The Trumpeter Swan Part 47

"Her money does not enter into the matter."

"Some people might think it did. There are those who might be unkind enough to call you a--fortune-hunter."

"I shall be called nothing of the kind by those who know me."

"But there are so many who don't know you."

"I wonder," said Randy, fiercely, "why I am staying here and letting you say such things to me. There is nothing you can say which can hurt me. Becky knows--G.o.d knows, that I wish she were as poor as poverty.

Perhaps money doesn't mean as much to us as it does to yon. I wish I had it, yes--so that I could give it to her. But love for us means a tent in the desert--a hut on a mountain--it can never mean what we could buy with money."

"Does love mean to her," George's tone was incisive, "a tent in the desert, a hut on a mountain?"

Randy's anger flamed. "I think," he said, "that I should beg Becky's pardon for bringing her name into this at all---- And now, will you give me her fan?"

"When she asks for it--yes."

Randy was breathing heavily. "Will you give me her--fan----"

The mist from the fountain blew cool against his hot cheeks. The water which old Neptune poured from his sh.e.l.l flashed white under the stars.

"Let her ask for it----" George's laugh was light.

It was that laugh which made Randy see red. He caught George's wrists suddenly in his hands. "Drop it."

George stopped laughing. "Let her ask for it," he said again.

Randy twisted the wrists. It was a cruel trick. But his Indian blood was uppermost.

"Drop it," he said, with another twist, and the fan fell.

But Randy was not satisfied. "Do you think," he said, "that I am through with you? What you need is tar and feathers, but failing that----" he did not finish his sentence. He caught George around the body and began to push him back towards the fountain.

George fought doggedly--but Randy was strong with the muscular strength of youth and months of military training.

"I'll kill you for this," George kept saying.

"No," said Randy, conserving his breath, "they don't--do it--in--these--days----"

He had Dalton now at the rim and with a final effort of strength he lifted him--there was a splash, and into the deeps of the great basin went George, while the bronze Neptune, and the bronze dolphins, and the nymphs with flowing hair, splashed and spouted a welcoming chorus that drowned his cry!

Randy, head up, eyes s.h.i.+ning, marched into the house and had a servant brush him off and powder a scratch on his chin; then he went down-stairs to the Hunt Room and strode across the room until he came to where Becky sat in her corner.

"I found your fan," he told her, and laid it, a blaze of lovely color, on the table in front of her.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WHISTLING SALLY

I

Becky, as she journeyed towards the north, had carried with her a vision of a new and rather disturbing Randy--a Randy who, striding across the Hunt Room with high-held head, had delivered her fan, and had, later, asked for an explanation.

"How did he get it, Becky?"

She had told him.

"Why didn't you tell me when I came back and said I would go for it?"

"I was afraid he might still be there."

"Well?"

"And that something might happen."

Something had happened later by the fountain. But Randy did not speak of it. "I saw the fan in his hand and asked for it," grimly, "and he gave it to me----"

On the night before she went away, Randy had said, "I can't tell you all that you mean to me, Becky, and I am not going to try. But I am yours always--remember that----" He had kissed her hand and held it for a moment against his heart. Then he had left her, and Becky had wanted to call him back and say something that she felt had been left unsaid, but had found that she could not.

Admiral Meredith met his granddaughter in New York, and the rest of the trip was made with him.

Admiral Meredith was as different from Judge Bannister in his mental equipment as he was in physical appearance. He was a short little man, who walked with a sailor's swing, and who laughed like a fog-horn. He had ruddy cheeks, and the manners of a Chesterfield. If he lacked the air of aristocratic calm which gave distinction to Judge Bannister, he supplied in its place a sophistication due to his contact with a world which moved faster than the Judge's world in Virginia.

He adored Becky, and resented her long sojourn in the South. "I believe you love the Judge better than you do me," he told her, as he turned to her in the taxi which took them from the train to the boat.

"I don't love anybody better than I do you," she said, and tucked her hand in his.

"What have they been doing to you?" he demanded; "you are as white as paper."

"Well, it has been hot."

"Of all the fool things to keep you down here in summer. I am going to take you straight to 'Sconset to the Whistling Sally and keep you there for a month."

"The Whistling Sally" was the Admiral's refuge when he was tired of the world. It was a gray little house set among other gray little houses across the island from Nantucket town. It stood on top of the bluff and overlooked a sea which stretched straight to Spain. It was called "The Whistling Sally" because a s.h.i.+p's figure-head graced its front yard, the buxom half of a young woman who blew out her cheeks in a perpetual piping, and whose faded colors spoke eloquently of the storms which had buffeted her.

The Admiral, as has been indicated, had an imposing mansion in Nantucket town. For two months in the summer he entertained his friends in all the glory of a Colonial background--white pillars, spiral stairway, polished floors, Chinese Chippendale, lacquered cabinets, old china and oil portraits. He gave dinners and played golf, he had a yacht and a motor boat, he danced when the spirit moved him, and was light on his feet in spite of his years. He was adored by the ladies, lionized by everybody, and liked it.

But when the summer was over and September came, he went to Siasconset and reverted to the type of his ancestors. He hobn.o.bbed with the men and women who had been the friends and neighbors of his forbears. He doffed his sophistication as he doffed his formal clothes. He wore a slicker on wet days, and the rain dripped from his rubber hat. He sat knee to knee with certain cronies around the town pump. He made chowder after a famous recipe, and dug clams when the spirit moved him.

His housekeeper, Jane, adjourned from the town house to "The Whistling Sally" when Becky was there; at other times the Admiral did for himself, keeping the little cottage as neat as a pin, and cooking as if he were born to it.

It seemed to Becky that as the long low island rose from the sea, the burdens which she had carried for so long dropped from her. There were the houses on the cliff, the glint of a gilded dome, and then, gray and blue and green the old town showed against the skyline, resolving itself presently into roofs, and church towers, and patches of trees, with long piers stretching out through shallow waters, boat-houses, fis.h.i.+ng smacks, and at last a thin line of people waiting on the wharf.

The air was like wine. The sky was blue with the deep sapphire which follows a wind-swept night. There was not a hint of mist or fog.

Flocks of gulls rose and dipped and rose again, or rested unafraid on the wooden posts of the pier.