Part 10

And as a forest creature, quick to defend her young, is quick to caress, Grace forebore vengeance to hold her friend in a closer embrace.

"He struck ye! You come up here to live with us, and make friends with us, like Doctor Ogilvie, and they go and say you spy out on them! Oh--" her voice echoed from the mountains--"I'll KILL anyone that harms ye!"

"Don't say that! Perhaps he did not mean to----"

"He meant it, whoever it was! Stones don't fly up from the ground, do they? I know--I know what they say, the lazy cowards--I know, I've heerd 'em----"

She paused; a new terror came into her eyes. "Miss Rose! Miss Rose! Don't ye go thinkin' 'twas Joe throwed----"

Suddenly her head dropped upon Rosamund's shoulder, and the straining arms held her more closely. "Miss Rose, even if 'twas Joe----"

"Grace! Oh, hush! You don't know what you are saying! You must not think that--it couldn't be true!"

"Couldn't it? You never saw my baby. _He_ came home drunk, 'struck by lightnin''--that's what they call it, so's not to lay blame on themselves. He fell on her. That's how 'twas. She was a-crawlin' over the sill to meet him--her daddy. An' he fell on her----"

"Put away those thoughts, Grace! Put away that memory! Grace--look at me! You must--not----"

"I'm lookin' at ye. That's what makes me remember. It ain't much to you, maybe, to be friends with me. But it's a heap to me, to be friends with you. Oh--" she threw her arms above her head, and her bitter cry rang out. "Oh, curse the stills! Curse 'em, curse 'em! First 'twas my baby, an' now--if anyone harms you, even so be 'twas Joe, I'll kill him!"

It was a devotion undreamed of. Their friendship had progressed insensibly. There had been long talks, when Grace's apparent simplicity had made it easy for Rosamund to open her heart, as far as in her lay; and she had been glad enough to feed the other's hunger for knowledge with tales of the things she had seen in the world, as Grace called all that lay beyond the barrier of the mountains. Yet it had been, as Grace herself had rightly said, not a very large part of life to Rosamund; all the stranger was the revelation of what their friendship meant to Grace.

It was long before she could bind Grace to secrecy; for Grace believed that safety lay in making known the dastardly attack of the afternoon. Rosamund denied that actual danger could exist, that the attacks--if such there might be--could possibly go farther; and she very well knew that if to-day's were made known it would put an end to all her plans for the winter, now progressed so far.

Yet all that night she lay awake. It was a dreadful thing to know herself suspected, distrusted, perhaps hated; why, she asked herself, could the mountaineers not read her innocence in the very fact of her remaining openly among them? They did not suspect Ogilvie; why, then, should they look upon her innocent self as a spy?

But morning found her with all terrors gone. Pride of race and knowledge of good intentions had come to sustain her.

In gold, in gems, it is friction which produces brilliancy; in the finer grades of humanity it is opposition, anxiety, suffering, even misfortune, which bring out inherent noble qualities that might else remain undiscovered. The fine courage of high race Rosamund had always possessed, but it lay hidden within her until the sting of an unseen enemy brought it to light. Fatigue and doubts and half-developed fears fell from her in the night; with the coming of the day she found herself strong in courage, in resourcefulness.

Ogilvie met her, later in the morning, coming from the post office at the Summit, and White Rosy stopped of her own accord until Rosamund had seated herself in the buggy.

"You look less tired," he said.

She laughed. "I'm not tired at all! I feel as if I could move mountains, even these mountains; I believe I could even move the people on them!"

He looked at her more keenly, and wondered what had caused her elation. His anxiety for her--and something else--was too great to permit of a smile in answer to hers.

"It is never too late to mend your ways!" he suggested. "I hope it's a change of mind that's making you so pleased with yourself!"

She laughed again, merrily. "It may be a change of mind," she said, "but it isn't a change of intention."

She waited for his question, but he only looked grimly at White Rosy's joggling ears.

"Don't you want to know what I mean?" she asked.

"Yes," he said shortly.

Rosamund glanced at him. "Dear me!" she remarked, and was provokingly silent until, at last, he turned towards her.

"Please!" he begged.

"Let's talk of something else," she said, and turned her face away from him to hide her dimples. "I don't in the least want to bore you with my affairs. You've been so kind!"

At that he shook his head, tumbled the old cap into the back of the buggy, and ran his fingers through his hair. He heaved a deep breath, and said, in the helpless tone of the bewildered male, "Oh, Lord!"

Then she turned towards him and laughed aloud. "I won't tease any more," she cried. "You and Father Cary almost frightened me, for a day or two, with your warnings and forebodings. Last night I was ready to give up the brown house and telegraph Mrs. Reeves not to come. This morning I have telegraphed her to hurry!"

His face became more stern. "I don't like it. I don't approve of it. You may take my word for it, there will be trouble if you go to live in that place, an unprotected household of women."

"Oh, but we shall not be an unprotected household of women! We are going to have good old Uncle Matt, my old nurse's husband! Surely I told you? Although," she thought to herself, "if old Matt saw a man with a gun I believe he'd crawl under the bed!"

The doctor looked a little relieved. "Well, that is the best thing you've planned yet," he said. "I had intended coming twice a day and taking care of your furnace myself; but Matt--did you say the man's name was Matt?--will be on the spot."

"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "I never once thought of the furnace!"

"I imagined as much," he said, dryly.

"Oh, well," she retorted, as he stopped before the brown cottage, "you would never have remembered to come! White Rosy would have had just one more thing on her mind!"

XIII

The result of Rosamund's increased determination was that, by the end of the week, a curiously assorted household was taxing the capacity of the cottage almost to the utmost. Grace Tobet, however, was not there. Rosamund had many long talks with her about other things; the poor soul had been miserably uneasy since the episode of the stone-throwing, and besought Rosamund to release her from her bond of silence. But that their friendship might bring trouble upon herself she denied, and when Rosamund tried to persuade her to take shelter in the brown house she would do no more than shake her head or raise the girl's hand to her own cheek in caress, or look off to the hills with unseeing eyes tear-brimmed, as on the first day she had spoken of her baby; and Rosamund could not urge her farther after that.

"It's often that a way," Mother Cary said, when Rosamund told her about it. "It binds 'em to a place faster than ropes could. You can break through most anything you can see, honey-bud; it's the things you can't see that you can't get away from. And they holds you all the tighter when they're the things you useter have and haven't any more--'specially little child'en."

Eleanor, too, had a word to say on Grace's side. "Can't you see, sweet, that if she leaves her Joe, she will be admitting his unworthiness?"

"But since he plainly is unworthy----?"

"What he is has very little to do with it. It is what she must believe him to be, as long as she can."

"How can she believe him to be anything that is good? He killed their baby--and you know very well that she has had to go through the woods all alone at night to warn him when the Government men are out."

Eleanor shook her head. "We don't know that, Rose. And as long as Grace stays with him and says nothing, we can't know it. She is keeping that fact from being knowledge--if it is fact. Don't you see that she just has to hold on to that vague 'if'?"

"But she cannot possibly love the man, Eleanor!"

Eleanor looked at her curiously, and for some hidden reason which she could not define Rosamund's heart, under that long look, began to beat faster.

"Ah, Rosamund, which of us can understand love?" Eleanor asked. After a pause she added, "I have wondered sometimes whether they really and truly love--the people who question 'why'!"

Rosamund was beginning to be afraid of the turn the conversation was taking. "Oh, Eleanor!" she exclaimed, somewhat impatiently, "your subtleties are beyond me!"

While they talked, Tim had been tramping back and forth on the front veranda of the house, himself the horse of a little iron wagon that was one of his new toys. He was seldom willing that Eleanor should waste time in uninteresting conversation with grown-ups. He had taken her for his own; and Rosamund, Yetta, Mother Cary--everyone who had ministered to him before--were all but forgotten. Eleanor must now do everything for him; nothing less than complete possession could satisfy his hungry little heart. And Eleanor's hunger for Tim went beyond his for her; as she talked, her eyes followed him, her look brooding upon him as if he were new-born and her own.

At Rosamund's last exclamation she laughed, and bending towards Timmy on one of his turnings, gathered him into her arms, in spite of his indignantly protesting squirms and thrusts.

"My subtleties, indeed!" she said, while burrowing for kisses under the curls on his neck. "I'm the most elemental creature alive! I'm nothing more than a mother hen!"

"Matt chopped ve chicken's head off wif a ax," said Tim, "an' it hopped an' hopped an' hopped. An' Sue took all its fevvers off. But chickens don't catch cold. An' anyway its head was gone."

"Mercy!" said Rosamund. "Matt ought not to have let the child see that! And I do wish he wouldn't be so--so explicit!"

They laughed, but Eleanor could not ignore the opportunity for a lesson in good manners. She had tried in vain to impress it upon Tim before; now she repeated, "You must call her _Aunt_ Sue, Timmy! I call her that, and Miss Rose does. You want to be polite, too, don't you?"

But Tim knew what he wanted; he had thought it out for himself. "She ain't," he said, frowning. "An' I don't want her. I got a muvver."

"Oh! The darling!" cried Eleanor, and let him swagger back to his march with the wagon.

So the boy was provided for, and Eleanor daily gained in health. Ogilvie was delighted.

"Just let it go on for a few months," said he, "and she'll forget she has any eyes. Pity she'll have to go back to work, though," he added.

He had been away for a few days, on some consultation, and so could notice the change in her all the more for his absence. They were driving through the golden woods; the first heavy frost had fallen the night before.

Her breath fluttered a little as she answered. "She will not have to work any more--not as she used to--if she decides really to adopt Timmy," she said, palpitating in wonder as to how he would take the disclosure of her gift and what it implied.

He turned quickly to look at her, all interest. "So that's what Flood meant!" he said.

She returned his look rather blankly. "Mr. Flood? What on earth do you mean?"

"I stayed with him in New York, you know. He told me the kiddie's future was provided for, but he was too modest to tell me how. That's one of the things I like about him--his modesty. He's a fine fellow, Flood is."

It was something more than disconcerting to have her generosity attributed to someone else; that he should give the credit of it to Flood, of all people, was plainly provoking.

"Did he give you to understand that he had done the providing?" she asked.

"Why, no! I've just told you he was too modest!" Then, perhaps at something in her look of disdain, he understood. "Oh, I see! I'm sure I beg your pardon! It is you who are doing it?"

She did not reply nor look at him, but flushed deeply.

But he did not seem to think it mattered either way. "Well, it'll be the best thing in the world for them both," he said.

So there was to be no word of praise for herself! She forgot to wonder at his unquestioning acceptance of the fact that she should have enough to spare for such a gift; it did not occur to her until afterward that he must have known of her fortune all along.

In her disappointment and dismay she spoke with a little tremor of anger which did not escape him.

"I suppose you think it is no more than I ought to do!" she said.

He ran his fingers through his hair. "Well! Is it?" he questioned.

She did not reply to that, and he asked, "You will not miss what you give, will you?" By his tone he might have been asking, "Well, what of it? What's money good for, anyway?"

At that she turned to him, head lifted, eyes aflame. "I suppose you are one of those people who think that we ought to divide everything equally--number the people and give them equal shares--so many pennies apiece!"

He laughed good-humoredly. "O Lord, no! If the wealth of the nations were equally divided on a Monday, it would be back in the pockets it was taken from by the first Saturday night! The smart ones would get it all back again."

"I am not one of the--'smart'--ones. But I suppose it wouldn't matter if I went hungry----"

Whatever she had hoped for from that, his reply was certainly unexpected. He looked at her for a moment, then put his head back and roared--laughed until the woods rang, until White Rosy turned her head to look at him, until Rosamund, her anger melting, laughed with him.

"Oh, I say!" he cried at last. "I'm awfully sorry! Miss Randall--you'll forgive me for being so utterly stupid, won't you?"

"I did want you to praise me," she admitted, dimpling.

Instantly he became serious. "To praise you would be like praising the sunlight, or the blessed rain, or any other of the crowning works of God Almighty," he said.

"We were talking of Timmy," she reminded him, not quite truthfully, but grasping at anything that might turn him from that strain, "and Mr. Flood!"

The ruse succeeded. "Flood! Yes. He's a big man."

"I don't think I quite realized that you were such friends!"

"I like him," said Ogilvie. "I like him mighty well. He's a chap who's not afraid to be fine. I tell you, it was a surprise to me to find him that sort--Benson Flood. You know, the name seems to suggest bonanzas, show and glitter, crudeness, perhaps a little--well--not what he is, anyway."

"But, surely, you have only seen him--twice, three times, isn't it? How can you possibly know all that about him?"

He smiled. "Oh, men don't always have to _learn_ each other, as they would lessons, you know. I know what Flood is as well as if I had known him for years--and I like him as well, too!"

She looked at his enthusiastic face a little wonderingly. "Women are not like that," she said. "We--I don't think we--believe in our friends, as men do!"

"Oh, come now! Why don't you?"

"Because we don't. And because we don't deserve it. Why, you talk about Mr. Flood, who is certainly a new friend, to say the least, as if you would make any sacrifice for him! Women wouldn't do that for each other."

He could not guess that her touch of bitterness was due to her new humility--the humility she was so rapidly learning through her experiences here in the mountains; certainly he was far from seeing that he had himself done much to teach it to her, even during the past hour, when he had seemed to look upon her wealth as of small significance; now he was putting far more emphasis upon the fineness of character of Flood, the man she had so lightly esteemed.

"I fancy Mrs. Reeves would have something to say to that," said Ogilvie.

"Oh, Eleanor! Eleanor is my exception, of course! We all have our exceptions. But aside from Eleanor, there is no one else for whom I would make a sacrifice; yet you would do so for Mr. Flood, wouldn't you?"

Now he was rumpling his hair until it stood on end. "Why, yes, I suppose so! Yes, of course," he said, as if he were wondering where the talk was leading. Then he put it aside, and turned towards her.

"How little you know yourself!" he said.

XIV

Before long there were ominous signs in the Tobet cottage. Mother Cary would shake her head whenever Grace's name was mentioned.

"It's bad now, land knows!" she said. "But it'll be worse, come spring. It ain't for me to deny that them the Lord sends He looks out for; but a body can't help wonderin' sometimes, at His choice o' the places He sends 'em to. Yet it's a livin' wonder how things do work out, honey."

The doctor openly berated Joe, and the two would have come to blows but for Grace's pleadings; afterwards he told Rosamund that Mother Cary had roundly scolded him for his interference, which of course ended the little influence he had over the man. Joe, indeed, swore that he would 'hurt' him if he found him again in his house, and it was only at the brown cottage or the Carys' that he could see poor Grace and give her what help he could. Tobet had also, of course, forbidden his wife to hold communication with 'the stranger woman'; but Grace knew his ways and times well enough to go occasionally to both her friends' houses. She herself could not have told from which she derived more comfort.

For a while Rosamund was unaware of any further evidences of the mountaineers' distrust; then, in the third week, came the most disquieting thing that had yet happened.

Their evenings at the cottage were usually placid enough. Rosamund had engaged the services of the young teacher of the district school to give lessons to Yetta, who, with the mental avidity of her race, was fairly absorbing knowledge, and rapidly acquiring the speech and manner of the world. She worshiped Rosamund, and tried to copy her in everything; she was urged onward, too, by her awakened ambition to sing, it being understood that her general education must be well on the way before the promised singing lessons should begin. The girl would have spent hours at her books, but Ogilvie had forbidden her reading at night; and Rosamund would read aloud to her for an hour or two after the lamps were lighted.

To-night Yetta had begged, as usual, for a later bed hour, and for once had been indulged. The wind had blown from the east all day, bleak and cold. Rosamund had been more and more restless with each passing hour, and now had a longing for company which made her lenient with Yetta. But at last the girl had reluctantly gone upstairs; and after a while Rosamund went up, too, in search of Eleanor.

She had not been the only one in the house to be made restless by the wind; Tim had been cross all day, and even Eleanor was glad at last to see him safely tucked into bed. But, having done so, she had scarcely taken her place on the opposite side of the table from Rosamund and Yetta, than a little white-clad figure appeared in the doorway.

"O Timmy!" Eleanor had cried, protesting.

"Well, I forgot to God-bless Pa Cary," said Tim, as if that justified his reappearance.

"Tim! Go right back to bed!" said Eleanor, with a conscientious attempt at sternness. Tim hesitated, wavered on the threshold, and she gained in courage. "Go back at once!" she said.

His under lip began to tremble. "I can't God-bless wivout somebody to say it to!" he said, and Eleanor got up, took him by the hand, and led him up to bed and his devotions.

Since then she had not come down again, and when Rosamund went in search of her it was to find her on her knees beside Tim's bed, asleep, her pale gold hair mingling with the yellow of his, her arms across his little body, one of his hands on her cheek.

Rosamund crept downstairs again, the loneliness of a moment ago pressing now upon her heart like a pain. The sitting-room was warm and cosy, with its open fire and the lamp with a yellow shade; but it was empty, for all that. She crossed the room to the window that faced the valley and rolled up the shade. Through the wind-swept air Mother Cary's light twinkled brightly on the opposite mountain; that was a home, too. It added to her sense of loneliness. She went back to her place by the table, her thoughts wandering--from the happy two in the room overhead, to her plans for Yetta; from Ogilvie, to Flood; from the present----

But, gradually, insensibly, into her mental atmosphere, there crept a shadowy, indefinable influence, something malevolent and strangely disquieting. She had never known fear; but as she sat there she shuddered, became cold with an unearthly chill, as if some premonition of horror were laying its clammy hand upon her. She said afterward that she felt herself in a cloud of dread and apprehension such as one might feel before the apparition of something ghostly or uncanny. It was intolerable. She must shake off such mental cowering, and forced herself to turn towards the window through which Mother Cary's light could be seen, thinking the friendly beacon would reassure her.

Then, although her heart seemed for an instant to stop beating, she sprang up; but her knees refused their burden, and she sank again into her chair, leaning forward with straining eyes, clutching its arms; for the light on the mountain was blotted out by a hideous thing, a white face set in shaggy hair, a sneering face, a face where drink and hate and fear had set their marks. As she sprang up and sank down again the wicked glare of hate turned into a more frightful leer; then the creature raised a horrid fist, shook it towards her--and vanished into the night.

It was Eleanor who came running downstairs at the cry she tried to choke back.

The two kept watch through the night, and morning found Rosamund shaken and feverish, but firmly determined to lay aside her dread, and at all hazards to keep her friends in the city in ignorance of it.

She shuddered at the thought of what the newspapers would make of it, and of Cecilia's raging, and Pendleton's taunting comments. She and Eleanor, in the reassuring daylight, tried to laugh away each other's fears; and both agreed that they would not be frightened away from the brown house; they agreed, too, that Ogilvie must not know.

But to keep the doctor in ignorance of what had happened was not so easy as Rosamund had hoped. He had many opportunities of hearing rumors that did not reach her; if he had not constantly persisted in his warnings it was not because he no longer feared for her, but because it seemed best to watch, rather than to warn. He went to the cottage every day on one pretext or another; if it was not fear alone which took him there, he admitted to himself no other reason.

It was not altogether because he was too busy with his mountaineer patients, as Mother Cary had told Rosamund, that he had remained among them; now and again he had consulted his friends, and his vigorous enjoyment of the days as they passed also told unmistakably of his recovery; but another year of mountain practice would doubly insure his safety in going back to his investigations in the confinement of the laboratory. Meanwhile he had thrown himself into the work here with ardor, as he must always do with work or play; but now just at the time when he was beginning to think of his return to the city there came into his thoughts an influence as disturbing as it was novel.