The Gay Cockade
And after we had eaten our suppers we would talk about what kind of
house we would build when our ship came in. Billy and I both have nice
tastes, and we know what we want; and we feel that the grocery store is
just a stepping-stone to better things.
The sunsets were late in those spring days, and there would be pink and
green and pale amethyst in the western sky, and after that deep sapphire
and a silver moon. And as it grew darker the silver would turn to gold,
and there would be a star--and then more stars until the night came on.
I can't tell you how we used to feel. You see we were young and in
love, and life was a pretty good thing to us. There was one perfect
night when the hills were flooded with moonlight. We seemed all alone in
a lovely world and I whispered:
"Oh, Billy, Billy, and some folks think that there isn't any God--"
And Billy put his arm around me and patted my cheek, and we didn't say
anything for a long time.
It was just a week later that Lady Crusoe came. I knew that some one was
in the house as soon as we passed the second gate. The door was still
closed, and the shutters were not opened, but I heard a clock strike--a
ship's clock--with bells.
I clutched Billy. "Listen," I said.
He heard it, too; "Who in the dickens?" he demanded.
"There's somebody in the house--"
"Nonsense--"
"Billy, there must be, and we can't sit on the porch."
"You stay here, and I'll go around to the back."
But I wouldn't let him go alone. At the back of the house a window was
open, and then we were sure.
"We'd better leave," I said, but Billy insisted that we stay. "If they
are new people, I'll find out their names, and come up to-morrow and get
their orders."
We went around to the front door and knocked and knocked, but nobody
answered. So we sat down on the front step and presently Billy said that
we might as well eat our supper, for very evidently nobody was at home.
I didn't feel a bit comfortable about it, but I opened our basket and
got out our cups and plates, and Billy poured the coffee and passed the
chicken and the bread and butter sandwiches. And just then the door
creaked and the knob turned!
My first impulse was to gather up the lunch and tumble it into the
basket; but I didn't. I just sat there looking up as calmly as if I were
serving tea at my own table, and Billy sat there too looking up.
The door opened and a voice said, "Oh, if you are eating supper, may I
have some?"
It was a lovely voice, and Billy jumped to his feet. A lovely head came
after the voice. Just the head, peeping around--the body was hidden by
the door. On the head was a lace cap with a gold rose, and the hair
under the cap was gold.
"You see, I just got up," said the voice, "and I haven't had any
breakfast--"
Billy and I gasped. It was seven P.M., and the meal that we were
serving was supper!
"Do you mind my coming out?" said the voice. "I am not exactly clothed
and in my right mind, but perhaps I'll do."
She opened the door wider and stepped down. I saw that her slippers had
gold roses and that they were pale pink like the sunset. She wore a
motor coat of tan cloth which covered her up, but I had a glimpse of a
pink silk negligee underneath.
She sat quite sociably on the steps with us. "I am famished," she said.
"I haven't had a thing to eat for twenty-four hours."
We gasped again. "How did it happen?"
"I was--shipwrecked," she said, "in a motor-car--I am the only
survivor--"
Her eyes twinkled. "I'll tell you all about it presently." Then she
broke off and laughed.
"But first will you feed a starving castaway?"
Yet she didn't really tell us anything. She ate and ate, and it was the
prettiest thing to see her. She was dainty and young and eager like a
child at a party.
"How good everything is!" she said, at last with a sigh. "I don't think
I was ever so hungry in my life."
Billy and I didn't eat much. You see we were too interested, and
besides we had had our dinner.
As I have said, she didn't really tell us anything. "It was an accident,
and I came up here. And the old clock that you heard strike belonged to
my grandfather. He was an admiral, and it was his clock. I used to
listen to it as a child."
"What happened to the rest--?" Billy asked, bluntly. He was more
concerned about the automobile accident than about her ancestors.
"Oh, do you mean the others in the car?" she came reluctantly back from
the admiral and his ship's clock. "I am sure I don't know. And I am very
sure that I don't care."
"But were any of them killed?"
"No--they are all alive--but you see--it was a shipwreck--and I floated
away--by myself--and this is my island, and you are the nice friendly
savages--" she touched Billy on the arm. He drew away a bit. I knew that
he was afraid she had lost her mind, but I had seen her twinkling eyes.
"Oh, it's all a joke!" I said.
She shook her head. "It isn't exactly a joke, but it might look like
that to other people."
"Are you going to stay?"
"Yes."
"I'll come up in the morning for orders," said Billy promptly. "I keep
the grocery store at Jefferson Corners."
"Oh," she said, and seemed to hesitate; "there won't be any orders."
Billy stared at her. "But there isn't any other store."
"Robinson Crusoe didn't have stores, did he? He found things and lived
on the land. And I am Lady Crusoe."
"Really?" I asked her.
"I've another name--but--if people around here question you--you won't
tell them, will you, that I am here--?"
She said it in such a pretty pleading fashion that of course we
promised. It was late when we had to go. I insisted that we should leave
what remained of the supper, and she seemed glad to get it. "You are
nice friendly savages," she said, with that twinkle in her eyes, "and I
am very grateful. Come into the house and let me show you my clock--"
She showed us more than the clock. I hadn't dreamed in those days when
Billy and I sat alone on the steps of the treasures that were shut up
behind us. The old furniture was dusty, but all the dust in the world
couldn't hide its beauty. The dining-room was hung with cobwebs, but
when the candles were lighted we saw the Sheffield on the old
sideboard, the Chinese porcelains, the Heppelwhite chairs, the painted
sheepskin screen--
She picked out a lovely little pitcher and gave it to me. I did not
learn until afterward that it was pink lustre and worth a pretty penny.
She paid in that way, you see, for her supper, and something in her
manner made me feel that I must not refuse it.
She did not ask us to come again, yet I was sure that she liked us. I
felt that perhaps it was the grocery store which had made her hesitate.
But whatever it was, I must confess that I was a little lonely as I went
away. You see we had come to look forward to our welcome at the Empty
House. We had known that we were the honored guests of the flying
squirrels and the lizards and of old Prince Charming. But now that the
house was no longer empty, we would not be welcome. I was sorry that I
had accepted the pink pitcher. I should have preferred to feel that I
owed no favor to the lady with the twinkling eyes.
It wasn't long after our adventure at the Empty House that Billy asked
William Watters to take a big load to a customer two miles out. But
William couldn't. He was working, he said, at a regular place. We
couldn't imagine William as being regular about anything. He and his
mule were so irregular in their habits. They came and went as they
pleased, and they would take naps whenever the spirit moved them. But
now, as William said, he was "wukin' regular," and he refused to say for
whom he worked. But we found out one day when he drove Lady Crusoe down
in a queer old carriage with his mule as a prancing steed.
He helped her descend as if she had been a queen, and she came in and
talked to Billy. "You see, I've hunted up my friendly savages," she
said. "I've reached the end of my resources." She gave a small order,
and told Billy that she wasn't at all sure when she could pay her bill,
but that there were a lot of things in her old house which he could have
for security.
Billy said gallantly that he didn't need any security, and that her
account could run as long as she wished and that he was glad to serve
her. And he got out his pad and pencil and stood in that nice way of his
at attention.
I listened and looked through a window at the back. I had seen her drive
up, and she was stunning in the same tan motor-coat that she had worn
when we first saw her. But she had on a brown hat and veil and brown
shoes instead of the lace cap and rosy slippers.
She asked about me, and Billy told her that I was in the garden. And I
was in the garden when she came out; but I had to run. She sat down in a
chair on the other side of my little sewing-table and talked to me. It
is such a scrap of a garden that there is only room for a tiny table and
two chairs, but a screen of old cedars hides it from the road, and
there's a twisted apple-tree, and the fields beyond and a glimpse of the
mountains.
"How is the island?" Billy asked her.
She twinkled. "I have a man Friday."
"William Watters?"
She nodded. "The Watters negroes have been our servants for generations.
And William thinks that he belongs to me. He cooks for me and forages.
He shot two squirrels one morning and made me a Brunswick stew. But I
couldn't stand that. You see the squirrels are my friends."
I thought of the flying squirrels and the blue-tailed lizards and the
old toad, and I knew how she felt. And I said so. She looked at me
sharply, and then she laid her hand over mine: "Are you lonely, my
dear?"
I said that I was--a little. Billy had gone in to wait on a customer, so
I dared say it. I told her that nobody had called.
"But why not?" she demanded.
"I think," I said slowly, "it is because we live--over the store."
"I see." And she did see; it was in her blood as well as in the blood of
the rest of them.
Presently she stood up and said that she must go, and it was then that
she noticed the work that was in my basket on the table. She lifted out
a little garment and the red came into her cheeks. "Oh, oh!" she said,
and stood looking at it. When she laid it down, she came around the
table and kissed me. "What a dear you are!" she said, and then she went
away.
William Watters came in very often after that; but he said very little
about Lady Crusoe. He was a faithful old thing, and he had evidently had
instructions. But one morning he brought a fine old Sheffield tray to
Billy and asked him to take his pay out of it, and let Lady Crusoe have
the rest in cash. William Watters didn't call her "Lady Crusoe," he
called her "Miss Lily," which didn't give us the key to the situation in
the least. Billy didn't know how to value the tray, so he asked me. I
knew more than he did, but I wasn't sure. I told him to advance what he
thought was best, and to send it to the city and have it appraised, or
whatever they call it, so he did; and when the check from the antique
shop came it was a big one.
It wasn't long after that that Lady Crusoe called on me. It was a real
call, and she left a card. And she said as she laid it on the table: "As
I told you, I'd rather the rest of the natives didn't know--they haven't
seen me since I was a child, and they think that I am just some stranger
who rents the old place and who wants to be alone."
After she had gone I picked up the card, and what I read there nearly
took my breath away. There are certain names which mean so much that we
get to look upon them as having special significance. The name that was
on Lady Crusoe's card had always stood in my mind for money--oceans of
it. I simply couldn't believe my eyes, and I took it down to Billy.