THE CALL TO ARMS
Ithas come at last—the call to arms—the biggest thing that may ever be my lot to record in all my life, or the life of my country. So I have hunted up this old book of Memoirs that I have not written in for months, in order that I may put down the date.
April 6, 1917. On this day the United States declared war against Germany!
Far down the street a band is playing, and in every direction flags are flying in the warm April breeze. All Washington is a-flutter with banners. The girls are so excited that they can't talk of anything else. Some of them have been in tears ever since the announcement came. Many of them have brothers in Yale or Princeton or Harvard who've only been waiting for this to break away and enlist. Not that the girls don't glory in the fact that they've got some one to go, just as I glory in the thought that Father is in the service.But we've been on a fearful nervous strain ever since the last of January, when Germany declared she'd sink at sight all vessels found in certain zones, and those zones are the very waters where our ships are obliged to go.
Lillian Locke's Uncle Charlie went down in one of the merchant ships they sank last month. He was her favorite uncle, and most of us girls knew him. He came to the school twice last year, and whenever he sent Lillian "eats" he sent enough for her to treat the entire class. Then there is Duffield, and Bailey Burrell and Watson Tucker all off on the high seas somewhere. Sometimes at vespers when we sing:
"O hear us when we cry to TheeFor those in peril on the sea,"
the thought of Father and of all those boys who danced with us just a year ago, and who went marching so gaily across the green mall, chokes me so that I can't sing another note. Sometimes all over the chapel voices waver and stop till only the organ is left to finish it alone.
We Seniors have voted to cut out all frills in our Commencement exercises, and give the money to the Red Cross. We're going to wear simple white shirt-waist suits. It'll make it such a plainaffair it won't be worth while for our families to come on to see us get our diplomas.
Barby is coming anyhow, and I know she'll be disappointed. She has all the old-time ideas about flowers and fluffy ruffles for the "sweet girl graduates." She had them herself, with so many presents and congratulations that her graduation was almost as grand an occasion as her wedding. Her Aunt Barbara's pearl necklace which she inherited was handed over to her then, and I think she has visions of my wearing it on the same stage, on the occasion of my Commencement. There are only a few strands in the necklace and the pearls are quite small, though exquisitely beautiful, but, of course, I couldn't wear it with just a plain shirt-waist.
Easter has come and gone, and nothing of importance has happened here at school, but a letter from Barby brings news of happenings at home which have a place in this record, so I am copying it.
"What a cold and snowy Spring this has been! All week we have had to pile on the wood as we do in midwinter. I am glad that you are away from this bleak tongue of sand, far enough inland and far enough South to escape these cold winds from the Atlantic, and to have Spring budsand Spring bird-calls in the school garden.
"Yesterday, just before supper, while I sat knitting in the firelight, the front doorbell rang. Not hearing Tippy go out into the hall, I started to answer it. You know how she opens a door by degrees, one cautious inch and then another— well, I was just in time to see a big man in a fur cap and burly overcoat shoulder his way in and throw his arms around her in a hearty embrace. I couldn't see his face in the dusk, nor did I recognize the deep voice that cried out—'Ah, Tippy! But you look good to me!'
"The next instant I was caught up in a great bear hug by those same strong arms. It was Richard, home again after two long years, and so glad to be back that it was a joy to see his delight. He had come home to enlist.
"You can easily picture for yourself the scene at the table a little while later. He teased and flattered Tippy till she was almost beside herself. She kept getting up to open some new jar of pickle or preserves, or to bring on something else from the pantry which she remembered he had an especial liking for. Afterwards he insisted on tying one of her aprons around him and wiping the dishes for her. He kept her quivering with concern as usual for the safety of the cups and saucers, when he tried his old juggling tricks ofkeeping several in the air at the same time.
"But later, when we were alone, he dropped all his gay foolery and sat down on the hearthrug at my feet, as he used to do when he was a little lad, and, leaning his head against my knee, looked into the fire.
"'You're all I've got now, Barby,' he said, and took my knitting away that my hand might be free to stray over his forehead as it used to do when he came to me for sympathy and comfort. After a moment he began talking about his father. It was the first time I had seen him, you know, since Mr. Moreland was killed.
"Then he told me how circumstances had made it possible for him to come back to the States to enlist, as soon as war was declared. He is no longer bound by his promise to the Canadian whose family he was caring for. The man was sent back home two months ago, dismissed from a hospital in France. He was wounded twice so badly that one leg had to be amputated. But though he came home on crutches he came back with something which he values more than his leg—the Victoria Cross. He won it in an awful battle, one in which nearly his whole regiment was wiped out.
"Richard sprang up from the rug and paced the floor as he talked about it. His face glowed sothat I couldn't help asking, 'But how did you feel when you saw him with the cross that might have been yours had you gone in his stead!'
"He stood a moment with one elbow resting on the mantel, looking down into the fire. Then he said slowly, 'Well, it would have been ripping, of course, to have had it one's self—worth dying for in fact; but after all, you know, little Mother, it isn't the "guerdon" any of us are after in this war. It's just that the deed gets done. I believe that is the spirit in which all America is going into it. Not for any gain—not for any glory—she's simply saying to herself and to the world, "For the deed's sakewill I do this."'
"As he said that, he looked so like his father in one of his inspired moods, that I realized the two years in which he has been away has made a man of him. It was only that he was so boyishly glad to be at home again that I hadn't noticed before how earnest and mature he had grown to be.
"Within a month after the Canadian's return, he was able to take a place in the factory. His artificial limb made it possible. Richard went at once to an aviation field to complete his training. He intended to go from there to join a flying squadron in France, for his Cousin James is ready now to do anything for him he asks. But just as he was about to start, the United States declaredwar, and he hurried home to enlist under his own flag. He has been promised a commission and an opportunity to go soon in some special capacity, for he passed all the tests in expert flying. He will probably be kept at Newport News while he is waiting for some bit of red tape to be untied.
"He did not stay late, for there were some business matters he had to discuss with Mr. Milford, and he left town early this morning. Several times while here, he glanced around saying, 'Somehow I keep expecting Georgina to pop in every time the door opens. It doesn't seem like home without her here to keep things stirred up.'
"He asked many questions about you and said that he hopes mightily to see you before he sails. I told him that was highly improbable as Commencement is to be so late this year owing to the enforced vacation in January when over half the school was in quarantine on account of mumps and measles. That was the first he had heard of it, and he said to congratulate you for him on your lucky escape."
I am glad that Barby wrote in detail as she did, for I have not had a line from Richard in three months. Evidently he did not get my last letter, for in that I told him all about that quarantine, and the fun we girls had who escaped the contagion,but who were kept in durance vile on account of the others.
I wish I had been at home when he surprised them. I wish I were a boy and could do what he is doing. It would be simply glorious to go winging one's way into battle as he will do. It's one thing to give your life for your country in one exalted moment of renunciation, and quite another to give it in little dribs of insignificant sacrifices and petty duties, the way we stay-at-home girls have to do. It is maddening to have the soul of an "Ace" who would dare any flight or of a "Sammie" who would endure any trench, and then have nothing but a pair of knitting needles handed out to you.
Another letter from Barby this week. Of course I knew the war would come close home in many ways, but I hadn't expected it would get that little mother-o'-mine first thing. This is what she writes:
"It is quite possible that I may be in Washington by the last of May. Mrs. Waldon has written, begging me to come and stay with her while Catherine goes back to Kentucky for a visit. She writes that she is 'up to her ears' in the Army and Navy League work, and that is where I belong. She says I should be there getting inspiration forall this end of the state, and lending a hand in the grand drive they are planning for. Her letter is such a veritable call to arms that I feel that I'll be shirking my duty if I don't go. Tippy says there is no reason why I shouldn't go. She can get Miss Susan Triplett to come up from Wellfleet to stay with her till you come home.
"Her patriotic old soul is fired with joy at no longer being under the ban of a 'neutral' silence. When it comes to her powers of speech, Tippy on the war-path is a wonder. I wish the Kaiser could hear her when she is once thoroughly warmed up on the subject. She'd be in the first soup-kitchen outfit that leaves for the front if it wasn't for her rheumatism. As it is, she is making the best self-appointed recruiting officer on the whole Cape.
"I have written to your father, asking him if he can find me a place where I can be useful on one of the hospital ships; I can't nurse, but there ought to be many things I can do if it's nothing more than scrubbing the operating rooms and sterilizing instruments. And maybe in that way I could see him occasionally. Of course it isn't as if he were stationed on one particular ship. I believe he could manage it then, but being needed in many places and constantly moving he may not want me to go. In that case I shall join Mrs. Waldon. She says she can put me into a place whereevery hour's work will count for something worth while."
It made the tears come to my eyes when I read that. Little Barby, out in the world doing things for her country! Since I have grown to be half a head taller than she, and especially since my office training last summer and Father's leaving her in my care, I've been thinking of her aslittleBarby. She's never done anything in public but read her graduating essay. The tables are turned now. It isshewho is going out on a stony road in her little bare feet, and she's never been shod for such going. But she's got the spirit of the old Virginia Cavaliers, even if she didn't inherit a Pilgrim-father backbone as the Huntingdons did. She'll never stop for the stones, and she'll get to any place she starts out to reach. I'm as proud of her as I am of Father. I've simplygotto do something myself, as soon as school is out.
farmhouse
"THE GATES AJAR"
Commencementis over, the good-byes are said and most of the girls have departed for home. Babe and I leave this morning at ten 'clock when Mrs. Waldon's machine is to come for us and take us to her apartment for a week's visit. Babe is included in the invitation because she can't go home till I do. Her family won't let her travel alone, although she's nineteen, a year and a month older than I.
Father wasn't willing for Barby to leave this country, so she went into the Army and Navy League work with Mrs. Waldon, the first month she was here. But now she's at the head of one of the departments in the Red Cross and will be in Washington all summer, and longer if necessary. I've finished my Book of Second Chronicles and shall leave it for her to read whenever she can find an opportunity. But I'm keeping my Memoirs out of my trunk till the last moment, because there's something I want to write in it about Babe.
It was agreed that nobody was to wear flowers at Commencement, and we asked our families not to send any, so it was generally understood that there was to be no display of any kind. But yesterday an enormous florist box arrived for Babe Nolan. If she hadn't been so mysterious about it we wouldn't have thought anything of it. Any one of us would have opened it right then and there in the hall, and passed it around to be sniffed and admired. But she got as red as fire and, grabbing the box, hurried into her room with it and shut the door. That's the last anybody saw of it. A little later when I had occasion to go to her room there wasn't a sign of a flower to be seen, not even the box or a piece of string. The girls all thought it was queer they should disappear so absolutely, and wondered why she didn't put them in the dining-room or the chapel if she didn't want them in her own room, and they teased her a good deal about her mysterious suitor.
But last night, after Lillian and Jessica had started to the train, she called me to her room and threw open the wardrobe door with a tragic gesture, and asked me what on earth she was to do withthat. Her trunk wouldn't hold another thing, and she supposed she'd have to go all the way to the Cape with it in her two hands, and it smelled so loud of tuberoses and such things she wasafraid people would think she was taking it to a funeral.
There on the wardrobe flood stood a floral design fully three feet high, that looked exactly as if intended for a funeral, for it was one of those pieces called "Gates Ajar." I didn't dare laugh because Babe stood there looking so worried and so deeply in earnest that I knew she'd be offended if I did. I suggested simply leaving it behind, or taking out the flowers and chucking the wire frame into the ash can. Then I saw my advice was unacceptable. Evidently she hadn't told me all, and didn't intend to for fear I'd laugh at the person who sent such a design.
But when I said in a real sympathetic and understanding way that it wassoappropriate for a Commencement offering because everybody thinks of Commencement Day as being a gate ajar, through which a school girl steps into the wider life beyond, she gave me a sharp glance and then took me into her confidence. She had on one of those new sport skirts with two enormous side pockets, the most stylish thing I ever saw Babe wear. She drew a card out of one of the pockets. On it was engraved, "Lieutenant Watson Tucker."
I nearly dropped with surprise, for two reasons. First, I didn't think he was the sort of a man tosend such a queer thing. It would have been more like him to have sent a bunch of sweet peas. And second, I didn't know he had kept up with Babe enough to know the date of her graduation.
She said yes, they correspond occasionally, and in his last letter he said he was expecting to have a two-weeks' shore leave soon. She wouldn't be surprised any day to hear that the ship was in. Although she said it airily, I know Babe. She couldn't fool me. She over-acted her indifference, and when she said she supposed she might as well box up the flowers and take them along when the machine came, I knew positively that she cared far more for Watty Tucker than she'd have me know.
Babe says it's like visiting in the Hall of Fame to be here at Mrs. Waldon's. Every way we turn are autographed pictures on the walls of celebrities who have helped to make history. Every time the door bell rings it is a call from somebody who is helping to make it now. And they're not Admirals and Generals and diplomats and their wives to Mrs. Waldon. They're just Joe and Ned and Nancy who took "pot luck" with her in the old army days on the frontier before they got to be famous or else somebody who knew her intimately in the Philippines.
It is so thrilling to meet them and so interesting to hear intimate bits of their family history afterward. People she hasn't heard of in years are constantly turning up, brought to Washington by the war. Only this morning, a Major whom she thought was out among the "head-hunters" dropped in and stayed to lunch.
We have spent the greater part of every day sight-seeing. Not the usual places like Mount Vernon and the Smithsonian, etc. We've been doing them for the last two years in school excursions with the teachers. But places that have taken on unusual interest because of these stirring war times. We went over to Fort Meyer in time for "Retreat" one afternoon, and again to see the trench-digging and the dummies being put up for bayonet practice. And we spent hours at the Wadsworth House, a palace of a home which has been turned over to relief work. There is where Barby spends most of her time. I was so thrilled when I found her there at a desk, directing things in her department, and looking so lovely in her uniform, white with a band around her sleeve, and a blue veil floating over her shoulders, bound on the forehead by a white band and a red cross.
Two retired Admirals in their shirt sleeves were filling huge packing boxes in one of the side rooms.They give their services, working like Trojans all day long. Upstairs in the great dismantled ballroom, and the apartments adjoining, were long tables surrounded by the women working on surgical dressings and hospital garments and comfort kits. Downstairs, near the entrance, was the desk of the Motor Service Corps. A pretty society girl in a stunning uniform came in while we stood there, saluted her superior officer, received her orders and started out to drive her machine on some Red Cross errand, with all the neatness and dispatch of a regular enlisted soldier. That's what I'd love to do, if I only had a machine of my own. She looked too adorable for words in that uniform.
One afternoon we went out to see the President receive the Sanitary Corps of a thousand men trained to carry litters. A temporary platform gay with bunting and flags was erected on the edge of the green where the President and his guests of honor sat. Barby was one of them in her floating blue veil, on account of the position she holds now. We parked the machine and sat down tailor-fashion on the grass in the front row of the crowd, which pressed against the rope that barred our entrance to the mall.
After awhile there was a sound of music down the street, and the marine band came marchingacross the great field towards us, at the head of the litter-bearers. It was a sunny afternoon, and the band played a gay marching tune as they advanced. I was feeling so uplifted over Barby's being on the grandstand among the honor guests, looking her prettiest, that I didn't realize the significance of the scene at first. Then the thought stabbed me like a knife, that on every one of those litters somebody's best beloved might some day be stretched, desperately wounded maybe, dead or dying. I couldn't help thinking "suppose I should see Father brought in that way, or Richard." When I glanced across at Babe the tears were running down her cheeks, so it evidently affected her the same way.
I'd have been willing to wager she was seeing Watson on one of those stretchers. When we got back to our room, which is a large one with twin beds in it, she dived under hers and pulled out the big florist's box and carried it to the bathroom to sprinkle the flowers. It's wonderful how fresh the thing has kept. She's had it nearly a week. She treats it like a mother would an idiot child, keeps it out of sight of the public, but hangs over it when alone with a tenderness that is positively touching.
Babe's the funniest thing! Every time the hall door opens she is out and up the little stairwayto the roof, like a cat. It is a nice place to go, for there is a magnificent view of the city from there, and at night it's entrancing, with the Monument illuminated, and the great dome showing up when the searchlights play. But I don't believe it's the view Babe is after. She wants to be alone. Twice when I went up after her to tell her it was time to start somewhere, I found her sitting staring at a rubber plant in front of her, as if she didn't see even that. And once she was leaning against the iron railing which surrounds the roof, oblivious to the fact that that section of it was rusty. It simply ruined her best evening dress, a delicate blue veiling made over white silk. When we got downstairs to the light there were great streaks of iron rust across the whole front, where the bars had pressed against it.
Saturday night Mrs. Waldon had a long-distance call from her cousin, Mac Gordon. His ship was in from the long cruise, and the boys were scattering to their homes for a short visit before being sent to join the fleet abroad. He wanted to know if he could stop by next day to see her, on his way home. She told him to come and welcome, and bring any of the other boys who cared to come. That Babe and I were with her.
Well, Sunday afternoon when Mac walked in there was a whole string of boys behind him; BobMayfield and Billy Burrell and Watty Tucker. Only four in all by actual count, but added to the six already in the room, the little apartment seemed brim full and running over. Two of her old army cronies were there besides Barby.
I wondered what Mrs. Waldon was going to do about feeding them all, because the cook is always away on Sunday night. But when the time came she simply announced they'd serve supper in the time-honored Crabtown fashion. At that the men all got up and crowded out into the little kitchenette to see what she had on her "emergency shelf" and to announce what part each one would be responsible for on the menu.
When we were ready to sit down to the table we noticed that Babe and Watson were missing, and when I tried to recall when I had seen them last, I was sure they had slipped away during the general exodus to the kitchen. And I am sure that when I ran up the steps to the roof garden with the announcement, "The rarebit is ready," neither one of them was a bit grateful to me.
I was sorry Duffield Locke wasn't with the boys. His family met him in New York and they went on to New York together. Bob Mayfield tried to tease me about him. He said Duff had my picture in the back of his watch. When I hotly denied it, and vowed I had never given him one, except alittle snapshot taken with Lillian of just our heads, he said, "Well, Duff had a pair of scissors."
After we went to our room that night, late as it was, Babe re-packed her trunk and deliberately squeezed all her hats into one compartment, thereby ruining two of them for life, to make room in the tray for that florist box. The flowers were badly shriveled up by that time. Seeing from my face that an explanation was necessary, she said she couldn't carry it back on the train as she had intended, because Watson was going up to Provincetown the same time we were, to visit his cousins, the Nelsons, and she didn't want him to see it.
"But the Nelsons aren't in Provincetown this summer," I answered. "And he knows it, because I told him what Laura said in her last letter. Besides, why shouldn't he see his own floral offering? He'd be complimented to think you cared enough for it to lug it all the way home."
She seemed a bit confused at my answer, but I couldn't tell at which part of it. Then she said that he didn't pick it out. He thinks he sent roses, and he'd have a fit if he knew it was that awful Gates Ajar. He sent his card to some old relative in Georgetown with a check and asked him to order something appropriate for the occasion.
I asked Babe then, why, if the design wasn't Watty's choice, and she thought it was so dreadful,whydid she cling to it so fondly, and take it back to the Cape at the risk of all her hats and the sure ruin of two of them. But she paid no attention to my remark, just went on with her packing. I know she's relieved to find out it wasn't Watty's taste. If they are not actually engaged, they have almost reached the gate, and itisajar.
Rowing a boat
HOME-COMINGS
I mightas well have traveled alone, for all the company Babe and Watson proved to be. They were so absorbed in their conversation with each other that they never once glanced out of the window, even when we were going along the Cape where one is apt to see a familiar face every time the train stops.
I was so glad to get back to familiar scenes like cranberry bogs and dunes and marshes, with the pools of water shining in them like mirrors, that I kept exclaiming, "Oh, look!" I said it several times before I realized that the landscape had no attractions for them. Neither had the stuffy car any discomforts, although the hot July sunshine streamed in across the red velvet upholstery.
With their chairs swung facing each other, they sat and talked like two Robinson Crusoes who had just found each other after aeons of solitude on separate islands. For a while I watched themover the top of my magazine; Watson mopping his shiny red face with his handkerchief, and Babe with her hat tilted crooked over one eye and a little wisp of hair straggling over her neck, and her collar all rumpled up behind. I kept wondering what on earth was the attraction that each had for the other. One can understand it when the heroine is beautiful and the hero fascinating, but how two such plain, average people as Babe Nolan and Watson Tucker can inspire the grand passion is a puzzle.
I couldn't help smiling to myself when I looked back on the time when I had once imagined Watson to be the most congenial man I ever met. I was heartily glad that our acquaintance had been interrupted at that point, until I grew older and wiser. Suppose I had gone on looking at him through the prism of my ideals until I actually believed that the halo which my imagination put around him was a real one! What a little fool a girl of fifteen can be! It seems to me I have aged more in this last year at school, than in all the years that went before it put together. Only a few more days until I can count myself actually grown up—till I have reached that magic milestone, my eighteenth birthday!
Growing up is like the dawning of Spring. For a long time there are just a few twitters, a hintof buds in the hedgerows. Then, suddenly as an April shower, a mist of green drops down over the bare branches like a delicate veil, and one awakens to a world of bloom and birdsong and romance.
(That's a good paragraph to start a story with. I'll put an asterisk on the margin to mark it.)
I had expected to awaken to my Springtime and romance this very summer—to find it perhaps, in Kentucky. Barby and I have planned for years that my eighteenth birthday should be spent there. The very word, Kentucky, suggests romance to me. But now that the war has upset everyone's plans, I'll have to give it up. And Romance is not likely to come riding by to such a gray old fishing port as Provincetown.
This is what I told myself as we went along between the cranberry bogs and the dunes. But suddenly we made a turn that showed us the entire end of the Cape. There, with the sunset light upon it, was the town, curving around the harbor like a golden dream city, rising above a "sea of glass mingled with fire." Spires and towers and chimney tops, with the great shaft of the Pilgrims high above them all, stood transfigured in that wonderful shining. I took it as an omen—a good omen of all sorts of delightful and unexpected happenings that might come to me.
When we reached the station, I had two completely separate and distinct impulses, which made me afraid that I still lack considerable of being grown up. The first fishy smell of the harbor which greeted me, with its tang of brine and tar, gave me the impulse to send my suitcase up to the house by the baggage man, and run all the way home. I wanted to go skipping along the streets as I used to when my skirts were knee high and my curls bobbing over my shoulders. I wanted to speak to everyone I met and have everyone call back at me, "Hello, Georgina," in friendly village fashion. I wanted to smell what was cooking for supper in every house I passed, and maybe if the baker's cart came along with its inviting step in the rear, "hang on behind" for a block or two.
The second impulse was to powder my nose a trifle, put on a little face veil and a pair of perfectly fitting gloves, and then when the panel mirror between the car windows showed a modish and tailor-made young lady, correct in every detail, step into the bus and drive home to make an impression on Tippy.
The latter impulse dominated, and I am glad it did, for Judith and George Woodson and several others of the old crowd were at the station to meet us. Babe hadn't even set her hat straight, butshe didn't know it. Neither did Watson. They just went along, smiling vacuously (I guess that's as good a word as any, though I'm not exactly sure of it) on everything and everybody.
It seemed so strange to come home to a house with no Barby in it, but it was such a satisfaction to feel that my arrival put Tippy into her little company flutter. It was the face veil which did it, I am sure, and the urban air which I acquired in Washington. I am taller than she, now, and I had to stoop a little to kiss her. Instead of her saying, as I expected, for me to run along and take my things off, because supper was getting cold, she led the way upstairs to my room, just as if I'd been the visiting missionary's wife, or relatives from out of the state. And she went around setting things straighter, which were already straight, and asking if there was anything I'd have to make me comfortable, till I hardly knew myself, her making such company out of me.
Miss Susan Triplett has been here ever since Barby went to Washington, but she's going home soon, now that I have come back. Between them I got all the news of the town during supper. Aunt Elspeth is very, very ill. They're afraid she can't last long at this rate. They have a trained nurse for her and Belle has to spend so much of her time over there that Tippy has beentaking care of little Elspeth and Judson in the daytime.
Titcomb Carver and Sammy III have both enlisted, and the two Fayal boys, Manuel and Joseph, are in the Navy. Nearly everyone I asked about was in some kind of government service. Tippy says the Portuguese boys have responded splendidly, and she keeps tab on the whole town. But she said it is a tragedy about George Woodson. He's tried four times to enlist, but he can't pass the physical examination. His sight is imperfect and the old trouble with his knee that he got from a football accident in his Junior year bars him out. Tippy never liked George. He was impudent to her one time, years ago. Ran his tongue out at her when she told him to quit doing something that she thought he had no business to do, and she never forgave him. But now she respects him so much for the desperate way he has tried to get into the service, and is so sorry for his disappointment, that she can't say nice enough things about him.
It was late when the expressman brought my trunk. Miss Susan had already gone upstairs and was putting up her front hair in crimping pins. But Tippy never made any objections when I started to unpack. I simply can't get used to being treated with so much deference. It's worthgrowing up just to have her listen so respectfully to my opinions and to know that she feels that my advice is worth asking for.
I only unpacked the top tray to get some things Barby and I had bought for her in the Washington shops, and to take out something she was even more interested in than her gifts. It was a little silk service flag to hang up in honor of Father. She took it in her hands as if it were sacred. I never saw her so moved to admiration over anything, as she was over that little blue star in its field of white with the red border around it.
Her voice didn't sound natural, because there was a queer sort of choke in it when she said: "I never before wanted to be a man. But I do now, just for the chance to be what that star stands for."
I had intended to wait till morning before hanging it in the front window, but she had a hammer and a push-pin out of a box in the hall closet before I knew what she was looking for, and carried the lamp ahead of me down the stairs. "Liberty enlightening the World," I called it, as she stood holding the lamp up for me to see, while I drove the push-pin into the window sash.
But she didn't laugh with me. It was a solemn thing to her, this placing of the symbol which showed the world that a patriot had gone out fromthe house in defence of his country. Although she's a thin, gaunt figure with her hair twisted into a hard little knot on the back of her head, and there's nothing statuesque about a black silk dress gathered full at the waist, and a ruffled white apron, her waiting attitude seemed to dignify the occasion and make a ceremony of it. I started to say something, jokingly, about firing a salute with our ancestral musket, or singing "America," but the expression on her face stopped me. The spirit of some old Revolutionary forbear seemed shining in her eyes. I hadn't dreamed that Patriotism meantthatto Tippy; something exalted enough to transform her homely old features with a kind of inner shining.
Something wakened me very early next morning, soon after daybreak. Sitting up to look out of the window nearest my bed, I saw somebody hoeing in the garden. A Portuguese woman I supposed, who was taking the place of the regular gardener. Ever since old Jeremy Clapp reached his nineties, we've had his nephew, young Jeremy. But they told me the night before, that he's gone to be a surfman in the U. S. Coast patrol. It was especially hard to give him up as the war garden he had just put in was twice the size we usually have.
Then I recognized the flapping old sport hatwhich the woman wore. It was one which I discarded last year. Underneath it, her skirts tucked up to her shoe-tops to avoid the heavy dew, was Tippy, hoeing weeds as if she were making a personal attack on the Hindenburg line and intended demolishing it before breakfast.
Funny as she looked in her scare-crow working outfit, there was something in the sight that made me want to stand and salute. It gave me the kind of thrill one has when the troops march by, and everyone cheers as the colors pass. I can't put it into words, but it was the feeling that brusque, rheumatic old Tippy with her hoe, stood for as fine a kind of patriotism as there is in the world. She's just as eager to do some splendid, big, thrilling thing for her country as any man in khaki, yet all she can do is to whack weeds. I wish I were artist enough to make a companion piece for the poster I brought home in my trunk—a goddess of liberty unfurling a star-spangled banner across the world. I'd make a homely work-roughened old woman in her kitchen apron, her face shining like Tippy's did last night, when she looked at the star and wished she could be the hero it stood for.
I made up my mind to say something like that to her, something to show her how fine I think it is for a woman of her age to put in such valiantlicks in a vegetable garden when greater things are denied her. But when I went downstairs and found she had changed from her garden clothes into her immaculate gingham house dress, and was stepping around in the brisk, capable way that used to make me afraid of taking any liberties with her, I couldn't have made such a speech to her any more than I could have made it to the refrigerator. My first glance showed me she had lost her company flutter. I saw she would soon have me back in my old place of doing as I was bid and not questioning her authority, if I did not assert myself at once.
The chance came while we were at breakfast. A man came with a great lot of blueberries that she had ordered last week. Not expecting them so soon she had promised Belle to spend most of the day in Fishburn Court, because the nurse wanted to get off for a while. She was dreadfully put out about the berries, afraid they wouldn't keep. She was starting to carry them downcellarwhen I rose and took the pails away from her, and announced thatI'dcan the whole lot of them, myself.
Goodness knows I didn't want to. I was simply aching to get down to the beach and go for a long row, and look in on the neighbors long enough to say howdy to everybody. But having once saidI'd do it and been flatly refused, I simply had to carry my point. I grabbed her by the elbows in a laughing sort of scuffle and sat her down hard in a chair, and told her to stay put. To my astonishment, she gave right up, but for a reason that completely took the wind out of my sails.
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "I suppose you do want to do your bit for Uncle Sam. It's about all a young thing like youcando, so I oughtn't to stand in your way if you feel that way about it."
Then I found out she has been canning and preserving everything she can get her hands on, as a patriotic measure, and she supposed that was my motive. It gave me a jolt to think that while I was saying: "Poor old thing, there's so little she can do," she was feeling the same pity for my youth and inefficiency.
Many a time I've helped put up fruit, but this was the first time I'd ever been allowed the whole responsibility. The minute she took herself off I began. Miss Susan was upstairs, starting to pack her trunk, so I had the kitchen all to myself. It is an attractive old kitchen, every tin silver-bright, and all in such perfect order that I could go to any nail or shelf in the dark, absolutely sure of finding on it the utensil it is expected to hold.
Just outside the screen door, on the back step,Captain Kidd lay with his head on his paws, watching every movement through his shaggy bangs. I think he is happy to have me at home again, but the house has been so quiet during my long absence, that my singing disconcerts him. He sleeps a lot now that he is such an old dog, and he couldn't take his usual nap while I was canning those berries. At Harrington Hall I never could let my voice out as I wanted to for fear of disturbing the public peace. Now with the whole downstairs to myself, I sang and sang, all the time I stirred and sweetened and weighed and screwed the tops on the long rows of waiting glass jars.
I was pretty hot by the time I came to the last kettleful. My hands were stained, and I had burned my wrist and spilled juice all down the front of my bungalow apron. But the end was in sight, and I swung into the tune of "Tipperary" as the soldiers sometimes do on the last lap of a long march. All of a sudden, Captain Kidd, who had been drowsing for awhile, lifted his head with such an alert air that I stopped singing to listen, too. He seldom shows excitement now. Then with an eager little yelp that was half bark, half whine, he bounded off the step and tore around the house like a crazy thing.
That cry meant but one thing. It had never meant anything else since he was a puppy.Richard was coming.
He always heralded him that way. If I had had any doubt of that first little cry of announcement there could be none about the fury of barking which followed. That ecstasy of greeting was reserved for one person alone. It couldn't be any one but Richard.
A figure in khaki strode past the window, the dog leaping up on him and almost turning somersaults in his efforts to lick his face. Then splash went the ladle into the kettle (I had been holding it suspended in my surprise), and the juice splashed all over the stove. The next instant Richard was in the kitchen, both hands outstretched to grasp mine, and we were looking questioningly into each others eyes. It was a long gaze, for we were each frankly curious to see if the other had changed.
Barby was right. The two years had, made a man of him. He was larger in every way, and in his lieutenant's uniform looked every inch a soldier. He spoke first, smiling broadly.
"The same old girl, only taller than Barby now!"
"The same old Dare-devil Dick!" I retorted, "only——" I started to add "so tremendouslygood-looking in that uniform," but instead just laughed, as I drew my hands away.
"Only what?" he persisted in his old teasing fashion. But I wouldn't tell, and there we were, right back again on our old squabbling grounds, just where we left off two years ago.
couple walking on shore
BACK WITH THE OLD CROWD
Richardcouldn't stay a minute, he said. It wasn't treating his Cousin James decently to throw his bag in at the door and rush off up here before he'd barely spoken to him. But he never felt that he'd really reached home till he'd been up here, and he couldn't wait to tell Barby about his good luck.
He was dreadfully disappointed to find that she wasn't at home. He wouldn't sit down at first, just perched on the edge of the table, regardless of what the spattered blueberry juice might do to his new uniform, and hastily outlined his plans. He was so happy over the prospect of getting into active service that will count for a lot, that he couldn't talk fast enough. We both had so much to say, not having seen each other for two years, that first thing we knew the telephone rang, and it was his Cousin James saying that dinner was ready, and would he please come on. And here we'd been talking an hour and ten minutes by theclock, when all the time he "didn't have a minute to stay," and was in such a rush to be off that he couldn't sit down except on the edge of the table. He couldn't help laughing at himself, it was so absurd.
Thinking about it after he'd gone, I was sure from the keen way he kept glancing at me that he did find me changed, after all. His recollection of me didn't fit the real me, any more than my last season's dresses do. He had to keep letting out seams and making allowance for my mental growth, as I had to for his. That's why neither of us noticed how time flew. We were so busy sort of exploring each other. That's why I found myself looking forward with such interest to his coming back after supper. It's like going back to a house you've known all your life, whose every nook and corner is familiar, and finding it done over and enlarged. You enjoy exploring it, to find what's left unchanged and what's been added.
Miss Susan and I had a cold lunch together. Then it took me half the afternoon to put the kitchen back into its original order and get the blueberry stains off my fingernails. Tippy was pleased with the way she found things when she came back, though she wouldn't have complimented my achievement for worlds. But I know her silences now, which ones are approving andwhich displeased. I know I went up several pegs in her respect. I heard her intimating as much to Miss Susan.
I wasn't out on the front porch with them when Richard came back after supper. A few minutes before he came I suddenly decided to change my dress—to put on a new one that Barby bought me the last day I was in Washington. It's a little love of a gown, white and rose-color. I'd never worn it before, so it took some time to locate all the hooks and snappers and get them fastened properly. Richard came before I was half through. I could hear quite plainly what he was saying to Tippy and Miss Susan, down on the front porch.
After I was all ready to go down, I went to the mirror for one more look. There was no doubt about it. It was the most becoming dress I ever owned, so pretty and unusual, in fact, that I dreaded to face Tippy in it. She'd wonder why I put it on just to sit at home all evening, when the one I changed from was perfectly fresh. Too often she does her wondering aloud, and it's embarrassing. I was thankful they were sitting out on the porch. The rose vines darkened it, although the world outside was flooded with brilliant moonlight. She wouldn't be so apt to notice out there.
Just as I put out the lamp and started towards the stairs, I heard Tippy say something about moving into the house because the night air was bad for her rheumatism. I didn't want to meet her in the full glare of the hall chandelier, so I waited on the upper landing long enough to give them time to go in. But Richard was slow about following them, and when I was half way down the stair he was only as far as the newel post. Glancing up, he saw me and stopped. I knew without his saying a word that he liked my dress. His eyes said it. He has wonderfully expressive eyes.
It was nice to feel that I was making what theatrical people call an effective stage entrance. Quoting from a play we had been in together a long time ago, I held my head high in the haughty-princess manner and said airily, "Hath waited long, my lord?"
He remembered the spirit of the reply if not the right words, and made up an answer that would have done credit to Sir Walter Raleigh for courtliness. We swept into the room, carrying on in a ridiculous stagey fashion for a moment or two, not giving Tippy a chance to comment on my dress. I saw her looking at it hard, but before she could get in a word edgeways, Richard asked me to go over to the Gilfreds' with him. He met Judith on the way up here and she asked him tobring me over. She said some others of the old crowd would be there.
George Woodson was already there, sitting in the hammock as usual, but with Judith's guitar on his knees, instead of the ukelele that he used to tinkle. We could hear him tuning it as we went up the path. After we had been there a few minutes Babe and Watson strolled in. Evidently they had had some sort of a quarrel. The effect was to make Watson unmistakably grouchy and Babe sarcastic. It was so noticeable that George said to me in an aside, "Babe is singing in sharps to-night, and Watty's gone completely off the key."
We'd been away so long that naturally our first wish was to find out where everybody was and what they were doing. The conversation was such for awhile that Watson was decidedly out of it. He doesn't know many Provincetown people, having been here only a few times on visits to the Nelsons, and now they're gone he is staying at the Gifford House, where everybody's strange. So he sat in one end of the porch swing, smoking. Sat in the kind of a silence that makes itself felt for the radius of half a mile.
Nearly everybody brought up for discussion was away at some training camp or flying school, or getting ready for naval service. Naturally thatcast a gloom on George's spirits, as he is always cursing his lot whenever he sees any one in khaki, because he feels left out of the game. I was feeling a bit gloomy myself because of the damper they cast, when in the midst of the questions about other people, Richard suddenly turned to Judith to ask about Esther.
"By the way, Judith, where is that fascinating little flirt of a cousin of yours?"
It was the first time I had heard him speak her name since she left, two years ago. For him to be able to refer to her as naturally as that, just as he would to any other human being, certainly took a load off my mind. Whenever I thought of these two in connection with each other, I've been afraid that the jolt she gave him had shaken his faith in some things. But evidently the old wound had healed without a scar. There was nothing but plain, ordinary curiosity in the questions he asked, when Judith answered that Esther was married last winter. She married Claude Millins, the man she's been engaged to off and on ever since she was a kid.
Judith went down to the wedding. She said it was a brilliant affair. They started out with a rosy future ahead of them, but it was like that old missionary hymn, "Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." They've been having a perfectlyheathenish time ever since the war threw a bomb into their domestic relations. Claude is crazy about Esther, but he isn't crazy about enlisting. He is a pacifist. She had forty-one relatives in the Civil War on the Confederate side. Over half of them were killed in the battle of Chicamaugua, and she's ashamed of having a husband who's a slacker. She wants him to be a hero. He said wasn't it "better to be a live dog than a dead lion?" and she said in that honey-sweet way of hers, "a yellow dog?"
"Gee!" said Watson suddenly, for the first time breaking into the conversation. "Did they quarrel that waybeforethey were married?"
Judith said, "Evidently. She always spoke of it as an off and on engagement."
"Well," said Richard reminiscently, "she certainly hadmegoing some, but after all, I don't know which she hit the hardest, old George here, or myself."
"Or John Wynne," spoke up Babe, who was in the other end of the swing. "What's become of that good-looking doctor?"
Richard was the only one who could answer that question. By the queerest coincidence they had met in a hotel lobby in Boston, and had lunched together afterward. The doctor will soon be in France. He's to take the place of a Harvard classmateof his, who was killed recently when the Ambulance Corps he was serving with was nearly wiped out.
Babe said she wondered that he hadn't gone over long before. She expected him to right after Esther broke up his life the way she did. She imagined he'd be like Francesco, in the story of Ginevra—"Francesco, weary of his life, flew to Venice, and embarking, threw it away in battle with the Turks."
"He isn't that kind of a man, Babe," said Richard. "You haven't got his right measure. He's too big and too fine to fling his life away for a little personal grievance. It's not morbid sentiment but a matter of principle that's taking him over. He asked for the place he's getting, because he thinks it's unattached men like himself who ought to fill them. Neither he nor I have any next of kin left now, who are near enough to worry over us or to mourn very long if we don't get back."
It did me a world of good to hear Richard speak of that affair as "a little personal grievance." Evidently it didn't hurt him in the least to recall Esther and the incidents of that summer. Under cover of some anecdote that George began telling, Richard said in an aside to me, "You remember that story Miss Crewes told us about him, Georgina—his doing the deed for the deed's sake.He's just like that all the way through, keeping himself so modestly in the background that he never gets the appreciation that is his rightful due."
It seems so nice to have a little secret like that Sir Gareth story with Richard. I can't explain just what it is, but I love the way he turns to me when he puts an intimate little parenthesis like that into the general conversation, just for me.
Presently Judith mentioned Miss Crewes, and then Richard remembered to tell us what Doctor Wynne told him about her. He had news of her death recently. Two years of nursing at the front was too much for her. She died from exposure and overwork, and it was no wonder she went to pieces as she did, witnessing so much German frightfulness. She was in one of the hospitals that they bombed.
Judith shivered and put her hands over her ears an instant. "Somehow we keep getting back to those awful subjects no matter what we talk about," she said. "And George has been strumming nothing but minors on that guitar ever since he picked it up. For goodness' sake, strike up something to make us forget such horrors—something more befitting such a glorious night."
It was a glorious night. The Gilfred place runs right down to the water. By this time the moonwas high overhead, flooding the porch steps with such a bright light one could almost see to read by it.
We did read by it presently, when Lowry Gilfred came spinning up on his bicycle. He always goes downtown the minute he hears the night train whistling for the bridge, and brings up the Boston and New York papers. He held one up. The headlines were so big and black we could read them easily several feet away.
"More atrocities by the Huns. Inhuman U-boat commander fires on life-boats escaping from torpedoed vessel."
"Well, Moreland," said Watson, "that's what we'll be coming up against in a week or two." His face was turned towards Richard as he spoke, but I saw him glance at Babe out of the corner of his eye to see how she took his remark.
Richard answered cheerfully that he looked on the prospect the same way that old "Horatius at the bridge" did. "To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late," and as long as he had to die some time, he'd rather go in a good cause than linger to a doddering old age, or be killed inch at a time by the germs that get you even when you do watch out.
He was sitting on the porch railing with his back against one of the white pillars, and the moonshone full on his upturned face. Remarking something about the way he used to spout Horatius on Friday afternoons, when he was a kid at school, he went on repeating from it. The expression on his face must have been the one Barby spoke of when she said he reminded her of his father in his inspired moments. He said it in a low, intense voice, as if he were speaking to himself, and thrilled with the deep meaning of it: