The Gay Cockade
rather earn fifteen dollars a week and own his soul. And he isn't a
hypocrite. His friends knew about his marriage. Tommy Drew knew, and I
knew. And there wasn't any particular reason why he should tell the rest
of you, was there? There wasn't any particular reason why he should tell
Tillotson?"
A murmur of laughter followed her questions. There was a feeling in the
crowd that the joke was on Tillotson.
"I wonder how many of you have told your pasts to Tinkersfield! How many
of you have made Tillotson your father confessor?
"As for me"--her head was high--"I sell sandwiches. I am very busy. I
hardly have time to think. But when I do think it is of something
besides village gossip."
She grew suddenly earnest; leaned down to them. "You haven't time to
think of it either," she told them; "have you, men of Tinkersfield?"
Her appeal was direct, and the answer came back to her in a roar from
the men who knew courage when they saw it; who knew, indeed, innocence!
"No!"
And it was that "No" which beat Tillotson.
"The way she put it over," Atwood exulted afterward, "to a packed crowd
like this!"
"The thing about Jane"--Henry was very seriously trying to say the thing
as he saw it--"the thing about Jane is that she sees things straight.
And she makes other people see."
IX
Well, Tillotson was beaten, and the men who supported O-liver came out
of the fight feeling as if they had killed something unclean.
And the morning after the election O-liver had a little note from Jane.
"I've got to go away. I didn't want to worry you with it before this. I
have saved enough money to start in at some college where I can work for
a part of my tuition. I have had experience in my little lunch room that
ought to be a help somewhere.
"When I finish college I'm going into some sort of occupation that will
provide a pleasant home for mother and me. I want books, and lovely
things, and a garden; and I'd like to speak a language or two and have
cultured friends. Then some day when you are made President you can say
to yourself: 'I am proud of my friend, Jane.' And I'll come to your
inauguration and watch you ride to the White House, and I'll say to
myself as I see you ride, 'I've loved him all these years.'
"But I shan't let myself say it now. And that's why I'm going away. And
I'm going without saying good-bye because I think it will be easier for
both of us. You and I can't be friends. What we feel is too big. I found
that out about myself that night when you sat there on the platform, and
I wanted to save you from Tillotson. If I'm going to work and be happy
in my work I've got to get away. And you will work better because I am
gone. I mustn't be here--O-liver."
Jane had indeed seen straight. O-liver laid the note down on his desk
and looked up at the mountain. He needed to look up. If he had looked
down for a moment he would have followed Jane.
X
And now there was no sandwich stand in Tinkersfield. But there was a
good hotel. O-liver saw to that. He got Henry Bittinger to put up the
money, with Tommy and his mother in charge. O-liver lived in the hotel
in a suite of small rooms, and when Atwood Jones passed that way the
four men dined together as O-liver's guests.
"Some day we'll eat with you in Washington," was Atwood's continued
prophecy.
They always drank "To Jane." Now and then Atwood brought news of her.
First from the college, and then as the years passed from the beach
resort where she had opened a tea room. She was more beautiful than
ever, more wonderful. Her tea room and shop were most exclusive and
artistic.
"Sandwich Jane!" said O-liver. "How long ago it seems!"
It was five years now and he had not seen her. And next month he was to
go to Washington. Not as President, but representing his district in
Congress. Tommy's hotel had outgrown the original modest building and
was now modern and fireproof. Henry was married, he had had several new
cars, and his wife wore sables and seal.
The old arcade was no more; nor the old post-office. But O-liver still
talked to admiring circles in the hotel lobby or to greater crowds in
the town hall.
He still would take no money from his father, but he saw much of him,
for Mrs. Lee was dead. The Tudor house was without a mistress. It seemed
a pity that O-liver had no wife to grace its halls.
The newspapers stated that Fluffy Hair's income had doubled. Whether
this was true or not it sounded well, and Fluffy Hair still seemed young
on the screen. Jane would go now and then and look at her and wonder
what sort of woman this was who had laughed at O-liver.
Then one day a telegram came to O-liver in his suite of rooms. And that
day and for two nights he rode Mary Pick over the hills and through the
canon and down to the sea, and came to a place where Jane's tea room was
met in the center of a Japanese garden--a low lovely building, with its
porches open to the wide Pacific.
He had not seen her for so long that he was not quite prepared for the
change. She was thinner and paler and more beautiful, with an air of
distinction that was new. It was as if in visualizing his future she had
pictured herself in it--as first lady of the land. Such a silly dream
for Sandwich Jane!
They were quite alone when he came to her. It was morning, and the
porches were empty of guests. Jane was in a long wicker chair, with her
pot of coffee on an hour-glass table. Far down on the terrace two Jap
gardeners clipped and cut and watered and saw nothing.
"You are younger than ever," Jane said when they had clasped hands.
"Will you ever grow old, O-liver?"
"The men say not." He seated himself opposite her. "Jane, Jane, it's
heavenly to see you. I've been--starved!"
She had hungered and thirsted for him. Her hand shook a little as she
poured him a cup of coffee.
"I told you not to come, O-liver."
He laid the telegram before her. Fluffy Hair was dead!
The yellow sheet lay between, defying them to speak so soon of
happiness.
"To-morrow," O-liver said, "I go to Washington. When will you come to
me, Jane?"
Her hand went out to him. Her breath was quick. "In time to hear your
first speech, O-liver. I'll sit in the gallery, and lean over and listen
and say to myself, 'He's mine, he's mine!'"
She heard many speeches in the months that followed, and sometimes Tommy
or Atwood or Henry, traveling across the continent, came and sat beside
her. And Atwood always clung to his prophecy: "He'll be governor next;
and then it'll be the White House. Why not?"
And Jane, dreaming, asked herself "Why?"
The East had had its share. Had the time not come for a nation to seek
its leader in the golden West?
LADY CRUSOE
Billy and I came down from the North and opened a grocery store at
Jefferson Corners. It is a little store and there aren't many houses
near it--just the railroad station and a big shed or two. Beyond the
sheds a few cabins straggle along the road, and then begin the great
plantations, which really aren't plantations any more, because nobody
around here raises much of anything in these days. They just sit and
sigh over the things that are different since the war.
That's what Billy says about them. Billy is up-to-date and he has a
motor-cycle. He made up his mind when he came that he was going to put
some ginger into the neighborhood. So he rides miles every morning on
his motor-cycle to get orders, and he delivers the things himself unless
it is barrels of flour or cans of kerosene or other heavy articles, and
then he hires somebody to help him. At first he had William Watters and
his mule. William is black and his mule is gray, and they are both old.
It took them hours to get anywhere, and I used to feel sorry for them.
But when I found out that compared to Billy and me they lived on flowery
beds of ease, I stopped sympathizing. They both have enough, to eat, and
they work only when they want to. Billy and I work all the time. We have
our way to make in the world, and we feel that it all depends on
ourselves. We started out with nothing ahead of us but my ambitions and
Billy's energy, and a few hundred dollars which my guardian turned over
to me when I married Billy on my twenty-first birthday.
As soon as we were married, we came to Virginia. Billy and I had an idea
that everything south of the Mason and Dixon line was just waiting for
us, and we wanted to earn the eternal gratitude of the community by
helping it along. But after we had lived at Jefferson Corners for a
little while, we began to feel that there wasn't any community. There
didn't seem to be any towns like our nice New England ones, with
sociable trolley-cars connecting them and farmhouses in a lovely line
between. You can ride for miles through this country and never pass
anything but gates. Then way up in the hills you will see a clump of
trees, and in the clump you can be pretty sure there is a house. In the
winter when the leaves are off the trees you can see the house, but in
the summer there is no sign of it. In the old days they seemed to feel
that they were lacking somewhat in delicacy if they exposed their
mansions to the rude gaze of the public.
There was one mansion that Billy took me to now and then. It was empty,
and that was why we went. The big houses which were occupied were not
open to us, except in a trades-person sort of fashion, and Billy and I
are not to be condescended to--we had a pair of grandfathers in the
_Mayflower_. But that doesn't count down here, where everybody goes back
to William the Conqueror.
That great big empty house was a fine place for our Sunday afternoon
outings. We always went to church in the morning, and people were very
kind, but it was kindness with a question-mark. You see Billy and I live
over the store, and none of them had ever lived on anything but
ancestral acres.
So our Sunday mornings were a bit stiff and disappointing, but our
afternoons were heavenly. We discovered the Empty House in the spring,
and there was laurel on the mountains and the grass was young and green
on the slopes, and the sky was a faint warm blue with the sailing
buzzards black against it. Billy and I used to stop at the second gate,
which was at the top of the hill, and look off over the other hills
where the pink sheep were pastured. I am perfectly sure that there are
no other sheep in the whole wide world like those Albemarle sheep. The
spring rains turn the red clay into a mud which sticks like paint, and
the sheep are colored a lovely terra-cotta which fades gradually to
pink.
The effect is impressionistic, like purple cows. Billy doesn't care for
it, but I do. And I adore the brilliant red of the roads. Billy says
he'll take good brown earth and white flocks. He might be reconciled to
black sheep but never to pink ones.
We used to eat our supper on the porch of the Empty House. It had great
pillars, and it was rather awe-inspiring to sit on the front steps and
look up the whole length, of those Corinthian columns. Billy and I felt
dwarfed and insignificant, but we forgot it when we turned our eyes to
the hills.
The big door behind us and the blank windows were shut and shuttered
close. There were flying squirrels on the roof and little blue-tailed
lizards on the stone flagging in front of the house; and there was an
old toad who used to keep us company. I called him Prince Charming, and
I am sure he was as old as Methuselah, and lived under that stone in
some prehistoric age.
We just loved our little suppers. We had coffee in our thermos bottle,
and cold fried chicken and bread and butter sandwiches and chocolate
cake. We never changed, because we were always afraid that we shouldn't
like anything else so well, and we were sure of the chicken and the
chocolate cake.