Georgina's Service Stars

CHAPTER XXIV

BRAVE LITTLE CARRIER PIGEON!

We have had another storm. It wrecked so many vessels and sent so many fishermen to their death that the dreadful tenth of August will go down in the annals of Provincetown as a day of dole for the whole Cape. So many families suffered from it. Most of them are Portuguese, and many of them are totally unprovided for, now that their breadwinners are taken.

At first it seemed to me that I just couldn't go down to the Fayals', but Tippy, who had been several times, said I ought to, because Mrs. Fayal has always been so good about coming in for an extra day's cleaning and has done our washing so many years, and I used to play with Rosalie. I didn't know what to say or do that could be of any possible comfort. But Rosalie clung to me so the night that her father was brought home, that I sat with them till morning.

There wasn't a stronger, sturdier fisherman along the coast than Joe Fayal. I've seen him go clumping past our house a thousand times in his high boots and yellow oilskins, and the flash of his white teeth and black eyes always gave the impression of his being more alive than most people. When I saw the white drowned thing they brought home in place of him I began to be afraid – afraid of the "peril of the sea." If it can do that to one strong man it can do it to another.

All night Mrs. Fayal sat in a corner behind the stove. Sometimes she wrung her hands without a word, and sometimes she kept up a sort of moaning whimper – "The War took both my boys and now the Sea's taken my man!" I can hear her yet.

The days that followed were too full for me to worry as much as I would have done otherwise over Richard's long silence. The poverty of all those desolate families came uppermost. A fund was started for the widows and orphans, and all parts of New England came to the rescue. Artists, actors, the summer people, the home folks – everybody responded. A series of benefits and tag days began. I was asked to serve on so many committees and to help in so many enterprises that I raced through the days as if I were a fast express train, trying to make connections. I didn't have time to think during the day, but at night when I lay counting up the time since I'd had a letter, the waves booming up against the breakwater took to repeating that wail of Mrs. Fayal's, and the fog bell tolled it: "The Sea's taken my man." And I'd be so afraid I'd pull the covers over my ears to shut out the sound.

Then seven letters came in a bunch. The long silence had not been Richard's fault, nor was anything the matter. There had simply been delays in the mail service. I vowed I'd let that be a lesson to me, not to worry next time.

Barby came home late in the summer, and the very day of her arrival I had to go to Brewster on a "war-bread" campaign. I had promised to be demonstrator any time they called for me. It was tough luck to have the call hit that first day. I hadn't had her to myself for ages, and after the wild scramble of the summer I longed for a quiet day in a rocking chair at home, where we could talk over all the things that had happened since the last time we were together – principally Richard.

If there were no war now, I suppose that's about all we'd be doing these days, spending long, placid hours together, embroidering dainty lingerie and putting my initials on table linen and such things. But there'll be no "hope chest" for me while there's a soldier left in a hospital to need pajamas and bandages, or one in the trenches who needs socks. The wild beast is not only on our door-steps now, he has us by the very throats.

Barby came with the intention of taking me back with her, and Tippy, too, if she could persuade her to go. Although we're not the very important hub of a very important wheel as she is in Washington, we are the hubs of a good many little wheels which we have started, and which would stop if we left. I was wild to go, but Tippy has no patience with people who put their hands to the plow and then look back. She kept reminding me of the various things that I have gotten into good running order, such as the Junior Red Cross, and a new Busy Bees Circle which Minnie Waite is running, under my direction and prodding. They are doing wonderfully well as long as the prodding never lets up.

While we were debating the question it was settled for us in a most unexpected way. Old Mr. Carver telephoned that he needed me dreadfully in the office. Could I come and help him hold the fort for awhile? His son was very ill and had been taken to Boston for an operation. The draft had called so many men that practically the whole office force was new, and his stenographer had just left to take a government position.

Much as Barby wanted me with her, she said that that settled it. Nothing a girl of my age could find to do in Washington was as important as that. Fish is a big item in the Nation's food supply and anything I could do to help carry on that business helped carry on the war. Also some of our income depended on the success of the Plant, and if old Mr. Sammy broke down under the responsibility, strangers would have to step in. Besides, Father would be gratified to have me called on in the emergency, just as Titcomb and Sammy III would have been if they were not in training camp.

It was wonderful the way that old man rose up and took the reins again, after having been little more than a figurehead in the business for some years. He seemed to be in a dozen places at once, and he found many places to use me besides at the typewriter; sending me to bank, and helping the new bookkeeper fill out checks for the pay-roll, etc. I had the surprise of my life when I found my own name on the pay-roll. I had gone in to help out in the emergency, just as I would have gone to a neighbor's house in time of sickness. Also it was partly for our own interests, and I was being more than compensated by the feeling that I was doing something worth while filling in in place of drafted employees. I had no thought of being paid for it, nor of being wanted more than a few weeks.

But Mr. Carver said I was worth more to him than an ordinary stenographer, even if I had forgotten a lot and lost my speed. I could answer many of the letters without dictation, and I knew so much of the inside workings of the business, he could trust me with confidential matters, and he could blow off steam to me when things went wrong. In other words, I could keep up his morale. Poor old fellow, he needed to have somebody keep it up, as time proved. His son had a relapse and there were weeks when he was desperately worried over his condition. He blew off steam principally about his daughter-in-law, whom he held responsible for the relapse.

"Always a-crying and a-fretting about those boys," he would fume. "Min's a good woman and a good mother, but she's a selfish slacker with Sammy. Doesn't seem to think that a father has any feelings. Doesn't realize that those boys are the apple of his eye. All her goings on about them, and how it's killing her, knowing they will surely be killed, when he's as weak as he is – it's a downright shame. She's only one of many, why can't she do like a million other mothers, keep her own hurt out of sight, at least till his life's out of danger."

Well, when I found I was to be paid for my work, that he really thought I was worth the salary the other girl got, and that he wanted to keep me permanently, I was the happiest creature that ever banged the keys of a typewriter. For while I banged them I was counting up all the Liberty Bonds I could buy in the course of a year, and how much I'd have for the Red Cross, and how much for all the other things I wanted to do. Of course, I've always had my allowance, but it's nothing to the bliss of earning money with your own fingers, to do exactly as you please with. There is no other sensation in the whole universe so gratifying, so satisfying and so beatifying!

When the noon whistle blew I ran down the wharf and all the way home to tell Barby, then I put a big red ring round the date on the calendar. Before nightfall I put another ring around that one, for the postman brought me a long letter from Richard, a letter that made me so happy I felt like putting a red ring around the whole world.

It was somewhat of a shock to find that it was written in a hospital, although he assured me in the very first paragraph that he was perfectly well, and over all the ill effects, before he went on to say ill effects of what. This is part of it:

"Lieutenant Robbins and I went out for an observation flight over the enemy ports last Monday. Coming back something went wrong with the engine and we were compelled to drop at once to the sea. It was unusually rough and the waves so high there was danger of our light seaplane being beaten to pieces before we could be rescued. There was one chance in a thousand that some cruising patrol vessel might happen along near enough to sight us, but there were all sorts of chances a submarine might get us first. The wireless apparatus wouldn't work. We had been flying so high to get out of the bumps of air currents, and had been up so long that we were not in any shape to stand a long strain. Our chief hope of rescue was in the little carrier pigeon we had with us. We always take one, but this one had never made a trial trip as long as the one it would have to take now, and we didn't know whether it would fail us or not.

Imagine us tossing about in that frail bit of wood and canvas, the waves washing over us at intervals, and land nowhere to be seen, watching that white speck wing its way out of sight. There was a while there when I'd have been willing to change places with old Noah, even if I had to crowd in with the whole Zoo. Well, we tossed around there for ages, it seemed to me, wet to the skin and chilled to the bone. All that night, all next day, and till dark again, we hung on desperately before a searchlight swept across us, and we saw a cruiser coming to our rescue. It had been hunting us all that time, for the bird went straight as an arrow with our S. O. S. call.

"The other man was past talking when they found us, and I could barely chatter. We were both so exhausted we had to be hauled aboard like a couple of water-soaked logs. But a while in the hospital has put us back to normal again, and here we are as good as new and ready to go up again. We report for duty in the morning.

"It bowled me over when I heard what happened to our brave little pigeon. Some fool took a shot at it, somewhere near the station probably, for it managed to keep going till it got home. Then, just as it reached the floor of its loft, it fell dead. A bell always rings as a carrier alights on the balanced platform. When the attendant answered the summons he found the pigeon lying there, one foot shot away, and blood on its little white breast. It had managed to fly the last part of its way, mortally wounded. Lucky for us it wasn't the leg with the message that was hit. I tell you it makes me feel mighty serious to think that but for those little wings, faithful to the last beat, I wouldn't be writing this letter at this present moment of A. D. 1917.

"Two things kept coming into my mind, while numb and exhausted. I clung to that busted plane, expecting every minute it would give way under us. I saw that old wooden figurehead of "Hope" that sits up on the roof of the Tupman's portico at home. Probably I was going a bit nutty, for I could see it as plain as day. It opened its mouth and called to me over and over, that saying of Uncle Darcy's that you are always throwing at people. 'As long as a man keeps hope at the prow he keeps afloat.' It kept holding its old green, wooden wreath out at me as if it were a life preserver, and I'll give you my word it shouted loud enough for me to hear across the noise of the wind, 'as long as a man' – 'as long as a man,' until I began to try to concentrate my mind on what it was saying. I actually believe the illusion or whatever it was helped me to hold on, for I began to obey orders. I hoped that the bird would reach home and hoped it so hard and long that it kept my wits awake. I was just at the point of letting go from sheer exhaustion and dropping into the sea, when it loomed up on the horizon.

"Then a star came out in the sky, and I thought in a hazy way of the one in your service flag that stands for me, and I felt that if I didn't manage to hang on and get back to you in some way, you'd think I wasn't 'true blue.' Then as I kept on staring at it, gradually I began to confuse it with you. But that's not to be wondered at. Ever since I've known you I've unconsciously steered my course by you. You're so dependable. That's one of your finest traits. No matter what happens you'll just go around in the circle of your days, true to your ideals and your sense of duty.

"And though everything was getting sort of confused to me out there in the black water, staring death in the face, there was an underlying comfort in the belief that even if I didn't get back you wouldn't go into a cloud of mourning for the rest of your days. You'd live out your life as it was intended, just like that star. I saw it again last night from the hospital window. It rises here before daylight has entirely faded. The astronomers may call it Hesperus if they want to, but I'll never see it again without calling it you."

I have read that letter till I know it by heart. It is getting worn in the creases. But last night when the tolling of the fog-bell awakened me, I groped for it under my pillow and read it once more by the glow of my little flashlight. I wanted to see the words again in his own handwriting. I cannot read often enough the part that calls me "Star." That has always been the most beautiful of names to me, even when I gave it to one who wasn't worthy of it. I wonder if it would be possible to live up to it, though, if Richard should never come back to me. How could I endure the ordinary orbit of my days? Yet how could I disappoint him?