Chapter 8

Instantly Rose flushed all over her face, a flooding red. With the word she remembered the other voice out of the moonlit night, telling her the same thing. Now it was almost an accusation. Then it was a caressing loveliness of the night, as if an unseen hand had crowned her with a chaplet, dripping fragrance. In that instant, with a throb of haste and longing, she was away from the circle of these alien souls, back in the night where voice had answered voice. It was immediately as if she were hearing his call to her. "I will come to-night, to-night," she heard her heart repeating. "Did you wait for me last night, dear playmate, alone in the dark and stillness? And the night before? Did you think I was never coming? I will come to-night."

Meantime Billy Stark, seeing the blush and knowing it meant discomfort, was pottering on in his kindly optimism, throwing himself into the breach, and dribbling words like rain. He talked of Paris and continental life in general. Rose had been everywhere. She spoke of traveling with her father on his missions from court to court. When MacLeod's name recurred upon her lips, Electra, who presided, still and pale, roused momentarily into some show of interest. But Rose would not be led along that road. For some reason she refused to speak freely of her father. At a question, her lovely lips would fix themselves in a straight line. Back in the library again, she seated herself persistently by Madam Fulton, like a dog who has at last discovered the person friendliest to him.

"Run away, Billy, if you like," said the old lady indulgently. "You want your cigar on the veranda. I know you."

Billy was going, in humorous deprecation, when there was a running step along the veranda, and Peter came in with a bound. And what a Peter! He looked like a runner--not a spent one, either--with the news of victory. It was in his face, his flushed cheeks and flaming eyes, but chiefly in the air he brought with him--all tension and immoderate joy. Electra held her hands tight together and looked at him. Rose got half out of her chair. In those days when she thought continually of her own affairs, it seemed to her that nothing could be so important unless it had to do with her. Billy Stark by the door waited, and it was Madam Fulton who spoke, irritated at the vague excitement.

"For heaven's sake, Peter, what's the matter?"

He addressed himself at once to Rose.

"I have heard from him. I have had a letter."

"From him!" She was out of her chair and facing him. For the moment, with that hidden communion with Osmond hot in her heart and sharp in her ears, she had almost cried, "Osmond!" But he went on,--

"I have heard from your father."

Instantly the blood was out of her face. Billy Stark wondered at the aging grayness, and reflected curiously that youth is not only a question of flesh and blood but of the merry soul. Peter could not contain his pleasure. He cried out irrepressibly, like the herald beside himself with news,--

"He is coming here!"

"Here!" Rose made one step to lay her hand upon a little cabinet, and stood supporting herself. Electra, who caught the movement, looked at her curiously. Her own enormous interest in Peter's news seemed to merge itself in watchful comment on the other girl.

"Here!" Peter was answering. "To America! He writes me the most stirring letter. I didn't think I knew him so well. He has so many friends here, he says, friends he never saw. He wants to meet them. The best of it is, he's coming here--to us."

"Here!" repeated Rose again. She seemed to be sinking into herself, but the tense hand upon the cabinet kept her firm.

Peter looked at her with eyes of innocent delight.

"Here, to us. I told him if he ever came over, we should grab him before anybody got a hand on him. I've told grannie. She's delighted."

"You told him that!" Her voice held a reproach so piercing that they were all staring at her in wonder. She looked like a woman suffering some anguish too fierce, for the moment, to be stilled. "You've been writing him!"

"Of course," said Peter. "Why, of course, I wrote him. I sent him word when we first got here, to tell him you were well."

"How could you! Oh, how could you!"

At her tone, the inexplicable reproach of it, he lost his gay assurance. Peter forgot the others. There was nobody in the room, to his eager consciousness, but Rose and his erring self; for somehow, most innocently, he had offended her. He took a step toward her, his boyish face all melted into contrition. There might have been tears in his eyes, they were so soft.

"Sit down," he implored her. "Rose! What have I done?"

It was like a sorry child asking pardon. Electra gave him a quick look, and then went on watching. At the tone Rose also was recalled. She shook herself a little, as if she threw off dreams. Her hand upon the cabinet relaxed. Her face softened, the pose of her body yielded, She seemed almost, by some power of the will, to bring new color into her cheeks. Peter had drawn forward her chair, and she took it smilingly.

"I'm not accustomed to long-lost fathers appearing unannounced," she said whimsically. "Dear me! What if he brings me a Paris gown!"

But Peter was standing before her, still with an air of deep solicitude.

"It was a shock, wasn't it?" he kept repeating. "What a duffer I am!"

"It was a shock," said Electra, with an incisive confirmation. "Mayn't I get you something? A glass of wine?"

Rose looked at her quite pleasantly before Peter had time to begin his persuasive recommendation that she should spare herself.

"Let me take you home," he was urging.

It was as if Rose had been drawing draughts from some deep reservoir, and now she had enough to carry her on to victory.

"No, no, Peter," she denied him. "I won't go home. Thank you, Electra,"--a delicate frown wrinkled Electra's brows. The girl had never used her familiar name before--"thank you, I won't have any wine. Well, my father is coming. Let's hope he won't turn the country upside down, and keep the trains from running. Get in your supplies, all of you. He may instigate a strike, and if the larder isn't full, you'll starve."

"Stop the trains?" repeated Electra, who was not imaginative. "Why should he stop the trains?"

"Ah, Miss Fulton, you don't know my father," Rose answered gayly. She had seen that tiny frown punctuating her first familiarity, and took warning by it. "Don't you know how, in great gardens, you can take a key and turn on the fountains? Well, my father can turn on strikes in the same manner. He has the key in his pocket."

Electra warmed, in spite of herself.

"I should like"--she hesitated.

"You'd like to see him do it? You may. Perhaps you will. We'll sit in a circle and point our thumbs down and all the bloated capitalists shall go in and be killed." She was talking, at random, out of a tension she might not explain. Billy Stark, the coolest of them, saw that Madam Fulton had some vague inkling of it. Billy, as usual, began talking, but Rose had risen. Having proved her composure, she was going. She listened to Billy with smiling interest, and then when he had finished, humorously and inconsequently, nodded concurrence at him and said good-by. She had a few pretty words for Madam Fulton, a gracious look for Electra, and she was gone, Peter beside her. Billy Stark followed and stayed on the veranda with his cigar. But Electra remained facing her grandmother. She looked at her, not so much in triumph as with a fixed determination. Suddenly Madam Fulton became aware of her glance and answered it irritably.

"For mercy's sake, Electra, what is it?"

Then Electra spoke, turning away, as if the smouldering satisfaction of her tone must not betray itself in her face.

"Do you realize what this means?"

"What what means?"

"She is terrified at his coming--Markham MacLeod's."

"Well, you don't know Markham MacLeod. Perhaps if you did, you'd be terrified yourself."

"But his daughter, grandmother, a girl who calls herself his daughter!"

Madam Fulton stared.

"Don't you believe that either?" she inquired. "Don't you believe she is his daughter?"

"Not for a moment." Electra had turned and was walking toward the door, all her white draperies contributing to the purity of her aspect.

Madam Fulton continued, in the same inadequacy of amaze,--

"But Peter knows it. He knew them together."

"Peter knew her with Tom," said Electra conclusively. "One proof is worth as much as the other."

At the door she turned, almost a beseeching look upon her face, as she remembered another shock that had been dealt her.

"Grandmother!" she said.

"Well!"

"You spoke of Mr. Stark--"

The old lady's thought went traveling back. Then her face lighted.

"Oh," she said. "Yes, I know. I'm engaged to Billy."

"Grandmother--" Electra blushed a little, painfully--"You can't mean--grandmother, are you going to marry him?"

Madam Fulton laid her head back upon the small silk pillow of her chair. She never owned to it, but sometimes the dull hour after luncheon brought with it a drowsiness she was ceasing to combat. She smiled at Electra, who seemed very far away from her through the veil of that approaching slumber and through the years that separated them.

"We shan't marry at once, Electra," she said, dropping off while the girl looked at her. "Not at once. I expect to have a good many little affairs before I settle down."

XI

On the way back to the house, Peter kept looking solicitously at Rose, breaking now and then into quick regrets.

"What have I done?" he asked her, in his impetuous stammer. "Shouldn't I have written to your father? Rose, what have I done?"

She seemed not to hear him. Her face had a strained expression, the old look he remembered from the days of Tom's illness and her not quite natural grief. Then she had never given way to the irrepressible warmth of sorrow, like a loving wife. She had seemed to harden herself, and that he accounted for by his knowledge of Tom's hideous past. The woman had known him, Peter reflected, from illuminating intercourse, and his death meant chiefly the turning of a blotted page. But now! over her bloom of youth was the same shadowing veil. She was not so much a woman moved by strong emotion as made desperate through hidden causes. Still he besought her to forgive him, finally to look at him. Then she wakened.

"It's all right, Peter," she said absently. "It had to be."

But still he saw no reason for her blight and pain. It was not merely incredible, it was impossible that any one should shrink because Markham MacLeod was coming. At the door she did look at him. He was shocked at the drooping sadness of her face. Yet she was smiling.

"Don't bother, Peter," she said. "You've done nothing wrong, nothing whatever."

Then she went up the stairs, and Peter, after watching the last glimmer of her dress, strode away into the orchard and threw himself on the grass. Thoughts not formulated, emotions one yeast of unrest went surging through him, until he felt himself a riot of forces he could not control. It was youth that moved him, his own ungoverned youth, but it seemed to him life, and that all life was like it. Peter thought he had experienced enormously because he had lived in Paris and painted pictures. Yet he had never governed his course of being. It had been done for him. The greatest impression it had made on him thus far was of the extreme richness of things. There was so much of everything! He was young. There was a great deal of time, and if he did not paint his pictures this year, he could do it next. There were infinite possibilities. He had ease and talent and power. He had, even so far, won laurels enough to be a little careless of them. Since he had by the happy pains of art got so much out of life, he made no doubt that by superlative efforts, which he meant to make in that divine future where the sun was always shining, he should set all the rivers afire. There was money enough, too. He had never lacked it, thanks to old Osmond's thrift, Osmond who did not need it himself in the ordinary ways of man. He found such pure fun in the pleasures money bought that there was a separate luxury in giving it up, turning it in to the sum of things, and living straitly that labor might take some ease.

And here he lay on the grass, youth seething within him and pointing like a drunken guide, a vine-crowned reveler, to a myriad paths, all wonderful. His mind wandered to Rose and settled there in a delighted acquiescence. He had never before given himself wholly up to her spell, but now, whether the summer day beguiled him, or whether her mysterious trouble moved him, he thought of her until they seemed to be alone together on the earth,--and that was happiness. Beauty! that was what she meant to him, he told himself when thought was at last uppermost, and not mere passionate feeling. She was delight and harmony, and allegiance to her was like worship of the world.

When he got out of his dream and went in to dinner with the noon sun upon his burning face, she was on the veranda with grannie, a little pale still, but sweet and responsive in the quiet ways she had for every day. Peter, looking at her, felt the sun go out of his blood, and the mad worship of that hour in the orchard seemed like a past bacchanal rout and triumph when the worshipers go home to feed the flocks. His will, recalled, took him by swift revulsion to Electra, but it could not make the journey welcome. She seemed to be far away on some barren plain at the top of climbing. Rose, too, was far away, but the mountain where she lived was full of springs and blossomy slopes, and at the top the muses and the graces danced and laughed. There were flying feet always, the gleam of draperies, the fall of melody,--always pleasures and the hint of pleasures higher still,--and echoes from old joys tasted by gods and nymphs in the childhood of the world. The way there, too, was hard, but what would the path matter to such blisses of the mind and soul? In his daze he became aware that grannie was looking at him kindly.

"I guess you've been asleep," said she.

"He's been dreaming, too," said Rose, in her intimate kindliness, always the same to him as if he were a boy with whom she had a tender and confident relation.

Peter rubbed his eyes.

"I got lost," he said ruefully. "I went up on the mountain and got lost."

"I guess you dreamed it," said grannie. "Come, let's have our dinner;" and they went in together, both the young things helping her.

Peter reflected that Rose had not even heard what he said. She did not care what the mountain was, or whether he was lost. But at the table, while grannie talked about gardening and the things Osmond meant to do another year, and Rose glanced up with involuntary question in her eyes whenever Osmond's name was mentioned, he seemed to have the vision of the mountain again before him and to hear the laughter and the sound of dancing feet. The picture, little by little, faded and would not be recalled, and by afternoon it had quite gone. Sobered, his feet on the earth again, he went away in the early evening, to see Electra.

Rose waited until the dark had really fallen and evening sounds had begun. Then she stole out of the house and, a black cloak about her, this time, went across the fields to the oak tree. At a little distance from it she paused, her heart too imperious to let her speak and find out whether he was there. But when she was about to venture it, a voice came from under the tree.

"Don't stay there, playmate. Come into the house."

Then she went on.

"Where are you?" she asked. There was an eloquent quiver in her voice.

"Never mind. I'm in the house. Stop where you are. There's a little throne. I made it for you."

She had her hand on the back of a rough chair. At once she seated herself.

"I never heard of a throne in a playhouse," she said, with that new merriment he made for her.

"You never saw a playhouse just like this. That's a beautiful throne. It fits together like a chair. It's here in the playhouse by night, but before daylight I draw it up into the tree and hide it."

"What if somebody finds it?"

"They'll think it's a chair."

"What if they break it?"

"That's easy. We'll make another. There's nothing so easy as to make a throne for a playhouse, if you know the way. Well, playmate, how have you been, all this long time?"

When she came across the field she had meant to tell him how sad she was, how perplexed, how incapable of meeting the ills confronting her. But immediately it became unnecessary, and she only laughed and said,--

"It hasn't been a long time at all."

"Hasn't it? Oh, I thought it had!"

"Have you been here every night?"

"Every night."

"But it rained."

"I know it, outside. It doesn't rain in a playhouse."

"Did you truly come?"

"Of course. What did I tell you? I said 'every night.'"

"Did you have an umbrella?"

"An umbrella in a playhouse? You make me laugh."

"You must have got wet through."

"Not always. Sometimes I climbed up in the branches--in the roof, I mean. You're eclipsed to-night, aren't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"That dark cloak. The other night you were a white goddess sitting there in the moonlight. You were terribly beautiful then. It's almost a shame to be so beautiful. This is better. I rather like the cloak. You're nothing but a voice to-night, coming out of the dark."

Immediately she had a curious jealousy of the white dress that made her beautiful to him when he did not really know her face.

"You have never seen me," she said involuntarily.

"Oh yes, I have. In the shack, that night. Then the day you came. I saw you driving by."

"Where were you?"

"In the yard looking at some grafted trees. Peter was late from the train. I got impatient, so I went round fussing over the trees, to keep myself busy. Then you came up the drive, and I saw you and retreated in good order."

"You needn't have hated me so. You hadn't really seen me."

"I saw enough. I saw your cheek and one ear and the color of your hair. Take care, playmate, you mustn't do that."

"What?"

"You mustn't say I hated you. You know it wasn't hate."

Some daring prompted her to ask, "What was it, then?" but she folded her hands and crossed her feet in great contentment and was still.

"Tell me things," she heard him saying.

"What things? About the house up there? About grannie? About Peter?"

"No, no. I know all about grannie and Peter. Tell me things I never could know unless we were here in the playhouse, in the dark."

Her mind went off, at that, to the wonder of it. She was here in strange circumstances, and of all the occurrences of her life, it seemed the most natural. Immediately she had the warmest curiosity, the desire that he should talk inordinately and tell her all the things he had done to-day, yesterday, all the days.

"You tell," she said. "Begin at the beginning, and tell me about your life."

"Why, playmate!" His voice had even a sorrowful reproach. "There's nothing in it. Nothing at all. I have only dug in the ground and made things grow."

"What people have you known?"

"Grannie."

"She isn't people."

"She's my people. She's all there is, except Peter, and he hasn't been here."

Something like jealousy possessed her. She was stung by her own ignorance.

"But there are lots of years when we didn't meet," she said.

"Lots of them. But I don't care anything about them. I told you so the other night."

"Don't you care about mine?"

"Not a bit."

She was lightheaded with the joy of it. There were things she need not tell him.

"Not the years before we met?" Then because she was a woman, she had to spoil the cup. "Nor the years after I go away?"

"No, not the years when you've gone away. You can't take this night with you, nor the other night."

He had hurt her.

"That's enough, then--a memory."

Osmond laughed a little. It was a tender sound, as if he might scold her, but not meaning it.

"You mustn't be naughty," he said. "There's nothing naughtier in a playhouse than saying what isn't true. You know if you go away you'll come back again. You can't help it. It may be a long time first. You were twenty-five years in coming this time. But you'll have to come. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes," she said gravely, "I know that." Then the memory of her wandering life and the sore straits of it voiced itself in one cry, "I don't want to go. I want to stay."

"Stay, dear playmate," said the other voice. "There never will be a night when I'm not here. Is the playhouse key in your hand, all tight and warm? I wear mine round my neck. We shan't lose them."

Immediately she felt that she must tell him her new trouble.

"My father is coming here," she said, in a low tone.

"Ah!" he answered quickly. "You won't like that."

"How do you know?"

"From what you said the other night. You don't like him."

"Is it dreadful to you, if I don't like my father?"

She put it anxiously, with timidity, and he answered,--

"It's inevitable. He hasn't treated you well."

She was staring at him through the darkness, though she could see nothing.

"You are a wizard," she said, "a wizard. Why do you say he has not treated me well?"

"Because I see how you hate him. You would never hate without reason. You are all gentleness. You know you are. You'd go on your knees to the man that was your father, and beg him to be good enough so you could love him. And if you couldn't--George! that settles him. Why, playmate, you're not crying!"

She was crying softly to herself. But for a little unconsidered sniff he need not have known it.

"I like to cry," she said, in a moment. "I like to cry--like this."

"It's awful," said the other voice, apparently to itself, "to make you cry and not know how to stop you. Don't do it, playmate!"

She laughed then.

"I won't cry," she promised. "But if you knew how pleasant it is when it only means somebody understands and likes you just as well--"

"Better," said the voice. "I always like you better. Whatever you do, that's the effect it has. Now let's talk about your father. We can't stop his coming?"

"No. Nobody ever stopped him yet in anything."

"Then what can we do to him after he gets here?"

"That's what I am trying to think. Sometimes I'm afraid I must run away--before he comes."

"Yes, playmate, if you think so." There was something sharp in the tone: a quick hurt, a premonition of pain, and it was soothing to her.

"But I've so little money." She said that to herself, and his answer shocked her.

"There's money, if that's all. I'll bury it here under a stone, and you shall find it."

"No! no! no! How could you! oh, how could you!"

The voice was hurt indeed now, and willing to be thought so.

"Why, playmate, is that so dreadful? Money's the least important thing there is."

"It is important," said she broodingly. "It seems to me all my miseries, my disgraces have come from that."

"You don't want to tell me about them? You don't think it would make them better?"

"You said you didn't care. You said what we had lived through--what I had--these twenty-five years, made no difference!"

"Not to me. But when it comes to you, why, maybe I could help you."

She thought a while and then answered definitely and coldly,--

"No, I can't do it. I should have to tell--too many things."

"Then we won't think of it," said the voice. "Only you must remember, there's money and there's--Peter to take you off and hide you somewhere. You can trust Peter." Again he seemed ready to break their companionship, and she wondered miserably.

"You seem to think of nothing but my going away."

"I must think of it. Nothing is more likely."

"You don't seem to care!"

"Playmate!" Again the voice reproached her.

"Well!"

"There's but one thing I think of--really. To give you a little bit of happiness while you are here. After that--well, you can make the picture for yourself. I shall come to the playhouse every night--alone."