Rosamund was afraid to break the thread of the story by a question, and the old woman mused a while before she went on.
"I reckon there's a door o' distrust that most of us have to open and pass through an' shet fast behind us, before we get to the place where's only content, an' love, an' trust. It ain't confined to jest a few; 'pears to me most everybody has to go through it."
Again she paused, while the girl waited.
"When your time comes, honey—an' I hope it will come, 'cause you can't rightly feel the glory tell you know the shadder—when your time comes to feel distrust, or have it felt against you, jest you do as your Ma Cary tells you! You take a firm holt o' your heart and your thoughts, an' don't you let 'em turn all topsy-turvy! You jest take a firm holt on 'em an' wait. WAIT! Don't run away, like I did; 'cause they ain't any more Pap Carys in the world! It ain't everybody you'd find ahead of you at the station, waitin'. You jest remember that it ain't but a door, even though the doorsill does seem dretful wide. It'll shet behind you, when the right time comes, an' you'll find yo'self a-standin' in the land o' content. That's the best dwellin'-place there is, I'm a-tellin' you!"
Rosamund had not been alone with John Ogilvie since the afternoon, three weeks earlier, when Flood's automobile interrupted them; but during the interval she was conscious of an uplift of the soul, a new serenity.
One of the great memories of her life was of an hour of her childhood when for the first time a revelation of something beyond her childish world was vouchsafed to her. She had been awakened at night by a touch of light upon her face; the full moon shone through her window, and its rays had called her from sleep. In her little bare feet she slipped from bed and went toward the casement, drawn by the moon-magic to look upon the beauty her early bedtime had left undiscovered. Great dark masses of cloud floated across the face of the golden disc, black on the side that hung over the shadowy fields and woods, but shining with a marvelous radiance where the moonlight touched them from above.
The child had watched them floating, forming, massing, until they had passed away to the horizon, and left the moon, a floating ship of light, far, far up in the sky, dimming the brilliance of the stars. She had crept back to her little bed with a new sense of things hitherto undreamed of in her childish imaginings, yet never again to be entirely lost—a sense of majesty, of order and immutability, of strange beauty, and of the Greatness that kept watch while she, a little child, safely slumbered.
The hour left its mark upon her entire life; and now once more such an impression of security, of beauty, and perhaps of destiny had been laid upon her in the moment when she had faced his soul through John Ogilvie's eyes.
There was no need to hasten further revelation. Indeed, she did not wish for it. She was more than content to rest for a while in the calm of unspoken assurance. It was enough, as much as the hours would hold, until they could grow used to it and expand to the greater glory that was to come.
Ogilvie, too, had something of the same sense of uplift. He, too, had had his revelation. But, man-like, he would have grasped at once at something more definite, more dear, if he had not, with a lover's keenness of intuition, seen that Rosamund was satisfied to wait. He had no fear, no misconception; he felt, rather, a reverence which forbade his hastening her toward the avowal which would bring the surrender he so ardently desired. The same force of love which made him long for it, made him also too tender to urge it. His coming to the brown cottage every day was too much a matter of custom to be remarked upon. There were Eleanor and Grace, Yetta and Timmy to talk to, as well as Rosamund; and he fell into the way of arriving in time for the mid-day dinner, just as Tim fell into the way of waiting for him with the announcement of what good things Aunt Susan was going to give them to eat. Rosamund teased Ogilvie about it a little, but Eleanor, the ostensible hostess, remembered the ancient person with whom he lived, took pity on him, and kept him as often as she could. Indeed, Eleanor, like Mother Cary, regarded him as an overgrown boy, very much in need of maternal attentions; if she suspected the state of affairs between him and Rosamund, she tactfully gave no sign of it. So Ogilvie came and went as naturally as if he were a member of the household, and his daily sight of Rosamund lent him patience.
But always he was on the watch for signs of the distrust that still muttered against "the stranger woman." Grace's taking refuge in the brown house had affected the mountaineers in two ways. One faction—for so strongly did each side feel that there were, indeed, definite factions—held that Rosamund had only offered her the shelter which any woman would have given to another in such sore need, and declared that all of Grace's friends were bound to Rosamund by the obligation of gratitude. The other faction, and perhaps the larger, held that if Grace had not actually betrayed her husband to the authorities, she had run away from him and so failed in her duty of hiding him, and that Rosamund shared her guilt, if, indeed, she was not directly responsible for it. Mother Cary, whom all adored, came in for a share of blame, for being friends with the guilty ones, and even the doctor, though he was known to be faithfully in sympathy with all his mountain patients, and though no one suspected his integrity toward them, found many faces turned away from him which had hitherto shown only confidence and affection.
That Rosamund was aware of the state of things he could only guess; she gallantly denied any uneasiness, although there were many evidences of the bad feeling against her. They were only trivial things, little annoyances, surly answers, eyes that would not see her; yet they told their story with unmistakable plainness.
It was while things were in this unsettled state that she was surprised by a second visit from Flood and Pendleton; not, this time, in the car, for the roads were impassable. They drove up in the only sleigh that was for hire at the Summit.
Pendleton had hardly got out of his great fur coat before he opened fire; he had evidently come primed.
"What's all this about arrests and moonshiners, Rosamund?" he demanded. "Cecilia's very uneasy. Had a letter from her day before yesterday, saying she'd come herself if she could do any good, and wouldn't I run up and look around a bit. So here we are, both of us, because Flood wouldn't be left behind!"
"That wasn't quite fair of Cecilia," Rosamund said, flushing angrily. Pendleton had promptly got on her nerves with the alacrity that only an old friend is capable of. "I thought I had made it plain that I mean to be let alone."
"Oh, please!" Flood, the peacemaker, besought them; and Rosamund had come to like his helpless "Oh, please!" so well that she smiled at him, though her eyes were still bright with anger.
"I say, Pendleton," he went on, "you're always trying to fight with Miss Randall." Pendleton only grinned at him. "Really, Miss Randall, we haven't come to interfere, not in the very least, I assure you! Mrs. Maxwell did write; but we wanted very much to see you. That is whyIcame, anyway!"
So far he dared venture, and at the very bathos of his distress Rosamund laughed, and peace reigned again. She told them of Tobet's arrest, and that his wife was now a member of her household. She declared that there remained no possible danger, with Joe out of the way.
Pendleton appealed to Eleanor; and Flood, too, gave her a questioning look. She could not hide her anxiety; but that she was not afraid to admit it gave Flood a feeling of security that he would have missed if she had shown herself, like Rosamund, inclined to deny the danger. For Flood believed that the newspaper accounts of trouble present and to come must be the smoke of some fire; yet he feared only a possible unpleasantness for Rosamund, rather than any actual danger.
Ogilvie came in while they were still discussing it. To-day there were no traces of tell-tale emotion to be hidden. He had seen the sleigh before the house, guessed who were within, and now showed himself unaffectedly glad to see Flood. Rosamund inwardly trembled lest Ogilvie should express himself on the subject of the mountaineers' suspicions; she could not know that a look, passed between himself and Flood, was enough to set Flood on the alert.
She talked feverishly while they were at dinner, and her heart sank when, afterwards, Pendleton announced that he was hit with an idea. He was standing at the window, taking in the white sweeps and stretches of snow, the black trunks of the leafless trees, the dark pyramids of the spruces, the more distant shadow of pines.
"Jove!" he cried. "Just look at those slopes for skiing and tobogganing! It's better than Davos!"
Then he turned from the window, his hands deep in his pockets, and stood in front of Rosamund, his head on one side, tipping backward and forward from heels to toes.
"I say, Rosy," he said, "the best way you can convince us, and poor dear Cecilia, that you are safe up here is to let us stay for a while and see for ourselves!"
Rosamund flushed; he was so wilfully provoking. "Marshall! How can you? You know very well I can't have two men in my house! Why do you want to make me appear so inhospitable?"
Flood, too, looked as if he would like to express himself forcibly. "Oh, I say, Pendleton——" he began.
But Ogilvie, apparently, saw something of good in the suggestion. "That's a capital idea, Mr. Pendleton," he said. "Stay up here a while, and see for yourselves. I'll be very glad to put you up, if Mrs. Reeves will invite us over to dinner once in a while! My landlady isn't much of a chef!"
Flood had turned to him quickly, with a keen look of questioning. "Could you really, old man?" he asked.
"Bully!" Pendleton cried, grinning at Rosamund. "Bet I can beat you in a snow fight, Rose!"
But Rosamund, biting her lip in dismay, would not look at him.
"I can snow-fight!" Tim announced. "I know how to make a snow man, too! My muvver showed me!"
It ended in their remaining ten gala days. Flood telegraphed for the implements of winter sports, and got them the next day. They opened them on the brow of the hill, and Pendleton, who took it upon himself to be master of ceremonies, "dared" Rosamund to lead off on the skis.
"What for is vey long sticks?" Tim asked. And when he saw Miss Rose walk off on them he shrieked, and hid his face in Eleanor's skirts.
The entire household had come to look on. Matt and Sue stood at the corner of the cottage, he leaning on a snow-shovel to keep him in countenance, Aunt Sue with one apron over her turbaned head and her hands rolled up in another. Grace, as white as the snow itself, sat bundled up in rugs on a sunny corner of the piazza; Ogilvie had seen to that.
Eleanor and Rosamund were in scarlet caps and long blanket coats. When Pendleton had fastened on her skis, Rosamund threw aside the coat, and stood, a figure of white against the vaster white, save for the red of her cap and the warm brightness of her hair and face.
She had known many Alpine winters, and was as much at home on skis and snowshoes as in a ball-room.
She turned away from the interested little group to look across the unbroken slope gleaming in sunlight that kissed it to a rosy glow in places, in others turned its frozen crystals to a myriad sparkling points of light. In the hollows and under the shadow of drifts and pines the snow looked blue. She knew where the fields lay, now under their blanket, patterned by fences in the summer. The road wound off to the left, then down, down——
It was only a step or two to the crest of the hill; the leap would be glorious! She turned a laughing glance over her shoulder; Eleanor, Ogilvie, Flood, were watching her intently.
"I dare you!" Pendleton cried again; and she was off, off in one splendid rush and leap, a leap that carried her out and down, far down.
Again Timmy shrieked, and Yetta fell on her knees. Eleanor's face flushed in admiration, and Pendleton called out,
"Good girl! Never knew you to take a dare!"
It was a phase of her new to the two men who loved her. Ogilvie had seen her in many situations, Flood in more; each believed that he knew the full excellence of her, yet, oddly enough, neither had thought of her as this wild, boyish, graceful creature of the out-of-doors. The sudden discovery of it came as a shock to both; for both were by nature men of the open, notwithstanding the fact of Flood's accumulated millions and Ogilvie's eminence in the laboratory. Now, in their surprise, they stood above, on the edge of the slope, and watched her, each thrilling, each showing his emotion in his own way.
Flood, in his surprise, had called out, then thrust one clenched fist into the other palm with a resounding smack; but in a moment his face took on its expressionless mask—expressionless save for the gleam from the half-closed eyes.
Ogilvie had made no sound; he stood perfectly still, with out-thrust under lip, the corners of his eyes wrinkling to a smile; his face wore something of the indulgent, restrained look of a mother when she sees an adored child perform some wonder, yet refrains from praise of that which is so intimately her own; his first move was to run his fingers through his hair.
The two stood there as if spellbound until Rosamund reached the valley and waved up to them. Then Flood and Ogilvie turned, and met each other's eyes. There was something of a shock; instantly each looked away again, with an unspoken feeling of apology, as if he had looked upon a disclosure that was not meant for him.
Neither analyzed what he had seen; until that moment neither had suspected that the thought of Rosamund might be living in the heart and desire of the other. Instantly each put the suspicion aside, as if it were an unworthy one; yet, through the hours that followed, it persisted in returning again and again. Each man acknowledged that if it were true of himself, it might well be true of his friend; but each tried to assure himself of its impossibility, even while admitting that, if it were true, there could have been nothing of unfairness on the part of the other.
From their first meeting on the mountain-top Flood and Ogilvie had intuitively liked each other. Through a knowledge of varied types of men, they had learned to look beneath the surface; each recognized in the other many qualities to respect. Men are by nature hero-worshipers, from the time that they look with covetous admiration on the policeman's brass buttons and the motorman's thrilling power, through the period when they worship the home league's star pitcher and third-base-man, the captain of their college foot-ball eleven, and on to their political enthusiasms. There is far more of pure hero-worship in the friendships of men than the world gives them credit for. Flood and Ogilvie had met on a mountain-top, and on a height their friendship was to remain. Each saw in the other "a splendid fellow"; neither would have admitted in his friend the least shadow of baseness. So, after the unforeseen disclosure of that look, each man felt generously on his honor to appear unaware of any possible feeling on the part of his friend toward Rosamund, even going so far, in his heart and hopes, as to deny that such might exist.
But while this ardent liking existed between Flood and Ogilvie, there was something far different between each of them and Pendleton.
Pendleton liked Flood. He liked him for the virile strength of his personality, as well as for his possessions; he knew him only in his hours of leisure, and might not have liked him so well, nor at all, if he had known him only when he was engrossed in business. But toward Ogilvie he could not disguise an antagonism which would have shown itself openly if he had been more courageous, and which as it was, appeared in countless small spitefulnesses.
To the man who does nothing there are no creatures less interesting than those whose every moment is taken up with affairs. Between the deliberate idler and the man of absorbing occupation there can be nothing in common; indeed, there often arises more or less antipathy. The business man is apt to retain a hearty disrespect for the idler; to him, the man of leisure must always appear an anomaly, an excrescence, a parasite of civilization. And even when the worker has developed toward the plane of the connoisseur, the collector, the lover of sports and arts, he seldom does more than tolerate the man who has begun where he finds himself only toward the end of an active career.
Yet Flood found Marshall amusing and likable enough. He was perfectly aware of Pendleton's qualities of the sycophant, the flatterer, the gatherer of crumbs from the rich man's table. He thought of them rather pityingly as a natural outgrowth of the life of that class in which Pendleton was so much at his ease, and regarded them leniently because he believed that there was also to be found in that class so much that was desirable, so much that he himself coveted. He was willing to accept its evil with its good, its defects with its excellence; if it had brought forth a Pendleton, it had also borne the perfect flower that was Rosamund.
But to Ogilvie Pendleton was altogether an abomination; he could see no good in him; his very palms itched to smite him!
They were fortunate in their weather. It seemed as if nature, satisfied with her latest marvel, were holding her breath. Every day of their ten was brilliantly clear and cold and windless. Their voices rang far across the white silence of valley and mountain in that hushed atmosphere. The frozen snow crunched even under Timmy's little trudging feet; and the mountain people apparently felt that it was useless to lurk among the spruces when every step they took told where they would be hidden. They came from far and wide to stare at the strange antics of the "foreigners," and grinned at Rosamund, more friendly than they had ever been before.
Pap drove Mother Cary across the valley to look on at the sports; Rosamund called her attention to the new friendliness of the other spectators. The old woman smiled rather grimly. "Land! No wonder!" she said. "Nobody could suspicion those young fellers were spies, cuttin' up sech capers as them, sliding down hill head foremost on their stummicks, an' prancin' around on slappers. I never saw such goin's on, myself—and John Ogilvie one of 'em!"
They laughingly compared notes afterward, and decided that Mother Cary had been quite scandalized by their "capers;" Ogilvie admitted that she had been very severe toward him the day after her drive across the valley.
But for themselves they were glorious hours. Rosamund threw aside the burden of care that had enveloped her during the past weeks, and became as merry as a child, more gay and joyous, than Ogilvie had ever seen her. She skimmed down the slopes on her toboggan with Tim holding on behind her, his curls blowing out in the onrush of their swift descent; and she would carry him back up the hill again, "pick-a-back," to show him how strong a horse she was. She could outdistance them all on skis, but Ogilvie proved himself the best on snowshoes—thanks to his boyhood in northern Vermont, although Flood, who had faced many a blizzard on the plains, was not far behind him.
On the last day of the joyful ten Flood had gone with Rosamund on snowshoes across the valley to carry something to Mrs. Allen. Snow had fallen during the night, and every bough of pine and spruce and fir had its burden of downy white. The two paused, when they had come past Father Cary's wood-lot, to look down upon the valley.
They stood for a moment or so without speech. Flood looked from the snow-covered fields to the face beside him, as if to compare one loveliness with another; then he drew a deep breath.
"Well," he said, as they went on again, "I'm sorry to be leaving all this!"
For a moment she did not reply; she looked up at him once or twice, and he divined that she had something to say which she did not quite dare to put into words. They had become very good friends, thanks to the freedom of the out-of-door life of the past days. He laughed.
"Go on, please! Don't mind saying it! I haven't any feelings!"
"Oh," she protested, laughing, "I was not dreaming of hurting your feelings! I was only thinking how—how curious it is that you should—should care so much for what you are going back to."
But he did, nevertheless, show himself a little hurt at that. "Why shouldn't I like it?" he asked. "Do I seem such a savage?"
"Oh, precisely not!" Her mood was kind. "You are not a savage. You are very nice—I'm very glad I've found out how nice you are. But that's just what makes me wonder, you see, how you can like it!"
"Like being nice?"
"No—of course not! Like what you're going back to. New York. Cecilia! Oh—all of that—you know what I mean, don't you?"
"Why," he said, a little puzzled, "I'm afraid I don't see anything wrong with it—with your 'all of that!' Do you think I ought to?"
"Oh, it isn't so much what is wrong with it. It's only that it doesn't satisfy—does it? It is chaff—husks—a bubble—it has no substance."
He considered it for a moment. Then he submitted: "Has this?"
"Well, at least this has substance. It isn't empty."
"Isn't it?" he asked. "Do you know, I should just have reversed that opinion. I should have said there was a good deal more in the life you've deserted this winter than in the life you're choosing to live here!"
She laughed. "Perhaps I've reverted! Or perhaps we are in different phases of evolution! You have reached your—we'll call it your New York—and I have passed through it and come on to something better. Or if that sounds impolite we'll say that I have reached it and tumbled down again!"
"Oh, there's no impoliteness in the truth! You are generations, infinite ages, ahead of me!"
She made no answer to his humility, and for a while neither spoke again. Their talk was, of necessity, largely broken by intervals when all their attention was needed for the task in hand. The light snow made the going uncertain; they were taking the shorter way home, along the upper slopes, instead of crossing the valley, and they had, more or less, alternately to feel their way and to rush swiftly on across possible dangers.
At the crest of the last slope Rosamund paused, and they turned to look back at the way they had come. Flood watched her with eyes of devotion, as she stood there with her head thrown a little upwards, breathing deeply, her face warm with her delight in the beauty of the scene before her.
"How lovely it is!" she said, in the vibrating tone that always thrilled him.
"Yes, it is lovely," he said, "but only for a time. It is too much like the real thing!"
"Isn't it the real thing?" she asked, surprised.
He laughed, and shook himself a little. "I mean the real thing that I used to know, the drifts on the plains, sleet in the face, the numbness in your feet that tells you they're frozen—that's the real thing! Believe me!"
She looked up at him, interested. "And you have really felt that?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "I've felt it—but it's a long time ago. I'm glad it is, too. A very little of it satisfies. Nowadays my real thing is—well, what you called a while ago, New York, though that's only a manner of speaking, you know."
"Yes, I know. We've talked back in a circle! I am still wondering why you like it as you do!"
They had crossed their last hummock, and had come to the place not far from the brown house where Matt now spread rugs and cushions every morning; but no one was there to greet them. Far down the long slope of white they could see Eleanor and Tim, moving slowly over the crust; Yetta was already at home on snowshoes, and her crimson-clad figure was skimming over the snow-covered fields. Apparently she was playing a game of ball with Pendleton—something they had invented for themselves; Ogilvie, also on snowshoes, was with them.
Rosamund sent a clear Valkyrie call down to them. They all looked up, and waved. Ogilvie moved closer to Pendleton's side, and the game of ball went on.
Rosamund threw herself down on one of the blankets, and Flood took his place beside her. She still wore her snowshoes, and sat with her knees drawn up, her arms clasped about them, boy fashion. She was watching the others at their game down below, but Flood looked no farther than her face.
Suddenly she became intensely aware of the man beside her; she could not tell how the change came, or whether there were a change at all, except in her intense consciousness of him. She did not turn to look at him; she did not so much as tremble from her position; but slowly, as if the blood were retreating to her heart, her face grew white.
Flood saw the change in her face, and knew that he was the cause of it. His heart beat triumphantly faster.
"Why did you say that you wonder at my liking—New York?" he asked.
She tried, vainly, to speak.
"You know what it represents, to me. It's something better than I ever had before. It's friends, it's music, and art, and the whirl on the Avenue. It is 'up and on'—and—Rosamund, don't you know what it is above all else? It is you."
He had meant to say a great deal, when this moment should have arrived; he had often wondered just how it would come, when he should find courage where they two should be. He had tried to teach himself the words he thought would be most sure to move her, words that would best disclose the fullness of his faith and his desire; yet now that the moment for speaking was upon him he reverted to the man that was his inmost self, forgetting his practiced phrases, not speaking the words he had rehearsed, but telling his longing in short, rushing sentences of pleading, voicing to her silence the cry of the strong soul to its chosen mate, the appeal, even the demand, of the man who had won a high place to the woman who could lead him up to even greater altitudes of the spirit. He pleaded as a man who has much to offer, but who is yet begging for the crowning gift. Unconsciously he disclosed his own greatness of soul, while making her understand that he held her supreme, beyond all that was beautiful, above all that was high.
Before he was done speaking, her head had bent itself until her face was on her knees. Never had she felt herself so unworthy; never had her humility been so great. Yet when he paused, she did not answer; even for his last strong appeal she had no word. He had shown her the depths of his heart, and hers was shaken to its own depths. But yield she could not, turn to him she could not. It was as if two great elemental forces met, and clashed, and refused to combine. She could not altogether repudiate his appeal, yet she must be true to the stronger one which held possession of her heart.
As he watched her in a silence that seemed still to vibrate with the strength of his words, she raised her head to look at the figures now coming toward them up the long slope. Suddenly she saw that Ogilvie stopped short, and, apparently at some word from Pendleton, looked up toward herself and Flood. He took a hesitating step or two, came on at a wave from Pendleton; then he turned away, leaving the others to return without him.
Some silent message had come up the mountain to her; Rosamund had found her answer to poor Flood. The others were out of sight for the moment behind a low growth of pine; only Ogilvie was visible as he made his way along the other ridge, taking his steps heavily, seeming suddenly to have become weary.
Rosamund watched him for a moment; then she turned her white face, pitiful with the knowledge of the hurt that she must give him, toward Flood. He must have read something there, for, startled, he bent a little closer; then, following her look, he glanced from her to Ogilvie, and back again. Her eyes did not waver from him, and when they had to answer the question in his, the paleness left her face, and a great wave of color flooded it. He held his breath, and his unspoken question must have become imperative; for she nodded, her parted lips refusing to form words. Then, withdrawing her look, she hid her face in her arms.
Neither of them ever realized that she spoke no word at all. Her reply had been too well-defined to need speech. Flood understood.
The morning after the departure of Flood and Pendleton, Eleanor and Rosamund went out to the veranda for their usual after-breakfast "breath of air," and stood arm in arm, looking over the long slopes which had been the theater of their wonderful ten days' sport. Apparently the same thought came to them simultaneously. They looked at each other and smiled.
"Did you ever see any place so empty?" Eleanor asked.
Rosamund shook her head. "I never did," she said. "Isn't it absurd?"
"It's like being in a room when the clock stops!" said Eleanor, and Rosamund laughed.
"Isn't it curious how much of the city feeling those two brought with them? Before they came I felt as if New York were miles—oh, continents—away. This place was home, the center of the universe. Now—well, now this is 'way off in the country'!"
Eleanor laughed understandingly. "I know! And yet not once while they were here did we do anything we should have done in town! No one so much as mentioned bridge!"
"It must have been Marshall's presence," said Rosamund. "Certainly Mr. Flood never suggests town to me!" She flushed, remembering what their last talk of New York had led to. He had taken it so well, proved himself so completely the master of his emotions, shown her so gently that he held her blameless and still supreme, that she had never liked him so much as after having shown him how little she liked him!
Eleanor looked at her curiously, for she suspected something of what had passed the day before; but she had cause to look at her wonderingly more and more, in the days that followed, days which, for Rosamund, soon became filled with mixed emotions.
"I want to see my doctor," Tim said at dinner one day.
The three women looked at one another as if it had just occurred to them that Ogilvie had not, indeed, been to the brown cottage that day, nor the day before, nor the one before that. Nearly a week in fact, had passed since the departure of the two men, and not once in that time had White Rosy stopped before the house.
"Why, he has not been here since Mr. Flood left! He must be ill," said Eleanor, trying to speak as if the idea had just occurred to her.
"No, he ain't," said Yetta, always willing to give information. "I saw him driving around by the other road yesterday. He ain't sick."
"Why, it's five days since he was here," Grace said. "He must 'a' forgot you, Timmy!"
Tim's lip began to tremble, and he turned to the ever ready Eleanor to be comforted.
It had been a week of restlessness for Rosamund. The visit of Flood and Pendleton had recalled enough of the old familiar atmosphere of cities to make the solitude of the mountains seem strange. She had been so sure that the new life was the best one! Now she was disgusted with herself to find that something of the old restlessness had returned. She told herself, with increasing determination, as the empty days wore on, that she had become dissatisfied with the pleasant monotony of the new life because a breath of the old one had blown toward her. For her admission to Flood, drawn from her unawares, as it had been, even before Ogilvie himself had demanded it, gave her a self-consciousness which was hard to bear. But apparently her secret was to remain with Flood. Ogilvie did not come to claim it. It had long become his habit to stop at the cottage whenever he passed there. For the first few days of his absence, she was only sorry that he did not find time to come. She could have no doubts of him. For weeks she had been happily sure that he was only waiting for a sign from her to put into words what his eyes and manner were always saying. To have doubted him would have been to doubt the foundations of the world.
But gradually she became anxious at his prolonged absence. All sorts of womanish fears began to crowd upon her. Although for a long time she had heard no mutterings of trouble from among the mountaineers, yet now she imagined all sorts of horrors, with Ogilvie as their victim. When Mother Cary told her, one day, that the doctor certainly must be sick, her fears went beyond bounds. She knew herself to be his own, she believed him to be hers; courageously she ignored her maidenly hesitancies, and went forth to meet him.
All night she had lain awake nerving herself to seek him out; but when morning brought the hour of their meeting she forgot everything save her anxiety for him. She had convinced herself that he was in trouble, and staying away so that no shadow of it should fall on her.
She knew which way White Rosy would bring him. It was snowing, but she put on her warm red coat and cap, and went quietly out of the house, walking down the road toward the Summit, to meet his sleigh on its way to the valley. She waved to him when he came in sight, but apparently he did not see her; as he drew nearer she waved again, and called.
He answered, for such a greeting had passed between them many times before, and was not to be ignored. But when the sleigh stopped beside her she cried out at the drawn whiteness of his face.
"Oh!" she cried, her hand over her heart, "you are ill!"
But he managed to smile, and threw aside his worn old fur rug with an inviting gesture. "Ill? Not a bit of it! Let me give you a lift to the cottage!"
Mechanically she took her place beside him, and he urged White Rosy on. She looked at him with anxious eyes and parted lips, feeling all the while as if she were in some bewildered dream, where the real was unreal, where everything was distorted—like itself, yet strangely unlike.
Always before they had talked as fancy led them, or were comfortably silent; now he was so unlike himself as to manufacture small-talk, commonplaces, nothings. There was no reference to his not having been to the cottage, no hint of having missed her, no least word, in fact, of anything personal between them. He talked on, almost feverishly, without looking at her, while she sat there numbly, dazed at the change in him, but wounded far beyond other thought or speculation.
He stopped the sleigh in front of the brown house, and she got down without looking at him; and still without speaking she went inside. He had not so much as suggested her driving on with him, as she had done half a hundred times before!
Grace, in a deep basket chair, was smilingly watching the pretty group before the fire—Eleanor, teaching the two children how to pop corn, with Tim on her knee vigorously shaking the wire basket. They looked up as Rosamund entered, and at sight of the girl's face Eleanor put Timmy quickly down from her lap and jumped up, with a little anxious cry.
But Rosamund blindly, unheeding, went past them and up to her own room. She closed the door and locked it, and made some incoherent answer to Eleanor's entreaties. She never knew how long she sat there, silent, motionless, without removing her hat or coat, dumbly trying to control the mingled shame and longing that surged through her. Vainly she searched through her memory for an explanation; she had done nothing to offend him, no least thing that should estrange him. Even now she could not believe that he would wantonly hurt her; her faith in their love had rooted itself too deep in her heart to be easily disturbed.
At last she called upon her pride for help, only to find that pride itself lay sorely wounded. But it was that which enabled her at last to lay aside hat and coat, to bathe her face and rearrange her hair, even to dress herself in her most becoming gown—that sure refuge of a suffering woman!—and go downstairs to meet Eleanor's questioning, anxious eyes. It was not until Ogilvie came back later in the day, for a hasty call at an hour when he knew the entire household would be assembled, that anger came, mercifully, to her relief. She saw that he wished to make it seem as if he had always come at that hour, as if his visits were habitually that far apart; she understood that he was determined to make it impossible for her to ask wherein he suspected her of offense. He meant to give her no opportunity to explain or demand explanation; instead, he was taking this way of turning back the hands of the clock. He was deliberately withdrawing from their intimacy, putting their friendship back upon a plane of formality. It would seem as if he were trying to show her that his feelings had changed. Yet she had faced her own love too frankly, in her heart's secret communings, to be able to deny it now. She could only, in an agony of shame, tell herself at last that she had been deceived in his.
The days that followed were full of misery for her. All her life she had been the center of a little world of love and admiration. For the first time some one had turned from her; the pain of it was not lessened because the one who spurned her had come to hold first place in her heart. Yet such was her attitude that not even Eleanor dared say a word which might touch upon the subject ever so remotely. Eleanor did, indeed, watch her with yearning eyes, and Rosamund, sensitive in her suffering, believed that she talked of her with Grace and Mother Cary; but it was only by their avoidance of Ogilvie's name that they showed any suspicion of what was in her heart. Had Eleanor dared to speak, Rosamund would not have been able to silence her; for she needed every atom of her strength to appear unconscious and natural whenever Ogilvie came. She would not avoid him. She could only be feverishly gay before him; and Eleanor noticed how much more grimly his face set itself after each visit.
The weeks passed, quickly for the rest of the household, slowly enough for Rosamund. She took long walks with Yetta; as Grace grew in strength she went with them, taking them to call on her mountain friends, who had shown themselves more friendly toward Rosamund since they had watched her at play—and since the arrest of Joe Tobet, always a disturbing personality. They came to see Grace at the brown house, where Rosamund made them feel at home, and gave them coffee and cake and talked to them about their children, and loaned them patterns, which she bought for the purpose, and which Eleanor showed them how to use. Rosamund's greatest comfort lay in the fact that she was coming to be of use to them, thus fulfilling the desire which had been her excuse for remaining among them.
For other exercise she had no desire; she could not put on snowshoes or skis without recalling a time which she was trying to forget; besides, she had no heart for play. And soon even the walks became not unalloyed pleasure. Although no further warnings had come, either to herself or Grace, and although the mountain people continued to show themselves more and more friendly, Rosamund was conscious of a feeling of uneasiness, a dread of ominous, unseen horrors hovering near, of stealthy presences following her, of eyes peering at her from the leafless undergrowth or through the branches of the scrub pine. She tried to persuade herself that it was all a part of the foolish imaginings of a timid woman, yet had to admit that she had never been timid before; gradually the feeling of uneasiness became almost unbearable, in her increasing nervousness.
She welcomed the relief of Christmas, although it was Eleanor who went to New York for their Christmas shopping. Rosamund resolved with herself that she would not leave the Summit until she had overcome the vague fear that was now present with her whenever she left the house. She would conquer that, or find out the reason for it, even though the relations between herself and Ogilvie were at an end forever. So she sent Eleanor in her place, reigning alone for two weeks in the house which had come to seem more Eleanor's than her own.
Eleanor returned on Christmas eve, all prepared to be a most munificent Santa Claus. It was only after the tree was trimmed, and they had filled bulging stockings for everybody—including the Carys and John Ogilvie—that she had a moment alone with Rosamund.
At last, however, Grace went upstairs, and Sue and Matt beamingly bade them good night; Tim had not yet awakened with the first of his repeated demands to go downstairs and see whether "Santy" had come. Eleanor threw herself wearily into a big chair, and Rosamund perched on its arm.
"Well, who did you see, and where did you go, and what did you do?" she demanded.
Eleanor laughed. "I saw Mrs. Maxwell, for one, and she was looking exceedingly pretty and youthful."
"Was she in a good humor?"
"Well, she invited me to luncheon!"
"Oh, then she was! I suppose she had gotten my Christmas check. I've sent to Tiffany's for some emeralds for her, besides. She'll get them as a surprise, to-morrow morning."
"Emeralds! How munificent you are!"
Rosamund laughed. "I'm afraid I'm only following the line of least resistance, Eleanor! Cissy's an angel when she's pleased. But didn't you see her more than once?"
Eleanor's pause was scarcely perceptible. "Mr. Flood asked us all to dinner at the Ritz," she said.
"How nice of him! You and Cissy—and Marshall, I suppose?"
"Of course!"
"Then you saw them together. Tell me, Eleanor, do Cissy and Marshall really care for each other, do you think?"
"Oh, my dear! Don't ask me such a question as that!"
"Why not? I've wondered sometimes whether they would marry, if there were more money between them. I'd like Cissy to be happy; but, of course, she'd have to be happy in her way!" She thought for a while, then added, "Marshall intimated that 'dear Cecilia' was setting her cap for Mr. Flood! What do you think about that?"
"I don't think anything at all, and it's bed-time," Eleanor answered, trying to rise.
But Rosamund's arm across her shoulder restrained her. "Not yet! I want a long talk. I have missed you so dreadfully, old precious!"
Eleanor reached up for the hand on her shoulder, and looked up into the girl's face. "I didn't miss you, sweet! I took you with me!"
Rosamund laughed, more joyously than in weeks. "Oh, what a lover-like speech from Eleanor!" she cried. "Who has been coaching you?"
It was the most innocent of questions; but instantly Eleanor's usual whiteness vanished. A wave of pink crept up from her throat to her cheeks, to her temples, to the line of her gold hair. Rosamund watched, amazed beyond expression. Then Eleanor sprang up.
"We really must go to bed!" she cried.
But Rosamond had her by the shoulders. "Eleanor!" she gasped. "Why—Eleanor—who?"
But Eleanor had broken away, and was running up the stairs, leaving Rosamund to a bewilderment which ended in a little gasp of understanding and delight.
The first weeks of the new year passed rather drearily. Christmas had been a day of disappointment for her, although she threw herself into the carefully planned festivities with a feverish gayety. The Carys had come across the valley to see the tree, and before dinner-time every gift had found its way to the one it was intended for, except the big net stocking which the children had filled for the doctor. He had promised Tim to come that morning; yet the day passed without him. He sent word that he was called over the mountain; yet, legitimate though the excuse was, Rosamund became gayer than before—for anger always acted as a goad to her self-control.
After Christmas his calls grew farther and farther apart; sometimes a week passed without his coming at all. When they met upon the road their greeting was cheerful enough—too cheerful! Eleanor watched her, wondered, and said nothing. Rosamund was aware that something new had come into her friend's life, and rejoiced, for Eleanor fell into the way of wanting to go for the mail; or if any one else brought it, she would take the letter that was addressed to herself in a characteristic handwriting that Rosamund knew, and ran off with it to read it alone. Had it not been for Grace's growing need of her, and for the new friendliness of the mountain people, Rosamund would have deserted the brown house, for a time at least. But the increasing confidence of her neighbors was unmistakable; and she told herself that she would remain throughout the winter, if only to prove John Ogilvie's forebodings wrong.
But all the while, as time passed, more and more, on her walks and in her own house at night, she was becoming haunted with that feeling of being watched and followed. She spoke of it to no one. Grace alone, her most constant companion, might have offered some explanation; but Joe Tobet's trial was approaching, and Grace was in no condition to be needlessly alarmed. Mother Cary was showing herself increasingly anxious about Ogilvie; and the teething grandchild kept her away from home much of the time. So Rosamund confided in no one; but especially whenever she was out alone, or towards twilight, she was possessed by the sense of a shadowy something watching, following, haunting her. It amounted to an obsession, a fear that was all the more terrifying because it could not be faced. She tried to persuade herself that it was a trick of overwrought nerves, a wild phantasy of the imagination; and the better to convince herself of that she laid little traps—sprinkling fresh snow over the path to the house, for one thing, only to find a man's footprints on it in the morning.
When the time came that she would wake in the night in horror, from a dream of something unseen creeping upon her out of the dark, she knew that she must somehow find and face the elusive presence, whatever it might be, or become utterly unnerved. Moved by the impulse of a frightened creature at bay, she had tried to do so before, but in vain; now, however, in her determination she laid a plan which was more likely to succeed.
There were two ways from the brown house to the post-office; by the road it was a countryman's long mile, and until the leaves fell she had not discovered that there was a shorter way by one of the hidden paths worn by the mountaineers. This little path ran along beside the highway at times, though higher up on the mountain-side, so that anyone walking upon it could look down, unseen, on the road; now and again it cut across turns, through woods, often with sharp turnings to avoid some bowlder or fallen tree.
Although at the thought of it her heart beat with something more closely related to fear than she cared to admit, Rosamund determined to take the little frozen path, and when she felt the presence lurking back of her to turn, at one of the points where the path bent aside, and, her movements hidden by the nature of the path, to retrace her steps and face whatever was following her.
At first she thought the Thing must in some ghostly way have divined her purpose; all the way to the Summit she knew that she was unfollowed. But on the way back, scarcely had she turned into the path when her heart gave a leap. There was the sound, so detestably familiar of late, of a stealthy footstep, which stopped when hers did, and which came on, quietly, relentlessly, when she started forward again. Nerving herself to courage, she walked quickly on until she came to a place where the path turned sharply; there for a moment or two she paused, to let the pursuer gain upon her, then quietly and quickly retraced her steps.
The ruse was successful. She could hear the footsteps come on, the man plainly unaware of her returning. Suddenly she stepped a little out of the path and waited. The man came nearer, was opposite her—and with a cry, her hand on her heart, she faced—John Ogilvie.
For a long minute they stared at each other. She could scarcely believe the evidence of her eyes, yet it was surely Ogilvie. "Is it you who have been following me?" she gasped.
His shoulders drooped as guiltily as a schoolboy's caught in mischief; he looked at her dumbly, wistfully.
"I—it—Yes!" he stammered.
For a moment she could not speak, so amazed was she. When she did, he flushed deeply at the scorn in her voice, but at once grew pale again.
"Has it amused you to frighten me?" she demanded.
He took off his cap, and ran his fingers through his hair in the old perturbed gesture. There was a pale intensity of yearning on his face, a dark gleam of hungering pain, something of the bewildered misery of the lost child, an agony of renunciation with none of that exaltation which makes renunciation beautiful. Despite the sharp cold of the closing day he looked hot, disheveled, as one hard pressed. His breath came quickly and painfully, as if he had been running a race. Every vestige of color left his face as he stood there, his look not faltering from hers.
"Oh, how could you do it?" she cried, tears starting to her eyes.
"I didn't think you knew," he said, hoarsely.
"Not know? Not know!" she gave a little laugh that was half a sob. "I have gone in terror—for weeks!"
"I am sorry," was all he found strength to say; and it seemed as if the words could scarcely pass his lips.
In the sudden revulsion of feeling she was becoming shaken with anger. He saw that she misjudged him; but she had never seemed to him so beautiful as in her scorn and anger and resentment. The appeal of her beauty only added to his distress. The moment was as tense as that earlier one when their hearts had been disclosed; but now no one came to break the spell. Instead, Rosamund turned, and walked away from him.
He had believed, during these weeks, that he had schooled himself to silence and restraint; but she heard him call, hoarsely, chokingly,
"Rosamund! I had to—know you were safe! I had to—see you!"
Then, for her, the world threw off the horror that had befogged it for weeks, and once more opened to light and life. Anger, resentment, doubt, all—all were swept away at his cry, were as if they had never existed. She heard the love in his voice, and with a little answering cry of her own she turned and ran toward him. Shyness and restraint had no place in this new happiness.
In a moment she would have been in his arms, for they were opened toward her. But before she had quite reached him he threw them upward, across his face, as if to shut off the sight of her, and with a cry she could never forget turned and ran, stumbling down from the little path to the highway, crashing through the bushes, running, running, in the desperate haste of a man fleeing from temptation, over the frozen ruts, sometimes stumbling, almost falling, recovering, running still—running away from her.
She could never tell how she got back to the cottage, how she found her way to her own room through the blind agony of the hour. What stood between them she could not surmise; yet now she knew, beyond all doubt, that he loved her. His cry still rang in her ears. There might remain wonder, distress, sorrow, even separation; but doubt had been forever swept away.
Somehow she got through the evening, and, later, slept. She awoke before dawn as if someone were calling; and, as in answer, she slipped from the bed and went to her window. She thrust her feet into her fur-lined bedroom slippers; the heavy coat she used for driving lay across a chair; she fastened it around her, and turned the full collar up about her bare white throat. The air was very cold, but so still that it held no sting. Over the sleeping whiteness of the valley, the snowy steeps of the lower hillsides, the dark crests of the mountains, myriads of stars shone with a pale radiance more lovely far than moonlight. Mother Cary's lamp burned, small and clear, on the side of the opposite mountain, which at night seemed so like a huge crouching beast; little farmsteads in the valley and the nearer cottages were alike dark and slumbering patches of shadow. She watched the steady brilliance of a planet pass towards the horizon and sink over the mountain. A star fell. After a while, from somewhere far away, a cock crowed. The earth was waiting for the day.
Then a subtle change began. The stars grew dim; the sky deepened its blue, and again slowly paled. The western mountains were faintly crowned with light, and under the base of those to the eastward shadows gathered more closely. Again a cock called, and was answered from near at hand. Over the eastern mountain tops an iridescent wave of color spread upward. So still was the air, so silent lay the earth, that it might have been the expectant hush of creation, the quiet of some new thing forming in the Thought which gives love birth. Dawn was there; and through the stillness something stirred, or dimly echoed; almost a pulse it seemed, or the first faint throbs of life. Then gaining strength, or coming nearer, the sound came up to her more clearly. She knew where the road lay, white on white; along its winding lift something was moving. Surely the sound came from there! Nearer, more clearly, beat upon beat, she heard it. At last she made out the form, and watched it with straining eyes and heart that yearned toward it.
From some night errand of ministration his old white mare was wearily bringing him homeward.
Yetta, a pretty girlish figure in soft gray, was leaning on the rail of the box, lost in the absorption of her first opera. For three or four exciting days they had been in the city, and Yetta felt as if she had been swept into fairyland. Everything was wonderful. Miss Randall had blossomed into a princess in marvelous raiment. The most beautiful lady in the world, Miss Randall's sister, had taken her to shops and bought her various garments as fine as Miss Randall's own. She had been whirled about in warm, closed automobiles. Footmen at whom, less than a year ago, she would have been pleased to smile, had opened doors for her while she haughtily passed through, outwardly oblivious of their magnificence. Miss Randall's friends, while they asked various questions about her as if she had possessed neither eyes nor ears, were mostly very kind and gentle to her. It was wonderful, and Yetta felt that the greatest day of her life had been the one when Miss Randall, coming down to breakfast, had surprised them all by declaring that she was going to New York that afternoon for a week or two, that Yetta was to accompany her, and that neither Mrs. Reeves, nor Grace, nor Timmy, nor Aunt Sue, nor Matt must divulge to a soul among their neighbors that she had gone, because she would be back before they had had time to think twice about it. And the crowning glory of it all was this, that to-night she was in the great Opera House in a box, leaning out toward the stage, and listening, listening, listening! She was certainly herself, Yetta; but it seemed as if she must also be someone else—someone in a lovely soft gray gown to whom Miss Randall's friends, coming into the box from time to time, bowed formally, as if she were a lady, and asked how she was enjoying herself; and quite secretly, though with all the intensity of her soul and her imagination she knew it, she was still another person who should, some day, be there on the stage, charming these hundreds of people as she herself was now bewitched, by the joy and beauty of a voice—her voice, Yetta's! But to-night it was enough to be a fairy princess!
Rosamund had not stopped to speculate upon Yetta's readiness for the great experience until they were on the north-bound train, on the day after her last encounter with Ogilvie. Her own need had been too pressing to admit of any other speculation or demand. She knew, when she turned back from the window after her vigil of the dawn, that she must get away for a time, away from the very thought of him, if she was to be able to continue to think at all. So she had bound the remaining members of the household to secrecy, and, with Yetta, started for New York.
The girl was really presentable, she thought. A child of no other race could have adjusted herself so quickly to the new demands; she believed that Yetta was now ready for a wider horizon, for she spoke and moved so well that Rosamund was sure even Cecilia's fastidiousness could find little fault in her. She meant to give her a glimpse of the larger world, to have her voice "tried" by a competent critic, and then to return to the little brown house, perhaps with a governess for the girl, someone who could do more for her education than the little school-teacher. At any rate, the trip would give her time to recover herself, to think, perhaps to decipher something of the puzzle of John Ogilvie's conduct.
So, to-night, Yetta was listening to her first opera, and Cecilia was chattering away at her side, their friends coming in from time to time to greet the returned one. It all seemed as unreal to Rosamund as to Yetta, so sudden had been the transposition.
Pendleton came late into a box across the semi-circle; Cecilia shrugged and pretended to be unaware of him. It was the first time Rosamund had seen him since her return, and she was beginning to wonder with some amusement whether he had transferred his attentions from Cecilia of his own accord or at the lady's suggestion, when she saw him hastily borrow his hostess's glass, take one look through it, and dart from the box. She knew what was coming.
"Rosy!" he cried, with his familiar impertinence, only grinning at Cecilia, who in turn just raised her eyebrows and became absorbed in the aria. But he, unabashed, bent over Rosamund. "Rosy! It can't be you! And—by all the saints, is that, is that the creature who yelped at Benny a few short months ago?"
"Be quiet," Rosamund whispered, laughing, in spite of herself, at his nonsense. "Don't be so absurd, Marshall!"
"Absurd!" he cried, in mock indignation. "Is it absurd to greet the dawn? Here we've all been living in the darkness of your absence, and now you're back at last, and you tell me not to be absurd! I like that!"
At his voice Yetta had turned for an instant to smile a recognition.
"Good Heavens!" he whispered, "what have you done to her?"
"It's nothing to what I am going to do," Rosamund told him. "But you are not to make love to Yetta, my dear Marshall; I'm not going to have the child told she's beautiful. Who knows but she might take you in earnest?"
Pendleton grinned cheerfully, and drew a little chair to her side. "All right, my dear," he said, "I won't say 'boo' to her!"
There were other visitors off and on, but for two acts he flagrantly deserted the woman he had come with, and sat back of Rosamund's chair, talking over her shoulder.
"How's Eleanor?" he asked.
Rosamund thought of Eleanor in the quiet room in the brown house, while she was here, with the song of the goose-girl in her ears—and her heart warmed as our hearts are apt to warm toward those we have left behind.
"Eleanor is well, and lovelier than ever," she told him.
Pendleton screwed up his face. "You aren't the only one who thinks she is lovely, old lady! If you don't watch out she'll spike your guns with Benny! He followed her around like Mary's lamb when she was up before Christmas; and I've known too many men and women in my time, Rosy dear, to believe they found nothing better to do than to sing your praises!"
Rosamund looked at him, and smiled tantalizingly. "Oh, we all know how experienced you are, Marshall," she teased him.
"Why don't you ask after Flood?" he pursued, ignoring her taunt; she smiled, and meekly said, "Well, how is he?"
"Bloody-thirsty!" he said, in a sepulchral tone.
"What?" she laughed. "What on earth do you mean?"
"Fact. He's had a lust for killing, a sort of Berserker rage against everything and everyone, ever since we got back from your place, except while your Eleanor was here. Finally he got into a regular fury with me, said he'd do various things to me—sort of speech you'd expect from a navvy, you know. Queer how those fellows revert. I told him to go west and shoot wild beasts, and, d'you know, he took me at my word! Now what do you think of that?"
Rosamund was greatly amused. "I think everyone ought to take your word with a grain of salt," she said.
He shook his head at her with mock reproach. "What makes you so incredulous, Rose?" he asked, sadly. "It's a lamentable trait in a woman!"
"I, at least, don't fly into rages with you," she retorted.
At that, he put on an air of intense depression. "It's well you don't," he said. "Two rages on your account are enough."
"On my account? Two?"
"Oh, yes, yes, wholly on your account. You little know, Rosamund, what I've tried to do for you!"
"Marshall, you are too absurd!"
"Now there's that lamentable trait of yours again, Rose! Really, it's time you came down from your mountains, if that's what they do to you!"
"Oh, well, Marshall, I'll believe anything you tell me! What have you been doing now?"
He drew his chair a little closer to hers, and lowered his voice to a more confidential tone. "Rosamund, I'm a misunderstood man," he said, mournfully. "Whenever I try to do anything for you, people seem to turn against me. Now there's Cecilia—look at those shoulders, will you? Did you ever see anything so frigid? Make me feel as if there's a draught on my neck, just to look at them. That's the way she treats me, ever since I told her to let Flood alone, because he's your preserve!"
Rosamund laughed; the mystery was made clear. "Good gracious, Marshall! You never did that?"
But he pretended the utmost seriousness. "That wasn't all," he declared. "One day I tried to jolly Benny along, cheer him up a bit, you know! He'd been so awfully down. I tried to tell him something about the best fruit hanging high, that there was nothing like perseverance, and all that sort of thing. He told me to mind only my own business. Yes, he really did, Rose! Wasn't it perfectly shocking of him? I told him it was, and he said he'd like to knock some sense into me. That's when I suggested his going off and shooting things."
"You had a fortunate escape," she said dryly.
"Yes, hadn't I?" he agreed. "But something disagreeable always happens when I try to do you a kindness, Rose! There was that chap Ogilvie; he seemed to turn against me from the moment I put him wise."
At the unexpected mention of the name, her heart seemed to stand still; but a flash of insight warned her that she was upon the clue to the mystery that had so tormented her. She managed to smile at Pendleton, and to ask, "How was that?"
"Oh, that last afternoon, you know, you've no idea how well you and Benny looked, seated up there on that red blanket. I called Ogilvie's attention to it—awfully hard to make conversation with a fellow like him, you know. I said something about you and Flood being well suited to each other, and he seemed rather surprised, and actually had the nerve to ask me what I meant. The way he spoke, or something, put it into my head that he—er—he—well, that I would be doing you a good turn by telling him a thing or two. I did."
"What?" she managed to ask, to his dramatic pause.
"Oh, I believe I said that you and Flood must be finding it very good to be together these few days; that of course nothing had been announced yet, and something of that sort. I remember he said I must be misinformed, which quite provoked me. A fellow doesn't like to be contradicted, you know. What? I assured him I was in a position to know, and threw in a word or two about your—er—millions being joined to Benny's, or something of that sort. Most combative chap, Ogilvie! Tried to tell me that a woman of your type would not be likely to stay up in the mountains so far from a fiancé. 'Pon my word, I almost thought the fellow must be really hit, himself! I said he probably hadn't had much experience with women of your type; never can tell what freak you girls will take to next. Oh, we had quite a word or two, I assure you. Ended in his being huffy. Wouldn't walk up the hill beside me, and all that, you know. What?"
Rosamund was never more grateful in her life than to the unsuspecting man whose coming into the box ended Pendleton's chatter. During the rest of the evening she dared not let herself think of his revelations. On the way home, however, she made herself sure of the truth of part of them.
"What happened between Marshall and Mr. Flood?" she asked Cecilia.
Mrs. Maxwell gave an exclamation of impatience. "Oh, my dear! Marshall has been altogether too insufferable! Mr. Flood has spoiled him. He got to the point where he thought he owned Mr. Flood. Oh, yes, there was a fight, of course." She raised her eyebrows towards Yetta, who, opposite them, was peering out at the receding street-lights with eyes still bright with wonder. Rosamund, catching the signal, said,
"It is perfectly safe to talk."
Then Cecilia, rather more circumstantially than Pendleton, told her of the triangular quarrel. "And now," she said, "Marshall is absurd enough to think I mind his dangling after that Mrs. Halley! She's welcome to him! Did he happen to say where Mr. Flood had gone?"
"He said he had gone west to shoot things," Rosamund told her, and Cecilia became very thoughtful. Later, while Rosamund was undressing, she came into her room, and said,
"Rose, the Whartons have asked me to go on their yacht to the Mediterranean. If you are sure you will not need me for a month or two I believe I'll go."
They talked for a while of plans, with no mention of Flood. Rosamund had small difficulty in adding the sum of two and two; it was plain enough that her sister had accepted the hint of the defeat of any hopes she might have had, and now was aiming somewhere else; but Cecilia, in a blue negligée, her hair down and her cheeks still delicately flushed, looking intently at the toe of her silver slipper, was bewitchingly pretty, and she had not the heart to laugh. When Rosamund announced her intention of leaving New York next morning, Cecilia, in turn, ignored any suspicions she might have had. She even offered to keep Yetta for a week, to take her to the master who was to hear her voice, to find the suitable governess and to send her back in the governess's charge before she sailed. She had taken a strange liking to the girl; perhaps the adoration in the black eyes had something to do with it.
Then, at last, Rosamund was alone. Do we ever, she wondered, look back upon our doubts and misunderstandings, when once they are dissolved, with anything but scorn and disgust for our own stupidity, our blindness? Pendleton's part in the affair was too mean to be given a second thought. Such people, she supposed, there must be, content to feed upon the crumbs of society, winning their way by their very silliness, which amuses more by its vociferous nonsense than by inherent wit. She could dismiss him as a meddler, knowing him too well to credit him with worse intentions; he was not bad at heart, and she knew that he would not have been merely spiteful toward herself. He had meant her no harm. It was her own part in it, and above all Ogilvie's, that were hard to think about. It was not for the woman to move with courage high enough to overcome misunderstandings; it was Ogilvie who had failed there. He at least had known what Pendleton had said, while she had been unaware of it. After that hour of wordless revelation, she asked herself, how could he have doubted her? In their walks and drives she had been so sincerely herself with him, had given him so many opportunities of knowing her character—even, she blushingly told herself, of knowing her heart. Was it possible that any man, after that, could so misunderstand her as to believe her capable of such deception? How could he have believed her engaged to Flood? Yet she realized that if he did indeed believe it, he would not have pressed his own claims. Whatever his feeling for her, he would not have tried to win her from the friend whom he placed so high, whom he knew to be so worthy a man, for whom he had told her that he would make any sacrifice. She was sorely wounded; yet there was that quality in her blood which refused to be vanquished. It would have been natural enough to scorn him for his doubt, to punish him for his neglect, to condemn him for his lack of courage, when a word or two, scarcely a question, would have made everything clear between them. To blame him, she told herself, would be the easier way. But her courage was higher than that. Beyond every other consideration, she knew very well that she must give precedence to the love that was in his heart and hers.
She recalled Mother Cary's words, "I reckon there's a door o' distrust most of us has to pass through, before we can stand in the land where there's only content, an' love, an' trust." Her heart warmed anew to the wise, tender old woman whose wisdom was large and loving enough to illumine every shadow.
She fell asleep pondering upon it all, and carried the same thoughts with her to the train next morning. She left New York before Yetta was awake, having said farewell to a very drowsy and very charming Cecilia.
It seemed strange that here the busy life of the city could be rushing on, crowding and grinding and shrieking, while there, in her mountains, as she knew so well, only quiet stretches of snow and lines of black pines and bare treetops, only the sun and the stars, only the few slowly moving people, an old white mare bringing home a tired man, the call of the man or boy crossing the fields, the lowing of cattle from the barnyards—only these made up the world! Here every second was crowded with activity; the deeper workings of human hearts were drowned in noise. There, nothing ever hastened; life matured normally, like the winter wheat; grew slowly, and to a largeness impossible in the cities.
She had forgotten that the trains, in winter, were less frequent. She missed the last one, and had to spend the night in Baltimore, and make a late start the next morning. She had been thinking, thinking, during every waking moment since the hour of Pendleton's disclosure, and in the station she bought an armful of papers and magazines; even pictures of criminals, financiers and actresses were better company than her own thoughts! There was no Pullman car on the train in winter, and she welcomed the changing company of the day-coach; but passengers happened to be few, and she was soon forced to take up her papers.