Georgina's Service Stars

CHAPTER V

A PHOTOGRAPH AND SOME DAY-DREAMS

I don't believe compliments are good for the male mind. They go to their heads. Up to this time in all the years I've known Richard, I'd never seen him walk up to a mirror and deliberately stare at himself, except when we were having a face-making contest, and trying to see which could look the ugliest.

But the first thing he did after we went into the house was to stop in front of the hall mirror and square back his shoulders. Then he turned and looked at himself, a long, slow glance out of the corner of his eyes, and walked away with such a satisfied air that I was dying to laugh. All the rest of the evening he had a sort of set-up, lordly way about him that he had never had before. I am sure that it was the effect of Esther's compliment.

Barby asked him to stay to supper, and he did, to hear all about her Washington trip. He talked to her sort of over my head, as if I were a little girl who couldn't understand the great war measures which interested him. It amused me immensely, for every one knows that a girl of sixteen is far more mature than a boy of seventeen and a half. But I didn't say anything, just smiled to myself as I sat and knit and listened.

After supper when I brought out the oval frame to show the family what a bargain I got for a quarter, I had the surprise of my life. Tippy recognized the photograph in the frame. She said there were probably a dozen like it hanging up in various parlors in Wellfleet. It was the picture of a minister's wife she had known years ago. "Sister Wynne," everybody called her, whether they went to that church or not, because she was so widely beloved. The little boy's name was John.

When this little John was just a baby, Brother Wynne had a call to a big church out West. On the way there they came up to Provincetown to take the boat, and they stayed all night with Grandfather Huntingdon in this very house. Tippy was here on a visit at the time, and remembers it perfectly. Several years later the Wynnes had this picture taken to send back to friends in their old parish, and let them see how little John had grown. Miss Susan Triplett at Wellfleet has one.

It seems too strange for words to think that once upon a time they slept in our big downstairs guest chamber in the bed with the bird-o'-paradise valance and the pink silk tester, and that years and years afterward I should find their picture in a barrel at an auction, and bring it home and hang it up in that very room.

That's what I did after supper while Richard was drawing maps on the margin of the Boston Transcript, showing Barby where the Allies were entrenched. I washed the glass and drove a nail, and hung it up over a little serving table between the windows. Then I stepped back and held up the lamp to see the effect. It seemed to belong there, and the little fellow's big, serious eyes looked straight out at me, as if they were saying: "Yes, I know you, and I came back on purpose to be put into your story."

He seemed so real to me that as I went out, carrying the lamp, I looked back over my shoulder and whispered, "Good-night, little John Wynne."

Then I went upstairs to get another skein of yarn and wind it on Tippy's swift. All the time I was doing it I kept thinking of the events of the afternoon, and how beautiful Esther Gilfred looked – how adorable she was in every way. Those lines from Wordsworth came to my mind:

Also she suggested that line "Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls!" Suddenly I thought, why not write a poem to her my own self. At that, a whole list of lovely words went slipping through my mind like beads along a string: lily.. pearl.. snow-crystal.. amber.. blue-of-deep-waters.. blue-of-sapphire-skies.. heart of gold. She makes me think of such fair and shining things.

But it was hard to get started. After trying ever so long I concluded to look in the dictionary in the list of Christian names for the meaning of Esther. I thought that might suggest something which would do for a starter.

When I went back downstairs Richard had finished his map drawing. He was lying on the leather couch, as he so often does, his eyes closed, and his hands clasped under his head, listening to Barby play the piano. He certainly did look long, stretched out full length that way, longer than he had ever seemed before. Maybe Esther's calling my attention to him the way she did made me see him in a new light, for, after staring at him critically a moment, I had to admit that he really was as good-looking as she said he was.

I carried the big dictionary over to the library table and opened it under the reading lamp. Years ago we had looked up the meaning of our names, but I had forgotten what Richard meant until my eye chanced on the word, as I glanced down the page. I didn't want to interrupt the music, but I couldn't resist leaning towards him and saying in an undertone, just to get a rise out of him:

"Listen to this, 'Apollo,' the name Richard means 'strong like a ruler, or powerful.' That's why you have the 'shoulders of an athlete.'"

But he didn't even open his eyes. Just gave an indulgent sort of smile, in rather a bored, superior way that made me want to slap him. It was as much as to say that I was carrying coals to Newcastle in telling him that.

"Well," I said, in Tippy's own tone, quoting what she always tells me when anybody compliments me in her presence, "'There's nothing lasting you will find but the treasures of the mind.' So you needn't be so uppity, mister."

He ignored the remark so completely that I determined not to speak to him again all evening. But presently I was forced to on account of the interesting fact I found on the next page. It was too interesting not to be shared.

"Beauteous Being," I remarked in a half whisper, "don't trouble to open those gorgeous dark eyes, but listen to this. The name Esther means A Star. Isn't that wonderfully appropriate?"

His eyes flew open quickly enough at that. He turned over on his side and exclaimed in the most interested way:

"Say, I was just thinking what a peach she is, but somehow peach didn't seem the right word. But Star– that fits her right down to the ground."

And that from Richard, who never looks at girls! Seeing how interested he was in her I confided in him that I was trying to write a poem to her. That she seemed to be set to music in my thoughts, and that she continually reminded me of lines of poetry like that one of Tennyson's: "Shine out little head, running over with curls, to the flowers, and be their sun."

He asked me what that was in. When I told him "Maude," he turned over on his back again and shut his eyes, with no more to say. But when Barby finished the "Reverie" she was playing and he got up to go home, he walked over to the bookcase and began hunting along the shelves. He always helps himself to whatever he wants. When he slipped a book into his pocket I looked up in time to see that it was one of the little blue and gold volumes of our set of Tennyson. Later I found he had carried off the one with "Maude" in it. I have wondered since if he would have taken the same interest in Esther if I hadn't repeated her compliment – if it was that which started him.

Tippy lost no time next morning in hunting up the auctioneer and finding whose furniture he was selling, and all about it. What he told her sent her to Wellfleet on the noon train to talk over old times with her cousin Susan Triplett. She came back at supper time with a piece of news wonderfully interesting to me.

Little John Wynne is alive and really is back on the Cape. But he's grown up now, of course. He's a physician. He worked his way through a Western college and then went to Harvard for his medical degree. This summer he is in Yarmouth, taking care of old Doctor Rawlins' practice, while he's off on a long vacation.

I was so thrilled over all that Tippy told, that on my way up to bed I slipped across the hall for another look at the picture which I had rescued. It is a pity that "Sister Wynne" died before she knew how splendidly he turned out. She would have been so proud of him. But she must have known that he'd grow up to be the kind of man that Miss Susan says he is, because they look so much alike – the same steadfast, dependable sort of eyes and mouth.

As I stood there, holding the flickering candle, with the wax melting and running down its side, I thought how wonderful it would be if fate should some time bring our paths in life together. There are so many ways that might be done. He might be called here in consultation any day. Dr. Rawlins often is. Or he might come up here to spend a week-end as hundreds of people do, because the town is quaint and has historic associations. I wondered if I'd recognize him from his likeness to this baby picture or to his mother, if I should happen to meet him suddenly – say going into the post-office or strolling along the wharf. I felt sure something would tell me that it might be he.

Then I began imagining the most dramatic scene, just as if I were reading it in a novel of which I was the heroine. I would be taking part in an entertainment at the Town Hall, giving the Fire-fly dance maybe, first with the spot-light following me, and then with hall and stage darkened to give that wonderful fire-fly effect, and all the tiny points of electric lights hidden in my costume flashing on and off. And he would be watching out there in the darkness, from the front row, watching intently every graceful move.

Then all at once something would go wrong behind the scenes. A cloud of fire and smoke would suddenly sweep across the stage, shutting me off from escape and almost suffocating me. There would be a moment of awful silence while the audience gazed transfixed with horror. Then out of the darkness he would leap forth, tearing off his coat as he sprang up on the stage to wrap it around my filmy dress, already aflame, and I would fall unconscious in his arms, overcome by the smoke.

Long hours afterward when I opened my eyes, his face would be bending anxiously over me, and I'd smile wanly up at him, and he'd say in a choking whisper, "Thank heaven, she lives!" I would be lying in this downstairs guest chamber instead of my own room, this being handier, and presently he'd see this picture of himself hanging on the wall. Then – well, suffice it to say, it would lead finally to a beautiful and touching scene like the one I saw at the movies Wednesday afternoon, in the last act of "The Harvest Moon."

After I went upstairs that night, I thought of still another way for us to meet, which I shall write down because it would make a good scene in a novel, and I am beginning to think I shall start another one soon instead of "Divided," which now seems amateurish and childish to me. This is the scene.

I would be a beautiful Red Cross nurse, serving with the Allies somewhere in France. Into the ward, where I was keeping vigil some night, would be brought a wounded officer, a member of the medical corps who had risked his life giving aid to the dying in the trenches. He would be too badly hurt for me to recognize him at first, till I found his mother's picture over his heart, and my calling his name would bring him back to consciousness.

"How did you find me?" he would murmur feebly. "How did you know?" And I'd say, "Because, far away across the seas in my old home on Cape Cod, hangs the picture of 'little John Wynne,' as he used to be. My guardian angel led me hither."

"You.. are my.. angel," he would whisper, and relapse into unconsciousness. I could make it awfully effective to have him die, after I'd nursed him tenderly for weeks, but I can't bear to. I'd rather have it end the way I'd want it to end in real life if I should really meet him on a foreign battle-field.

Probably, though, if I ever do meet him, it'll be just my luck to be coming in from blue-berrying the way I was last week with a bee-sting on my lip that swelled it up till I was a sight for the gods.

Oh, if we could only make things happen actually the way we can in our day-dreams, what a thrilling thing Life would be from start to finish!

CHAPTER VI

THE ONE AND ONLY STAR

That's Esther. She has been here two weeks, and all that time I've been trying to write a poem to her which would do her justice. It is impossible. So, since coming across the above line from Wordsworth, I've simply called her "Star" and given up trying. She likes to have me call her that.

She is so wonderful that it is a privilege just to be in the same town with her. Merely to feel when I wake in the morning that I may see her some time during the day makes life so rich, so full, so beautiful! How I long to be like her in every way! Since that cannot be I try to live each hour in a way that is good for my character, so as to make myself as worthy as possible of her friendship. For instance, I dust the hind legs of the piano and the backs of the picture frames as conscientiously as the parts that show. I work overtime on my music instead of skipping practice hours as I have sometimes done in the past. The most unpleasant tasks I go through gladly, feeling that the rubbing of such, although disagreeable, puts a shine on one's soul in the same way that a buffer polishes the nails.

At first Richard laughed at what he called my infatuation, and said it didn't pay to take Emerson's advice and "hitch your wagon to a star." You have to jerk along at such a rattling gait to keep up that it soon wears out an ordinary mortal. But before he realized what had happened to him his wagon was hitched as firmly as mine, and to the same star.

Esther loves to motor, so he takes her for a long drive every day when his cousin James doesn't want the machine. As he furnishes his own gasoline for such pleasure trips, he hasn't saved very much of his wages since she's been here, to put in his "Going abroad" fund.

Every time I go to the Gilfred's, Esther passes me a freshly opened box of candy. All the boys send it to her, but twice in the last week I've been sure it was from Richard. The first one had a card lying on top that she turned around for me to read. No name – just a pencilled line – "Queen Rose of the rose-bud garden of girls." But I know Richard's handwriting as well as I know my own. Besides he learned that very quotation from me. The next time the card was printed instead of written, but there was a pansy drawn in the corner, and the sentence was in French.

Esther asked me to read it. She said she was so rusty in her French she wasn't sure she had translated it correctly. It said "Pansies are for thought." Then I remembered the pansy bed out by the Gilfreds' side porch. Richard had a big purple one in his button-hole the other day when he came back from there. But that was no proof, of course, because I'd seen George Woodson with one, and also Truman Long. Truman draws almost as well as Richard and is always making marginal sketches on things, but Truman never took any of the languages but dead ones.

But later on when Esther said she and Richard were going to read some fables together to help her brush up her French, I was pretty sure he had sent that second box. I was altogether sure when he came over the second time with that same pansy in his buttonhole, so dry and dead it was all shriveled up. I knew just how he felt about it, that it was too sacred to throw away. I feel the same way about whatever her fingers touch. So just to let him know that I understood and sympathized like a real sister I picked up Barby's guitar and in an off-hand sort of way began to sing an old song of hers that he knows quite as well as I do.

I hadn't the faintest intention of teasing him, but he seemed to take it that way. He got as red as fire and shrugged his shoulders impatiently and strode out of the room as if he were provoked. It seems so queer to think of him having any sentiment in connection with a girl, when he's always been so indifferent towards them. Still, Esther is so star-like, so high above all other girls that I don't wonder that even he has yielded to her magic influence.

All the boys are crazy about her. George Woodson spends most of his waking hours there. He sits around in the hammock with his ukelele, waiting for her to come out, and if they have an engagement and go off and leave him, he just sits and waits for them to come back. Truman Long has composed a serenade dedicated to her that's really awfully sweet, and when they dance at the Gilfreds' of an evening the boys break in so continually that Esther doesn't get to dance around the room without changing partners. It must be heavenly to be so popular.

Babe Nolan has a sentence copied in her memory book which she says is a test of whether one is truly in love or not. She thinks it is from Emerson. "When a single tone of one voice can make the heart beat, and the most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in the amber of memory. When we become all eye when one is present and all memory when one is gone."

She says she was all eye when she used to be with the One who wrote those letters which are now in that bedpost somewhere in the Salvation Army or the White Mountains, and she was all memory when he was gone. And if it happened that it was his voice which answered when she called up the grocery where he clerked, she was all of a flutter, and couldn't remember whether her mother told her to order starch or stove polish. I wonder if I shall ever know that blissful sensation.

According to Babe's test I am sure of the last two items in Richard's case. He certainly is all eye when Esther is present, and the most trifling thing she says or does is cherished in the amber of his memory. I can tell from the way he keeps coming back to them in a round-about way without mentioning her name.

Barby has noticed the difference in him, too. He doesn't come to the house as often as usual for one thing, and he talks about something besides war. He doesn't mention Esther's name to Barby, but he brings up subjects connected with her that he's never been interested in before. Things they've discussed at the Gilfreds', such as the difference between Southern and Northern girls, and what constitutes charm in a woman, and why angels are always painted with golden hair and nobody ever thinks of there being brunette angels with snappy dark eyes.

When I told Barby he was helping Esther brush up her French, she gave a funny sort of a groan, and said, "Of all the arrows in the little god's quiver that is the deadliest." When I asked what arrow, she said, "Conjugating a familiar verb in a foreign tongue with a – " Then she broke off suddenly and asked what kind of a girl I thought Esther really was. She said if she were the right kind it would do Richard worlds of good to be interested in her, but she couldn't bear to think of the dear boy being disillusioned this early, or having his confidence in woman-kind shaken by a shallow little flirt.

I told her that shallowness and coquetry were not to be mentioned in the same breath with Esther. That while Richard's a nice boy, and feeling towards him as I do, as if he were a real brother, I want him to have the very best things Life can give him, I don't consider him fine enough and noble enough for such an angel as Esther. With her lofty ideals only a Sir Galahad or King Arthur himself is worthy of her.

Barby has met her several times, but only when there were a lot of others present. She had no chance to talk with her and see what a truly fine and strong character she has. She could see only in a general way that she is lovely and gracious. So, not knowing her as I know her, she reminded me again of that old prism of mine and the way I used to go about with it in front of my eyes, putting rainbows around everything in sight.

She asked if I was sure I wasn't looking at Esther in some such way, putting a halo of perfection around her that was largely of my own making. She said she did that twice when she was in her early teens. Once it was a music teacher she was infatuated with, and once her roommate at boarding school. She looked upon them as perfect, and nearly died of disappointment when she discovered they were only ordinary mortals.

It hurt me dreadfully to have her think my adoration of Esther was nothing but a schoolgirl infatuation. She must have seen how I felt and she must have changed her mind about Esther, for lately she has been perfectly lovely about encouraging our intimacy. She says she'd like for me to invite her to the house often, and that I may have her here for a week after her visit with Judith is over. And she suggested several things we might do for her entertainment, such as a picnic at Highland Light, and a motor-boat trip over to the weirs to see the nets hauled in.

An age has gone by since I wrote of the above plans. There has been no chance to carry them out, because the very next day Mrs. Gilfred went to Boston and took Judith and Esther with her for a week. Ever since they left I've gone around humming:

Only I change it to "My Star is not here."

The only thing that makes the loneliness bearable is that Barby has a guest, a Miss Helen Crewes, who is a Red Cross nurse. She is going to Flanders very soon, and she is up here resting. She gives "First Aid" lessons to Barby, Tippy and me in the evenings.

Tuesday when the Busy Bees met here she put on her uniform and went down and talked to the girls. She seemed so wonderful and so set apart, all in white with the Red Cross blazing on her forehead, and she talked so inspiringly that the girls were ready to rise up and follow her to the death. They didn't want to go home when the time came, but hung around begging her to tell some more. And Minnie Waite said that if anybody in town would start a Melting Pot like the one Miss Crewes told about to put your jewels in for the cause, she'd throw in her gold thimble and her locket and her silver friendship bracelet that needs only one more link to complete it.

Barby hasn't invited any of our friends to meet Miss Crewes yet, because she's just off a hard case that nearly wore her out. She says she must store up every bit of strength she can get from the dunes and the sea, for what lies ahead. So she sits down on the beach hours at a time, and goes on long walks by herself. When I take her out in the boat she scarcely says a word. But in the evenings while she's teaching us first aid bandaging, etc., she talks so thrillingly of her experiences and what her friends are doing over there that I could listen all night.

Barby made several attempts to get Richard to come over and meet her, but he hasn't been near here since Esther went to Boston. He always makes some excuse when Barby telephones. Barby says it would do him good to meet a woman like Miss Crewes. That she'd wake him up out of the trance he is in, and rekindle his old enthusiasms. Miss Crewes is middle-aged, for she's at least thirty-eight, and she's very plain, except when she talks. Then her face lights up till you feel as if a lamp had suddenly been brought into the room.

I know now what Barby meant by trance. It is the same thing as being "all memory when one is gone." Yesterday Babe Nolan and I were walking along the street together, she eating an apple, when Richard drove by without seeing us. It was up along in one of the narrowest turns, where he had to pass so close to the board walk that the machine nearly grazed it. Yet he went by, perfectly unconscious of us. Never looked to the right nor the left, and never even heard when I called to him. Usually he is on the look-out to wave his hand to anybody he knows. When he had gone by Babe said: