Madam Fulton and Electra were busy, each in her own track, making ready
to go. Electra was truly concerned because grandmother had fallen into
this frenzy of setting her belongings in order and would even fly up to
town to her little apartment, on mysterious errands. But Madam Fulton
was as gayly confident as she was inscrutable, and even when Billy Stark
warned her that she was doing too much, she only whispered,--
"Got the tickets, Lochinvar?"
On the last day, when the house was partly closed and the servants
lingered only for an hour or two, Electra, ready to her gloves, came to
kiss her grandmother good-by. Madam Fulton drew back a pace and looked
at her.
"Electra," said she, "you'll be horribly shocked and you'll want to
laugh at me. But don't you do it. Don't you do either of those two
things."
Electra's brows came together in a perplexity that yet betokened only a
tepid interest. Her own affairs were too insistent. They crowded out the
pale, dim hopes of age.
"When, grandmother?" she asked. "Why should I want to laugh?"
"Never mind. But you will. And when you do, you say to yourself that,
after all, youth and age are just about the same, only age has tested
many things and found they're no good. So if it finds something that
seems good--well, Electra, you're off on your fool's errand. Don't you
deny other folks the comfort of theirs."
"I don't understand you, grandmother."
"No, of course you don't. But you will. Once I shouldn't have cared
whether you did or not, but I've taken a kind of a liking to you. I told
you I should when you turned human and made a fool of yourself like the
rest of us. And now you're going out into the wilderness, to found a
city or something of that sort."
"I am going to help the Brotherhood," said Electra, with punctilious
truth.
"And build a monument to that handsome scamp that had the bad taste to
come over here to die."
"Grandmother, you must not use such words."
"Must not? Don't you suppose I know a scamp when I see one? If I'd been
fifty years younger, I dare say I should be starting out to build him a
monument, too. But I'm glad of it, child, I'm glad of it. He's your
preserver. He has roused in you the capacity for being a fool. Make much
of it. Prize it. It's God's most blessed gift to man. When you've lost
that, you've lost everything."
"There is the carriage, grandmother. I must go."
Madam Fulton presented a kindly cheek.
"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I'm sorry I've harried you. I had to,
though. I should again. Now we'll meet in Paris, or London--or another
world."
Electra, a perfect picture of the well-equipped traveler, in her
beautiful suit, her erect pose, was at the door.
"The maids will go in an hour," she said. "Then you've only to turn the
key and walk over to Mrs. Grant's. I wish you'd had your trunks taken
out before."
"My trunks can wait," chuckled the old lady. "They'll be sent for."
As Electra's carriage turned from the driveway into the road, Madam
Fulton laughed again.
Electra had five minutes at the station, and there appeared Peter,
wearing the air of haste. He had been painting in the garden, when the
carriage went by, and he had dropped brush and palette to run. Why,
Peter could not have said, only it seemed cold and miserable to have an
imperial lady taking the train alone and then setting sail with no one
by.
"You wouldn't let me go up to town with you?" he ventured, with his
eager stammer.
"No," returned Electra, "thank you."
"I'd like to awfully," said Peter. "Maybe I could be of use."
"Everything is done. My luggage is on board. We sail at three."
"It seems an infernally lonesome thing to do!"
Electra smiled. She had gained that smile of late. It was a subtle
indication of the secret knowledge she had of the resources of her own
future. With a perfect and simple conviction, she believed she should be
guided by Markham MacLeod or some unseen genius of his life. She should
follow his star. She should know where to go.
"Rose said you didn't take the letters she offered you. Is that wise,
Electra? If you want to know the Brotherhood--"
"I shall know it," said Electra, with entire simplicity. "The way will
open."
She did not say that she could not bear to blur her secret by sharing it
overmuch with any one. She was going on a mission for the chief. Other
voices would confuse the message. The medium must be kept clarified
between his soul and hers. Peter stood back, feeling, in another form,
Madam Fulton's hopeless admiration of this magnificent futility.
"Well," he said, "I shall be there in the late autumn, and I shall find
you."
"I may not," said Electra decisively, "want to be found."
But when he thought of the elements into which she meant to hurl
herself, he was of the opinion that she would as gladly long to be found
as the maiden in the arena before the beasts walked in. Then the train
came, and she bade him a civil and correct good-by and was taken away.
Peter went home wondering, his eyes on the ground. Life seemed to
resolve itself, not into the harmonious end of tragedy, but into more
tragedy. Human things, when a solution was reached, deliberately began a
new act. Peter had the childlike egoism of the very religious or the
devotee of art. He never could help feeling that, in a way, the world
was created for him. Its fortuitous happenings strengthened that belief.
He had come home to lose Electra whom he did not love. Markham MacLeod,
who, he now saw, had been too bright a sun, blinding his eyes to his own
proper work, had been removed. Perhaps that, too, was done for him. And
now he should paint his pictures. The Brotherhood still seemed far off
and, if not vain, at least a clamorous sea of discontent, the hope of a
palace beautiful beyond the touch of time. But near him were dear and
intimate things: the feel of the brush in his fingers, the adorable
combination of colors as delirious as the sunsets God could make. And in
the future there were men and women who also would go singing along the
path to perfect pictures and leafy glades. In them was infinite
possibility of more pleasure, more delight. And there was his broken
heart! For Peter's heart was truly broken. That he knew. He had lost
Rose, for she had gravely told him so, and given the simple reason, if
he needed it. There was no man for her but one. And the one was Osmond,
to whom he would gladly relinquish even the delight of her. So, thinking
of his brother who was the best thing born, of his broken heart, of his
pictures and the general adorableness of the world, crammed full of
things to paint, Peter threw his stick into the air, caught it, and
burst into song.
* * * * *
When the maids had left, after their good-by to Madam Fulton, giving the
keys into her hand, she sat awhile in the silent house, and took a
comfortable nap. It was amazing, she thought, as she sank off, what a
lessening of tension it was to have Electra gone. When she awoke, it was
still quiet and Billy Stark had not come. He was to run down from town,
his last preparations made; the country minister was to meet them at the
Grant house, and there they would be married. Then they would take the
late afternoon train, and, in due course, sail for Liverpool. Even
Bessie Grant did not guess they were to be married; but she, Madam
Fulton knew, was ready for the last trump and welcoming evangels, and
that prepared her for all lesser things.
It seemed a little chilly in the house, shut up as it was for the
flitting, all except the room where Madam Fulton sat, and she took her
chair out of doors, not pausing on the veranda, but going on to the
garden beds. It would be pleasant, she thought, to sit there in the sun
with the bees humming on their way, and take her last look at the place.
As well as she knew she was going to leave it, she knew she should
return to it no more. It was not only that her age made it
improbable,--for she had no doubt of Billy's ability to run over a dozen
times yet; it was some inward certainty that told her she was going for
good. It pleased her in every way. She liked new peoples and untried
lands.
Yet, as she sat there, old faces crowded upon her, and they were
pleasant to behold. Her husband was not there. With his death he seemed
to have withdrawn into a remote place where no summons could reach him,
even if she wished to call. And she had never wished it. But these were
faces scarcely remembered in her daytime mood, very clear in the
sunlight and with no possibility of mistake. One was like her own, only
where hers sparkled with irony and discontent, this was softer and more
sweet. "Why," said Madam Fulton aloud, "mother!" It gave her no
surprise. Nothing seemed disturbing in this calm world, where things
were throbbing warmly and, she knew at last, for the general good. Then
she reflected that this was probably the effect of happiness because she
was going to marry Billy Stark. It must be love, she thought, instead of
their gay friendship. Youth and age were perhaps not so unlike after
all, when one shut one's eyes and sat in the garden in the sun.
Billy Stark faded out of her musings, and the forgotten faces came the
more clearly, all smiling, all bearing a mysterious benediction. She
found herself recalling old memories with them, doings that had been
once of great importance, but of later years had been packed into the
rubbish hole of childish things. There was the summer day when she had
lost the stolen prism from the parlor lamp, and mother had looked at her
gravely for a moment and then smiled, seeing that tears were coming, and
said it was no matter. Mother had never known that the tears were all
for the loss of the red and blue lights in the prism, and somehow her
kindness had not mattered then, because it could not bring the colors
back. But now it seemed to the old lady in the garden that mother had
been very kind indeed. "Don't mind it," the sweet face seemed to be
saying. "Don't mind anything." And as she listened, she was restored to
the pleasant usages of some morning land where one could be reassured in
a blest authority that made it so.
It seemed a long time that she sat there in this pleasant company, so
far removed from the conditions of her own life that it was actually, at
moments, as if she were in another country. But forms began to fade,
and, mingled with their going, was the sense that another personality
was thrusting itself into their circle, and, being more solid than they,
was pushing them out. Billy Stark was calling, in his kindly tone,--
"Florrie! wake up, child."
Her eyes came open.
"Yes," she said, "that's what mother was just calling me." She winked,
and rubbed her eyes. "My stars, Billy," said she, "I've been dreaming."
Billy pulled up a garden chair. He looked at her with a tender
consideration. Florrie was pretty tired, he thought. She had worn
herself out with these forced hurryings. Now he had no doubts about his
ability to take care of her, or his wish to do it. Billy was one who,
having made up his mind to a thing, cast care behind him, and if it
climbed up on the saddle-bow, he promptly knocked it off again. That was
why he proposed to be hearty for twenty years to come.
"Shall we turn the key in the door, and be poking over to Bessie
Grant's?" he asked. "We'll call here for your trunks, on the way to the
train."
"By and by, Billy." She leaned her head on the chair back, and regarded
him with her friendly smile. "I haven't waked up yet. What time is it?"
"Five minutes before three."
"No! Electra'll be sailing in five minutes."
"And in half an hour, the reverend parson will be waiting for us at
Bessie Grant's."
"Yes, I know. But let me sit a minute, Billy. I had the most
extraordinary dream."
"Last night?"
"No, no. Sitting here in the sun. And yet I didn't think I'd slept a
wink. Billy, do you remember the day mother stood me in the corner for
going fishing with you, and then, when she found you'd stood yourself in
the other corner, she laughed and gave us cookies?"
"Seems to me I do. I'd forgotten, though."
"So had I. I hadn't thought of it for years. Then there was the time
Jeanie Lake was married and they found out he'd deceived that girl over
in the next township, and Jeanie died of a broken heart."
"What makes you think of it now, Florrie?"
"I remember so well how Jeanie looked through the weeks she was fading
out, before she died. I remember I thought I shouldn't have taken it so.
I'd have struck him on his lying mouth and lived to love another man.
But Jeanie looks exactly like herself now."
"You've been dreaming, Florrie," said the old man anxiously.
"Didn't I tell you I'd been dreaming? I saw them in crowds. Don't you
hurry me, Billy. Let's sit here a minute and talk about old times." She
blinked her eyes awake again and looked at him reassuringly. "You
mustn't think I don't want to go, Billy. I do. I'm a little tired, but
I'm all keyed up to go. I'm perfectly sure we shall have a lovely
time,--the loveliest time that ever was."
"The voyage will do you good," he said, in the same affectionate
concern. "The maid will meet us on the pier. And once in London, you'll
be the centre of the crowd."
"Fancy! And Electra shall come over from Paris, and you'll make love to
me, to shock her. Billy, isn't it queer I didn't dream of Charlie Grant
this morning?"
"Why, Florrie? Why should you?"
"Because they were all there, crowds of them I haven't told you about.
But not he. I suppose he was with Bessie Grant. Billy, it was when I
gave him up, my life went wrong."
"Yes, dear, you told me so."
"It wasn't that I couldn't bear to lose him. I never broke my heart. It
was because I made a bad choice,--a bad choice. I said deliberately I
wanted the world and the things the world can give. Everything began
when I gave him up."
"Time's going, Florrie. The parson will be there."
"Yes. Don't hurry me. Do you suppose we find things because we believe
in them?"
"What things, dear?"
"Will Bessie Grant have heaven because she believes in it? Will she find
him because she thinks he's there?"
"Come, dear, wake up."
"Well!" The old lady roused herself. The light came back to her eyes,
the old smile to her lips.
"I'll tell you what, Billy," said she, "there's one thing I swear I
never will forget. Living or dying, I never will."
"What is it?"
"I never'll forget you saw me an old woman and treated me like a young
one. I never'll forget you did your best to bring back my lost youth.
And if there is a heaven and I set foot in it, and they bring up their
archangels, I'll say, 'Away with you and your fine company. Where's
Billy Stark?'"
But the light faded as she spoke and her face changed mysteriously, in a
way he did not like. A clever thought came to him.
"Florrie," said he, "have you had your luncheon?"
"I guess not."
"Have you been sitting here ever since Electra went, dreaming and
starving?"
"I guess so."
"Well, that's it. Now you get on your two feet and take my arm and come
over to Bessie Grant's. And she'll give you food and coffee. Bless us,
Florrie, we're not going to own we miss Electra's patent foods as early
in the game as this!"
She smiled at him. "I believe I am hungry, Billy," she owned. "That's
why I had my dream. They always have visions fasting. But it was a
beautiful dream. I wish I could have it again."
"You wait a minute. I'm going to get you a nip of brandy." She was
rising, and he put her back into her chair. "I know where it is." He
hurried down the path, but her voice recalled him sharply.
"Billy, come back. Don't leave me."
He returned to her, where she had risen and was standing tremulously.
That same dire change was on her face, as if old age had passed a sponge
over it. Her eyes regarded him, in a keen questioning.
"What is it, Billy?" she whispered. "What's coming?" He put her into her
chair, and she said again, "Don't leave me."
"I must." There were tears in his kind eyes. "Let me go one minute,
dear. I'll get you something."
But her frail hand detained him.
"Sit down, Billy," she was whispering. "No, kneel--there--where I can
see you. Keep hold of me."
He knelt at her feet, and she bowed her head upon his shoulder. He put
her back gently into her chair, again with the determination to get the
brandy; but her face forbade him.
"Florrie!" he called loudly.
No one answered. With the keenness of the shocked intelligence, summoned
to record the smallest things with the same faithfulness as the large,
he noted how the bees were humming in the garden. He and the bees were
alive, but his old friend was dead.