Peter was early at Osmond's door. He did not find him working, though
the other men had been many hours afield, but standing still gazing off
into the distance. Osmond was pale. He looked as if he had not slept,
and the lines about his mouth hinted at decisions.
"I want to speak to you," said Peter abruptly.
"Yes. I want to speak to you, too." The answer was gravely and almost
unwillingly given. "Come out under the tree."
They took their way silently to the apple tree, but there neither could,
after old custom in a talk, throw himself on the ground to luxuriate
and, in moments of doubt, chew a blade of grass. Peter walked back and
forth, a short tether. Osmond, fixed in some unexplained reserve,
awaited him. Peter spoke first, nervously.
"Electra has given me up."
"Well, it was bound to come."
"Why was it?"
"It was a dream, Pete. You dreamed it when you were a boy. It was the
best you had then."
"Well, there's something else. That's not a dream. But I don't know that
I can talk of it yet. What was it you wanted to say to me?"
At intervals all night Osmond had been wondering how to broach it.
"You know, boy," he began at last, "it isn't good for you any more to
have me send you money."
Peter stared.
"But it's our money," he said.
Osmond too stared, but not at him. He was wondering whether Peter could
possibly fail to see that the money, all these years, had not come by
favor, that it had been earned by Osmond's own arduous grappling with
the earth, that struggle out of which the man had gained strength and
the earth had yielded her fruits.
"You see, boy," he hesitated, "there isn't anything but the place, and
that's grannie's."
"Yes, but the place earns something."
"Not without a good deal put into it."
"Ah!" Peter drew a breath of pure surprise. "You're tired of overseeing,
old boy. I don't wonder. Of course you must let up."
Again Osmond waited, not so much to commune with himself as from sheer
disinclination to face the awkwardness of speech. It was impossible to
say, "I am not tired of serving you, but you must not be served. You
must carry your pack."
"You see," he began again, "the place must stand intact while grannie
lives. After that, we don't know. But now--Pete, you must paint your
pictures."
"Of course!" But the response was wavering. Peter smiled radiantly.
"Come, old chap," he said, "you're not going to make rules for me,
because it's better for the white man to bear his burden."
Osmond, too, tried to smile, and failed in it.
"I don't know but I am," he said, with a wry face. "Pete, I want you to
go in and conquer--earn your fame, earn your bread. I don't want you to
depend on anybody, even on me."
Peter was wrinkling his brows. He was delightfully good-tempered, and
money meant very little to him save as a useful medium of which there
was sure to be enough. He had never regarded it as a means of moral
discipline.
"That's very awkward," he said, "because--Osmond, I want to marry."
"To marry! You said she had given you up!"
"Oh, Electra!" That issue had withdrawn into a dim past. "Osmond, I have
spoken to Rose."
"Rose!" Now again Osmond felt the blood beating in his ears. Was it the
impulse of fight, he asked himself, or another, as savage? But this time
he did not mean to be overborne. Peter was speaking simply and boyishly,
with a great sincerity.
"I see now there never was anybody but Rose, from the minute we met. I
told her yesterday."
"So you are--engaged." Osmond brought out the commonplace word with a
cold emphasis.
Peter looked at him, surprised.
"No. She's not to be had for the asking. I had to tell her. But I've got
to earn her. If you knew her as I do, you'd see that."
Osmond's brain was in a maze of longing to hear what she had said, and
with it a fierce desire to escape that knowledge. Also he was overborne
by a passionate recoil from his own suggestion of cutting off his
brother's income. At least he might have some share in their happiness.
He could work here like a gnome underground, delving for the gold to
deck their bridal. And underneath was that new pain at the heart: that
earth pang so sickening that it might well threaten to stop the heart's
beating altogether.
"There never was anything like her," said Peter, out of his new dream.
"She needs happiness, sheer happiness, after what she has been through.
That settles it about living abroad." He looked up brightly. "We must be
in Paris."
"You think she would wish it?"
"We should be near her father, near headquarters. For of course we
should be working for the Brotherhood."
Osmond turned abruptly.
"I must get to hoeing," he said.
Peter followed him. Something in the air struck him with a new timidity.
"You know," he qualified, when they were well into the field, "she
hasn't accepted me."
"No."
"I'm not the man for her, in many ways. Who is? But by the powers! I bet
I could make her happy."
He took off his hat to strike at a butterfly, not to destroy it but to
prove his good-will, and Osmond, without glancing at him, knew exactly
how he looked, and thought bitterly that to Peter Rose was only one of a
hundred beautiful things that made the earth a treasury. And to Osmond
there was but one, and that was Rose.
Peter took the path homeward, and Osmond kept on across the field. At
the farthest bound, he stepped over the stone wall into the bordering
tangle on the other side, and crossed that field also and went on into
the pasture, to the pines. This land was his, and the deep woods,
stretching forth in a glimmering twilight, had been in many moods his
best resort. He did not enter far, but sat down in a little covert where
in spring there were delicate flowers. There he faced himself.
Everything brought its penalty, even life. This he knew at last. He
could not feed on what he called his kinship with Rose and escape the
suffering from a bond unfulfilled. Instead of halting outside the garden
of being, smelling its fragrance and thankful for a breath, he was
inside with other men who owned the garden and felt free to eat the
fruit. He had never really been outside the garden at all. He had merely
been turning away from the blossoming trees, denying himself the
certainty of what the fruit might be, working carefully about the roots
and learning the unseeing patience of the earthworm. And the one flower
had bloomed in the garden at last, so sweet he could not ignore it, so
white it lighted the air like a lamp that was stronger than the sun. He
had bade himself never to forget that he was not like other men; but he
was exactly like other men, for he loved a woman.
As he sat there, overcome by this conviction of the tyranny of the
universe, one thought pierced him like the light of stars. He could have
made her happy. A sweet exultancy told him that her nature turned to him
as irrevocably as the needle to the north. He could sway and dominate
her. He could comfort her with the unconsidered tenderness that, when he
thought of her, came with his breath. As by a revelation he understood
what she had meant when she told him how love had been her waiting
dream. In a passion of sympathy he saw her trailing through sad
undergrowths in pursuit of that luring light--now stumbling in the bog
of earthy desires other hands had led her to, now pricked by thorns of
disappointment, but never for a moment sullied through that wretched
progress; and when the marsh was past, washing her garments and her feet
in the water of life--that unquenchable spring of belief in the mystery.
That was what it was, the divine mystery, the force that led through all
appearance to the real, through all false glitter to the light. It was a
heavenly vision, the possibility as she saw it: the rounded life, the
two bound in a mutual worship, carrying their full cup carefully to the
altar where they would make their vows. He saw how lesser desires could
be wiped out by one pure passion, how no price is too great to pay for
the soul's treasure, not so much the possession of it, but the guarding
it for all the uses of the world.
While he lay there, the scent of the pines in his nostrils, it seemed to
him that he was living through the progress of his completed life with
her. There was not only the overwhelming passion of it, but the intimate
communion of quiet days. She would turn to him for counsel and for
sustenance, as he would turn to her. This would be the interchange of
needs and kindnesses. There would be funny little queernesses of the day
to keep them laughing; and they would be kind, not forgetful in their
castle of content, but kind, the stronger that they had multiplied their
strength by union.
And then settled upon him again his wonder at the inexorability of
things, that a man could not escape the general laws because he willed
to live outside them. He was bound round by necessity. Merely because he
would not take a mate, he was not exempt from crying out for her. And as
the day went on and the vividness of his first high vision faded, his
mind went back to Peter and the incredible truth that Peter also knew he
could make her happy. The cloud of jealousy darkened again, and he met
earth pangs and strangled them. But as he slew them, more were born, and
lying there in the fern he hated his brother and his brother's body,
born to regnancy. MacLeod, too, appeared before his inward vision,
wholesome, well-equipped, riding the earth as Apollo drives the horses
of the sun. Him, too, he hated, and for Rose's sake longed again to put
him away with his own hands out of the air she breathed. Spent by his
passions, he lingered there in the coolness of the unheeding woods while
the afternoon gloomed into night.
* * * * *
Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, thinking sadly. She found herself
puzzled by one thing most of all. Several times a day she had asked
Billy Stark, "Do you really believe there's anything in that notion
about money's being tainted?"
"Don't fret yourself," he counseled her, in his kind voice; but she
would sit wrinkling her brows and putting the question again to herself,
if not to him.
"The trouble is, Billy," she had said, this morning, "I get so puzzled.
It's like trying to learn a new language when you're old. My eyes are
too blurred to see the accents. My ears are dulled. There's that girl
that comes looking like an angel and says she's a sinner. I thought she
might be a comfort; but no, if you please. She just looks Electra in the
face and says, 'I'm as good as the best, only I prefer to do things in
my own way.' I wish Electra hadn't made me so frightfully
self-conscious."
But smile at it all she might, something had wrought upon her. She
looked older and more frail, a pathetic figure now, leaning forward in a
ruminating dream, and reminding Billy Stark, in a hundred unconsidered
ways, of the shortness of the time before she should be gone. His heart
ached. He had truly loved her in his youth, and afterwards, in other
fashions, for many years.
As she sat there in her daze of past and present, she was aware that a
tall white figure stood before her in the sun. She recalled herself with
a start from those never-to-be-explored bounds, and came awake,
humorously frightened at the thought that here, judging from the height
and whiteness, was an angel come to make remarks upon tainted money. But
it was only Electra.
"The next thing to it," said Madam Fulton, with her broad-awake smile.
"What did you say, grandmother?" asked Electra.
"Nothing, my dear. What were you going to say? Sit down. You dazzle me
in that sun."
Electra sat down and considered how she should speak, having triumphant
news to tell. Then, in the midst of her reflection, the news got the
better of her. She began with an eloquent throb in her voice.
"Grandmother, I am going abroad."
"So Peter has spoken, has he? When is it to be?"
"I am not going with Peter. That is all over."
"Well, you're a silly girl. You never'll get such a nice boy again.
Peter could make a woman laugh from morning till night, if she'd have
the sense to please him."
"I am going for a year. At least, I say a year. I put no limit to it in
my own mind. Do you want to go with me, grandmother?"
"No, I'm sure I don't. If I go with anybody, it will be Billy Stark."
"Then I must go alone," A high determination ruled her voice.
"Alone! Mercy, Electra! you're a young woman. Don't you know you are?"
"I am glad I am young," said Electra. Her eyes were shining. "I shall
have the more years to devote to it."
"You don't mean to say you propose crossing alone? Did you want to drag
me out of my coffin to see you landed there respectably?"
"I am quite willing to go alone," said Electra, still with her air of
beatific certainties. "I shall be the more unhampered. You must stay
here all you want to, grandmother. Keep the house open. Act exactly as
if it were yours."
A remembrance of the time when she had thought the place not altogether
her own tempered the warmth of that permission. Some severity crept into
her demeanor, and Madam Fulton, recognizing its birth, received it
humbly as no more than she had earned.
"When are you going, Electra?" she asked.
"In about a month. Grandmother!" Electra, in her worship of the conduct
of life, hardly knew how to express strong emotions without offense to
her finer instincts. "I don't forget, grandmother," she hesitated, "that
I ought to be with you."
"Why ought you?"
"Because--grandmother, haven't I a duty to you?"
"A duty!" the old lady muttered. "The devil fly away with it!"
"I beg your pardon, grandmother?"
"I beg yours, my dear. Never swear before a lady! No, no. You haven't
any duty towards me."
"But there are other calls." Electra struggled to find words that should
not tell too much. She ended lamely, "There are calls I cannot
disregard." There rose dimly before her mind some of the injunctions
that bid men leave father and mother for the larger vision.
"There's Billy Stark," said the old lady, with a quickened interest.
"Fancy! he's been away all day."
Electra rose and went in again. She was not sensitive now to the ironies
of daily life, but it did occur to her that her grandmother was more
excited at seeing Billy Stark home after a day in town than by her own
great conclusion. Electra had thought solemnly about the magnitude of
the decision she was making when she gave up the care of grandmother to
follow that larger call, but again she found herself outside the line of
recognized triumphs. She had announced her victory and nobody knew it.
Billy Stark had brought his old friend a present: a box of the
old-fashioned peppermints she liked. She took off the string with a
youthful eagerness.
"My dear," said she, "what do you think has happened now?"
"I know what has happened to me," said Billy. He threw himself into a
chair with an explosive sigh, half heat and half regret. "I've had
business letters. I've got to be off."
"Off!" She regarded him in a frank dismay. "Billy, you break my heart!"
"I break my own heart," said Billy gallantly. "I've taken my passage.
Say the word, dear girl, and I'll take it for two."
She looked at him in silent trouble. Tears had dimmed her eyes.
"Well, Billy," she said at last, "this is the pleasantest summer I shall
ever have."
"Say the word," he admonished her again. "We've got more summers before
us."
She smiled at him, and winked away the tears.
"Then come back and spend them here. Electra's going, too,--like a
stowaway. You won't let her cross with you, and see at least that she
doesn't hold services on board?"
"God forbid!" said Billy. "I'm afraid of her."
"I don't blame you. Billy, I suppose we ought to be saying solemn things
to each other, if you're really going."
"Clip ahead, old lady. What do you want to say?"
"I'd like to clear up my accounts a little. I want to get my books in
order. I don't intend to die in a fog. Billy, how much of it was real?"
"How much of what, Florrie?"
"Of life. Of the things we thought and felt. Is there such a thing as
love, Billy?"
He got up under the necessity of thought and stood, hands in his pockets
and legs apart, looking over the garden beds. He might have been gazing
out to sea for the Islands of the Blest.
"Florrie," he said at length, "I guess there is."
"Did you love me, Billy? No compliments. We're beyond them."
"Yes," said Billy, after another pause. "I think I did. You were a great
deal to me at that time. And when I found it was no use, other people
were a great deal to me, one after another. Several of 'em. I looked
upon it then as a species of game. But they didn't last, Florrie. You
did. You always give me a kind of a queer feeling; you're all mixed up
in my mind with pink and blue and hats with rosebuds on 'em and college
songs."
It was not much like a grand passion, but it was something, the honest
confession of a boy.
"I thought it was a game, too," she said musingly. "Do you suppose it
was, Billy? Or were we wrong?"
Billy whirled about and faced her.
"Dead wrong! No, Florrie, it never was meant for a game. It's earnest.
The ones that take it so are the ones that inherit the earth. No, not
that--but they go in for all they're worth and they've something left to
show for it. They don't put their money into tinsel and see it fade."
"Well, what else? Did Charlie Grant love me?"
"Yes. No doubt of it."
"But he loved Bessie afterwards."
"Yes. She lived the thing through with him. She built up something, I
fancy. He probably remembered you as I did, all pink ribbons and fluff;
but she helped him rear his house of life."
"And my husband didn't love me and I didn't love my husband," the old
lady mused. "Well, Billy, it's almost the end of the play. I wish I
understood it better. And I've written a naughty book, and I'm going to
be comfortable on the money from it. And you wish I hadn't, don't you?"