Georgina's Service Stars

But in all the years we've been growing up together I've had time to learn every one of his faults and short-comings. Though I've frankly told him of them in times past for his own good, I realize now that he never had as many as most boys, and he has outgrown the few he did have. I wouldn't have him changed now in any way whatever.

An attachment like ours that blossoms out of such a long and intimate acquaintance must have deeper roots than one like Babe's and Watson's. Theirs hasn't any background, any past tense. Babe married him without having seen a single member of his family nearer than cousins, which is an awful risk, I think. Suppose one of his next of kin were a miser or a fanatic, and the same traits would crop out in him later in life. Knowing Richard's father as I did makes me feel that I know Richard in the future tense. They are so much alike. He'll always keep that sense of humor which was one of Mr. Moreland's charms, and the same feeling for things with old happy associations, like my ring.

When I thought of that adorable ring I just couldn't wait till morning to see it again. Reaching for the little pocket flashlight which I keep on the stand beside my bed, I sat up and flashed it on the stone, turning it in every possible direction to see it sparkle. It was much more dazzling under the electric light than it had been under the lamp. I wondered if it made Richard's mother as happy when she wore it as it makes me. I wondered if she ever sat up in the dark to admire it as I was doing, and what she would think if she could see me press it to my lips in the consciousness that it is the precious link which binds me to Richard. I don't believe she would think it silly. She would be glad that I care so much – so very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard liked the idea immensely, but it gave me a gruesome feeling at first. There would be no need of identification tags, were it not that possible death and wounds and capture face every man who wears one. Besides it seemed such a cold-blooded sort of token to give to one's best beloved, just starting off to the Field of Honor. About as romantic as a trunk check.

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

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

CHAPTER XXII

"THE MAID WHO BINDS HER WARRIOR'S SASH"

I couldn't tell Tippy. The way we did I just handed her Barby's night letter without a word and Richard gave her his. She read them with no more change of expression than if they'd been weather reports. Then she said that she'd known it all along. A wooden Indian couldn't have been less demonstrative, but later I found that nothing could have pleased her more.

Richard says she can't help being born a Plymouth Rock. She's like an ice-bound brook that can't show the depth and force underlying the surface coldness. But her tenderness leaked out for us both afterwards, in all sorts of ways, and I began to understand her for the first time in my life.

She watched me take down the service flag in the window and replace it with one bearing two stars, and I'm sure she read my thoughts. She's always had an uncanny way of doing that. I was thinking how much harder it was to put up that second star than the first one, because I hadn't really given Father to the service. He was in it before I was born. But the second star was the symbol of a real sacrifice that I was laying on the altar of my country. There was no laughing this time, or joking suggestion to make a ceremony of it. I felt to the bottom of my heart what I was doing, and did it in reverent silence.

Soon after she followed me to my room and laid a couple of books on the table, open at the places marked for me to read. I smiled after she went out when I saw that one was an antiquated volume of poems. All my life she has tried to teach me morals and manners by the aid of such verse as "The boy stood on the burning deck" and "Fie! What a naughty child to pout." So I picked up the books wondering what lesson she thought I needed now. The poem she marked was "The Maid who binds her Warrior's sash." As I read I understood. Dear old Tippy! It was courage she would teach me.

Richard was right. She couldn't say these things to me, so she brought me the words of another to help me, knowing the lesson would soon be sorely needed. The other book was a new one she had just drawn from the library, the adventures of a young gunner in the Navy. He had won the Croix de Guerre for distinguished service and escaped the horrors of a German prison camp, so he knew what he was talking about when he wrote the words she left for me to read.

"When you say goodbye to your son or your husband or your sweetheart, take it from me that what he will like to remember the best of all is your face with a smile on it. It will be hard work; you will feel more like crying and so will he, maybe. That smile is your bit. I will back a smile against the weeps in a race to Berlin any time. So I am telling you, and I can't make it strong enough —send him away with a smile."

This is the verse:

"The maid, who binds her warrior's sash
With smile, which well the pain dissembles,
The while, beneath the drooping lash,
One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles,
Though heaven alone record the tear
And fame shall never know her story,
Her heart has shed a drop as dear
As ever dewed the field of glory."

I didn't realize then how hard it was going to be to live up to those quotations, but Tippy, with so much of her life behind her full of its hard lessons – Tippy knew and took this mute way of warning me.

The storm did us a good turn in more ways than unearthing our buried treasure. It brought such cold weather in its wake that when we came in glowing from a tramp along shore just before supper, we found a jolly big fire waiting for us in the living-room. Such a one, Richard said, as would warm him many a time, thinking of it, nights when he was miles up in the air, numb as the North Pole.

We had such a long cosy evening afterward, there in the firelight.

"We'll have it just like this in our own little home when I get back," Richard kept saying. We planned the dearest house. We decided to make his Cousin James sell us his bungalow studio, not only because the Green Stairs running up the cliff to it is the place where we first saw each other when we were infants, but because it's such an artistic place, and has such a wonderful view of the sea. It's a place far too delightful to be wasted on a single person, even such a nice old bachelor as his Cousin James.

We even planned what we'd have for our first breakfast when we started to housekeeping, with Aunt Georgina's coffee urn shining at one end of the table and an old beaten-silver chop dish, that is one of Richard's memories of their studio days in Paris, at the other.

"If I could only see that picture in reality before I go!" Richard exclaimed – "if I could only sit down at that table once with you across from me, and know that it was my home and my little wife – "

Then he confessed that he wanted to take back everything he'd said about Watson and war weddings. He believed in 'em now and couldn't I, wouldn't I – ? But without waiting to finish the question he hurried on to answer it himself. No, he mustn't ask it. He wouldn't. It wouldn't be fair to me, young as I was, with Barby gone, nor to her. But if he could only feel that I really belonged to him —

I told him I didn't see how rushing through a whirlwind ceremony as Babe did could make us feel we belonged to each other any more than we already did, and I couldn't do it without Barby, but we could say the betrothal part to each other, and that would make him feel that we were almost married. So we hunted it up in the prayer book and each repeated the part that says, "I take thee.. from this day forward.. to love and to cherish.. and thereto I plight thee my troth."

But after we said it I couldn't see that it made the thought of parting any easier. Really it seemed even harder after we'd solemnly promised ourselves to each other that way.

After a while he said there were several things he wanted to speak of before he went away. One was that his Cousin James has all his belongings in charge. Among them is a beautiful old Venetian jewel casket with his mother's rings and necklaces and things in it. His Cousin James understands that everything in it is to be mine and he hoped that I'd wear them sometimes – even if – in any event – He didn't go on to say even if what, but the unfinished sentence filled me with its unspoken dread, more than if he'd really said it.

After a long silence he said lightly that there was some satisfaction in the thought that I'd always be comfortably provided for no matter what happened, and that I could have the bungalow and the motor-boat and all the other things we'd planned. He'd made his will the day before and his Cousin James had promised to see it was carried out in every detail.

At the thought of what his speech implied and the mere idea of me having or doing any of those lovely things without him, I couldn't stand it any longer. I simply hid my face in the sofa cushions and let the dykes wash out to sea. It must have broken him up somewhat himself, to see the way I took it, for his voice was shaky when he tried to comfort me. But it was so dear and tender, just like Uncle Darcy's that time he kept saying, "There's naught to fear lass, Dan'l's holding you." Every word only made me cry that much harder.

Presently he cleared his throat and asked if I supposed there was any powder left in the old powder horn over the mantel, and did I remember the time we fed some to Captain Kidd to make him game. He'd confess now, after all these years, he ate some himself that day when I wasn't looking, but its effect was about worn off by this time, and if I kept on that way much longer he'd have to have another nip at that old horn or go to pieces himself.

I sat up then and laughed, despite the big, gulpy sobs that nearly choked me. For I had to tell him that I'd eaten some of that powder myself that same time. I licked it out of the palm of my hand when his back was turned. And if the powder had lost its effect on me the horn itself hadn't. The mere mention of it made me stiffen. Hereafter I'd be just as brave as that old Revolutionary grandmother of mine who snatched it from the wall with the musket, and hustled her Minute Man off with the one grim word, "Hurry!" I promised him that hereafter he shouldn't see me shed another drop. And he didn't.

Mr. Milford came up for me early next morning to take me down to the station to see Richard off. Maybe it was because I had had that spell of wild weeps the night before, that I felt like the-morning-after-a-storm, all cleared up and shiney. At any rate I sent him off laughing. He looked so fit and so fine, starting off on his great adventure like some knight of old, that I told him I pined to go along; that under the circumstances I'd gladly change places with him. I'd much rather be Richard Moreland than G. Huntingdon.

But he said right before his Cousin James that he'd much rather I'd be Mrs. Richard Moreland. It was my blushing so furiously at hearing that name applied to me for the first time which made him laugh. Then there was only time to be caught up in a good-bye embrace before the train pulled out. He swung himself up on the rear platform just as it started. He did look so handsome and so dear and I was so proud of him in his khaki that there was nothing forced in the last smile I gave him. It was the real spangled-bannery kind; such as shines in your eyes when the band plays martial music and the troops march by. Your heart beats awfully fast and you hold your breath, but you have the feeling that in your soul you are one of the color bearers yourself. You are keeping step with your head held high.

Afterwards when Mr. Milford helped me into the machine he said, "Georgina, you're a trump. You wear your service stars in your eyes."

When I looked at him questioningly, wondering what he meant, he said, "Oh, I know they're brown, not blue, but you showed my boy the star of 'true blue' courage in them, and I was horribly afraid for a few minutes there that maybe you wouldn't."

He talked about service flags all the way home, for we kept coming across them in the windows in every street. Over two hundred men have gone out from this little fishing town. When I told him how I felt that way, about "keeping step," he said he wished I could make some other people he knew feel the same way.

"There's poor Mrs. Carver, for instance, crying her eyes out over Titcomb and Sammy III, and talking as if she's the only mother in the world who's sacrificing anything. If you could suggest that those boys would be a bit prouder of her if she could keep step with the rest of the mothers, make her sacrifice with her head up, it would do her a world of good. She mustn't fly service stars in her window unless she can back them on the inside with the same true blue courage they stand for on the outside – the kind that sends the men to the front."

CHAPTER XXIII

MARKED ON THE CALENDAR

It's queer what a way Doctor Wynne has of stepping abruptly into my life and out again. It's been so ever since I found his picture in the barrel. A few days after Richard left he unexpectedly opened the front gate and came up to the porch where Tippy and I sat knitting. I did not recognize him at first in his captain's uniform, and no one could have been further from my thoughts. I supposed he had already sailed for France.