Before long there were ominous signs in the Tobet cottage. Mother Cary
would shake her head whenever Grace's name was mentioned.
"It's bad now, land knows!" she said. "But it'll be worse, come
spring. It ain't for me to deny that them the Lord sends He looks out
for; but a body can't help wonderin' sometimes, at His choice o' the
places He sends 'em to. Yet it's a livin' wonder how things do work
out, honey."
The doctor openly berated Joe, and the two would have come to blows but
for Grace's pleadings; afterwards he told Rosamund that Mother Cary had
roundly scolded him for his interference, which of course ended the
little influence he had over the man. Joe, indeed, swore that he would
'hurt' him if he found him again in his house, and it was only at the
brown cottage or the Carys' that he could see poor Grace and give her
what help he could. Tobet had also, of course, forbidden his wife to
hold communication with 'the stranger woman'; but Grace knew his ways
and times well enough to go occasionally to both her friends' houses.
She herself could not have told from which she derived more comfort.
For a while Rosamund was unaware of any further evidences of the
mountaineers' distrust; then, in the third week, came the most
disquieting thing that had yet happened.
Their evenings at the cottage were usually placid enough. Rosamund had
engaged the services of the young teacher of the district school to
give lessons to Yetta, who, with the mental avidity of her race, was
fairly absorbing knowledge, and rapidly acquiring the speech and manner
of the world. She worshiped Rosamund, and tried to copy her in
everything; she was urged onward, too, by her awakened ambition to
sing, it being understood that her general education must be well on
the way before the promised singing lessons should begin. The girl
would have spent hours at her books, but Ogilvie had forbidden her
reading at night; and Rosamund would read aloud to her for an hour or
two after the lamps were lighted.
To-night Yetta had begged, as usual, for a later bed hour, and for once
had been indulged. The wind had blown from the east all day, bleak and
cold. Rosamund had been more and more restless with each passing hour,
and now had a longing for company which made her lenient with Yetta.
But at last the girl had reluctantly gone upstairs; and after a while
Rosamund went up, too, in search of Eleanor.
She had not been the only one in the house to be made restless by the
wind; Tim had been cross all day, and even Eleanor was glad at last to
see him safely tucked into bed. But, having done so, she had scarcely
taken her place on the opposite side of the table from Rosamund and
Yetta, than a little white-clad figure appeared in the doorway.
"O Timmy!" Eleanor had cried, protesting.
"Well, I forgot to God-bless Pa Cary," said Tim, as if that justified
his reappearance.
"Tim! Go right back to bed!" said Eleanor, with a conscientious
attempt at sternness. Tim hesitated, wavered on the threshold, and she
gained in courage. "Go back at once!" she said.
His under lip began to tremble. "I can't God-bless wivout somebody to
say it to!" he said, and Eleanor got up, took him by the hand, and led
him up to bed and his devotions.
Since then she had not come down again, and when Rosamund went in
search of her it was to find her on her knees beside Tim's bed, asleep,
her pale gold hair mingling with the yellow of his, her arms across his
little body, one of his hands on her cheek.
Rosamund crept downstairs again, the loneliness of a moment ago
pressing now upon her heart like a pain. The sitting-room was warm and
cosy, with its open fire and the lamp with a yellow shade; but it was
empty, for all that. She crossed the room to the window that faced the
valley and rolled up the shade. Through the wind-swept air Mother
Cary's light twinkled brightly on the opposite mountain; that was a
home, too. It added to her sense of loneliness. She went back to her
place by the table, her thoughts wandering--from the happy two in the
room overhead, to her plans for Yetta; from Ogilvie, to Flood; from the
present----
But, gradually, insensibly, into her mental atmosphere, there crept a
shadowy, indefinable influence, something malevolent and strangely
disquieting. She had never known fear; but as she sat there she
shuddered, became cold with an unearthly chill, as if some premonition
of horror were laying its clammy hand upon her. She said afterward
that she felt herself in a cloud of dread and apprehension such as one
might feel before the apparition of something ghostly or uncanny. It
was intolerable. She must shake off such mental cowering, and forced
herself to turn towards the window through which Mother Cary's light
could be seen, thinking the friendly beacon would reassure her.
Then, although her heart seemed for an instant to stop beating, she
sprang up; but her knees refused their burden, and she sank again into
her chair, leaning forward with straining eyes, clutching its arms; for
the light on the mountain was blotted out by a hideous thing, a white
face set in shaggy hair, a sneering face, a face where drink and hate
and fear had set their marks. As she sprang up and sank down again the
wicked glare of hate turned into a more frightful leer; then the
creature raised a horrid fist, shook it towards her--and vanished into
the night.
It was Eleanor who came running downstairs at the cry she tried to
choke back.
The two kept watch through the night, and morning found Rosamund shaken
and feverish, but firmly determined to lay aside her dread, and at all
hazards to keep her friends in the city in ignorance of it.
She shuddered at the thought of what the newspapers would make of it,
and of Cecilia's raging, and Pendleton's taunting comments. She and
Eleanor, in the reassuring daylight, tried to laugh away each other's
fears; and both agreed that they would not be frightened away from the
brown house; they agreed, too, that Ogilvie must not know.
But to keep the doctor in ignorance of what had happened was not so
easy as Rosamund had hoped. He had many opportunities of hearing
rumors that did not reach her; if he had not constantly persisted in
his warnings it was not because he no longer feared for her, but
because it seemed best to watch, rather than to warn. He went to the
cottage every day on one pretext or another; if it was not fear alone
which took him there, he admitted to himself no other reason.
It was not altogether because he was too busy with his mountaineer
patients, as Mother Cary had told Rosamund, that he had remained among
them; now and again he had consulted his friends, and his vigorous
enjoyment of the days as they passed also told unmistakably of his
recovery; but another year of mountain practice would doubly insure his
safety in going back to his investigations in the confinement of the
laboratory. Meanwhile he had thrown himself into the work here with
ardor, as he must always do with work or play; but now just at the time
when he was beginning to think of his return to the city there came
into his thoughts an influence as disturbing as it was novel.
Early in the summer one of his classmates, the Doctor Blake who was
Mother Cary's old friend, had come from the city for a visit of a day
or two, and to him Rosamund's name was unmistakably well known. He had
seen her, too, in town. There could be no mistake; she was the only
daughter of old Randall, the "king" of Georgia pine. It seemed to
Blake a wild freak which kept such a girl here in the mountains, away
from her kind, a freak to be distrusted. He watched Ogilvie rather
keenly when they met Rosamund at Mother Cary's that afternoon, but it
was evident that Ogilvie was master of whatever emotions he might have
towards her. As a matter of fact, her money counted no more in his
estimate of her than a scar on her cheek, or a strand of gray hair, or
an ignorance of German would have counted. He knew himself for a man,
and more; he knew, as they who possess the embryo of greatness never
fail to know, that he had that to offer which all her money could not
buy; the belief that she, too, knew as much was fast becoming the
essence of life for him.
The thought of her filled his days and half his nights. Her swinging
step along the frozen roads, the tired child nestling in her arms, the
cadence of her voice as she greeted him, the look of shy withdrawal
that he sometimes surprised in her eyes--all would set him inwardly
trembling, longing, worshiping. Yet love was new to him, and he
feared; inexperience had left him with nothing for comparison. He
could not know how far to venture. Masculine instinct warned him to
display to her the brightest plumage of his mind and heart, and their
walks and drives together were full of talk and intimate silences; but
of that which was uppermost in his desire he feared to speak.
Yet his fears no less than his love made him keen to notice every shade
of expression on her face, and on the morning after her fright at the
hideous vision at the window he saw at once that something was amiss.
He had been over the mountain earlier in the day to set a man's broken
arm, and several things had made him more than usually suspicious that
the underworld of the woods was stirring uneasily. A storm of some
sort was certainly in the air; the people showed themselves distrustful
even of him, and the very children shrank into reserve at his approach.
Rosamund had walked across the valley to Mother Cary's, to confide to
her the strange disturbing happening of the night; then she had gone
home again, hoping for that day to escape Ogilvie's keen eyes. The
tale had been most disquieting to the old woman, and when Rosamund had
gone, she sent Pap to the main road to hail the doctor as he passed.
She had been bound to secrecy, but she could at least, without breach
of trust, send him a message.
"You tell Doctor Ogilvie that I say when wolves are out, lambs 're in
danger. Jest that; don't say another word. Ef he's all I take him for
he'll understand."
Pap repeated the message word for word and the two men looked into each
other's eyes for a moment, in a look that told far more than the
message; then Ogilvie whipped up White Rosy with unprecedented
emphasis, and the old mare gallantly responded, as if she knew that an
emergency prompted the unaccustomed touch. Ogilvie was sure that one
glance at Rosamund's face would tell him whether she were the lamb
Mother Cary had in mind; and the girl's pale cheeks, that flushed so
treacherously when he entered the brown cottage, disclosed the secret
she would have kept. But Mother Cary must not be betrayed, and he
greeted her as if he suspected nothing.
"I saw Aunt Sue at the clothesline," he said, "so I used the doctor's
privilege and just walked in! Tell me if I'm in the way."
She turned a large chair towards the blaze in the fireplace and moved
her own a little back, as if to credit her bright color to the heat of
the flames.
"Doctors are always welcome," she said.
But that did not satisfy him, and with characteristic directness he
pursued the question. "Am I not welcome as a friend, too?"
She bent forward to reach the tongs, and lifted a glowing ember.
"You're welcome in every rôle! But you are very formal to-day, aren't
you, in spite of your just walking in? Why?"
She was always mistress of herself when she could tease. Ogilvie,
however, would not respond to her levity.
"Because doctors may prescribe, and friends may advise; as it happens,
I want to do both!"
She sat up very straight and looked at him mockingly. "Dear me!" she
said, in the dry tone which usually provoked all his Scotch
combativeness.
But to-day that, also, he ignored.
"Where are Mrs. Reeves and the children?" he asked.
"Eleanor has taken Tim on a hunt for nuts, and Yetta is at her lessons."