Part 7

He turned on the seat to look at her, and she met his gaze a little defiantly, on the defensive, for she knew him well enough by now to guess what his reply would be. For the first time she encountered in his eyes a look of appraisement as if he were weighing her value, even questioning it. Suddenly there arose between them the antagonism of their opposite points of view, of those differences in their minds and characters which must always arise between a man and a woman, and be settled by conquest or compromise, before happiness can be secure between them.

As he looked at her, more beautiful in her sudden proud defiance than he had ever before seen her, it flashed upon him who and what she was, and that what he had chosen to ignore might be none the less placing her beyond him. In his inexperience he was unprepared for the swift pain of the idea; instinctively defending himself, his defense was cruelly sharp.

The irony of his words stung her cheeks to a quick crimson.

"I am not capable of judging of your class, Miss Randall!" he said.

She might have understood, from the tremor in his voice, but she heard nothing but the meaning of the words. As she still looked into his eyes her own widened, and with the widening of their pupils seemed to grow black. For an instant they looked at one another so; but the moment was too tense to be one of revelation. Then she drew a gasping breath so sharp that it almost seemed to be a wordless cry of pain, and turned away.

Instantly he was filled with shame of having hurt her, and greater shame of having doubted her.

"Oh, forgive me," he cried. "Forgive me! Won't you forgive me?"

She lifted her head a little, still turned from him, but did not speak.

"Rosamund!" he cried. "Forgive me!"

It was now unmistakably a cry of pain, appealing and revealing; it steadied her, as a woman is always steadied by that tone in a man's voice, until the moment when she is prepared to welcome it. On the instant, she was no longer the woman of the past weeks, simple, companionable, revealing herself as naturally as a child; she was once more the Miss Randall the world knew, haughty, reserved, aloof. Even her eyes, as she turned to smile at him, were not those he had known.

"There is nothing in the world to forgive! I think we have been a little absurd!"

It was his turn to feel how words could lash.

"I am glad you see it so," he said, and wondered, during the rest of their drive, filled as it was with the commonplace of small talk, how he could have forgotten her likeness to the vapid, futile, fashionable women at the Summit; while she, hurt and bewildered, was wondering what he had meant, whether he had known her all along for the person she was, Colonel Randall's daughter and only heir, and in the stupidity of a countryman had failed in the observance due to her position.

When White Rosy stopped at the little red gate, willingly, as always, the two children were there to welcome them. Ogilvie, in spite of Timmy's beseeching arms, would not stay to supper, as he often did.

Tim sat down on the brick path and lifted his voice in a wail. "Oh, ev'rybody's gonin' away!" he cried; and his anguish increased by his own words, he further declared, "Ev'rybody has went away!"

Rosamund picked up the boy, but he wriggled down from her arms. In spite of her care for him, and the good-fellowship there was between her and both the children, who were ordinarily devoted enough, nothing of the maternal had as yet been aroused in her; and in the moments when he needs the only comfort that satisfies childhood, a child knows instinctively whether there is aught of the mother in the arms that hold him.

But Rosamund was in need of love to-day. "Why, Timmy," she cried, still holding him to her, "_I_ am here! _I_ have not gone away!"

"I don't want my White Lady to go away! I want my White Lady!" was Timmy's cry. "Ev'rybody's gonin' away!"

Now Yetta became voluble in explanation of his cry. "She is going away! She came over while you were gone, 'cause she said maybe she won't be able to come to-morrow. She says she's got to pack, 'cause the old one's going back to town. Lots o' people have gone already, it's so cold; and the old one thinks it's going to set in to rain, so she's going home, an' Mis' Reeves has got to go with her."

"My White Lady's gonin' away!" Tim wailed again, with a concentration of thought that might have been admirable under other circumstances. "Ev'rybody's gonin' away!"

Rosamund had been overwrought on the drive, and the boy's persistent cry was rasping her nerves. "Oh, for goodness' sake, Timmy, don't say that again! It is not true, Tim! I am here, and Yetta's here, and Mother Cary's here. Aren't we enough!"

"No, she ain't," Yetta cried, still informing. "She's gone down to her daughter's, 'cause the baby's sick. Pap took her, and maybe he'll stay all night, if it rains, an' he says it's going to for sure. And I know what to get for supper, and it's corn puddin' and jam!"

At last they had found the silencing note for Timmy. "'Ikes jam!" he announced. Then, apparently warming towards Rosamund, he encircled her knees with his arms. "'Ikes you, too!" he declared. '"Ikes ev'rybody!"

Rosamund was glad to laugh, to carry him, with swings and bounces and kisses stolen from the tangle of his curls, into the house, glad to make a 'party' out of the simple supper and a ceremony out of the lighting of Mother Cary's nightly beacon, glad to hold him up to the window to see the trees bend under the wind that came with Father Cary's predicted rain, and glad to hold his little warm body to her while she undressed him, and to hear him repeat after her, in unison with Yetta, the prayer that she was, somewhat shyly, teaching them. She was glad when Yetta claimed the privilege of her fifteen years to sit up a while longer; glad of anything that might postpone the moments when she should be alone with her own thoughts.

The storm was increasing; each gust of wind shrieked louder than the last, sending the rain against the little house in sheets that broke with a sound as of waves on a shore. Rosamund, answering Yetta's demand for a story, regaled her with the tale of Rip Van Winkle, and then, somewhat unwisely, with the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, so that when the girl's bed-time could no longer be put off she pleaded to stay downstairs with Timmy and herself.

But at last Rosamund must be alone with herself and the storm. At first she could not think of Eleanor's message, and what it might mean to her. She had forgotten that the summer was almost over, forgotten that Eleanor's inevitable departure must leave her alone, as far as old friends were concerned, in the mountains. She had even forgotten that she herself must return; and now she had to remember that Cecilia's clamor might begin again with any letter. The summer was over. It had warmed into growth some part of her which had laid dormant before; but, after this afternoon, she was in no mood to dwell upon that. She thought again of Eleanor, of her parting with the boy. There must, of course, be something provided for the poor little waif, and for Yetta; that would be easy enough; she had only to write a check or two. Yet, in spite of the obviousness of that way, something else, quite different, seemed to be struggling to formulate itself in her mind; for once the writing of a check did not appear to be an adequate solution.

But the sum of it all, for her, seemed to be that she was just where she had left her old self, two months before. The old restlessness, the old discontent, swept back upon her with accumulated force, only increased by her life here. The summer had taught her something, given her something; how much she was unwilling to admit.

Suddenly there came back to her the sound of Ogilvie's voice, when he had called her by name, out of his shame and pain; and with the memory there came the reality of his voice, only now it was muffled by the storm, and by the sound of his knocking on the door.

Startled though she was at its coming in apparent answer to her thoughts, she sprang to the door and opened it. Then, in a quick heat of shame, she realized that he was far from calling upon her.

He stood under the overhang of the upper story, water dripping from him onto the brick paving, hatless as usual, tossing the rain from his eyes. He was exceedingly far from being a beautiful figure as he stood there; rather, he seemed a creature of the storm, wind-swept, rain-soaked, forceful, insistent.

"Mother Cary!" he demanded almost before Rosamund had opened the door. "Mother Cary! Where is she?"

Rosamund drew back, as if repelled from the dripping figure. Unconsciously she had, expected something else.

"Mother Cary is not here," she said, coldly.

"Not here?" he cried. Then, like a man who finds himself suddenly stopped, repeating, "Not here? To-night?"

"She went to her daughter's, before the storm broke. The baby is sick."

"Then Father Cary--I must have someone!"

"He is with her," said Rosamund, and made as though she would close the door, although, if truth be told, no power on earth would have made her do so. But Ogilvie stepped, still dripping, across the threshold, while she stood before him in her dress of thin blue, silhouetted against the lamp-light.

For a moment they faced each other, again, as earlier on that day, their natures and all the difference in their training and traditions ranged in opposing forces.

The appeal of her beauty, the memory of their hours together, swept over him like the breath of a dream; but the doctor in him was uppermost.

"It's the Allen woman," he said. "That boy, six years old, came all the way to my house to tell me. Jim Allen is in the woods, and there's no telling how long she's been that way. The baby is starving; and if I don't operate now she will die, and the baby, too."

The words had poured out. He barely paused, hesitated only to give her a glance more piercing. Yet when he spoke again he voiced a new insistence.

"I have _got_ to have help. Get on your things," he commanded.

"I?" she gasped.

"Yes, you! And quickly. I have no time to lose."

The haste of his words only made her own seem slower. "Then you will certainly have to go for someone else. You are losing time waiting for me."

He came a step or two closer. "You have got to come," he said, clearly, speaking his words very distinctly, as if trying to make himself understood beyond question. "There is no time to go for someone else. And I have got to operate on that woman at once, _at once_, or she will die." As Rosamund still stood, head up, eyes upon him coldly, he repeated: "Don't you understand? The woman will die, and then the baby will starve...."

Her eyes seemed to darken; Cecilia would have recognized the sign of wrath. "Certainly I understand," she said. "But you must see that it is perfectly impossible for me--_me_--to help you! I don't know what you can be thinking of!"

"Impossible? I say you have got to help me! I can't wait for anyone else!"

"I? Help you--help you--operate--cut--oh!"

She shrank farther back towards the table. "Oh, I think you are perfectly brutal!"

He watched her in silence for a moment, a silence that burned, so charged with meaning was it. Then he said,

"I am asking you to help me save a woman's life!"

"It would kill _me_ to see it!"

He threw his hand out towards her. "Then live!" he cried. "Live on, and shield your pretty eyes from the beautiful works of the Almighty, draw your dainty skirts aside from the contamination of suffering humanity, cover your ears against the cries of those little children whose mother is dying. Dance with your friends, laugh your life away; live for yourself--yourself! My God! What kind of a thing are you? Do you call yourself a woman?"

He did not wait to see what effect his words would have upon her. He rushed across the door sill, and the door, which he drew behind him, was slammed by the wind as from the force of a blow.

For a moment she stood watching the door, lips parted, eyes opened wide in horror. It seemed as if the blood pulsing in her throat would choke her; or was it the wild hammering of her heart?

She looked around Mother Cary's little room as if she had never seen it before. Was the whole world different, or was it only herself? Was she still dreaming, or was she awake? Had he come at all, had he called her, had he--had he thrown his bitter scorn at her----?

Was that the wind? Her hand rose from her heart to her white cheek. Was that the voice of the storm, or the voice of children, children--calling--crying for----

From her frozen horror she sprang to life. She ran to the room where Tim and Yetta were. Yetta was sitting up in bed, wide-eyed.

"What went off?" she demanded, excitedly.

Rosamund was already getting into her rain-coat. "Doctor Ogilvie has been here, Yetta, and I have got to help him. Mrs. Allen is sick, and I have got to go."

Yetta interrupted. "Was that him slammed the door? Gee! He must a been mad about somethin'!"

But Rosamund would not be interrupted. "Hush, Yetta! Listen to me! I have got to go to Mrs. Allen's. Do you hear?"

"My land! If you was to meet one o' the goberlins or one o' them fellers with their heads under their arms, Miss Rose, you'd drop down dead with fright!"

Rosamond remembered the absurdity of it afterwards, but there was no time to laugh. "Yetta! Oh, hush! Listen to me! You will not be afraid, here with Timmy, will you?"

"Land! No! I ain't afraid of anything when a door's between me an' it!"

"Father Cary will be up the mountain early!" She turned in the door of the bed-room to look back at the two her care had made comfortable; then she closed it, and went out of the other door into the storm.

IX

She never forgot that night. When the door of Mother Cary's house closed behind her, and she faced the wind and blinding rain, she awoke. That was the way she always thought of it--as an awakening.

The Allen house lay beyond Father Cary's pasture; she knew the way by day--down through the garden, then through the woods to the rock-ribbed clearing where the cattle were, then up, into woods again; but in the dark it was for her but a wild, instinctive rush, a stumbling over rock-broken ground, a splashing through pools of water; on through the darkness, on from one darkness to another, turning from time to time to look back at Mother Cary's light as a guide to direction. Yet on she flew, impelled by a conquering fear that drove out all lesser fears, over rough places, through woods, up the ascent of hills, running as much of the way as she could, bending against the wind that seemed trying to force her back, praying that she might find the way, praying that she might be in time.

At last, though she could never tell how she had come to it, a light gleamed faintly through the dark and the rain. At last--the Allen house! She tumbled to the door, paused a moment for breath, and opened it.

It was the usual one-room cabin of the mountaineer; there were strange, shelf-like beds against the farthest wall, and in a corner a wooden bedstead. It was from there that John Ogilvie looked up as she opened the door.

"Quick! That largest bottle--saturate something--anything--and hold it over her face!"

She worked with him, obeying blindly, while he struggled through the night for a woman's life, while the poor hungry baby awoke at intervals to wail its complaint from the other bed, while the storm shook the house and the rain swept down unceasingly. Once he bade her get more light. There were no more lamps; she knelt down on the hearth to blow into the flame the scraps she had gathered up in her bare hands from the wood-box; those lighted, and lacking more, somehow she broke the box itself--a task ordinarily as far beyond her strength as her imagination. It was by the light of that blaze that he finished his work, leaving Rosamund free to do what she could for the baby.

But, when at last there was time for speech, neither found anything to say. He remembered too well the brutal words he had thrown at her a few hours before; he could not but fear that her silence meant that she, too, was recalling them. He saw her there beside the hearth, the baby on her knees; but he saw her also in the doorway, her hair wind-blown and wet, and her eyes wide with fear and dread, determination and hope. He could have grovelled at her feet, had not her silence held him back; but speak he could not; great emotion was always to leave him inarticulate.

But as for Rosamund, she was unaware of his silence or her own. She was like a woman after her travail, who is content to lie in silence, because the purpose of the world has been revealed to her. Life--that was it--to further life, to prolong it, to minister to it! How futile was all else! How valueless were the things she had been taught to value most! Her shielded ignorance, her--her refinement--of what use were they, when they could not face such an emergency as last night's? Her money, that could have bought a hospital--what had it bought last night, when only the service of her own two hands could help to save a woman's life? The pursuits of her kind--she smiled, remembering Ogilvie's orderly haste, as unerringly he cut, and tied and sewed, while she as unfalteringly watched him, even assisted. No! For her there was nothing to say; she knew now what life was for. It was not the empty, useless existence she had known. It had a deeper meaning, a purpose worthier its Maker. It was wonderful beyond words. She had nothing to say.

Neither of them was aware that the dawn had come, until someone knocked on the door. Then Ogilvie opened it to Father Cary, and to the grayness of a still driving rain.

The stalwart old man stepped inside and looked about the cabin, at the quietly breathing woman on the bed, at Ogilvie, at Rosamund beside the fire trying to persuade the baby to take something warm from a spoon.

"So!" he said. "And where's Jim Allen?"

Ogilvie threw up both his hands, hopelessly. "Where he always is--back in the woods at one of the stills, dead drunk, like as not."

"More'n likely," Father Cary acquiesced. Then, nodding towards the bed, he asked, "What's the matter with _her_?"

"Nothing now. She would have been dead, though, if I had operated half an hour later. Lord knows how long she's been lying there. The baby's nearly dead, too--half-starved and half-poisoned by his mother's illness."

"How'd you happen to come?" the old man asked.

"The oldest boy came for me--all the way over to the Summit, and he's not six. He's at my house in bed now."

Then Father Cary crossed the room, and stood beside Rosamund, looking down at her. She met his look with a quiet smile.

"New work for you, ain't it?" he asked. "Ma Cary'll be real proud o' ye!"

And answering the question in her eyes, he went on, "Oh, she'll be home again in time to get dinner. Wasn't nothin' the matter with the baby; but Nancy's that nervous, an' so's Ma Cary." He chuckled. "I reckon it takes some experience and a right smart o' ca'm to be a real successful granny."

The doctor was becoming impatient. "Will you stay here with Miss Randall, Cary? I must get someone to come; she"--nodding towards the bed--"will need watching until we can find Allen."

So for an hour or so Pa Cary sat opposite Rosamund or busied himself preparing for breakfast the little food to be found in the house. The other children awoke, tumbling down backwards from the high box-bed, looking across at their mother with scared faces, and distrustfully at Rosamund.

At last Ogilvie returned, bringing Grace Tobet with him, and Rosamund was free to go home with Father Cary.

But there must first be the inevitable moment when she and Ogilvie should stand face to face. It happened simply enough. Grace had taken Rosamund's place beside the fire, replenished now through Father Cary's efforts in the outer shed; the old man had gone out for a last armful of wood, and Rosamund was about to take down her coat from its nail on the door.

Then, somehow, Ogilvie was standing before her. He looked at her with trembling lips; he did not dare to trust himself to speak. He could only hold out his hands.

She turned her tired face up to him, looking, searchingly, it seemed, into his eyes. Then, smiling, she laid her hands for the breath of a moment in his, and with a little gasp reached for her coat and ran out to join Father Cary.

She was glad that Eleanor's departure, and the rain, kept them apart for a few days after that. She dreaded the restraint that she thought they both must feel when they should meet; but, when the meeting came at last, there was no embarrassment at all.

Father Cary had left her at the Summit and she meant to walk back to the house on the mountain, to make the most of the first clear day after the rain. There was a little brown house, set on the brow of the hill overlooking the valley, almost opposite the mountain whence Mother Cary's light shone every night. Rosamund had often noticed the little place, and to-day, at the store, she had heard the men talking about it. The man who owned it had come from the city a year or so before, with his wife, to be near Doctor Ogilvie. They were young, and the young do not see very far ahead. It had seemed to them in their distress that they would have to stay there forever; they had done many things to the little house, and put into it many of the comforts they had been used to. Now the man was well, and they were going back to the city.

"Want to sell out," the postmaster had told her. "Humph! Wouldn't mind sellin' out myself! Like to know who's going to buy prop'ty up here, this time o' year!"

So, as she approached the little house on her way home, Rosamund was busily thinking about it. Perhaps, subconsciously, the idea had been a long time growing in her mind; but when she turned the last bend in the road that hid the house from her view, a plan seemed to burst upon her with all the novelty of a revelation. She stood still, looking first at the house, then across the valley towards the place which had sheltered her all summer. She was not aware that a vehicle drawn by a familiar white horse was just turning out of a wood-road into the highway, scarcely ten yards behind her.

But Ogilvie, in the sudden gladness of thus unexpectedly coming upon her, called out.

"Oh, good luck! Let me give you a lift, won't you?"

The embarrassment that she had been dreading was not there! They were as simply glad to see each other as two children; laughing, she took the place beside him in the buggy.

He had never looked more cheerful. "So I caught you staring into the Marvens' windows!" he accused her.

She laughed again. "I am tempted to buy that little house," she told him.

"Why don't you?" he asked, lightly. "And go there to live, and take Timmy and Yetta with you!" He smiled down at her, indulgently, as at the fancies of a child.

"That was just precisely what I was thinking of doing," she replied. "We could be perfectly comfortable there during the winter. I don't want to go back to town one bit!"

"So you could," he agreed, still in his bantering tone. "And I wouldn't stop with Tim and Yetta. I'd take in a few more. You might borrow some little Allens, or get someone to lend you an orphan asylum."

Rosamund put her head back and laughed aloud, merrily. "But I am perfectly in earnest!" she cried; and was, from that moment.