Master of the Vineyard Part 50

Gradually her resentment pa.s.sed away. The impa.s.sioned yearning for life, in all its fulness, that once had shaken her to the depths of her soul, had ceased to trouble or to beckon. It had become merely a question of getting through with this as creditably and easily as she might, and pa.s.sing on to the next, whatever that might prove to be.

The ground upon which she sat was cold and damp. Rosemary s.h.i.+vered a little and was glad. Release might come in that way, though she doubted it. She was too hopelessly healthy ever to take cold, and in all her five and twenty years had never had a day's illness.

A step beside her startled her and a kindly voice said: "Why, Rosemary!

You'll take cold!"

Crimson with embarra.s.sment she sprang to her feet, shaking the soil from her skirts. "I--I didn't hear you coming," she stammered. "I must go."

[Sidenote: New Plans]

"Please don't," Alden responded. "Remember how long it is since I've seen you. How did you happen to come up here?"

"Because--oh, I don't know! I've come sometimes to see the vineyard.

I've--I've liked to watch the people at work," she concluded, lamely. "I see so few people, you know."

Alden's face softened with vague tenderness. "Was it just this last Summer you've been coming, or has it been all along?"

"I've always come--ever since I was big enough to climb the hill. I--I used to steal grapes sometimes," she confessed, "before I knew it was wrong."

"You can have all the grapes you want," he laughed. "I'll send you a basket every day, if you want them, as long as the season lasts. Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I--I never thought," she answered. She might have added that she was not accustomed to the idea of any sort of gift, but she did not put the thought into words.

"Come over here, Rosemary. I want to show you something--tell you about some new plans of mine."

He led her to the group of workers' houses back of the pines. A great deal of repairing had been done and every house was habitable, if not actually comfortable. They had all been furnished with quiet good taste, and had been freshly whitewashed, both inside and out. There was a great pile of cots and a stack of new blankets.

[Sidenote: The Hospital]

"What is it?" asked Rosemary, much interested.

"The Marsh Tuberculosis Hospital," he answered. His face was beaming.

"I--I don't understand."

"Don't you? Well, it's simple enough. If I hadn't been all kinds of an idiot and blindly selfish I'd have thought of it before. One of the men who came to pick grapes this year has a wife at home with tuberculosis.

All she needs is to lie on a cot outdoors and have plenty of fresh eggs and milk. He's coming to-morrow, with her, and his two children. The girl will learn housekeeping from mother daytimes and the boy will go to school. I have room for several others if I can find them, and I have people in town hunting them up for me. See?"

"Oh!" said Rosemary. "How beautiful! How good you are!"

"Not good," said Alden, shamefacedly, digging at the soil with his heel.

"Merely decent--that's all." He took a spring cot out of the pile, spread a blanket upon it, and invited Rosemary to sit down.

"It is beautiful," she insisted, "no matter what you say. How lovely it must be to be able to do things for people--to give them what they need! Oh," she breathed, "if I could only help!"

[Sidenote: The Gift and the Giver]

Alden looked at her keenly. "You can, Rosemary."

"How?"

"I don't know, but there's always a way, if one wants to help."

"I have nothing to give," she murmured. "I haven't anything of my own but my mother's watch, and that won't go, so it wouldn't be of any use to anybody."

"Someone said once," he continued, "that 'the gift without the giver is bare.' That means that what you give doesn't count unless you also give yourself."

"To give yourself,'" she repeated; then, all at once, her face illumined. "I see now!" she cried. "I can give myself! They'll need someone to take care of them, and I can do that. I can cook and scrub floors and keep everything clean, and--but Grandmother won't let me,"

she concluded, sadly.

A paragraph from Edith's letter flashed vividly into his memory: "_The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to admit her, too, into full fellows.h.i.+p, through striving and through love._"

His heart yearned toward her unspeakably. They belonged to one another in ways that Edith had no part in and never could have. Suddenly, without looking at her, he said: "Rosemary, will you marry me?"

[Sidenote: What For?]

She turned to him, startled, then averted her face. Every vestige of colour was gone, even from her lips. "Don't!" she said, brokenly. "Don't make fun of me. I must go."

She rose to her feet, trembling, but he caught her hand and held her back. "Look at me, dear. I'm not making fun of you. I mean it--every word."

She sat down beside him, then, well out of reach of his outstretched hand. "What for?" she asked, curiously.

"Because I want you."

"I--I don't understand."

"Don't you love me?"

"You have no right to ask me that." Her tone was harsh and tremulous with suppressed emotion.

"No," he agreed, after a pause, "I suppose I haven't." She did not answer, so, after a little, he rose and stood before her, forcing her eyes to meet his.

"Do you--know?" he asked.

Rosemary hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I--know," she said, in a different tone.

"And that was why you----"

"Yes." Her voice was scarcely audible now.

"It wasn't true, then, that you didn't love me?"

[Sidenote: Alden Confesses]

She turned upon him fiercely. "What right have you to ask me all these questions?" she cried, pa.s.sionately. "What have you to offer me? How can you take all I have to give and give me nothing in return? What is your love worth? What do you think I am? The plaything of an idle hour, something to be taken up or cast aside whenever you may choose, to be treated kindly or brutally as your fancy may dictate, to be insulted by your pity--by what you call your love? No, a thousand times no!"

His face was very white and his mouth twitched, but in a moment he had gained, in a measure, his self-control. "I don't blame you in the least, Rosemary. I deserve it all, I know. But, before you condemn me utterly, will you listen to me for a few moments?"