To see a lover after such a lapse was an experience not unconnected with a possibility of surprise in herself as well as in him. She had hardly, even at the first, explicitly stated that she loved him. She had only recognized his privilege of loving her. But now she had put on a white dress, to meet him, and the garden was, in a sense, a protection to her.
The diversity of its flowery paths seemed like a shade out of the glare of a defined relation. At last there was a step and he was coming. She forced herself to look at him and judge him as he came. He had scarcely changed, except, perhaps from his hurrying gait and forward bend, that he was more eager. There was the tall figure, the loose tie floating back, the low collar and straight black hair--the face with its aquiline curve and the wide sweet mouth, the eager dark eyes--he looked exactly like the man who had painted the great portrait of the year. Then he was close to her, and both her hands were in his. He lifted them quickly to his lips, one and then the other.
"Electra!" he said. It was the same voice, the slight eager hesitancy in it like the beginning of a stammer.
Electra, to her surprise, said an inconsequent thing. It betrayed how she was moved.
"Grandmother is away. She has gone to town."
"We will go into the summer-house," said the eager voice. "That is where I always think of you. You remember, don"t you?"
He had kept her hand, and, like two children, they went along the broad walk and into the summer-house, where there was a green flicker of light from the vines. There was one chair, a rustic one, and Peter drew it forward for her. When she had seated herself, he sat down on the bench of the arbor close by, and, lifting her hand, kissed it again.
"Do you remember the knock-kneed poem I wrote you, Electra?" he asked her. "I called it "My Imperial Lady." I thought of it the minute I saw you standing there. My imperial lady!"
The current was too fast for her. She could not manage large, impetuous things like flaming words that hurtled at her and seemed to ask a like exchange--something strong and steady in her to meet them in mid-air and keep them from too swift an impact. His praise had always been like the warriors" shields clanging over poor Tarpeia,--precious, but too crushing. They disconcerted her. If she could not manage to escape after the first blow, she guessed how they might bruise.
"When did you come?" she asked.
Peter did not answer. He was still looking at her with those wonderful eyes that always seemed to her too compelling for happy intercourse.
"Electra," he said, and stopped. She had to answer him. There must be some heavy thing to break to her, which he felt unequal to the task of telling unless she helped him. "Electra," he said again, "I didn"t come alone. Some one came with me. I wrote you about Tom."
Electra drew her hand away, and sat up straight and chilled. There had been few moments of her grown-up life, it seemed to her, unspoiled by Tom, her recreant brother. In the tumultuous steeple chase of his existence he had brought her nothing but mortification. In his death, he was at least marring this first moment of her lover"s advent.
"You wrote me everything," she said. The tone should have discouraged him. "You were with him at the last. He knew you. I gather he didn"t send any messages to us, or you would have given them."
"He did, Electra."
"He sent a message?"
"I simply couldn"t write it, because I knew I should be home so soon. It was about his wife. He begged you to be kind to her."
"His wife! Tom was not married."
"He was married, Electra, to a very beautiful girl. I have brought her home with me."
Electra was upon her feet. Her face had lost its cold sweet pallor. The scarlet of hot blood was upon it, a swift response to what seemed outrage at his hands.
"I have never--" she gasped. "It is not true."
Peter, too, had risen. He was looking at her rather wistfully. His imperial lady had, in that instant, lost her untouched calm. She was breathing ire.
"Ah, don"t say that," he pleaded. "You never saw her."
"I can"t help it. I feel it. She is an adventuress."
"Electra!"
"What did he say to you? What did Tom say?"
"He pointed to her as she stood by the window, her back to us--it was the day before he died--and said, "Tell them to be good to her.""
"You see! You don"t even know whether he meant it as a message to me or some of his a.s.sociates. He didn"t say she was his wife?"
"No."
He answered calmly and rather gravely, but the green world outside the arbor looked unsteady to him. Electra was one of the fixed ideas of his life; her n.o.bility, her reserve, her strength had seemed to set her far above him. Now she sounded like the devil"s advocate. She was gazing at him keenly.
"Her story made a great impression on you," she threw out incidentally.
The effort was apparent, but Peter accepted it.
"Yes," he answered simply. "She makes a great impression on everybody.
She will on you."
"What evidence have you brought me? Did you see them married?"
"No," said Peter, with the same unmoved courtesy.
"You see! Have you even found any record of their marriage?"
"No."
"You have the girl"s word. She has come over here with you. What for?"
Peter lifted a hand to his forehead. He answered gently as a man sometimes does, of set purpose, to avoid falling into a pa.s.sion.
"It was the natural thing, Electra. She has no home, poor child!--nor money, except what Tom left in his purse. He"d been losing pretty heavily just before. I say, it seemed the natural thing to come to you.
Half this place was his. His wife belongs here." The last argument sounded to him unpardonably crude, as to an imperial lady, but he ventured it. Then he looked at her. With his artist"s premonition, he looked to see her brows drawn, her teeth perhaps set angrily upon a quivering lip. But Electra was again pale. Her face was marble to him, to everything.
"I shall fight it," she said inexorably, "to the last penny."
He gazed at her now as if she were a stranger. It was incredible that this was the woman whose hand he had kissed but the moment before. He ventured one more defense.
"Electra, you have not seen her."
"I shall not see her. Where is she--in New York?"
"Here."
"Here!"
"At grandmother"s. I left her there. I thought when we had had our little talk you would come over with me and see her, and invite her home."
"Invite her here?"
"I thought so."
"Peter," said Electra, with a quiet certainty, "you must be out of your mind."