V
THAT Mrs. Allestree’s divinations were not very far short of the truth, or unlikely of fulfilment, would have been apparent to her could she have looked in, a few weeks later, on Rose and Fox together in Judge Temple’s fine old library. In the judge’s estimation the library was the one spot of the house, the sanctum sanctorum, and its noble book-lined walls imparted a warmth of color and an erudite dignity to a room of fine proportions lighted by an immense southern bow-window which overlooked the walled garden, where Rose had cultivated every flower which blooms in summer and every evergreen vine and ilex which lives in winter.
Over the high wide mantel was one fine old painting which testified both to the extravagance and distinctive taste of the judge’s grandfather, and on the book littered table stood a slender vase filled with roses. There was an exquisite delicacy, a refinement, an atmosphere of culture, even insuch minutiæ as these, which gave a detailed charm to the perspective of the entire house.
Rose herself sat in a high-backed chair by the open fire, her bright head and slender figure outlined against the dark background, while she listened, with all the freshness and enthusiasm of girlhood, to Fox’s gay, easy talk, his dog, Sandy, lying stretched on the hearthrug between them in the blissful content of physical comfort and the instinctive assurance of safety and friendship which Rose’s presence seemed to increase.
To Fox, half the girl’s charm lay in a certain rigid mental uprightness, a clear ethical point of view, which was entirely different from the careless tolerance of the smart set in which he had hitherto almost exclusively moved. Fox had no religion; Rose was devout, and swift in her denunciation of wrong, for she had all the terrible unrelenting standards of youth and the religion of youth which is wont to be the religion of extremes. Her character was indeed just emerging from that raw period of girlhood which is full of passionate beliefs and renunciations as well as a shy pride which can inflict keen mental suffering for a little hurt; a season when the mind is wonderfully receptive and the young, untried spirit full of beautiful inspirations, hopes, and beliefs which are toofrequently destined to woeful annihilation in later years.
Fox had recently made a great speech, a speech which had filled both the floor and the galleries of the House to suffocation, and even thronged the corridors with spectators who could gain no admittance, yet, while it had thrilled Rose’s pulses with excitement and enthralled her with the spell of its eloquence, her rigid sense of the proprieties had been shocked; she had felt its flowing periods its scornful references to mysteries which seemed to Fox as rotten as they were immaterial, and the fact that she had taken umbrage at phrases of his, which seemed to him sufficiently innocuous to escape all criticism, amused and pleased him. It was a new point of view; he liked to tease her into expressing a shy opinion, or into a sudden outburst of righteous disapproval which brought the color to her cheek and the sparkle to her eye. It delighted him to feel that even disapproving of him she could not hate him, for in their dawning intimacy he found ample assurance of her liking, and the unguarded friendliness of her feeling showed in her eagerness to win him to her side on any mooted question.
He leaned back in his chair, watching her with a keen appreciation of her loveliness and her unconsciousbetrayal of her own emotions. “So! after all you didn’t approve of me the other day?” he said, with perfect good humor; “you were really condemning my ethics while you applauded—you know you did applaud, you told me you congratulated me on my ‘great speech.’”
Rose returned his teasing look seriously. “I did congratulate you; it was a great speech, but I didn’t like it,” she said in a low voice and with an evident effort.
“And why?” he asked, his brilliant gaze bent more fully on her.
She turned away, her cheek red, and resting her chin on her hand she fell to studying the fire though she was still courageous. “I didn’t like the tone of it; you belittle your own great gifts,” she said softly, hesitating slightly and choosing her words with care; “you make them of your own creation when they are really given you, given you as the five talents were given to the man in the Scriptures. You haven’t laid them away in a napkin; why then are you ashamed to give the glory where it is justly due? You can’t deny that there is glory in it all!”
He smiled. “You make me feel like a thief. To be entirely honest, I’m not religious, but I read the Bible and Shakespeare as dictionaries ofeloquence. Do you think me a dreadful sinner—worse than those on whom the tower of Siloam fell?”
Rose bit her lip. “I’ve no doubt you think me a hypocrite!” she replied.
“I should like to tell you what I think of you,” he said softly, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking across at her, “but I’m afraid—afraid of you!”
She laughed a little with a charming diffidence, for she had met the sweetness of his glance which was full of gentle admiration.
“I sometimes wonder,” he continued, “how you would meet a great moral question which involved your happiness and, perhaps, that of another whom you loved.”
She shivered a little, stretching out one slender hand to the fire. “Ah,” she said, with a faint smile, “I hope I may never meet such a question! I see you make me a Pharisee.”
“God forbid!” he replied quickly, “you belong rather to the Christian martyrs; I’m either a Barbarian or a Scythian!”
They both laughed softly at this, and Rose forgot her momentary embarrassment. “I should try to be just!” she said.
He shook his head with that rare smile of hiswhich seemed half mocking, half caressing. “You couldn’t be!” he retorted provokingly, “you are a little Puritan, narrow, firm, righteous; I begin to be more and more afraid of you!”
She lifted her chin. “You think me too narrow to be just? Isn’t that the charge that you worldlings always bring against—against—”
“The righteous?” he supplied quickly.
They laughed again. “You convict me out of my own mouth; I shall dare no more arguments!”
“Ah, now you know how I feel under your criticisms!” he flashed back at her.
His manner wore its happiest aspect, it was delightful to be with her; through all contradictions he began to feel the temperamental sympathy, and she, too young to understand these subtleties, was aware of the glow and warmth of his presence, the sweetness of his manner which could be, when he was neither stern nor angry nor self-absorbed, one of a delicacy and sentiment uncommon in a man; with all his egotism, his spoiled acceptance of the world’s homage, he retained qualities that were inherently noble and lovable.
“But I have more reason,” she declared with warmth, “it’s unworthy of you to espouse anycause for the mere sake of party, ‘to stand pat’ when your heart is against the issue; I don’t believe in it!”
“You have been reading revolutionary documents; you are full of this new heresy,” he retorted, still laughing softly; “you are like some of the new politicians; they pull down the pillars of the temple on their own heads.”
She leaned forward eagerly, her eyes sparkling. “Do you know what this party worship reminds me of?” she said, “this devotion in a man to his party? The tomb of Rosicrucius and the statue which crushed the worshipper who entered there! So your party’s graven image crushes out a man’s originality.”
“Little heretic!” he mocked, “little revolutionist! A party is a great machine; we can’t do without it!”
She shook her head vehemently. “The children of Israel thought they couldn’t do without the golden calf! You were not so strong a party man five years ago, do you remember?”
He looked at her quickly. “Do you?”
“I read your speeches,” she confessed with charming ingenuousness, her eyes kindling with emotion; “I read the first speech they ever printed in the newspapers here. I’ve wanted totell you how beautiful I thought it, how eloquent!”
He regarded her a moment in silence; he felt suddenly that there had always been a link between them, that across space and time he had spoken not to the public but to her, and even been understood by her; that the virgin whiteness of her young soul had received the inscription of his mind. Then he was as suddenly and vividly conscious of his folly, his egotism, his unworthiness! She was too lovely and too innocent to have received the impression of his spirit; and he—the thought of his careless life, his worship at Margaret’s shrine, the strength of the old fetters which bound him, made him suddenly humble. And then, the beauty of her smile, the warm sympathy of her temperament created an angry impatience of such restrictions; with characteristic scorn of conventionalities he thrust them aside. The perfect innocence and spontaneity of her praise and appreciation was the most subtle of all flattery, and he possessed the temperament of genius which is, at one moment, above the consideration of either praise or blame and the next quivers with sensibility at the breath of either. He returned her shy but glowing look with one of unusual humility. “I feel as if I didn’t deserve it,” hesaid gently; “it is an exquisite happiness to be praised by you!”
She smiled. “And I feel ashamed to have set myself up as a judge,” she replied quickly, “but it was because—because I didn’t want you to fall below your own standard! You see what it is to have a record of great achievements.”
“Hereafter I shall only seek to deserve your praise,” he rejoined, “but I feel myself a sublime egoist; I’ve sat here talking of myself, of my work, and meanwhile I remember that my aunt told me of your voice. Why do you never sing for me?”
“Because you have never asked me,” she replied simply, with an involuntary smile.
Fox leaned toward her with an eloquent gesture of appeal. “Did I deserve that? Am I such a miserable egoist?” he exclaimed, and then: “I ask you now.”
Rose was entirely unaffected, and she went at once to the piano in the room beyond, and seating herself began to play the first soft notes of a prelude. Fox had followed her and took his place near the instrument, again observing her with keen appreciation; her sweetness, her whiteness of soul had taken possession of his imagination with a force which he had supposed, until thismoment, impossible. For, after one bitter and humiliating experience in the drama of love and passion, he had withdrawn with seared sensibilities, and assuming a new attitude had regarded women as a detached spectator, fancying that he possessed a high degree of eclecticism in comparing the emotional phases of their existence which should be henceforth quite apart from his; love and marriage were mere episodes in a man’s life, and feeling no need of assuming either the duties or the responsibilities of the latter state he had not seriously contemplated the former as anything but a remote possibility. Besides, in a curious way, his life seemed to be linked with Margaret White’s; she continued to make claims upon him, to tacitly presuppose his devotion, and he had been too uncertain of himself, too indolent, too easily drifting with the tide to make any effort to free himself from the shackles of that old love affair. But all these things slipped out of mind as he sat listening to Rose’s song.
It was a simple Italian love-song, soft, caressing, gently plaintive, and peculiarly suited to her voice, but the air and the words were nothing compared with that voice. When Mrs. Allestree spoke of it, Fox had thought of it as the usual vocal accomplishment of a raw schoolgirl, somethingyoung and sweet, no doubt, but full of crudity and weakness. Instead, he was suddenly aware that he was listening to a voice which had a scope and richness beyond any that he had ever heard except in opera, and there were but few of the great singers who had such a gift as this. The thrill and exquisite freshness of its tones touched his very soul. He found himself listening with a keen feeling of depression; this gift of hers lifted her at once into another sphere than his, and he reflected that her beautiful body was an exquisite envelope for the spirit, her voice its divine interpretation.
His mind drifted back to the sweeter and more sacred relations of life, to those simple emotions which approach more nearly the divine. The complex affairs of the world, of politics, passion, intrigue, slipped away from him, and the holier aspects of a pure and devoted life took visible shape to his imagination in this young and beautiful girl. He had never fully appreciated his own susceptibility to the uplifting power of music, and the charm of her voice seemed more poignant because so unexpected; he lost himself in a delightful revery, the poet in him awoke with a thrill of pleasure,—the joy we feel in discovering a new power, a larger grasp; he was no longer consciousof his surroundings, but only of the supreme delight of her presence.
As she finished singing, her hands slipped from the keys into her lap and she turned and looked at him, smiling, expecting some applause, unconscious of the depth of his emotion. For a moment he said nothing, then he rose and held out his hand, his eyes eloquent of feeling.
“Exquisite!” he said, and she blushed with pleasure, knowing that he could not express his appreciation in words.
She laid her hand in his, rising too. “Thank you,” she exclaimed, “I’m so glad!”
As she spoke and while he still held her hand, intending to tell her how profoundly she had moved him, they were both suddenly aware of some one’s entrance, and turned to see Mrs. White standing just inside the drawing-room door. She had entered unannounced, and stopped abruptly as she came upon the little scene. She was elaborately dressed in black velvet with ermine furs, and an immense bizarre hat of violet velvet and chiffon with masses of violets on the wide brim. Under her arm was a toy Pomeranian as black as her gown and as glossy as silk, its little black head just appearing over her immense ermine muff. She had evaded the servant’s intention of announcingher, she had thought only of surprising Rose at her music and had come upon this! She stood still, a sudden spiritual perception sweeping over her and thrusting a blade of agony into her heart. Every vestige of color ran out of her cheeks, her gray eyes dilated. When they turned they surprised a look on her face which distorted its usual gayety and defiance. Then she thrust it aside with a great effort of will, with the force of a new and vivid determination, and greeted their amazement with her light little laugh.
“Caught!” she said, “next time I shall send a footman—or ring a bell!”
Rose came forward with a blushing but eager welcome, but Fox stood in a moment of awkwardness which both vexed and amused the woman. Men have no resources, she thought bitterly.
As for him he experienced a shock of dismay; he was trying to shake off a vague feeling which possessed him that he had no right to be there, that he owed allegiance still to Margaret, that her look, her manner, her very presence demanded it while, in fact, she had long ago forfeited all claims upon him.
Meanwhile she had led the way back to the library, driven Sandy away from her Pomeranian, and was seated in Rose’s chair, an elegant andconspicuously important figure, at once the centre of the stage; she had one of those personalities which are immediately predominant in society. “So,” she said lightly, “this is why William deserted my Sunday afternoons; I should have looked for him in vain!”
“It seems you are yourself a deserter,” Fox retorted, “this is your day at home.”
“You thought me safely anchored?” she laughed, with a little mocking intonation, caressing the Pomeranian’s ears; “I should be, but I had to make a call of condolence. Wicklow insisted; you know he’s so conventional and so determined upon being the popular public man! Mrs. Wingfield lost her grandmother two weeks ago so, of course, I must call and make my condolences!”
Fox laughed softly; her manner brought back the normal tone of affairs and he knew her moods to perfection. “Of course you condoled?” he said.
She shrugged her shoulder, looking at Rose. “My dear,” she said, “you will be interested; no mere man could understand. I’ve always been uncertain in my mind about the correct mourning for a grandmother; now I know,—it’s settled beyond appeal.”
“By Mrs. Wingfield?” Rose smiled her incredulity.
“By Mrs. Wingfield—it’s shrimp pink!” Margaret said, “she had on a tea-gown with lace ruffles; it was a violent, vivid shrimp pink, and her nose was red. Of course I said all manner of appropriate things. Everybody stared, then I made a grand finale and departed. She was furious. And Wicklow sends me out to make his way for him!” and she threw out her hands with a little gesture of mock despair.
“Why do you tease that poor soul so?” Rose protested laughing, “she falls an easy prey, too. I heard they were going abroad soon.”
“In three months,” Margaret said, “to the Riviera; they tried Switzerland, she told me, a year ago, but she found ‘it wasn’t really fashionable.’”
“Margaret!” Rose shook an admonishing finger, “you make her say such things, you know you do!”
Mrs. White raised her eyebrows, her eyes haggard. “One would suppose me a Sapphira. She truly said it and I kept on asking her what she said; she repeated it twice,—they were all listening of course, and M. de Caillou tried to look plaintive.”
“He’s solemn enough anyway, Margaret,” Fox said, amused; “he might well be shocked at your levity.”
“Oh, I always want to make him sit up and beg for a lump of sugar,” she retorted scornfully.
As she spoke she rose and went to the window, looking out with an abruptness of manner which seemed to take no account of their presence. She was struggling with an overwhelming dread; with the keen intuition of unhappiness she read Fox’s mood, and her very soul cried out against it. But she was an actress, an actress of long training and accomplishment. She turned carelessly, lifting her Pomeranian to her shoulder and resting her cheek against its long black fur. “There’s my motor back,” she said, catching a glimpse of it through the long window in the drawing-room. “I’m going home to receive Wicklow’s public. Can I borrow Fox, Rose?”
Rose turned easily, mistress of herself and aware of his annoyance, keenly alive to the possibility that his old love for Margaret might still be a factor in his life. “I’m afraid I haven’t asked Mr. Fox to take a cup of tea,” she said laughing; “father is late and you know we dineearly on Sundays; we’re very unconventional and old-fashioned.”
Margaret was trailing slowly to the door, her velvet draperies and her long ermine stole seeming heavy and burdensome on her slender figure. “Oh, I know,” she retorted, “you’re Old Testament Christians; I’m always expecting to see the scapegoat caught in your fence-railing! In spite of my shortcomings though, you are going to sing for me some Sunday, Rose, and make my sinners think they’ve found the gate of Paradise.”
But Rose shook her head, laughing. “Ask father,” she said; “he declares that I shall not exhibit!”