after the retreat of pendleton and flood, rosamund went back to the little boy's room, smiling. mother cary looked up at her with a face slightly troubled.
"seems like your friends ain't willing to have you stay here," she said. "is there anything calling you home, honey, anything that needs you?"
the girl shook her head. "i think i have never been needed anywhere in all my life, until now," she said. then, perhaps because of flood's words, she remembered eleanor. "well, perhaps there is one person who has needed me, from time to time; and, dear mother cary, she is somewhere near here. she came to bluemont to be near doctor ogilvie."
"there's a many a one that does," said mother cary.
"my friend is mrs. reeves. do you know her?"
"land, honey, rich city folks don't bother to become acquainted with the likes of me!" the old woman said, smiling.
"mrs. reeves is not 'rich city folks.' she is working for her living all the while she is here in the mountains; she is companion for another of the doctor's patients, mrs. hetherbee."
"oh, i know!" yetta exclaimed. "i saw her in the post-office one day askin' for the mail, while the old one waited outside in the automobile. gee! that old one looked cross!"
rosamund laughed. "and do you know where they live?"
"sure! want me to show you?"
"i should like it ever and ever so much if you would take a note there for me. could you do that? is it too far?"
mother cary patted yetta's dark hair. "she can go over with pap, when he goes to the store," she said. "she'll be real glad to; won't you, yetta?"
so it came to pass that in the late afternoon eleanor came in mrs. hetherbee's car. the boy tim was resting so quietly that rosamund had gone outside; she went swiftly down the little red path to the gate, and the two met, arms entwining, cheek to cheek, with little laughs and questions and soft cries.
"your note said there was an accident!" these were eleanor's first words. "darling, that is not why you are here? you are not hurt?"
"why i am here; but it was not i—i was not hurt! look at me—feel me!"
"nor cecilia?"
"nor anyone, you precious, that you know! a tiny mite of a boy, eleanor, and i stayed to take care of him."
"you?"
"oh, don't say it like that! and yet i don't wonder!"
eleanor's arm was about her at once. "sweet, i was only wondering that cecilia let you!"
"cecilia did not let me; and you were wondering, too, why i stayed, what really kept me. you are quite right; of my own accord i shouldn't have stayed. my own impulse would not have moved that way. i should have taken the easy, the obvious course, if i had been left to choose. but i wasn't, you see."
eleanor looked at her keenly. this note of bitterness was quite new. suddenly she remembered ogilvie; but almost on the instant rosamund spoke again.
"what manner of man do you find this red-headed doctor of yours?"
eleanor laughed. "he gets his own way with people!" she looked at her friend, but rosamund's face was turned from her. "i have never met anyone else like him. i thought at first that he was two people—a man of heart and a man of science; you know his reputation, and yet he stays up here mainly, i am told, to be near these mountain people. he says that they trust him, and seems to think that excuse enough for staying."
"i thought he stayed for the air or something?"
"he did, but now he is perfectly well again. and his character is not dual; nothing so romantic. he is a man of science just because he is a man of heart. he is one of the simplest people i have ever known."
"you seem to know him pretty well."
"oh, he is the first object of interest to all his patients; we talk of nothing else! i am only a case to him."
rosamund laughed. "very likely, dear! and what does he think of you, as a case?"
eleanor's face took on its shadow of sadness. "he—he does not know," she said; and rosamund drew a swift breath of pain.
eleanor came daily after that, mrs. hetherbee, a worn, eager little woman with restless eyes, showing herself entirely complaisant when it seemed likely that the very well known miss randall would return eleanor's visits. her attitude towards her companion had been pleasant enough before, but it certainly took on a new warmth after rosamund's arrival in the neighborhood, and when she learned that mrs. reeves was one of miss randall's lifelong friends.
"you will have to drive over and call on mrs. hetherbee, rose," eleanor assured her. "if you don't i shall feel that i'm using her car under false pretenses!"
so rosamund called, and mrs. hetherbee basked in the distinction of being the only person at the summit whom miss randall cared to know. thereafter eleanor came daily across the valley, tenderly sweet as only she knew how to be, almost at once becoming fast friends with mother cary, and hanging over the boy with aching heart and arms weary of their emptiness. rosamund always felt as if a hand of pain clutched at her heart as she watched them.
"who is he?" eleanor had asked the first day she saw him. "is he the child of these people?"
"he is a waif," rosamund said, and told how mother cary made of the little white house a refuge of love for the needy ones of the city. "and this tiny boy, doctor ogilvie says, needs love more than most of them. the charities have tried to have him adopted; but most people do not want boys—not homely little boys, whose fathers were not at all good and whose mothers died very young and very forlorn. timmy has gone begging—and he will have to go back after his summer here is over. the most to be hoped for is that he will go back stronger; then perhaps he will be prettier, and some one may want him. it is really unspeakably pathetic."
so eleanor hung over the child, and gradually there grew up in rosamund's heart and mind a plan, which, as it matured, was to alter the course of life for all of them.
but that was not until later; and while to her on the mountain the days passed uneventfully enough, they were days of distressful change for her sister. during the first week or two, cecilia sent her four letters and eleven telegrams—the telegrams being duly delivered with the letters, whenever father cary drove across the valley to the store. rosamund read them all, pondered, smiled, and then sent off a reassuring telegram by eleanor. later she wrote two letters; the first was to her banker, and in the second she said:
dearest cissy:
don't be too cross! you've always been an angel to me, and i love you; but i am tired, tired, tired of the sort of life we lead; and the other day, when mr. flood's man so obligingly bumped into the poor little boy, i was wondering how on earth i could get out of it for a time, get some sort of change. then, the people here seemed to take it for granted that i would stay to nurse the child. it was the first time in my life that anyone had ever taken for granted that i would do the right thing if it meant personal discomfort. before, i had always been praised and applauded if i merely happened to do it. i don't suppose i can make you understand, dearest cissy; but just that made all the difference in the world to me. and now i am going to stay here—for how long, i do not know. until i get tired of it, perhaps, or until i can think up something else. the mountains are so big, cecilia, and the stars so bright, and the sun does such good work!
i have put some money to your credit; i think there will be enough to last you for a while. you can even get the motor car, if you want to. and if i were you, i should stop in town and get a few linens and perhaps a hat or two and a parasol at lucille's. you will need a lot of things at bar harbor. i suppose you will go right up to the whartons'.
you say i have broken up mr. flood's plans. i'm afraid i don't altogether agree to that. there was only another week-end left in june, and we were not going to stay any longer than that. i do not choose to think that you referred to other plans of his. if you do, please understand that i have no interest in them.
give my love to the whartons; they have always thought me queer, anyway, so you will not have to account to them for me. and don't be too cross!
cecilia's reply, which the doctor brought up the mountain a week later, was dated from bar harbor. it read:
dear rosamund:
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!"
