Part 5

The doctor's hair had been very much blown by the wind, but it would have taken more than wind to send his smile awry.

"Morning!" he threw towards Rosamund.

She was at once aware that he thought of her only as the child's nurse, oblivious of all that other men saw in her, of her beauty and grace, of the signs of wealth and well-being in her garments and bearing. It amused her, though her smile was, perhaps, a little disdainful.

The boy was better; the doctor could find no serious injuries. "I am sure the car barely touched him," Rosamund said, and the doctor nodded.

"But it sometimes takes so little to shock the life out of a little underfed, weakened body like this," he said. "There's nothing to fight with, nothing to build on."

Rosamund's hand went over her heart. "Then you think," she asked, "you think that he will not----"

"On the contrary, I am very sure that he will," the doctor smiled at her. "Mother Cary, here, will teach you how to make him well."

Mother Cary laid her wrinkled hand on the girl's arm, but Rosamund's eyes filled with tears. "Poor mite!" she said, bending over the child, "we will try to make you well--but I don't know what for!"

Then Mother Cary spoke for the first time since her return. "Don't you trouble yourself about the what for, dearie," she said. "Folks is got plenty to keep 'em busy with the 'what way' and the 'what next' without troublin' themselves with the 'what for.' Ain't it so, Doctor?"

"It most certainly is," the red-headed doctor agreed, running his fingers through his already tousled hair. When he had given her further directions for the care of the child and driven off behind his jogging old white mare, he seemed to have left with her some of his own happy energy and assurance. Quite suddenly, the fatigue of her sleepless night fell from her, and from some unsuspected inner store-house of strength there crept a serenity and determination hitherto undreamed of. The boy would sleep, the doctor had told her, until late afternoon, probably awake hungry and thirsty, and then ought to sleep again; he must be kept very quiet, nourished regularly and lightly, made clean and comfortable; such careful and ceaseless nursing should, in a week or two, bring him out with even more strength than he had had before. So, until afternoon, there would be little for her to do.

She went into the kitchen to be with the old woman, who was moving about with her queer, crab-like motion of crutches and hands, preparing their dinner; Yetta had taken herself to the fields.

"No, indeedy, you can't help me one mite," Mother Cary declared, "exceptin' by settin' in that arm cheer and puttin' your pretty head back and restin.' There's nothin' I enjoy more'n a body to talk to whilst I'm a gettin' dinner, or supper. Yetta ain't that kind of a body, though! Land! The way the child can talk, and the things she knows!" Mother Cary turned about from her biscuit board to emphasize her horror. "Honey," she said, impressively, "that child knows more o' the world, the bad side of it, than--well, than I do!"

Rosamund smiled, and the old woman shook her head at her. "Oh, I was brought up in the city, honey," she told her, "so I know more about it than you think for. That's what makes me glad the doctor brought us a girl, this time; she's the first girl we've had this summer. I wisht it might be that she could stay up here as I did, but land! they ain't but one Pap! Pap jest made _me_ stay, and me a cripple, too! He said he couldn't be happy without somebody to look after; and whilst it was a new idea to me then, I come to see the sense of it many a long year ago! That poor little Yetta! It's her eyes is bad. They ain't so bad but what they won't do well enough for most things; but all she knows how to do is to sew beads and buttons and run a big sewin' machine in a shop. They say her eyes won't hold out for that! Land! If I was rich, I'd have her taught music, that's what I'd do! You jest ought to hear the child sing, dearie! To hear her in the evenin's settin' down on the fence an' singin', why, it's prettier 'n a whip-poor-will a-callin'. It wouldn't surprise me a mite if Yetta could be learnt to sing that well, with some new songs and such, that folks would pay money to hear her!"

"Perhaps we could find some way to help her," Miss Randall suggested. Mother Cary flashed a keen look at her.

"Do you know any rich folks, honey, that might?" she asked eagerly. "Yetta's a good little thing, for all the bad she knows. An' she jest loves an' loves whatever is pretty an' sweet!"

"I think perhaps I do know someone," Rosamund said. "But I wanted especially to ask you to let me board with you here for a while. Is there room for me?"

"Room a plenty, dearie," the old woman said, as she hobbled to the door to strike the metal hoop that swung from the over-hanging floor of the second story. "But," she added, when she had sent the summons ringing out to Pap and Yetta, and had come back and seated herself near the girl, "but there ain't any call for you to pay. Pap an' me has a plenty to share with folks that come our way; and you're helpin' with Timmy. I'd be real pleased to have you stay."

But Rosamund hesitated. "I'm afraid I cannot do that," she said, "unless you will let me pay something. I can afford it, really," she added, smiling.

For a long moment the old woman looked at her, keenly, kindly, with the faintest, tenderest, most teasing smile on her little wrinkled face that was as brown as a nut. "An' can't you really afford to visit?" she asked. "There's a plenty of folks that can afford to pay and to give; there ain't so many as can afford to take and to be done for. Ain't you forgettin' which kind you be?"

Rosamund lifted her head, and looked directly into the twinkling, faded old eyes. "No," she said, "I'm not forgetting the kind I am! I think I am only beginning to find out!"

Mother Cary laid her hand over the girl's in her usual gesture of caress before she hobbled to the dinner table. Pap and Yetta had come in and were already seating themselves.

It was the sweetest meal that Rosamund had ever tasted; but she had still to find out more about herself. They had not risen from the table when a musical view-halloo sounded up from the road below the stretch of woods, and in a moment Flood and Pendleton sprang out of the big red car and came briskly up the little walk. Rosamund went forward to meet them.

"Why, I say," said Flood, beaming at her, "you're looking right as a trivet, you know!"

Pendleton drawled: "Ah, fair knight-errantess! Miss Nightingale! Also Rose o' the World! You wouldn't be smiling like that if you knew Cecilia's state of mind!"

Rosamund laughed, and held out her hand to them. "I can imagine it," she said. "It's plain that I had better keep out of her way for a time!"

"I'm at your service," cried Flood bowing low: with mock servility, delighted at her merry mood, at her smiles which included even himself.

But Pendleton understood her better. "Now, what are you up to, Rosy?" he asked, severely, uneasily. She came directly to the point.

"I am going to stay here," she announced.

Both men stared at her. "How d'ye mean?" asked Flood weakly.

"The deuce you are!" cried Pendleton.

"Oh! With Mrs. Reeves!" Flood beamed, as if he had found an answer even while asking.

"Is that it? Why didn't you say so? Where is Eleanor, anyway?" Pendleton asked.

Rosamund laughed again. "I'm sure I don't know!" she said. "She is at Bluemont, and that's miles away, isn't it? I haven't even asked. No, Marshall, no, Mr. Flood, I am going to stay here, right here, here in this house, or this valley, or this mountain, but here, here as long as I like--forever, if I want to! That's what I mean--or part of it!"

It was evident that her laughter carried more conviction than any amount of seriousness would have done. Poor Flood's face got redder, and he suddenly, after a stare, turned on his heel, and walked rather slowly down the path to his car, standing beside it with his arms folded, looking across at the strip of woods, but seeing nothing. Pendleton, however, felt it incumbent upon him to remonstrate.

"Of course, we all know you can afford any whim you like, Rosamund," he said, in the tone of the old friend who dares, "but I think I ought to warn you that this sort of thing is not--not in the best of taste, you know! It is not done, really--in--in--among our sort, you know!"

Rosamund openly showed her amusement. "That is undoubtedly true, my dear Marshall," she said, "but this time it is going to be done! _I_ am going to do it! You think it is a freak, and I'm sure I can say it isn't, because I don't in the least know what it is!"

"I think you're mad. If I had not been an unwilling observer of the accident, I should believe it was you had got concussion, and not the infant."

"My dear Marshall, your diagnosis is wrong! I may have a--a disease, but it is not madness. Did you ever hear of people who had suffered from loss of memory for years and years and quite suddenly recovered it? Perhaps I'm one of those--I feel as if I had only just come to my senses!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" said Pendleton.

"Don't you? I thought you wouldn't!" Again she laughed, and at the sound Flood started, looked back towards the house where she stood, radiant and lovely, framed in the doorway, and then got into his car.

But Pendleton had one further protest. "You _can't_ stay in this--this hovel, alone, Rosamund! You can't think of doing it! Please remember _I_ have got to go back to Cecilia! What on earth am I going to say to her?"

"Poor Marshall! Tell Cecilia, with my love, that I am going to stay here for the present. She may send me some clothes by express, or not, as she likes. Please give her my love, and tell her that I hope she will have a pleasant visit with the Whartons--she had better go there to-morrow. And try, my dear Marshall, to assure her of my sanity! Good-by! Don't let me keep you waiting!"

Pendleton pushed back his hat, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and looked at her. Then he drew a long breath and delivered himself, oracularly. "Rosamund," he said, "you're a fool! You can't, you really can't, do this sort of thing, you know. Why, my dear girl, it--it is not done, you know, in--"

But Rosamund ran back into the house, turned a flashing, smiling look upon him over her shoulder, cried, "Good-by, Marshall! Give my love to Cecilia!" and was gone, leaving him there agape. There was really nothing for him to do but rejoin Flood.

Cecilia, however, remained for a time inconsolable. Flood and Pendleton motored back across the mountain, told Mrs. Maxwell of Rosamund's decision to remain indefinitely in the little cottage on the mountain, and forthwith avoided the presence of the irate lady as much as possible. Fortunately, the newly arriving week-end guests had to be entertained. They were very good and very stupid; but, as Pendleton said, anything was better than Cecilia in a temper.

Left to herself, Cecilia's mind was occupied with a veritable jack-straw puzzle of events, motives, contingencies. She had had good reason, before this, to know that Rosamund enjoyed unforeseen departures; but that anyone should deliberately choose to forego the luxuries of Oakleigh, to stay, instead, in what Mrs. Maxwell considered a peasant's cottage--such conduct, such a choice, were beyond the lady's imagination and experience. Rosamund must be wild; for surely not even pique at Cecilia's generalship, not even annoyance at Flood's attentions, not even the desire to be near that tiresome Eleanor Reeves, could have determined her to such a move. As for the accident, anyone could have cared for the child. Rosamund could have paid a dozen nurses to stay there, if she was charitably inclined; and certainly Mr. Flood had shown that he wanted to do what was right. Cecilia could not understand it.

VII

After the retreat of Pendleton and Flood, Rosamund went back to the little boy's room, smiling. Mother Cary looked up at her with a face slightly troubled.

"Seems like your friends ain't willing to have you stay here," she said. "Is there anything calling you home, honey, anything that needs you?"

The girl shook her head. "I think I have never been needed anywhere in all my life, until now," she said. Then, perhaps because of Flood's words, she remembered Eleanor. "Well, perhaps there is one person who has needed me, from time to time; and, dear Mother Cary, she is somewhere near here. She came to Bluemont to be near Doctor Ogilvie."

"There's a many a one that does," said Mother Cary.

"My friend is Mrs. Reeves. Do you know her?"

"Land, honey, rich city folks don't bother to become acquainted with the likes of me!" the old woman said, smiling.

"Mrs. Reeves is not 'rich city folks.' She is working for her living all the while she is here in the mountains; she is companion for another of the doctor's patients, Mrs. Hetherbee."

"Oh, I know!" Yetta exclaimed. "I saw her in the post-office one day askin' for the mail, while the old one waited outside in the automobile. Gee! That old one looked cross!"

Rosamund laughed. "And do you know where they live?"

"Sure! Want me to show you?"

"I should like it ever and ever so much if you would take a note there for me. Could you do that? Is it too far?"

Mother Cary patted Yetta's dark hair. "She can go over with Pap, when he goes to the store," she said. "She'll be real glad to; won't you, Yetta?"

So it came to pass that in the late afternoon Eleanor came in Mrs. Hetherbee's car. The boy Tim was resting so quietly that Rosamund had gone outside; she went swiftly down the little red path to the gate, and the two met, arms entwining, cheek to cheek, with little laughs and questions and soft cries.

"Your note said there was an accident!" These were Eleanor's first words. "Darling, that is not why you are here? You are not hurt?"

"Why I am here; but it was not I--I was not hurt! Look at me--feel me!"

"Nor Cecilia?"

"Nor anyone, you precious, that you know! A tiny mite of a boy, Eleanor, and I stayed to take care of him."

"You?"

"Oh, don't say it like that! And yet I don't wonder!"

Eleanor's arm was about her at once. "Sweet, I was only wondering that Cecilia let you!"

"Cecilia did not let me; and you were wondering, too, why I stayed, what really kept me. You are quite right; of my own accord I shouldn't have stayed. My own impulse would not have moved that way. I should have taken the easy, the obvious course, if I had been left to choose. But I wasn't, you see."

Eleanor looked at her keenly. This note of bitterness was quite new. Suddenly she remembered Ogilvie; but almost on the instant Rosamund spoke again.

"What manner of man do you find this red-headed doctor of yours?"

Eleanor laughed. "He gets his own way with people!" She looked at her friend, but Rosamund's face was turned from her. "I have never met anyone else like him. I thought at first that he was two people--a man of heart and a man of science; you know his reputation, and yet he stays up here mainly, I am told, to be near these mountain people. He says that they trust him, and seems to think that excuse enough for staying."

"I thought he stayed for the air or something?"

"He did, but now he is perfectly well again. And his character is not dual; nothing so romantic. He is a man of science just because he is a man of heart. He is one of the simplest people I have ever known."

"You seem to know him pretty well."

"Oh, he is the first object of interest to all his patients; we talk of nothing else! I am only a case to him."

Rosamund laughed. "Very likely, dear! And what does he think of you, as a case?"

Eleanor's face took on its shadow of sadness. "He--he does not know," she said; and Rosamund drew a swift breath of pain.

Eleanor came daily after that, Mrs. Hetherbee, a worn, eager little woman with restless eyes, showing herself entirely complaisant when it seemed likely that the very well known Miss Randall would return Eleanor's visits. Her attitude towards her companion had been pleasant enough before, but it certainly took on a new warmth after Rosamund's arrival in the neighborhood, and when she learned that Mrs. Reeves was one of Miss Randall's lifelong friends.

"You will have to drive over and call on Mrs. Hetherbee, Rose," Eleanor assured her. "If you don't I shall feel that I'm using her car under false pretenses!"

So Rosamund called, and Mrs. Hetherbee basked in the distinction of being the only person at the Summit whom Miss Randall cared to know. Thereafter Eleanor came daily across the valley, tenderly sweet as only she knew how to be, almost at once becoming fast friends with Mother Cary, and hanging over the boy with aching heart and arms weary of their emptiness. Rosamund always felt as if a hand of pain clutched at her heart as she watched them.

"Who is he?" Eleanor had asked the first day she saw him. "Is he the child of these people?"

"He is a waif," Rosamund said, and told how Mother Cary made of the little white house a refuge of love for the needy ones of the city. "And this tiny boy, Doctor Ogilvie says, needs love more than most of them. The Charities have tried to have him adopted; but most people do not want boys--not homely little boys, whose fathers were not at all good and whose mothers died very young and very forlorn. Timmy has gone begging--and he will have to go back after his summer here is over. The most to be hoped for is that he will go back stronger; then perhaps he will be prettier, and some one may want him. It is really unspeakably pathetic."

So Eleanor hung over the child, and gradually there grew up in Rosamund's heart and mind a plan, which, as it matured, was to alter the course of life for all of them.

But that was not until later; and while to her on the mountain the days passed uneventfully enough, they were days of distressful change for her sister. During the first week or two, Cecilia sent her four letters and eleven telegrams--the telegrams being duly delivered with the letters, whenever Father Cary drove across the valley to the store. Rosamund read them all, pondered, smiled, and then sent off a reassuring telegram by Eleanor. Later she wrote two letters; the first was to her banker, and in the second she said:

DEAREST CISSY:

Don't be too cross! You've always been an angel to me, and I love you; but I am tired, tired, tired of the sort of life we lead; and the other day, when Mr. Flood's man so obligingly bumped into the poor little boy, I was wondering how on earth I could get out of it for a time, get some sort of change. Then, the people here seemed to take it for granted that I would stay to nurse the child. It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever taken for granted that I would do the right thing if it meant personal discomfort. Before, I had always been praised and applauded if I merely happened to do it. I don't suppose I can make you understand, dearest Cissy; but just that made all the difference in the world to me. And now I am going to stay here--for how long, I do not know. Until I get tired of it, perhaps, or until I can think up something else. The mountains are so big, Cecilia, and the stars so bright, and the sun does such good work!

I have put some money to your credit; I think there will be enough to last you for a while. You can even get the motor car, if you want to. And if I were you, I should stop in town and get a few linens and perhaps a hat or two and a parasol at Lucille's. You will need a lot of things at Bar Harbor. I suppose you will go right up to the Whartons'.

You say I have broken up Mr. Flood's plans. I'm afraid I don't altogether agree to that. There was only another week-end left in June, and we were not going to stay any longer than that. I do not choose to think that you referred to other plans of his. If you do, please understand that I have no interest in them.

Give my love to the Whartons; they have always thought me queer, anyway, so you will not have to account to them for me. And don't be too cross!

Cecilia's reply, which the doctor brought up the mountain a week later, was dated from Bar Harbor. It read:

DEAR ROSAMUND:

It's no use saying what I think. But you are exceedingly disagreeable about Mr. Flood, and the mountains were just as big at Oakleigh, and the sun is just as hot in one place as another at this time of year, and it is very selfish of you to break up everybody's plans. But at least I can say that I am glad you remain sane upon some subjects. I hope you got the trunks I sent over to Bluemont Summit; and I took your advice about the linens. There was a white serge, too, that was unusually good for the price. I haven't decided about the car. We play bridge here twice a day, and my game seems rather uncertain, since the shock you gave me. And Minnie has invited Benson Flood for two weeks, and a good many things may happen. I may not buy the car after all. I told Minnie that you were camping in the mountains, and she only raised her eyebrows. Well--all I can say is that poor dear Mamma always admitted Colonel Randall was peculiar. If you are not going to wear your opals this summer, you may as well let me have them.

Rosamund laughed aloud at the letter. Doctor Ogilvie was sitting on the side of Timmy's bed, and she had gone to the window to read it. At her laugh he looked up.

"Good news?" he asked, cheerfully. He was always cheerful, as cheerful as a half-grown puppy.

"Neither good nor bad," she replied, "only amusing."

"But whatever is amusing is good," he asserted.

She looked up from folding her letter, to see whether he was in earnest. "That," she said, slowly, "is rather a unique point of view!"

He ran his fingers through his hair, and came towards her. "Unique? I hope not," he replied. "Oh, I see what you mean--you're taking issue with my word 'amusing'! I'm not thinking of passing the time, as a definition of that word; I'm thinking of fun, mirth, that kind of amusement--nothing to do with chorus ladies and things to eat and drink and that sort of thing, you know!"

She was learning to watch his smile as one watches a barometer; to-day the signs were certainly propitious. There was something of indulgence in her look as she replied to him, the indulgence one feels towards the young and inexperienced.

"So you think it is a good thing to be amused--in your way?" she asked.

He nodded. "Most assuredly. Nothing like it. And the most amusing thing I know is the way we can cheat disease and dirt and a few other nice little things like them--turn the joke on them! Now, there's Master Tim--eh, youngster? Life will seem like a good deal of a joke to you, when you get over that ache in your hip, won't it? Think you'll find fun in life then, don't you, old chap? And there's a girl down in the valley--by the way, how'd you like to go down with me and make a call? Do you a lot of good!"

He cocked his head on one side and looked at Rosamund inquiringly, persuasively.

She had seen him every day for two weeks, and this was the first moment he had looked at her with the least shadow of personal interest. Until now, she had felt that she was no more to him than an article of furniture, certainly less of a personage than Mother Cary or Yetta or the sick child. She had a feeling that he tolerated her solely as an aid, that she had not even the virtue of being a 'case'; and she told herself in secret disgust that while she did not possess the last virtue, she at least shared the patients' fault, or absurdity; she had to admit that he piqued her interest, and she resented his doing so, blaming him even while disgusted at herself.