Rose MacLeod Part 38

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. Rose wore the simplest dress, and her slender arms were bare. There were about her the signs of tasks abandoned, even of pleasures dropped and not remembered--the book half closed upon her finger, the rose and fan. Her great hat with its long feather lay beside her on the ground, and Electra, justly appraising its picturesqueness and value, thought, with brief distaste, that it looked as if it might belong to an actress. She asked her question at once and Rose answered.

No, her father would not be here in time for the important meeting. She had no doubt he would indeed have said more than a few words, since the entertainment had fallen through. Here Electra interrupted her delicately and challenged the use of that term for so serious an issue.

It could hardly be called an entertainment; they had simply been unable to consider the topic fixed upon, and it was necessary to find a subst.i.tute.

"Let me do something," said Rose, with her appealing grace. "I'll sing for them."

That accounted for her again, Electra thought, the unconsidered ease, perhaps the boldness. She belonged to public life; yet as such she might well be taken into account.

"What do you sing?" she asked.

Rose forgot all about her picture and sat up, looking quite in earnest.

Peter held his brush reproachfully poised.

"I tell you what I can do," she said, after a moment's thinking. "I can give a little talk on contemporary music--what they are doing in France, in Germany. I can give some personal data about living musicians--things they wouldn't mind. And I really sing very well. Peter, boy, tell the lady I sing well."

"She sings adorably," said Peter. "She has a nightingale in her throat:--

"'Two larks and a thrush, All the birds in the bush.'

"You never heard anything more sympathetic. I never did."

The "Peter, boy," had spoiled it. Electra grew colder. She wished she were able to be as easy as she liked; but she never could be, with other people perpetually doing and saying things in such bad taste.

"The club is composed of ladies who know the best music," she heard herself saying, and realized that it sounded like a child's copy-book.

Rose was still sitting upright, Peter patiently looking at her, evidently wishing she would return to her pose, and yet quite as evidently enriching his attention with this new aspect of her. She had turned into a vivid and yet humble creature, intent on offering something and having it accepted. The thought that she had something Electra wanted seemed for the moment the next best thing to knowing that Electra tendered her kinship and recognition.

"Please like me," her look begged for her. "Please tolerate me, at least, and take what I have to give."

The end of it was that Electra did accept it, and that Peter's painting was quite forgotten while Rose ran eagerly over the ground she could cover. One moment of malice she did have. While Electra was hesitating, she looked up at her with a curious little smile.

"You can introduce me," she said, "as you always have, as 'the daughter of Markham MacLeod.' That will give your afternoon an added flavor."

Electra answered seriously, "Thank you," and resolved to do it. Madam Fulton, she thought, would have the decency not to break the situation by her intemperate "Mrs. Tom's." Electra had no experience of contrition in her grandmother, but she could but feel that any woman who had done what that old lady had might be trusted to observe the decencies for at least a week thereafter.

"That was my public name," Rose added hastily, as if she had invalidated her claim. "I sang for eight months or more as Rose MacLeod."

It was a new triumph for her, Electra realized when the day was over.

The ladies came down from the city and, in perfect weather, sat about on the veranda and in the two front rooms, while Rose, at the piano, sang to them and then gave them a charming talk. 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. To her, unused to the American woman's pa.s.sion for new things, it was a real tribute, something she could count upon to-morrow after the epoch of to-day; and the afternoon left her exhilarated and warm in momentary triumph. The women crowded about her with intemperate comment and question. They wanted to know as much about her father as they did about her. They were all eager to show their conversance with the Brotherhood, its aims and potencies, and they were more than ready to besiege her father and to entertain her. Some of them even wanted to make dates for the coming autumn, and Rose found herself the recipient of a score of visiting cards, all pointing to new alliances. She slipped away before the afternoon was over, to spare Electra the pains of thanking her, and going home, found Markham MacLeod at the gate.

Immediately her hopes died. She had forgotten the issues she had to reckon with in him. From these no ladies' club could save her.

He was affection itself in greeting her.

"I have just come," he explained. "Peter is in town and Mrs. Grant is taking her afternoon rest. Let us walk a little way."

"I haven't my hat," she demurred.

He looked at her sufficient parasol and took her hand, turning her toward the road again.

"Come. We'll walk along to that grove. It is shady there. I want to see you before we meet the others."

She yielded, and presently they stepped in at the bars to the field where the grove invited. Under the trees she furled her parasol, and sat down on a stone. She looked involuntarily toward the plantation, below them to the west. There were the little clumps of nursery trees, the green patches of seedlings, and, dotted through the working area, men with backs bent over the rows. She wondered if Osmond were there, and the thought gave her, if not courage, at least the defiance that answers for it. MacLeod threw himself on the ground, and her eyes came back to him. He looked so strong, so much a part of all living things, that he seemed to her invincible. He spoke quite seriously, as if there were matters between them to be gravely settled.

"I have been wondering about the bearing of these people toward you.

What explanation did you make when you came?"

"I made no explanation."

"What att.i.tude did you take?"

"Peter introduced me to her. He went in advance, to tell her I was coming."

"Electra?"

"Yes, Tom's sister."

"What did Peter tell her?"

"He told her I was her brother's wife."

"Ah! and she accepted you?"

"No, she has never accepted me."

"What!"

He glanced sharply up at her, and she met the look coldly. Her cheeks were burning, but there was nothing willingly responsive in her face.

She repeated it: "Peter told her Tom had married me. I have reason to think she told him she did not believe it."

"Has Peter said that to you?"

"No, but I think so."

"Did she send for you, to go to see her?"

"No, I went without it."

"Now, how did she receive you?" His voice betrayed an amiable curiosity.

He might have been interested merely in the vagaries of human nature, and particularly because Electra, as a handsome, willful creature, had paces to be noted. Rose laughed a little, in a way that jarred on him.

He liked mirth to sound like mirth.

"She was civil to me. But she has never once given me Tom's name, nor has she allowed me to introduce myself by it."

"The old lady used it."

"That was because I followed an impulse one day and told her. She followed an impulse and used it. She is a naughty old lady."

"Ah!" He considered for a moment. "If she did believe you, is it your impression she would expect you to--inherit?"

"I wouldn't have it." Her face quivered all over. "I never thought of that for a moment. Can't you see why I came? I was beside myself in Paris. There were you, hurrying back from the East and bringing--him."