Temple Bailey - The Gay Cockade

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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.

"Look at that," I said, and laid it before him, "and she has asked us to
supper for next Sunday!"

Well, we couldn't make anything of it. Why was a woman with a name like
that down here with nothing to eat but the things that William Watters
could forage for, and that Billy could supply from his little store, and
that she paid for with Sheffield trays?

We had supper that Sunday night in the great dining-room. There was a
five-branched candlestick with tall white candles in the center of the
shining mahogany table and William Watters acted as butler. You never
would have believed how well he did it. And after supper we had coffee
on the front porch and looked out over the hills at the sunset, and the
silver moon and the old toad came out from under his stone and sat with
us.

Lady Crusoe was in a thin white dress which she had made for herself,
and she talked of the old place and of her childhood there. But not a
word did she say of why she had come back to live alone on the Davenant
ancestral acres.

It was her mother, we learned, who was a Davenant, and it was her
mother's father who was the old admiral. She said nothing of the man
whose name was on her card. It was as if she stopped short when she came
to that part of her life, or as if it had never been.

She took me up-stairs after a while and left Billy to smoke on the
porch. She said that she had something that she wanted me to see. Her
room was a huge square one at the southwest corner of the house. There
was a massive four-poster bed with faded blue satin curtains, and there
was a fireplace with fire-dogs and an Adam screen. Lady Crusoe carried a
candle, and as she stood in the center of the room she seemed to gather
all of the light to her, like the saints in the old pictures. She was so
perfectly lovely that I almost wanted to cry. I can't explain it, but
there was something pathetic about her beauty.

She set the candle down and opened an old brass-bound chest. She took
out a roll of cloth and brought it over and laid it on the table beside
the candle.

"I bought it with some of the money that your Billy got for my Sheffield
tray," she said. Then she turned to me with a quick motion and laid her
hands on my shoulders. "Oh, you very dear--when I saw you making those
little things--I knew that--that the good Lord had led me. Will
you--will you--show me--how?"

I told Billy about it on the way home.

"She doesn't know anything about sewing, and she hasn't any patterns,
and I am to go up every day, and William Watters will come for me with
his mule--"

Then I cried about her a little, because it seemed so dreadful that she
should be there all alone, without any one to sustain her and cherish
her as Billy did me.

"Oh, Billy, Billy," I said to him, "I'd rather live over a grocery store
with you than live in a palace with anybody else--"

And Billy said, "Don't cry, lady love, you are not going to live with
anybody else."

And he put his arm around me, and as we walked along together in the
April night it was like the days when we had been young lovers, only our
joy in each other was deeper and finer, for then we had only guessed at
happiness, and now we knew--

Well, I went up every day. William Watters came for me, and I carried my
patterns and we sat in the big west room, and right under the window a
pair of robins were building a nest.

We watched them as they worked, and it seemed to us that no matter how
hard we toiled those two birds kept ahead. "I never dreamed," Lady
Crusoe remarked one morning, "that they were at it all the time like
this."

"You wait until they begin to feed their young," I told her. "People
talk about being as free as a bird. But I can tell you that they slave
from dawn until dark. I have seen a mother bird at dusk giving a last
bite to one squalling baby while the father fed another."

Lady Crusoe laid down her work and looked out over the hills. "The
father," she said, and that was all for a long time, and we stitched and
stitched, but at last she spoke straight from her thoughts: "How dear
your husband is to you!"

"That's what husbands are made for."

"Some of them are not, dear," her voice was hard, "some of them expect
so much and give so little--"

I kept still and presently she began again. "They give money--and they
think that is--enough. They give jewels--and think we ought to be
profoundly grateful."

"Well, my experience," I told her, "is that the men give as much love as
the women--"

She looked at me. "What do you mean?"

"Love costs them a lot."

"In what way?"

"They work for us. Now there's Billy's grocery store. If Billy didn't
have me, he'd be doing things that he likes better. You wouldn't believe
it, but Billy wanted to study law, but it meant years of hard work
before he could make a cent, and he and I would have wasted our youth in
waiting--and so he went into business--and that's a big thing for a man
to do for a woman--to give up a future that he has hoped for--and that's
why I feel that I can't do enough for Billy--"

"I don't see why you should look at it in that way," she said, and her
eyes were big and bright. "Women are queens, and they honor men when
they marry them--"

"If women are queens," I told her, "men are kings--Billy honored me--"

She smiled at me. "Oh, you blessed dear--" she said, and all of a sudden
she came over and knelt beside me. "What would you think of a man who
married a woman whom the world called beautiful and brilliant, and
whom--whom princes wanted to marry--And he was a very plain man, except
that he had a lot of money--millions and millions--and after he married
the woman whom he had said that he worshiped, he wanted to make just an
every-day wife of her. He wanted her to stay at home and look after his
house. He told her one night that it would be a great happiness for him
if he could come in and find her warming--his slippers. And he said that
his ideal of a woman was one who--who--held a child in her arms--"

I looked down at her. "Well, right in the beginning," I said, "I should
like to know if the woman loved the man--"

She stared at me and then she stood up. "If she did, what then? She had
not married to be--his slave--"

I pointed to the mother robin on the branch below. "I wonder if she
calls it slavery! You see--she is so busy--building her nest she hasn't
time to think whether Cock Robin is singing fewer love songs than he
sang early in the spring."

She laughed and was down on her knees beside me again. "Oh, you funny
little practical thing! But it wasn't because I missed the love songs.
He sang them. But because I couldn't be an every-day wife--"

"What kind of wife did you want to be?"

"I wanted to travel with him alone--I planned a honeymoon in the desert,
and we had it--and I planned after that to sail the seas to the land of
Nowhere--and we sailed--and then--I wanted to go to the high plains--and
ride and camp--and into the forests to hunt and fish--but he wouldn't.
He said that we had wandered enough. He wanted to build a house--and
have me warm--his slippers--"

"And so you quarreled?"

"We quarreled--great hot heavy quarrels--and we said things--horrid
things--that we can't forgive--"

She was sobbing on my shoulder and I said softly: "Things that _you_
can't forgive?"

"Yes. And that _he_ can't. That's why I ran away from him."

I waited.

"I couldn't stand it to see him going around with his face stern and set
and not like my lover's. And he didn't speak to me except to be polite.
And he asked people to go with us--everywhere. And we were never
alone--"

"What had you said to make him--like that?"

She raised her head. "I told him that I--hated him--"

"Oh, oh--"

She knelt back on her heels.

"It was a dreadful thing to say, wasn't it? That's why I ran away. I
couldn't stand it. I knew it was a thing no man--could--forgive--"

I smoothed her hair and rocked her back and forth while she cried. It
was strange how much of a child she seemed to me. And I was only the
wife of a country grocer and lived over the store, and she was the wife
of a man whose name was known from east to west, and all around the
world. But you see she hadn't learned to live. Neither have I, really.
But Billy has taught me a lot.

I think it was a comfort for her to feel that she had confided in me.
But she made me promise that whatever happened I wouldn't let him know.

"Unless I--die," she said, and she was as white as a lily, "unless I
die, and then you can--set him--free--"

Billy was sorry that I had promised. "Somehow I feel responsible,
sweetheart, and I'll bet her poor husband is almost crazy."

"Would you be, Billy?"

He caught me to him so quickly that he almost shook the breath out of
me. "Don't ask a thing like that," he said, and his voice didn't sound
like his own. "If anything should happen to you--if anything should
happen--I should--I should--oh, why will women ask things like that--?"

In the days that followed, Billy didn't want me out of his sight. He
even hated to have me go up to the Davenant house with William Watters.
"Take care of her, William," he would say, and stand looking after us.

William and I got to be very good friends. He was a wise old darky, and
he was devoted to Lady Crusoe. He usually served tea for us out under
the trees, unless it was a rainy day, and then we had it in the library.

It was on a rainy day that Lady Crusoe said: "I wonder what has become
of William. I haven't seen him since you came. I have hunted and called,
and I can't find him."

He appeared at tea time, however, with a plate of hot waffles with
powdered sugar between. When his mistress asked him about his mysterious
disappearance, he said that he had cleaned the attic.

"But, William, on such a day?"

"I kain't wuk out in the rain, Miss Lily, so I wuks in--"

That was all he would say about it, and after we had had our tea, she
said to me, "There are a lot of interesting things in the attic. Let's
go up and see what Willie has been doing--"

The dim old place was as shining as soap and water could make it, and
there was the damp smell of suds. There was the beat of the rain on the
roof, and the splash of it against the round east window. Through the
west window came a pale green light, and there was a view over the
hills. As we became accustomed to the dimness our eyes picked out the
various objects--an old loom like a huge spider under a peaked gable, a
chest of drawers which would have set a collector crazy, Chippendale
chairs with the seats out, Windsor chairs with the backs broken, gilt
mirror frames with no glass in them--boxes--books--bottles--all the
flotsam and jetsam of such old establishments. Most of the things had
been set back against the wall, but right in the middle of the floor was
an object which I took at first for a small trunk.

Lady Crusoe reached it first, and knelt beside it. She gave a little
cry. "My dear, come here!" and I went to her, and in another moment, I,
too, was on my knees. For the dark object was a cradle--a lovely hooded
thing of mahogany, in which the Davenants had been rocked for
generations.

"William got it out," Lady Crusoe said, "ready to be carried down. Oh,
my good old man Friday! Do you mind if I cry a little, you very dear?"

It rained a great deal that summer, and it was hot and humid. Billy and
I longed for the cold winds that sweep across the sea on the North
Shore, but we didn't complain, for we had each other, and I wouldn't
exchange Billy for any breeze that blows.

Lady Crusoe suffered less than I, for she was on her native heath, and
in the afternoon when we sewed together William Watters made lemonade,
and in the evening when Billy came up for me we sat out under the stars
until whispers of wind stirred the trees, and then we went away and left
our dear lady alone.

As the time went on we hated more and more to leave her, but she was
very brave about it. "I have my good man Friday," she told us, "to
protect me, and my grandfather's revolver."

So the summer passed, and the fall came, and the busy robin and all of
her red-breasted family started for the South, and there was rain and
more rain, so that when October rolled around the roads were perfect
rivers of red mud, and the swollen streams swept under the bridges in
raging torrents of terra-cotta, and the sheep on the hills were pinker
than ever. There was no lack of color in those gray days, for the trees
burst through the curtain of mist in great splashes of red and green and
gold. But now I did not go abroad with William Watters behind his old
gray mule, for things had happened which kept me at home.

It was on a rainy November night that I came down to the store to call
Billy to supper. I had brought a saucer for old Tid, the store cat, and
when he had finished Billy had cut him a bit of cheese and he was
begging for it. We had taught Tid to sit up and ask, and he looked so
funny, for he is fat and black and he hates to beg, but he loves cheese.
We were laughing at him when a great flash of light seemed to sweep
through the store, and a motor stopped.

Billy went forward at once. The front door opened, and a man in a
rain-coat was blown in by the storm.

"Jove, it's a wet night!" I heard him say, and I knew it wasn't any of
Billy's customers from around that part of the country. This was no
drawling Virginia voice. It was crisp and clear-cut and commanding.

He took off his hat, and even at that distance I could see his shining
blond head. He towered above Billy, and Billy isn't short. "I wonder if
you could help me," he began, and then he hesitated, "it is a rather
personal matter."

"If you'll come up-stairs," Billy told him, "there'll be only my wife
and me, and I can shut up the store for the night."

"Good!" he said, and I went ahead of them with old Tid following, and
presently the men arrived and Billy presented the stranger to me.

He told us at once what he wanted. "I thought that as you kept the
store, you might hear the neighborhood news. I have lost--my wife--"

"Dead?" Billy inquired solicitously.

"No. Several months ago we motored down into this part of the country.
Some miles from here I had trouble with my engine, and I had to walk to
town for help. When I came back my wife was gone--"

I pinched Billy under the table. "Gone?" I echoed.

"Yes. She left a note. She said that she could catch a train at the
station and that she would take it. Some one evidently gave her a lift,
for she had her traveling bag with her. She said that she would sail at
once for France, and that I must not try to follow her. Of course I did
follow her, and I searched through Europe, but I found no trace, and
then it occurred to me that after all she might still be in this part of
the country--"

I held on to Billy. "Had you quarreled or anything?"

He ran his fingers through his hair. "Things had gone wrong somehow,"
he said, uncertainly, "I don't know why. I love her."

If you could have heard him say it! If _she_ could have heard him! There
was a silence out of which I said: "Did you ask her to warm your
slippers?"

He stared at me, then he reached out his hands across the table and
caught hold of mine in such a strong grip that it hurt. "You've seen
her," he said, "_you've seen her_--?"

Then I remembered. "I can't say any more. You see--I've promised--"

"That you wouldn't tell me?"

"Yes."

He threw back his head and laughed. "If she's in this part of the
country, I'll find her." And I knew that he would. He was the kind of
man you felt wouldn't know there were obstacles in the way when he went
after the thing he wanted.

I made him stay to supper. It was a drizzly cold night and he looked
very tired.

"Jove," he said, "you're comfortable here, with your fire and your
pussy-cat, and your teakettle on the hearth! This is the sort of thing I
like--"

"You wouldn't like living over a grocery store," I told him.

"Why not?"

"Oh, nobody around here ever has, and they are all descended from
signers of the Declaration of Independence and back of that from William
the Conqueror, and they stick their noses in the air."

"Shades of Jefferson!--why should they?"

"They shouldn't. But they do--"

He came back to the subject of his wife. "I didn't want her to warm my
slippers. It was only that I wanted her to feel like warming them," he
appealed to Billy, and Billy nodded. Billy positively purrs when I make
him comfortable after his day's work. He says that it is the homing
instinct in men and that women ought to encourage it.

"Does she warm yours?" he asked Billy.

"Not now, she's too busy--" and then as if the stage were set for it,
there came from the next room a little, little cry.

I went in and brought out--Junior! He was only a month old, but you know
how heavenly sweet they are with their rose-leaf skins, and their little
crumpled hands and their downy heads--Junior's down was brown, for Billy
and I are both dark.

"You see he keeps me busy," I said.

I was so proud I am perfectly sure it stuck out all over me, and as for
Billy he beamed on us in a funny fatherly fashion that he had adopted
from the moment that he first called me "Little Mother."

"Do you wonder that she hasn't time to warm my slippers?" was his
question.

The stranger held out his arms--"Let me hold the little chap." And he
sat there, without a smile, looking down at my baby. When he raised his
head he said in a dry sort of fashion, "I thought the pussy-cat and the
teakettle were enough--but this seems almost too good to be true--"

I can't tell you how much I liked him. He seemed so big and fine--and
tender. I came across a poem the other day, and he made me think of it:

"... the strong"
The Master whispered, "are the tenderest!"

Before he went away, he took my hand in his. "I want you to play a game
with me. Do you remember when we were children that we used to hide
things, and then guide the ones who hunted by saying 'warmer' when we
were near them, and 'colder' when they wandered away? Will you say
'warm' and 'cold' to me? That won't be breaking your promise, will it?"

"No."

"Then let's begin now. To-morrow morning I shall go to the north and
east--"

"Cold!"

"To the south and west--"

"Warmer."

"Up a hill?"

"Very warm. But you mustn't ask me any more."

"All right. But I am coming again, and we will play the game."

Billy went down with him, and when he came back we stood looking into
the fire, and he said, "You didn't tell him?"

"Of course not. That's the lovely, lovely thing that he must find out
for himself--"

The next day I went to see Lady Crusoe. William Watters took me. "They's
a man been hangin' round this mawnin'," he complained, "an' a dawg--"

"What kind of man, William?"

"He's huntin', and Miss Lily she doan' like things killed--"

Half-way up, we passed the man. His hat came off when he saw me. "It's
cold weather we're having," he said pleasantly.

"It's getting warmer," I flung back at him, and William drove on with a
grunt.

I had Junior with me, and when I reached the house I went straight
up-stairs. In the very center of the room in the hooded mahogany cradle
was another crumpled rose-leaf of a child. But this was not a "Junior."

"Robin-son," Lady Crusoe had whispered, when I had first bent over her
and had asked the baby's name.

"Because of the robins?" I had asked.

She shook her head. "I couldn't call him Crusoe, could I?"

So there he lay, little Robinson Crusoe, in a desert expanse of polished
floor, and there he crowed a welcome to my own beautiful baby!

Lady Crusoe was in a big chair. She was not strong, and William Watters
had brought his sister Mandy to wait on her. She was very pale, this
lovely lady, and there were shadows under her eyes. As I sat down beside
her, she said: "I shall have to have your Billy sell some more things
for me. You see the servants must be paid, and my Robin must be comfy.
There's a console-table that ought to bring a lot from a city dealer."

"I wish that you needn't be worried," I said. "I wish--I wish--that
you'd let me send for Robin's father--"

"Robin's father!" she drew a quick breath, "how funny it
sounds!--_Robin's father_--"

I waited for that to sink in, and then I said: "I know how you feel.
When I think of Billy as Junior's father it is different from thinking
of him as my husband, and it makes a funny sensation in my throat as if
I wanted to cry--"

"You've nothing to cry about," she told me fiercely, "nothing, but I
sometimes feel as if I could weep rivers of tears!"

I realized that I must be careful, so I changed the subject. "William,"
I said after a pause, "is worrying about a man who is hunting over the
grounds."

"He told me. I can't understand why any one should trespass when the
place is posted. I sent William to tell him, but it didn't seem to have
any effect. I haven't heard him shoot. When I do, I shall go out and
speak to him myself."

I wondered if Fate were going to settle it in that way, and I wondered
too if it would be breaking my promise to tell him to shoot! We sewed in
silence for a while, but Lady Crusoe was restless. At last she wandered
to the window. It was a long French window which opened on a balcony.
She parted the velvet curtains and looked out. "There he is again," she
said, with irritation, "by the gate with his gun and dog--"

I rose and joined her. The man stood by the gate-post, and the dog sat
at his feet. They might have been a pair of statues planted on the round
top of the hill, with the valleys rolling away beneath them and the
mountain peaks and the golden sky beyond. Lady Crusoe was much stirred
up over it.

"I'll send William again, when he comes with our tea. I won't have my
wild things shot. There was a covey of partridges on the lawn this
morning, and my squirrels come up to the porch to be fed. Men are cruel
creatures with their guns and their traps."

"Women are cruel, too," I told her, and now I took my courage in my
hands. "Suppose, oh, suppose, that the mother robin had stolen her nest
and had never let the father robin share her happiness, wouldn't you
call that cruel?"

"What do you mean?" her voice shook.

"You have stolen your--nest--"

"Why shouldn't I steal it? I had always felt that when I wanted a real
home it would be here. And the time had come when I wanted a--home. So I
planned to come--with him. It was to be my surprise--he doesn't even
know that the old place belongs to me. He thought it was just another of
my restless demands, but he let me have my way. We had friends with us
when we started; they left us at Washington. It was after we were alone
that--we quarreled--and I ran away. I left a note and told him that I
had gone to France. I suppose he followed and didn't find me. I am not
even sure that he wants to find me."

"Do you want to be found?"

"I don't know. I'd rather not talk about it."

William came in with the tea and was told to send the intruder off.

"I done sent him, Miss Lily," he said, with dignity, "but he ain't gwine
to go. He say he ain't, and I kain't make him."

She went again to the window, and this time she drew back the faded
hangings and stepped out on the balcony.

I heard her utter a cry; then the whole room seemed to whirl about me as
she came in, dragging the curtains together behind her. Every drop of
blood was drained from her face.

"William," she said, sharply, "that man--is coming toward the house! If
he asks for me--I am not--at home."

"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?"

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