AT "THE LOCUSTS"
Lloyd and Betty had been home from Warwick Hall only two days, and the
joyful excitement of arrival had not yet worn off. The Locusts had never
looked so beautiful to them as it did this vacation, and their
enthusiasm over all that was about to happen kept them in a flutter from
morning till night.
When Rob's telephone message came that the train was late and that he
could not bring the girls out until after lunch, Lloyd chafed at the
delay at first. Then she consoled herself with the thought that she
could arrange a more effective welcome for the middle of the afternoon
than for an earlier hour.
"Grandfathah will have had his nap by that time," she said, with a saucy
glance in his direction, "and he will be as sweet and lovely as a May
mawning. And he'll have on a fresh white suit for the evening, and a
cah'nation in his buttonhole." Then she gave her orders more directly.
"You must be suah to be out on the front steps to welcome them,
grandfathah, with yoah co'tliest bow. And mothah, you must be beside him
in that embroidered white linen dress of yoahs that I like so much. Mom
Beck will stand in the doahway behind you all just like a pictuah of an
old-time South'n welcome. Of co'se Joyce has seen it all befoah, but
little Mary has been looking foh'wa'd to this visit to The Locusts as
she would to heaven. You know what Joyce wrote about her calling this
her promised land."
"I know how it is going to make her feel," said Betty. "Just as it made
me feel when I got here from the Cuckoo's Nest, and found this 'House
Beautiful' of my dreams. And if she is the little dreamer that I was the
best time will not be the arrival, but early candle-lighting time, when
you are playing on your harp. I used to sit on a foot-stool at
godmother's feet, so unutterably happy, that I would have to put out my
hand to feel her dress. I was so afraid that she might vanish--that
everything was too lovely to be real.
"And now, to think," she added, turning to Mrs. Sherman and
affectionately laying a hand on each shoulder, "it's lasted all this
time, till I have grown so tall that I could pick you up and carry you
off, little godmother. I am going to do it some day soon, lift you up
bodily and put you into a story that I have begun to write. It will be
my best work, because it is what I have lived."
"You'd better live awhile longer," laughed Mrs. Sherman, "before you
begin to settle what your best work will be. Think how the shy little
Elizabeth of twelve has blossomed into the stately Elizabeth of
eighteen, and think what possibilities are still ahead of you in the
next six years."
"When mothah and Betty begin to compliment each othah," remarked Lloyd,
seating herself on the arm of the old Colonel's chair, "they are lost to
all else in the world. So while we have this moment to ou'selves, my
deah grandfathah, I want to impress something on yoah mind, very
forcibly."
The playful way in which she held him by the ears was a familiarity no
one but Lloyd had ever dared take with the dignified old Colonel. She
emphasized each sentence with a gentle pull and pinch.
"Maybe you wouldn't believe it, but this little Mary Ware who is coming,
has a most exalted opinion of me. From what Joyce says she thinks I am
perfect, and I don't want her disillusioned. It's so nice to have
somebody look up to you that way, so I want to impress it on you that
you're not to indulge in any reminiscence of my past while she is heah.
You mustn't tell any of my youthful misdemeanahs that you are fond of
telling--how I threw mud on yoah coat, in one of my awful tempahs, and
smashed yoah shaving-mug with a walking-stick, and locked Walkah down in
the coal cellah when he wouldn't do what I wanted him to. You must 'let
the dead past bury its dead, and act--act in the living present,' so
that she'll think that _you_ think that I'm the piece of perfection she
imagines me to be."
"I'll be a party to no such deception," answered the old Colonel,
sternly, although his eyes, smiling fondly on her, plainly spoke
consent. "You know you're the worst spoiled child in Oldham County."
"Whose fault is it?" retorted Lloyd, with a final pinch as she liberated
his ears and darted away. "Ask Colonel George Lloyd. If there was any
spoiling done, he did it."
Two hours later, still in the gayest of spirits, Lloyd and Betty raced
down the avenue to meet their guests, and tired and travel-stained as
the newcomers were, the impetuous greeting gave them a sense of having
been caught up into a gay whirl of some kind. It gave them an excited
thrill which presaged all sorts of delightful things about to happen.
The courtly bows of the old Colonel, standing between the great white
pillars, Mrs. Sherman's warm welcome, and Mom Beck's old-time curtseys,
seemed to usher them into a fascinating story-book sort of life, far
more interesting than any Mary had yet read.
Several hours later, sitting in the long drawing-room, she wondered if
she could be the same girl who one short week before was chasing across
the desert like a Comanche Indian, beating the bushes for rattlesnakes,
or washing dishes in the hot little kitchen of the Wigwam. Here in the
soft light shed from many waxen tapers in the silver candelabra,
surrounded by fine old ancestral portraits, and furniture that shone
with the polish of hospitable generations, Mary felt civilized down to
her very finger-tips: so thoroughly a lady, through and through, that
the sensation sent a warm thrill over her.
That feeling had begun soon after her arrival, when Mom Beck ushered her
into a luxurious bathroom. Mary enjoyed luxury like a cat. As she
splashed away in the big porcelain tub, she wished that Hazel Lee could
see the tiled walls, the fine ample towels with their embroidered
monograms, the dainty soaps, and the cut-glass bottles of toilet-water,
with their faint odor as of distant violets. Then she wondered if Mom
Beck would think that she had refused her offers of assistance because
she was not used to the services of a lady's maid. She was half-afraid
of this old family servant in her imposing head-handkerchief and white
apron.
Recalling Joyce's experiences in France and what had been the duties of
her maid, Marie, she decided to call her in presently to brush her hair
and tie her slippers. Afterward she was glad that she had done so, for
Mom Beck was a practised hair-dresser, and made the most of Mary's thin
locks. She so brushed and fluffed and be-ribboned them in a new way,
with a big black bow on top, that Mary beamed with satisfaction when she
looked in the glass. The new way was immensely becoming.
Then when she went down to dinner, it seemed so elegant to find Mr.
Sherman in a dress suit. The shaded candles and cut glass and silver and
roses on the table made it seem quite like the dinner-parties she had
read about in novels, and the talk that circled around of the latest
books and the new opera, and the happenings in the world at large, and
the familiar mention of famous names, made her feel as if she were in
the real social whirl at last.
The name of copy-cat which Holland had given her proved well-earned now,
for so easily did she fall in with the ways about her, that one would
have thought her always accustomed to formal dinners, with a deft
colored waiter like Alec at her elbow.
Rob dined with them, and later in the evening Mrs. Walton came strolling
over in neighborly fashion, bringing her house-party to call on the
other party, she said, though to be sure only half of her guests had
arrived, the two young army officers, George Logan and Robert Stanley.
Allison and Kitty were with them, and--Mary noted with a quick indrawn
breath--_Ranald_. The title of _Little_ Captain no longer fitted him. He
was far too tall. She was disappointed to find him grown.
Somehow all the heroes and heroines whom she had looked upon as her own
age, who _were_ her own age when the interesting things she knew about
them had happened, were all grown up. Her first disappointment had been
in Rob, then in Betty. For this Betty was not the one Joyce had pictured
in her stories of the first house-party. This one had long dresses, and
her curly hair was tucked up on her head in such a bewitchingly
young-ladified way that Mary was in awe of her at first. She was not
disappointed in her now, however, and no longer in awe, since Betty had
piloted her over the place, swinging hands with her in as friendly a
fashion as if she were no older than Hazel Lee, and telling the way she
looked when _she_ saw The Locusts for the first time--a timid little
country girl in a sunbonnet, with a wicker basket on her arm.
The military uniforms lent an air of distinction to the scene, and
Allison and Kitty each began a conversation in such a vivacious way,
that Mary found it difficult to decide which group to attach herself to.
She did not want to lose a word that any one was saying, and the effort
to listen to several separate conversations was as much of a strain as
trying to watch three rings at the circus.
Through the laughter and the repartee of the young people she heard Mrs.
Walton say to Mr. Sherman: "Yes, only second lieutenants, but I've been
an army woman long enough to appreciate them as they deserve. They have
no rank to speak of, few privileges, are always expected to do the
agreeable to visitors (and they do it), obliged to give up their
quarters at a moment's notice, take the duties nobody else wants, be
cheerful under all conditions, and ready for anything. It is an
exception when a second lieutenant is not dear and fascinating. As for
these two, I am doubly fond of them, for their fathers were army men
before them, and old-time friends of ours. George I knew as a little lad
in Washington. I must tell you of an adventure of his, that shows what a
sterling fellow he is."
Mary heard only part of the anecdote, for at the same time Kitty was
telling an uproariously funny joke on Ranald, and all the rest were
laughing. But she heard enough to make her take a second look at
Lieutenant Logan. He was leaning forward in his chair, talking to Joyce
with an air of flattering interest. And Joyce, in one of her new
dresses, her face flushed a little from the unusual excitement, was
talking her best and looking her prettiest.
[Illustration: "HE WAS LEANING FORWARD IN HIS CHAIR, TALKING TO JOYCE"]
"She's having a good time just like other girls," thought Mary,
thankfully. "This will make up for lots of lonely times in the desert,
when she was homesick for the high-school girls and boys at Plainsville.
It would be fine if things would turn out so that Joyce liked an army
man. If she married one and lived at a post she'd invite me to visit
her. Lieutenant Logan might be a general some day, and it would be nice
to have a great man in the family. I wish mamma and Jack and Holland
could see what a good time we are having."
It did not occur to Mary that, curled up in a big chair in the corner,
she was taking no more active share in the good times than the portraits
on the wall. Her eager smile and the alert happy look in her eyes showed
that she was all a-tingle with the unusual pleasure the evening was
affording her. She laughed and looked and listened, sure that the scene
she was enjoying was as good as a play. She had never seen a play, it is
true; but she had read of them, and of player folk, until she knew she
was fitted to judge of such things.
It was a pleasure just to watch the gleam of the soft candle-light on
Kitty's red ribbons, or on the string of gold beads around Allison's
white throat. Maybe it was the candle-light which threw such a soft
glamour over everything and made it seem that the pretty girls and the
young lieutenants were only portraits out of a beautiful old past who
had stepped down from their frames for a little while. Yet when Mary
glanced up, the soldier boy was still in his picture on the wall, and
the beautiful girl with the June rose in her hair was still in her
frame, standing beside her harp, her white hand resting on its shining
strings.
"It is my grandmothah Amanthis," explained Lloyd in answer to the
lieutenant's question, as his gaze also rested admiringly on it. "Yes,
this is the same harp you see in the painting. Yes, I play a little. I
learned to please grandfathah."
Then, a moment later, Mary reached the crown of her evening's enjoyment,
for Lloyd, in response to many voices, took her place beside the harp
below the picture, and struck a few deep, rich chords. Then, with an
airy running accompaniment, she began the Dove Song from the play of
"The Princess Winsome:"
"Flutter and fly, flutter and fly,
Bear him my heart of gold."
It was all as Mary had imagined it would be, a hundred times in her
day-dreams, only far sweeter and more beautiful. She had not thought how
the white sleeves would fall back from the round white arms, or how her
voice would go fluttering up like a bird, sweet and crystal clear on the
last high note.
Afterward, when the guests were gone and everybody had said good night,
Mary lay awake in the pink blossom of a room which she shared with
Joyce, the same room Joyce had had at the first house-party. She was
having another good time, thinking it all over. She thought scornfully
of the woman on the sleeping-car who had told her that distance lends
enchantment, and that she must not expect too much of her promised land.
She hoped she might meet that woman again some day, so that she could
tell her that it was not only as nice as she had expected to find it,
but a hundred times nicer.
She reminded herself that she must tell Betty about her in the morning.
As she recalled one pleasant incident after another, she thought, "Now
_this_ is _life_! No wonder Lloyd is so bright and interesting when she
has been brought up in such an atmosphere."