Georgina's Service Stars Part 10

"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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 gra.s.sy 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, la.s.s! 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 bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PART II

"_True to One's...o...b..t and the Service of Shining._"

CHAPTER XIV