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Temple Bailey - The Trumpeter Swan

T >> Temple Bailey >> The Trumpeter Swan




And now he, with a million others, was faced by the problem of the
day's work. He wondered how the others looked at it--those gallant young
knights in khaki who had followed the gleam. Were they, too, grasping at
any job that would buy them bread and butter, pay their bills, keep them
from living on the bounty of others?

He felt that in some way the thing was all wrong. There should have been
big things for these boys to do. There seemed something insensate in a
civilization which would permit a man who wore medals of honor to sell
ribbon over a counter, or weigh out beef at a butcher's. Yet he supposed
that many of them were doing it. Indeed he knew that some of them were.
The butcher's boy, who brought the meat over every morning to King's
Crest, wore two decorations, and when Randy had stopped for breakfast
supplies, the hero of Belleau Woods had cut off sausages as calmly as he
had once bayonetted Huns.

Randy wondered what the butcher's boy was feeling under that apparently
stolid surface. Was his horizon bounded by beef and sausages, or did his
soul expand with memories of the shoulder-to-shoulder march, the
comradeship of the trenches, the laughter and songs? Did his pulses
thrill with the thought of the big things he might yet do in these days
of peace, or was he content to play safe and snip sausages?

Randy felt that he was not content. It was not that he loved war. But he
loved the visions that the war had brought him. There had seemed no
limit then to America's achievement. She had been a laggard--he thanked
God that he had not been a party to that delay. But when she had come
in, she had come in with all her might and main. And her young men had
fought and the future of the whole world had been in their hands, and
since peace had come the future of the world must still be reckoned in
the terms of their glorious youth.

And now, something within Randy began to sing and soar. He felt that
here were things to be put on paper--the questions which he flung at
himself should be written for other men to read. That was what men
needed--questions. Questions which demanded answers not only in words
but in deeds. This was a moment for men of high thoughts and high
purposes.

And he was selling cars----!

Well, some day he would write. He was writing a little now, at night. In
his room at the top of the Schoolhouse. Yet the things that he had
written seemed trivial as he thought of them. What he wanted was to
strike a ringing note. To have the fellows say when they read it, "If it
is true for him it is true for me."

Yet when one came to think of it, there were really not any "fellows."
Not in the sense that it had been "over there." They were scattered to
the four winds, dispersed to the seven seas--the A. E. F. was
extinct--as extinct--as the Trumpeter Swan!

And now his thoughts ran fast, and faster. Here was his theme. Where was
that glorious company of young men who had once sounded their trumpets
to the world? Gone, as the swans were gone--leaving the memory of their
whiteness--leaving the memory of their beauty--leaving the memory of
their--song----

He wanted to turn back at once. To drive Little Sister at breakneck
speed towards pen and paper. But some instinct drove him doggedly
towards the matter on hand. One might write masterpieces, but there were
cars to be sold.

He sold one----; quite strangely and unexpectedly he found that the
transaction was not difficult. The man whom he had come to see was on
the front porch and was glad of company. Randy explained his errand. "It
is new business for me. But I've got something to offer you that you'll
find you'll want----"

He found that he could say many things truthful about the merits of
Little Sister. He had a convincing manner; the young farmer listened.

"Let me take you for a ride," Randy offered, and away they went along
the country roads, and through the main streets of the town in less time
that it takes to say--"Jack Robinson."

When they came back, the children ran out to see, and Randy took them
down the road and back again. "You can carry the whole family," he said,
"when you go----"

The man's wife came out. She refused to ride. She was afraid.

But Randy talked her over. "My mother felt like that. But once you are
in it is different."

She climbed in, and came back with her face shining.

"I am going to buy the car," her husband said to her.

Randy's heart jumped. Somehow he had felt that it would not really
happen. He had had little faith in his qualities as salesman. Yet, after
all, it had happened, and he had sold his car.

Riding down the hill, he was conscious of a new sense of achievement. It
was all very well to dream of writing masterpieces. But here was
something tangible.

"Nellie," he said, "things are picking up."

Nellie laid her nose on his knee and looked up at him. It had been a
long ride, and she was glad they were on the homeward stretch. But she
wagged her tail. Nellie knew when things were going well with her
master. And when his world went wrong, her sky darkened.


III

The sale of one car, however, does not make a fortune. Randy realized as
the days went on that if he sold them and sold them and sold them,
Dalton would still outdistance him financially.

There remained, therefore, fame, and the story in the back of his mind.
If he could lay a thing like that at Becky's feet! He had the lover's
urge towards some heaven-kissing act which should exalt his mistress----
A book for all the world to read--a picture painted with a flaming
brush, a statue carved with a magic instrument. It was for Becky that
Randy would work and strive hoping that by some divine chance he might
draw her to him.

He worked at night until the Major finally remonstrated.

"Do you ever go to bed?"

Randy laughed. "Sometimes."

"Are you writing?"

"Trying to."

"Hard work?"

"I like it,"--succinctly.

The Major smoked for a while in silence. Then he said, "I suppose you
don't want to talk about it."

It was a starry night and a still one. The younger boarders had gone for
a ride. The older boarders were in bed. The Major was stretched in his
long chair. Randy sat as usual on the steps.

"Yes," he said, "I'd like to talk about it. I have a big idea, and I
can't put it on paper."

He hugged his knees and talked. His young voice thrilled with the
majesty of his conception. Here, he said, was the idea. Once upon a time
there had been a race of wonderful swans, with plumage so white that
when they rested in flocks on the river banks they made a blanket of
snow. Their flight was a marvellous thing--they flew so high that the
eye of man could not see them--but the sound of their trumpets could be
heard. The years passed and the swans came no more to their old haunts.
Men had hunted them and killed them--but there were those who held that
on still nights they could be heard--sounding their trumpets----

"I want to link that up with the A. E. F. We were like the swans--a
white company which flew to France---- Our idealism was the song which
we sounded high up. And the world listened--and caught the sound---- And
now, as a body we are extinct, but if men will listen, they may still
hear our trumpets--sounding----!"

As he spoke the air seemed to throb with the passion of his phrases. His
face was uplifted to the sky. The Major remembered a picture in the
corridor of the Library of Congress--the Boy of Winander---- Oh, the
boys of the world--those wonderful boys who had been drawn out from
among the rest, set apart for a time, and in whose hands now rested the
fate of nations!

"It is epic," he said, slowly. "Take your time for it."

"It's too big," said Randy slowly, "and I am not a genius---- But it is
my idea, all right, and some day, perhaps, I shall make it go."

"You must make it clear to yourself. Then you can make it clear to
others."

"Yes," Randy agreed, "and now you can see why I am sitting up nights."

"Yes. How did you happen to think of it, Paine?"

"I've been turning a lot of things over in my mind----; what the other
fellows are doing about their jobs. There's that boy at the butcher's,
and a lot of us went over to do big things. And now we have come back to
the little things. Why, there's Dalton's valet--Kemp--taking orders from
that--cad."

His scorn seemed to cut into the night. "And I am selling cars---- I
sold one to-day to an old darkey, and I felt my grandsires turn in
their graves. But I like it."

The Major sat up. "Your liking it is the biggest thing about you,
Paine."

"What do you mean?"

"A man who can do his day's work and not whine about it, is the man that
counts. That butcher's boy may have a soul above weighing meat and
wrapping sausages, but at the moment that's his job, and he is doing it
well. There may be a divine discontent, but I respect the man who keeps
his mouth shut until he finds a remedy or a raise.

"I don't often speak of myself," he went on, "but perhaps this is the
moment. I am as thirsty for California, Paine, as a man for drink. It is
the dry season out there, and the hills are brown, but I love the brown,
and the purple shadows in the hollows. I have ridden over those hills
for days at a time,--I shall never ride a horse over them again." He
stopped and went on. "Oh, I've wanted to whine. I have wanted to curse
the fate that tied me to a chair like this. I have been an active
man--out-of-doors, and oh, the out-of-doors in California. There isn't
anything like it--it is the sense of space, the clear-cut look of
things. But I won't go back. Not till I have learned to do my day's
work, and then I will let myself play a bit. I'd like to take you with
me, Paine--you and a good car--and we'd go over the hills and far
away----

"I haven't told you much of my life. And there's not a great deal to
tell. Fifteen years ago I married a little girl and thought I loved her.
But what I really loved was the thought of doing things for her. I had
money and she was poor. It was pleasant to see her eyes shine when I
gave her things---- But money hasn't anything to do with love, Paine,
and that is where we American men fall down. When we love a woman we
begin to tell her of our possessions and to tempt her by them. And the
thing that we should do is to show her ourselves. We should say, 'If I
were stripped of all my worldly goods what would there be in me for you
to like?' My little wife and I had not one thing in common. And one day
she left me. She found a man who gave her love for love. I had given her
cars and flowers and boxes of candy and diamonds and furs. But she
wanted more than that. She died--two years ago. I think she had been
happy in those last years. I never really loved her, but she taught me
what love is--and it is not a question of barter and sale----"

He seemed to be thinking aloud. Randy spoke after a silence. "But a man
must have something to offer a woman."

"He must have himself. Oh, we are all crooked in our values, Paine. The
best that a man can give a woman is his courage, his hope, his
aspiration. That's enough. I learned it too late. I don't know why I am
saying all this to you, Paine."

But Randy knew. It was on such nights that men showed their souls to
each other. It was on such nights that his comrades had talked to him in
France. Under the moon they had seemed self-conscious. But beneath a sky
of stars, the words had come to them.

As he sat at his desk later, he thought of all that the Major had said
to him: that possessions had nothing to do with love; that the test must
be, "What would there be in me to like if I were stripped of all my
worldly goods?"

Well, he had nothing. There were only his hopes, his dreams, his
aspiration--himself.

Would these weigh with any woman in the balance against George Dalton's
splendid trappings?

The dawn crept in and found him still sitting at his desk. He had not
written a dozen lines. But his thoughts had been the long, long thoughts
of youth.




CHAPTER VI

GEORGIE-PORGIE


I

It would never have happened if Aunt Claudia had been there. Aunt
Claudia would have built hedges about Becky. She would have warned the
Judge. She would, as a last resort, have challenged Dalton. But Fate,
which had Becky's future well in hand, had sent Aunt Claudia to meet
Truxton in New York. And she was having the time of her life.

Her first letter was a revelation to her niece. "I didn't know," she
told the Judge at breakfast, "that Aunt Claudia could be like this----"

"Like what?"

"So young and gay----"

"She is not old. And when she was young she was gayer than you."

"Oh, not really, Grandfather."

"Yes. And she looked like you--and had the same tricks with her hands,
and her hair was bright and brown. And she was very pretty."

"She is pretty yet," said Becky, loyally, but she was quite sure that
whatever might have been Aunt Claudia's likeness to herself in the past,
her own charms would not in the future shrink to fit Aunt Claudia's
present pattern. It was unthinkable that her pink and white should fade
to paleness, her slenderness to stiffness, her youthful radiance to a
sort of weary cheerfulness.

There was nothing weary in the letter, however. "Oh, my dear, my dear,
you should see Truxton. He is so perfectly splendid that I am sure he is
a changeling and not my son. I tell him that he can't be the bundle of
cuddly sweetness that I used to carry in my arms. I wore your white
house-coat that first morning, Becky, and he sent some roses, and we had
breakfast together in my rooms at the hotel. I believe it is the first
time in years that I have looked into a mirror to really like my looks.
You were sweet, my dear, to insist on putting it in. Truxton must stay
here for two weeks more, and he wants me to stay with him. Then we shall
come down together. Can you get along without me? We are going to the
most wonderful plays, and to smart places to eat, and I danced last
night on a roof garden. Should I say 'on' or 'in' a roof garden? Truxton
says that my step is as light as a girl's. I think my head is a little
turned. I am very happy."

Becky laid the letter down. "Would anyone have believed that Aunt
Claudia _could_----"

"You have said that before, my dear. Your Aunt Claudia wasn't born in
the ark----"

"But, Grandfather, I didn't mean that."

"It sounded like it. I shall write to her to stay as long as she can. We
can get along perfectly without her."

"Of course," said Becky slowly. She had a feeling that, at all costs,
she ought to call Aunt Claudia back.

For Dalton, after that first ride in the rain from Pavilion Hill, had
speeded his wooing. He had swept Becky along on a rushing tide. He had
courted the Judge, and the Judge had pressed upon him invitation after
invitation. Day and night the big motor had flashed up to Huntersfield,
bringing Dalton to some tryst with Becky, or carrying her forth to some
gay adventure. Her world was rose-colored. She had not dreamed of life
like this. She seemed to have drunk of some new wine, which lighted her
eyes and flamed in her cheeks. Her beauty shone with an almost
transcendent quality. As the dove's plumage takes on in the spring an
added luster, so did the bronze of Becky's hair seem to burn with a
brighter sheen.

Yet the Judge noticed nothing.

"Did you ask him to dine with us?" he had demanded, when Dalton had
called Becky up on the morning of the receipt of Aunt Claudia's letter.

"No, Grandfather."

"Then I'll do it," and he had gone to the telephone, and had urged his
hospitality.


II

When Dalton came Becky met him on the front steps of the house.

"Dinner is late," she said, "let's go down into the garden."

The garden at Huntersfield was square with box hedges and peaked up with
yew, and there were stained marble statues of Diana and Flora and Ceres,
and a little pool with lily pads.

"You are like the pretty little girls in the picture books," said
George, as they walked along. "Isn't that a new frock?"

"Yes," said Becky, "it is. Do you like it?"

"You are a rose among the roses," he said. He wondered a bit at its
apparent expensiveness. Perhaps, however, Becky was skillful with her
needle. Some women were. He did not care greatly for such skill, but he
was charmed by the effect.

"You are a rose among the roses," he said again, and broke off a big
pink bud from a bush near by.

"Bend your head a little. I want to put it in your hair."

His fingers caught in the bronze mesh. "It is wound around my ring." He
fumbled in his pockets with his free hand and got his knife. "It may
pull a bit."

He showed her presently the lock which he had cut. "It seems alive," he
kissed it and put it in his pocket.

Her protest was genuine. "Oh, please," she said, "I wish you wouldn't."

"Wouldn't what?"

"Keep it."

"Shall I throw it away?"

"You shouldn't have cut it off."

"Other men have been tempted--in a garden----"

It might have startled George could he have known that old Mandy, eyeing
him from the kitchen, placed him in Eden's bower not as the hero of the
world's initial tragedy, but as its Satanic villain.

"He sutt'n'y have bewitched Miss Becky," she told Calvin; "she ain'
got her min' on nothin' but him."

"Yo' put yo' min' on yo' roas' lamb, honey," Calvin suggested. "How-cum
you got late?"

"That chile kep' me fixin' that pink dress. She ain' never cyard what
she wo'. And now she stan' in front o' dat lookin'-glass an' fuss an'
fiddle. And w'en she ain' fussin' an' fiddlin', she jus' moons around,
waitin' fo' him to come ridin' up in that red car like a devil on
greased light'in'. An' I say right heah, Miss Claudia ain' gwine like
it."

"Why ain' she?"

"Miss Claudia know black f'um w'ite. An' dat man done got a black
heart----"

"Whut you know 'bout hit, Mandy?"

"Lissen. You wait. He'll suck a o'ange an' th'ow it away. He'll pull a
rose, and scattah the leaves." Mandy, stirring gravy, was none the less
dramatic. "You lissen, an' wait----"

"W'en Miss Claudia comin'?"

"In one week, thank the Lord," Mandy pushed the gravy to the back of the
stove and pulled forward an iron pot. "The soup's ready," she said; "you
go up and tell the Jedge, Calvin."

All through dinner, Becky was conscious of that lock of hair in George's
pocket. The strand from which the lock had been cut fell down on her
cheek. She had to tuck it back. She saw George smile as she did it. She
forgave him.

It was after dinner that George spoke of Becky's gown.

"It is perfect," he said, "all except the pearls----?"

She gave him a startled glance. "The pearls?"

"I want to see you without them."

She unwound them and they dripped from her hand in milky whiteness.

He made his survey. "That's better," he said, "if they were real it
would be different--I don't like to have you cheapened by anything less
than--perfect----"

"Cheapened?" She smiled inscrutably, then dropped the pearls into a
small box on the table beside her. "Yes," she said, "if they were real
it would be different----"

There was something in her manner which made him say hurriedly, "You
must not think that I am criticizing your taste. If I had my way you
should have everything that money can buy----"

Her candid eyes came up to his. "There are a great many things that
money cannot buy."

"You've got to show me," George told her; "I've never seen anything yet
that I couldn't get with money."

"Could you buy--dreams----"

"I'd rather buy--diamonds."

"And money can't buy happiness."

"It can buy a pretty good imitation."

"But imitation happiness is like imitation pearls."

He laughed and sat down beside her. "You mustn't be too clever."

"I am not clever at all."

"I believe you are. And you don't have to be. There are plenty of clever
women but only one Becky Bannister."

It was just an hour later that Georgie-Porgie kissed her. She was at the
piano in the music-room, and there was no light except the glimmer of
tall white candles, and the silver moonlight which fell across the
shining floor.

Her grandfather was nodding in the room beyond, and through the open
window came the dry, sweet scent of summer, as if nature had opened her
pot-pourri to give the world a whiff of treasured fragrance.

Becky had been singing, and she had stopped and looked up at him.

"Oh, you lovely--lovely, little thing," he said, and bent his head.

To Becky, that moment was supreme, sacred. She trembled with happiness.
To her that kiss meant betrothal--ultimate marriage.

To George it meant, of course, nothing of the kind. It was only one of
many moments. It was a romance which might have been borrowed from the
Middle Ages. A rare tale such as one might read in a book. A pleasant
dalliance--to be continued until he was tired of it. If he ever
married, it must be a spectacular affair--handsome woman, big fortune,
not an unsophisticated slip of a child from an impoverished Virginia
farm.


III

In the days that followed, Becky's gay lover came and rode away, and
came again. He sparkled and shone and worshipped, but not a word did he
say about the future. He seemed content with this idyl of old gardens,
scented twilights, starlight nights, with Beauty's eyes for him alone
radiant eyes that matched the stars.

Yet as the days went on the radiance was dimmed. Becky was in a state of
bewilderment which bordered on fear. George showed himself an
incomparable lover, but always he was silent about the things which she
felt cried for utterance.

So at last one day she spoke to the Judge.

"Granddad, did you kiss Grandmother before you asked her to marry you?"

"Asking always comes first, my dear. And you are too young to think of
such things."

Grandfather was, thus obviously, no help. He sat in the Bird Room and
dreamed of the days when the stuffed mocking-bird on the wax branch sang
to a young bride, and his ideal of love had to do with the courtly
etiquette of a time when men knelt and sued and were rewarded with the
touch of finger tips.

As for George, he found himself liking this affair rather more than
usual. There was no denying that the child was tremendously
attractive--with her youth and beauty and the reserve which like a stone
wall seemed now and then to shut her in. He had always a feeling that he
would like to climb over the wall. It had pricked his interest to find
in this little creature a strength and delicacy which he had found in no
other woman.

He had had one or two letters from Madge, and had answered them with a
line. She gave rather generously of her correspondence and her letters
were never dull. In the last one she had asked him to join her on the
North Shore.

"I am sorry," she said, "for the new little girl. I have a feeling
that she won't know how to play the game and that you'll hurt her.
You will probably think that I am jealous, but I can't help that.
Men always think that women are jealous when it comes to other
women. They never seem to understand that we are trying to keep the
world straight.

"Oscar writes that Flora isn't well, that all her other guests are
gone except you--and that she wants me. But why should I come? I
wish he wouldn't ask me. Something always tugs at my heart when I
think of Flora. She has so much and yet so little. She and Oscar
would be much happier in a flat on the West Side with Flora cooking
in a kitchenette, and Oscar bringing things home from the
delicatessen. He would buy bologna and potato salad on Sunday
nights, and perhaps they would slice up a raw onion. It sounds
dreadful, doesn't it? But there are thousands of people doing just
that thing, Georgie, and being very happy over it. And it wouldn't
be dreadful for Flora and Oscar because they would be right where
they belong, and the potato salad and the bologna and the little
room where Oscar could sit with his coat off would be much more to
their liking than their present pomp and elegance. You and I are
different. You could never play any part pleasantly but that of
Prince Charming, and I should hate the kitchenette. I want wide
spaces, and old houses, and deep fireplaces--my people far back
were like that--I sometimes wonder why I stick to Flora--perhaps it
is because she clung to me in those days when Oscar was drafted and
had to go, and she cried so hard in the Red Cross rooms that I took
her under my wing---- Take it all together, Flora is rather worth
while and so is Oscar if he didn't try so hard to be what he is
not.

"But then we are all trying rather hard to be what we are not. I am
really and truly middle-class. In my mind, I mean. Yet no one would
believe it to look at me, for I wear my clothes like a Frenchwoman,
and I am as unconventional as English royalty. And two generations
of us have inherited money. But back of that there were nice
middle-class New Englanders who did their own work. And the women
wore white aprons, and the men wore overalls, and they ate
doughnuts for breakfast, and baked beans on Sunday, and they milked
their own cows, and skimmed their own cream, and they read Hamlet
and the King James version of the Bible, and a lot of them wrote
things that will be remembered throughout the ages, and they had
big families and went to church, and came home to overflowing
hospitality and chicken pies--and they were the salt of the earth.
And as I think I remarked to you once before, I want to be like my
great-grandmother in my next incarnation, and live in a wide, low
farmhouse, and have horses and hogs and chickens and pop-corn on
snowy nights, and go to church on Sunday.

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