Georgina's Service Stars Part 7

She said it in a way I can never forget. It brought back the old feeling Tippy used to give me when she traced my name on my silver christening cup, the feeling that it was up to me to keep it s.h.i.+ning. I've thought about it quite a lot since, but I am all mixed up as to which is the best way to do it. Maybe after all it would be more star-like of me to renounce my dream of becoming a famous author, and go in for duty alone, like Miss Crewes.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

ONE might think, seeing that I am keeping two diaries now, that I am leading a double life. But such is not the case. When it was decided that I was to go to Was.h.i.+ngton this year, to the same school that Barby attended when she was my age, she suggested that I keep a journal, as she did while here. She called hers "Chronicles of Harrington Hall." So I am calling mine "The Second Book of Chronicles." Next vacation we are to read them together.

Naturally I want to make mine as interesting as possible, so I've spent considerable time describing life here at school as I see it, and making character sketches of the different girls, teachers, etc. It would have been more satisfactory if I could have put all that in my Memoirs, thus making one continuous story, but it's too great a task to write it all out twice. So I have put a footnote in my Memoirs for the benefit of whoever my biographer may be, saying, "For what happened at Harrington Hall, see my Book of Chronicles."

All during the first term I did not make a single entry in this old blank book, now open before me. It lay out of sight and out of mind in the back of my desk. But this morning I came across it while looking for something, and tonight I have just finished reading it from start to finish. I realize I have left quite a gap in the story by failing to record several things which happened after Esther went home.

As I sit and re-read these last pages, how far away I seem now from that unhappy August afternoon when I came home from the Gilfreds', feeling that I could never take anyone on trust again. It was days before I got over the misery of that experience, and I really believe it was on account of the way I went moping around the house that Barby decided to send me away to school. Father had been urging it for some time, but she wanted to keep me at home with her one more year.

It wasn't the excitement of getting ready to go away and trying on all my new clothes that restored me to my former cheerfulness, although Barby thinks so. It was just two little words that Richard said the last day he was with us, before going back to school. I wouldn't have believed that a mere exclamation could have brought about such an amazing change in my feelings, and I still wonder how it did. Next year I'm going to study psychology just to find out about such queer happenings in our brains.

We were out in the boat, he and Captain Kidd and I, taking a farewell row. He hadn't mentioned Esther's name since the day she left, but Judith told me he never went back to the house after he found out the double game she had been playing. Remembering how infatuated he'd been I knew he must have felt almost as broken up as Babe says John Wynne was.

I kept hoping he'd bring up the subject. I thought it would make it easier for him if he would confide in one who had known the same adoration and disappointment. Besides I brooded over it all the time. It was all I thought about.

So on the way back I sat in pensive silence, trailing my hand languidly over the side of the boat through the water. Richard talked now and then, but of trivial things that could not possibly interest one communing with a secret sorrow, so I said nothing in reply. When we were almost at the pier he rested on the oars and let the boat drift, while we sat and listened to the waves tumbling up against the breakwater.

As we paused thus in the gathering dusk, a verse came to me that seemed a fitting expression of the sad twilight time as well as both my mood and his. For his face looked sad as he sat there gazing out to sea, sad and almost stern. So I repeated it softly and so feelingly that the tears sprang to my eyes, and there was a little catch in my voice at the last line:

"Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea, But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me."

I had expected some sort of sympathetic response, at least an eloquent silence, for he knew I meant Esther, and it was like a dash of cold water to hear him exclaim in an exasperated sort of way, "_Oh rats!_"

Captain Kidd took the exclamation to himself, and barked till he nearly fell out of the boat. And Richard laughed and rolled him over on the seat and asked him what he meant by making such a fuss about nothing.

That was no way for a good sport to do. Then he began pulling for the landing with all his might.

Considering that I had just bared to him one of the most sacred emotions of my heart, his answer seemed as unfeeling as it was rude and inappropriate, something I could never forgive nor forget. He couldn't help seeing that I was hurt and indignant, for I ran up the beach ahead of him and only answered in monosyllables when he called after me, pretending nothing had happened.

But later when I was upstairs brus.h.i.+ng my hair, I heard him down in the dining-room, teasing Tippy and telling her what he wanted for his farewell supper, in that jolly, audacious way of his that makes a joke of everything. I knew perfectly well that he felt blue about going back to school and that he was all broken up over the affair with Esther, but he was too good a sport to show it.

And _that's_ what he meant by saying "Oh rats," in such an exasperated way! He had expected me to measure up to his idea of a good sport and I hadn't done it! My brooding over "a day that is dead" till it spoiled our enjoyment of the present one, seemed silly and sentimental to him.

As he told the dog, "that was no way to do." From away back in our pirate-playing days the thought that Richard expected a thing of me, always spurred me on to do it, from walking the ridgepole to swinging down the well rope. He expected me to be as game and cheerful a chum as he is, and here I had spoiled our last boat-ride together by relapsing into that moody silence.

It was as if those two words held a mirror before my eyes, in which I saw myself as I looked to him. "But I'll show him I _can_ be game," I declared between my teeth, and as soon as I had tied the ribbon on my hair I ran downstairs, determined to make that last evening the jolliest one we had ever had.

I am so thankful that we did have such a gay time, for now that things can never be the same again, he will have it to look back on and remember happily. He went away next morning, but I did not leave until nearly two weeks later. It was the day before I started to Was.h.i.+ngton that I heard the news which changed things.

I was down in the post-office, sending a money order, when Mr. Bart, the famous portrait painter, came in. Some other artist-looking man followed him in, and I heard him say as he caught up with him:

"Bart, have you heard the news about Moreland? He's reported killed in action. No particulars yet, but, it goes without saying that when he went, he went bravely."

Mr. Bart started as if he had been hit, and said something I didn't quite catch about dear old d.i.c.k, the most lovable man he ever knew. All the time the clerk was filling my money-order blank they stood there at the same window, talking about him and the winters they had spent together in Paris, their studios all in the same building, and how they'd never want to go back there now with so many of the old crowd gone. They said all sorts of nice things about Mr. Moreland. But not till one of them asked, "Where's the boy now?" did I realize the awfulness of what I had just heard. It was _Richard's_ father they were talking about, _and he was dead_.

But I couldn't really believe that it was true until I got home and found Barby at the telephone. Mr. Milford had just called her up to tell her about it. And she was saying yes, she thought he ought to go to Richard at once by all means. He would feel so utterly desolate and alone in the world, for his father had been everything to him. Now that his Aunt Letty was dead he had no relatives left except Mr. Milford.

She'd go herself if she thought she could be any comfort to the dear boy.

Mr. Milford said he'd catch the _Dorothy Bradford_ within an hour, and he'd convey her messages. And that's the last I heard for ever so long.

I wanted to write to Richard, but I just couldn't. There wasn't any way of telling him how sorry I was. But that night I scribbled a postscript at the end of Barby's letter to him, and signed it, "Your loving sister, Georgina." I wanted him to feel that he still had somebody who thought of him as their really own, and as belonging to the family.

I had been here at school over two weeks before any news came about him.

Then Barby wrote that Mr. Milford was back, and had told her that they had a trying interview. Richard was more determined than ever to get into the war. He kept saying, "I've _got_ to go, Cousin James. There's a double reason now, don't you see, with _Dad_ to be avenged? I'm not asking you to advance any of my money. All I want is your consent as my guardian. They won't let me in without that."

Richard can't get the money his Aunt Letty left him till he is twenty-one. It's in trust. But he'll have a lot then, and there ought to be considerable when his father's affairs are settled. But because Mr.

Moreland had said that Richard was too young to go now and must keep on in school, Mr. Milford feels it is his duty to be firm and carry out his cousin's wishes. But he told Barby he came away feeling that with the boy in that frantic frame of mind, school would do him no more good than it would a young lion. A caged and wounded one at that.

The next news of him was that he had disappeared from the school and his Cousin James couldn't find a trace of him. About that time the expressman left a big flat box for Barby with a note inside that said, "Take care of this for me, please. If I shouldn't come back I'd like for you and Georgina to have it. Dad thought it was the best thing he ever did."

In the box was the portrait that Mr. Moreland painted of Richard the first summer he came to Provincetown, called, "The thoughts of Youth are long, long thoughts." It has been given first place in every art exhibition in which it has been hung, and, besides being a wonderful piece of painting, is the darlingest portrait of Richard as he was at the age of ten that one could imagine.

It was not until after Thanksgiving that I heard directly from him myself. Then I had a note from him, written up in Canada. He said, "I know you won't give me away, Georgina, even to Barby. She might feel it was her duty to tell Cousin James where I am. I couldn't enlist, even up here without his consent, but I've found a way that I can do my bit and make every lick count. I'm at the front, _by proxy_, and _more_. So I am satisfied. I haven't much time to write but that's no reason I wouldn't appreciate all the home news available. If you have any on hand just pa.s.s it along to yours truly who will be duly grateful."

I was wild to know what he was doing, and exactly what he meant by being at the front "by proxy and more." But, although I wrote regularly after that and underscored the question each time, he never paid any attention to that part of my letters. I could see he was purposely ignoring it. I would have ignored his questions, just to get even, if they hadn't showed so plainly how hungry he was for news of us all. Remembering that he is all alone in the world now, since he and his Cousin James are at outs, and that I am the only one of his home folks who knows his whereabouts, I make my letters as entertaining as possible.

Sometimes Babe Nolan, who is at this school, rooming just across the hall, hands over her brother Jim's letters. The spelling is awful and his grammar a disgrace, but he certainly has a nose for news. He tells about everybody in town from the Selectmen to the Portuguese fishermen.

Babe never wants the letters back, so I send them on to Richard, also the Provincetown _Advocate_, which Tippy mails me every week as soon as she is done reading it.

Hardly had I written the above when my roommate, Lillian Locke, came in.

Being a Congressman's daughter, she is allowed to spend a lot of her spare time with her family, who are living at a hotel. She had been out all afternoon with them, consequently had not received her pile of letters which came in the last mail. The elevator boy gave them to her as she came up. One of mine had been put in with hers by mistake. That is why I didn't get it earlier. I was surprised to see that it was from Barby, because I had one from her only this morning. Late as it is I'll have to sit up and add a few more lines to this record, for it's all about Richard and fits right in here.

Mr. Milford finally got track of him in some way and followed him to Canada. He has just returned. He found Richard working in what had once been an automobile factory. It is now turning out aeroplanes for the Canadian government.

One of the first persons Richard met when he reached the town was a workman in this factory who was eager to go to the front, but couldn't for two reasons. He was badly needed in the factory, and he had a family dependent on his wages, two little children and a half-blind mother. His wife is dead. When Richard found he couldn't enlist, big and strong as he is, without swearing falsely as to his age, he went to the man and offered to take his place both in the factory and as a breadwinner for his family.

It was the foreman who told Mr. Milford about it. He said there was no resisting a boy like him. He was in such dead earnest and such a likable sort of a lad. He walked into everybody's good graces from the start.

They took him on trial and he went to work as if every blow was aimed at a Hun. When the man saw that he actually meant business and wanted it put down in black and white that he would look after the family left behind, the matter was arranged in short order.

And now Richard feels that not only is there a man on the firing line who wouldn't be there but for him, but every day as he fas.h.i.+ons some part of the aircraft, he is doing a man's work in helping to win the war. The foreman said, "He's the kind that won't be satisfied till he knows everything about airs.h.i.+ps there is to know," and Mr. Milford said he didn't feel that he was justified in opposing him any longer. A job like the one he had undertaken would do him more good than all the colleges in the country.

Down at the bottom of the letter Barby said, "I have written all this to Miss Crewes, that she may have another Sir Gareth to add to her list of knightly souls who do their deed and ask no guerdon."

CHAPTER X

AT HARRINGTON HALL

THE other day Miss Everett, the English teacher, took a book away from Jessica Archibald. She said it wasn't suitable for a girl in her teens.

It was too sentimental and romantic. Jess didn't mind it very much, for she is one of the wors.h.i.+ppers at Miss Everett's shrine. When a bunch of girls are so devoted to a person that they'll go to her room and take the hairs out of her comb to put in their lockets or their memory books, that is the limit. I don't see how any novel ever written could beat that for being sentimental.