Emily looked conscious. "Yes," she said, "I think he is."
Somehow Alexina felt that Emily not only knew but wanted it to be felt that she knew. Then why hesitate and say only that she thought so?
"How"s Garrard?" Alexina asked suddenly. Garrard was young Doctor Ransome. Emily flushed a little, but she answered unconcernedly, "Well enough, I reckon."
On Alexina"s return to the hotel, the clerk stopped her in the corridor, looking a little embarra.s.sed under the clear, surprised gaze of the young lady. "It"s about a little matter with Mrs. Garnier; it"s been running two months now."
A moment after, as she went on blindly up the stairs, a folded paper in her hand, she understood; understood what Georgy had offered to share with her, what the taciturn secretiveness of Celeste meant. She went in through the parlour to her mother"s room, from which of late she had been so much shut out.
"Molly," she said, her voice sounding strange to herself, as she held out the paper open.
Molly, risen on her pillow, looked at it, at her, her eyes growing big. She was frightened, and cowered a little, crumpling some letters in her lap.
"Don"t look at me like that, Malise," she said. "I"ve some of the money you gave me left--I"ll help to pay it."
That she was afraid only because of the bill!
"Oh--" Alexina breathed it rather than uttered it.
Molly, risen from her elbow to sitting posture, was looking at her with big, miserable eyes, her throat, so slight and pretty, swelling with the sobs coming.
But the other came first, and with it came the terror. "Malise, Malise, hold me; hold me. I"m afraid!"
Celeste was out.
Alexina, holding her mother, could reach the bell, and rang it, again and again.
"Oh," she said to the boy when he came; "get a doctor."
"What one?" he asked.
Alexina remembered Dr. Ransome.
Then she sat and fed ice to Molly and tried to keep her still. It is a fearful thing to feel the close, clinging touch of a person we are shrinking from. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon. The clock on the parlour mantel ticked with maddening reiteration. It seemed hours before Dr. Ransome came. Then a moment later Celeste returned. Molly flung her arms out to the old woman.
"He"s dead, mammy," she wailed; "Jean"s dead; the letters came after you went--and I"m afraid, I"m afraid of it, I"m afraid to die!"
It was to Celeste Molly had to tell it. The daughter listened with a sudden resentment towards Celeste.
Molly was not going to be better right at once, and Alexina and Dr.
Garrard Ransome had many opportunities for talk. She stopped him in the parlour, as he was going, one morning. It had been on her mind for a long time to ask him something. "It"s odd, your name being Ransome,"
she said. "Mrs. Leroy, who used to live where you do, had been a Miss Ransome."
"She"s my cousin Charlotte," said the young fellow; "that"s how my mother came to fancy living where we do, when we came down from Woodford to Louisville. She used to visit the Leroys there you see."
"Oh," said Alexina, "really? They were very good to me."
The blue eyes of the doctor were regarding her intently, but as if thought were concentrated elsewhere. "I wonder if it was you Cousin Charlotte meant? I was down there two winters ago for a month. They live in Florida, at a place called Aden."
"Yes," said Alexina, "Aden."
"And she asked me about some young girl who, she said, lived across from the cottage. Of course I didn"t know."
"I wasn"t there then," said Alexina; "I was at school. They were good to me; are they well--and happy?" The eagerness was good to see, so dejected had the girl seemed of late.
"Well, yes, or were when mother last heard. Happy, too, I reckon, as it"s counted with us poor families used to better things."
"Tell me about them, if you don"t mind. They were the best friends I ever had."
"Well," he said, looking rather helpless in the undertaking, "there isn"t much to tell. They"re getting along. The Captain was book-keeper for a steamboat line down there, went home every week, but, somehow, a year ago, they dropped him; he"s getting old, the Captain is."
"Yes, he must be. And Mrs. Leroy?"
"Cousin Charlotte? Well, she"s Cousin Charlotte. Some ways she"s a real child about things and mighty helpless when it comes to managing, but she never thinks about repining, and it"s funny how she"ll do whatever King tells her."
"And he?"
"King? Oh, he"s all right. Queer fellow though, some ways, imperturbable as a young owl. Best poker player down there, and that"s saying something. It"s motley, Aden is, like all those small towns since the railroad went through "em."
The young man happening to glance at Miss Alexina, saw that he had said something wrong. He was the only child of his mother and so knew how ladies feel on certain subjects. Yet, on the other hand, Miss Alexina adored Major Rathbone, and the Major"s poker record, while possibly of a more local character, was scarcely less celebrated than his guerrilla past. Still, ladies are expected to be inconsistent.
"I shouldn"t have told that, I reckon," he remarked; "you all don"t see these things as we do. He"s a fine fellow, King is. He"s a great shot, too," cheerfully; "I went on a week"s hunt down in the glades with him. King"s all right."
Maybe he was, but it sounded as though he was trifling. "Hasn"t he a business?" she asked with condemning brevity.
"I don"t know about calling it a business," said William Leroy"s cousin; "I know he"s the busiest. It"s a big old place, you see, the grove they own, and he"s reclaiming it. There"s just one subject he"s discursive on, and that"s the best fertilizer for young orange trees."
Somehow William Leroy did not shine against this background as his well-intending cousin meant he should. "And they"re poor, Mrs. Leroy and the Captain?" asked Miss Blair.
"Well," admitted Garrard, "they aren"t rich."
The girl sat thinking. "I"m going down there," she said suddenly. "Is there a hotel? There is? Then I"m going to take Molly and go down to see them. There"s something I want to tell Mrs. Leroy and the Captain."
"As good a place as any," agreed Dr. Garrard. "I told you at the start Mrs. Garnier must not try a winter here."
"We"ll go," declared Alexina, then stopped. Maybe they would not be glad to see her. "But don"t mention the possibility if you should be writing," she begged; "don"t mention knowing me--please. I--I"d like to discover it all for myself."
After he had gone she went to the piano, near the window looking out over the warehouse roofs to the river, and, softly fingering some little melody, sat thinking.
There was a tap and Alexina turned on the piano stool as Emily Carringford came in. Somehow Emily, so prettily, daintily charming in her fresh white dress, made Alexina cross. She felt wilted and jaded, and who cared if she did? That her present state was brought about by her own choosing only made her crosser.
What was it in Emily"s manner? Had she grown more beautiful in a night? She dropped into a chair, and, holding her parasol by either end across her knee, looked over at Alexina on the stool, and, looking, laughed. It was a laugh made of embarra.s.sment and complacency, half shy, half bold.
"Your Uncle Austen last night asked me to marry him, Alexina," she said.
"Emily--" Alexina sprang from the stool and stood with apprehension rushing to her face in rising colour and dilated gaze. "Oh--Emily!"
Was it foreboding in her eyes as they swept Emily"s girlish loveliness?