CHAPTER FOUR
Now William Leroy supposed Mrs. Garnier to be in his mother’s room. A moment later he followed Alexina up the stairs, meaning to get something out of his desk which he wished to show her. He was a most direct youth, considering that he was, by his mother’s confession, a timorous one. There was an odd little smile about his mouth, perhaps because all things looked pleasant right now.
His nature was practical rather than sanguine, and built in general only on things achieved, but to-day the fruit was hanging golden on the trees and the grove was one of the few new ones in bearing. He had anticipated the railroad by several years in planting, and now the grove and house were going to bring a figure larger than he ever had hoped for.
As the Israelites yearned for Canaan, he was looking towards the pastoral lands of Kentucky. To-day, for the once, he would let this new buoyancy, this unanalyzed optimism run warm in his blood; why not? He was young, he was strong, he was master of his circumstances for the first time.
He went up the steps lightly, springily, with a sort of exuberant joy in the mere action. His canvas shoes made no sound. The stairs landed him at his own door. He brought up short.
Alexina was standing midway of the threshold; he thought he heard a sob.
She turned hurriedly, her hands outspread across the doorway as by instinct.
“Don’t,” she begged; “please go away.” Then as he wheeled, “No, wait—” She swallowed before she could speak.
“It’s Molly,” she said; “can you send us back to town? she’s—she’s—”
“Not well,” the daughter was trying to say. The boy’s straightforward eyes were fixed on hers inquiringly.
“What’s the use; I can’t lie,” the girl broke down miserably. “I ought not to have come with her.” Her arms dropped from across the doorway. In all perplexity he was waiting. He had a glimpse of Molly within, drooping against the table, and her eyes regarding them with a kind of furtive fear.
His hunting flask from out the cellarette was there on the table.
The girl was speaking with effort. “I’m sorry; she must have felt bad and found it.”
She suddenly hid her face in her hands against the casement.
That roused him. He felt dazed. It needed a woman here to feel the way.
“I’ll get mother,” he said.
“Oh,” begged the girl, and quivered; “can’t we get back to town without—must she know?”
King was growing himself again. “Why,” he said, “of all people, yes, mother.”
He went down the steps two at a time. There was no sensitive apprehension in his manner when he brought her back, as there often was concerning his mother; he knew her strength as well as her incompetencies.
She came straight up and hardly noticed Alexina as she passed but went on to Molly, whose eyes, full of shame and fear, were dully watching the scene.
Charlotte put her arms about her, drew her to the sofa, and sat by her. “Poor dear,” she said; “poor dear.”
Molly drooped, trembled, then turned and clung to her, crying piteously. “You’re sorry for me? I did it because I’m afraid. He said they all come down here to die. Malise don’t know, she don’t understand, she’s hard.”
“You go down to your dinner, Alexina,” said Charlotte; “it’s waiting. Oh, yes, yes you will go.” There was finality in the tone, very different from Charlotte’s usually indefinite directions. “Leave your mother to me; oh, you needn’t tell me anything about it; I know. And take that hardness out of your face, Alexina, it’s your own fault if you let this embitter you, it’s ourselves that let things spoil our lives, not the things. I’ll tell you something, that you may believe I know, something that I told Willy at a time his arrogance seemed to need the knowledge. My father, my great, splendid, handsome father, all my life was this way. But he came straight home to my mother, and so she kept him from worse, and held him to his place in the world. Keep on loving them, it’s the only way. Many a time we’ve all cried together like babies, father and mother and I, by her sofa.”
“Willy,” called Charlotte. The boy ran up from below. “Take Alexina down to her dinner and afterwards take her out of doors. No, you’re not going back to the hotel, not to-night. Willy can send Peter in for your woman and your things, for you’re going to stay here till she’s better and you see this thing differently.”
That evening King and Alexina sat on the edge of the pier, the water lapping the posts beneath their swinging feet. He was peeling joints of sugar-cane and handing her sections on the blade of his knife, she trying to convince herself that they were as toothsome as he insisted they were. He could idle like a child.
But the girl’s mind was back there in the house. “According to your mother,” she was saying, “there’s got to be affection back of the doing of a duty.” Poor child, she was putting it so guardedly, so impersonally she thought.
“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 analyze. 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.”