"Did the Leroys know it?"
"Why, naturally, I should suppose so."
That was all that Alexina wanted to know, yet not all, either. Her colour rose a little. It made her pretty. "Do you know anything of the Leroys since?"
"Not a word," said Mrs. Carringford.
"What do you hear from Miss Harriet and Major Rathbone?"
"They are still East. Dr. Ransome came back yesterday."
"Yes; I know he did," said Mrs. Carringford. "He was here to see Emily last night. He"s a nice boy." There was emphasis in her way of making the statement. Harriet Blair had once remarked that Mrs.
Carringford was that anomaly--a sane woman. Yet she opposed the visits of Austen Blair and spoke heartily concerning the other one. "Garrard is a nice boy; I like him."
CHAPTER SIX
Alexina became twenty-one in May. She had found that in the settling of her affairs it would be necessary for her to remain in Louisville and so had written her mother to come to her there. She explained about the change in her life to the Carringfords, to find that they knew all about her mother; probably her little world, Georgy, Dr.
Ransome, knew it, too, while these years she had comforted herself with the thought that, at least, it was her secret shame.
Mrs. Carringford put an arm about her and kissed her. There was approval in the action.
Emily looked at her, then laughed nervously, while a vivid scarlet rose to the roots of her chestnut hair.
As Alexina pa.s.sed through the front-room study going home, the old minister glanced up from his writing and called her name. He pushed his spectacles back onto his leonine head, looking up as she came toward him. She was surprised, for he never had seemed conscious even of her comings and goings.
"There are two ties that are not of our making," he told her; "the spiritual tie between the Creator and the created, and the material tie between the parent and the child. They are ties not of duty but of nature, as indestructible as matter. G.o.d go with you."
She felt strange and choked, though she was not sure she knew what he meant.
A week after she became of age she was dismantling the bay-windowed room of such things as were hers. Little by little it grew as cold and cheerless as the one adjoining, now the personality of Aunt Harriet was gone out of it. What would become of Uncle Austen after both were gone?
She had tried to force from him some expression of feeling, at first wistfully, then determinedly. There is a chance, had he responded, that she would have made other arrangements for her mother. Then she told herself she did not care and went hotly on with her preparations.
She had taken two bedrooms and a parlour at a hotel, and had written her mother to go directly there, but the night of her arrival the girl felt she could not go to meet her. It was too late an hour anyhow, she would wait until morning, but she shrank so from that first moment she could not sleep.
She and her uncle met at the breakfast table the next morning. She made one or two attempts at conversation. "I go to-day, Uncle Austen,"
she said at last, and, leaning forward, pushed a paper across the table to him. It was the final statement of the household expenditures under her management.
Her board from her first coming had been paid into the general house fund, and, accordingly, she had included against herself charge for these several days in the new month.
Noting it, Austen Blair nodded; it was the first approval accorded her for some time.
She laughed. "I go to-day," she repeated.
Her uncle, who had risen, put the paper, neatly folded, into his wallet, then crossed to her and put out his hand.
"I will not see you again then?" he said, and shook hands.
A moment after she heard the front door close.
There were the servants to bid good-by, and that being done there was no excuse to linger.
It was a warm May day; the magnolia in the yard, the pirus j.a.ponicas, the calycanthus, the horse chestnuts, were in bloom. The lawn was green, the edges of the gravel paths were newly cut and trim. Alexina, in her muslin dress and Leghorn hat, turned on the stone flagging and looked back at the home she was leaving. Home?
The girl, pausing in the yard of the big house, glanced across the street to a shabby old brick cottage. Her affection was for it.
The hotel was in the business part of the city near the river. A street-car would have taken her directly there but she walked, as if seeking to put the moment off. The way took her past the house furnished and waiting for Aunt Harriet and the Major. Louise was sitting on an up-stairs window-sill with little Stevie, and caught his small fist and waved it to her. A curtain was fluttering out an opened window and a comfortable looking coloured woman was sweeping the pavement. The place had an air of relaxation, of comfort, already.
Aunt Harriet was going to have a home.
The arrangements had been made at the hotel, and the child, for a very child she was, went in at the ladies" entrance where a sleepy bell-boy sat, always nodding, past the pillared corridor, on up-stairs, and along the crimson-carpeted hallways. She was trembling, her throat was dry.
In the suite she had taken, a bed-room either side opened into a connecting parlour. It was the k.n.o.b of the parlour door she turned after a tap. Then she went in.
"Why, you tall, charming, baby-faced--! Celeste, Celeste, here"s your baby! Come here to me, Malise. Why the child"s hands are cold!"
How foolish to have dreaded it so! It was all gone--even the constraint. The twelve years were as nothing. She was again the baby child, Malise, so-called by her mother"s people.
And her mother? The linen pillows on the sofa beneath her head looked cool and pleasantly rumpled, and the sheer white wrapper was fine and softly laundered as a baby"s. Her hair, hanging in two plaits over the pillows, had no suggestion of carelessness; it looked fascinating, it looked lovely.
The mother, holding her daughter"s hands, was gazing up curiously, interestedly, her lips parted, as pleased interest will part any child"s. There was contagious laughter in the eyes, too, the laugh of expectancy about to be gratified, as with children while the curtain goes up on a new scene. "You are as pretty as you can be, Malise; the Blair features used to look so solemn on a baby!"
"Lil" missy--"
Alexina looked around. It was Celeste, tall, brown, regarding her with covert eyes as of old. Celeste had never loved her, the child had known that; her love belonged to the mother, her first charge, her Southern born, all her own. The father"s blood in this second child was alien; Celeste had resented it as she had resented that father and all his kind. She had been jealous for the mother against the father and child from the first.
Alexina, drawing a hand from her mother"s, gave it to Celeste. The old woman took it loosely, then let it drop. Things were to be as of old, then, between them.
The girl turned back to her mother. "But, Molly," the name came naturally, she had known her mother by no other, "your health, you know; tell me about that."
What did this dilation in Molly"s eyes mean? And she glanced sidewise, secretly, as if at fear of some dreaded thing, lurking.
"Did I write about that? Oh, well, perhaps I was, then, but not now; not at all now."
The haste to disclaim was feverish, and the look directed by Celeste at Alexina was sullen, even while the old woman"s strong, resistless brown hand was pushing her mistress back onto the pillows.
"Got to res" lil" while, p"t.i.te; got to min" Celeste an" lay back an"
res" now."
Then to her daughter, who suddenly felt herself a little compelled creature again, so was she carried into the past by the old woman"s soft, Creole slurring: ""Tain", lil" missy, "tain" like Madame Garnier she aire seeck actual, but jus" she taire, easy like."
Madame Garnier! That meant Molly! The illusions were all gone. The girl backed from the couch. Twelve years rolled between Molly and herself, years full of resentment. A slow red came up and over the daughter"s face.
But Molly, back upon the pillows, gave no sign. She flung her plaits out of the way and slipped her arms under her head. There is a slenderness that is not meagreness, but delicacy; thus slight, thus pretty, were Molly"s wrists. The arms under her head tilted her face so the light fell on it. It was a narrow, piquant face, with no lines to mar its delicacy. The odd difference in the eyebrows, which had fascinated Alexina as a child, one arched, one straight, lent laughter to it even in repose. Yet the mouth drooped, like a child"s, with pathos and appeal. Could one say no to that mouth, it was so wistful?
It was an alluring face, and moved you so to tenderness, to do battle, to give protection, that it hurt.