Rose MacLeod Part 56

"Not even for you! I did want to kill him. If I got my hands on him, I should want it again. But it was for you."

"Good-night."

She was going, and he called after her,--

"Remember!"

"What shall I remember?"

She halted hopefully, and the old kind voice was near her:--

"Remember I would die for you."

XXIII

Peter was early at Osmond's door. He did not find him working, though the other men had been many hours afield, but standing still gazing off into the distance. Osmond was pale. He looked as if he had not slept, and the lines about his mouth hinted at decisions.

"I want to speak to you," said Peter abruptly.

"Yes. I want to speak to you, too." The answer was gravely and almost unwillingly given. "Come out under the tree."

They took their way silently to the apple tree, but there neither could, after old custom in a talk, throw himself on the ground to luxuriate and, in moments of doubt, chew a blade of gra.s.s. Peter walked back and forth, a short tether. Osmond, fixed in some unexplained reserve, awaited him. Peter spoke first, nervously.

"Electra has given me up."

"Well, it was bound to come."

"Why was it?"

"It was a dream, Pete. You dreamed it when you were a boy. It was the best you had then."

"Well, there's something else. That's not a dream. But I don't know that I can talk of it yet. What was it you wanted to say to me?"

At intervals all night Osmond had been wondering how to broach it.

"You know, boy," he began at last, "it isn't good for you any more to have me send you money."

Peter stared.

"But it's our money," he said.

Osmond too stared, but not at him. He was wondering whether Peter could possibly fail to see that the money, all these years, had not come by favor, that it had been earned by Osmond's own arduous grappling with the earth, that struggle out of which the man had gained strength and the earth had yielded her fruits.

"You see, boy," he hesitated, "there isn't anything but the place, and that's grannie's."

"Yes, but the place earns something."

"Not without a good deal put into it."

"Ah!" Peter drew a breath of pure surprise. "You're tired of overseeing, old boy. I don't wonder. Of course you must let up."

Again Osmond waited, not so much to commune with himself as from sheer disinclination to face the awkwardness of speech. It was impossible to say, "I am not tired of serving you, but you must not be served. You must carry your pack."

"You see," he began again, "the place must stand intact while grannie lives. After that, we don't know. But now--Pete, you must paint your pictures."

"Of course!" But the response was wavering. Peter smiled radiantly.

"Come, old chap," he said, "you're not going to make rules for me, because it's better for the white man to bear his burden."

Osmond, too, tried to smile, and failed in it.

"I don't know but I am," he said, with a wry face. "Pete, I want you to go in and conquer--earn your fame, earn your bread. I don't want you to depend on anybody, even on me."

Peter was wrinkling his brows. He was delightfully good-tempered, and money meant very little to him save as a useful medium of which there was sure to be enough. He had never regarded it as a means of moral discipline.

"That's very awkward," he said, "because--Osmond, I want to marry."

"To marry! You said she had given you up!"

"Oh, Electra!" That issue had withdrawn into a dim past. "Osmond, I have spoken to Rose."

"Rose!" Now again Osmond felt the blood beating in his ears. Was it the impulse of fight, he asked himself, or another, as savage? But this time he did not mean to be overborne. Peter was speaking simply and boyishly, with a great sincerity.

"I see now there never was anybody but Rose, from the minute we met. I told her yesterday."

"So you are--engaged." Osmond brought out the commonplace word with a cold emphasis.

Peter looked at him, surprised.

"No. She's not to be had for the asking. I had to tell her. But I've got to earn her. If you knew her as I do, you'd see that."

Osmond's brain was in a maze of longing to hear what she had said, and with it a fierce desire to escape that knowledge. Also he was overborne by a pa.s.sionate recoil from his own suggestion of cutting off his brother's income. At least he might have some share in their happiness.

He could work here like a gnome underground, delving for the gold to deck their bridal. And underneath was that new pain at the heart: that earth pang so sickening that it might well threaten to stop the heart's beating altogether.

"There never was anything like her," said Peter, out of his new dream.

"She needs happiness, sheer happiness, after what she has been through.

That settles it about living abroad." He looked up brightly. "We must be in Paris."

"You think she would wish it?"

"We should be near her father, near headquarters. For of course we should be working for the Brotherhood."

Osmond turned abruptly.

"I must get to hoeing," he said.