Part 40 (1/2)

Lois had not expected to be called upon to defend Fay, but she said, ”I suppose he naturally feels indignant when he sees--”

”There's a desperate streak in Fay,” the woman broke in, uneasily, ”and Rosie takes after him. For the matter of that, she takes after us both--for I'm sure I've been gloomy enough. There's been something lacking in us all, like cooking without salt. I see that now as plain as plain, though I can't get Fay to believe me. You might as well talk to a stone wall as talk to Fay when he's got his nose stuck into a book. I hate the very name of that Carlyle; and that Darwin, he's another.

They're his Bible, I tell him, and he don't half understand what they mean. It's Duck Rock,” she went on, with a quiver of her fine lips, while her hands worked nervously at the corner of her ap.r.o.n--”it's Duck Rock that I'm most afraid of. It kind o' haunted me all the time I was sick; and it kind o' haunts Rosie.”

”Then I'll go and see if she's there,” Lois said, as she turned away, leaving the austere figure to stare after her with eyes that might have been those of the woman delivered from the seven devils.

It was an easy matter for Lois to find her way among the old apple-trees--of which one was showing an early blossom or two on the sunny side--to the boulevard below, and thence to the wood running up the bluff. Though she had not been here since the berry-picking days of childhood, she knew the spot in which Rosie was likely to be found. As a matter of fact, having climbed the path that ran beneath oaks and through patches of brakes, spleenwort, and lady-ferns, she was astonished to hear a faint, plaintive singing, and stopped to listen.

The voice was poignantly thin and sweet, with the frail, melancholy sound she had heard from distant shepherds' pipes in Switzerland. Had she not, after a few seconds, recognized the air, she would have been unable to detect the words:

”Ah, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory, By bonnie Irvinside, Where first I owned the virgin love I long, long had denied?”

Though the singer was invisible, Lois knew she could not be far away, since the voice was too weak to carry. She was about to go forward when the faint melody began again:

”An exile from my father's ha'

And a' for loving thee; At least be pity to me shown, If love it may na' be.”

Placing the voice now as near the great oak-tree circled by a seat, just below the point where the ascending bluff broke fifty feet to the pond beneath, Lois went rapidly up the last few yards of the ascent.

Rosie was seated with her back to the gnarled trunk, while she looked out over the half-mile of dancing blue wavelets to where, on the other side, the brown, wooden houses of the Thorley estate swept down to the sh.o.r.e. She rose on seeing the visitor approach, showing a startled disposition to run away. This she might have done had not Lois caught her by the hand and detained her.

”I know all about everything, Rosie--about everything.”

She meant that she understood the situation not only as regarding one brother, but as regarding both. Rosie's response was without interest or curiosity. ”Do you?”

”Yes, Rosie; and I want to talk to you about it. Let us sit down.”

Still holding the girl's hands in a manner that compelled her to reseat herself, she examined the little face for the charm that had thrown such a spell on Thor. With a pang she owned to herself that she found it. No one could look at Thor with that expression of entreaty without reaching all that was most tender in his soul.

For the moment, however, that point must be allowed to pa.s.s. ”Not yet!

Not yet!” something cried to the pa.s.sion that was trying to get control of her. She went on earnestly, almost beseechingly: ”I know just what happened, Rosie dear, and how hard it's been for you; and I want you to let me help you.”

There was no light in Rosie's chrysoprase-colored eyes. Her voice was listless. ”What can you do?”

Put to her in that point-blank way, Lois found the question difficult.

She could only answer: ”I can be with you, Rosie. We can be side by side.”

”There wouldn't be any good in that. I'd rather be left alone.”

”Oh, but there would be good. We should strengthen each other. I--I need help, too. I should find it partly, if I could do anything for you.”

Rosie surveyed her friend, not coldly, but with dull detachment. ”Do you think Claude will come back to me?”

”What do you think, yourself?”

”I don't think he will.” She added, with a catch in her breath like that produced by a sudden, darting pain, ”I know he won't.”

”Would you be happy with him if he did?”