VIII
ROSE let the bridle lie loosely on her horse’s neck as they halted at the elbow of the path. Rock Creek, leaping over its gray boulders and flowing between them with little swirls of foam, comes rushing madly past, slips under the trailing branches of a weeping birch and suddenly widening, hushes its tumult and drops placidly below the ford, where, in summer, in a wide shallow basin, the swan and the little white ducks lie. The scene was wild; the untouched forest rose behind them, its bare gray limbs against the sky, the black green of an occasional spruce or cedar breaking the monotony above the brown-leafed earth and closing the long vistas of stripped tree trunks which stand on the shoulder of the hill in serried ranks in the teeth of the north wind, like soldiers, with their faces to the foe. Below, the stream gurgled and murmured; on the farther bank the dense growth of young maples showed here and there a scarlet bud. The air was sweet, redolent with fresh pineand the promise of the spring; overhead the crows were flying by twos and tens and twenties, lost at last in the soft blue distance.
Fox, who was riding with Rose, dismounted and turning back the dead leaves on a sunny slope found a single spray of arbutus. She uttered a little exclamation of pleasure, holding out her hand.
He laughed. “When I was a boy I always found the first wild flowers,” he said; “I knew just where the blood-root grew and the anemone. Since then I’ve been making speeches at the primaries and getting votes for my party. There’s no comparison between the two pursuits!”
She had the arbutus in her hand and gave him a challenging glance; she began to understand him better, but her convictions were too strong to be subdued. “You mean that you’ve given up your life for politics, just to be a part of a machine?”
He assented, still smiling as he remounted, and the horses moved on at a walk.
“I can’t see why you think it noble to be merely a politician,” she persisted.
“Am I?” his amused eyes met hers.
“Yes!” she retorted, “a statesman is above his party, before it; he guides, moves, sways it.You like to call yourself part of a machine! You don’t vote against a bill which concerns the party—that’s being a politician!”
“But I can’t betray my party,” he objected, unmoved.
“You should be independent of it.”
“You can’t judge,” he argued, with his teasing laugh, “your coat is of another color.”
“Well, at least it isn’t Joseph’s!” she exclaimed vexed.
“You think I can’t be trusted?” He pursued the subject with a boyish enjoyment of her red cheek and kindling eye.
“I didn’t mean that—of course party men can be honest, but I don’t call it the highest honesty to vote against your own convictions for any party.”
“Yet that is what I did on a bill the other day,” mused Fox, “because the party opposed it.”
“Was it a good bill?”
“Excellent.”
“And you voted against it when you believed in it?” indignantly.
“I’m the guilty creature,” he replied, laughter in his eyes but his face sober.
Rose bit her lip.
“You see it’s a bad moment to make a splitin the party; next year is the Presidential campaign,” he continued provokingly.
She could not restrain her indignation. “Aren’t you ashamed to go against your own conscience for that?” she cried; “it isn’t worthy of you.”
“Then you think better things of me?” he argued softly, “you see a chance for my redemption?”
She looked up and met his glance fully but with a sudden feeling of confusion. “It is because you are meant for so much greater things that I speak,” she said finally; “I think you will be a greater man than you are now at last.”
His manner softened at once, with that subtle gentleness which no man knew better how to use. “Your belief should make me so!” he said gravely; “a man might accomplish much to justify your belief in him!”
She averted her face, her lip trembling. Around her the woodland seemed suddenly transfigured, the tumult of the stream, breaking here in little cataracts, scarcely leaped more wildly than her pulses; before them the long road narrowed in a beautiful perspective where trailing branches locked their spectral arms and the evergreen honeysuckle hung on gray rocks.
Fox leaned forward in his saddle, trying to meet her eyes, but seeing only the soft curve of her cheek and throat. “Will you try to believe in me?” he asked, with that new sweetness of tone which took the sting out of his jests.
But she had touched her horse lightly and he shot ahead, trotting down the long road, his rider swaying and bending slightly to avoid an occasional sweeping bough. Fox followed quickly, and overtaking her, the two horses galloped together while their riders relapsed for a while into a significant silence.
“Did you know that my portrait is nearly finished?” Rose said at last; “I think that Robert has painted it out and in again just five times.”
“It isn’t in the least like you,” retorted Fox sharply, “he has made a failure.”
“Oh, no, every one likes it!” protested Rose.
“Not at all,” said Fox; more calmly; “I don’t—neither does Allestree.”
“He has too high a standard for his work,” she replied laughing, “but I hoped you liked it.”
“No picture of you could ever please me,” he retorted significantly; “when I shut my eyes I can still see your face. Allestree’s wits have beenwool-gathering; he has made an image, nothing more—he—”
Rose interrupted laughing. “Please don’t tell father; he likes it, and Mrs. Vermilion was so pleased that she and Mr. Vermilion have ordered life-sized portraits of the entire family,en masseand singly; Robert’s fortune is made.”
“The Vermilions are parvenus,” said Fox, with a shrug; “poor Bob!”
“And why poor Bob?” she objected lightly; “it seems to me the greatest good fortune.”
“Does it?” Fox looked down at the creek musingly; “and yet I say, ‘poor Bob.’”
She colored, scarcely conscious of the cause of her blush, unless Fox’s dreamy sympathy for Allestree touched a responsive chord in her own bosom when she remembered how lightly she had thought of him and his unspoken but candid devotion to her; a little thing, a word, a gesture reproached her with ingratitude, for how easily she had passed over all those years and forgotten Allestree in the charm of his cousin’s presence! Then she remembered all the stories she had heard of Fox’s love for Margaret Ward before she married White; steadily as she had tried to forget them, to cease to think of his past where it touched another woman’s life, the stories suddenly tooktangible shape and it seemed to her that Margaret was concerned with his existence and she—a mere intruder. Rose, whose heart had been hitherto as untouched as a child’s, shrank with infinite shyness and reluctance from those old dead leaves of passion which had never yet sullied the whiteness of her soul.
Some intuition, perhaps, of her feeling warned him, for he began to tell her stories of his boyhood and gradually spoke of his home, his dead mother, his father who had been a distinguished jurist, and so, little by little, won her from her mood. His gentleness, his kindling speech, the tenderness of his eyes thrilled her again with that wonderful attraction which was part of the man’s genius and which even his enemies found incontrovertible.
He told her of his mother’s gentleness, her profound religion, her meekness compared with his father’s fierce severity, an Old Testament Christian who beat his boys if they did not go to church three times on Sunday and also to meeting on Thursday nights. “And out of that home I grew up a heathen and a publican,” he said with a smile.
Rose looked steadily before her; far off the road dwindled, and she saw Sandy racing a squirrelto a tree. “How can you?” she said at last, in a low voice.
“Confess it?” He leaned forward and touched her hand; “will you convert me?”
She looked up, their eyes met with the shock of sudden feeling. Her lip trembled like a child’s. “I’m not wise enough,” she replied simply; “you would end by laughing at me!”
His face sobered. “Am I so utterly unworthy?” he demanded.
She was silent; the water rushed and murmured beside them, and the still bright atmosphere seemed to palpitate with some great mystery; were all barriers really disappearing and a new sweet understanding emerging from the challenge of their two opposing temperaments? Her heart trembled and beat fast at the thought; it was so wild, so improbable, so dangerously sweet. Then she made one great effort to master her emotions, to be herself. She schooled herself to meet his eyes again, with that new subtle sweetness of expression in them, that delicate understanding of her mood which frightened her!
“Who am I that I should judge?” she said tremulously, with a charming smile, full of youth, simplicity, unconscious confession.
Something in the very girlishness and purityof her face, and her unguarded mood smote Fox with sudden humility; he felt himself the veriest worldling and sinner compared with her. What right had he to thrust his life into hers? His hand closed over hers with unconscious force. “Who are you?” he repeated passionately, “my guardian angel.”
Rose smiled; there were tears in her eyes but his emotion had the effect of crystallizing hers, she understood her own heart at last, and with a woman’s intuition began to hide it; she withdrew her hand gently and the horses went on.
Neither spoke; both had been deeply moved and there was a new happiness in mere companionship. It was one of those rare moments, in the higher relations between man and woman, when a new situation emerges from the old, a more beautiful understanding is established, and the exquisite gentleness of his mood was a revelation to her of a phase of his character which she had only dimly perceived.
The road had left the creek now and following the rising ground lay through a growth of stunted cedars; the stillness was broken suddenly by the full sweet note of a robin.
Rose turned with kindling eyes. “Hark!” she exclaimed softly; “doesn’t that make you thinkof apple-blossoms? There must be periwinkles somewhere!”
The spell was broken and he smiled, turning to look back for the singer. At the same moment Sandy stopped and pricked his ears.
There was a full sound in the air, a throbbing and buzz of some machine and a big motor-car swung suddenly around the curve and bore down upon them. The road was narrow and both riders had to turn out on to the short turf beside the cedars. The car came on, and then abruptly slackening its speed it stopped a few yards beyond them and some one called to them.
Rose looked back startled and met Margaret’s eyes. Mrs. White was leaning on the door of the car and beckoning to them, her great crimson hat flaming against the dark background. Meanwhile Louis Berkman had slipped down from the farther side and came up to Rose smiling, hat in hand.
“I feel myself as fortunate as Balaam’s ass,” he said gayly, “since I, too, have met an angel in the way!”
“Never mind, Rose,” interposed Margaret laughing; “Louis is a poet and he’s had a terrible experience, he isn’t quite himself!”
“I don’t in the least mind being called an angel;I rather like it,” Rose retorted with amusement; “it is only a little startling. What has happened, Mr. Berkman?”
“Nothing of the least importance,” he answered, a trifle stiffly; “only Mrs. White is laughing at me.”
Margaret still leaned on the door of the motor-car, her face as white as paper against her flame-colored hat, but her laugh was light and careless; the fierce pain tugging at her heart demanded a mask and she wore it gayly and well. “He went to the White House last night,” she exclaimed maliciously.
“What new form of insanity overtook you, Berkman?” asked Fox; “went to a crush?—and it wasn’t compulsory either!”
“Oh, I’ve repented,” Berkman retorted, with a harsh laugh; “I’ll never be taken alive again!”
“What happened?” Rose asked, laughing softly, her hand on her saddle and the reins hanging loose while the horse cropped the dry turf and dead leaves.
Margaret’s laugh interrupted again. “Let me tell them, Louis,” she said.
Berkman shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of assent, coloring a little in spite of himself.
“He got an invitation without the cabalisticsign,” Margaret began, her eyes dancing, “and, in the ignorance of his soul, he went. He was an hour and a half getting in,—you know how they come—two and two—like the couples that left the ark. They had to keep on the carpet; he says one of the ushers kept shouting: ‘move on—keep on the carpet, don’t scratch the floors!’ Louis, did you wear hobnails or sabots?”
“I wish I’d worn overshoes!” he retorted disgustedly; “fancy it—I’ve been received at Buckingham Palace and in Berlin and Vienna; it’s the first time I was ever told ‘to keep off the grass!’”
“Your own fault!” laughed Margaret, “you should have come to me. He never got into the Blue Room at all! Tell us what you saw in the East Room, Louis?” she mocked.
“What I saw?” Berkman drew a deep breath of indignation; “a damned lot of goats like myself; the sheep were figuratively roped off in sacred precincts—I saw you going to supper.”
“Served you right!” laughed Fox; “no sane person goes without the open sesame—unless forced to. What will happen when your personality is revealed? You can trust Margaret for that. You’ll be invited to lunch.”
“Sha’n’t go!” said Berkman angrily.
“Hoity-toity! you’ll have to!” cried Margaret teasingly, “it’s in the nature of a police summons, you know!”
“I’ll get out of jurisdiction! I’ll go hang myself,” Berkman retorted, with a reluctant laugh; and then to Rose: “I’ve just seen your portrait, Miss Temple, and it seems Allestree has established his fame; it is beautiful, as it should be.”
“I’m so glad you like it,” she replied; “Mr. Fox has just been abusing it.”
“He’s a notorious unbeliever!” said Berkman; “don’t mind him; it’s inspired. Mrs. Vermilion hopes to look like it!”
“With the immortal bonnet?” said Fox laughing, but with a glance which perceived every detail of Rose’s beautiful young face and figure radiant in the sunshine.
Margaret saw it; a shudder of perception passed over her and she drew back into her corner of the motor-car with a little sigh of agony, dragged from her very heart, but happily unnoticed. Her whole being rebelled against fate, against submission, against loss!
Berkman was still laughing, uncovered, at Rose’s bridle, and Fox sat listening, idly amused. The clear atmosphere cut every detail out,—the low growth of cedars, the sweeping slope of thedun colored hill behind it, the dark ribbon of woods in the hollow where the creek flowed unseen, the long vista of the road which seemed to meet the sky.
Margaret called to them. “Good-bye,” she said, “I’m engaged to receive thecanaille—as Madame de Caillou calls it—at five. Come, Louis, or else we’ll send you to the East Room again.”
“The gods forbid!” he exclaimed, and ran to the motor amid more gay laughter.
A moment later Margaret’s white face smiled at them as she was whirled away.