“And if you don’t believe meAnd think I tell a lie—”
“And if you don’t believe meAnd think I tell a lie—”
But it only gave him an idea. He was not often a host. It was going to his head. “Wait!” he ordered, to whom it was not quite clear, and tore into the house, to be back almost at once, bearing a beribboned guitar.
“Now,” he said, depositing it upon his mother’s lap; “now, sing it for her; sing it right, mother. It’s ‘The Ram of Derby.’” This to Alexina, with a sudden shyness as he found himself addressing her.
But she, unconscious soul, did not recognize it, hers being an all-absorbed interest, and, reassured, young William went on:
“There was a William Ransome once,when he was little, sat on General Washington’s knee, and General Washington sang him ‘The Ram of Derby.’ Go on, mother, sing it.”
And Charlotte, with eyes laughing down on the two upturned faces, “went on,” her jewelled fingers bringing the touch of a practised hand upon the strings, her buoyant figure responsive to the rhythm, while into the Munchausen recital she threw a dash, a swing that rendered the interest breathless.
“There was a ram of DerbyI’ve often heard it said,He was the greatest sheep, sir,That ever wore a head.And if you don’t believe meAnd think I tell a lie,Just go down to DerbyAnd see as well as I.“The horns upon this ram, sir,They reached up to the sky,The eagles built their nest there,For I heard the young ones cry.And if you don’t believe me, etc., etc.“The wool upon this ram, sir,It grew down to the ground,The devil cut it off, sir,To make a morning gown.And if you don’t believe me, etc., etc.”
“There was a ram of DerbyI’ve often heard it said,He was the greatest sheep, sir,That ever wore a head.And if you don’t believe meAnd think I tell a lie,Just go down to DerbyAnd see as well as I.
“The horns upon this ram, sir,They reached up to the sky,The eagles built their nest there,For I heard the young ones cry.And if you don’t believe me, etc., etc.
“The wool upon this ram, sir,It grew down to the ground,The devil cut it off, sir,To make a morning gown.And if you don’t believe me, etc., etc.”
And so on through the tale. King William, at her knees, clapped his hands. Alexina, by him, clapped hers, too, for joy of companionship, while the third listener sat with unchanging countenance below. But he liked it, somehow one knew he liked it, knew that he was listening down there in the dusk.
Perhaps Charlotte knew it, too. The vibrant twang slowed to richer chords, broke into rippling chromatic, caught a new measure, a minor note, and her contralto began:
“I am going far away, far away to leave you now,To the Mississippi River I am going—”
“I am going far away, far away to leave you now,To the Mississippi River I am going—”
But this was only so much suggestion for her son’s active brain. “Tell her, mother,” he begged, pulling at Charlotte’s sleeve; “tell her about the ‘King William.’”
“And it has lain dormant, this egotism, unsuspected,” came up from out of the dusk.
Charlotte’s fingers swept the chords, her eyes fixed adoringly on her little son’s face, the while she sang on, absently, softly:
“Down in my ol’ cabin home,There lies my sister an’ my brother.There lies my wife, the joy of my life,An’ the child in the grave with its mother.”
“Down in my ol’ cabin home,There lies my sister an’ my brother.There lies my wife, the joy of my life,An’ the child in the grave with its mother.”
But King William, far from being harrowed by the woeful enumeration, laid an imperious hand on the strings. “Tell her, mother; I want you to tell her.”
“Come then, and kiss mother, and I will.”
He moved the intervening step andsubmitted a cheek reluctantly. “Just one and you said you’d tell.”
But Charlotte, imperious herself, waved him off; she’d none of him now. “It’s because he’s a vain boy, little Mary Alexina Blair, and filled with self-importance, that he wants you to know, and he only wants me to tell you because he has not quite the assurance to do it himself; that is why he wants me to tell about the great, white-prowed Argo—”
“We call them bows, not prows,” came up out of the dusk.
But she refused the correction. “—The white-prowed Argo that is building across the river, to go in search of a golden fleece for little Jason here, a boat large, oh larger even than those other boats of little Jason’s father, the Captain down there, which used to float up and down the Mississippi, andwhich vanished one day into the maw of the Confederacy—”
But Jason was lifting his voice. “Not that way; make her stop, father; that ain’t the way!”
But mother was not to be hurried out of her revenge. “And this big, white ark is one day going to float off on the flood of Hope, bearing Jason and his father and his mother, the last plank of fortune between them and—”
Jason was beating with his hands on the steps. “Make her stop, father; make her tell it right; she don’t understand what mother means. Do you?” with an appeal to the absorbed Alexina.
That small soul jumped and looked embarrassed to know what to say, for direct admissions are not always polite. “I had an ark once,” she stated, “but I sucked thered off Noah, and Marie, my bonne, took it away.”
Leaning down, Charlotte Leroy swept the baby-voiced creature up into her lap. There was a passion of maternity in the act. “You innocent,” she said, and held her fast.
It was nice to be there; the ribbons and the lacy ruffles were soft beneath her cheek, and the dark eyes of the lady were smiling down.
The child turned suddenly and clung to Charlotte with passionate responsiveness.
“It’s about the boat his father is building, Willy wants you to know, little Mab,” the lady was telling her, “and how, the other day, the Captain down there and our friends and Willy and I went aboard her, on the ways at the shipyard over the river, and how, at the ax-stroke, as she slid down and out across the water, Willy broke the bottle onthe bow and christened the boat ‘King William.’”
“Just so,” came up in the Captain’s voice.
The moon was rising slowly.
“There’s some one at the gate,” cried Willy.
“It’s for me,” said Alexina, starting up; “it’s Nelly and she’s hunting me.”
Later, Nelly, leading her across the street, was saying, “I don’t believe Miss Harriet is going to like it when she knows where you’ve been.”
“Why?”
But Nelly couldn’t say; “except that they’re the only ladies on the street not knowing each other,” she explained.
The two went in. Alexina dropped Nelly’s hand and walked into the parlour and across to Harriet’s knee. Austen sat reading on the other side of the table.
“I’ve been over to a boy’s house,” said Alexina; “his name is King William and their other name is Leroy.”
Harriet held the cambric strip of embroidery from her and viewed it. “Austen,” she asked, “is Alexina to play indiscriminately with the children on the square?”
Austen looked across at his sister. “It is within your authority to decide,” he returned, “but I know of no reason why she should not.”
Harriet made no response. Outwardly she was concerned with some directions to Nelly, waiting to take the child to bed, but inwardly she was wondering if Austen ever could have cared for this Charlotte Ransome.
He sat long after Harriet had gone. Then, rising abruptly, he went out the front door and walked to the corner of the house. Itwas dark in the coachman’s room above the stable, and the master could go to bed secure that his oil was not being wasted.
That was all, yet he did not go in. The night was perfect, full of moonlight and the scent of earth and growing things. It was so still the houses along the street seemed asleep.
Almost furtively, the gaze of Austen lifted to the cottage, dark and silent across the way. He had been the one who would not forgive; the other had been only an impetuous girl.
He stood there long. Perhaps his face was colder, his lips pressed to a thinner line; perhaps it was the moonlight. Then he turned and went into the house.
Alexina came to Harriet with information.
“Emily goes to school to her aunt, and King William goes there, too.”
“Do they?” returned Harriet. Her interest was good-humoured rather than ardent.
“I’d like to go, too,” said her niece.
“Oh,” from Harriet, understanding at last; “but isn’t school about over?”
“There’s two weeks more.”
“If it will make you happy, why not, if the teacher does not object?”
So Alexina went with Emily to school. King William was there, but he hardlynoticed her, seeming gloomy and given to taking his slate off into corners.
“He don’t want to come,” explained Emily; “he’s the only boy.”
“Then what does he come for?” queried the practical Alexina.
“His mother won’t let him go to a public school.”
There was more to be learned about William. He fought the boys who went to the public school, because they jeered him in his ignominy. Alexina saw it happening up the alley but, strangely enough, when William appeared at school, he seemed cheered up, though something of a wreck.
Out of school, Alexina often went over to Emily’s house to play. There were no servants there, but her mamma beat up things in crocks, and her great-aunty, a brisk little old woman with sharp eyes, made yeastcakes and dried them out under the arbour and milked the cow, too, and Emily’s little brother, Oliver, carried milk to the neighbours. Once in the spotless, shining kitchen, Alexina was allowed to wield a mop in a dish-pan and, still again, to stir at batter in a bowl.
In the room which would have been the parlour in another house, Emily’s grandfather Pryor sat at a table with books around him, and wrote on big sheets of paper in close writing. He was a stern old man and his hair stood out fine and white about his head. Once, as he passed across the front porch, he looked at Emily, then stopped, pointing to the chain about her neck. It was Alexina’s little gold necklace which Emily had begged to wear.
“Take it off,” he said.
Emily obeyed, but her checks were flaming,and when he had gone she threw her head back. “When I’m grown, I mean to have them of my own, and wear them, too,” she said.
She seemed happier away from home. “Let’s go over to your house,” she always said. She liked grown people, too, and Uncle Austen once patted her head, and after she had gone said to Aunt Harriet: “A handsome child, an unusually pleasing child.”
But while Alexina played thus with Emily, more often she trudged across to King William’s.
The nature of engrossment was different over there. Often as not it was theology, though this, to be sure, was the Captain’s word for it, not his son’s.
Willy’s mother, like Aunt Harriet, was a Presbyterian. “If I had been a better one,”she lamented to her husband one evening, “I would know how to meet his questions now. You don’t take one bit of the responsibility of his religious training, Captain Leroy.”
The creed of King William’s mamma, when she came to formulate it, seemed a stern one, and it lost nothing in its setting forth by reason of her determination to do her duty by her son.
“Thank Heaven I had to sit under these things when I was a child, however I hated it then, or I could not do my part by him now,” she told the Captain. “I want him,” fervently, “to be everything I am not.”
“Which might,” suggested the Captain, “be a prig, you know.”
But King William, listening, drank in these things. He had a garden patch in the back yard and knew the nature and habitsof every vegetable in it, and being strictly a utilitarian, he weeded out sickly plants and unknown cotyledons with a ruthless hand.
Alexina expostulated. “Maybe it hurts ’em,” she feared.
“Maybe it does,” said the inexorable William; “but they are like the souls born to be damned. Put ’em on the brush pile there, and after a while we’ll burn ’em.”
At other times the yard was a sea-girt coral reef and they the stranded mariners. Generally Alexina accepted everything. The stories were new to her. But when she did have knowledge of a thing she stood firm; for instance, about the ocean, that you could not land every few moments of your progress and throw out gang-planks.
“For I’ve been there,” she insisted, “and you couldn’t, you know.”
At times they adjourned to the commonsbehind the stable, which, in reality, were plains frequented by Indians, or, if the yard palled or rain drove them in, there was fat, black, plausible Aunt Rose in the basement kitchen to talk to, and if Aunt Rose proved fractious and drove them out, together with her own brood generally skulking around, before a threatening dish-rag or broom, there was Charlotte to be beguiled from more serious occupation into doing her son’s bidding.
Charlotte was always busy. The cottage and all in it had come to her from her father’s aunt. She had been accustomed to seeing the windows, the furniture, the mirrors, the silver door knobs shining; therefore, she knew such things ought to shine, and since there was no one in these days but herself to do it, she cleaned, polished, rubbed, and went to bed limp.
One afternoon in the late fall, when the children sought her, she was pasting papers over glasses of jelly. “We went over the river to see the boat yesterday,” King William was saying to Alexina as they came in. “Tell her about it, mother; about the gold star at the bow.”
The papers did not want to stick. “He’s a bad boy, little Mab,” Charlotte informed her. “He made me take him over before he’d promise to go to the party he’s asked to. He wants to be a little boor who won’t know how to act when he grows up.”
“I’m never goin’ to parties when I’m grown up, so what’s the use learning how to act at ’em now?” argued her son.
Charlotte dropped a mucilaged paper. “But you promised,” she reminded him anxiously; “you promised—”
“Oh, well—” admitted her son.
Charlotte kept a fire in her parlour. Coal was at a fabulous price in the South that winter, but she had never known a parlour without a fire, and here she and the children sat in the afternoons, the Captain often returning early and joining them.
“Georges,” said Charlotte upon one of these occasions, “we are poor.”
The Captain smoked in silence. Perhaps he had realized it before. His keen eyes, however, were regarding her.
“But,” said Charlotte, “we go on acting as though we were rich.”
“Just so,” said the Captain.
“When your trousers get shabby, you order more like them. Did you ever ask your tailor if he has anything cheaper?”
Now, trousers of that pearl tint peculiar to the finest fabrics were as characteristic a part of the Captain’s garb as were the blackcoat, the low-cut vest, the linen cambric handkerchiefs like small tablecloths for size, the tall silk hat, and the Henry Clay collar above the black silk stock.
“Did you ever ask him if he had anything cheaper, Georges?”
“I can’t say,” admitted Georges, “that I ever did.” For the Captain had never asked his tailor a price in his life. When the bill came he paid it. But it takes income to meet eccentricities of this sort, while now—
Did the Captain, glancing from his wife to the boy on the floor, seem to age, to shrink in his chair? For Charlotte was thirty-two and the boy was ten and the Captain was nearing sixty.
“And when your shirts and Willy’s things and mine give out, I’ve been going right on to the sisters ordering more. Convent prices are high, Georges.”
The Captain had nothing to say.
“Adele has been telling me that she cuts down her eldest boy’s things for the little one.” Adele was the widow of a Confederate general. “So I borrowed her patterns. Listening to Adele talk, I realized, Georges, that you and Willy and I have to learn how to be poor.”
It was at this point that Charlotte brought forth from the chair behind her a voluminous broadcloth cape, such as men then wore for outer wrap, and spread it on the mahogany centre-table.
“It’s perfectly good, if you did discard it, and I’m going to cut it into something for Willy; I didn’t tell Adele I never had tried, she is so capable, but I borrowed her patterns.” And Charlotte brought forth a paper roll.
The Captain, in the arm-chair, sat andwatched. Alexina, from his knee, where he had a way of lifting her, watched too. Willy, from a perch on the arm of the sofa, offered suggestions.
This was early in the afternoon. At six o’clock the Captain, lighting another of an uninterrupted series of cigars, was still watching silently. On the sofa sat Charlotte, in tears. On the table, tailor fashion, sat King William, sorting patterns, while Nelly, who had come for Alexina, stood by and directed.
“How does he know?” Mrs. Leroy, watching her son a little anxiously, asked the Captain. “I wouldn’t like him to develop such a bent. He doesn’t get it from you—or from me.”
“I look at my legs,” said William, “and then I build it that way.”
Another afternoon the Captain looked upfrom his smoking and spoke to Charlotte. The children were on the floor turning the pages of a picture paper.
“We have succeeded in securing the loan on a mortgage on the boat. Cowan arranged it through his bank. It was at a higher rate than we had agreed on, but we’d lost all the time we could spare. We’ll push ahead now and have things finished by spring.”
That night, over at the Blairs’, as Alexina climbed into her place at the table Austen was speaking to Harriet. “You remember I told you I was looking for an investment of the proceeds of those bonds of Alexina’s which matured the other day? This morning I took a mortgage on a boat Cowan is building at his yard.”
Alexina heard her name, but did not understand.
There came a day the following spring when Alexina, seeking her aunt, wept.
Harriet gazed at her dismayed, at a loss. Heretofore Alexina had taken her tears to Nelly or had kept them to herself.
“They are going away,” she said, “King William and them; going in the boat.”
This, as a matter to cry about, was a mystery to Harriet. “Going where?” she asked.
“To get the golden fleece,” her weeping niece assured her.
“Well,” said Harriet amused, “let us hope they may find it, but why the tears?”
Alexina got up and carried her tears to her own room. It spoke her infantile capacity to discriminate that she bore away no resentment; there are things that the Aunt Harriets with the best wills in the world need not be expected to understand.
King William’s mother, telling her, had held her tight and rocked her; King William’s father, when he saw her lip trembling afterward, had lifted her on his knee.
Going into the big, high room which was her own, Alexina shut the door. Then she cast herself on the floor. A little hand, beating about wildly, came upon Sally Ann, lying unregarded there. Gathering her in fiercely, presently the sobs grew quieter. Later she wiped her eyes upon her child and, kissing her tenderly, put her down and went over to King William’s; the time was short and she could have Sally Ann afterward.
The next day the cottage was closed and the shutters made fast. Alexina felt lonesome even to look over there, and Sally Anns are but silent comforters.
But in a year the Leroys came back from St. Louis, between which city and New Orleans the splendid new “King William” had been plying. The judgment of Captain Leroy had been at fault, which is a sad thing when a man is sixty. The day of the steamboat had passed, because that of the railroad had come. The “King William” as a venture was a failure.
So, one morning, the cottage windows were open to the Virginia creeper outside them. Nelly whispered the news to Alexina at breakfast, and the child could not eat for hurry to be through and go over.
It was as if King William had been watching for her, for he came running to the gateand took her hand to conduct her in. He was taller and thinner, and looked different, and neither could find anything to say on the way.
Charlotte was sitting in the parlour, her wraps half-removed. They had only just arrived, and the stillness and closeness of a newly opened house was about. “How does one pack furniture for moving, Willy?” Charlotte began as he appeared.
But he was bringing Alexina. “Tell her about it, mother,” he said, “so she’ll know.”
Charlotte, brightening, held out her arms. Then, having lifted the child to her lap and kissed her, her face grew wan again. “There was no fleece for Jason, little Mab; there is no Land of Colchis, never believe it. And those seeking, like Willy and me, are like to wander until youth and hope and opportunity are gone.”
She was crying against a little cropped head. King William stood irresolute, then put an arm around her. “Not that way, mummy; don’t tell it that way.”
But control had given way. “And there is nothing for little Jason. He must go and fight with his bare hands like any poor churl’s child—oh, Willy, Willy, my little son—”
Alexina, in her lap, sat very still; King William was staring hard into space.
Charlotte went on. “We are going away, little Mab, Willy and his father and I; going away for good. Everything that ever was ours, this cottage and all, is gone. We are going to a place in the South called Aden, where there are a few acres that still are ours only because they would not sell.”
A moment they all were still. Then the little breast of Alexina began to heave. TheLeroys had never seen her this way. Sally Ann had, many times, and Nelly once or twice. She threw herself upon Charlotte. “I want to go, too; I want to go; I hate it—there,” with a motion of self toward the big, white house visible through the window. “I hate it, and I want to go too.”
They were all crying now. Suddenly King William stood forth in front of the child. “When we get rich, I’ll come for you,” he said.
The practical Alexina looked through the arrested tears as she sat up. “But if you don’t get rich?” she questioned.
Charlotte laughed. She was half child herself. The laugh died. The other half was woman. “Then he won’t come; if he is the son of his father, he won’t come.”
“Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbour’s creed has lent.All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone.”EMERSON.
“Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbour’s creed has lent.All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone.”EMERSON.
Alexina Blair, at twenty, returned from school to her uncle’s home with but small emotion, as, at fourteen, she had left with little regret, yet the shady streets, the open front doors, the welcomes called from up-stairs windows as she passed—evidences that she was back among her own people in the South—all at once made her glad to be here.
How could she have felt emotion over a mere return to Uncle Austen’s house? She might have felt enthusiasm over Nelly, but Nelly was married to the gardener at her old asylum and a Katy had taken her place.The house was the same. If only its stone façade might be allowed to mellow, to grey a little! But, newly cleaned, it stood coldly immaculate in its yard of shaven lawn set about with clipped shrubberies. As for her uncle, Alexina found herself applying the same adjectives to him, shaven, immaculate, cold.
She wondered what he thought of her, but Uncle Austen never made personal remarks.
Aunt Harriet, on joining her niece in the East early in the summer, had looked at her consideringly. She seemed pleased.
“Why,” she said, “Alexina, you are a Tennyson young person, tall and most divinely—you are a little more intense in your colouring than is usual with a Blair. I’m glad.”
The somewhat doubtful smile on the girl’s face deepened as if a sudden radianceleaped into it. She seized her aunt’s hand. “Oh,” she said, “you’re very nice, Aunt Harriet.”
Harriet laughed, rather pleased than not, but she still was studying the girl. “She is impulsive and she doesn’t look set,” the aunt was telling herself—was it gratefully? “perhaps she is less Blair than I thought.”
Austen Blair too, in fact, now viewed his niece with complacency—she fulfilled the Blair requirements—but he talked of other things.
“It is the intention of your aunt and myself,” he told her promptly, “to introduce you at once to what will be your social world, for it is well for everyone to have local attachment.”
As the matter progressed it appeared that social introduction, as Uncle Austen understoodit, was largely a matter of expenditure. In all investment it is the expected thing to place where there is likeliest return. Therefore he scanned the invitation list earnestly.
“She can afford to do the thing as it should be done,” he remarked to Harriet.
“She? But Austen—” Harriet hesitated. “I supposed it was ours, this affair; it seems the least—”
Austen looked at her. At first he did not comprehend, then he replied with some asperity. “I have so far kept sentiment and business apart in managing Alexina’s affairs.”
Harriet was silenced. It was becoming less and less wise to oppose Austen. He had his own ideas about the matter. “The thing is to be done handsomely,” he set forth, “but,” as qualification, “judiciously.”
Therefore he stopped an acquaintance onthe street a day or two before the affair. “Are we to have the pleasure of seeing you on Tuesday?” he asked, even a little ostentatiously, for the young man had neglected to accept or decline.
Austen reported the result to Harriet. “For there is no use ordering a supper for five hundred if but four hundred and ninety-nine are coming,” he told her.
“No?” said Harriet.
“Exactly,” said her brother.
Alexina, present at the conversation, looked from the one to the other. Uncle Austen was Uncle Austen; there was a slight lift of the girlish shoulders as she admitted this. But Aunt Harriet—
For Harriet had changed. She had been changing these past two summers. She was absent, forgetful, absorbed, even irritable. Aunt Harriet! And recalled, shewould colour and look about in startled fashion.
Alexina and Harriet had been always on terms friendly and pleasant, but scarcely to be called intimate; terms that, after a cordial good-night, closed the door between their rooms, and while the girl had been conscious of a fondness for her serene and capable aunt, there were times too, when, met by that same serenity, she had felt she must rebel, and in secret had thrown her young arms out in impotent, passionate protest.
But now Aunt Harriet forgot and neglected and grew cross like any one, and the sententious utterances of Uncle Austen irritated her. Alexina, going into her room one day, found her with her head bowed on the desk. Was she crying? The girl slipped out.
Was Aunt Harriet unhappy? The heart of Alexina warmed to her.
The evening of Alexina’s return home Harriet had come to her door. To twenty years thirty-eight seems pitiably far along in life, yet Harriet called up no such feeling in Alexina. No passion of living writ itself on Galatea’s check while she was in marble, and Alexina, opening the door to the tap, thought her aunt beautiful.
“If there are callers to-night,” Harriet said, “I want you to come down. My friends are not too elderly,” she smiled in the old, good-humoured way, “to be nice to you this winter.”
So later Alexina went down to the library, a room long unfurnished, now the only really cheerful room in the house. Was it because Harriet had furnished it?
The girl always had realized in an indefinite way that Harriet was a personage; later, in their summers away together, shediscovered that men liked her handsome aunt.
In the library she found a group who, from the conversation, seemed to be accustomed to dropping in thus in casual fashion. They were men of capacity and presence, one felt that, even in the case of that long avowed person of fashion, Mr. Marriot Bland, who was getting dangerously near to that time of life when he would be designated an old beau. He was a personage, too, of his type. Alexina shook hands with him gaily; she had been used to his coming since she first came to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle Austen. Harriet introduced the others. The girl’s spirits rose; she felt it was nice that she should be knowing them.
And they? What does middle-age feel, looking upon youth, eager-eyed, buoyant,flushed with the first glow from that unknown about to dawn?
Oh, it was a charming evening. The girl showed she thought it so and smiled, and the men smiled too, as they joined Harriet in making her the young centre. Perhaps there was a tender something in the smiles. Was it for their own gone youth?
One, a Major Rathbone, stayed after the others left. He sat building little breastworks on the centre-table out of matches taken from the bronze stand by the lamp, and as he talked he looked over every now and then at Harriet on the other side.
In the soberer reaction following the breaking up of the group, Alexina, too, found time to look at Harriet. It was an Aunt Harriet that she had never seen before. The colour was richly dyeing this Harriet’s cheeks, and the jewel pendant at her throatrose and trembled and fell, and her white lids fell, too, though she had laughed when her eyes met laughter and something else in the brown eyes of the Major fixed on her.
It was of Mr. Marriot Bland the Major was speaking, his smooth, brown hand caressing his clean-shaven chin.
“So cruelly confident are you cold Dianas,” he was saying. “Now, even a Penelope must hold out the lure of her web to an old suitor, but you Dianas—”
Alexina laughed. She had jumped promptly into a liking for this lean, brown man with the keen, humorous eyes and the deliberate yet quick movements, and now absorbed in her thoughts, was unconscious of her steadfast gaze fixed on him, until he suddenly brought his eyes to bear on hers with humorous inquiry.
“Well?” he inquired.
Now Alexina, being fair, showed blushes most embarrassingly, but she could laugh too.
“What’s the conclusion?” he demanded; “or would it be wiser not to press inquiry?”
Alexina laughed again. She knew she liked this Major.
“I was wondering,” she confessed. “You are so different from what I expected. I heard Aunt Harriet and Uncle Austen discussing one of your editorials, so I read it. I thought you would be different—fiercer maybe, and—er—more aggressive.”
Alexina began to blush again, for the Major was so edified at something that his enjoyment was suspicious.
“But no man is expected to live down to his editorials, Miss Alexina; I write ’em for a living.”
He stroked his chin as he regarded her,but there was laughter too out of the tail of his eye across at Aunt Harriet, who was laughing also, though she looked teased.
Later Alexina learned more about this Major Rathbone. It was Emily Carringford who told her. Emily came over promptly the day after Alexina’s return and, admitted by Katy, ran up as of old.
Alexina, hearing her name called, turned from a melée of unpacking as the other reached the open doorway.
“Oh, Emily,” she said, and stood and gazed.
Emily stood, too, archly, and, meeting Alexina’s look, laughed. Her blush was an acknowledgment; she did not even pretend to misunderstand Alexina’s meaning.
“Aunt Harriet told me how—how lovely you were, and Uncle Austen told me last night that my friend, Miss Emily, heconsidered an ‘unusually good-looking woman—a handsome woman, in fact.’” The niece had her uncle’s every conciseness of tone as she quoted. “But somehow with it all, I wasn’t prepared—”
She came forward with hands out.
Emily forgot to take the hands. “Did he say that, really, Alexina?”
“Yes; why shouldn’t he? Oh, Emily, it must be joy, or does it frighten you to know you’re so beautiful?”
She was letting her fingers touch, almost with awe, the curve of the other’s check.
Emily laughed, but the crimson on the cheek deepened.
“And your voice?” demanded Alexina. “I want to hear you sing. Did you get the place in the choir you wrote me about?”
“Miss Harriet got it for me; it was she who suggested it—that is, she got Mr.Blair to get it for me. It’s at your church, you know.”
“Uncle Austen? No. Did he, really?”
But the surprise in Alexina’s voice was unfair to her uncle. To help people to the helping of themselves was part of his creed. He looked upon it as a furthering of the general social economy, as indeed he had pointed out more than once to those he was thus assisting.
But Alexina had many things to ask. She pushed Emily into a chair.
“Is it pleasant—the choir?” she began.
“Pleasant? Well,” Emily looked away and coloured, “I like the money; I’ve never been able to have any clothes before. There was a scene at home about it—my singing, I mean, in any but my own church, and for money. It was grandfather, of course; it’s always been grandfather. He says it’sspiritual prostitution, whatever he means by that, taking money for praising the Lord in an alien faith.” She laughed in an off-hand way. “No, I’ll be honest, I’d have to be sooner or later with you, anyhow, I hate it—not the work and rehearsals so much, but the being patronized. When some of those women stop me, with the air of doing the gracious thing, to tell me they have enjoyed my singing, oh, I could—” Again she laughed, but her cheeks were blazing. Then she leaned over and fingered some of the girlish fineries strewing the bed. “I hate it at home, too, when it comes to being honest about things—six of us, with grandfather and Aunt Carrie making eight, in that little house!”
Later, Alexina chanced to refer to Major Rathbone. She spoke enthusiastically, forshe either liked people or she did not like them. “Hadn’t you heard about him?” asked Emily in surprise. “He met Miss Harriet two years ago, and he’s been coming ever since. It’s funny, too, that he should. He’stheMajor Rathbone, you know—”
But Alexina looked unenlightened.
“Why,” said Emily, “the Major Rathbone who was the Confederate guerrilla—the one who captured and burned a train-load of stuff your grandfather and Mr. Austen had contracted to deliver for the government. I’ve heard people tell about it a dozen different ways since he’s been coming to see Miss Harriet. Anyway, however it was, the government at the time put a price on his head and your grandfather and Mr. Austen doubled it. And now they say he’s in love with Miss Harriet!”
In love! With Aunt Harriet! Alexinagrew hot. Aunt Harriet! She felt strange and queer. But Emily was saying more. “Mr. Blair and Major Rathbone aren’t friends even yet; I was here to supper with Miss Harriet one evening last winter, and Mr. Blair was furious over an editorial by Major Rathbone in the paper that day about some political appointments from Washington. Mr. Blair had had something to do with them, had been consulted about them from Washington, it seems. Major Rathbone’s a Catholic, too.”
It rushed upon Alexina that she had spoken to the Major of a family discussion over his editorials.
Emily stayed until dusk. As Alexina went down to the door with her, they met Uncle Austen just coming in. He stopped, shook hands, and asked how matters were in the choir.
As Emily ran down the steps he addressed himself to his niece. “A praiseworthy young girl to have gone so practically to work.” Then as Emily at the gate looked back, nodding archly, he repeated it. “A praiseworthy young girl, praiseworthy and sensible,” his gaze following her, “as well as handsome.”
He went in, but Alexina lingered on the broad stone steps. It was October and the twilight was purple and hazy. Chrysanthemums bloomed against the background of the shrubbery; the maples along the street were drifting leaves upon the sidewalk; the sycamores stood with their shed foliage like a cast garment about their feet, raising giant white limbs naked to heaven.
There were lights in the wide brick cottage. Strangers lived there now. A swingingsign above the gate set forth that a Doctor Ransome dwelt therein.
The eddying fall of leaves is depressing. Autumn anyhow is a melancholy time. Alexina, going in, closed the door.
The Blair reception to introduce their niece may have been to others the usual matter of lights and flowers and music, but to the niece it was different, for it was her affair.
She and her aunt went down together. The stairway was broad, and to-night its banister trailed roses.
Alexina was radiant. She even marched up and kissed her uncle. Things felt actually festive.
All the little social world was there that evening. Alexina recalled many of the girls and the older women; of the older men sheknew a few, but of the younger only one could she remember as knowing.
He was a rosy-cheeked youth with vigorous, curling yellow hair, and he came up to her with a hearty swinging of the body, smiling in a friendly and expectant way, showing nice, square teeth, boyishly far apart. She knew him at once; he had gone to dancing school when she did, and she was glad to see him.
“Why, Georgy,” she said, and held out a hand, just as it was borne in upon her that Georgy wore a young down on his lip and was a man.
“Oh,” she said, blushing, “I hope you don’t mind?”
He was blushing, too, but the smile that showed his nice spaced teeth was honest.
“No,” he said; “I don’t mind.”
Which Alexina felt was good of him andso she smiled back and chatted and tried to make it up. And Georgy lingered and continued to linger and to blush beneath his already ruddy skin until Harriet, turning, sent him away, for Harriet was a woman of the world and Georgy was the rich and only child of the richest mamma present, and the other mammas were watching.
Alexina’s eyes followed him as he went, then wandered across the long room to Emily. She had expected to feel a sense of responsibility about Emily, but Uncle Austen, after a long and precise survey of her from across the room, put his eye-glasses into their case and went to her. His prim air of unbending for the festive occasion was almost comical as he brought up youths to make them known. This done he fell back to his general duties as host.
But Alexina, watching Emily, feltdissatisfaction with her, her archness was overdone, her laughter was anxious.
Why should Emily stoop to strive so? With her milk-white skin and chestnut hair, with her red lips and starry eyes there should have belonged to her a pride and a young dignity. Alexina, youthfully stern, turned away.
It brought her back to the amusing things of earth, however, that Uncle Austen should take Emily home when it was over. Would Emily be arch with Uncle Austen? Picture it!
Several of the older men lingered after the other guests were gone, and they, with Harriet and Alexina, had coffee in the library. The orderliness of the room, compared with the dishevelled appearance elsewhere now the occasion was over, seemed cheerful, and these men friends of Aunt Harriet wereinteresting. The talk was personal, as among intimates. The local morning paper, opposed to Major Rathbone’s own, it seemed, had taxed the Major with aspiring to be the next nominee of his party for Congress. And this was proving occasion for much banter at his expense by the other men, for the truth was the Majorwasbeing considered as a possibility, but a possibility tempered, for one thing, by the fact that his guerrilla past shed a somewhat lurid light upon his exemplary present.
“But why want to keep it secret as if it were something dark and plotting?” insisted Harriet Blair. “Why not come right out and admit your willingness if your party wants you?”
The men laughed in varying degrees of delight at this feminine perspicacity. The Major regarded her with somewhat comicalhumour, looking a little shamefaced, though he was laughing too. “For the fear my party can’t afford to have me,” he answered. “It takes money. They are casting about for a richer available man first, and, that failing, why—”
Here Austen Blair came in, bringing a breath of the November chill. Or was it his own personality that brought the chill, Alexina wondered. For, to do him justice, there was a distinction, a fine coldness, a bearing about him which distinguished him in any company.
Promptly on his coming the group broke up. The others passed into the hall to hunt overcoats, but the Major paused to address Harriet, who had risen and was looking at him as he spoke. There was colour in her face, and light.
“Friday evening, then,” he was saying,“you will go with me to hear Benton lecture?”
Austen, who had taken a cup of coffee from Alexina, looked up sharply. He put the cup down.
Harriet smiled acquiescence. “Friday evening,” she agreed.
Later, in the hall, as the outer door shut behind the group of departing men, Austen turned on his sister, his nostrils tense with dilation.
“Do you realize what you are doing?” he asked. “Have you utterly lost sight of how this man was regarded by your father, if you prefer to put consideration for me out of the matter?”
Harriet continued to unfasten her long glove. The colour was gone from her face, and the light, but otherwise she stood outwardly serene.
“The fight was fair,” she said calmly, “and also mutual.”
Her brother regarded her fixedly, then he spoke. “Though what there is to be gained in thus setting yourself in opposition to my repeatedly expressed wishes I do not”—all at once two steely points seemed to leap into the blue intensity of his gaze—“unless—in Heaven’s name, Harriet, is it possible that you mean to—”
“Mean to what?” she repeated. Harriet was meeting his eyes with a look as unflinching as his. She seemed unconsciously to have drawn herself to her full, superb height, but she had grown white as her gown.
He suddenly resumed his usual manner. “Take the child on to bed,” he said, glancing at Alexina standing startled, looking from one to the other. “This is no time to have the matter out.”
“I agree with you quite,” said his sister, and held out a hand to the girl. Alexina took it quickly, impulsively, and held to it as they went up the garlanded stairway, which suddenly looked tawdry and garish. In the hall above the girl lifted Harriet’s hand and put her cheek against it, then almost ran in at her own door.
The Blairs met about the breakfast table next morning at the usual time; a matter of four hours for sleep instead of eight would have been insufficient excuse to Austen for further upsetting of routine; and there was none of the chit-chat that would seem natural on a morning following the giving of a large social affair.
Aunt Harriet was dumb and Uncle Austen tense, or so it seemed to the third and youngest Blair about the board. She had been conscious of sharp interchange checked as she entered. Uncle Austen even forgot to look up at her interrogatively as she came in, though she was a moment late.
Was the trouble still about the Major? Was Aunt Harriet determined to go with him Friday evening?
Whatever the cause, Friday came, with the strained relations between sister and brother unrelieved.
The town was in the midst of its social season, the Blair reception being one of several crowding each other. On this Friday Harriet and Alexina were to attend an afternoon affair, and later Alexina was to go to an evening occasion with her uncle, who had consented icily, as though to emphasize the fact that it was Harriet’s engagement which made it necessary for him to take the girl.
Alexina, coming down a little before five, found Harriet standing in the parlour, ready, gloves on and wrap on a chair. To be young is to be ardent. Not all youthful things are young. Alexina was young.
“You are beautiful, Aunt Harriet,” she declared.
But it was as if Harriet did not hear. Was it premonition, that strained absorption?
“A moment, Alexina,” she was saying. “Listen, was that the bell?”
“John, probably,” said Alexina, “to let us know the carriage is waiting.”
But it was Major Rathbone who came in upon them in his quick fashion a moment later. His overcoat was a cape affair which somehow seemed to suit his personality, and ever after Alexina could see him throwing the cavalier-like drapery back with impatient gesture.
“You are not gone then, Harriet,” he said; “I am glad for that.”
Quickly as the words were spoken, the Harriet on his lips was not lost upon Alexina. She turned to go, quite hot and withimpulsive haste, but the Major, putting out a hand, detained her.
“No, Miss Alexina; I’d really rather you would stay if you will be so kind,” he said, then turned to the older woman. “I have just had some words with your brother on the club-house steps and I knocked him down. I came on straight here, preferring you should hear my regret from myself. I lost my temper.”
He was facing Harriet, who had taken a step towards him at his entrance, then had stopped. Looking at her he went on rapidly:
“There is this I want to say. Yesterday I thought never to have the right to say it since I was too poor to ask you to listen. To-night I came here to say that I love you from my soul, and near you or away from you, alive or dead, will go on loving you andwanting you. Had you been poor I would have fought like any man to make you care; as it is I knocked your brother down for saying I was trying to do it because you are rich, to further my political ambition. I knocked him down for that, and for some other, older reasons. There is nothing more to say; no, in the divine bigness of your nature don’t think you have to speak. I cannot come here any more, even if you would permit me, after what has happened, and I can’t expect you to go to-night of course. But if ever I can serve you I am yours, soul and body, and will be while there is life in me. That’s all at last. What,” as he turned, “crying, Miss Alexina? For me? Or for him? I assure you there was little hurt but his arrogance. Dare I ask you to shake hands?”
And he was gone in his abruptly quickfashion and the latch of the outer door was heard clicking behind him.
It aroused Harriet and she came to herself. She was trembling, but on her face was a look of one who has entered Heaven. Then it seemed to come to her that he was gone.
“I must—oh, stop him, Alexina. He must know—”
The girl ran into the hall, but the outer door was heavy, and in her haste she was awkward getting it open. As it gave finally the rush of wind drove her inward. The steady rainfall of the day, freezing as it touched the ground, had changed to finely driven sleet. The steps glared with ice. But already the Major was at the gate, and through the dusk she could see his umbrella lowered against the wind as he turned and started up the street. She called after himimpulsively, beseechingly, but realized the futility of it through the fierce rush of wind and sleet. John was just driving out the carriage-way from the stable. Indeterminate, she closed the door and turned back to the parlour.
Harriet had sunk upon a chair, and in her eyes, looking far off, was a light, a smile, or was it tears?
She sprang up and turned, her face one heavenly blush, as Alexina entered. Had she thought it would be he?
“Gone? Oh, Alexina, I must—I have to tell him. Ring the bell. John must go for him. After what has happened I cannot stand it that the knowledge should all be mine.”
But she was already pulling the bell-cord herself, then turned to Alexina blushing and radiant.
“I am thirty-eight years old, Alexina; I am not even young, and yet he cares for me.”
The bell had rung; both had heard the far-off sound of it, but no one answered, maid or man-servant.
She rang again. “I had no time, the words would not come, I tried to tell him,” she said pleadingly to Alexina, as if the girl were arraigning her, then suddenly dropped into the chair by the bell-cord, and with her face in her hands against its back went into violent weeping.
Alexina stood hesitant. There are times for silence. She would go and find Katy.
But she met her hurrying from the kitchen towards the parlour, the shawl over her head full of sleet and wet. She was panting and her eyes were large. Alexina was vaguely conscious of the cook, breathing excitement, somewhere back in the lengthof the hall, and behind her some trades-boy, his basket on his arm, his mouth gaping.
“It’s Major Rathbone,” said Katy, panting; “John ran into him coming out the carriage gate. The horses slipped and he had his umbrella down and didn’t see. I was coming from the grocery.”
“Oh,” said Alexina; “Katy, oh—”
Harriet had heard and was already in the hall and struggling with the outer door. “I can’t—it won’t—oh, Alexina, help me!”
Katy had reached the door too, and put her hand on the knob. “They’ve already started to the infirmary with him, Miss Harriet, John and that young doctor across the street, before I came in. He told them to take him there himself. He was half up, holding to the fence, before John was off thebox. ‘Stop the doctor there getting in his buggy,’ he said to John, ‘and get me around to the infirmary.’”
“And the doctor—what did he say?” demanded Alexina.
“He said ‘Good Lord, man!’ and he swore just awful at John being so slow helping get him in the carriage.”
Harriet all at once was herself, perfectly controlled.
“Go get me my long cloak, please, Katy,” she said.
“Oh, Miss Harriet,” from Katy; “you ain’t thinking of goin’ out—it’s sleetin’ awful—without the carriage!”
But Harriet already had reached the stairs going for the wrap herself.
Alexina followed her. “What is it, Aunt Harriet?” she begged. “Where are you going?”
Harriet answered back from her own doorway. “To the infirmary.”
Action is the one thing always understood by youth. Alexina entirely approved. “I’ll go, too,” she said, and ran into her room to change her wrap for a darker one.
There was but one infirmary at the time in the city, and that a Catholic institution. They could walk a square and take a car to the door. Alexina, in her haste, never thought of money, but Harriet, as she came down, had her purse.
Neither spoke on the way; it was all they could do to keep umbrellas open in the fierce drive of wind and sleet. Alexina bent her head to catch breath; the sleet whipped and stung her face, the wind seized her loose cape, her light skirts, bellying them out behind her. But Harriet, ahead, tall, poised, went swiftly on, and, in the light from thestreet gas-post as they waited for a car, her face showed no consciousness of storm or of aught about her. Yet it was Harriet who stopped the car, who made the change, and paid the fares. The ride into town was in silence. It was Harriet who rang the bell before the infirmary building, who led the way over the icy pavement, up the wide brick walk through the grounds; it was Harriet who rang the bell at the big central door, and it was she who entered first past the little Sister who opened that door.
Not that the little Sister meant to permit it—it was against rules, she assured them, visiting hours were over. She could tell them nothing. The doctors were with the gentleman now.
But she let them in. Prison doors must have opened to Harriet that night, she would have put the little Sister aside if needbe and walked in, Alexina felt that. Perhaps the little Sister felt it too. She glanced at Harriet furtively, timidly, and, murmuring something about going to see, glided away.
The two stood in the hall, Alexina gazing at the patron Saint of the place, in marble on his pedestal. After a time the little Sister returned and told them the doctor would see them presently and said something about the parlour, but Harriet shook her head.
Again they waited, the woman and the girl sitting in chairs against the painted wall, facing the Saint in his niche. The instincts of long ago arose within Alexina, and unconsciously her lips moved for comfort to herself in a prayer to the benign old Saint before her, there being nothing incongruous to her that she was using a little form of child’s prayer taught her by her Presbyterian aunt.
And still they waited, so long that Alexina felt she could not stand the silence longer, or the waiting. She looked at Harriet, who was gazing before her, her face colourless, her eyes unseeing. Alexina began to wonder if the Sister had forgotten they were there.
But at last she came stealing noiselessly back, and, following her, a young man.
Alexina recognized him at once as the young doctor she had seen going in and out the cottage, and whose name she remembered was Ransome.
Harriet arose to meet him. He was young and boyish and looked unnerved. “The others will be down in a moment—the other doctors”—he told her; “when I saw it was bad—you know I’m just beginning—I turned it over.”
His nice blue eyes looked quite distressed.
“How bad?” asked Harriet steadily.
He looked at her quite miserably, the boy, then gathered himself together.
“May I ask—I beg pardon—may I know who I am talking to?” though true to tell he knew who she was, living as he did across from her, but in his young embarrassment did not know how to say so.
The tall, beautiful woman stood a moment before him, then a slow colour came up over her throat and face. “I am Miss Blair—Major Rathbone is—”
Alexina had come close to her side and her young eyes were on the doctor’s appealingly.
He understood; doubtless he had heard the two names connected before; the affairs of the wealthy Miss Blair and the somewhat famous editor were likely to be talked over in a city the size of Louisville, or, perhaps, being young, he merely divined. Hisdistress increased; he looked quite wretched. “It’s bad—I’m mighty sorry to be the one to tell you.”
Did she grow taller, whiter? “Are you—are the doctors still—”
“They are through for the present and coming down now.”
“Then I will go to him. Oh, but I must”—this to the horrified little Sister’s upraised hands of protest and headshake of negation.
“It’s against all rules,” ejaculated the little Sister.
Miss Blair addressed herself to the young doctor.
“Kindly take me to the room,” she said.
The abashed young fellow looked from one to the other. But he started. The little Sister, however, hastily interposing herself between Miss Blair and progress, washeard to murmur that name of authority—the Mother.
“Go and bring her,” said Harriet.
The Sister departed in haste, to return speedily with the Mother, her calm face beneath its bands mild, benignant, but inexorable.
“But I am,” returned Harriet to anything she could say. “I am going to him.”
The dominant calmness of the Mother had met its equal. Finally, in her turn, she retreated behind authority and mentioned Father Ryan.
“Oh,” said Harriet, “go and bring him.”
He came, heavy of jowl, keen and humorous of eye, but his manner disturbed, distraught, as with one whose absorption is elsewhere. Suddenly Harriet remembered that he was the intimate, the friend of Major Rathbone.
“I am going to him,” said Harriet; “nothing that you can say makes any difference.”