Alexina became twenty-one in May. She had found that in the settling
of her affairs it would be necessary for her to remain in Louisville
and so had written her mother to come to her there. She explained
about the change in her life to the Carringfords, to find that they
knew all about her mother; probably her little world, Georgy, Dr.
Ransome, knew it, too, while these years she had comforted herself
with the thought that, at least, it was her secret shame.
Mrs. Carringford put an arm about her and kissed her. There was
approval in the action.
Emily looked at her, then laughed nervously, while a vivid scarlet
rose to the roots of her chestnut hair.
As Alexina passed through the front-room study going home, the old
minister glanced up from his writing and called her name. He pushed
his spectacles back onto his leonine head, looking up as she came
toward him. She was surprised, for he never had seemed conscious even
of her comings and goings.
"There are two ties that are not of our making," he told her; "the
spiritual tie between the Creator and the created, and the material
tie between the parent and the child. They are ties not of duty but of
nature, as indestructible as matter. God go with you."
She felt strange and choked, though she was not sure she knew what he
meant.
A week after she became of age she was dismantling the bay-windowed
room of such things as were hers. Little by little it grew as cold and
cheerless as the one adjoining, now the personality of Aunt Harriet
was gone out of it. What would become of Uncle Austen after both were
gone?
She had tried to force from him some expression of feeling, at first
wistfully, then determinedly. There is a chance, had he responded,
that she would have made other arrangements for her mother. Then she
told herself she did not care and went hotly on with her preparations.
She had taken two bedrooms and a parlour at a hotel, and had written
her mother to go directly there, but the night of her arrival the girl
felt she could not go to meet her. It was too late an hour anyhow, she
would wait until morning, but she shrank so from that first moment she
could not sleep.
She and her uncle met at the breakfast table the next morning. She
made one or two attempts at conversation. "I go to-day, Uncle Austen,"
she said at last, and, leaning forward, pushed a paper across the
table to him. It was the final statement of the household expenditures
under her management.
Her board from her first coming had been paid into the general house
fund, and, accordingly, she had included against herself charge for
these several days in the new month.
Noting it, Austen Blair nodded; it was the first approval accorded her
for some time.
She laughed. "I go to-day," she repeated.
Her uncle, who had risen, put the paper, neatly folded, into his
wallet, then crossed to her and put out his hand.
"I will not see you again then?" he said, and shook hands.
A moment after she heard the front door close.
There were the servants to bid good-by, and that being done there was
no excuse to linger.
It was a warm May day; the magnolia in the yard, the pirus japonicas,
the calycanthus, the horse chestnuts, were in bloom. The lawn was
green, the edges of the gravel paths were newly cut and trim. Alexina,
in her muslin dress and Leghorn hat, turned on the stone flagging and
looked back at the home she was leaving. Home?
The girl, pausing in the yard of the big house, glanced across the
street to a shabby old brick cottage. Her affection was for it.
The hotel was in the business part of the city near the river. A
street-car would have taken her directly there but she walked, as if
seeking to put the moment off. The way took her past the house
furnished and waiting for Aunt Harriet and the Major. Louise was
sitting on an up-stairs window-sill with little Stevie, and caught his
small fist and waved it to her. A curtain was fluttering out an opened
window and a comfortable looking coloured woman was sweeping the
pavement. The place had an air of relaxation, of comfort, already.
Aunt Harriet was going to have a home.
The arrangements had been made at the hotel, and the child, for a very
child she was, went in at the ladies' entrance where a sleepy bell-boy
sat, always nodding, past the pillared corridor, on up-stairs, and
along the crimson-carpeted hallways. She was trembling, her throat was
dry.
In the suite she had taken, a bed-room either side opened into a
connecting parlour. It was the knob of the parlour door she turned
after a tap. Then she went in.
"Why, you tall, charming, baby-faced--! Celeste, Celeste, here's your
baby! Come here to me, Malise. Why the child's hands are cold!"
How foolish to have dreaded it so! It was all gone--even the
constraint. The twelve years were as nothing. She was again the baby
child, Malise, so-called by her mother's people.
And her mother? The linen pillows on the sofa beneath her head looked
cool and pleasantly rumpled, and the sheer white wrapper was fine and
softly laundered as a baby's. Her hair, hanging in two plaits over the
pillows, had no suggestion of carelessness; it looked fascinating, it
looked lovely.
The mother, holding her daughter's hands, was gazing up curiously,
interestedly, her lips parted, as pleased interest will part any
child's. There was contagious laughter in the eyes, too, the laugh of
expectancy about to be gratified, as with children while the curtain
goes up on a new scene. "You are as pretty as you can be, Malise; the
Blair features used to look so solemn on a baby!"
"Lil' missy--"
Alexina looked around. It was Celeste, tall, brown, regarding her with
covert eyes as of old. Celeste had never loved her, the child had
known that; her love belonged to the mother, her first charge, her
Southern born, all her own. The father's blood in this second child
was alien; Celeste had resented it as she had resented that father and
all his kind. She had been jealous for the mother against the father
and child from the first.
Alexina, drawing a hand from her mother's, gave it to Celeste. The old
woman took it loosely, then let it drop. Things were to be as of old,
then, between them.
The girl turned back to her mother. "But, Molly," the name came
naturally, she had known her mother by no other, "your health, you
know; tell me about that."
What did this dilation in Molly's eyes mean? And she glanced sidewise,
secretly, as if at fear of some dreaded thing, lurking.
"Did I write about that? Oh, well, perhaps I was, then, but not now;
not at all now."
The haste to disclaim was feverish, and the look directed by Celeste
at Alexina was sullen, even while the old woman's strong, resistless
brown hand was pushing her mistress back onto the pillows.
"Got to res' lil' while, p'tite; got to min' Celeste an' lay back an'
res' now."
Then to her daughter, who suddenly felt herself a little compelled
creature again, so was she carried into the past by the old woman's
soft, Creole slurring: "'Tain', lil' missy, 'tain' like Madame Garnier
she aire seeck actual, but jus' she taire, easy like."
Madame Garnier! That meant Molly! The illusions were all gone. The
girl backed from the couch. Twelve years rolled between Molly and
herself, years full of resentment. A slow red came up and over the
daughter's face.
But Molly, back upon the pillows, gave no sign. She flung her plaits
out of the way and slipped her arms under her head. There is a
slenderness that is not meagreness, but delicacy; thus slight, thus
pretty, were Molly's wrists. The arms under her head tilted her face
so the light fell on it. It was a narrow, piquant face, with no lines
to mar its delicacy. The odd difference in the eyebrows, which had
fascinated Alexina as a child, one arched, one straight, lent laughter
to it even in repose. Yet the mouth drooped, like a child's, with
pathos and appeal. Could one say no to that mouth, it was so wistful?
It was an alluring face, and moved you so to tenderness, to do battle,
to give protection, that it hurt.
"Throw off your hat, Malise," suggested Molly. "Celeste, take her
parasol from that chair. There is so much to hear about. I asked la
femme de charge, when she was in this morning, if she'd ever heard of
the Blairs. Everybody used to know everything about everybody when I
was here before and the servants most of all, and, mon Dieu, she knew
all about them. 'Miss Blair is married,' she told me. 'I know that,'
said I, for you'd mentioned that much in your letter, Malise. 'She ran
off to get married,' said she. 'Oh, hush,' I told her."
She had retained her very colloquialisms, this Molly, too unconscious
and too indolent to know she had them, probably, or to care.
"So she told me all about it, how tall, cold, proper Harriet had run
off from Blair proprieties and Austen, to marry a Southerner and a
Catholic! It's as if the virgin in marble had stepped down and done
it!"
Molly was amused. It narrowed her eyes till they laughed through the
lashes.
"I never heard anything so funny in my life, Malise, as--as Harriet
eloping. What is it Jean Garnier would quote from his adored
Shakespeare about Diana and her icicles? Make me stop! It hurts
me--to laugh. Oh-o-h, mammy--God, mammy!"
The appeal died in a little choke, and the morsel of handkerchief
pressed to her mouth showed a spot of crimson, but Celeste was already
there, putting Alexina aside. "You can ring fo' lil' ice--yonder," she
told the girl jealously. "Then, efen I were lil' missy, I'd go in
there--that one is yo' room--an' I'd shet my do'h. When it's over
with, p'tite won't want fo' you to have been in heah."
But pushed into the adjoining room and with the door shut between,
Malise still could hear. She did not want to hear; she tried not to
hear. She was awed and frightened.
"Am I going to die this time, Celeste? I'm afraid, mammy; my hands are
cold. Don't rub them with the rings on, you fool; you hurt. No, no;
don't go away, mammy! mammy! I couldn't sleep last night; that's why
I'm--I'm tired. The night was so long and I was afraid. I see Jean
when I try to sleep. I hear him cough. Give me something to make me
sleep--oh, mammy, give it to me."
The girl in the next room stood gazing out the window over the roofs
and chimney stacks at the yellow tide of the river sweeping down
towards the pier bridge spanning it, but she was not seeing it. She
was filled with pity and terror.
It grew quieter in the next room, then still, then the door between
opened and closed. It was Celeste, outwardly unmoved and taciturn.
"P'tite's gone to sleep. Shall I help lil' missy unpack her things?"