eleanor was most free to motor across the valley—where now a double magnet drew her—while mrs. hetherbee still slumbered in the mornings. since the first day when tim's little hand had reached up to touch her cheek, she had yearned towards the boy. rosamund laughingly accused her of coming to see him instead of herself; eleanor, in reply, held the mite to her heart, smiling over his curls through gathering tears, at rosamund.
the summer had done much for timmy. the pain in his hip was disappearing, and by the end of august there were pink baby curves where the skin had been white and drawn over his little bones. there were times, when he was cuddling against eleanor or tumbling about in the sun, that he was almost pretty. he was glad enough of ministrations from rosamund or mother cary, but eleanor was the bright lady of his adoration.
"my white lady," he called her, taking great pains always to pronounce every consonant of the beloved name, though he usually discarded most of them as not at all necessary to intelligent conversation. with the inquisitiveness of childhood, he soon discovered that she had once had a little boy of her own.
"where is your little boy?" he asked one day with infantile directness.
"he is gone away," she told him.
but that was not enough. "did somebody 'dopt your little boy?" he persisted.
eleanor looked at rosamund; the same thought was in the minds of both. how many times had little tim been offered for inspection to would-be adopters, and refused? how much of it had he understood? what had it all meant, to his poor little lonely heart? eleanor drew him more closely to her.
"w'y don't you tell timmy? did somebody 'dopt your little boy?"
she gave him the simplest answer. "yes, dear," she said.
timmy was thoughtful for a moment. then he said, "i guess he must have been a pretty little boy!"
neither eleanor nor rosamund could speak, but tim was oblivious of their emotion. a new idea, an entrancing one, had presented itself. he climbed upon eleanor's lap, took her face between his palms, and said, smiling divinely,
"if i was a great big man, white lady, i would 'dopt you!"
it seemed to rosamund that eleanor, while reaching out with all the ardor of her loneliness, was being daily wrung by seeing him; she spoke of it to ogilvie, after eleanor herself had denied it. but he was inclined to agree with mrs. reeves that it could not harm her.
"women find comfort in strange things," he said. "let her have her own way."
rosamund sighed. "it does not seem to me that her summer here has helped her at all," she said. "she is more a 'white lady' than ever. i wish you would tell me what you think of her, doctor ogilvie!"
"i cannot tell you any more than i have," he replied. "there is no incurable fault of vision, no defect of the eye itself. if i could prescribe a large dose of happiness for her, she would get well. as it is—nerves have very elusive freaks sometimes, you know!"
"then she will—she will be—oh! don't say that! not my eleanor!"
"now you are taking too much for granted. i do not say it. her eyes are no worse than when she came here. if she were strong they would recover; if she were happy she would quickly become strong! as it is—who can say?"
"oh, how helpless you all are!" she cried.
he ran his fingers through his hair—his cap was apt to be anywhere but on his head. "helpless! good lord, yes!"
as the weeks passed, they had become very good friends, spending many hours together, driving about the countryside as he made his rounds. knowing eleanor to be there in the mornings, ogilvie fell into the way of making mother cary's his first house of visitation in the afternoon. they were always waiting for him at the gate—the now inseparable three; and if rosamund left all show of eager greeting to yetta and little tim, the doctor seemed never to notice the omission. it was enough to find her there.
hitherto, john ogilvie had passed his life, first, in study, and later in investigation and service. women had appeared as people who cooked his meals, or as nurses trained to careful obedience, or as those who, more or less ill, were apt to be more or less querulous. there were one or two who had seemed to possess different characteristics, especially here in the mountains. there was mother cary, who had helped him on more than one occasion when more trained assistance, if not assistance more experienced, was not to be had; he warmly loved mother cary, whose indulgent affection persisted in regarding him as a boy—a clever boy, to be sure, but not by any means one who had outgrown the need of maternal attention. and there were grace tobet, and a few other of the mountaineers' wives, who stood out from the mass of women as he had known them.
miss randall was of still another sort, already beginning to inspire him with emotions new and different. but he was too far past the introspective phase that is a part of early youth to analyze his emotions. he was less concerned with the phenomenon of his own heart throbs than with the happily recurring hours of their being together, and the increasingly dreary intervals when his duties carried him away from her.
he knew very well to what world she belonged. he had had enough experience of it among his patients, the overfed, overwrought women who came to bluemont in the summer to be near him—near the young doctor of high scientific attainments, who remained in this out-of-the-way place of his own choice, "who can be just as disagreeable and firm, my dear, as if his sign hung two doors from fifth avenue, and whose fees are only one-fifth as high as dr. blake's," as one of them wrote home. even if she had not come into the valley as one of flood's guests, he would have known of what class she was a part. mrs. hetherbee, in her overflowing complaisance after rosamund's call, had poured out to his bored and impatient ears, in a torrent that was not to be stemmed, the facts of the girl's inheritance and position.
"witherspoon randall's only daughter! he made all his money, millions, they say, in georgia pine—only had to go out on the land he had inherited and cut down trees! think of it! and left every penny to this girl, nothing to the mother, nothing to the mother's daughter by her first marriage, nothing to charity—everything, everything to this girl! and you know she is just the smartest of the smart, in town; thanks to her sister's marriage, in the very heart of the most exclusive——"
so he had, in spite of himself, been told what she was, given some idea of what she possessed; yet so wholly did he discard as immaterial the material things, and measure her only by the weight of personality, that rosamund was deceived into thinking that he knew nothing about her.
the friends she made while at mother cary's had not questioned her; she had dropped among them from an automobile, and later her sister had sent her some clothes of deceptive simplicity. their seeming to accept her as she tried to appear deceived her into believing that they were not curious; as a matter of fact their code of good manners forbade their showing curiosity; nothing could prevent their having it. she believed that ogilvie, also, had been deceived in like manner. during their drives together she carefully avoided any reference to her possessions; it amused her to imagine how surprised he would be when he knew.
yet she found herself becoming more and more contented that he did not know. in her own world she had been unable to ignore her wealth; she could read knowledge of it on every face, deference to it in every courtesy, and the very fact that it had set her apart was largely the cause of her old discontent. she would not voluntarily have discarded it, but she would have welcomed an escape from all but its agreeable consequences.
the other men she had known might have been able to command riches larger than her own, or possessed that which weighed equally in the social scales; yet they remained conscious of what her very name signified, and invariably showed it. even mr. flood, or so she believed, although he could have bought all she owned without missing what it cost him, showed her the usual deference.
therefore, there was something fresh and unaccustomed in her growing friendship with ogilvie. it amused and piqued her; in her ignorance of his real state of mind it even touched her. she found herself eager to be real with him, to show him depths of heart and mind which she herself had scarcely suspected. other men saw only the social glaze which hid her real self and reflected themselves; ogilvie had a way of looking at her which pierced the surface, although, because of his obvious sincerity, it caused her no resentment. so, during the glowing summer, while the hot noons ripened the corn in the valley and the cold nights left early beacons of flame in the young maples on the mountains, they grew to know each other; she serene in her belief in his unsuspecting simplicity, he ignoring in her what other men would so greatly have valued. as far as the things of the world affected them, they might, on their drives, have been alone in a deserted land, or at least in one peopled only by aborigines.
for always he had as an objective point some mountain cottage where his aid was needed. at first she was inclined to be curious about the mountaineers; theoretically they ought to have been interesting, quaint, amusing. but in reality she scarcely saw them; when she did, she found nothing appealing in their lank figures, and faces hidden in the depths of slat bonnets or under large straw hats pulled down over their eyes.
"they all seem to avoid me," she told ogilvie one day when he had come out of a house with a tiny child in his arms, which had slid down and run away at sight of her. "do they think i'm the bogey-man or the plague?"
he laughed aloud at her petulance. "they don't stop to think," he said. "they are as timid as chipmunks, or as any other hunted woodland creatures."
"oh, hunted!" she cried, as if to repudiate what he implied. "i've heard you talk like that before! do you still believe in that nonsense about the secret stills and the government spies, and all that?"
"yes, i believe in it."
"i have been here eight weeks, and i have not heard another soul speak of it!"
"how many of the 'natives,' as you call them, have you met?"
she pursed her lips. "i don't believe there are many to see!"
"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.
