"Yes, I reckon distrust must be about one of the hardest things to set down under," she said. "I know somethin' about it, 'cause time was when I distrusted Pap, though 'twas before we was married, o' course. I distrusted Pap's love, like poor Joe distrusts Grace's. I thought he couldn't possibly love me enough to last for ever an' always, me bein' crippled up like I be; an' I thought it wasn't fair to let him try. So I up an' run away. I tried to get to the station an' so back to the city. It was a long ol' walk for me, an' I had to hide all one night in a barn. But betwixt walkin' an' hobblin' an' crawlin' I got to the station at last; an' there was Pap a-waitin' to take me into his arms, which he did then an' there, good an' strong. I ain't never tried to get far from 'em sence!"
Rosamund was afraid to break the thread of the story by a question, and the old woman mused a while before she went on.
"I reckon there's a door o' distrust that most of us have to open and pass through an' shet fast behind us, before we get to the place where's only content, an' love, an' trust. It ain't confined to jest a few; 'pears to me most everybody has to go through it."
Again she paused, while the girl waited.
"When your time comes, honey—an' I hope it will come, 'cause you can't rightly feel the glory tell you know the shadder—when your time comes to feel distrust, or have it felt against you, jest you do as your Ma Cary tells you! You take a firm holt o' your heart and your thoughts, an' don't you let 'em turn all topsy-turvy! You jest take a firm holt on 'em an' wait. WAIT! Don't run away, like I did; 'cause they ain't any more Pap Carys in the world! It ain't everybody you'd find ahead of you at the station, waitin'. You jest remember that it ain't but a door, even though the doorsill does seem dretful wide. It'll shet behind you, when the right time comes, an' you'll find yo'self a-standin' in the land o' content. That's the best dwellin'-place there is, I'm a-tellin' you!"
Rosamund had not been alone with John Ogilvie since the afternoon, three weeks earlier, when Flood's automobile interrupted them; but during the interval she was conscious of an uplift of the soul, a new serenity.
One of the great memories of her life was of an hour of her childhood when for the first time a revelation of something beyond her childish world was vouchsafed to her. She had been awakened at night by a touch of light upon her face; the full moon shone through her window, and its rays had called her from sleep. In her little bare feet she slipped from bed and went toward the casement, drawn by the moon-magic to look upon the beauty her early bedtime had left undiscovered. Great dark masses of cloud floated across the face of the golden disc, black on the side that hung over the shadowy fields and woods, but shining with a marvelous radiance where the moonlight touched them from above.
The child had watched them floating, forming, massing, until they had passed away to the horizon, and left the moon, a floating ship of light, far, far up in the sky, dimming the brilliance of the stars. She had crept back to her little bed with a new sense of things hitherto undreamed of in her childish imaginings, yet never again to be entirely lost—a sense of majesty, of order and immutability, of strange beauty, and of the Greatness that kept watch while she, a little child, safely slumbered.
The hour left its mark upon her entire life; and now once more such an impression of security, of beauty, and perhaps of destiny had been laid upon her in the moment when she had faced his soul through John Ogilvie's eyes.
There was no need to hasten further revelation. Indeed, she did not wish for it. She was more than content to rest for a while in the calm of unspoken assurance. It was enough, as much as the hours would hold, until they could grow used to it and expand to the greater glory that was to come.