tim and Yetta were. Yetta was sitting up in bed, wide-eyed.
"What went off?" she demanded, excitedly.
Rosamund was already getting into her rain-coat. "Doctor Ogilvie has been here, Yetta, and I have got to help him. Mrs. Allen is sick, and I have got to go."
Yetta interrupted. "Was that him slammed the door? Gee! He must a been mad about somethin'!"
But Rosamund would not be interrupted. "Hush, Yetta! Listen to me! I have got to go to Mrs. Allen's. Do you hear?"
"My land! If you was to meet one o' the goberlins or one o' them fellers with their heads under their arms, Miss Rose, you'd drop down dead with fright!"
Rosamond remembered the absurdity of it afterwards, but there was no time to laugh. "Yetta! Oh, hush! Listen to me! You will not be afraid, here with Timmy, will you?"
"Land! No! I ain't afraid of anything when a door's between me an' it!"
"Father Cary will be up the mountain early!" She turned in the door of the bed-room to look back at the two her care had made comfortable; then she closed it, and went out of the other door into the storm.
She never forgot that night. When the door of Mother Cary's house closed behind her, and she faced the wind and blinding rain, she awoke. That was the way she always thought of it—as an awakening.
The Allen house lay beyond Father Cary's pasture; she knew the way by day—down through the garden, then through the woods to the rock-ribbed clearing where the cattle were, then up, into woods again; but in the dark it was for her but a wild, instinctive rush, a stumbling over rock-broken ground, a splashing through pools of water; on through the darkness, on from one darkness to another, turning from time to time to look back at Mother Cary's light as a guide to direction. Yet on she flew, impelled by a conquering fear that drove out all lesser fears, over rough places, through woods, up the ascent of hills, running as much of the way as she could, bending against the wind that seemed trying to force her back, praying that she might find the way, praying that she might be in time.
At last, though she could never tell how she had come to it, a light gleamed faintly through the dark and the rain. At last—the Allen house! She tumbled to the door, paused a moment for breath, and opened it.
It was the usual one-room cabin of the mountaineer; there were strange, shelf-like beds against the farthest wall, and in a corner a wooden bedstead. It was from there that John Ogilvie looked up as she opened the door.
"Quick! That largest bottle—saturate something—anything—and hold it over her face!"
She worked with him, obeying blindly, while he struggled through the night for a woman's life, while the poor hungry baby awoke at intervals to wail its complaint from the other bed, while the storm shook the house and the rain swept down unceasingly. Once he bade her get more light. There were no more lamps; she knelt down on the hearth to blow into the flame the scraps she had gathered up in her bare hands from the wood-box; those lighted, and lacking more, somehow she broke the box itself—a task ordinarily as far beyond her strength as her imagination. It was by the light of that blaze that he finished his work, leaving Rosamund free to do what she could for the baby.
But, when at last there was time for speech, neither found anything to say. He remembered too well the brutal words he had thrown at her a few hours before; he could not but fear that her silence meant that she, too, was recalling them. He saw her there beside the hearth, the baby on her knees; but he saw her also in the doorway, her hair wind-blown and wet, and her eyes wide with fear and dread, determination and hope. He could have grovelled at her feet, had not her silence held him back; but speak he could not; great emotion was always to leave him inarticulate.
But as for Rosamund, she was unaware of his silence or her own. She was like a woman after her travail, who is content to lie in silence, because the purpose of the world has been revealed to her. Life—that was it—to further life, to prolong it, to minister to it! How futile was all else! How valueless were the things she had been taught to value most! Her shielded ignorance, her—her refinement—of what use were they, when they could not face such an emergency as last night's? Her money, that could have bought a hospital—what had it bought last night, when only the service of her own two hands could help to save a woman's life? The pursuits of her kind—she smiled, remembering Ogilvie's orderly haste, as unerringly he cut, and tied and sewed, while she as unfalteringly watched him, even assisted. No! For her there was nothing to say; she knew now what life was for. It was not the empty, useless existence she had known. It had a deeper meaning, a purpose worthier its Maker. It was wonderful beyond words. She had nothing to say.
Neither of them was aware that the dawn had come, until someone knocked on the door. Then Ogilvie opened it to Father Cary, and to the grayness of a still driving rain.
The stalwart old man stepped inside and looked about the cabin, at the quietly breathing woman on the bed, at Ogilvie, at Rosamund beside the fire trying to persuade the baby to take something warm from a spoon.
"So!" he said. "And where's Jim Allen?"
Ogilvie threw up both his hands, hopelessly. "Where he always is—back in the woods at one of the stills, dead drunk, like as not."
"More'n likely," Father Cary acquiesced. Then, nodding towards the bed, he asked, "What's the matter withher?"
"Nothing now. She would have been dead, though, if I had operated half an hour later. Lord knows how long she's been lying there. The baby's nearly dead, too—half-starved and half-poisoned by his mother's illness."
"How'd you happen to come?" the old man asked.
"The oldest boy came for me—all the way over to the Summit, and he's not six. He's at my house in bed now."
Then Father Cary crossed the room, and stood beside Rosamund, looking down at her. She met his look with a quiet smile.
"New work for you, ain't it?" he asked. "Ma Cary'll be real proud o' ye!"
And answering the question in her eyes, he went on, "Oh, she'll be home again in time to get dinner. Wasn't nothin' the matter with the baby; but Nancy's that nervous, an' so's Ma Cary." He chuckled. "I reckon it takes some experience and a right smart o' ca'm to be a real successful granny."
The doctor was becoming impatient. "Will you stay here with Miss Randall, Cary? I must get someone to come; she"—nodding towards the bed—"will need watching until we can find Allen."
So for an hour or so Pa Cary sat opposite Rosamund or busied himself preparing for breakfast the little food to be found in the house. The other children awoke, tumbling down backwards from the high box-bed, looking across at their mother with scared faces, and distrustfully at Rosamund.
At last Ogilvie returned, bringing Grace Tobet with him, and Rosamund was free to go home with Father Cary.
But there must first be the inevitable moment when she and Ogilvie should stand face to face. It happened simply enough. Grace had taken Rosamund's place beside the fire, replenished now through Father Cary's efforts in the outer shed; the old man had gone out for a last armful of wood, and Rosamund was about to take down her coat from its nail on the door.
Then, somehow, Ogilvie was standing before her. He looked at her with trembling lips; he did not dare to trust himself to speak. He could only hold out his hands.
She turned her tired face up to him, looking, searchingly, it seemed, into his eyes. Then, smiling, she laid her hands for the breath of a moment in his, and with a little gasp reached for her coat and ran out to join Father Cary.
She was glad that Eleanor's departure, and the rain, kept them apart for a few days after that. She dreaded the restraint that she thought they both must feel when they should meet; but, when the meeting came at last, there was no embarrassment at all.
Father Cary had left her at the Summit and she meant to walk back to the house on the mountain, to make the most of the first clear day after the rain. There was a little brown house, set on the brow of the hill overlooking the valley, almost opposite the mountain whence Mother Cary's light shone every night. Rosamund had often noticed the little place, and to-day, at the store, she had heard the men talking about it. The man who owned it had come from the city a year or so before, with his wife, to be near Doctor Ogilvie. They were young, and the young do not see very far ahead. It had seemed to them in their distress that they would have to stay there forever; they had done many things to the little house, and put into it many of the comforts they had been used to. Now the man was well, and they were going back to the city.
"Want to sell out," the postmaster had told her. "Humph! Wouldn't mind sellin' out myself! Like to know who's going to buy prop'ty up here, this time o' year!"
So, as she approached the little house on her way home, Rosamund was busily thinking about it. Perhaps, subconsciously, the idea had been a long time growing in her mind; but when she turned the last bend in the road that hid the house from her view, a plan seemed to burst upon her with all the novelty of a revelation. She stood still, looking first at the house, then across the valley towards the place which had sheltered her all summer. She was not aware that a vehicle drawn by a familiar white horse was just turning out of a wood-road into the highway, scarcely ten yards behind her.
But Ogilvie, in the sudden gladness of thus unexpectedly coming upon her, called out.
"Oh, good luck! Let me give you a lift, won't you?"
The embarrassment that she had been dreading was not there! They were as simply glad to see each other as two children; laughing, she took the place beside him in the buggy.
He had never looked more cheerful. "So I caught you staring into the Marvens' windows!" he accused her.
She laughed again. "I am tempted to buy that little house," she told him.
"Why don't you?" he asked, lightly. "And go there to live, and take Timmy and Yetta with you!" He smiled down at her, indulgently, as at the fancies of a child.
"That was just precisely what I was thinking of doing," she replied. "We could be perfectly comfortable there during the winter. I don't want to go back to town one bit!"
"So you could," he agreed, still in his bantering tone. "And I wouldn't stop with Tim and Yetta. I'd take in a few more. You might borrow some little Allens, or get someone to lend you an orphan asylum."
Rosamund put her head back and laughed aloud, merrily. "But I am perfectly in earnest!" she cried; and was, from that moment.
But if the doctor refused to take the idea seriously, it was quite otherwise with Mother Cary. When Rosamund disclosed to her the half-formed plan—she had come to discuss nearly everything with that fount of human wisdom—the dear soul did not seem surprised at all, but at once made a thoroughly feminine mental leap into the very middle of arrangements.
"Why, of course, dearie, it will be just splendid! And you won't need so very many furnishin's. There's some cheers up in our loft you might take, and you can have things up from the city. Yetta's learned a good deal this summer. I can bake for you for a while, till the child gets more used to the work, and I reckon you can manage the rest of it betwixt you."
"Do you suppose," Rosamund asked, "that Grace Tobet would come, too?"
Mother Cary sat down in her little low rocking chair, and laid her crutch on the brick floor of the front walk, always a sign of her settling down for a real talk. Things had been going worse and worse with the Tobets; Rosamund and Yetta went down almost daily, but beyond their friendly visits there seemed little they could do. The Government's suspicions were centering on Joe, the big, born leader of rough elements, and on his band of four or five other men, who would follow him to death or worse. Jim Allen was one; but now, repentant and sobered by the baby's death, he was at home nursing his wife. Grace had sped through the woods in the night to warn Joe and his followers more than once; yet even to Ogilvie she denied any knowledge of Joe's business.
"It's squirrels he's after," she said, "and sometimes drink; all this talk of moonshine's jest foolishness. I'd know it ef 'twas so. It ain't so!"
"Well, Mrs. Tobet," the doctor replied, "your squirrel stew would not be to my liking! Better keep the lid on the pot while it's cooking!"
He saw too many evidences of the moonshine's work to believe her; but he had seen Joe Tobet come home, and he honored Grace, too familiar with human nature to marvel at her faithfulness. Mother Cary alone knew all that Grace Tobet knew; all secrets were safe in her kind old heart, and even from Pap she hid this one, for Father Cary was not one of those who hold councils of compromise with the Evil One. Therefore, when Rosamund suggested Grace Tobet, Mother Cary sat down to think it out.
After a few minutes' silent pondering, she said, "Honey, I've never been one to advise the partin' of husband and wife! Howsomever, if there's any good left in Joe Tobet, it may be the surest way o' bringin' him back to straight ways o' livin', ef we can coax Grace to leave him for a while."
"I'm afraid I can't give a thought to Joe's salvation," Rosamund declared. "But Grace—oh, she's too fine to be left there! I should like to give her one winter of comfort!"
"Well, you haven't got a holt of her yet," Mother Cary reminded her, "an' it wouldn't be but half comfort for her, the outside half, anyways, away from her man. But I can't see what anybody could do better than to keep little Tim and Yetta up here out o' harm's way, and maybe save Grace Tobet an' Joe, too. Land's sake, dearie, you must be quite well off!"
It seemed to come to Mother Cary suddenly, and was the first spark of curiosity Rosamund had ever known her to show. Until now her wisdom had seemed all-embracing; but that a young woman, that Rosamund, who had lived so quietly in her house all summer, could carry out a suddenly formed plan of buying a house and sheltering three people—this was evidently quite outside of her experience. She looked up with unwonted surprise in her face. Rosamund bent and kissed the wrinkled pink cheek.
"Dear, dear Mother Cary," she said, "I am so well off that I could probably buy every house at the Summit, and build as many more! I am so well off that I have never in all my life, until this summer, had a chance to find out how well off I am! I am so well off that I did not know how poor I have been, nor how much people can need the wretched mere money, nor how very, very little it can really do! I have only begun to find out what life is made of, and so I'm not well off at all!"
Tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and she turned her head away; but Mother Cary's hand was stretched towards her, instantly. Presently she said, in the low tone which was the tenderest and sweetest of all:
"Dearie child, when the young folks come an' tell me things like you're tellin' me now, I reckon there ain't anybody in the world as well off as me! An' I'll tell you jest what it is makes you do it—it's because I'm so happy! An' I'll tell you jest what makes me so happy. I let Pap take keer o' me, an' I try to take keer o' him an' jest as many other folks as I can! That's the whole of it!" After a pause she added, "You're goin' to do jest the same as me, both in keering for someone, an' in bein' took keer of!"
Rosamund's eyes opened wide; she paled a little and pressed her hand against her trembling lips. "I don't know," she whispered. "I'm afraid! Oh, I'm afraid!"
Mother Cary patted the hand she held, and knew too much to speak. Their thoughts, in the silence, wandered far; came back and dwelt upon the things that were, the things to be; there is no way of knowing whether they went hand in hand, but after a while Mother Cary said:
"Dearie, I wouldn't tell him, if I was you, about—about all you have, the money an'—you know!—I wouldn't tell the doctor yet a while!"
Rosamund drew her breath sharply, and her face flamed; she was too startled to answer, but in a moment she left her place on the bench and knelt beside the old woman, hiding her face on the knees where so many had found comfort. Mother Cary smoothed her hair, and after a while began to talk, almost as if to herself.
"There's a friend o' mine sometimes spends her summers up around here; she's married to a eye doctor—that's how come Yetta got sent up here to me. Her husband knew Doctor Ogilvie down in the city. She told me there never was one they thought more of, down there; they said he found out more about nerves than anybody else in the world, and he used to work day and night and in between times, trying to discover more. They said there never was such a one with little child'en; he could almost make 'em over new, seemed like. They said he never cared whether folks could pay him or not for what he did—all he cared for was the curin' of 'em. I can well believe it, too, for many's the time I see him almost starved without knowin' what's the matter with him, and he ain't a mite particler about his clo'es. Well, he worked an' he worked; and one day my friend's husband, that was one o' his friends, went into his little room where he kept his bottles and things, and found him layin' on the floor. They thought he surely would die, but praise the Lord, that wasn't to be; only, he had to give up his work down in the big horspital. I often think on what that must 'a' been to him. I reckon it must 'a' been worse than it would be for Pap to give up a raisin' them white hogs o' his he's so proud of. Anyway, he come up here, an' he got well! And now he says he hasn't got time to go back there again—there's too much for him to do up here all the time. So he jest rides around the country with that Rosy horse. Somebody asked him once why he didn't buy an automobile. He said for one thing he hadn't the money for it; and for another, he needed White Rosy to remind him where he was going!"
Mother Cary stopped to laugh; Rosamund raised her head, with an answering smile that was half tears.
"Land sakes," Mother Cary went on, "I do believe if it wasn't for Rosy he'd sometimes forget to come home! When they get to one o' the houses where he visits, Rosy stops and turns her head around; ef he don't say anything to her, there she stands; but if he tells her he don't have to get out there that day, Rosy jogs along to the next place! I'm real fond o' humans, but sometimes I do wish't they all knew as much as the doctor's Rosy!"
This time Rosamund joined in the laugh. But the old woman had more to tell. "Time was when I might 'a' wondered how come he stays on here, him bein' the great doctor he is; but I'm so old now that I know too much to wonder about anything any more! There's folks in this world that never can find any work to do, and there's folks that makes work for themselves, and then again there's folks that are so busy with the work right at hand that they never get time to find out whether they're workin' or not. That's Doctor Ogilvie's kind. He's so busy workin' up here in the mountings, that he never stops to think about whether he is doing the work he likes best or not; it's just work he has to do, because it's here to be done, and that's all there is to it for him. He works so hard at it, inside his own head, that he forgets most everything else. Land, I remember the time he sat up with me all night long, workin' over Milly Grate's baby that had the membranious croup—dipthery, he called it. Come mornin', an' he told Milly the baby'd get well, he suddenly went out and sat right down on the doorstep; come to find out, he'd brought two babies into the world the day before and driven twenty-two miles and walked about a dozen—and forgotten to take a bite to eat! Another time, somebody sent a little boy over the mounting for him in a hurry; he was at a house where a man had broke his leg, and White Rosy was waitin' for him at the gate; but when he heard how bad off the little girl was he'd been sent for, didn't he jest set out and run all the way there, forgettin' that there was such a thing as a wagon to ride in, and White Rosy still a waitin'!
"And he boards with the Widder Speers, where it ain't likely she can make him very comfortable, she bein' well past eighty; but he found out soon after he come up here that she would have to be moved to—the place where nobody likes to go!—she not having any support; so he boards there, an' she doesn't have to leave her home, that her husband built for her when they was married, and where her only son died. You might hunt the world over, honey-bird, without findin' any better man than Doctor Ogilvie! But, somehow or other, ef I was you, I wouldn't let on to him that I had as much money as you say you have. Money's a dreadful stumblin'-block to some people! And you never can tell which way men folks'll jump!"
It had been long since Rosamund, trained in self-control as she had been, was so keenly aware of intense embarrassment. Her first impulse was to feel affront at Mother Cary's taking so much for granted in her relations with the doctor; but no one could really be angry with Mother Cary. She was abashed that the old woman had divined more than she herself had been aware of; and then there arose the doubt that she had so often felt of the doctor's personal interest in herself or her affairs. She yielded to the maiden's inevitable longing for reassurance.
"What makes you think," she whispered, her cheek against Mother Cary's hand, "what makes you think that he—would be—interested?"
"Darlin'!" Mother Cary cried, "John Ogilvie thinks a heap o' you—but he ain't got hardly a suspicion of it yet—any more than you know how much you're goin' to care for him!"
Then, with the usual coincidence, the object of their talk came into view, driving White Rosy toward the little green gate, Yetta on one side of him and Tim on the other; they waved to the two in front of the house, but Rosamund sprang to her feet and fled indoors.
Rosamund awoke the next morning with her mind joyously full of her new plans; but it was little Tim who suggested that which crowned them. Tim was always the first member of the household, after Father Cary, to go out of doors in the mornings; to-day he brought back a tight handful of stemless blossoms to present to Rosamund. Dewy and rosy-cheeked, he had never before appeared as much the baby as on this morning, standing in front of her with his feet apart, holding up his floral offering.
"It was all ve pretty flowers 'at was awake," he announced. "Here—I 'ikes you!"
"Land! I hope he ain't been in my geraniums!" said Mother Cary, from the stove; but Rosamund grasped the chubby hand, with its blossoms, and kissed it.
"They are beautiful, Tim! I 'ike you, too! And Tim, how would you like to live with me all the time?"
He stared at her for a moment. "Oh! O-o-oh! Is you gonin' to 'dopt me?"
Mother Cary, with an exclamation, turned quickly to watch the two; Rosamund met her eyes over the boy's head. Her plan was coming to birth.
"Do you want me to, Tim?" she asked.
The child's lips began to quiver. Then he dumped himself down upon the floor, and howled. "Want my White Lady!" he cried. "Want to 'dopt my White Lady!"
Swiftly he was lifted in Rosamund's arms. "Good for you, Tim! Good for you, old man! I'm glad you know your own mind!" she cried.
She gathered him up, threw herself into a big rocking chair, set him astride on her knees and rocked him wildly back and forth, down until his curls nearly touched the floor, then up again, up in a bubble of laughter and kisses, Timmy forgetting his tears to shout with glee, down and up again, down and up, the child screaming with joy. Father Cary and Yetta coming in from the barn to breakfast, stood in the doorway laughing, Yetta wondering a little at Miss Rose's unwonted exuberance. Mother Cary had already taken her place at the table, and was laughing in sympathy with them.
When Rosamund stopped, breathless, with aching arms, Tim still demanded "More! More! do it 'den!"
"Land's sakes, honey-bird, what ails ye?" Mother Cary cried. "I never suspected youcouldbe so lively!"
For reply Rosamund looked at Yetta. "When Tim adopts the 'White Lady,' and I go to live with them, will you come, too, Yetta?" she asked.
"Is that a conundrum? I ain't much good at riddles!" Yetta declared.
Rosamund laughed; she would have laughed at anything to-day. "Not a riddle—an answer, Yetta! You and Timmy, Mrs. Reeves and I, are all going to live together in the brown house at the Summit! What do you think of that?"
"Sho', now! That's the very ticket!" said Mother Cary. "How come you didn't think o' Mis' Reeves yesterday, lamb? But—ain't she held by that Mis' Hetherbee?"
"Yes, she is; but I think we can persuade Mrs. Hetherbee to let her come."
"Gee! I'd be glad to get away from that old one, if 'twas me!" said Yetta, in an aside which the others thought best to ignore.
"Pap," said Mother Cary, "if so be you'll put the harness on Ben, Miss Rose and me'll drive over an' begin cleanin' the house this mornin'!"
The old man put down his knife and fork, looked from his wife to Miss Randall, and back again. "It do beat all how you women-folks jump into the middle o' things the minute you get started," he said. "The house ain't even empty yet!"
"Land, I forgot all about them Marvens," said Mother Cary. "No matter! It gives us all the more time to get good an' ready, honey-bird!"
Rosamund very soon began to realize that she needed time. First of all, she sent for her man of business, an excellent person who lacked imagination, and was later found to disapprove of purchases of little brown houses or of anything else that could never bring interest or increase in value. But his disapproval of that investment was as nothing to the objections he made to another. It was not until Rosamund reminded him that her twenty-fifth birthday had come and gone, releasing the Randall property from all trust and making it now her own, and declared that if he refused to obey her directions she would be obliged to ask someone else to look after her interests, that he reluctantly consented to it.
Then there was the delicate matter of bringing Eleanor to consent to her plans.
DARLING ELEANOR [she wrote]: I have decided that Timmy must be adopted. I make the announcement first of all, because I know that if I did not mention him at once, you would skip all the first part of my letter until you found his name, and only read on from there. And I have a proposition which needs to be presented right end foremost. So—Timmustbe adopted. He has his heart set upon it; and he has turned out to be such a darling little boy. He cannot be sent back to the Charities, to be looked over and refused by people who would not appreciate him, anyway. Doctor Ogilvie says that he must stay here another year, if he is to be made entirely well; but unless he has the best of care after that, and is made happy, he will not live to be the good and useful man we should like to see him. Doctor Ogilvie is a great believer in the curative powers of happiness; and you know he is a very good doctor. Well—I have already made over to Tim some money, to be held in trust for him until he is twenty-five. The entire interest is to be given, until said time, to the adopted parent of said Tim, according to said agreement, for the use and maintenance of said parent and said Tim, the entire amount to be paid over to him twenty-one years after the execution of the deed of trust. I do hope you are properly impressed by that legal phraseology, Eleanor darling. I put in all the 'saids' I could, just as the lawyers do. I want you to see what a fine and wonderful thing it is for Timmy, Timmy the waif, to be the subject of anything so impressive; and the sum of money I have given him will provide simple comfort for him and his parent-by-adoption; only, of course, I must be sure that his parent is a person whom I can trust to spend it as it should be spent, and so to bring up the boy that he will be worthy of his—let's call it his inheritance—when he finally receives it. So it has all been done subject to one condition. Unless that condition should be fulfilled, the child will have to go back to the Charities; I had a great discussion about it all with Mr. Leeds, my lawyer; and he only consented to draw up the paper subject to that condition. It is that—oh, Eleanor, don't say 'no'!—it is that you will adopt little Tim, let him fill that empty place in your heart, teach him to be a good man, and—I shall spoil it if I write another word, dear White Lady, sweet White Lady, White Lady that Timmy loves! See this blur, Eleanor—it is where he has pressed a kiss, to send to his White Lady. R.
To this Eleanor replied, "I have your letter. I must think." Rosamund tried to be satisfied with that for a while; but as the days passed and Eleanor wrote nothing more, and as Cecilia must be persuaded and her trustees interviewed, she sent her sister a night letter, begging her to join her in New York immediately. She told Ogilvie and the others that she was going to buy furniture for the house, which was true enough.
There was that in the interview with the lawyers that put Cecilia into a most complaisant state of mind; when she thought of Rosamund's having put the greater part of the Randall income at her disposal she could not find it in her heart to show disapproval of anything else that Rosamund might choose to do. The only protest she made was at the gift to the little waif.
"Pure Quixotism, my dear, never gains you a thing. It is the most utter madness I ever heard of."
"Well, it will gain Timmy something, and Eleanor something; and you know very well, Cecilia, that I shall never miss it."
"We won't discuss it," Cecilia said, "but I am sure that not even Colonel Randall would have done anything so wildly impulsive."
Rosamund could find very little to say to that; she knew well enough that nothing but her faith in Eleanor could make it seem anything but a hazardous experiment. Mother Cary had seen nothing but good in the plan, but here in New York idealism seemed out of place; what had appeared fine there looked foolish here. She was beginning to doubt the excellence of her plan, when word came from Eleanor that Mrs. Hetherbee was back in town. Rosamund called at once, presenting Cecilia's cards with her own, as the first move in the little social campaign that she foresaw. Eleanor, in her white gown, looked strangely out of place in Mrs. Hetherbee's florid apartment that overlooked the Hudson, and had every splendor known to apartments, even to an up-and-down-stairs of its own.
Eleanor kissed her, then held her off for a long look.
"Rose, Rose! How can you tempt me so?" she cried. "It is only a scheme for giving the money to me!"
"Eleanor, tell me the truth. Did you and Tim fall in love with each other at first sight, or not?"
"Ah! Little Tim!"
"Precisely! Little Tim! Would you deprive him of such an opportunity as this?"
"Oh, you would never take the money away from him, Rose—now?"
"But it is not his, yet! It never can be, unless you will take him for your son—for your own little boy, Eleanor! Think of it!"
"I do think of it! I haven't thought of anything else."
"Except, my dear, that you, too, will benefit by the plan! So you are trying to refuse. Don't be selfish, Eleanor!"
"Selfish? To deny myself what I want most in the world?"
"You and Tim seem to know your own minds! When I asked him ifIshould adopt him, he plumped down on the floor and yelled for his White Lady."
"Rose! Don't make it so hard!"
"It is you who are making it hard! I have grown very fond of Timmy, and I should hate, just hate to see him go back to the Charities. Think of the poor mite being scrubbed up and dressed in a clean striped gingham, and brought out to be inspected by possible adopters! Think how he will feel when they say, 'Oh, I don't think we want a little boy with hip disease!' or 'Haven't you any—er—prettier children?'
"Oh, Rose!" Eleanor put her hands over her eyes, while Rosamund drew her down to one of Mrs. Hetherbee's Louis Quinze settees.
"Eleanor," she said, seriously, "let us admit, if you want to, that I am giving the money to you. Of course it will be practically your own until you have had Tim twenty-one years. I have such faith in what you will do with him that I give the whole amount to Tim, outright, after then. I have such faith in the son he will be to you, that I am willing to let him have the joy of taking care of his mother after that time. Do you suppose I would give him money, if he were going to a stranger? Cecilia calls me Quixotic, but I assure you I am not as far gone as all that." Eleanor was weakening. "It is a great deal of money, Rosamund," she said.
"Oh, if that's all that's troubling you! It does not seem much to me. Besides, I owe the world something!"
"Ah!" Eleanor put her hand to the girl's cheek, turning her face until she could look into her eyes. "Rose, what else has the summer taught you?"
Rosamund's eyes widened a little. "We have no time to talk of that now while Timmy is waiting for his mother!"
"His mother! Oh, how you tempt me, Rose!"
"Listen, Eleanor! I have bought that little house at the Summit that the Marvens lived in. Mr. Marven is cured, and they have gone back to the city. I am going to live in it this winter, with you and Tim and Yetta; I have already sent down to Augusta for my old Mammy Susan and her husband, Matt, to meet me there two weeks from now. The Charities will not let you or me or anyone else adopt Timmy without a year's probation first. Come with me for this winter, and see how we all feel about it when the year is out. Come as my housekeeper. Put away your selfish pride, White Lady—and let your salary be what Timmy's interest would be if you had already adopted him. A year will help us all to wisdom perhaps."
Eleanor, with head bent, and hands clasped in her lap, thought for a long moment.
"I am asking you to take too much responsibility upon yourself, I suppose!" Rosamund said at last, slyly watching her friend. Eleanor turned at once, swift to deny.
"How can you insinuate such a thing! Are they open, at the Charities building, in the afternoon?"
Rosamund threw her arms about the White Lady's neck in a half-strangling embrace. "You darling! Yes, we will go there at once! I told them we'd be there this afternoon!"
"Rose!" Eleanor cried. "How could you?"
"Oh, I knew you could never in the world send Tim back to them!"
They forgot Mrs. Hetherbee until they had signed the provisional papers of adoption for the child, and were on their way uptown in Cecilia's new limousine, which she had loaned Rosamund for the afternoon. It was disconcerting to find that Mrs. Hetherbee had no intention of releasing Eleanor; but Cecilia allowed herself to be persuaded to join in the campaign. When at last Cecilia sent for a society reporter who had never before succeeded in penetrating to her, and gave out the interesting item that she was to dine,en famille, with Mrs. Hetherbee on the twenty-second, the little lady capitulated, even adding her blessing.
To Cecilia, admiration was an incense always acceptable; Mrs. Hetherbee amused her, and one had to do something to amuse one's self. There was nothing exciting in Rosamund's shopping expeditions. The city might have been deserted, so few of their own friends were in town. Some lingered at their country places, others were in Lenox for the hunting, or still abroad. The effect of New York's social emptiness was to draw more closely together than was possible during the busier season the comparative few who for one reason or another were in town. There was more time for lunching together and going afterwards for a spin toward the Westchester hills or over to one of the Long Island golf courses; and for one of the week-ends, which were torrid with the humidity of late September, they stood out to sea aboard one of the steam yachts that were beginning to bring their owners back to the North River. Sometimes a longing for her mountains would sweep so strongly over Rosamund that she would have a sense of unreality, as if she were in a strange land, among strange people, instead of having just returned to the familiar noise and glitter of New York.
One morning, when they had been shopping about for things that refused to be discovered, and clothes which should be simple enough for the brown house, and Cecilia had refused to go farther until she had had something to eat, they went to their favorite lunching place, now curiously deserted except by people who seemed to have come from another world, who spoke in strange accents and stared about them as if still under the spell of the man with the megaphone. In a corner of the overdecorated room near a window which was still shielded by awning and window boxes from the Avenue's glare, Cecilia sank back, weary, and frankly out of sorts with everything.
"It is a most horrible time of year for shopping," she said, after she had ordered their luncheon with great precision. "There is not a thing left in the shops. I wonder what they do with the clothes that were left over? Does somebody wear them, or do they just throw them out, or what? Or is it because you are hunting for such queer things, Rosamund?"
Rosamund laughed. "But they won't be queer in the mountains, Cecilia," she said.
"I am glad I shall not have to look at them," Mrs. Maxwell replied. "But if you are going to do the peculiar, I suppose you may as well be consistently peculiar all the way along. Only, don't expect me to like it, nor approve of it; and don't think I'm encouraging you in it. I am going about with you because someone has to; I think you are foolish,very, and I really doNOTbelieve even Colonel Randall would have approved of your going off like this!"
Hunger and fatigue had worn on poor Cecilia's nerves; but if she had dreamed of having any other audience than her sister, the scolding would have been subdued. Flood and Pendleton, finishing their luncheon in a distant corner, had seen the two and made their ways towards them. The sharpness of Cecilia's tone seemed to amuse Marshall.
"Dear me, Cecilia," he said, so close behind her that she fairly jumped, while Rosamund smiled, "what's going off?"
Cecilia's eyes looked dangerous, and Flood, laughing, came to the rescue. "Come off with us, won't you?" he asked, so genially that for the first time Rosamund felt some warmth of response to his smile. "We thought of running up Westchester way for the afternoon; won't you come with us?"
His lover's quick perception told him that Rosamund was not averse to the interruption of thetête-à-tête, and he looked at her rather than at Cecilia for response. "There's a bit of woods back of Pocantico that always reminds me of those Virginia places where the leaves remain pale green, and the sunlight comes through and touches the ferns; you know!"
His own eloquence rather abashed him; but Rosamund's tired face flushed; his words recalled to her the very scent of the woods; suddenly, there overlooking the Avenue, amid the vibrating undertone of noises, in the place of all others where the wealth of the metropolis and its cosmopolitanism that is unlike any other cosmopolitanism manifests itself most impressively, she was homesick for the mountains and her friends there. She could have cried out with longing; and Flood's offer of a glimpse of woods was to her what the blossom is to the man in a hospital.
"Oh, yes!" she said, leaning towards him with a little air of eagerness. "Oh, yes, do take us! I'd rather get out to the woods than do anything else in the world this afternoon!"
Flood's face reddened deeply with the satisfaction of having scored at last. He and Pendleton drew up chairs and chatted while the two women disposed of their skillfully combined luncheons.
"I say, Flood, make her promise not to desert us again," cried Pendleton.
"It is rather brave of you, Marshall, to talk about desertions!" Cecilia remarked.
Pendleton grinned. "I haven't deserted you, Cecilia," he said. "I retreated! You know I'm afraid of you, Cecilia, when you're in a temper."
Flood was beginning to look distressed, but Rosamund smiled at him. "Let them squabble, Mr. Flood! I want to tell you about Timmy!"
Flood's look brightened. "Ah! The little chap we bumped into! Yes! And do tell me about Ogilvie. Didn't you find him a good fellow?"
She told him of her plans for the child and for her winter; Flood listened, saying little. It put him to shame that she should be doing everything for the two waifs, but her doing so only set her on a higher throne in the heaven of his longing. So intent was he on listening to every word, catching every intonation, watching every fleeting expression, that he was unaware of her not answering his question about Ogilvie.
At last Flood was driving his own car northward out of the city. A hope that fortune would continue further to smile upon him had prompted his asking a third man, who came up to speak to them, to join their party, so that he could release his chauffeur for the afternoon; and it was either an undefined wish to be rid of Cecilia for a few hours, or else a latent sense of gratitude, which prompted Rosamund to take her place beside him, smiling divinely—or so he fondly thought—at him, and roguishly at Cecilia and her attendant swains. Cecilia thoroughly enjoyed having two men to herself, especially as Marshall had been none too faithful since their parting in Virginia, and the situation offered an opportunity for discipline. The third man was benignly unaware of complications, and Rosamund openly laughed at Pendleton's expression of disgust.
They had passed out of the place side by side, while Flood went ahead to see to the car. "What's the matter with its little nose?" Rosamund laughed at Pendleton. "All out of joint?"
"You are perfectly disgusting, Rosamund," he replied in a most matter-of-fact tone, quite as if he were saying the sun was warm or the car was there. "Your manners have become contaminated, and your complexion has suffered, and you are a most disagreeable person. I hope you'll be stout before you are thirty! There!"
Rosamund's laugh was so frankly merry that Cecilia turned on a quick impulse of repression. Rosamund ought to know better than to laugh aloud in the door of a restaurant! But Flood was beside them, the other man might misunderstand a sisterly admonition, and Pendleton's raised eyebrows of disgust quite satisfied her. She allowed herself to be helped into the tonneau, happy in her own situation.
Flood knew better than to attempt small talk; he divined that he could better make himself felt by saying nothing than by saying the wrong thing. They passed swiftly northward out of the city, following upland roads that gave enchanting glimpses of the river and of nearer gardens; after an hour or so he brought his car to slow speed. They were beyond Sleepy Hollow, in woods of new growth, ferny depths, scarcely touched by sunlight, roadsides where pale asters set themselves like stars.
"Isn't it like Virginia?" Flood asked.
Rosamund only nodded; but presently she almost whispered, "I love it! Oh, I love it!"
"You are really going to spend the winter there?" Flood asked.
"Yes," she told him. "It somehow seems like home to me."