Georgina's Service Stars

"I'll change at Chatham," she called back to us.

"No, Mrs. Tucker," Richard remarked as the machine dashed off, "you'll never change. You'll always be just like that."

"The whole affair has been more like a whirlwind than a wedding," said Judith as she joined us. "I'm limp."

CHAPTER XIX

THE VIGIL IN THE SWING

When I look back on that hot July day it seems a week long; so much was crowded into it. After the ceremony we took Tippy up home in the machine with the children, and then went for a drive. I hadn't realized how tired I was till I sank back into the comfortable seat beside Richard. Nothing could have rested me more than that rapid spin toward Wellfleet with the salt breeze in my face. As we started out of town Richard glanced at his watch.

"Only sixty-three hours more for this old burg," he announced. "I've got it figured down to a fine point now. Even to the minutes."

"So anxious to get away?" I asked.

"Oh, it isn't that. I'm keen enough to get busy over there, but – " He did not finish but presently nodded toward the water where a great fleet of fishing boats was putting into port. They filled the harbor with a flashing of sails in the late afternoon sunshine, like a flock of white-winged birds. "I'm wondering how long it will be before I see that again."

I answered with a line from "Kathleen Mavourneen," humming it airily: "It may be for years and it may be forever."

"Don't you care?" he demanded almost crossly, with his eyes intent on the triple curve just ahead.

"Of course I care," I answered. "If you were a truly own brother I couldn't feel any worse about your going off into all that danger, and I couldn't be any prouder of you. And I think that under the circumstances we might be allowed to put another star on our service flag, one for you as well as for Father. You belong to us more than anyone else now."

"Will you do that?" he asked quickly, and with such eagerness that I saw he was both touched and pleased. "It makes a tremendous difference to a fellow to feel that he's got some sort of family ties – that he isn't just floating around in space like a stray balloon. It's a mighty lonesome feeling to think that there's nobody left to miss you or care what becomes of you."

"Oh, we'll care all right," I promised him. "We'll be a really truly family to you, and we'll miss you and write to you and knit for you."

He was in the midst of the triple curve now, with a machine honking somewhere ahead, but he turned to flash a pleased smile at me and we came very near to a collision. He had to veer to one side so suddenly that we were nearly thrown out. For two years he has been so eager to go overseas that I hadn't an idea he would have any homesick qualms when the time came, but to find that he was hanging on to each hour as something precious made me twice as sorry to see him go as I would have been otherwise.

As we came back into town he glanced at his watch again but said nothing until I leaned over to look too.

"How many hours now?" I asked. "Only sixty-one and a half," he answered, "and they'll whiz by like a streak of lightning." From then on I began counting them too.

There was a birthday letter from Barby waiting for me when I got home, such a dear one that I took it off to my room to read by myself. The package she mentioned sending was evidently delayed. As I sat in front of my mirror, brushing my hair before going down to supper, I thought what a very, very different birthday this was from the one we had planned for my eighteenth anniversary. Still it had been a happy day. I felt repaid for my wild rush every time I recalled Babe's face when she saw herself for the first time in her wedding gown. Her delight was pathetic, and her gratitude will be something to remember always, that and the fact that I was a bridesmaid for the first time – and a Maid of Honor at that.

Suddenly I came to myself with a start to find myself with my hair down over my shoulders and my brush held in mid air, while I gazed at something in the depths of the mirror. Something that wasn't there. The altar and the bridal party before it, and the Best Man looking across at me with that grave, wistful expression that was like a leave-taking. And then his smile as our eyes met. It seems strange that just recalling a little thing like that should make me glowingly happy, yet in some unaccountable way it did.

Judith and George Woodson came up after supper. I was almost sorry they did, for Richard had asked me to play the "Reverie" that he always asks Barby for. He was stretched out on the leather couch with his hands clasped under his head, looking so comfortable and contented it seemed a pity to disturb him. He'll think of that old couch and the times he's lain on it listening to Barby play, many a time when he's off there in range of the enemy's guns.

They stayed till after ten o'clock, talking aeroplanes mostly, for George got Richard started to describing nose dives and spirals and all the wonderful somersault stunts they do above the clouds. He knows so much about machines, having helped build them, that he could sketch the different parts of them while he was talking, and he knows the record of all the famous pilots, just as a baseball fan knows all about the popular players. While he was up in Canada he met two of the most daring aces who ever flew, one from the French Escadrille, and one an Englishman of the Royal Flying Corps. It was his acquaintance with the Englishman which led to Richard's being assigned to the Royal Naval Air Service. He's to learn the British methods of handling sea-planes, and he's hoping with all his heart that he won't be brought home as an instructor when he has learned it. He wants to stay right there patrolling the Channel and making daring raids now and then over the enemy's lines.

It must have been torture for George to listen to his enthusiastic description of duels above the clouds and how it feels to whiz through space at a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, because it was the dream of his life to get into that branch of the service. His disappointment makes him awfully bitter. Still he persisted in talking about it, because he's so interested he can't keep off the subject. It's a thousand times more thrilling than any of the old tales of knight errantry, and I'm glad George kept on asking questions. Otherwise I'd never have found out what an amazing lot Richard knows that I never even suspected.

During the last few minutes of their visit I heard Tippy out in the hall, answering the telephone. She came in just as they were all leaving, to tell us it was a message from Belle. Aunt Elspeth was sinking rapidly. The end was very near now. Uncle Darcy had asked for Barby, forgetting she was away, and Belle thought it would be a comfort to him to feel that some of the family were in the house, keeping the vigil with him.

Tippy had intended to go down herself as soon as the children were asleep, but little Judson kept waking up and crying at finding himself in a strange bed. He seemed a bit feverish and she was afraid to leave him. So Richard and I went. When Judith and George left we walked with them part of the way.

I've seen many a moonlight night on the harbor before, when the water was turned to a glory of rippling silver, but never have I seen it such a sea of splendor as it was that night we strolled along beside it. It was entrancingly beautiful – that luminous path through the water, and the boats lifting up their white sails in the shining silence were like pearl-white moths spreading motionless wings.

None of us felt like talking, the beauty was so unearthly, so we went along with scarcely a word, until we reached the business part of the town. There the buildings on the beach side of the street hid the view of the water. Both picture-shows were just out, and the gay summer crowds surging up and down the narrow board walk and overflowing into the middle of the street were as noisy as a flock of jaybirds. George and Judith left us at the drug-store corner, going in for ice-cream soda.

When we turned into Fishburn Court, there on the edge of the dunes, we seemed entering a different world. It was so still, shut in by the high warehouses between it and town. We opened the gate noiselessly and went up the path past the old wooden swing. The full moon shining high overhead made the little doorway almost as bright as day, except for the circle of shadow under the apple tree. Even there the light filtered through in patches. All the doors and windows stood open. A candle flickered on the high black mantel in the sitting-room. In the bedroom beyond the lamp on the bureau was turned low.

Belle met us at the door, motioning us toward the bedroom. Coming in from the white radiance outside the light seemed dim at first, but it was enough to show the big four-posted bed with Aunt Elspeth lying motionless on it. Such a frail little body she was, but her delicate, flower-like sort of beauty had lasted even into her silver-haired old age. She did not seem to be breathing, but Uncle Darcy, sitting beside her holding her hand, was leaning over talking to her as if she could still hear. Just bits of sentences, but with a cadence of such infinite tenderness in the broken words that it hurt one to hear them.

"Dan'l's right here, lass… He won't leave you… No, no, my dear."

I drew back, but Belle's motioning hand insisted. "Just let him see that you're here to keep watch with him," she whispered. "It'll be a comfort to him."

So we went in. When I laid my hand on his shoulder he looked up with a dazed expression till he saw who it was and who was with me. Then he smiled at us both, and after that one welcoming glance turned back to the bed.

We went back to the sitting room and stood there a moment, uncertainly. Then Richard opened the screen door, beckoning me to follow. He led the way to the swing, and we stepped in and sat down, facing each other. It stood so close to the cottage that to sit there opposite the open window was almost like being in the room. The glow from the lamp streamed out across the grass towards us, dimly yellow. We could see every movement, hear every rustle. Belle and the nurse tiptoed back and forth. Danny went out and came in again. Then they settled back into the shadowy corners.

Somewhere away up in the town, a phonograph began playing "The Long, Long Trail." The notes came to us faintly a few moments, then stopped, and the silence grew deeper and deeper. Nothing broke it except a cricket's chirp in the grass, and now and then a half-whispered word of soothing from Uncle Darcy. He crooned as he would to a sleepy child.

"There's naught to fear, lass… All's well… Dan'l's holding you."

Already she was beyond the comfort of his voice, but he kept on murmuring reassuringly, as if the protecting care that had never failed her in a long half-century of devotion was great enough now in this extreme hour to push aside even Death. He would go with her down into the very Valley of the Shadow.

As I sat there listening, dozens of little scenes came crowding up out of the past like mute witnesses to their beautiful love for each other. There was the day Mrs. Saggs found a nightgown of Aunt Elspeth's in the work-basket with a bungling patch half-stitched on by Uncle Darcy's stiff old fingers, and what she said about those old hands making a botch of patches, but never any botch in being kind. And the day Father and I, waiting in the kitchen, saw her cling to him and tell him quaveringly, "You're always so good to me, Dan'l. You're the best man the Lord ever made."

I do not know how long we sat there, but there was time to review all the many happy days I had spent with them in the little cottage. Then some very new and startling thoughts came crowding up in the overwhelming way they do when one is drowning. It seems to me I grew years older in that time of waiting. I had always been afraid of Death before, but suddenly the fear left me. It was no longer to be dreaded as the strongest thing in the world, if Love could thrust it aside like that and walk on past it, immortal and unafraid.

I didn't know I was crying till two tears splashed down on my hands, which were pressed tightly together in my lap. A little shiver ran over me. Richard leaned forward and took my white sweater from the back of the seat where I had thrown it, motioning for me to put it on. I shook my head but he kept on holding it out for me to slip my arms into, in that insistent, masterful way of his, till finally I did so. I hadn't known I was cold till I felt the warmth of it around me. Then I noticed that a breeze had sprung up and was stirring the boughs of the apple tree, and my hands were like ice from the long nervous strain.

But even more comforting than the wrap which enveloped me was the inward warmth that came from the sense of being watched over and taken care of.

The long vigil went on. Suddenly the nurse leaned over and said something. And then – Belle pulled down the shade.

After a few moments Uncle Darcy came stumblingly out to the doorway and sat down on the step, burying his face in his hands. Richard and I looked at each other, uncertain what to do or to say, hesitating as the two children had done so long ago, when the old rifle gave up its secret. But this time we did not run away.

This time we went up to him, each with a silent handclasp. Then putting my arm around the bent old shoulders I held him close for a moment. He leaned against me and reaching up with his stiff, crooked fingers gently patted my hand.

"Aye," he said brokenly. "She's gone.. but —her love abides! Death couldn't take that from me!"

CHAPTER XX

THE HIGHWAY OF THE ANGELS

It was so late when we started home that the streets were deserted. The only noise was the hollow sound our own footsteps made on the board walk. Even that ceased the last half of the way, for we crossed over and went along the beach, walking close to the curling edges of the tide. Several times we paused to stand and look at the path the moon made on the water – wide miles of rippling silver, like a highway for the feet of passing angels.

I kept thinking of Aunt Elspeth as I looked. It took away my sadness to feel that she must have passed up that radiant road. And everything – the white night itself – seemed throbbing with the words, "But Love abides! Death cannot take that."

I think Richard heard them too, for once as we stood looking back he said, "Somehow that belief of Uncle Darcy's changes one's conception of death, just as that moon changes the night and the sea. It takes all the blackness out. It gives.. Dad.. back to me again. It makes me feel differently about saying goodbye to you all."

"I wish you didn't have to say goodbye," I exclaimed impetuously. "I wish that this awful war were over and you could stay right on here."

"Without my having done my part to win it?" he asked in a reproachful sort of tone.