Rose MacLeod. Alice Brown

no possibility of affecting to misunderstand. Peter knew what he had gone to Paris for, five years ago, and why Osmond had been sending him the steady proceeds of the garden farm. He was to prove himself, take his talent in his hand and mould it and turn it about with a constant will, and shape a cup to hold the drink that makes the gods jealous and men delirious with adulation. Peter was to live at his ease in Paris, sparing nothing that would keep him well and strong of heart, so that he could paint the best portraits in the world. Peter knew he had begun to paint the best portraits in the world, because he had done many good ones and one actual marvel, and suddenly, as it sometimes is in art after we have been patient and discouraged, the whole task seemed to him a light and easy one. In his extraordinary youth he had the freshness of his brain, his quick eye and obedient hand, and he felt, lightly and gayly, that he was rich,—but rich in a world where there was plenty more of whatever he might lose.

      "I guess so," he said, returning to the speech of his youth. "And I can do it twice, old man. I can do it a hundred times."

      Osmond stopped and laid a hand on a boulder at the termination of their way, where the lane opened into plowed fields. He looked off through the distance as if he saw the courts of the world and all the roads that run to fame. His eyes were burning. The hand trembled upon the rock.

      "By George!" he said, "it's amazing."

      "What is, Osmond?"

      "It's amazing that the world can hold so much for one man. You wouldn't think there would be water enough in all the rivers for one man to drink so deep. What does Electra say?"

      "About the painting? Nothing yet."

      "Didn't you speak of it? Why, you're covered with laurel, boy, like Jack-in-the-Green. She couldn't help seeing it."

      Peter, brought back to that luckless interview with the imperial lady, felt shamefaced in his knowledge of it.

      "We didn't get to that," he said. "We were talking about Rose. Who do you think she is, Osmond?"

      "Tom's widow. So you said."

      "Yes, but what more? She's the daughter of Markham MacLeod."

      He was watching Osmond narrowly, to weigh the effect of the name. But Osmond's face kept its impressive interest.

      "You know who he is," Peter suggested.

      "Yes, oh, yes! But that doesn't mean anything to me. Nothing does until I see the man. He works with too big a brush. He is an agitator. He may be Christ or Anti-Christ, but he's an agitator. That's all I know. I can't give a snap judgment of a man that gets whole governments into a huff and knows how to lead a rabble a million strong. So he's her father?"

      Peter, unreasonably irritated, pitched upon one word for a cause of war.

      "Rabble? What do you mean by that? Labor?"

      Osmond smiled broadly and showed his white teeth.

      "I'm labor myself," he said. "You know that, boy."

      "Then what do you want to talk so for? Rabble!"

      "I only meant it in relation to numbers," said Osmond, again irritatingly, in his indifference to all interests outside his dear boy's home-coming. "I'll make it a rabble of kings, if you say so. Folks, Peter, that's what I mean, folks. He deals with them in the mass. That makes me nervous. I can't like it."

      "He believes in the equality of man," Peter announced, as he was conscious, rather swellingly. "The downfall of kings, the freedom of the individual."

      "There's the pot-au-feu smoking inside that shack," said Osmond, indicating a shanty across the field. "Come and have dinner with labor."

      But Peter turned. He shook his head.

      "I can't, Osmond," he said. "I've brought this girl into the house, and I've got to see her through. Won't you come up to-night?"

      "Not till your Parisian has gone over to Electra's. You come down here. Come down about dusk and we'll have another go."

      As Peter hurried back, conscious of being a little late, he could have beaten his head against the locust trees for the stupidity of his home-coming. He had the shattered moment with Electra to remember, and now he had turned the other great meeting of the day into a fractious colloquy. Unformed yet vivid in his mind, for the last year, had been strong, determining anticipations of what would happen when he at last came home. He had known certainly what would happen when he saw Electra. She would still be the loveliest and best, and his would be the privilege of telling her so. And to Osmond, who had dug in the ground that Peter might work under the eye of men, he would return as one who has an account to give, and say, in effect, "You did it." But, laughably, neither of these things had happened. He forgot that he had in him the beginnings of a great painter in remembering that he had shown the obtuseness of an ass.

      He did not see Electra that night. After the noon dinner he left Rose and grannie intimately together,—the girl, with a gentle deprecation, as if she brought gifts not in themselves worth much, talking about Paris, the air young Peter had been breathing,—and betook himself again to Electra's house. It was all open to the day, but no one answered his knock. He went in and wandered from parlor to library, the dignified rooms that had once seemed to him so typical of her estate as compared to his own: for in those days he had been only a young man of genius with scarcely enough money to live and study on, save as his brother earned it for him. He sauntered in and out for an hour—it seemed as if even the two servants had gone—and then played snatches at the piano, to waken drowsy ears. But the house kept its quiet, and in the late afternoon he wandered home again. That evening he returned, and then there was some one to answer his knock. The maid told him Miss Electra had gone out; but though he waited in a fevered and almost an angry impatience, she did not return. Knowing her austere and literal truth, he could not believe that the denial was the conventional expedient, and in a wave of regret over the day, he longed for her inexpressibly. It seemed to him that no distance would be too great to bring him to her. He felt in events, and in himself also, the rushing of some force to separate them, and swung back, after his blame of her, into the necessity of a more passionate partisanship. When he went home, still without seeing her, he found his grandmother's house deserted. But the minute his foot sounded, there was a soft rush down the stairs. Rose stood beside him in the hall.

      "Did you see her?" she asked breathlessly.

      He strove to make his laugh an evidence of the reasonableness of what he had to answer.

      "No. She was obliged to be away."

      "Isn't she at home now?" asked the girl insistently. "She is there, and you refuse to hurt me. She won't see me!"

      "She is not there," said Peter, in relief at some small truth to tell. "I haven't seen her since morning."

      The girl stood there in the faint radiance of the hall lamp, her eyes downcast, thinking. She had dressed for dinner, though there was only high tea in the old-fashioned house, and delighted grannie beyond words. The old lady said it was as good as a play to her, who never went out, to see a lovely dress trailing about the rooms. Peter, looking at the girl, felt his heart admonish him that here was beauty demanding large return of kindly treatment from the world. Not only must justice be done her, but it must be done lavishly. This was for all their sakes. Electra could not be allowed to lose anything so precious, nor could he lose it either, his small share of tribute. She was speaking, still with that air of pondering:—

      "I must do it myself. I mustn't let you risk anything." Then she turned her full glance on him, and frankly smiled. "Good-night," she said, giving him her hand. "Don't speak of me to her. Don't think of me. I must do it all myself."

V

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      Next morning it was a different Rose he saw, quite cosy and cheerful at the breakfast-table, with no sign of tragedy on her brow. The day was fair, and the mood of the world seemed to him, for no reason,