Molly, Alexina and Celeste stayed a week at Nancy with the Leroys. It
was a household wherein there was no strain, no tension, though, to be
sure, there was small management. One had a comical comprehension that
Mandy the cook and Tina the wash-woman kept their families off the
gullibility and good faith of their mistress.
Alexina was sent into the sunshine.
"Keep her outdoors," Charlotte commanded Willy; "the child's morbid."
Mr. Jonas drove out with trophies of game as offerings to Mrs.
Garnier. One morning Mr. Henderson came with him in the buckboard,
and Molly and the two men sat in the sunshine on the porch and talked.
"Did he die?" she asked the minister presently.
"Who?"
"The man at the house where you stopped that day?" She asked it as one
driven to know, even while apprehensive of the answer.
Exultation leaped for an instant to the young man's face, a stern joy.
"He died," he told her, "but in the faith at the end."
"In what faith?" Molly asked curiously. She was a child in so many
things.
"The Church," he told her, with reproof in his tone.
The click of Mr. Jonas's incisors upon incisors chopped the air.
But Molly moved a little nearer the minister.
"Yes," she agreed slowly, unwillingly almost; "they all do. Father
Bonot used to say it over and over. They all come back to the Church
to--to die."
She was shivering.
There was a quick, snapped off h'ah from Mr. Jonas.
Mr. Henderson looked bewildered. "I did not know; then, Mrs. Garnier,
you are--"
"I'm a Catholic," said Molly, a little in wonder.
"Romanist?" said the other gently.
But Molly wasn't listening, nor would she have known what the
distinction meant, had she been. It was Mr. Jonas who gave forth
another sound that was almost a snort, and marched off to where King
and Alexina were sitting on the step.
Molly watched him go, then glanced around as if to insure aloofness,
and leaned forward, her fingers pulling at the edge of her
handkerchief.
"You helped him to die, and you're a priest--one sort of a priest--and
I want to tell you--"
"No," said the other, "you do not understand; let me make you see."
"It doesn't matter," said Molly; "no," hurriedly, "let me tell you. I
want to tell you. It will help me. I take things--I have to; anything
that will make me forget and make me sleep. I'm afraid--I take it
because I'm afraid to die."
He looked at her out of dull eyes. She was, self-avowedly, everything
he held abhorrent--alien, worldly, and weak. He stammered
something--was he asking God to help her, or himself?--and left her.
Later, as he and Mr. Jonas drove back to Aden, the eyes of Mr. Jonas
snapped. "You're brewing mischief to your own or somebody else's peace
of mind; you always are when you look like that. Out with it, man."
Why Mr. Henderson should out with it, he himself knew less than any,
but Mr. Jonas had a way.
The minister's words came forth with effort.
"I've been seeking light to know why Mrs. Garnier was sent down here.
I've never cared for a woman before; I can't seem to tear it out. But
to-day it's made clear: she was sent to me to be saved."
"From her faith?" inquired Mr. Jonas.
But the minister was impervious to the sarcasm.
"To the faith," said Mr. Henderson.
The others gone, Alexina, King William and the Captain sat on the
porch. The girl who was on the step reached up and put a hand on the
locket swinging from the Captain's fob. "May I?" she asked, "I used
to, often, you know."
The Captain slipped the watch out and handed it to her, the rest
depending, and she opened the locket, a large, thin, plain gold
affair. "This," she said, bending over it, then looking up at the
Captain archly, "this is Julie Piquet, your mother, wife of Aristide
Leroy, refugee and Girondist."
She recited it like a child proud of knowing its lesson, then regarded
him out of the corners of her eyes, laughing.
There answered the faintest flicker of a smile somewhere in the old
Roman face.
The girl returned to the study of the dark beauty on the ivory again,
its curly tresses fillet bound, its snowy breasts the more revealed
than hidden by the short-waisted, diaphanous drapery.
"And because it had been your father's locket, with you and your
mother in it, Mrs. Leroy wouldn't let you change it to put her in; and
so this on the other side is you, young Georges Gautier Hippolyte
Leroy--"
"Written G. Leroy in general," interpolated the gentleman's son.
"And this is how you looked at twenty, dark and rosy-cheeked, with a
handsome aquiline nose. You never were democratic, for all your grand
pose at being; do you believe he was?" This to King. "Look at him
here; if ever there was an inborn, inbred aristocratic son of a
revolutionist--"
"He barricaded the streets of Paris with his fellow-students in his
turn, don't forget," said King.
"Where his papa had sent him for a more cosmopolitan knowledge of
life than Louisville could afford," supplemented Alexina gaily.
"And where he wrote verses to a little dressmaker across the hall,"
said William.
"Verses?" said Alexina. "Did he write verses? I never heard about the
verses."
"No?" said the son; "hasn't he ever written verses to you? Well, since
I've opened the way to it, I was leading up to it all the while, why
_I have_. I'll show 'em to you. I've had 'em in my pocket waiting the
opportunity three days now." Which was true. He had been going for
them that first day.
He produced a small card photograph, somewhat faded, which, taken in
Alexina's hand, showed her a little girl's serious face, with
short-cropped hair.
"She had a nice, straight little nose, anyhow," said Alexina
approvingly, studying the card.
"Turn it over," said William Leroy. He had a way of commanding people.
Some day Alexina intended warring with him about it, but she turned it
over now. The lines inscribed on its reverse were in a round and
laboured script that, despite effort, staggered down hill.
"I wrote 'em," said Willy Leroy, "moi--myself, with gulped-down tears
at leaving you. I've never written any since."
She was reading them.
"Out loud," he commanded.
She read them aloud. She was laughing, but she was blushing absurdly,
too.
"This is Alexina and she
Is a girl but she
Plays like I tell her and she
Cried because we had to come away
And this is Alexina."
"He thinks, your son does," said Alexina, addressing herself to the
Captain, "that he was a precocious person, whereas he was only--"
"Young," said the Captain.
"Lamentably egotistical," said Alexina.
"Give it to me," said Willy, "my picture and my feelings thereon."
"No," said the girl; "I want it."
"Yes." He said it with the King William air. She made a little mouth,
but gave him the card, which he put back in his wallet and the wallet
into his pocket. "You're welcome to a copy of the lines," he said.
Alexina, bestowing on him a glance of lofty disdain, departed,
high-headed, into the house.
But he ran after her and stooped, that he might look into her face;
was he laughing at her?
"Oh," she said, and wheeled upon him, but had to laugh too, such was
the high glee behind the sweet gravity on William Leroy's countenance.
Glee there was, yet, too, something else in the dark eyes laughing at
her, something unconsciously warm and caressing.
The girl ran quickly up-stairs.
And William Leroy, brought to himself, stood where she left him. The
hand on the newel-post suddenly closed hard upon it, then he
straightened and walked into the parlour, and, sitting down, stared at
the embers of the wood fire, as one bewildered. Then his head lifted
as with one who understands. On his face was a strange look and a
light.