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[Illustration: Cover]
GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS
[Illustration: "If anyone comes along I begin knitting."]
GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS
BY ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
_Author of "Georgina of the Rainbows," "Two Little
Knights of Kentucky," "The Giant Scissors,"
"The Desert of Waiting," Etc._
_Illustrations by Thelma Gooch_
"For the deed's sake have I done the deed."
--"Idylls of the King."
NEW YORK
BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, 1918
BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
Made in U. S. A. All rights reserved.
_To
THOSE BEHIND THE SERVICE
FLAGS_
_whose part in this world-struggle can never be chronicled. Their
sacrifices are unnumbered and their wounds are within._
_To the silent Heroism which shoulders the double load and faces the
loneliness undaunted._
_To the Patriotism which, denied the sword, takes up whatever weapon
lies at hand and wields it valiantly at home._
_To the Love which "beareth all things, endureth all things," that in
its "Service Stars" may be written a righteous destiny for the Nations,
and the prophecy of a lasting peace._
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GEORGINA BEGINS HER MEMOIRS 13
II. THE MISUNDERSTOOD 'TEENS 26
III. IN THE SHADOW OF WAR 37
IV. HER IDEAL GIRL STEPS IN 46
V. A PHOTOGRAPH AND SOME DAY-DREAMS 56
VI. THE ONE AND ONLY STAR 66
VII. A MODERN SIR GARETH 79
VIII. DISILLUSIONED 91
IX. SEVEN MONTHS LATER 104
X. AT HARRINGTON HALL 116
XI. THE MIDSHIPMAN HOP 126
XII. "SHOD GOES SURE" 140
XIII. A WORK-A-DAY VACATION 151
PART II
XIV. THE CALL TO ARMS 163
XV. "THE GATES AJAR" 173
XVI. HOME-COMINGS 184
XVII. BACK WITH THE OLD CROWD 198
XVIII. A WAR WEDDING 210
XIX. THE VIGIL IN THE SWING 224
XX. THE HIGHWAY OF THE ANGELS 238
XXI. "PIRATE GOLD" 243
XXII. "THE MAID WHO BINDS HER WARRIOR'S SASH" 257
XXIII. MARKED ON THE CALENDAR 267
XXIV. BRAVE LITTLE CARRIER PIGEON! 277
XXV. "MISSING" 289
XXVI. "THE SERVICE OF SHINING" 300
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"If anyone comes along I begin knitting"--_Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"I don't think compliments are good for the
male mind" 56
Richard salutes "Sallie Jane" 216
"Lieutenant Richard Moreland Missing----" 298
BARON: "What guerdon will ye?"
GARETH: "_None._ For the deed's sake have I done the
deed."
--_Idylls of the King._
GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS
PART I
"_My salad days, when I was green in judgment._"
GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS
CHAPTER I
GEORGINA BEGINS HER MEMOIRS
UP the crooked street which curves for three miles around the harbor
comes the sound of the Towncrier's bell. It seems strange that he should
happen along this morning, just as I've seated myself by this garret
window to begin the story of my life, for it was the sound of his bell
five years ago which first put it into my head to write it. And yet, it
isn't so strange after all, when one remembers the part the dear old man
has had in my past. "Uncle Darcy," as I've always called him, has been
mixed up with most of its important happenings.
That day, when I first thought of writing my memoirs, was in Spring
house-cleaning time, and I had been up here all morning, watching them
drag out old heirlooms from the chests and cubby-holes under the
rafters. Each one had a history. From one of the gable windows I could
look down on the beach at the very spot where the Pilgrims first landed,
and away over on the tongue of sand, which ends the Cape, I could see
the place where they say the old Norse Viking, Thorwald, was buried nine
hundred years ago.
From this window where I am sitting, I looked down as I do now, on the
narrow street with the harbor full of sails on one side and the gardens
of the Portuguese fishermen spread out along the other, like blocks in a
gay patchwork quilt. I remember as I stood looking out I heard Uncle
Darcy's bell far down the street. He was crying a fish auction. And
suddenly the queer feeling came over me that I was living in a
story-book town, and that I was a part of it all, and some day I must
write that story of it and me.
I did not begin it then, being only ten years old at that time and not
strong on spelling. It would have kept me continually hunting through
the dictionary, or else asking Tippy how to spell things, and that would
have led to her knowing all. Her curiosity about my affairs is almost
unbelievable.
But there is no reason why I should not begin it now. "The Life and
Letters of Georgina Huntingdon" ought to make interesting reading some
of these days when I am famous, as I have a right to expect, me being
the granddaughter of such a great Kentucky editor as Colonel Clayton
Shirley. To write is in my blood, although on the Huntingdon side it's
only dry law books.
I am going to jot down all sorts of innermost things in this blank book
which will not be in the printed volume, because I might pass away
before it is published, and if any one else had to undertake it he could
do it more understandingly if he knew my secret ambitions and my opinion
of life and people. But I shall bracket all such private remarks with
red ink, and put a warning on the fly-leaf like the one on Shakespeare's
tomb: "Cursed be he who moves these bones."
He would have been dug up a thousand times, probably, if it had not been
for that, so I shall protect the thoughts buried here between these red
brackets in the same way.
"Cursed be he who prints this part
From the inmost sanctum of my heart."
Up to this time there has been little in my life important enough to put
into a record, so it is just as well that I waited. But now that this
awful war is going on over in Europe, all sorts of thrilling things may
begin to happen to us any minute. Father says there's no telling how
soon our country may be fighting, too. He thinks it's shameful we
haven't been doing our part all along. As he is a naval surgeon and has
been in the service so many years, he will be among the first to be
drawn into the thick of danger and adventure.
I am old enough now to understand what that will mean to us all, for I
am fifteen years and eleven months, and could easily pass for much older
if Barby would only let me put my hair up. Barby is the dearest mother
that ever lived, and I wouldn't for worlds appear to be criticizing her,
but she _is_ a bit old-fashioned in some of her ideas about bringing up
children. I believe she and Tippy would like to keep me the rest of my
mortal life, "standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river
meet," regardless of the fact that I am all ready to wade in and fully
able to do so.
I asked Tippy why nobody ever quotes that verse farther along in the
poem, which exactly expresses my sentiments:
"Then why pause with indecision,
When bright angels in thy vision
Beckon thee to fields Elysian?"
It stumped her to think of an answer for a moment, and she made an
excuse of putting the cat out, in order to give herself more time. But
when she came back all she had found to say was that I needn't think
being grown up was any field Elysian. I was eating my white bread now,
and if a girl only knew all that lay ahead of her she'd let well enough
alone. She'd wait for trouble to come to her instead of running to meet
it.
Somehow I don't believe Tippy ever had any bright angels beckoning her,
else she couldn't be so pessimistic about my growing up. I can't think
of her as ever being anything but an elderly widow with her hair twisted
into a peanut on the back of her head. And yet she had a lover once, and
a wedding day, or she couldn't be Mrs. Maria Triplett now. But it's
impossible to think of her as being gay fifteen and dancing down the
stairs to meet the morning with a song. One feels that she met it with a
broom, saying:
"Shall birds and bees and ants be wise
While I my moments waste?
O let me with the morning rise
And to my duties haste."
She's said that to me probably as much as five hundred times. I shall
bracket this part about her just as soon as I can get a bottle of red
ink. But how I'm going to account to her for having red ink in my
possession is more than I know.
That's the worst about being the only child in a family. They're all so
fond of you and so interested in your sayings and doings, that they
watch every movement of your mind and body. You're like a clock in a
glass case with your works open to the gaze of the older people. It's
all very well during the first years for them to keep tab on your
development, but the trouble is most relatives never seem to know when
you're developed, and have reached the point where a little privacy is
your _right_. It's maddening to have to give a reason every time you
turn around.
All the lives of noted people which I have read begin with the person's
birthplace and who his parents were, and his early acts which showed he
gave promise of being a genius. So I'll pause right here for a brief
outline of such things.
My name is Georgina Huntingdon. A name to be proud of--so Tippy has
always impressed on me--and one hard to live up to. She used to show it
to me on the silver christening cup that came down to me from the
great-great-aunt for whom I am named. She'd take the tip of my finger in
hers and solemnly trace the slim-looped letters around the rim, till I
came to feel that it was a silver name, and that I must keep it shining
by growing up unusually smart and good. That I owed it to the cup or the
great-aunt or the Pilgrim monument or _something_, to act so as to add
lustre to the name.
Tippy is a distant cousin on father's side. She has lived with us ever
since Barby brought me up here from Kentucky, where I was born. Father,
being a naval surgeon, was off in foreign ports most of the time, and
Barby, being such a young and inexperienced mother, needed her
companionship. Barby is lots younger than father. It was hard for her at
first, coming away with just me, from that jolly big family down South
who adored her, to this old Cape Cod homestead that had been boarded up
so long.
Lonely and gray, it stands at the end of town, up by the breakwater,
facing the very spot on the beach where the Pilgrims landed. One of them
was an ancestor of mine, so the big monument overlooking the harbor and
the tip of the Cape was put up partly in his honor.
Really, several pages might well be devoted to my ancestors, for one was
a minute-man whose name is in the history I studied at school. His
powder-horn hangs over the dining-room mantel, and Tippy used to shame
me with it when I was afraid of rats or the dark cellarway. If I were
asked to name three things which have influenced me most in arousing my
ambition to overcome my faults and to do something big and really worth
while in the world, I'd name my christening cup, that Pilgrim monument
and the old powder-horn.
With such a heritage it is unthinkable that I should settle down to an
ordinary career. Something inside of me tells me that I am destined to
make my name an honored household word in many climes. I've considered
doing this in several ways.
It might be well to mention here that my earliest passion was for the
stage. That will explain why quotations came so trippingly from my
tongue at times. I learned yards and yards of poems and Shakespeare's
plays for declamation, and I'm always given one of the leading parts in
the amateur theatricals at the High School or the Town Hall. My looks
may have something to do with that, however. As it might seem conceited
for me to describe myself as my mirror shows me, I'll just paste some
newspaper clippings on this page describing different plays I've been
in. Several of them speak of my dark eyes and glowing complexion, also
my "wealth of nut-brown curls," and my graceful dancing.
But in my Sophomore year at High School I began to feel that literature
might be my forte, even more than acting. R. B. (which initials will
stand for "red brackets" until I get the ink). The reason for that
feeling is that my themes in English were always marked so high that
the class nicknamed me "Abou ben Ahdem."
Last summer I began a novel called "Divided," which the girls were crazy
about. It was suggested by Jean Ingelow's poem by that name and is
awfully sad. Really, it kept me so depressed that I found I wasn't half
enjoying my vacation. I simply lived the heroine's part myself.
Now that I am a Senior, it seems to me that Journalism offers a greater
field than fiction. We had a debate last term which convinced me of it.
George Woodson had the affirmative, and I didn't mind being beaten
because he used grandfather for one of his arguments, and said so many
nice things about his editorials being epoch-making and his inspired
phrases moulding public opinion, and being caught up as slogans by all
parties, leading on to victory. He spoke, too, of them being quoted not
only by _Punch_ and the London _Times_, but by papers in France and
Australia.
R. B. (I am fully determined either to write the leading novel of the
century, or to own and edit a newspaper which shall be a world-power.)
The seashore was my first schoolroom. Barby taught me to write in the
sand and to spell words with shells and pebbles. I learned Arithmetic by
adding and subtracting such things as the sails in the harbor and the
gulls feeding at ebb-tide. On stormy days when we were home-bound, I
counted the times the fog-bell tolled, or in the early dark counted how
often Wood End lighthouse blinked its red eye at me.
But I must get on with my story. If I am to have room in this book for
all the big happenings of life, which I feel sure lie ahead of me, I
cannot devote too much space to early memories, no matter how cherished.
Probably in the final revision all the scenes I have lived through will
be crowded into one act or chapter. I may start it in this fashion:
_Time_
First fifteen years of life just ended.
_Place_
An ancient fishing town between the sand-dunes and the
sea, where artists flock every summer to paint, its
chief attraction for them seeming to be its old
streets and wharves, the Cape Cod people whom they
call "quaint" and the Portuguese fisher-folk.
_Principal characters besides myself and family,
already described._
DANIEL DARCY
The old Towncrier, whom I call "Uncle Darcy" and love
as dearly as if he were really kin to me.
AUNT ELSPETH
His wife. They are my ideal Darby and Joan.
CAPTAIN KIDD
A darling Irish terrier, half mine and half Richard's.
RICHARD MORELAND
Who comes every summer to stay with his cousin, Mr.
James Milford, in the bungalow with the Green Stairs.
He has been like an own brother to me since the days
when we first played pirate together, when he was
"Dare-devil Dick, the Dread Destroyer," and I was
"Gory George, the Menace of the Main." Barby took him
under her wing then because his own mother was dead
and they've been devoted to each other ever since.
This summer Richard came alone, because his father, who always spends
his vacations with him, did not come back from his Paris studio as
usual. He is in the trenches now, fighting with the Allies. His friends
shake their heads when they speak of him, and say what a pity such a
brilliantly gifted fellow should run the risk of being killed or maimed.
It would be such a terrible waste. He could serve his age better with
his brush than a bayonet.
But when Richard talks of him his face lights up as if he fairly
worships him for being such a hero as to sacrifice his art for the cause
and go in just as a private. He has said to me a dozen times, "That is
why the Allies will win this war, Georgina, because men like _Dad_ are
putting it through. They are fighting with their souls as well as their
bodies."
That's all Richard talks about now. He's perfectly wild to go himself.
Though he's only seventeen and a half, he is six feet tall and so strong
he could take a man's place. He says if they'd so much as give him a
chance to drive an ambulance he'd be satisfied, but his father won't
consent.
He's running his Cousin James' car this summer instead of the regular
chauffeur, and keeping it in repair. Mr. Milford pays him a small
salary, and (nobody knows it but me) Richard is saving every cent. He
says if he can once get across the water he'll find some way to do his
part. In the meantime he's digging away at his French, and Uncle Darcy's
son Dan is teaching him wireless. He's so busy some days I scarcely see
him. It's so different from the way it was last summer when he was at
our house from morning till night.
The same jolly crowds are back this summer at the Gray Inn and the
Nelson cottage, and Laura Nelson's midshipman cousin from Annapolis is
here for a week. I shall not name and describe them now, but simply
group them as minor characters.
Laura says, however, that she feels sure that the midshipman is destined
to be anything but a minor character in my life. She prophecies he will
be leading man in a very short while. That is so silly in Laura,
although, of course, she couldn't know just how silly, because I've
never explained to her that I am dedicated to a Career.
I have not said positively that I shall never marry, and sometimes I
think I might be happier to have a home and about four beautiful and
interesting children; that is, if it could be managed without
interfering with my one great ambition in life. But positively, that
must come first, _no matter what the cost_. Only thus can I reach the
high goal I have set for myself and write mine as "one of the few, the
immortal names that were not born to die."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II
THE MISUNDERSTOOD 'TEENS
"O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness" where I could write without
anybody butting in to ask what I'm doing! I suppose it's the penalty I
must pay now for having been such a vain little peacock in the
beginning. Because father praised my first letters when I was learning
to write, I passed them over to the family for more praise before
sealing them. Now they've grown to feel that it is their right to read
them, and to expect it as a matter of course.
It is the same way with all my attempts at stories and verses. If I
should take to turning the key in the door at this late day, they'd
think it queer, and I'm afraid Barby would feel a bit hurt and shut out
of my life, because we've always shared everything of that sort.
So I just carry the book around with me in my knitting bag, and scribble
a few lines whenever there is an opportunity. Most of this will have to
be written down on the beach where I am now. It's too hot up in the
garret these days. I sit cross-legged in the sand behind an overturned
rowboat, drawn up out of reach of the tide. All that can be seen of me
from the house is a big garden hat flopping down over the shoulders of
my pink smock. Smocks and flopping hats are as common as clams in this
old fishing town, full of artists and summer girls, so when I tuck my
"wealth of nut-brown curls" up out of sight, nobody recognizes me at a
little distance. If any one comes along I begin knitting on a bright
blue muffler that I'm making for a Belgian orphan. It seems dreadfully
deceitful, but what else can I do?
I haven't any place where I can keep the book between times. Tippy is
such a thorough-going housekeeper that she knows what is in every drawer
and closet in this house, from top to bottom. Neither she nor Barby
would dream of reading a diary or even a scrap of writing belonging to
any one else but me. But they think of me as a part of themselves, I
suppose, or as still such an infant that if they were to come across
this they'd smile indulgently and say, "The dear child. Was anything
ever so diverting and clever!" And they'd read it with that pleased,
proud expression you see on a family's face when they discover the
baby's first tooth or find that it can stand alone.
I'd keep it at Uncle Darcy's, down at Fishburn Court, but I seldom go
down there now oftener than once a week, and I want to make a practice
of filling a few pages every day.
Fishburn Court would be an ideal place in which to write. It's a cluster
of little old houses set around the edge of a sand dune, and hidden away
from the heart of the town by some tall buildings. A crooked, sandy lane
leads into it from one of the back streets. There's an apple-tree in
Uncle Darcy's yard with thick grass under it, and a two-seated wooden
swing where an old yellow-nosed cat sleeps all day. You can look up and
see billowy white clouds floating in the blue overhead, and smell the
salt of the sea, but it's so shut in that although it's only a short
distance from the beach you barely hear the chug of the motor boats, and
the street cries are so faint, that you feel you're far, far away from
the world, like a nun in a cloister.
Sitting there, I've sometimes thought I'd like to be that--a nun in a
cloister, to walk with rapt, saint-like face, my hands folded lily-wise
over my breast. It must be lovely to feel that one is a pure white
saint, a bride of heaven. Sometimes I think I'd rather be that than a
world-renowned author.
I often wonder what great part I'm destined to play in the universe.
Really the world is so full of things to do and be, that one needs as
many lives as a cat. I'd like one life in which to be a nun, another an
actress, another in which to shine as a peerless wit and beauty, the
social leader in a brilliant salon like that great French madame--I
can't think of her name. Then, of course, there's the life I want for my
literary career, and one in which to be just a plain wife and mother.
One thing is certain, if I ever have a daughter I'll try to remember how
a girl feels at my age; although I don't see how one who has been one
can ever forget. And there are _some_ things she shall be allowed to
decide for herself. R. B. (As long as I was a mere child Barby seemed to
understand me perfectly. But now that I lack only one paltry inch of
being as tall as she is, she doesn't seem able to get my point of view
at all. She doesn't seem to realize that I've put away childish things,
and that when you're in your teens you're done with doll-rags.)
There is nothing so bitter in life as being misunderstood. If you have
cruel step-parents who mistreat you out of pure meanness, everybody
sympathizes with you. But if you have devoted own parents who hurt you
through a mistaken idea that they're doing it for your own good, nobody
sympathizes with you. I'd rather be beaten or locked in my room on bread
and water than have Minnie Waite or Daisy Poole tagging after me
forevermore.
I wasn't at home the day Mrs. Saxe came around, organizing the "Busy
Bees" to do Red Cross work for the Belgians. But Barby put my name down
and paid the fifty cents dues, and said I'd be _glad_ to do my part.
Well, I am glad, but I'd already been trying to do it ever since the war
started "over there." I've rolled bandages every Saturday afternoon and
taken part in two plays and waited on the table at all the lawn fetes,
and I'm knitting my sixth sweater for French and Belgian orphans.
But I draw the line at being a "Busy Bee," and meeting around with a lot
of little girls not one of them over thirteen and most of them younger.
And Minnie Waite has a crush on me anyhow, and is harder to get rid of
than a plague of sand-fleas. I could have cried when Barby told me what
she had let me in for, and I couldn't help sounding cross when I said
she might at least have consulted me first. It was too much to have that
miserable bunch of kids wished on to me.
But Barby only reminded me that I was using slang, and said cheerfully,
"Did it ever occur to you, Baby Mine, that you are three whole years
younger than Laura Nelson, and yet you want to be with her every moment?
Possibly she may feel that _you_ are tagging."
Laura is one of the summer girls, and Barby never has approved of our
intimacy, just because she is so much older and has college men coming
to see her now instead of High School boys and all that sort of thing. I
didn't attempt to explain to Barby that we are as congenial as twins,
and that Laura seeks my society quite as much as I do hers. I think
Barby hoped that I'd become so interested in the Busy Bees that I
wouldn't have any time for Laura, and she said a great deal about them
needing a leader, and how much good I could do if I went into it as an
enthusiastic president instead of a half-hearted one.
Of course, when she put it that way, the privilege and duty of being an
inspiration whenever possible, I had to give in as gracefully as I
could. But I'm done now, after yesterday's performance.
I was over at Laura's to lunch. Her midshipman cousin, Mr. Tucker, was
off on a fishing trip, but he was to be back early in the afternoon and
she wanted me to take him off her hands while she talked to some one
else. Her most ardent admirer was coming to call.
So she put my hair up for me the way she wears hers, flat over her ears
and a sort of soft, fluffy whirl on top, and loaned me a pair of her
green silk stockings and high-heeled white slippers, instead of my
"growing girl" pumps that Father insists upon. I have somewhere read
that "The consciousness of being well dressed imparts a blissfulness to
the human heart that even religion is powerless to give or take away,
and its importance can hardly be over-estimated by the feminine mind."
I heartily agree, for just that difference in hair and heels made me
feel and act perfectly grown up. I knew that Mr. Tucker thought I was as
old as I seemed from the way he called me "Miss Huntingdon." And he had
such a complimentary way of looking at me, and was so appreciative of my
repartee that I found it easier to talk to him than any one I had ever
met before. I found myself discussing the deep questions of life with
him with an ease I couldn't have had, if I had been conscious of
juvenile curls bobbing over my shoulders.
But right in the middle of our interesting conversation came the most
awful racket. A donkey-cart full of girls drove in from the street,
past the window where we were sitting. Minnie Waite was standing up,
driving, her hair streaming like a wild Amazon. And they all yodelled
and catcalled till I went out on the porch. It was the dreadfullest
noise you ever heard, for the donkey balks every other step unless he's
headed for home, and the only way they can make him travel is to shake a
tin can half-full of pebbles behind him.
They asked had I forgotten that the Busy Bees were to have an extra
meeting at my house to dress dolls for the Bazaar, and the whole bunch
was over there waiting. They couldn't start till I got there, me being
president, and my mother said for me to get straight into the cart and
go back with them.
I knew perfectly well that Barby had never sent any such sounding
message as that, but I also knew the only way to keep them from making
matters worse was to get them away as soon as possible. They were
talking at the tops of their voices, and nobody knew what they'd say
next. The quickest way to stop them was to climb into that babyish
donkey-cart and jolt off with them, just like a kid myself.
So I ran back and explained to Laura and made my hurried adieux. Mr.
Tucker went down the steps with me to help me in. Of course, those
horrid children noticed my green stockings, as I'd never worn that color
before, and they made remarks about them and my high heels, when I
tripped going down the steps, not being used to them. I would have
fallen all over myself if Mr. Tucker hadn't caught me. He didn't seem to
hear what they were saying, but Laura's little sister Dodo, who was
hanging over the railing of the upstairs porch, listening like the
long-eared little pitcher that she is, called down in her high, shrill
voice:
"Oh, Georgina! You've forgotten your pumps, and are going off in
Laura's. Wait. I'll throw them down to you."
Well, of course the donkey balked just then and wouldn't start till they
began rattling the tin can full of stones, and in the midst of the
pandemonium there was a whack-bang! on the porch steps, and down came my
old flat-heeled Mary-Jane pumps, with my white stockings stuffed inside
of them. Mr. Tucker picked them up and put them in the cart. He made
some awfully nice, polite speech about Cinderella, but I was so
mortified and so mad that I turned perfectly plum-colored I am sure. As
we dashed off I wished I could be a _real_ busy bee for about a minute.
A vicious one.
Now I feel that I never want to lay eyes on Mr. Tucker again after such
a humiliating experience. It is a pity, for he is the most congenial man
I ever met. Our views on the deeper things of life are exactly the same.
The worst of it is I can't explain all that to Barby. She made light of
the affair when I cried, and told her how the girls had mortified and
embarrassed me. Said it was foolish to take such a trifle to heart so
bitterly; that probably Mr. Tucker would never give it a second thought,
or if he did he would laugh over the incident and the little girl, and
forget them entirely.
But that was cold comfort. I couldn't tell her that I didn't want to be
laughed at, and I didn't want to be forgotten by the first and only
really congenial man I had ever met. Yet I might have told her all that
if she had approached me differently. I long to confide in her if she
would talk to me as one woman to another.
Instead, she referred to a little Rainbow Club that Richard and I
started long ago. We pretended that every time we made anyone happy it
was the same as making a rainbow in the world. She asked me if I was
tired of being her little prism, and to think how happy I could make
those girls by interesting myself in their affairs, and a whole lot more
like that.
It made me so cross to be soothed in that kind, kindergarten way that
while she was talking I burrowed back in my closet as if looking for
something and said "_Darn!_" in a hollow whisper, between set teeth. One
can't "be a kitten and cry mew" always.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III
IN THE SHADOW OF WAR
LAST Wednesday I spent the day at Fishburn Court. My visits seem to mean
so much to Aunt Elspeth, now that her time is divided between her bed
and wheeled chair. I improvised a costume and did the song and dance for
her that I am going to give in the French Relief entertainment next
week. And I made a blueberry pie for dinner, and set the little kitchen
in shining order, and put fresh bows on her cap, and straightened out
all the bureau drawers.
When everything you do is appreciated and admired and praised until you
are fairly basking in approval, it makes you feel so good inside that
you want to keep on that way forever. You just _love_ to be sweet and
considerate. But afterwards it's such a comedown to go back home to
those who take it as a matter of course that you should be helpful, and
who feel it is their duty to improve your character by telling you what
_your_ duty is. It rubs you the wrong way, and makes life much harder.
Somehow, going to Fishburn Court is like climbing up into the Pilgrim
monument and looking down on the town. Seen from that height, the things
that loomed up so big when you were down on their level shrink to
nothing. Maybe it is because Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth have lived so
very, very long that they can look down on life that way and see it from
a great height as God does. I always think of them when I read that
verse, "A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday." That is why
nothing seems to matter to them very much but loving each other and
their neighbors as themselves.
I came away from there resolved to turn over a new leaf. I am sorry now
that I said what I did the other day in the closet, but I don't feel
that I have a right to blot it out of this record. The good and the bad
should stand together in one's memoirs. It makes a character seem more
human. I never felt that I had anything in common with Washington until
I read that he sometimes gave away to violent fits of anger.
I am now resolved to make those Busy Bees the power for good which Barby
thinks I can, and quit thinking of my own feelings in the matter, of how
disagreeable it is to have them eternally tagging after me. After all,
what difference will it make a thousand years from now if they do tag?
What difference if one little ant in the universe is happy or unhappy
for one atom of time? When you think of yourself that way, as just a
tiny ant sitting on the equator of eternity you can put up with almost
anything.
* * * * *
A whole week has gone by since I wrote the above sentence, and in that
time the most exciting thing has happened, in addition to celebrating my
sixteenth birthday. The birthday came first. Barby's gift to me was a
darling rowboat, light and graceful as a cockle-shell. Uncle Darcy
carved my initials on the oars, and Richard came after dark the night
before and dragged it up into the yard, and tied it under the holiday
tree. Next morning my presents were all piled in the boat instead of
being tied to the branches, for which I was very thankful. It made me
feel that I had come to a boundary line which the family recognized,
when they discarded the old custom of decorating the holiday-tree. They
no longer considered me an infant.
I have been wild for a boat of my own for two years, and was so excited
I could scarcely eat my breakfast. I was out in it all day, first with
Barby and Richard, and, afterward, with Babe Nolan and Judith Gilfred,
who came to lunch. Ordinarily, I would fill pages describing my
presents and what we did, but I can't wait to tell the climax.
Late in the afternoon Richard came again and rowed me over to the
Lighthouse and back. When we came up the beach on our way home to supper
the sun was just setting. It was all so beautiful and I was so happy
that I began humming "The End of a Perfect Day." But it wasn't the end,
for when we went into the house the exciting thing happened. Who should
rise up suddenly in the dusk and put his arms around me but _Father_,
home on unexpected shore leave. I hadn't seen him for a year.
Even Barby didn't know he was coming. It seemed too good to be true that
he should be in time for the lighting of my birthday candles. As if it
wasn't more than enough just to have him back again, safe and sound, he
brought me the most adorable little wrist-watch, and from then on till
midnight when my eyes weren't on him they were on it. It's so heavenly
to have everybody in the world that you love best and everything you
want most all together at the same time.
We had to talk fast and crowd as much as possible into the hours. I felt
that I had at last stepped into my field Elysian, when nobody said a
word about my running along to bed. I think they would have let me sit
up though, even if I hadn't been sixteen, the time was so precious.
Up till this time the war had seemed a faraway, unreal thing, just like
the tales we used to shudder over, of the heathen babies thrown to the
crocodiles. I had been working for the Red Cross and the Belgian orphans
in the same spirit that I've worked for the Missionary Society, wanting
to help the cause, but not feeling it a personal matter. But when Father
talked about it in his grave, quiet way, I began to understand what war
really is. It is like a great wild beast, devouring our next-door
neighbors and liable to spring at our throats any minute. It is
something everybody should rise up and help to throttle.
I understand now why Richard is so crazy on the subject. It isn't just
thirst for adventure, as his cousin James says, although "Dare-devil
Dick" is a good name for him. He sees the danger as Father sees it, and
wants to do his part to rid the world of it. He talked a long time with
Father, begging him to use his influence to get him into some kind of
service over there. But Father says the same thing that Mr. Moreland
did. That he's too young, and the only thing for him to do is to go back
to school in the fall and fit himself for bigger service when his
country has greater need of him. Richard went off whistling, but I knew
he was horribly disappointed from the way his hat was pulled down over
his eyes.
The next morning when I went down to breakfast I felt as if the wild
beast had already sprung as far as our door-step, if not actually at our
throats, for Barby sat pale and anxious-eyed behind the coffee urn, and
her lips were trembly when I kissed her good-morning. Father had
received his orders to report in Washington in forty-eight hours, and we
had hoped to keep him with us at least two weeks. He is called to a
consultation about some extensive preparations to be made for marine
hospital work. He had already been notified that he was to be put at the
head of it, and he may have to go abroad to study conditions, almost
immediately.
I knew from the dumb misery in Barby's eyes she was thinking of the same
things I was--submarines and sunken mines, etc., but neither of us
mentioned them, of course. Instead, we tried to be as jolly as possible,
and began to plan the nicest way we could think of to spend our one day
together. Suddenly Father said he'd settle it. He'd spend it all with
me, any way I chose, while Barby packed her trunk and got ready to go
back to Washington with him. He'd probably be there a week or ten days
and he wasn't going one step without her.
Then I realized how grown-up one really is at sixteen. A year ago I
would have teased to be taken along, and maybe would have gone off in a
corner and cried, and felt dreadfully left out over such an arrangement.
But I saw the glance that passed between them when he said it, and I
understood perfectly. Barby's face was radiant. You may adore your only
child, but the love of your life comes first. And it should. I was
_glad_ they wanted to go off that way on a sort of second honeymoon
trip. It would be dreadfully sad to have one's parents cease to be all
in all to each other. Babe Nolan's mother and stepfather seem that way,
bored to death with each other.
Two things stand out so vividly in that last day that I never can forget
them. One is our walk down through the town, when I almost burst with
pride, going along beside Father, so tall and distinguished looking in
his uniform, and seeing the royal welcome people gave him at every step.
They came out of the stores and the houses to shake hands with him, the
people who'd known him as a little boy and gone to school with him, and
they seemed so really fond of him and so glad to have him back, that I
fairly loved them for it, even people I hadn't liked especially before.
The second thing was the talk we had up here in the garret in the gable
window-seat, when he came up to look for some things he had packed away
in one of the chests, twenty years ago.
We did lots of other things, of course; went rowing in the new boat to a
place on the beach where he used to picnic when he was a boy. We took
our lunch along and ate it there. Afterwards we tramped back into the
dunes a little way, just to let him feel the Cape Cod sand in his shoes
once more, he said. It was high tide when we got back to the boat-house,
so we got our bathing suits and went in. He was so surprised and pleased
at some of my diving stunts, and taught me a new one. He is a
magnificent swimmer himself.
His hair is iron gray at the temples, and I've always been halfway
afraid of him before--that is, afraid to say right out whatever I
happened to think or feel. But it was different this time. I felt that
he understood me better than anybody else in the world, even as well as
Barby used to, when I was younger. As we went back home he said the
nicest thing. He said it seemed to him that we must have been boys
together at some time in our lives. That I was such a jolly good chum.
I can't think about that last evening or the going away yesterday
morning without the tears starting. But I'm thankful I didn't break
down at the station. I couldn't have kept from it if it hadn't been for
Captain Kidd, who frisked along with us. Just at the hardest moment he
stood up on his hind legs and saluted. I'd never seen him do it before.
It's a trick Richard taught him lately. It was so cunning everybody
laughed, and I managed to pull myself together till the train started.
But I made up for it when I got back home and came up here to the gable
window-seat where Father and I had that last precious talk together,
with his arm around me and my head on his shoulder. I nearly bawled my
eyes out as I recalled each dear thing he said about my being old enough
now to understand business matters, and what he wanted me to do in case
the United States went to war; how I was to look after Barby if anything
happened to him; and what I was to do for Uncle Darcy and Dan's
children. That he relied on me just as if I were a son, because I was a
true Huntingdon, and no Huntingdon woman had ever flinched from a duty
or failed to measure up to what was expected of her.
I keep thinking, what if he should never come back to talk to me again
in that near, dear way. But ... I'll have to stop before any more
splashes blot up this page.
CHAPTER IV
HER IDEAL GIRL STEPS IN
ALL the time Barby was gone I didn't write a line in this record. I
couldn't. Things seemed too trivial. Besides, the house had that
strange, hushed air that you feel at a funeral when you're waiting for
it to begin. I couldn't bear to touch the piano. It didn't seem right to
be playing gay tunes while there was such awful sorrow in the world, and
in all probability Father and Barby were spending their last days
together.
I declined the invitation to Laura Nelson's dance on that account, and
after Tippy had gone to bed I put on Barby's only black dress, a chiffon
dinner gown that she had left behind in her closet, and sat by the
window in the moonlight, listening to the music of piano and drum
floating up from the Nelson cottage. I had turned the silver trimming in
so as not to show, and looking down on the clinging black folds that
trailed around me, I pictured to myself so vividly the way an orphan or
a young widow must feel, that the tears splashed down into my lap till
I was afraid it would make the chiffon all crinkly. The dance music
sounded perfectly heartless to me. I could understand how bitter it
might make one feel who was really in mourning.
When Barby came home and I told her about it, she said that I should
have gone to the dance; that our first duty to ourselves and the world
is to keep ourselves normal. After I'd spent the morning helping her
unpack and hearing everything she had to tell about her week with Father
and his departure to some unknown port, she told me she wanted me to
stay out of doors all the rest of the day. I must go on the Quest of
Cheerful Things, and she hoped that I'd be able to report at least two
adventures.
The two things which happened are that I went to a furniture auction and
met my ideal girl. While they're not particularly cheerful things,
they're important enough to be recorded here.
It began by Babe Nolan bumping into me as I turned a corner, after I'd
been out nearly half the afternoon. Babe is a far cry from anybody's
ideal girl, that is, as far as looks and manners are concerned, but she
has her good points. For one thing she is absolutely sincere, and it's
always interesting to hear what new trouble she's been in.
She had her bathing suit bundled carelessly under her arm, and said she
couldn't stay because she'd promised to be up at the West End beach by
four o'clock, and it was almost that time then. But she'd heard that
there was a furniture auction going on in front of the old Holloway
house, which has been vacant for years, and she just had to go by and
see if there was a white bedstead in the lot, with hollow brass balls on
the posts. She was sure that there couldn't be, because she'd been told
that the furniture had been brought up from Truro or Wellfleet, or some
place down the Cape. It belonged to relatives of the Holloway family.
Still she felt possessed to look, and she supposed she'd go through life
like the Wandering Jew, looking for that bedstead and never finding it.
Then she told me why. Babe is very unfortunate in her family life,
having a stepfather which complicates matters. All her brothers and
sisters are either steps or halves. She has no whole ones. And they are
all socialists in a way, believing in a community of interests, such as
wearing each other's clothes without asking, and using each other's
things. Right while Babe was talking to me she had on one of her
half-brother Jim's outing shirts, turned in V at the neck instead of her
own middy blouse, because Viola had walked off with her last clean one.
With everybody free to root through her bureau drawers, and with no
locks in the house that work, of course she has absolutely no privacy,
and she had several letters that she wouldn't have the family read for
worlds. They were too sacred, and she couldn't bear to destroy them, for
they breathed devotion in every line, and were her first of the kind.
She thought of burying them under the garden hedge, but that would have
necessitated digging them up every time she wanted to re-read them, and
there was danger of the puppy trailing her and unearthing them if she
went too often to that hallowed spot.
One night just before she and Viola went to Yarmouth for a visit, she
found, quite by accident, that the brass balls on her bedposts were
screwed on and were hollow. So she folded the letters up small and
stuffed them into one, with a dried rose and a broken cuff-link that had
associations, and screwed it back tight.
What was her horror when she came home two weeks later to find that her
mother had had the room done over in their absence as a surprise for her
and Viola. She had bought twin beds of bird's-eye maple and given one
old bed to a Salvation Army man who was going through town collecting
junk, and sent the other to a camp up in the White Mountains where her
mother's people go every year. She didn't know which went where.
Now there's no telling how, when or where those letters will next see
the light of day. It was bad enough to lose the letters, but Babe says
she'll simply die if they fall into her Aunt Mattie's hands. She's the
prim, cold kind who makes you feel that anything sentimental should
never be mentioned. It's something to be ashamed of. Tippy's that kind.
I have written all this out not because it's important in itself, but
because it's a link in a chain. If I hadn't happened to meet Babe and go
with her to hunt for that bedstead, I wouldn't have been at the auction
when my ideal girl came along, or when Richard drove by and I hailed him
to borrow a quarter, and he stopped and saw her. What she said and what
he said, and what happened afterward was like a game of "Consequences."
All sorts of stuff lay around on the grass--dishes and bed-slats and odd
andirons. There was a beaded mat and a glass case of wax flowers, and a
motto, "The Lord is my Shepherd," cross-stitched in pink and gray
worsted, sitting right out on the grass. Babe said probably it was the
work of hands long dead and gone, and didn't it seem sad that they
should come to this end? But the tide was in and she'd have to go. She
might have known she'd not find that bedstead. Would I walk up to the
beach with her?
But I told her no, I'd just rummage around awhile longer to see what
else there was for sale. Maybe I could get some "local color" that way.
Babe knows about my writing. She is one of the girls I read my novel to,
and she respects my talent. So she left me. I did get some local color
by staying, and took out my pencil and pad, which I always carry around
in my knitting bag, and made a note of it.
An old-fashioned hoop-skirt was thrown across a rose-bush, and a black
silk bonnet lay under it, beside a pair of worn shoes. Both the bonnet
and the shoes had what Tippy calls a "genteel" air, and made me think
they must have belonged to a prim maiden lady with proud nose and
slender feet, probably called "Miss Althea." The name came to me like an
inspiration, I could almost see her standing by the rose-bush.
Just then some boys, who were wrestling around, bumping into everything,
upset a barrel on the grass, and a great pile of framed photographs came
rolling out. Some of them were comical enough for a Sunday supplement,
women in tight basques and little saucer hats, and men with
whiskers--beards or perfectly ridiculous bushy "burnsides." A crowd of
summer people began making joking remarks about them to set each other
to laughing.
But there was one in an oval walnut frame that I couldn't bear to have
them make fun of, the photograph of a lady with a little boy leaning
against her shoulder. She had a strong, kind face, with such steadfast
eyes looking straight at you, that you just knew everybody went to her
with their troubles. The boy was a dear little fellow, serious as a
judge, with his hair brushed in a long roll on the top of his head in
one of those old-fashioned coxcomb curls.
One of the girls from the hotel picked it up and began declaiming a
verse from "Somebody's Darling," that's in one of our school readers.
"Kiss him once for somebody's sake.
* * * * * *
One bright curl from its fair mates take----
They were somebody's pride you know."
It came over me in a great wave how I would feel if it were Barby's
picture thrown out that way for strangers to ridicule and step on, or
the one I've always loved of Father, when he was a little boy, hugging
his white rabbit. I felt that I simply must save it from further
desecration. The only way was to buy it. The man said I could have any
frame in the barrel, picture thrown in free, for twenty-five cents,
without waiting for it to be put up at auction. They were in a hurry to
get through. I told him I'd take it, then I discovered I hadn't a penny
left in my knitting bag. I'd spent my last one on the way down, treating
Babe to a soda water.
It was right while I was standing there with the frame in my hands,
uncertain whether to go to the bakery and borrow a quarter or ask the
man if he'd take my note for it till next day, that Judith Gilfred came
into the yard with a girl I'd never seen before. I knew at a glance that
it must be the cousin she'd been expecting from the South. She's talked
about her for a month, and said such gushing things that I was prepared
to see quite a pretty girl, but not the most beautiful one I had ever
seen in my life. That's what she is, and also my ideal of all that is
gracious and lovely and sweet.
She's a blonde with the most exquisite hair, the color of amber or
honey, with little gold crinkles in it. And her eyes--well, they make
you think of clear blue sapphires. I loved her from the moment Judith
introduced us. Loved her smile, the way it lights up her face, and her
voice, soft and slow, blurring her r's the way Barby does. From her
little white-slippered feet to the jewelled vanity box on a slender
chain around her neck, she looks exactly as I'd choose to look if I
could make myself over. Her name is Esther Gilfred.
Judith must have told her as much about me as me about her, for she was
so cordial and dear. Judith has been my most intimate friend ever since
I started to school. Esther was so interested in the auction. One of her
greatest charms I think is her enthusiasm for whatever you happen to be
interested in. She made the picture I was carrying around seem doubly
desirable, just by saying in that indescribably charming way of hers
that antique frames are quite the rage now. There is such a fad for them
in her town.
We must have spent more than half an hour poking around among all the
queer old things being auctioned off, when I heard the honk of an
automobile horn, which I recognized as Richard's. He was signaling me.
He had slowed down as he came opposite the place, to see why such a
crowd was gathered in there, and, as he did so, caught sight of us.
He stopped when I waved to him, and I ran out and asked him to loan me a
quarter. As he fished one out of his pocket, he told me he'd take me
home if I was ready to go.
So I ran back to pay for the frame, and ask the girls what time they'd
be ready to go rowing next morning. While Judith was answering, Esther
laid her hand on my arm in her enthusiastic way and exclaimed in a low
tone, "Who is that young Apollo you spoke to? He has the most gorgeous
dark eyes I ever saw, and the shoulders of an athlete. He's simply
stunning!"
On the way home I told Richard what Esther said about him. He looked so
pleased and conscious, that it was funny to watch his face.
"Which one said it?" he asked. "The little goldilocks in blue, or the
one under the red parasol?"
I surely was astonished, for I had no idea that Richard was so
observing. Heretofore, he had never seemed to notice how girls looked,
or what they wore.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
A PHOTOGRAPH AND SOME DAY-DREAMS
I DON'T believe compliments are good for the male mind. They go to their
heads. Up to this time in all the years I've known Richard, I'd never
seen him walk up to a mirror and deliberately stare at himself, except
when we were having a face-making contest, and trying to see which could
look the ugliest.
[Illustration: "I don't think compliments are good for the male mind."]
But the first thing he did after we went into the house was to stop in
front of the hall mirror and square back his shoulders. Then he turned
and looked at himself, a long, slow glance out of the corner of his
eyes, and walked away with such a satisfied air that I was dying to
laugh. All the rest of the evening he had a sort of set-up, lordly way
about him that he had never had before. I am sure that it was the effect
of Esther's compliment.
Barby asked him to stay to supper, and he did, to hear all about her
Washington trip. He talked to her sort of over my head, as if I were a
little girl who couldn't understand the great war measures which
interested him. It amused me immensely, for every one knows that a girl
of sixteen is far more mature than a boy of seventeen and a half. But I
didn't say anything, just smiled to myself as I sat and knit and
listened.
After supper when I brought out the oval frame to show the family what a
bargain I got for a quarter, I had the surprise of my life. Tippy
recognized the photograph in the frame. She said there were probably a
dozen like it hanging up in various parlors in Wellfleet. It was the
picture of a minister's wife she had known years ago. "Sister Wynne,"
everybody called her, whether they went to that church or not, because
she was so widely beloved. The little boy's name was John.
When this little John was just a baby, Brother Wynne had a call to a big
church out West. On the way there they came up to Provincetown to take
the boat, and they stayed all night with Grandfather Huntingdon in this
very house. Tippy was here on a visit at the time, and remembers it
perfectly. Several years later the Wynnes had this picture taken to send
back to friends in their old parish, and let them see how little John
had grown. Miss Susan Triplett at Wellfleet has one.
It seems too strange for words to think that once upon a time they
slept in our big downstairs guest chamber in the bed with the
bird-o'-paradise valance and the pink silk tester, and that years and
years afterward I should find their picture in a barrel at an auction,
and bring it home and hang it up in that very room.
That's what I did after supper while Richard was drawing maps on the
margin of the _Boston Transcript_, showing Barby where the Allies were
entrenched. I washed the glass and drove a nail, and hung it up over a
little serving table between the windows. Then I stepped back and held
up the lamp to see the effect. It seemed to belong there, and the little
fellow's big, serious eyes looked straight out at me, as if they were
saying: "Yes, I know you, and I came back on purpose to be put into your
story."
He seemed so real to me that as I went out, carrying the lamp, I looked
back over my shoulder and whispered, "Good-night, little John Wynne."
Then I went upstairs to get another skein of yarn and wind it on Tippy's
swift. All the time I was doing it I kept thinking of the events of the
afternoon, and how beautiful Esther Gilfred looked--how adorable she was
in every way. Those lines from Wordsworth came to my mind:
"She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight."
Also she suggested that line "Queen rose of the rosebud garden of
girls!" Suddenly I thought, why not write a poem to her my own self. At
that, a whole list of lovely words went slipping through my mind like
beads along a string: lily ... pearl ... snow-crystal ... amber ...
blue-of-deep-waters ... blue-of-sapphire-skies ... heart of gold. She
makes me think of such fair and shining things.
But it was hard to get started. After trying ever so long I concluded to
look in the dictionary in the list of Christian names for the meaning of
Esther. I thought that might suggest something which would do for a
starter.
When I went back downstairs Richard had finished his map drawing. He was
lying on the leather couch, as he so often does, his eyes closed, and
his hands clasped under his head, listening to Barby play the piano. He
certainly did look long, stretched out full length that way, longer than
he had ever seemed before. Maybe Esther's calling my attention to him
the way she did made me see him in a new light, for, after staring at
him critically a moment, I had to admit that he really was as
good-looking as she said he was.
I carried the big dictionary over to the library table and opened it
under the reading lamp. Years ago we had looked up the meaning of our
names, but I had forgotten what Richard meant until my eye chanced on
the word, as I glanced down the page. I didn't want to interrupt the
music, but I couldn't resist leaning towards him and saying in an
undertone, just to get a rise out of him:
"Listen to this, 'Apollo,' the name Richard means 'strong like a ruler,
or powerful.' That's why you have the 'shoulders of an athlete.'"
But he didn't even open his eyes. Just gave an indulgent sort of smile,
in rather a bored, superior way that made me want to slap him. It was as
much as to say that I was carrying coals to Newcastle in telling him
that.
"Well," I said, in Tippy's own tone, quoting what she always tells me
when anybody compliments me in her presence, "'There's nothing lasting
you will find but the treasures of the mind.' So you needn't be so
uppity, mister."
He ignored the remark so completely that I determined not to speak to
him again all evening. But presently I was forced to on account of the
interesting fact I found on the next page. It was too interesting not to
be shared.
"Beauteous Being," I remarked in a half whisper, "don't trouble to open
those gorgeous dark eyes, but listen to this. The name Esther means _A
Star_. Isn't that wonderfully appropriate?"
His eyes flew open quickly enough at that. He turned over on his side
and exclaimed in the most interested way:
"Say, I was just thinking what a peach she is, but somehow peach didn't
seem the right word. But _Star_--that fits her right down to the
ground."
And that from Richard, who never looks at girls! Seeing how interested
he was in her I confided in him that I was trying to write a poem to
her. That she seemed to be set to music in my thoughts, and that she
continually reminded me of lines of poetry like that one of Tennyson's:
"Shine out little head, running over with curls, to the flowers, and be
their sun."
He asked me what that was in. When I told him "Maude," he turned over on
his back again and shut his eyes, with no more to say. But when Barby
finished the "Reverie" she was playing and he got up to go home, he
walked over to the bookcase and began hunting along the shelves. He
always helps himself to whatever he wants. When he slipped a book into
his pocket I looked up in time to see that it was one of the little blue
and gold volumes of our set of Tennyson. Later I found he had carried
off the one with "Maude" in it. I have wondered since if he would have
taken the same interest in Esther if I hadn't repeated her
compliment--if it was that which started him.
Tippy lost no time next morning in hunting up the auctioneer and finding
whose furniture he was selling, and all about it. What he told her sent
her to Wellfleet on the noon train to talk over old times with her
cousin Susan Triplett. She came back at supper time with a piece of news
wonderfully interesting to me.
Little John Wynne is alive and really is back on the Cape. But he's
grown up now, of course. He's a physician. He worked his way through a
Western college and then went to Harvard for his medical degree. This
summer he is in Yarmouth, taking care of old Doctor Rawlins' practice,
while he's off on a long vacation.
I was so thrilled over all that Tippy told, that on my way up to bed I
slipped across the hall for another look at the picture which I had
rescued. It is a pity that "Sister Wynne" died before she knew how
splendidly he turned out. She would have been so proud of him. But she
must have known that he'd grow up to be the kind of man that Miss Susan
says he is, because they look so much alike--the same steadfast,
dependable sort of eyes and mouth.
As I stood there, holding the flickering candle, with the wax melting
and running down its side, I thought how wonderful it would be if fate
should some time bring our paths in life together. There are so many
ways that might be done. He might be called here in consultation any
day. Dr. Rawlins often is. Or he might come up here to spend a week-end
as hundreds of people do, because the town is quaint and has historic
associations. I wondered if I'd recognize him from his likeness to this
baby picture or to his mother, if I should happen to meet him
suddenly--say going into the post-office or strolling along the wharf. I
felt sure something would tell me that it might be he.
Then I began imagining the most dramatic scene, just as if I were
reading it in a novel of which I was the heroine. I would be taking part
in an entertainment at the Town Hall, giving the Fire-fly dance maybe,
first with the spot-light following me, and then with hall and stage
darkened to give that wonderful fire-fly effect, and all the tiny points
of electric lights hidden in my costume flashing on and off. And _he_
would be watching out there in the darkness, from the front row,
watching intently every graceful move.
Then all at once something would go wrong behind the scenes. A cloud of
fire and smoke would suddenly sweep across the stage, shutting me off
from escape and almost suffocating me. There would be a moment of awful
silence while the audience gazed transfixed with horror. Then out of the
darkness _he_ would leap forth, tearing off his coat as he sprang up on
the stage to wrap it around my filmy dress, already aflame, and I would
fall unconscious in his arms, overcome by the smoke.
Long hours afterward when I opened my eyes, his face would be bending
anxiously over me, and I'd smile wanly up at him, and he'd say in a
choking whisper, "Thank heaven, she lives!" I would be lying in this
downstairs guest chamber instead of my own room, this being handier, and
presently he'd see this picture of himself hanging on the wall.
Then--well, suffice it to say, it would lead finally to a beautiful and
touching scene like the one I saw at the movies Wednesday afternoon, in
the last act of "The Harvest Moon."
After I went upstairs that night, I thought of still another way for us
to meet, which I shall write down because it would make a good scene in
a novel, and I am beginning to think I shall start another one soon
instead of "Divided," which now seems amateurish and childish to me.
This is the scene.
I would be a beautiful Red Cross nurse, serving with the Allies
somewhere in France. Into the ward, where I was keeping vigil some
night, would be brought a wounded officer, a member of the medical
corps who had risked his life giving aid to the dying in the trenches.
He would be too badly hurt for me to recognize him at first, till I
found his mother's picture over his heart, and my calling his name would
bring him back to consciousness.
"How did you find me?" he would murmur feebly. "How did you know?" And
I'd say, "Because, far away across the seas in my old home on Cape Cod,
hangs the picture of 'little John Wynne,' as he used to be. My guardian
angel led me hither."
"You ... are my ... angel," he would whisper, and relapse into
unconsciousness. I could make it awfully effective to have him die,
after I'd nursed him tenderly for weeks, but I can't bear to. I'd rather
have it end the way I'd want it to end in real life if I should really
meet him on a foreign battle-field.
Probably, though, if I ever do meet him, it'll be just my luck to be
coming in from blue-berrying the way I was last week with a bee-sting on
my lip that swelled it up till I was a sight for the gods.
Oh, if we could only make things happen actually the way we can in our
day-dreams, what a thrilling thing Life would be from start to finish!
CHAPTER VI
THE ONE AND ONLY STAR
"Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky."
THAT'S Esther. She has been here two weeks, and all that time I've been
trying to write a poem to her which would do her justice. It is
impossible. So, since coming across the above line from Wordsworth, I've
simply called her "Star" and given up trying. She likes to have me call
her that.
She is so wonderful that it is a privilege just to be in the same town
with her. Merely to feel when I wake in the morning that I may see her
some time during the day makes life so rich, so full, so beautiful! How
I long to be like her in every way! Since that cannot be I try to live
each hour in a way that is good for my character, so as to make myself
as worthy as possible of her friendship. For instance, I dust the hind
legs of the piano and the backs of the picture frames as
conscientiously as the parts that show. I work overtime on my music
instead of skipping practice hours as I have sometimes done in the past.
The most unpleasant tasks I go through gladly, feeling that the rubbing
of such, although disagreeable, puts a shine on one's soul in the same
way that a buffer polishes the nails.
At first Richard laughed at what he called my infatuation, and said it
didn't pay to take Emerson's advice and "hitch your wagon to a star."
You have to jerk along at such a rattling gait to keep up that it soon
wears out an ordinary mortal. But before he realized what had happened
to him his wagon was hitched as firmly as mine, and to the same star.
Esther loves to motor, so he takes her for a long drive every day when
his cousin James doesn't want the machine. As he furnishes his own
gasoline for such pleasure trips, he hasn't saved very much of his wages
since she's been here, to put in his "Going abroad" fund.
Every time I go to the Gilfred's, Esther passes me a freshly opened box
of candy. All the boys send it to her, but twice in the last week I've
been sure it was from Richard. The first one had a card lying on top
that she turned around for me to read. No name--just a pencilled
line--"Queen Rose of the rose-bud garden of girls." But I know
Richard's handwriting as well as I know my own. Besides he learned that
very quotation from me. The next time the card was printed instead of
written, but there was a pansy drawn in the corner, and the sentence was
in French.
Esther asked me to read it. She said she was so rusty in her French she
wasn't sure she had translated it correctly. It said "Pansies are for
thought." Then I remembered the pansy bed out by the Gilfreds' side
porch. Richard had a big purple one in his button-hole the other day
when he came back from there. But that was no proof, of course, because
I'd seen George Woodson with one, and also Truman Long. Truman draws
almost as well as Richard and is always making marginal sketches on
things, but Truman never took any of the languages but dead ones.
But later on when Esther said she and Richard were going to read some
fables together to help her brush up her French, I was pretty sure he
had sent that second box. I was altogether sure when he came over the
second time with that same pansy in his buttonhole, so dry and dead it
was all shriveled up. I knew just how he felt about it, that it was too
sacred to throw away. I feel the same way about whatever her fingers
touch. So just to let him know that I understood and sympathized like a
real sister I picked up Barby's guitar and in an off-hand sort of way
began to sing an old song of hers that he knows quite as well as I do.
"Only a pansy blossom, only a withered flower,
Yet to me far dearer than all in earth's fair bower."
I hadn't the faintest intention of teasing him, but he seemed to take it
that way. He got as red as fire and shrugged his shoulders impatiently
and strode out of the room as if he were provoked. It seems so queer to
think of _him_ having any sentiment in connection with a girl, when he's
always been so indifferent towards them. Still, Esther is so star-like,
so high above all other girls that I don't wonder that even he has
yielded to her magic influence.
All the boys are crazy about her. George Woodson spends most of his
waking hours there. He sits around in the hammock with his ukelele,
waiting for her to come out, and if they have an engagement and go off
and leave him, he just sits and waits for them to come back. Truman Long
has composed a serenade dedicated to her that's really awfully sweet,
and when they dance at the Gilfreds' of an evening the boys break in so
continually that Esther doesn't get to dance around the room without
changing partners. It must be heavenly to be so popular.
Babe Nolan has a sentence copied in her memory book which she says is a
test of whether one is truly in love or not. She thinks it is from
Emerson. "When a single tone of one voice can make the heart beat, and
the most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in the
amber of memory. When we become all eye when one is present and all
memory when one is gone."
She says she was all eye when she used to be with the One who wrote
those letters which are now in that bedpost somewhere in the Salvation
Army or the White Mountains, and she was all memory when he was gone.
And if it happened that it was his voice which answered when she called
up the grocery where he clerked, she was all of a flutter, and couldn't
remember whether her mother told her to order starch or stove polish. I
wonder if I shall ever know that blissful sensation.
According to Babe's test I am sure of the last two items in Richard's
case. He certainly is all eye when Esther is present, and the most
trifling thing she says or does is cherished in the amber of his memory.
I can tell from the way he keeps coming back to them in a round-about
way without mentioning her name.
Barby has noticed the difference in him, too. He doesn't come to the
house as often as usual for one thing, and he talks about something
besides war. He doesn't mention Esther's name to Barby, but he brings up
subjects connected with her that he's never been interested in before.
Things they've discussed at the Gilfreds', such as the difference
between Southern and Northern girls, and what constitutes charm in a
woman, and why angels are always painted with golden hair and nobody
ever thinks of there being brunette angels with snappy dark eyes.
When I told Barby he was helping Esther brush up her French, she gave a
funny sort of a groan, and said, "Of all the arrows in the little god's
quiver that is the deadliest." When I asked what arrow, she said,
"Conjugating a familiar verb in a foreign tongue with a----" Then she
broke off suddenly and asked what kind of a girl I thought Esther really
was. She said if she were the right kind it would do Richard worlds of
good to be interested in her, but she couldn't bear to think of the dear
boy being disillusioned this early, or having his confidence in
woman-kind shaken by a shallow little flirt.
I told her that shallowness and coquetry were not to be mentioned in the
same breath with Esther. That while Richard's a nice boy, and feeling
towards him as I do, as if he were a real brother, I want him to have
the very best things Life can give him, I don't consider him fine enough
and noble enough for such an angel as Esther. With her lofty ideals only
a Sir Galahad or King Arthur himself is worthy of her.
Barby has met her several times, but only when there were a lot of
others present. She had no chance to talk with her and see what a truly
fine and strong character she has. She could see only in a general way
that she is lovely and gracious. So, not knowing her as I know her, she
reminded me again of that old prism of mine and the way I used to go
about with it in front of my eyes, putting rainbows around everything in
sight.
She asked if I was sure I wasn't looking at Esther in some such way,
putting a halo of perfection around her that was largely of my own
making. She said she did that twice when she was in her early teens.
Once it was a music teacher she was infatuated with, and once her
roommate at boarding school. She looked upon them as perfect, and nearly
died of disappointment when she discovered they were only ordinary
mortals.
It hurt me dreadfully to have her think my adoration of Esther was
nothing but a schoolgirl infatuation. She must have seen how I felt and
she must have changed her mind about Esther, for lately she has been
perfectly lovely about encouraging our intimacy. She says she'd like for
me to invite her to the house often, and that I may have her here for a
week after her visit with Judith is over. And she suggested several
things we might do for her entertainment, such as a picnic at Highland
Light, and a motor-boat trip over to the weirs to see the nets hauled
in.
* * * * *
An age has gone by since I wrote of the above plans. There has been no
chance to carry them out, because the very next day Mrs. Gilfred went to
Boston and took Judith and Esther with her for a week. Ever since they
left I've gone around humming:
"What's this dull town to me?
Robin's not here."
Only I change it to "My Star is not here."
The only thing that makes the loneliness bearable is that Barby has a
guest, a Miss Helen Crewes, who is a Red Cross nurse. She is going to
Flanders very soon, and she is up here resting. She gives "First Aid"
lessons to Barby, Tippy and me in the evenings.
Tuesday when the Busy Bees met here she put on her uniform and went
down and talked to the girls. She seemed so wonderful and so set apart,
all in white with the Red Cross blazing on her forehead, and she talked
so inspiringly that the girls were ready to rise up and follow her to
the death. They didn't want to go home when the time came, but hung
around begging her to tell some more. And Minnie Waite said that if
anybody in town would start a Melting Pot like the one Miss Crewes told
about to put your jewels in for the cause, she'd throw in her gold
thimble and her locket and her silver friendship bracelet that needs
only one more link to complete it.
Barby hasn't invited any of our friends to meet Miss Crewes yet, because
she's just off a hard case that nearly wore her out. She says she must
store up every bit of strength she can get from the dunes and the sea,
for what lies ahead. So she sits down on the beach hours at a time, and
goes on long walks by herself. When I take her out in the boat she
scarcely says a word. But in the evenings while she's teaching us first
aid bandaging, etc., she talks so thrillingly of her experiences and
what her friends are doing over there that I could listen all night.
Barby made several attempts to get Richard to come over and meet her,
but he hasn't been near here since Esther went to Boston. He always
makes some excuse when Barby telephones. Barby says it would do him good
to meet a woman like Miss Crewes. That she'd wake him up out of the
trance he is in, and rekindle his old enthusiasms. Miss Crewes is
middle-aged, for she's at least thirty-eight, and she's very plain,
except when she talks. Then her face lights up till you feel as if a
lamp had suddenly been brought into the room.
I know now what Barby meant by trance. It is the same thing as being
"all memory when one is gone." Yesterday Babe Nolan and I were walking
along the street together, she eating an apple, when Richard drove by
without seeing us. It was up along in one of the narrowest turns, where
he had to pass so close to the board walk that the machine nearly grazed
it. Yet he went by, perfectly unconscious of us. Never looked to the
right nor the left, and never even heard when I called to him. Usually
he is on the look-out to wave his hand to anybody he knows. When he had
gone by Babe said:
"That boy doesn't know whether he's in the body or out of the body.
Somebody ought to tell him about Esther Gilfred. It's a shame to let him
go on that way making a goose of himself."
"Tell him _what_ about her?" I demanded.
"Oh, that it's all a bluff about her brushing up her French. She
doesn't know enough French to brush. All she does is to hold the
dictionary while he reads. She can't even find the words by herself half
the time. Besides she's years older than he is, although she passes for
the same age. And worse yet--_she's engaged_."
I was so furious that I contradicted her hotly, but she just looked at
me over the apple she was biting into, with the calm, unruffled gaze of
an old Aztec. Babe can be the most provoking person at times that ever
lived. She prides herself on having a mathematical mind, and being exact
about facts and figures. The worst of it is she usually is, and will go
any length to prove she's right. Although I know in this case she _must_
be mistaken, it worries me in spite of myself.
She said that one day at the Gilfreds' they were laughing over some old
photographs of Esther and Judith, taken when they were babies. On the
back of one was written: "This is our little Esther at the age of six
months and six days." It was signed with her father's name and the date.
Esther snatched it away and tore it up before anyone else saw it, but,
Babe says, counting up from that date to this, Esther is all of three
years older than Richard. She is twenty and a half.
And she said that twice while she and Viola were visiting in Yarmouth,
their Aunt Rachel took them to a hop in Barnstable. Both times Esther,
who was visiting in Barnstable then, was there with the man she's
engaged to. He's a doctor. They met at a house-party when he was a
medical student at Harvard and she was at a finishing school near
Boston. Her aunt told Babe's aunt all about it. They've been engaged
nearly a year, but Esther won't have it announced because she says it
would spoil her good times wherever she goes. She'd never make any more
conquests. He's so busy establishing his practice that he can't pay her
the attention and give her the things that the other men do.
When Babe told me that I felt as if the solid ground were giving away
under my feet. She seemed perfectly sure that what she was telling was
the straight, unvarnished truth. And yet, I cannot, I _will_ not believe
that Esther would stoop to deceit in the smallest matter. She is the
soul of honor. She _couldn't_ be sacredly betrothed to one man and then
go on acting exactly as if she wasn't, with another. Besides, I heard
her say one day that she is just Judith's age, which is seventeen, and
another time that she was "heart whole and fancy free."
When I triumphantly quoted that last to Babe to prove she was wrong she
swallowed another bite of apple and then said, "Well, a coquette might
be all that and at the same time engaged. And she _is_ engaged, and I
can prove it."
All I could trust myself to say was, "Babe Nolan, your remarks are
perfectly insulting. I'll thank you to remember you're talking about my
very best friend and the very finest and sweetest girl I've ever known
in my whole life."
With that I drew myself up in my most freezing manner and walked off and
left her. I've wished since that I'd thought in time to hurl that
quotation from Shakespeare over my shoulder at her, but I didn't think
of it till I was nearly home:
"Be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
Thou shalt not escape calumny."
Those statements of Babe's were nothing but out and out calumny.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII
A MODERN SIR GARETH
YESTERDAY morning, just to oblige me, Miss Crewes put on her Red Cross
uniform and went out in the garden with me to let me take some snapshots
of her. Barby came out to watch us, sitting on the stone bench under the
apple tree, with her knitting. I was using my last film, posing Miss
Crewes among the hollyhocks by the garden wall, when we heard a machine
drive up and stop out in front. The next minute Richard came dashing
around the corner of the house, bareheaded, and calling Barby in such a
breathless way that I knew he had exciting news from the front.
Then he caught sight of her under the apple-tree, and came striding
across the grass to her, his head up and his face fairly shining. As we
walked over towards them we caught parts of his sentences, "It's
Dad--all banged up and in the hospital. One of the bravest things--so
proud of him--it chokes me."
He didn't even see us when we joined them, for he had pulled a handful
of letters out of his pocket, and was shuffling them over to find the
one that brought the news. A comrade of Mr. Moreland's had written it
and his nurse added a postscript. No one thought to introduce Miss
Crewes and he never seemed to notice a stranger was present till he
finished reading. And then there didn't seem to be any need of an
introduction. She just held out her hand with tears in her eyes and that
wonderful light in her face which comes when she talks of sacrifice and
heroism, and he gripped it as if they were old friends.
That's what they've seemed to be ever since. I think the sight of that
red cross blazing on her uniform waked him up to the fact that she is
connected in a way with the same cause his father is suffering for now
in the hospital, and that she would be in sympathy with his desire to
get into the service, and possibly might be able to help him. He
couldn't stay then, because his Cousin James was in the machine out in
front, waiting for him. But he promised to come back later, said there
were a hundred questions he wanted to ask her.
It seems strange that, in the midst of hearing such a big vital piece of
news about a real hero, I should notice a trifle like the following.
When Richard took the handful of letters from his pocket and began
shuffling through them to find the one from France, I saw without being
conscious that I was staring at them, that they were all strangely
familiar--square and pale blue. In his excitement he dropped one, and
there on the flap of the envelope were the two long slim silver initials
that I know so well, "E. G." I had several notes written on that same
silver and blue stationery before Esther went to Boston, though none
since.
I wasn't conscious of counting them as he passed them from hand to hand,
but I must have done so automatically, for I seem to remember as far as
five, and that it was the sixth one he dropped. He was so absorbed in
the news that he didn't realize he was making a public display of
Esther's letters, though of course nobody could recognize them but me. I
think maybe for the moment she was so far in the background of his
thoughts that she lost her importance for him.
But not so with me. Mingled with a thrill of happiness over Richard's
news, was a feeling that my faith in Esther had been vindicated. She
_couldn't_ have written to him six times in seven days if she had been
sacredly pledged to another. Babe Nolan is wrong for once in her life,
and I shall have the joy of telling her so before this week is out. I
know I am not putting a rainbow around Esther. It is simply that love
gives me a clearer vision than the others have--the power to see the
halo of charm which encircles her.
* * * * *
This has been such a wonderful day that I can't close my eyes until I
have made a record of it. First, _I have seen Doctor John Wynne_! And
second, I've found out something about him which makes me honor and
admire him more than any man I know except Father.
Miss Crewes told us the story, but she didn't intend to tell us his
name, nurses being bound to respect a confidence. It came out quite by
accident. She was dreadfully distressed at the slip and made us promise
we'd never repeat it to a soul. It happened this way:
Richard had the machine to do as he pleased with today, Mr. Milford
being out of town, and he and Barby arranged a little picnic for Miss
Crewes. He's taken the greatest fancy to her. We started out soon after
breakfast and drove for hours through the perfectly heavenly summer
morning, stopping at each little village along the Cape as we came to
it, to tack up some posters. They were posters different artists had
painted for that French Relief entertainment, which has been postponed
so many times.
At lunch time we stopped by the side of the road in the shade of a pine
grove, so close to the water that we could see the blue shining through
the trees. It was such a fascinating, restful spot that we sat there a
long time after we finished our lunch.
Richard stretched out full length on the pine needles with his hat over
his eyes, and the rest of us took out our knitting. I knew he was
thinking of Esther, for presently he brought up a subject which we have
discussed several times at the Gilfreds', which she was particularly
interested in. It's whether the days of chivalry are dead or not, and if
men were not nobler in the days of King Arthur, when they rode forth to
deeds of prowess and to redress wrongs, than they are now when their
highest thought is making money or playing golf.
Esther always took the side that nobody nowadays measures up to the
knights of the Round Table, and that she wished she could have lived
when life was picturesque and romantic instead of in these prosaic
times. I think what she said rather rankled in Richard's mind, because
I've heard him refer to it several times. Naturally I sided with Esther,
for her arguments seemed unanswerable. Today I quoted some of them.
That is what led to Miss Crewes telling one of her experiences. She was
red-hot for the other side, and said I might name any deed of chivalry
mentioned in the "Idylls of the King," and she could match it by
something equally fine, done in this day of the world, by some man she
was personally acquainted with.
Instantly I thought of the story of "Gareth and Lynette," for that is
one that Esther and George Woodson had the biggest argument over. The
part where Gareth saves the baron's life, and when asked what reward he
would have--"_What guerdon will ye?_"--answers, "_None! For the deed's
sake have I done the deed_."
Esther once said she thought that was one of the noblest sentences in
all literature. As soon as I quoted it Richard raised himself on one
elbow and then sat up straight. He could see by Miss Crewes' face that
she had a story worth telling.
"For the deed's sake have I done the deed," she repeated to herself as
if searching through her memory. Then after a moment she said
triumphantly, "Yes, I have a Sir Gareth to more than match yours. He is
a young physician just beginning to make good in his practise, and he's
had a far harder apprenticeship to win his professional spurs than ever
Gareth served, as scullion in the King's kitchen."
Of course, it being a nurse's confidential experience, she had to tell
the story in the most impersonal way, like the censored war reports that
begin "Somewhere in France." She began it:
"Somewhere in a little seaport where I was resting one summer," and we
didn't know till she finished it that it was Yarmouth she was talking
about, and that it was this summer it happened, only two weeks ago, and
that she was talking about the last case she nursed, the one that
exhausted her so. She wouldn't have taken it, as she had given up
regular nursing and was taking a vacation before going abroad in the Red
Cross service, but the doctor was a good friend of hers and seemed to
think it was a life and death matter to have her help in such a critical
case.
The patient was a fine-looking young fellow, not much more than a boy,
although they found out later he had a wife and baby down in New Jersey.
All they knew about him was that he had been in that neighborhood about
three months, as agent for an insurance company, and was taken ill in
the house where he was boarding. It was typhoid fever and a desperate
case from the beginning. The first night they discovered why. It came
out in his delirium, in broken sentences.
He had been using the company's money, holding back the premiums in some
way. Of course he always expected to replace the amounts in a short
time, but his speculations were unfortunate and he had not succeeded in
doing so when he was taken ill. And now he was in an agony of fear,
tortured by the thought of exposure and disgrace. His ravings were
something pitiful. He kept starting up in bed, thinking the detectives
were after him, and begging them not to arrest him--to give him one more
chance.
He had a lucid interval next morning when the doctor questioned him and
he made a full confession. There was no one he could apply to for help.
His own people had nothing, and the thought of his wife finding out his
dishonesty almost crazed him. Miss Crewes said it was one of the most
harrowing experiences she ever lived through. There was no place for her
to go but out on the tiny balcony. She stepped through the window and
sat on the railing out of sight of the bed, but she couldn't help
hearing. The way she told it made us feel that we were right there with
her, watching the doctor's face, and reading in it as she did the
struggle going on in his mind. He was turned so he could not see her,
but she could see every expression that crossed his face.
This stranger had no claim on him whatsoever. He had gotten into
trouble through extravagance and a fast life, while what the doctor had
managed to save after putting himself through school had been earned by
the hardest work and most frugal living. It would take all his savings
to replace the stolen funds, and he had been piling it up, bit by bit,
for a cherished purpose of his own. Why should he sacrifice it for this
careless young fellow, who by his own confession had never denied
himself anything? And yet, to stand back and see him go down that path
abhorred of all men to exposure and public disgrace probably would take
away his one chance of recovery.
For a long time the doctor sat there, looking past the restless form on
the white bed to the sky-line of the little town that showed through the
open window. It was a hard decision for him to make. Finally he said
cheerfully:
"It's all right, old chap. Don't worry about it any more. I'll stand
between you and trouble. I'll send my check to the company for you this
very day."
Then the boy broke down again, and his relief and gratitude were almost
as distressing as his fear had been. Well, he died after all, though
they worked to the utmost to save him. There were some complications.
And it was all so pitiful, the little wife's coming on with the baby to
be with him those last few days, and her frantic imploring of them to
save him, when they were already doing everything in human power. And
the funeral and everything, and her going back home with his body. The
one thing she clung to--the only thing that comforted her--was the
thought of his goodness and nobility of character, and that she must
live to bring up her little son to be worthy of his father's memory.
She went away never knowing what she had been spared. The doctor didn't
have even her gratitude to reward him, because she didn't know what he
had done. And nobody will ever know but Miss Crewes how much he gave to
wipe out a stranger's dishonor and let him die with his reputation
unstained. Not that he ever mentioned the matter to Miss Crewes. All she
knew was what she couldn't help overhearing. But, being old friends, he
had told her in the beginning of the summer why he was working so hard
and living so frugally. He was engaged to the loveliest girl in
Christendom, and expected to marry her as soon as his bank account
reached the place where he could give her the things she was accustomed
to having.
"And so you see," said Miss Crewes in ending the story, "there was no
_possible_ 'guerdon' for him. It was done solely, purely, for the
deed's sake."
"I'd like to know that chap," said Richard thoughtfully. Then for a
moment or two there was a deep silence. It was broken by the sound of a
noisy little automobile rattling down the road. As it came nearer Miss
Crewes recognized it and started to her feet in surprise. "Well, this is
the most remarkable coincidence that ever was!" she exclaimed. "There he
is this blessed minute!"
If the man had driven on by we wouldn't have known his name, and
probably might never have discovered it. But the surprise of seeing him
made her forget that she was disclosing the identity of the hero of her
story. At sight of her he stopped his car, got out and came over to
where we were sitting, to speak to her. After a cordial greeting she
introduced him to us. _And he was Doctor John Wynne._
My heart beat so hard that I was sure everybody must hear it. To meet in
this unexpected fashion by the roadside when I had been picturing all
sorts of romantic ways! And yet it wasn't a bit strange that he should
happen by, for we were only a couple of miles out of Yarmouth, and his
calls were liable to bring him along that road almost any hour of the
day or night.
He is an older looking man than I imagined him to be. He has that keen
X-ray gaze that doctors have when they're asking you your symptoms, and
I was afraid that he'd know just by looking at me how hard my heart was
beating, and that I'd made up all those romantic day-dreams about him.
My guilty conscience made my face burn like fire. I looked away every
time he glanced at me. I'd never really expected to have him appear so
unexpectedly. Fortunately he stayed only a few minutes and then was off
again in a cloud of dust.
Richard stood and looked after him till he was out of sight and then
said slowly, "There's nothing picturesque about a rickety second-hand
machine like that, and nothing heroic looking about an ordinary village
doctor, but when it comes to a choice between them and one of your old
guys in armor, it's me for the modern knight every time."
Not till then did it dawn on Miss Crewes that she had unwittingly
betrayed a confidence. Then she felt perfectly awful about it, and said
so much that we swore over and over we'd never repeat what she told us,
under any circumstance.
But I'm glad she did let it slip. So glad I know that "little John
Wynne" grew up to be that kind of a man. I wonder if the "loveliest girl
in Christendom" is worthy of him. If she appreciates him as he
deserves.
CHAPTER VIII
DISILLUSIONED
MANY times since making that promise to Miss Crewes I have wished I
could take it back. I'd give a fortune to tell just one person in this
world what Dr. Wynne did, but Barby says no. Miss Crewes has sailed and
I can't reach her for weeks to get her permission, and under the
circumstances I'd not be justified in breaking my promise. I must keep
my word. But I almost know it would right a great wrong if I could tell,
and it almost breaks my heart not to be able to do it. The way of it is
this.
The French Relief entertainment took place last Saturday night, after
being postponed four times, and I did the Spanish dance in my lovely
green and gold costume. Esther got back Saturday morning, just in time
for it. I was too busy to go over to see her, but she telephoned that
she would be at the entertainment, and that I must look my prettiest.
Some of her Yarmouth friends were coming. The posters had attracted
people from all over the Cape.
My heart sang for joy all the rest of the day. Everybody says that I am
at my best in that Spanish dance and look my best in that costume, and
naturally if one is to do any shining one wants one's best beloved there
to see it.
Babe Nolan was behind the scenes with me before the performance began.
Jim and Viola were both on the program, and she was there to help them
make up and prompt them if they forgot. It was the first chance I had to
mention those letters of Esther to her, and I took advantage of it a few
minutes before the curtain went up.
Of course I didn't tell her it was Richard whom I saw with the six
letters written in the seven days of Esther's absence. I just mentioned
the fact that I had seen them and added, "So, of course, she couldn't be
engaged to that doctor she danced with in Barnstable."
Babe was standing with one eye glued to a peep-hole in the curtain,
trying to see who was in the audience. She never turned her head but
just kept on looking with one eye, and said in that flat, cocksure way
of hers, "Well, that doesn't prove anything."
It made me so mad I didn't know what to do. It wasn't what she said so
much as the way she said it that was so odious. There have been a few
times in my life when I've been sorry that I was born a Huntingdon with
the family manners to live up to, and this was one of them. Before I
could think of an answer she added in that calm,
I'll-prove-it-to-you-voice:
"She's down there with him right now, in the third row, next to the
middle aisle, on the left."
Then she stepped aside for me to put my eye to the peep-hole, and for
one giddy instant I thought I was going to faint. The shock of the
surprise was so great. There sat Esther looking like a dream and the man
with her was Doctor John Wynne. So _she_ was the "loveliest girl in
Christendom" whom he was working and waiting for, and whom he'd have to
go on working and waiting for no telling how long, because he had acted
the part of a true knight, helping an unfortunate stranger who had no
claim on him whatsoever. When Babe talked about the doctor who was
attentive to Esther, I took it for granted he was a Barnstable man. It
never occurred to me that he had gone from Yarmouth to see her.
My head was in such a whirl that I was thankful the orchestra struck up
just then, and we had to scurry to seats in the wing before the curtain
went up. My dance didn't come till near the last, so I had plenty of
time to think it all over. My first and greatest feeling after the
tremendous surprise was one of gladness for both of them. It seemed too
good to be true that my ideal girl and my ideal man should have found
each other--should belong to each other. It is exactly what I could have
wished for each of them. But a little doubt kept raising its head like a
tiny snake in a rose-bower. If she were really engaged to him how could
she be writing daily to Richard, those long fat letters, and carrying on
with him in that fascinating, flirtatious, little way of hers that keeps
him simply out of his head about her?
My mind went round and round in that same circle of questions like a
squirrel in a cage, never getting anywhere, till all of a sudden my name
was called. It was my time to go on the stage and I had forgotten my
steps--forgotten everything. For a second I was as cold as ice. But at
the first notes of the fandango my castanets seemed to click of their
own accord, and I glided on to the stage feeling as light as a bubble
and as live as a flash of fire. I was dancing for those two down there
in the third row, next to the middle aisle. I would do my best, and not
a doubt should cloud my belief in my beautiful Star.
After the performance they were among the first to come up and
congratulate me. This time I could meet his gaze fearlessly, and I saw
his eyes were just like the little boy's in the picture. They hadn't
changed a bit, but looked out on the world as if they trusted everybody
in it and everybody could trust him. When he put Esther's scarf around
her shoulders he did it in such a masterful, taking-care-of-her sort of
way, and she looked up at him so understandingly that I realized Babe
Nolan was right about their caring for each other.
I could hardly go to sleep that night for thinking about them. I felt as
if I had stepped into a real live story where I actually knew and loved
both hero and heroine, and was personally interested in everything that
happened to them. I didn't think of Richard's part in it.
And now--oh how can I tell what followed, or how it began? I scarcely
know how the change came about, or how it started--that
"little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening, slowly silence all."
Maybe Barby's suggestion that I was seeing Esther through a prism
started me to looking at her more critically. And Babe Nolan's
statements dropped with such calm precision every time we met, stuck in
my memory like barbed arrows with poison on them. I had been mistaken in
one thing, why not in others?
At first I made excuses for everything. When Esther counted the pile of
photographs given her by the different boys who have rushed her this
summer, and said she would have plenty of scalps to show when she went
back home, I thought it was just as Judith had said. It wasn't because
she was a born flirt that she made each boy think his picture was the
only one she cared for. They all did that way back in her home town. She
was brought up to think that was part of the game.
But if she were really engaged to Doctor Wynne, as Judith admitted when
I asked her, then she had no business to treat Richard as she did. It
wasn't fair to him to lead him on so far and to accept so much from him,
and it wasn't fair to Dr. Wynne.
But Judith said, "For the land sakes, Esther wasn't ready to settle down
to any one person yet. Besides, Richard was too young for her to take
him seriously, and John Wynne was too deadly in earnest for a girl like
Esther. He was too intense. He couldn't understand a little butterfly
like her whose only thought was to have a good time. She'd be utterly
miserable tied for life to a man like him, who put duty ahead of her and
her pleasure. It would probably end in her marrying one of the men back
home that she'd been engaged to off and on ever since she was fifteen.
She said of course it would make things dreadfully uncomfortable when it
came to breaking her engagement with John Wynne, because he was so
horribly in earnest that he considered her actually his. It was a
mistake to let the affair go so far. When I asked how about Richard,
Judith just shrugged her shoulders and said it wasn't to be wondered at
that Esther should have a little summer affair with him, such a
good-looking boy and so entertaining, with that lovely car at his
disposal.
Just then Esther came downstairs in a soft white dress, beaded in
crystal, looking like such an angel with the lamplight falling on her
amber hair and sweet upturned face, that all my old faith in her came
back in a rush. "The loveliest girl in Christendom." No wonder he called
her that.
It was then that I first thought, oh, if I could only tell her the story
that Miss Crewes told us, of that knightly deed her John Wynne did
without any hope of guerdon, she wouldn't want to break tryst with him.
But I couldn't tell then. I had given my promise.
The next week-end he came up to Provincetown again. He was to stay all
night at the hotel and take Esther down to Chatham next day to a
house-party. Some old school friends of hers were giving it. But he went
back without her. When she found he had come for her in the same shabby
little old automobile that he had last Spring when she was in
Barnstable, she refused to go with him. Said she'd be ashamed to have
the girls know he drove such an old rattletrap, and that he'd promised
her last Spring--at least halfway promised her--that he'd get a new one
in time for this house-party, so that he could join them sometimes and
take them on picnics.
He explained to her that he had fully intended to do so, but that
something came up lately which made it impossible. He wouldn't tell her
what, although she coaxed and pouted. He just stuck to it doggedly that
it was something he couldn't talk about. Somebody needed his help and he
felt forced to give it. Then he grew stern and told her that she must
believe him when he said the sacrifice was necessary, and forgive him if
he couldn't humor her wishes.
It was Judith who told me about it. She said that Esther has always
queened it over everybody, and is so used to being considered first in
everything that she wouldn't stand for his putting some old charity
patient ahead of her wishes and her comfort. She just gave him his ring
back and he went home that night.
I wanted to cry out that I knew the reason. That I could tell her
something that should make her proud to be seen in that shabby old
machine, because of the gallant sacrifice it stood for. But my lips were
sealed by my promise.
Only once before in my whole life have I ever had such a gone-to-pieces
feeling. That was when our old gardener, Jeremy Clapp sneezed his teeth
into the fire. I was so little then I didn't know that teeth could be
false, and when I saw all of his fly out of his mouth I thought he was
coming apart right before my eyes. The shock was so awful I screamed
myself almost into spasms. My faith in everything seemed crumbling. I
felt the same way this time.
I had been so sure of Esther, so absolutely sure of her high standards
of honor, that the slightest flaw in her was harder to forgive than a
crime in a less shining soul. And now to think that she had cruelly hurt
and disappointed the man who, to me, was the knightliest of all men, was
more than I could bear. I felt I could never take another person on
trust as long as I lived. I wished I could have died before I found out
that she wasn't all I believed her to be.
Barby had guests when I reached home. I could hear their voices as I
paused an instant on the front door-step. I knew that if I tried to slip
up the stairs she'd see me and call me to come in, so I tip-toed across
the hall into the big downstairs guest chamber, and threw myself on the
couch by the open window. I was too miserable to face anybody. Too
miserable even for tears.
But the tears came presently when I looked up and caught sight of the
picture that I had rescued at the auction, "little John Wynne," leaning
against his mother's shoulder, looking out on the world so trustingly
from that safe refuge. As I looked at the curl her fingers had brushed
so carefully into shape, and the curve of the baby lips that had never
known anything but truth, I just couldn't bear to think of him growing
up to be deceived and disappointed. I had to admit that Esther wasn't
worthy of him, but I recalled the way he looked at her as he put her
scarf around her that night, and I felt that if he still wanted her as
much as he did then, I wanted him to have her. It didn't seem fair for
her not to be told about his Sir Gareth sacrifice. I believe I cried
more for his disappointment than for my own, as I pictured his blighted
future, although mine seemed empty enough, goodness knows. I wished I
was old enough to be a trained nurse and go to Flanders right away.
It was almost dark when the guests left. I had cried myself into a
blinding headache. I hadn't intended to tell Barby, but she happened to
glance in as she passed the door, and, seeing me face downward on the
couch, came in with an exclamation of surprise, and before I knew it the
whole miserable story was out. Then I was glad I told, for she was so
sweet and comforting as she sat and stroked my forehead with her cool
fingers. Some of the ache went away as she talked. It helped a lot to
know that she had gone through the same kind of an experience. Everyone
does, she said, "in their salad days." One can't expect to be an expert
at reading character then.
But she insisted that I mustn't tell Esther about the typhoid fever
patient. She said it wouldn't help matters. That John Wynne had been
looking through a prism too. He saw her pretty, fascinating, gracious
ways and imagined her perfect as I had done. He hadn't seen what a
shallow little creature she really is, vain and selfish. It was better
for his disillusionment to come now than later.
"But how is one ever to be sure?" I wailed. "There was Richard and
Doctor Wynne and me, all three of us mistaken. She was like a star to
each of us. I called her 'Star.' It seemed the most beautiful name in
the world and I thought it fitted her perfectly."
"Don't be too hard on her," Barby said. "It was your mistake in taking
her measure, and giving her a misfit name. Remember how many mistakes
the prince made before he found a perfect fit for Cinderella's slipper.
But cheer up! You'll find some one worthy of the name some day."
I didn't want to cheer up, so I just closed my eyes, and Barby, seeing
that I didn't wish to talk, went on rubbing the headache away in
silence. When I opened them again it was twilight, so I must have dozed
off for a while. Barby was sitting across the room in the window-seat,
her elbow on the sill. Her dress glimmered white. Beyond her, through
the open casement, glowed the steady harbor lights and the winking red
eye of the Wood End lighthouse. I went over to her and leaned out into
the sweet-smelling summer dusk. It made me feel better just to sniff
that delightful mingling of sea salt and garden fragrances.
"Look up," said Barby. "Did you ever see the stars so bright? I've been
sitting here taking a world of comfort out of them. It's good to feel
that no matter what else goes wrong they keep right on, absolutely true
to their orbits and their service of shining; so unfailingly true that
the mariner can always steer his course by them. And Georgina--you don't
believe it possible now, but I want you to take my word for it--_there
are people in the world like that--there are friendships like
that--there is love like that--just as dependable as the stars_!"
She said it in a way I can never forget. It brought back the old feeling
Tippy used to give me when she traced my name on my silver christening
cup, the feeling that it was up to me to keep it shining. I've thought
about it quite a lot since, but I am all mixed up as to which is the
best way to do it. Maybe after all it would be more star-like of me to
renounce my dream of becoming a famous author, and go in for duty alone,
like Miss Crewes.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
ONE might think, seeing that I am keeping two diaries now, that I am
leading a double life. But such is not the case. When it was decided
that I was to go to Washington this year, to the same school that Barby
attended when she was my age, she suggested that I keep a journal, as
she did while here. She called hers "Chronicles of Harrington Hall." So
I am calling mine "The Second Book of Chronicles." Next vacation we are
to read them together.
Naturally I want to make mine as interesting as possible, so I've spent
considerable time describing life here at school as I see it, and making
character sketches of the different girls, teachers, etc. It would have
been more satisfactory if I could have put all that in my Memoirs, thus
making one continuous story, but it's too great a task to write it all
out twice. So I have put a footnote in my Memoirs for the benefit of
whoever my biographer may be, saying, "For what happened at Harrington
Hall, see my Book of Chronicles."
All during the first term I did not make a single entry in this old
blank book, now open before me. It lay out of sight and out of mind in
the back of my desk. But this morning I came across it while looking for
something, and tonight I have just finished reading it from start to
finish. I realize I have left quite a gap in the story by failing to
record several things which happened after Esther went home.
As I sit and re-read these last pages, how far away I seem now from that
unhappy August afternoon when I came home from the Gilfreds', feeling
that I could never take anyone on trust again. It was days before I got
over the misery of that experience, and I really believe it was on
account of the way I went moping around the house that Barby decided to
send me away to school. Father had been urging it for some time, but she
wanted to keep me at home with her one more year.
It wasn't the excitement of getting ready to go away and trying on all
my new clothes that restored me to my former cheerfulness, although
Barby thinks so. It was just two little words that Richard said the last
day he was with us, before going back to school. I wouldn't have
believed that a mere exclamation could have brought about such an
amazing change in my feelings, and I still wonder how it did. Next year
I'm going to study psychology just to find out about such queer
happenings in our brains.
We were out in the boat, he and Captain Kidd and I, taking a farewell
row. He hadn't mentioned Esther's name since the day she left, but
Judith told me he never went back to the house after he found out the
double game she had been playing. Remembering how infatuated he'd been I
knew he must have felt almost as broken up as Babe says John Wynne was.
I kept hoping he'd bring up the subject. I thought it would make it
easier for him if he would confide in one who had known the same
adoration and disappointment. Besides I brooded over it all the time. It
was all I thought about.
So on the way back I sat in pensive silence, trailing my hand languidly
over the side of the boat through the water. Richard talked now and
then, but of trivial things that could not possibly interest one
communing with a secret sorrow, so I said nothing in reply. When we were
almost at the pier he rested on the oars and let the boat drift, while
we sat and listened to the waves tumbling up against the breakwater.
As we paused thus in the gathering dusk, a verse came to me that seemed
a fitting expression of the sad twilight time as well as both my mood
and his. For his face looked sad as he sat there gazing out to sea, sad
and almost stern. So I repeated it softly and so feelingly that the
tears sprang to my eyes, and there was a little catch in my voice at the
last line:
"Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea,
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."
I had expected some sort of sympathetic response, at least an eloquent
silence, for he knew I meant Esther, and it was like a dash of cold
water to hear him exclaim in an exasperated sort of way, "_Oh rats!_"
Captain Kidd took the exclamation to himself, and barked till he nearly
fell out of the boat. And Richard laughed and rolled him over on the
seat and asked him what he meant by making such a fuss about nothing.
That was no way for a good sport to do. Then he began pulling for the
landing with all his might.
Considering that I had just bared to him one of the most sacred emotions
of my heart, his answer seemed as unfeeling as it was rude and
inappropriate, something I could never forgive nor forget. He couldn't
help seeing that I was hurt and indignant, for I ran up the beach ahead
of him and only answered in monosyllables when he called after me,
pretending nothing had happened.
But later when I was upstairs brushing my hair, I heard him down in the
dining-room, teasing Tippy and telling her what he wanted for his
farewell supper, in that jolly, audacious way of his that makes a joke
of everything. I knew perfectly well that he felt blue about going back
to school and that he was all broken up over the affair with Esther, but
he was too good a sport to show it.
And _that's_ what he meant by saying "Oh rats," in such an exasperated
way! He had expected me to measure up to his idea of a good sport and I
hadn't done it! My brooding over "a day that is dead" till it spoiled
our enjoyment of the present one, seemed silly and sentimental to him.
As he told the dog, "that was no way to do." From away back in our
pirate-playing days the thought that Richard expected a thing of me,
always spurred me on to do it, from walking the ridgepole to swinging
down the well rope. He expected me to be as game and cheerful a chum as
he is, and here I had spoiled our last boat-ride together by relapsing
into that moody silence.
It was as if those two words held a mirror before my eyes, in which I
saw myself as I looked to him. "But I'll show him I _can_ be game," I
declared between my teeth, and as soon as I had tied the ribbon on my
hair I ran downstairs, determined to make that last evening the jolliest
one we had ever had.
I am so thankful that we did have such a gay time, for now that things
can never be the same again, he will have it to look back on and
remember happily. He went away next morning, but I did not leave until
nearly two weeks later. It was the day before I started to Washington
that I heard the news which changed things.
I was down in the post-office, sending a money order, when Mr. Bart, the
famous portrait painter, came in. Some other artist-looking man followed
him in, and I heard him say as he caught up with him:
"Bart, have you heard the news about Moreland? He's reported killed in
action. No particulars yet, but, it goes without saying that when he
went, he went bravely."
Mr. Bart started as if he had been hit, and said something I didn't
quite catch about dear old Dick, the most lovable man he ever knew. All
the time the clerk was filling my money-order blank they stood there at
the same window, talking about him and the winters they had spent
together in Paris, their studios all in the same building, and how
they'd never want to go back there now with so many of the old crowd
gone. They said all sorts of nice things about Mr. Moreland. But not
till one of them asked, "Where's the boy now?" did I realize the
awfulness of what I had just heard. It was _Richard's_ father they were
talking about, _and he was dead_.
But I couldn't really believe that it was true until I got home and
found Barby at the telephone. Mr. Milford had just called her up to tell
her about it. And she was saying yes, she thought he ought to go to
Richard at once by all means. He would feel so utterly desolate and
alone in the world, for his father had been everything to him. Now that
his Aunt Letty was dead he had no relatives left except Mr. Milford.
She'd go herself if she thought she could be any comfort to the dear
boy.
Mr. Milford said he'd catch the _Dorothy Bradford_ within an hour, and
he'd convey her messages. And that's the last I heard for ever so long.
I wanted to write to Richard, but I just couldn't. There wasn't any way
of telling him how sorry I was. But that night I scribbled a postscript
at the end of Barby's letter to him, and signed it, "Your loving
sister, Georgina." I wanted him to feel that he still had somebody who
thought of him as their really own, and as belonging to the family.
I had been here at school over two weeks before any news came about him.
Then Barby wrote that Mr. Milford was back, and had told her that they
had a trying interview. Richard was more determined than ever to get
into the war. He kept saying, "I've _got_ to go, Cousin James. There's a
double reason now, don't you see, with _Dad_ to be avenged? I'm not
asking you to advance any of my money. All I want is your consent as my
guardian. They won't let me in without that."
Richard can't get the money his Aunt Letty left him till he is
twenty-one. It's in trust. But he'll have a lot then, and there ought to
be considerable when his father's affairs are settled. But because Mr.
Moreland had said that Richard was too young to go now and must keep on
in school, Mr. Milford feels it is his duty to be firm and carry out his
cousin's wishes. But he told Barby he came away feeling that with the
boy in that frantic frame of mind, school would do him no more good than
it would a young lion. A caged and wounded one at that.
The next news of him was that he had disappeared from the school and
his Cousin James couldn't find a trace of him. About that time the
expressman left a big flat box for Barby with a note inside that said,
"Take care of this for me, please. If I shouldn't come back I'd like for
you and Georgina to have it. Dad thought it was the best thing he ever
did."
In the box was the portrait that Mr. Moreland painted of Richard the
first summer he came to Provincetown, called, "The thoughts of Youth are
long, long thoughts." It has been given first place in every art
exhibition in which it has been hung, and, besides being a wonderful
piece of painting, is the darlingest portrait of Richard as he was at
the age of ten that one could imagine.
It was not until after Thanksgiving that I heard directly from him
myself. Then I had a note from him, written up in Canada. He said, "I
know you won't give me away, Georgina, even to Barby. She might feel it
was her duty to tell Cousin James where I am. I couldn't enlist, even up
here without his consent, but I've found a way that I can do my bit and
make every lick count. I'm at the front, _by proxy_, and _more_. So I am
satisfied. I haven't much time to write but that's no reason I wouldn't
appreciate all the home news available. If you have any on hand just
pass it along to yours truly who will be duly grateful."
I was wild to know what he was doing, and exactly what he meant by being
at the front "by proxy and more." But, although I wrote regularly after
that and underscored the question each time, he never paid any attention
to that part of my letters. I could see he was purposely ignoring it. I
would have ignored his questions, just to get even, if they hadn't
showed so plainly how hungry he was for news of us all. Remembering that
he is all alone in the world now, since he and his Cousin James are at
outs, and that I am the only one of his home folks who knows his
whereabouts, I make my letters as entertaining as possible.
Sometimes Babe Nolan, who is at this school, rooming just across the
hall, hands over her brother Jim's letters. The spelling is awful and
his grammar a disgrace, but he certainly has a nose for news. He tells
about everybody in town from the Selectmen to the Portuguese fishermen.
Babe never wants the letters back, so I send them on to Richard, also
the Provincetown _Advocate_, which Tippy mails me every week as soon as
she is done reading it.
Hardly had I written the above when my roommate, Lillian Locke, came in.
Being a Congressman's daughter, she is allowed to spend a lot of her
spare time with her family, who are living at a hotel. She had been out
all afternoon with them, consequently had not received her pile of
letters which came in the last mail. The elevator boy gave them to her
as she came up. One of mine had been put in with hers by mistake. That
is why I didn't get it earlier. I was surprised to see that it was from
Barby, because I had one from her only this morning. Late as it is I'll
have to sit up and add a few more lines to this record, for it's all
about Richard and fits right in here.
Mr. Milford finally got track of him in some way and followed him to
Canada. He has just returned. He found Richard working in what had once
been an automobile factory. It is now turning out aeroplanes for the
Canadian government.
One of the first persons Richard met when he reached the town was a
workman in this factory who was eager to go to the front, but couldn't
for two reasons. He was badly needed in the factory, and he had a family
dependent on his wages, two little children and a half-blind mother. His
wife is dead. When Richard found he couldn't enlist, big and strong as
he is, without swearing falsely as to his age, he went to the man and
offered to take his place both in the factory and as a breadwinner for
his family.
It was the foreman who told Mr. Milford about it. He said there was no
resisting a boy like him. He was in such dead earnest and such a likable
sort of a lad. He walked into everybody's good graces from the start.
They took him on trial and he went to work as if every blow was aimed at
a Hun. When the man saw that he actually meant business and wanted it
put down in black and white that he would look after the family left
behind, the matter was arranged in short order.
And now Richard feels that not only is there a man on the firing line
who wouldn't be there but for him, but every day as he fashions some
part of the aircraft, he is doing a man's work in helping to win the
war. The foreman said, "He's the kind that won't be satisfied till he
knows everything about airships there is to know," and Mr. Milford said
he didn't feel that he was justified in opposing him any longer. A job
like the one he had undertaken would do him more good than all the
colleges in the country.
Down at the bottom of the letter Barby said, "I have written all this to
Miss Crewes, that she may have another Sir Gareth to add to her list of
knightly souls who do their deed and ask no guerdon."
CHAPTER X
AT HARRINGTON HALL
THE other day Miss Everett, the English teacher, took a book away from
Jessica Archibald. She said it wasn't suitable for a girl in her teens.
It was too sentimental and romantic. Jess didn't mind it very much, for
she is one of the worshippers at Miss Everett's shrine. When a bunch of
girls are so devoted to a person that they'll go to her room and take
the hairs out of her comb to put in their lockets or their memory books,
that is the limit. I don't see how any novel ever written could beat
that for being sentimental.
But Babe Nolan doesn't agree with me. She never does. She said, "Look at
the old Romans. Didn't I remember in Anthony over Caesar's dead body:
"Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, and dying, mention
it within their wills, bequeathing it as a rich
legacy."
But Babe admits that Jessica is disgustingly sentimental. They are
room-mates. And Babe says how any grown person can be the blind bat that
Jess's mother is, is a mystery to her. Mrs. Archibald told Miss Everett
that her little daughter is "an unawakened child as yet, just a shy,
budding, white violet," and she wants to keep her so till she's through
school. She says Jessica has always been totally indifferent to boys,
never gives them a thought, and she doesn't want her to until she is
grown and Prince Charming arrives on the scene. She's just fifteen now.
And all the time, Babe says, shy little Jessica is having the worst kind
of a case with one of the Military Academy cadets, who started up an
acquaintance with her one day on the street-car, behind the chaperone's
back. She's slipped off and gone alone to movies several times to meet
him, when she was supposed to be taking tea with her aunt. Yet she looks
up in such an innocent, wide-eyed way, and seems so shocked when such
escapades are mentioned, that you wouldn't suspect her any more than you
would a little gray kitten. But it's making her dreadfully deceitful.
Babe came up to our room to talk to Lillian and me about it, for she's
really worried over those clandestine meetings. She says the whole
trouble is that Jess doesn't know boys as they exist in the flesh. She
knows only the demi-gods created by her own imagination. She has been
brought up on fairy-tales in which princes often go around disguised as
swine-herds, and, not having any brothers which would give her the key
to the whole species, she doesn't know a swineherd when she meets him.
Babe told her no real prince would ask anything clandestine, and that
this cadet she's mooning around about is only an overgrown schoolboy
with a weak chin and a bad complexion, and if she could see him as he
really is and as he looks to the rest of us girls, it would cure her of
her romantic infatuation. And Babe told her, moreover, that no real
prince would pretend to be a poet when he wasn't, and that the verses he
sent her were not original as she fondly believed, wearing them around
inside her middy blouse. Babe couldn't remember just what poem they were
taken from, but said they were as well known to the public as "Casey at
the bat." She is so blunt that when she begins handing out plain truths
she never stops for anyone's feelings.
Babe says that if she ever marries and is left a widow in poor
circumstances, she will support herself by starting a Correspondence
School in a branch that will do more good than all the curriculums of
all the colleges. It will be a sort of Geography of Life, teaching maps
and boundaries of the "_United States_" and general information to fit
one for entering it. She said we shouldn't be left to stumble into it,
in blindfold ignorance like Jessica's.
Right there I couldn't resist breaking in to say, "Oh, speaking of a
_correspondence_ course, Babe, did you ever find that brass-balled
bedstead you were looking for at the auction?"
Of course the question had no significance for Lillian, but it pointedly
reminded Babe of the correspondence she had with the One for whom she
was once all eyes when he was present, and all memory when he was gone.
She's entirely over that foolishness now, but she turned as red as fire,
just the same, and to keep Lillian from noticing, she turned to the
bureau and began talking about the first thing she looked at.
It happened to be a photograph of Lillian's brother, Duffield, who is an
upper classman at Annapolis. Lillian is awfully proud of him, although
from his picture you wouldn't call him anything extraordinary. His nose
is sort of snub, but he has a nice face as if he really might be the
jolly kind of a big brother that Lillian says he is. She's always
quoting him. I've heard so much about what "Duff thinks" and "Duff used
to say and do" that I feel that I know him as well as if we'd been
brought up in the same house.
So when she began singing his praises again, declaring that Duffield
wouldn't ask a girl to meet him clandestinely and he wouldn't have any
respect for one who wanted to, I withdrew from the conversation. It was
time for me to go on copying the theme which Babe's entrance had
interrupted.
She must have been responsive enough to have pleased even Lillian, for
when next I was conscious of what they were saying, Lillian was
including Babe in the invitation she had given me some time ago, to go
along with them next time her mother motored down to Annapolis to see
Duff. They're going down to a hop in April, which is only a few days off
now, and again in June week, and stay at John Carrol Hall. Mrs. Locke
has already written to Barby, inviting me, and Barby has given her
permission.
Mrs. Locke is from Kentucky, and knows all the Shirleys. She always
introduces me as "the granddaughter of our illustrious editor, you
know." In that way I've met a lot of Barby's old friends when I've been
invited to take dinner at the hotel with Lillian. That accounts also for
my being included in their invitation to an informal musicale at the
White House where I met the President and his wife. (See Book of
Chronicles for six pages describing that grand occasion.)
Of all the legacies in the world, nothing is more desirable for children
to inherit than old friendships. One day when Mrs. Locke took Lillian
and me shopping with her, we met a lady in one of the stores whom she
introduced as Mrs. Waldon. No sooner had she been told who I am than she
held out both hands to me, saying in the dearest way, "Not Barby
Shirley's daughter, and half a head taller than I! Why, my dear, I was
at your mother's wedding, and it seems only yesterday. Our families have
been neighbors for three generations, so you see we inherited our
friendship, and now here you come, walking into the same heritage."
She insisted on taking us home to lunch with her. Mrs. Locke had another
engagement, but Lillian and I went. She has the dearest apartment, on
the top floor with a stairway running up to a little roof garden. Her
husband served in the Civil War and was a general in the Cuban war, and
two of her daughters have recently married naval officers. They were
living in Annapolis when that happened, so she knows all about the
place. Her other daughter, Miss Catherine, has just come back from a
visit down there, and she told us so much about the place and the good
times she has there that we are simply wild to go. I can hardly wait for
the time to come.
* * * * *
We have just come to our rooms from the Current Events class. If it
wasn't for Miss Allen's little lecture every Friday afternoon, reviewing
the happenings of the week, we'd hardly know what is going on outside of
the school premises. We rarely see the papers, and it is as sweet and
peaceful as a cloister, here at the Hall, with its high-hedged park
around it. We forget, sometimes, the awful suffering and horrors that
have been shocking the world for nearly two years. Our lessons and
recreations and friendships fill our days to the brim, and crowd the
other things out. While we're digging into our mathematics or playing
basketball with all our might, if we think of war at all, it's in the
back of our heads, like the memory of a bad dream.
But when Miss Allen tells us of some new horror as she did today, of the
torpedoing of the _Sussex_, crowded with passengers and many Americans
aboard, then we realize we are living on the edge of a smouldering
volcano, which may burst into action any moment. It doesn't seem
possible that our country can keep out of it much longer. I know Father
thinks so. His letters are few and far between because he's so very
busy, but there's always that same note of warning running through them.
"Make the most of this year at school, Georgina. Nobody knows what is
coming. So get all you can out of it in the way of preparation to meet
the time of testing that lies ahead for all of us."
After one of those letters I go at my lessons harder than ever, and the
little school happenings, its games and rivalries and achievements, seem
too trivial for words. I keep measuring them by Father and his work, and
what Richard is doing so splendidly up there in Canada, and I wish there
was something I could do to make them as proud of me as I am of them. If
the family would only consent to my going in for a nurse's training! I'm
going to talk Barby into letting me stop school this vacation, and
beginning this fall to fit myself for Red Cross service.
When Richard found that Mr. Milford had told us about him being the
temporary head of a family, he began mentioning his proteges now and
then in a joking way. But two snapshots which he sent of them told more
than all his brief descriptions. The one labelled "Granny" shows more
than just a patient-faced little woman knitting in the doorway. The
glimpse of cottage behind her and the neat door-yard in front shows that
he has something to go back to every night that has a real touch of
home about it. He boards there, so that he can keep an eye on the boys.
One is five, the other seven. He said he had to give the older one,
Cuthbert, a fatherly spanking one day, but it didn't seem to make any
difference in the kid's feeling towards him.
They seem to be very fond of each other, judging from the second
snapshot, labelled "Uncle Dick and his acrobats." The two boys were
climbing up on his shoulders like little monkeys, all three in overalls
and all grinning as if they enjoyed it. It seems too queer for words to
think of Richard being dignified and settled down enough for anybody to
look up to him as authority. But the sights he sees are enough to make
him old and grave beyond his years. He has written several times of
going to the station to help with a train-load of soldiers returned from
the front. They are constantly coming back, crippled and blinded and
maimed in all sorts of ways. He says that sights like that make him
desperate to get a whack at the ones who did it. He'll soon be in shape
to do something worth while, for he's learning to fly, so he can test
the machines they are making.
Lillian looked at the acrobat picture rather sniffily when it came. I
think she took him for just an ordinary mechanic in his working
clothes. But when I told her what a Sir Gareth deed he is doing her
indifference changed almost to hero-worship. She's so temperamental. Not
long ago he sent another picture of himself, a large one, in the act of
seating himself in the plane, ready for flight. She wanted to know if
she had anything I'd be willing to trade with her for it. She'd gladly
give me one of Duff in place of it.
It put me in rather an awkward position for I didn't want Duffield's
picture, and I most certainly didn't want her to have Richard's.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XI
THE MIDSHIPMAN HOP
IT is all in my Book of Chronicles, written out for Barby to read, how
we motored down to Annapolis in the fresh April sunshine, and what we
wore and what we did. But it is only in this "inmost sanctum" of these
pages that "my tongue can utter the thoughts that arose in me."
Mrs. Waldon was with us, as enthusiastic as a girl over going back to
her old home, and she kept us amused most of the way with her
reminiscences of different midshipmen, especially the two who married
her daughters. But in between times my thoughts kept wandering forward
uneasily to the hop, in spite of the reassuring knowledge of a lovely
new coral-pink party dress, stowed away in the suitcase under my feet,
and I couldn't help feeling a bit nervous over the coming event.
It would be the first dance I had ever gone to among strangers, and I
kept thinking, "Suppose I'd be a wall-flower!" Then, too, I was a
trifle agitated over the prospect of seeing Mr. Tucker again, the most
congenial man I had ever met. Naturally I wanted to meet him again, but
I shrank from doing so, certain that the sight of me would recall to his
mind that humiliating affair of the borrowed slippers and my old
Mary-Jane pumps. I was wild to know if he still remembered me, or if he
had forgotten "both the incident and the little girl" as Barby predicted
he would. Besides I wanted him to see how mature I had grown since
then--how boarding school broadened and developed my views of life.
I made up several little opening speeches on the way down, but couldn't
decide which to use. Whether to assume a rather indifferent air with a
tinge of hauteur, or to be frankly and girlishly glad to see him, and
ignore the past.
I was still debating the question in my mind when we drove into "little
old Crabtown" as Mrs. Waldon calls Annapolis. She asked the chauffeur to
drive by the house where she used to live, so she could point out the
place where the midshipmen used to swarm in for their favorite "eats"
whenever they could get away from the Academy, and where she and her
girls and their guests had those funny "guinea-hen teas" that she'd been
telling us about.
While we were drawn up by the curb in front of the house, a big, blond
boy in midshipman uniform, swinging past at a lively gait, stopped and
saluted, the surprise on his face spreading into a vast grin as he
recognized Mrs. Waldon. The next instant he was on the running board,
shaking hands with her, and they began talking a dialect none of us
could understand, about "dragging" and "queens" and "Jimmy-legs." The
regular Midshipman "lingo" she explained afterward when she had
introduced him to us in ordinary English. He was Mac Gordon, a sort of a
cousin of hers from out West.
The conversation that we couldn't understand was nothing but that she
was asking him if he intended taking a girl to the dance, and telling
him that we would be there, and asking if the same old guards were at
the gates, because she intended to take us over the Academy grounds next
day and hoped someone she knew would be detailed to escort us. I could
see right then and there that Mac was making up his mind to give Lillian
a good time, from the way he kept looking at her, sort of bashfully,
through his eyelashes.
Well, I needn't have worried about anything. I had "crossed my bridge
before I got to it," as Uncle Darcy often says, when I was fearing I'd
be a wall flower. I had the first dance with Duffield, and the moment
the band struck up I went into it, feeling as I did that night in the
Spanish fandango. After that my card filled up so fast that I had to
split dances. Mac Gordon was among the first, and Bailey Burrell, who
once spent a summer in Provincetown, so long ago that I'd nearly
forgotten him. But he remembered lots of things about me; the first time
he ever saw me, for instance, dressed up at a bazaar as "A Little Maid
of Long Ago." He even told how I was dressed, with a poke bonnet trimmed
in rosebuds over my curls, sitting in a little rocking chair on a table.
And he remembered about his sister Peggy breaking my prism. She's cured
of her lameness now, and is grown up to be a very pretty girl, Bailey
said. He promised to bring her picture around to the hotel next day.
He and Duffield were so entertaining, that as I talked and danced with
them, suddenly Mr. Tucker and his opinions ceased to interest me any
more. When he came hurrying up to speak to me and to ask for a dance, it
was the strangest thing--his personality seemed to have changed since
last summer. I looked up to him then as being quite intellectual and
fascinating, but, seeing him now with Duffield and Bailey and Bob
Mayfield, he seemed really rather insignificant. They called him
"Watty," and that expresses him exactly.
But Babe seemed to find him very entertaining, and they danced together
a lot. Good old Babe, so homely and so plain. Her nose was shiney and
her hair straggling and her dress all sagging crooked before she'd been
at it an hour. But she was having a beautiful time, and there's not a
bit of jealousy in her nature. She came up to me once to ask for a pin
and whispered, "Georgina, you're perfectly wonderful tonight--all
sparkle and glow."
It made me very happy, for Babe's compliments are few and far between.
She is more apt to speak of your bad points than your good ones, and to
be moved to say anything like _that_ meant a lot from her. When I took
her over to Mrs. Waldon to get some pins out of her "chaperone bag,"
because I didn't have any and she needed nearly a dozen, I heard Mrs.
Waldon and Mrs. Locke saying nice things about me in an undertone, that
made me think of that little line in "The Battle of Waterloo," about
"cheeks that blushed with praise of their own loveliness."
It seemed to me that if the band would only keep on playing I could
float on and on forever to the music. Oh, it's so wonderful to be
a-tingle to the very finger-tips with the joy of just being
alive--_radiantly_ alive! To have all eyes following you admiringly as
if you were a flower swaying on its stem! Oh I know this sounds
conceited, written out in black and white in plain daylight, but that
night as they played the strains of "Poor Butterfly" again and again, I
felt to the fullest the joy of being a social success, such as Esther
was. I felt all wings and as if I really were--at least inwardly--"all
sparkle and glow." I wished that the night need never, never end, and
the music and the heavenly floating motion need never stop. I wonder if
a time can ever come when I'll be so old and stiff and feeble like Aunt
Elspeth, that the strains of "Poor Butterfly" will not give me wings
again. How does one ever become reconciled to being old?
Next morning when we went over to the Naval Academy none of the boys
could get off to accompany us, but the "Jimmy-legs" detailed to escort
us was an old acquaintance of Mrs. Waldon's, and she has seen the sights
so many times that she is as good as a guide-book. Nothing escaped us. I
could have spent a week in the building where the trophy flags are,
especially in the room that is lined with them, ceiling and all. By the
time we had seen them, from Commodore Perry's "Don't give up the ship"
down to the Chinese flag captured from the Boxers, we were worked up to
such a pitch of patriotic pride that we wanted to go right off and do
something ourselves to add a guidon or an ensign to that "long honor
roll of heroic victories on the high seas."
We stayed so long looking at the flags that we didn't have time to go
through the chapel before lunch, but we did take time to watch the boys
a few moments as the signal sounded for formation and they came marching
in every direction to form in front of Bancroft Hall. We sat down on
some benches under the trees to watch them, and they did look so fine,
marching along with their precise military swing that we girls were
wildly enthusiastic about them. I couldn't understand why Mrs. Locke's
eyes filled with tears, till Mrs. Waldon said reminiscently:
"It seems only yesterday that my girls and I sat here, watching Oliver
and Roy in that same line, and now one is on a submarine and the other
on a destroyer."
And then I remembered that out from this peaceful spot where the April
flowers were springing up everywhere and robins hopping across the green
grass, these boys might have to go right off after "June week" into a
storm of shot and shell. A storm far worse than any that ever rained
around those tattered old flags we had just been looking at, because now
there is the added frightfulness of mines and U-boats, and aircraft
overhead, dropping death from the very skies. And yet (it's shocking to
confess) last night, while we were dancing in the very place where the
boys are being made strong and fit for such fighting, I actually forgot
that war is going on.
I forgot it again when the boys came over after lunch to take us back to
the Academy to finish our sight-seeing. There were five of them, one
apiece on the way over. But after we got inside the grounds Mrs. Locke
said she was too tired to climb any more stairs, and she'd seen
everything several times before, anyhow. So she and Mrs. Waldon found a
bench under the trees facing the water, where a boat drill was going on,
and took out their knitting. We strolled off in the direction of the
boathouse.
Presently I noticed that no matter how we shifted positions as we went
up steps or paused to look out of windows, three of the boys always came
drifting back to me: Duff and Bob Mayfield and Bailey. And I wasn't
doing a single thing to keep them with me, only laughing at their bright
remarks and trying to be agreeable in a general way, for naturally I
wanted them all to like me.
But all of a sudden I realized that I was having the same effect on them
that Esther had on the boys at home. They were falling all over
themselves to make me like _them_. It was the queerest sensation, that
feeling of power that came over me. And, although I didn't care for one
a bit more than for the others, I was curious to see what would happen
if I were to exert that mysterious influence that I seemed to have over
each of them. I began to feel that maybe I had not been fair to Esther
in judging her so harshly. Maybe she had felt that same way, and drifted
into those different affairs without thinking of consequences.
Pretty soon I could see that Duffield was maneuvering to get the other
boys out of the way, and finally he succeeded after talking in an aside
with his sister a moment. She immediately developed a great interest in
an old wooden Indian which sits out on the campus on a pedestal. It was
once a figurehead on the prow of a ship, and is supposed to be a
likeness of the old war-chief Tecumpseh. The boys count it as their
mascot. They decorate it with their colors before a football game and
run around it for luck before exams, and all that sort of thing.
Before I realized how it happened, Duff and I were walking off towards
the chapel alone, and all the others were going down to watch Babe and
Lillian run around old Tecumpseh for luck. It was nearly an hour before
they joined us. We strolled around inside the chapel and read the
tablets put up in memory of the heroes who had once been merely boyish
midshipmen like the one beside me. One had lost his life in some
Asiatic expedition among savages. It was awfully interesting to me,
seeing it for the first time, but Duffield kept interrupting my thrills
to talk about personal matters.
By this time I felt as if I had known him all my life, for Lillian's
daily reminiscences of him had done more to make me acquainted with him
than years of occasional meetings could have done. So it didn't seem as
startling as it would have been otherwise when he suddenly became very
personal. We were sitting in one of the seats back under the gallery.
The few tourists wandering about were up near the chancel, whispering
together and looking up at the memorial windows. We talked almost in
whispers, too, of course, being in this shrine of heroes as well as a
place of worship, and that in itself gave a more intimate tone to our
conversation.
Duffield told me that he liked me better than any girl he ever met in
his life. That he felt he had known me for years, for Lillian quoted me
so often both in her letters and visits. And he wanted me to promise to
correspond with him, and to give him my picture to put in the back of
his watch, so's he'll have it with him when he goes off on his long
cruise this summer. Of course I wouldn't promise. I told him I didn't
know him well enough, but he wouldn't give up, and we kept on arguing
about it for a long time, in a half-joking, half-serious way, till I was
almost tempted to say I would, just to see what would happen.
Then the others came in, and we all went down in the crypt to see the
tomb of John Paul Jones. And even down there in that solemn place where
a guard keeps vigil all the time, and the massive bronze wreaths and the
flags and the silence make it so impressive, he edged in between Bailey
and me and stooped down to whisper laughingly, "I won't give up the
ship. You might as well promise."
But just at that moment Bailey called my attention to the ceiling above
the tomb. A map of the heavens is painted on it, with all the
constellations that the mariners steer their ships by. Looking up at
those stars set above the last resting place of the old Admiral, Barby's
words came back to me as if she were right at my elbow:
"There are people like that--there are friendships like that--there is
love like that--_as dependable as the stars_." If Esther had been the
"Star" I thought her she never would have drifted into those affairs
with Richard and John Wynne and all the others. I think if it hadn't
been for that I might have let myself drift a bit, for it certainly was
a temptation to see how much Duffield might grow to care for me,
although I was sure I could never feel any deep and lasting sentiment
for him--the real Uncle-Darcy-and-Aunt-Elspeth kind.
While I stood looking up at that map of the heavens, with these thoughts
chasing through my mind, Babe came up and nudged me and told me for
mercy's sake to quit star-gazing in a cellar. They were all ready and
waiting to go. Babe has a lot of curiosity. As we started towards the
stairs she gave me a puzzled look which said as plainly as words, "Now
what did you do _that_ for?"
I had stopped to lay my hand on a banner bearing the name of the old
Admiral's flag-ship. It was a blue one with the name of the ship in
white--_Bonhomme Richard_. I could not have told her why I did it, had
she asked in words, instead of with her eyes. Even to myself I could not
explain the impulse, save that the name brought a thought of Richard
Moreland, and the feeling that what he had done made him, in his boyish
way, as worthy of bronze wreaths and blue banners as any of those whose
tablets shone in the chapel above. Seeing those tablets and the tomb and
that map of stars, made my old dreams come back, my old longing to do
something and be something in the world really worth while. I simply
couldn't stand it to go through life and not write my name on the
world's memory as it was written in the silver of my christening cup.
Then I wondered what Richard would think of Duffield.
That evening the same five boys who had been with us in the afternoon
were lucky enough to get off again and come down to the hotel. Duffield
and Mrs. Waldon's cousin were allowed to come earlier, in time for
dinner. Afterwards we danced in the parlors and had just as an
entrancing a time as we had the night before,
"Where Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet."
Duffield was all that Lillian had bragged he was. The more I saw him the
better I liked him. He was so sweet to her and so dear to his mother and
so lovely to me, that I began to have a real pang at the thought of him
going off on that long cruise and our never meeting again perhaps, as
long as we lived.
I found myself liking him so much better as the evening wore on, and
discovering so many attractive things about him, that I was halfway
frightened. I was afraid that I was doing what Barby said--"putting a
rainbow around him." That the charm I saw about him was maybe partly of
my own imagining. It worried me dreadfully. How is one to know? As we
floated through the last dance together I began to think that if we were
thrown together often I might find that he was the one person in the
world I would care for above all others. And yet, John Wynne had thought
that about Esther and so had Richard. I wished I had some absolutely
sure test, some magic charm, by which I could _know_ the gold of real
love from the imitation that glitters like it.
I lost the rhinestone buckle off one of my slippers and my coral dress
caught on a jagged hoop of one of the tubs that the palms were in, and
tore such a long slit in it that I can never wear it again. But it has
served its purpose in the world. I've had two perfectly heavenly
evenings in it. I've saved a handsbreadth of its pink loveliness to put
away and keep in memory of that happy time.
The boys wouldn't go home until Mrs. Locke promised to bring us down
again for June week. She promised, but I'm almost sure Barby won't let
me go. The last thing Duffield did was to ask me again for that picture.
"Please," he said in an undertone when he stooped to pick up my
handkerchief. And he said it again in a meaning half-whisper as we shook
hands all around in the general chorus of "Goodbye till June week."
CHAPTER XII
"SHOD GOES SURE"
JUNE week has come and gone, but I was not there when the midshipmen
went marching by in their white uniforms across the green mall, and the
band played and parasols and summer dresses fluttered their gay colors
from the Armory to the training ship.
Father wrote that he was coming, and would take me home with him if I
didn't mind missing commencement. I did mind, terribly, but it was
nothing when weighed in the balance with travelling back to the Cape
with him and being with him a whole week.
So Babe and Lillian went without me, but it was some comfort afterward
to hear that the boys all seemed disappointed because I wasn't there.
They sent ever so many nice messages. Duffield sent me a _Lucky Bag_,
the midshipmen's Annual, full of jokes about each other and some very
attractive pictures both of the men and the buildings. There was a
splendid one of him, and he drew a little sketch of Commodore Perry's
flag on the margin, changing the motto to the words, "_Won't_ give up
the ship."
Babe brought back a _Lucky Bag_, too; Watson gave it to her. She also
had a postal card of that old Indian figurehead, Tecumpseh. I believe
Babe must have made some wish while running around it which came true,
or else Watson gave her the postal. It surely must have some association
for her, for she brought it back to Provincetown and has it now, framed
in a carved ivory frame, the handsomest one in the house, and wholly
unsuitable for an old wooden Indian. She keeps it on her side of the
bureau, and Viola simply loathes it.
Father and I had a delightfully cosy visit on the way home. We stayed
all night in Boston and came over on the boat. He has been under a
frightful strain and shows it; looks so worn and tired and has ever so
many more gray hairs than he had a year ago. He came right from the war
zone, and twice has been on ships that had to go to the rescue of
torpedoed vessels and pick up passengers adrift in life-boats.
I couldn't get him to talk much about such things. He said he was trying
to put them out of his mind as much as possible, and was hungry to get
back to the sand dunes and just peaceful women folks. His eyes followed
Barby's every movement. At times they had a grave, wistful expression
which gave me dreadful forebodings.
Coming over on the boat he questioned me about the course of study at
Harrington Hall--how far I'd gone in mathematics and everything. Then he
asked what I thought about learning typewriting this summer, and taking
a short practical business course in Mr. Carver's office. I was so
astonished I couldn't speak for a moment. All I could think of was
Chicken-Little's cry--"The sky's a-failing. I was sitting under a
rose-bush and a piece fell on _me_."
Finally, instead of answering his question, I blurted out the one I was
fixing to ask him later on, after I'd paved the way for it and led up to
it diplomatically, about my stopping school and taking the training for
a Red Cross nurse. The moment it was out I knew I had bungled it by
being so abrupt. He simply waved it aside as impossible. He said I
didn't understand the conditions at the front at all. They needed women
there, not immature girls unfitted both physically and mentally to cope
with its horrors. They would be nervous wrecks in a short time. He said
he was speaking from a physician's standpoint. He recognized the Joan of
Arc spirit in the school-girls who offered themselves. It was one of
the most beautiful and touching things the war had called forth, but
they needed something more than youthful enthusiasm and a passion for
sacrifice. When I was through school if I still wanted to take the
training he wouldn't say a word, but now----
The shake of his head and the gesture of his hand as he said that one
word dismissed the subject so utterly that I simply couldn't insist. I
couldn't offer a single one of the arguments which I had stored up to
answer him with in case he objected, as I knew he would.
Then he said he'd always hoped to give me some practical business
training, just as if I'd been a boy, and now the war was making it even
more necessary that I should have it. If I'd been a boy he would have
wanted me to go into the Cold Storage Plant here that we have an
interest in, long enough for me to learn how it is carried on and what
its success depends upon. Mr. Samuel Carver II is at the head of it, and
Titcomb Carver and Sammy III will take it up when they're through
college. But they'll be the first to enlist when the call comes. They're
that kind. And if they never come back the business will be eventually
turned over to strangers. He wants me to know enough about it to
safeguard our interests.
I was perfectly aghast at the idea. Me, not seventeen till next month,
spending all my vacation shut up in an office, banging on a typewriter,
with the whole free sparkling harbor outside calling to me. I'd planned
such good times for this summer, a regular "under-the-rose-bush" kind,
no lessons, no rules. Now not only was the sky a-falling over my
particular bush, it was hitting me hard.
The boat had just rounded the point when Father finished unfolding his
plan, and we were leaning over the railing of the upper deck watching
for the old town to come in view. For the first time it failed to look
beautiful to me. The straight, ugly lines of the huge Storage plant
loomed up till it seemed the biggest thing alongshore except the Pilgrim
monument. That, of course, stretched up grim and stern above everything
else, and looked across at me as if it knew the hard thing Father had
just asked me to do. I felt that it heard the rebellious answer I was
making to myself.
"I can't."
"You must," it answered back, as it had done all my life. "It's your
duty. The idea of a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Minute Men
shirking her duty!"
It always gets back at me that way. It knows that the stern and
rockbound Huntingdon part of me could make only one answer when Father
put the matter to me the way he did. It was a sacrifice, for I had hoped
to begin my new novel this summer. But I had a sort of righteous,
uplifted feeling after I had consented, such as I think the martyrs must
have had, which is the reward of sacrifice. It's queer what a
satisfaction one can get out of that martyr feeling at times.
But I was ashamed of it next morning. I was going through the hall to
join Barby and Father on the porch when I heard them talking about me.
"No, Judson, she's only a child. I can't bear to have her go out into
the rough business world this early. There'll be time enough for that if
some actual need should arise."
"But, Barbara, to let her grow up unprepared for what is almost sure to
happen, would be like sending her out on a stony road in her little bare
feet. 'Shod goes sure,' Uncle Darcy used to say. If she's properly shod
she'll be spared much pain and weariness. If you could only realize what
lies ahead of us--if you could only see what I have seen----"
I walked out on the porch just then and he put out his hand to draw me
to a seat beside him. Then he began to tell us of what he has just seen
in France and England, the splendid way the women and girls over there
are rising up and shouldering their burdens. Of their work in the
munitions factories and on farms and in railroad yards. From peeresses
to peasants they stop at nothing which needs doing, from oiling a
locomotive to cleaning out a stable. Personal affairs are no longer
regarded. Personal comfort no longer counts. Safety doesn't count. Life
itself doesn't count. The only thing that does count is winning the war,
and they are giving themselves magnificently, body and soul, "as one who
does a deed for love nor counts it sacrifice."
It's like listening to one of the old Crusaders when Father talks that
way. It's a holy war to him. When I compared the selfish, easy existence
I had planned for myself this vacation with what the girls over there
are doing, and remembered how noble I had considered myself for giving
it up, I felt ashamed of having called _it_ a sacrifice. I made up my
mind then and there that I'll make good in the way Father wants me to if
it kills me. He shall never have cause to regret my being just a girl.
I'm sure he has envied Mr. Carver his sons many a time, but I'll show
him I can answer my Country's call when it comes, fully as well as
Titcomb or Sammy III. In the meantime, I'll put in my best licks at
getting shod for whatever road that lies ahead.
Of course I didn't start till Father's visit was over, but he took me
down to the office one morning and made all the arrangements. It is the
old Mr. Carver, Grandfather Huntingdon's friend, who is to take me in
hand. Sammy Senior, everybody calls him. He doesn't do much now but sign
checks and attend to some of the correspondence, so he'll have plenty of
time to attend to me, and seems glad to do it.
It was a solemn sort of morning, for we went into Mr. Sammy Senior's
office, and Father took his private box out of the safe and looked over
the papers in it. He made a lot of changes and told both of us what he
told me up in the garret last time he was home, and a lot more besides.
There are certain bonds he wants turned over to Uncle Darcy's
grandchildren, Elspeth and little Judson, when they are old enough to go
to college. Judson is Father's namesake. He explained to Mr. Sammy
Senior that their father, Dan Darcy, saved his life once over in China,
nursing him, that time he caught the strange disease which was attacking
the sailors. Father had gone over there to study it for the government.
Dan married Tippy's niece, Belle Triplett, after he came home and is
working now in the wireless station over at Highland Light, but the
government wants him for more important work in the Navy, and Father
wants to make sure those children are provided for in case anything
happens to Dan. Naturally that led to our going over the whole story.
How Dan disappeared from town under a cloud years ago, everybody
thinking he was the thief, instead of his friend Emmet Potter. (Dan just
went away, like a scapegoat into the wilderness to shield him.) And how
a year later Emmet was drowned, trying to save some people from a wreck
on Peaked Hill bars, and the town put up a monument in his memory. And
then a long time after that Richard and I found his confession in an old
musket that we were cleaning up to play pirate with.
It was as dramatic as a real play, the finding of that confession, and I
enjoyed telling it again to such an appreciative audience. How Richard
and I were sitting in the swing in front of Uncle Darcy's door,
polishing the brass plate on the stock, when we found it, and I went
screaming into the house that Danny was innocent. How Belle, who
happened to be there by the strangest coincidence, read the confession
over Uncle Darcy's shoulder, and cried out "Emmet a thief! God in
heaven, it will kill me!" and how she carried on like a crazy woman till
she made Uncle Darcy promise he'd never tell till she gave him
permission, although he would have given his life to wipe the stain
from Danny's name. She was engaged to Emmett when he died, and had been
worshipping him as a hero up to this time. She didn't know till later
that one of the reasons that Dan took Emmet's disgrace on himself was to
shield her, because he had cared for her all along as much as Emmet did.
Then Father took up the story again, and told how my letter reached him
over there in China and led to the discovery that the silent young
American who had saved his life was no other than Dan, who didn't know
till then that Emmet had confessed and that exile was no longer
necessary. "And so," said Father in conclusion, "he came back and
married Belle, and, thanks to the little pirates, they lived happily
ever after."
"That would make a rattling good movie," Mr. Carver said. "That
ship-wreck scene, and finding the confession, and you children burying
that pouch of gold-pieces in the sand, for the storm to cover up
forever. If the little pirate can write it as well as she can tell it
there's the material all right."
All the way home I kept thinking of his suggestion. I had never used
material from real life before. I had always made up my characters. But
now I began to see some of the familiar town people in a new light.
Plain, quiet Dan, doing his deed regardless of the disgrace it brought
upon him, was a real Sir Gareth. And dear old Uncle Darcy, vowed to
silence so long, what a heroic part he had played!
"I'll try it some day on the typewriter," I resolved. Then I thought
Father was right when he said "shod goes sure." Knowing how to use the
typewriter will be a help in my literary career. It begins to look as if
every road I happen to take leads into the one of my great ambition.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIII
A WORK-A-DAY VACATION
IT was late in the afternoon when we crossed the sandy court and went
through the picket gate into Uncle Darcy's grassy dooryard. As usual the
old yellow-nosed cat was curled up in one of the seats in the wooden
swing, and the place was so quiet and cool after the glare of the sun
and sand we had tramped through, that Father took off his hat with a
sigh of relief.
Belle and Dan live next door now in the cottage where Mrs. Saggs used to
live. We could see little Elspeth's flaxen head bobbing up and down as
she played in the sandpile on the other side of the fence. I was just
thinking that I was no bigger than she is now when I first began coming
down to Fishburn Court, when Father startled me by saying the same
thing. _He_ was just Elspeth's size when he began tagging after Uncle
Darcy all day long.
Aunt Elspeth sat dozing in her wheeled chair inside the screen door.
When we went in she didn't recognize Father. Had to be told who he was.
But when she got it through her head that it was "Judson, grown up and
come back from sea," she was fairly childish in her welcome of him. She
wanted him to hide as he used to do when he was a boy and let "Dan'l"
guess who was there when he came home. And Father humored her, and we
went out into the kitchen when we heard Uncle Darcy click the
gate-latch. Then in her childish delight at his home-coming she forgot
everything else. She even forgot we were in the house, so, of course,
couldn't ask him to guess who was there.
He came in breathing hard, for the length of the town is a long walk
when one is "eighty odd." He had been crying a church supper, and was so
tired his feet could scarcely drag him along. But he didn't sit
down--just put the big bell on the mantel and went over to Aunt Elspeth.
And then, somehow, the tenderness of a lifetime seemed expressed in the
way he bent down and laid his weatherbeaten old cheek against her
wrinkled one for a moment, and took her helpless old hands in his,
feeling them anxiously and trying to warm them between his rough palms.
There was something so touching in his unspoken devotion and the way she
clung to him, as if the brief separation of a few hours had been one of
days, that I felt a lump in my throat and glanced up to see that the
little scene seemed to affect Father in the same way.
Then Uncle Darcy fumbled in his pocket and brought out a paper bag and
laid it in her lap, watching her with a pleased twinkle in his dim eyes,
while she eagerly untwisted the neck and peered in to find a big, sugary
cinnamon bun.
"You're so good to me, Dan'l," she said quaveringly. "Always so good.
You're the best man the Lord ever made."
And he patted her shoulder and pulled the cushions up behind her,
saying, "Tut, lass! You'll spoil me, talking that way."
Then Father cleared his throat and went into the room, and Uncle Darcy's
delight at seeing him was worth going far to see. You'd have thought it
was his own son come home again. But even in the midst of all they had
to say to each other it was plain that his mind was on Aunt Elspeth's
comfort. Twice he got up to slap at a fly which had found its way in
through the screens to her annoyance, and another time to change the
position of her chair when the shifting sunlight reached her face.
On the way home I asked, "Did you ever see such devotion?" I was so sure
that Father would answer that he never had, that I was surprised and
somewhat taken aback by his emphatic yes. His face looked so stern and
sad that I couldn't understand it. We walked nearly a block before he
added,
"It was an old, old couple, just like Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth. I
kept thinking of them all the time I was at Fishburn Court. Their home
was just as peaceful, their devotion to each other as absolute. It was
in Belgium. The Huns came and tore them apart. Bayoneted _her_ right
before the old man's agonized eyes, and drove him off with the other
villagers like frightened, helpless sheep, to die in the open. When he
wandered back weeks afterward, dazed and half-starved, he found every
home in the village in ruins. His was burned to the ground. Only the
well was left, but when he drank of it he nearly died. It had been
poisoned. He's in an asylum now, near Paris. Fortunately, his memory is
gone."
When I cried out at the hideousness of it, Father put his arm across my
shoulder a moment saying, "Forgive me, dear. I wish I might keep the
knowledge of such horrors from you, but we are at a place now where even
the youngest must be made to realize that the only thing in the world
worth while is the winning of this war. Sometimes I feel that I must
stop every one I meet and tell them of the horrors I have seen, till
they feel and see as I do."
I understood what was in his mind when a little farther along we met two
young Portuguese fishermen. They were Joseph and Manuel Fayal. He had
known them ever since the days when they used to go past our place
dragging their puppy in a rusty tin pan tied to a string, and using such
shocking language that I was forbidden to play with them. They are big,
handsome men now, with black mustaches and such a flashing of white
teeth and black eyes when they smile that the sudden illumination of
their faces makes me think of a lightning-bug.
They flashed that kind of a smile at Father, when he stopped to shake
hands with them, plainly flattered at his remembering their names. I
could see them eyeing his uniform admiringly, and they seemed much
impressed when he said, "We need you in the navy, boys," and went on in
his grave way to put the situation before them in a few forceful
sentences.
He was that way all the time he was at home. It made no difference where
we went or what we were doing, he couldn't shake off the horror of
things he had seen, and the knowledge that they were still going on.
Several times he said he felt he oughtn't to be taking even a week's
rest. It was like taking a vacation from fighting mad dogs. Every
moment should be spent in beating them off.
It worried Barby dreadfully to see him in such a state. She's afraid
he'll break down under the strain. He's promised her that when the war
is over he'll ask for a year's leave.
* * * * *
Father has been gone two weeks. It was hard to see him go this time, so
much harder than usual, that I am glad to have my days filled up with
work as well as play. Down at the office I'm so busy there isn't time to
remember things that hurt. This arrangement isn't half as bad as it
sounded at first. In fact, it isn't at all bad, and there's lots about
it that I enjoy immensely.
For one thing I go only in the mornings. The stenographer is a nice
Boston girl who gives me lessons in shorthand in between times when she
isn't busy, and I'm getting a lot by myself, just out of a text book. I
can already run the typewriter, and I certainly bless Tippy these days
for giving me such a thorough training in spelling. Old Mr. Carver is a
darling. He likes taking me around inside the business and showing me
how the wheels go round. It may sound disrespectful, to say it gives him
a chance to show off, but I don't mean it that way.
I'm learning all about the weirs and the fisheries connected with the
Plant, and where our markets are, and what makes the prices go up and
down, and where we buy chemicals to freeze with and what companies we're
insured with and all that sort of thing. It's amazing to discover how
many things one has to know--banking and payrolls and shipping and
important clauses in contracts. I never before realized how pitifully
ignorant I am and what a world full of things there is to learn outside
of the school room.
One of his ways of testing how much I have learned about shipments and
prices and things, is to hand me a letter to answer, just for practice,
not to send away. I've always been told that I write such good letters
that I was awfully mortified over the way that he smiled at my first
attempt. I had prided myself on its being quite a literary production.
But I caught on right away what he meant, when he told me in his
whimsical fashion that "frills are out of place in a business letter.
They must be severely plain and tailor-made." Then he gave me a sample
and after that it was easy enough. I've answered three "according to my
lights," as he puts it, that were satisfactory enough to send, without
any dictation from him.
Often he drifts into little anecdotes about grandfather, and lots of
things I never heard before about the Huntingdon family and the older
town people. Usually the mornings fly by so fast that I'm surprised when
the noon whistle blows and it's time to go home. At first I brought my
knitting along to pick up at odd moments, such as the times when he gets
to reminiscing. Then I got so interested in practising shorthand, that I
began taking down his conversations, as much as I could get of them.
That old saying of Uncle Darcy's, "All's fish that comes to my net,"
seems to be a true one. For everything that comes my way seems to help
along towards the goal of my ambition. These very tales I am taking down
in shorthand, once I am proficient enough to catch more than one word in
a sentence, may prove to be very valuable material for future stories.
* * * * *
It isn't turning out to be a very gay summer after all. Babe and Viola
are up in the White Mountains, and Judith is tied at home so closely,
keeping house and nursing her mother who has been ill all vacation, that
I never see her except when I go to the house. George Woodson is a
reporter on a Boston paper, and comes home only on Sunday now and then,
and Richard seems to have dropped entirely out of my life. He says he is
so busy these days that there's never any time to write, except when
he's so dead tired he can't spell his own name.
There's so little going on here of interest to him that my letters to
him are few and far between. It's strange how absence makes people drift
apart. When he was home he was one of the biggest things in my
landscape. If he were here now I'd find plenty of time to boat and ride
and talk with him, but now it's hard to find a moment for even a short
note; that is, when I'm in a mood for writing one. I surely do miss him,
though. We've spent so many summers together.
* * * * *
For the few things that happened between my seventeenth birthday and
this last day of August, see my "Book of Second Chronicles." Barby was
so interested in reading my Harrington Hall record, and so very
complimentary, that I have been writing in it this summer, to the
neglect of this old blank book. But I'm going to put it in the bottom of
my trunk and take it back to school with me.
Babe is back home. She had a chance to investigate the brass balls of
that bedstead in the White Mountains. She did it in fear and trembling,
for it was in her Aunt Mattie's room, and she was afraid she'd walk in
any minute and ask what she was doing. The balls were empty. So she's
still wondering where in the Salvation Army those letters can be. We
are going back to Washington together next week. To think of our being
Seniors! Father is going to be pleased when he gets Mr. Carver's report
of me. I never had a vacation fly by so fast.
[Illustration]
PART II
"_True to One's Orbit and the Service of Shining._"