HER IDEAL GIRL STEPS IN
Allthe 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, thatthe 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 carelesslyunder 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 peoplego 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 couldhave 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 vanitybox 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 rowingnext 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.
Mother and child
A PHOTOGRAPH AND SOME DAY-DREAMS
I don'tbelieve 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.
Girl on stairs, man looking at painting"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 littlegirl 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 thatonce 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 theBoston 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 delightWhen 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 meansA 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. ButStar—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" init. 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. Andhewould 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 darknesshewould 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, wouldbe 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!
THE ONE AND ONLY STAR
"Fair as a star, when only oneIs shining in the sky."
That'sEsther. 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 asconscientiously 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 Iknow 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'sguitar 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 ofhimhaving 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 aroundthe 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, andfeeling 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 andshe 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 puton 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 alwaysmakes 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 himwhatabout her?" I demanded.
"Oh, that it's all a bluff about her brushing upher 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 shemustbe 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 Racheltook 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, Iwillnot believe that Esther would stoop to deceit in the smallest matter. She is the soul of honor. Shecouldn'tbe 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 coquettemight be all that and at the same time engaged. And sheisengaged, 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.
Woman in star
A MODERN SIR GARETH
Yesterdaymorning, 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. WhenRichard 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. Shecouldn'thave 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 beforethis 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 paintedfor 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 seemedunanswerable. 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 professionalspurs 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 withhim 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 nopossible'guerdon' forhim. 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.