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.
But, to-day, with the charming woman's intuition, she knew that he was
seeing her with different eyes, as if she had only just now come within
his range of vision; yet she knew that his was a look that she had not
encountered from other men.
Hitherto, the men she knew had been quite evidently aware of her
beauty. She had always accepted, quite calmly, the fact that there was
enough of that to be of first consideration, over and beyond anything
else that she might possess. This country doctor was the first man who
had ever appeared unconscious of the excellence of her femininity; but
the same pride which had led her to repel Flood's admiration forbade
her making any conscious appeal for Ogilvie's. There was, after all,
very little of the coquette in her. The amusement that his
obliviousness caused her, or the interest it excited in her, was only
increased by his suggestion that she should accompany him on a visit to
some mountaineer's cottage; he had offered it as likely to do her good,
and not, as she might not unreasonably have expected, that her going
would brighten or benefit or honor the mountain girl. It was a new
experience, surely, for Rosamund Randall!
On their way down the mountain, which White Rosy knew so well that to
guide her would have been entirely superfluous, he talked cheerfully,
as always, of many things--of White Rosy herself, of the mountain
people, of the view across the valley, of roadside shrubs and flowers.
It was the first of their drives together, and the woman they went to
see that day became a most important factor in their destinies.
At first she listened to him with scarcely more interest than she would
have felt towards the amiable volubility of any of the countrymen; but
his talk soon rose above the commonplace. Insensibly he became aware
that the girl beside him could understand, could sympathize, respond.
"I know you can't put ropes on the world and try to pull back against
its turning round," the doctor said when at a bend of the road they
could look down almost upon the roof of a cottage below, a cottage with
a sadly neglected garden patch at one side and a tumbled-down chimney.
"It's a good deal better to stand behind and push, or to get in front
and pull. I'm fond of pulling, myself! But when it comes to the
individual instance, it's sometimes more merciful to stand in the way
of what we're pleased to call progress. Now that girl down
there--daughter of a horse-dealer, the owner of a little store at one
of the crossroads in the other valley--it would really have been better
if she had never gone to school, never been away from home, never
learned of anything beyond what she has. She has been taught enough to
make her know how badly off she is. Her father was ambitious, and sent
his daughter to board in town and go to the high school. She stayed
there two years, and absorbed about as much as she could; then she came
back home, but her education had taught her something finer and better
than what she came back to. She did just what any restless young thing
would do. Inside of a year she eloped with the handsomest rascal in
the mountains. And Tobet's a moonshiner!"
"Moonshiner! But I thought the Government had done away with all that
sort of thing? I heard a man say, at a place where I was staying
before I came here, that there was really no more of it left, in these
mountains. The men are intimidated, the stills discovered and broken
up. Isn't that so?"
A wry smile from the doctor answered her. "Then there must be some
natural springs of it about here," he said. He pointed back over his
shoulder with his whip. "See that big pine up there on the left?
Well, if an empty bottle be left there, at the foot of the tree, at
night, with a fifty-cent piece under it, the bottle will be filled in
the morning, and the coin gone. I don't ask any questions, and I
suppose she would not answer any; but if she would, Grace Tobet could
explain how that sort of thing happens."
Rosamund was not greatly impressed. "Well, there probably is not very
much of it," she said, "and they must be quite used to it. I don't
suppose it does them much harm, does it?"
The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he said, and his voice was
very low, "Grace Tobet has lately lost her baby, her little girl. Joe
came in one morning, struck by white lightning, as they say around
here. He fell on the baby, and Grace came in from the garden too late.
She told Mother Cary that perhaps it was just as well."
Rosamund paled. Presently the doctor went on, "And you see, poor Grace
knows better things; she remembers that town and the school, and the
little pleasures and gayeties there."
Neither spoke again until White Rosy drew up before the Tobet cottage.
The front windows and door were closed, but on the sill of the back
door a woman crouched, a woman in faded brown calico, whose face, when
she raised it from her arms, showed a dark bruise on one side. She
rose and smiled wanly.
"I've brought a lady to see you, Mrs. Tobet," the doctor said. He
introduced them as formally as if Grace Tobet had been a duchess. Then
he said, "Now you two talk, while I hunt up Joe. Where is he?"
The woman nodded towards the front of the house, and the doctor went
indoors. Rosamund and Mrs. Tobet looked at each other.
To the mountain woman this stranger was a being from another sphere,
who could not touch her own at any point of intercourse; while Rosamund
was too deeply moved by the woman's story, by the livid mark on her
temple, by the squalor of her dress and surroundings contrasting so
strongly with the intelligence of her face, to find words. It was Mrs.
Tobet who first remembered one of those phrases of common coin which
are the medium of conversation the world over.
"Stranger about here?" she asked.
"I am staying with Mrs. Cary on the mountain," Rosamund replied; and,
as, in a flash, the other woman's face was lit by a smile scarcely less
radiant than Mother Cary's own.
"A friend o' Mother Cary's, be ye? I'm glad to see ye! I can't ask
you into the front room, but there's a seat in my spring-house, real
pleasant and cool; won't ye come try it?"
She led the way through the neglected garden to the little spring-house
that was built of the rough stone of the hillsides, roofed over with
sod. In front of the door-space was a wooden bench, where Rosamund sat
down, while Grace drew a glass of sparkling water from the cool spring
inside. It was a delicious draught.
"My baby could jest pull herself up by that bench," Grace Tobet said,
as she took the empty glass. "She used to play here while I tended to
the milk. Joe's sold the cow now; but that didn't make any difference;
there wasn't any reason for keeping her."
The woman's deep-set dark eyes strained out towards the mountain-tops.
Rosamund felt herself suddenly brought face to face with some primal
force of which she had hitherto known nothing; for the first time in
her life she looked upon the agony of bereft mother-love laid bare.
She had been with Eleanor through her loss, but Eleanor's grief had
seemed to turn her to white stone; this other mother's was a fiercely
scorching, consuming flame of anguish before which Rosamund shrank away
as from the blast of a furnace. Before she dared to speak, however,
Grace Tobet's face was smiling again.
"I know you must like it up there," she said. "I do miss the mountains
so, livin' down here in the valley. I don't know what I'd do ef it
wasn't for Mother Cary's light. I look up there for it every night of
my life, an' it's always there. An' I ain't the only one it talks to,
neither."
"It has its message for everyone who sees it, I think," Rosamund
agreed. "I know, because I am living under it!"
Grace looked into her eyes, and nodded. "Ain't it so?" she replied.
"Why, there's never been a night when I was in trouble that her little
lamp hasn't said to me, 'Here I am, honey, an' I know all about it.
When it gets so bad you can't stand it, you jest send for me; I'll
come!' An' she does come, too!"
There was silence between them for a moment; then Rosamund said, only
wondering at herself long afterwards, "It says more than that! It is
telling me that there is something in life worth while, that there's
courage and goodness in many a dark corner where we'd never think of
looking for them; oh, it is teaching me a great deal!"
"Yes," Grace Tobet agreed, and all barriers between them were gone.
They found so much to say that the hour the doctor spent with Joe
passed like a moment. When at last he came out of the house and back
to the spring for a drink of the pure water, the two women walked
together to the buggy; and before she took her place Rosamund, yielding
to a sudden impulse of which she knew she would have been incapable a
fortnight earlier, turned and clasped both of the older woman's hands,
and looked into her face.
"Will you be friends with me?" she asked simply.
Grace Tobet's eyes widened. It seemed long before she spoke. Then,
"Yes," she said, and both knew that there was something sealed between
them.
"May I bring a friend of mine to see you? She lost her baby boy last
year, and--and we are afraid she is going to be--blind. Perhaps you
can comfort her, in some way. She needs friends. May I bring her?"
"Pray do," Grace said, in the quaint mountain speech.
When they were slowly climbing the mountain, the doctor turned to
Rosamund with a quizzical smile. "You and Grace seemed to progress
somewhat!" he said.
For a few moments Rosamund pondered; then she met his look, but there
was no smile on her face.
"Do you know," she said, "I have always thought that the people I lived
among were the only ones who really knew life, the only ones who felt,
or thought, or _lived_! Lately I seem to have come into a new world."
The doctor's smile faded, and he ran his fingers through his hair.
"No," he said, "it's the same old world! Human nature's pretty much
the same, wherever you find it. Human experience is bounded by life,
and the boundaries are not very wide, either. It's the different
combinations that make things interesting, although the basic elements
remain the same!"
"Then I almost think there are more basic elements among these people
than among--my kind!"
"Oh, no! The difference is that with your kind the surface is rounded
and polished, and the points of possible contact therefore fewer; with
the other kind the rougher surfaces offer more points of contact, more
chances of combinations, that's all. And," he added, "even that's only
partly true!"
Afterwards, when she went over in her mind the events of the whole
afternoon, she wondered how Flood or Pendleton would have expressed
themselves on the subject; but at the moment she was too deeply
concerned with her problems to form any mental digression. For a while
neither spoke; then she said:
"Reserve seems to have no place here! I find myself saying what I
think, describing what I feel, opening my heart to Mother Cary, to Mrs.
Tobet, to you--to anyone! I do not know myself!"
The doctor's face changed from one expression to another and another;
he was about to speak, but her look was intense, rapt, uplifted, and
very serious; he evidently changed his mind. Neither spoke again until
they stopped before the little green gate. Then, he passed his hand
over his head as if suddenly missing something.
"Lord bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "I believe I left my hat at
Grace's!"