The Gay Cockade
"she wouldn't let me, come if she did."
"Why not?"
"I am supposed to be chaperoned."
"My dear child, I told you to bring either or both of your sisters."
"I don't want them. They would spoil it."
"How?"
She tried to explain. He and she could see things in the old Capitol
that Amy and Ethel couldn't.
He laughed, but knew it true. Anne's imagination met his in a rather
remarkable fashion. When they walked through Statuary Hall they saw not
Fulton and Pere Marquette and Carroll of Carrollton; they saw, rather, a
thousand ships issuing forth on the steam of a teakettle; they saw
civilization following a black-frocked prophet; they saw aristocracy
raising its voice in the interest of democracy.
As for the mysterious whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of
acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or
the shriek of a banshee.
"Don't say every-day things to me," Anne had instructed Maxwell when he
had first placed her behind a mottled marble pillar before leaving for
the spot where he could speak to her by this unique wireless.
There came to her, therefore, a part of a famous speech; the murmured
words flung back by that strange sounding board rang like a bell:
"Give me liberty or give me death!"
She emerged from her corner, starry-eyed. "It was as if I heard him say
it."
"Perhaps it was he, and I was only a mouthpiece."
"I should think they'd like to come back. Will you come?"
He laughed. "Who knows? I'll come if you are here."
To have brought a third into these adventures would have robbed them of
charm. Knowing this he argued that the child was safe with him. Why
worry?
They always lunched together before he took her up to the Members'
Gallery, and went himself to the floor of the House. He let her order
what she pleased and liked The definite way in which she did it. They
had usually, chops and peas, or steak, and ice-cream at the end.
III
Then suddenly; things stopped. The reason that they stopped was Murray.
He saw Anne one day in the House Gallery and asked Amy about it.
"How did she happen to be up there alone?"
Amy asked Anne. Anne told the truth.
"I've had lunch three times with Mr. Sears, and I've listened to his
speeches. It's something about the League of Nations. He believes in it,
but thinks we've got to be careful about tying ourselves up."
Amy did not care in the least what Maxwell Sears believed. The thing
that worried her was Murray. She wanted him to approve of Anne. If Amy
had thought in a less limited circle she might have worked the thing out
that if Maxwell married Anne it would narrow Murray's choice down to
herself and Ethel. But there was always that vague fear of some outside
siren who would capture Murray. If he had Anne, he would then be safely
in the family.
She realized, in the days following the revelation of the clandestine
meetings with Maxwell, that Murray was depending upon her to see that
Anne's affections did not stray into forbidden paths. He said as much
one afternoon when he found Amy alone in an atmosphere of old portraits,
old books, old bronzes. She sat in a Jacobean chair and poured tea for
him. The massive lines of the chair made her proportions seem
wraithlike. Her white face with its fixed spots of red was a high light
among the shadows.
"Where's Anne?"
"She and Ethel have gone to the matinee with Molly Winchell."
"Why didn't you go?"
"Molly never takes but two of us and, of course, this is Anne's first
winter out. I have to step back--and let her have her chance."
He chose to be gallant. "You are always lovely, Amy."
His compliment fell cold. Amy felt old and tired. She had a pain in her
side. It had been getting very bad of late, and she coughed at night.
She had been to her doctor, and again he had emphasized the need of a
change of climate and of nourishing food. Amy had come away unconvinced.
She would have a chance in July when she and her sisters would go to
the Eastern Shore for their annual visit to their Aunt Elizabeth. As for
different food, she ate enough--all the doctors in the world couldn't
make her spend any more money on the table.
Murray stood up very straight by the mantelpiece, under the portrait of
one of the Merryman great-grandfathers in a bag wig, and talked of Anne:
"I believe I am falling in love with her, Amy."
Amy's heart said, "It has come at last." Her brain said, "He has
discovered it because of Maxwell Sears." Her lips said, "I don't wonder.
She's a dear child, Murray."
"She's beautiful."
Murray swayed up a little on his toes. It made him seem thinner and
taller. He could see himself reflected in the long mirror on the
opposite wall. He liked the reflection of the thin tall man.
"She's beautiful, Amy. I am going to ask her to marry me. I can't have
some other fellow running off with her. She belongs to Georgetown."
He seemed to think that settled it. The pain in Amy's side was sharper.
She felt that she couldn't quite stand seeing Murray happy with Anne.
"She's--she's such a child." Her voice shook.
"Well," said Murray, glancing at the tall thin man in the mirror, "of
course she is young. But Maxwell Sears is coming here a lot. Is he in
love with her?"
"I'm not sure. She amuses him. She isn't in love with him or with
anybody."
"Not even with me?" Murray laughed a little. "But we can remedy that,
can't we, Amy? But you might hint at what I'm expecting of her. I don't
want to startle her." He came and sat down beside her. "You are always a
great dear about doing things for me."
The pain stabbed her like a knife. "I'll do my best."
She had a nervous feeling that she must keep Murray from talking to her
like that. She rang for hot water, and their one maid, Charlotte,
brought it in a Sheffield jug. Then Ethel and Anne and Molly Winchell
arrived, and once more Murray stood up, tall and self-conscious as he
stole side glances at himself in the mirror.
Maxwell Sears had brought the three women home. He had a fashion of
following up Anne's engagements and putting his car at her disposal.
When Amy had vetoed any more adventures at the Capitol he had conceded
good-naturedly that she was right. After that he had always included Amy
or Ethel in his invitations.
"They are very pretty dragons," he had written to Winifred, "and little
Anne is like a princess shut in a tower."
Winifred, reading the letter, had brooded upon it. "He's falling in
love. A child like that--she'll spoil his future."
Congress was having night sessions. "If I could only have you up there,"
Maxwell had said to Anne as he had driven her home from the matinee,
with old Molly and Ethel on the back seat. "I should steal you if I
dared."
"Please dare."
"Do you mean it?"
"Yes. To-night. Ethel and Amy are going to a Colonial Dames meeting with
Molly Winchell. I never go. I hate ancestors."
"I shouldn't let you do it," he hesitated, "but ghosts walk after dark
in the Capitol corridors."
"I know," she nodded. "Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln."
"Yes. Then you'll come?"
"Of course."
It was the thought of her rendezvous with him that lighted her eyes when
she talked to Murray. But Murray did not know. So he swayed up on his
toes and glanced in the glass and was glad of his thinness and
tallness.
Maxwell came for Anne promptly. "You must get me back by ten," she told
him. "I have a key, and Charlotte's out."
It was a night of nights, never to be forgotten. Maxwell did not take
Anne into the Gallery. He had not brought her there to hear speeches or
to be conspicuous in the glare of lights. He led her through shadowy
corridors--up wide dim stairways.
At one turn he touched her arm. "Look!" he whispered.
"What?"
"Lafayette passed us--on the stairs."
It was a great game! On the east front Columbus spoke to them of ships
that sailed toward the sunset; in the Rotunda they kept a tryst with
William Penn; from the west-front portico they saw a city beautiful--the
streets under the moon were rivers of light--the great monument reached
like the soul of Washington toward the stars!
Out there in the moonlight Maxwell spoke of another great soul, gone of
late to join a glorious company.
"It was he who taught me that life is an adventure."
"Greatheart?"
"Yes."
"You loved him too?"
"Yes."
Anne caught her breath. "To think of him dead--to think of them
all--dead."
Maxwell looked down at her. "They live somewhere. You believe that,
don't you?"
"Yes."
He was silent for a moment; then he laid his hand lightly on her
shoulder. "I feel to-night as if they pressed close."
Oh, it was a rare game to meet great souls in odd corners! They could
scarcely tear themselves away. But he got her home before her sisters
arrived, and Anne went to bed soberly, and lay long awake, thinking it
out. She had never before had such a playmate. In all these years she
had starved for other things than food.
IV
In due time Congress adjourned, but Maxwell did not go home. He
continued to see Anne. Amy was at last driven to her duty by Murray. She
could not forbid Maxwell the house. There was nothing to do but talk to
Anne.
Having made up her mind she sought Anne's room at once. Anne, in a
cheap cotton kimono, was braiding her hair for the night. The sleeves of
the kimono were short and showed her thin white arms. Amy had on a
blanket wrapper. Her hair was in metal curlers. She looked old and
tired, and now and then she coughed.
Anne got into bed and drew the covers up to her chin. "I'm so cold, I
believe there are icicles on my eyebrows. Amy, my idea of heaven is a
place where it is as hot as--Hades."
"I don't see where you get such ideas. Ethel and I don't talk that way.
We don't even think that way, Anne."
"Maybe when I am as old as you---" Anne began, and was startled at the
look on Amy's face.
"I'm not old!" Amy said passionately. "Anne, I haven't lived at all, and
I'm only thirty."
Anne stared at her. "Oh, my darling, I didn't mean---"
"Of course you didn't. And it was silly of me to say such a thing. Anne,
I'm cold. I'm going to sit on the foot of your bed and wrap up while I
talk to you."
Anne's bed had four pineapple posts and a pink canopy. The governor of a
state had slept in that bed for years. He was one of the Merryman
grandfathers. Amy could have bought mountains of food for the price of
that bed. But she would have starved rather than sell it.
Anne under the pink canopy was like a rose--a white rose with a faint
flush. The color in Amy's cheeks was fixed and hard. Yet even with her
oldness and tiredness and metal curlers she had the look of race which
attracted Murray.
"Anne," she said, "Murray and I had a long talk about you the other
day."
"Murray always talks--long." Anne was yawning.
"Please be serious, Anne. He wants to marry you."
"Marry me!" incredulously. "I thought it was you; or Ethel."
"Well, it isn't," wearily. "And it's a great opportunity--for you,
Anne."
"Opportunity for what?"
Amy had a sense of the futility of trying to explain.
"There aren't many men like him."
"Fortunately."
"Anne, how can you? He's really paying you a great compliment."
"Why didn't he ask me himself?"
"He didn't want to startle you. You're so young. Murray has extreme
fineness of feeling."
Anne tilted her chin. "I don't see what he finds in me."
"You're young"--with a tinge of bitterness--"and he says you are
beautiful."
Anne threw off the covers and set her bare feet on the floor.
"Beautiful!" she scoffed, but went to the mirror. "I'm thin," she
meditated, "but I've got nice hair."
"We all have nice hair," said Amy; "but you've got Ethel's complexion
and my figure."
"I don't think I want to be loved for my complexion." Anne turned