"The money. Always that--money, position, a pressure here, a pull there."
"Then"--his tone seemed to demand her actual meaning--"your case is won.
Electra owns you."
She was on her feet gripping the back of her chair with both hands. The rough wood hurt her and she held it tighter.
"Range myself with him--my father? Sell myself in his company? No! When I was fighting before, it was from bravado, pride, mean pride, the necessity of the fight. But now, when he confirms me--no! no! no!"
"We must tell the truth," she heard Osmond murmuring to himself.
To her also it looked not only necessary but beautiful. There were many things she wanted to say to him at that moment, and, as she suddenly saw, they were all in condonation of herself. Yet the pa.s.sionate justice in her flamed higher as she remembered again that it was true that others had marked out her way for her. When she walked in it, it had been with an exalted sense that it was the one way to go.
"I cannot understand about the truth," she said. "I can"t, even now."
"What about it?"
"Once it seemed as if there were different kinds. He told me so--my father. He always said there was the higher truth, and that almost n.o.body could understand. Then there were facts. What were facts? he asked. Often worse than lies."
"I don"t know," said Osmond. Whatever he might say, he was afraid of hurting her. It seemed impossible to express himself without it. "Facts are all I have had to do with."
She seemed like a bewildered creature flying about in a confined s.p.a.ce.
"You wouldn"t say what my father does," she concluded miserably. "You wouldn"t feel we have a right to the higher truth, if we feel great desires, great hungers the world wouldn"t understand?"
"I only know about facts," said Osmond again. "You see, I work in my garden all day, nearly every day in the year. I know I must sow good seed. I must nourish it. I know nature can"t lie. I didn"t suppose things were so incomprehensible out in the world--or so hard."
"Haven"t they been hard for you?"
"For me!" He caught his breath, and immediately she knew how the question touched him. It was as monstrous as his fate. But he answered immediately and with a gentleness without reproach,--
"Things are different for me in every way. But I should have thought you would reign over them like a queen."
"A queen! I have been a slave all my life. I see it now. A slave to other people"s pa.s.sions--Tom Fulton"s cruelty, my father"s greed."
"His greed for money? I don"t always understand you when you speak of him."
"For money, power, everything that makes up life. My father is one great hunger. Give him the world and he would eat it up."
Images crowded upon her. It seemed to her that here in the silence, with the s.p.a.ces of the dark about her and that voice answering, her thought was generated like the lightning.
"Do you see," she asked suddenly, "how I blame those two men, and not myself? I am the sinner. The sinner ought to own his sin. I don"t know whether I have sinned or not. I believed in love, and because I believed in it, those two men betrayed me. That was how I was taught not to believe in anything."
"Don"t you believe any more?"
"Oh, I don"t know! I don"t know!" It was a despairing cry. "There is kindness, I know that. Peter is kind. Your grandmother is the kindest person in the world. But that one thing I dreamed about--why, Osmond, that one thing was the most beautiful thing G.o.d ever made."
"Tell me more about it."
"You have thought about it, too. We can"t be so much alike, you and I, and not have thought the same things."
"Are we alike?"
It was a wistful voice. She laughed, a little sorry laugh.
"Well," she said, "at least we are in our playhouse together."
"Ah!" He seemed to speak in spite of prudence. "That"s not because we are alike. It is because we are different." But he went on at once, as if to keep her from interrogating that, or even perhaps remembering it.
"I have forbidden myself to think of some things. When they came upon me, I went out and dug them into the ground."
She was filled that night with an imperative sense of life. It made her forget even him and his claim to be heard. The great resolve in her to be for once understood was like a crowning wave drenching the farthest sh.o.r.e.
"I have never had enough of life," she avowed pa.s.sionately. "I have always had the appearance of it, the promise that the next minute the cup would be given me. But the cup was never there. Or if it was, there was muddy water in it. The lights have never been bright enough, the music has never gone on long enough. Why!" She seemed frightened. "Is that like my father? Do I get that from him?"
"It is because you are young," said Osmond. "And because you are beautiful and the world ought to be yours--to put your foot on it."
The pa.s.sion of his voice recalled her.
"No," she answered humbly. "Not to put my foot on anything. No! no! no!
Playmate," she added, "you are the dearest thing in all the world."
The voice laughed out harshly. The man was lying p.r.o.ne at full length where she could not see him, his hands upon the earth he loved, his fostering, yet unheeding mother that had saved his life for her own service. At that moment, it seemed to him, his eye turned inward upon himself, as if there were foolish irony in that friendly comment. He looked to himself rather one of the earth forces, supremely strong, waiting for some power to guide it.
"Elemental things are no good until they are harnessed and made to work," he heard himself saying, as in a trance; and then it was apparent she had not noticed, for she went on,--
"To be able to speak to any one as I speak to you! Playmate, it seems to me men might as well kill a child as kill women"s innocent faith in love."
"But men love, too," he heard himself answering her.
"If I thought that! But when anything so beautiful turns into something base, and the creature we worshiped laughs and says it is always so, he kills something in us. And he can"t bring it to life again. Neither he nor any other man can make it live. It is a dream, and the thought of it hurts us too much for us even to dream it over again.--What is that?"
Out of his web of pain he could only answer,--
"What, playmate?"
"Something sweet in the air."
That recalled him to his dear garden and the homely sanities that awaited him. He sat up and brushed the wet hair from his forehead.
"It is the lily field," he said. "A wind has risen. The flowers have been coming out to-day, and you get their scent." He laughed a little, tenderly, as at a child. "You said you never had enough of anything. You would have enough of them if you were there."
"Why should I?"
"The fragrance is so strong. You can make yourself drunk with it."
"Come, playmate! Take me there. Let us walk through them in the dark and smell them."
"No!"
"Why not?"