Georgina's Service Stars Part 1

Georgina's Service Stars.

by Annie Fellows Johnston.

PART I

"_My salad days, when I was green in judgment._"

GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS

CHAPTER I

GEORGINA BEGINS HER MEMOIRS

UP the crooked street which curves for three miles around the harbor comes the sound of the Towncrier's bell. It seems strange that he should happen along this morning, just as I've seated myself by this garret window to begin the story of my life, for it was the sound of his bell five years ago which first put it into my head to write it. And yet, it isn't so strange after all, when one remembers the part the dear old man has had in my past. "Uncle Darcy," as I've always called him, has been mixed up with most of its important happenings.

That day, when I first thought of writing my memoirs, was in Spring house-cleaning time, and I had been up here all morning, watching them drag out old heirlooms from the chests and cubby-holes under the rafters. Each one had a history. From one of the gable windows I could look down on the beach at the very spot where the Pilgrims first landed, and away over on the tongue of sand, which ends the Cape, I could see the place where they say the old Norse Viking, Thorwald, was buried nine hundred years ago.

From this window where I am sitting, I looked down as I do now, on the narrow street with the harbor full of sails on one side and the gardens of the Portuguese fishermen spread out along the other, like blocks in a gay patchwork quilt. I remember as I stood looking out I heard Uncle Darcy's bell far down the street. He was crying a fish auction. And suddenly the queer feeling came over me that I was living in a story-book town, and that I was a part of it all, and some day I must write that story of it and me.

I did not begin it then, being only ten years old at that time and not strong on spelling. It would have kept me continually hunting through the dictionary, or else asking Tippy how to spell things, and that would have led to her knowing all. Her curiosity about my affairs is almost unbelievable.

But there is no reason why I should not begin it now. "The Life and Letters of Georgina Huntingdon" ought to make interesting reading some of these days when I am famous, as I have a right to expect, me being the granddaughter of such a great Kentucky editor as Colonel Clayton s.h.i.+rley. To write is in my blood, although on the Huntingdon side it's only dry law books.

I am going to jot down all sorts of innermost things in this blank book which will not be in the printed volume, because I might pa.s.s away before it is published, and if any one else had to undertake it he could do it more understandingly if he knew my secret ambitions and my opinion of life and people. But I shall bracket all such private remarks with red ink, and put a warning on the fly-leaf like the one on Shakespeare's tomb: "Cursed be he who moves these bones."

He would have been dug up a thousand times, probably, if it had not been for that, so I shall protect the thoughts buried here between these red brackets in the same way.

"Cursed be he who prints this part From the inmost sanctum of my heart."

Up to this time there has been little in my life important enough to put into a record, so it is just as well that I waited. But now that this awful war is going on over in Europe, all sorts of thrilling things may begin to happen to us any minute. Father says there's no telling how soon our country may be fighting, too. He thinks it's shameful we haven't been doing our part all along. As he is a naval surgeon and has been in the service so many years, he will be among the first to be drawn into the thick of danger and adventure.

I am old enough now to understand what that will mean to us all, for I am fifteen years and eleven months, and could easily pa.s.s for much older if Barby would only let me put my hair up. Barby is the dearest mother that ever lived, and I wouldn't for worlds appear to be criticizing her, but she _is_ a bit old-fas.h.i.+oned in some of her ideas about bringing up children. I believe she and Tippy would like to keep me the rest of my mortal life, "standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet," regardless of the fact that I am all ready to wade in and fully able to do so.

I asked Tippy why n.o.body ever quotes that verse farther along in the poem, which exactly expresses my sentiments:

"Then why pause with indecision, When bright angels in thy vision Beckon thee to fields Elysian?"

It stumped her to think of an answer for a moment, and she made an excuse of putting the cat out, in order to give herself more time. But when she came back all she had found to say was that I needn't think being grown up was any field Elysian. I was eating my white bread now, and if a girl only knew all that lay ahead of her she'd let well enough alone. She'd wait for trouble to come to her instead of running to meet it.

Somehow I don't believe Tippy ever had any bright angels beckoning her, else she couldn't be so pessimistic about my growing up. I can't think of her as ever being anything but an elderly widow with her hair twisted into a peanut on the back of her head. And yet she had a lover once, and a wedding day, or she couldn't be Mrs. Maria Triplett now. But it's impossible to think of her as being gay fifteen and dancing down the stairs to meet the morning with a song. One feels that she met it with a broom, saying:

"Shall birds and bees and ants be wise While I my moments waste?

O let me with the morning rise And to my duties haste."

She's said that to me probably as much as five hundred times. I shall bracket this part about her just as soon as I can get a bottle of red ink. But how I'm going to account to her for having red ink in my possession is more than I know.

That's the worst about being the only child in a family. They're all so fond of you and so interested in your sayings and doings, that they watch every movement of your mind and body. You're like a clock in a gla.s.s case with your works open to the gaze of the older people. It's all very well during the first years for them to keep tab on your development, but the trouble is most relatives never seem to know when you're developed, and have reached the point where a little privacy is your _right_. It's maddening to have to give a reason every time you turn around.

All the lives of noted people which I have read begin with the person's birthplace and who his parents were, and his early acts which showed he gave promise of being a genius. So I'll pause right here for a brief outline of such things.

My name is Georgina Huntingdon. A name to be proud of--so Tippy has always impressed on me--and one hard to live up to. She used to show it to me on the silver christening cup that came down to me from the great-great-aunt for whom I am named. She'd take the tip of my finger in hers and solemnly trace the slim-looped letters around the rim, till I came to feel that it was a silver name, and that I must keep it s.h.i.+ning by growing up unusually smart and good. That I owed it to the cup or the great-aunt or the Pilgrim monument or _something_, to act so as to add l.u.s.tre to the name.

Tippy is a distant cousin on father's side. She has lived with us ever since Barby brought me up here from Kentucky, where I was born. Father, being a naval surgeon, was off in foreign ports most of the time, and Barby, being such a young and inexperienced mother, needed her companions.h.i.+p. Barby is lots younger than father. It was hard for her at first, coming away with just me, from that jolly big family down South who adored her, to this old Cape Cod homestead that had been boarded up so long.

Lonely and gray, it stands at the end of town, up by the breakwater, facing the very spot on the beach where the Pilgrims landed. One of them was an ancestor of mine, so the big monument overlooking the harbor and the tip of the Cape was put up partly in his honor.

Really, several pages might well be devoted to my ancestors, for one was a minute-man whose name is in the history I studied at school. His powder-horn hangs over the dining-room mantel, and Tippy used to shame me with it when I was afraid of rats or the dark cellarway. If I were asked to name three things which have influenced me most in arousing my ambition to overcome my faults and to do something big and really worth while in the world, I'd name my christening cup, that Pilgrim monument and the old powder-horn.

With such a heritage it is unthinkable that I should settle down to an ordinary career. Something inside of me tells me that I am destined to make my name an honored household word in many climes. I've considered doing this in several ways.

It might be well to mention here that my earliest pa.s.sion was for the stage. That will explain why quotations came so trippingly from my tongue at times. I learned yards and yards of poems and Shakespeare's plays for declamation, and I'm always given one of the leading parts in the amateur theatricals at the High School or the Town Hall. My looks may have something to do with that, however. As it might seem conceited for me to describe myself as my mirror shows me, I'll just paste some newspaper clippings on this page describing different plays I've been in. Several of them speak of my dark eyes and glowing complexion, also my "wealth of nut-brown curls," and my graceful dancing.

But in my Soph.o.m.ore year at High School I began to feel that literature might be my forte, even more than acting. R. B. (which initials will stand for "red brackets" until I get the ink). The reason for that feeling is that my themes in English were always marked so high that the cla.s.s nicknamed me "Abou ben Ahdem."

Last summer I began a novel called "Divided," which the girls were crazy about. It was suggested by Jean Ingelow's poem by that name and is awfully sad. Really, it kept me so depressed that I found I wasn't half enjoying my vacation. I simply lived the heroine's part myself.

Now that I am a Senior, it seems to me that Journalism offers a greater field than fiction. We had a debate last term which convinced me of it.

George Woodson had the affirmative, and I didn't mind being beaten because he used grandfather for one of his arguments, and said so many nice things about his editorials being epoch-making and his inspired phrases moulding public opinion, and being caught up as slogans by all parties, leading on to victory. He spoke, too, of them being quoted not only by _Punch_ and the London _Times_, but by papers in France and Australia.

R. B. (I am fully determined either to write the leading novel of the century, or to own and edit a newspaper which shall be a world-power.)

The seash.o.r.e was my first schoolroom. Barby taught me to write in the sand and to spell words with sh.e.l.ls and pebbles. I learned Arithmetic by adding and subtracting such things as the sails in the harbor and the gulls feeding at ebb-tide. On stormy days when we were home-bound, I counted the times the fog-bell tolled, or in the early dark counted how often Wood End lighthouse blinked its red eye at me.

But I must get on with my story. If I am to have room in this book for all the big happenings of life, which I feel sure lie ahead of me, I cannot devote too much s.p.a.ce to early memories, no matter how cherished.

Probably in the final revision all the scenes I have lived through will be crowded into one act or chapter. I may start it in this fas.h.i.+on:

_Time_

First fifteen years of life just ended.

_Place_

An ancient fis.h.i.+ng town between the sand-dunes and the sea, where artists flock every summer to paint, its chief attraction for them seeming to be its old streets and wharves, the Cape Cod people whom they call "quaint" and the Portuguese fisher-folk.

_Princ.i.p.al characters besides myself and family, already described._

DANIEL DARCY

The old Towncrier, whom I call "Uncle Darcy" and love as dearly as if he were really kin to me.