Rose MacLeod Part 57

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 b.u.t.terfly, 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sion 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 p.r.i.c.ked by thorns of disappointment, but never for a moment sullied through that wretched progress; and when the marsh was past, was.h.i.+ng 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sions, 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 fas.h.i.+ons, 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 s.h.i.+ning. "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 wors.h.i.+p 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 n.o.body knew it.

Billy Stark had brought his old friend a present: a box of the old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 pa.s.sage.

Say the word, dear girl, and I'll take it for two."

She looked at him in silent trouble. Tears had dimmed her eyes.