Then, as Electra dropped her hand, she went away. But after three paces she returned, doubtful of her own judgment, but ready to venture it.
"Electra," she said, "the papers have begun already to report a woman"s speeches to the Brotherhood. You saw that yesterday."
Electra bowed her head silently. She was white to the lips.
"That woman was Ivan Gorof"s mistress. My father separated them, for a time, just as he is separating you now from all your past. Ivan Gorof accused him of it, and next day he died. But I know, as well as I know anything, that now she has gone back to Ivan Gorof"s memory. She will preach the Brotherhood as he saw it. Don"t you see, Electra, until a man rises that is strong enough, she will lead the Brotherhood herself?"
Electra struck her hands together in a pa.s.sionate, unconsidered gesture.
But she recalled herself immediately.
"Good-by," she said coldly, and, turning about, went in.
XXIX
Rose, unquiet over her useless mission to Electra, sought out Peter where he sat in the sun, his mind swaying in its constant rhythm between his happy work and his charming dreams. He left the garden chair and came forward to her, struck by the pathos of her face, and a little irritated, too, because MacLeod"s death was a sorrow past, and it seemed unfortunate, at least, that there should be so much melancholy in bright weather.
"Electra is going abroad, you know," she said.
Peter turned with her and they paced along the gra.s.s. Rose went on,--
"She was much impressed by my father."
"I know."
"She belongs to the Brotherhood now."
Peter nodded, his mind still with Osmond, but cheering a little in the consciousness of her graceful presence.
"Peter!" She stopped, and laid a finger on his sleeve. "Say something to her! She is going over there to work, to throw herself into that movement. She might as well jump into the Seine."
"Yes," said Peter musingly. "Yes, of course! I"ll go see her. I"ll go at once."
She a.s.sented eagerly. She seemed to hurry him away, and not knowing quite what he was to do when he got there, he found himself, obedient but unprepared, at the other house, before Electra. She was agreeably welcoming. Peter had ceased even to remind her of young love, chiefly because it was a part of her dignity to put the incomplete dream aside.
When she was forced to remember, sometimes by a word of grandmother"s, it gave her an irritated sense of having once been cheek to cheek with something unworthy of her. But this morning Peter meant nothing whatever. A larger bulk had blotted him out. He plunged, at once.
"I am going to Paris, too, Electra. We shall meet there."
She smiled at him with a fine remoteness.
"Perhaps," she said. Then a wave of her old distaste came over her, and she asked, with the indifference that veils forbidden feeling,--
"Are you going together?"
"Together?"
"Yes. Are you going with Rose MacLeod?"
Peter frowned.
"We have not mentioned it," he said. Their coming to America together had seemed most natural, but some intonation of her tone made the implication odious. Seeing his look, she said, not giving him time to answer,--
"You will help me with the Brotherhood. I must get in touch with it by every possible means."
The color came into his face. He looked half ashamed, half wondering.
"I can"t account for it," he returned, "but--Electra, I shan"t have time for those things any more."
"Not have time--for that!"
It was as if she accused him of lacking time to breathe.
"I can"t help it," said Peter. "It"s all true, Electra, as true as it was; but I"ve got to paint. That"s my business."
"Don"t you feel that you owe anything to Markham MacLeod?"
He looked at her with interest, noting the indignation that made a handsomer woman of her; but only for that reason, not because the indignation stirred him. Peter hardly knew how he felt about Markham MacLeod. He scarcely thought of him at all, save as Rose recalled him.
As to the Brotherhood, now that this great persuasive force was gone, Peter could view it dispa.s.sionately, and it did not move him. It was like waves heard a long way off, the waves of a sea he once had sailed, but from which he had escaped to this upland meadow where the light was good. Only when Rose, possessed by the remembrance of Ivan Gorof"s vision, had gone home and told him about it, had he felt the flare of that old enthusiasm to be in the surge of the general life,--but chiefly then because she had chanced to use the phrase "shining armor," and he saw a knight p.r.i.c.king through a glade, with sunlight dappling between leaves, and knew it would be good to paint. There was nothing to say to Electra, because, as Rose had told him, she could listen to nothing but the Brotherhood, and wakened only to MacLeod. It was not that she refused other challenges; but her face grew mystical and he knew her mind was afar from him. He got up to go.
"In Paris, then, Electra," he said awkwardly.
Her brows contracted. She remembered the other tryst that was to have been, and could not answer.
"You will let me know where you are. I shall find you," Peter said, as he went down the steps, "at once."
But as he walked away, he knew it would have to be some incredible chance to bring them together. There was no room for him.
Electra sat there, her feet together, her hands in her lap, like a carven image, and held herself still in her dream of fantasy. She hardly knew where she was in these days. This was not the world as she had known it. Bound beyond bound of possibility lay over its horizon. There had been her former world, full of disappointments, lacking in opportunities for picturesque morals, and Markham MacLeod had walked into it, and turned on a light under which the whole place glittered. He had caused things to be forever different. One such illumination made all things possible. She felt like an adventurer setting sail. There in the room where he had talked to her, she sat and thought of him and even felt him near. The great stories flashed out before her, as if she turned page after page. Dante--how many times did he see Beatrice? She must look that up. But once would be enough, once for souls to recognize each other and then be forever faithful. At a step in the hall she recalled herself. It seemed as if everybody interrupted her in her pa.s.sionate musings. This was Madam Fulton, and Electra remembered she had something to say to her. Madam Fulton looked very tired and irked in some way, as if she found the daily burden hard to bear. Electra rose, and waited scrupulously for her to sit.
"Billy Stark comes back to-morrow," said Madam Fulton. She took a chair, and laid her head back wearily.
"When does he sail?"
"Next week. You go Wednesday. He goes Sat.u.r.day."
Electra dared not remind her of that wild threat of marrying Billy Stark and sailing with him. Her grandmother looked a pathetically old woman, and such fantasy seemed to have withdrawn into its own place.
"Grandmother," she began delicately. She had a fear of disturbing something frail that might fall to pieces of its own weakness.
"Well."
"Shall you stay on here?"
Madam Fulton roused herself.