CHAPTER ONE
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 radiance leaped 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 understood it, 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 on the 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, she would 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, she discovered 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 throat rose 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, he considered 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’s spiritual 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, for she 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’s the Major 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! Alexina grew 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 swinging sign 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.