Rose MacLeod Part 16

"To say it's the will of G.o.d?"

"To be wheeled out in her chair, and sit at the head of your armies and say, 'Love G.o.d. Love one another.' If they love G.o.d, they'll listen to Him. If they love one another your strikes will end to-morrow, and your rich man will break bread with your poor one, and your poor one will lose hatred for the rich. You need grandmother."

They sat smiling over it. Peter had amazingly cooled. He rose to his feet.

"Well," he said, "I'll paint some pictures. Of course I'll paint my pictures--sometime. There's the Brotherhood again. Don't I want to turn in shekels? Don't I want to have it known that such weight as my name carries is going in there?"

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 prost.i.tute 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 pa.s.sion such as he had never seen in any man.

"What would you do, old chap?" he asked.

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."

He started straightway across the field, and met Electra, returning. As he was standing in the roadway, hat off, smiling most confidently at her, Electra had no resource but to draw up. Before she fairly knew how it had come about, he was beside her, and they were in a proximity for the most intimate converse. Electra felt irritably as if she could not escape.

VIII

Peter made up his mind to display, at last, all the guile he had; he would say nothing about Rose. If Electra had attempted to call on her, she might impart the fact to him or not, as she determined. But Electra did not wait to be asked. She turned to him with a serious air, inquiring,--

"When is Miss MacLeod likely to be back?"

"Rose?" Peter countered obstinately. "At dinnertime, surely."

"I shall try to find her then."

Peter felt such an access of grat.i.tude that, as he looked down at the charmingly gloved hands, holding the reins in the right way, he thought of conveying his emotion by placing his own hand over them. But their masterful ease had a message of its own. It seemed almost as if they might resist. He cast about for something to please her.

"Electra," he began, "I'm going to pitch into work with Osmond."

Electra looked at him over a chin superbly lifted. This was evidently surprise, but whether disdainful of him or not he could not tell. At any rate, he felt whimsically miserable under it.

"Osmond works on the farm," she said merely.

Peter inferred some belittling of Osmond, and immediately he was at one with him and market-gardening.

"I belong to the Brotherhood," he said stiffly. "I don't propose to live like a bondholder while other fellows are hoeing. I'm going to work."

Still Electra said nothing. She had meant to stop at her own gate and let Peter leave her, if he would, but she had driven by, and now they were in a pretty reach of pines, with the needles under the horse's feet. The reins lay loosely, and Electra, who seldom did anything without a painstaking consciousness, even forgot her driving, and let her hands relax into an unlawful ease. They might almost tremble, she was afraid, she felt so undone with some emotion,--disappointment, anger? She did not know. But she kept her eyes fixed on a spot directly ahead, and in spite of herself thought turbulently. She could not help feeling that Peter would be surprised if he knew how he seemed to her after this return, almost a stranger, and one who awoke in her no desire for further acquaintance. He was not ministering to her pride in any way. He was not in the least a person whom she could flaunt at gatherings of the intellectually worshipful, with any chance of his doing her credit. She herself had tried to talk art with him, and Peter grew dumb. She could not guess it was because she did not speak his language, which had become almost a sign language, touched here and there with idiom and the rest understood,--a jargon of technicalities, mostly, it seemed, humorous, he appeared to mean them so lightly. Before he went abroad, she, who had read exhaustively in art, used to impart fact and theory to him in a serious fashion, and Peter had humbly accepted them. But now, when she opened her lips about his darling work which was so intimate a part of him that it was almost like play, he had a queer horror of what she was saying, as if she were beginning a persistent solo on a barbarous instrument; he could think of nothing but putting his hands over his ears and running off. But instead he had only been silent. She could not understand Peter's having read so few books and being in possession of such a meagre treasury of formulated opinion.

The truth was that he had so many pleasant things to think about that books were only the dullard's task. His thoughts were not very consecutive or toward any particular end; they were merely a pageant of dancing figures, sometimes fantastic, sometimes dramatically grave, but always absorbing. This Electra could not know. Now it was running through her mind that Peter, though he had won the great prizes of art, was mysteriously dull and not what she considered a distinguished figure at all. His air, his clothes even--she found herself shrinking a little, at the moment, from the slovenly figure he made, his long legs drawn up in the carriage so that he could clasp his hands about his knees, while he went brightly on. For now Peter had found something to talk about.

His topic shone before him as he handled it. This was almost like painting a picture with a real brush on real canvas, it grew so fast.

"We might found a community," he was urging as warmly, she thought, as if he meant it. "Osmond can dig. I can. I wonder if you could milk the cow!"

"I have certainly never tried to milk a cow," said Electra, in a tone that bit.

But Peter wasn't listening. He was simply pleasing his own creative self.

"You shouldn't," he offered generously. "You should

'Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, And live on ripe strawberries, sugar, and cream.'"

Electra pulled the horse up, and though this was the narrowest bit of road for a mile, turned, with a masterly hand.

"How under the sun do you do that?" Peter was asking pleasantly. She interrogated him with a glance, and saw him hunched together in more general abandon. The happier Peter was in his own thoughts and the warmer the sun shone on him, the looser his joints became. To Electra he looked like a vagabond, but she was conscious that if for a moment he would act the part of a great painter, she would bid him sit up, try to get him into a proper cravat, and marry him to-morrow. Careless Peter was quite oblivious to the effect he was creating. He had forgotten Electra, save as some one possessed of two ears to listen.

"Turn," he pursued. "How can you turn? I never could. I remember I took you to drive once, ages ago, and I had to keep on in a thunder-shower, round the five-mile curve, because I didn't dare to let you know I couldn't cramp the wheel."

Electra remembered the day. Peter was timidly worshipful of her then, and she had found that quite appropriate in him. She remembered the lightning, and how satisfied she had been to go round the five-mile curve, if only to show that she was not timid in a storm. Then it seemed as if Peter had been unable to forego the delight of having her with him; but now it appeared that he could absently sit there hugging his knees and guying the occasion.

"I believe I can cramp the wheel," he was saying sunnily, out of an absolute content in his limitations. "Only I never can remember which rein does it. Can you turn either way, Electra, right or left, one just as well as the other?"

Electra could not answer in that vein.

"Don't!" she said involuntarily.

In some moods Peter had a habit of not waiting for answers.

"It's beyond me how they do those things," he was saying, "drive, ride, swim. Shouldn't you like to be a fish? I should be mighty proud."

"Shall I leave you here?" asked Electra, drawing up at his gate.

Peter came out of his childish muse. He saw Rose in the garden, and knew it was better that Electra should find her alone.

"Yes, let me out," he said. "I'll run back and see if Osmond is where I left him."

Electra also had seen Rose, lying in the long chair under the grape arbor, and left her carriage at the gate. Rose was in white. A book lay in her lap, unopened. The idle hands had clasped, and her eyes were closed. Electra, coming upon her, felt a pang, an inexplicable one, at her loveliness. It seemed half la.s.situde, 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.

"How good of you," she was saying. "How good of you!"

"Not at all," returned Electra, with a stiff dignity she hated, as not in the least the armor she had meant to wear. "I came to see if you would drive over to the house." This she had not meant to ask, but it seemed easier to deal with problematic characters in the course of motion than face to face and standing. Rose was eagerly ready.

"My hat is here," she cried, "and my parasol. I thought I might walk up the road a bit,--but it was so hot. How good of you!"