Part 42

"It's a lie, just the same," Matilda protested, though weakly, as one in the last ditch.

"Matilda Starr!" The clarion note of Grandmother's voice would have made the dead stir. "Ain't I showed it to you, in the paper?" To question print was as impious as to doubt Holy Writ.

Rosemary was greatly relieved when Mrs. Lee gave way to mermaids in the eternal flow of talk. She wondered, sometimes, that their voices did not fail them, though occasionally a sulky silence or a nap produced a brief interval of peace. She worked faithfully until her household tasks were accomplished, discovering that, no matter how one's heart aches, one can do the necessary things and do them well.

Early in the afternoon, she found herself free. Instinct and remorseless pain led her unerringly to the one place, where the great joy had come to her. She searched her suffering dumbly, and without mercy. If she knew the reason why!

"She's married, and her husband isn't dead, and they're not divorced." Parrot-like, Rosemary repeated the words to herself, emphasising each fact with a tap of her foot on the ground in front of her. Then a new fear presented itself, clutching coldly at her heart. Perhaps they were going to be divorced and then----

Something seemed to snap, like the breaking of a strained tension. Rosemary had come to the point where she could endure no more, and mercifully the pain was eased. Later on, no doubt, she could suffer again, but for the moment she felt only a dull weariness. In the background the ache slumbered, like an ember that is covered with ashes, but now she was at rest.

She looked about her curiously, as though she were a stranger. Yet, at the very spot where she stood, Mrs. Lee had stood yesterday, her brown eyes cold with controlled anger when she made her sarcastic farewell. When she first saw her, she had been sitting on the log, where Alden usually sat. Down in the hollow tree was the wooden box that held the red ribbon. Shyly, the nine silver birches, with bowed heads, had turned down the hillside and stopped. Across, on the other side of the hill, where God hung His flaming tapestries of sunset from the high walls of Heaven, Rosemary had stood that day, weeping, and Love had come to comfort her.

None of it mattered now--nothing mattered any more. She had reached the end, whatever the end might be. Seemingly it was a great pause of soul and body, the consciousness of arrival at the ultimate goal.

When she saw Alden, she would ask to be released. She could tell him, with some semblance of truth, that she could not leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, because they needed her, and after they had done so much for her, she could not bring herself to seem ungrateful, even for him. The books were full of such things--the eternal sacrifice of youth to age, which age unblushingly accepts, perhaps in remembrance of some sacrifice of its own.

He had told her, long ago, that she was the only woman he knew. Now he had another standard to judge her by and, at the best, she must fall far short of it. Some day Alden would marry--he must marry, and have a home of his own when his mother was no longer there to make it for him, and she--she was not good enough for him, any more than Cinderella was good enough for the Prince.

The fact that the Prince had considered Cinderella fully his equal happily escaped Rosemary now. Clearly before her lay the one thing to be done: to tell him it was all a mistake, and ask for freedom before he forced it upon her. He had been very kind the other day, when she had gone there to tea but, naturally, he had seen the difference--must have seen it.

Of course it would not be Mrs. Lee--Rosemary could laugh at that now. Her jealousy of an individual had been merely the recognition of a type, and her emotion the unfailing tribute inferiority accords superiority. Married, and her husband not dead, nor divorced--manifestly it could not be Mrs. Lee.

She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him. Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that has ceased. She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received. This much could never be taken away from her. She had had it and been blessed by it, and now the time had come to surrender it. What was she, that she might hope to keep it?

"Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all One little shell upon the murmuring sand, One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand--"

The moment of shelter became divinely dear. Already, in her remembrance, she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things became too hard. She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it.

Her face transfigured by a passion of renunciation, Rosemary reached into the hollow tree for the wooden box, and, for the last time unwound the scarlet ribbon. She tied it to the lowest bough of the birch when the school bell rang, and went back to wait. Without emotion, she framed the few words she would say. "Just tell him it's all a mistake, that they need me and I mustn't leave them, and so good-bye. And if he tries to kiss me for good-bye--oh, he mustn't, for I couldn't bear that!"

So Rosemary sat and waited--until almost dark, but no one came. Alden had, indeed, hurried home to have afternoon tea with his mother and Edith. He had almost forgotten the oriflamme that sometimes signalled to him from the top of the hill, and seldom even glanced that way.

In the gathering dusk, Rosemary took it down, unemotionally. It seemed only part of the great denial. She put it back into the box, and hid it in the tree.

"Service," she said to herself, as she went home, "and sacrifice. Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer. And this is love!"

XIII

The Stain of the Rose

Alden had put Rosemary aside as though in a mental pigeon-hole. If vague thoughts of her came now and then to trouble him, he showed no sign of it. As weeks and months had sometimes passed without a meeting, why should it be different now? Moreover, he was busy, as she must know, with the vineyard and school, and a guest.

He had ordered several books on the subject of vine-culture, and was reading a great deal, though a close observer might have noted long intervals in which he took no heed of the book, but stared dreamily into space. He saw Edith at the table, and in the evenings, and occasionally at afternoon tea--a pleasant custom which she and Madame never failed to observe,--but she seemed to make it a point not to trespass upon his daylight hours.

The apple blossoms had gone, blown in fragrant drifts afar upon field and meadow. The vineyard lay lazily upon its southern slope, basking in the sun. Sometimes a wandering wind brought a fresh scent of lusty leaves or a divine hint of bloom.

The old-fashioned square piano, long silent, was open now, and had been put in order. In the evenings, after dinner, Edith would play, dreamily, in the dusk or by the light of one candle. The unshaded light, shining full upon her face, brought out the delicacy of her profile and allured stray gleams from the burnished masses of her hair. In the soft shadows that fell around her, she sat like St. Cecilia, unconscious of self, and of the man who sat far back in a corner of the room, never taking his eyes from her face.

Wistfulness was in every line of her face and figure, from the small white-shod foot that rested upon the pedal to the glorious hair that shimmered and shone but still held its tangled lights safely in its silken strands. The long line from shoulder to wrist, the smooth, satiny texture of the rounded arm, bare below the elbow, the delicate hands, so beautifully cared-for, all seemed eloquent with yearning.

Alden, from his safe point of observation, feasted his soul to the full. The ivory whiteness of her neck shaded imperceptibly into the creamy lace of her gown. Underneath her firm, well rounded chin, on the left side, was a place that was almost a dimple, but not quite. There was a real dimple in her chin and another at each corner of her mouth, where the full scarlet lips drooped a little from sadness. Star-like, her brown eyes searched the far shadows and sometimes the flicker of the candle brought a dancing glint of gold into their depths. And as always, like a halo, stray gleams hovered about her head, bent slightly forward now and full into the light, throwing into faint relief the short straight nose, and the full, short upper lip.

Smiling, and wholly unconscious, it was as though she pleaded with the instrument to give her back some half-forgotten melody. Presently the strings answered, shyly at first, then in full soft chords that sang and crooned through the dusk. Alden, in his remote corner, drew a long breath of rapture. The ineffable sweetness of her pervaded his house, not alone with the scent of violets, but with the finer, more subtle fragrance of her personality.