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 soeurs 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!"