Georgina's Service Stars Part 15

She'd be giving something to the cause herself, a continuing sacrifice, for it would keep on all the rest of her life."

"But suppose he wasn't killed outright. Suppose he'd come back to her crippled or blinded or frightfully disfigured. He oughtn't to want to tie her for life to just a part of a man."

Then I took up for Babe so emphatically that I dropped the pins. "Then she'd be eyes to him and feet to him and hands to him--and everything else. And she'd _glory_ in it. _I_ would if I loved a man as Babe does Watson Tucker, though I don't see what she sees in him to care for."

"I believe you would," he answered slowly. Then after a long pause he added, "It certainly must make a difference to a man over there to know he's got somebody back home, caring for him like _that_!"

He left in a few moments, and I had to work harder than ever for I had slowed up a bit while we talked. The wedding was at four. I am sure I was the happiest one in the crowd, for not only was the dress done in time, it was p.r.o.nounced a real "creation." Babe never looked so well in her life. Judith had worked some sort of miracle on her hair, and in that simple fluff of white tulle she was almost pretty.

Never did a Maid of Honor have less time for her own arraying. I hurriedly slipped into the same dress of rose-color and white that I wore the night of Richard's arrival, and put on the little pearl necklace that had been Barby's. When he came for me in his Cousin James'

machine he brought a big armful of roses for me to carry. It made me awfully happy to have him say, "Many happy returns of the day" when he gave them to me, even when he laughingly confessed that he hadn't remembered the date himself. It was Judith who reminded them that the wedding day and my birthday were the same. Even so, it was nice to have the event marked by his lovely roses.

Despite all Judith's precautions we had a wild scramble to get all the little Dorseys corralled for a final dress review. Each one of them came up with some important article missing, which had to be hunted for. Then a sudden calm descended. We found ourselves at the door of the Church of the Pilgrims. We were going slowly, very slowly up the aisle to the solemn organ music, conscious of a white blur of faces on each side. The church was packed.

There had been no time for a rehearsal, but, for once, luck was with the Nolan-Dorseys. n.o.body stumbled, n.o.body dropped anything, n.o.body responded in the wrong place. As Jim remarked afterward, "We did real well for a bunch of amateurs. We flocked all right though not even birds of a feather; one man in naval uniform, one in aviator's, and one in civilian's."

Jim gave the bride away. I was strung up to such a nervous tension for fear it wouldn't go off all right that I never took a full breath till Jim was through his part, the ring on Babe's finger and her bouquet safely back in her hands again. It was only at the very last when the old minister who was perfectly devoted to Babe began to falter through a prayer, that I realized I hadn't really heard the ceremony. It had gone in one ear and out the other, leaving no impression of its sacred meaning.

But if I missed the impressiveness of it Babe and Watson did not. He was as pale as a ghost, and her hands trembled so they could hardly hold her flowers. It was a solemn time for them. Then it grew solemn for me, as a sentence of the last prayer caught my attention.

"_And take now, into Thy especial care and keeping, those who go forth from this altar to defend us, both upon the high seas and in the boundless battle plains of the air._"

He was praying for Richard too. I glanced across at him and found that he was looking intently at me. I had never seen such an expression in his eyes before--a sort of goodbye, as if he were looking at me for the last time, and was sorry. It was the dearest look. Our eyes met gravely for an instant, then just the shadow of a smile crept into his, and mine dropped. I couldn't understand why that little half-smile should make me so sort of happy and confused. Then the "Amen!" sounded and the organ pealed out the wedding march, and with my hand on his arm we followed the bridal couple down the aisle, and out through the door to the automobile, waiting to take them to Chatham.

Once out of the door Babe wasn't a bit dignified. In her hurry to get away before the crowd could follow and hold a curbstone reception, she chased down the long board walk leading from the church to the street so fast that Watson could hardly keep up. They didn't pretend to keep step.

She had a long coat and a hat waiting for her in the machine. She had kissed her family all around before leaving the house, so she just piled in as she was, and began pulling off her veil while the chauffeur cranked up.

"I'll change at Chatham," she called back to us.

"No, Mrs. Tucker," Richard remarked as the machine dashed off, "you'll never change. You'll always be just like that."

"The whole affair has been more like a whirlwind than a wedding," said Judith as she joined us. "I'm limp."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIX

THE VIGIL IN THE SWING

WHEN I look back on that hot July day it seems a week long; so much was crowded into it. After the ceremony we took Tippy up home in the machine with the children, and then went for a drive. I hadn't realized how tired I was till I sank back into the comfortable seat beside Richard.

Nothing could have rested me more than that rapid spin toward Wellfleet with the salt breeze in my face. As we started out of town Richard glanced at his watch.

"Only sixty-three hours more for this old burg," he announced. "I've got it figured down to a fine point now. Even to the minutes."

"So anxious to get away?" I asked.

"Oh, it isn't that. I'm keen enough to get busy over there, but----" He did not finish but presently nodded toward the water where a great fleet of fis.h.i.+ng boats was putting into port. They filled the harbor with a flas.h.i.+ng of sails in the late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, like a flock of white-winged birds. "I'm wondering how long it will be before I see _that_ again."

I answered with a line from "Kathleen Mavourneen," humming it airily: "It may be for years and it may be forever."

"Don't you care?" he demanded almost crossly, with his eyes intent on the triple curve just ahead.

"Of course I care," I answered. "If you were a truly own brother I couldn't feel any worse about your going off into all that danger, and I couldn't be any prouder of you. And I think that under the circ.u.mstances we might be allowed to put another star on our service flag, one for you as well as for Father. You belong to us more than anyone else now."

"_Will_ you do that?" he asked quickly, and with such eagerness that I saw he was both touched and pleased. "It makes a tremendous difference to a fellow to feel that he's got some sort of family ties--that he isn't just floating around in s.p.a.ce like a stray balloon. It's a mighty lonesome feeling to think that there's n.o.body left to miss you or care what becomes of you."

"Oh, we'll care all right," I promised him. "We'll be a really truly family to you, and we'll miss you and write to you and _knit_ for you."

He was in the midst of the triple curve now, with a machine honking somewhere ahead, but he turned to flash a pleased smile at me and we came very near to a collision. He had to veer to one side so suddenly that we were nearly thrown out. For two years he has been so eager to go overseas that I hadn't an idea he would have any homesick qualms when the time came, but to find that he was hanging on to each hour as something precious made me twice as sorry to see him go as I would have been otherwise.

As we came back into town he glanced at his watch again but said nothing until I leaned over to look too.

"How many hours now?" I asked. "Only sixty-one and a half," he answered, "and they'll whiz by like a streak of lightning." From then on I began counting them too.

There was a birthday letter from Barby waiting for me when I got home, such a dear one that I took it off to my room to read by myself. The package she mentioned sending was evidently delayed. As I sat in front of my mirror, brus.h.i.+ng my hair before going down to supper, I thought what a very, very different birthday this was from the one we had planned for my eighteenth anniversary. Still it had been a happy day. I felt repaid for my wild rush every time I recalled Babe's face when she saw herself for the first time in her wedding gown. Her delight was pathetic, and her grat.i.tude will be something to remember always, that and the fact that I was a bridesmaid for the first time--and a Maid of Honor at that.

Suddenly I came to myself with a start to find myself with my hair down over my shoulders and my brush held in mid air, while I gazed at something in the depths of the mirror. Something that wasn't there. The altar and the bridal party before it, and the Best Man looking across at me with that grave, wistful expression that was like a leave-taking. And then his smile as our eyes met. It seems strange that just recalling a little thing like that should make me glowingly happy, yet in some unaccountable way it did.

Judith and George Woodson came up after supper. I was almost sorry they did, for Richard had asked me to play the "Reverie" that he always asks Barby for. He was stretched out on the leather couch with his hands clasped under his head, looking so comfortable and contented it seemed a pity to disturb him. He'll think of that old couch and the times he's lain on it listening to Barby play, many a time when he's off there in range of the enemy's guns.

They stayed till after ten o'clock, talking aeroplanes mostly, for George got Richard started to describing nose dives and spirals and all the wonderful somersault stunts they do above the clouds. He knows so much about machines, having helped build them, that he could sketch the different parts of them while he was talking, and he knows the record of all the famous pilots, just as a baseball fan knows all about the popular players. While he was up in Canada he met two of the most daring aces who ever flew, one from the French Escadrille, and one an Englishman of the Royal Flying Corps. It was his acquaintance with the Englishman which led to Richard's being a.s.signed to the Royal Naval Air Service. He's to learn the British methods of handling sea-planes, and he's hoping with all his heart that he won't be brought home as an instructor when he has learned it. He wants to stay right there patrolling the Channel and making daring raids now and then over the enemy's lines.

It must have been torture for George to listen to his enthusiastic description of duels above the clouds and how it feels to whiz through s.p.a.ce at a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, because it was the dream of his life to get into that branch of the service. His disappointment makes him awfully bitter. Still he persisted in talking about it, because he's so interested he can't keep off the subject. It's a thousand times more thrilling than any of the old tales of knight errantry, and I'm glad George kept on asking questions. Otherwise I'd never have found out what an amazing lot Richard knows that I never even suspected.

During the last few minutes of their visit I heard Tippy out in the hall, answering the telephone. She came in just as they were all leaving, to tell us it was a message from Belle. Aunt Elspeth was sinking rapidly. The end was very near now. Uncle Darcy had asked for Barby, forgetting she was away, and Belle thought it would be a comfort to him to feel that some of the family were in the house, keeping the vigil with him.

Tippy had intended to go down herself as soon as the children were asleep, but little Judson kept waking up and crying at finding himself in a strange bed. He seemed a bit feverish and she was afraid to leave him. So Richard and I went. When Judith and George left we walked with them part of the way.

I've seen many a moonlight night on the harbor before, when the water was turned to a glory of rippling silver, but never have I seen it such a sea of splendor as it was that night we strolled along beside it. It was entrancingly beautiful--that luminous path through the water, and the boats lifting up their white sails in the s.h.i.+ning silence were like pearl-white moths spreading motionless wings.

None of us felt like talking, the beauty was so unearthly, so we went along with scarcely a word, until we reached the business part of the town. There the buildings on the beach side of the street hid the view of the water. Both picture-shows were just out, and the gay summer crowds surging up and down the narrow board walk and overflowing into the middle of the street were as noisy as a flock of jaybirds. George and Judith left us at the drug-store corner, going in for ice-cream soda.

When we turned into Fishburn Court, there on the edge of the dunes, we seemed entering a different world. It was so still, shut in by the high warehouses between it and town. We opened the gate noiselessly and went up the path past the old wooden swing. The full moon s.h.i.+ning high overhead made the little doorway almost as bright as day, except for the circle of shadow under the apple tree. Even there the light filtered through in patches. All the doors and windows stood open. A candle flickered on the high black mantel in the sitting-room. In the bedroom beyond the lamp on the bureau was turned low.

Belle met us at the door, motioning us toward the bedroom. Coming in from the white radiance outside the light seemed dim at first, but it was enough to show the big four-posted bed with Aunt Elspeth lying motionless on it. Such a frail little body she was, but her delicate, flower-like sort of beauty had lasted even into her silver-haired old age. She did not seem to be breathing, but Uncle Darcy, sitting beside her holding her hand, was leaning over talking to her as if she could still hear. Just bits of sentences, but with a cadence of such infinite tenderness in the broken words that it hurt one to hear them.

"Dan'l's right here, la.s.s.... He won't leave you.... No, no, my dear."

I drew back, but Belle's motioning hand insisted. "Just let him see that you're here to keep watch with him," she whispered. "It'll be a comfort to him."

So we went in. When I laid my hand on his shoulder he looked up with a dazed expression till he saw who it was and who was with me. Then he smiled at us both, and after that one welcoming glance turned back to the bed.

We went back to the sitting room and stood there a moment, uncertainly.

Then Richard opened the screen door, beckoning me to follow. He led the way to the swing, and we stepped in and sat down, facing each other. It stood so close to the cottage that to sit there opposite the open window was almost like being in the room. The glow from the lamp streamed out across the gra.s.s towards us, dimly yellow. We could see every movement, hear every rustle. Belle and the nurse tiptoed back and forth. Danny went out and came in again. Then they settled back into the shadowy corners.