The Gay Cockade
"Isn't it heavenly to be alone, Jim Crow?"
It was the high moment which I had planned, but I could not grasp it.
Between me and happiness stood the shadow of that other Rosalie,
shrinking from me when I was old as she had shrunk from Perry.
"My dear," I said, and I did not look at her, "I've been thinking a lot
about you."
Her chin was in her hand. "I know."
But she didn't know.
"I've been thinking, Rosalie; and I want to give you something for
Christmas which will make you happy throughout the year."
"You are such a darling, Jim Crow."
"And I have thought of this--a trip to Europe. You'll let me do it,
won't you? There'll be the art galleries, and you can stay as long as
you like."
I could see that she was puzzled. "Do you mean that I am to go--alone?"
she asked slowly.
"There may be some one going. I'll find out."
There was dead silence.
"You will let me do it?" I asked finally.
She came over to my chair and stood looking down at me.
"Why are you sending me alone, Jim Crow?"
I think, then, that she saw the anguish in my eyes. She sank on her
knees beside my chair.
"I don't want to go alone, Jim Crow. I want to stay--with--you."
* * * * *
Well, the jewel is on her breast and a ring to match is on her finger.
And when the spring comes we are to sail for Italy, for France.
Perhaps we shall never come back. And I am going to give Rosalie all
the loveliness that life can hold for her. Now and then she whispers
that she never knew love until I taught it to her. That what she felt
for Perry was but the echo of his own need of her.
"But I'd tramp the muddy roads with you, Jim Crow."
I wonder if she really means it. I wish with all my heart that I might
know it true. I have never told her of my fears and I believe that I can
make her happy. I shall try not to look too far beyond the days we shall
have in the Louvre and the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. We shall search
for beauty, and perhaps I can teach her to find it, before it is too
late, in the things that count.
PETRONELLA
"If you loved a man, and knew that he loved you, and he wouldn't ask you
to marry him, what would you do?"
The Admiral surveyed his grand-niece thoughtfully. "What do you expect
to do, my dear?"
Petronella stopped on the snowy top step and looked down at him. "Who
said I had anything to do with it?" she demanded.
The Admiral's old eyes twinkled. "Let me come in, and tell me about
it."
Petronella smiled at him over her big muff. "If you'll promise not to
stay after five, I'll give you a cup of tea."
"Who's coming at five?"
The color flamed into Petronella's cheeks. In her white coat and white
furs, with her wind-blown brown hair, her beauty satisfied even the
Admiral's critical survey, and he hastened to follow his question by the
assertion, "Of course I'll come in."
Petronella, with her coat off, showed a slenderness which was enhanced
by the straight lines of her white wool gown, with the long sleeves
fur-edged, and with fur at the top of the high, transparent collar. She
wore her hair curled over her ears and low on her forehead, which made
of her face a small and delicate oval. In the big hall, with a roaring
fire in the wide fireplace, she dispensed comforting hospitality to the
adoring Admiral. And when she had given him his tea she sat on a stool
at his feet. "Oh, wise great-uncle," she said, "I am going to tell you
about the Man!"
"Have I ever seen him?"
"No. I met him in London last year, and--well, you know what a trip home
on shipboard means, with all the women shut up in their cabins, and with
moonlight nights, and nobody on deck--"
"So it was an affair of moonlight and propinquity?"
After a pause: "No, it was an affair of the only man in the world for
me."
"My dear child--!"
Out of a long silence she went on: "He thought I was poor. You know how
quietly I traveled with Miss Danvers. And he didn't associate Nell
Hewlett with Petronella Hewlett of New York and Great Rock. And
so--well, you know, uncle, he let himself go, and I let myself go, and
then--"
She drew a long breath. "When we landed, things stopped. He had found
out who I was, and he wrote me a little note, and said he would never
forget our friendship--and that's--all."
She finished drearily, and the bluff old Admiral cleared his throat.
There was something wrong with the scheme of things when his Petronella
couldn't have the moon if she wanted it!
"And what can I do--what can any woman do?" Petronella demanded, turning
on him. "I can't go to him and say, 'Please marry me.' I can't even
think it"; her cheeks burned. "And he'd die before _he'd_ say another
word, and I suppose that now we'll go on growing old, and I'll get
thinner and thinner, and he'll get fatter and fatter, and I'll be an old
maid, and he'll marry some woman who's poor enough to satisfy his pride,
and--well, that will be the end of it, uncle."
"The end of it?" said the gentleman who had once commanded a squadron.
"Well, I guess not, Petronella, if you want him. Oh, the man's a fool!"
"He's not a fool, uncle." The sparks in Petronella's eyes matched the
sparks in the Admiral's.
"Well, if he's worthy of you--"
Petronella laid her cheek against his hand. "The question is not," she
said, faintly, "of his worthiness, but of mine, dear uncle."
Dumbly the Admiral gazed down at that drooping head. Could this be
Petronella--confident, imperious, the daughter of a confident and
imperious race?
He took refuge in the question, "But who is coming at five?"
"He is coming. He is passing through Boston on his way to visit his
mother in Maine. I asked him to come. I told him I was down here by the
sea, and intended to spend Christmas at Great Rock because you were
here, and because this was the house I lived in when I was a little
girl, and that I wanted him to see it; and--I told him the truth,
uncle."
"The truth?"
"That I missed him. That was all I dared say, and I wish you had read
his note of assent. Such a stiff little thing. It threw me back upon
myself, and I wished that I hadn't written him--I wished that he
wouldn't come. Oh, uncle, if I were a man, I'd give a woman the right to
choose. That's the reason there are so many unhappy marriages. Nine
wrong men ask a woman, and the tenth right one _won't_. And finally she
gets tired of waiting for the tenth right one, and marries one of the
nine wrong ones."
"There are women to-day," said the Admiral, "who are preaching a woman's
right to propose."
Petronella gazed at him, thoughtfully. "I could preach a doctrine like
that--but I couldn't practice it. It's easy enough to say to some other
woman, 'Ask him,' but it's different when you are the woman."
"Yet if he asked you," suggested the Admiral, "the world might say that
he wanted your money."
"Why should we care what the world would say?" Petronella was on her
feet now, defending her cause vigorously. "Why should we care? Why, it's
our love against the world, uncle! Why should we care?"
The Admiral stood up, too, and paced the rug as in former days he had
paced the decks. "There must be some way out," he said at last, and
stopped short. "Suppose I speak to him--"
"And spoil it all! Oh, uncle!" Petronella shook him by the lapels of
his blue coat. "A man never knows how a woman feels about such things.
Even you don't, you old darling. And now will you please go; and take
this because I love you," and she kissed him on one cheek, "and this
because it is a quarter to five and you'll have to hurry," and she
kissed him on the other cheek.
The Admiral, being helped into his big cape in the hall, called back, "I
forgot to give you your Christmas present," and he produced a small
package.
"Come here and let me open it," Petronella insisted. And the Admiral,
without a glance at the accusing clock, went back. And thus it happened
that he was there to meet the Man.
It must be confessed that the Admiral suffered a distinct shock as he
was presented to the hero of Petronella's romance. Here was no courtly
youth of the type of the military male line of Petronella's family, but
a muscular young giant of masterful bearing. The Hewlett men had
commanded men; one could see at a glance that Justin Hare had also
commanded women. This, the wise old Admiral decided at once, was the
thing which had attracted Petronella--Petronella, who had held her own
against all masculine encroachments, and who was heart-free at
twenty-five!
"Look what this dearest dear of an uncle has given me," said Petronella,
and held up for the young surgeon's admiration a string of pearls with a
sapphire clasp. "They belonged to my great-aunt. I was named for her,
and uncle says I look like her."
"You have her eyes, my dear, and some of her ways. But she was less
independent. In her time women leaned more, as it were, on man's
strength."
Justin Hare looked at them with interest--at the slender girl in her
white gown, at the tall, straight old man with his air of command.
"Women in these days do not lean," he said, with decision; "they lead."
A spark came into Petronella's eyes. "And do you like the modern type
best?" she challenged.
He answered with smiling directness, "I like you."
The Admiral was pleased with that, though he was still troubled by this
man's difference from the men of his own race. Yet if back of that
honest bluntness there was a heart which would enshrine her--well, that
was all he would ask for this dearest of girls.
He glanced at the clock, and spoke hurriedly: "I must be going, my dear;
it is long after five."
"Must you really go?" asked the mendacious Petronella.
An hour later she was alone. The visit had been a failure. She admitted
that, as she gazed with a sort of agonized dismay through the wide
window to where the sea was churned by the wildness of the northeast
gale. Snow had come with the wind, shutting out the view of the great
empty hotels on the Point, shutting out, too, the golden star of hope
which gleamed from the top of the lighthouse.
Petronella turned away from the blank scene with a little shudder. Thus
had Justin Hare shut her out of his life. He had talked of his mother in
Maine, of his hospital plans for the winter, but not a word had he said
of those moonlight nights when he had masterfully swayed her by the
force of his own passion, had wooed her, won her.
And now there was nothing that she could do. There was never anything
that a woman could do! And so she must bear it. Oh, if she could bear
it!
A little later, when a maid slipped in to light the candles, Petronella
said out of the shadows, "When Jenkins goes to the post-office, I have a
parcel for the mail."
"He's been, miss, and there won't be any train out to-night; the snow
has stopped the trains."
"Not any train!" At first the remark held little significance, but
finally the fact beat against her brain. If the one evening train could
not leave, then Justin Hare must stay in town, and he would have to stay
until Christmas morning!
Petronella went at once to the telephone, and called up the only hotel
which was open at that season. Presently she had Hare at the other end
of the line.
"You must come to my house to dinner," she said. "Jenkins has told me
about your train. Please don't dress--there'll be only Miss Danvers and
uncle; and you shall help me trim my little tree."
Although she told him not to dress, she changed her gown for one of dull
green velvet, built on the simple lines of the white wool she had worn
in the afternoon. The square neck was framed by a collar of Venetian
point, and there was a queer old pin of pearls.
The Admiral, arriving early, demanded: "My dear, what is this? I was