When she went out, the other two exchanged glances. "What," asked Grandmother, "do you reckon has got into Rosemary?"
"I don't know," returned Aunt Matilda, gloomily. "Do you suppose it's religion?"
"I ain't never seen religion affect anybody like that, have you?'
"No, I ain't," Aunt Matilda admitted, after a moment's pondering.
"She reminds me of her ma," said Grandmother, reminiscently, "the day Frank brought her home."
VI
More Stately Mansions
The new joy surged in every heart-beat as Rosemary went up the Hill of the Muses, late in the afternoon. Instinctively, she sought the place of fulfilment, yearning to be alone with the memory of yesterday.
Nothing was wrong in all the world; nothing ever could be wrong any more. She accepted the brown alpaca and the brown gingham as she did the sordid tasks of every day. That morning, for the first time, it had been a pleasure to wash dishes and happiness to build a fire.
Grandmother and Aunt Matilda had been annoyances to her ever since she could remember. Their continual nagging had fretted her, their constant restraint had chafed her, their narrowness had cramped her. To-day she saw them from a new point of view.
Grandmother was no longer a malicious spirit of evil who took delight in thwarting her, but a poor, fretful old lady whose soul was bound in shallows. And Aunt Matilda? Rosemary's eyes filled at the thought of Aunt Matilda, unloved and unsought. Nobody wanted her, she belonged to nobody, in all her lonely life she had had nothing. She sat and listened to Grandmother, she did the annual sewing, and day by day resented more keenly the emptiness of her life. It was the conscious lack that made them both cross. Rosemary saw it now, with the clear vision that had come to her during the past twenty-four hours.
She wanted to be very kind to Grandmother and Aunt Matilda. It was not a philanthropic resolution, but a spontaneous desire to share her own gladness, and to lead the others, if she might, from the chill darkness in which they dwelt to the clear air of the heights.
Oh, but it was good to be alive! The little birds that hopped from bough to bough chirped ecstatically, the nine silver-clad birches swayed and nodded in the cool wind, and the peaceful river in the valley below sparkled and dimpled at the caress of the sun. The thousand sounds and fragrances of Spring thrilled her to eager answer; she, too, aspired and yearned upward as the wakened grass-blades pierced the sod and the violets of last year dreamed once more of bloom.
Yesterday she had emerged from darkness into light. She had been born again as surely as the tiny dweller of the sea casts off his shell. The outworn habitation of the past was forever left behind her, to be swept back, by the tides of the new life, into some forgotten cave.
"Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul,
As the swift seasons roll."
The words said themselves aloud. She had learned the whole poem long ago, but, to-day, the beautiful lines assumed a fresh significance, for had she not, by a single step, passed from the cell of self into comradeship with the whole world? Was she not a part of everything and had not everything become a part of her? What could go wrong when the finite was once merged with the infinite, the individual with the universal soul?
She sat down on the log that Alden had rolled back against the two trees, three years ago, when they had first begun to come to the Hill of the Muses for an occasional hour of friendly talk. Everything was the same, and yet subtly different, as though seen from another aspect or in another light. Over yonder, on the hillside farthest from the valley, he had put his arm around her and refused to let her go.
She remembered vividly every word and every look and that first shy kiss. Of course they belonged together! How foolish they had been not to see it before! Was she not the only woman he knew, and was he not the only man to whom she could say more than "How do you do?" God had meant it so from the beginning, ever since He said: "Let there be light, and there was light."
Dreaming happily, Rosemary sat on the fallen tree, leaning against the great oak that towered above her. The first pink leaves had come out upon the brown branches, and through them she could see the blue sky, deep as turquoise, without a single cloud. It seemed that she had always been happy, but had never known it until this new light shone upon her, flooding with divine radiance every darkened recess of her soul.
She went to the hollow tree, took out the wooden box, and unwound the scarlet ribbon. Yesterday, little dreaming of the portent that for once accompanied the signal, she had tied it in its accustomed place, and gone back, calmly to wait. The school bell echoed through the valley as she stood there, her eyes laughing, but her mouth very grave. She had taken two or three steps toward the birches when an unwonted shyness possessed her, and she hurried back.
"I can't," she said to herself. "Oh, I can't – to-day!"
So she restored it to its place, wondering, as she did so, why love should make such mysterious changes in the common things of every day. Won and awakened though she was, her womanhood imperatively demanded now that she must be sought and never seek, that she must not even beckon him to her, and that she must wait, according to her destiny, as women have waited since the world began.
Yet it was part of the beautiful magic of the day that presently he should come to her, unsummoned save by her longing and his own desire.
"Where is the ribbon?" he inquired, reproachfully, when he came within speaking distance.
"Where it belongs," she answered, with a flush.
"Didn't you want me to come?"
"Of course."
"Then why didn't you hang it up?"
"Just because I wanted you to come."
Alden laughed at her feminine inconsistency, as he took her face between his hands and kissed her, half-shyly still. "Did you sleep last night?" he asked.
"Yes, but I had a horrible dream. I was glad to wake up this morning."
"I didn't sleep, so all my dreams were wakeful ones. You're not sorry, are you, Rosemary?"
"No, indeed! How could I ever be sorry?"
"You never shall be, if I can help it. I want to be good to you, dear. If I'm ever otherwise, you'll tell me so, won't you?"
"Perhaps – I won't promise."
"Why not?"
"Because, even if you weren't good to me, I'd know you never meant it." Rosemary's eyes were grave and sweet; eloquent, as they were, of her perfect trust in him.
He laughed again. "I'd be a brute not to be good to you, whether I meant it or not."
"That sounds twisted," she commented, with a smile.
"But it isn't, as long as you know what I mean."
"I'll always know," sighed Rosemary, blissfully leaning her head against his shoulder. "I'll always understand and I'll never fail you. That's because I love you better than everything else in the world."
"Dear little saint," he murmured; "you're too good for me."
"No, I'm not. On the contrary, I'm not half good enough." Then, after a pause, she asked the old, old question, first always from the lips of the woman beloved: "When did you begin to – care?"
"I must have cared when we first began to come here, only I was so blind I didn't know it."
"When did you – know?"
"Yesterday. I didn't keep it to myself very long."
"Dear yesterday!" she breathed, half regretfully.
"Do you want it back?"
She turned reproachful eyes upon