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 Brulee. 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 Brulee--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 G.o.d," 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 rea.s.surance; "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 Brulee.
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. w.i.l.l.y 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 w.i.l.l.y 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, w.i.l.l.y 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 rea.s.suring 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.