Chapter 19

"What time is breakfast, grannie?"

"Eight o'clock."

The next morning when they had assembled in the dining-room, grannie, standing with a hand on the back of her chair, waited. Her face had a flush of expectation. Her eyes sought the window.

"There!" she said, "he's coming. Peter, I've moved your place. Osmond will sit opposite me."

"Osmond!" Peter almost shouted it.

"Yes," said grannie, in what seemed pride. "I thought Osmond would be here."

Osmond came in, a workman in his blouse, fresh from cold water and the night's stern counseling. Rose, hearing his step, could not, for a minute, look at him, because he had once forbidden it. The commonplace room, with the morning light in it, swam before her. After he had spoken to grannie, he walked up to her and offered his hand. Then their eyes met. Hers were full of tears, and through their blur, even, his face looked stern and beautiful.

"I wanted to see you," Osmond said; and she answered, feeling his kindness as from some dim distance,--

"To say good-by?"

"No, not to say good-by."

Then they sat down, and there was no constraint, but a good deal of talking; and, strangely, it was Osmond who led it. He did not touch upon things of wider interest than his own garden ground, where he was at home. He had pleasant chronicles of the work to give grannie, and MacLeod took a genial interest. Only Peter sat, wide-eyed at the turn things were taking, and Rose grew paler and left her plate untouched. She did not know whether it was joy that moved her, or grief at parting with him. Only the morning seemed like no other morning. When they rose from the table, Osmond turned at once to MacLeod.

"May I see you for a minute or two?" he asked. "We'll go into the west room, grannie."

While Peter started forward, as if to help or hinder as the case might be when he understood it, Osmond had led the way, still with the air of being master of the house, and Rose stood with downcast eyes, as if miserably conscious that the interview would concern her. Inside the west room, cool in the morning, and with a restful bareness about it, a retreat where people went to sleep or read, Osmond turned at once to the man whom, at that moment, he delighted in as a worthy foe. Osmond had never known before the keen, salt taste of victory. All his triumphs up to this time had been as slow as the growth of a tree that recovers itself after lopped branches. Now he felt the anticipation of combat.

"We needn't sit down," he said rapidly, yet with self-possession. He looked taller, even, MacLeod thought with wonder. His dark eyes were full of fire. "I love your daughter," said Osmond, in a full, steady voice. He chose the words the poets had taught him to use simply, and also, perhaps, the novels he had been reading since he had known Rose.

"My dear fellow!" cried MacLeod expansively. And then, remembering the peculiar circumstances of the case, "I'm sorry, devilish sorry for you."

Osmond smiled. He felt capable, if there were no other way of doing it, of wresting the lady's fate from evil chances with his hands. Yet he liked MacLeod to resist. It made the fight more splendid.

"She must not go back with you," he said. "You are not to insist on it. Don't insist. That will save us all trouble."

MacLeod had gathered himself together. He put his hand in his pocket and meditatively brought out his pipe, fingering the case with an absent and lingering interest, as if he felt the call to a lost rite.

"My dear fellow," he said again, "this is too bad. I'm sorry."

"Rose will remain here," said Osmond briefly. "My grandmother will take the kindest care of her."

"But I can't allow it, you know," said the father, still with tolerance. "Rose is due in Paris. We're both due there. It's very good of you, very hospitable and all that,--but you mustn't carry this Lochinvar business too far. It's too rapid a world, you know. I'm too busy, my dear fellow. That's the truth."

Osmond stood gazing at him reflectively, not in doubt or hesitation, but because he liked the look of so big an animal, and considering that it would be charming to see the creature yield. Osmond had not sharpened his weapons or even decided what they were. He only knew MacLeod must bend, and that there was in himself a big, even an invincible force to make him.

"Rose is not going," he said quietly.

Then MacLeod laughed. The morning was hurrying by and this vaporing was a hindrance to be shuffled off. "You say you love my daughter?" he remarked, with a veiled meaning in the tone. "What then? You don't propose to marry her?" The tone said further, "You don't tell me you propose to marry anybody?"

"I only said I loved her," returned Osmond simply. "I thought it would be well for you to know that. It seemed fairer."

MacLeod smiled again, as if he were smiling down on something. Osmond opened the door, knowing where he should find her. She was there at the end of the hall, sitting in one of the high-backed chairs, her hands in her lap, her head bent sweetly as she listened. She was pale, and there was terror in her face. As Osmond read that, his own passion quieted, and he spoke with perfect gentleness:--

"Rose, will you come here?"

She obeyed at once, and they three were in the room together and Osmond had closed the door. He put out his hand to her, and without hesitation she gave him hers.

"Rose," he said, "I have been telling your father you will not go back with him."

Her eyes dilated. Her lips parted eagerly.

"I have said I would," she began; but he forestalled her.

"I have forbidden it, Rose. I have told him I forbid it."

His touch on her hand seemed to be leading her, drawing her into his own breast. They looked at each other, and both forgot the other presence in the room. The color came back slowly to her cheeks, and Osmond's eyes filled with tears.

"Answer, dear," he said, with the same gentleness. "Let me hear you answer."

"Very well," she returned, like a gentle child. "Shall I go now, Osmond?"

He led her to the door, opened it, and closed it after her. Then he glanced at his adversary. MacLeod had sunk into a chair and was sitting astride it, his chin bowed upon its back. He looked terror-stricken. One hand held a little box, and he was tendering it to Osmond.

"Open it," he gasped. "Crush one in your handkerchief. Let me smell it."

Osmond ignorantly but deftly did it, and held the handkerchief to MacLeod's face. MacLeod breathed at it greedily. He lifted his left hand as if it were half useless to him. "Rub it," he said savagely. "Wring it off. Such pain! my God, such pain!"

In a moment more the attack was over, and he looked like an old man, inexplicably ravaged. Osmond's question sprang impetuously.

"Is it--excitement?"

MacLeod smiled a little and moistened his lips.

"You think you did it?" he suggested. "No. You didn't do it. It comes--of itself--like a thief in the night, like the very devil. Nobody's to know it. Understand that."

"Then you need her with you!" Osmond broke out, in a fresh understanding.

"Need her? need Rose? Get that out of your mind. The world is full of women. She'll go back with me, but not because I need her."

He walked past Osmond and out through the empty hall, and slowly, but still erect, to the driveway and the road. Osmond stood watching him. He saw him straighten more and more, and assume his wonted carriage though without its buoyancy. Osmond followed for a little distance, but when MacLeod turned to look at him and then went on again, he stepped over the wall and crossed the lot to his own plantation. MacLeod, he knew, was going to Electra's for a last word, and for himself, he had struck his one sharp, quick blow for Rose. She should have an interval alone, to make her abiding decision calmly, and when the moment came for MacLeod's going, Osmond would be there again, to hearten her.

But MacLeod, when Osmond had really turned aside, halted more and more. At last he was sick with fear of that enemy inside his breast. There was no moment now, he knew, when he might not expect it, tearing away at the delicate harmonies within the gates of life. What would happen when the pain grew fiercer still? The enemy would let in that other he refused to think upon, though even that was more tolerable than having this evil creature claw at him when men could see him cringe. And as life itself is death when it is once sapped of power, he threw up his head and strode on faster. One step with the old vigor and abandon--and there it was again.

XXVI

Later that same morning, Peter was hurrying along the road, for the carriage was due and MacLeod had not returned. Peter was not more than reasonably sorry to lose his chief, because he meant to follow soon. He had the excited sense of being ready for flight, of great freedom before him and strength in his wings, and of leaving Osmond and grannie with regret, yet happily, for something untried and as wonderful as youth. He ran along the road, hat in hand, in love with the morning breeze, and Electra met him. She looked wan, he saw, and with an incredulous pang, he questioned whether she could be moved by their separation. But he was glad of a definite and hurried question to ask.

"Where is MacLeod?"

A look like hope flashed into her face. She stopped and turned half about, as if for instant flight back to the house.

"Was he coming to me?" she asked breathlessly.

"We thought he might be there."

"Did he say he was coming?" Her eagerness looked like hunger for a desired good, slipping, by some chance, away from her.

"No! no! he may have gone to the plantation. I'll run down there and find him."

He hurried on, and Electra, watching his light, easy lopes, wished she, too, were a man and running to find Markham MacLeod.

At the pasture-bars, in a bed of roadside fern, Peter found him. MacLeod lay majestically, stretched at length, upon his side, as if some one had disposed him in the attitude of sleep. Peter knew. Yet he stooped and touched one of the beautifully shaped hands with his finger. He stood there a long time, it seemed to him, looking not at the figure at his feet, but off into the morning sky, and MacLeod was not in his mind: only Osmond and what Osmond had said about the lust for fight. Osmond seemed to fill the world. He had wished to kill the man, but God instead had killed him. Yet the other thing might have been. Peter wondered that he had not realized what his brother was to him, and again that he had too often foregone Osmond's companionship, this summer of their reunion, for lesser loyalties. He comprehended him, at the moment, with an exaggerated passion that was pain: a gigantic figure, all sacrifice, all patient truthfulness, and, in its own bounded life, as much to be loved and protected as a woman, and yet untrained and ready for a savage deed. And all the time Electra was advancing rapidly toward him on the road, aimlessly, but, as she afterwards believed, drawn by some premonition of what she was to find. Her approach broke Peter's fearful vision. She was like a figure walking into his dream, and he hurried toward her, remembering what she must not see. He motioned to her harshly with his hand.

"Go back!" he called.

But Electra came inevitably on. Then Peter placed himself before her.

"Something has happened," he said quietly, while she looked him in the face. "Go home."

But now she was gazing past him, and the figure in the bracken caught her sight. With a low cry, the inarticulate sound that throws suffering woman back to her kinship with the mother brute, she ran past him and stooped over MacLeod; Peter, dull with feeling, thought she tried to raise his head, and failing that, she took the hand and nursed it on her bosom. Peter judged apathetically that he had never really known Electra; she looked now like a woman numb with grief over a dead child. Then he waked himself out of his maze.

"Don't!" he heard himself calling. "People will come."

"Who will come?" she returned sharply, as if she challenged them all to show why this should not be her dead. Then she wakened. "Go!" she cried. "Get help. It can't be true."

"I will call the men. We can get him home among us."

He ran over the wall and on to the field where men were hoeing. When they had dropped their work and followed him, they found Electra sitting there by the roadside, as if she were the one mourner over the dead, and she did not rise until they stooped to lift him, and arranged how he should be carried. Then she said to Peter, again as if it were her right,--

"Have him taken to my house."

Peter stared at her, but he remembered Rose.

"That will be better," he said; and added, "but who will tell her?"

"His daughter?" said Electra, in her clear tone. "I will tell her. But there is a great deal to do before that. She can wait."

So they walked along the road like a strange funeral procession, Electra in front, as if she had a right to lead. She turned in at her own gate, and they followed, and she walked on up the steps and into the library, where they laid him down. Madam Fulton and Billy Stark had gone for a drive, and the house, in its morning order, looked as if it had been prepared for the solemnity of this entrance. Now Electra's methodical capacity came into play. She sent one man for the doctor and another to the kitchen for hot water and for brandy. But when they were hurriedly dispersed, she turned to Peter and said, with a heart-breaking quiet,--

"And yet, he is dead!"

She sat down upon the floor beside the couch and laid her head on the dead man's heart. Peter knew it was to listen for a flutter there, but with his sensitive apprehension of all emotion, he felt also that she was glad to put her head upon MacLeod's breast. He was conscious of being useless in his inactivity, but he could only stand and stare down at them, the dead man and the mourning woman. Presently Electra got up and stood, dry-eyed, and looked at him.

"He was coming to me," she said, in awe at the loneliness of the event. "I couldn't sleep last night. I wish I had known a little more. Instead of thinking about him, I could have met him. I could have been with him."

Peter shuddered.

"I am glad you were not with him."

Electra was not listening. She had placed her hand on the hair of the fallen man, tenderly and yet with reverence.

"He is splendid, Peter, isn't he?" she said, as if she wondered at life and its fleeting forms. "He looks like a god, sleeping." Some echo of her words came back to her, and she felt a momentary pleasure at their sound. Then, very shortly it seemed, men came, the doctor and others who had authority, and Electra was turned out of the room.

"Go upstairs," Peter besought her.

But she stepped out, bare-headed, into the air.

"No," she answered, "I am going to tell his daughter."

"No!" Suddenly Peter remembered how little she was fitted to be a kindly messenger. "No, Electra. I will go."

Electra looked at him in a calm surprise.

"He would wish it," she said. "He would wish me to do everything." And she was gone.

Peter went back into the room, where there were quick voices and peremptory demands. Markham MacLeod was being interrogated in a way that had never befallen him before. His body was being asked to bear witness of the fashion by which it had come to its dumb estate, wherein it could not compel others, but was most ruthlessly at their will.

Rose, at grannie's knee, in a mute gratitude that now she was to stay here, because it had been wonderfully decreed, saw Electra coming up the walk. She ran to meet her light-heartedly; in her flooding delight it seemed to her as if even Electra might acquiesce in her reprieve.

At the foot of the steps they met, Rose all pleadingness, as if again she begged Electra to love her. But Electra delivered her news straightway. She felt like nothing but the messenger of MacLeod.

"He is dead," she said, with the utmost quietude.

Rose stared at her.

"Who is dead?" she managed to ask.

"Markham MacLeod."

Rose leaned forward and gazed still in her face. She was well convinced that this look was real: a look of hopeless grief, though the words were so fantastic.

"Electra," she said gently, and even put out a hand and touched her on the arm. "Electra! What is it?"

"I have told you," said Electra, "he is dead. We found him in the ferns, Peter and I. He is at my house. We thought you ought to know it."

"Come!" said Rose. She seized her hand, and Electra pulled it away again, quietly, and yet as if it had no business in that hasty grasp. "Let me go home with you."

"If you wish," said Electra. "I suppose you have a right to be there. They may want you." And in silence they hurried down the path together and out into the road. At Electra's own gate, she turned to Rose.

"It is strange, isn't it?" she said.

"What, Electra?"

"That he could die."

"Electra, he has not died. No one has died." Rose spoke gently, knowing that in some way the other woman had been shocked and her reason shaken. "Come into the house and we'll find Peter."

But at the moment Peter and the doctor appeared together in the doorway, and the doctor turned to give orders to a servant in the hall. Peter saw them and came quickly down to them. It was apparent to Rose that something had happened.

"Tell her, Peter," said Electra, in some impatience. "She won't believe me. Tell her he is dead."

Peter and Rose stood looking at each other, she questioning and he in sad assent. Then there crept upon her face a look that was the companion to Electra's. The color faded, her eyes widened.

"My father?" she breathed, and Peter nodded.

"Yes," said Electra, as if she were astonished at them both and their dull wits, "Markham MacLeod is dead."

That evening grannie was in her own room, and Peter and Rose, below, talked intermittently of that strange morning.

"It is incredible, Peter, isn't it," she began, "for him to die like this?"

He nodded.

"I expected violence," he said. "We all expected it."

"Isn't it strange, too, that I can't feel grief! I'm neither glad nor sorry. I feel very still."

"The whole world will feel grief," said Peter loyally.

"Yes, but to me--Peter, it is just as if he were not a man, not something I had loved, but a thing that was great to look at and had no soul. It was like a tree falling, or a huge rock undermined. Don't you see? As if it were the natural thing, and there was no other way possible."

She began to feel the inexorability of great revenges, and to see that when a soul has for a long time denied us answer in our needs, we refuse to believe that it can speak. MacLeod had grown to be a beautiful spectacle of the universe, full of natural health and power. Now that he had fallen, there was nothing left. She had no vestige to remember of those responses in the dim reaches of being when one calls and another answers: homely loyalties, sweet kindnesses, even overlaid by later pain. He had lived what he called the natural life, and its breath had failed him and he was no more. Some time, she knew, in this dull brooding, she might try to whip herself up into an expected grief; but now, in the bare honesty of the moment, she accepted the event as it was.

"Osmond has been great," said Peter.

She started back to life.

"What has he done?"

"Everything. He's been Electra's right-hand man. I'll run down to see him a minute presently."

He hoped Rose would send some word of appreciative thanks. Old Osmond, he knew, would like it. But she got up and gave him her hand, in her grave affectionate way, and said good-night. She remembered how Osmond and her father had met in contest, and she knew Osmond would not seek her until Markham MacLeod was wholly gone.

XXVII

Peter met his brother midway in the field, and waited for him.

"I'll go with you," he said.

"No," said Osmond, "I'm not going now. Come back to the shack."

"You're a regular night-owl," said Peter, as they turned. "When I don't find you after dark, I know you're in the woods, prowling. What makes you?"

"It's a good place to think things out,--and swear over 'em."

"What things, old man? You know I wouldn't tell. Nothing would tempt me to."

Osmond laughed a little.

"If you care so much as that, I'll tell you," he said, with a sudden harshness for himself in retrospect. "I go into the woods to think about life, my life, my difference from other fellows."

They sat down on the bench at the door, and a whippoorwill, calling, made the distance lonely. Peter had no answer for the truth he had evoked. It was too harsh. Only a woman could have met it, and that with kisses, not with words.

"Do you know," he said abruptly, "what all this makes me want?--this horrible excitement?"

"No, boy."

"It makes me want to paint. I want to paint everything I see: Markham MacLeod lying there in that bed of fern, Rose with all the life washed out of her, and you now, your face coming out of the dark. Everything's been unreal to me since it happened--except paint--and you."

"Poor old chap!" said Osmond. But he fled on from that concurrent sympathy to a dearer plea. "Paint, Pete," he urged. "Let all the rest go. Let MacLeod die. But you paint."

Peter was looking at him now, fascinated. The pale face out of the dark was all one glowing life. Peter wondered at him, his strength, his beauty. Again he felt as he had that morning, as if he had never known his brother, and as if it would pay for any pains to comprehend that pathetic and yet adventurous soul. Peter was more than half woman, with his quick perception of what went on in other minds. He understood, at that moment, that the great adventure of all is life itself: not, as it seemed to him, to paint, to love, but to taste all things with this richness that was beginning to be Osmond's, this hunger for the forbidden, even, so it was hunger. Osmond had begun to recognize his own nature, and for the first time his brother began to recognize him.

"Osmond," he said, in a wistful eagerness, very beguiling, "whatever you did, I should believe in it."

Osmond looked at him with that faint sweet smile upon his face, and his eyes offered hints of ineffable meanings.

"Would you, boy?" he asked.

Peter went on. It was almost like a woman's confession of her love.

"Osmond, you say you think about your life when you are alone. What do you think?"

"I think it is full of passions as an egg is of meat. They have been growing while I ignored them. I saw them marching before me and round and round me. They thought they were my masters."

"What then?"

Osmond remembered how the morning seemed when he met Rose in the sunlight, and touched her hand.

"Then," he said gravely, "I was their master. That's all."

"Oh," said Peter exultingly, "you'd be the master in the end. You're great!"

"Pete," said Osmond suddenly, "is this death coming?"

"Is what death?"

"It's too queer for life."

"To sit here talking like this?"

"No, not that exactly, but the sense of things to come. It seems as if life wasn't going to be the same again, and nothing was quite big enough to come after things as they've been lately,--but death, and that's only big enough because it's unknown."

"What will come?" asked Peter. He felt at once like a little boy, half afraid, and afraid of his fear, yet with his brother to uphold him.

"We won't go to bed to-night, will we? We'll sit here, even if we hold our tongues. I can't go to bed."

They did sit there for an hour or so. Peter spoke.

"What are you thinking, old man?"

"Of Rose."

It was not strange to Peter to hear him speak of her familiarly. He returned,--

"I've been thinking of her, too."

XXVIII