"One shouldn"t fall in love," Louise said, serenely, "they should walk squarely into it. That"s what I shall do, when I get ready to marry---- But I shall love Archibald as long as the good Lord will let me----"
She was trying to say it lightly, but a quiver of her voice betrayed her.
"Louise," Becky said, "what"s the matter with Archibald? Is anything really the matter?"
Louise began to cry. "Archie saw the doctor to-day, and he won"t promise anything--I made Arch tell me----"
"Oh, Louise." Becky"s lips were white.
"Of course if he takes good care of himself, it may not be for years.
You mustn"t let him know that I told you, Becky. But I had to tell somebody. I"ve kept it all bottled up as if I were a stone image. And I"m not a stone image, and he"s all I have."
She dabbed her eyes with a futile handkerchief. The tears dripped. "I must stop," she kept saying, "I shall look like a fright for dinner----"
But at dinner she showed no signs of her agitation. She had used powder and rouge with deft touches. She had followed Becky"s example and wore white, a crisp organdie, with a high blue sash. With her bobbed hair and pink cheeks she was not unlike a painted doll. She carried a little blue fan with lacquered sticks, and she tapped the table as she talked to Major Prime. The tapping was the only sign of her inner agitation.
The Admiral"s table that night seemed to Becky a circle of sinister meaning. There was Archibald condemned to die--while youth still beat in his veins---- There was Louise, who must go on without him. There was the Admiral--the last of a vanished company; there was the Major, whose life for four years had held--horrors. There was Madge, radiant to-night in the love of her husband, as she had perhaps once been radiant for Dalton.
_Georgie-Porgie_!
It was a horrid name. "_There were always so many girls to be kissed--and it was so easy to run away----_"
She had always hated the nursery rhyme. But now it seemed, to sing itself in her brain.
"_Georgie-Porgie, Pudding and pie, Kissed the girls, And made them cry----_"
Cope was at Becky"s right. "Aren"t you going to talk to me? You haven"t said a word since the soup."
"Well, everybody else is talking."
"What do I care for anybody else?"
Becky wondered how Archibald did it. How he kept that light manner for a world which he was not long to know. And there was Louise with rouge and powder on her cheeks to cover her tears---- That was courage---- She thought suddenly of "The Trumpeter Swan."
She spoke out of her thoughts. "Randy has sold his story."
He wanted to know all about it, and she repeated what Madge had said.
Yet even as she talked, that hateful rhyme persisted,
"_When the girls Came out to play, Georgie-Porgie Ran away----_"
After dinner they went into the drawing-room so that Louise could play for them. A great mirror which hung at the end of the room reflected Louise on the piano bench in her baby frock. It reflected Madge, slim and gold, with a huge fan of lilac feathers. It reflected Becky--in a rose-colored damask chair, it reflected the three men in black. Years ago there had been other men and women--the Admiral"s wife in red velvet and the same pearls that were now on Becky"s neck---- She shuddered.
As they drove home that night, the Major spoke to his wife of Becky.
"The child looks unhappy."
"She will be unhappy until some day her heart rests in her husband, as mine does in you. Shall I spoil you, Mark, if I talk like this?"
When they reached their hotel there were letters. One was from Flora: "You asked about George. He is not with us. He has gone to Nantucket to visit some friends of his--the Merediths. He will be back next week."
"The Merediths?" Madge said. "George doesn"t know any--Merediths.
Mark--he is following Becky."
"Well, she"s safe in Boston."
"She is going back. On Wednesday. And he"ll be there." Her eyes were troubled.
"Mark," she said, abruptly, "I wonder if Randy has left New York. Call him up, please, long distance. I want to talk to him."
"My darling girl, do you know what time it is?"
"Nearly midnight. But that"s nothing in New York. And, anyhow, if he is asleep, we will wake him up. I am going to tell him that George is at Siasconset."
"But, my dear, what good will it do?"
"He"s got to save Becky. I know Dalton"s tricks and his manners. He can cast a glamour over anything. And Randy"s the man for her. Oh, Mark, just think of her money and his genius----"
"What have money and genius to do with it?"
"Nothing, unless they love each other. But--she cares---- You should have seen her eyes when I said he had sold his story. But she doesn"t know that she cares, and he"s got to make her know."
"How can he make her know?"
"Let her see him--now. She has never seen him as he was in New York with us, sure of himself, knowing that he has found the thing that he can do. He was beautiful with that radiant boy-look. You know he was, Mark, wasn"t he?"
"Yes, my darling, yes."
"And I want him to be happy, don"t you?"
"Of course, dear heart."
"Then get him on the "phone. I"ll do the rest."
IV
Randy, in New York, acclaimed by a crowd of enthusiasts who had read his story as a gold nugget picked up from a desert of literary mediocrity. Randy, not knowing himself. Randy, modest beyond belief.
Randy, in his hotel at midnight walking the floor with his head held high, and saying to himself, "I"ve done it."
It seemed to him that, of course, it could not be true. The young editor who had eyed him through sh.e.l.l-rimmed gla.s.ses had said, "There"s going to be a lot of hard work ahead--to keep up to this----"
Randy, in his room, laughed at the thought of work. What did hardness matter? The thing that really mattered was that he had treasure to lay at the feet of Becky.
He sat down at the desk to write to her, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, a hand that shook with excitement.
"I am to meet a lot of big fellows to-morrow--I shall feel like an ugly duckling among the swans--oh, the _swans_, Becky, did we ever think that the Trumpeter in his old gla.s.s case----"