The doctor promptly, in his most professional manner, turned Rosamund
out of the room as soon as he got there. He preferred the old colored
woman even to Eleanor as assistant; and he showed no sign of
remembering that night in the Allen house when Rosamund had fought
beside him, through the heavy hours, for a woman's life. When he
closed the door of Grace's room upon her, she was keenly hurt; she
could not know that while he worked over poor Grace he was recalling
every moment of that earlier scene, viewing it now through the glamor
of his later knowledge of her.
Aunt Sue was installed as supreme power in the sick-room. Grace's life
hung by a thread for days, and before the doctor could be sure that all
would be well the disquieting news of Joe Tobet's arrest came to
disturb them still further.
Snow lay deep over everything before Grace came down among them, a pale
wraith of a woman, but with a deepened sweetness of expectation in her
face. They feared to tell her of Joe's predicament, but knew afterward
that it would have been better to do so; for she was to discover it in
one of those unforeseen, brutal ways that so often accompany the
disasters of the poor. One day a shivering small boy brought a note to
the back door, and Grace herself happened to be the one to take it in.
It would have been less cruel to give her a coal of living fire.
The folded paper was soiled, as if it had been passed from hand to
hand. Its pencilled words were:
"You or she told Youl be got even with Curs you JOE."
Grace waited to speak of it until the doctor came. Then her dignity of
manner was a revelation to Rosamund, who had yet to discover that
elemental passions can sometimes be as silent as the ages that create
them.
Grace looked unfalteringly at Ogilvie as she spoke. "Where have they
got Joe?" she asked.
Rosamund exclaimed, and motioned to him not to reply; but he was wiser
than she. His answer, as simple and direct as her question, gave no
evidence of surprise. "In the city. The jail is stronger there."
"Will they let him out?"
"The evidence may not be enough to hold him. He is awaiting trial."
"Will we know if they let him out?"
"I think so."
Then she gave him the soiled paper, which he read and passed on to
Rosamund. "He wrote that," she said. "Miss Rose hadn't ought to be
here when he gets out."
She gave Rosamund a look of agonized tenderness, then left them.
Presently they heard her walking in her room upstairs, up and down, up
and down. Ogilvie shook his head when Rosamund asked him to go up to
her.
"She must work it out alone," he said. "She's strong enough."
But Rosamund, uneasy, went to Mother Cary.
"Yes, she's strong enough," the old woman said, when she had heard all
about it. "Land! She's got to be! An' she's jest got to fight it out
by herself. Don't you try to cross her, honey, nor say anything to
ease her, 'cause that ain't the way to treat hurts like that. Joe's
her man, an' she'd lay down her life for him, ef 'twas only her own
life; an' I reckon even ef she thought 'twould save his soul she
couldn't 'a' found stren'th to tell on him. Yet that's what he thinks
she done! Eh, me! The contrairy fools men like him can be when they
sets out!"
"He's not worth her caring for! He's not worth it!"
"Land, no! I shouldn't think he was! But that ain't got a mite to do
with it! Women folks don't care for them they ought to care for, jest
because they ought to; nor they don't stop carin' when they ought to
stop, neither. An' Joe bein' her man, she can't give a thought to
whether he's worth it or not; she's jest got to go on lovin' him."
"But, oh!" the girl cried, "shouldn't you think his distrust would make
her loathe him? To know herself a true and faithful wife, and to be
distrusted! Oh!"
Mother Cary's eyes were very bright as she looked out of the window
across the snowy field to where Pap was cutting down a tree for
firewood. She took one of Rosamund's hands in hers before she spoke,
and patted it.
"Yes, I reckon distrust must be about one of the hardest things to set
down under," she said. "I know somethin' about it, 'cause time was
when I distrusted Pap, though 'twas before we was married, o' course.
I distrusted Pap's love, like poor Joe distrusts Grace's. I thought he
couldn't possibly love me enough to last for ever an' always, me bein'
crippled up like I be; an' I thought it wasn't fair to let him try. So
I up an' run away. I tried to get to the station an' so back to the
city. It was a long ol' walk for me, an' I had to hide all one night
in a barn. But betwixt walkin' an' hobblin' an' crawlin' I got to the
station at last; an' there was Pap a-waitin' to take me into his arms,
which he did then an' there, good an' strong. I ain't never tried to
get far from 'em sence!"
Rosamund was afraid to break the thread of the story by a question, and
the old woman mused a while before she went on.
"I reckon there's a door o' distrust that most of us have to open and
pass through an' shet fast behind us, before we get to the place
where's only content, an' love, an' trust. It ain't confined to jest a
few; 'pears to me most everybody has to go through it."
Again she paused, while the girl waited.
"When your time comes, honey--an' I hope it will come, 'cause you can't
rightly feel the glory tell you know the shadder--when your time comes
to feel distrust, or have it felt against you, jest you do as your Ma
Cary tells you! You take a firm holt o' your heart and your thoughts,
an' don't you let 'em turn all topsy-turvy! You jest take a firm holt
on 'em an' wait. WAIT! Don't run away, like I did; 'cause they ain't
any more Pap Carys in the world! It ain't everybody you'd find ahead
of you at the station, waitin'. You jest remember that it ain't but a
door, even though the doorsill does seem dretful wide. It'll shet
behind you, when the right time comes, an' you'll find yo'self
a-standin' in the land o' content. That's the best dwellin'-place
there is, I'm a-tellin' you!"
Rosamund had not been alone with John Ogilvie since the afternoon,
three weeks earlier, when Flood's automobile interrupted them; but
during the interval she was conscious of an uplift of the soul, a new
serenity.
One of the great memories of her life was of an hour of her childhood
when for the first time a revelation of something beyond her childish
world was vouchsafed to her. She had been awakened at night by a touch
of light upon her face; the full moon shone through her window, and its
rays had called her from sleep. In her little bare feet she slipped
from bed and went toward the casement, drawn by the moon-magic to look
upon the beauty her early bedtime had left undiscovered. Great dark
masses of cloud floated across the face of the golden disc, black on
the side that hung over the shadowy fields and woods, but shining with
a marvelous radiance where the moonlight touched them from above.
The child had watched them floating, forming, massing, until they had
passed away to the horizon, and left the moon, a floating ship of
light, far, far up in the sky, dimming the brilliance of the stars.
She had crept back to her little bed with a new sense of things
hitherto undreamed of in her childish imaginings, yet never again to be
entirely lost--a sense of majesty, of order and immutability, of
strange beauty, and of the Greatness that kept watch while she, a
little child, safely slumbered.
The hour left its mark upon her entire life; and now once more such an
impression of security, of beauty, and perhaps of destiny had been laid
upon her in the moment when she had faced his soul through John
Ogilvie's eyes.
There was no need to hasten further revelation. Indeed, she did not
wish for it. She was more than content to rest for a while in the calm
of unspoken assurance. It was enough, as much as the hours would hold,
until they could grow used to it and expand to the greater glory that
was to come.
Ogilvie, too, had something of the same sense of uplift. He, too, had
had his revelation. But, man-like, he would have grasped at once at
something more definite, more dear, if he had not, with a lover's
keenness of intuition, seen that Rosamund was satisfied to wait. He
had no fear, no misconception; he felt, rather, a reverence which
forbade his hastening her toward the avowal which would bring the
surrender he so ardently desired. The same force of love which made
him long for it, made him also too tender to urge it. His coming to
the brown cottage every day was too much a matter of custom to be
remarked upon. There were Eleanor and Grace, Yetta and Timmy to talk
to, as well as Rosamund; and he fell into the way of arriving in time
for the mid-day dinner, just as Tim fell into the way of waiting for
him with the announcement of what good things Aunt Susan was going to
give them to eat. Rosamund teased Ogilvie about it a little, but
Eleanor, the ostensible hostess, remembered the ancient person with
whom he lived, took pity on him, and kept him as often as she could.
Indeed, Eleanor, like Mother Cary, regarded him as an overgrown boy,
very much in need of maternal attentions; if she suspected the state of
affairs between him and Rosamund, she tactfully gave no sign of it. So
Ogilvie came and went as naturally as if he were a member of the
household, and his daily sight of Rosamund lent him patience.
But always he was on the watch for signs of the distrust that still
muttered against "the stranger woman." Grace's taking refuge in the
brown house had affected the mountaineers in two ways. One
faction--for so strongly did each side feel that there were, indeed,
definite factions--held that Rosamund had only offered her the shelter
which any woman would have given to another in such sore need, and
declared that all of Grace's friends were bound to Rosamund by the
obligation of gratitude. The other faction, and perhaps the larger,
held that if Grace had not actually betrayed her husband to the
authorities, she had run away from him and so failed in her duty of
hiding him, and that Rosamund shared her guilt, if, indeed, she was not
directly responsible for it. Mother Cary, whom all adored, came in for
a share of blame, for being friends with the guilty ones, and even the
doctor, though he was known to be faithfully in sympathy with all his
mountain patients, and though no one suspected his integrity toward
them, found many faces turned away from him which had hitherto shown
only confidence and affection.
That Rosamund was aware of the state of things he could only guess; she
gallantly denied any uneasiness, although there were many evidences of
the bad feeling against her. They were only trivial things, little
annoyances, surly answers, eyes that would not see her; yet they told
their story with unmistakable plainness.
It was while things were in this unsettled state that she was surprised
by a second visit from Flood and Pendleton; not, this time, in the car,
for the roads were impassable. They drove up in the only sleigh that
was for hire at the Summit.
Pendleton had hardly got out of his great fur coat before he opened
fire; he had evidently come primed.
"What's all this about arrests and moonshiners, Rosamund?" he demanded.
"Cecilia's very uneasy. Had a letter from her day before yesterday,
saying she'd come herself if she could do any good, and wouldn't I run
up and look around a bit. So here we are, both of us, because Flood
wouldn't be left behind!"
"That wasn't quite fair of Cecilia," Rosamund said, flushing angrily.
Pendleton had promptly got on her nerves with the alacrity that only an
old friend is capable of. "I thought I had made it plain that I mean
to be let alone."
"Oh, please!" Flood, the peacemaker, besought them; and Rosamund had
come to like his helpless "Oh, please!" so well that she smiled at him,
though her eyes were still bright with anger.
"I say, Pendleton," he went on, "you're always trying to fight with
Miss Randall." Pendleton only grinned at him. "Really, Miss Randall,
we haven't come to interfere, not in the very least, I assure you!
Mrs. Maxwell did write; but we wanted very much to see you. That is
why _I_ came, anyway!"
So far he dared venture, and at the very bathos of his distress
Rosamund laughed, and peace reigned again. She told them of Tobet's
arrest, and that his wife was now a member of her household. She
declared that there remained no possible danger, with Joe out of the
way.
Pendleton appealed to Eleanor; and Flood, too, gave her a questioning
look. She could not hide her anxiety; but that she was not afraid to
admit it gave Flood a feeling of security that he would have missed if
she had shown herself, like Rosamund, inclined to deny the danger. For
Flood believed that the newspaper accounts of trouble present and to
come must be the smoke of some fire; yet he feared only a possible
unpleasantness for Rosamund, rather than any actual danger.
Ogilvie came in while they were still discussing it. To-day there were
no traces of tell-tale emotion to be hidden. He had seen the sleigh
before the house, guessed who were within, and now showed himself
unaffectedly glad to see Flood. Rosamund inwardly trembled lest
Ogilvie should express himself on the subject of the mountaineers'
suspicions; she could not know that a look, passed between himself and
Flood, was enough to set Flood on the alert.
She talked feverishly while they were at dinner, and her heart sank
when, afterwards, Pendleton announced that he was hit with an idea. He
was standing at the window, taking in the white sweeps and stretches of
snow, the black trunks of the leafless trees, the dark pyramids of the
spruces, the more distant shadow of pines.
"Jove!" he cried. "Just look at those slopes for skiing and
tobogganing! It's better than Davos!"
Then he turned from the window, his hands deep in his pockets, and
stood in front of Rosamund, his head on one side, tipping backward and
forward from heels to toes.
"I say, Rosy," he said, "the best way you can convince us, and poor
dear Cecilia, that you are safe up here is to let us stay for a while
and see for ourselves!"
Rosamund flushed; he was so wilfully provoking. "Marshall! How can
you? You know very well I can't have two men in my house! Why do you
want to make me appear so inhospitable?"
Flood, too, looked as if he would like to express himself forcibly.
"Oh, I say, Pendleton----" he began.
But Ogilvie, apparently, saw something of good in the suggestion.
"That's a capital idea, Mr. Pendleton," he said. "Stay up here a
while, and see for yourselves. I'll be very glad to put you up, if
Mrs. Reeves will invite us over to dinner once in a while! My landlady
isn't much of a chef!"
Flood had turned to him quickly, with a keen look of questioning.
"Could you really, old man?" he asked.
"Bully!" Pendleton cried, grinning at Rosamund. "Bet I can beat you in
a snow fight, Rose!"
But Rosamund, biting her lip in dismay, would not look at him.
"I can snow-fight!" Tim announced. "I know how to make a snow man,
too! My muvver showed me!"