"He didn"t seem to mind my being poor," said Emily; "he said it was my practical and praiseworthy way of going to work that made him first--oh, Alexina," she coloured and looked at the other, "he didn"t even mind our little house--and mother doing the work."
A sort of rage against Emily seized Alexina. She stamped her foot.
"Oh," she cried, "why shouldn"t he the rather go down on his unbending knees in grat.i.tude that you"ll even listen? You"re twenty-one and he"s fifty-one. You have everything, you"re lovely, you"ve your voice, you haven"t begun to live yet--oh, I know he"s my uncle, and I remember all he"s done for me, but I"ve known him years, Emily, _years_, and I"ve never seen Uncle Austen laugh once."
What on earth has laughing to do with it? Alexina always was queer.
This from Emily. Not that she said it, except in the puzzled, uncomprehending stare at Alexina, while she returned to what she had come to communicate. "We"re going to be married the first day of October," she said. "Mr. Blair has to go East on some business then."
Alexina drew herself together with a laugh. What was the use--yet she could not divest herself of a responsibility.
She looked at Emily, who was looking at her. Their eyes met. Alexina looked away.
"Emily," she said, "there"s a thing"--it took effort to say it--"a thing maybe you haven"t thought of. It came to Aunt Harriet; it comes to everybody, I feel sure. Won"t you be cutting yourself off from any right to it?" The red was waving up to Alexina"s very hair.
Emily showed no resentment at this implication which both seemed to take for granted, but then she was not following Alexina very closely, her own thoughts being absorbing. "The wedding will have to be in our little house," she said, "so it won"t make much difference about the dress; n.o.body"ll be there. But for the rest, I"m going to have some clothes. I told mother and father and grandfather so this morning."
Alexina went over and seized the other"s hands as children do. A softer feeling had come over her. Perhaps Emily was doing this thing to help her people. Besides, she and Emily used to weave wonderful garbs in bygone days, for the wearing to the Prince"s ball. To be sure, one never had pictured an Uncle Austen as the possible Prince, but still Emily should have them, if she wanted them.
Alexina"s gaze fell upon a flower lying on the floor, which had dropped out of Garrard Ransome"s b.u.t.tonhole. The boy loved flowers as most men from the blue gra.s.s country do, and the cottage yard was a wilderness of them. She had almost forgotten Garrard"s share in this.
She picked the flower up and handed it to Emily. "Dr. Ransome has been here," she said, feeling treacherous--for the other man, after all, was her uncle.
Emily took it, and laid it against the lace of her parasol, this way and that.
"I"ve always, as far back as I can remember, meant to be somebody, something," said Emily. She said it without emotion, as one states a fact. Then she rose and picked up her glove. "Sometimes I"ve thrown my arms out and felt I could scream, it all has seemed so poor and crowded and hateful to me," which was large unburdening of self for Emily. Then she went. At the door she laid the flower on a chair.
The three weeks of Molly"s illness brought it to the end of August, and, as she convalesced, Alexina began to plan for Aden. In the midst of her preparations the Major and Harriet returned.
She went out to the house the morning of their arrival. The luggage was being unloaded at the curb as she reached the gate, and, hearing voices as she stepped on the porch, she looked in at the parlour window. Harriet, her hat yet on, was bending her head that little Stevie, urged by his mother, might kiss her. The baby was no shyer about it than the woman, yet the woman smiled as the baby"s lips touched her face.
As she rose she saw Alexina and came to the door to meet her. She kissed the girl almost with embarra.s.sment, yet kept hold of her hands, while suddenly her eyes filled with something she tried to laugh away.
"I had your letter," she was saying, "and resent it, too, that you are going, and so does Stephen." Her face changed, her voice grew hesitant, hurried. "He"s never going to be better than now"--was it a sob?--"but since I may have him, may keep him, and he is willing now to live so for me, though not at first, not at first-- Oh, Alexina, it has been bitter!"
Alexina followed her into the parlour. The Major was there in a wheeled chair, the babies afar off, refusing to obey the maternal pokes and pushes to go to him, and regarding him and his wheeled affair with furtive, wide-eyed suspicion. The eyes of the Major were full of the humour of it.
"Now had I been a gamboling satyr on hoofs they would have accepted me at once," he a.s.sured Alexina. "It"s this mingling of the familiar with the unnatural--"
He was holding the girl"s hand while he spoke and looking up keenly at her pretty, tired face. There had been enough in her letters for them to have divined something of her trouble.
"To some it comes early, to others late, Alexina," he said quite gently. He had noted the signs--the violet shadows beneath the baffled young eyes, the hint of the tragedy in their depths.
Alexina sat down suddenly and, leaning her face on the arm of the wheeled chair, began to cry, not that she meant to do it at all.
Time was when Harriet would have been at a loss, even now she was embarra.s.sed, though she hovered over the girl, anxious and solicitous, and even touched the pretty, shining hair with her hand.
"Let her alone: let her cry it out," said the Major.
Alexina, groping for his hand, held to it like a very child and cried on.
PART THREE
"Joy will be part of the Kingdom of G.o.d."
RENAN.
CHAPTER ONE
Immediately after the wedding Alexina and Molly went South. Molly turned petulant at sight of Aden and Alexina could not blame her; indeed, she and Celeste were of a mind with her as they drove from the station to the hotel.
The horses ploughed through loose, greyish sand, the sidewalks along the street, ostensibly the business thoroughfare, were of board, not in the best of repair, and the skyline of the street was varied according as the frame stores had or did not have a sham front simulating a second story. Men sat on tilted chairs beneath awnings along the way and stared at the occupants of the carriage as it pa.s.sed. It was mid-afternoon, which, in Aden, seemed to be a glaring, shadeless hour and, but for these occasional somnolent starers, a deserted one. Yet people lived here, existed, spent their lives in this crude, poor hideousness, this mean newness; the Leroys lived here! And that their son would let them, would remain himself!
"What did we come for anyhow?" queried Molly. "The world is full of charming places. You do adopt the queerest notions, Malise."
Malise sat convicted. It had sounded so alluring, so suggestive of charm and languor; the very name of Aden had breathed a sort of magic.
And Alexina had come, too, buoyed up by a large and epic idea of rest.i.tution. How foolish, how young, how almost insulting from the Leroys" standpoint it suddenly seemed.
"We spent two winters in Italy, Jean and I, and one in Algiers," Molly was saying plaintively. "Heavens, Malise, they"re building that house on stilts, right over a sinkhole of tin cans."
For that matter there were tin cans everywhere. It was most depressing.
"Even Louisville was better than this," said Molly grudgingly. "Don"t look so resigned, Malise; it"s not becoming."
They turned a corner and the driver stopped before a long, two-storied building, painted white, which proved to be the hotel. It stood up from the street on wooden posts, the s.p.a.ce between latticed. A railed gallery ran across the front, steps ascending midway of its length.
Two giant live-oaks flanked the building either end, the wooden sidewalk cut out to encircle their great roots, and, while handbills and placards were tacked up and down the rugged, seamy trunks, yet grey moss drooped from the branches and swept the gallery posts. The building looked roomy, old-fashioned and reposeful, and Alexina"s spirits rose. She gathered up the wraps, Celeste the satchels--no one ever looked to Molly to gather up anything--and they went in.
The place seemed deserted and asleep, but just inside the doorway, where the hall broadened into an office, a man stood looking through a pile of newspapers. His clothes were black and his vest clerical; below its edge hung a small gold cross. He turned politely, then said he would go and find some one.
"Dear me," said Molly, brightening, "he"s handsome."
Two days after, they were settled in comfortable rooms overlooking the hotel grounds. A slope down to a small lake boasted some gnarled old live-oaks and pines, and one side was set out with a young orange grove. Across the water one could see several more or less pretentious new houses built around the sh.o.r.e. The breeze tasted of pine and Molly had slept a night through without coughing.
"But, Heavens!" she complained, the second afternoon, lolling back in a wooden arm-chair on the hotel gallery; "isn"t there anything to do?"
Alexina and the young man in clerical garb were her audience. He was the Reverend Harrison Henderson, and had charge of the Episcopal Church of Aden and lived at the hotel. He seemed a definite and earnest man. His blond profile was strong. It was a rather immobile face, perhaps, but it lighted with very evident pleasure as he answered Mrs. Garnier.
"How would you like to go out to Nancy?" he proposed; "it"s quite an affair for a lake down here, and a young fellow out there rents sail-boats."
"Charming," agreed Molly, sitting up. "You have ideas; you can"t have been here long."
Mr. Harrison smiled, though it was an acknowledging rather than a mirthful smile. Life is too earnest for mere laughter, but his zeal to serve Mrs. Garnier was not to be doubted.