"Well," said he, dropping his unappreciated bits of cane, piece by piece into the water, "that"s a woman"s way of looking at it."
"What"s a man"s?" asked the girl, at that, "how does a man do hard things?"
"He just does "em, I should say, and doesn"t a.n.a.lyze. He"s got to be at something, you know; it"s part of the creed."
"What creed?" demanded Alexina.
"Mr. Jonas"s."
"Oh," said Alexina, "yes, I see."
CHAPTER FIVE
Molly, Alexina and Celeste stayed a week at Nancy with the Leroys. It was a household wherein there was no strain, no tension, though, to be sure, there was small management. One had a comical comprehension that Mandy the cook and Tina the wash-woman kept their families off the gullibility and good faith of their mistress.
Alexina was sent into the sunshine.
"Keep her outdoors," Charlotte commanded w.i.l.l.y; "the child"s morbid."
Mr. Jonas drove out with trophies of game as offerings to Mrs.
Garnier. One morning Mr. Henderson came with him in the buckboard, and Molly and the two men sat in the sunshine on the porch and talked.
"Did he die?" she asked the minister presently.
"Who?"
"The man at the house where you stopped that day?" She asked it as one driven to know, even while apprehensive of the answer.
Exultation leaped for an instant to the young man"s face, a stern joy.
"He died," he told her, "but in the faith at the end."
"In what faith?" Molly asked curiously. She was a child in so many things.
"The Church," he told her, with reproof in his tone.
The click of Mr. Jonas"s incisors upon incisors chopped the air.
But Molly moved a little nearer the minister.
"Yes," she agreed slowly, unwillingly almost; "they all do. Father Bonot used to say it over and over. They all come back to the Church to--to die."
She was shivering.
There was a quick, snapped off h"ah from Mr. Jonas.
Mr. Henderson looked bewildered. "I did not know; then, Mrs. Garnier, you are--"
"I"m a Catholic," said Molly, a little in wonder.
"Romanist?" said the other gently.
But Molly wasn"t listening, nor would she have known what the distinction meant, had she been. It was Mr. Jonas who gave forth another sound that was almost a snort, and marched off to where King and Alexina were sitting on the step.
Molly watched him go, then glanced around as if to insure aloofness, and leaned forward, her fingers pulling at the edge of her handkerchief.
"You helped him to die, and you"re a priest--one sort of a priest--and I want to tell you--"
"No," said the other, "you do not understand; let me make you see."
"It doesn"t matter," said Molly; "no," hurriedly, "let me tell you. I want to tell you. It will help me. I take things--I have to; anything that will make me forget and make me sleep. I"m afraid--I take it because I"m afraid to die."
He looked at her out of dull eyes. She was, self-avowedly, everything he held abhorrent--alien, worldly, and weak. He stammered something--was he asking G.o.d to help her, or himself?--and left her.
Later, as he and Mr. Jonas drove back to Aden, the eyes of Mr. Jonas snapped. "You"re brewing mischief to your own or somebody else"s peace of mind; you always are when you look like that. Out with it, man."
Why Mr. Henderson should out with it, he himself knew less than any, but Mr. Jonas had a way.
The minister"s words came forth with effort.
"I"ve been seeking light to know why Mrs. Garnier was sent down here.
I"ve never cared for a woman before; I can"t seem to tear it out. But to-day it"s made clear: she was sent to me to be saved."
"From her faith?" inquired Mr. Jonas.
But the minister was impervious to the sarcasm.
"To the faith," said Mr. Henderson.
The others gone, Alexina, King William and the Captain sat on the porch. The girl who was on the step reached up and put a hand on the locket swinging from the Captain"s fob. "May I?" she asked, "I used to, often, you know."
The Captain slipped the watch out and handed it to her, the rest depending, and she opened the locket, a large, thin, plain gold affair. "This," she said, bending over it, then looking up at the Captain archly, "this is Julie Piquet, your mother, wife of Aristide Leroy, refugee and Girondist."
She recited it like a child proud of knowing its lesson, then regarded him out of the corners of her eyes, laughing.
There answered the faintest flicker of a smile somewhere in the old Roman face.
The girl returned to the study of the dark beauty on the ivory again, its curly tresses fillet bound, its snowy b.r.e.a.s.t.s the more revealed than hidden by the short-waisted, diaphanous drapery.
"And because it had been your father"s locket, with you and your mother in it, Mrs. Leroy wouldn"t let you change it to put her in; and so this on the other side is you, young Georges Gautier Hippolyte Leroy--"
"Written G. Leroy in general," interpolated the gentleman"s son.
"And this is how you looked at twenty, dark and rosy-cheeked, with a handsome aquiline nose. You never were democratic, for all your grand pose at being; do you believe he was?" This to King. "Look at him here; if ever there was an inborn, inbred aristocratic son of a revolutionist--"
"He barricaded the streets of Paris with his fellow-students in his turn, don"t forget," said King.