CHAPTER EIGHT
The next evening at Nancy, an hour or two after supper, King William was tapping at Mrs. Garnier’s door, which was ajar.
“She is asleep,” warned Alexina from within.
“Then come on out,” he begged, “the moon’s up.”
“Go on,” Mrs. Leroy told her, “Willy wants you,” which to Charlotte was reason for all things.
“It’s windy,” he called softly, “bring a wrap.”
The girl came, bringing her reefer jacket and her Tam and put them on in the hall. The jacket was blue, the Tam was scarlet, and both were jaunty. He regarded her in them with satisfaction.
“Now, there,” said he, with King William approval, “I like that.”
They went down and out. She was tired, she said, so they sat on the bench under the wild orange. The moss, drooping from the branches, fluttered above them. The wind was fitful, lifting and dying. It was a grey night, with scattered mists lying low over the lake, while a shoal of little clouds were slipping across the face of the moon.
“It’s been too soft and warm,” said he; “it can’t last.”
But Alexina shivered a little, for there was a chill whenever the wind rose.
“Walk down to the pier,” he begged, “and back. Then you shall go in.”
The path led through the grove. Stopping to select an orange for her, he passed his hand almost caressingly up and down a limb of the tree.
“And you begin to pick the oranges Monday?” said Alexina.
“Monday.”
“And this is Thursday.”
They walked on. He was peeling away the yellow rind that she might have a white cup to drink from.
“I won’t be here to see the picking,” said Alexina. “I have to go to Kentucky for two weeks, something about business. Uncle Austen wrote me in the letter you brought out to-day, that it would simplify things if I could come. And Emily—Emily Carringford, you know—Uncle Austen’s wife, wrote too, asking me to stay with them.”
“So,” said he, “you go—”
“Monday. I’ve been talking to your mother, and she’s willing, if Captain Leroy and you are; I came out to ask you—I am always to be asking favors of your family, it seems—if you will let me leave Molly here instead of at the hotel. Celeste can attend to everything.”
“Why not?” asked Willy.
“It’s—it’s a business proposition,” said Alexina. But it took a bit of courage to bring it out.
“Is it?” said he.
“Or I can’t do it, you know.”
They had reached the lake and were sitting like children on the edge of the pier. The water was ruffled, the incoming waves white-crested, and the wind was soughing a little around the boat-house behind them. He was breaking bits off a twig and flinging them out to see them drift in.
“Great country this,” he said, “that can’t produce a pebble for a fellow to fling.”
He looked off toward the shining, shadowy distance, where the moon gleamed against the mists. “You are”—then he changed the form of his question—“are you very rich?”
“Leave the very out, and, yes, I suppose I am rich,” said Alexina.
“You are so—well—yourself,” he said, “sometimes I find myself forgetting it.”
The girl swallowed once, twice, as if from effort to speak. She was looking off, too, against the far shore. “Is it a thing to have to be remembered?” then she asked.
“Isn’t it?” said King William, turning on her suddenly. There was a sharp harshness in his tones. “I wish to God it wasn’t.”
She got up, and he sprang up, too, facing her. Suddenly she stamped her foot. The wind, rising to a gale now, was blowing her hair about her face and she was angry. It made her beautiful. She might have been a Valkyr, tall, wind-tossed.
But the sob in her voice was human. “I’ve had Uncle Austen say such things to me in his fear I might let other people forget it, and a girl I cared for at school let it come between us, but I thought you—I had a right to think you were bigger. Your mother is, oh, yes, she is, and your father is. Not that I despise the other, either.” She lifted her head defiantly. “It’s a grand and liberating thing, though it was shackles on me in Uncle Austen’s hands. I don’t despise it; I couldn’t; but that it should have to be remembered—”
“Just so,” said Willy Leroy, in his father’s phrase.
Her head went up again and she looked at him full, straight, then turned and fled towards the house.
He ran after her, came abreast, and after the fashion he had, stooped to see into her face. “Don’t go away, in from me—mad,” he begged. Was he laughing?
“But I am mad,” she returned promptly.
“But don’t go in either way,” he said; “stay, mad if you will, but stay. Oh, I’m not proud,” he was breathing hard again, “that is—only this proud; I shall build onto my little gold of Colchis until we stand at least nearer equal—and then—”
Each looked at the other, with defiance almost. She was as beautiful as Harriet Blair.
“Then,” said the girl, “then you’ll be that far less my equal. Let me go.” And she jerked her sleeve from his hand and ran into the house.