Amazing Grace Part 13

The lecture had commenced in good earnest by this time, and I was scribbling away in shorthand as I talked.

"Not one among us is insensible to the visions of patriotic pride and affection which the very name of 'Old Glory' conjures up within us, but at the same time we may do well to review, quite dispa.s.sionately, once in a while the wonderful chain of historical changes which came about in evolving this flag to its present form.... For we all realize that there is no perfect thing in this world which has not been an evolution from some imperfect thing.... When Pope Gregory, the"--Somethingth, I quite failed to catch his number--"granted to Scotland the white cross of St. Andrew, and to England the red cross of St. George, he faintly surmised what a tempest in a teapot he was stirring up!"

He paused, and the man at my side got in a word, edgewise.

"All of it?" he asked, looking aghast at the pages of long-tailed dots and dashes under my hand. I laughed.

"I'm paid to do it," I answered. "I don't disfigure my handwriting this way for nothing."

"But--but--you must be very clever," he commented, so appalled at the thought that he forgot he was talking to a stranger. I like that faculty. I like a man who dares to be awkwardly sincere.

"Not clever--only very needy," I replied, turning over the page as I saw the lecturer replace the white flag of St. Andrew into its stand and take up the thread of his talk. "And I don't know that I need get every word of the discourse. The women who read my page don't care a rap about flags--but they do care to see a picture of Major Coleman and his wife and their dog on the piazza of their winter home, just out from Tampa!--I've got to have enough of this lecture to carry that picture."

He nodded gravely.

"I see. But after you get this report?"

"I'm going back to the city," I answered. "I have to catch the five o'clock car in."

"... The jealousy became so fierce between the two nations--the absurd jealousy over which should first salute the flag of the other--St.

George claiming great superiority in the way of G.o.dliness over St.

Andrew, and St. Andrew, with the true Scotch spirit, stiffening his neck to the breaking point, while waiting for St. George to take off his hat to him, that when the story of this dissension reached the ears of Pope Gregory, he--"

I never knew what he did until afterward, for at that moment I saw Maitland Tait slip his watch out carefully, guarding the action with an outspread left hand.

"I've an engagement at five, too," he said.

"... He determined to lose no time," was the next sentence I found myself jotting down on paper, and wondering whether Major Coleman had really said such a thing or whether it had been born in my mind of the stress of the moment.... "He was a man of the most impulsive, sometimes of the most erratic, actions."

"Of course!" my heart said between thumps. "I shouldn't like him if he were not."

"I can make my excuses to Mrs. Walker at the same time you make yours," the deep voice said, in a surprisingly soft tone.

"... For he saw in such a course protection and peace," Major Coleman announced. "All the world suspected that his ultimate aim was union, but--"

"An international alliance," my heart explained, as I jotted down the words of the lecturer.

"Mayn't I take you back to town in my car?"

"... And all the world knew that he was a man absolutely untrammeled by tradition," the white-flanneled one proclaimed.

"Thank you, that would be lovely, but I'm afraid Mrs. Walker won't consent to your going so soon," I said between curlicues.

"I'm going, however," he answered. "I've an important engagement, and--I'm not going to stay at this--this," he closed his lips firmly, but the silence said "_cussed_," that dear, fierce, American adjective. "I'm not going to stay at this party one minute after you're gone. I don't like to talk to just any woman."

"... Yet I would have you understand that he was a temperamental man,"

was thundered in a warning tone from the speaker's stand. "He was quick in judgment and action, but he was fine and sensitive in spirit.

I've never a doubt that he disliked and feared the occasion which caused this precipitate action. He was quaking in his boots all the time, but he was courageous. He decided to make brief work of formalities and take a short cut to his heart's desire."

"What was it he did?" I asked of Mr. Tait, startled at the thought of what I'd missed. "Do you know what this thing was that Pope Gregory did?"

"No-o--listen a minute!" he suggested.

"... Can't you just imagine now that he was afraid of what people might say--or do?" asked the major encouragingly. "It was absolutely unprecedented in the annals of history--such a quick, rash and sudden decision. If England and Scotland were going to be eternally bickering over their flags, they should have _one_ flag! They should be united!

They should--"

"The _Union Jack_!" whispered the deep voice close at my side, while the grave dark eyes lighted, as--as they should have lighted, or I'd never have forgiven him. "He created the Union Jack, by George!"

And the speaker on the stand demonstrated the truth of this conclusion by displaying a big British flag, which caught in its socket as he attempted to lift it and occasioned another pause in the speech.

"This enthusiasm makes me hungry," Maitland Tait observed, as the audience courteously saluted the ancient emblem of hostility, and the echoes of applause died away. "Since we're going to get no tea here, can't we drive by some place up-town? There's a good-looking place in Union Street--"

"But that would make you very late for your engagement, I'm afraid," I demurred. "It will take some little time to drive in."

He looked at me wonderingly for a moment.

"My engagement? Oh, yes--but it can wait."

"Then, if it can, I'm afraid Mrs. Walker will not let you off. I happen to know that--"

He cut short my argument by motioning me to pay attention to the speaker, who at the moment had replaced the flag of Pope Gregory's cunning, and was talking away at a great rate.

"... Yet, who can say that the hastiest actions do not often bring about the best results? Certainly when a decision is made out of an excessive desire to bring happiness to all parties concerned, its immediate action can not fail to denote a wholesome heartiness which should always be emulated.... Different from most men of his native country, possessing a genuinely warm heart, a subtle mentality, coupled with a conscience which impelled him always toward the right, he was enabled, by this one impetuous act, to become a benefactor of mankind! What he longed for was harmony--a harmonious union; and what he has achieved has been the direct outcome of a great longing. He created a union--wholesome, strengthening and permanent," I took down in shorthand.

I have a confused impression--I suppose I should say post-impression, for I didn't remember anything very clearly until afterward--that Betsy Ross, Pope Gregory, the Somethingth, and Mrs. Hiram Walker were all combining to tie my hands and feet together with thongs of red, white and blue.

It seemed hours and hours before that lecture ended, then more hours before the tall restless man and I could make our way through a sea of ma.s.saged faces to a distant point where our hostess stood giving directions to a white-coated servant.

She turned to me, with a fluttering little air of regret, when I reached her side.

"Grace, surely you don't have to hurry off at this unchristian hour!"

she insisted. "My dear, you really should stay! Solinski has arranged the loveliest spread, and I'm not going to keep the company waiting forever to get to it, either!--The ices will be the surprise of the season."

"I'm sorry," I began, but she interrupted me.

"Why _didn't_ your mother come?"

Already her vague regret over my own hasty departure had melted away, and as she saw the tall man following me, evidently bent upon the same mission as mine, she put her query in a perfunctory way to hide her chagrin.

"Mother couldn't come, Mrs. Walker. There is only one D. A. R. pin in the family, as you know--and I had to wear that."

Maitland Tait, looking over my shoulder, heard my explanation and smiled.

"It is a great deprivation to miss the rest of your charming party, Mrs. Walker," he began, but as he mentioned going, in a cool final voice, our hostess emitted a little terrified shriek.

"What? Not you, too!"