Part 11

Early in the summer one of his classmates, the Doctor Blake who was Mother Cary's old friend, had come from the city for a visit of a day or two, and to him Rosamund's name was unmistakably well known. He had seen her, too, in town. There could be no mistake; she was the only daughter of old Randall, the "king" of Georgia pine. It seemed to Blake a wild freak which kept such a girl here in the mountains, away from her kind, a freak to be distrusted. He watched Ogilvie rather keenly when they met Rosamund at Mother Cary's that afternoon, but it was evident that Ogilvie was master of whatever emotions he might have towards her. As a matter of fact, her money counted no more in his estimate of her than a scar on her cheek, or a strand of gray hair, or an ignorance of German would have counted. He knew himself for a man, and more; he knew, as they who possess the embryo of greatness never fail to know, that he had that to offer which all her money could not buy; the belief that she, too, knew as much was fast becoming the essence of life for him.

The thought of her filled his days and half his nights. Her swinging step along the frozen roads, the tired child nestling in her arms, the cadence of her voice as she greeted him, the look of shy withdrawal that he sometimes surprised in her eyes--all would set him inwardly trembling, longing, worshiping. Yet love was new to him, and he feared; inexperience had left him with nothing for comparison. He could not know how far to venture. Masculine instinct warned him to display to her the brightest plumage of his mind and heart, and their walks and drives together were full of talk and intimate silences; but of that which was uppermost in his desire he feared to speak.

Yet his fears no less than his love made him keen to notice every shade of expression on her face, and on the morning after her fright at the hideous vision at the window he saw at once that something was amiss. He had been over the mountain earlier in the day to set a man's broken arm, and several things had made him more than usually suspicious that the underworld of the woods was stirring uneasily. A storm of some sort was certainly in the air; the people showed themselves distrustful even of him, and the very children shrank into reserve at his approach.

Rosamund had walked across the valley to Mother Cary's, to confide to her the strange disturbing happening of the night; then she had gone home again, hoping for that day to escape Ogilvie's keen eyes. The tale had been most disquieting to the old woman, and when Rosamund had gone, she sent Pap to the main road to hail the doctor as he passed. She had been bound to secrecy, but she could at least, without breach of trust, send him a message.

"You tell Doctor Ogilvie that I say when wolves are out, lambs 're in danger. Jest that; don't say another word. Ef he's all I take him for he'll understand."

Pap repeated the message word for word and the two men looked into each other's eyes for a moment, in a look that told far more than the message; then Ogilvie whipped up White Rosy with unprecedented emphasis, and the old mare gallantly responded, as if she knew that an emergency prompted the unaccustomed touch. Ogilvie was sure that one glance at Rosamund's face would tell him whether she were the lamb Mother Cary had in mind; and the girl's pale cheeks, that flushed so treacherously when he entered the brown cottage, disclosed the secret she would have kept. But Mother Cary must not be betrayed, and he greeted her as if he suspected nothing.

"I saw Aunt Sue at the clothesline," he said, "so I used the doctor's privilege and just walked in! Tell me if I'm in the way."

She turned a large chair towards the blaze in the fireplace and moved her own a little back, as if to credit her bright color to the heat of the flames.

"Doctors are always welcome," she said.

But that did not satisfy him, and with characteristic directness he pursued the question. "Am I not welcome as a friend, too?"

She bent forward to reach the tongs, and lifted a glowing ember. "You're welcome in every rôle! But you are very formal to-day, aren't you, in spite of your just walking in? Why?"

She was always mistress of herself when she could tease. Ogilvie, however, would not respond to her levity.

"Because doctors may prescribe, and friends may advise; as it happens, I want to do both!"

She sat up very straight and looked at him mockingly. "Dear me!" she said, in the dry tone which usually provoked all his Scotch combativeness.

But to-day that, also, he ignored.

"Where are Mrs. Reeves and the children?" he asked.

"Eleanor has taken Tim on a hunt for nuts, and Yetta is at her lessons."

He frowned. "Which way have they gone?"

"I have not the least idea."

"Have you seen Grace lately?"

"I have not," she replied. "Pray don't mind asking about anything you want to know!"

He would not notice her flippancy even to frown. "Because," he said, "she is not at her own house, nor the Allens', and she has not been to the Carys' since yesterday morning; if she has not been here either, there is only one thing possible--or at all likely----"

At last Rosamund became serious; if Grace had gone into the woods it could, indeed, mean but one thing. "Oh, dear!" she cried. "Does that mean--do you think?--that Joe is out again?"

The doctor nodded. "And has been for several days. The trouble is coming to a head somewhere. I wish I knew where. The very air is full of it, and these people are so mysterious that even I cannot get anything definite. Pa Cary says they all believe there are spies about."

At the word, Rosamund's hand went to her throat, and her lips paled. "Oh, then----" she began, and stopped.

Ogilvie leaned forward and laid his hand on the arm of her chair.

"Then?" he repeated, looking closely at her.

His intentness forced the tale from her. He listened without interrupting, and when she had finished, sat for a while in deep meditation.

At last he drew a long breath, rose, took a turn or two about the little room, and came and stood before her, frowning.

"You shall not stay here," he said.

Of all words he could have chosen none more unfortunate. A tone of fear, a phrase of hidden tenderness, even an appeal to her own sense of the futility of braving the hovering danger--almost anything but the words and tone he used would have induced her to submit to his wishes; but this imperative command of words and voice touched off some quick, foolish spark within her.

"Ah, but that is precisely what I am going to do," she calmly declared. "They will find out sooner or later that I am not a spy. I shall remain here until they do."

Unconsciously, as once before, her name escaped him. "Rosamund," he cried, "I cannot stand it! I cannot bear to think of your being in danger!"

If she heard, she gave no sign of it. "I do not believe there is the slightest danger," she said, "but what if there is? I have taken up my life here; there are always difficulties to be overcome whenever one wants really to do anything. Why should I run away from my share of them?"

He had turned toward the fire, his arm resting upon the mantel-shelf, and his forehead upon his clenched hand.

"I wish I could make you understand how it is with me," she went on. "I have chosen, deliberately chosen, to take this way of living. I have come here to stay, for a time anyway. You would tell me, I know, that I could have the same little family somewhere else. I know I could; but I am not staying only on their account, any more than I am for a mere whim of my own. The place is more my home than any I have ever known since I was a little girl. I love it, and I see so many things to be done, things I can do; and I want to do them. I don't always know how, but I am learning. These mountain people are distrustful of everyone; but all wild creatures can be tamed, if one has patience. When they have learned to trust me I can help them. I am not going to be driven away. Besides, when all else is said, I don't see the need of it!"

"You had warning last night. Whoever that ruffian was, his coming here meant no good to you."

For a while she was silent, and when she spoke he looked at her, and saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"Oh, I cannot argue it out," she cried. "Of course, you can array fact upon fact to prove me wrong and foolish. Oh--Doctor Ogilvie, be fair! Credit me with a purpose! I have never before had a chance to go on in a simple, clearly defined line of action. It would not seem very much to most people, I suppose--merely to stay here, to live in this little cottage with Eleanor and the children. But it's the only real life I've ever known, as far as I can remember. I was dropped into this place by accident, and I found something to do. What is more, I found myself among real people. It is not much--but to live my own life--that is what I want!" In her emotion she stood before him, straight and purposeful. "Won't you give me credit for the strength of it, and not believe me merely willful?"

He was deeply moved; she laid her own in the hand he held out to her. "I will credit you with everything that is brave and good," he said, with utmost seriousness. "If you are really determined to remain here, I will not interfere. If this is what you choose, I will try to believe it is the best thing for you--the only thing."

Her earnestness had fanned in his heart an altar-flame of worship and new faith; its glow shone in his eyes, and her face paled under his look. In the tenseness of the moment there could be no speech, but it seemed as if their souls sped toward each other on a bridge of understanding. They were hushed before the vision of great elemental truth; and although later they came to believe that they had been deluded, that vision of truth remained as having passed between them, a revelation and a message.

Afterward, in the hours when doubt and pain and loneliness were her companions, she often wondered what the outcome might have been; but she could only wonder, for at the highest moment of their silent communion there sounded a well-remembered view-halloo, and a quick turn of the head showed the flash of a big red car that was stopping before the house.

With a low cry she drew away the hand that had been held in his, turned from him, and for an instant hid her face in her two palms, needing the moment to recall her soul from the heights. When she turned at the sound of steps upon the veranda Ogilvie was gone; she stooped to pick up his worn brown cap, left unheeded upon the hearth, put it quickly into a drawer, and turned the key in the lock.

XV

The revulsion of feeling was so sharp as to demand all the effort she was capable of making to move at all. Her self-control had never before been so severely tested; the strain was so great that she forgot to smile, until Pendleton, drawing off his gloves and toasting his back at the fire, which he first took pains to rearrange with as serene assurance as if it had been his own house, said:

"Dear me, Rosamund! Why this exuberant gayety of welcome?"

It was easy enough to laugh, and she felt secretly grateful for his nonsense. She had almost forgotten the time when she had found such banter on her own part a veritable shield and buckler.

"I'm stunned with joy, Marshall," she laughed. Then, turning to Flood, "Have my woods brought you?"

He flushed with joy that she should have remembered their talk on the Pocantico ride. "Your woods and what's in them," he told her. "I've brought down a couple of young dogs, and we thought we'd try for some shooting before the snow. That's due any day now, isn't it?"

"Yes, the season has been unusually late, they say. But, Mr. Flood, you must not try to do any shooting around here!"

"Why not?" Pendleton put in, raising his eyebrows; he succeeded in trying to look teasing only so far as to appear malicious. "Tame birds, Rose?"

She ignored his impudence. "You'd get me into greater disfavor than ever," she said, speaking to Flood. "You know there are said to be illicit stills in these mountains; there have been some lawless things done within a year or two, and the Government is watching the people here, or so they believe. They are distrustful of everybody--my poor innocent self included."

"I hope there's nothing unpleasant?" Flood asked, looking disturbed.

"No! Oh, dear, no! But there might be, if you went about in the woods with your guns, and were known to be my friends."

"Your fears are quite groundless, my dear," said Pendleton. "We were not going to stop here, anyway, but Flood hesitates to disillusion you. There's no hotel in your neighborhood, you know."

"I'm so glad!" she cried, and then joined the two men in their laugh. "Oh, Marshall, you're always making me absurd! You know perfectly well what I mean! I had horrible visions of your being murdered in the woods; naturally, I'm not glad there's no place for you to stay! I wish I could put you up here, but----"

"Certainly!" said Flood, to her expressive pause. "We understand how impossible it would be. Fact is, we thought we'd run down to Oakleigh for a few days, and we found we wanted to come a bit out of the path and call on you! Hope you don't mind?"

To her surprise she realized that she was really very glad to see them. She had within the hour been declaring that she had put away the old life, yet here were these two dropped from the skies of chance, to remind her of it; and she was undeniably glad to see them!

It ended in their staying to the midday dinner, when Aunt Sue surpassed the standard of her own fried chicken and beaten biscuits, and Matt could be heard turning the ice-cream freezer all during the first part of the meal, and Tim had to be suppressed by Eleanor because he would persist in trying to describe how the chickens they were eating had hopped and hopped and hopped when Matt had chopped their heads off.

It was the first time Flood had met Eleanor, and it was immediately evident that she impressed him very much. His look was upon her more than upon Rosamund; he watched her every move with a light of pleasure in his eyes, and his manner toward her was exquisite--holding something of the deference of a young man toward a very charming, very old lady, something of the tenderness of a physician toward a courageous patient, something of a courtier's manner toward a queen, a little of the look of the lover of beauty at something unexpectedly lovely. And since Eleanor was neither old nor ill nor yet a queen, it must have been her loveliness, fragile and gentle and rare, that had attracted him, since attracted he so plainly was.

He would look from Eleanor to Rosamund from time to time as if trying to convey, silently, to the woman whom he held above all others how lovely he found her friend; and Rosamund, understanding and liking him for it, drew Eleanor out of the little tiredness of manner that was apt to fall upon her before strangers, and Flood brought the color to Eleanor's cheeks when he noticed how Timmy had blossomed under her care. Indeed, the little boy, with the quick adaptability of babyhood, might have been petted and adored all his life, so complacently did he accept his new mother's care and ignore the comments of Flood; for the moment he was absorbed in the celery family which he had spread out before him on the tablecloth.

"It's me an' my muvver," he said to himself, as he arrayed a short stalk and some longer ones before him, "an' it's Miss Rose, an' it's Yetta, an' it's Matt. An' vey ain't any Sue!" Tim could not be prevailed upon to accept Aunt Susan, apparently feeling that in order to repudiate the relationship which he thought her title of courtesy implied he must repudiate her entirely.

After dinner Rosamund managed so that a rather reluctant Flood and Eleanor should be led off by Tim to inspect the chickens. Pendleton was by no means disdaining to pay homage to Yetta's black eyes, and for a while Rosamund watched the two with amusement.

It was the first opportunity Rosamund had found for measuring the girl's improvement. It was amusing to see how well Yetta had learned to imitate Eleanor's manners and her own, how seldom she lapsed into the speech of the streets, yet how much of her native quickness and assurance she had retained. She was never at a loss for an answer to Pendleton's banter; and Pendleton, soaring to farther and farther heights of absurdity, was enjoying himself immensely, when Rosamund decided that Yetta had had enough, and sent the girl off to her lessons.

"Now what did you break it up for, Rose?" Pendleton protested, adding, "It's wonderful how jealous all you women are of me!"

She laughed. "Marshall! Your absurdity is only exceeded by your modesty!"

"Oh, I know my worth," said he, folding his hands and looking down, with his head on one side. Apparently he never tired of playing the clown.

"Tell me about Cecilia," said Rosamund.

"Ah, dear Cecilia! She's looking very well this autumn, very well indeed. And young! And slim! I admire dear Cecilia's slimness exceedingly. It's a monument to perseverance and self-denial."

Rosamund understood, and smiled with him. "Her letters have sounded very happy, so I've taken it for granted that things have gone well with her," she said.

"Well, you're responsible for that, aren't you? 'Pon my word, if Cecilia had money enough--or I had--to make her contented----" He sighed. "But Cecilia's up to something. She doesn't seem to--er--to care as much for my company as she did. Why, Rose, would you believe it, she even sent down word to me the other day that she had a headache!"

"Perhaps she had," Rosamund suggested.

"Oh, no. No. If she had, she would have let me see her. I'm good for headaches. No, it wasn't that. Besides, it was the very day after Flood told her he was coming here, and asked if she had any messages for you. No. Cecilia's up to something."

He wilted sideways in his chair, and tried to look pensive and pathetic. Rosamund watched him, amused as always, and not in the least understanding what he was trying to imply.

Suddenly he leaned toward her. "And you're up to something, too, Rosy!" he said, as if throwing the words at her. "What's your game in staying down here, anyway?"

She flushed angrily. "Marshall! You go too far, you know!"

"Oh, come along, don't get mad!" he said. "What's your little game? Are you staying up here to draw old Flood on, or is it something else? I won't tell!"

She felt herself enveloped in a hot wave of anger and disgust, as if the fetid breath of some foul creature had blown toward her. She sprang from her chair and went swiftly toward the long window, and throwing it open stepped down to the piazza.

Pendleton followed as calmly as if nothing had been said to arouse her; but she was spared an answer, even a look, for Eleanor and Flood were coming back to the house, Flood declaring that it was time for their adieux.

Rosamund was glad; she had been unexpectedly glad to see them, but now her pleasure was gone. She felt sick at heart, and wanted to be alone. Yet her pride sustained her until they were gone; she stood on the veranda to wave farewell to them as if nothing had happened, one arm about Yetta's shoulders, framed against the background of the little brown house that Flood thought so inadequate a shelter for a creature so beloved and so rare.

Flood felt that he had been discretion itself. He had learned his lesson, and was now too anxious for ultimate success to risk alarming her; but every move she made, every look, every tone had been as meat and drink to his longing.

On their way back past the Summit his mind and heart were full of her, from her first silent greeting to the last glimpse of her with her arm across the child's shoulders. How like her unerring taste, he thought, to have chosen as friend so exquisite a creature as that Mrs. Reeves; and how right Mrs. Reeves had been in all her praise of Rosamund! It had seemed to him to-day that her face had been more than ever full of dancing play of color; certainly her cheeks had flamed when she had come out of that long window to meet him.

But Pendleton broke in on his dreams. "Our Rosy was looking exceedingly blooming," said he. "Wonder what's up?"

He managed to throw something of insinuation into his tone.

"Oh, shut up, you ass!" said Flood.

Whereupon Mr. Pendleton raised his eyebrows, smiled, and proceeded to whistle the "Merry Widow Waltz," which he knew Flood detested, for one immortal hour.

Later in the evening, when Tim and Yetta had been long in bed, Rosamund and Eleanor were in the sitting-room before the fire, the table with its yellow-shaded lamp drawn up between them. Since the night of Rosamund's fright the shades were kept drawn at night; now the room, in its seclusion, was warm and cosy with the sense of home. Eleanor smiled over a garment of Timmy's that she was mending; she stopped, from time to time, to look into the fire, laying the work in her lap as if it were a task over which she loved to linger.

Rosamund sat back in her big chair, her eyes partly closed, deep in thought. The day had been full of crowding emotions. She mentally recalled first one and then another, trying to marshal them into some sequence of cause and event.

On the last moments between herself and John Ogilvie she dwelt least; even in memory they were too palpitating. It is only after surrender, or after loss, that a woman loves to dwell upon such moments; before, they hold too much of fear, not to call forth the feminine withdrawal of the unwon. His looks she dared recall; his pale intensity, the flame in his eyes, the fear and anger there as she described the wicked face at the window, his look before he left her, when Pendleton's step was already on the veranda.

That brought her thoughts to Pendleton, to his insinuations and the slight leer in his look. She shuddered all the more because she knew that, a few months before, she would have parried his impertinence with a laugh, instead of with the scorn and anger she had not been able to hide to-day. She was at least that far from the old life, the old state of mind! She knew now how intolerable she would find the people who had seemed only commonplace before! Looking back, secure in her new life in this purer air, she could say to herself how much she hated their suspicions of everyone, their petty gossip, their searching for hidden, unworthy motives in every least action, their expecting the base to emerge from every innocence, their smiling, flattering faces.

She was glad, she told herself, so glad to be away from all that--all the more glad because she could remember the time when it had not especially displeased her. Yet in fairness she reminded herself that Flood was different. He had been very nice, indeed, to-day--and he had liked Eleanor. It spoke well for him that Eleanor, too, liked him! She looked across at Eleanor's tenderly brooding face, and smiled; how suitable it would be, she thought, if Flood and Eleanor--that would relieve herself of Flood's intentions. It was the first time she had been willing to admit that she knew what they were--and intentions on Flood's part would be quite delightful if Eleanor were their object----

So her thoughts passed, from one thing to another, until, suddenly, as if a shot had broken her dream, her heart stood still with fear, then seemed to leap into her throat.