The deed was over. The great emotional wave that mounted, in Europe and
America, at the death of Markham MacLeod, threw its spray upon this
quiet shore. Letters came from his disciples and his lovers, and Rose,
wondering as she read them, answered in a patient duty. If a great man
is one who moves things, then her father had been great. He was bigger
to her now than when she feared him. Though there were mutterings afar
of what must come now Markham MacLeod was dead, this country spot took
on its old tranquillity. Peter sat in the garden and painted. He seemed
to think of nothing else. Rose was too busy to sit, and he began a
portrait of grannie; then his only communication with the world seemed
to be his flashing glance at her and at his canvas. Osmond, in the
plantation, bent his back and worked with the men, and no one knew what
he thought. To Peter he was gravely kind, and Rose, with a growing
emotion that seemed to her likely to become terror in the end, realized
that he had not sought her.
One morning while Peter was in the garden smoking, before he called
grannie to her chair again, and Rose was at the library table answering
letters, Madam Fulton appeared at the door.
"Where's Bessie Grant?" she asked.
Rose was at once on her feet and came forward to give her a chair,
relieve her of her parasol, and stand beside her in a deferential
waiting that, for some reason, never displeased this pulsating age with
its memory ever upon the habitudes of youth.
"Where's Bessie Grant?"
"She will be in presently. Peter is painting her."
The old lady lay back in the chair and gazed at her absently, as if she
merely included her in a general picture of life. Madam Fulton had
changed. Her eyes were wistful, and she looked very frail.
"Billy Stark sails on Saturday," she volunteered, as if it were the one
thing in her mind.
Grannie came in at the moment, and laid a kindly hand on her old
friend's shoulder. Rose went back to her chair, and left them to their
talk, while she put up her papers before quitting the room. Madam Fulton
looked at grannie now.
"You've had your morning coffee, haven't you?" asked grannie, because
she could think of nothing else to offer.
"Yes, I've had coffee, and I've had cereals. Electra is looking after me
with that kind of an air, you know, as if I were a rockbound duty. My
soul! If it wasn't for Billy Stark, I should die."
"Poor Electra!" said grannie softly.
"Now what do you want to call her that for? Why is she 'poor Electra'
because she chooses to go round like a high priestess strapping me down
on altars and pouring libations of cereals and cream? I could stand it
if her heart was in it, but it's miles away. And Billy Stark is going."
Grannie only patted her hand.
"Well, well!" said she. "It's been nice to have him here."
"It's been heaven. It's the only heaven I shall ever know."
"We get a little mite of it here every once and a while," said grannie.
"Don't you think so?"
"No, except when Billy Stark comes,--and he won't come again. Electra's
going, too."
"Abroad?"
"Yes. She's going abroad. At once, it seems. Rose MacLeod!"
Rose looked up from her papers.
"What was it about your father that put the devil into people?"
Rose answered with an unsmiling candor.
"I don't know, Madam Fulton."
"But you know what I mean?"
"He had great personal power."
"You are not in mourning for him?" She had been considering the girl's
dress and its fluttering ribbons.