Georgina's Service Stars Part 17

IF this were a novel instead of my memoirs, I'd skip now to Richard's part of it, and tell his thoughts and feelings as he lay awake for hours, trying to adjust himself to his new outlook on the future. But I didn't know about that till afterward. It only came out bits at a time in the few hours we had together before he went away. We had so little time by ourselves.

The thing that worried him was the discovery that he no longer wanted to hurry off to the front. He was still as eager as ever to do his part. It wasn't that. It was _me_. He told me down at Uncle Darcy's next morning.

I was staying there until time for the funeral, doing the little things that Barby would have done had she been here. Belle had gone home, worn out, and Tippy was over there with her, getting dinner for some of the out-of-town relatives who were expected on the noon train. It seemed as if everybody on the Cape must have sent flowers. The little house overflowed with them. Richard helped me find places for them and carry out the empty boxes.

Uncle Darcy was so wonderful. He went about just as usual, talking in cautious half-whispers as he always did when Aunt Elspeth was asleep, tiptoeing into the darkened room now and then, to lean over and look at her. Sometimes he touched her hair caressingly, and sometimes smoothed down the long, soft folds of her white robe. Once when I took in a great basket full of ferns and roses to put on the table beside her he looked up with a smile.

"That's right," he said. "Fix it all nice and pretty for her, Georgina.

Mother likes to have things pretty."

He was so calm, and seemingly so oblivious to the fact that she was no longer conscious of his presence, that we were awed by his wonderful composure. So when we were out by the pump, giving some of the floral designs a fresh sprinkling, it did not seem out of place for Richard to ask me if I had told Uncle Darcy--about us. It might have seemed strange at any other house of mourning for us to put our own affairs in the foreground, but not here.

I said no, I couldn't tell anybody until Barby knew. She must be the very first. He said all right, if I felt that way, but we'd have to send a telegram, because he couldn't go away till he'd claimed me before the footlights as well as behind the scenes. I didn't see how we could put such a thing in a telegram, but he was so determined that finally I consented to try. Together we composed one that we thought would enlighten Barby, and at the same time mystify the telegraph operator, who happened to be one of the old High School boys.

When the noon whistle blew Uncle Darcy's composure suddenly left him. He looked around, startled by the familiar sound as if its shrill summons pierced him with a realization of the truth. It was the signal for him to wheel Aunt Elspeth to the table; to uncover the tray Belle always sent in, to urge her appet.i.te with the same old joke that never lost its flavor to her. It seemed to come over him in a terrifying wave of realization that all that was ended. He could never do it again, could never do anything for her. He looked at the clock and then turned stricken eyes on me, asking when they would take her away. When I told him his distress was pitiful. It is awful to hear an old man sob.

It sent me hurrying from the room, fumbling for my handkerchief. Richard followed me and put his arms about me. The cheek pressed against mine was wet too.

"Dearest," he whispered, "that's the way I care for _you_. That's what I want to do--stay with you to the end--be to you all he's been to her. I _can't_ go and leave you with so many chances of never getting back to you. I'm clinging to the few hours still left to us as desperately as he is."

At the funeral that afternoon, as we stood together on the old burying-ground on the hill, listening to the brief service at the grave, such a comforting thought came to me. It was about the mantle of Elijah falling on Elisha as the chariot of fire bore him heavenward. He dropped it in token that a double portion of his spirit should rest on the younger prophet. I felt that Richard and I, in keeping vigil as the soul of Aunt Elspeth took its flight, had witnessed the earthly ending of the most beautiful devotion we had ever known. And its mantle had fallen on us. We would go down to old age as they had done. And we surely needed a double portion of their spirit, for we faced a long, uncertain separation, beset by danger and death. _They_ had gone all the way hand in hand.

After it was all over and the crowd straggled away we stayed behind with Uncle Darcy for a while, telling Dan and Belle we would take him home in the machine when he was ready to go. We left him sitting beside the flower-covered mound under a scraggly old pine, and strolled off to the top of the hill. Richard asked me if I remembered that the very first day we ever saw each other he brought me out to this old burying-ground.

He dared me to slip in through the picket fence and touch ten tombstones to test my courage. And after I'd touched them I went tearing down the hill with eyes as big as saucers, to tell him there was a whole row of pirates' graves up there, with a skull and cross bones on each headstone, and how disappointed we were when we found out that they were only early settlers.

And I asked him if he remembered that the first compliment he ever paid me was that same day on our way home. I was so stuck up over it I never forgot it. It was, "You're a partner worth having. You've got a _head_."

He said yes our partnership dated from that very first day. It certainly was a deep-rooted affair. Then I told him the lovely thought that had come to me about the mantle of those two old lovers falling on our shoulders, and he reached out and took my hand in the gentlest way, and said that all that they had been to one another _we'd_ be to each other, and more. And then we sat there on the hillside talking in low tones and watching the wind from the harbor blowing through the long sedge gra.s.s, till it was time to take Uncle Darcy home.

He was ready to go when we went down to him. On the way home he talked about Aunt Elspeth in the most wonderful way, as if he'd been up in some high place where he could look down on life as G.o.d does and see how short the earth part of it is. He said "'Twould be a sin to fret for her." That she was safe in port now and he'd soon follow. He was so glad that she wasn't the one to be left behind. She'd have been so helpless without him.

On the way home to supper we noticed an unusual number of boats putting into the harbor. The sky was overcast and the wind was rising. It was a disappointment because we'd planned for a moonlight row. We could see at a glance there wasn't going to be any moonlight. When we reached the house we found that Miss Susan Triplett was there. She had come back to town for the funeral and was going to stay all night with us.

My heart sank when I thought of one of our last precious evenings being interrupted by her. She always takes the centre of the stage wherever she is. But to my unbounded surprise Tippy took Miss Susan upstairs with her after supper, to help her spread the batting in a quilt that she was getting ready to put in the quilting frames. It took them till bedtime.

Richard vowed Tippy took her off purposely, out of pure goodness of heart, knowing that we wanted to be alone. I was positive that if she had thought that, or even suspected it, she wouldn't have budged an inch. She wouldn't approve of my being engaged. But Richard insisted that she was chuck full of sentiment herself, in spite of her apparent scorn of it, and that she not only suspected which way the wind was blowing, but knew it positively.

We didn't have any difference of opinion about what Barby would say, however. So I did not feel that I had to wait for an answer to our telegram before I let him slip the ring on my finger which he brought for me. It's a beautiful solitaire in a quaint Florentine setting.

"It's the one Dad gave mother," he said, "but if you'd rather have it in a modern setting----"

I love the tone of his voice when he says "Dad" that way, and I wouldn't have the setting changed if it had been as ugly as sin, instead of what it is, the most artistic one I ever saw.

It was blowing hard when he left the house. The waves were lashing angrily against the breakwater. We knew the fishermen must be expecting a storm. The night was so black we couldn't see the fleets they had brought in, but the harbor was full of lights, hundreds of them gleaming from the close-reefed boats lying at anchor.

It was not until late in the night that the storm struck. Then a terrific wind swept the Cape. Shutters banged and windows rattled. The house itself shook at times, and now and then sand struck the window panes even of the second story, as if thrown against them in giant handfuls. Once there was a crash, and a big limb of the old willow went down. It has been years since we have had such a storm. Part of the willow went down that time.

Lying there unable to sleep I recalled that other storm. I could remember distinctly old Jeremy's coming in next morning to report the damage, and saying it was so wild it was a wonder the dunes hadn't all blown into the sea. Some of them had. Captain Ames' cranberry bog was buried so deep in sand you couldn't see a leaf of it, and there was sand drifted over everything, as if a cyclone had swirled through the dunes, lifting them bodily and scattering them over the face of the earth.

I had cause to remember that storm. It buried still deeper the little pouch of "pirate gold" which Richard and I had buried temporarily, and we had never been able to find it since. For days we dug with a hoe and the bra.s.s-handled fire shovel, trying to unearth it, but even the markers we had set above it never came to light.

Lying there in the dark I could remember exactly how Richard looked then, in his little gra.s.s-stained white suit with a hole in the knee of his stocking. What a dear little dare-devil he was in those days, always coming to grief with his clothes, because of his thirst for adventure.

All through the storm I lay thinking about him. I am so glad that I have those memories of him as a boy to add to my knowledge of him as a man.

If I knew him only as I have known him since his return, a handsome young officer in his immaculate uniform and with his fascinating ways, I'd be afraid I was being attracted by his outward charm, and might be disillusioned some day as I was about Esther.

But in all the years we've been growing up together I've had time to learn every one of his faults and short-comings. Though I've frankly told him of them in times past for his own good, I realize now that he never had as many as most boys, and he has outgrown the few he did have.

I wouldn't have him changed now in any way whatever.

An attachment like ours that blossoms out of such a long and intimate acquaintance must have deeper roots than one like Babe's and Watson's.

Theirs hasn't any background, any past tense. Babe married him without having seen a single member of his family nearer than cousins, which is an awful risk, I think. Suppose one of his next of kin were a miser or a fanatic, and the same traits would crop out in him later in life.

Knowing Richard's father as I did makes me feel that I know Richard in the future tense. They are so much alike. He'll always keep that sense of humor which was one of Mr. Moreland's charms, and the same feeling for things with old happy a.s.sociations, like my ring.

When I thought of that adorable ring I just couldn't wait till morning to see it again. Reaching for the little pocket flashlight which I keep on the stand beside my bed, I sat up and flashed it on the stone, turning it in every possible direction to see it sparkle. It was much more dazzling under the electric light than it had been under the lamp.

I wondered if it made Richard's mother as happy when she wore it as it makes me. I wondered if she ever sat up in the dark to admire it as I was doing, and what she would think if she could see me press it to my lips in the consciousness that it is the precious link which binds me to Richard. I don't believe she would think it silly. She would be glad that I care so much--so very much.

Next morning Richard was over early to take me out with him to see how much damage the storm had done. The beach was strewn with wreckage, trees were uprooted on every street, and roofs and chimneys had suffered all over town. But the strangest thing was that we found our little pouch of pirate gold. It was like the sea giving up its dead for the dunes to give up the treasure we'd buried in it so long ago. We hadn't the faintest expectation of such a thing when we started out; merely thought we'd go over for a look at the place where it was buried.

When we ploughed through the sand to the fringe of bayberry bushes and wild beach plums that was our landmark, we found that the last storm had undone the work of that first one. It had scooped out the sand and left a hollow as it used to be years ago. Even then we hadn't any thought of really finding the money, but Captain Kidd was along, and just to give him some excitement Richard called "Rats!"

That started him to digging frantically, and the first thing that flew out from under his paws was one of the pieces of broken crock which we had used as a marker. Then we tried him in other places, poking around ourselves with sticks, and presently he gave a short bark and stopped digging, to nose something else he had unearthed. It actually was the old baking-powder can. It was almost eaten up with rust, and the names and date we had scratched on it were almost illegible. But everything inside was intact.

I watched Richard's face as he unrolled layer after layer of tin foil that was wrapped around the pouch, and thought again how nice it was that I shared his memories. I could understand the smile that curved his lips, for I knew the scenes that tin foil brought back to him. He had been weeks saving it.

"Off Dad's tobacco," was all he said. But more than once I had climbed the Green Stairs up the cliff to the bungalow in time to see the laughing scuffle which invariably took place before it was handed over to him. They had been rare play-fellows, he and his father.

In the pouch was the letter, the black rubber ring, the handful of change. "We'll pa.s.s all that over to Dan," I said, "but the gold we'll divide and gloat over."

But Richard insisted that it shouldn't be divided. He wanted to take it down to the Arts and Crafts shop and have it made into a ring for me.

Just a little circle, that I could wear as a guard for the other one. I wanted half of it made into some token for him "to have and to hold" but we couldn't think of anything suitable. He wouldn't wear a ring himself, and there wasn't time to make a locket. There's so little that a soldier going abroad can carry with him.

It was the artist who does the lovely jewel work at the Shop who settled the question. We had to take her partly into our confidence in order to show her how necessary it was to have the keepsake done before Richard's departure. She was dear about it, and so thrilled with the romance of the affair that she said she'd sit up all night if necessary to finish it. Yes, she understood perfectly, she said. She would melt the two gold pieces together, and out of part would fashion the ring, just a little twist of a lover's knot, and out of the rest--well, why not an identification tag? The gentleman would have to wear one anyhow, and, being an officer could have it of gold if he wished.

Richard liked the idea immensely, but it gave me a gruesome feeling at first. There would be no need of identification tags, were it not that possible death and wounds and capture face every man who wears one.

Besides it seemed such a cold-blooded sort of token to give to one's best beloved, just starting off to the Field of Honor. About as romantic as a trunk check.

But suddenly I thought of something which made me agree instantly. There was a name which I could have engraved upon the reverse side, which would make the little tag seem almost like a decoration, in commemoration of a n.o.ble deed. I managed to write it down and slip it to the artist without Richard's seeing it.

Now whenever he looks at it he will remember it is the name I call him in my heart of hearts. He will know that I think of him as my true knight, as worthy of a royal accolade as any of those who fared forth in Arthur's time to redress the wrongs of the world. He is my "_Sir Gareth_."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXII

"THE MAID WHO BINDS HER WARRIOR'S SASH"