Rose MacLeod Part 66

"Yes, I've had coffee, and I've had cereals. Electra is looking after me with that kind of an air, you know, as if I were a rockbound duty. My soul! If it wasn't for Billy Stark, I should die."

"Poor Electra!" said grannie softly.

"Now what do you want to call her that for? Why is she 'poor Electra'

because she chooses to go round like a high priestess strapping me down on altars and pouring libations of cereals and cream? I could stand it if her heart was in it, but it's miles away. And Billy Stark is going."

Grannie only patted her hand.

"Well, well!" said she. "It's been nice to have him here."

"It's been heaven. It's the only heaven I shall ever know."

"We get a little mite of it here every once and a while," said grannie.

"Don't you think so?"

"No, except when Billy Stark comes,--and he won't come again. Electra's going, too."

"Abroad?"

"Yes. She's going abroad. At once, it seems. Rose MacLeod!"

Rose looked up from her papers.

"What was it about your father that put the devil into people?"

Rose answered with an unsmiling candor.

"I don't know, Madam Fulton."

"But you know what I mean?"

"He had great personal power."

"You are not in mourning for him?" She had been considering the girl's dress and its fluttering ribbons.

Rose returned with dignity,--

"I am not in mourning."

"Well, Electra is. She hasn't put on black, but it's all over her. She's perfectly shameless. I asked her this morning why she was hurrying her sailing, and she said it was because he would wish it. There were things to do for him."

"That he would wish it?"

"Your father. Don't you see? She's got an idea that she's his earthly vicegerent, and there's some majestic poppyc.o.c.k about the Brotherhood. I can't understand it, and I don't want to. All I know is, she's mad.

Bessie Grant, when I told the Lord I wanted things to happen, I didn't mean this kind, and He knew it perfectly well."

Rose had risen and stood in grave attention.

"Oh, she mustn't do that," she said earnestly. "I must tell her."

"Well, go and tell her, then," said the old lady, turning back to Mrs.

Grant. "If you can make her listen, you'll do more than I can. I ought to chaperon her, though you might as well chaperon the Lion of Lucerne.

Bessie!" And then as Rose left the room, she bent forward, and leaned her head on grannie's breast. "Bessie," she repeated, "it's a miserable world."

To grannie all ages were as one. The old and the young were alike defenseless, when they were in trouble, and she put her arms about the frail creature and held her warmly.

"Hush, dear!" she said, and forgot this was not one of her own children.

"Mother's sorry." Then they both smiled a little, but grannie went on: "You must come right here, you know. Electra will be gone, and Billy, and you don't want to carry on the house alone. You come here, dear, and stay with me."

"Could I?" Madam Fulton lifted her tear-wet face. "If I could stay here a little while, maybe I might pull myself together. I don't know how to do it, Bessie. I don't know how to live. I never did."

Rose had run over to the other house in an unreasoning haste. Electra was in the library, putting her desk in order. Her firm white hands were busy, a.s.sorting and arranging. She turned her head as Rose came in, and, without rising, spoke to her collectedly and bade her be seated. She was older, Rose thought; she looked even like a different woman, not merely one whom middle age had overtaken. Purpose sat on her brow, and her eyes looked straight at you, as if she bade you tell your business and be gone. The one effect upon Rose was to make her sorry, infinitely sorry for her. Electra had broken the globe of her hopes upon a rock, and she was not even going to walk on and leave the shards forgotten there. Rose spoke at once, to use her courage while she felt it hot.

"Madam Fulton tells me you are going abroad."

"Yes. I sail next week."

"Is it with any purpose? Electra, did my father make you love him?"

Electra faced her. Color flowed into her cheeks. Her eyes glowed beyond any promise they had ever given.

"I am glad you ask me that," she said, and her full tone was strangely unlike the even consonance of the old Electra's voice. At last she forgot how she did things or why. Life was sweeping her along. "He never made me love him. It was ordained. It was like nothing else on earth."

Rose felt cold with the sad knowledge of it.

"Yes," she said, "he had great power over people."

A smile stole upon Electra's lips.

"We had planned it all," she said. "I was to go to Paris. I was to work with him. Now that he is gone, I must carry on the work for both of us."

Rose regarded her with a wistful compa.s.sion, not knowing how much she might help her, and yet wishing to offer all she had.

"Electra," she said, "what do you mean by carrying on the work?"

"His work, the Brotherhood."

"But, dear child, you would have to submit yourself for years and years to all sorts of tests before you would be trusted. I don't even know whether it won't fall apart, now he has gone. It may do that and reorganize in a different form. And how would you find it? You think of it as a definite body with headquarters anybody can reach. Why, Electra, you might stay a dozen years in Paris and not put your finger on it."

Still Electra turned to her that look of rapt allegiance. She heard apparently, yet the words made no impression on her fixed resolve. Now she spoke, and rather sweetly. All the tones of her voice, all her looks, had a reminiscent value, as if they were echoes from her lost relation with him.

"He told me where to write," she said, as if she were satisfied with that. "I shall go there."

"I know, the address for his letters. But he was never there. Now that he is gone, the place will be for other uses. Everything connected with the Brotherhood keeps fluctuating, changing. There would be no safety otherwise."

Electra was looking at her in that removed, patient way that made another woman of her. It was almost like a mother who has cares to think of and can spare no time from them for alien presences.

"I must go," she said again. "He would wish it."