Rose MacLeod Part 25

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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 baccha.n.a.l 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ddess 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."