Peter made up his mind to display, at last, all the guile he had; he
would say nothing about Rose. If Electra had attempted to call on her,
she might impart the fact to him or not, as she determined. But Electra
did not wait to be asked. She turned to him with a serious air,
inquiring,--
"When is Miss MacLeod likely to be back?"
"Rose?" Peter countered obstinately. "At dinnertime, surely."
"I shall try to find her then."
Peter felt such an access of gratitude that, as he looked down at the
charmingly gloved hands, holding the reins in the right way, he thought
of conveying his emotion by placing his own hand over them. But their
masterful ease had a message of its own. It seemed almost as if they
might resist. He cast about for something to please her.
"Electra," he began, "I'm going to pitch into work with Osmond."
Electra looked at him over a chin superbly lifted. This was evidently
surprise, but whether disdainful of him or not he could not tell. At any
rate, he felt whimsically miserable under it.
"Osmond works on the farm," she said merely.
Peter inferred some belittling of Osmond, and immediately he was at one
with him and market-gardening.
"I belong to the Brotherhood," he said stiffly. "I don't propose to live
like a bondholder while other fellows are hoeing. I'm going to work."
Still Electra said nothing. She had meant to stop at her own gate and
let Peter leave her, if he would, but she had driven by, and now they
were in a pretty reach of pines, with the needles under the horse's
feet. The reins lay loosely, and Electra, who seldom did anything
without a painstaking consciousness, even forgot her driving, and let
her hands relax into an unlawful ease. They might almost tremble, she
was afraid, she felt so undone with some emotion,--disappointment,
anger? She did not know. But she kept her eyes fixed on a spot directly
ahead, and in spite of herself thought turbulently. She could not help
feeling that Peter would be surprised if he knew how he seemed to her
after this return, almost a stranger, and one who awoke in her no desire
for further acquaintance. He was not ministering to her pride in any
way. He was not in the least a person whom she could flaunt at
gatherings of the intellectually worshipful, with any chance of his
doing her credit. She herself had tried to talk art with him, and Peter
grew dumb. She could not guess it was because she did not speak his
language, which had become almost a sign language, touched here and
there with idiom and the rest understood,--a jargon of technicalities,
mostly, it seemed, humorous, he appeared to mean them so lightly. Before
he went abroad, she, who had read exhaustively in art, used to impart
fact and theory to him in a serious fashion, and Peter had humbly
accepted them. But now, when she opened her lips about his darling work
which was so intimate a part of him that it was almost like play, he had
a queer horror of what she was saying, as if she were beginning a
persistent solo on a barbarous instrument; he could think of nothing but
putting his hands over his ears and running off. But instead he had only
been silent. She could not understand Peter's having read so few books
and being in possession of such a meagre treasury of formulated opinion.
The truth was that he had so many pleasant things to think about that
books were only the dullard's task. His thoughts were not very
consecutive or toward any particular end; they were merely a pageant of
dancing figures, sometimes fantastic, sometimes dramatically grave, but
always absorbing. This Electra could not know. Now it was running
through her mind that Peter, though he had won the great prizes of art,
was mysteriously dull and not what she considered a distinguished figure
at all. His air, his clothes even--she found herself shrinking a little,
at the moment, from the slovenly figure he made, his long legs drawn up
in the carriage so that he could clasp his hands about his knees, while
he went brightly on. For now Peter had found something to talk about.
His topic shone before him as he handled it. This was almost like
painting a picture with a real brush on real canvas, it grew so fast.
"We might found a community," he was urging as warmly, she thought, as
if he meant it. "Osmond can dig. I can. I wonder if you could milk the
cow!"
"I have certainly never tried to milk a cow," said Electra, in a tone
that bit.
But Peter wasn't listening. He was simply pleasing his own creative
self.
"You shouldn't," he offered generously. "You should
'Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And live on ripe strawberries, sugar, and cream.'"
Electra pulled the horse up, and though this was the narrowest bit of
road for a mile, turned, with a masterly hand.
"How under the sun do you do that?" Peter was asking pleasantly. She
interrogated him with a glance, and saw him hunched together in more
general abandon. The happier Peter was in his own thoughts and the
warmer the sun shone on him, the looser his joints became. To Electra he
looked like a vagabond, but she was conscious that if for a moment he
would act the part of a great painter, she would bid him sit up, try to
get him into a proper cravat, and marry him to-morrow. Careless Peter
was quite oblivious to the effect he was creating. He had forgotten
Electra, save as some one possessed of two ears to listen.
"Turn," he pursued. "How can you turn? I never could. I remember I took
you to drive once, ages ago, and I had to keep on in a thunder-shower,
round the five-mile curve, because I didn't dare to let you know I
couldn't cramp the wheel."
Electra remembered the day. Peter was timidly worshipful of her then,
and she had found that quite appropriate in him. She remembered the
lightning, and how satisfied she had been to go round the five-mile
curve, if only to show that she was not timid in a storm. Then it seemed
as if Peter had been unable to forego the delight of having her with
him; but now it appeared that he could absently sit there hugging his
knees and guying the occasion.
"I believe I can cramp the wheel," he was saying sunnily, out of an
absolute content in his limitations. "Only I never can remember which
rein does it. Can you turn either way, Electra, right or left, one just
as well as the other?"
Electra could not answer in that vein.
"Don't!" she said involuntarily.
In some moods Peter had a habit of not waiting for answers.
"It's beyond me how they do those things," he was saying, "drive, ride,
swim. Shouldn't you like to be a fish? I should be mighty proud."
"Shall I leave you here?" asked Electra, drawing up at his gate.
Peter came out of his childish muse. He saw Rose in the garden, and knew
it was better that Electra should find her alone.
"Yes, let me out," he said. "I'll run back and see if Osmond is where I
left him."
Electra also had seen Rose, lying in the long chair under the grape
arbor, and left her carriage at the gate. Rose was in white. A book lay
in her lap, unopened. The idle hands had clasped, and her eyes were
closed. Electra, coming upon her, felt a pang, an inexplicable one, at
her loveliness. It seemed half lassitude, not alone to challenge pity,
but a renewed and poignant interest when she should awake. At Electra's
step her eyes came open slowly, as if there were nothing in that garden
ground to move her. Then with a rush of color to the face, her eyes grew
large. Life, surprised life, poured in on her, and she had gained her
feet with a spring. Before Electra could insist upon her own decorous
distance, Rose, with a charming gesture and an insistent cordiality, had
her by both hands.
"How good of you," she was saying. "How good of you!"
"Not at all," returned Electra, with a stiff dignity she hated, as not
in the least the armor she had meant to wear. "I came to see if you
would drive over to the house." This she had not meant to ask, but it
seemed easier to deal with problematic characters in the course of
motion than face to face and standing. Rose was eagerly ready.
"My hat is here," she cried, "and my parasol. I thought I might walk up
the road a bit,--but it was so hot. How good of you!"
As they went down the path together, Rose in her slender grace and eager
motions the significant note in the garden, Electra felt the irritation
of having, for any reason, committed herself to even a short intimacy
with her. But presently they were together in the carriage, and Electra
spoke.
"My grandmother is at home this morning. We have a guest for a few days,
Mr. William Stark, of London. I thought you might be interested in
meeting them both."
"I shall be delighted," returned Rose, still in that warmly impulsive
tone.
Electra had a strong distaste for unconsidered things. They seemed to
her to show lack of poise. Now she was conscious of the inconsistency of
proposing that Rose should meet anybody, even Billy Stark. But in the
moment of conceiving it she had remembered that Mr. Stark was a man of
the world; he would know an adventuress when he saw one. Afterwards she
would ask him frankly how his judgment had been affected by the siren's
song.
At the house she led the way into the vine-shaded sitting-room where
Madam Fulton and Stark had been engaged for an hour in a battle
delightful to them both. Madam Fulton sat beautifully upright in a
straight-backed chair, and her old friend, with her permission, lay upon
a bamboo couch, where he held his eyeglass by its ribbon in one
outstretched hand and gesticulated with it, while he urged torrentially
upon her the rights of a publisher to the confidence of his author. Now
he came to his feet and stood punctiliously.
"Ah!" said Madam Fulton. She had remembered a little lack in her
reception of Rose when, hot and tired from her journey, she had found
her in the house. "So here is our young lady again. I have been
wondering why we haven't seen you, my dear."
While Rose, in her grateful sweetness, was bowing over her hand, Electra
had said to the gentleman, with the air of its being quite the usual
thing to say,--
"You know all about Markham MacLeod, Mr. Stark. This is the daughter of
Markham MacLeod."
Somehow, save to Rose, it seemed an adequate presentation, and that
instant Stark was bowing before her.
"I can't say Mr. MacLeod," Electra added, with the elaborate grace that
fitted what seemed to her that skillful preface. "He is quite too great
for that, isn't he, Mr. Stark?"
Billy had no extravagant opinion of Markham MacLeod. He had rather the
natural dubiousness of the inquiring mind toward a man whom the world
delighted to honor and who had, according to dispassionate standards,
done nothing, as yet, save telling others what to do.
"We don't say Mr. Browning often," he concurred, "certainly not Mr.
Shakespeare. But, my dear young lady, I don't forgive your father."
He seated himself, for Electra was now decorously smiling in a chair
that became her. It had a high carved top like Madam Fulton's, and in
these the older woman and the younger looked like the finest-fibred
beings bred out of endurance and strong virtues. Rose was in a low chair
near Madam Fulton's knee. She was leaning forward now, listening in her
receptive way, and Billy Stark looked at her anew and wondered at her
beauty and her grace. But he recalled himself with a sigh, and
remembered it was the old commonplace--youth--and it was not for him.
"You don't forgive my father?" she repeated, with a slightly foreign
accent that came sometimes upon her tongue, no one knew why, whether to
enhance her charm or in unconsciousness. "Why?"
Billy Stark had thrown one of his short legs over the other, and held it
with his well-kept hand.
"He is a renegade," he said. "He began to write, and stopped writing.
You can't expect a publisher to condone that."
Madam Fulton was having a strange pang of liking and envy as she looked
at the girl, one such as she never felt over Electra. Rose for her, too,
had youth, beautiful and pathetic also. As the girl only smiled without
answering, she said kindly,--
"Your father got very much interested in people, didn't he, my dear? the
working classes?"
"Labor," said Electra, as if it were a war-cry.
Madam Fulton glanced at her involuntarily, with a satirical thought.
Electra had a maternal attitude toward her servants, shown, her
grandmother thought, chiefly by interfering in their private lives. She
worked tirelessly at clubs to raise money for labor, and she listened to
the most arid talks on the situation of the day. But did Electra love
her fellowman? Madam Fulton did not know. She had seen no sign of it.
But Rose was returning one of her vague answers that always seemed
significant, and, to any partial ear, quite adequate.
"My father founded what he calls the Brotherhood. He speaks for it. He
works for it. But you know that already."
Stark nodded.
"I know," he said. "It is tremendous. He says to this man 'Come,' and he
cometh, and so on. I should think it would make him lie awake o'
nights."
"No," said Rose, smiling brilliantly in a way she had when the smile had
no honest mirth in it, "my father never lies awake. Responsibility is
the last thing he fears."
Now Electra was smiling upon her so persuasively that Rose bent toward
the look as if it were a species of sunshine.
"We want you to do something for us," Electra said.
"Oh, I'll do it," Rose was responding eagerly. "Gladly."
"We want you to give us a talk on your father."
Rose, painfully thrown back upon herself, looked her discomfort.
"Do you mean"--she began. "That was what you asked me before."
"For the Club."
"They want me to give a talk on my book," said Madam Fulton, looking at
Stark with a direct mirth. Then, still with a meaning for him, she
added, to Rose, "You do it, my dear. So will I, if they drive me to it.
We'll surprise them."
"That would be very sweet of you, grandmother," said Electra, innocent
of hidden meanings. "Then we might count on two afternoons."
"What do you want to know about my father?" asked Rose, and Electra
answered with a contrasting enthusiasm,--
"His habit of thought, something about his daily life as seen by those
nearest him, anything to interpret a great man to us."
"I can't do it." Rose had answered with a touch of harshness strangely
contrasted with her facile ways. "I really can't."
Now she saw why she had been summoned, and her gratitude sobered into
dull distaste. She felt cold.
"That sort of thing is very difficult," said Stark, in a general desire
to quell the emotional tide. "I often think a person next us has to be
inarticulate about us. He doesn't know really what he thinks of us till
we are gone. You know a big Frenchman says it is like being inside the
works of a clock. You can't tell the time there. You have to go
outside."
Rose was upon her feet, a lovely figure, wistful and mysteriously sad.
"I must go back," she said. "Thank you for letting me come." She had
turned away when Madam Fulton called to her.
"Miss MacLeod!" Rose stood, arrested. Madam Fulton continued, "Why not
stay to luncheon with us?"
The girl did not answer. Apparently she could not. Tears were swimming
in her eyes. She looked at Electra in what might be reproach or a
despair at the futility of the fight she had to make. She returned to
Madam Fulton and stood before her.
"You didn't know," she said, in a low tone. "No one has told you!"
"Sit down," said the old lady kindly. "What is it?"
Rose stood before her, proudly now, her back turned upon Electra, as if
she repudiated one source of justice and appealed to another court.
"You called me Miss MacLeod," she said, in her full-throated voice. "I
was your grandson's wife."
"Tom's wife!" cried the old lady, in a sharp staccato. "Tom's wife! For
heaven's sake!"
Rose turned from her to Stark with an eloquent insistence. Electra,
outside the circle of the drama, stood ignored. But Madam Fulton called
to her,--
"Electra, do you hear?"
"I have heard it," answered Electra, with composure.
"You have heard it? Why didn't you tell me?"
But Electra made no reply. Madam Fulton gave way to her excitement. It
seemed to put new blood into her veins.
"Sit down here," she said imperiously, pushing forward a chair. Rose
sank upon it in a dignified obedience. "Now tell me,--how long were you
married?"
"Two years."
"Did Tom"--there were many things the old lady, knowing Tom, wished to
ask. But Tom was in his grave, and she contented herself with remarking,
"I certainly am petrified."
Stark gave a little smiling nod at them, and began making his way to the
door. It seemed to him emphatically that this was a family conclave.
"Billy," called the old lady, "did you ever hear of such a thing in your
life? Tom had a wife two years before he died, and not a word. Did you
ever dream of such a thing? Electra, I could trounce you for not telling
me." Then, as no one spoke, she asked sharply, "Does Peter know?"
"Yes, Madam Fulton," Rose returned. "He brought me here. Not quite that.
He assured me I might come."
"Come! of course you had to come. You belong here. Why aren't you
staying with us? Electra, haven't you seen to it?"
Electra was immovable, and the other girl turned to her a mute glance.
To Billy Stark it said many things. Reproach was in it, and a
challenging, almost a hard appeal. Rose looked like a gentle thing that
has been forced to fight. But she spoke to Madam Fulton.
"I must go," she said, with her exquisite deference. "I mustn't tire
you."
"Tire me! I'm never tired. Well, you must come again. You must come to
stay. Electra will see to that."
But Electra only walked to the library door with the departing guest,
and presently Billy Stark caught the white shimmer of a gown, as Rose
went down the path. Electra was looking eagerly from him to her
grandmother.
"Well, Mr. Stark," she said, as if she hurried him, "what do you think
of her?"
Stark indicated a chair, with a courteous motion, and then allowed
himself to be seated.
"She is a remarkably beautiful young woman," he returned, in his
impartial way of shedding optimism. Electra made an impatient gesture.
"I know--I know. It's easy enough to be handsome."
"Oh, is it?" commented Madam Fulton.
"But what do you think of her?"
"What do you mean, Electra?" asked her grandmother testily. She was
prepared to hear that Electra thought the stranger lacking in poise.
A deep red had risen to Electra's cheeks. Her hands flew together in a
nervous clasp. She had momentarily lost what poise she herself
possessed.
"Can't you see," she urged, "that girl is an adventuress?"
Grandmother was leaning forward, enchanted at the prospect. She seemed
to have before her an absorbing work of fiction, "concluded in our
next."
"Now what makes you think so?" she inquired cosily. "Wouldn't that be
grand! Stay here, Billy. If there's any scandal about Queen Elizabeth,
you must share it."
Electra was speaking with a high impatience.
"Of course she is an adventuress. You must see it, both of you."
"Is that all the evidence you have?" asked the old lady dryly.
Electra blenched a little. She liked to have irrefutable fact on her
side, and allow other people the generalities. Yet her certainty
remained untouched.
"Does Peter say she is Tom's wife?" inquired Madam Fulton, in some scorn
at herself for putting elementary questions.
"Yes. Peter says she was Tom's wife."
"There, you see!" But at Electra's look, the old lady cried out to
Stark, in irrepressible annoyance, "No, she doesn't see! It doesn't mean
a thing to her."
"It will be quite easy," said Stark soothingly, "to assure yourself,
Miss Electra. She will no doubt tell you where she was married. That can
be confirmed at once."
"She must present her proofs," said Electra. "I shall not ask for them."
"What do you hate the poor girl for?" asked Madam Fulton. "Is it the
money? Are you afraid you've got to share with her?"
Billy Stark had been nearing the door, and now he was out of the room.
"Have you told Peter how you feel about it?" asked the old lady keenly.
Electra seemed to herself to be unjustly upon her own defense when she
had meant to place the stranger there.
"He knows it, grandmother." She spoke as impatiently as decorum would
allow.