The Trumpeter Swan Part 24

"Becky--oh, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry--_Becky_----"

Her answer came faintly, "I'll come."

"What's the matter with the wire? I can't hear you."

There was nothing the matter with the wire. The thing that was the matter was Becky's voice. She found it suddenly unmanageable. "We'll come," she told him finally, and hung up the receiver.

She ascended the stairs as if she carried a burden on her back. Mandy was on her knees before the hamper, untying the rosy packages.

"Is you goin' to try 'em on, honey?" she asked.

Becky stood in the doorway, the lace wrap hanging from her shoulders and showing the delicate blue of the negligee beneath--her face was like chalk but her eyes shone. "Yes," she said, "there's a pink gingham I want to wear to the barbecue to-morrow. There ought to be a hat to match. Did the hats come, Mandy?"

"Calvin he say there's another box, but he ain' brought it up from the deepot. He was ridin' dat Jo-mule, and this yer basket was all he could ca'y."

In the pink frock Becky looked like a lovely child.

"Huc-c.u.m you-all gettin' eve'y thing pink, Miss Becky?" Mandy asked.

"For a change," said Becky.

And how could she tell old Mandy that she had felt that in a rose-colored world everything should be rose-color?

She tried on each frock deliberately. She tried on every pair of slippers. She tried on the wraps, and the hats which came up finally with Calvin staggering beneath the bulkiness of the box. She was lovely in everything. And she was no longer the little Becky Bannister whom Dalton had wooed. She was Mademoiselle Midas, appraising her beauty in her lovely clothes, and wondering what Dalton would think if he could see her.

II

Becky did not, after all, wear the pink gingham. The Judge elected to go on horseback, so Becky rode forth by his side correctly and smartly attired in a gray habit, with a straight black sailor and a high stock and boots that made her look like a charming boy.

They came to Pavilion Hill to find the boarders like the chorus in light opera very picturesque in summer dresses and summer flannels, and with Mrs. Paine in a broad hat playing the part of leading lady. Mr.

Flippin, who was high-priest at all of the county barbecues, was superintending the roasting of a whole pig, and Mrs. Flippin had her mind on hot biscuits. The young mulatto, Daisy, and Mandy's John, with the negroes from the Paine household, were setting the long tables under the trees. There was the good smell of coffee, much laughter, and a generally festive atmosphere.

The Judge, enthroned presently in the Pavilion, was the pivotal center of the crowd. Everybody wanted to hear his stories, and with this fresh audience to stimulate him, he dominated the scene. He wore a sack suit and a Panama hat and his thin, fine face, the puff of curled white hair at the back of his neck, the gayety of his glance gave an almost theatric touch to his appearance, so that one felt he might at any moment come down stage and sing a topical song in the best Gilbertian manner.

It was an old scene with a new setting. It was not the first time that Pavilion Hill had been the backgrounds of a barbecue. But it was the first time that a Paine of King's Crest had accepted hospitality on its own land. It was the first time that it had echoed to the voices of an alien group. It was the first time that it had seen a fighting black man home from France. The old order had changed indeed. No more would there be feudal lords of Albemarle acres.

Yet old loyalties die hard. It was the Judge and Mrs. Paine and Becky and Randy who stood first in the hearts of the dusky folk who served at the long tables. The boarders were not in any sense "quality."

Whatever they might be, North, East and West, their names were not known on Virginia records. And what was any family tree worth if it was not rooted in Virginia soil?

"Effen the Jedge was a king and wo' a crown," said Mandy's John to Daisy, "he couldn't look mo' bawn to a th'one."

Daisy nodded. "Settin' at the head o' that table minds me o' whut my old Mammy used to say, 'han'some is as han'some does.' The Bannisters _done_ han'some and they _is_ handsome."

"They sure is," John agreed; "that-all's whut makes you so good-lookin', Daisy."

He came close to her and she drew away. "You put yo' min' on pa.s.sin'

them plates," she said with severity, "or you'll be spillin' po'k gravy on they haids." Her smile took away the sting of her admonition. John moved on, murmuring, "Well, yo' does han'some and yo' is han'some, Daisy, and that's why I loves you."

There were speeches after dinner. One from Randy, in which he thanked them in the name of his mother, and found himself quite suddenly and unexpectedly being fond of the boarders. Major Prime was not there.

He had been summoned back to Was.h.i.+ngton, but would return, he hoped, for the week-end.

It was after lunch that Randy and Becky walked to the woods. Nellie Custis followed them. They sat down at last at the foot of a hickory tree. Becky took off her hat and the wind blew her s.h.i.+ning hair about her face. She was pale and wore an air of deep preoccupation.

"Randy," she asked suddenly out of a long silence, "did you ever kiss a girl?"

Her question did not surprise him. He and Becky had argued many matters. And they usually plunged in without preliminaries. He fancied that Becky was discussing kisses in the abstract. It never occurred to him that the problem was personal.

"Yes," he said, "I have. What about it?"

"Did you--ask her to marry you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He pulled Nellie Custis' ears. "One of them wasn't a nice sort of girl--not the kind that I should have cared to introduce to--you."

"Yet you cared to--kiss her?"

Randy flushed faintly. "I know how it looks to you. I hated it afterwards, but I couldn't marry a girl--like that----"

"Who was the other girl?"

For a moment he did not reply, then he said with something of an effort, "It was you, Becky."

"Me? When?" She turned on him her startled gaze.

"Do you remember at Christmas--oh, ten years ago--and your grandfather had a party for you. There was mistletoe in the hall, and we danced and stopped under the mistletoe----"

"I remember, Randy--how long ago it seems."

"Yet ten years isn't really such a long time, is it, Becky? I was only a little boy, but I told myself then that I would never kiss any other girl. I thought then that--that some day I might ask you to marry me.

I--I had a wild dream that I might try to make you love me. I didn't know then that poverty is a millstone about a man's neck." He gave a bitter laugh.

Becky's breath came quickly. "Oh, Randy," she said, "poverty wouldn't have had anything to do with it--not if we had--cared----"

"I care," said Randy, "and I think the first time I knew how much I cared was when I kissed that other girl. Somehow you came to me that night, a little white thing, so fine and different, and I loathed her."

He was standing now--tall and lean and black-haired, but with the look of race on his thin face, a rather princely chap in spite of his shabby clothes. "Of course you don't care," he said; "I think if I had money I should try to make you. But I haven't the right. I had thought that, perhaps, if no other man came that some time I might----"

Becky picked up her riding crop, and as she talked she tapped her hoot in a sort of staccato accompaniment.

"That other man has come," _tap-tap_, "he kissed me," _tap-tap_, "and made me love him," _tap-tap_, "and he has gone away--and he hasn't asked me to marry him."

One saw the Indian in Randy now, in the lifted head, the square-set jaw, the almost cruel keenness of the eyes.

"Of course it is George Dalton," he said.