All about her sounded the murmur of bluebirds, which came each year to live in the old trees about Storm. She wondered why the bluebird should have been taken as a symbol of happiness. There is nothing more plaintive in nature than its nesting-song, a cadence of little dropping minor notes, which Kate, grown fanciful in her idleness, translated for herself:

Love and loss, loss and love. Take them together, while there is time. Better together than not at all. Quick--for the Spring is pa.s.sing by.--

Yet one who saw her sitting there, the breeze blowing tendrils of bright hair about her face, her strong, lithe hands clasped youthfully about her knees, her beautiful eyes darkling or brightening with the thoughts that pa.s.sed, could not have connected her with the mere pa.s.sivity of waiting, of remembering.

Sometimes the pale sunlight, growing daily in warmth, touched her cheek or her hand like a caress, and stirred her to a sudden restlessness.

"It can't be all over for me," she thought, then. "It can't!"

It seemed to her that she had been like the Lady of Shalott, doomed to see life only in a mirror, while her hands weaved eternally at a task of which she had grown weary; hoping always for one to pa.s.s, that she might turn and break the spell, and be done forever with the mirror....

At length a message came that put out of her mind both herself and the man she loved. It was a telegram from Philip, sent from the mountain town whence he and Jacqueline and Channing and Brother Bates had set forth on their missionary expedition.

The telegram read:

Jacqueline wants you. Will meet morning train. Please bring Mag's baby.

PHILIP.

CHAPTER LI

She was disappointed to find that Philip, despite his telegram, was not at the station to meet her, but had sent instead a wagon which, its driver explained, was to take her as far as wheels were feasible after the Spring rains, and then return.

"Reckon thar'll be a mule or somethin' to tote you the rest of the way,"

he added, indifferently.

He was unable to answer any of her questions, or to allay the fears which, despite the eager happiness in her heart, were beginning to make themselves felt. Jacqueline wanted her at last--but why?

Mile after mile they drove in utter silence, Kate's thoughts racing ahead of her; while small Kitty, on a pile of quilts in the bottom of the bouncing wagon, adapted herself to circ.u.mstances with the ease of a born traveler, and alternately dozed, or imbibed refreshment out of a bottle, or rehea.r.s.ed her vocabulary aloud for the pleasure of the world at large. She would have preferred a more attentive audience, but she could do without it.

Where the road degenerated into a mere trail along the mountain-side, Kate found a mule awaiting her, in charge, not of Philip, as she had hoped, but of a mountaineer even more taciturn than the driver. Her fears became more acute.

"Can you tell me whether my daughter--young Mrs. Benoix--is ill?" she asked her new conductor, anxiously.

The man took so long to answer that she thought he had not heard her, and repeated the question.

He spat exhaustively--he was chewing tobacco--and finally replied, "The gal at Teacher's house? Dunno as I've heerd tell."

"Aren't you a neighbor of hers?"

He gave a brief nod of a.s.sent.

"Then," she persisted, "you surely would have heard if she were ill, wouldn't you?"

Another long pause. "Dunno as I would. We-all ain't much on talk."

"You certainly are not!" exclaimed Kate with some asperity.

It seemed to her anxious impatience that his taciturnity was deliberate, hostile. He was a rough, unkempt, savage-looking creature; yet the tenderness and skill with which he held little Kitty before him on his ungainly mount would have done credit to any woman.

Kate remarked presently, observing this, "You've had children of your own?"

"Thirteen on 'em."

"Thirteen? Splendid! All living?"

He spat again. "All daid. Died when they was babies."

"Good Heavens! This must be looked into!" exclaimed Kate, with a touch of the old authority; and then remembered that she was not in her own domain.

Presently, as they mounted, her attention was attracted to a woman planting in a steep and barren-looking field, swinging her arms with the fine free grace of a Millet figure.

"What's she trying to raise there--corn?" Kate inspected the soil with a professional eye. "She won't do it--not in that soil! It needs fertilizing."

Her companion remarked impartially, "Ben raisin' corn thar a right smart while."

"All the more reason to give it a rest! I suppose you've never heard of rotation of crops?"

"Yes, I hev," was the unexpected reply. "Fum Teacher." He spat with great success, and added, "We-all ain't much on new-fangled idees."

Kate attempted no more conversation. She began to feel the fatigue of the hurried journey, and to her secret fears was added a growing dread of the end of it, a sudden shyness about meeting not only Jacqueline, but Philip, after the conclusion to which her long meditations had led her. She had recalled again and again, and always with a sharp twinge of shame, the hurt bewilderment on Philip's face when she had offered him Jacqueline in marriage. What a blind and stubborn fool she had been not to understand! If he still had that look in his eyes, that patient acquiescence in her will, Kate felt that she could not bear it.... But surely he had forgotten her, now that he was with Jacqueline? Surely the girl was lovely enough, and piteous enough in her great need of him, to drive any other woman out of his mind?

After many miles, the mountaineer volunteered a remark: "Thar's the school buildin's."

She saw on the rise beyond a group of log-cabins, the central one small and old, the two wings much larger and evidently of recent construction.

In the doorway of one a man stood, looking out; and as he started down the slope toward them Kate recognized him. It was Philip.

"Mother!--At last!" he cried out. "I would have gone to meet you, but she could not spare me. She's been asking for you every moment.--Wait, let me help you!"

The tone of his voice laid to rest all her misgivings with regard to him. Even as he welcomed her, he was thinking of his wife.--As for Philip, if he remembered a time when to call this woman "mother" would have been like a knife-thrust in his breast, he thought only that the time was very long ago.

Kate sprang down unaided, her fatigue forgotten. "Jacqueline?" she demanded eagerly.

"A little stronger to-day. But--the baby--"

Kate gave a cry. Her unspoken fears had been true. "A baby?"

"Yes. It did not live.--That is why I asked you to bring little Kitty."

Kate put her hands before her eyes. "My poor little girl! Oh, my poor little girl!--Let me go to her."

At the door she was not surprised to find Jemima, in a neat nursing-dress, her eyes heavily lined with fatigue.

"I've been here several days. Jacky forgot to make them promise not to send for me. She never thought of me," she explained humbly.... "Oh Mother, it has been pretty bad! Jacky was so--so brave!" She broke down a little in Kate's arms.