"I am going to help the Brotherhood," said Electra, with punctilious truth.
"And build a monument to that handsome scamp that had the bad taste to come over here to die."
"Grandmother, you must not use such words."
"Must not? Don"t you suppose I know a scamp when I see one? If I"d been fifty years younger, I dare say I should be starting out to build him a monument, too. But I"m glad of it, child, I"m glad of it. He"s your preserver. He has roused in you the capacity for being a fool. Make much of it. Prize it. It"s G.o.d"s most blessed gift to man. When you"ve lost that, you"ve lost everything."
"There is the carriage, grandmother. I must go."
Madam Fulton presented a kindly cheek.
"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I"m sorry I"ve harried you. I had to, though. I should again. Now we"ll meet in Paris, or London--or another world."
Electra, a perfect picture of the well-equipped traveler, in her beautiful suit, her erect pose, was at the door.
"The maids will go in an hour," she said. "Then you"ve only to turn the key and walk over to Mrs. Grant"s. I wish you"d had your trunks taken out before."
"My trunks can wait," chuckled the old lady. "They"ll be sent for."
As Electra"s carriage turned from the driveway into the road, Madam Fulton laughed again.
Electra had five minutes at the station, and there appeared Peter, wearing the air of haste. He had been painting in the garden, when the carriage went by, and he had dropped brush and palette to run. Why, Peter could not have said, only it seemed cold and miserable to have an imperial lady taking the train alone and then setting sail with no one by.
"You wouldn"t let me go up to town with you?" he ventured, with his eager stammer.
"No," returned Electra, "thank you."
"I"d like to awfully," said Peter. "Maybe I could be of use."
"Everything is done. My luggage is on board. We sail at three."
"It seems an infernally lonesome thing to do!"
Electra smiled. She had gained that smile of late. It was a subtle indication of the secret knowledge she had of the resources of her own future. With a perfect and simple conviction, she believed she should be guided by Markham MacLeod or some unseen genius of his life. She should follow his star. She should know where to go.
"Rose said you didn"t take the letters she offered you. Is that wise, Electra? If you want to know the Brotherhood--"
"I shall know it," said Electra, with entire simplicity. "The way will open."
She did not say that she could not bear to blur her secret by sharing it overmuch with any one. She was going on a mission for the chief. Other voices would confuse the message. The medium must be kept clarified between his soul and hers. Peter stood back, feeling, in another form, Madam Fulton"s hopeless admiration of this magnificent futility.
"Well," he said, "I shall be there in the late autumn, and I shall find you."
"I may not," said Electra decisively, "want to be found."
But when he thought of the elements into which she meant to hurl herself, he was of the opinion that she would as gladly long to be found as the maiden in the arena before the beasts walked in. Then the train came, and she bade him a civil and correct good-by and was taken away.
Peter went home wondering, his eyes on the ground. Life seemed to resolve itself, not into the harmonious end of tragedy, but into more tragedy. Human things, when a solution was reached, deliberately began a new act. Peter had the childlike egoism of the very religious or the devotee of art. He never could help feeling that, in a way, the world was created for him. Its fortuitous happenings strengthened that belief.
He had come home to lose Electra whom he did not love. Markham MacLeod, who, he now saw, had been too bright a sun, blinding his eyes to his own proper work, had been removed. Perhaps that, too, was done for him. And now he should paint his pictures. The Brotherhood still seemed far off and, if not vain, at least a clamorous sea of discontent, the hope of a palace beautiful beyond the touch of time. But near him were dear and intimate things: the feel of the brush in his fingers, the adorable combination of colors as delirious as the sunsets G.o.d could make. And in the future there were men and women who also would go singing along the path to perfect pictures and leafy glades. In them was infinite possibility of more pleasure, more delight. And there was his broken heart! For Peter"s heart was truly broken. That he knew. He had lost Rose, for she had gravely told him so, and given the simple reason, if he needed it. There was no man for her but one. And the one was Osmond, to whom he would gladly relinquish even the delight of her. So, thinking of his brother who was the best thing born, of his broken heart, of his pictures and the general adorableness of the world, crammed full of things to paint, Peter threw his stick into the air, caught it, and burst into song.
When the maids had left, after their good-by to Madam Fulton, giving the keys into her hand, she sat awhile in the silent house, and took a comfortable nap. It was amazing, she thought, as she sank off, what a lessening of tension it was to have Electra gone. When she awoke, it was still quiet and Billy Stark had not come. He was to run down from town, his last preparations made; the country minister was to meet them at the Grant house, and there they would be married. Then they would take the late afternoon train, and, in due course, sail for Liverpool. Even Bessie Grant did not guess they were to be married; but she, Madam Fulton knew, was ready for the last trump and welcoming evangels, and that prepared her for all lesser things.
It seemed a little chilly in the house, shut up as it was for the flitting, all except the room where Madam Fulton sat, and she took her chair out of doors, not pausing on the veranda, but going on to the garden beds. It would be pleasant, she thought, to sit there in the sun with the bees humming on their way, and take her last look at the place.
As well as she knew she was going to leave it, she knew she should return to it no more. It was not only that her age made it improbable,--for she had no doubt of Billy"s ability to run over a dozen times yet; it was some inward certainty that told her she was going for good. It pleased her in every way. She liked new peoples and untried lands.
Yet, as she sat there, old faces crowded upon her, and they were pleasant to behold. Her husband was not there. With his death he seemed to have withdrawn into a remote place where no summons could reach him, even if she wished to call. And she had never wished it. But these were faces scarcely remembered in her daytime mood, very clear in the sunlight and with no possibility of mistake. One was like her own, only where hers sparkled with irony and discontent, this was softer and more sweet. "Why," said Madam Fulton aloud, "mother!" It gave her no surprise. Nothing seemed disturbing in this calm world, where things were throbbing warmly and, she knew at last, for the general good. Then she reflected that this was probably the effect of happiness because she was going to marry Billy Stark. It must be love, she thought, instead of their gay friendship. Youth and age were perhaps not so unlike after all, when one shut one"s eyes and sat in the garden in the sun.
Billy Stark faded out of her musings, and the forgotten faces came the more clearly, all smiling, all bearing a mysterious benediction. She found herself recalling old memories with them, doings that had been once of great importance, but of later years had been packed into the rubbish hole of childish things. There was the summer day when she had lost the stolen prism from the parlor lamp, and mother had looked at her gravely for a moment and then smiled, seeing that tears were coming, and said it was no matter. Mother had never known that the tears were all for the loss of the red and blue lights in the prism, and somehow her kindness had not mattered then, because it could not bring the colors back. But now it seemed to the old lady in the garden that mother had been very kind indeed. "Don"t mind it," the sweet face seemed to be saying. "Don"t mind anything." And as she listened, she was restored to the pleasant usages of some morning land where one could be rea.s.sured in a blest authority that made it so.
It seemed a long time that she sat there in this pleasant company, so far removed from the conditions of her own life that it was actually, at moments, as if she were in another country. But forms began to fade, and, mingled with their going, was the sense that another personality was thrusting itself into their circle, and, being more solid than they, was pushing them out. Billy Stark was calling, in his kindly tone,--
"Florrie! wake up, child."
Her eyes came open.
"Yes," she said, "that"s what mother was just calling me." She winked, and rubbed her eyes. "My stars, Billy," said she, "I"ve been dreaming."
Billy pulled up a garden chair. He looked at her with a tender consideration. Florrie was pretty tired, he thought. She had worn herself out with these forced hurryings. Now he had no doubts about his ability to take care of her, or his wish to do it. Billy was one who, having made up his mind to a thing, cast care behind him, and if it climbed up on the saddle-bow, he promptly knocked it off again. That was why he proposed to be hearty for twenty years to come.
"Shall we turn the key in the door, and be poking over to Bessie Grant"s?" he asked. "We"ll call here for your trunks, on the way to the train."
"By and by, Billy." She leaned her head on the chair back, and regarded him with her friendly smile. "I haven"t waked up yet. What time is it?"
"Five minutes before three."
"No! Electra"ll be sailing in five minutes."
"And in half an hour, the reverend parson will be waiting for us at Bessie Grant"s."
"Yes, I know. But let me sit a minute, Billy. I had the most extraordinary dream."
"Last night?"
"No, no. Sitting here in the sun. And yet I didn"t think I"d slept a wink. Billy, do you remember the day mother stood me in the corner for going fishing with you, and then, when she found you"d stood yourself in the other corner, she laughed and gave us cookies?"
"Seems to me I do. I"d forgotten, though."
"So had I. I hadn"t thought of it for years. Then there was the time Jeanie Lake was married and they found out he"d deceived that girl over in the next township, and Jeanie died of a broken heart."
"What makes you think of it now, Florrie?"
"I remember so well how Jeanie looked through the weeks she was fading out, before she died. I remember I thought I shouldn"t have taken it so.
I"d have struck him on his lying mouth and lived to love another man.
But Jeanie looks exactly like herself now."
"You"ve been dreaming, Florrie," said the old man anxiously.