MARKED ON THE CALENDAR
IT'S queer what a way Doctor Wynne has of stepping abruptly into my life
and out again. It's been so ever since I found his picture in the
barrel. A few days after Richard left he unexpectedly opened the front
gate and came up to the porch where Tippy and I sat knitting. I did not
recognize him at first in his captain's uniform, and no one could have
been further from my thoughts. I supposed he had already sailed for
France.
Some business with old Mr. Carver, who is giving an ambulance to the Red
Cross, brought him to Provincetown, and, happening to hear that Miss
Susan Triplett was at our house, he came up to say goodbye to her before
starting to join the unit to which he's been assigned. He was
disappointed when he found that Miss Susan had gone back to Wellfleet.
He said she was one of the few people left who had known his family
intimately, and who remembered him as a child. It gave him a sense of
kinship to have her call him "Johnny" in a world where everyone else
said "Doctor."
That was enough for Tippy. In her opinion any man in khaki is entitled
to all the "sugar and spice and everything nice" the world can give.
When she found that he has no home ties now, she adopted him on the
spot. He didn't know he was being adopted, but I did, just from the
positive tone of her voice. She told him her claim on him was about as
old as Susan's. She'd known him when he was a bald-headed baby--held him
in her arms in this very house, and sat under his father's preaching
many a time in Wellfleet. And indeed he'd stay to supper. He needn't
think she'd let a son of Sister Wynne's leave the house without breaking
bread with her, especially when he was starting off to a far country
where he was liable to get nothing but husks.
If what Tippy wanted was to give him a little slice of home to pack up
and take away in his "old kit bag," she certainly succeeded. It will be
many a moon before he can forget the table she spread for him, the
advice she gave him and the sock she hurried to "toe off" in order that
there might be a full half dozen in the package she thrust upon him at
parting. An own aunt could not have been more solicitous for his
comfort, and she did all but call him Johnny.
It's the first time I ever had any conversation with him more than a
sentence or two. Now as he "reminisced" with Tippy, and told experiences
of his boyhood on a Western farm and of his medical student days, I saw
that the real John Wynne was not the person I imagined him to be.
What a sentimental little goose I must have been at sixteen; truly
"green in judgment" to have woven such a fabric of dreams around him.
Miss Crewes' story started it, putting him on a sort of pedestal, and
the affair with Esther added to it, till I imagined him a romantic and
knightly figure, "wrapped in the solitude" of a sad and patient
melancholy. The real John Wynne is a busy, matter-of-fact physician,
absorbingly interested in the war and keen to be into it, also ready to
talk about anything from "cabbages to kings." Yet I suppose if anyone
had told me then that I was mistaken in that early estimate of him I
would have resented it. I _wanted_ him to fit the role I assigned him.
It made him more interesting to my callow mind to imagine him like that
king in the poem when,--"The barque which held the prince went down he
never smiled again."
He was so warmly interested in my account of finding his picture at that
auction and keeping it all these years, that I took him across the hall
to look at it. The thought came to me that maybe he'd like to have it,
but when I offered it to him he said no, he had a more recent one of his
mother, one more like her as he remembered her. He stood looking at it a
long while and finally said it seemed so much at home there on the wall
that he hoped I'd keep it there. It would sort of anchor him to the old
Cape to look back and know that it was hanging in the very room where
they had once been together. Then he added almost wistfully:
"If _she_ were here to wish me Godspeed, I could go away better
equipped, perhaps, for what lies ahead."
Some sudden impulse prompted me to open the table drawer and take out
the little service flag with the one star which I had thrust in there
when I put up the new one. As I hung it under the picture I was
surprised to hear myself saying, "See! She _does_ wish you Godspeed."
It was exactly as if someone else put the words into my mouth, for I had
never thought of them before, and I'm sure I never quoted Scripture that
way before, outside of Sunday school. It gave me the queerest sensation
to be doing it as if some force outside of myself were impelling me to
speak.
"Don't you suppose," I said slowly, "that if God so loved the world that
He could give His only son to die for it, that he must know how _human_
fathers and mothers feel when they do the same thing? Don't you believe
that He'd let a mother, even up in heaven, have some way to comfort and
help a son who was offering _his_ life to save the world? The men in the
trenches can't see the stars we hang out for them here at home, but they
feel our spirit of helpfulness flowing out to them. How do we know that
the windows of heaven are not hung with stars that mean the same thing?
How do we know but what those who watch and wait for us up there are not
aiding us in ways greater than we dream possible? Helping us as Israel
was helped, by the invisible hosts and chariots of fire, in the mountain
round about Elisha?"
The tenderest smile lit up his face. "It's strange you should have hit
upon that particular story," he said. "It was one of my mother's
favorites. She began telling it to me when I was no bigger than that
little chap there, leaning against her shoulder."
Then he turned and held out his hand, saying, "You've given me more than
you can ever know, Miss Huntingdon. Thank you for hanging that little
service star there. She does say Godspeed, and its help will go with me
overseas."
A little while later he went away, and I've wondered a dozen times since
what made me say that to him.
* * * * *
The month of July in my 1917 calendar is a motley page, the first half
of it being marked with a perfect jumble of red rings and black crosses.
They stand for all that happened between my home-coming after
Commencement and Richard's goodbye. When you consider that into one day
alone was crowded my birthday anniversary, Babe's wedding, Aunt
Elspeth's death, and the greatest experience of my life, it's no wonder
that in looking back over it all July seems almost as long and eventful
as all the years which went before it.
There is a triple ring around the twenty-seventh. I couldn't make it red
enough, for that is the joyful day that Richard's cablegram came, saying
that he was safe in England. It was also the day that Babe came home
from her honeymoon, alone, of course. Watson joined his ship two days
after they left here, and she visited his people the rest of the time.
I've not marked that event but I'll not forget it soon, because she was
so provoking when I ran in to tell her my news. Not that she wasn't
interested in hearing of Richard's safety, or that she wasn't
enthusiastic about my engagement and my solitaire, but she had such a
superior married air, as if the mere fact of her being Mrs. Watson
Tucker made all she said and felt important.
She gave me to understand that while it was natural that she should
worry about Watson, and almost die of anxiety when the mails were late,
I oughtn't to feel the separation as keenly as she, because I was merely
engaged.
"My _dear_, you can't realize the difference until you've had the
experience," she said patronizingly. I told her Richard had been a part
of my life ever since I was a child, and it stood to reason that he
filled a larger place in it than Watson could in hers, having only come
into it recently.
It's no use arguing with Babe. You never get anywhere. So I just looked
down on my little ring of pirate gold and felt sorry for her. She has no
link like that to remind her of such buried treasure as Richard and I
share--the memory of all those years when we were growing up together.
Early in August I had the joy of putting a big red capital L on my
calendar, to mark the day that Richard's first letter came. He was well,
he had had a comfortable crossing, he had passed all his tests and
begun his special training for the coast patrol. It is almost worth the
separation to have a letter like that. Not only did he tell me right out
in the dearest way how much he cares for me, regardless of the censor's
possible embarrassment, but every line showed his buoyant spirits over
the chance that has come to him at last. He has wanted it so
desperately, tried for it so gallantly and worked and waited so
patiently that I would be a selfish pig not to be glad too, and I _am_
glad.
Judith asked how I had the heart to go into the tableaux that Mrs.
Tupman is getting up for the Yarn fund. She was sure she couldn't if she
were in my place. She'd be thinking all the time of the danger he is in.
She wondered if I realized that the elements themselves conspire against
an aviator--fire, earth and even water, if he's in the naval force, to
say nothing of the risk of the enemy's guns.
She couldn't understand it when I said I wasn't going to make myself
miserable thinking of such things. And I'm not. He's having his heart's
desire at last, and I'm so happy for him that I won't let myself be
sorry for me.
His next letter was written five thousand feet up in the air. He went to
twenty thousand feet that trip, but couldn't write at such a height,
because his hand got so cold he had to put his glove on. Of course it
was only a short scribbled note, but it thrilled me to the core to have
one written under such circumstances.
In the postscript, added after landing, he said, "I never go up without
wishing you could share with me the amazing sensations of such a flight.
You would love the diving and twirling and swooping. You were always
such a good little sport I don't like to have you left out of the game.
Never mind, we'll have a flier of our own when I come back, and we'll go
up every day. We had an exciting chase after some enemy planes the other
day. We sent down one raiding Boche and came near getting winged
ourselves. I wish I might tell you the important particulars, but the
things which would interest you most are the very ones we are not at
liberty to write about. All I can say is that life over here now is one
perpetual thrill, and it's a source of constant thanksgiving to me that
Fate landed me in this branch of the service instead of the one I was
headed for when I skipped off to Canada."
Even Richard's reference to the enemy planes which came near winging
them did not fill me with uneasiness, because all his life he's gone
through accidents unscathed. Once when he was only half-grown he brought
his sailboat safely into port through a squall which crippled it, and
old Captain Ames declared if it had been any other boy alongshore he'd
have been drowned. That for level head and steady nerve he'd never seen
his beat. Even back in the days when his crazy stunts in bicycle riding
made the town's hair stand on end, he never had a bad fall. So I didn't
worry when two weeks went by without bringing further word from him. But
when three passed and then a whole month, I began to get anxious. Now
that it's beginning on the second month, I'm awfully worried.
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