"You are not the man," he said. "You would not believe in it. You wouldn"t live it. You are very powerful. But your mastery wouldn"t serve you. That"s where you can"t pretend."
"Now where have you got your idea of me?" MacLeod was looking at him sharply. "You never saw me before to-day. Yet your idea was already formed before I came down here. Who"s been talking to you?"
Osmond had entrenched himself at last in his customary reserve.
"You are a public character," he said indifferently.
"Has Peter been talking about me?"
"Yes. He speaks of you."
"But not in this fashion. Peter believes in me, over head and ears."
"Yes. He believes in you. I wish he didn"t."
"Ah!" MacLeod drew a deep breath. "My daughter! Do you know my daughter?"
The question was too quick, and Osmond quivered under the a.s.sault of it.
He felt the blood in his face. His heart choked him. And MacLeod"s eyes were upon him.
"Do you know her?" MacLeod was asking sharply.
"Yes," Osmond heard himself answering, in a moved voice. "I have seen her."
MacLeod spoke with what seemed to the other man an insulting emphasis.
Yet Osmond had not time to calm himself by the reminder that he was not used to hearing Rose spoken of at all as mortal woman. In his dreams she was something more than that.
"My daughter," MacLeod was saying, "has an intemperate habit of speech.
If she has talked me over with you, she has inevitably made your opinions. For Rose is a very beautiful woman. I needn"t tell you that."
Then something strange happened to Osmond. He experienced a sensation which he had accepted as a form of words, and had only idly believed in.
He saw red. A rush and surge were in his ears. And as if it were a signal, known once but ignored through years of tranquil living, he as instantly obeyed. He was on his feet, his fists clenched, and MacLeod, also risen, was regarding him with concern and even, Osmond thought in fury, with compa.s.sion. The red deepened into black and Osmond felt the suffocation and nausea of a weakness MacLeod instantly formulated for him.
"My dear fellow," he was saying, "sit down here. You"re faint."
But Osmond would neither sit nor accept the cup of water MacLeod had brought him from the pail left on the bench for the workmen. He stood, keeping his grip on himself and battling back to life. Presently he was conscious that Peter was there, calling him affectionately. Now again he felt the blood in his face, the wetness of the hair above his forehead, and he knew he was not the man he had been. MacLeod was speaking, in evident solicitude.
"Your brother has had an ill turn. He"s all right now, aren"t you, Grant?"
Osmond looked at him, smiling grimly. MacLeod seemed to him his foe not only for the sake of Rose, but because the man, great insolent child of good fortune as he was, represented the other side of the joy of fight.
Osmond almost loved him, because it was through him that he had been inducted into a knowledge of that unknown glory. MacLeod picked up his pipe from the bench, tapped it empty, and pocketed it. He gave them a pleasant inclusive nod of fellowship.
"I"ll trot along," said he. "See you at dinner, Peter."
"What was it, Osmond? What was it?" Peter was asking, in a worried voice.
Osmond suddenly looked tired. He pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, and put back his matted hair.
"Pete," he said, "I suppose it was a hundred things. But all it really was, was the rage for fight, plain fight. But whatever it was, I"ve got something out of it."
"What?"
"I know how men--other men--feel."
"Other men don"t want to tackle one another, as a general thing, like bulldogs."
"Oh, yes! they recognize the instinct. They"re ready to stamp on it. I wasn"t ready. I"m glad to have met that instinct. It"s a healthy old devil of an instinct. I respect it."
Peter was staring as if he did not know him.
"What was it, Osmond?" he asked again.
Osmond shook his head and laughed.
"I"ll wash my hands," he said. "I feel as if there were dirt on them and the touch of clothes that are not mine." He stopped on his way to the bench where there was a basin and towel for hasty use. "Pete," he said, "you don"t want to sc.r.a.p a little, do you?"
He did not look like the same man. Light was in his face, overlying the flush of simple pa.s.sions. He looked almost joyous. It was Peter who was distraught, older with a puzzled sadness.
"Don"t!" he said. "Don"t think of such devilment. There"s no good in it.
Why, we get over that when we are under twenty--except in an emergency."
"Ah, but this is an emergency," said Osmond, coming out of his washing with clean hands and a dripping face. "It was an emergency for me, if it wasn"t for him."
XXII
MacLeod kept his thoughtful way on to Electra"s gate. There he turned in with no lack of decision, and walked up to her door. She had seen him, and came forward from the shaded sitting-room. It was as if she had been expecting him. Whether she had acknowledged it to herself or not, it was true that Electra had never felt so strong a desire for the right companionship as at that moment. As soon as she saw him and he had put out his hand to her, she felt quieted and blessed. He was, as he had been from the first, the completion of her mood. As he looked at her, MacLeod, little as he knew her face, noted the change in it. She seemed greatly excited and yet haggard, as if this disturbance were nothing to what had preceded it. And her bright eyes fed upon him with a personal appeal to which he was well used: that of the lower vitality involuntarily demanding the support of his own magnetic treasury.
"You are tired," he said, as she drew her hand away and they sat down.
"No," returned Electra. "I am not tired."
"Tell me what has done it!"
The tender disregard of her denial broke down reserve. She looked at him eloquently. It seemed to her that he had a right to know. She answered faintly,--
"I have been through such scenes."
"Scenes? With whom?"
"Your daughter has told me"--She hesitated for a moment, and then, still confident that his worship of the truth must be as exalted as her own, ended with unstinted candor, "She says she was not my brother"s wife."
Electra was looking at him, and it appeared to her now as if, in a bewildering way, his gaze absorbed hers. It was very strange, how he seemed to draw the intelligence of the eye into his and hold it unresisting. She hardly knew how he looked, whether surprised or sympathetic, or whether he was moved at all. But she was conscious of being gripped by some communion in which she acquiesced. After a moment he leaned forward and took her hand.
"Will you promise me something?" he asked.