"You see we shall have to play fair every minute. That"s the way to be good playmates."
"That"s what we are, isn"t it--playmates?"
"It"s about the size of it." Then he asked her gravely, across the distance between them, "Don"t you hear a nightingale?"
She was taken in.
"But there aren"t any nightingales in New England!"
"I almost think I hear one. You see if you don"t."
She caught the pace then, and listened. Presently she spoke as gravely as he had done.
"I am sure I hear one--over there in the rose garden."
"I knew you would." He breathed quickly, in a gay relief. "Yes, in the rose garden, "her breast against a thorn." Well, playmate, it"s a wonderful night. I smell the roses, too, don"t you?"
"Yes, and lilies. The nightingale sings very loud."
"Let us talk, playmate. Where have you been since I saw you last?"
"Since that other night I came down here?"
"Since that other year, so long ago. We mustn"t forget there are other years, though we can"t quite recall them. If there hadn"t been, we shouldn"t be hearing the nightingale to-night and talking without words.
You see it"s a good while since I saw you. How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty-five! A quarter of a century. That"s a long time. Well, what have you been doing all that twenty-five years?"
She seemed to shrink into herself, as if a hand had struck her.
"Don"t!" she breathed. "Don"t ask me to remember."
"Why, no! not if it troubles you."
"Troubles me! it kills me. Can"t we begin now?"
"We will begin now. There, playmate, don"t shiver. I feel you"re doing it through the moonlight. Don"t let your chin tremble either. It did, that night down in the shack."
"When I was talking about Electra?"
"I guess so. Anyway it trembled a lot, and I made up my mind it mustn"t any more. Cheer up, playmate. Be a man."
"I wish I were a man." She spoke bitterly. The beauty of the night seemed to break about her, and this castle of whim that had looked, a moment ago, more solid than certainty, was crumbling.
"Now you"re doing what I told you not to," he warned her gravely. "You have stopped telling the truth. You don"t wish you were a man. Think how happy you were a minute ago, only because you are a beautiful woman and you heard the nightingale."
She was struggling back into the clear medium that had been between them the moment before.
"I only meant"--she spoke painstakingly, hunting for words and pathetically anxious to have them right--"I only meant--I have been unhappy. No man would have been as unhappy as I have been."
Osmond smiled a little to himself, in grave communing. The uphill road of his life presented itself to him as a th.o.r.n.y way so hard that, if he had foreseen it from the beginning, he would have said it was impossible. But at the same instant he remembered where it had led him: he had come out into clear air, he was resting in this garden of delight. And she, too, was resting. He knew that with a perfect certainty.
"We have begun over," he warned her. "We don"t have to remember. See the moon driving along the sky. We are going with her, fast. Look at her, playmate."
She looked up into the sky where the moon seemed to be racing past more stable clouds. It was as if their spiritual gaze met there, to be welded into a mutual compact. This was the ecstasy of silence. Presently a sound broke it, a whistle loud and clear from the other field. Osmond was at once upon his feet.
"Come," he said, "we must go. There"s Peter."
"But why must we go?" She was struggling out of her trance of quietude, almost offended at his haste.
"Come with me. We will meet him in the field. It is too--too splendid, here. This is our castle under the tree. Don"t you know it is? We can"t ask anybody in--not even Peter."
"Not even Peter!" She tried to say it gayly, but a quick sadness fell upon her as she rose and went with him along the path. The moon had gone into a cloud, and a breath sprang up. The night was cooler. That other still langour of too great emotion seemed like something generated by their souls, and dissipated when they had to come out of the world of their own creating. All her daily fears rose up before her in antic.i.p.ation. She was again alien here in her own land, and Electra was unkind to her. But there was a strange confidence and strength in knowing this silent figure was at her side.
"Courage, playmate," he said, as if he knew her thought. "We shall think this night over, shan"t we?"
"Yes. When"--her voice failed her.
"Every night," he said, with an unchanged a.s.surance that amazed her like the night itself. "I shall be there every night. If you don"t come--why, never mind. If you come"--his voice stopped, as if something choked it.
Then he went on heartily, "The house will be there under the tree, the playhouse. n.o.body will see it by day, you know. n.o.body"ll run up against it by night. But you"ve got the key. There are only two, you know. You have one. I have the other. And here"s Peter."
The whistle had come nearer, clear and pure now like the pipe of Pan.
Peter stopped short.
"Rose!" he cried. "Osmond! What is it?"
Some accident seemed to him inevitable. Nothing else could have brought about this meeting. Osmond answered, stopping as he did so, when Peter turned to join him.
"I"ll go back, now you"ve come, Peter. We were taking our walks abroad.
So we met. Good-night! good-night!"
It seemed a separate and a different farewell to each of them, and he walked away. Peter stood staring after him, but Rose involuntarily glanced up to heaven to see if the moon, out of her cloud now, would give again the radiant a.s.surance of that other moment. She longed pa.s.sionately for an instant"s meeting even so with the man who had gone.
Then an exalted calm possessed her. She and Peter were walking rather fast along the path; he had been talking and she was conscious that she had not heard. Now a name arrested her.
"Had you met him before?" he was asking,--"Osmond?"
Her old habit of elusive courtesy came back to her. She laughed a little.
"We haven"t really met now, have we?" she responded pleasantly.
"He said he was afraid of you." Peter put it bluntly, out of his curiosity and something else that was not altogether satisfaction. He was not jealous of Osmond. He could not be, more than of a splendid tree; but there was a something in the air he did not understand. He felt himself pushing angrily against it, as if it were a tangible obstruction. "He was afraid of you," he continued blunderingly, "because you are a Parisian."
Rose laughed again, with that beguiling gentleness.
"But he spoke first, I believe," she explained carelessly. "I was walking along and he asked me where I was going."
"What were you talking about?" Peter"s voice amazed him, as it did her.