The Gay Cockade
"Nawm," and William went down to answer the blows of the brass knocker.
We heard him open the door, we heard the crisp, quick voice. We heard
William's stately response. Then the quick voice said: "Will you tell
your mistress that I shall wait?"
William came up with the message. "He's settin' on the po'ch, an' he
looks like he was makin' out to set there all night."
"Let him sit," said Lady Crusoe inelegantly. "Lock all of the doors,
William, and serve the tea."
She sat there and drank a cup of it scalding hot, with her head in the
air and her foot tapping the floor. But I couldn't drink a drop. I was
just sick with the thought of how he loved her, and of how she had
hardened her heart.
At last I couldn't stand it any longer. The tears rolled down my cheeks.
Lady Crusoe set her cup on the tray and stared at me in amazement.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, how can you--when he loves you?"
I don't know how I dared say it, for her eyes were blazing in her white
face, and my heart was thumping, but there was Robinson Crusoe crowing
in his hooded cradle, and Robin's father was on the front step, with the
old oak door shut and barred against him.
She leaned forward, and I knew what was coming. "How did you know it
was--my husband?"
My eyes met hers squarely. "He came to the store. He was looking for
you."
"And you told him that I was here?"
"No. I wanted to. But I had promised."
For a little while neither of us spoke. The silence was broken by a
thud, as if a flying squirrel had dropped from the roof to the balcony.
A stick of wood fell apart in the grate, and the crow of the baby in the
hooded cradle was answered by the baby on my lap.
Lady Crusoe hugged her knees with her white arms as if she were cold,
although the room was hot with the blazing fire. "I think you might have
told me. It would have been the friendly thing to have told me--"
"Billy thought it wasn't best."
"What had Billy to do with it?"
"Billy has everything to do with me. I talked it over with him--and--and
Billy's such a darling to talk things over--"
I broke down and sobbed and sobbed, and the tears dripped on Junior's
precious head. And at last she said, her face softened, "You silly
little thing, what do you want me to do?"
"If it were Billy, I should ask him in--and show him--the baby--"
"If it were Billy, you would set your heart under his heel for him to
step on. I am not like that--"
Another squirrel dropped to the balcony. The sun was setting, and
between the velvet curtains I could see it blood-red behind the hills.
Lady Crusoe rose, pacing the room restlessly. The wind rising rattled
the long windows. A shadow blotted out the sun.
"I suppose if you were I," she said at last, "you'd take your baby in
your arms, and go down and say to that man on the steps, 'Come in and be
lord of the manor and the ruler of your wife and child.'"
I held Junior close and my voice trembled. "I should never say a thing
like that to--Billy--"
"What would you say?"
"I should say"--I choked over it, and broke down at the end--"oh, lover,
lover, this is your son--and I am his happy mother--"
She stopped in front of me and stood looking down, with the anger all
gone from her eyes. Then, before she could turn or cry out, the long
windows were struck open by something that was stronger than the wind.
There had been no flying squirrels on the balcony, and the shadow which
had hidden the sun was the breadth and height of the big man who stood
between the velvet curtains! He crossed the room at a stride.
"Did you think that bolts and bars could keep me from you?" he asked,
and took Lady Crusoe's hands in a tight grip and drew her toward him.
She resisted for a moment. Then her white slenderness was crushed in his
hungry arms.
Well, as soon as I could gather up Junior and his belongings, I went
down to wait for Billy. But before I went I saw her drop on her knees
beside the hooded cradle and lift out little Robin, and, still kneeling,
hold him up toward his father, as the nun holds up Galahad in the Holy
Grail.
And what do you think I heard her say?
_"Oh, lover, lover, this is your son--and I am his happy mother!"_
Billy came in glowing from his walk in the sharp air, and I can't tell
you how good it seemed to feel his cold cheek against my cheek, and his
warm lips on mine. We were a rapturous trio in front of the library
fire, and there we were joined presently by the rapturous trio from
above stairs. They treated Billy and me as if we were a pair of guardian
angels. Then we had dinner together, with Mandy and William in the
background beaming.
And that night I told Billy all about it. "Isn't it beautiful, Billy?
They are going to live on the old Davenant place, and it is to be their
home."
Everybody calls on us now. You see, Lady Crusoe's family is older than
any of the others, and then there's her husband's money. And I shine in
her reflected light, for our friendship, as she says, is founded on a
rock. But Billy says it is founded on a wreck. Yet while he jokes about
it, I know that he is proud of his friendship with Robin's father. And
when the spring comes, we are to take old Tid and our blessed Junior and
our family effects to an adorable cottage with a garden on all four
sides of it and set well back from the road. You see, we feel that we
can afford it, for we have the exclusive business of supplying the needs
of the Davenant estate, and we are thus financially on our feet.
A REBELLIOUS GRANDMOTHER
Mrs. Cissy Beale and her daughter Cecily sat together in the latter's
bedroom--a bewitching apartment, in which pale-gray paper and pale-gray
draperies formed an effective background for the rosewood furniture and
the French mirrors and tapestried screens.
Between the two women was a bassinet and a baby.
"You act," said Cecily, "as if you were sorry about--the baby."
Her mother, who lay stretched at ease on a pillowed couch, shook her
head.
"I'm not sorry about the baby--she's a darling--but you needn't think
I'm going to be called 'grandmother,' Cecily. A grandmother is a person
who settles down. I don't expect to settle down. My life has been hard.
I struggled and strove through all those awful years after your
father--left me. I educated you and Bob. And now you've both married
well, and I've a bit of money ahead from my little book. For the first
time in my life I can have leisure and pretty clothes; for the first
time in my life I feel young; and then, absolutely without warning, you
come back from Europe with your beautiful Surprise, and expect me to
live up to it--"
"Oh, no!" Cecily protested.
"Yes, you do," insisted little Mrs. Beale. She sat up and gazed at her
daughter accusingly. With the lace of her boudoir cap framing her small,
fair face, she looked really young--as young almost as the demure
Cecily, who, in less coquettish garb, was taking her new motherhood very
seriously.
"Yes, you do," Mrs. Beale repeated. "I know just what you expect of me.
You expect me to put on black velvet and old lace and diamonds. I shan't
dare to show you my new afternoon frock--it's _red_, Cecily, geranium
_red_; I shan't dare to wear even the tiniest slit in my skirts; I
shan't dare to wear a Bulgarian sash or a Russian blouse, or a low
neck--without expecting to hear some one say, disapprovingly, 'And
she's a _grandmother_!'" She paused, and Cecily broke in tumultuously:
"I should think you'd be proud of--the baby."
"No, I'm not proud." Mrs. Beale thrust her toes into a pair of
silver-embroidered Turkish slippers and stood up. "I'm not proud just at
this moment, Cecily. You see--there's Valentine Landry."
"Mother--!"
"Now please don't say it that way, Cecily. He's half in love with me,
and I'm beginning to like him, awfully. I've never had a bit of romance
in my life. I married your father when I was too young to know my own
mind, and he was much older than I. Then came the years of struggle
after he went away.... I was a good wife and a good mother. I worshiped
you and Bob, and I gave my youth for you. I never thought of any other
man while your father lived, even though he did not belong to me. And
now he is dead. You'll never know--I hope you may _never_ know--what
drudgery means as I have known it. I've written my poor little screeds
when I was half-dead with fatigue; I've been out in cold and rain to get
news; I've interviewed all sorts of people when I've hated them and
hated the work. And if now I want to have my little fling, why not?
Everybody effervesces some time. This is my moment--and you can't expect
me to spoil it by playing the devoted grandmother."
The baby was wailing, a little hungry call, which made her mother take
her up and say, hastily: "It's time to feed her. You won't mind,
mother?"
"Yes, I _do_ mind," said the little lady. "I don't like that Madonna
effect, with the baby in your arms. It makes me feel horribly frivolous
and worldly, Cecily. But it doesn't change my mind a bit."
After a pause, the Madonna-creature asked, "Who is Valentine Landry?"
Mrs. Beale had her saucy little cap off, and was brushing out her thin,
light locks in which the gray showed slightly. But she stopped long
enough to explain. "He isn't half as sentimental as his name. I met him
in Chicago at the Warburtons', just before I made a success of my book.
I was very tired, and he cheered me a lot. He's from Denver, and he made
his money in mines. He hasn't married, because he hasn't had time. We're
awfully good friends, but he doesn't know my age. He knows that I have a
daughter, but not a grand-daughter. He thinks of me as a young
woman--not as a grandmother-creature in black silk and mitts--"
"_Mother_! nobody expects you to wear black silk and mitts--"
"Well, you expect me to have a black-silk-and-mitt mind. You know you
are thinking this very minute that there is no idiot like an old
one--Cecily--"
The girl flushed. "I don't think you are quite kind, mother."
Mrs. Beale laughed and forgot to be cynical. "I know what you'd like to
have me, dearie, but this is my moment of emancipation." She crossed the
room and looked down at the tiny bit of humanity curled like a kitten in
the curve of her daughter's arm. "I'm not going to be your grandmother,
yet, midget," she announced, with decision. Then, "Cecily, I think when
she's old enough I shall have her call me--Cupid--"
And laughing in the face of her daughter's horrified protest, the
mutinous grandparent retired precipitately to her own room.
Three hours later, Mrs. Cissy Beale went forth to conquer, gowned in a
restaurant frock of shadow lace topped by a black tulle hat.
Valentine Landry, greeting her in Cecily's white-and-gold drawing-room,
was breezy and radiant. "You're as lovely as ever," he said, as he took
her hand; "perhaps a bit lovelier because you are glad to see me."
"I am glad," she assured him; "and it is so nice to have you come before
the summer is at an end. We can have a ride out into Westchester, and
come back by daylight to dinner."
"And no chaperons?"
"No." She was looking up at him a little wistfully. "We know each other
too well to have to drag in a lot of people, don't we? It is the men
whom women trust with whom they go alone."
He met her glance gravely. "Do you know," he said, "that you have the
sweetest way of putting things? A man simply has to come up to your
expectations. He'd as soon think of disappointing a baby as of
disappointing you."
His selection of a simile was unfortunate. Mrs. Beale's eyes became
fixed upon a refractory button of her glove.
"Please help me," she said; "your fingers are stronger," and as he bent
above her hand she forgot the baby, forgot her new estate, forgot