Rose MacLeod. Alice Brown

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СКАЧАТЬ his heart sank. Peter had been thinking straight thoughts and swearing by crude values in these five years when he had lived with men and women who said what they meant, things often foolish and outrageous, but usually honest, and his mind had got a trick of asserting itself. None of the judgments it had been called upon to make seemed to matter vitally; but this one disconcertingly did, and to his horror he found himself wondering if Electra could possibly mean to be so hateful. Electra meant nothing of the kind. She had a pure desire toward the truth, and she assumed that Peter's desire tallied with her own. She felt very strongly on the point in question, and she saw no reason why he should not offer the greatest hospitality toward her convictions.

      "Peter," she said at once, "you must not talk to me about that woman."

      "So she said," Peter was on the point of irresistibly retorting, but he contented himself with the weak make-shift that at least gains time,—

      "What woman?"

      "Markham MacLeod's daughter."

      "Tom's wife? Tom's widow?"

      Electra looked at him in definite reproof.

      "You must not do that, Peter," she warned him. "You must not speak of her in that way."

      "For God's sake, why not, Electra?"

      "That is not her title. You must not give it to her."

      He stared at her for a number of seconds, while she met his gaze inflexibly. Then his face broke up, as if a hand had struck it. Light and color came into it, and his mouth trembled.

      "Electra," he said, "what do you want me to understand?"

      "You do understand it, Peter," she said quietly. "I can hardly think you will force me to state it explicitly."

      "You can't mean it! no, you can't. You mustn't imply things, Electra. You imply she was not married to him."

      Still Electra was looking at him with that high demeanor which, he felt with exasperation, seemed to make great demands upon him of a sort that implied assumptions he must despise.

      "This is very difficult for me," she was saying, and Peter at once possessed himself of one passive hand.

      "Of course it is difficult," he cried warmly. "I told her so. I told her everything connected with Tom always was difficult. She knows that as well as we do."

      "Have you talked him over with her?" The tone was neutral, yet it chilled him.

      "Good Lord, yes! We've done nothing but talk him over from an outside point of view. When she was deciding whether to come here, whether to write you or just present herself as she has—of course Tom's name came into it. She was Tom's wife, wasn't she? Tom's widow?"

      "No! no!" said Electra, in a low and vehement denial. "She was not." Peter blazed so that he seemed to tower like a long thin guidepost showing the way to anger. "I said the same thing yesterday."

      "That was before you saw her. It means more now, infinitely more."

      "I hope it does."

      "Think what you're saying, Electra," he said violently, so that she lifted her hand slightly, as if to reprove him. "You refuse to receive her—"

      "I have received her,—as her father's daughter. I may even do so again."

      "But not as your sister?"

      "That would be impossible. You must see it is impossible, feeling as I do."

      "But how, how? You imply things that dizzy me, and then, when it comes to the pinch, I can't get a sane word out of you." That seemed to him, as to her, an astonishing form of address to an imperial lady, and he added at once, "Forgive me!" But he continued irrepressibly, "Electra, you can't mean you doubt her integrity."

      She had her counter question:—

      "Did you see them married?"

      "No, no, heavens, no! Why, I didn't come on Tom in Paris until his illness. Tom never had any use for me. You know that. Meantime he'd been there a couple of years, into the mire and out again, and he'd had time to be married to Rose, and she'd had time to leave him."

      "Ah, she left him! Why?"

      "Why did you leave him, Electra, before he went over there? Why did you give up living in town, and simply retreat down here? You couldn't stand it. Nobody could. Tom was a bad egg, Electra. I don't need to tell you that."

      "It is certainly painful for me to hear it."

      "But why, why, Electra? I can't stultify myself to prove this poor girl an adventuress. I can't canonize Tom Fulton, not even if you ask me."

      "There are things we need not recur to. My brother is dead," said Electra, with dignity.

      "Yes. That's precisely why I am asking you to provide for his widow."

      "Suppose, then, this were true. Suppose she is what you say,—don't you feel she forfeited anything by leaving him?"

      "Ah, but she went back, poor girl! She went back to him when he was pretty well spent with sickness and sheer fright. Tom didn't die like a hero, Electra. Get that out of your mind."

      She put up both hands in an unconsidered protest.

      "Oh, what is the use!" she cried; and his heart smote him.

      "None at all," he answered. "But I mean to show you that this girl didn't walk back to any dead easy job when she undertook Tom."

      "Why did she do it?"

      "Why? From humanity, justice, honor, I suppose, the things that influence women when they stick to their bad bargains."

      "Where had she been meantime?"

      "With her father, in lodgings. That was where I met her."

      "Was she known by my brother's name?"

      "No," he hesitated, "not then. I knew her as Miss MacLeod."

      "Ah!"

      "I can see why," Peter declared, with an eager emphasis. "I never thought of it before, but can't you see? I should think a woman could, at least. The whole situation was probably so distasteful to her that she threw off even his name."

      "And assumed it after his death!"

      "No! no! She was called Madame Fulton at his apartment. I distinctly remember that."

      They had been immovably facing each other, but now Electra turned away and walked back to the library table, where she stood resting one hand and waiting, pale and tired, yet unchanged. This seemed to her one of the times that try men's souls, but wherein a New England conscience must abide by its traditions.

      "How long does she propose remaining?" she asked, out of her desire to put some limit to the distasteful situation, though she had forbidden herself to enter it with even that human interest.

      "Why, as СКАЧАТЬ