Immediately after the wedding Alexina and Molly went South. Molly
turned petulant at sight of Aden and Alexina could not blame her;
indeed, she and Celeste were of a mind with her as they drove from the
station to the hotel.
The horses ploughed through loose, greyish sand, the sidewalks along
the street, ostensibly the business thoroughfare, were of board, not
in the best of repair, and the skyline of the street was varied
according as the frame stores had or did not have a sham front
simulating a second story. Men sat on tilted chairs beneath awnings
along the way and stared at the occupants of the carriage as it
passed. It was mid-afternoon, which, in Aden, seemed to be a glaring,
shadeless hour and, but for these occasional somnolent starers, a
deserted one. Yet people lived here, existed, spent their lives in
this crude, poor hideousness, this mean newness; the Leroys lived
here! And that their son would let them, would remain himself!
"What did we come for anyhow?" queried Molly. "The world is full of
charming places. You do adopt the queerest notions, Malise."
Malise sat convicted. It had sounded so alluring, so suggestive of
charm and languor; the very name of Aden had breathed a sort of magic.
And Alexina had come, too, buoyed up by a large and epic idea of
restitution. How foolish, how young, how almost insulting from the
Leroys' standpoint it suddenly seemed.
"We spent two winters in Italy, Jean and I, and one in Algiers," Molly
was saying plaintively. "Heavens, Malise, they're building that house
on stilts, right over a sinkhole of tin cans."
For that matter there were tin cans everywhere. It was most
depressing.
"Even Louisville was better than this," said Molly grudgingly. "Don't
look so resigned, Malise; it's not becoming."
They turned a corner and the driver stopped before a long, two-storied
building, painted white, which proved to be the hotel. It stood up
from the street on wooden posts, the space between latticed. A railed
gallery ran across the front, steps ascending midway of its length.
Two giant live-oaks flanked the building either end, the wooden
sidewalk cut out to encircle their great roots, and, while handbills
and placards were tacked up and down the rugged, seamy trunks, yet
grey moss drooped from the branches and swept the gallery posts. The
building looked roomy, old-fashioned and reposeful, and Alexina's
spirits rose. She gathered up the wraps, Celeste the satchels--no one
ever looked to Molly to gather up anything--and they went in.
The place seemed deserted and asleep, but just inside the doorway,
where the hall broadened into an office, a man stood looking through a
pile of newspapers. His clothes were black and his vest clerical;
below its edge hung a small gold cross. He turned politely, then said
he would go and find some one.
"Dear me," said Molly, brightening, "he's handsome."
Two days after, they were settled in comfortable rooms overlooking
the hotel grounds. A slope down to a small lake boasted some gnarled
old live-oaks and pines, and one side was set out with a young orange
grove. Across the water one could see several more or less pretentious
new houses built around the shore. The breeze tasted of pine and Molly
had slept a night through without coughing.
"But, Heavens!" she complained, the second afternoon, lolling back in
a wooden arm-chair on the hotel gallery; "isn't there anything to do?"
Alexina and the young man in clerical garb were her audience. He was
the Reverend Harrison Henderson, and had charge of the Episcopal
Church of Aden and lived at the hotel. He seemed a definite and
earnest man. His blond profile was strong. It was a rather immobile
face, perhaps, but it lighted with very evident pleasure as he
answered Mrs. Garnier.
"How would you like to go out to Nancy?" he proposed; "it's quite an
affair for a lake down here, and a young fellow out there rents
sail-boats."
"Charming," agreed Molly, sitting up. "You have ideas; you can't have
been here long."
Mr. Harrison smiled, though it was an acknowledging rather than a
mirthful smile. Life is too earnest for mere laughter, but his zeal to
serve Mrs. Garnier was not to be doubted.
"What do you say, Miss Blair?" he asked, turning to that young person.
"Who?--I?" Alexina had been leaning forward with her elbow on the
gallery railing, her eyes looking off to a line of pines against the
sky. She had been wondering how she should inquire about the Leroys,
and if she really wanted to. She came back to the veranda and the
present.
"I think it would be charming, too," she replied.
"Then we'll go right away. I'll order the carriage, so as to see the
sunset," he said, and rose. "You will need wraps for Mrs. Garnier."
Somehow a man never thinks the other woman will need anything.
He spoke briskly and went off down the plank sidewalk towards town
with a swing. The day was fair, the air was soft, and the blood in the
Reverend Henderson, despite the dogmatic taint in it, was red and
young.
* * * * *
Out at Lake Nancy Osceola, a young fellow in flannel shirt,
knickerbockers and canvas shoes, was scanning the shore from a wooden
pier which ran out the extent of shallow water, having just made fast
the sail-boat rising and falling with the swell at the pier's end.
A grove of well grown orange trees stretched up the slope from the
water. The trees were heavy with fruit and looked sturdy and well
cared for. To the right stood the frame packing sheds, and beyond,
amid higher foliage against the cerulean sky, showed a house roof.
But the young fellow on the pier was gazing in the other direction,
where, through the straight vistas of the grove, a carriage was being
driven under the trees, the top sweeping the fruit laden branches. The
young man hallooed as he started in the pier, but a negro digging
among the trees had dropped his spade and was running up. The carriage
stopped and the young minister of the Aden Episcopal Church got out.
Naturally, it was to be supposed that it was some person with no more
common sense.
But there were others than the Reverend Mr. Henderson descending--two
ladies. Some party from the hotel come for a sail, probably.
It was the duty of coloured Pete to go with sailing parties, but there
was work that he should finish this afternoon. The old darky was
backing the horse. The minister and the ladies were approaching.
The young fellow was just in from a sail, having been down to the
sedge land with his gun, but he would go again. He gave a call. "It's
all right, Pete; go on with the ditching."
His eyes were indifferent as he watched the approach, though their
glance was straight and clear and keen. Suddenly the look changed,
intensified, and the young fellow's shoulders squared.
The minister led the way, talking with the pretty, slight woman, who
stopped with protest every step as her feet went down in sand. Behind
them came a jaunty-looking girl with light-footed carriage. The wind
was ruffling and tossing her hair and she held to her hat as she
stopped under the orange trees to look upon the prospect.
But the eyes watching her did not turn, knowing the scene on which she
was gazing. It was Lake Nancy, long and lizard-like--its sapphire
water shimmering beneath the breeze--stretching westward between
curving, twisting, inletted shores, fringed near at hand with the
bright green of young oranges and lemons, and farther on by the darker
live-oak and pine, while on the opposite side the line of forest
stretched heavy and sombre, trailing grey moss hoariness into Nancy's
lapping wave.
And while the girl gazed on Nancy the young man watched her with a
curious intentness but with no doubt. Then he walked in the length of
the pier to meet them. As the girl's eyes came round to him she
changed to a startled pallor, white as her serge gown, and her eyes
dilated, then into them came eagerness.
Except for a tightening pull on muscles about nose and mouth the young
fellow stood impassive.
The colour rushed back into the girl's face. The young man had turned
and was shaking hands with Mr. Henderson. The minister was mentioning
names, too, but the girl had her back to them and was studying the
outstretch. Her head was high.
When she turned again Mr. Henderson was carefully piloting the other
lady into the boat. "Malise," that lady was calling. Malise, forced by
this to come and be helped in, found herself in the stern. But her
throat, because of a choked-back sob, hurt, and a vast homesickness
and sense of futility was upon her.
When presently she could look up and around the little craft was
skimming out across the lake to deep water, where it shifted westward
and flew into the dying afternoon.
There were billowy puffs of clouds high above, softly flushing into
rose with a golden fleeciness to their edges. Her mother's talk and
dulcet-toned laughter reached the girl, punctuated with the serious
accents of Mr. Henderson. The two were sitting where the seats,
running about, came together at the bow, and he, with an elbow on the
rail, was looking at Molly. Such a wistful, pretty child she looked in
her white canvas dress, with her wind-blown, gauzy veil fluttering
from her hat.
Alexina's eyes were fixed on them, but she was conscious, too, of a
gaze on her, which for all her hot pride and hurt she could not look
around and meet. Once, when the sail was shifting and she knew the
eyes would, perforce, be concerned therewith, she stole a hurried
survey and saw a well-knit figure, quick in its movements, the muscles
playing beneath the flannel shirt. A discarded coat was upon the seat
near her.
"Down, please," came in cool, deliberate tones from the owner of the
coat and the gaze. The head of the girl went down, while the sail
swung about. The boat dipped, righted, then flew ahead, following the
curving shores of the lake.
The very air seemed flushing, the shimmering water had a thousand
tints, the shores slipping by breathed out odours of mould, and leaf
and vine. The western sky was triumphing, clouds of purple and of
crimson lifting one above another about a golden centre. And they in
the boat were speeding into the glory; the very rosiness of the air
seemed stealing down upon them and enveloping them. The sense of
avoirdupois, of gravitation, was lost; one felt winged, uplifted; it
was good all at once, it was good to live, to be.
The eyes and the gaze were on her again; she felt them and turned
suddenly and faced them. The look she met was deep and warm, but it
changed, holding hers, grew cool, enigmatical, impersonal. Did he not
know her then, or did he not want to know her?
This time tears of hurt and pride rushed to her eyes. He was
watching, but she could not get her eyes away, even with those hateful
tears welling.
The sail shifted, for no reason apparently. "Down, please," he
commanded. But as the boat dipped, shook itself, righted again, and
flew on through the rosy light, his head came up near hers and his
voice, in the old, boyish way, said: "Really?"
Sudden light shone through the tears in the girl's eyes. Molly would
have wrung her hands with an artist's anguish, this was the place for
coquetry!
"I thought you didn't want to know me and I was hurt," said Alexina.
"It was yours to know first," said Willy Leroy stoutly, but his eyes
were laughing.
"Oh," said Alexina, doubtfully; "why, yes; perhaps it was." And then
she laughed, too, gaily.