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 Antaeus 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 Antaeus was
brought to earth, he arose renewed, if I recall. The boy must wrestle
with his own fate."