But all this touch and go was a strange, poor sequel to the task of that confession. It had all turned out very small beer indeed, except so far as Electra was concerned. Electra, Rose was convinced, in a moment of sadly mirthful fancy, was upstairs setting her judgments in order and decorously glad to have been proven right.
"I"ll go now," she said, rising. She felt very tired with it all. "I"ve told you."
"But come again, my dear," the old lady insisted. "Be sure you come again. You are so understanding, I shall miss you sadly. Come every day."
Rose went down the garden path and noted, with some irony, that Billy Stark, still smoking, turned away into the grape arbor. It looked like the shyness of decorum. She could hardly know that Billy felt unable to bear any more revelations from womenfolk. And now she said to herself, "I shall have to tell grannie and I shall have to tell Peter."
Opportunity was easy, for Peter was at that moment coming whistling along the road on the way to Electra"s. When she saw him, her purpose failed. He looked so boyish, so free and happy-hearted. How could she give him a sordid secret to keep, in place of their admiring comradeship?
"Where is my father?" she asked him, when they met and Peter had pulled off his hat and salaamed before her.
"Gone down to the plantation to see Osmond."
She took fright.
"To see Osmond! How does my father know anything about him? How does he dare--"
"Osmond sent for him," said Peter, turning to walk with her. He was tossing up his stick and catching it, in love of the day. "It"s the first human being Osmond has expressed an interest in. But I don"t wonder. Everybody wants to see the chief."
"Why should he have sent?" she repeated to herself.
"I"ll tell you something," continued Peter. "The chief will tell you when you see him. He has been summoned."
"My father?"
"Yes. He is needed."
"Where?"
"He won"t tell me. But it"s urgent. It means canceling his engagements here. Of course there"s but one supposition."
"Russia?"
He nodded.
"I wish I could go with him," he said impetuously.
She looked at him, and his face was glowing. She had seen that look so many times on other faces, that wistful longing for the unnamed beautiful. It was what Markham MacLeod was always calling out in faces.
They might be young, they might be the faces of those who had suffered long experience, but always it was those who were hungry, either with the hunger of youth or the delay of hope, the cruelty of time. He seemed to be the great necromancer, the great promiser. Could such promises come to naught?
"To leave here?" she suggested. "To leave--" she hesitated.
"I shouldn"t leave Electra," said Peter simply. "When I met you, I was going to ask her to go with me."
She stopped and held out her hand to him.
"Go," she said. "Go to her and ask her. I wish you luck, Peter--dear Peter!"
He did not look altogether a happy lover, as he stood holding her hand.
He gazed at her, she thought, sadly, as if he dreamed of things that could not be. What was it in youth that made everything into twilight, even with the drum and fife calling to wars and victories? She was impatient with it, with deceiving life itself that promised and then lied. She took her hand away.
"Good-by, Peter," she said, sadly now in her turn, because it occurred to her that after Peter should have seen Electra, he would never again be her own good comrade. He would know. She left him standing there looking after her, and then, when he found she would not loiter, he went on his way. But Peter did not toss his stick up now. He walked slowly, and thought of what he meant to do.
They seemed to be walking with him, one on each side, Rose and Electra.
It was chiefly the thought of Electra, as it had moulded him from year to year while he had been absent from her; but it was the delicate presence of the other woman, so wonderful by nature and so equipped with all the arts of life that the pleasure of her was almost pain. They seemed to keep a hand upon him, one through his fealty to her and the other by compelling and many-sided beauty.
XX
Electra, in her excitement, found herself unable to stay upstairs at her accustomed tasks. She had to know what grandmother thought of this ill-bred woman. But speeding down, she saw grandmother in the garden path with Billy Stark. There they walked intimately arm-in-arm, and grandmother talked. There was something eager in the pose of her head.
Evidently what she had heard quite pleased her, if only because it was some new thing. And there was Peter at the door. Instantly the light sprang renewed into Electra"s eyes. Peter would do still better than grandmother to confirm her triumph, though at the moment even she charged herself to be lofty in her judgments and temperate in expressing them. Peter did not look at all like one who had himself heard unlovely news. His face glowed. There were points of light in his dark eyes. Rose had left them there, and Electra, with the sick certainty of the jealous, knew it. They went silently into the library, Peter holding, as well as he might, the lax hand hanging at her side. In the morning light of the room they faced each other, and she asked her question, the one that, unbidden, came leaping to her lips.
"Did you meet her?"
He knew whom she meant, for his thought, too, was full of her.
"Yes," he said, and then swept even Rose aside as deflecting him from his purpose. "Electra, I have decided to go back to France."
Immediately she thought she saw why. Rose was going and he had to follow.
"What did she tell you?" she cried sharply. The pang that came astonished her, it was so savage. Even in the haste of the moment, she had time for a pa.s.sing surprise that she could be so moved by Peter. He was looking at her with innocent perplexity.
"Rose?" he said. "Nothing. I told her I was coming here and she--" He paused, for he was on the point of adding, "She sent me." Peter could see how ill-judged that would be.
Electra, her proud glance on him, was considering, balancing probabilities. With his artist"s eye he saw how handsome she was, how like, in the outer woman, to his imperial lady. Such spirit in her could only, it seemed, be spent for n.o.ble ends.
"Has she told you?" asked Electra, and there was something, he saw, beyond what he suspected. Her voice rang out against her will: "No, she hasn"t. She means, for some reason, not to tell you. But she has had to tell me."
Peter was staring at her.
"Has something happened to her?" he asked quickly. "I must know."
That mysterious rage she was so unwilling to recognize got possession of her again.
"It means a great deal to you," she breathed.
"Of course it does," said Peter honestly. "Don"t keep me dangling, Electra."
Electra"s mouth seemed to harden before his eyes. She looked like some n.o.ble and beautiful image of justice or a kindred virtue.
"She thinks I shall not tell you," she declared. "But I shall. It is no more right for you to be deceived than it was right for me. I shall tell you."
"Don"t tell me anything she wouldn"t wish," said Peter earnestly. He began to see the need of holding down the flaming spirit in her, lest it consume too much. "If there is anything she wants me to know, she will tell me."
"My instinct was right," said Electra, now with equal steadiness. "She was not his wife. Tom never married her."