"Rose," said he, "this may be the last little talk we have together here. I want to speak to you about your mother."
"My mother!" Unconsciously she drew nearer him. Her mother was--what? A banished dream, not forgotten, but relegated to dim tapestried chambers because the air of the present seemed to blur out memory by excess of light. She had awakened from her girlhood"s dreams; to them, chiefly, her mother had belonged. Now that past beneficence was a faded flower found in a casket, a scent of beauty touched by time.
"Sit down," said MacLeod, and she obeyed him. He stretched out his legs at ease, and put his head back, his eyes closed, in an easy contemplation. "We don"t speak of her very often, do we, little girl?"
"No!" Her irrepressible comment was, "I thought you had forgotten her."
But he continued,--
"I was thinking the other day how much you lose in not having known her as she was when I met her first."
"I have the miniature."
"I know. But that"s only a suggestion. It doesn"t help me bring her to life for you. She had beauty--not so much as you have--and an extraordinary grace and charm. She had, too, that something we trace back to breeding."
He had always undervalued the virtues claimed by gentle birth, and she looked at him, amazed. He understood, and laughed a little. His best weapon against the aristocrat had been tolerance, at its mildest, or a gentle scorn. Where a mob threw eggs, he tossed a rounded epithet.
"I know," he said, "you think I laugh at breeding. Not in her. She had its rarest virtues. She was like an old portrait come to life. She couldn"t think of her own advantage. She couldn"t lie. Ah, well! well!"
He seemed to be musing over the sadness of things begun and ended all too soon, over a light quenched, a glory gone. Rose found herself pa.s.sionately anxious to hear more. He had brought her a jewel, a part of her heritage; she might have seen it, but without knowing how bright it was. She was acquiescing, too, in the old spell of his kindness, but never, it seemed to her, so beguilingly administered: for he had come, like a herald accredited by an impeccable authority--the talisman of her mother"s name. He was, she thought from his voice, gently amused, even smiling a little to himself.
"You see, Rose, your mother made a bad match. Her people, the few there were, repudiated her. I had no qualifications. I was a poor scribbler, too big, too robust, too everything to suit them. I breathed up all the air. I just went into their stained-gla.s.s seclusions and carried her off. They never forgave me."
"Her father died very soon?" She had never referred to the two old people as her grandparents. She found, in her emotional treasury, no right to them, even as a memory. This hesitating question, indeed, seemed a liberty, as it subtly brought them nearer.
"Yes. Your mother was prostrated by that. She had a strong sense of family feeling."
Immediately Rose pictured to herself the wonder of having such clinging tendrils, to aspire upward, and such filaments of root, to mingle with kindred roots in a tended ground. Until now it had seemed to her brave and desirable to walk alone without inherited ties, the cool wind breathing about her, unchecked by walls of old restraint. Now, whether he was gently guiding her thoughts toward his desired ends, or whether some actual hunger in her was impelling them to seek lost possibilities, she did not know; but she was sad. She wanted the s.p.a.cious boughs of a tree of family life to sit under, to play there and rest. He was continuing,--
"Above all, your mother was a woman of great loyalties, not only to individuals but to her inherited pride. You know that threadbare phrase, _n.o.blesse oblige_? I can laugh when most of them use it. I never laughed when I saw her cutting her conduct by it."
"I never knew--" She was about to say, in her glowing surprise, that she never knew he cared so much for her mother, or that he had been cherishing such memories.
"That"s the reason, my dear," he was saying now, "why you must model yourself on her, and not on me. I don"t know that you ever had the least desire to model yourself on me, but I feel very strongly about your knowing what kind of woman she was and letting her--well, letting her decide things for you."
"I wish"--All sorts of longings were choking her and crying for expression; but she could only finish, "I wish she had not died."
"Yes, child. Now these people here, Rose,"--his voice had changed into a decisive affirmation,--"they are a good sort, very gentle, very well worth your meeting them with fairness. You haven"t met them fairly. Now, have you?"
"What do you mean?" She was trembling, not so much under his words as from her own dreary shame. The shame had been with her all day, until she was tired with it, and the words seemed to be little separate floutings to make the burden heavier.
"Electra called you an adventuress. She had every right to."
"Yes. She had every right to." But Rose spoke with the unreasoning bitterness of youth that, finding itself in the wrong path, is sure the way, once entered, has no turning.
"She says you came here with a lie on your lips. Isn"t that true?"
"But you told me"--She was seeking to get back her lost self, the one that still believed in its own integrity. "I didn"t choose to lead the life she thinks I led. You told me it was the n.o.blest thing to do."
"Ah!" He took the words out of her mouth. "I did. But did you make your stand magnificently and face the conventions you defied? No! you came here and told a lie. You chose the cheapest part you could, and played it."
His righteous anger was sweeping her away. Everything helped him, even her own sad sense of inexorable destiny and her poor desert.
"You have taken a very unfortunate step, child," he was saying. "You came here on a questionable errand. Now you have owned up to these people. They know what you are."
"Oh!" She threw out her hands at the horror of it. Until now she had not seen herself as she must be, even in Electra"s eyes. His way of presenting things made them intolerably vivid.
"But they--they will not--" She quivered before him, and seemed to crouch and lessen.
"They won"t tell? I don"t feel sure of that. But do you want to trade on their not telling? Such things are always known."
"Well, I have done wrong. I must suffer for it."
"Who suffers? You--and I. The blow to me is incalculable. I don"t understand it. Your mother"s memory--that should have kept you straight.
So far, child--why, you"re a liar."
She was, she told herself, the tears streaming over her face. The happy certainties she had felt with Osmond withdrew into a vague distance. At last she understood; she had sinned, and she was not forgiven.
"Now!" said MacLeod. His voice had a ring she knew. "Now, we must consider what is to be done. One thing I have done already. I have taken pa.s.sage for you. I will stand by you if you go back to France. I won"t support you here. Nor shall they. Think what you did. A cheap adventuress could do no more, except persist in it." He was all breathing indignation.
"Do you mean"--Her voice broke. "Do you mean to take me back to him?"
"The prince? By no means. I mean to take you back to work, to be good and clean and honest. You must retrieve this step. You shall be independent of me, if you like. You shall sing. My dear daughter, you may not think I have shown you much affection,--but your honor is very dear to me." He looked n.o.bly sincere, and yet she bent her brows upon him, and tried to read a deeper soul than he displayed.
"Father!" The word was wrung from her. She had not willingly called him by it for the two years past. "You have persuaded me before. How can I believe you?"
A melting change came over him. It was evident in his voice, his suffused look, his whole manner.
"My child," said he, "can"t you believe I loved your mother?"
Immediately the tides of her filial being were with him. If she denied him, she must hurt something to which her very blood bade her be faithful. The house of life, the father, mother, and their child,--these were the sacred three, and it might be her high emprise to keep their union holy.
"Can you be ready to-morrow?" he asked, with that emphasis his followers knew. "You will stay in town with me until we sail."
"Yes."
"Will you be ready?"
"I will be ready."
He got up and bent to kiss her forehead. But she retreated.
"No," she breathed. "I"ll do it, father, but don"t be kind to me."
He gave her a little pat on the shoulder, and a rea.s.suring, "Nonsense!
I"m always kind. We"ll have famous times yet, my dear."
She stood droopingly while his steps went down the stairs and out through the veranda and ceased upon the gra.s.s. Then she opened her door and crossed the hall to grannie"s room and tapped.