The Trumpeter Swan

The Trumpeter Swan, by Temple Bailey,

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Trumpeter Swan, by Temple Bailey, Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Trumpeter Swan
Author: Temple Bailey

Release Date: April 21, 2006 [eBook #18219]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRUMPETER SWAN***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 18219-h.htm or 18219-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/2/1/18219/18219-h/18219-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/2/1/18219/18219-h.zip)

THE TRUMPETER SWAN
by
TEMPLE BAILEY
Author of The Tin Soldier, Contrary Mary, Mistress Anne, Etc.
Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens

[Frontispiece: "When I am married will you sound your trumpet high up near the moon?"]

"A sound from the clouds shall call thee from this earth."

New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
Copyright 1920 by The Penn Publishing Company

CONTENTS
I. A MAJOR AND TWO MINORS
II. STUFFED BIRDS
III. A WOLF IN THE FOREST
IV. RAIN AND RANDY'S SOUL
V. LITTLE SISTER
VI. GEORGIE-PORGIE
VII. MADEMOISELLE MIDAS
VIII. ANCESTORS
IX. "T. BRANCH"
X. A GENTLEMAN'S LIE
XI. WANTED--A PEDESTAL
XII. INDIAN--INDIAN
XIII. THE WHISTLING SALLY
XIV. THE DANCER ON THE MOOR
XV. THE TRUMPETER SWAN
XVI. THE CONQUEROR

ILLUSTRATIONS
"When I am married will you sound your trumpet high up near the moon?" . . . . . . Frontispiece
"It's so heavenly to have you home."
Becky drew a sharp breath--then faced Dalton squarely--"I am going to marry Randy."
"Oh, oh,", she whispered, "you don't know how I have wanted you."

THE TRUMPETER SWAN
CHAPTER I
A MAJOR AND TWO MINORS
I
It had rained all night, one of the summer rains that, beginning in a thunder-storm in Washington, had continued in a steaming drizzle until morning.
There were only four passengers in the sleeper, men all of them--two in adjoining sections in the middle of the car, a third in the drawing-room, a fourth an intermittent occupant of a berth at the end. They had gone to bed unaware of the estate or circumstance of their fellow-travellers, and had waked to find the train delayed by washouts, and side-tracked until more could be learned of the condition of the road.
The man in the drawing-room shone, in the few glimpses that the others had of him, with an effulgence which was dazzling. His valet, the intermittent sleeper in the end berth, was a smug little soul, with a small nose which pointed to the stars. When the door of the compartment opened to admit breakfast there was the radiance of a brocade dressing-gown, the shine of a sleek head, the staccato of an imperious voice.
Randy Paine, long and lank, in faded khaki, rose, leaned over the seat of the section in front of him and drawled, "It is not raining rain to me--it's raining roses--down----?"
A pleasant laugh, and a deep voice, "Come around here and talk to me. You're a Virginian, aren't you?"
"By the grace of God and the discrimination of my ancestors," young Randolph, as he dropped into the seat opposite the man with the deep voice, saluted the dead and gone Paines.
"Then you know this part of it?"
"I was born here. In this county. It is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh," there was a break in the boy's voice which robbed the words of grandiloquence.
"Hum--you love it? Yes? And I am greedy to get away. I want wider spaces----"
"California?"
"Yes. Haven't seen it for three years. I thought when the war was over I might. But I've got to be near Washington, it seems. The heat drove me out, and somebody told me it would be cool in these hills----"
"It is, at night. By day we're not strenuous."
"I like to be strenuous. I hate inaction."
He moved restlessly. There was a crutch by his side. Young Paine noticed it for the first time. "I hate it."
He had a strong frame, broad shoulders and thin hips. One placed him immediately as a man of great physical force. Yet there was the crutch. Randy had seen other men, broad-shouldered, thin-hipped, who had come to worse than crutches. He did not want to think of them. He had escaped without a scratch. He did not believe that he had lacked courage, and there was a decoration to prove that he had not. But when he thought of those other men, he had no sense of his own valor. He had given so little and they had given so much.
Yet it was not a thing to speak of. He struck, therefore, a note to which he knew the other might respond.
"If you haven't been here before, you'll like the old places."
"I am going to one of them."
"Which?"
"King's Crest."
A moment's silence. Then, "That's my home. I have lived there all my life."
The lame man gave him a sharp glance. "I heard of it