She continued to borrow books from the school library, however, and later from Alden Marsh. When he learned that she dared not read at night, for fear of burning too much oil, he began to supply her with candles. Thus the world of books was opened to her, and many a midnight had found her, absorbed and breathless, straining her eyes over the last page. More than once she had read all night and fallen asleep afterward at the breakfast table.
Once, long ago, Alden had called upon her, but the evening was made so unpleasant, both for him and his unhappy hostess, that he never came again. Rosemary used to go to the schoolhouse occasionally, to sit and talk for an hour or so after school, but some keen-eyed busy-body had told Grandmother and the innocent joy had come to an abrupt conclusion. Rosemary kept her promise not to go to the schoolhouse simply because she dared not break it.
The windows of the little brown house, where the Starrs lived, commanded an unobstructed view of the Marshs' big Colonial porch, in Winter, when the trees between were bare, so it was impossible for the girl to go there, openly, as Mrs. Marsh had never returned Aunt Matilda's last call.
Sometimes Alden wrote to her, but she was unable to answer, for stationery and stamps were unfamiliar possessions; Grandmother held the purse-strings tightly, and every penny had to be accounted for. On Thursday, Rosemary always went to the post-office, as The Household Guardian was due then, so it happened that occasionally she received a letter, or a book which she could not return until Spring.
At length, the Hill of the Muses became the one possible rendezvous, though, at the chosen hour of four, Rosemary was usually too weary to attempt the long climb. Moreover, she must be back by six to get supper, so one little hour was all she might ever hope for, at a time.
Yet these hours had become a rosary of memories to her, jewelled upon the chain of her uneventful days. Alden's unfailing friendliness and sympathy warmed her heart, though she had never thought of him as a possible lover. In her eyes, he was as far above her as the fairy prince had been above Cinderella. It was only kindness that made him stoop at all.
When the school bell, sounding for dismissal, echoed through the valley below, Rosemary hung her scarlet signal to the outstanding bough of the lowest birch, and went back to the crest of the hill to wait for him. She had with her the little red book that he had given her long ago, and which she had not had opportunity to return.
She turned the pages regretfully, though she knew the poems almost by heart. Days, while she washed dishes and scrubbed, the exquisite melody of the words haunted her, like some far-off strain of music. For the first time she had discovered the subtle harmonies of which the language is capable, entirely apart from sense.
Living lines stood out upon the printed page, glowing with a rapture all their own.
"Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn
Together,"
she read aloud, thrilled by the very sound.
"Tender as dawn's first hill-fire," … "What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May," … "Shadows and shoals that edge eternity." …
"Oh," she breathed, "if only I didn't have to give it back!"
"Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, —
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand."
"What, indeed?" thought Rosemary. What was she to Love, or what ever might she be?
"But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
Up your warm throat to your warm lips: for this" …
Rosemary put the book down, face to face at last with self-knowledge. She would have torn down the flaming signal, but it was too late. If he were coming – and he never had failed to come – he would be there very soon.
Alden had closed his desk with a sigh as the last pair of restless little feet tumbled down the schoolhouse steps. Scraps of paper littered the floor and the room was musty and close in spite of two open windows. From where he sat, he could see the vineyard, with its perpetual demand upon him. Since his painful interview with his mother, he had shrunk, inwardly, from even the sight of the vineyard. It somehow seemed to have a malicious air about it. Mutely it challenged his manhood, menaced his soul.
He had accepted the inevitable but had not ceased to rebel. The coming years stretched out before him in a procession of grey, uneventful days. Breakfast, school, luncheon, school, long evenings spent in reading to his mother, and, from Spring to frost, the vineyard, with its multitudinous necessities.
He felt, keenly, that his mother did not quite understand him. In fact, nobody did, unless it was Rosemary, whom he had not seen for weeks. Brave little Rosemary, for whom life consisted wholly of deprivations! How seldom she complained and how often she had soothed his discontent!
It was three years ago that she had come shyly to the schoolhouse and asked if she might borrow a book. He had known her, of course, before that, but had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with her. When he saw her, rarely, at church, Grandmother or Aunt Matilda was always with her, and the Starrs had had nothing to do with the Marshs for several years past, as Mrs. Marsh had been remiss in her social obligations.
At first, Rosemary had been purely negative to him, and he regarded her with kindly indifference. The girl's personality seemed as ashen as her hair, as colourless as her face. Her dull eyes seemed to see nothing, to care for nothing. Within the last few months he had begun to wonder whether her cold and impassive exterior might not be the shield with which she protected an abnormal sensitiveness. Now and then he had longed to awaken the woman who dwelt securely within the forbidding fortress – to strike from the flint some stray gleams of soul.
Of late he had begun to miss her, and, each afternoon, to look with a little more conscious eagerness for the scarlet thread on the hill-top signalling against the grey sky beyond. His interest in her welfare was becoming more surely personal, not merely human. During the Winter, though he had seen her only twice, he had thought about her a great deal, and had written to her several times without expecting an answer.
The iron bars of circumstance which bound her, had, though less narrowly, imprisoned him also. It seemed permanent for them both, and, indeed, the way of escape was even more definitely closed for Rosemary than for him.
He sighed as he rose and brushed the chalk from his clothes. Through force of habit, he looked up to the crest of the Hill of the Muses as he locked the door. The red ribbon fluttered like an oriflamme against the blue-and-white of the April sky. His heart quickened its beat a little as he saw it, and his steps insensibly hastened as he began to climb the hill.
When he took her hand, with a word of friendly greeting, he noticed a change in her, though she had made a valiant effort to recover her composure. This was a new Rosemary, with eyes shining and the colour flaming in her cheeks and lips.
"Spring seems to have come to you, too," he said, seating himself on the log beside her. "How well you look!"
The deep crimson mounted to her temples, then as swiftly retreated. "Better take down the ribbon," she suggested, practically.
"I've been watching a long time for this," he resumed, as he folded it and restored it to its place in the hollow tree. "What have you been doing?"
"All the usual dreary things, to which a mountain of sewing has been added."
"Is that a new gown?"
She laughed, mirthlessly. "It's