Once she had read a sentence from Lowell which flamed upon her mind now each time she mused upon her lot.
"The wilderness is all right for a vacation, but all wrong for a life-time."
She considered the coulé a wilderness. It had nothing for her but nature, and nature palls upon a girl of twenty, with red blood in her veins, and splendid dreams in her heart.
Out there was her ideal. "Out there is the man who is to fill out my life," she uttered to herself softly, so that only her inner ear heard.
So she argued, fought, wept, surrendered, and went to battle again. While all about her, John and his sister, moved tranquilly to their daily duties, calm as the cattle in the meadows. To the discerning eye it was a wonderful sight to see that dark, gloomy, restless girl seated opposite those serene, almost stolid faces, to whom "the world" was a breeze blowing in the tree-tops. She had the bearing of a rebellious royal captive—a duchess in exile. Mrs. Diehl and the hired man were the peasants who waited upon her, but ate with her—and her father was the secure free-holder, to whom kings were obscure, world-distant diseases.
Then the equinoctial storms came on, and days of dull, cold, unremitting rain confined her to the house. The birds fell silent, the landscape, blurred with gray mist, looked grim and threatening, and there was prophecy of winter in the air. The season seemed to have rushed into darkness, cold and decay, in one enormous bound. The hills no longer lifted buoyant crests to heaven; they grew cheerless and dank as prison walls.
One night Rose spoke. She had always been chary of caresses; even when a child she sat erect upon her father's knee, with a sober little face, and when she grew sleepy she seldom put hands to his neck, but merely laid her head on his breast and went to sleep. John understood her in all this, for was he not of the same feeling? Love that babbled spent itself, his had no expression.
His heart was big with pride and affection when his splendid girl came over and put her arms about his neck, and put her forehead down on his shoulder.
"O pappa John, you're so good to me—I'm ashamed—I don't deserve this new house!"
"O yes y' do, daughter." His voice when he said "daughter" always made her cry, it was deep and tender like the music of water. It stood for him in the place of "dear" and "darling," and he very, very seldom spoke it. All this made it harder for her to go on.