Georgina's Service Stars

CHAPTER XVI

HOME-COMINGS

I might as 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 them over 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 hint of 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, but she 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 been taking 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 worth growing 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 from the 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 meant that to 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 hat which 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 valiant licks 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 down cellar when I rose and took the pails away from her, and announced that I'd can 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 said I'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 you can do, 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 tremendously good-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.

CHAPTER XVII

BACK WITH THE OLD CROWD

Richard couldn'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 the clock, 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 and which 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 to bring 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 that cast 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.