PART THREE (continued 2)

Promptly Molly dragged the girl off to their room. She looked slighter and more wistful-eyed and bored to death. “You promised me that we would go early in March, if I stayed out here—you promised, Malise. And I’ve stayed. You promised we’d go to The Bay, where there are people and hotels and it’s gay. And it’s March now. You look so tall and cold, Malise! what’s the matter?”

Alexina, restless and absent, wandered out on the porch to the Captain. She chatted to him about Louisville, but there were sharpening angles about his face that made her heart ache. She went up to Mrs. Leroy’s room.

“I don’t know what we are going to do, Alexina,” Charlotte told her. “Willy said I was not to think or worry about it, I was to put it all aside until he got back. But it hurts. He went off looking so gaunt. I don’t believe he slept a night through after the freeze; all hours I could hear him up, walking around, but he don’t like it if I notice, you know.”

Alexina dropped down and put her head in Charlotte’s lap and cried, and Charlotte patted the girl’s wealth of shining hair and cried too.

But since he could go without a sign to her, Alexina could go too. That day she wrote for rooms at The Bay Hotel. The answer came that she could have what she wanted by the eighth. She told Mrs. Leroy she and Molly would go on that date.

She could leave without a sign too, she had said, but in her heart there was joy that Fate had given her to the eighth. She would not have moved a finger to stay, but since he was to return on the sixth, why—

But the very day the letter from The Bay reached her, a Seminole came up from the glades with game from King and a note. The party was considering making a longer stay, he wrote to his mother, so she need not worry in case he did not return.

“I told him in my answer,” said Charlotte, “that you all were going. Dear me, I’ll miss you so.”

Then he would know, he would know, and if he did not come it would be because it was his desire not to.

Molly confessed to a few bills in town. Malise had left money, yet Molly had managed to make accounts at a fruiterer’s, the café, as it called itself, the drug store, the stationer’s, and the two dry-goods establishments.

“I’m glad you’re not stingy like the Blairs,” Molly told her; “you know, Malise, they’re really mean. Your grandfather Blair carried you out to their gate once to see a hand-organ man and his monkey. You were too pleased for anything, and when the man finally moved away your grandfather told you, ‘Say good-by to the monkey, Alexina.’”

Truth to tell, Molly and Charlotte seemed to have had a fine time in the absence of their two youthful monitors. Charlotte was as wax in the naughty Molly’s hands. Even now, with Alexina on the scene, Molly proceeded to put Mrs. Leroy up to a thing that never would have entered that innocent soul’s head.

Charlotte went mysteriously to town one morning, Peter in his best clothes driving her, and came back beaming.

“I’ve asked some of the Aden young people out for the evening before you go,” she told Alexina. “The halls and the parlours are so big, you can dance.”

Charlotte beamed and Molly looked innocent. Alexina gazed at Mrs. Leroy dismayed. What would the Captain, what would King William think? It would never occur to Mrs. Leroy until afterward that she could not afford such a thing.

“I think we ought to do it together,” said Alexina privately to her. “Molly and I owe Aden some return.”

Charlotte was made to see it. Had Willy come along, she would have seen it as speedily after his will, be that what it might.

Whatever the Captain thought, he sat unmoved in the midst of the deluge of water and mopping that suddenly swept about him on the porch. There must have been Dutch in Charlotte somewhere, for hospitality with her meant excess of cleaning.

It was a miserable week altogether to Alexina. The days dragged through to their nights, and the nights to morning. She had never known so hateful a time. She hated the grove, where thousands of oranges, gathered into piles, lay rotting, and where the smiling trees, wherever their buds had escaped injury, were putting out scattered blooms; she hated the lake, and the Cherokee roses in bloom, she hated the crepe myrtles and the camelias in the yard. To walk meant wading through sand; there was nothing in town to make the drive worth while. The shame, the sting was in everything that was beautiful. That she should care!

Mr. Jonas and Mr. Henderson drove out one evening, Mr. Jonas to talk over matters with the Captain. Alexina wandered off by herself.

Presently she heard Mrs. Leroy calling softly. “It’s your mother,” she told Alexina in a whisper, as the girl came back to the house. “I don’t believe Mr. Henderson is good for her.”

Molly was talking to Mr. Jonas rapidly, eagerly, like one defending self, as Alexina reached them. Mr. Henderson was regarding her out of sombre eyes.

“It’s not that I think I’m sick,” Molly was saying, “like he says I am. I’m better, really, much better, only while he was talking about, about things—it’s a dreadful religion his; I’d rather be without any, like Jean, than have one like his—I remembered how Father Bonot used to pull the oranges for me I couldn’t reach. Here’s Malise come back. Malise, let’s not go to The Bay after all; I’m tired; let’s go to Cannes Brulée. He’s there, Father Bonot is, they told me in Washington. He’s an old, old man. Let’s go back home there.”

“Why, yes,” said the girl, “if you want, we’ll go.”

“You were a little baby at Cannes Brulée—yes,” animatedly, “that’s what we’ll do. We’ll go home to Father Bonot, Malise.”

At the touch of Mr. Jonas the minister started. His face was grey. Then he got up and followed the other. On the way in to Aden in the buckboard he hardly spoke until the hotel was reached.

Mr. Jonas stopped the mare before the plank sidewalk. The minister came to himself as out of chaos.

“My God,” he said.

Mr. Jonas turned the wheel. “Only yours?” he rejoined briskly.

The minister, on the sidewalk now, looked up at him dazedly. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Not yet,” returned Mr. Jonas, with cheerful reassurance; “you will, you will, though.”

So again Alexina made plans. They would go on the eighth as before, she and Celeste and Molly, but they would go to Cannes Brulée.

Supper was over and the Captain sat smoking in his cane chair on the gallery. If King was coming, it would be to-night; the train from the South came in at seven, and he knew that they were going.

Alexina, sitting on the steps below him, was glad it was the Captain out here with her, rather than the others. It was like the quiet and cover of twilight, the silence of the Captain. Moving a little, she put a hand upon the arm of his chair. His closed upon it and his eyes rested on her young, beautiful profile, though she did not know it.

The moon came up. The clock in the hall struck eight. Molly was lying on the sofa inside, Mrs. Leroy moving about as was her wont, straightening after the servants had gone, and innocently unsystematizing what little system they employed.

Outside sat the man and the girl. There were night calls from birds and insects, but beyond these sounds the girl’s heart listening, heard—

Between where the road emerged from the hummock and the gate to Nancy was a stretch of old corduroy road over a marshy strip. Elsewhere a horse’s hoofs sank into sand. Willy Leroy would ride out, if he came, probably on Mr. Jonas’s mare.

The girl sat, all else abeyant, listening. She heard the first hoof-beat, the first clattering thud on wood. Her hand slipped from the Captain’s; she sat still.

She sat stiller even as Willy rode in and called halloo to the house, while his mother and Molly, and even Celeste, came out. She hardly moved as he touched her hand and went past her with the others into the house, and left her there.

She did not know how long it was they came and went, Pete with the horse to the stable, Mrs. Leroy getting the boy his supper. The talk of the father and mother and son rose and fell within.

She heard them closing shutters, hunting lamps, and moving up the steps. But he came out and sat on the step near her, and yet far away.

They did not look toward each other. And yet he knew how she looked, fair, still, perhaps a little cold; and she knew how he looked, tanned and bronzed, yet good to see in his hunting clothes.

Shy as two young, wild things they sat, and wordless.

Presently he spoke, looking away from her.

“Mother wrote me you were going. I came up to say good-by. They’re to wait for me in camp.”

After that they both were silent, how long neither knew. Then the girl stood up.

“It must be late,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, “no—”

“Yes,” she said; “I think you’ll find it is. Good-night.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In her packing Alexina had left out a muslin dress for Mrs. Leroy’s evening. Going up from the hurried supper to dress, she glanced at it, then drew forth a box from a trunk and pulled the contents therefrom. The dress that came forth shimmered and gleamed and floated; it was a thing that must have enfolded any woman to beautiful lines, and have made any throat, any head, lift. It was a purchase she had been in a way ashamed of, tempted to it in a moment of weakness, urged on by Molly.

Now she laid it forth and dressed with care, grave as some young priestess. Molly watched her curiously. Even at the hotel there had been occasions for only simple clothes.

But the girl even brought forth some leather cases. Generally it was her little pose that she did not care for jewels, but in her heart she loved them, as every woman does, primitive or civilized, young or three-score-and-ten. Now she put on what she had. Of late the fairness of Malise had deepened into abiding beauty, yet to-night it was the garb she was emphasizing it would seem, and what it stood for, not the personality.

“You’re curious,” said Molly. “I would have thought it was a time for the simplest.”

“Should you?” said Alexina.

The evening turned into a really spontaneous little affair. It was the sort of thing the young people of Aden—dwellers in the various frame houses about the town, all sojourners from a common cause, somebody’s health—it was the sort of thing these young people got up about every other night in the year. Two mandolins, a violin, and a harp made music. A college boy with a cough, and a Mexican bar-keeper played the mandolins, the local boot and shoe dealer the violin, an Italian the harp, and the whole called itself a string band.

Charlotte Leroy, in a rejuvenated dress of former splendour, was a beaming soul of delight. That Alexina, Willy and Celeste had really seen to everything Charlotte had no idea, for neither had she sat down that day.

But she beamed now while Molly’s low laughter rose softly.

Alexina rearranged lights and adjusted decorations. She went out to the kitchen and took a reassuring survey. Later, she told the Aden youths who asked, she didn’t believe she meant to dance. They did not press her; perhaps it was the gown, perhaps it was her manner preventing. She laughed, as if it mattered! She talked with Mr. Jonas, but all the time she knew that William Leroy, in his white flannel clothes, was outside, smoking, on the gallery. After a while she went out. He was leaning against a pillar, and turned at her step. The night was flooded as by an ecstasy of moonlight. His eyes swept her bare shoulders and arms, the shimmering dress, the jewels, then turning, he looked away.

“Come and dance,” said Alexina.

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s your own fault,” said the girl as promptly; “you climbed up on back sheds at dancing school so you wouldn’t have to learn.”

“It gave me my own satisfaction at the time,” said he.

“There’s so much that’s your own fault,” she returned, “and which you cover up by pretending that you don’t like or want. You’re as human as any one else. You make yourself believe you don’t want things because you’re stubborn and proud, but you do, you do.”

“Under proper conditions,” he admitted largely, “I might, yes.”

“Under any conditions, in your heart you want them, we all want them; you’re not different.”

“Well, and what then?”

“You are not honest, that is what then.”

“Well,” he returned, “and what then?”

She was almost crying. “You exonerate yourself, you condone yourself, you say you would, you could, you will—some day, if—if thus and so. You think some better condition is going to bring the confidence to be what nature meant you to be; yes, you do think it, you do, you do. But it has to grow out of yourself. I can tell you that, and when the time you think for comes, to be what you’d like to be, you’ll have lost the power. I want to say it, I mean to say it, I want to hurt you, I hope my saying it can hurt you, so I can go away glad, glad I’ve hurt you. There, I’ve said it; don’t stop me, don’t; I came to say it and I’m going back now.”

He was breathing hard. “Oh, no,” he said, “you’re not.” He glanced around. Then he stepped down from the gallery and turned. “Come, let yourself go, I’ll steady you.”

She hesitated, brushing some wet from her cheek with her hand. She did not know until then there had been tears.

“Come,” he reiterated. It was the tone women, even Molly, obeyed.

She slipped down and he caught her and set her on her feet. “Pick up your dress,” he said, “the grass is wet.”

Everywhere, it seemed, there were couples strolling. Around to the right, by the side door, with its little, vine-covered pent-house, was a bench beneath a tree; Aunt Mandy and Mrs. Leroy aired their crocks and pans thereon. He led the way to it, spread out his handkerchief, and Alexina, gathering up her gleaming dress, sat down. The comical side of it must have occurred to him, the girl gathering up a dress fit for a princess, to sit there. He laughed, not an altogether humorous laugh.

“Illustrative of the true state of things, as it were,” he said. “I proffer my lady a milk-bench.”

A sob rose in her throat. “I hate you,” she said hotly.

“That you bestow feeling of any sort, to such degree, is flattering,” said he nastily.

“You’re very rude.”

“It puts us on a sort of equality, and establishes me in my own self-respect, so to speak, to have face to be rude to une grande dame—”

“You’re not honest, and you know it, and it’s hurting you while you’re doing it.”

“Just so,” said William, after the fashion of his father. “Where are you going?”

“To the house.”

“Come back.”

“I won’t. I’ve said what I had to say.”

He came after her. “And now you shall listen.” They stood and looked at each other. Her eyes measured him with some scorn, his met the look squarely. “I care for you as the only thing worth while in life,” he said.

“I’ve not so much pride left you need think you have to say that to save it,” she burst forth.

“You are the one not true now. You know it, you have known it right along. I hadn’t even the arts of your world to know how to conceal it.”

“My world!” said Alexina.

“Very well; let’s both be honest. I’ve fought it because I’ve had enough decency to see the impossibility—oh, my God!—what’s the use being fool enough to talk about it. I haven’t one cent on earth that’s my own; I’m worse than a beggar, if we are going to be quite honest about matters, since I am a debtor.”

“Oh,” said Alexina; “oh, don’t.”

“I fought it out, or thought I had, down there in the glades, and then got up and came back because I couldn’t let you go—without—”

“I’m glad,” said Alexina, “I’m glad.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do know,” said the girl. “I’m glad, I’m glad—”

“Alexina!”

“I’m glad.”

Her young face was white and solemn in the moonlight, but her eyes came up to his with a splendid courage. “I’m glad,” she repeated.

It might have been a moment, an hour, a day, an æon, the two looked at each other. Then their hands went out to each other, for very need of human touch in the great awe of it.

When he spoke both were trembling.

“Will you wait?” he asked her. “It may be long.” But the note in his voice was new. The fight even then was begun.

“Yes,” she told him, grave eyes meeting grave eyes, for young love is solemn. Then he drew her to him and sight and sound went out, and the solid round earth was spurned. And yet they were but two of the long, unending line, mounting thus to God and His heaven, for it is for this we are come into the world.

Suddenly Alexina slipped her hands from his and fled.

Molly was on the porch with Mr. Jonas. A toy harness from the cotillion favors jangled on her dress. She had sunk laughing on a bench to get breath.

“Yes,” she told Mr. Jonas, “we go in the morning, to Cannes Brulée.”

Alexina was coming up on the porch and to Molly. Straight she slipped to her knees and her arms went around her mother.

“Dear me, Malise,” said Molly.

The head of the girl hid itself in the curve of the mother’s neck and shoulder.

“Dear me, Malise,” said Molly, “you’re such a child.”

THE END

THE McCLURE PRESS, NEW YORK

Transcriber's Note

A table of contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.

Hyphenation and spelling has been made consistent where there was a prevalence of one form over another. Please note that the author appears to have used both US and UK spelling.

Typographic errors have been repaired—for example, deleting superfluous letters, fixing omitted or incorrect punctuation.