"She is the daughter of Markham MacLeod."
"Not the author? Not the chief?"
"Yes," said Peter, with some quiet pride in the assurance, "chief of the
Brotherhood, the great Markham MacLeod."
Electra pondered.
"If that is true," she said, "I must call on her."
"True? I tell you it is true. Electra, what are you saying?"
But Electra was looking at him with those clear eyes where dwelt neither
guile nor tolerance of the guile of others.
"Did she tell you so," she inquired, "or do you know it for a fact?"
He had himself well in hand now, because it had sprung into his wise
artist brain that he must not break the beauty of their interview. It
was fractured, but if they turned the hurt side away from the light,
possibly no one would know, and the outer crystalline sheen of the thing
would be deceptively the same.
"I know Markham MacLeod," he said. "I have seen them together. She calls
him father."
A wave of interest swept over her face.
"Do you mean you really know him, Peter?"
"Assuredly."
"As the leader of the Brotherhood?"
"Yes, the founder."
"He is proscribed in Russia and watched in France. Is that true?"
"All true."
"He gave up writing for this--to go about organizing and speaking?
That's true, isn't it?"
"Quite true."
"How much do you know about the Brotherhood, Peter?"
"I belong to it."
He straightened as he spoke. An impulse of pride passed over him, and
she read the betrayal in his kindling eyes and their widened pupils.
"Is there work for you?" she asked, "for men who don't speak and
proselytize?"
"I do speak, Electra."
"You do?"
"I have spoken a little. I can't do it yet in the way he wants. What he
wants is money."
"We have sent him money," she agreed. "The Delta Club gave a series of
plays last winter and voted him the proceeds. The first was for labor in
America. The second for free Russia."
"Yes, it pours in on him. It's his enormous magnetism."
"It's his cause."
She seemed to have reached something now that warmed her into life, and
he took advantage of that kindling.
"Rose is his daughter," he reminded her. "She is very beautiful, very
sad. She is worthy of such a father."
"Rose? Is that her actual name?"
"Yes. They are Americans, though since her childhood she has lived in
France."
"What did she do before Tom--got acquainted with her? Live there in
Paris with her father?"
"She sang. She has a moving voice. She always hoped she was going to
sing better, but there never was money enough to give her the right
training. Then she began going about with her father. She spoke, too."
"In public? For the Brotherhood?"
"Yes. She has great magnetism. But she stopped doing that."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I have heard her father ask her to do it, but she
refused. She is beautiful, Electra."
Electra was looking at him thoughtfully.
"Did she persuade you to join the Brotherhood?" she asked.
"No," said Peter, unmoved, "the chief himself persuaded me. I went to a
great meeting one Sunday night. I heard him. That was the end of me. I
knew where I belonged."
Electra, her mind hidden from him as completely as if a veil had fallen
between them, was, he could see, considering him. As for her, he hardly
dared dwell upon her as she ruthlessly seemed. She was again like the
bright American air, too determinate, too sharp. She almost hurt the
eyes. He wondered vaguely over several things he was unwilling to ask
her, since he could not bear to bring their difference to a finished
issue: why she cherished a boundless belief in the father and only
reprobation for the daughter, when she had seen neither the one nor the
other; why she had this vivid enthusiasm for the charity that embraces
the world and none for a friendless child at her door. Their interview
seemed to have dropped flat in inconceivable collapse; what was to have
been the beginning of their dual life was only the encounter of a
hand-to-hand discussion. He tried to summon back the vividness to his
fagged emotions, and gave it up. Then he ventured to think of his
imperial lady, and found a satirical note beating into his mind. He took
refuge in the practical.
"I have not seen Osmond yet."
"Wasn't he there to meet you?"
"No. Grannie said I should have to go down to the plantation, to find
him. Does he keep up his old ways, Electra?"
"Yes. Sleeping practically out of doors summer and winter, or in the
shack, as he calls it,--that log hut he put up years ago. Haven't you
known about him? Hasn't he written?"
"Oh, he writes, but not about himself. Osmond wouldn't do that. Somehow
grandmother never wrote any details about him either. I fancied he
didn't want her to. So I never asked. She only said he was 'well.' You
know Osmond always says that himself."
"I believe he is well," said Electra absently. She was thinking of the
alien presence at the other house. "He looks it--strong, tanned. Osmond
is very impressive somehow. It's fortunate he wasn't a little man."
Peter made one of the quick gestures he had learned since he had been
away from her. They told the tale of give and take with a more mobile
people. He could not ask her to ignore Osmond's deformity, yet he could
not bear to hear her speak of it. Osmond was, he thought, a colossal
figure, to be accepted, whatever his state, like the roughened rock that
builds the wall. He rose, terminating, without his conscious will, an
interview that was to have lasted, if she had gone to the other house
with him and he had returned again with her, the day long.
"I must see Osmond," he hesitated.
Electra, too, had risen.
"Yes," she said conformably, though the table, she knew, would be laid
for them both in what had promised to be their lovers' seclusion.
"I will come back. This afternoon, Electra?"
That morning, the afternoon had been his and hers only. She had expected
to listen to the recital of his triumphs in Paris, and to scan eagerly
the map of his prospects which was to show her way also. And she too
opened her lips and spoke without preconsidered intent.
"This afternoon I shall be busy. I have to go in town."
"You won't--" he hesitated again. "Electra, you won't call at the house
on the way, and see her, at least?"
"Your Rose?" She smiled at him brilliantly. "Not to-day, Peter."
Then, bruised, bewildered, he went back over the path he had come,
leaving his imperial lady to go in and order the luncheon table prepared
for one.
"Madam Fulton will not be home," she said to the maid, with a proud
unconsciousness; and for the moment it sounded as if Madam Fulton had
been the expected guest.