CHAPTER SEVEN
Summer in a half-grown Southern city is full of charm; pretty girls in muslin dresses stroll the shopping streets and stop on the sidewalks to chat with each other and with callow youths; picnic parties board the street cars, and in the evenings sounds of music and dancing float out from open doors and windows along the residence streets.
Alexina, chaperoned by Harriet Blair, would have found herself in these things, yet never quite of them.
“Malise,” Molly said quite earnestly, a day or so after her coming, “don’t you think it’s stuffy here?”
It was stuffy; hotel rooms in summer are apt to be; Alexina felt as apologetic as if Molly were the one who had given up a spacious, comfortable home to come and live in rooms for her. “I’m sorry,” she said. She had explained the necessity for it before.
“I thought you’d gotten the bank to take charge of your affairs,” Molly reminded her; “so why do we have to stay?”
“I have, but it’s a different thing, very, from having Uncle Austen, personally—”
She stopped; it might seem to be reminding Molly that she had caused the break with Austen Blair.
But Molly never took disagreeable things personally. She threw her arms back of her head. “Can’t you propose something to do?” she entreated.
“We might go round to the stores,” suggested Alexina doubtfully. She hated stores herself.
Molly brightened. “I need some summer things.”
Alexina agreed, yet she wondered. Seven trunks can disgorge a good many clothes; “mere debris from the wreckage of things,” Molly explained, though they didn’t look it. Yet in a way Alexina understood. It wasn’t the actual things Molly wanted; it was the diversion, and so at the suggestion Molly cheered up. “You look pretty in summer clothes, Malise,” she stated with graciousness, as they started. On the way she went in and bought chocolates; not that she wanted them either—it was too hot for candy, she said—but one must be doing something.
Coming out the door they met Georgy, who promptly stopped. He was a beautiful youngster, with a buoyant and splendid heartiness, and now he was flushing ruddily with pleasure up to his yellow hair.
Alexina blushed, too; she hardly knew why, except that he did, and told his name to Molly, who regarded him with smiling eyes and gave him her hand, whereupon he blushed still more and then suggested that he go along with them.
A group of young matrons and their daughters stood at the door of the shop to which they were bound, chatting in easy, warm weather fashion. Alexina knew them slightly but Georgy knew them well, and they were greeted with salutations and laughter.
Molly smiled, too, an interested smile that brightened as she was introduced, and she remembered having known the mother of this one when she, Molly, had lived in Louisville before, and the husband of another one, and all the while she was letting her eyes smile from one to the other of the group, who meanwhile were telling Georgy that they were planning a dance.
Dance? Molly’s eyes grew inquiringly eager. Favors were they speaking of? She had a trunk full of Parisian knick-knacks, she told them. “Come around to the hotel,” she suggested, “all of you: why not now?”
And so it was that the stream of things gayest caught Molly and Molly’s daughter into its swirl. The banks along the way were flowery, the sky was blue, and Alexina began to find the waters of dalliance sweet. Hitherto girlish groups had seemed to make themselves up and leave her out, and there always had been a disconcerting lack of things to talk about in dressing-rooms and strictly feminine assemblies. Now she found herself in the planning and the whirl, happy as any.
There was exhilaration, too, in this sudden realization of what an income meant, which she had not had much opportunity of learning before, and these days she laughed out of very exuberance and sudden joy in living.
“It seems as if I didn’t really know you, sometimes,” said the literal Georgy, out calling with her one evening. “It makes you awful pretty, you know, to be jolly this way,” which was meant to be more complimentary than it sounded.
They were stepping up on the porch of the house to which they were bound. Alexina laughed and caught a handful of rose petals from a blossoming vine clambering the post and cast them on Georgy.
There were other swains than Georgy these days, too, and not all of them were youths, either, not that it mattered in the least who they were; for in the beginning it is the homage, not the individual, that counts.
She hung over the offerings which came to her from them with a rapture which was more than any mere joy; it was relief. Suppose such things had been denied her? There are maidens, worthy maidens, who never know them, and so Alexina blushed divinely with relief. Roses to her!
And Molly, watching, would grow peevish—not over the flowers; Molly was too sure of her own charm for that. Alexina really did not know what it was about, and she did not believe Molly quite knew herself.
There was a lazy-eyed personage the young people called Mr. Allie. Their mothers had called him Mr. Randall, but then he had been the contemporary of the mothers.
No daughter of these bygone belles was secure in her place to-day until the seal of Mr. Allie’s half-serious, half-lazy approval was upon her, or so the mothers and the daughters felt. Mr. Allie was perennial, indolently handsome, an idler in the gay little world, yet somehow one believed he could have gone at life in earnest had there been need.
He, too, sent roses to Alexina, and flowers from him meant something subtly flattering, and he came strolling around at places and sat down by her, saying pretty things to make her blush, apparently to watch her doing it. Not that she minded as much as she worried, because she felt she ought to mind, and in her heart she knew she didn’t really.
She had gone out with him half a dozen times perhaps, when, one evening at a dance, Mr. Allie, seeking, found her at the far end of a veranda where the side steps went down to the gravel. She and Georgy were sitting there together. Georgy was telling her of his aspirations and, in passing, dwelling on the lack of any civic spirit in the town, the inference seeming to be that Georgy, modest as he was, some day himself meant to supply it.
Mr. Allie told Georgy that a waiting damsel was expecting him, then took Georgy’s place. He did not speak for a while, and Alexina never was talkative.
“Would you rather go in and dance?” at last he asked.
“Why,” said Alexina; “no.” Which was not quite true for she loved to dance these days. She used to be afraid she was not going to have a successive partner and it marred the full enjoyment of the one she had, but now—
Still, any one would be flattered to have Mr. Allie asking, so she said no.
“Then we’ll stay,” he said; which was not brilliant, to be sure, but it was the way in which Mr. Allie said things which made them seem pregnant of many meanings.
After that neither of them spoke, yet Alexina’s pulses began to beat. The big side yard upon which the steps descended was flooded with moonlight, and a mockingbird was sending forth a trial note or two. And it was June.
“For you know, really, you’re the very dearest of them all,” said Mr. Allie, with soft decision, as if he had been arguing about it.
There was not a thing to say, and she could not have said it if there had been.
“And I’ve known a good many,” continued Mr. Allie, which probably was true, only Mr. Allie knew how true; “but I’ve never felt just this way about any of them before.”
Then they sat very still, and the bird note rose and fell.
“Maybe you’d rather go in,” said Mr. Allie as the music began again. Was it hurt in his tone?
“Oh,” said Alexina, “no.”
Mr. Allie picked up the end of the scarf which had fallen to the steps and put it about her shoulders again. It brought his face around where he could see hers. Was he laughing? Or were his eyes full of reproach? For what? He did not look a bit like a contemporary of anybody’s mother. Yet perhaps the moustache that drooped over the mouth did hide—lines, and the lazy eyes sometimes did look tired. Youth has its dreams, vague, secret, yet the Prince of the dreams should be no Mr. Allie with eyes that look weary and tired.
“If I thought,” said Mr. Allie softly, oh, so softly; “if I thought that you could care?”
“Oh,” said Alexina, “no, I couldn’t.”
She sobbed. It seemed cruel to Mr. Allie.
Then they talked it over, he so gently, she with self-reproach and little chokes against tears. He even held her hand, she too tender-hearted to know how to take it away, though the remorse eating into her heart was forgotten somewhat in the glow, the wonder that this thing, this sad but beautiful thing should come to her. Presently he took her in. The rest of the evening sped hazily. Going home, she talked to Mr. Allie and Molly as in a dream.
Reaching the hotel, and in their own apartment, Alexina sank down on the sofa, her wrap and fan falling unobserved, and sat, chin on palm, shyly remembering, shrinking a little, and blushing. Suddenly conscious, she turned and found Molly in her doorway between, undressing, and looking at her with knowledge and with laughter. She had forgotten Molly, who had been rummaging and had brought out some olives and crackers and wine. Molly lunched at all unheard-of hours.
Alexina sprang up. She turned white, then scarlet.
“‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,’ Jean Garnier would say,” Molly began, unloosing her waist and laughing again. “Mais non, mon enfant, you take these things too seriously; it is time you understood. He has said as much to every pretty girl there, one time and another, and to most of their mothers before them, only they all understood. It’s very charming in you, of course, right now, and to a man like him, irresistible but, still—Malise—”
Alexina looked at Molly. Then up welled a red that rose to her hair and spread down her throat and over her bare young shoulders. She would never misunderstand again. It is a cruel thing, the hotness of shame. But Molly was staring. Malise was beautiful with her head so proudly up and her cheeks flaming.
There was more to understand. They were a gay crowd, the young people and their elders with whom Molly and Alexina and Georgy were going. Things came to Alexina slowly.
“It isn’t just nice,” she told Molly anxiously, an evening at the Willy Fields’; “Georgy says you’ve all been in the pantry opening more champagne. I’m sure they’re acting like there’s been enough, and he thinks, too, we ought to go home.”
“Good Lord,” said Molly. She looked so slender, so childishly innocent standing there where the daughter had drawn her aside, one couldn’t believe she had said it. “This is the way you used to go on when you were a child. One would think you’d had your fill of what people ought to do, living with the Blairs.”
Alexina looked at her. That Molly should dare allude to that past this way! Then she went and found her mother’s wrap and brought it.
“Put it on,” she said.
Molly laughed rebelliously, then waveringly.
“We are going home,” said the daughter.
Molly essayed to put it on but didn’t seem able to find the hooks, and Alexina, hardening her heart, would not help her, but went to find Georgy. He was looking stern himself, and forlorn and young, and the fact that she knew why did not serve to make Alexina happier.
The cars had stopped running and they walked home, leaving hilarity behind them. Molly was acting stubbornly, her tones were injured, and her talk incessant. Alexina couldn’t make her stop.
“Jean was just such another clog as Malise,” she told Georgy. “He was forever harping about proprieties, and he wore me out trying to make me tie my money up; Malise isn’t stingy, I’ll say that, though she might have been—she’s a Blair. Jean shivered over spending money. And after there wasn’t any left, he used to sit and cough and cry over his Shakespeare about it. He had thought he was going to be a great poet once, himself, Jean had.”
In the light of the setting moon one could see Molly’s childlike face; and her voice, with its upward cadence, was more plaintive than the face. The very look and the sound of her were sweet, seductively sweet.
“He liked to believe himself a Gascon, too, Jean did, and he loved his Villon too. He wasn’t well ever; he couldn’t always breathe, Jean couldn’t, but, vraiment, he could swagger as well as any.”
The night was still, the streets asleep. Nearing the hotel now, the way led past blocks of warehouses and wholesale establishments. Molly stumbled over a grating. Georgy steadied her. They went on, their footsteps echoing up from the flagging as from a vault.
“I’m cold,” complained Molly, “and,” querulously, “you know, Malise, it will make me cough if I take cold. Jean coughed. After he coughed for a year and the money was gone, he raised more on our things. Then they came and seized them, except my trunks; Jean had sent those away. I was sick, too; I took the cough from Jean, and I was afraid after I heard one could take it, so he made me come away. Celeste had some money. He made us come; he said it would be easier to know I was over here, and it would be better for him at the hospital—‘les sœurs sont bonnes,’ Jean said over and over.”
Alexina was hearing it for the first time. People like Molly supply no background, the present is the only moment, and Alexina was not one to ask.
At the hotel entrance, in the ladies’ deserted hallway, even the nodding bell-boy gone, Georgy paused. Molly went and sat down in a chair against the wall. She laughed unsteadily, though there was nothing to laugh about. Her lids were batting and fluttering like a sleepy child’s. “I thought you said it was late, Malise,” she remarked.
“Wait,” entreated Georgy of Alexina, and squared himself between her and her mother. He was a dear, handsome boy. He gazed pleadingly at the tall, fair-haired girl whose eyes were meeting his so apologetically.
“You said to me there, to-night, you couldn’t care for me that way,” he told her, “but couldn’t you marry me anyhow, Alexina, and we’ll take care of her together?”
For he thought she knew what he did. Her eyes, which had lowered, lifted again, doubtfully, wistfully. Was she wishing she could? They met his. Perhaps his were too humble.
A shiver went through the girl. Then came a sobbing utterance. “I can’t, I can’t; but oh, if you only knew how I wish I could!”
She broke down in tears. “Don’t be mad with me, Georgy.”
“Oh,” said Georgy, preparing to go, “it’s not that I’m mad. I reckon you don’t understand these things yet, Alexina.”