The Gay Cockade
dollars a month. That's all I got when the crash came--it is all I
shall ever get. I pay four dollars a month for my room and twenty
cents a day for food. Sometimes I pay less than twenty cents when I
find myself in need of other--luxuries. Yet there's an adventure in
it, Whiting. A good little woman who lives in this house begs me to
work. But I have never worked. And why begin? I've a heritage of
bad habits, and one does not wish to seem superior to one's
ancestors.
"The winters are the worst. I spend the summers on the open road.
Ask Marion if she remembers the days when we read Stevenson
together in the garden? Tell her it is like that--under the
stars--Tell her that I am getting more out of it than she is--with
you--
"But the winters send me back to town--and this winter Fate has
brought me to an old house in a shabby street just a bit back from
the Club. On the first floor there is a little family. Three
kiddies and a young mother who works to keep the wolf from the
door. There's a Pussy-Kiddie, and a Milly-Kiddie, and a baby, and
they have adopted me as a friend.
"And this Christmas I had nothing to give them--but a red candle to
light their room.
"When I got into your car it was just for the adventure. To breathe
for a moment the air I once breathed--to fancy that Marion's ghost
might sit beside me for one little moment, as she will sit beside
you to the end of your days.
"I have played all roles but that of robber--but when I saw the
things that you had bought with Marion's money for Marion's
children--it went to my head--and I wanted them in the worst way
for those poor kiddies--who haven't any dolls or Christmas dinners.
"I am playing Santa Claus for them to-night. I shall take the
things down and leave them in their poor rooms. It will be up to
you to come and take them away. It will be up to you, too, to give
this note to the police and steal my freedom.
"You used to be a good sport, Whiting. I have nothing against you
except that you stole Marion--perhaps this will square our
accounts. And if your children are, because of me, without their
dolls to-morrow, you can remember this, that the kiddies are happy
below stairs--since Dick Turpin dwells aloft!
"From among the rest I have chosen for myself a squat bottle, a box
of biscuits, and a tin of the little imported sausages that you
taught me to like.
"Well, my dear fellow, happy days! To-morrow morning I shall
breakfast at your expense, unless you shall decide that I must
breakfast behind bars.
"If you should come to-night, you will find in the window a red
candle shining. They have put it there to guide St. Nicholas and a
certain Fluffy Ruffles doll!
"Ever yours,
"Tony."
He found an envelope, sealed, and addressed it. Then he went to work.
Four trips he made down the stairs. Four times he tiptoed into the
shadowed room, where the long red candle burned. And when he turned to
take a last look there on the table beside the tree stood the blue doll
for Milly and the Fluffy Ruffles doll for Pussy and the rattles and
rings and blocks for the baby, and on the chairs and the shelf above the
tree were the other things--the great cake and the fruit and the big
basket and the boxes of candy.
And for the little mother there were the violets and a note:
"The red candle winked at your window and brought me in. It is useless
to search for me--for now and then a Prince passes and goes on. And he
is none the less a Prince because you do not know him."
And now there was that other note to deliver. Out in the cold once more,
he found the moon gone and the snow falling. As he passed the saint on
the old church, it seemed to smile down at him. The towers and gables
were sheeted with white. His footsteps made no sound on the padded
streets.
He left the note at Whiting's door. He fancied that, as the footman held
it open, he saw Marion shining on the stairs!
He was glad after that to get home and to bed, and to the warmth of his
blanket. There was the warmth, too, of the wine.
In a little while he was asleep. On the table by his untidy bed was the
box of biscuits and the bottle and the tin of tiny sausages.
If all went well he would feast like a lord on Christmas morning!
RETURNED GOODS
Perhaps the most humiliating moment of Dulcie Cowan's childhood had been
when Mary Dean had called her Indian giver. Dulcie was a child of
affluence. She had always had everything she wanted; but she had not
been spoiled. She had been brought up beautifully and she had been
taught to consider the rights of others. She lived in an old-fashioned
part of an old city, and her family was churchly and conscientious.
Indeed, so well-trained was Dulcie's conscience that it often caused her
great unhappiness. It seemed to her that her life was made up largely of
denying herself the things she wanted. She was tied so rigidly to the
golden rule that her own rights were being constantly submerged in the
consideration of the rights of others.
So it had happened that when she gave to Mary Dean a certain lovely
doll, because her mother had suggested that Dulcie had so many and Mary
so few, Dulcie had spent a night of agonized loneliness. Then she had
gone to Mary.
"I want my Peggy back."
"You gave her to me."
"But I didn't know how much I loved her, Mary. I'll buy you a nice new
doll, but I want my Peggy back."
It was then that Mary had called her Indian giver. Mary had been a
sturdy little thing with tight-braided brown hair. She had worn on that
historic occasion a plain blue gingham with a white collar. To the
ordinary eye she seemed just an every-day freckled sort of child, but to
Dulcie she had been a little dancing devil, as she had stuck out her
forefinger and jeered "Indian giver!"
Dulcie had held to her point and had carried her Peggy off in triumph.
Mary, with characteristic independence, had refused to accept the
beautiful doll which Dulcie bought with the last cent of her allowance
and brought as a peace offering. In later years they grew to be rather
good friends. They might, indeed, have been intimate, if it had not been
for Dulcie's money and Mary's dislike of anything which savored of
patronage.
It was Mary's almost boyish independence that drew Mills Richardson to
her. Mills wrote books and was the editor of a small magazine. He came
to board with Mary's mother because of the quiet neighborhood. He was
rather handsome in a dark slender fashion. He had the instincts of a
poet, and he was not in the least practical. He needed a prop to lean
on, and Mary gradually became the prop.
She was teaching by that time, but she helped her mother with the
boarders. When Mills came in late at night she would have something for
him in the dining-room--oysters or a club sandwich or a pot of
coffee--and she and her mother and Mills would have a cozy time of it.
In due season Mills asked her to marry him, and his dreams had to do
with increased snugness and with shelter from the outside world.
They had been engaged three months when Dulcie came home from college.
There was nothing independent or practical about Dulcie. She was a real
romantic lady, and she appealed to Mills on the aesthetic side. He saw
her first in church with the light shining on her from a stained-glass
window. In the middle of that same week Mrs. Cowan gave a garden party
as a home-coming celebration for her daughter. Dulcie wore embroidered
white and a floppy hat, and her eyes when she talked to Mills were
worshipful.
He found himself swayed at last by a grand passion. He thought of Dulcie
by day and dreamed of her by night. Then he met her by accident one
afternoon on Connecticut Avenue, and they walked down together to the
Speedway, where the willows were blowing in the wind and the water was
ruffled; and there with the shining city back of them and the Virginia
hills ahead, Mills, flaming, declared his passion, and Dulcie,
trembling, confessed that she too cared.
Mills grew tragic: "Oh, my beloved, have you come too late?"
Dulcie had not heard of his engagement to Mary. Mills told her, and that
settled it. She had very decided ideas on such matters. A man had no
right to fall in love with two women. If such a thing happened, there
was only one way out of it. He had given his promise and he must keep
it. He begged, but could not shake her. She cared a great deal, but she
would not take him away from Mary.
Mary knew nothing of what had occurred; she thought that Mills was
working too hard. She was working hard herself, but she was very happy.
She had a hope chest and sat up sewing late o' nights.
Before Mary and Mills were married Dulcie's mother died, and Dulcie went
abroad to live with an aunt. Five years later she married an American
living in Paris. He was much older than she, and it was rumored that she
was not happy. Ten years after her marriage she returned to Washington a
widow.
It was at once apparent that she had changed. She wore charming but
sophisticated clothes, made on youthful lines so that she seemed nearer
twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She
had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest
change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule
philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy.
Hence when she met Mills and found the old flames lighted in his eyes,
she stirred the ashes of her dead romance and discovered a spark. It was
pleasant after that to talk with him in dim corners at people's houses.
Now and then she invited him and Mary to her own big house with plenty
of other guests, so that she was not missed if she walked with Mills in
the garden. She meant no harm and she was really fond of Mary.
The years had not been so kind to Mills as to Dulcie. They had stolen
some of his slenderness, and his hair was thin at the back. But he wrote
better books, and it was Mary who had helped him write them. She had
made of his house a home. She was still the same sturdy soul. Her bright
color had faded and her hair was gray. Life with Mills had not been an
easy road to travel. She had traveled it with loss of youth, perhaps,
but with no loss of self-respect. She knew that her husband was in some
measure what he was because of her. She had kept the children away from
his study door; she had seen that he was nourished and sustained. She
had prodded him at times to increased activities. He had resented the
prodding, but it had resulted in a continuity of effort which had added
to his income.
Dulcie came into Mary's life as something very fresh and stimulating.
She spoke of it to Mills.
"It is almost as if I had been abroad to hear her talk. She has had such
interesting experiences."
It was not Dulcie's experiences which interested Mills; it was the
loveliness of her profile, the glint of her hair, the youth in her, the
renewed urge of youth in himself.
Priscilla Dodd saw what had happened. Priscilla was the aunt with whom
Dulcie had lived in Paris; and she was a wise, if worldly, old woman.
She saw rocks ahead for Dulcie.
"He's in love with you, my dear."
Dulcie, in a rose satin house coat which shone richly in the flame of
Aunt Priscilla's open fire, was not disconcerted.
"I know. Mary doesn't satisfy him, Aunt Cilla."
"And you do?"
"Yes."
"The less you see of him the better."
"I'm not sure of that."
"Why not?"
"I can inspire him, be the torch to illumine his path."