Charlotte suggesting that Mrs. Garnier put on a wrapper, the two went back to her bed-room. Alexina stood hesitating. She felt a sense of surrept.i.tiousness and embarra.s.sment, and then took a step to the book-case--any one might do that much--and read the t.i.tles of the books.

About orange culture and fertilizing these first seemed to be, and those next were concerned with the breeding of stock. They meant Woodford and the future, probably. She skipped to the other shelves.

Buckle's Introduction to the History of Civilization, Hallam's Middle Ages, Wealth of Nations, Wilhelm Meister, Poems of Heinrich Heine, several volumes of Spencer and Huxley, Slaves of Paris, Lecocq, the Detective, File No. 118, The Lerouge Case, The Scotland Yard Detective, Carlyle's French Revolution, Taxidermitology, Renan's Life of Jesus, Pole on Whist, Hoyle, Tom Sawyer, Past and Present, Pickwick Papers, Herodotus, an unbroken shelf of Walter Scott, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Cousin Pons, Drainage, Pendennis, Small Fruit Culture.

Why, here was a world, within these gla.s.s doors, she did not know. Yet she had read diligently among Uncle Austen's books. She looked back in memory over his shelves; Macaulay, yes, Uncle Austen cared so essentially for Macaulay, and for Bancroft and Prescott, and Whittier and Lowell. There were the standards in fiction and poetry in well-bound sets. Uncle Austen himself admired Alexander Pope, and Franklin's Autobiography; he liked Charles Reade's novels, too, bearing on inst.i.tutional reforms--

Here Mrs. Leroy and Molly came back, Molly in a white wrapper and Charlotte bearing a pillow and a silk quilt.

"w.i.l.l.y's calling," Charlotte told Alexina; "he wants you."

He was at the foot of the stairs, and, waiting for her to get down, watched her hand on the banister. The wood was dark and the hand was white and slender. Then he held out a big, checked ap.r.o.n. She walked into it and looked over her shoulder while he tied the strings behind.

It takes time to set a table when neither is just certain where things are to be found. Hunting together in sideboard, cupboards, and on pantry shelves brings about a feeling of knowing each other very well.

There was so much, too, to talk about.

"Do you remember--" it was Alexina pausing with a goblet in hand to ask it.

"Have you forgot--" King, producing a carving set, would rejoin.

Presently she paused. Twice she started to speak, hesitated, then said, "There's a thing I want to ask you, or, rather, want to say--"

Her voice was a little tremulous and breathless.

"Yes."

"You remember--that is, you haven't forgot the 'King William'?"

She was looking away from him and he looking at her, his mouth odd, yet smiling, too. She was an honest and a pleasant thing to look upon.

"Yes," he told her, "as well as I remember the raft we put off on from the desert island and the plains back of the stable--have you forgotten the trackless plains where we sat down to starve in the snow, with never a sign of deer or buffalo for days, or even a thing on wing? We'd just lighted on Hiawatha those days. There was an Indian, by the way, came up from the gra.s.s water yesterday and brought us venison for to-day."

It was evident he did not mean to let her return to the subject.

Presently Alexina untied the ap.r.o.n. "I must see your mother some," she said.

"But she does not want you," declared his mother's son; "she's overjoyed to think you're with me. She thinks there is something deficient in her son; she insists I've never spoken to a girl since we left you in Louisville. Besides, she's in the kitchen, I hear her out there now, all fluttered herself and fluttering Aunt Mandy."

But Alexina would go. "I must call Molly in time for dinner," she insisted.

CHAPTER FOUR

Now William Leroy supposed Mrs. Garnier to be in his mother's room. A moment later he followed Alexina up the stairs, meaning to get something out of his desk which he wished to show her. He was a most direct youth, considering that he was, by his mother's confession, a timorous one. There was an odd little smile about his mouth, perhaps because all things looked pleasant right now.

His nature was practical rather than sanguine, and built in general only on things achieved, but to-day the fruit was hanging golden on the trees and the grove was one of the few new ones in bearing. He had antic.i.p.ated the railroad by several years in planting, and now the grove and house were going to bring a figure larger than he ever had hoped for.

As the Israelites yearned for Canaan, he was looking towards the pastoral lands of Kentucky. To-day, for the once, he would let this new buoyancy, this una.n.a.lyzed optimism run warm in his blood; why not?

He was young, he was strong, he was master of his circ.u.mstances for the first time.

He went up the steps lightly, springily, with a sort of exuberant joy in the mere action. His canvas shoes made no sound. The stairs landed him at his own door. He brought up short.

Alexina was standing midway of the threshold; he thought he heard a sob.

She turned hurriedly, her hands outspread across the doorway as by instinct.

"Don't," she begged; "please go away." Then as he wheeled, "No, wait--" She swallowed before she could speak.

"It's Molly," she said; "can you send us back to town? she's--she's--"

"Not well," the daughter was trying to say. The boy's straightforward eyes were fixed on hers inquiringly.

"What's the use; I can't lie," the girl broke down miserably. "I ought not to have come with her." Her arms dropped from across the doorway.

In all perplexity he was waiting. He had a glimpse of Molly within, drooping against the table, and her eyes regarding them with a kind of furtive fear.

His hunting flask from out the cellarette was there on the table.

The girl was speaking with effort. "I'm sorry; she must have felt bad and found it."

She suddenly hid her face in her hands against the cas.e.m.e.nt.

That roused him. He felt dazed. It needed a woman here to feel the way.

"I'll get mother," he said.

"Oh," begged the girl, and quivered; "can't we get back to town without--must she know?"

King was growing himself again. "Why," he said, "of all people, yes, mother."

He went down the steps two at a time. There was no sensitive apprehension in his manner when he brought her back, as there often was concerning his mother; he knew her strength as well as her incompetencies.

She came straight up and hardly noticed Alexina as she pa.s.sed but went on to Molly, whose eyes, full of shame and fear, were dully watching the scene.

Charlotte put her arms about her, drew her to the sofa, and sat by her. "Poor dear," she said; "poor dear."

Molly drooped, trembled, then turned and clung to her, crying piteously. "You're sorry for me? I did it because I'm afraid. He said they all come down here to die. Malise don't know, she don't understand, she's hard."

"You go down to your dinner, Alexina," said Charlotte; "it's waiting.

Oh, yes, yes you will go." There was finality in the tone, very different from Charlotte's usually indefinite directions. "Leave your mother to me; oh, you needn't tell me anything about it; I know. And take that hardness out of your face, Alexina, it's your own fault if you let this embitter you, it's ourselves that let things spoil our lives, not the things. I'll tell you something, that you may believe I know, something that I told w.i.l.l.y at a time his arrogance seemed to need the knowledge. My father, my great, splendid, handsome father, all my life was this way. But he came straight home to my mother, and so she kept him from worse, and held him to his place in the world.

Keep on loving them, it's the only way. Many a time we've all cried together like babies, father and mother and I, by her sofa."

"w.i.l.l.y," called Charlotte. The boy ran up from below. "Take Alexina down to her dinner and afterwards take her out of doors. No, you're not going back to the hotel, not to-night. w.i.l.l.y can send Peter in for your woman and your things, for you're going to stay here till she's better and you see this thing differently."

That evening King and Alexina sat on the edge of the pier, the water lapping the posts beneath their swinging feet. He was peeling joints of sugar-cane and handing her sections on the blade of his knife, she trying to convince herself that they were as toothsome as he insisted they were. He could idle like a child.

But the girl's mind was back there in the house. "According to your mother," she was saying, "there's got to be affection back of the doing of a duty." Poor child, she was putting it so guardedly, so impersonally she thought.