"She was much impressed by my father."
"I know."
"She belongs to the Brotherhood now."
Peter nodded, his mind still with Osmond, but cheering a little in the
consciousness of her graceful presence.
"Peter!" She stopped, and laid a finger on his sleeve. "Say something to
her! She is going over there to work, to throw herself into that
movement. She might as well jump into the Seine."
"Yes," said Peter musingly. "Yes, of course! I'll go see her. I'll go at
once."
She assented eagerly. She seemed to hurry him away, and not knowing
quite what he was to do when he got there, he found himself, obedient
but unprepared, at the other house, before Electra. She was agreeably
welcoming. Peter had ceased even to remind her of young love, chiefly
because it was a part of her dignity to put the incomplete dream aside.
When she was forced to remember, sometimes by a word of grandmother's,
it gave her an irritated sense of having once been cheek to cheek with
something unworthy of her. But this morning Peter meant nothing
whatever. A larger bulk had blotted him out. He plunged, at once.
"I am going to Paris, too, Electra. We shall meet there."
She smiled at him with a fine remoteness.
"Perhaps," she said. Then a wave of her old distaste came over her, and
she asked, with the indifference that veils forbidden feeling,--
"Are you going together?"
"Together?"
"Yes. Are you going with Rose MacLeod?"
Peter frowned.
"We have not mentioned it," he said. Their coming to America together
had seemed most natural, but some intonation of her tone made the
implication odious. Seeing his look, she said, not giving him time to
answer,--
"You will help me with the Brotherhood. I must get in touch with it by
every possible means."
The color came into his face. He looked half ashamed, half wondering.
"I can't account for it," he returned, "but--Electra, I shan't have time
for those things any more."
"Not have time--for that!"
It was as if she accused him of lacking time to breathe.
"I can't help it," said Peter. "It's all true, Electra, as true as it
was; but I've got to paint. That's my business."
"Don't you feel that you owe anything to Markham MacLeod?"
He looked at her with interest, noting the indignation that made a
handsomer woman of her; but only for that reason, not because the
indignation stirred him. Peter hardly knew how he felt about Markham
MacLeod. He scarcely thought of him at all, save as Rose recalled him.
As to the Brotherhood, now that this great persuasive force was gone,
Peter could view it dispassionately, and it did not move him. It was
like waves heard a long way off, the waves of a sea he once had sailed,
but from which he had escaped to this upland meadow where the light was
good. Only when Rose, possessed by the remembrance of Ivan Gorof's
vision, had gone home and told him about it, had he felt the flare of
that old enthusiasm to be in the surge of the general life,--but chiefly
then because she had chanced to use the phrase "shining armor," and he
saw a knight pricking through a glade, with sunlight dappling between
leaves, and knew it would be good to paint. There was nothing to say to
Electra, because, as Rose had told him, she could listen to nothing but
the Brotherhood, and wakened only to MacLeod. It was not that she
refused other challenges; but her face grew mystical and he knew her
mind was afar from him. He got up to go.
"In Paris, then, Electra," he said awkwardly.
Her brows contracted. She remembered the other tryst that was to have
been, and could not answer.
"You will let me know where you are. I shall find you," Peter said, as
he went down the steps, "at once."
But as he walked away, he knew it would have to be some incredible
chance to bring them together. There was no room for him.
Electra sat there, her feet together, her hands in her lap, like a
carven image, and held herself still in her dream of fantasy. She hardly
knew where she was in these days. This was not the world as she had
known it. Bound beyond bound of possibility lay over its horizon. There
had been her former world, full of disappointments, lacking in
opportunities for picturesque morals, and Markham MacLeod had walked
into it, and turned on a light under which the whole place glittered. He
had caused things to be forever different. One such illumination made
all things possible. She felt like an adventurer setting sail. There in
the room where he had talked to her, she sat and thought of him and even
felt him near. The great stories flashed out before her, as if she
turned page after page. Dante--how many times did he see Beatrice? She
must look that up. But once would be enough, once for souls to recognize
each other and then be forever faithful. At a step in the hall she
recalled herself. It seemed as if everybody interrupted her in her
passionate musings. This was Madam Fulton, and Electra remembered she
had something to say to her. Madam Fulton looked very tired and irked in
some way, as if she found the daily burden hard to bear. Electra rose,
and waited scrupulously for her to sit.
"Billy Stark comes back to-morrow," said Madam Fulton. She took a chair,
and laid her head back wearily.
"When does he sail?"
"Next week. You go Wednesday. He goes Saturday."
Electra dared not remind her of that wild threat of marrying Billy Stark
and sailing with him. Her grandmother looked a pathetically old woman,
and such fantasy seemed to have withdrawn into its own place.
"Grandmother," she began delicately. She had a fear of disturbing
something frail that might fall to pieces of its own weakness.
"Well."
"Shall you stay on here?"
Madam Fulton roused herself.
"No," she said. "I am going to Bessie Grant's. She'll help me pull
myself together, and in the fall I shall move back to town."
Electra came awake to her pathetic look.
"You are not feeling well, grandmother," she said solicitously.
"Feeling well!" The old lady repeated it with a fractious emphasis. "I'm
worn out."
"Is it anything particular, grandmother?"
"Billy Stark is going away, isn't he? Isn't that particular enough? He's
the only human creature left, except Bessie Grant and that pretty girl."
"Rose MacLeod?"
"Yes; but she's too young. She tires me; you all tire me, all but Billy
and Bessie Grant. No, you can close the house, or I will, after you're
gone. I shan't be in it."
There was something inevitably foolish to Electra in the regret of an
old woman at losing the company of an old man whom she had not married
at the proper time. She found herself hoping, with some distaste, that
grandmother would forget him as soon as possible, and settle down into
the decencies of age. But Madam Fulton seemed to have gathered herself
and summoned energy for action. She sat upright now, and composed her
face into more cheerful lines. She looked at Electra, and a wicked smile
flickered out.
"I believe," said Madam Fulton, "if I have the strength, the day he
sails, I believe I'll marry Billy Stark and go along with him."
Electra looked her pain and then her purpose to ignore it.
"I have left everything in complete order, grandmother," she said. "It
will be easy to close the house. I have made my will."
"Bless me!"
"I have given you half my property. The other half I leave to the
Brotherhood."
"For heaven's sake, Electra! What do you want to act like that for?"
Electra was too enamored of that deed to keep it hidden.
"It is for a monument to Markham MacLeod," she said, from her abiding
calm. "But it is to be used by the Brotherhood. He would wish that."
Madam Fulton was regarding her, not satirically now, but in an honest
wonder.
"Electra," she said, "I glory in you."
"Grandmother!"
"I do. I can't help it. You've gone bad, just as I said you would. And
you never were so human in your life. Brava! I'm proud of you."
But Electra lifted her head a little and did not answer. Grandmother,
she knew, could hardly understand. It made her isolation the more
sacred.
"You give me courage," the old lady was saying. "Why, you put some life
into me! I don't know but I've got the strength to fly with Billy, after
all."
Electra rose. She could not listen. But at the door she turned, a new
thought burning in her.
"Grandmother," she said irrepressibly, "if you would make your will--"
"Bless you, I haven't sixpence," said the old lady gayly, "except the
tainted money from the book."
"That's what I mean." Electra came back and stood beside her. She
breathed an honest fervor. "That money, grandmother,--it is tainted, as
you say,--if you would leave that to the Brotherhood--"
Madam Fulton was on her feet, with an amazing swiftness.
"My money!" she cried. Then a gleam of humor irradiated her face, and
she ended affectionately, "My own tainted money? Why, I'm devoted to it.
And I tell you this, Electra: if there's one scrap of it left when you
inherit, if you give it to your brotherhoods, I'll haunt you. As I'm a
living woman, you shan't have a chance. I'll make my will and Billy
Stark shall help me, and I'll leave it to that pretty girl, and she
shall buy ribbons with it. And--My heavens! but there's Billy Stark
now."
He was coming up the walk, and she flew to meet him in an ingenuous
happiness, half dramatic fervor to plague Electra, who, walking with
dignity, went out the other way.
Madam Fulton was laughing, at Electra, at life itself.
"Billy," said she, "I'd rather see you than all the heavenly hosts."
Billy took off his hat and wiped his forehead.
"I found I'd got things pretty well in order," he explained. "I thought
you wouldn't mind my coming sooner."
"Mind! I'm enchanted. Come along in and have cold drinks and things.
Bless me, Billy! how it does set me up to see you."
She led the way into the dining-room, and when no one answered the bell,
on into the kitchen for exploration in the icebox. She tiptoed about,
her pretty skirt caught under one arm, her high heels clicking. The pink
came into her cheeks. She had the spirit which is of no age. Then they
sat down together at the dining-table in the shaded calm, and while
Billy drank, she leaned her elbows on the table and, with the ice
clinking in her glass, drank and made merry. She might have been sixteen
and in a French cafe. Her spirits were seething, and she feared no
morrow.
"I never can let you go in the world, Billy," she said, out of her gay
candor.
He was instant with his gallant remedy.
"Come with me, then!"
"Sometimes"--she paused and watched him--"sometimes I almost think I
will."
William Stark was a tired man that day. He had been telephoning and
besieging men in their offices and talking business; he felt his age. It
was one of the days when it seemed to him that sacred business even was
less than nothing,--vanity,--and when he wondered, without interest, who
would spend the money he might make. He was plainly fagged, and here was
a gay creature of his own age, beguiled by the old perennial promises,
whom life had not yet convinced of its own insolvency. He wondered at
the youth of women, their appetite for pleasure, their inability to
realize when the game is done. There was the curtain slowly descending
between age and its entertainment, and Madam Fulton was clapping her
unwearied hands as if things could go on forever. Grant her an encore,
and she would demand another. As for him, he would fain go home to bed.
But Billy was a man of his word. His loyal heart could not allow itself
to recognize the waywardness of his sad mind. The one had done with life
in all but its outer essences. The other, in human decency, must go on
swearing the old vows to the last. His face took on a resolution that
made him more the man, and sobered her. He put out his hand.
"Will you come, Florrie?" he asked.
"Yes, Billy," she answered. "I'll come."
"You honor me very much." He sat there holding the frail hand and
wondering at himself, wondering at them both. If he had known he was to
go back in this guise, he might not have had the courage to come. But it
was well. It was a good thing, having missed many ventures, not to let
this one pass. Madam Fulton was having one of her moments of a renewed
grasp on life, a gay delight in it which was a matter of nerves and
quite distinct from memory or hope. She was discoursing gleefully.
"We won't tell Electra."
"Not if you'd rather not."
"She shall sail, and we'll sail after her. We'll send her cards from
London. My stars, Billy! do you think we're mad?"
"You may be," said Billy. "As for me, I'm a great hand at a bargain."
And while there were flutterings of wings before sailing, Osmond bent
over his ground and delved and thought. His brows were knitted. He
hardly saw the earth or his fellow workmen, but answered mechanically
when men came for orders, and went on riving up the earth, as if it were
his enemy, and then smoothing it in tenderest friendliness.