Rose MacLeod Part 7

"I have not seen Osmond yet."

"Wasn't he there to meet you?"

"No. Grannie said I should have to go down to the plantation, to find him. Does he keep up his old ways, Electra?"

"Yes. Sleeping practically out of doors summer and winter, or in the shack, as he calls it,--that log hut he put up years ago. Haven't you known about him? Hasn't he written?"

"Oh, he writes, but not about himself. Osmond wouldn't do that. Somehow grandmother never wrote any details about him either. I fancied he didn't want her to. So I never asked. She only said he was 'well.' You know Osmond always says that himself."

"I believe he is well," said Electra absently. She was thinking of the alien presence at the other house. "He looks it--strong, tanned. Osmond is very impressive somehow. It's fortunate he wasn't a little man."

Peter made one of the quick gestures he had learned since he had been away from her. They told the tale of give and take with a more mobile people. He could not ask her to ignore Osmond's deformity, yet he could not bear to hear her speak of it. Osmond was, he thought, a colossal figure, to be accepted, whatever his state, like the roughened rock that builds the wall. He rose, terminating, without his conscious will, an interview that was to have lasted, if she had gone to the other house with him and he had returned again with her, the day long.

"I must see Osmond," he hesitated.

Electra, too, had risen.

"Yes," she said conformably, though the table, she knew, would be laid for them both in what had promised to be their lovers' seclusion.

"I will come back. This afternoon, Electra?"

That morning, the afternoon had been his and hers only. She had expected to listen to the recital of his triumphs in Paris, and to scan eagerly the map of his prospects which was to show her way also. And she too opened her lips and spoke without preconsidered intent.

"This afternoon I shall be busy. I have to go in town."

"You won't--" he hesitated again. "Electra, you won't call at the house on the way, and see her, at least?"

"Your Rose?" She smiled at him brilliantly. "Not to-day, Peter."

Then, bruised, bewildered, he went back over the path he had come, leaving his imperial lady to go in and order the luncheon table prepared for one.

"Madam Fulton will not be home," she said to the maid, with a proud unconsciousness; and for the moment it sounded as if Madam Fulton had been the expected guest.

IV

When Peter went up the steps of his grandmother's house, he found Mrs.

Grant still on the veranda, and Rose beside her. The girl looked at him eagerly, as if she besought him for whatever message he had, and he answered the glance with one warmed by implied sympathy. Until he saw her, he had not realized that anger made any part in the emotion roused in him by his imperial lady. Now he remembered how this gracious young creature seemed to him, so innocent, so sad. He felt a rising in his throat, as he thought of subjecting her to unfriendly judgment. Rose, in spite of the serious cast of her face and the repose of her figure, wore an ineffable air of youth. She had splendid shoulders and a yielding waist, and her fine hands lay like a separate beauty in the lap of her black dress. She had the profile of a coin touched with finer human graces, a fullness of the upper lip, a slight waving of the soft chestnut hair over the low forehead, and lashes too dark for harmony with the gray eyes. There were defects in her flawlessness. Her mouth was large, in spite of its pout, and on her nose were a few beguiling freckles. At that moment, in her wayward beauty, lighted by the kindled eye of expectation, she seemed to Peter to be made up of every creature's best. His grandmother smiled at him out of her warm placidity, and though Rose still drew his eyes to her, he was aware that she did not mean to question him.

"Electra has to go in town," he volunteered. "She won't be back. Perhaps not to-night."

"You must stay here with us, my dear," said Mrs. Grant. "Peter, have her trunks moved into the west chamber."

Still the girl's eyes seemed to interrogate him, and Peter sat down in a chair and twined his long fingers in and out. He felt the drop in temperature ready to chill the voyager who, after the lonely splendor of the sea, returns to the earth as civil life has made it.

"We must remember she hadn't heard of you," he a.s.sured Rose blunderingly, out of his depression.

"No. He had not written." She made the statement rather as that of a fact they shared together, and he nodded. "I am afraid it is unwelcome to her, the idea of me."

"She doesn't know you," he a.s.sured her, in the same bungling apology. He expected her to betray some wound to her pride, but she only looked humble and a little crushed.

Grannie had apparently not heard, and she said now, with her lovely gentleness,--

"Don't you want to go upstairs, my dear, and be by yourself a little while? You have been traveling so far. We have noon dinner, you know.

That will seem funny to you. Mary is getting it, but Peter will show you a room."

Peter found her bag in the wide hall, darkened from the sun, and went with her up the stairs. At the head she paused and beckoned him to the window-seat over the front door.

"Set it down there," she said rapidly, touching the bag with a finger.

"Tell me--how did she receive it?"

"What?"

"You know. The news of me."

"She was surprised."

"Naturally. But what else? She was shocked!"

"It was a shock, of course. In its suddenness, you know. You'd expect that."

She sank down in the window-seat and clasped her hands upon her knees, looking at them thoughtfully. Her brows were drawn together.

"Yes," she said, "yes. It was a shock. I see that. Well!" She looked up at him in a challenging directness before which he winced, conscious of the little he had to meet it with. "When am I to see her?"

"I am not sure when she is to be back."

"Ah! She won't come to me. Very well. I shall go to her." She laid her hand upon the bag, and rose, as if the interview were ended. Peter carried the bag in at the open door of her room, and after he had set it down, looked vaguely about him, as if arrangements might be bettered in the still, sweet place. She was smiling at him with an irradiating warmth.

"You're sorry, aren't you?" she said, from a comprehension that seemed a proffer of vague sympathy. "It makes you feel inhospitable. You needn't.

You're a dear. Your grandmother is lovely--lovely."

Her praise seemed to Peter such a precious fruitage that the only thing, in delicacy, was to turn away and take it with him to enjoy. But she was calling him.

"Peter!"

He found her flushed and eagerly expectant, it seemed to him, as if his news had been uplifting to her. She looked at him, at the room, and rapidly from the window where the treetops trembled, all in one comprehensive sweep.

"Peter," she said, with conviction, "it's simply lovely here."

"It's a nice old place," responded Peter. He loved it from long use, but he was aware of its comfortable plainness.

"I never saw anything so dear. Those square worn tiles down by the front door, the fireplace, the curtains,--look, Peter, it's dotted muslin."

She touched a moving fold, and Peter laughed outright.

"I like it," he said, "but there's nothing particular about it. If you want style, why, you'll have to look back at what you've left. When it comes to that, what's the matter with a chateau?"