Rose MacLeod Part 9

Peter, brought back to that luckless interview with the imperial lady, felt shamefaced in his knowledge of it.

"We didn't get to that," he said. "We were talking about Rose. Who do you think she is, Osmond?"

"Tom's widow. So you said."

"Yes, but what more? She's the daughter of Markham MacLeod."

He was watching Osmond narrowly, to weigh the effect of the name. But Osmond's face kept its impressive interest.

"You know who he is," Peter suggested.

"Yes, oh, yes! But that doesn't mean anything to me. Nothing does until I see the man. He works with too big a brush. He is an agitator. He may be Christ or Anti-Christ, but he's an agitator. That's all I know. I can't give a snap judgment of a man that gets whole governments into a huff and knows how to lead a rabble a million strong. So he's her father?"

Peter, unreasonably irritated, pitched upon one word for a cause of war.

"Rabble? What do you mean by that? Labor?"

Osmond smiled broadly and showed his white teeth.

"I'm labor myself," he said. "You know that, boy."

"Then what do you want to talk so for? Rabble!"

"I only meant it in relation to numbers," said Osmond, again irritatingly, in his indifference to all interests outside his dear boy's home-coming. "I'll make it a rabble of kings, if you say so.

Folks, Peter, that's what I mean, folks. He deals with them in the ma.s.s.

That makes me nervous. I can't like it."

"He believes in the equality of man," Peter announced, as he was conscious, rather swellingly. "The downfall of kings, the freedom of the individual."

"There's the _pot-au-feu_ smoking inside that shack," said Osmond, indicating a shanty across the field. "Come and have dinner with labor."

But Peter turned. He shook his head.

"I can't, Osmond," he said. "I've brought this girl into the house, and I've got to see her through. Won't you come up to-night?"

"Not till your Parisian has gone over to Electra's. You come down here.

Come down about dusk and we'll have another go."

As Peter hurried back, conscious of being a little late, he could have beaten his head against the locust trees for the stupidity of his home-coming. He had the shattered moment with Electra to remember, and now he had turned the other great meeting of the day into a fractious colloquy. Unformed yet vivid in his mind, for the last year, had been strong, determining antic.i.p.ations of what would happen when he at last came home. He had known certainly what would happen when he saw Electra.

She would still be the loveliest and best, and his would be the privilege of telling her so. And to Osmond, who had dug in the ground that Peter might work under the eye of men, he would return as one who has an account to give, and say, in effect, "You did it." But, laughably, neither of these things had happened. He forgot that he had in him the beginnings of a great painter in remembering that he had shown the obtuseness of an a.s.s.

He did not see Electra that night. After the noon dinner he left Rose and grannie intimately together,--the girl, with a gentle deprecation, as if she brought gifts not in themselves worth much, talking about Paris, the air young Peter had been breathing,--and betook himself again to Electra's house. It was all open to the day, but no one answered his knock. He went in and wandered from parlor to library, the dignified rooms that had once seemed to him so typical of her estate as compared to his own: for in those days he had been only a young man of genius with scarcely enough money to live and study on, save as his brother earned it for him. He sauntered in and out for an hour--it seemed as if even the two servants had gone--and then played s.n.a.t.c.hes at the piano, to waken drowsy ears. But the house kept its quiet, and in the late afternoon he wandered home again. That evening he returned, and then there was some one to answer his knock. The maid told him Miss Electra had gone out; but though he waited in a fevered and almost an angry impatience, she did not return. Knowing her austere and literal truth, he could not believe that the denial was the conventional expedient, and in a wave of regret over the day, he longed for her inexpressibly. It seemed to him that no distance would be too great to bring him to her.

He felt in events, and in himself also, the rus.h.i.+ng of some force to separate them, and swung back, after his blame of her, into the necessity of a more pa.s.sionate partisans.h.i.+p. When he went home, still without seeing her, he found his grandmother's house deserted. But the minute his foot sounded, there was a soft rush down the stairs. Rose stood beside him in the hall.

"Did you see her?" she asked breathlessly.

He strove to make his laugh an evidence of the reasonableness of what he had to answer.

"No. She was obliged to be away."

"Isn't she at home now?" asked the girl insistently. "She is there, and you refuse to hurt me. She won't see me!"

"She is not there," said Peter, in relief at some small truth to tell.

"I haven't seen her since morning."

The girl stood there in the faint radiance of the hall lamp, her eyes downcast, thinking. She had dressed for dinner, though there was only high tea in the old-fas.h.i.+oned house, and delighted grannie beyond words.

The old lady said it was as good as a play to her, who never went out, to see a lovely dress trailing about the rooms. Peter, looking at the girl, felt his heart admonish him that here was beauty demanding large return of kindly treatment from the world. Not only must justice be done her, but it must be done lavishly. This was for all their sakes. Electra could not be allowed to lose anything so precious, nor could he lose it either, his small share of tribute. She was speaking, still with that air of pondering:--

"I must do it myself. I mustn't let you risk anything." Then she turned her full glance on him, and frankly smiled. "Good-night," she said, giving him her hand. "Don't speak of me to her. Don't think of me. I must do it all myself."

V

Next morning it was a different Rose he saw, quite cosy and cheerful at the breakfast-table, with no sign of tragedy on her brow. The day was fair, and the mood of the world seemed to him, for no reason, to have lightened. It was not credible that Electra, of all gracious beings, should sulk outside the general harmony. After breakfast, when Rose had, with a sweet air of service, given grannie her arm to the veranda chair, she returned to Peter, waiting, perhaps for a word with her, in the hall. His hat swung from his hand, and seeing that, she spoke in a low, quick tone.

"You are going over there. Don't do it."

"I must. I want to see her."

"I know. But not yet. Let me see her first. If you talk about me, it will make trouble between you,--not real trouble, perhaps, but something unfortunate, something wrong. I am going myself, now." She pointed out her hat and gloves where she had them ready, and without waiting for him to speak, began pinning on the hat. While she drew on the gloves she looked at him again with her charming smile. "Don't you see," she said, "we can get along better alone--two women? Which house is it?"

He followed her out and down the steps.

"I'll go part of the way with you."

She waved a gay farewell to grannie, busy already at her knitting, and they went down the path. But at the gate she paused.

"Now," she said, "which way? Which house?"

"The next one."

"I see. Among the trees. Now don't come. Whatever happens, don't come.

If I am not here to dinner,--if I am never here. You simply must not appear in this. Good-by." She gave her parasol a little rea.s.suring fling, as if it were a weapon that proved her amply armed, and took her swift way along the shaded road.

Peter stood for a moment watching her. She went straight on, and the resolution of her gait bore sufficient witness to her purpose. He turned about then and went rather disconsolately the other way, which would bring him out at the path to Osmond's plantation.

Rose, going up the garden path, came upon Electra herself, again dressed in white and among the flower-beds. Whether she hoped her lover would come, and was awaiting him, her face did not tell; but she met Rose with the same calm expectancy. There was ample time for her to walk away, to avoid the interview; but Electra was not the woman to do that. False things, paltering things, were as abhorrent to her in her own conduct as in that of another. So she stood there, her hands at her sides in what she would have called perfect poise, as Rose, very graceful yet flushed and apparently conscious of her task, came on. A pace or two away, she stopped and regarded the other woman with a charming and deprecatory grace.

"Do guess who I am!" she said, in a delightful appeal. "Peter Grant told you."

"Won't you come in?" returned Electra, with composure. "Mr. Grant did speak of you."

Rose felt unreasonably chilled. However little she expected, this was less, in the just civility that was yet a repudiation. They went into the library, where the sun was bright on rows of books, and Electra indicated a seat.

"Mr. Grant told me a very interesting thing about you," she volunteered, with the same air of establis.h.i.+ng a desirable atmosphere.