Rose MacLeod Part 45

"Nor I, playmate. But I think very often about what grannie said."

"Have you tried to do it?"

"I have kept it in my mind."

It was her turn to brood in silence. Then she said to him,--

"It doesn't seem to mean anything to you,--that thing--I told you."

"Everything you tell me means more than anything else in the world."

"But about Tom Fulton. I was not married to him. I lied about it. It isn't possible that I seem--the same--to you."

"You would always seem the same to me," he answered,--and she found herself smiling at the beauty of his voice. "How could you be different?

These things are just things that happen to you. Should I like you less if you were caught in the rain, or got your pretty dress muddy?"

"How do you know it is a pretty dress?" she asked irrepressibly.

"Because it's your dress. Run home, now, and brush your hair."

She went at once, and, in spite of her doubts, light-heartedly. He made her feel, as the night did, that here in this present life, as in the outer universe, are great s.p.a.ces still unexplored. Everything had possibilities. Sprinkle new pollen on a flower and its fruit would take on other forms. Stretch out a hand and you might be led into unguessed delights, even after you were dulled with pain. Sleeping in the air, even, were forces to nourish and revive, dormant only because we do not call upon them. She smiled into the night, and her heart called believingly.

XIX

Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, in the shade of the vines. It was rather early in the morning, and Electra was about her methodical tasks.

Billy Stark sat reading the paper, but nevertheless not failing, from time to time, to look up and give his old friend a smile. Madam Fulton could not answer it. She felt estranged in a world where she had failed to learn the values.

"Billy," she said at length, "do you think she is right?"

"Who?"

"Electra. She says the money I got out of that pesky book is tainted money. Is it?"

Billy folded his paper and hung it over the veranda rail. His face began to pucker into a smile, but, gazing at Madam Fulton, it became apparent to him that she was really troubled. She even looked as if she had not slept. Her faint pinkness was overlaid by a jaded ivory. Her eyes interrogated him with a forlorn pleading. All his chivalry rose in arms.

"Hang the book, Florrie!" he said. "Forget it. You've had your fling with it. You wanted fun and you got it. Stop thinking about it."

"But," she persisted, "is it really true? Have I done a shocking thing, and is it monstrous to use the money?"

"You've been exceedingly naughty," said Billy. He eyed her with anxiety.

"You ought to have your hands slapped, of course. Electra's done it, so far as I can see. So now let's get over crying and go out and jump rope."

"It isn't so much the book nor the money nor Electra. It's because I can't help wondering whether I'm a moral idiot. Do you think I am, Billy?"

"I think you're the gamest old girl that ever was, if you want to know.

Let me have the horse put into the phaeton, Florrie, and we'll go out and jog awhile."

But she was musing. Suddenly he saw how old she looked.

"It's always been so, Billy. I never was able to see things as other people saw them. These rules they make such a pother about never seemed so vital to me. It's all a part of life, seems to me. Go ahead and live, that's what we're in for. Growing things just grow, don't they? They don't stop and take photographs of themselves on the twenty-third day of every month. Now, do they?"

"Florrie," said her old friend, still watching her, "I'll tell you what you do. You just run away with me and come to London. We've got fifteen good years before us yet, if we take 'em soberly."

She seemed to be considering. Her face lighted.

"I could almost do it," she owned. "Electra's having me here helps out a lot, but I could almost do it-on my polluted gains."

Billy Stark looked into the distance. In his earlier years he had loved to ride and take his fences well, even when they loomed too high. He could not remember many great challenges in life; but what he had recognized, he had not refused. Everything he had met like an honest gentleman.

"Florrie," he said, "I shan't want to leave you here in Electra's clutches. You come--and marry me."

She laughed a little. It was sadly done, but the pink came back into her cheeks.

"As true as I am a living sinner, Billy," she said, "I'd do it, if I were half sure how we were coming out."

"Coming out?"

"Yes. If I thought I should be pretty vigorous up to the end, and then die in my chair, like a lady. Yes, I'd do it, and thank ye, too. But a million things might happen to me. I might be palsied and helpless on your hands, head nodding, deaf as a post--d.a.m.n, Billy! I could swear."

"I might give out myself," he said generously. "You might be the one to tote the burden."

The old lady laughed again.

"The amount of it is, Billy, we're afraid. Own up. Now aren't we?"

Billy thought it over.

"I'm not so sure of that," he said contentiously, "I'm not prepared to say I'm afraid. Nor you either, Florrie. Come on, old girl. Chance it."

"I'll think it over," said Madam Fulton. The brightness had come back to her eye. So much was gained, at any rate, Billy told himself. "There's that handsome girl coming, Tom's widow.--Electra!"

Electra's scales were beginning, with a serious emphasis.

"I love to see them together," Madam Fulton said. "She makes Electra mad as hops."

Rose was coming very fast. She had the walk of women well trained, for the stage perhaps, the spring and rhythm of art superadded to nature's willingness. She wore no hat, and the sun made her bright hair brighter and brought out the tragic meaning in her face. She had been thinking in the night, and this morning forbade herself to falter. All through her fluctuating moods there had been a division of joy and dread. The perplexing questions of her past lay heavily upon her; but when she thought of Osmond, she was light as air. He made everything easy, his simplicity, his implied truth. She felt a great loyalty to what seemed good to him. Her conscious life throughout the night and morning became a reaching out of hands to him in the pa.s.sionate a.s.severation that she would be true.

Electra came, in answer to Madam Fulton's call. She, too, was grave, but with a hint of expectation on her face. She had been looking for MacLeod. Since their meeting, she had done nothing but wait for him again. Rose was running up the steps. She glanced from one to another of them with a recognizing swiftness, and when Billy Stark rose and placed a chair for her, she thanked him with a word, and took her place behind it, her hands upon it, so that she faced them all. There was a momentary hush. Madam Fulton put up her eyegla.s.ses and gazed at her curiously, as if she were a species of tableau arranged for notice. Billy Stark felt uneasily as if this were one of the occasions for him to take himself away. Rose spoke rapidly, in her beautifully modulated voice, but without emotion.

"I want to tell you something. I was not his wife."

Electra was the one to show dramatic feeling. She threw her hands up slightly.

"I knew it." Her lips formed the words. Her triumphant glance went from one to another, saying, "I told you so."