The Gay Cockade Part 36

IV

It was not until the following Sat.u.r.day that he saw Jane. She had made two hundred sandwiches. She had got Tommy's mother to help her. She had invented new combinations, always holding to the idea of satisfying the substantial appet.i.tes of men.

There would be no use, she argued, in offering five-o'clock-tea combinations.

She was very busy and very happy and very hopeful.

"If this keeps up," she told her mother, "I shall rent a little shop and sell them over the counter."

Her mother had an invalid's pessimism. "They may tire of them."

They were not yet tired. They gave Jane and her basket vociferous greeting, crowding round her and buying eagerly. Atwood and Henry having placed orders hung back, content to wait for a later moment when she might have leisure to talk to them.

Tommy helped Jane to hand out sandwiches and make change. He felt like the faithful squire of a great lady. He had read much romantic literature, and he served as well if not as picturesquely as a page in doublet and hose.

So O-liver saw them. He had been riding all the afternoon on Mary Pick.

He had gone up into the Canon of the Honey Pots. No one knew it by that name but O-liver, but at all the houses one could buy honey. Up and down the road were little stands on which were set forth gla.s.ses and jars of amber sweet. The bees flashed like motes in the sunlight, the air was heavy with the fragrance of the flowers which yielded their largess to the marauders.

It was dark when he rode down toward the town. It lay before him, all twinkling lights. Above it hung a thin moon and countless stars. It might have been a fairy town under the kindly cover of the night.

But when he reached the central square the illusion ceased. It was what men had made it--sordid, cheap. He stopped Mary Pick under a pepper tree and surveyed the scene.

Jane and her basket were the center of an excited group. She had almost reached the end of her supplies, and some one had suggested auctioning off the remainder. Jane had protested, but her protests had not availed.

She had turned to Tommy for help, to Henry, to Atwood. They had done their best. But the man who led the crowd had an object in his leaders.h.i.+p. It was Tillotson of the little hotel--red-faced, whisky-soaked.

"Sandwich Jane, Sandwich Jane!" he shouted. "That's the name for her, boys."

And they took it up and shouted "Sandwich Jane!"

It was at this moment that O-liver stopped under the pepper tree. The bright light fell directly on Jane's distressed face. He saw the swept-back brightness of her hair, her clear-cut profile, her white skin, her white teeth. But he saw more than this. "By Jove," he said, "she's a lady!"

If he had been talking to the men he would have said "Gos.h.!.+" It was only when he was alone that he permitted himself the indulgence of more formal language.

That Jane was harried he could see. And suddenly he rode forward on Mary Pick.

The crowd made way for him expectantly. There were always interesting developments when O-liver was on the scene.

"Gentlemen," he said, "let the lady speak for herself. I am not sure what you are trying to do, but it is evidently something she doesn't want done."

Jane flashed a grateful glance up at him. He was the unknown knight throwing down the gauntlet in her defense. He was different from the others--his voice was different.

"They want to auction off my sandwiches," she explained, "and they won't listen."

"I'm sure they will listen." O-liver on Mary Pick, with his hat off and his mane tossed back, might have been Henry of the white plumes. "Of course they'll listen."

And they did!

Jane stood on her box and addressed them.

"I don't want to get any more for my sandwiches than they are worth,"

she said earnestly. "I make good ones, and I sell them for twenty cents because they are the best of their kind. I am glad you like them. I want to earn my living and my mother's. She is sick, and I have to stay at home with her. And I don't mind being called 'Sandwich Jane.' It's a good name and I shall use it in my business. But I don't like being treated as you have treated me to-night. If it happens again I shall have to stop selling sandwiches; and I'd be sorry to have that happen, and I hope you'd be sorry too."

Her little speech was over. She stepped down composedly from the box, folded her cloth and picked up her basket. She said "Thank you" to O-liver, "Come on" to Tommy, and walked from among them with her light step and free carriage; and they stared after her.

O-liver sitting later in front of the post-office with his satellites round him found himself compelled to listen to praise of Jane.

"She's made a hit," Atwood said earnestly. "When a woman talks like that it's the straight goods."

Henry agreed. "She's got grit. It's her kind that get ahead. But it's a pity that she's got to work to make a living."

Atwood, too, thought it was a pity. And presently he and Henry fell into silence as they fitted Jane into various dreams. Atwood's dream had to do with a mansion high on Frisco's hills. But Henry saw her beside him in his long and lovely car. He saw her, too, in a fur coat.

V

"I feel," said Jane, "like a murderer." Tommy and O-liver had stopped at her front gate to leave her some books.

"Why?" It was O-liver who asked it.

"Come and see." She led them round the house. Death and destruction reigned.

"I poured gasoline into the ants' nests and set them on fire--and now look at them!"

There were a few survivors toiling among the ruins.

"They are taking out the dead bodies," Jane explained. "It's so human that it's tragic. I'll never do it again."

"You can't let them eat you up."

"I know. It's one of the puzzles." She sat looking down at them. "How busy they are!"

"Too busy," O-liver stated. "They are worse than bees. There are at least some drones in the hive."

"Poor drones," said Jane.

"Why?" quickly.

"To miss the best."

"Is work the best?"

She said "Yes," adding after a little: "I don't just mean making sandwiches. That's just a beginning. There's everything ahead."

She said it as if the world were hers. O-liver, in spite of himself, was thrilled. "How do you know that everything is ahead?"