The Trumpeter Swan | Page 2

in Washington--delightful atmosphere--and all that----"
"You are going as a--paying guest?"
"Yes."
A deep flush stained the younger man's face. Suddenly he broke out. "If you knew how rotten it seems to me to have my mother keeping--boarders----"
"My dear fellow, I hope you don't think it is going to be rotten to have me?"
"No. But there are other people. And I didn't know until I came back from France---- She had to tell me when she knew I was coming."
"She had been doing it all the time you were away?"
"Yes. Before I went we had mortgaged things to help me through the University. I should have finished in a year if I hadn't enlisted. And Mother insisted there was enough for her. But there wasn't with the interest and everything--and she wouldn't sell an acre. I shan't let her keep on----"
"Are you going to turn me out?"
His smile was irresistible. Randy smiled back. "I suppose you think I'm a fool----?"
"Yes. For being ashamed of it."
Randy's head went up. "I'm not ashamed of the boarding-house. I am ashamed to have my mother work."
"So," said the lame man, softly, "that's it? And your name is Paine?"
"Randolph Paine of King's Crest. There have been a lot of us--and not a piker in the lot."
"I am Mark Prime."
"Major Prime of the 135th?"
The other nodded. "The wonderful 135th--God, what men they were----" his eyes shone.
Randy made his little gesture of salute. "They were that. I don't wonder you are proud of them."
"It was worth all the rest," the Major said, "to have known my men."
He looked out of the window at the drizzle of rain. "How quiet the world seems after it all----"
Then like the snap of bullets came the staccato voice through the open door of the compartment.
"Find out why we are stopping in this beastly hole, Kemp, and get me something cold to drink."
Kemp, sailing down the aisle, like a Lilliputian drum major, tripped over Randy's foot.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said, and sailed on.
Randy looked after him. "'His Master's voice----'"
"And to think," Prime remarked, "that the coldest thing he can get on this train is ginger ale."
Kemp, coming back with a golden bottle, with cracked ice in a tall glass, with a crisp curl of lemon peel, ready for an innocuous libation, brought his nose down from the heights to look for the foot, found that it no longer barred the way, and marched on to hidden music.
"Leave the door open, leave it open," snapped the voice, "isn't there an electric fan? Well, put it on, put it on----"
"He drinks nectar and complains to the gods," said the Major softly, "why can't we, too, drink?"
They had theirs on a table which the porter set between them. The train moved on before they had finished. "We'll be in Charlottesville in less than an hour," the conductor announced.
"Is that where we get off, Paine?"
"One mile beyond. Are they going to meet you?"
"I'll get a station wagon."
Young Paine grinned. "There aren't any. But if Mother knows you're coming she'll send down. And anyhow she expects me."
"After a year in France--it will be a warm welcome----"
"A wet one, but I love the rain, and the red mud, every blooming inch of it."
"Of course you do. Just as I love the dust of the desert."
They spoke, each of them, with a sort of tense calmness. One doesn't confess to a lump in one's throat.
The little man, Kemp, was brushing things in the aisle. He was hot but unconquered. Having laid out the belongings of the man he served, he took a sudden recess, and came back with a fresh collar, a wet but faultless pompadour, and a suspicion of powder on his small nose.
"All right, sir, we'll be there in fifteen minutes, sir," they heard him say, as he was swallowed up by the yawning door.
II
Fifteen minutes later when the train slowed up, there emerged from the drawing-room a man some years older than Randolph Paine, and many years younger than Major Prime. He was good-looking, well-dressed, but apparently in a very bad temper. Kemp, in an excited, Skye-terrier manner, had gotten the bags together, had a raincoat over his arm, had an umbrella handy, had apparently foreseen every contingency but one.
"Great guns, Kemp, why are we getting off here?"
"The conductor said it was nearer, sir."
Randolph Paine was already hanging on the step, ready to drop the moment the train stopped. He had given the porter an extra tip to look after Major Prime. "He isn't used to that crutch, yet. He'd hate it if I tried to help him."
The rain having drizzled for hours, condensed suddenly in a downpour. When the train moved on, the men found themselves in a small and stuffy waiting-room. Around the station platform was a sea of red mud. Misty hills shot up in a