The Gay Cockade Part 54

Maxwell looked and knew the type. "But you don't agree about d.i.c.kens?"

"No. And Amy says that Murray's wiser than I. But I'm not sure. Amy thinks that all men are wiser than women."

Maxwell chuckled. Anne was refres.h.i.+ng. She was far from modern in her modes of thought. She was--he hunted for the word and found it--mid-Victorian in her att.i.tude of mind.

He wondered what Winifred Reed would think of her. Winifred lived in Chicago. She was athletic and intellectual. She wrote tabloid dramas, drove her own car, dressed smartly, and took a great interest in Maxwell's career. She wrote to him once a week, and he always answered her letters. Now and then she failed to write, and he missed her letters and told her so. It was altogether a pleasant friends.h.i.+p.

She hated the idea of Maxwell's farm. She thought it a backward step.

"Are you going to spend the precious years ahead of you in the company of cows?"

"There'll be pigs too, Winifred; and chickens. And, of course, my horses."

"You belong in a world of men. It's the secret of your success that men like you."

"My cows like me--and there's great comfort after the stress of a stormy session in the reposefulness of a pig."

"I wish you'd be serious."

"I am serious. Perhaps it's a throwback, Winifred. There is farmer blood in my veins."

It was something deeper than that. It was his virile joy in fundamentals. He loved his golden-eared Guernseys and his black Berks.h.i.+res and his White Wyandottes--not because of their choiceness but because they were cows and pigs and chickens; and he kept a pair of p.u.s.s.y cats, half a dozen dogs, and as many horses, because man primitively had made friends of the dumb brutes upon whom the ease and safety of his life depended.

There was, rather strangely, something about Anne which fitted in with this atavistic idea. She was, more than Winifred, a hearthstone woman. A man might carry her over his threshold and find her when he came home o'

nights. It was hard to visualize Winifred as waiting or watching or welcoming. She was always going somewhere with an air of having important things to do, and coming back with an air of having done them.

Maxwell felt that these important things were not connected in any way with domestic matters. One did not, indeed, expect domesticity of Winifred.

Thus Anne, drawing upon him by mysterious forces, drew him also by her beauty and a certain wistfulness in her eyes. He had once had a dog, Amber Witch, whose eyes had held always a wistful question. He had tried to answer it. She had grown old on his hearth, yet always to the end of her eyes had asked. He hoped now that in some celestial hunting ground she had found an answer to that subtle need.

He told Anne about Amber Witch. "I have one of her puppies on my farm."

She was much interested. "I've never had a dog; or a cat."

He had, he said, a big pair of tabbies who slept in the hay and came up to the dairy when the milk was strained. There were two blue porcelain dishes for their sacred use. There was, he said, milk and to spare. He grew eloquent as he told of the number of quarts daily. He bragged of his b.u.t.ter. His cheeses had won prizes at county fairs. As for chickens--they had fresh eggs and broilers without end. He had his own hives, too, white-clover honey. And his housekeeper made hot biscuit. In a month or two there'd be asparagus and strawberries. Say! Yes, he was eloquent.

Anne was hungry. There had been a meagre dinner that evening. The other girls had not seemed to care. But Anne had cared.

"I'm starved," she had said as she had surveyed the table. "Let's p.a.w.n the spoons and have one square meal."

"Anne!"

"Oh, we're beggars on horseback"--bitterly--"and I hate it."

It was her moment of rebellion against the tyranny of tradition. Amy had had such a moment years ago when her mother had taken her away from school. Amy had a brilliant mind, and she had loved study, but her mother had brought her to see that there was no money for college.

"You'd better have a year or two in society, Amy. And this craze for higher education is rather middle-cla.s.s."

Ethel's rebellion had come when she had wanted to marry a round-faced chap who lived across the street. They had played together from childhood. His people were pleasant folks but lacked social background.

So Ethel's romance had been nipped in the bud. The round-faced chap had married another girl. And now Amy at thirty and Ethel at twenty-five were crystallizing into something rather hard and brilliant, as Anne would perhaps crystallize if something didn't happen.

The something which happened was Maxwell Sears. Anne listened to the things he said about his farm and felt that they couldn't be true.

"It sounds like a fairy tale."

"It isn't. And it's all tremendously interesting."

He looked very much alive as he said it, and Anne felt the thrill of his energy and enthusiasm. Murray was never enthusiastic; neither were Amy and Ethel. They were all indeed a bit petrified.

Before he left her Maxwell asked Anne if he could call. He came promptly two nights later and brought with him a bunch of violets and a box of chocolates. Anne pinned the violets in the front of the gray frock that gave her the look of a cloistered nun, and ate up the chocolates.

Amy was shocked. "Anne, you positively gobbled--"

"I didn't."

"Well, you ate a pound at least."

Anne protested. Maxwell had eaten a lot, and Ethel and Amy had eaten a few, and Murray had come in.

"You remember, Amy, Murray came in."

"He didn't touch one, Anne. He never eats chocolates."

"He's afraid of getting fat."

"Anne!"

"He is. When he takes me out to lunch he thinks of himself, not of me.

The last time we had grapefruit and broiled mushrooms and lettuce; and I wanted chops."

Maxwell had been glad to see Anne eat the chocolates. She had seemed as happy as a child, and he had liked that. There was nothing childish about Winifred. She had been always grown-up and competent and helpful.

He felt that he owed Winifred a great deal. They were not engaged, but he rather hoped that some day they might marry. Of course that would depend upon Winifred. She would probably make him give up the farm and he would hate that. But a man might give up a farm for a woman like Winifred and still have more than he deserved.

It will be seen that Maxwell was modest, especially where women were concerned. The complacency of Murray Flint, weighing Amy against Ethel and Ethel against Amy and Anne against both, would have seemed infamous to Maxwell. He felt that it was only by the grace of G.o.d that any woman gave herself to any man. He had a sense of honor which was founded on decency rather than on convention. He had also a sense of high romance which belonged more fittingly to the fifteenth than to the twentieth century. He was not, however, aware of it. He looked upon himself as a plain and practical chap who had a few things to work out politically before he settled down to the serious business of farming. Of course if he married Winifred he wouldn't settle down to the farm, but he would settle down to something.

In the meantime here was Anne, reading d.i.c.kens, eating chocolates, and leaning over the rail of the House Gallery to listen to his speeches.

It was rather wonderful to have her there. She wore a gray cape with a chinchilla collar made out of Amy's old m.u.f.f. A straight sailor hat of rough straw came well down over her forehead and showed fluffs of s.h.i.+ning hair at the sides. Her little gray-gloved hands clasped the violets he had given her. Above the violets her eyes were a deeper blue.

She came always alone. "Amy doesn't know," she had told him frankly; "she wouldn't let me, come if she did."

"Why not?"

"I am supposed to be chaperoned."

"My dear child, I told you to bring either or both of your sisters."

"I don't want them. They would spoil it."

"How?"

She tried to explain. He and she could see things in the old Capitol that Amy and Ethel couldn't.