Temple Bailey - The Gay Cockade

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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
everything except the joy she felt at having his smooth gray head so
close to her own.

When he had her safely beside him in his big car he asked, "What made
you run away from me in Chicago?"

"My daughter came home from Europe."

"I can't quite think of you with a grown daughter."

"Cecily's a darling." Mrs. Beale's voice held no enthusiasm.

Landry, noting her tone, looked faintly surprised. "You and she must
have great good times together."

"Oh, yes--"

Mrs. Beale wished that he wouldn't talk about Cecily. Cecily had married
before good times were possible. They had never played together--she and
the little daughter for whom she had toiled and sacrificed.

Landry's voice broke in upon her meditations: "I should like to meet
Cecily."

Mrs. Beale switched him away from the topic expeditiously. He should not
see her as yet in the bosom of her family. _He should not_. He should
not see Cecily with her air of mature motherliness. He should not see
Victor, Cecily's husband, who was ten years older than Cecily and only
ten years younger than herself. He should not hear her big son Bob call
her "Grandma." He should not gaze upon the pretty deference of Bob's
little wife toward the queen-dowager!

Dining later opposite Landry in a great golden palace, Cissy seemed like
some gay tropical bird. In her new and lovely clothes she was very
pretty, very witty, almost girlishly charming. Yet Landry was conscious
of a vague feeling of disappointment. She had been more serenely
satisfying in Chicago--not so brilliantly hard, not so persistently
vivacious. How could he know that the change was one of desperation?
Cissy, as grandmother, felt that she must prove, even to herself, that
she was not yet a back number.

With this rift in the lute of their budding romance, they ate and drank
and went to the play and had what might otherwise have been an
enchanted ride home in the moonlight. But when Landry said "Good-night"
Cissy felt the loss of something in his manner. His greeting that
afternoon had had in it something almost of tenderness; his farewell was
commonplace and slightly constrained.

As Mrs. Beale went through the dimly lighted hall to her room, she met
Cecily in a flowing garment, pacing back and forth with the baby in her
arms.

"She isn't well," Cecily whispered, as the little lady in the lace frock
questioned her. "I don't know whether I ought to call a doctor or not."

Mrs. Beale poked the tiny mite with an expert finger. "I'll give her a
drink of hot water with a drop of peppermint in it," she said, "as soon
as I get my hat off, and you'd better go back to bed, Cecily; you aren't
well enough to worry with her."

Cecily looked relieved. "I was worried," she confessed. "It's nurse's
night out and Victor had to go to a board meeting unexpectedly--and with
you away--I lost my nerve. It seemed dreadful to be alone, mother."

Mrs. Beale knew how dreadful it was. She had carried the wailing Cecily
in her arms night after night in the weeks which followed the crushing
knowledge of her husband's infidelity. But she had carried a heavier
burden than the child--the burden of poverty, of desertion, of an
unknown future.

But these things were not to be voiced. "You go to bed, Cecily," she
said. "I'll look after her."

Walking the floor later with the baby in her arms, Mrs. Beale's mind was
on Landry. "Heavens! if he could see me now!" was her shocked thought,
as she stopped in front of a mirror to survey the picture she made.

Her hair was down and the grayest lock of all showed plainly. She had
discarded frills and furbelows and wore a warm gray wrapper. She looked
nice and middle-aged, yet carried, withal, a subtle air of
girlishness--would carry it, in spite of storm or stress, until the end,
as the sign and seal of her undaunted spirit.

The baby stirred in her arms, and again Mrs. Beale went back and forth,
crooning the lullaby with which she had once put her own babies to bed.

In the morning the baby was much better, but Mrs. Beale was haggard. She
stayed in bed until eleven o'clock, however. Cecily, coming in at
twelve, found her ready to go out. In response to an inquiry, Mrs. Beale
spoke of a luncheon engagement with Valentine Landry.

"Mother--are you going to marry him?"

Cissy, studying the adjustment of her veil, confessed, "He hasn't asked
me."

"But he will--"

Mrs. Beale shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows?"

In the weeks which followed, the little lady was conscious that things
were not drawing to a comfortable climax. By all the rules of the game,
Landry should long ago have declared himself. But he seemed to be
slipping more and more into the fatal role of good friend and comrade.

Cissy's pride would not let her admit, even to herself, that she had
failed to attract at the final moment. But there was something deeper
than her pride involved, and she found her days restless and her nights
sleepless. One night in the dense darkness she faced the truth
relentlessly. "You're in love, Cissy Beale," she told herself,
scornfully. "You're in love for the first time in your life--and you
a--grandmother!"

Then she turned over on her pillow, hid her face in its white warmth,
and cried as if her heart would break.

In the meantime the baby drooped. Cecily, worried, consulted her mother
continually. Thus it came about that Mrs. Beale lived a double life.
From noon until midnight she was of to-day--smartly gowned, girlish;
from midnight until dawn she was of yesterday--waking from her fitful
slumbers at the first wailing note, presiding in gray gown and slippers
over strange brews of catnip and of elderflower.

Cecily's doctor, being up-to-date, remonstrated at this return to the
primitive, but was forced to admit, after the baby had come triumphantly
through a half-dozen critical attacks, that Cissy's back-to-grandma
methods were effective.

It was on a morning following one of these struggles that Cissy said to
her daughter, wearily, "I can't escape it--"

"Escape what?" demanded Cecily, who, in the pale-gray bedroom was
endeavoring to observe the doctor's injunction to let the wailing baby
stay in her bassinet, instead of walking the floor with her.

"The black-silk-and-mitt destiny," said the depressed lady.

"What has happened?" Cecily demanded.

"Nothing has happened," responded her weary little mother, and refused
to discuss the matter further.

But to herself she was beginning to admit that she had lost Landry. An
hour later she had a telephone message from him.

"I want you to go with me for a last ride together," he said. "I leave
to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" Her voice showed her dismay.

"But why this sudden decision--"

"I have played long enough," he said; "business calls--"

As Mrs. Beale made ready for the ride she surveyed herself wistfully in
her mirror. There were shadows under her eyes, and faint little lines
toward the corners of her lips--it even seemed to her that her chin
sagged. She had a sudden sense of revolt. "If I were young, _really_
young," she thought, "he would not be going away--"

With this idea firmly fixed in her mind, she exerted herself to please
him; and her little laugh made artificial music in his ears, her fixed
smile wore upon his nerves, her staccato questions irritated him.

Again they had dinner together, and as she sat opposite him, gorgeous
and gay in her gown of geranium red, he began to talk with her of her
daughter.

"I've never met her. It has seemed to me that you might have let me see
her--"

Cissy flushed. "She's such a great grown-up," she said. "Somehow when
I'm with her I feel--old--"

"You will never seem old," he said, with the nearest approach to
tenderness that had softened his voice for days. "You have in you the
spirit of eternal youth--"

Then he floundered on. "But a mother and a daughter--when you used to
speak of her in Chicago, it seemed to me that I could see you together,
and I liked the sweetness and womanliness of the thought; but I have
never seen you together."

With a sense of recklessness upon her, Cissy suddenly determined to tell
him the truth. "Cecily hasn't been going out much. You see, there's the
baby--"

He stared. "The baby--?"

"Her baby--Cecily's--"

"_Then you're a grandmother_?"

It seemed to Cissy that the whole restaurant rang with the emphasis of
the words. Yet he had not spoken loudly; not a head was turned in their
direction; even the waiter stood unmoved.

When she came to herself Landry was laughing softly. "When are you going
to let me see--the baby--?"

"Never--"

"Why not?"

Cissy went on to her doom. "Because you'll want to put me on the shelf
like all the rest of them. You'll want to see me with--my
hair--parted--and spectacles. And my eyes are perfectly good--and my
hair is my own--"

She stopped. Landry was surveying her with hard eyes.

"Don't you love--the baby--?"

Cissy shrugged. "Perhaps. I don't know yet. Some day I may when I
haven't anything to do but sit in a chimney-corner."

Thus spoke Cissy Beale, making of herself a heartless creature, flinging
back into the face of Valentine Landry his most cherished ideals.

But what did it matter? She had known from the moment of her confession
that he would be repelled. What man could stand up in the face of the
world and marry a grandmother!--the idea was preposterous.

She finished dinner with her head in the air; she was hypocritically
lively during the drive home; she said "Good-night" and "Good-bye"
without feeling, and went up-stairs with her heart like lead to find the
nurse weeping wildly on the first landing.

The baby, it appeared, was very ill. And the baby's father and mother,
having left the little cherub sleeping peacefully, were motoring
somewhere in the wide spaces of the world. The family doctor was out.
She had called up another doctor, and he would come as soon as he could.
But in the meantime the baby was dying--

"Nonsense, Kate," said Cissy Beale, and pulling off her gloves as she
ran, she made for the pale-gray room.

Now, as it happened, Valentine Landry, driving away in a priggish state
of mind, was suddenly overwhelmed by miserable remorse. Reviewing the
evening, he seemed to see, for the first time, the unhappiness in the
eyes of the little woman who had borne herself so bravely. In a sudden
moment of illumination he realized all that she must have been feeling.
Perhaps it had not been heartlessness; perhaps it had been--heart
hunger.

Leaning forward, he spoke to his chauffeur. They stopped at the first
drug-store, and Landry called up Cissy. Her voice from the other end
answered, sharply, then broke as he gave his name.

"I thought it was the doctor," she said. "Can you come back, please? The
baby, oh, the baby is very ill!"

Five minutes later the nurse let him into the house. He followed her up
the stairs and into the nursery. Cissy sat with the baby in her arms.
The baby was in a blanket and Cissy was in her gray wrapper. She had
donned it while the nurse held the baby in the hot bath which saved its
life. Cissy's hair was out of curl and the color was out of her cheeks.
But to Valentine Landry she was beautiful.

"It was a convulsion," she told him, simply. "I am afraid she will have
another. We haven't been able to get a doctor--will you get one for us?"

Out he went on his mission for the lady of his heart, and the lady of
his heart, sitting wet and worried in the pale-gray bedroom, was saying
to herself, monotonously, "It's all over now--no man could see me like
this and love me--"

Cecily and her husband and the doctor and Landry came in out of the
darkness together. They went up-stairs together, then stopped on the
threshold as Cissy held up a warning hand.

She continued to croon softly the lullaby which had belonged to her own
babies: "Hushaby, sweet, my own--"

It was Cecily and the doctor who went in to her, and Landry, standing
back in the shadows, waited. He spoke to Cissy as she came out.

"I am going so early in the morning," he said, "will you give me just
one little minute now?"

In that minute he told her that he loved her.

And Cissy, standing in the library in all the disorder of uncurled locks
and gray kimono, demanded, after a rapturous pause, "But why didn't you
tell me before?"

He found it hard to explain. "I didn't quite realize it--until I saw you
there so tender and sweet, with the baby in your arms--"

"A Madonna-creature," murmured Cissy Beale.

But he did not understand. "It isn't because I want you to sit in a
chimney-corner--it wasn't fair of you to say that--"

Then in just one short speech Cissy Beale showed him her heart. She told
of the years of devotion, always unrewarded by the affection she craved.
"And here was the baby," she finished, "to grow up--and find somebody
else, and forget me--"

As he gathered her into his protecting embrace, his big laugh comforted
her.

"I'm yours till the end of the world, little grandmother," he whispered.
"I shall never find any one else--and I shall never forget."

WAIT--FOR PRINCE CHARMING

Kingdon Knox was not conscious of any special meanness of spirit. He was
a lawyer and a good one. He was fifty, and wore his years with an effect
of youth. He exercised persistently and kept his boyish figure. He had
keen, dark eyes, and silver in his hair. He was always well groomed and
well dressed, and his income provided him with the proper settings. His
home in the suburb was spacious and handsome and presided over by a
handsome and socially successful wife. His office was presided over by
Mary Barker, who was his private secretary. She was thirty-five and had
been in his office for fifteen years. She had come to him an unformed
girl of twenty; she was now a perfect adjunct to his other office
appointments. She wore tailored frocks, her hair was exquisitely dressed
in shining waves, her hands were white and her nails polished, her
slender feet shod in unexceptional shoes.

Nannie Ashburner, who was also in the office and who now and then took
Knox's dictation, had an immense admiration for Mary. "I wish I could
wear my clothes as you do," she would say as they walked home together.

"Clothes aren't everything."

"Well, they are a lot."

"I would give them all to be as young as you are."

"You don't look old, Mary."

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