it was late april, and the snow was gone from the mountains save in a few sheltered places under some rock or overhanging tangle of roots. in the valley the apple trees were abloom; in the woods the dogwood was falling; the roadsides were turning from mellow brown to green, here and there carpeted with violets; a line of emerald showed where some willows caressed the stream. great puffs of cloud floated slowly across the deep blue of the sky, their cool shadows passing reluctantly over the plowed fields, the few bright patches of wheat, and the brown ribbon of road—gray in summer and lately white with snow—that wound up from the lowland. even the weather-worn buildings bore signs of spring. barn doors were thrown back, and little calves tied in the barn yards protested their infant loneliness; while from upper windows of the houses, windows that had been kept closed during all the long winter, flapping curtains waved outward to the breeze.
two months and more had passed since the night when john ogilvie returned to consciousness to find the face he loved bending above him, and on this particular morning father cary had driven rosamund to the post office at the summit, on his way to sell a calf, and she was taking a leisurely homeward way, reading, as she went, the handful of letters the mail had brought her. every now and then the betraying fragrance of arbutus lured her from the road to little excursions among the trees. sometimes she looked up at the flash of a brilliant wing, or stopped to listen to an outburst of bird-music. it was plain to be seen that she was living in the hour; the present satisfied; she was taking it as unquestioningly as a child, caring neither to hasten its passing nor to hold it back. to past and future she was giving no thought; the moment was enough.
she smiled often over her letters.
yetta's was a p?on of joy. she had been for two months under the care of the governess chosen by mrs. maxwell, working hard at all her lessons, devouring them, rosamund thought—and going twice a week to an advanced pupil of a great master for singing lessons. she wrote that she had just received a letter from mrs. flood, saying that when the master declared her ready to study in paris or berlin, she would make it possible for her to go. "how funny it seems," she wrote, "to call dear mrs. reeves by that name!"
there was a long envelope from an architect, enclosing various blue-prints which she tried to unfold, but which so resisted the breeze that they were soon put back for later inspection. there was a thin letter from cecilia, bearing a foreign stamp, which rosamund read more than once, with varying emotions. it ran:
dear rosamund:
your letter has made me very happy. i had no right to expect anything from colonel randall's will, although he was always so good to me that i thought of him as a father. but i was hurt, and it would be foolish not to admit that i was disappointed, when i found that he had left me nothing. so was mamma; it was not easy for us to be dependent upon you. i don't mean to hurt you in saying that. especially now! because, rose, dear, you have made me see that my stepfather was right when he left everything to you. he could trust you!
you have really been magnificent. your gift—for that is what it is—will make the world a different place for me. i had to go to bed for two days after i got your letter. i was overcome!
now i do hope you won't be too much surprised, dear, and i don't want you to disapprove. i suppose you know that mr. flood sent over his yacht, the esperanza, so that it would be ready for kiel. but perhaps you don't know that he told marshall to make use of it until he wanted it himself. well, he did; it was nice of him, wasn't it? so marshall brought it to algiers, and the whartons—and i—saw a good deal of him. it is all over now, so i may as well confess that marshall and i were very unhappy for a time. we didn't have five thousand a year between us! but when i got your letter, and the papers—and the note from the bank—oh, rosamund, you will never, never know how the world changed for me. and we were married yesterday, at the american consulate in lisbon, and i am your happy, happy, happy sister,
cecilia pendleton.
rosamund held the letter to her heart, when she had read it; it was all just as she had hoped. she wondered what ogilvie would say—but that could wait!
the last letter was in eleanor's handwriting.
my own dear rose:
your letter told me nothing that i was not prepared for. but i don't know how to put into words even a small part of my hopes for you. john is—excepting my own dear husband—the best man in the world. you will be happy, and proud, as i am happy and proud; we both send our love, and wish we might be with you on that beautiful morning that is coming so soon. but we cannot, for almost as soon as we get back to new york from this lovely columbia valley we shall have to sail for europe. so we can only send our love, my darling; and timmy is sending something else by express.
i am so happy that i cannot help wondering whether this is really myself; yet ever and always, sweet, i know that i am i—your eleanor.
rosamund had kept that letter to read last; and as she folded it back into its envelope there were tears in her eyes, so that for a moment she did not see the familiar figure of a white horse, that was coming upon her with the gentle ambling trot that white rosy fell into when her master was in one of his absent-minded moods. it was a sort of up-and-downness of a trot, one of rosy's great achievements. ogilvie always said that it was worthy of everyone's admiration, since it made a remarkably good effect with the minimum of effort.
when she had come up to the place where rosamund waited, white rosy stopped of her own accord, edged toward the side of the road, and began to nibble at the young green things already burgeoning there.
ogilvie looked, without speaking, at the girl waiting for him at the roadside. she was not smiling, yet her whole look seemed a smile. she was standing with her chin uplifted, her eyelids a little drooped; he thought she was the most beautiful thing in all the beauty of the spring-kissed world.
"don't move!" he said. "i just want to look at you!"
then slowly the smile came. she turned her head away to look at him roguishly, sideways.
"is that all you want?" she asked.
"no!" he cried, explosively; and with a little bubbling laugh she sprang up to the empty place at his side, and turned her face towards him.
presently he asked, looking off to the mountain with a very casual air.
"have you seen grace to-day?"
rosamund looked at him anxiously. "not to-day! isn't she well?"
"oh, i thought you might like to see her. i'm on my way there now," he said.
"oh, do you remember," she asked, "the first day you took me there?"
"do i remember?" he repeated. "i remember a good many things."
"don't tease—be serious! do you remember, that was the first of all our drives together, and this is——"
"well, not quite the last, i hope!"
"no! but—the last—until there will be a difference!"
"it's a difference i welcome, sweet!" he declared; and at the look in his eyes she put up her hands to ward him away.
"no, no! not now!" she said, in one of the sudden shy reserves that he adored, for all their tormenting him. "i want to tell you about my letters."
he read them, smiling with her over each one; but there was no time for comment then, for they were stopping before the tobets' house, and white rosy was looking inquiringly around at them.
ogilvie led the way into the cottage. it seemed strangely quiet. joe came from the inner room, grinned at them in a friendly way, and ogilvie motioned to rosamund to go in.
the quiet, the presence of joe at that time of day, something in the doctor's manner, all made her pause; ogilvie held the door open for her, but he was looking at joe as men look when they understand each other.
"oh! what is it?" rosamund breathed, and he turned to her, still smiling.
"go in," he said. "it's the loveliest sight in god's world, isn't it, joe?"
the smile left joe's face, but not his eyes. "it be," he agreed, emphatically, and began very vigorously to rattle the stove.
within the darkened room grace lay; and although the little place was decked with its gayest of quilt and curtain, although grace's face shone with a radiance as of heaven itself, rosamund saw only the wee brown head in the hollow of her arm.
she went slowly forward, awed in the presence of the newly awakened soul in such a tiny form. grace smiled up at her.
"joe says he's that glad he favors me!" she whispered, and nestled her cheek against the downy head.
such simple words, and so momentous an event! just humble pride that the father of her child rejoiced in his son's likeness to his mother! a cheek against a baby's forehead, an old agony forgotten! the master-marvel of all creation sleeping upon the breast so lately wrung in torture! such innocence, such purity, blessing and cleansing the house of all sin and sorrow, of shame and bitterness! god's breath in the new life, his ever recurring purpose of love redeeming!
rosamund could find no fitting words before the miracle. the joyous words of an ancient song echoed in her heart, "mine eyes have seen thy salvation!"
but she was far from ready for her own nunc dimittis. the future drew her, life was welcoming her to its fulfillment. she kissed the pale, smiling mother, went swiftly from the room, past the two men whom she saw through a blur of tears, and out to the road where spring was waiting.
there, presently, ogilvie joined her. her look deeply stirred him. her eyes were darker than he had ever seen them, darker than he thought they could be—or was it, he wondered, that he lost the sense of their color in sounding the promise that welled up from their depths? the promise he read there was a reflection of the revelation of those moments in grace's room. so might mary's eyes have looked when she bowed before the angel. for a moment they looked silently at each other; then, with a little sobbing indrawn breath, she withdrew her gaze and he took his place beside her.
he urged white rosy's reluctant feet toward a rough wood-road that led up the mountain. for a while neither spoke. the air was full of little fitful pauses and quickly blown breaths of fragrance. a white petal fluttered from somewhere and caught, trembling, in her hair. a bee passed so near their faces, in his eager quest for sweetness, that they drew quickly back. against the blue of the sky a hawk circled slowly, with no visible motion of pinion, seeking in vain in the unfolding life of earth for something dead to feast upon. the woods were hushed, and from their moist recesses faint vapors rose, wraithlike spirits of departing winter, and melted off in the warm sweetness of the air.
after a while they came to an open space, the scar of some old fire, from which they could look across the great plain below, back toward the summit and the blackened spot that had been rosamund's cherished home a few weeks before, and down upon the roof of the little house that sheltered grace and her baby. white rosy stopped, looked down at the faint green of the fields and whinnied; then she took up her roadside feasting. "see that bluebird," ogilvie presently said, pointing. "see the blue flash of his wing! see—ah, there's his mate!"
they watched the flight of the bird until his mate had lured him out of sight. then ogilvie turned to her. "rosamund," he said, "i have something to tell you—something to ask."
she smiled at him. "something more?"
"oh, there will always be something more! there always is—human love being not only human! but—i have had an offer of a professorship—a new chair that has lately been given in the university of the north."
he paused, as if waiting for a question from her; but she said nothing.
"you will go with me?" it was scarcely a question; she smiled, remembering how he always took for granted that she would do his will.
"of course," she said, quietly.
"it would mean great things for me," he went on, as one reading from an open page. "the university, the quickening life there; the unlimited power to search out; everything to work with, and then—success, success and—fame!"
he paused, and drew a deep breath or two before he went on. when he spoke again a new quality had come into his voice.
"but what if i do not go? what if i give it up? what if i stay here?"
he turned to her now, his eyes burning with his question; for, this time, question indeed it was, and not the old demand.
"will you stay with me?"
her look grew softer, holding almost the reassuring sweetness of a mother. it was as if she wished to smile away his doubt.
"of course," she said, again.
she had long since come to know that he was the least given to expressing his feelings when they were most deeply stirred. the very intensity of his emotion seemed to bind him. now he looked at her, and he flushed very deeply; yet still he made no move to embrace her.
"you are made for the highest and best, rosamund. i am offering you only the commonplace!"
she looked off over the valley with unseeing eyes. she, too, had her vision.
"'only the commonplace!' what is that, john? is it life, and love, and service?"
"it may be," he said, and drew her to him.
she felt for his hand, and let her own creep under its warmth. together they looked again at the familiar scene before them, colored now with their own dreams. presently, recalling something of an earlier time, she said.
"it's the land of content, john!"
he repeated the words, as if their music, but half understood, sounded sweet in his ears. "the land of content?"
"they are mother cary's words," she told him. "aren't they like her—so quaint and true, and so wise! she told me once that we must all know doubt and pain and sorrow, if we would cross the threshold of happiness, into the land of content."
he said nothing; but she knew from his look that he was sharing her vision.
"cecilia—eleanor—they think they know it, too, i suppose—poor dears!"
ogilvie threw back his head and laughed. then he looked at her with a smile in his eyes—the smile, half tenderness and half pity, that we give to a beloved child who thinks he has just discovered a new truth.
"and you are the only one who knows anything about it?" he teased.
"oh, you, too!" she said.
"thanks! i'm glad you let me in!" but he grew serious again. "do you know," he said, "i have a suspicion that your land of content is wherever love is?"
she brushed his shoulder with her cheek. "i shouldn't wonder!" she said.
but white rosy was not interested in such speculation. evidently having decided that dinner was more to be desired than the view, she set off down the road, at her briskest trot, toward the valley. they laughed; but neither would have thought of restraining white rosy when she had taken the control of affairs upon herself.
"but i hate to come down from the high places," ogilvie protested. "she's an old tyrant, a materialist!"
he had brought from the intensity of his emotions all a lover's clamoring to prolong the hour alone with the beloved. his visions now went no farther than the sweet reality beside him.
she laughed back at him. "i'm not going to let you offend her, though; i want to keep her always on my side. and we can take our high places with us!"
that turned him serious again for the moment.
"are you sure," he asked her, "that you can be satisfied to remain here?"
"here, or anywhere——" she paused, and he, reassured, smiled at her.
"go on," he urged. "go on! you were going to say something very nice to me! i want to hear it!"
but she looked curiously embarrassed. "i—i was not going to say anything of the kind! i was thinking of—something!"
then she took her courage firmly in hand. "john," she said, "did you guess that—that it was i—who—gave that professorship?"
his eyes opened wide. "why, no!" he said. "did you? well, now, i think that was a very good thing to do! how did you happen to think of it?"
"oh—it was a sort of thank-offering—and a sort of experiment."
he looked around at her. "oh! it was! well, don't you try any more of your experiments on me!"
"john—have you known, all along, about—about my horrid money?"
he looked at her quizzically. "well—yes. i knew. oh, i knew, of course! but—it isn't one of the things that counts, is it?"
he smiled at her, sure of her agreeing. she drew a long breath.
"no," she said, "it doesn't seem to be one of the things that count."
there seemed to be no further need for words; neither spoke again until white rosy stopped before mother cary's gate. then rosamund turned her face toward ogilvie.
"to-morrow!" she said.
his lips trembled. "to-morrow," he replied, "and all the to-morrows!"
