"Allow me to remind you again of my feeble simile of the chipmunks!" he
laughed. "And believe me, it is more apt than you think. For
instance, have you seen the little Allen children?"
"What, the queer little animals that bend their arms over their eyes
when you meet them, and live in that shanty back of Father Cary's
pasture?"
He smiled at her description. "Precisely! The Carys' nearest
neighbors, scarcely a mile away. And have you seen their mother?"
She seemed to be trying to remember.
"Come now," he teased, "don't tell me you don't believe they have a
mother! The eldest child is not yet six, and the youngest of the five
is two months old!"
She laughed and gave in. "No, I have not seen the mother, nor the
father, nor the aunts, nor any of the rest of the family! But that is
only one instance."
"There are many; you really may take my word for it, if it interests
you to. But if you were to be here after the summer people go, then
you'd see. They come out into the open then."
She still looked skeptical, and he pointed up the mountain. "Do you
see that path?" he asked.
"No. Where?"
He laughed. "Caught, Miss Randall! A path is there, invisible though
it is to you--to us. All through these woods there are paths, often
little more than trails, well known to the mountaineers and often used.
Sometimes they run for a mile or more beside the road, screened by the
undergrowth; sometimes they keep higher up, or cross where a road could
not, or follow the courses of the streams; but they are there. It is
only one of the evidences of the mountaineers' secretiveness."
"Your simile was a good one! What animals they are!"
"So are we all."
"Oh, of course, you are the doctor, saying that! But you could
scarcely class these creatures with ourselves!"
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.