Part 15

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.

She was no exception among the women of her sort; newspapers made uninteresting reading. She looked first with a slight distrust at the flaring headlines on the front page, then turned to the social notes. Those exhausted, an advertisement or two caught her attention; and then there seemed to leap at her the words: "TOBET FREE." She read, almost at a glance, the short paragraph which followed.

"The Federal authorities have failed to obtain sufficient evidence to convict Joseph Tobet, of Long Mountain, of the charge of illicitly distilling the so-called 'White Lightning.' Tobet had been under suspicion for some months, and was arrested last October, but the charge against him has been dismissed, and the man was set at liberty yesterday."

The paper dropped to her feet. She wondered what effect this would have upon Grace, and remembered the note of warning. But, just from New York as she was, such doubts or fears seemed too utterly trivial to be of account. Joe might threaten, Doctor Ogilvie might shake his head, and Grace, poor soul, might tremble; but the arm of the law was, after all, a sure protection. There was really nothing that Joe could do; and she dismissed the thought of him for the more welcome one of Ogilvie.

The day before, her impatience had been boundless. She had not doubted that she should seek him out at once, as the most courageous thing to do, tell him what Pendleton had said, and of Flood's absence in the West; that, she told herself, would surely be enough. He would then understand.

But to-day, as she drew nearer the end of her journey, her resolution faltered. He had been stupid; his doubts had wronged her; his restraint, if such it had been, was unfair to them both, and had stolen something from their love which there would never be time enough to replace. It was not the woman's part to offer apologies; it was the man's part to have faith, or, at the very worst, to seek explanation. If he could so deny himself, if her love was so small a thing to him that he could bring himself to do without it, was it for her to urge it upon him?

Her revulsion of feeling went still farther. Life, she told herself, was after all pretty much the same, wherever it was lived. To give happiness to Eleanor and Tim, to care for Yetta--that was what had justified her spending the winter in the mountains; she could have done as much in town. If she had not found sincerity of purpose and singleness of aim among her earlier friends, it was because she had not learned to look for it. She had only chosen the easier part, not the higher; it was easier to be sincere and simple in the mountains than in town where life was more crowded. It was she who had been at fault in not finding in the old life what was more plainly to be seen in the new; she was so small a creature that she could not reach high purpose through confusing interventions, but must have it laid before her in bareness and singleness. And what was, in truth, her feeling for this man who could so readily doubt her, or, at the very least of his offending, hold himself aloof from her through any consideration whatever? Aside from his belief in her baseness, had he not been willing to sacrifice her for his friend? Would not love, such love as she felt herself worthy of receiving, have put aside without a thought of misgiving anything and everything but the glory and necessity of its own demands?

All the way her mind was busy with such problems of its own making. The journey seemed long. She told herself that her impatience was only to end it, to reassure herself by the sight of him; yet the impatience was there. It was mid-afternoon when she alighted, remembering her last return. She wondered whether White Rosy would be there, and bent, on her way down the car, to look along the platform.

But the only familiar form was the important person who combined the functions of station master, storekeeper and retailer of news. He grinned when he saw her, and came towards her with unusual alacrity.

"Well, I declare," he said, "got the news a'ready, have ye? Bad news sho'ly does travel fast!"

She stood still and looked at him. His eyes brightened still more when he perceived that he was to be the first to inform her.

"Why, ain't ye heard?" he cried. "Yer house was burnt down to the groun' las' night. Thought ye was in it, the doctor did. That's how he so nigh got killed."

XXI

There are some hours of human experience so intense with suffering that they return, again and again, living themselves over in the memory, arising in the small hours of the night--haunting specters of pain, meeting us unexpectedly in an unguarded moment of solitude to open and reopen the wounds they have left, following us on through the years with a recurring vindictiveness of pain almost as keen as when it was first inflicted. Joy, happiness, exaltation of spirit, return only in new guises; they, too, make their impression upon the memory, but otherwise. The shock of loss, the agony of parting, the fear and dread of the suffering of loved ones, the bitterness of self-reproach, the message of loss--these are the things that return and return again; and of such as these were the hours of that afternoon to Rosamund. Not only on that first night, once more in the small upper room at Mother Cary's, but often and often during her after life did the shock and agony of those hours return to her.

Past the form of the station master, gloating in his satisfaction at being the first to tell her the evil news, she had seen Father Cary's familiar form descending from his wagon. She scarcely remarked his surprise at her being there, his disappointment that Doctor Blake and the nurse had not come on that train, his helping her into the wagon, and his description of the events of the night before. The drive past the dull little houses and the store, the closed cottages, the big hotels with their uncurtained windows staring like eyeless sockets, the woods, the glimpses of the path where she had faced John Ogilvie; the turn at last toward the brown cottage she had come to love so dearly; the blackened, smoking hole that alone remained of it; then the half mile farther to the house where Ogilvie lay--those were the moments of most intense pain, because of their suspense.

The story was simple enough. The little household had gone to bed early, and toward midnight Grace had awakened with a whispering fear of smoke. She roused the others, and Eleanor had bundled sleepy Tim in blankets, thrown other bed covering out of a window, and gone quietly down with Grace. Matt and Sue, wild with fear, rushed out ahead of them, shouting, and their cries aroused the nearest neighbors. Country folk come quickly to a fire, although there is seldom anything to do but watch and surmise; a small crowd gathered in an incredibly short time, and a few things were rescued from the blazing house. In spite of the pleading of the women, Grace stayed to watch the flames, wringing her hands, and calling Rosamund's name. Eleanor was half frantic herself, with the alternate efforts at calming Timmy and beseeching Grace to go away. But Grace, loving and faithful, was crying at the loss of the house and the things in it that had seemed to her so beautiful, and that were so dear because they belonged to Rosamund. She could not be persuaded to leave, but stood wringing her hands and saying, over and over,

"Oh, Miss Rose! Oh, Miss Rose!"

After the first alarm, Aunt Sue became calm enough to tell the questioners that all were safe, that Miss Randall and Yetta were in New York. But the man who was urging White Rosy up the long road from the valley, the man who, at last, came running, stumbling, panting up to the little band of watchers, who heard Grace Tobet calling a beloved name and sobbing, did not wait for explanation. He looked among them for one face, and found it missing; then he rushed into the blazing house.

There were brave men who, for the sake of all he had done for their women and children, went after him; there were strong arms to bear him to the nearest shelter, and loving hands to tend him. It was not long before Mother Cary came, bundled up in the wagon beside her big husband, to take command of everything.

So short and simple a story of a ruin so great! Rosamund sat dumbly in the kitchen of the little house where Ogilvie lay, while Mother Cary told her, braced beside her on the little padded crutch, her tender old hands smoothing the girl's hair, the sweet old voice speaking words of courage and hope.

"Pap's done telegraphed for Doctor Blake," she said, "him that's his friend, him that sent Yetta up here. He's an eye doctor, but he'll know everything to do for everything else as well. We reckoned he'd come on this train. That's how come Pap was there to meet it. Howsomever, he'll be here before the day's out, you mark me; an' he'll say jest what I'm sayin'--John ain't goin' to die. He's a goin' to get well."

Rosamund looked up at her, and the old woman understood. "I wouldn't, ef I was you, darlin', honey! No, now don't ye go thinkin' that a way; it ain't that he's burnt so bad, 'cause he ain't. Hair grows quick, an' that did get sco'ched a leetle mite. I reckon all ails him is thet he breathed in the smoke."

Half-remembered tales of horror passed through the girl's mind, and she hid her face in her hands.

"Oh, well, honey, ef you goin' to take on about it, maybe you better jest come to the door and peek in at him. I guess when all's said an' done you got more right than anybody else."

"Ah, no," Rosamund cried, "no, I have not!"

But Mother Cary touched her cheek. "Honey, he wouldn't 'a' gone into the house that a way ef so be it he hadn't 'a' thought all he loved best in the world was there. A body don't go into flames for nothin'! An' it wasn't no ways like the doctor to lose his head--now was it? You come right along in here with yo' Ma Cary."

As long as she lived Rosamund could recall that room--the dingy white walls, the oval braided rug upon the floor; the tiny looking-glass and little corner washstand; the bureau with its characteristic assortment of shaving things, a stethoscope and a small photograph in a plush frame of a woman dressed in the fashion of thirty years before; the bedstead of turned yellow wood, the bright patchwork quilt over the feather-bed--and Ogilvie's form lying there, his flushed face, his heavy breathing, his restless hands.

The woman who was watching beside his bed arose, and Rosamund crossed the narrow space. She bent over him a little, put out her hand, but shrank back, restrained perhaps by the fear of an emotion which threatened to be too strong for her.

She turned, went blindly from the little room, and Pa Cary led her out to the wagon. If he talked to her on the way to his house she did not hear him. Tim saw them coming, and ran to meet her. The pressure of his warm little arms about her neck, in the "tight squeeze" that he usually reserved for Eleanor, did more than anything else to bring her back to a normal state of mind.

But after his first embrace, Tim wanted to go to the stable with Father Cary. Eleanor was standing in the little familiar doorway, under the overhanging roof made by the upper floor. She waited, as if spell-bound, while Rosamund walked slowly up the path to the house; it was the look on the girl's face that held her back, for her heart was reaching out in sympathy. At last Rosamund stood before her, and they looked into each other's eyes; then Eleanor opened her arms wide, and with a sob drew Rosamund to her.

"Oh, my sweet, my Rose!" she cried, her tears on Rosamund's cold cheek. "I knew! I knew! I knew it was John! But he'll get well, darling. He will live for your sake!"

But Rosamund went past her into the house, looked about the little familiar room as if she had never seen it before, and seated herself in a chair near the table.

Eleanor took off her hat and unfastened her coat as if she had been a child, instead of the stricken woman that she was; Rosamund looked up at her in a dumb agony of appeal.

Eleanor repeated the story she had already heard from Father Cary; at the end she paused, hesitated, and said,

"But there is one thing more that you've got to know, Rose. The house was set on fire."

Rosamund looked up at her, as if waiting.

"Oh, don't look like that, my darling! Try to understand! Someone set fire to the house--it's so cruel to have to tell you!"

Suddenly Rosamund's face changed from its blankness to a look of horror.

"Then--if--I--had gone away, as he wanted me to--Oh! Eleanor, then he would not--"

But Eleanor's arms were around her. "Don't, Rosamund! Don't let yourself do that! There's not one of us could live and be sane, if we dwelt on our 'ifs'!"

"But it is true!"

"It is not true. It is not! Because there was no 'if'; there could not have been! You had to stay; you had to obey your own reasoning, not his. We all have to decide for ourselves. It is when we don't, that we get into trouble. I can assure you of that, I of all others. I married because I was told it was the best thing to do--but you must forget I told you that!"

At least it brought Rosamund to a thought of something else. "Eleanor!" she exclaimed, her hand reaching out towards her friend.

But it was not the moment for Eleanor to think of herself. "Rose, listen to me," she said. "Someone set fire to the house. There is no doubt of that. Now you will have to make up your mind what to do--there will have to be an inquiry, they say."

"Why?"

"Why? Because the people who look after those things will want to find out who did it. They will want to fix the blame."

"But I don't understand! It is my house! What difference does it make to anyone else?"

"And you don't care?"

Rosamund arose, and mercifully burst into tears. "Oh, Eleanor!" she sobbed, "how can you ask me that? Do you think I care for the mere loss of a few sticks and stones and things, when he----"

Again Eleanor's comforting arms were around her, and Eleanor's hand on her hair. "Oh, you darling! I knew you'd say that! I knew you would! They cannot do anything without your consent!"

Apparently in relief from some doubt or fear, she even laughed. Rosamund looked at her in amazement.

"What on earth do you mean?" she began.

But before there could be time for explanation the door opened, and Father Cary brought his little wife into the room in his arms, and set her down in a chair.

Mother Cary always brought an atmosphere of happiness with her, but this time, it seemed to Rosamund, she was also the personification of all that was angelic and beautiful, a messenger of hope, a bearer of glad tidings.

"Well," she began, as soon as Pap had set her down and unbundled her, "they come! My, that young woman knows jest how to go about things! I been nursin' all my life, seems like, and that girl can't be more than twenty-five; but the way she took a holt o' things did beat me! My! I wasn't one bit worried at leavin' him with her, not one bit! An' Doctor Blake's goin' to set up all night."

She smiled into Rosamund's beseeching eyes.

"Doctor Blake says they ain't a doubt but he'll be all right in no time!" she said, and mentally asked forgiveness for stretching the truth. "He says his eyes ain't hurt a bit, far as he can tell, an' it's only the smoke got into them, that's all. An' anybody knows that ain't much! Land! Think how many smokin' chimblys there be, an' nobody givin' a thought to 'em!"

It was not until after supper, when Tim had been sent to bed, rather joyful than otherwise in his excitement over the return to the Carys', and Eleanor was trying to put him to sleep by telling him a story, that Rosamund went upstairs to the room that had been Yetta's, to be alone with her thoughts. She was never one of those, usually members of a large family, who can take council with themselves while others are in the room; she needed solitude, if she would adjust herself and set the chambers of her mind in order. Now she had much to think of, for the events of the past three days had been incongruous enough. She smiled as she remembered that, scarcely forty-eight hours before, she had been sitting in an opera box listening to Pendleton's inanities; but there was no smile when she thought of Ogilvie.

Presently she was aware, through the silence, of a timid hand on the door. She had scarcely had time to do more than speak to Grace, who had sat, through the earlier part of the evening, as if turned to stone; now something told her she was there.

Grace, white and wan, came over the threshold and threw her arms about her friend, resting her head on Rosamund's shoulder. For a few moments they stood so, clasped in the sympathy that women convey to each other in that silent manner. Then Grace released herself a little, looked into Rosamund's face, and whispered.

"Miss Rose, he did it!"

Rosamund's thoughts had been of Ogilvie alone; for a moment she did not understand. Then Eleanor's words came back to her; and all the while she protested, she knew the truth of what Grace said.

But, out of pity, protest she must. "Oh, no, Grace! No! Don't think that! Don't let yourself think it!"

But Grace, even whiter than before, met her eyes steadily. "I don't have to think it," she said, quietly. "I know it. You know it, too."