CHAPTER TEN
The Captain, Mrs. Leroy and Alexina, on the gallery, watched King as he trudged across the yard. He was going for his horse that he might take a telegram into Aden for Alexina, who was to leave the following morning.
He trudged sturdily and was whistling under his breath as he went.
“But it’s a debt—I owe it to you,” said the girl suddenly, turning on the Captain. She spoke with vehemence, entreaty, passion.
“We put that aside the other day—discussed,” said the Captain gently.
“You did,” declared the girl; “but not—you can’t say I did. And Mrs. Leroy saw the right, the justice of it, when I talked to her up-stairs.”
“But I hadn’t heard Georges then,” Charlotte hastened to say, “and I see now how you’re trying to make a purely business affair a personal one.” Poor Charlotte, she did not see anything of the kind; she was quoting the Captain.
“But it is a debt,” declared the girl, crying a little against her will, “and you have no right to refuse me. The whole transaction was a taking advantage, and hard, and mean; it was the pound of flesh, and you said, Mrs. Leroy, that if the grove could be held a year or two, and not sacrificed right away—”
“The boy will fight that part out,” said the Captain. The words sounded final, but the hand laid on the girlish one clasping the arm of his chair made it right.
“How can he?” she insisted, with stubbornness.
“I don’t know,” said the father.
The three sat silent. King, waving his hat at them as he rode around, stooped from his horse, opened the gate and went through. He was not a person to be offered sympathy. Right now he was absorbingly cheerful.
“But Mrs. Leroy admitted,” Alexina began again, her under lip trembling.
“No, Alexina,” said Charlotte hastily; “I didn’t. Or I ought not to have,” she added honestly. “I’ve never set myself against Georges in things concerning Willy since we came down here. We talked it out then, Georges and I. It’s been hard to see Willy fighting things; he was born imperious, but he’s used to battling now. I see what Georges meant. It’s better for people to learn how to battle. If I had ever been taught—”
The sun was slanting in under the old, wild orange tree on to the gallery. Again the three sat silent. Then out of the silence the Captain spoke. He was an old man who had laid down the burden of labour to lift and carry the heavier load of inaction in silence, as he had carried the other. His tone was impersonal.
“There was a giant wrestler, one Antæus of Lybia, if I remember my classics, Alexina. King used to lie on the rug when you both were children and read you about him. So many times as this Antæus was brought to earth, he arose renewed, if I recall. The boy must wrestle with his own fate.”