Alice Brown

“ MacLeod took off his hat and wiped his forehead beaded with a moisture come on it, he knew, at that moment.
"I should like to ask," he said peevishly, "what in the devil you mean. Have you—heard anything?"
"No," said Rose, entirely amazed. "What is there to hear?"
They had reached the station, and she led him to the bench under a tree where lovers and their lasses assembled at dusk to see the train come in. She sat down, dispirited and still wondering, and he stood before her, all strength, now, and candor, as if he had thrown off his dubious mood and resolved to be himself. ”

“ It was Peter who put a hand before his eyes, not because there were tears there, but as if to shut her out from a knowledge of his too candid self. But in an instant he was looking at her again, not in anger, but sorrowfully.
"Isn't it strange?" she exclaimed, almost to herself.
"What, Electra?"
"Strange to think what power a woman has—a woman of that stamp."
"Don't, Electra. You mustn't classify her. You can't."
She was considering it with a real curiosity.
"You don't blame her at all," she said. "You know Tom did wrong. You don't think she did." ”

“ Osmond seemed not to be debating now, but hastening along the thread of a perfect certainty. Something had put a clue in his hand. Wherever it might lead him, he was running fast. It came upon him, like the lighting of a great fire, that this was a call for high emprise. He loved nothing so much as courage. Here was the summons to the world-old battle where all but a few fail and none are said to succeed unless they die for passion and so life drops a curtain on the after-fight. The great lovers—chiefly they are those for whom the fight never was finished, who chose death rather than endure. ”

“ Electra had now no more doubt of the unspoken pact between them than if it had been sealed by all the most blessed vows. It would have cheapened it rather if he had delegated her to the classified courts of sympathy. Instead, it left them a universe to breathe in. It pointed to undiscovered cities beyond the marge of time. It made her his in a way transcending mutual promises. This same full belief rose passionately to assert itself, and perhaps to soothe that small sharp ache in her heart, the kind that rises in woman when man, though he takes the cup, yet offers none in turn. ”

“ There was the curtain slowly descending between age and its entertainment, and Madam Fulton was clapping her unwearied hands as if things could go on forever. Grant her an encore, and she would demand another. As for him, he would fain go home to bed. But Billy was a man of his word. His loyal heart could not allow itself to recognize the waywardness of his sad mind. The one had done with life in all but its outer essences. The other, in human decency, must go on swearing the old vows to the last. His face took on a resolution that made him more the man, and sobered her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Madam Fulton felt the rhythm and surge of it all, and acquiesced in her own inactive part in it. Sometimes of late she hardly knew how much of life was memory and how much the present brilliant call of things. It was life, the thing she did not understand. Presently she closed her eyes and sank, she thought, into a deeper reverie. These excursions of hers were less like sleep, she always told herself, than a kind of musing dream. At last she was learning what other old people had meant when they explained, with a shamefaced air of knowing youth could never understand, "I just lost myself." ”

“ Electra had risen.
"Excuse me for a moment, grandmother," she said. "I must get you a glass of wine."
Madam Fulton, too, got up and rested one hand upon the table.
"If you leave the room before I've finished," she cried, "I'll scream it after you." A small red spot had come upon each cheek. She looked like a fairy god-mother, a pinpoint of fury in the eye. "I insist upon your listening. God Almighty meant you for a handsome, well-behaved woman. You're not clever. There's no need of your being. But you've made yourself so intelligent that you're as dull as death. ”

“ Rose said it gently, as if she wondered at him. "Of course I shall keep faith with you."
She heard him rising from his place.
"Now," he said, "you must go home."
"Why must I? The little side door is never locked."
"No, but you have been through a good deal. We must take care of you."
"I feel as if I had all the strength in the world. I could waste it and waste it, and then have enough to waste again."
"It isn't altogether strength. It's fire—the fire of youth. Bank it up and let it smoulder, or it will burn you up."
"How are you so wise, playmate? You are as wise as dear grannie." ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was no possibility of affecting to misunderstand. Peter knew what he had gone to Paris for, five years ago, and why Osmond had been sending him the steady proceeds of the garden farm. He was to prove himself, take his talent in his hand and mould it and turn it about with a constant will, and shape a cup to hold the drink that makes the gods jealous and men delirious with adulation. Peter was to live at his ease in Paris, sparing nothing that would keep him well and strong of heart, so that he could paint the best portraits in the world. ”

“ Osmond was ashamed of his display, but he had to answer.
"I would guard it," he said, "as a man would guard—a woman."
They stood silent, their eyes not meeting now, hardly knowing how to get away from each other. As if she had been evolved by his mention of precious womanhood, Electra, in her phaeton, drove swiftly by. They took off their hats, glad of the break in the moment's tension; but she did not turn that way.
"Could she be going to see her?" Peter asked in haste.
"To see her?"
"Rose. She mustn't go now. Rose has gone to the orchard with her book." ”

“ If Osmond had had any gift at all, he knew how different it would have made his life. A tragedy of the flesh would have been slighter to a man who felt the surge of fancy in the brain. He had nothing, at the outset, but a faltering will and a deep distaste for any task within his reach. He remembered well the day when he first found Peter had that aptitude for painting, and realized, with the clarity of great revealings, what it meant to them both. All through his boyhood Peter had been drawing, with a facile hand, caricatures, fleeting hints of homely life, but always likenesses. ”

“ Electra, coming upon her, felt a pang, an inexplicable one, at her loveliness. It seemed half lassitude, not alone to challenge pity, but a renewed and poignant interest when she should awake. At Electra's step her eyes came open slowly, as if there were nothing in that garden ground to move her. Then with a rush of color to the face, her eyes grew large. Life, surprised life, poured in on her, and she had gained her feet with a spring. Before Electra could insist upon her own decorous distance, Rose, with a charming gesture and an insistent cordiality, had her by both hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They looked at each other in the terrible recognition that brings souls almost too close.
"You are a great woman, my dear," said Osmond. He rose and stood before her. "Look at me. I hate my body. Could you love it?"
"I do love it," said the woman. "And I love your soul. And I am ashamed to think we can know the things we have known and then think of the bodies we live in. Grannie believes in immortal life. I believe in it too, since I have known you."
"There are a good many hours, my dear, when we forget immortal life. The world goes hard with us. ”

“ Peter followed him. Something in the air struck him with a new timidity.
"You know," he qualified, when they were well into the field, "she hasn't accepted me."
"No."
"I'm not the man for her, in many ways. Who is? But by the powers! I bet I could make her happy."
He took off his hat to strike at a butterfly, not to destroy it but to prove his good-will, and Osmond, without glancing at him, knew exactly how he looked, and thought bitterly that to Peter Rose was only one of a hundred beautiful things that made the earth a treasury. And to Osmond there was but one, and that was Rose. ”

“ Osmond himself seemed like an unknown force as ready to bring confusion as calm.
But he knew.
"You are afraid of him," he said. "Dear child, don't be afraid. Sit down hard and say 'no' and 'no,' whatever he demands. You are here with us. Grannie is an angel of light. She'll send for shining cohorts and they'll camp round about you. There's Peter—your Peter. And I'll die for you."
"No! no!" The assurance of his tone was terrifying to her. She saw him dying in unnecessary sacrifice. "Nobody must die for me. We must all live and be good children and do what grannie would want us to." ”

“ Electra, who could do no creative work, could not take her eyes from the young creature, all eager brilliancy and dressed in a perfect Paris gown. The dress, Electra knew, was no finer than she herself could amply afford to buy in her own country. Only it was worn with a grace, the air of a woman born to be looked at, and used to fervid tributes. The other women, too, were worshipers of notability, and Rose knew she had raised a wave of admiration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 had a delicate-fingered way of touching everything, as if the creative process were a little one, of small simplicities: not as if art were long.
When she appeared that morning, behind the hollyhocks, Rose was about to spring up, and Peter did stand, expectant, with his charming smile. Electra at once made proper disclaimers, and insisted that the sitter's pose should not be broken and that it would be an immense entertainment to see the work go on. Peter brought a chair out of the arbor, and she sat down, erect and handsome, while Rose sank back into her unconstrained reclining. ”

“ It was Osmond's turn to rage. He, too, rose, and they confronted each other. Osmond spoke. His voice trembled, it seemed with emotion that was not anger but a fervor for great things.
"I cannot get it through my head. You can do the thing, and it's I that value it. You can paint pictures and you'd prostitute the thing for money,—for reputation. If I had it, if I had that gift"—he paused, and shook his head as if he shook a mane. Peter was looking at him curiously. This was passion such as he had never seen in any man. ”