VI

During the long silent watches of that night there came to Rosamund one

of those revelations, fortunately not rare in human experience, by

means of which the soul is taught some measure of the power of the

infinite--power to change or to create, to lead, to see more clearly,

or better to understand. The afternoon had been crowded with new

impressions and emotions following each other so swiftly as to preclude

consideration of them, but during the hours beside the unconscious

child her mind was busy; one thing after another came back to her, and,

reviewed in comparison with all the other happenings of the day, took

its rightful place of importance or unimportance.

[Illustration: "One thing after another came back to her."]

After the car had borne away her irate sister and friends, the

red-headed doctor carefully went over his directions to her, and she

had some difficulty in ignoring the twinkle in his eyes; Cecilia's

horror and Flood's disgust had been as amusing as Pendleton's lazy

irony. But before supper the doctor, too, had hurried away. Flood had

not offered him a lift, and the walk back to the Summit was long.

Father Cary, whom she found to be a friendly giant with a

well-developed rustic sense of humor, had driven off with his tiny wife

down the mountain to their daughter's home, leaving Yetta to clear away

the supper.

Until then the black eyes of that other daughter of cities had scarcely

left Rosamund. As soon as she had washed and put away the dishes, she

came to the door of the room where the little boy lay, and after asking

if 'the lady' were afraid of the quiet and dark, she went upstairs.

Then Rosamund stood at the window and watched the stars come out. The

great boles of the oaks and chestnuts in the strip of woods across the

way drew about themselves mantles of shadow. An apple fell from a tree

near the low, white spring-house, and a cricket began to chirp. From

some lower mountain slope there sounded the faint tinkle of a cow bell,

and still farther down the valley twinkling lights marked, in the

darkness, the places where people were gathered--little beacons of

home; and she knew that overhead there shone another light, set in a

window by the old woman before she went down the mountain. The placing

of that light in the window, Mother Cary had told her, was the

uninterrupted custom of the house since her first child was born. On

that day of wonder, when the shadows had deepened in the quiet room

where the miracle had taken place, they had set a lamp on the window

sill, and a light had burned in the same window every night since then,

a signal to all who should see it that happiness had come to live on

the mountain, and still dwelt there. It was so small a light that,

even when dark closed in, the girl standing beneath it could scarcely

discern its rays; yet she knew that it was large enough to be seen far

off, miles down the valley, across on the other mountains. Flood had

told her of seeing it from Doctor Ogilvie's house at the Summit. She

felt its symbolism--so small and humble a light, shedding its rays and

carrying its message so far; and with that thought there came another.

This humble life of love and service, how beautiful it was! Only that

morning she had believed her life the real one, her world the only one

worth living in; but already she was beginning to suspect that there

might be a life more real, a world less circumscribed. She looked back

into the little bedroom, and beyond into the dimly lighted kitchen; it

was so poor a house, so rich a home!

And of their poverty these mountain folk had given immeasurable

largesse to how many waifs--dust of the city's greed and sin, taken

them into this loving shelter, tended them back to usefulness, taught

them cleanliness of heart and body. Yet even to the waif so rescued

the city's power of harm reached out! How strange it was that the boy

lying there should have escaped so many of the city's dangers, found

this safe refuge on the mountain, and then have been injured on a quiet

country road by one of those very dangers he had dodged every day since

he first toddled across city streets!

As she watched the child, another thought presented itself, caused her

cheeks to burn in the dark, sent a wave of disgust and shame over her:

these people, who had added nothing to the city's harm, recognized

their responsibility to the city's offspring; whereas Flood and

Pendleton, her sister and herself, who fed upon the city and its

workers, would almost have left the boy by the roadside, but for very

shame of one another. Her friends believed her whimsical,

unreasonable, utterly foolish to watch beside him through one night;

and she had been, in her inmost heart, taking credit to herself for

doing so!

She asked herself whether, indeed, she would have remained, if it had

not been for the compelling force of Ogilvie, no less insistent for

being unvoiced. She recalled what Flood had told her about him; yet,

now that she had met him, all of Flood's enthusiasm did not seem to

explain the man, and she smiled as she remembered how little of that

enthusiasm poor Flood had shown in his disgust at Ogilvie's quiet

demand for her assistance. She felt suddenly ashamed as she admitted

to herself her secret delight in teasing Flood and Cecilia and Marshall

by obeying the doctor's appeal. In her growing humility she was almost

ready to believe that there had been no impulse of good in her

remaining. Yet she knew that she would have had to remain, even if the

others had not been there. What manner of man, she wondered, was this

red-headed country doctor who had first aroused the admiration of a man

like Benson Flood, and now had forced Rosamund Randall to perform a

service that, a day before, she would have thought a menial one?

Certainly he must differ in many respects from the men she had hitherto

met.

The loudly ticking clock on the kitchen mantel struck off hour after

hour. A lusty cock began calling his fellows long before the fading of

the stars. Rosamund, standing again at the breast-high casement of the

little window, for the first time in her life watched the day break.

Rosy fingers of light reached up from the eastern mountains; valley and

hillsides threw off their purple and silver wrappings of night, and

gradually took on their natural colors; little fitful gusts of air,

sweet with night-drawn fragrance, touched her face at the window; from

their nests in the near-by fruit-trees faint, sleepy twitterings soon

increased to a joyful chorus of bird music; the shadows melted, it was

day, and the world awoke; but it was a new world to Rosamund. She had

touched the pulse of life, and with the dawn there was born in her

heart a purpose, feeble and immature as yet, but as surely purpose as

the newborn babe is man.

Father Cary came up the mountain early to attend to his cattle,

bringing word that his daughter was not so well, and that Mother Cary

could not leave her until later in the day, but that Miss Randall was

to feel at home, and Yetta was to do all she could for her comfort. He

had made breakfast ready by the time Rosamund came into the kitchen;

and presently Yetta stumbled down the stairs, yawning and sleepy-eyed.

"Gee!" she said, by way of morning greeting, "If this place ain't the

limit for sleep! When I first come up here I jist had to set up in bed

an' listen to the quiet; kept me awake all night, it did. Now I want

to sleep all day an' all night, too! Ain't it the limit?"

"But that's the best thing in the world for you," Rosamund said, and

smiled at her. The girl must have divined a difference in the smile,

for she beamed cheerfully back.

"That's what Doctor Ogilvie says," she replied. "All's the matter with

me is m'eyes. Y'see I been sewin' ever since I's about as big as a

peanut; first I sewed on buttons to help my mother, an' then I sewed

beads. There was my mother an' me an' m'father, on'y he wasn't ever

there; an' we had four boarders. Course the boarders had to set next

to the light, an' I couldn't see very well. Then after my mother died,

I sewed collars day-times and beads at night, till I got the job in the

shirt-waist shop. Tha's where m'eyes got inspected--they don't never

inspect you till you get a good job. It don't do me no good to know my

eyes is bad; I could a told 'em that m'self--only thing is, that was

the reason they sent me up here, so I've that much to thank 'em for, I

guess. Still, I----"

But Father Cary interrupted the stream of chatter. "Now look a here,"

he said, "supposin' you do less talkin' an' more eatin'! Two glasses

of milk, two dishes o' oatmeal, and two eggs is what you got to get

away with before you get up from this table."

But Yetta's tongue was irrepressible. "You watch me!" she replied, and

grinned at him, her black eyes sparkling. "That's another funny thing

about the country," she informed Rosamund, nodding. It was evident

that she believed Miss Randall to be as much a stranger to the country

as she herself had been. "In the city all you want to eat in the

mornin' is a bite o' bread an' some tea; nobody ever heard o' eatin'

eggs in the mornin', nor oatmeal any other time; but here--Gee! I can

stow away eggs while the band plays on, an' tea ain't in it with

milk--this yere kind o' milk!"

Rosamund's strained ear caught a faint rustle from the inner room; she

sprang up, followed closely by the others; the child had moved his

head, and his eyes were closed; before that they had been ever so

slightly open. Rosamund laid her hand upon his forehead, bent down so

that his breath fanned her soft cheek. Then she looked up at Father

Cary.

"I believe he is really sleeping, not unconscious," she whispered. "I

think we must keep very, very quiet."

Yetta nodded, tiptoed out of the room, and presently Father Cary's

large form passed the window on the way to the stable.

So again was Rosamund's vigil renewed, unbroken through several hours

except by faint noises from without, the humming of a locust, the

chirps of birds, the homely conversation of some chickens, who had

stolen up to the little house, lonely for Mother Cary. She must have

dozed, for it seemed only a short time before the kitchen clock struck

eleven, and almost at the same moment the doctor stood in the doorway,

with Mother Cary behind him.

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.