Georgina's Service Stars Part 21

He helps me more than anyone else, because, more than anyone else, he understands what I am enduring. He remembers what he endured all those anxious years when Danny was missing. It's a comfort to have him tell me over and over how his "line to live by" kept him afloat and brought him into port with all flags flying, and that it will do the same for me if I only hold to it fast and hard enough. So I set my teeth together and repeat grimly as he used to do:

"I will not bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward."

But my imagination won't let me say it in a way to do much good. It keeps showing me dreadful pictures of Richard; of what might have happened to him. I keep seeing his body in some G.o.d-forsaken field, lying shattered and marred past recognition by the enemy's guns, his dead face turned up to the sky. Or I see him falling headlong to earth in a blazing plane, or, worst of all, in the filth of a German prison camp, weak, wounded, famishing for food and water and tortured in a thousand ways that only the minds of those demons can invent. All the things I've read as happening to other men I imagine happening to him. I see those things over and over and over till I nearly go mad.

When I fold the gauze into bandages and sew the long seams in the hospital garments, with every movement and every st.i.tch I wonder if he needs such comforts, and if needing them, they are given or denied him.

I know it doesn't do any good to say that I am hoping as long as I persist in such imaginings, but I don't want to think about anything but Richard. My hands go on working in a normal way, but when I'm not torturing myself as to his whereabouts, I am re-living the past, or picturing the empty years ahead if he should never come back to me. I can't help it.

Because in one of his letters he mentioned that old figurehead on the roof of the Tupman's portico, I have taken to walking past the house every day. Everything even remotely connected with him seems sacred now, even the things he used to laugh at. Because the memory of the figurehead helped him to hang on to the wrecked plane till rescue came, I feel as grateful to it as if it were a human being. Every time I pa.s.s it I tell myself I won't stop hoping for a single minute. I won't let myself believe anything else but that he'll come back to me some day.

Then with the next breath comes that awful vision of him lying dead in some lonely spot where he can never be found, and it seems to me I simply can't go on living.

"Cousin James" still writes encouragingly, but as the weeks go by and no trace of him can be found in any of the hospitals and no news of him comes through any of the foreign offices, the suspense is getting to be unbearable. I can't admit to anyone how horribly afraid I am, but it is a relief to confess it here. Now that I've done so, I'll run down and talk to Uncle Darcy awhile. He is the living embodiment of hope and faith. The confident, happy way with which he looks forward to joining Aunt Elspeth soon makes me feel better every time I am with him. It brings back what Richard said the day she was buried: "All that they were to each other we will be to one another, and _more_." If I could only be sure that after this terrible waiting will come such long, placid years as they had! Years of growing nearer and dearer, in a union that old age only strengthens, and death cannot sever.

_Mid-June, and still no word!_ Now that no new letters ever come, I read the old ones over and over. The one I take out oftenest is the one which says, "No matter what happens, you'll go around in the circle of your days, true to your ideals and your sense of duty. You won't go into a cloud of mourning.... You will live out your life as it was intended, just like that star."

Always, until to-night, that letter has been a comfort, because it tells of his wonderful rescue, and gives me the feeling that if he could escape so marvelously one time he can another. But re-reading that paragraph a while ago, I suddenly saw something in it that I'd never discovered before. It shows he must have had a presentiment that he'd never get back to me. He knew what was going to happen, else why should he have said "you won't go into a cloud of mourning ... you'll live out your life as it was intended!" The discovery of that premonition takes away the last little straw that I've been clinging to. He felt what was going to happen. It has happened. It must be so, for it is over two months now since he was first reported missing.

One goes on because one must. We're made that way on purpose, I suppose.

When sight fails we still have touch. We can feel our way through the dark with groping fingers.

All the glad incentive for living is gone, but when I look at the star in the little service flag which stands for Richard, every atom of me lifts itself like a drawn sword to pledge itself to greater effort. _His sacrifice shall not be in vain!_

And when I look at the star that stands for Father, I make the same vow.

He is sacrificing himself just as surely as Richard did, though he's giving his life by inches. His health is going, and his strength.

Twenty-four hours at a stretch at the operating table is too much for any man, and that's what he's had to endure a number of times recently after the big enemy offensives. Always he's on a strain. One of Mr.

Carver's friends who saw him not long ago, wrote home that he has aged terribly. He looks fifteen years older than when we saw him. Tippy says I'm burning the candle at both ends, but I don't care if I can only keep burning till we've put an end to this mad carnage.

The other day when I pa.s.sed the Figurehead House, Mrs. Tupman called me in and asked me if I'd be willing to tell the story of Richard's rescue and the little Carrier Pigeon's part in it, at the Town Hall this week.

There's to be a big rally for selling Thrift Stamps. She wanted me to show the children the tiny aluminum bracelet and cartridge which held the S. O. S. call. She was sure that if they could hear how one little pigeon saved the lives of two officers, they would be impressed with the importance of small things. They would be more interested in saving their pennies if they could think of their stamps as little wings, speeding across the seas to save the lives of our armies.

But I told her I couldn't. I'd do anything impersonal that she might ask, but I couldn't get up before a crowd and speak of anything so intimately connected with Richard. I could have done it gladly when he was alive, but now that little link of aluminum has a.s.sociations too sacred for me to hold up for the curious public to gape at.

But after supper, out in the row-boat, I saw things differently. I was paddling around near sh.o.r.e, watching the wonderful afterglow reflected in the water, pink and mother-of-pearl and faintest lavender. It was all unspeakably beautiful, as it has been countless times when Richard was out with me. Because of the conviction that we'd never again see it together, the very beauty of it gave me a lonely, hopeless sort of heart-ache. It is one of the most desolate sensations in the world, and it is a poignant pain to remember that "tender grace of a day that is dead," which "can never come back to me."

As those words floated dreamily through my memory, with them came the recollection of the time I had repeated them in this very boat, and Richard's unexpected answer which set Captain Kidd to barking. I could hear again his hearty laugh and the teasing way he said, "That's no way for a good sport to do." It brought him back so plainly that I could almost see him sitting there opposite me in the boat, so big and cheerful and _alive_. The sense of nearness to him was almost as comforting as if he had really spoken.

And then, knowing him as well as I do, knowing exactly how he always responded, in such a common-sense, matter-of-fact way, I could imagine the answer he would make were I to tell him of Mrs. Tupman's request.

"Why, sure!" he'd say. "_Tell_ the story of the little pigeon, and make it such a ripping good one there won't be a dry eye in the house. It'll give the little fellow the chance for another flight. Every stamp they sell will be in answer to an S.O.S. call of some kind, and if it's the bird that makes them buy, it'll be just the same as if his own little wings had carried the message."

The thought cheered me up so much that I went straight home and telephoned to Mrs. Tupman that I'd reconsidered, and I'd gladly do what she asked me to.

Since then I've taken to going out in the boat whenever my courage is at low ebb. Out there on the water, in the peace of the vast twilight dropping down on the sea, I can conjure up that sense of his nearness as nowhere else. It has the same effect on my feverish spirit as if his big firm hand closed gently over mine. It quiets my forebodings. It steadies me. It makes me know past all doubting that no matter what has happened, he is still mine. His love abides. Death cannot take _that_.

Oh, what does a person do who is so glad--so _crazy_ glad that he must find vent for his joy, when there are no words made great enough to express it? _We've had news of Richard!_ He's safe! He escaped from a German prison camp. That's all we know now, but it is all of heaven to know that much.

The news of his safety came as suddenly as the word that he was missing.

Tippy called me to come down to the telephone. Long distance wanted me.

It was "Cousin James." He had a cablegram from that Canadian friend of Richard's. We had an expensive little jubilee for a while there. You don't think of how much it's costing a minute when you're talking about the dead coming to life. It was as wonderful as that.

"Cousin James" said undoubtedly we would have letters soon. The fact that Richard had not cabled for himself, made him afraid that he was laid up for repairs. He was probably half-starved and weak to the point of exhaustion from all he'd gone through in making his escape. So we must have patience if we didn't hear right away. We could wait for details now that we had the greatest news of all, and so forth and so on.

The moment he rang off I started down to Uncle Darcy's, telling Tippy all there was to tell, as I clapped on my hat and hurried through the hall. I started down the back street half running. The baker's cart gave me a lift down Bradford Street. I was almost breathless when I reached the gate.

Uncle Darcy was dozing in his arm-chair set out in the dooryard. There flashed into my mind that day long ago, when _his_ hopes found happy fulfillment and Dan came home. That day Father came back from China and we all went out to meet the ship and came ash.o.r.e in the motor boat. And now I called out to him what I had called to him then, through the dashing spray and the noise of the wind and waves and motor:

"It _pays_ to keep hope at the prow, Uncle Darcy!"

And he, rousing up with a start at the familiar call, smiled a welcome and answered as he did when I was a child, the same affectionate light in his patient old eyes.

"Aye, la.s.s, it does _that_!"

"And we're coming into port with all flags flying!"

Then he knew. The trembling joy in my voice told him.

"You've heard from Richard!" he exclaimed quaveringly, "and you've come to tell the old man first of all. I knew you would."

And then for a little while we sat and rejoiced together as only two old mariners might, who had each known shipwreck and storm and who had each known the joy of finding happy anchorage in his desired haven.

On the way home I stopped to tell Babe. Good old Babe. She was so glad that the tears streamed down her face.

"Now I can help with _your_ wedding," was her first remark. "Of course, he'll have to be invalided home, for I don't suppose he's more than skin and bone if he's been in the hands of the Germans all this time. But, under the circ.u.mstances, you won't mind marrying a living skeleton. I know _I_ wouldn't if I were in your place. He'll be coming right back, of course."

Everybody I met seemed to think the same thing. They took it for granted that he'd done all that could be expected of a man. That three months in a German prison was equal to several dyings. After I got home I told Captain Kidd. He was lying on the rug inside the hall door with his nose between his paws, seemingly asleep. "Richard's coming," was all I said to him, but up he scrambled with that little yap of joy and ran to the screen door scratching and whining to be let out. It was so human of him that I just grabbed his s.h.a.ggy old head in my arms and hugged him tight.

"He's coming some day," I explained to him, "but we'll have to wait a while, old fellow, maybe a long, long while. But we won't mind that now, after all we've been through. Just now it's enough to know that he's alive and safe."

MY NINETEENTH BIRTHDAY. It's wonderful that Richard's letter should happen to get here on this particular day. The sight of his familiar handwriting gave me such a thrill that it brought the tears. It was almost as if he had called my name, seeing it written out in his big, bold hand.

He says he can't tell me the details of his experiences now. They are too fierce for him to attempt to put on paper till he is stronger. Babe was right. He's almost the shadow of his former self. But he says he is beginning to pick up famously. He is in Switzerland, staying with a family who were old friends of his father's. They are taking royal care of him, and he's coming around all right. The wound in his arm (he doesn't say how he got it) is healing rapidly.

Oh, it's a dear letter--all the parts in between about wanting to see me, and my being doubly dear to him now--but he doesn't say a word about coming home. Not one word!

A WEEK LATER. He has written again, and he is not coming home until the war is over. He'll be able to go back into the service in a couple of months, maybe sooner, if he stays on quietly there. It isn't that he does not want to come. He has been behind the lines and seen the awfulness. It must be stopped. Those prison camps must be wiped out! We must win as soon as possible! He feels, as never before, the necessity for quick action, and he makes me feel it too.

"Dad's sacrifice must not be in vain," he writes. "Nor Belgium's, nor the hordes of brave men who have fallen since. And we must not go on sacrificing other lives. _This thing has got to be stopped!_