CHAPTER XI
THE MIDSHIPMAN HOP
IT is all in my Book of Chronicles, written out for Barby to read, howwe motored down to Annapolis in the fresh April sunshine, and what wewore and what we did. But it is only in this "inmost sanctum" of thesepages that "my tongue can utter the thoughts that arose in me."
Mrs. Waldon was with us, as enthusiastic as a girl over going back toher old home, and she kept us amused most of the way with herreminiscences of different midshipmen, especially the two who marriedher daughters. But in between times my thoughts kept wandering forwarduneasily to the hop, in spite of the reassuring knowledge of a lovelynew coral-pink party dress, stowed away in the suitcase under my feet,and I couldn't help feeling a bit nervous over the coming event.
It would be the first dance I had ever gone to among strangers, and Ikept thinking, "Suppose I'd be a wall-flower!" Then, too, I was atrifle agitated over the prospect of seeing Mr. Tucker again, the mostcongenial man I had ever met. Naturally I wanted to meet him again, butI shrank from doing so, certain that the sight of me would recall to hismind that humiliating affair of the borrowed slippers and my oldMary-Jane pumps. I was wild to know if he still remembered me, or if hehad forgotten "both the incident and the little girl" as Barby predictedhe would. Besides I wanted him to see how mature I had grown sincethen--how boarding school broadened and developed my views of life.
I made up several little opening speeches on the way down, but couldn'tdecide which to use. Whether to assume a rather indifferent air with atinge of hauteur, or to be frankly and girlishly glad to see him, andignore the past.
I was still debating the question in my mind when we drove into "littleold Crabtown" as Mrs. Waldon calls Annapolis. She asked the chauffeur todrive by the house where she used to live, so she could point out theplace where the midshipmen used to swarm in for their favorite "eats"whenever they could get away from the Academy, and where she and hergirls and their guests had those funny "guinea-hen teas" that she'd beentelling us about.
While we were drawn up by the curb in front of the house, a big, blondboy in midshipman uniform, swinging past at a lively gait, stopped andsaluted, the surprise on his face spreading into a vast grin as herecognized Mrs. Waldon. The next instant he was on the running board,shaking hands with her, and they began talking a dialect none of uscould understand, about "dragging" and "queens" and "Jimmy-legs." Theregular Midshipman "lingo" she explained afterward when she hadintroduced him to us in ordinary English. He was Mac Gordon, a sort of acousin of hers from out West.
The conversation that we couldn't understand was nothing but that shewas asking him if he intended taking a girl to the dance, and tellinghim that we would be there, and asking if the same old guards were atthe gates, because she intended to take us over the Academy grounds nextday and hoped someone she knew would be detailed to escort us. I couldsee right then and there that Mac was making up his mind to give Lilliana good time, from the way he kept looking at her, sort of bashfully,through his eyelashes.
Well, I needn't have worried about anything. I had "crossed my bridgebefore I got to it," as Uncle Darcy often says, when I was fearing I'dbe a wall flower. I had the first dance with Duffield, and the momentthe band struck up I went into it, feeling as I did that night in theSpanish fandango. After that my card filled up so fast that I had tosplit dances. Mac Gordon was among the first, and Bailey Burrell, whoonce spent a summer in Provincetown, so long ago that I'd nearlyforgotten him. But he remembered lots of things about me; the first timehe ever saw me, for instance, dressed up at a bazaar as "A Little Maidof Long Ago." He even told how I was dressed, with a poke bonnet trimmedin rosebuds over my curls, sitting in a little rocking chair on a table.And he remembered about his sister Peggy breaking my prism. She's curedof her lameness now, and is grown up to be a very pretty girl, Baileysaid. He promised to bring her picture around to the hotel next day.
He and Duffield were so entertaining, that as I talked and danced withthem, suddenly Mr. Tucker and his opinions ceased to interest me anymore. When he came hurrying up to speak to me and to ask for a dance, itwas the strangest thing--his personality seemed to have changed sincelast summer. I looked up to him then as being quite intellectual andfascinating, but, seeing him now with Duffield and Bailey and BobMayfield, he seemed really rather insignificant. They called him"Watty," and that expresses him exactly.
But Babe seemed to find him very entertaining, and they danced togethera lot. Good old Babe, so homely and so plain. Her nose was shiney andher hair straggling and her dress all sagging crooked before she'd beenat it an hour. But she was having a beautiful time, and there's not abit of jealousy in her nature. She came up to me once to ask for a pinand whispered, "Georgina, you're perfectly wonderful tonight--allsparkle and glow."
It made me very happy, for Babe's compliments are few and far between.She is more apt to speak of your bad points than your good ones, and tobe moved to say anything like _that_ meant a lot from her. When I tookher over to Mrs. Waldon to get some pins out of her "chaperone bag,"because I didn't have any and she needed nearly a dozen, I heard Mrs.Waldon and Mrs. Locke saying nice things about me in an undertone, thatmade me think of that little line in "The Battle of Waterloo," about"cheeks that blushed with praise of their own loveliness."
It seemed to me that if the band would only keep on playing I couldfloat on and on forever to the music. Oh, it's so wonderful to bea-tingle to the very finger-tips with the joy of just beingalive--_radiantly_ alive! To have all eyes following you admiringly asif you were a flower swaying on its stem! Oh I know this soundsconceited, written out in black and white in plain daylight, but thatnight as they played the strains of "Poor Butterfly" again and again, Ifelt to the fullest the joy of being a social success, such as Estherwas. I felt all wings and as if I really were--at least inwardly--"allsparkle and glow." I wished that the night need never, never end, andthe music and the heavenly floating motion need never stop. I wonder ifa time can ever come when I'll be so old and stiff and feeble like AuntElspeth, that the strains of "Poor Butterfly" will not give me wingsagain. How does one ever become reconciled to being old?
Next morning when we went over to the Naval Academy none of the boyscould get off to accompany us, but the "Jimmy-legs" detailed to escortus was an old acquaintance of Mrs. Waldon's, and she has seen the sightsso many times that she is as good as a guide-book. Nothing escaped us. Icould have spent a week in the building where the trophy flags are,especially in the room that is lined with them, ceiling and all. By thetime we had seen them, from Commodore Perry's "Don't give up the ship"down to the Chinese flag captured from the Boxers, we were worked up tosuch a pitch of patriotic pride that we wanted to go right off and dosomething ourselves to add a guidon or an ensign to that "long honorroll of heroic victories on the high seas."
We stayed so long looking at the flags that we didn't have time to gothrough the chapel before lunch, but we did take time to watch the boysa few moments as the signal sounded for formation and they came marchingin every direction to form in front of Bancroft Hall. We sat down onsome benches under the trees to watch them, and they did look so fine,marching along with their precise military swing that we girls werewildly enthusiastic about them. I couldn't understand why Mrs. Locke'seyes filled with tears, till Mrs. Waldon said reminiscently:
"It seems only yesterday that my girls and I sat here, watching Oliverand Roy in that same line, and now one is on a submarine and the otheron a destroyer."
And then I remembered that out from this peaceful spot where the Aprilflowers were springing up everywhere and robins hopping across the greengrass, these boys might have to go right off after "June week" into astorm of shot and shell. A storm far worse than any that ever rainedaround those tattered old flags we had just been looking at, because nowthere is the added frightfulness of mines and U-boats, and aircraftoverhead, dropping death from the very skies. And yet (it's shocking toconfess) last night, while we were dancing in the very place where theboys are being made stro
ng and fit for such fighting, I actually forgotthat war is going on.
I forgot it again when the boys came over after lunch to take us back tothe Academy to finish our sight-seeing. There were five of them, oneapiece on the way over. But after we got inside the grounds Mrs. Lockesaid she was too tired to climb any more stairs, and she'd seeneverything several times before, anyhow. So she and Mrs. Waldon found abench under the trees facing the water, where a boat drill was going on,and took out their knitting. We strolled off in the direction of theboathouse.
Presently I noticed that no matter how we shifted positions as we wentup steps or paused to look out of windows, three of the boys always camedrifting back to me: Duff and Bob Mayfield and Bailey. And I wasn'tdoing a single thing to keep them with me, only laughing at their brightremarks and trying to be agreeable in a general way, for naturally Iwanted them all to like me.
But all of a sudden I realized that I was having the same effect on themthat Esther had on the boys at home. They were falling all overthemselves to make me like _them_. It was the queerest sensation, thatfeeling of power that came over me. And, although I didn't care for onea bit more than for the others, I was curious to see what would happenif I were to exert that mysterious influence that I seemed to have overeach of them. I began to feel that maybe I had not been fair to Estherin judging her so harshly. Maybe she had felt that same way, and driftedinto those different affairs without thinking of consequences.
Pretty soon I could see that Duffield was maneuvering to get the otherboys out of the way, and finally he succeeded after talking in an asidewith his sister a moment. She immediately developed a great interest inan old wooden Indian which sits out on the campus on a pedestal. It wasonce a figurehead on the prow of a ship, and is supposed to be alikeness of the old war-chief Tecumpseh. The boys count it as theirmascot. They decorate it with their colors before a football game andrun around it for luck before exams, and all that sort of thing.
Before I realized how it happened, Duff and I were walking off towardsthe chapel alone, and all the others were going down to watch Babe andLillian run around old Tecumpseh for luck. It was nearly an hour beforethey joined us. We strolled around inside the chapel and read thetablets put up in memory of the heroes who had once been merely boyishmidshipmen like the one beside me. One had lost his life in someAsiatic expedition among savages. It was awfully interesting to me,seeing it for the first time, but Duffield kept interrupting my thrillsto talk about personal matters.
By this time I felt as if I had known him all my life, for Lillian'sdaily reminiscences of him had done more to make me acquainted with himthan years of occasional meetings could have done. So it didn't seem asstartling as it would have been otherwise when he suddenly became verypersonal. We were sitting in one of the seats back under the gallery.The few tourists wandering about were up near the chancel, whisperingtogether and looking up at the memorial windows. We talked almost inwhispers, too, of course, being in this shrine of heroes as well as aplace of worship, and that in itself gave a more intimate tone to ourconversation.
Duffield told me that he liked me better than any girl he ever met inhis life. That he felt he had known me for years, for Lillian quoted meso often both in her letters and visits. And he wanted me to promise tocorrespond with him, and to give him my picture to put in the back ofhis watch, so's he'll have it with him when he goes off on his longcruise this summer. Of course I wouldn't promise. I told him I didn'tknow him well enough, but he wouldn't give up, and we kept on arguingabout it for a long time, in a half-joking, half-serious way, till I wasalmost tempted to say I would, just to see what would happen.
Then the others came in, and we all went down in the crypt to see thetomb of John Paul Jones. And even down there in that solemn place wherea guard keeps vigil all the time, and the massive bronze wreaths and theflags and the silence make it so impressive, he edged in between Baileyand me and stooped down to whisper laughingly, "I won't give up theship. You might as well promise."
But just at that moment Bailey called my attention to the ceiling abovethe tomb. A map of the heavens is painted on it, with all theconstellations that the mariners steer their ships by. Looking up atthose stars set above the last resting place of the old Admiral, Barby'swords came back to me as if she were right at my elbow:
"There are people like that--there are friendships like that--there islove like that--_as dependable as the stars_." If Esther had been the"Star" I thought her she never would have drifted into those affairswith Richard and John Wynne and all the others. I think if it hadn'tbeen for that I might have let myself drift a bit, for it certainly wasa temptation to see how much Duffield might grow to care for me,although I was sure I could never feel any deep and lasting sentimentfor him--the real Uncle-Darcy-and-Aunt-Elspeth kind.
While I stood looking up at that map of the heavens, with these thoughtschasing through my mind, Babe came up and nudged me and told me formercy's sake to quit star-gazing in a cellar. They were all ready andwaiting to go. Babe has a lot of curiosity. As we started towards thestairs she gave me a puzzled look which said as plainly as words, "Nowwhat did you do _that_ for?"
I had stopped to lay my hand on a banner bearing the name of the oldAdmiral's flag-ship. It was a blue one with the name of the ship inwhite--_Bonhomme Richard_. I could not have told her why I did it, hadshe asked in words, instead of with her eyes. Even to myself I could notexplain the impulse, save that the name brought a thought of RichardMoreland, and the feeling that what he had done made him, in his boyishway, as worthy of bronze wreaths and blue banners as any of those whosetablets shone in the chapel above. Seeing those tablets and the tomb andthat map of stars, made my old dreams come back, my old longing to dosomething and be something in the world really worth while. I simplycouldn't stand it to go through life and not write my name on theworld's memory as it was written in the silver of my christening cup.Then I wondered what Richard would think of Duffield.
That evening the same five boys who had been with us in the afternoonwere lucky enough to get off again and come down to the hotel. Duffieldand Mrs. Waldon's cousin were allowed to come earlier, in time fordinner. Afterwards we danced in the parlors and had just as anentrancing a time as we had the night before,
"Where Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet."
Duffield was all that Lillian had bragged he was. The more I saw him thebetter I liked him. He was so sweet to her and so dear to his mother andso lovely to me, that I began to have a real pang at the thought of himgoing off on that long cruise and our never meeting again perhaps, aslong as we lived.
I found myself liking him so much better as the evening wore on, anddiscovering so many attractive things about him, that I was halfwayfrightened. I was afraid that I was doing what Barby said--"putting arainbow around him." That the charm I saw about him was maybe partly ofmy own imagining. It worried me dreadfully. How is one to know? As wefloated through the last dance together I began to think that if we werethrown together often I might find that he was the one person in theworld I would care for above all others. And yet, John Wynne had thoughtthat about Esther and so had Richard. I wished I had some absolutelysure test, some magic charm, by which I could _know_ the gold of reallove from the imitation that glitters like it.
I lost the rhinestone buckle off one of my slippers and my coral dresscaught on a jagged hoop of one of the tubs that the palms were in, andtore such a long slit in it that I can never wear it again. But it hasserved its purpose in the world. I've had two perfectly heavenlyevenings in it. I've saved a handsbreadth of its pink loveliness to putaway and keep in memory of that happy time.
The boys wouldn't go home until Mrs. Locke promised to bring us downagain for June week. She promised, but I'm almost sure Barby won't letme go. The last thing Duffield did was to ask me again for that picture."Please," he said in an undertone when he stooped to pick up myhandkerchief. And he said it again in a meaning half-whisper as we shookhands all around in the general
chorus of "Goodbye till June week."