Part 58 (1/2)

”One shouldn't fall in love,” Louise said, serenely, ”they should walk squarely into it. That's what I shall do, when I get ready to marry---- But I shall love Archibald as long as the good Lord will let me----”

She was trying to say it lightly, but a quiver of her voice betrayed her.

”Louise,” Becky said, ”what's the matter with Archibald? Is anything really the matter?”

Louise began to cry. ”Archie saw the doctor to-day, and he won't promise anything--I made Arch tell me----”

”Oh, Louise.” Becky's lips were white.

”Of course if he takes good care of himself, it may not be for years.

You mustn't let him know that I told you, Becky. But I had to tell somebody. I've kept it all bottled up as if I were a stone image. And I'm not a stone image, and he's all I have.”

She dabbed her eyes with a futile handkerchief. The tears dripped. ”I must stop,” she kept saying, ”I shall look like a fright for dinner----”

But at dinner she showed no signs of her agitation. She had used powder and rouge with deft touches. She had followed Becky's example and wore white, a crisp organdie, with a high blue sash. With her bobbed hair and pink cheeks she was not unlike a painted doll. She carried a little blue fan with lacquered sticks, and she tapped the table as she talked to Major Prime. The tapping was the only sign of her inner agitation.

The Admiral's table that night seemed to Becky a circle of sinister meaning. There was Archibald condemned to die--while youth still beat in his veins---- There was Louise, who must go on without him. There was the Admiral--the last of a vanished company; there was the Major, whose life for four years had held--horrors. There was Madge, radiant to-night in the love of her husband, as she had perhaps once been radiant for Dalton.

_Georgie-Porgie_!

It was a horrid name. ”_There were always so many girls to be kissed--and it was so easy to run away----_”

She had always hated the nursery rhyme. But now it seemed, to sing itself in her brain.

”_Georgie-Porgie, Pudding and pie, Kissed the girls, And made them cry----_”

Cope was at Becky's right. ”Aren't you going to talk to me? You haven't said a word since the soup.”

”Well, everybody else is talking.”

”What do I care for anybody else?”

Becky wondered how Archibald did it. How he kept that light manner for a world which he was not long to know. And there was Louise with rouge and powder on her cheeks to cover her tears---- That was courage---- She thought suddenly of ”The Trumpeter Swan.”

She spoke out of her thoughts. ”Randy has sold his story.”

He wanted to know all about it, and she repeated what Madge had said.

Yet even as she talked, that hateful rhyme persisted,

”_When the girls Came out to play, Georgie-Porgie Ran away----_”

After dinner they went into the drawing-room so that Louise could play for them. A great mirror which hung at the end of the room reflected Louise on the piano bench in her baby frock. It reflected Madge, slim and gold, with a huge fan of lilac feathers. It reflected Becky--in a rose-colored damask chair, it reflected the three men in black. Years ago there had been other men and women--the Admiral's wife in red velvet and the same pearls that were now on Becky's neck---- She shuddered.

As they drove home that night, the Major spoke to his wife of Becky.

”The child looks unhappy.”

”She will be unhappy until some day her heart rests in her husband, as mine does in you. Shall I spoil you, Mark, if I talk like this?”