Georgina's Service Stars
Page 23
CHAPTER XXII
"THE MAID WHO BINDS HER WARRIOR'S SASH"
I COULDN'T tell Tippy. The way we did I just handed her Barby's nightletter without a word and Richard gave her his. She read them with nomore change of expression than if they'd been weather reports. Then shesaid that she'd known it all along. A wooden Indian couldn't have beenless demonstrative, but later I found that nothing could have pleasedher more.
Richard says she can't help being born a Plymouth Rock. She's like anice-bound brook that can't show the depth and force underlying thesurface coldness. But her tenderness leaked out for us both afterwards,in all sorts of ways, and I began to understand her for the first timein my life.
She watched me take down the service flag in the window and replace itwith one bearing two stars, and I'm sure she read my thoughts. She'salways had an uncanny way of doing that. I was thinking how much harderit was to put up that second star than the first one, because I hadn'treally given Father to the service. He was in it before I was born. Butthe second star was the symbol of a real sacrifice that I was laying onthe altar of my country. There was no laughing this time, or jokingsuggestion to make a ceremony of it. I felt to the bottom of my heartwhat I was doing, and did it in reverent silence.
Soon after she followed me to my room and laid a couple of books on thetable, open at the places marked for me to read. I smiled after she wentout when I saw that one was an antiquated volume of poems. All my lifeshe has tried to teach me morals and manners by the aid of such verse as"The boy stood on the burning deck" and "Fie! What a naughty child topout." So I picked up the books wondering what lesson she thought Ineeded now. The poem she marked was "The Maid who binds her Warrior'ssash." As I read I understood. Dear old Tippy! It was _courage_ shewould teach me.
Richard was right. She couldn't say these things to me, so she broughtme the words of another to help me, knowing the lesson would soon besorely needed. The other book was a new one she had just drawn from thelibrary, the adventures of a young gunner in the Navy. He had won theCroix de Guerre for distinguished service and escaped the horrors of aGerman prison camp, so he knew what he was talking about when he wrotethe words she left for me to read.
"When you say goodbye to your son or your husband or your sweetheart,take it from me that what he will like to remember the best of all isyour face _with a smile on it_. It will be hard work; you will feel morelike crying and so will he, maybe. That smile is your bit. I will back asmile against the weeps in a race to Berlin any time. So I am tellingyou, and I can't make it strong enough--_send him away with a smile_."
This is the verse:
"The maid, who binds her warrior's sash With smile, which well the pain dissembles, The while, beneath the drooping lash, One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles, Though heaven alone record the tear And fame shall never know her story, Her heart has shed a drop as dear As ever dewed the field of glory."
I didn't realize then how hard it was going to be to live up to thosequotations, but Tippy, with so much of her life behind her full of itshard lessons--Tippy knew and took this mute way of warning me.
The storm did us a good turn in more ways than unearthing our buriedtreasure. It brought such cold weather in its wake that when we came inglowing from a tramp along shore just before supper, we found a jollybig fire waiting for us in the living-room. Such a one, Richard said, aswould warm him many a time, thinking of it, nights when he was miles upin the air, numb as the North Pole.
We had such a long cosy evening afterward, there in the firelight.
"We'll have it just like this in our own little home when I get back,"Richard kept saying. We planned the dearest house. We decided to makehis Cousin James sell us his bungalow studio, not only because the GreenStairs running up the cliff to it is the place where we first saw eachother when we were infants, but because it's such an artistic place, andhas such a wonderful view of the sea. It's a place far too delightful tobe wasted on a single person, even such a nice old bachelor as hisCousin James.
We even planned what we'd have for our first breakfast when we startedto housekeeping, with Aunt Georgina's coffee urn shining at one end ofthe table and an old beaten-silver chop dish, that is one of Richard'smemories of their studio days in Paris, at the other.
"If I could only see that picture in reality before I go!" Richardexclaimed--"if I could only sit down at that table once with you acrossfrom me, and know that it was my home and my little wife----"
Then he confessed that he wanted to take back everything he'd said aboutWatson and war weddings. He believed in 'em now and _couldn't_ I,_wouldn't_ I----? But without waiting to finish the question he hurriedon to answer it himself. No, he mustn't ask it. He wouldn't. It wouldn'tbe fair to me, young as I was, with Barby gone, nor to her. But if hecould only feel that I really belonged to him----
I told him I didn't see how rushing through a whirlwind ceremony as Babedid could make us feel we belonged to each other any more than wealready did, and I _couldn't_ do it without Barby, but we could say thebetrothal part to each other, and that would make him feel that we werealmost married. So we hunted it up in the prayer book and each repeatedthe part that says, "I take thee ... from this day forward ... to loveand to cherish ... and thereto I plight thee my troth."
But after we said it I couldn't see that it made the thought of partingany easier. Really it seemed even harder after we'd solemnly promisedourselves to each other that way.
After a while he said there were several things he wanted to speak ofbefore he went away. One was that his Cousin James has all hisbelongings in charge. Among them is a beautiful old Venetian jewelcasket with his mother's rings and necklaces and things in it. HisCousin James understands that everything in it is to be mine and hehoped that I'd wear them sometimes--even if--in any event---- He didn'tgo on to say even if _what_, but the unfinished sentence filled me withits unspoken dread, more than if he'd really said it.
After a long silence he said lightly that there was some satisfaction inthe thought that I'd always be comfortably provided for no matter whathappened, and that I could have the bungalow and the motor-boat and allthe other things we'd planned. He'd made his will the day before and hisCousin James had promised to see it was carried out in every detail.
At the thought of what his speech implied and the mere idea of me havingor doing any of those lovely things without _him_, I couldn't stand itany longer. I simply hid my face in the sofa cushions and let the dykeswash out to sea. It must have broken him up somewhat himself, to seethe way I took it, for his voice was shaky when he tried to comfort me.But it was so dear and tender, just like Uncle Darcy's that time he keptsaying, "There's naught to fear lass, Dan'l's holding you." Every wordonly made me cry that much harder.
Presently he cleared his throat and asked if I supposed there was anypowder left in the old powder horn over the mantel, and did I rememberthe time we fed some to Captain Kidd to make him game. He'd confess now,after all these years, he ate some himself that day when I wasn'tlooking, but its effect was about worn off by this time, and if I kepton that way much longer he'd have to have another nip at that old hornor go to pieces himself.
I sat up then and laughed, despite the big, gulpy sobs that nearlychoked me. For I had to tell him that I'd eaten some of that powdermyself that same time. I licked it out of the palm of my hand when hisback was turned. And if the powder had lost its effect on me the hornitself hadn't. The mere mention of it made me stiffen. Hereafter I'd bejust as brave as that old Revolutionary grandmother of mine who snatchedit from the wall with the musket, and hustled her Minute Man off withthe one grim word, "Hurry!" I promised him that hereafter he shouldn'tsee me shed another drop. And he didn't.
Mr. Milford came up for me early next morning to take me down to thestation to see Richard off. Maybe it was because I had had that spell ofwild weeps the night before, that I felt like the-morning-after-a-storm,all cleared up and shiney. At any rate I sent him off laughing. Helooked so fit and
so fine, starting off on his great adventure like someknight of old, that I told him I pined to go along; that under thecircumstances I'd gladly change places with him. I'd much rather beRichard Moreland than G. Huntingdon.
But he said right before his Cousin James that he'd much rather I'd be_Mrs._ Richard Moreland. It was my blushing so furiously at hearing thatname applied to me for the first time which made him laugh. Then therewas only time to be caught up in a good-bye embrace before the trainpulled out. He swung himself up on the rear platform just as it started.He did look so handsome and so dear and I was so proud of him in hiskhaki that there was nothing forced in the last smile I gave him. It wasthe real spangled-bannery kind; such as shines in your eyes when theband plays martial music and the troops march by. Your heart beatsawfully fast and you hold your breath, but you have the feeling that inyour soul you are one of the color bearers yourself. You are keepingstep with your head held high.
Afterwards when Mr. Milford helped me into the machine he said,"Georgina, you're a trump. You wear your service stars in your eyes."
When I looked at him questioningly, wondering what he meant, he said,"Oh, I know they're brown, not blue, but you showed my boy the star of'true blue' courage in them, and I was horribly afraid for a few minutesthere that maybe you wouldn't."
He talked about service flags all the way home, for we kept comingacross them in the windows in every street. Over two hundred men havegone out from this little fishing town. When I told him how I felt thatway, about "keeping step," he said he wished I could make some otherpeople he knew feel the same way.
"There's poor Mrs. Carver, for instance, crying her eyes out overTitcomb and Sammy III, and talking as if she's the only mother in theworld who's sacrificing anything. If you could suggest that those boyswould be a bit prouder of her if she could keep step with the rest ofthe mothers, make her sacrifice with her head up, it would do her aworld of good. She mustn't fly service stars in her window unless shecan back them on the inside with the same true blue courage they standfor on the outside--the kind that sends the men to the front."