Chapter 14

She went at once, and, in spite of her doubts, light-heartedly. He made her feel, as the night did, that here in this present life, as in the outer universe, are great spaces still unexplored. Everything had possibilities. Sprinkle new pollen on a flower and its fruit would take on other forms. Stretch out a hand and you might be led into unguessed delights, even after you were dulled with pain. Sleeping in the air, even, were forces to nourish and revive, dormant only because we do not call upon them. She smiled into the night, and her heart called believingly.

XIX

Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, in the shade of the vines. It was rather early in the morning, and Electra was about her methodical tasks. Billy Stark sat reading the paper, but nevertheless not failing, from time to time, to look up and give his old friend a smile. Madam Fulton could not answer it. She felt estranged in a world where she had failed to learn the values.

"Billy," she said at length, "do you think she is right?"

"Who?"

"Electra. She says the money I got out of that pesky book is tainted money. Is it?"

Billy folded his paper and hung it over the veranda rail. His face began to pucker into a smile, but, gazing at Madam Fulton, it became apparent to him that she was really troubled. She even looked as if she had not slept. Her faint pinkness was overlaid by a jaded ivory. Her eyes interrogated him with a forlorn pleading. All his chivalry rose in arms.

"Hang the book, Florrie!" he said. "Forget it. You've had your fling with it. You wanted fun and you got it. Stop thinking about it."

"But," she persisted, "is it really true? Have I done a shocking thing, and is it monstrous to use the money?"

"You've been exceedingly naughty," said Billy. He eyed her with anxiety. "You ought to have your hands slapped, of course. Electra's done it, so far as I can see. So now let's get over crying and go out and jump rope."

"It isn't so much the book nor the money nor Electra. It's because I can't help wondering whether I'm a moral idiot. Do you think I am, Billy?"

"I think you're the gamest old girl that ever was, if you want to know. Let me have the horse put into the phaeton, Florrie, and we'll go out and jog awhile."

But she was musing. Suddenly he saw how old she looked.

"It's always been so, Billy. I never was able to see things as other people saw them. These rules they make such a pother about never seemed so vital to me. It's all a part of life, seems to me. Go ahead and live, that's what we're in for. Growing things just grow, don't they? They don't stop and take photographs of themselves on the twenty-third day of every month. Now, do they?"

"Florrie," said her old friend, still watching her, "I'll tell you what you do. You just run away with me and come to London. We've got fifteen good years before us yet, if we take 'em soberly."

She seemed to be considering. Her face lighted.

"I could almost do it," she owned. "Electra's having me here helps out a lot, but I could almost do it-on my polluted gains."

Billy Stark looked into the distance. In his earlier years he had loved to ride and take his fences well, even when they loomed too high. He could not remember many great challenges in life; but what he had recognized, he had not refused. Everything he had met like an honest gentleman.

"Florrie," he said, "I shan't want to leave you here in Electra's clutches. You come--and marry me."

She laughed a little. It was sadly done, but the pink came back into her cheeks.

"As true as I am a living sinner, Billy," she said, "I'd do it, if I were half sure how we were coming out."

"Coming out?"

"Yes. If I thought I should be pretty vigorous up to the end, and then die in my chair, like a lady. Yes, I'd do it, and thank ye, too. But a million things might happen to me. I might be palsied and helpless on your hands, head nodding, deaf as a post--damn, Billy! I could swear."

"I might give out myself," he said generously. "You might be the one to tote the burden."

The old lady laughed again.

"The amount of it is, Billy, we're afraid. Own up. Now aren't we?"

Billy thought it over.

"I'm not so sure of that," he said contentiously, "I'm not prepared to say I'm afraid. Nor you either, Florrie. Come on, old girl. Chance it."

"I'll think it over," said Madam Fulton. The brightness had come back to her eye. So much was gained, at any rate, Billy told himself. "There's that handsome girl coming, Tom's widow.--Electra!"

Electra's scales were beginning, with a serious emphasis.

"I love to see them together," Madam Fulton said. "She makes Electra mad as hops."

Rose was coming very fast. She had the walk of women well trained, for the stage perhaps, the spring and rhythm of art superadded to nature's willingness. She wore no hat, and the sun made her bright hair brighter and brought out the tragic meaning in her face. She had been thinking in the night, and this morning forbade herself to falter. All through her fluctuating moods there had been a division of joy and dread. The perplexing questions of her past lay heavily upon her; but when she thought of Osmond, she was light as air. He made everything easy, his simplicity, his implied truth. She felt a great loyalty to what seemed good to him. Her conscious life throughout the night and morning became a reaching out of hands to him in the passionate asseveration that she would be true.

Electra came, in answer to Madam Fulton's call. She, too, was grave, but with a hint of expectation on her face. She had been looking for MacLeod. Since their meeting, she had done nothing but wait for him again. Rose was running up the steps. She glanced from one to another of them with a recognizing swiftness, and when Billy Stark rose and placed a chair for her, she thanked him with a word, and took her place behind it, her hands upon it, so that she faced them all. There was a momentary hush. Madam Fulton put up her eyeglasses and gazed at her curiously, as if she were a species of tableau arranged for notice. Billy Stark felt uneasily as if this were one of the occasions for him to take himself away. Rose spoke rapidly, in her beautifully modulated voice, but without emotion.

"I want to tell you something. I was not his wife."

Electra was the one to show dramatic feeling. She threw her hands up slightly.

"I knew it." Her lips formed the words. Her triumphant glance went from one to another, saying, "I told you so."

Rose stood there with perfect self-possession, very white now and with the chilled look that accompanies difficult resolution. She glanced at Madam Fulton, and the old lady met her gaze eagerly with an unbelieving query.

"For heaven's sake!" she ejaculated, "Electra, why don't you speak?"

"I lived with Tom Fulton as his wife," said Rose, in the same moving voice. She might have been engaged in the rehearsal of a difficult part. No one looking at her could have said whether she duly weighed what she was announcing. "I called myself his wife because I thought I had a right to. Other people would have called me a disgraced woman."

Billy Stark now, without waiting to find the step, walked off the edge of the veranda and was presently to be seen, if any one had had eyes for him, lighting a cigar in the peaceful garden. Madam Fulton had spoken on the heels of these last words. She brightened into the most cordial animation.

"This is the most extraordinary story I ever heard in my life," she commented, with relish. "Sit down, my dear, and tell us all about it."

"There is nothing more to tell," said Rose. Her eyes traveled to Electra's face, and stayed there, though the unfriendly triumph of it shook her resolution. "I had to say this because I must say, too, that I do not want money and I will not take it. I do not want to be known as Tom Fulton's wife. I was not his wife."

"You wanted it a week ago," said Electra involuntarily. She had made up her mind not to speak, not to be severe, not to be anything that would destroy the picture Markham MacLeod must have of her in his own mind; but the words escaped her.

"That was before--" Rose stopped. She had almost said it was before her father came, but it was borne floodingly in upon her that this was not alone the reason. It was before she had felt this great allegiance to Osmond Grant.

"Your father confirms you," said Electra, yielding to her overpowering curiosity. "He says you were my brother's wife."

"My father"--Rose held her head higher--"I have nothing to do with that," she concluded. "It is the truth that I was never married."

Electra turned away and went into the house. They heard her step in the neighboring room. She had paused there by the piano, considering, in her desire to be mistress of herself, whether she should not go on with her music as if nothing had happened. But the thought of Rose and her mastery of the keys forbade that, as display, and she turned away and went upstairs, with great dignity, though there was no one by to consider the fashion of it. There she sat down by the window, to watch for Markham MacLeod. Madam Fulton had been regarding Rose with an exceedingly friendly smile. The girl looked tired, though her muscles had relaxed with Electra's going.

"Come here, my dear, and sit down," said the old lady, indicating a chair. Rose shook her head. Then, as she found herself trembling, she did sit down, and Madam Fulton laid a hand upon her knee. "You are a very interesting child," she said, with an approving emphasis. "Now what in the world made you fall in love with Tom Fulton? Did he seem very nice to you?"

"I can't talk about him," said Rose. It seemed to her as if now his shadow might be lifted from her. "It is over. He is dead."

"Of course he's dead. It was the best thing he could do. Well, well, my dear! What made you come over here and play this little comedy for us?"

The girl's eyes had filled with tears.

"I can't tell you," she answered. It was easy to defend her cause to Osmond; not to this eager creature who wanted to read her like a curious book. But Madam Fulton was almost whispering. She looked as if she had something of the utmost importance to communicate.

"I ask you, my dear, because I am thoroughly bad myself, and it's beyond me to understand why it's so important whether we are bad or good. And I thought maybe if you could tell me--did you know you were bad before you came and Electra found you out?"

Rose was looking kindly into the vivid face.

"No," she said, "I didn't think I was bad."

"That's it!" cried the old lady, in high triumph. "We don't any of us know it till they find us out. My dear, it's the most awful system--now, isn't it? You go on as innocent as you please, and suddenly they tell you you're a criminal. It's as if you made up your mouth to whistle, walking along the road, and somebody pounces on you and tells you whistling's against the law and claps you into jail."

Rose was smiling at her now, forgetful, for the moment, of her own coil, Madam Fulton seemed to her so pathetically young and innocent of everything save untamed desires.

"What under heavens does it mean?" Madam Fulton was insisting, with the greatest irritation.

"I must go now," said Rose. "I had to tell you."

Madam Fulton kept the detaining hand upon her knee.

"But where are you going?" she insisted. "Back to France?"

"No, I shall stay in America. I shall sing."

"Do you think anybody'll want to hear you?"

"They'll love to hear me!"

Madam Fulton eyed her smilingly.

"You're a brazen hussy," she said. "But of all things, why did you come here with your little comedy in your hand, if you didn't mean to play it out?"

"I did mean to play it," said Rose, laying her head back against the high rail of the chair. She closed her eyes, for again she felt the tears coming. "But I--got sick of it."

Madam Fulton nodded confirmingly.

"That's precisely it," she agreed. "We do get sick of it. We get sick of conduct, good or bad. They don't, the good ones. They go on clambering, one step after another, up that pyramid, and peering over the edge to see us playing in the sand, and occasionally, if they can get a brick, they heave it at us."

"Who are the good ones?" Rose asked languidly. "Electra?"

"Electra? She's neither hot nor cold. But she's of the kind that made the system in the first place."

"Grannie is good," said Rose absently.

"Bessie Grant? Yes, she's God's anointed, if there is a God. My dear, I love to talk with you, almost as much as with Billy Stark. You come and stay with me next winter."

Rose smiled.

"There's Electra," she reminded her.

"Bless you, Electra and I don't live together! I only visit her here half the year, to save my pocketbook. That's another proof of my general unworthiness. I flout her and mad her all the time. She wouldn't do that to me, but she'd drive me to drink trying not to. No, I've got a little apartment in town, like a hollow tree, and I crawl into it in the winter. You come, too, and I'll introduce you to all the people I know, and you can make 'em listen while you sing."

Rose was looking at her in a moved warmth and wonder.

"How kind you are!" she breathed.

"No! no! Only when you said you were a liar, and worse, I suddenly felt the most extraordinary interest in you. I feel as if you might speak my language. I don't know that I want to do anything bad, but I don't want to be kept so nervous trying to decide whether things are bad or not. You come, my dear--unless I marry Billy Stark. I may do that. I must, if it will plague Electra."

Rose gave her a quick glance, at once withdrawn, and while she allowed the last possibility to sink into the depths of her mind, Madam Fulton was interrogating her again.

"You don't think it is possible," she was urging, with the insistence of one who sees incredible good fortune, "you don't suppose you haven't any moral sense?"

She seemed to hang upon the answer. Rose, in spite of herself and the unhappy moment, laughed.

"I hoped I had," she rejoined, "but I don't believe I ever thought much about it."

Madam Fulton nodded quite gayly.

"That's it!" she cried. "Don't you see you haven't? When they have it, they're always thinking about it. It's like a cinder in the eye. My dear, you're just as bad as I am, and I thank my stars I've met you."

But all this touch and go was a strange, poor sequel to the task of that confession. It had all turned out very small beer indeed, except so far as Electra was concerned. Electra, Rose was convinced, in a moment of sadly mirthful fancy, was upstairs setting her judgments in order and decorously glad to have been proven right.

"I'll go now," she said, rising. She felt very tired with it all. "I've told you."

"But come again, my dear," the old lady insisted. "Be sure you come again. You are so understanding, I shall miss you sadly. Come every day."

Rose went down the garden path and noted, with some irony, that Billy Stark, still smoking, turned away into the grape arbor. It looked like the shyness of decorum. She could hardly know that Billy felt unable to bear any more revelations from womenfolk. And now she said to herself, "I shall have to tell grannie and I shall have to tell Peter."

Opportunity was easy, for Peter was at that moment coming whistling along the road on the way to Electra's. When she saw him, her purpose failed. He looked so boyish, so free and happy-hearted. How could she give him a sordid secret to keep, in place of their admiring comradeship?

"Where is my father?" she asked him, when they met and Peter had pulled off his hat and salaamed before her.

"Gone down to the plantation to see Osmond."

She took fright.

"To see Osmond! How does my father know anything about him? How does he dare--"

"Osmond sent for him," said Peter, turning to walk with her. He was tossing up his stick and catching it, in love of the day. "It's the first human being Osmond has expressed an interest in. But I don't wonder. Everybody wants to see the chief."

"Why should he have sent?" she repeated to herself.

"I'll tell you something," continued Peter. "The chief will tell you when you see him. He has been summoned."

"My father?"

"Yes. He is needed."

"Where?"

"He won't tell me. But it's urgent. It means canceling his engagements here. Of course there's but one supposition."

"Russia?"

He nodded.

"I wish I could go with him," he said impetuously.

She looked at him, and his face was glowing. She had seen that look so many times on other faces, that wistful longing for the unnamed beautiful. It was what Markham MacLeod was always calling out in faces. They might be young, they might be the faces of those who had suffered long experience, but always it was those who were hungry, either with the hunger of youth or the delay of hope, the cruelty of time. He seemed to be the great necromancer, the great promiser. Could such promises come to naught?

"To leave here?" she suggested. "To leave--" she hesitated.

"I shouldn't leave Electra," said Peter simply. "When I met you, I was going to ask her to go with me."

She stopped and held out her hand to him.

"Go," she said. "Go to her and ask her. I wish you luck, Peter--dear Peter!"

He did not look altogether a happy lover, as he stood holding her hand. He gazed at her, she thought, sadly, as if he dreamed of things that could not be. What was it in youth that made everything into twilight, even with the drum and fife calling to wars and victories? She was impatient with it, with deceiving life itself that promised and then lied. She took her hand away.

"Good-by, Peter," she said, sadly now in her turn, because it occurred to her that after Peter should have seen Electra, he would never again be her own good comrade. He would know. She left him standing there looking after her, and then, when he found she would not loiter, he went on his way. But Peter did not toss his stick up now. He walked slowly, and thought of what he meant to do.

They seemed to be walking with him, one on each side, Rose and Electra. It was chiefly the thought of Electra, as it had moulded him from year to year while he had been absent from her; but it was the delicate presence of the other woman, so wonderful by nature and so equipped with all the arts of life that the pleasure of her was almost pain. They seemed to keep a hand upon him, one through his fealty to her and the other by compelling and many-sided beauty.

XX

Electra, in her excitement, found herself unable to stay upstairs at her accustomed tasks. She had to know what grandmother thought of this ill-bred woman. But speeding down, she saw grandmother in the garden path with Billy Stark. There they walked intimately arm-in-arm, and grandmother talked. There was something eager in the pose of her head. Evidently what she had heard quite pleased her, if only because it was some new thing. And there was Peter at the door. Instantly the light sprang renewed into Electra's eyes. Peter would do still better than grandmother to confirm her triumph, though at the moment even she charged herself to be lofty in her judgments and temperate in expressing them. Peter did not look at all like one who had himself heard unlovely news. His face glowed. There were points of light in his dark eyes. Rose had left them there, and Electra, with the sick certainty of the jealous, knew it. They went silently into the library, Peter holding, as well as he might, the lax hand hanging at her side. In the morning light of the room they faced each other, and she asked her question, the one that, unbidden, came leaping to her lips.

"Did you meet her?"

He knew whom she meant, for his thought, too, was full of her.

"Yes," he said, and then swept even Rose aside as deflecting him from his purpose. "Electra, I have decided to go back to France."

Immediately she thought she saw why. Rose was going and he had to follow.

"What did she tell you?" she cried sharply. The pang that came astonished her, it was so savage. Even in the haste of the moment, she had time for a passing surprise that she could be so moved by Peter. He was looking at her with innocent perplexity.

"Rose?" he said. "Nothing. I told her I was coming here and she--" He paused, for he was on the point of adding, "She sent me." Peter could see how ill-judged that would be.

Electra, her proud glance on him, was considering, balancing probabilities. With his artist's eye he saw how handsome she was, how like, in the outer woman, to his imperial lady. Such spirit in her could only, it seemed, be spent for noble ends.

"Has she told you?" asked Electra, and there was something, he saw, beyond what he suspected. Her voice rang out against her will: "No, she hasn't. She means, for some reason, not to tell you. But she has had to tell me."

Peter was staring at her.

"Has something happened to her?" he asked quickly. "I must know."

That mysterious rage she was so unwilling to recognize got possession of her again.

"It means a great deal to you," she breathed.

"Of course it does," said Peter honestly. "Don't keep me dangling, Electra."

Electra's mouth seemed to harden before his eyes. She looked like some noble and beautiful image of justice or a kindred virtue.

"She thinks I shall not tell you," she declared. "But I shall. It is no more right for you to be deceived than it was right for me. I shall tell you."

"Don't tell me anything she wouldn't wish," said Peter earnestly. He began to see the need of holding down the flaming spirit in her, lest it consume too much. "If there is anything she wants me to know, she will tell me."

"My instinct was right," said Electra, now with equal steadiness. "She was not his wife. Tom never married her."

Peter was tired of that issue. His controlled manner showed it.

"I know what you think about that, Electra," he said. "You see we don't agree. We mustn't talk about it."

Electra answered him with a gracious certainty.

"That was what she told me, Peter. She told grandmother, too. For some reason she has abandoned her deception. She has a reason for ending it. That was what she said. Tom never married her."

Peter's face was blazing, the indignant blood in it, the light darting from his eyes. He straightened. His hands clenched. His voice was thick with anger.

"Tom never married her?"

"That was what she told us."

"The damned scoundrel!"

Electra had been regarding him in serene certainty of her own position and her ability to hold it. But human nature flashed out in her, the loyalty of blood.

"Are you speaking of my brother?" she demanded.

"I am speaking of your precious brother. And I might have known it." Ire, gathering in him, suffused his face anew. "I might have known Tom Fulton would do the dastardly trick in any given situation. Of course he never married her."

"You don't seem to think of her," she reminded him, under her breath.

"Not think of her! What else am I thinking of? Poor child! poor child!"

Electra was always having to feel alone in the world. Art left her desolate when other people sang and painted and she could only praise. Love and the fierce loyalty she coveted were always failing her and lavishing themselves elsewhere. She had one momentary impulse to speak for herself.

"Do you wonder now," she said, "that I wouldn't accept her."

"Not accept her, when she had been hurt? Good God, Electra! how monstrous it is. You, a delicate woman, fully believed he had wronged another woman as lovely as yourself, and yet the only impression it made on you was that you could not accept her."

Electra resisted the impulse to turn away or put her hands to her face; the tears were coming. She held herself rigid for a moment, choking down the shuddering of her nerves, lest her lips quiver and betray her.

"I suppose,"--the words were almost inaudible, yet he heard them,--"I suppose that is because you have lived so long in France."

"What, Electra?" He spoke absently, his mind with Rose.