"Yes. She asked me plainly whether he married you."
"She asked you! How could she?"
"She did it without preamble. It was really rather magnificent."
"Did you answer without preamble?"
"I think so. At all events, it contented her. I said, "yes,"--not much more, if anything."
There was a long silence, and he felt her determination to remain outside the issue, even to the extent of denying herself the further news he brought. When that became apparent, he spoke again, rather lightly:--
"She took my a.s.surance without question. She said she should know what to do."
"What will she do?"
"The simplest thing possible--make over Tom"s money to you. She doesn"t consider, apparently, whether you are ent.i.tled to the whole of it, any more than she had previously guessed that, if your claim were just, you could have pushed it without her concurrence. She is a very intemperate person."
Rose did not intend to comment on the situation, however warmly she might express herself over Electra"s personal standpoint.
"Electra did not strike me as intemperate," she said. "She seemed to me very collected, very cold and resolute."
"Yes, but her reactions! they"d be something frightful. I can fancy that pendulum swinging just as far the other way. They are terrifying, those women."
"How are they terrifying?"
Governing the wild forces in herself at that minute, she felt as if all women were terrifying when they are driven too far, and that all men might well beware of them. MacLeod rose, and stretched himself upward in a muscular abandon.
"Good-night, my dear," he said. "I"m going upstairs. I will see her again to-morrow. You need give yourself no uneasiness about the outcome.
You needn"t even concern yourself with the details. I shall arrange them with her."
Rose was quickly upon her feet. She felt more his equal so than when he towered above her at that height.
"If you see her," she threatened, "I will overturn everything."
"No, no, you wouldn"t. Run upstairs now and go to bed. You are overwrought. This whole thing has been a strain on you."
"Yes." She spoke rapidly and in a low tone, fearing grannie"s window above. "It has been a strain on me. But who brought it on? I did it myself. I must meet it. But I will not have you meddling with it. I will not."
"Not to-night, at least," said MacLeod, with unblemished kindliness.
"Don"t do anything intemperate. But you won"t. I know you too well."
After a good-night she could not answer he went in and up the stairs.
She could hear him humming to himself that gay little song. She stood there quite still, as if she were in hiding from him and he might return to find her. When the door closed above, she still stood there, her nails clasped into her palms. And for the instant she was not thinking of herself, but of Electra. It seemed to her that it would be necessary to protect Electra from his charm. Then she heard Peter whistling back again. She stepped down to the end of the veranda and stole across the orchard into the field. The night was still, yet invisible forces seemed to be whispering to one another. In the middle of the field she stopped, tempted to call to Osmond, knowing he was there. But because it was late, and because her thoughts were all a disordered and protesting turmoil, she turned about and fled home.
XVIII
The next night Rose went early to her own room, and when she heard Peter and MacLeod on the veranda, their voices continuing in a steady interchange, she took her cloak, locked the chamber door behind her, and ran downstairs and out by the long window to the garden, the orchard, and the field. The night was dark and hot, and over in the south played fitful lightnings. In spite of the heat, she wrapped her cloak about her for an invisible shield: for now that MacLeod had come, she felt strangely insecure, as if eyes were everywhere. It was apparent to her that these meetings might be few, and as if this even might be the last; so it must not be interrupted. When she was once in the field, the hush of the night, the heat, and her own uneasy thoughts bewildered her. She stopped in doubt. His voice a.s.sured her.
"This way, playmate."
"I am coming," she found herself answering, not once but twice, and then, as she reached the seat he had ready for her, it came upon her overwhelmingly that such gladness was of the scope and tumult to bear two creatures to each other"s arms, to mingle there, face to face and breast to breast.
But the quick thought neither threw her back in shame upon herself nor forward to his side. The night and the things of life together were too great to admit of fine timidities or crude betrayals. It was not of so much avail to consider what was done as whether the deed was true. She sat down, in deep relief at finding herself near him.
"Playmate," she said, "things are very bad indeed."
"Are they, my dear playmate?"
Her breath came in a sob, his voice sounded so kind, so altogether merciful of her, whatever she might do.
"Dreadful things are happening," she said.
"The prince?"
"Not the prince, this time. Worse things."
"Tell me, child."
She had ceased to be altogether his playmate. Deeper needs had called out keener sympathies, and she found some comfort even in his altered tone. She waited for a time, listening to the summer sounds, and vainly wishing she had been a more fortunate woman, and that these sad steps need not be retraced in retrospect before life could go on again.
"You will have to listen to a long story," she said at last. "And how am I to tell you! Ask me questions."
"How far shall I go back?"
"To the beginning--to the beginning of my growing up. Before I met Tom Fulton."
"When you meant to sing?"
"I did sing. But you mustn"t think that was what I wanted. I never wanted anything but love."
"Go on." To him, who, in his solitude, had never expected to find close companionship, it was inconceivable that they should be there speaking the unconsidered truth. She, too, who, in the world, had tasted the likeness of happy intercourse, only to despair of it, had found a goal.
Here now was the real to which all the old promises had been leading.
"You must understand me," she said, in a low voice. "I"m going to tell you the plain truth. How awful if you didn"t understand!"
"I shall understand. Go on."
"I don"t know how it is with other girls, but always I dreamed of love, always after my first childhood. I thought of kings and queens, knights and ladies. They walked in pairs and loved each other."
"What did you mean by love?"
"Each would die for the other. That was my understanding of it. I knew the time would come some day when a beautiful young man would say to me, "I would die for you," and I should say to him, "And I would die for you." It was a kind of dream. Maybe it would not have been, except that I was never much of a child when I was a child. I had ecstatic times with my father, but I was lonesome. The lover was to change that, when he came."
"When did he come?"