GEORGIE-PORGIE
I
It would never have happened if Aunt Claudia had been there. Aunt
Claudia would have built hedges about Becky. She would have warned the
Judge. She would, as a last resort, have challenged Dalton. But Fate,
which had Becky's future well in hand, had sent Aunt Claudia to meet
Truxton in New York. And she was having the time of her life.
Her first letter was a revelation to her niece. "I didn't know," she
told the Judge at breakfast, "that Aunt Claudia could be like this----"
"Like what?"
"So young and gay----"
"She is not old. And when she was young she was gayer than you."
"Oh, not really, Grandfather."
"Yes. And she looked like you--and had the same tricks with her hands,
and her hair was bright and brown. And she was very pretty."
"She is pretty yet," said Becky, loyally, but she was quite sure that
whatever might have been Aunt Claudia's likeness to herself in the
past, her own charms would not in the future shrink to fit Aunt
Claudia's present pattern. It was unthinkable that her pink and white
should fade to paleness, her slenderness to stiffness, her youthful
radiance to a sort of weary cheerfulness.
There was nothing weary in the letter, however. "Oh, my dear, my dear,
you should see Truxton. He is so perfectly splendid that I am sure he
is a changeling and not my son. I tell him that he can't be the bundle
of cuddly sweetness that I used to carry in my arms. I wore your white
house-coat that first morning, Becky, and he sent some roses, and we
had breakfast together in my rooms at the hotel. I believe it is the
first time in years that I have looked into a mirror to really like my
looks. You were sweet, my dear, to insist on putting it in. Truxton
must stay here for two weeks more, and he wants me to stay with him.
Then we shall come down together. Can you get along without me? We
are going to the most wonderful plays, and to smart places to eat, and
I danced last night on a roof garden. Should I say 'on' or 'in' a roof
garden? Truxton says that my step is as light as a girl's. I think my
head is a little turned. I am very happy."
Becky laid the letter down. "Would anyone have believed that Aunt
Claudia could----"
"You have said that before, my dear. Your Aunt Claudia wasn't born in
the ark----"
"But, Grandfather, I didn't mean that."
"It sounded like it. I shall write to her to stay as long as she can.
We can get along perfectly without her."
"Of course," said Becky slowly. She had a feeling that, at all costs,
she ought to call Aunt Claudia back.
For Dalton, after that first ride in the rain from Pavilion Hill, had
speeded his wooing. He had swept Becky along on a rushing tide. He
had courted the Judge, and the Judge had pressed upon him invitation
after invitation. Day and night the big motor had flashed up to
Huntersfield, bringing Dalton to some tryst with Becky, or carrying her
forth to some gay adventure. Her world was rose-colored. She had not
dreamed of life like this. She seemed to have drunk of some new wine,
which lighted her eyes and flamed in her cheeks. Her beauty shone with
an almost transcendent quality. As the dove's plumage takes on in the
spring an added luster, so did the bronze of Becky's hair seem to burn
with a brighter sheen.
Yet the Judge noticed nothing.
"Did you ask him to dine with us?" he had demanded, when Dalton had
called Becky up on the morning of the receipt of Aunt Claudia's letter.
"No, Grandfather."
"Then I'll do it," and he had gone to the telephone, and had urged his
hospitality.
II
When Dalton came Becky met him on the front steps of the house.
"Dinner is late," she said, "let's go down into the garden."
The garden at Huntersfield was square with box hedges and peaked up
with yew, and there were stained marble statues of Diana and Flora and
Ceres, and a little pool with lily pads.
"You are like the pretty little girls in the picture books," said
George, as they walked along. "Isn't that a new frock?"
"Yes," said Becky, "it is. Do you like it?"
"You are a rose among the roses," he said. He wondered a bit at its
apparent expensiveness. Perhaps, however, Becky was skillful with her
needle. Some women were. He did not care greatly for such skill, but
he was charmed by the effect.
"You are a rose among the roses," he said again, and broke off a big
pink bud from a bush near by. "Bend your head a little. I want to put
it in your hair."
His fingers caught in the bronze mesh. "It is wound around my ring."
He fumbled in his pockets with his free hand and got his knife. "It
may pull a bit."
He showed her presently the lock which he had cut. "It seems alive,"
he kissed it and put it in his pocket.
Her protest was genuine. "Oh, please," she said, "I wish you wouldn't."
"Wouldn't what?"
"Keep it."
"Shall I throw it away?"
"You shouldn't have cut it off."
"Other men have been tempted--in a garden----"
It might have startled George could he have known that old Mandy,
eyeing him from the kitchen, placed him in Eden's bower not as the hero
of the world's initial tragedy, but as its Satanic villain.
"He sutt'n'y have _be_witched Miss Becky," she told Calvin; "she ain'
got her min' on nothin' but him."
"Yo' put yo' min' on yo' roas' lamb, honey," Calvin suggested.
"How-cum you got late?"
"That chile kep' me fixin' that pink dress. She ain' never cyard what
she wo'. And now she stan' in front o' dat lookin'-glass an' fuss an'
fiddle. And w'en she ain' fussin' an' fiddlin', she jus' moons around,
waitin' fo' him to come ridin' up in that red car like a devil on
greased light'in'. An' I say right heah, Miss Claudia ain' gwine like
it."
"Why ain' she?"
"Miss Claudia know black f'um w'ite. An' dat man done got a black
heart----"
"Whut yon know 'bout hit, Mandy?"
"Lissen. You wait. He'll suck a o'ange an' th'ow it away. He'll pull
a rose, and scattah the leaves." Mandy, stirring gravy, was none the
less dramatic. "You lissen, an' wait----"
"Wen Miss Claudia comin'?"
"In one week, thank the Lord," Mandy pushed the gravy to the back of
the stove and pulled forward an iron pot. "The soup's ready," she
said; "you go up and tell the Jedge, Calvin."
All through dinner, Becky was conscious of that lock of hair in
George's pocket. The strand from which the lock had been cut fell down
on her cheek. She had to tuck it back. She saw George smile as she
did it. She forgave him.
It was after dinner that George spoke of Becky's gown.
"It is perfect," he said, "all except the pearls----?"
She gave him a startled glance. "The pearls?"
"I want to see you without them."
She unwound them and they dripped from her hand in milky whiteness.
He made his survey. "That's better," he said, "if they were real it
would be different--I don't like to have you cheapened by anything less
than--perfect----"
"Cheapened?" She smiled inscrutably, then dropped the pearls into a
small box on the table beside her. "Yes," she said, "if they were real
it would be different----"
There was something in her manner which made him say hurriedly, "You
must not think that I am criticizing your taste. If I had my way you
should have everything that money can buy----"
Her candid eyes came up to his. "There are a great many things that
money cannot buy."
"You've got to show me," George told her; "I've never seen anything yet
that I couldn't get with money."
"Could you buy--dreams----"
"I'd rather buy--diamonds."
"And money can't buy happiness."
"It can buy a pretty good imitation."
"But imitation happiness is like imitation pearls."
He laughed and sat down beside her. "You mustn't be too clever."
"I am not clever at all."
"I believe you are. And you don't have to be. There are plenty of
clever women but only one Becky Bannister."
It was just an hour later that Georgie-Porgie kissed her. She was at
the piano in the music-room, and there was no light except the glimmer
of tall white candles, and the silver moonlight which fell across the
shining floor.
Her grandfather was nodding in the room beyond, and through the open
window came the dry, sweet scent of summer, as if nature had opened her
pot-pourri to give the world a whiff of treasured fragrance.
Becky had been singing, and she had stopped and looked up at him.
"Oh, you lovely--lovely, little thing," he said, and bent his head.
To Becky, that moment was supreme, sacred. She trembled with
happiness. To her that kiss meant betrothal--ultimate marriage.
To George it meant, of course, nothing of the kind. It was only one of
many moments. It was a romance which might have been borrowed from the
Middle Ages. A rare tale such as one might read in a book. A pleasant
dalliance--to be continued until he was tired of it. If he ever
married, it must be a spectacular affair--handsome woman, big fortune,
not an unsophisticated slip of a child from an impoverished Virginia
farm.
III
In the days that followed, Becky's gay lover came and rode away, and
came again. He sparkled and shone and worshipped, but not a word did
he say about the future. He seemed content with this idyl of old
gardens, scented twilights, starlight nights, with Beauty's eyes for
him alone radiant eyes that matched the stars.
Yet as the days went on the radiance was dimmed. Becky was in a state
of bewilderment which bordered on fear. George showed himself an
incomparable lover, but always he was silent about the things which she
felt cried for utterance.
So at last one day she spoke to the Judge.
"Granddad, did you kiss Grandmother before you asked her to marry you?"
"Asking always comes first, my dear. And you are too young to think of
such things."
Grandfather was, thus obviously, no help. He sat in the Bird Room and
dreamed of the days when the stuffed mocking-bird on the wax branch
sang to a young bride, and his ideal of love had to do with the courtly
etiquette of a time when men knelt and sued and were rewarded with the
touch of finger tips.
As for George, he found himself liking this affair rather more than
usual. There was no denying that the child was tremendously
attractive--with her youth and beauty and the reserve which like a
stone wall seemed now and then to shut her in. He had always a feeling
that he would like to climb over the wall. It had pricked his interest
to find in this little creature a strength and delicacy which he had
found in no other woman.
He had had one or two letters from Madge, and had answered them with a
line. She gave rather generously of her correspondence and her letters
were never dull. In the last one she had asked him to join her on the
North Shore.
"I am sorry," she said, "for the new little girl. I have a feeling
that she won't know how to play the game and that you'll hurt her. You
will probably think that I am jealous, but I can't help that. Men
always think that women are jealous when it comes to other women. They
never seem to understand that we are trying to keep the world straight.
"Oscar writes that Flora isn't well, that all her other guests are gone
except you--and that she wants me. But why should I come? I wish he
wouldn't ask me. Something always tugs at my heart when I think of
Flora. She has so much and yet so little. She and Oscar would be much
happier in a flat on the West Side with Flora cooking in a kitchenette,
and Oscar bringing things home from the delicatessen. He would buy
bologna and potato salad on Sunday nights, and perhaps they would slice
up a raw onion. It sounds dreadful, doesn't it? But there are
thousands of people doing just that thing, Georgie, and being very
happy over it. And it wouldn't be dreadful for Flora and Oscar because
they would be right where they belong, and the potato salad and the
bologna and the little room where Oscar could sit with his coat off
would be much more to their liking than their present pomp and
elegance. You and I are different. You could never play any part
pleasantly but that of Prince Charming, and I should hate the
kitchenette. I want wide spaces, and old houses, and deep
fireplaces--my people far back were like that--I sometimes wonder why I
stick to Flora--perhaps it is because she clung to me in those days
when Oscar was drafted and had to go, and she cried so hard in the Red
Cross rooms that I took her under my wing---- Take it all together,
Flora is rather worth while and so is Oscar if he didn't try so hard to
be what he is not.
"But then we are all trying rather hard to be what we are not. I am
really and truly middle-class. In my mind, I mean. Yet no one would
believe it to look at me, for I wear my clothes like a Frenchwoman, and
I am as unconventional as English royalty. And two generations of us
have inherited money. But back of that there were nice middle-class
New Englanders who did their own work. And the women wore white
aprons, and the men wore overalls, and they ate doughnuts for
breakfast, and baked beans on Sunday, and they milked their own cows,
and skimmed their own cream, and they read Hamlet and the King James
version of the Bible, and a lot of them wrote things that will be
remembered throughout the ages, and they had big families and went to
church, and came home to overflowing hospitality and chicken pies--and
they were the salt of the earth. And as I think I remarked to you once
before, I want to be like my great-grandmother in my next incarnation,
and live in a wide, low farmhouse, and have horses and hogs and
chickens and pop-corn on snowy nights, and go to church on Sunday.
"I don't know why I am writing like this, except that I went to Trinity
to vespers, when I stopped over in Boston. It was dim and quiet and
the boys' voices were heavenly, and over it all brooded the spirit of
the great man who once preached there--and who still preaches----
"And now it is Sunday again, and I am back at the Crossing, and I
played golf all the morning, and bridge this afternoon, and all the
women smoked and all the men, and I was in a blue haze, and I wanted to
be back in the quiet church where the boys sang, and the lights were
like stars----
"I wish you and I could go there some day and that you could feel as I
do about it. But you wouldn't. You are always so sure and smug--and
you have a feeling that money will buy anything--even Paradise. I
wonder what you will be like on the next plane. You won't fit into my
farmhouse. I fancy that you'll be something rather--devilish--like Don
Juan--or perhaps you'll be just an 'ostler in a courtyard, shining
boots and--kissing maids----
"Of course I don't quite mean that. But I do feel that you'd be rather
worth while if you'd stop philandering and discover your soul.
"I am a bit homesick, and I haven't any home. If Dad hadn't married a
second time, I believe he would still love me a bit. But his wife
doesn't. And so here I am--and as restless as ever--seeking
something--always seeking.
"And now, once more, don't break the heart of the new little girl. I
don't need to warn you not to break your own. You are the greatest
example of the truth of 'he who loves and runs away will live to love
another day.' Oh, Georgie-Porgie, will you ever love any woman enough
to rise with her to the heights?
"Perhaps there aren't any heights for you or me. But I should like to
think there were. Different hilltops, of course, so that we could wave
across. We shall never climb together, Georgie. Perhaps we are too
much alike to help each other up the hills. We need stronger props.
"Tell me about Flora. Is she really ill? If she is, I'll come. But
I'd rather not.
"I hope you won't read this aloud to Oscar. You might, you know, and
it wouldn't do. He would hate to believe that he'd be happier buying
things at a delicatessen, and he wouldn't believe it. But it's true,
just as it is true that you would be happy shining boots and making
love to the maids like a character in Dickens.
"Come on up, and we'll motor to Boston on Sunday afternoon and we'll go
to Trinity; I want somebody to be good with me, Georgie, and there are
so many of the other kind.
"Ever wistfully,
"MADGE."
George knew that he ought to go, but he was not ready yet to run away.
He was having the time of his life, and as for Becky, he would teach
her how to play the game.
IV
Aunt Claudia was away for three weeks.
"I wish she would come home," young Paine said one morning to his
mother.
"Why?" Caroline Paine was at her desk with her mind on the dinner.
"Why, Randy?"
"Oh, Dalton's going there a lot."
Mrs. Paine headed her list with gumbo soup. "Do you think he goes to
see Becky?"
"Does a duck swim? Of course he goes there to see her, and he's
turning her head."
"He is enough to turn any woman's head. He has nice eyes." Mrs. Paine
left the topic as negligible, and turned to more important things.
"Randy, would you mind picking a few pods of okra for the soup? Susie
is so busy and Bob and Jefferson are both in the field."
"Certainly, Mother," his cool answer gave no hint of the emotions which
were seething within him. Becky's fate was hanging in the balance, and
his mother talked of okra! He had decided some weeks ago that boarders
were disintegrating--and that a mother was not a mother who had three
big meals a day on her mind.
He went into the garden. An old-fashioned garden, so common at one
time in the South--with a picket fence, a little gate, orderly paths--a
blaze of flowers to the right, and to the left a riot of
vegetables--fat tomatoes weighing the vines to the ground, cucumbers
hiding under their sheltering leaves, cabbages burgeoning in
blue-green, and giving the promise of unlimited boiled dinners, onions
enough to flavor a thousand delectable dishes, sweet corn running in
countless rows up the hill, carrots waving their plumes, Falstaffian
watermelons. It was evident with the garden as an index that the
boarders at King's Crest were fed on more than milk and honey.
Randy picked the okra and carried it to the kitchen, and returning to
the Schoolhouse found the Major opening his morning mail.
Randy sat down on the step. "Once upon a time," he said, "we had
niggers to work in our gardens. And now we are all niggers."
The Major's keen eyes studied him. "What's the matter?"
"I've been picking okra--for soup, and I'm a Paine of King's Crest."
"Well, you peeled potatoes in France."
"That's different."
"Why should it be different? If a thing is for the moment your job you
are never too big for it."
"I wish I had stayed in the Army. I wish I had never come back."
The Major whistled for a moment, thoughtfully. Then he said, "Look
here, Paine, hadn't you better talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"That's for you to tell me. There's something worrying you. You are
more tragic than--Hamlet----"
"Well--it's--Becky----"
"And Dalton, of course. Why don't you cut him out, Paine----"
"Me? Oh, look here, Major, what have I to offer her?"
"Youth and energy and a fighting spirit," the Major rapped out the
words.
"What is a fighting spirit worth," Randy asked with a sort of weary
scorn, "when a man is poor, and the woman's rich?"
The Major had been whistling a silly little tune from a modern opera.
It was an air which his men would have recognized. It came to an end
abruptly. "Rich? Who is rich?"
"Becky."
The Major got up and limped to the porch rail.
"I thought she was as poor as----"
"The rest of us? Well, she isn't."
It appeared that Becky's fortune came from the Nantucket grandmother,
and that there would be more when the Admiral died. It was really a
very large fortune, well invested, and yielding an amazing income. One
of the clauses of the grandmother's will had to do with the bringing up
of Becky. Until she was of age she was to be kept as much as possible
away from the distractions and temptations of modern luxury. The Judge
and the Admiral had agreed that nothing could be better. The result,
Randy said, was that nobody ever thought of Becky Bannister as rich.
"Yet those pearls that she wears are worth more than I ever expect to
earn."
"It is rather like a fairy tale. The beggar-maid becomes a queen."
"You can gee now why I can't offer her just youth and a fighting
spirit."
"I wonder if Dalton knows."
"I don't believe he does," Randy; said slowly, "I give him credit for
that."
"He might have heard----"
"I doubt it. He hasn't mingled much, you know."
"It will be rather a joke on him----"
"To find that he has married--Mademoiselle Midas?"
"To find that she is Mademoiselle Midas, whether he marries her or not."
V
Of course Georgie-Porgie ran away. It was the inevitable climax.
Flora's illness hastened things a bit.
"She wants to see her New York doctors," Waterman had said. "I think
we shall close the house, and join Madge later at the Crossing."
George felt an unexpected sense of shock. The game must end, yet he
wanted it to go on. The cards were in his hands, and he was not quite
ready to turn the trick.
"When do we go?" he asked Oscar.
"In a couple of days if we can manage it. Flora is getting worried
about herself. She thinks it is her heart."
George rode all of that afternoon with Becky. But not a word did he
say about his departure. He never spoiled a thing like this with
"Good-bye." Back at Waterman's, Kemp was packing trunks. In
forty-eight hours there would be the folding of tents, and Hamilton
Hill would be deserted. It added a pensiveness to his manner that made
him more than ever charming. It rained on the way home, and it seemed
to him significant that his first ride and his last with Becky should
have been in the rain.
He stayed to dinner, and afterwards he and Becky walked together in the
fragrance of the wet garden. A new moon hung low for a while and was
then lost behind the hills.
"My little girl," George said when the moment came that he must go, "My
dear little girl." He gathered her up in his arms--but did not kiss
her. For once in his life, Georgie-Porgie was too deeply moved for
kisses.
After he had gone, Becky went into the Bird Room, and stood on the
hearth and looked up at the Trumpeter Swan. There was no one to whom
she could speak of the ecstasy which surged through her. As a child
she had brought her joys here, and her sorrows--her Christmas presents
in the early morning--the first flowers of the spring. She had sat
here often in her little black frock and had felt the silent sympathy
of the wise old bird.
He gazed down at her now with an almost uncanny intelligence. She
laughed a little and standing on tiptoe laid her cheek against the cool
glass. "When I am married," was her wordless question, "will you sound
your trumpet high up near the moon?"