The Trumpeter Swan Part 42

"Law? Oh, look here, Randy, I thought you had given that up."

"I haven't, and why should you? We will finish, and some day we will open an office together."

The Major, whistling softly, listened and said nothing.

"I have been thinking a lot about it," Randy went on, "and I can't see much of a future ahead of me. Not the kind of future that our families are expecting of us. You and I have got to stand for something, Truxton, or some day the world will be saying that all the great men died with Thomas Jefferson."

The Major went on with his lilting tune. What a pair they were, these lads! Randy, afire with his dreams, and rather tragic in his dreaming.

Truxton, light as a feather--laughing.

"Why can't we give to the world as much as the men who have gone before us?" Randy was demanding. "Are we going to take everything from our ancestors, and give nothing to our descendants?"

Truxton chuckled. "By Jove," he said, "now that I come to think of it, I am the head of a family--there's Fiddle-dee-dee, and I shall have to reckon with Fiddle-dee-dee's children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren--who will expect that my portrait will hang on the wall at Huntersfield."

"It is all very well to laugh," said Randy hotly, "but that is the way it looks to me; that we have got to show to the world that our ambitions are--big. It is all very well to talk about the day's work.

I am going to do it, and pay my way, but there's got to be something beyond that to think about--something bigger than I have ever known."

He gained dignity through the sincerity of his purpose. The Major, still whistling softly, wondered what had come over the boy. He recognized a difference since he had last talked to him. Randy was not only roused; he was ready to look life in the face, to wrest from it the best. "If that is what love of the little girl is doing for him,"

said the Major to himself, "then let him love her."

Truxton continued to treat the situation lightly. "Look here," he said, "do you think you are going to be the only great man in our generation?"

Randy laughed; but the fire was still in his eyes. "The county will hold the two of us."

And now the Major spoke. "No man can be great by simply saying it.

But I think most of our great men have expected things of themselves.

They have dreamed dreams of greatness. I fancy that Lincoln did in his log cabin, and Roosevelt on the plains. And it wasn't egotism--it was a boy's wish to give himself to the world. And the wish was the urge.

And the trouble with many of our men in these days is that they are content to dream; of what they can get instead of what they can do.

Paine has the right idea. There must be a day's work no matter how hard, and it must be done well, but beyond that must be a dream of bigger things for the future----"

Truxton stood up. "I asked for bread and you have given me--caviar.

Sufficient unto the day is the greatness thereof. And in the meantime, Randy, I will make the grand gesture--and help you sell cars." He was grinning as he left them. "Good-bye, Major. Good-bye, T. Jefferson, Jr. Let me know when you want me in your Cabinet."

It was late that afternoon that Mary, looking for her husband, found him in the Judge's library.

"What are you doing?" she asked, with lively curiosity.

Truxton was sitting on the floor with a pile of calf-bound books beside him.

"What are you doing, lover?"

"Come here and I'll tell you." He made a seat for her of four of the big books. His arm went around her and he laid his head against her shoulder.

"Mary," he said, "I am carving a pedestal."

"You are what?"

He explained. He laughed a great deal as he gave her an account of his conversation with the Major and Randy that morning.

"You see before you," with a final flourish, "a potential great man. A Thomas Jefferson, up-to-date; a John Randolph of the present day; the Lincoln of my own time; the ancestor of Fiddle's great-grandchildren."

She rumpled his hair. "I like you as you are."

He caught her hand and held it. "But you'd like me on--a pedestal?"

"If you'll let me help you carve it."

He kissed the hand that he held. "If I am ever anything more than I am," he said, and now he was not laughing, "it will be because of you--my dearest darling."

CHAPTER XII

INDIAN--INDIAN

I

The Merriweather fortunes had not been affected by the fall of the Confederacy. There had been money invested in European ventures, and when peace had come in sixty-five, the old grey stone house had again flung wide its doors to the distinguished guests who had always honored it, and had resumed its ancient custom of an annual harvest ball.

The ballroom, built at the back of the main house, was connected with it by wide curving corridors, which contained the family portraits, and which had long windows which opened out on little balconies. On the night of the ball these balconies were lighted by round yellow lanterns, so that the effect from the outside was that of a succession of full moons.

The ballroom was octagonal, and canopied with a blue ceiling studded with silver stars. There were cupids with garlands on the side walls, and faded blue brocade hangings. Across one end of the ballroom was the long gallery reserved for those whom the Merriweathers still called "the tenantry," and it was here that Mary and Mrs. Flippin always sat after baking cakes.

Mrs. Flippin had not baked the cakes to-day, nor was she in the gallery, for her daughter, Mary, was among the guests on the ballroom floor, and her mother's own good sense had kept her at home.

"I shall look after Miss MacVeigh," she had said. "I want Truxton to bring you over and show you in your pretty new dress."

When they came, Madge, who was sitting up, insisted that she, too, must see Mary. "My dear, my dear," she said, "what a wonderful frock."

"Yes," Mary said, "it is. It is one of Becky's, and she gave it to me.

And the turquoises are Mrs. Beaufort's."

Madge, who knew the whole alphabet of smart costumers, was aware of the sophisticated perfection of that fluff of jade green tulle. The touch of gold at the girdle, the flash of gold for the petticoat. She guessed the price, a stiff one, and wondered that Mary should speak of it casually as "one of Becky's."

"The turquoises are the perfect touch."

"That was Becky's idea. It seemed queer to me at first, blue with the green. But she said if I just wore this band around my hair, and the ring. And it does seem right, doesn't it?"

"It is perfect. What is Miss Bannister wearing?"

"Silver and white--lace, you know. The new kind, like a cobweb--with silver underneath--and a rose-colored fan--and pearls. You should see her pearls, Miss MacVeigh. Tell her about them, Truxton."

"Well, once upon a time they belonged to a queen. Becky's great-grandfather on the Meredith side was a diplomat in Paris, and he bought them, or so the story runs. Becky only wears a part of them.

The rest are in the family vaults."

Madge listened, and showed no surprise. But that account of lace and silver, and priceless pearls did not sound in the least like the new little girl about whom George had, in the few times that she had seen him of late, been so silent.