The Trumpeter Swan Part 41

"What would you subst.i.tute for--my drug?"

"I'll have to think about it. May I come again and tell you?"

"Of course. I am dying to know."

Mrs. Flippin entered just then with a tall pitcher of lemonade and a plate of delicate cakes. "I think Miss MacVeigh is looking mighty fine," she said, "don't you, Major?"

He would not have dared to tell how fine she looked to him.

He limped across the room with the plate of cakes, and poured lemonade into a gla.s.s for Madge. Her eyes followed his strong soldierly figure.

What a man he must have been before the war crippled him. What a man he was still, and his strength was not merely that of body. She felt the strength too of mind and soul.

"I think," said Mrs. Flippin that night, "that Major Prime is one of the nicest men."

Madge was in bed. The nurse had made her ready for the night, and was out on the porch with Mr. Flippin. Mrs. Flippin had fallen into the habit of having a little nightly talk with Madge. She missed her daughter, and Madge was pleasant and friendly.

"I think that Major Prime is one of the nicest men," repeated Mrs.

Flippin as she sat down beside the bed, "but what a dreadful thing that he is lame."

"I am not sure," Madge said, "that it is dreadful."

She hastened to redeem herself from any possible charge of bloodthirstiness.

"I don't mean," she said, "that it isn't awful for a man to lose his leg. But men who go through a thing like that and come out--conquerors--are rather wonderful, Mrs. Flippin."

Madge had hold of Mrs. Flippin's hand. She often held it in this quiet hour, and the idea rather amused her. She was not demonstrative, and it seemed inconceivable that she should care to hold Mrs. Flippins'

hand. But there was a motherliness about Mrs. Flippin, a quality with which Madge had never before come closely in contact. "It is like the way I used to feel when I was a little girl and said my prayers at night," she told herself.

Madge did not say her prayers now. n.o.body did, apparently. She thought it rather a pity. It was a comfortable thing to do. And it meant a great deal if you only believed in it.

"Do you say your prayers, Mrs. Flippin?" she asked suddenly.

Mrs. Flippin was getting used to Madge's queer questions. She treated them as a missionary might treat the questions of a beautiful and appealing savage, who having gone with him to some strange country was constantly interrogatory.

"She don't seem to know anything about the things we do," Mrs. Flippin told her husband. "She got the nurse to wheel her out into the kitchen this afternoon, and watched me frost a cake and cut out biscuits. And she says that she has never seen anything so sociable as the teakettle, the way it rocks and sings."

So now when Madge asked Mrs. Flippin if she said her prayers, Mrs.

Flippin said, "Do you mean at night?"

"Yes."

"Bob and I say them together," said Mrs. Flippin. "We started on our wedding night, and we ain't ever stopped."

It was a simple statement of a sublime fact. For thirty years this plain man and this plain woman had kept alive the spiritual flame on the household altar. No wonder that peace was under this roof and serenity.

Madge, as she lay there holding Mrs. Flippin's hand, looked very young, almost like a little girl. Her hair was parted and the burnished braids lay heavy on her lovely neck. Her thin fine gown left her arms bare. "Mrs. Flippin," she said, "I wish I could live here always, and have you come every night and sit and hold my hand."

Her eyes were smiling and Mrs. Flippin smiled back. "You'd get tired."

"No," said Madge, "I don't believe anybody ever gets tired of goodness.

Not real goodness. The kind that isn't hypocritical or priggish. And in these days it is so rare, that one just loves it. I am bored to death with near-bad people, Mrs. Flippin, and near-good ones. I'd much rather have them real saints and real sinners."

The nurse came in just then, and Mrs. Flippin went away. And after a time the house was very still. Madge's bed was close to the window.

Outside innumerable fireflies studded the night with gold. Now and then a screech-owl sounded his mournful note. It was a ghostly call, and there was the patter of little feet on the porch as the old cat played with her kittens in the warm dark. But Madge was not afraid.

She had a sense of great content as she lay there and thought of the things she had said to Major Prime. It was not often that she revealed herself, and when she did it was still rarer to meet understanding.

But he had understood. She was sure of that, and she would see him soon. He had promised. And she would not have to go back to Oscar and Flora until she was ready. Flora was better, but still very weak. It would be much wiser, the doctor had said, if she saw no one but her nurses for several days.

II

Truxton Beaufort rode over to King's Crest the next morning, and sat on the steps of the Schoolhouse. Randy and Major Prime were having breakfast out-of-doors. It was ten o'clock, but they were apparently taking their ease.

"I thought you had to work," Truxton said to Randy.

"I sold a car yesterday----"

"And to-day you are playing around like a plutocrat. I wish I could sell cars. I wish I could do _anything_. Look here, you two. I wonder if you feel as I do."

"About what?"

"Coming back. I came home expecting a pedestal--and I give you my word n.o.body seems to think much of me except my family. And they aren't wors.h.i.+pful--exactly. They can't be. How can they rave over my one decoration when that young n.i.g.g.e.r John has two, and deserved them, and when the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker are my ranking officers? War used to be a gentleman's game. But it isn't any more."

"We've got to carve our own pedestals," said the Major. "We are G.o.ds of yesterday. The world won't stop to praise us. We did our duty, and we would do it again. But our laurel wreaths are doffed. Our swords are beaten into plowshares. Peace is upon us. If we want pedestals, we've got to carve them."

Truxton argued that it wasn't quite fair. The Major agreed that it might not seem so, but the thing had been so vast, and there were so many men involved, so many heroes.

"Every little family has a hero of its own," Truxton supplemented.

"Mary thinks none of the others did _anything_--I won the _whole_ war.

That's where I have it over you two," he grinned.

"It is a thing," said the Major, cheerfully, "which can be remedied."

"It can," Truxton told him; "which reminds me that our young John is going to marry Flippins' Daisy, and our household is in mourning.

Mandy doesn't approve of Daisy, and neither does Calvin. Mandy took to her bed when she heard the news, and young John cooked breakfast to the tune of his Daddy's lamentations. But it was a good breakfast."

"Marriage," said the Major, "seems rather epidemic in these days."

Randy rose restlessly and sat on the porch rail. "Why in the world does John want to marry Daisy----"

"Why not?" easily. "There's some style about Daisy----"

"But there are lots of nice, comfortable, hard-working girls in this neighborhood."

"Lead me to 'em," Truxton mimicked young John, "lead me to 'em. Mary says that Daisy is the best of the lot. She has plenty of good sense back of her foolishness, and she is one of the best cooks in the county. She and John are planning to go up to Was.h.i.+ngton and open an old-fas.h.i.+oned oyster house. She says that people are complaining that they can't get oysters as they did in the old days, and she is going to show them. I wouldn't be surprised if they made a success of it. And I tell you this--I envy John. He will have a paying business, and here I am without a thing ahead of me, and I have married a wife and the ravens won't feed us."

Randy stuck his hands in his pockets with an air of sudden resolution.

"Look here," he said, "why can't we go halves in this car business? It will pay our expenses, and we can finish our law course at the University."