Alexina

“ Alexina had been reared on the soundest moral principles of church and society, to say nothing of the law, but the norm at the wheel has often laughed in her amiable way at church and society and law when circumstances have conspired to help her. But against fastidiousness even the blind urge of the race seldom has availed her; she can only go on sullenly feeding the fires, heaping on the fuel, hoping grimly for the astrological moment. ”

“ Of these some were placid, emotionless, extinguished, consistently noble, selfless, profoundly and simply religious, as correct in every thought and deed as the best bourgeois peace society of any land.
But others! Alexina had been horrified at first at the wanderings off after nightfall of women who had nursed like scientific angels by day, accompanied by men who were never more men than when any moment might turn them into carrion. But with her mental suppleness she had quickly readjusted her point of view. There is nothing as sensual as war. It is the quintessential carnality. ”

“ III Alexina set her cup and saucer down on the table, forebore to interrupt her hostess, who was known to talk steadily in order to avoid questions, and walked quickly and deliberately out after him. It is a primitive instinct in woman to chase the male; but civilization having initiated her into the art of permitting him to chase her, Alexina was merely bent upon giving this man his chance if the interest had been mutual and existed beyond the moment. ”

“ Then she scrambled to her feet and stood twisting her hands together, expecting a burst of wrath that would further reveal the pent-up fires in this long-sealed volcano; for Alexina was inclined to the exaggerations of her sex and years and would not have been surprised if her mother, masterpiece of a lost art, had suddenly become as elementary as the forces that had devastated San Francisco.
But there was only dismay in Mrs. Groome's eyes as she stared at her repentant daughter. Her heart sank still lower. She had never been a vain woman, but she had prided herself upon not feeling old. ”

“ For a moment Alexina was aghast. Here was the real tragedy. She almost prayed for inspiration, for it lay with her to readjust Gora to life. To no one else would Gora ever give her confidence.
"I don't believe for a moment," she said, "that the intelligent public will ever reject a great novel or story dealing with the war. The masterly treatment of any subject, the new point of view, the swift compelling breathless drama that is your peculiar gift, must triumph over any mood of the moment. ”

“ She was obliged to look up as she watched Alexina's subtly transfigured face, fascinated. It made her feel even her physical insignificance; the more as she had lost the flesh that had given her short stature a certain majesty.
"Oh, life is unjust, unjust." She no longer spoke with bitterness, merely as one forced to state an inescapable fact. "Injustice! The root of all misfortune."
"Life is a hard school but where she has strong characters to work on she turns out masterpieces. You will be one of them, Gora. ”

“ Once or twice a mocking glance flashed through those starry ingenuous orbs, but was banished by the simple art of elevating the wicked iris and revealing a line of saintly white. Alexina was quite determined to add a British scalp to her small collection, and for the young man's possible torment she cared not at all. With young arrogance she rather despised him for his surrender before battle, or at all events for hauling down his flag publicly ”

“ Alexina shook her wise little head. "Oh, no. It isn't done any more. No woman who has learned to think is so unjust as to throw the whole burden of life on her husband's shoulders. You have your own daily battle in the business world. ”

“ Alexina had not gone to Mrs. Hofer's first party, Aileen being in Santa Barbara, but she had sniffed at the comparisons of the more critical girls in their second season. She was quite convinced that nothing so splendid had ever been given in the world. She had danced every dance. She had had the most delicious things to eat, and never had she met so charming a young man as Mortimer Dwight. ”

“ Alexina began to blush again, for the Major was so edified at something that his enjoyment was suspicious.
“But no man is expected to live down to his editorials, Miss Alexina; I write ’em for a living.”
He stroked his chin as he regarded her, [Pg 98] but there was laughter too out of the tail of his eye across at Aunt Harriet, who was laughing also, though she looked teased.
Later Alexina learned more about this Major Rathbone. It was Emily Carringford who told her. Emily came over promptly the day after Alexina’s return and, admitted by Katy, ran up as of old. ”

“ She paused and her eyes grew sharp and watchful, Alexina's face showed no understanding and she went on, still watching.
"I nursed him back to life. Through a part of his convalescence. A woman knows certain things. He almost loved me then. If we could have been alone he would have found out—asked me to marry him. We should be married to-day. If I could have seen him constantly in London it would have been the same." She burst out violently: "I believe you wrote to him to come to Paris."
"My dear Gora! Keep your imagination for your fiction. ”

“ Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white and shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of strong nerves as well as of untiring effort.
"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap.
"If he had been assassinated! In Paris! I thought André would faint.
His last wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who
knows? ... In Paris!..."
Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent friends in the porte cochère the certainty grew that some one was watching her. That officer! Who else? ”

“ He had been very alert and thorough and Alexina admired him consumedly. There was no question but that he was one of those men—Aileen called it the one hundred per cent male—upon whose clear brain and strong arm a woman might depend even in the midst of an infuriated mob. He had an opportunity that comes to few aspiring young men born into the world's unblest millions, and if he made the most of it he was equally assured that he was acting in strict accord with the instincts and characteristics that had descended upon him by the grace of God. ”

“ In my solitude down here I’ve grown a shameless egotist.”
As if she had been ever anything else, the unconscious soul!
“But to be with one of my own sex—some one linked with the past, too, is extenuation. There’s so much a woman can’t talk of with men, they have such different ways of seeing things, and let her love her men folk never so dearly, if there’s none of her own sex around, a woman’s lonesome, Alexina.”
“Yes,” said Alexina, “she is.” But she said it absently, for she was conscious of King William’s gaze being upon her. ”

“ Molly being of the party, it followed that Alexina was, too, but that William Leroy was of it seemed to quicken something in his own sense of humour. His manner with the gay world was perhaps a little stony. He avowed, when thus accused by Alexina and Mr. Jonas, that it was to cover bashfulness.
[Pg 310] “I hate people,” he declared.
Yet, for a bashful youth, he was singularly deliberate and masterful, seeming to know what he wanted and how to get it. To-night it was that Alexina go with him in a small boat. The others started first, a youth in a striped flannel coat, strumming a guitar. ”

“ Alexina was far from satisfied with herself as she was; she would have liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power in the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the national gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction—racial rather than individual ... qualities that have made the United States lag far behind the greater European nations in all but material development and a certain inventiveness ”

“ Alexina speculated. Gora had all the brains that Mortimer lacked and commanding traits of character. She was so striking in appearance even now that people often turned and stared at her. But unless she possessed the potent spell of woman for man all her gifts would avail her nothing in this tragic crisis of her life. Did she possess it I No woman could answer. Certainly Alexina had never seen evidence of it even in Gora's youth ”

“ She herself was a symphony in pink ("dago pink," whispered Aileen wickedly) , and she wore a small pink silk turban, apparently made from the same bolt as the gown.
"Perhaps we should have worn hats," said Gora nervously. "I didn't know—I thought..."
"You are just all right. Anything goes here. We wear what's becoming, what we can afford, and what is our own idea of the right thing. Nobody criticizes anybody else."
"Now, this is life!" said Alexina to Aileen. ”

“ Alexina had interested in her behalf a sisterhood of Beguins; who, touched with her filial piety and dignified resignation to destiny so deplorable, had employed her in this convent in such works as she could perform; but since the town had been full of sick and wounded prisoners, she had attended one of these charitable nuns in administering to the wretched victims of war: and when this pious task was over, in which she had but too near a view of every species of human misery, the evening closed with a visit at the grate of her father's prison. ”

“ She had done nothing, and Alexina wondered if she would have the courage to go into some sort of business with herself ... they could give out they were bored, seeking a new distraction ... save the precious pride of their families.
She leaned forward and took her head in her hands. If she only had some one to talk things over with. It was impossible to confide in Gora, in any one. If she broached the subject to Tom Abbott, to Judge Lawton, even in a roundabout way, they would suspect at once. Aileen and Janet and the other girls did not know enough. They would suspect also. ”

“ People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important and many small dinners, not avowedly bridge or poker parties, were as inevitable as crab in season; but there were too many young men whom girls would infinitely prefer to enliven the monotony of crab à la poulette, to any married man, particularly one who had as little to say as poor Morty. ”

“ There was contagious laughter in the eyes, too, the laugh of expectancy about to be gratified, as with children while the curtain goes up on a new scene. “You are as pretty as you can be, Malise; the Blair features used to look so solemn on a baby!”
“Lil’ missy—”
Alexina looked around. It was Celeste, tall, brown, regarding her with covert eyes as of old. Celeste had never loved her, the child had known that; her love belonged to the mother, her first charge, her Southern born, all her own. ”

“ Aileen Lawton is with her."
Gora knew that Alexina had gone out at four in the morning and returned half an hour since, but the cat in her was of the tiger variety and never descended to small game.
"Oh, of course!" Mortimer gave a groan of resignation as he hunted out a pair of black socks. "I like Aileen well enough, but she has altogether too much influence over Alexina. She'd have more than myself if I didn't keep a close watch."
"I have an idea that no one will have much influence over Alexina as time goes on. She hasn't that jaw and chin for nothing. They mean things in some people." ”

“ She had been so delighted with the efforts of the prosecuting group to bring the boss and the mayor to justice that she had permitted Alexina to invite the Hofers to dinner; but when men of her own proud circle were accused of crimes against society and threatened with San Quentin, nothing could convince her of their guilt; and she asked Alexina to follow the example of Maria and cut that Mrs. Hofer. ”

“ Groome that Alexina should not be introduced to any young man whose name was not on her own visiting list; and, while her mother slept, the last of the Ballinger-Groomes accompanied Aileen (chaperoned by an unprincipled aunt, who was an ancient enemy of Maria Groome) to parties quite as respectable but infinitely gayer, and indubitably mixed. ”

“ Those with much to lose seldom lose it; the instinct of self-protection envelops them as a mantle; although in small towns, where concealments are less simple, the majority of scandals are not about married women as in a less sophisticated era, but about girls.
Alexina had possessed numerous confidences, helped more than once to throw dust, amiably replaced the post. She had never approved, but she was philosophical. She took life as she found it; although the fact stood out that Aileen, who was indifferent to men, remained always her favorite friend. ”

“ Alexina once more yielded to temptation. "But the only people you really know at Burlingame except Mrs. Hunter are those of the old set, what you would call the pick of the bunch, if you were one of us. They went there to live because they were tired of being moss-backs. Why don't you follow their example and go the whole hog? They—and their girls—have a ripping time."
"At least they have not picked up your vocabulary. I seldom see the young people. And I have never been to the Club. I am told the women drink and smoke quite openly on the verandah." ”