The Gay Cockade

I

I had not known Tom Randolph a week before I was aware that life was not real to him. All his world was a stage, with himself as chief player. He dramatized everything—actions, emotions, income. Thus he made poverty picturesque, love a thing of the stars, the day's work a tragedy, or, if the professors proved kind, a comedy. He ate and drank, as it were, to music, combed his hair and blacked his boots in the glare of footlights; made exits and entrances of a kind unknown to men like myself who lacked his sense of the histrionic.

He was Southern and chivalric. His traditions had to do with the doffed hat and the bent knee. He put woman on a pedestal and kept her there. No man, he contended, was worthy of her—what she gave was by the grace of her own sweet charity!

It will be seen that in all this he missed the modern note. As a boy he had been fed upon Scott, and his later reading had not robbed him of his sense of life as a flamboyant spectacle.

He came to us in college with a beggarly allowance from an impoverished estate owned by his grandfather, a colonel of the Confederacy, who after the war had withdrawn with his widowed daughter to his worthless acres. In due time the daughter had died, and her child had grown up in a world of shadows. On nothing a year the colonel had managed, in some miraculous fashion, to preserve certain hospitable old customs. Distinguished guests still sat at his table and ate ducks cooked to the proper state of rareness, and terrapin in a chafing-dish, with a dash of old sherry. If between these feasts there was famine the world never knew.

It was perhaps from the colonel that Randolph had learned to make poverty picturesque. His clothes were old and his shoes were shabby. But his strength lay in the fact that he did not think of himself as poor. He had so much, you see, that the rest of us lacked. He was a Randolph. He had name, position, ancestry. He was, in short, a gentleman!

I do not think he looked upon any of us as gentlemen, not in the Old Dominion sense. He had come to our small Middle-Western college because it was cheap and his finances would not compass education anywhere else.

In an older man his prejudices would have been insufferable, but his youth and charm made us lenient. We contented ourselves with calling him "Your Highness," and were always flattered when he asked us to his rooms.

His strong suit was hospitality. It was in his blood, of course. When his allowance came he spent it in giving the rest of us a good time. His room was as shabby as himself—a table, an ink-spotted desk, a couch with a disreputable cover, a picture of Washington, a half-dozen books, and a chafing-dish.

The chafing-dish was the hump and the hoof of his festivities. He made rarebits and deviled things with an air that had been handed down from generations of epicures. I can see him now with his black hair in a waving lock on his forehead, in worn slippers and faded corduroy coat, sitting on the edge of the table smoking a long pipe, visualizing himself as the lord of a castle—the rest of us as vassals of a rather agreeable and intelligent sort!

It was perfectly natural that he should stage his first love-affair, and when he was jilted that he should dramatize his despair. For days after Madge Ballou had declared her preference for Dicky Carson, Randolph walked with melancholy. He came to my rooms and sat, a very young and handsome Hamlet, on my fire-bench, with his chin in his hand.

"Why should she like Dicky best?"

"She has no imagination."

"But Dicky's a—beast—"

"With a fat bank-account."

"Money wouldn't count with Madge."

"I'm not so sure—"

"Women are not like that, MacDonald."

I saw, as he went on with his arguments, that she had become to him an Ophelia, weakly led. Women in his lexicon of romance might be weak but never mercenary. I think he finally overthrew her in his mind with "Get thee to a nunnery!" I know that he burned her picture; he showed me the ashes in a silver stamp-box.

He had, of course, his heroes—there were moments when unconsciously he aped them. It was after a debate that the boys began to call him "Bonaparte." He had defended the Little Corporal, and in defending him had personified him. With that dark lock over his forehead, his arms folded, he had flung defiance to the deputies, and for that moment he had been not Tom Randolph but the Emperor himself.

He won the debate, amid much acclaim, and when he came down to us I will confess to a feeling, which I think the others shared, of a soul within his body which did not belong there. Tom Randolph was, of course, Tom Randolph, but the voice which had spoken to us had rung with the power of that other voice which had been stilled at St. Helena!

The days that followed dispelled the illusion, but the name clung to him. I think he liked it, and emphasized the resemblance. He let his hair grow long, sunk his head between his shoulders, was quick and imperious in his speech.

Then came the war. Belgium devastated, France invaded. Randolph was fired at once.

"I'm going over."

"But, my dear fellow—"

"There's our debt to Lafayette."

With his mind made up there was no moving him. The rest of us held back. Our imaginations did not grasp at once the world's need of us.

But Randolph saw himself a Henry of Navarre—white plumes; a Richard of the Lion Heart—crusades and red crosses; a Cyrano without the nose—"These be cadets of Gascony—"

"You see, MacDonald," he said, flaming, "we Randolphs have always done it."

"Done what?"

"Fought. There's been a Randolph in every war over here, and before that in a long line of battles—"

He told me a great deal about the ancient Randolphs, and the way they had fought on caparisoned steeds with lances.

"War to-day is different," I warned him. "Not so pictorial."

But I knew even then that he would make it pictorial. He would wear his khaki like chain armor.

He gave us a farewell feast in his room. It was the season for young squirrels, and he made us a Brunswick stew. It was the best thing I had ever tasted, with red peppers in it and onions, and he served it with an old silver ladle which he had brought from home.

While we ate he talked of war, of why men should fight—"for your own honor and your country's."

There were pacifists among us and they challenged him. He flung them off; their protests died before his passion.

"We are men, not varlets!"

Nobody laughed at him. It showed his power over us that none of us laughed. We simply sat there and listened while he told us what he thought of us.

At last one who was braver than the rest cried out: "Go to it, Bonaparte!"

In a sudden flashing change Randolph hunched his shoulders, set his slouched hat sidewise low on his brows, wrapped the couch-cover like a cloak about him. His glance swept the room. There was no anger in it, just a sort of triumphant mockery as he gave the famous speech to Berthier.

"They send us a challenge in which our honor is at stake—a thing a Frenchman has never refused—and since a beautiful queen wishes to be a witness to the combat, let us be courteous, and in order not to keep her waiting, let us march without sleeping as far as Saxony—!"

I can't tell you of the effect it had on us. We were gripped by the throats, and the room was so still that we heard ourselves breathe. Four of the fellows left next day with Randolph. I think he might have taken us all if we had not been advised and held back by the protests of our professors, who spoke of war with abhorrence.

II

Three years later I saw him again, in France. Our own country had gotten into the fight by that time, and I was caught in the first draft. I had heard now and then from Randolph. He had worked for nearly three years with the Ambulance Corps, and was now fighting for democracy with his fellows.

We had been shivering in the rain for a week in one of the recaptured French towns when a group of seasoned officers were sent to lick us into shape. Among the other officers was Randolph, and when he came upon me he gave a shout of welcome.

"Good old MacDonald—at last!"

I'll confess that his "at last" carried a sting, and I remember feeling the injustice of our equal rank, as I set his years of privation and hardship against my few weeks in a training camp.

He was very glad to see me, and the very first night he made me a Brunswick stew. This time there were no squirrels, but he begged young rabbits from the old couple who had once been servants in the château where we were billeted. They had trudged back at once on the retirement of the Boches, and were making the best of the changed conditions.

There was, of course, no chafing-dish, and the stew was cooked in an iron pot which hung over an open fire in the ancient kitchen. Before they sold the rabbits the old people had made one condition:

"If we may have a bit for mademoiselle—?"

"For mademoiselle?"

"She is here with us, monsieur. She had not been well. We have been saving the rabbits for her."

Randolph made the grand gesture that I so well remembered.

"My good people—if she would dine with us—?"

The old woman shook her head. She was not sure. She would see.

Perhaps she said pleasant things of us, perhaps mademoiselle was lonely. But whatever the reason, mademoiselle consented to dine, coming out of her seclusion, very thin and dark and small, but self-possessed.

I have often wondered what she thought, in those first moments of meeting, of Randolph, as with a spoon for a sceptre, the manner of a king, he presided over the feast. She spoke very good English, but needed to have many things explained.

"Do gentlemen cook in your country?"

Randolph sketched life as he had known it on his grandfather's plantation—negroes to do it all, except when gentlemen pleased.

She drew the mantle of her distaste about her. "Black men? I shouldn't like it."

Well, I saw before the evening ended that Randolph had met his peer. For every one of his aristocratic prejudices she matched him with a dozen. And he loved her for it! At last here was a lady who would buckle on his armor, watch his shield, tie her token on his sleeve!

He sat on the edge of the table in his favorite attitude—hunched-up shoulders, folded arms. His hair was cut too short now for the dark lock, but even without it I saw her glance at him now and then in a puzzled fashion, as if she weighed some familiar memory.

But it was one of the peasants who voiced it—the old man carrying away the remains of the stew muttered among the shadows to his wife:

"C'est Napoleon."

Mademoiselle caught her breath. "Oui, Gaston." Then to me, in English: "Do you see it?"

"Yes. We called him that at school."

"Bonaparte?"

"Yes."

She was thin and dark no longer—illumined, the color staining her cheeks. "Oh, if he were here—to save France!"

I protested. "An emperor against an emperor?"

"He was a great democrat—he loved the common people. For a little while power spoiled him—but he loved the people. And the Bourbons did not love them—Louis laughed at them—and lost his head. And Napoleon never laughed. He loved France—if he had lived he would have saved us."

Out of the shadows the old woman spoke. "They say he will come again."

"Oui, Margot." Mademoiselle was standing, with her hand on her heart. Randolph's eyes devoured her. He had taken no part in the conversation. It was almost uncanny to see him sitting there, silent, arms folded, shoulders hunched, sparkling eyes missing nothing. "It is true," mademoiselle told us earnestly, "that the tra-dee-tion says he will come back—when France needs him—the soldiers talk of it."

"In almost every country," I said, "there is a story like that, of heroes who will come again."

"But Napoleon, monsieur—surely he would not fail France?"

The thing that followed was inevitable. Randolph and Mademoiselle Julie fell in love with each other. He drew her as he had drawn us at school. She was not a Madge Ballou, mundane and mercenary; she was rather a Heloise, a Nicolette, a Jeanne d'Arc, self-sacrificing, impassioned. She met Randolph on equal ground. They soared together—mixed love of country with love of lovers. They rose at dawn to worship the sun, they walked forth at twilight to adore together the crescent moon.

And all the while war was at the gates; we could hear the boom of big guns. The spring drive was on and the Germans were coming back.

I shall never forget the night that Randolph and I were ordered to the front. Mademoiselle had come in with her hands full of violets. Randolph, meeting her for the first time after a busy day, took her hands and the frail blossoms in his eager clasp. He was an almost perfect lover—Aucassin if you will—Abelard at his best.

"Violets," he said. "May I have three?"

"Why three, monsieur?"

"For love, mademoiselle, and truth and constancy."

He took his prayer-book from his pocket, and she gave him the violets. He touched them to her lips, then crushed them to his own. I saw it—sitting back in the shadows. I should never have thought of kissing a girl like that. But it was rather wonderful.

He shut the violets in the little book.

They sat very late that night by the fire. I went in and out, not disturbing them. I saw him kneel at her feet as he left her, and she bent forward and kissed his forehead.

He talked of her a great deal after that. More than I would have talked of love, but his need of an audience drove him to confidences. He felt that he must make himself worthy of her—to go back to her as anything less than a hero might seem to belittle her. I am not sure that he was braver than other men, but his feeling for effect gave him a sort of reckless courage. Applause was a part of the game—he could not do without it.

And so came that night when a small band of us were cut off from the rest. We were intrenched behind a small eminence which hid us from our enemies, with little hope of long escaping their observation. It had been wet and cold, and there had been no hot food for days. We, French and Americans, had fought long and hard; we were in no state to stand suspense, yet there was nothing to do but wait for a move on the other side, a move which could end in only one way—bayonets and bare hands, and I, for one, hated it.

I think the others hated it, too, all but Randolph. The rain had stopped and the moon flooded the world. He turned his face up to it and dreamed.

The knowledge came to us before midnight that the Huns had found us. It became only a matter of moments before they would be upon us, the thing would happen which we hated—bayonets and bare hands, with the chances in favor of the enemy!

Somewhere among our men rose a whimper of fear, and then another. You see, they were cold and hungry and some of them were wounded, and they were cut off from hope. It wasn't cowardice. I call no man a coward. They had faced death a thousand times, some of them. Yet there was danger in their fears.

Randolph was next to me. "My God, MacDonald," he said, "they've lost their nerve—"

There wasn't a second to spare. I saw him doing something to his hat.

As I have said, there was a moon. It lighted that battle-scarred world with a sort of wild beauty, and suddenly in a clear space above us on the little hill a figure showed, motionless against the still white night—a figure small yet commanding, three-cornered hat pulled low—oh, you have seen it in pictures a thousand times—Napoleon of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Friedland—but over and above everything, Napoleon of France!

Of course the Germans shot him. But when they came over the top they were met by Frenchmen who had seen a ghost. "C'est l'Empereur! C'est l'Empereur!" they had gasped. "He returns to lead us."

They fought like devils, and—well, the rest of us fought, too, and all the time, throughout the bloody business, I had before me that vision of Randolph alone in the moonlight. Or was it Randolph? Who knows? Do great souls find time for such small business? And was it small?

His medals were, of course, sent to the colonel. But the violets in the little book went back to mademoiselle. And the old hat, crushed into three-cornered shape, went back. And I told her what he had done.

She wrote to me in her stiff English:

"I have loved a great man. For me, monsieur, it is enough. Their souls unite in victory!"

It was so cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose. Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through clouded glass.

Ostrander, with his blood like ice within his veins, yearned for a Scriptural purgatory with red fire and flame. To be warm would be heaven. It was a wise old Dante who had made hell cold!

As he crossed the threshold of his filthy tenement he felt for the first time a sense of its shelter. Within its walls there was something that approached warmth, and in his room at the top there was a bed with a blanket.

Making his way toward the bed and its promise of comfort, he was stopped on the second stairway by a voice which came out of the dark.

"Mr. Tony, you didn't see our tree."

Peering down, he answered the voice: "I was going up to get warm."

"Milly said to tell you that we had a fire."

"A real fire, Pussy? I didn't know that there was one in the world."

He came down again to the first floor. Pussy was waiting—a freckled dot of a child tied up in a man's coat.

The fire was in a small round stove. On top of the stove something was boiling. The room was neat but bare, the stove, a table, and three chairs its only furnishing. In a room beyond were two beds covered with patchwork quilts.

On the table was a tree. It was a Christmas tree—just a branch of pine and some cheap spangly things. The mother of the children sewed all day and late into the night. She had worked a little longer each night for a month that the children might have the tree.

There was no light in the room but that of a small and smoky lamp.

Milly spoke of it. "We ought to have candles."

Ostrander, shrugged close to the stove, with his hands out to its heat, knew that they ought to have electric lights, colored ones, a hundred perhaps, and a tree that touched the stars!

But he said: "When I go out I'll bring you a red candle—a long one—and we'll put it on the shelf over the table."

Milly, who was resting her tired young body in a big rocker with the baby in her arms, asked: "Can we put it in a bottle or stand it in a cup? We haven't any candlestick."

"We can do better than that," he told her, "with a saucer turned upside down and covered with salt to look like snow."

Pussy, economically anxious, asked, "Can we eat the salt afterward?"

"Of course."

"Then, may we do it, Milly?"

"Darling, yes. How nice you always fix things, Mr. Tony!"

Long before he had known them he had fixed things—things which would have turned this poor room into an Aladdin's palace. There was that Christmas Eve at the Daltons'. It had been his idea to light the great hall with a thousand candles when they brought in the Yule log, and to throw perfumed fagots on the fire.

He came back to the round stove and the tiny tree. "I like to fix things," he said. "Once upon a time—"

They leaned forward eagerly to this opening.

"Of course you know it isn't true," he prefaced.

"Of course it couldn't be true"—Pussy was reassuringly sceptical—"the things that you tell us couldn't really happen—ever—"

"Well, once upon a time, there was a tree in a great house by a great river, and it was set in a great room with squares of black-and-white marble for a floor, and with a fountain with goldfish swimming in its basin, and there were red-and-blue parrots on perches, and orange-trees in porcelain pots, and the tree itself wasn't a pine-tree or a fir or a cedar; it was a queer round, clipped thing of yew, and it had red and blue and orange balls on it, and in the place of a wax angel on top there was a golden Buddha, and there were no candles—but the light shone out and out of it, like the light shines from the moon."

"Was it a Christmas tree?" Pussy asked, as he paused.

"Yes, but the people who trimmed it and the ones who came to see it didn't believe in the Wise Men, or the Babe in the Manger, or the shepherds who watched their flocks by night—they just worshiped beauty and art—and other gods—but it was a corking tree—"

"You use such funny words," Pussy crowed ecstatically. "Who ever heard of a corking tree?"

He smiled at her indulgently. He was warmer now, and as he leaned back in his chair and unbuttoned his coat he seemed to melt suddenly into something that was quite gentlemanly in pose and outline. "Well, it really was a corking tree, Pussy."

"What's a Buddha?" Milly asked, making a young Madonna of herself as she bent over the baby.

"A gentle god that half of the world worships," Ostrander said, "but the people who put him on the tree didn't worship anything—they put him there because he was of gold and ivory and was a lovely thing to look at—"

"Oh," said Pussy, with her mouth round to say it, "oh, how funny you talk, Mr. Tony!" She laughed, with her small hands beating her knees.

She was presently, however, very serious, as she set the table. There was little formality of service. Just three plates and some bread.

Milly, having carried the baby into the other room, was hesitatingly hospitable. "Won't you have supper with us, Mr. Tony?"

He wanted it. There was a savory smell as Milly lifted the pot from the stove. But he knew there would be only three potatoes—one for Pussy and one for Milly and one for the mother who was almost due, and there would be plenty of gravy. How queer it seemed that his mind should dwell on gravy!

"Onions are so high," Milly had said, as she stirred it. "I had to put in just a very little piece."

He declined hastily and got away.

In the hall he met their mother coming in. She was a busy little mother, and she did not approve of Ostrander. She did not approve of any human being who would not work.

"A merry Christmas," he said to her, standing somewhat wistfully above her on the stairs.

She smiled at that. "Oh, Mr. Tony, Mr. Tony, they want a man in the shop. It would be a good way to begin the New Year."

"Dear lady, I have never worked in a shop—and they wouldn't want me after the first minute—"

Her puzzled eyes studied him. "Why wouldn't they want you?"

"I am not—dependable—"

"How old are you?" she asked abruptly.

"Twice your age—"

"Nonsense—"

"Not in years, perhaps—but I have lived—oh, how I have lived—!"

He straightened his shoulders and ran his fingers through his hair. She had a sudden vision of what he might be if shorn of his poverty. There was something debonair—finished—an almost youthful grace—a hint of manner—

She sighed. "Oh, the waste of it!"

"Of what?"

She flamed. "Of you!"

Then she went in and shut the door.

He stood uncertainly in the hall. Then once again he faced the cold.

Around the corner was a shop where he would buy the red candle. The ten cents which he would pay was to have gone for his breakfast. He had sacrificed his supper that he might not go hungry on Christmas morning. He had planned a brace of rolls and a bottle of milk. It had seemed to him that he could face a lean night with the promise of these.

There were no red candles in the shop. There were white ones, but a red candle was a red candle—with a special look of Christmas cheer. He would have no other.

The turn of a second corner brought him to the great square. Usually he avoided it. The blaze of gold on the west side was the club.

A row of motors lined the curb. There was Baxter's limousine and Fenton's French car. He knew them all. He remembered when his own French car had overshadowed Fenton's Ford.

There were wreaths to-night in the club windows, and when Sands opened the doors there was a mass of poinsettia against the hall mirror.

How warm it looked with all that gold and red!

In the basement was the grill. It was a night when one might order something heavy and hot. A planked steak—with deviled oysters at the start and a salad at the end.

And now another motor-car was poking its nose against the curb. And Whiting climbed out, a bear in a big fur coat.

Whiting's car was a closed one. And it would stay there for an hour. Ostrander knew the habits of the man. From the office to the club, and from the club—home. Whiting was methodical to a minute. At seven sharp the doors would open and let him out.

The clock on the post-office tower showed six!

There was a policeman on the east corner, beating his arms against the cold. Ostrander did not beat his arms. He cowered frozenly in the shadow of a big building until the policeman passed on.

Then he darted across the street and into Whiting's car!

Whiting, coming out in forty minutes, found his car gone. Sands, the door man, said that he had noticed nothing. The policeman on the corner had not noticed.

"I usually stay longer," Whiting said, "but to-night I wanted to get home. I have a lot of things for the kids."

"Were the things in your car?" the policeman asked.

"Yes. Toys and all that—"

Ostrander, with his hand on the wheel, his feet on the brakes, slipped through the crowded streets unchallenged. It had been easy to unlock the car. He had learned many things in these later years.

It was several minutes before he was aware of faint fragrances—warm tropical fragrances of flowers and fruits and spices—Christmas fragrances which sent him back to the great kitchen where his grandmother's servants had baked and brewed.

He stopped the car and touched a button. The light showed booty. He had not expected this. He had wanted the car for an hour, to feel the thrill of it under his fingers, to taste again the luxury of its warmth and softness. He had meant to take it back unharmed—with nothing more than the restless ghost of his poor desires to haunt Whiting when again he entered it.

But now here were toys and things which Whiting, in a climax of generosity, had culled from bake-shop and grocer, from flower-shop, fruit-shop, and confectioner.

He snapped out the light and drove on. He had still a half-hour for his adventure.

It took just three of the thirty minutes to slide up to the curb in front of the tall tenement. He made three trips in and up to the top floor. He risked much, but Fate was with him and he met no one.

Fate was with him, too, when he left the car at a corner near the club, and slipped out of it like a shadow, and thence like a shadow back to the shop whence his steps had tended before his adventures.

When he returned to the tall tenement the small family on the first floor had finished supper, and the mother had gone back to work. The baby was asleep. Milly and Pussy, wrapped up to their ears, were hugging the waning warmth of the little stove.

"Mr. Tony, did you get the candle?" Pussy asked as he came in.

"Yes. But I've been thinking"—his manner was mysterious—"I don't want to put it on the shelf. I want it in the window—to shine out—"

"To shine out—why?"

"Well, you know, there's St. Nicholas."

"Oh—"

"He ought to come here, Pussy. Why shouldn't he come here? Why should he go up-town and up-town, and take all the things to children who have more than they want?"

Milly was philosophic. "St. Nicholas is fathers and mothers—"

But Pussy was not so sure. "Do you think he'd come—if we did? Do you really and truly think he would?"

"I think he might—"

The candle set in the window made a fine show from the street. They all went out to look at it. Coming in, they sat around the stove together.

Pussy drew her chair very close to Ostrander. She laid her hand on his knee. It was a little hand with short, fat fingers. In spite of lean living, Pussy had managed to keep fat. She was adorably dimpled.

Ostrander, looking down at the fat little hand, began: "Once upon a time—there was a doll—a Fluffy Ruffles doll, in a rosy gown—"

"Oh!" Pussy beat the small, fat hand upon his knee.

"And pink slippers—and it traveled miles to find some one to—love it. And at last it said to St. Nicholas, 'Oh, dear St. Nick, I want to find a little girl who hasn't any doll—'"

"Like me?" said Pussy.

"Like you—"

"And St. Nicholas said, 'Will you keep your pink slippers clean and your nice pink frock clean if I give you to a poor little girl?' and the Fluffy Ruffles doll said 'Yes,' so St. Nicholas looked and looked for a poor little girl, and at last he came to a window—with a red candle—"

The fat little hand was still and Pussy was breathing hard.

"With a red candle, and there was a little girl who—didn't have any doll—"

Pussy threw herself on him bodily. "Is it true? Is it true?" she shrieked.

Milly, a little flushed and excited by the story, tried to say sedately: "Of course it isn't true. It couldn't be—true—"

"Let's wish it to be true—" Ostrander said, "all three of us, with our eyes shut—"

With this ceremony completed the little girls were advised gravely to go to bed. "If Fluffy Ruffles and old St. Nick come by and find you up they won't stop—"

"Won't they?"

"Of course not. You must shut the door and creep under your quilt and cover up your head, and if you hear a noise you mustn't look."

Milly eyed him dubiously. "I think it is a shame to tell Pussy such—"

"Corking things?" He lifted her chin with a light finger and looked into her innocent eyes. "Oh, Milly, Milly, once upon a time there was a Princess, with eyes like yours, and she lived in a garden where black swans swam on a pool, and she wore pale-green gowns and there were poppies in the garden. And a Fool loved her. But she shut him out of the garden. He wasn't good enough even to kneel at her feet, so she shut him out and married a Prince with a white feather in his cap."

He had a chuckling sense of Whiting as the white-feathered Prince. But Milly's eyes were clouded. "I don't like to think that she shut the poor Fool out of the garden."

For a moment he cupped her troubled face in his two hands. "You dear kiddie." Then as he turned away he found his own eyes wet.

As he started up-stairs Pussy peeped out at him.

"Wouldn't it be—corking—to see a Fluffy Ruffles doll—a-walking up the street?"

In a beautiful box up-stairs the Fluffy Ruffles doll stared at him. She was as lovely as a dream, and as expensive as they make 'em. There was another doll in blue, also as expensive, also as lovely. Ostrander could see Milly with the blue doll matching her eyes.

There were toys, too, for the baby. And there was a bunch of violets. And boxes of candy. And books. And there were things to eat. Besides the fruits a great cake, and a basket of marmalades and jellies and gold-sealed bottles and meat pastes in china jars, and imported things in glass, and biscuits in tins.

Ostrander, after some consideration, opened the tin of biscuits and, munching, he wrote a note. Having no paper, he tore a wrapper from one of the boxes. He had the stub of a pencil, and the result was a scrawl.

"My Dear Whiting:

"It was I who borrowed your car—and who ran away with your junk. I am putting my address at the head of this, so that if you want it back you can come and get it. But perhaps you won't want it back.

"I have a feeling that to you and your wife I am as good as dead. If you have any thought of me it is, I am sure, to pity me. Yet I rather fancy that you needn't. I am down and out, and living on ten dollars a month. That's all I got when the crash came—it is all I shall ever get. I pay four dollars a month for my room and twenty cents a day for food. Sometimes I pay less than twenty cents when I find myself in need of other—luxuries. Yet there's an adventure in it, Whiting. A good little woman who lives in this house begs me to work. But I have never worked. And why begin? I've a heritage of bad habits, and one does not wish to seem superior to one's ancestors.

"The winters are the worst. I spend the summers on the open road. Ask Marion if she remembers the days when we read Stevenson together in the garden? Tell her it is like that—under the stars—Tell her that I am getting more out of it than she is—with you—

"But the winters send me back to town—and this winter Fate has brought me to an old house in a shabby street just a bit back from the Club. On the first floor there is a little family. Three kiddies and a young mother who works to keep the wolf from the door. There's a Pussy-Kiddie, and a Milly-Kiddie, and a baby, and they have adopted me as a friend.

"And this Christmas I had nothing to give them—but a red candle to light their room.

"When I got into your car it was just for the adventure. To breathe for a moment the air I once breathed—to fancy that Marion's ghost might sit beside me for one little moment, as she will sit beside you to the end of your days.

"I have played all roles but that of robber—but when I saw the things that you had bought with Marion's money for Marion's children—it went to my head—and I wanted them in the worst way for those poor kiddies—who haven't any dolls or Christmas dinners.

"I am playing Santa Claus for them to-night. I shall take the things down and leave them in their poor rooms. It will be up to you to come and take them away. It will be up to you, too, to give this note to the police and steal my freedom.

"You used to be a good sport, Whiting. I have nothing against you except that you stole Marion—perhaps this will square our accounts. And if your children are, because of me, without their dolls to-morrow, you can remember this, that the kiddies are happy below stairs—since Dick Turpin dwells aloft!

"From among the rest I have chosen for myself a squat bottle, a box of biscuits, and a tin of the little imported sausages that you taught me to like.

"Well, my dear fellow, happy days! To-morrow morning I shall breakfast at your expense, unless you shall decide that I must breakfast behind bars.

"If you should come to-night, you will find in the window a red candle shining. They have put it there to guide St. Nicholas and a certain Fluffy Ruffles doll!

"Ever yours,
      "Tony."

He found an envelope, sealed, and addressed it. Then he went to work.

Four trips he made down the stairs. Four times he tiptoed into the shadowed room, where the long red candle burned. And when he turned to take a last look there on the table beside the tree stood the blue doll for Milly and the Fluffy Ruffles doll for Pussy and the rattles and rings and blocks for the baby, and on the chairs and the shelf above the tree were the other things—the great cake and the fruit and the big basket and the boxes of candy.

And for the little mother there were the violets and a note:

"The red candle winked at your window and brought me in. It is useless to search for me—for now and then a Prince passes and goes on. And he is none the less a Prince because you do not know him."

And now there was that other note to deliver. Out in the cold once more, he found the moon gone and the snow falling. As he passed the saint on the old church, it seemed to smile down at him. The towers and gables were sheeted with white. His footsteps made no sound on the padded streets.

He left the note at Whiting's door. He fancied that, as the footman held it open, he saw Marion shining on the stairs!

He was glad after that to get home and to bed, and to the warmth of his blanket. There was the warmth, too, of the wine.

In a little while he was asleep. On the table by his untidy bed was the box of biscuits and the bottle and the tin of tiny sausages.

If all went well he would feast like a lord on Christmas morning!

Perhaps the most humiliating moment of Dulcie Cowan's childhood had been when Mary Dean had called her Indian giver. Dulcie was a child of affluence. She had always had everything she wanted; but she had not been spoiled. She had been brought up beautifully and she had been taught to consider the rights of others. She lived in an old-fashioned part of an old city, and her family was churchly and conscientious. Indeed, so well-trained was Dulcie's conscience that it often caused her great unhappiness. It seemed to her that her life was made up largely of denying herself the things she wanted. She was tied so rigidly to the golden rule that her own rights were being constantly submerged in the consideration of the rights of others.

So it had happened that when she gave to Mary Dean a certain lovely doll, because her mother had suggested that Dulcie had so many and Mary so few, Dulcie had spent a night of agonized loneliness. Then she had gone to Mary.

"I want my Peggy back."

"You gave her to me."

"But I didn't know how much I loved her, Mary. I'll buy you a nice new doll, but I want my Peggy back."

It was then that Mary had called her Indian giver. Mary had been a sturdy little thing with tight-braided brown hair. She had worn on that historic occasion a plain blue gingham with a white collar. To the ordinary eye she seemed just an every-day freckled sort of child, but to Dulcie she had been a little dancing devil, as she had stuck out her forefinger and jeered "Indian giver!"

Dulcie had held to her point and had carried her Peggy off in triumph. Mary, with characteristic independence, had refused to accept the beautiful doll which Dulcie bought with the last cent of her allowance and brought as a peace offering. In later years they grew to be rather good friends. They might, indeed, have been intimate, if it had not been for Dulcie's money and Mary's dislike of anything which savored of patronage.

It was Mary's almost boyish independence that drew Mills Richardson to her. Mills wrote books and was the editor of a small magazine. He came to board with Mary's mother because of the quiet neighborhood. He was rather handsome in a dark slender fashion. He had the instincts of a poet, and he was not in the least practical. He needed a prop to lean on, and Mary gradually became the prop.

She was teaching by that time, but she helped her mother with the boarders. When Mills came in late at night she would have something for him in the dining-room—oysters or a club sandwich or a pot of coffee—and she and her mother and Mills would have a cozy time of it. In due season Mills asked her to marry him, and his dreams had to do with increased snugness and with shelter from the outside world.

They had been engaged three months when Dulcie came home from college. There was nothing independent or practical about Dulcie. She was a real romantic lady, and she appealed to Mills on the æsthetic side. He saw her first in church with the light shining on her from a stained-glass window. In the middle of that same week Mrs. Cowan gave a garden party as a home-coming celebration for her daughter. Dulcie wore embroidered white and a floppy hat, and her eyes when she talked to Mills were worshipful.

He found himself swayed at last by a grand passion. He thought of Dulcie by day and dreamed of her by night. Then he met her by accident one afternoon on Connecticut Avenue, and they walked down together to the Speedway, where the willows were blowing in the wind and the water was ruffled; and there with the shining city back of them and the Virginia hills ahead, Mills, flaming, declared his passion, and Dulcie, trembling, confessed that she too cared.

Mills grew tragic: "Oh, my beloved, have you come too late?"

Dulcie had not heard of his engagement to Mary. Mills told her, and that settled it. She had very decided ideas on such matters. A man had no right to fall in love with two women. If such a thing happened, there was only one way out of it. He had given his promise and he must keep it. He begged, but could not shake her. She cared a great deal, but she would not take him away from Mary.

Mary knew nothing of what had occurred; she thought that Mills was working too hard. She was working hard herself, but she was very happy. She had a hope chest and sat up sewing late o' nights.

Before Mary and Mills were married Dulcie's mother died, and Dulcie went abroad to live with an aunt. Five years later she married an American living in Paris. He was much older than she, and it was rumored that she was not happy. Ten years after her marriage she returned to Washington a widow.

It was at once apparent that she had changed. She wore charming but sophisticated clothes, made on youthful lines so that she seemed nearer twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy.

Hence when she met Mills and found the old flames lighted in his eyes, she stirred the ashes of her dead romance and discovered a spark. It was pleasant after that to talk with him in dim corners at people's houses. Now and then she invited him and Mary to her own big house with plenty of other guests, so that she was not missed if she walked with Mills in the garden. She meant no harm and she was really fond of Mary.

The years had not been so kind to Mills as to Dulcie. They had stolen some of his slenderness, and his hair was thin at the back. But he wrote better books, and it was Mary who had helped him write them. She had made of his house a home. She was still the same sturdy soul. Her bright color had faded and her hair was gray. Life with Mills had not been an easy road to travel. She had traveled it with loss of youth, perhaps, but with no loss of self-respect. She knew that her husband was in some measure what he was because of her. She had kept the children away from his study door; she had seen that he was nourished and sustained. She had prodded him at times to increased activities. He had resented the prodding, but it had resulted in a continuity of effort which had added to his income.

Dulcie came into Mary's life as something very fresh and stimulating. She spoke of it to Mills.

"It is almost as if I had been abroad to hear her talk. She has had such interesting experiences."

It was not Dulcie's experiences which interested Mills; it was the loveliness of her profile, the glint of her hair, the youth in her, the renewed urge of youth in himself.

Priscilla Dodd saw what had happened. Priscilla was the aunt with whom Dulcie had lived in Paris; and she was a wise, if worldly, old woman. She saw rocks ahead for Dulcie.

"He's in love with you, my dear."

Dulcie, in a rose satin house coat which shone richly in the flame of Aunt Priscilla's open fire, was not disconcerted.

"I know. Mary doesn't satisfy him, Aunt Cilla."

"And you do?"

"Yes."

"The less you see of him the better."

"I'm not sure of that."

"Why not?"

"I can inspire him, be the torch to illumine his path."

"So that's the way you are putting it to yourself! But how will Mary like that?"

"Oh, Mary"—Dulcie moved restlessly—"I don't want to hurt Mary. I don't want to hurt Mary," she said again, out of a long silence, "but after all I have a right to save Mills' soul for him, haven't I, Aunt Cilla?"

"Saving souls had better be left to those who make a business of it."

"I mean his poetic soul." Dulcie studied the toes of her rosy slippers. "A man can't live by bread alone."

Yet Mills had thrived rather well on the bread that Mary had given him, and there was this to say for Mills, he was very fond of his wife. She was not the love of his life, but she had been a helpmate for many years. He felt that he owed many things to her affection and strength. Like Dulcie, he shrank from making her unhappy.

It was because of Mary, therefore, that the lovers dallied. Otherwise, they said to each other, Mills would cast off his shackles, ask for his freedom, and then he and Dulcie would fly to Paris, where nobody probed into pasts and where they could make their dreams come true.

They found many ways in which to see each other. Dulcie had a little town car, and she picked Mills up at all hours and took him on long and lovely rides, from which he returned ecstatic, with wild flowers in his coat and a knowledge of work left undone.

Gossip began to fly about. Aunt Priscilla warned Dulcie.

"It is a dangerous thing to do, my dear. People will talk."

"What do Mills and I care for people? Oh, if it were not for Mary—" She had just come in from a ride with Mills, and her eyes were shining.

"I wish we were not dining there to-night," said Aunt Priscilla. "I wonder how Mary manages a dinner of eight with only one servant."

"She is so splendid and competent, Aunt Cilla. Mills says so. Everybody says it. Things are easy for her that would be hard for other people."

"I wonder what she thinks of you?"

Dulcie, drawing off her gloves, meditated.

"I fancy she likes me. I know I love her, but not so much as I love Mills."

Fifteen years ago Dulcie would have died rather than admit her love for a married man. But since then she had seen life through the eyes of a worldly-minded old husband, and it had made a difference.

At dinner that night Dulcie was exquisite in orchid tulle with a string of pearls that hung to her knees. Her hair was like ripe corn, waved and parted on the side with a girlish knot behind. Her skin was as fresh as a baby's. Mary was in black net. She had been very busy helping the cook, and she had had little time to spend on her hair. She looked ten years older than Dulcie, and her mind was absolutely on the dinner. The dinner was really very good. Mills had been extremely anxious about it. He had called up Mary from down-town to tell her that he was bringing home fresh asparagus. He wanted it served as an extra course with Hollandaise sauce. Mary protested, but gave in. It was the Hollandaise sauce that had kept her from curling her hair.

There were orchids for a centerpiece—in harmony with Dulcie's gown. In fact, the whole dinner seemed keyed up to Dulcie. The guests were for the most part literary folk, to whom Mills wanted to display his Egeria. After dinner Dulcie sang for them. She had set to music the words of one of Mills' poems, and she was much applauded.

After everybody had gone Mary went to bed with a headache. She was glad that it was Saturday, for Sunday promised a rest. She decided to send the children over to her mother and to have a quiet day with Mills. She wouldn't even go to church in the morning. There was an afternoon service; perhaps she and Mills might go together.

But Mills had other plans. He walked as far as the church door with Mary, and left her there. Mary wasn't sorry to be left; her headache had returned, and she was glad to sit alone in the peaceful dimness. But the pain proved finally too much for her, so she slipped out quietly and went home.

Clouds had risen, and she hurried before the shower. It was a real April shower, wind with a rush and a silver downpour. Mary, coming into the dark living-room, threw herself on the couch in a far corner and drew a rug over her. The couch was backed up against a table which held a lamp and a row of books. Mary had a certain feeling of content in the way the furniture seemed to shut her in. There was no sound but the splashing of rain against the windows.

She fell asleep at last, and waked to find that Mills and Dulcie had come in. No lights were on; the room was in twilight dimness.

Mills had met Dulcie at her front door. "How dear of you to come," she had told him.

He had spoken of his desertion of Mary. "But this day was made for you, Dulcie."

They had walked on together, not heeding where they went, and when the storm had caught them they were nearer Mills' house than Dulcie's and so he had taken her there. They had entered the apparently empty room.

"Mary is still at church. Come and dry your little feet by my fire, Dulcie." Mills knelt and fanned the flame.

Mary, coming slowly back from her dreams, heard this and other things, and at last Dulcie's voice in protest:

"Dear, we must think of Mary."

"Poor Mary!"

Now the thing that Mary hated more than anything else in the whole world was pity. Through all the shock of the astounding revelation that Mills and Dulcie cared for each other came the sting of their sympathy. She sat up, a shadow among the shadows.

"I mustn't stay, Mills," Dulcie was declaring.

"Why not?"

"I feel like a—thief—"

"Nonsense, we are only taking our own, Dulcie. We should have taken it years ago. Loving you I should never have married Mary."

"I had a conscience then, Mills, and you had promised."

"But now you see it differently, Dulcie?"

"Perhaps."

Mills was on his knees beside Dulcie's chair, kissing her hands. The fire lighted them. It was like a play, with Mary a forlorn spectator in the blackness of the pit.

"Let me go now, Mills."

"Wait till Mary comes—we'll tell her."

"No, oh, poor Mary!"

Poor Mary indeed!

"Anyhow you've got to stay, Dulcie, and sing for me, and when Mary comes back she'll get us some supper and I'll read you my new verses."

Among the shadows Mary had a moment of tragic mirth. Then she set her feet on the floor and spoke:

"I'm sorry, Mills, but I couldn't cook supper to-night if I died for it—"

From their bright circle of light they peered at her.

"Oh, my poor dear!" Dulcie said.

"I'm not poor," Mary told her, "but I'm tired, dead tired, and my head aches dreadfully, and if you want Mills you can have him."

"Have him?" Dulcie whispered.

"Yes. I don't want him."

Mills exploded.

"What?"

"I don't want you, Mills. I'm tired of being a prop; I'm tired of planning your meals, I'm tired of deciding whether you shall have mushrooms with your steak or—onions. You can have him, Dulcie. I know you think I've lost my mind." She came forward within the radius of the light. "But I haven't. As long as I thought Mills cared I could stick it out. But I have learned to-night that he loved you before he married me. You gave him to me, Dulcie, and now you want him back."

Indian giver! Like a flash Dulcie's mind went to the little Mary of the pigtails and pointing forefinger.

"You want him and you can have him. Perhaps if you had taken him years ago he might have been different. I don't know. Perhaps even now he can live up to all the lovely, lovely things that you and he are always talking about. But I've had to talk to Mills about what he likes to eat and what we have to pay for things; I've had to push him and prod him and praise him, and it has been hard work. If you want him you can have him, Dulcie."

Mills had a stunned look.

"Don't you love me, Mary?"

"I think I've proved it," she said quietly; "but I couldn't possibly go on loving you now. You have Dulcie to love you, and one woman is enough for any man. I don't know what you are planning to do, but you needn't run away or do anything spectacular. I'll make it as easy for you as possible. And now if you don't mind I'll go up and take a headache powder; my head is splitting."

Left alone, they tried to regain their air of high romance.

"Poor Mary!"

But the words rang hollow. One couldn't possibly call a woman poor who had given away so much with a single gesture.

They tried to talk it over but found nothing to say. At last Mills took Dulcie home. She asked him in and he went. Aunt Priscilla was out, and tea was served for the two of them from a lacquered tea cart—Orange Pekoe and Japanese wafers. It was delicious but unsubstantial. Dulcie with her coat off was like a wood sprite in leaf green. Her hair was gold, her eyes wet violets; but Mills missed something. He had a feeling that he wanted to get home and talk things over with Mary.

At last he rose, and it was then that Dulcie laid her hand on his arm.

"Mills, I can't."

"Can't what?"

"Let you leave Mary."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be right."

"It would be as right as it has ever been, Dulcie."

"I know how it must look to you, but—but I knew all the time that wrong is wrong. I thought I was a different Dulcie from the girl of long ago, but I'm not. I still have a conscience; I can't take you away from Mary."

"You're not taking me away. You heard what she said—she doesn't want me."

And Dulcie didn't want him! He saw it in that moment! The things that Mary had said had scared her. She didn't want to prod and push and praise. She didn't want to decide what he should have for dinner. She didn't want to weigh the merits of beefsteak and mushrooms or beefsteak and onions—onions!

He felt suddenly old, fat, bald-headed! The glow had faded from everything. He did not protest or attempt to persuade her. He took his hat, kissed her hand and got away.

Aunt Priscilla coming in found Dulcie in tears by the fire.

"I've given him up, Aunt Cilla."

"Why?"

"Well, it wouldn't be right."

She came into Aunt Priscilla's bedroom later to talk it over. She had on the rosy house coat. She spoke of going back to Paris.

"It will be better for both of us. After all, Aunt Cilla, we are what we are fundamentally, and we Puritans can't get away from our consciences, can we?"

"Some of us," said Aunt Priscilla, "can't."

The old woman lay awake a long time that night, thinking it out. She was glad that Dulcie had stopped the thing in time. But she had a feeling that the solution of the situation could not be laid to an awakened conscience. She hoped that some day Dulcie would tell her the truth.

It was still raining when Mills reached home. The house was dark, the fire had died down. He went up-stairs. The boys were in bed. There was a light in Mary's room. He opened the door. Mary was propped up on her pillows reading a book.

He stopped, uncertain, on the threshold.

"Come in," she said, "my head's better."

He crossed the room and stood beside her.

"Oh, Mary," he said, and his face worked. He dropped on his knees by the bed and cried like a child.

She laid her hand on his head and smoothed his thin hair.

"Poor Mills!" she said softly; "poor old Mills!" Then after a moment, brightly: "It will do us both good to have some coffee. Run along, Mills, and start the percolator; I'll be down in a minute to get the supper."