"You are so--well--yourself," he said, "sometimes I find myself forgetting it."
The girl swallowed once, twice, as if from effort to speak. She was looking off, too, against the far sh.o.r.e. "Is it a thing to have to be remembered?" then she asked.
"Isn"t it?" said King William, turning on her suddenly. There was a sharp harshness in his tones. "I wish to G.o.d it wasn"t."
She got up, and he sprang up, too, facing her. Suddenly she stamped her foot. The wind, rising to a gale now, was blowing her hair about her face and she was angry. It made her beautiful. She might have been a Valkyr, tall, wind-tossed.
But the sob in her voice was human. "I"ve had Uncle Austen say such things to me in his fear I might let other people forget it, and a girl I cared for at school let it come between us, but I thought you--I had a right to think you were bigger. Your mother is, oh, yes, she is, and your father is. Not that I despise the other, either." She lifted her head defiantly. "It"s a grand and liberating thing, though it was shackles on me in Uncle Austen"s hands. I don"t despise it; I couldn"t; but that it should have to be remembered--"
"Just so," said w.i.l.l.y Leroy, in his father"s phrase.
Her head went up again and she looked at him full, straight, then turned and fled towards the house.
He ran after her, came abreast, and after the fashion he had, stooped to see into her face. "Don"t go away, in from me--mad," he begged. Was he laughing?
"But I am mad," she returned promptly.
"But don"t go in either way," he said; "stay, mad if you will, but stay. Oh, I"m not proud," he was breathing hard again, "that is--only this proud; I shall build onto my little gold of Colchis until we stand at least nearer equal--and then--"
Each looked at the other, with defiance almost. She was as beautiful as Harriet Blair.
"Then," said the girl, "then you"ll be that far less my equal. Let me go." And she jerked her sleeve from his hand and ran into the house.
CHAPTER NINE
The morning after dawned sunless and chill. The sky was a pale leaden, below which darker ma.s.ses of clouds scurried. The wind blew strong, steady, resistless. At breakfast they all sat shivering.
"Have Pete start fires," said King William to Charlotte, "and you had better move Mrs. Garnier over to my room before night." For there were not fire-places in all the rooms.
It was a dreary morning every way. The breakfast was poor and scant.
Aunt Mandy defended herself. "Ev"y thing done give out," she declared.
"Mis" Charlotte been so occapied she done forgot to order things f"om town."
Convicted, Charlotte looked at w.i.l.l.y, then hastily took the defensive.
"Mandy ought to have reminded me," she declared.
"No, _ma"am_," responded Mandy. "I done quit this thing uv tellin" an"
havin" you say things give out too soon."
w.i.l.l.y sat stony. The Captain shivered. One realized all at once that he was an old man. "The thermometer is at forty-six, King," he remarked.
"Yes," said the son, "and falling."
All morning it fell. At noon it registered forty degrees. The wind still swept a gale that whistled and shrieked at the corners of the house, and the three women pa.s.sed the morning in Charlotte"s room, shivering about the open fire-place. Pete spent his day chopping and bringing in arm-loads of fat pine wood. All the sense of dissatisfaction with Aden returned. Desolate grey sand is a hideous exchange for sward, and orange trees look like toys from a Noah"s ark.
At dinner there was a furrow between King"s straight, dark brows.
"It"s thirty-eight," he told his father, "and falling. It"s clearing, too."
Afterwards he was talking to Pete in the hall.
"No, sir," reiterated Pete, "we"s too far below the line, ain"t never heard of sech a thing down here."
At four o"clock King came in to say he was going to town. "It"s down to thirty-four," he told his father. "I"m going in and telegraph up the river for reports."
"And what then, son?" asked the Captain. "What can you do?"
It was a hitherto unexperienced danger threatening Aden. But youth cannot sit and wait. Alexina, from the window in Charlotte"s room, saw King William fling himself on his horse at the gate and gallop off.
The wind had ceased. The live-oaks on either side of the old iron gate stood motionless, their moss hanging in dreary, sombre lengths. There was no sound of bird or insect. And it was cold--cold. Alexina had a jacket over her woollen dress, for Aden houses are not built for cold, which poured in at cas.e.m.e.nts, beneath doors, at keyholes. Molly, on the couch drawn up to the fire, coughed and coughed again. Alexina went to her. "I"m cold," she complained; "and how dreary it is."
It had cleared and the sky was a pale, chilly blue. The sun set in a yellow pallor. The night fell.
King came in and warmed his hands at the parlour fire. Alexina and Charlotte had come down now.
"Thirty-two," he told his father, "and falling."
Neither the Captain nor his son ate much supper, but near-sighted Charlotte, absorbed in things at hand, seemed unconscious of anything more amiss than discomfort from the cold. After supper the son disappeared.
Molly was coughing sadly. They had moved her bed across to w.i.l.l.y"s sitting-room, and a fire crackled on the stone hearth; but it was to be one of the nights when she would not sleep, or but fitfully, and when Celeste and Alexina would not sleep either. At nine o"clock they persuaded her to bed.
"But talk, Malise, you and mammy talk. I don"t have chance to think when people keep on talking; and, mammy, rub my hands; it helps, to have some one rub them."
At ten she wanted a drink of water. Alexina went to the window where she had set a tumbler outside. The night was still and clear, the stars glittering. The moon would rise soon now. How large the grove showed itself from this south window, stretching away to the southwest around the curving sh.o.r.es of Nancy. As Alexina opened the window she shivered, despite the heavy wool of her white wrapper. As she took in the gla.s.s--was it? Yes, over the surface of the water radiated a ferny, splintery film, which was ice.
Molly, feverish and restless, drank it thirstily, and said it was good, but it roused her so that she began to talk again.
"He said I couldn"t prevent his praying for me," she was harping on the minister. "For my soul," she laughed uneasily. "I told him to let my soul alone. It"s perfectly funny, Malise, that I"ve got to be prayed over when I don"t want to be."
The night wore on. Celeste was nodding, even while her brown hands went on rubbing up and down the slim white wrist and arm.
The wood on the andirons broke and fell apart. The room grew shadowy.
"Build it up, Malise," begged Molly; "I like it light."
There was no more wood up-stairs. It was past twelve o"clock and the house was still. Alexina opened the door into the hall. A lamp in case of need, because of Molly, was burning on a stand. Alexina had remembered that there was wood piled on the parlour hearth. Her slippers were noiseless.
Down-stairs she paused, then tip-toed to the front door. The big thermometer and barometer in one hung against a side of the recess and could be seen through the gla.s.s side-lights. It was bright moonlight now, the shadows of the rose vine clear cut on the porch floor. She looked at the thermometer.
She looked again.
It had come, then, what never had come to Aden before. From the talk of the day she had gleaned enough to know that the fruit hanging on William Leroy"s trees was but so much sodden, worthless pulp.
She turned back towards the parlour where the firelight was flickering out the doorway, then stopped. He was in his father"s chair before the hearth. His elbow was on his knee and the hand on which his chin was propped was clenched. The flame flared up. His face was haggard and harsh.
She fled back up-stairs. Molly had fallen asleep, Celeste was nodding.
The girl shut the door and dropped in a little heap on the bearskin before the fire. She was shivering, but in her eyes, fixed on the embers, was a yearning, brooding light that made them beautiful. Then suddenly she hid her face in her hands, her head bowed on her knees, and began to sob.