The Gay Cockade

V

Maxwell was a man of action. When he saw Anne pale he sought a remedy. "Look here, why can't you and your sisters come out to my farm?"

Anne, remembering certain things—broilers and fresh eggs—was thrilled by the invitation. "I'd love it! But Amy won't accept."

"Why not?"

"She's terribly stiff."

He laughed. "Perhaps I can talk her over."

Amy, lying on her couch, very weary, facing a shadowy future, felt his magnetism as he talked to her. It was as if life spoke through his lips. Murray had sat there beside her only an hour before. He had brought her roses but he had brought no hope.

Fear had for weeks kept Amy company. Through her nights and days it had stalked, a pale spectre. And now Maxwell was saying: "You'll be well in a month. Of course you'll come! There's room for half a dozen. You three won't half fill the house."

It was decided, however, that Ethel must stay in town. Amy had a nervous feeling that with the house closed Murray might slip away from them.

Old Molly Winchell, summing up the situation, said to Murray: "Of course Anne will marry Maxwell Sears. There's nothing like propinquity."

Murray, startled, admitted the danger. "It would be an awful thing for Anne."

"Why?"

"He's rather a bounder."

Old Molly Winchell hit him on the arm with her fan. Her eyes twinkled maliciously. "He's nothing of the sort, and you know it. You're jealous, Murray."

Murray's jealousy was, quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the other sisters also figured—especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought of a world without Amy.

Her illness had troubled him, but not greatly. Things had always come to him as he had wanted them, and he was quite sure that if Anne was to be the flame to light his future, Providence would permit Amy to be, as it were, the keeper of the light.

He felt it necessary to warn Anne: "Don't fall in love with Sears."

"Don't be silly, Murray."

"Is it silly to say that I love you, Anne?"

They were alone in the old library, with its books and bronzes and bag-wigged ancestors. And Murray sat down beside Anne and took her hand in his and said, "I love you, Anne."

It was a proposal which was not to be treated lightly. In spite of herself, Anne was flattered. Murray had always loomed on her horizon as something of a bore but none the less a person of importance.

She caught her breath quickly. "Please, Murray"—her blushes were bewitching—"I'm too young to think about such things. And I'm not in love with anybody."

Murray raised her hand to his lips. "Keep yourself for me, little Anne." He rose and stood looking down at her. "You're a very charming child," he said. "Do you know it?"

Anne, gazing at herself in the glass later, wondered if it were true. It was nice of Murray to say it. But she was not in the least in love with Murray. He was too old. And Maxwell was too old. Anne's dreams of romance had to do with glorified youth. She wanted a young Romeo shouting his passion to the stars!

She packed her bag, however, in high anticipation. Maxwell was a splendid playmate, and she thought of his farm as flowing with milk and honey!

Maxwell wrote to Winifred that he was coming home and bringing guests.

"Run down and meet them. Anne's a corking kid."

Winifred knew what had happened. Some girl had got hold of Maxwell. It was always the way with men like that—big men; they were credulous creatures where women were concerned, and it would make such a difference to Maxwell's future if he married the wrong woman.

She decided to go down as soon as she could. She felt that she ought to hurry, but there were things that held her. And so it happened that before she reached the farm Maxwell had asked Anne to marry him. There had been a cool evening when the scent of lilacs had washed in great waves through the open windows. Amy had gone to bed and he and Anne had dined alone with the flare of candles between them, and the rest of the room in pleasant shadow. And then their coffee had been served, and Aunt Mittie, his housekeeper, had asked if there was anything else, and had withdrawn, and he had risen and had walked round to Anne's place and had laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Little Anne," he had said, "I should like to see you here always."

"Here?"

"As my wife."

"Oh!"

She had had a rapturous week at the farm. She had never known anything like it. Aunt Elizabeth, of the Eastern Shore, lived in a sleepy town, and Anne's other brief vacations had been spent in more or less fashionable resorts. But here was a paradise of plenty; the big wide house, the spreading barns, the opulent garden, the rolling fields, the enchanting creatures who were sheltered by the barns and fed by the fields, and who in return gave payment of yellow cream and warm white eggs, and who lowed at night and cackled in the morning, and whose days were measured by the rising and the setting of the sun.

She loved it all—the purring pussies, the companionable pups, the steady, faithful older dogs, the lambs in the pasture, the good things to eat.

She was glowing with gratitude, and Maxwell was asking insistently, "Won't you, Anne?"

She had never been so happy, and he was the source of her happiness. Against this background of vivid life the thought of Murray was a pale memory.

So her wistful eyes met Maxwell's. "It would be lovely—to live here—always."

Later, when she had started up-stairs with her candle, he had kissed her, leaning over the rail to watch her as she went up, and Anne had gone to sleep tremulous with the thought that her future would lie here in this great house with this fine and kindly man.

Winifred, coming down at last, found that she had come too late. Maxwell told her as they motored up from the station.

"Wish me happiness, Win. I am going to marry little Anne."

It did not enter his head for a moment that the woman by his side loved him. He had thought that if she ever married him it would be a sort of concession on her part, a sacrifice to her interest in his future. He had a feeling that she would be glad if such a sacrifice were not demanded.

But Winifred was not glad. "You are sure you are making no mistake, Max?"

"Wait till you see her."

Winifred waited and saw. "She's not in the least in love with him. She likes the warm nest she has fallen into. And she'll spoil his future. He'll settle down here, and he belongs to the world."

He belonged at least to his constituency.

"I've got to make a speech," he told the three women one morning, "in a town twenty miles away. If you girls would like the ride you can motor over with me. You needn't listen to my speech if you don't want to."

Amy and Winifred said that of course they wanted to listen. Anne smiled happily and said nothing. She was, of course, glad to go, but Maxwell's speeches were to her the abstract things of life; the concrete things at this moment were the delicious dinner which was before her and the fact that in the barn, curled up in the hay, was a new family of kittens—little tabbies like their adoring mother.

"Isn't it a lovely world?" she had said to her lover as she had sat in the loft with the cuddly cats in her lap.

"Yes."

He knew that it was not all lovely, that somewhere there were lean and hungry kittens and lean and hungry folks—but why remind her at such a moment?

VI

On the way over Anne sat with Winifred. She had insisted that Amy should have the front seat with Max. Amy was much better. Life had begun to flow into her veins like wine. She had written to Murray: "It is as if a miracle had happened."

Winifred, on the back seat, talked to Anne. She had a great deal to say about Maxwell's future. "I am sorry he bought the farm."

"Oh, not really." Anne's attention strayed. She had one of the puppies in her lap. He kept peeping out from between the folds of her cape with his bright eyes. "Isn't he a darling, Winifred?"

"He ought to sell it." Winifred liked dogs, but at this moment she wanted Anne's attention. "He ought to sell the farm. He has a great future before him. Everybody says it. He simply must not settle down."

"Oh, well, he won't," said Anne easily.

"He will if you let him."

"If I let him?"

"If he thinks you like it."

There was a deep flush on Winifred's cheeks. She was really a very handsome girl, with bright brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a small brown hat and a sable collar. The collar was open and showed her strong white throat.

"If he thinks you like it," she repeated, "he will stay; and he belongs to the world; nobody must hold him back. He's the biggest man in his party to-day. There is no limit to his powers."

Anne stared at her. "Of course there isn't." She wondered why Winifred seemed so terribly in earnest about it. She pulled the puppy's ears. "But I should hate to have him sell the farm."

Winifred settled back with a sharp sigh and gazed at the long gray road ahead of her. She gazed indeed into a rather blank future. Her talents would be, she felt, to some extent wasted. If Max rose to greater heights of fame it would be because of his own unaided efforts. This child would be no help to him.

The speech Max made to his constituents was not cool and clear-cut like the speeches which Anne had heard him make to his colleagues in the House. He spoke now with warmth and persuasiveness. Anne, sitting in the big car on the edge of the crowd, found herself listening intently. She was aware, as he went on, of a new Max. The mass of men who had gathered were largely foreigners who knew little of the real meanings of democracy. Max was telling them what it meant to be a good American. He told it simply, but he was in dead earnest. Anne felt that this earnestness was the secret of his power. He wanted men to be good Americans, he wanted them to know the privileges they might enjoy in a free country, and he was telling them how to keep it free-not by violence and mob rule but by remembering their obligations as citizens. He told them that they must be always on the side of law and order, that they must fight injustice not with the bomb and the red flag but with their votes.

"Vote for the man you trust, and not for the man who inflames your passions. Your vote is a sacred thing; when you sell it you dishonor yourself. Respect yourself, and you'll respect the country that has made a man of you."

The response was immediate, the applause tumultuous. After his speech they crowded about him. They knew him for their friend. But they knew him for more than that. He asked nothing of their manhood but the best. He preached honesty and practiced it.

Yet as he climbed into the car Anne had little to say to him. Winifred, leaning forward, was emphatic in her praise:

"You have no right to bury yourself, Max."

"My dear girl, I'm not dead yet." He was a bit impatient. He had hoped for a word from Anne. But she sat silent, pulling the puppy's ears.

"He's asleep," she said finally as she caught the inquiry in her lover's eyes. "He's tired out, poor darling."

She seemed indifferent, but she was not. She had been much stirred. She had a strange feeling that something had happened to her while she had listened to Maxwell's speech. Some string had broken and her romance was out of tune.

She lay awake for a long time that night, thinking it over. She grew hot with the thought of the limitations of her previous conception of her lover. She had considered him a sort of background for the pleasant things he could do for her. She had fitted him to the measure of the boxes of candy that he had brought her, the luncheons in the House restaurant, the bountiful hospitality of the farm. How lightly she had looked down on him as he had stood below her on the stairs with her candle in his hand. How casually she had accepted his kiss. She had a sudden feeling that she must not let him kiss her again!

Early in the morning she went into Amy's room. "Amy," she said, "how soon do you think we can go to Aunt Elizabeth's?"

"Aunt Elizabeth's? Why, Anne?"

"I want to leave here."

"To leave here?" Amy sat up. Even in the bright light of the morning her face looked young. Good food and fresh air had done much for her. It had been quite heavenly, too, to let care slip away, to have no thought of what she should eat or what she should drink or what she should wear. "To leave here? I thought you loved it, Anne."

"I've got to get away. I'm not going to marry Maxwell, Amy."

"Anne! What made you change your mind?"

"I can't tell you. Please don't ask me. But I wish you would write to Aunt Elizabeth."

"I had a letter from her yesterday. She says we can come at any time. But—have you told Max?"

"Not yet."

"Has he done anything?"

"No. It's just—that I can't marry him. Don't ask me, Amy." She broke down in a storm of tears.

Amy, soothing her, wondered if after all Anne cared for Murray Flint. It was, she felt, the only solution possible. Surely a girl would not throw away a chance to marry a man like Maxwell Sears for nothing.

For Amy had learned in the days that she had spent at the farm that Maxwell Sears was a man to reckon with. She was very grateful for what he had done for her, and she had been glad of Anne's engagement. Murray would perhaps be disappointed, but there would still be herself and Ethel.

It was not easy to explain things to Maxwell.

"Why are you going now?" he demanded, and was impatient when they told him that Aunt Elizabeth expected them. "I don't understand it at all. It upsets all of my plans for you, Anne."

That night when he brought Anne's candle she was not on the stairs. Winifred and Amy had gone up.

"Anne! Anne!" he called softly.

She came to the top rail and leaned over. "I'm going to bed in the dark. There's a wonderful moon."

"Come down—for a minute."

"No."

"Then I'll come up," masterfully.

He mounted the stairs two at a time; but when he reached the landing the door was shut!

In the morning he asked her about it. "Why, dearest?"

"Max dear, I can't marry you."

"Nonsense!" His voice was sharp. He laid his hands heavily on her shoulders. "Why not? Look at me, Anne. Why not?"

"I'm not going to marry—anybody."

That was all he could get out of her. He pleaded, raged, and grew at last white and still with anger. "You might at least tell me your reasons."

She said that she would write. Perhaps she could say it better on paper. And she was very, very sorry, but she couldn't.

Winifred knew that something was up, but made no comment. Amy, carrying out their program of departure, had a sense of regret.

After all, it had been a lovely life, and there were worse things than being a sister to Maxwell Sears. Her voice broke a little as she tried to thank him on their last morning.

He wrung her hand. "Say a good word for me with Anne. I don't know what's the matter with her."

Neither did Amy. And if she was Maxwell's advocate how could she be Murray's? She flushed a little.

"Anne's such a child."

He remembered how he had called her a corking kid. She was more than that to him now. She stood in the doorway in her gray sailor hat and gray cape.

"Anne," he said, "you must have a last bunch of pansies from the garden. Come out and help me pick them."

In the garden he asked, "Are you going to kiss me good-bye?"

"No, Max. Please—"

"Then it's 'God bless you, dearest.'"

He forgot the pansies and they went back to where the car waited.

VII

Anne's letter, written from the Eastern Shore, was a long and childish screed. "We have always been beggars on horseback," she said. "Of course you couldn't know that, Max. We have gone without bread so that we could be grand and elegant. We have gone without fire so that we could buy our satin gowns for fashionable functions. We went without butter for a year so that Amy could entertain the Strangeways, whom she had met years ago in Europe. I wouldn't dare tell you what that dinner cost us, but we had a cabinet member or two, and the British Ambassador.

"You wondered why I liked Dickens. Well, I read him so that I could get a good meal by proxy. I used to gloat over the feasts at Wardle's, and Mr. Stiggins' hot toast. And when I met you you gave me—everything. Murray Flint thinks that because I am thin and pale I am all spirit, and I'm afraid you have the same idea. You didn't dream, did you, that I was pale because I hadn't had enough to eat? And when you told me that you wanted me to be your wife I looked ahead and saw the good food and the roaring fires, and I didn't think of anything else. I honestly didn't think of you for a moment, Max.

"There were days, though, when you meant more to me than just that. When we played at the Capitol—that night when we met Lafayette on the stairs! Nobody had ever played with me. But after we went to the farm I was smothered in ease. And I loved it. And I didn't love you. You were just—the man who gave me things. Do you see what I mean? And when you kissed me on the stairs it was as if I were being kissed by a nice old Santa Claus.

"Everybody saw it but you. I am sure Amy knew—and Winifred Reed. You—you ought to marry Winifred, Max. Perhaps you will. You won't want me after you read this letter. And Winifred is splendid.

"It was your speech to the men that waked me. I saw how big you were, and I just—shriveled up.

"And you mustn't worry about me. I am not hungry any more. I feel as if I should never want anything to eat. Perhaps it is because I am older and haven't a growing appetite. And I am not any of the things you thought me. And of course you would be disappointed, and it wouldn't be fair."

Having posted this, Anne had other things to do. She wrote mysterious letters, and finally came into a room where her sisters and Aunt Elizabeth were sewing, with an important-looking paper in her hand.

"I am going to work, Amy."

"To work!"

"Yes."

Amy and Ethel and Aunt Elizabeth wore white frocks, and looked very cool and feminine and high-bred. Aunt Elizabeth had a nose like Amy's and the same look of race.

It was Aunt Elizabeth who said in her commanding voice: "What are you talking about, Anne?"

"I am going to work in the War Risk Bureau, Aunt Elizabeth. I wrote to two senators, and they helped me."

No woman of the Merryman family had ever worked in an office.

Anne faced a storm of disapproval, but she stood there slim and defiant, and stated her reasons.

"We need money. I don't see how we can get through a winter like the last. I can't keep my self-respect if we go on living as we did last winter."

"Haven't you any pride, Anne?"

"I have self-respect."

She left the room a conqueror. After she had gone the three women talked about her. They did not say it openly, but they felt that there was really an ordinary streak in Anne. Otherwise she would not have wanted to work in an office.

There was, however, nothing to be done. Anne was twenty-one. She was to get a hundred dollars a month. In spite of herself, Amy felt a throb of the heart as she thought of what that hundred dollars would mean to them.

Murray Flint was much perturbed when he heard of Anne's decision. He wrote to her that of course she knew that there was no reason why she should go into an office—his home and hearthstone were hers. She wrote back that she should never marry! After that, Murray felt, with Amy and Ethel and Aunt Elizabeth, that there was an ordinary streak in Anne!

When he arrived in August at Aunt Elizabeth's he was astonished at the change in Amy. She looked really very young as she came to meet him, and Aunt Elizabeth's house was a perfect setting for her charms. Murray was very fond of Aunt Elizabeth's house. It was an ancient, stately edifice, and within there were the gold-framed portraits of men and women with noses like Amy's and Aunt Elizabeth's.

Murray had missed Amy very much and he told her so.

"It was a point of honor for me to ask Anne again. But when I thought I was going to lose you I learned that my life would be empty without you."

He really believed what he was telling her. If Amy did not believe it she made no sign. She was getting much more than she expected, and she accepted him graciously and elegantly, as became a daughter of the Merrymans.

It was when he told Anne of his engagement to Amy that Murray again offered her a home. "There will always be a place for Amy's sisters, Anne."

"You are very good, Murray—but I can't."

She had said the same thing to Maxwell, who had come hot-footed to tell her that her letter had made no difference in his feeling for her.

"How could you think it, Anne? My darling, you are making a mountain of a molehill!"

She had been tremulous but firm. "I've got to have my—self-respect, Max."

Because he understood men he understood her. And when he had left her he had said to himself with long-drawn breath, "She's a corking kid."

And this time there had been no laughter in his eyes.

All that winter Anne worked, a little striving creature, with her head held high!

Maxwell was in town, for Congress had convened. But he had not come to see her. Now and then when there was a night session she went up to the House and sat far back in the Gallery, where, unperceived, she could listen to her lover's voice. Then she would steal away, a little ghost, down the shadowy stairway; but there were no games now with Lafayette!

Amy and Murray were to be married in June. They had enjoyed a dignified and leisurely engagement, and Amy had bloomed in the sunshine of Murray's approbation. Anne's salary had helped a great deal in getting the trousseau together. Most of the salary, indeed, had been spent for that. The table was, as usual, meagre, but Anne had not seemed to care.

She was therefore rather white and thin when, on the day that Congress adjourned, Maxwell came out to Georgetown to see her. It had been a long session, and it was spring.

There were white lilacs in a great blue jar in the Merryman library, and through the long window a glimpse of a thin little moon in a faint green sky.

As he looked at Anne, Maxwell felt a lump in his throat. She had given him her hand and had smiled at him. "How are the kittens?" she had asked in an effort to be gay.

He did not answer her question. He went, rather, directly to the point. "Anne, why wouldn't you kiss me on that last night?"

She flushed to the roots of her hair. "It—it was because I loved you, Max."

"I thought so. But you had to prove it to yourself?"

"Yes."

"Anne, that's why I've let you alone all winter—so that you might prove it. But—I can't go on. It has been an awful winter for me, Anne."

It had been an awful winter for her. But she had come out of it knowing herself. And even when at last his arms were about her and he was telling her that he would never let her go, she had a plea to make:

"Don't let me live too softly, Max. Life isn't a feather bed—You belong to the world. I must go with you toward the big things. But now and then we'll run back to the farm."

"What do I care where we run, so that we run—together!"

THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY