"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.
Rose and grannie had been living in an atmosphere of calm. Something was not determined yet, and they had to wait for it. Osmond had not come to the house for his early calls on grannie, and Rose, awake in her room to hear his step, at least, listened for it with a miserable certainty of disappointment. Every morning she gave a quick look of inquiry as she and grannie met, and the old lady would say,—
"No, dear, no!"
She sickened mentally under the delay, and at last her heart began to ask her whether he would ever see her again. On the day she told grannie that she was going to Paris to settle MacLeod's estate, grannie said,—
"That's right. But you'll come back."
"I must come back. You must let me." It was a great cry out of a warring heart. "But I must see him before I go. May I send for him to come?"
"You must send for him, my dear, and have your talk," said grannie.
So it was grannie who gave the message to Peter, and afterwards told him Rose was to see Osmond alone. Peter walked up and down the room. He did not altogether understand.
"What is it now, child?" asked grannie.
"I wondered if Rose needs to see him. This is all so painful for her! Why should she be bothered?"
"She must see him," said grannie. "It wouldn't be possible for her to go away without."
"She demands too much of herself," said Peter, stopping in his stride.
Grannie was smiling at him in a way that indicated she was very old and Peter was young. A wave of knowledge swept upon him.
"What is it, grannie?" he demanded. "What is between them?"
"You must let them find out."
"But what is it? I ought to know. Don't you see what I mean? I'm going to marry her, grannie, when all this is over."
Grannie looked at him in quick concern.
"Oh, no, Peter," she said. "No, you can't do that."
"Why can't I?"
"She doesn't love you, Peter."
"But she will. I can make her happy. I depend on showing her I can."
"That isn't enough, Peter."
"What?"
"To make her happy. You might make her miserable, and if she loved you, it would be all one to her."
"Tom Fulton made her miserable. Was that all one to her?"
"She isn't the girl Tom Fulton hurt. She's a woman now."
"Then what is it between her and Osmond?"
Grannie looked at him a few moments seriously. She seemed to be considering what he should be told. At last she spoke.
"Peter, I believe it's love between them."
"Love!"
"Yes, dear. She has a very strong feeling for Osmond."
"Osmond!"
Grannie got up out of her chair. She was trembling. Peter could almost believe it was with indignation against him, her other boy, not so dear as Osmond, but still her boy. Her calm face flushed, and when she spoke her voice also trembled.
"Peter," she said, "whatever we do, let us never doubt the kindness of God."
It was a little hard on Peter, he felt, for here was he, too, devoted to Osmond with a full heart; yet nature was nature, and life was life. He could not help seeing himself in the bridegroom's garment.
"Osmond is the greatest thing there is," he said. "But, grannie—" He stopped.
"I know, I know," said grannie. She was not accustomed to speaking with authority. The passion of her life had all resolved itself into deeds, into a few simple words like the honey in the flower and the slowly fructifying cells. Now she stood leaning on her staff and thinking back over the course she had run. Osmond had been the child of her spirit because he was maimed. She had drawn with him every breath of his horror of life, his acquiescence, his completed calm. What withdrawals there were in him, what wrestlings of the will, what iron obediences, only she knew. There was the sweetness, too, of the little child who, when they were alone, in some sad twilight, used to come and put his arms about her neck and lay his cheek to hers, with a mute plea to her to understand. And now when Osmond had harnessed himself to the earth, God had let a beautiful flower spring up before him, to say, "Behold me." God did everything, grannie knew. He had not merely created, in a space of magnificent idleness, some centuries ago, and then, with the commendation that it was "good," turned away his head and let his work shift for itself. He was about it now, every instant, in the decay of one seed to nourish another, in the blast and in the sunshine. He was ever at hand to hear the half-formed cry of the soul, the whisper it hardly knew it gave. He was the still, small voice. And He had remembered Osmond as He had been remembering him all these years. He had led him by painful steps to the hilltop, and then had painted for him a great sunrise on the sky. The night might lower and obscure it, the rain fall, or the lightning strike. But Osmond would have seen the sunrise. And all grannie could say was,—
"It may not turn out well, dear, but it's a great thing for him to have."
Peter strode away into the garden. She followed him, in an hour or so, and asked if she should sit for him, and all that afternoon he painted on her portrait, with the dash and absorption of one who knows his task.
"Tired, grannie?" he asked at length.
"No, Peter."
"You're going to be a sweet thing with your white cap here against the hollyhocks," said Peter. "I must hurry. When it's done, I'll leave it for exhibition, and then I'll go back to France."
That night he strode away for a walk, and grannie betook herself to her own room. So Rose was alone when Osmond came. She had dressed for him, and she looked the great lady. There was about her that air of proud conquest worn by women when they are willing to let man see how much he may lose in lacking them, or how rich he is in the winning. It says also, perhaps, "This is the wedding garment. It is worn for you."
When Osmond entered, these things were in his mind because it was a part of his bitter thought that he had no clothes to meet her in. For many years he had seen no use for the conventional dress of gentlemen, and grannie had never failed to like him in his clean blue blouse. So he came in, as Rose thought at once, like a peasant of an Old World country. All but the face. What peasant ever wore a mien like that: the clarified look of conquered grief, the wistfulness of the dark eyes, the majestic patience of one who, finding that the things of the world are not for him, has put them softly by? There were new lines in the face, Rose could well believe; in spite of those appealing softnesses of the eyes, it was a face cut in bronze. She held out her hand, and he took it briefly.
"I had to see you," she said, rushing upon the subject of her fears. "I am going away."
They were seated now, and Osmond was looking at her steadily. "But I am coming back," she smiled. "Please be glad to see me."
"I can't seem to talk to you," said Osmond abruptly, also smiling a little, in his whimsical way. "You are such a fine lady."
She glanced down at her dress, and hated it.
"I don't know why I put this on, except, perhaps, I didn't want you to despise me for what I am going to say."
"Despise you!"
She choked a little and dared it.
"You haven't been to the playhouse lately."
"No."
"Why?"
"Have you been there yourself?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I couldn't."
"Well, I couldn't, either."
"Why?" cried the girl passionately. "Why has everything got to change? Why should you tell me you would be there always and then never come again? Why?"
Osmond regarded her in what seemed a sad well-wishing.
"Youth can't last," he said. "That was youth. We are grown up now."
Tears gathered in her eyes. The finality of his tone seemed to be consigning her to fruitless days without the joy of dreams.
"Well," he added, "it doesn't matter. You are going away."
"You said once I should take the key of the playhouse with me."
He smiled humorously, as at a child who must, if it is possible, be allowed some pleasure in the game.
"Take it, playmate," he said.
The color ran over her face. She sparkled at him.
"Oh, now you've said it!" she entreated. "You've called me by my name. Now we can go back."
Osmond still smiled at her. He shook his head.
"You are very willful," he remarked.
"That's right. Abuse me. I like it, playmate."
But he could abuse her no more. Fancy in him was dead or dumb. He was tired of thinking, tired of his own life, with its special problems. A deep gravity came over her own face also. When she spoke, it was with a high dignity and seriousness.
"Osmond," she said, "I sent for you because I want to give you something before I go away. I can't bear to go. I can't bear to leave this place and grannie—and you. Sometimes I think I shall die of homesickness over there, even in the few weeks I stay, to think what may happen to you before I see you again. So I want to give it to you."
She was under some stress he did not understand, yet speaking with a determined quiet.
"What is it?" he asked gently.
She had no words left, only the two she had thought of for days and days until it had seemed to her he must hear her heart beating them out. She held her hands together in her lap, and spoke clearly, though it frightened her:—
"My love, Osmond, my love."
He had turned his look away from her, and feeling the aloofness of that, she fell to trembling. When he began to speak, she stopped him. It seemed to her that he was bringing rejection of her gift, and she could not bear it.
"No," she said, "don't say it."
But he did speak, in that grave, moved tone:—
"That is dear of you. I shall always keep your present, just as grannie will keep your love for her. It's very precious."
Hope and will went out of her. She put her clasped hands on the chair in front of her, and bent her head upon them, trembling.
"What is it?" she said at last, "what is it that has come between us? Is it what you told me once in the playhouse? that you were going to give your life away when you chose?"
He laughed a little, sadly, to himself.
"How long ago that seems!" he mused. "No, it was a different thing I meant then."
"What was it? Tell me, Osmond."
"I can tell you now, for I shall never do it. It smells of madness to me, now I see what living demands of us. It was only,—well, my body hadn't done me much service in the ways I should have liked."
"Tell me, Osmond!"
"I meant to give it, living, to some scientist, to experiment on. To a doctor, if I could find one that would meet me as I wanted to be met, to work on,—with drugs, with germs,—the things they do to dogs, you know."
She forgot how he had held himself aloof from her, or that some grain of pride might well have met his coldness. She was kneeling beside him, her hands about his neck, her head upon his breast.
"No, Osmond, no," she sobbed. "It would kill me."
The man sat still. Then he spoke, and his voice was hard as iron.
"It will never happen, I tell you."
"To have you tortured," she was sobbing. "To have them hurt you—your hands, your dear hands—"
He lifted one of them, in a dazed way, and looked at it, all brown with work and yet a wonder in its virile power. Then a flame passed over him and burned up what kept him from her. His arms were about her and he bent his mouth to hers. For the first time since he could remember, he forgot what he had called his destiny. And after they had kissed, he said,—
"Now, sweetheart, now we can talk. It's better so, even if we say good-by to-morrow."
She drew apart from him and went back to her chair. But there she stretched out her hands to him and Osmond took them, and so, holding them, they spoke out their true minds. Her eyes were brimming full.
"I wasn't sure you would take my present," she said. "It's dear of you to take it, Osmond."
"Your love, your wonderful love!"
"I selected it with great care, dear." She was laughing. "It's very shiny, and nice, and warranted to last. It's the strongest love I could find. I never saw one like it. Shall we live in the playhouse now, dear?"
"You will live in my heart. Rose, I kissed you."
She bent to him.
"Kiss me again. Kisses are little blooms budding out of my love. You are a gardener-man. You know the faster flowers are picked, the sooner they bloom again."
He was regarding her in wonder.
"You must be crazy to think you like me!" he said honestly. Again she laughed.
"I am! stark mad. I feel as if a thousand birds were singing and all the lilies opening: You remember how they smelled that night, Osmond? You wouldn't go with me to smell them. They've come to us. They're here."
He held her gaze.
"Be serious," he said.
"I can't, I like you so!"
"Only till I ask you this. You said once you had always been in love with love."
"Always. Ought I to be ashamed of it? I am not. I am proud. To find the half of you that you have been lonesome for, and then be faithful to it,—oh, beautiful!"
"Are you in love with love, or are you in love with me?"
"With you, dear Osmond." The clear eyes answered him in a joyous confidence.
"I must have taken hold of your imagination."
"Yes! You make me see visions and dream dreams. Hear how fast I talk to you! The words can't tumble out quick enough, there are so many more pushing them."
"No, I mean I have taken hold of your imagination because I am so queer."
"You are queer, Osmond. It's queer to be so darling."
"If I were sure!" He loosed her hands and looked away from her, and his face set gravely.
"What, Osmond?"
"If I were sure it was fair to you—best for you to let you know the truth—then I'd tell you."
"Tell me what?"
He drew her hands back into his. He was looking at her with the first voluntary yielding of his whole self. It lighted his face into beauty, the chrism of the adoring spirit laid upon trembling lip and flashing eye. "I have withheld from you," he said, in quick, short utterance, "because it had to be. But if you care, too, why deny us both one hour of happiness, if we part to-morrow?"
"Deny me nothing," she was murmuring. "Let me see your heart."
"You should see my soul, if it could be. Dearest, it was so from the first minute. I was afraid of you with the terrible fear of love. Don't you see how different it is with us? You longed for love because you are the angel of it. I was afraid of it because it would have to mean hunger and pain and thirst."
"But not now! not now! We have found each other, and it means the same thing for both of us."
"We have got to part, you know, for a couple of ages or so, or even till we die. Maybe I can get into some sort of trim by that time, if I give my mind to it; but here it's no use, dear, you see."
"No use! Osmond, I have given you my love. What do you mean to do with it?"
He caught his breath miserably.
"I am going to—God! what am I going to do! You are honest," he cried, "you mean it all, but—sweetheart, look at me, and see it is not possible. To-night ends it."
She withdrew her hands from his, and sat upright in her chair.
"Then," she said, "you are a coward."
"Am I?" He looked at her, blanched and sorrowful. "Am I, Rose?"
"You are a coward. You love me—"
"You know it! You do know that!"
"You know you do, and then you refuse to take the simple, sweet, faithful way with me."
"What way, my dear?"
She did not even flush at the words, sprung from a great sincerity.
"Shall I ask you? Shall I ask you to let me take your name and live with you, and be true to you?"
They looked at each other in the terrible recognition that brings souls almost too close.
"You are a great woman, my dear," said Osmond. He rose and stood before her. "Look at me. I hate my body. Could you love it?"
"I do love it," said the woman. "And I love your soul. And I am ashamed to think we can know the things we have known and then think of the bodies we live in. Grannie believes in immortal life. I believe in it too, since I have known you."
"There are a good many hours, my dear, when we forget immortal life. The world goes hard with us. In those times, shall you look at me and hate me?"
She was smiling at him through tears.
"I shall look at you and love you, stupid!" she said. "Oh, how little men know!"
"And then," he was continuing, in his bitter honesty, "I am a laboring man. I told Peter you were a terrible Parisian."
She shook her head.
"You don't quite know what you are, Osmond. There's a good deal of grannie in you. Perhaps that is one of the things I love. You work with your hands. Everything is possible to you, every kind of splendid thing, because you have not been spoiled by artificial life, the ambitions of it, the poor, mean hypocrisies. Strange that I should be talking about labor!"
"Why strange?"
"Because I hated the mention of it while my father lived. But now I seem to have gone back to my old feeling of a kind of pity for them all,—the ones that work blindly out of the light,—I see them as Ivan Gorof saw them, that great sea of the oppressed."
"But not every workingman is oppressed."
"No, no! Not here. But in other countries where they are surging and trying to have their ignorant way. And they are no more to be pitied than the rich. And I keep wishing for them, not money and power and leisure, such as the rich have, but something better, something I wish the rich had, too."
"The heart that sees God, grannie would say."
"Maybe grannie would pray for it, Osmond. Maybe I could sing it—I hope to sing now—maybe you could put it into the land and bring it out in flowers."
"That's poetry!" said Osmond. He was smiling at her unconscious way of showing him how lovely she was and how loving. "I am going now, dear. I am going to take your present home carefully and look at it alone."
She knitted wistful brows a moment. Then she too smiled.
"You will see how valuable it is when you look at it," she said. "It will shine so."
He had risen and stood before her, looking at her.
"Rose," he said, "you're a darling."
"Am I?" She was radiant.
"I am going to think up the things lovers have said, and read Solomon's Song, maybe! But now I'm going back to the plantation, to let the Almighty God and the undergods have a chance to tell me how to give you up."
"Ask them now, Osmond," she breathed. "Ask here, while I am here to answer, too."
"No," said Osmond. He shook his head. "Not while we are together. I can't listen to Him."
In the road he met Peter. They stopped, and Peter said at once,—
"I've got three orders from New York. When they're finished, I'm going back to France."
Osmond could not at once recall himself, even for his boy. Peter seemed only a figure of the night, familiarly dear, and yet unrelated to the great dream that swept across the sky with banners. Peter spoke again bluntly.
"I shall paint again all right. You needn't worry. It's got hold of me."
Then they shook hands.
Osmond went back to his little house, not to sleep, but to think. The old habit of his life was changed. Henceforward, whether he took a woman's love or left it, things would not be the same. Say she loved him with the enduring passion of a woman at her best, could he let her undertake the half of his strange lot? Could he cut her off from a thousand sources of happiness to be found in the world she knew, even though he forced her to go out into that world and sing, and lessened his claim on her to a swallow flight now and then back to his waiting heart? If her lot were to be a public one, she would have, in a measure, to make it herself; for here was he, with his plants and trees, almost one of them, and he could not give up his hardy life, lest he dwindle and fail utterly. Besides, this was his business, as music was hers. Whatever communion they had, it could never be a unison of pursuits, but rather an interchange of rich devotion. It looked, he concluded, very bad for her.
As he thought that, the night grew chill, and the stars waned in their shining. These were the dull old ways of a world that had swung so long in one orbit that it could never be otherwise. He was bringing the woman to break bitter bread with him, and though she ate it cheerfully in the morning of her hope, it would seem intolerable in the evening, and at night she might refuse it utterly. What right had he to let her vow herself to such things and swell the list of proven failure? But say she loved him! And after all, what was love? Was it the ever-living germ of desire to create new life, that life might live? Was it the gift shut in the hand when life left the creating source, to be squandered or hoarded, to be used for honor or dishonor, but always ignorantly, to serve the power behind creation itself? Was this beautiful creature the sport of her woman's blood, doing the will of the earth, and so most innocently walking into the lure of his arms because they longed for her? He wondered.
And his side of it, the man's side, what did it mean for him to know he worshiped the divinity of her beauty, the sun of her good pleasure, the might of her yieldingness? When he thought of her, the body of things became mysteriously transmuted to what he had to call their soul, because it wore no other name. There was the flame of passion and the frost of awe. The mystical call of her spirit to his had become the most natural of all created impulses. Yet, say that he, too, was in the grip of that greatest force, and nature was tricking the woman out with all the colors of the dawn, to blind him into stumbling along nature's ways. Did nature want him to say, "This is Paradise," until she was ready to let him know it was the unchanged earth? If it was all a gigantic phenomenon of a teeming universe—well, it was good. It was to be worshiped as the savage worships the sun: but not greatly. For clouds hide the sun, and, in spite of it, men die. Better not spill too much blood for a savage god that gives but savage recompense. And, thinking so, he closed his eyes and lapsed into a dull recognition of the things of earth.
How far his mind had rushed upon its track he did not know, but suddenly it came to a stop and jolted him awake. It was as if he had come to a great gulf, the darkness girdling the natural life, and across it were the colors of the dawn. They breathed and wavered in sheer beauty. And at that moment there began in him the fainting recognition of what love might be if men would have it so. First, there was the lure, the voice of the creature calling to its mate. Then there was the unveiling of the soul, the recognition, the sight of the soul as God sees it, so that the two creatures can only breathe, "How beautiful you are!" And that must not continue, because the soul is a delicate though an indestructible thing, and cannot walk naked through the assaults of time. It would consume the beholder; it would even scorch under the flame of its own being. It withdraws, only to appear again, like the god from the brake, when it is greatly summoned. But always it is there, and the two that hold high fealty remember what they have seen. When the flame sinks, they say: "But it is the flame on the altar. It must not die." So they renew it. When the outer habit of life fails in one of them, to grow poor and mean, the other remembers that one glimpse of the soul, and calls upon it tenderly.
"Revive," says his patient love, "I stay you with the flagons of my hope, I comfort you with the apples of my great belief." And always it is an interchange of life, the one feeding the other with eternal succor.
And now, to come back to the old question: Say a woman loved a man like this man. Osmond seemed not to be debating now, but hastening along the thread of a perfect certainty. Something had put a clue in his hand. Wherever it might lead him, he was running fast. It came upon him, like the lighting of a great fire, that this was a call for high emprise. He loved nothing so much as courage. Here was the summons to the world-old battle where all but a few fail and none are said to succeed unless they die for passion and so life drops a curtain on the after-fight. The great lovers—chiefly they are those for whom the fight never was finished, who chose death rather than endure. He had bitten his teeth all his life on the despair of adventure, but now it came upon him that life itself is the great adventure, and love the crown of it. Say he, loving a woman, went out to fight the dragons of the way. He had no armor such as youth delights in. He was not a Prince Charming, who wooes the eye even before he speaks. He had only the one treasure—love. Say he crowned the woman with it, and then challenged God to give their hungers food, be the unseen combatant and fight out the fight beside them? Say he vowed himself like a knight to her service, and their mutual worship scorned the body save as the instrument of life, and glorified the soul? "I am the soul," something cried out in him. "Do not deny me, or you blaspheme the God that also lives. Give me food, the large liberty to be faithful. Lay bonds upon me, patience and loyalty, and I shall rejoice in them and grow strong enough to break them, and delight in perfect liberty."
It all resolved itself, he found, into this question of the soul. Was the marvel true? Did it really exist? For if it did, it must have food and cherishing. Inevitably then he thought of grannie, and his struggling mind seemed to appeal to her clarity, question and answer, and to every question she smiled and told him the dream was true. It did live, this mystery, this imperishable one that came from the bosom of God and would return in safety there.
Osmond rose, in the dewy midnight, and stretched his arms to heaven. He felt what he never had before, in his iron acquiescence, an ecstasy of worship. This was what grannie felt, he knew; it was the daily draught that kept her spirit young. He made no doubt she was praying for him at that moment, and that their buoyant certainties were meeting in the air of quickened life. Hitherto he had walked. Now he saw the use of wings.
He knew what Rose was doing. She would not be waking. She would be lying in her bed asleep, too secure in her glad confidence to wonder over it. Another thought swept in and awoke his quivering sentience to the marvel of his life. Some recognition of the cherishing maternal seemed to grow in him, and as grannie had saved his body for him, so now Rose seemed to have given birth to his new soul. It was like a shining child. With his bodily eyes he almost saw it through the dark, and he longed to take it in his arms to where she slept and lay it on her breast. He could fancy how the shining child would lie there and how, sleeping, her sweet soul would cherish it. And whether he began the next day with the resolve to give her up or to relinquish his own doubts, at least he had had the vision. As the dawn broke he seemed to see her coming toward him, the spirit of it, rosy-clad, bearing in her hands, outstretched, a beaker for his lips. It was the water of life, and her face besought him to know finally that they were to drink of it together. He was shaken with the wonder of it. All his past had been preparing him for ignominy and loss. He trembled when he saw what the girl in the vision meant: that the greater quest is farther yet.
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.
In the hushed interval after Madam Fulton had died and Billy Stark had gone away sadly, knowing he should return to America no more, Osmond went to find Rose. He had seen her briefly, in the common ways of life, but it was evident to her that they were not to meet alone. Perhaps his mind had fixed itself inexorably against her, she thought, and he meant to see her only to say good-by. But even that contented her, if it must be. The splendor of their understanding abode with her and made his will seem easy. When the tide of new love went down, it would be another thing; but now it was at the flood, and the light of heaven shone in it.
He came walking through the garden, and she saw him come. Grannie sat out there among the hollyhocks, waiting for Peter. He had left his painting to bring her a glass of water from the house, and she rested in a somnolent calm. Grannie liked the sunshine, and to-day it was opulent and flooding. To Osmond, looking at her as he came, her serenity seemed even majestic. She had forgotten the world, he saw, and a smile brooded upon her face, that face where no evil passions had ever dwelt, and where peace had lain like a visible sign for many years. As he passed her portrait, he glanced at it in proud wonder because Peter had done it. To Osmond it looked complete as it was, and he found it another and only less beautiful grannie in the garden, with an added touch of life upon the face, something that did not lie there every day. It was a shade of sadness in the midst of the tranquillity, as if grannie also, in spite of her calm, had known great hungers. It tempered her childlike quality and made what might be called her character as enduring as time that had wrought it. She opened her eyes, when he neared her, and her smile came, the one that was for him alone and never failed him.
"What were you thinking about, grannie?" he asked her.
"A good many things," she said. "Florrie and poor Billy Stark."
"You'll miss her, grannie!"
"Not long, son. And I'm very glad she's gone. Florrie never was one to bear old age. She'd have had to meet it soon!"
Osmond smiled tenderly at the ingenuous implication, but then he bethought him it was true. Madam Fulton never had been old. Grannie put out her hand to his.
"I've been thinking of you, son, all the morning. I hoped you'd come."
"Yes, grannie. I couldn't come before."
"No. You look like a new man."
"I am a new man, grannie."
He gave the kind hand a little tight grasp, and left her. Peter was coming with the glass of water, and Peter, too, had a morning light on his face, only his was the look of the maker who sees the vision of fulfillment.
"Good picture, Pete," said Osmond.
Peter nodded in entire acquiescence.
"I don't know what grannie looks like," he said. He was gazing into the glass of water, as if it were a crystal and he could find the answer there. "I've been trying to think. Like a baby—with a sort of innocence—like a fate, a kind one,—like the earth goddess. If I've put in all I see, it's a corker."
"It's the mother look," said Osmond. "But it is a corker, safe enough."
They parted with a nod, but Peter stopped.
"Hear that!" he said.
Rose was singing. The song began so triumphantly, with such dash and splendor, that it was almost like improvising. Osmond felt it like a call. He went on to the house, and Peter, after that moment of listening, also kept on the way that took him to his work. He, too, walked with quickened step, and there was light in his eyes. All the vibrations of his being quickened to the song; but he was thinking what a stunning world it was to have such things in it: paint and canvas and disturbing songs and broken hearts. The song ceased suddenly. He knew why. Osmond had gone into the room and Rose had met him. Peter sighed. Then he laughed, took grannie's empty glass from her, and sat down to work.
"It's a funny world, grannie," he remarked.
Grannie smiled at him. She understood him also, though he was not in her heart as Osmond was.
"You like your work, don't you, Peter?" she remarked. "It's just the right thing for you."
Peter plunged at it.
"It's the best thing out," he affirmed. "It's the top bubble on the biggest wave." Then he too, because the song had ceased, began one on his own account, with an inward rueful apology to his broken heart. For the song should have been a sad one, but Peter could not paint when the vibrations lagged, and so he made it gay.
Osmond followed the voice, and met Rose in the sitting-room, where she stood waiting for him. She wore a morning gown of demure dimity, with a little ruffle about her singing throat. When she saw him, she laughed, for no reason. Then she blushed. For Osmond was not the same. He came up to her and took her hands.
"You don't look like a goddess," he said.
They were smiling at each other out of an equal hope.
"I'm not a goddess. I'm just girl."
"Not a terrible Parisian?"
She looked down at her dress, that had wrought the simplicity.
"I put it on for you," she said. "You didn't like my chiffons that other night."
"How did you know I should come?"
"You knew it. Why shouldn't I know it? Are the wires down?"
Then, by one impulse, they began to walk back and forth through the room, hand in hand, like children.
"You go next week," he said, although he knew she did.
"Yes."
"When do you come back?"
"As soon as I can race through all the business there. In a month, I hope—perhaps less."
"Shall you come straight here?"
"I may stay a day or two in New York. I shall bring letters. I shall try to get a footing there."
"I will meet you in New York. Grannie has folks there. I'll take you to them."
It was a different man that spoke, decisive, dominating. She flushed in keen delight. They stopped at the window and looked out on the garden beds, in that tranquil summer hush, all growth and bloom. He drew her hand to his lips and spoke intemperately.
"What a fool I was to come by day!"
"Why, Osmond?"
"I wanted it to be by day, with no glamour round us, to make you judge, accept, reject things as they are. But now I need the night to help me." She was a picture of breathing happiness. He forgot his part. "Rose," he cried, "it's love between us!"
"It's love," she answered.
"I came to tell you the past is past. It's not to be remembered. Not a doubt! not a fear! not even a fear for you. You're not to love a coward. I won't have that. Will you take me, make what you can of me?"
The light on their faces spoke without their will.
"I'm not going to mark it down," he said. "I'm not going to say it isn't worthy of you. It's going to be, the sort the big lovers died for. I have looked the thing in the face. I adore it. I'm going where it leads me."
She calmed as he grew fervid.
"Sit down, Osmond," she said. "We must talk. There aren't many days to talk in."
But as he sat, he kept her hand.
"Shall I tell you why I've been staying away from you?" he asked.
"If you want to. But I know."
"You don't know the half. I have had to conquer all sorts of fears, chiefly for you. For me it's nothing. I'd rather have one minute of you and lose you to-morrow than not to have had you. But for you!" A wistful shade fell upon his face. "My own dear child!" he mused. "It must be well for you."
"It will be well."
"It shall. It's a great adventure, Rose. It's a big challenge—the biggest. I promise you—"
"No! no!"
"Yes. I promise you my undying faith. And I won't be a coward."
She was looking at him, smiling.
"You're a darling lover," she said. "Such pretty words!"
Then they laughed.
"This is nothing to what I can do," said Osmond. "I shall read the poets."
He leaned to her and they kissed, like children. Tears came into his eyes. He foresaw strange beauties he had never dreamed of. There would be the sweet, slumbrous valleys and the sharp lightnings of fierce love, but there would be also the homely intimacies, the foolishness of children who, hand in hand, can smile at everything.
"Do you suppose you could tell what I am thinking?" he wondered.
The air of the playhouse seemed to be about her, and she knew.
"You are playing we are on a ship," she said.
"Yes, we two alone—"
"We're just starting on the great adventure—"