Electra felt very much alone in a world of wrongdoers. To her mind moral
trespassing was a definite state of action fully recognized by the
persons concerned in it. She made no doubt that everybody was as well
able to classify obliquity as she was to do it for them. She had stated
times for sitting down and debating upon her own past deeds, though she
seldom found any flagrant fault in them. There was now and then an
inability to reach her highest standard; but she saw no crude
derelictions such as other people fell into. It was almost impossible
for her to think about grandmother at all, the old lady seemed to her so
naughty and so mad. Billy Stark, too, though he was a man of the world,
admirably equipped, was guilty of extreme bad taste or he could never
have asked Madam Fulton to marry him. Why was he calling her Florrie and
giving her foolish nosegays every morning? Rose and Peter, when it came
to them, seemed pledged to keeping up some wild fiction beneficial to
Rose; only Markham MacLeod was entirely right, and so powerful, too,
that his return must shake all the warring atoms into a harmonious
conformity with Electra and the moral law.
Moreover, she had the entire programme of the club meeting to
reconstruct. Nothing, she inexorably knew, would tempt her to allow for
a moment any further consideration of her grandmother's pernicious book.
Yet the club was to meet with her, the honorable secretary, and it had
no topic to whet its teeth upon. In her dilemma, she put on her hat and
walked over to inquire of Rose when her father was to return. MacLeod's
bubbling kindliness seemed to her so generous that she made no doubt he
would talk to them for an hour, or even allow her to give him a
reception.
Rose was in the garden, as usual, in the long chair, and Peter was
painting. Ostensibly he was painting her, but the mood escaped him and
he was blurring in a background. Electra remembered, as she went up the
path, that still nothing had been said to her about Peter's painting. He
might have been any sort of young 'prentice for all she heard about his
work; and here it was beginning incidentally, like an idle task, with no
reference to her. She had thought painting was something to be carried
on gravely, when one had reached Peter's eminence. There ought to be
talk of theories and emotions inspired by pictures in the inception, not
merely this prosaic business of sitting down to work and characterizing
beauties with a flippant jargon of words misused. "Very nice,"
"stunning"--that was what she had heard Peter say even of sunsets that
ought to have moved him to the skies. He had a delicate-fingered way of
touching everything, as if the creative process were a little one, of
small simplicities: not as if art were long.
When she appeared that morning, behind the hollyhocks, Rose was about to
spring up, and Peter did stand, expectant, with his charming smile.
Electra at once made proper disclaimers, and insisted that the sitter's
pose should not be broken and that it would be an immense entertainment
to see the work go on. Peter brought a chair out of the arbor, and she
sat down, erect and handsome, while Rose sank back into her
unconstrained reclining. Rose wore the simplest dress, and her slender
arms were bare. There were about her the signs of tasks abandoned, even
of pleasures dropped and not remembered--the book half closed upon her
finger, the rose and fan. Her great hat with its long feather lay beside
her on the ground, and Electra, justly appraising its picturesqueness
and value, thought, with brief distaste, that it looked as if it might
belong to an actress. She asked her question at once and Rose answered.
No, her father would not be here in time for the important meeting. She
had no doubt he would indeed have said more than a few words, since the
entertainment had fallen through. Here Electra interrupted her
delicately and challenged the use of that term for so serious an issue.
It could hardly be called an entertainment; they had simply been unable
to consider the topic fixed upon, and it was necessary to find a
substitute.
"Let me do something," said Rose, with her appealing grace. "I'll sing
for them."
That accounted for her again, Electra thought, the unconsidered ease,
perhaps the boldness. She belonged to public life; yet as such she might
well be taken into account.
"What do you sing?" she asked.
Rose forgot all about her picture and sat up, looking quite in earnest.
Peter held his brush reproachfully poised.
"I tell you what I can do," she said, after a moment's thinking. "I can
give a little talk on contemporary music--what they are doing in France,
in Germany. I can give some personal data about living musicians--things
they wouldn't mind. And I really sing very well. Peter, boy, tell the
lady I sing well."
"She sings adorably," said Peter. "She has a nightingale in her
throat:--
"'Two larks and a thrush,
All the birds in the bush.'
"You never heard anything more sympathetic. I never did."
The "Peter, boy," had spoiled it. Electra grew colder. She wished she
were able to be as easy as she liked; but she never could be, with other
people perpetually doing and saying things in such bad taste.
"The club is composed of ladies who know the best music," she heard
herself saying, and realized that it sounded like a child's copy-book.
Rose was still sitting upright, Peter patiently looking at her,
evidently wishing she would return to her pose, and yet quite as
evidently enriching his attention with this new aspect of her. She had
turned into a vivid and yet humble creature, intent on offering
something and having it accepted. The thought that she had something
Electra wanted seemed for the moment the next best thing to knowing that
Electra tendered her kinship and recognition.
"Please like me," her look begged for her. "Please tolerate me, at
least, and take what I have to give."
The end of it was that Electra did accept it, and that Peter's painting
was quite forgotten while Rose ran eagerly over the ground she could
cover. One moment of malice she did have. While Electra was hesitating,
she looked up at her with a curious little smile.
"You can introduce me," she said, "as you always have, as 'the daughter
of Markham MacLeod.' That will give your afternoon an added flavor."
Electra answered seriously, "Thank you," and resolved to do it. Madam
Fulton, she thought, would have the decency not to break the situation
by her intemperate "Mrs. Tom's." Electra had no experience of contrition
in her grandmother, but she could but feel that any woman who had done
what that old lady had might be trusted to observe the decencies for at
least a week thereafter.
"That was my public name," Rose added hastily, as if she had invalidated
her claim. "I sang for eight months or more as Rose MacLeod."
It was a new triumph for her, Electra realized when the day was over.
The ladies came down from the city and, in perfect weather, sat about on
the veranda and in the two front rooms, while Rose, at the piano, sang
to them and then gave them a charming talk. Electra, who could do no
creative work, could not take her eyes from the young creature, all
eager brilliancy and dressed in a perfect Paris gown. The dress, Electra
knew, was no finer than she herself could amply afford to buy in her own
country. Only it was worn with a grace, the air of a woman born to be
looked at, and used to fervid tributes. The other women, too, were
worshipers of notability, and Rose knew she had raised a wave of
admiration. To her, unused to the American woman's passion for new
things, it was a real tribute, something she could count upon to-morrow
after the epoch of to-day; and the afternoon left her exhilarated and
warm in momentary triumph. The women crowded about her with intemperate
comment and question. They wanted to know as much about her father as
they did about her. They were all eager to show their conversance with
the Brotherhood, its aims and potencies, and they were more than ready
to besiege her father and to entertain her. Some of them even wanted to
make dates for the coming autumn, and Rose found herself the recipient
of a score of visiting cards, all pointing to new alliances. She slipped
away before the afternoon was over, to spare Electra the pains of
thanking her, and going home, found Markham MacLeod at the gate.
Immediately her hopes died. She had forgotten the issues she had to
reckon with in him. From these no ladies' club could save her.
He was affection itself in greeting her.
"I have just come," he explained. "Peter is in town and Mrs. Grant is
taking her afternoon rest. Let us walk a little way."
"I haven't my hat," she demurred.
He looked at her sufficient parasol and took her hand, turning her
toward the road again.
"Come. We'll walk along to that grove. It is shady there. I want to see
you before we meet the others."
She yielded, and presently they stepped in at the bars to the field
where the grove invited. Under the trees she furled her parasol, and sat
down on a stone. She looked involuntarily toward the plantation, below
them to the west. There were the little clumps of nursery trees, the
green patches of seedlings, and, dotted through the working area, men
with backs bent over the rows. She wondered if Osmond were there, and
the thought gave her, if not courage, at least the defiance that answers
for it. MacLeod threw himself on the ground, and her eyes came back to
him. He looked so strong, so much a part of all living things, that he
seemed to her invincible. He spoke quite seriously, as if there were
matters between them to be gravely settled.
"I have been wondering about the bearing of these people toward you.
What explanation did you make when you came?"
"I made no explanation."
"What attitude did you take?"
"Peter introduced me to her. He went in advance, to tell her I was
coming."
"Electra?"
"Yes, Tom's sister."
"What did Peter tell her?"
"He told her I was her brother's wife."
"Ah! and she accepted you?"
"No, she has never accepted me."
"What!"
He glanced sharply up at her, and she met the look coldly. Her cheeks
were burning, but there was nothing willingly responsive in her face.
She repeated it: "Peter told her Tom had married me. I have reason to
think she told him she did not believe it."
"Has Peter said that to you?"
"No, but I think so."
"Did she send for you, to go to see her?"
"No, I went without it."
"Now, how did she receive you?" His voice betrayed an amiable curiosity.
He might have been interested merely in the vagaries of human nature,
and particularly because Electra, as a handsome, willful creature, had
paces to be noted. Rose laughed a little, in a way that jarred on him.
He liked mirth to sound like mirth.
"She was civil to me. But she has never once given me Tom's name, nor
has she allowed me to introduce myself by it."
"The old lady used it."
"That was because I followed an impulse one day and told her. She
followed an impulse and used it. She is a naughty old lady."
"Ah!" He considered for a moment. "If she did believe you, is it your
impression she would expect you to--inherit?"
"I wouldn't have it." Her face quivered all over. "I never thought of
that for a moment. Can't you see why I came? I was beside myself in
Paris. There were you, hurrying back from the East and bringing--him."
"The prince?"
"You had written me he would come with you. When he saw me again, you
said, he would not take 'no.' Peter was going home. Kind Peter! He said,
'Why don't you come with me?' He said Electra was beautiful, quite the
most beautiful person in the world. I thought she would receive me. I
could tell another woman--and so kind!--everything, and I could settle
down for a little among simple people and get rested before--" She
stopped, and he knew what she had meant to say: "Before you and your
prince began pursuing me again."
But he did not answer that. It was a part of his large kindliness never
to perpetuate harsh conclusions, even by accepting them.
"I shall go to see your Electra at once," he said.
She raised a forbidding hand.
"Do nothing of the kind. I insist on that."
But he was again reflecting.
"That puzzles me," he said at last; "that she should receive you at all
if she does not believe you. Why?"
She looked at him steadfastly for a moment, a satirical smile coming on
her face. These emotions he was awakening in her made her an older
woman.
"I really believe you don't know," she said at length.
"Certainly I don't know."
"Why, it's you!" He stared at her. It was, she saw, an honest wonder.
"She adores you. They all do, all her ladies. They meet and talk over
things, and you are the biggest thing of all. I am the daughter of
Markham MacLeod. That is what she calls me."
"I see." He mused again. "I must go over there to-night."
"No! no! no!" It was an ascending scale of entreaty, but he did not
regard it. He got up and offered her his hand.
"Come," he said. "Peter will be back. By the way," he added, as she
followed him laggingly, "does Peter know why you came to America?"
"Peter thought it the most natural thing in the world to wish to be with
Tom's relations."
"You haven't told him about the prince?"
"I have been entirely loyal to you--with Peter. Don't be afraid. He,
too, adores you."
They walked on in silence. At the house they found grannie, now in her
afternoon muslin, cheerfully ready for a new guest, and Peter in extreme
delight at seeing him.
Markham MacLeod, once in his own room, sat down and stretched his legs
before him. As he ruminated, his face fell into lines. Nobody ever saw
them,--even he,--because in public, and before his glass, he had a way
of plumping himself into cheerfulness. His tortuous thoughts were for
his inmost mind. Whatever he planned, no one knew he was planning; only
his results came to him in the eye of the world.