CHAPTER XXIII
MARKED ON THE CALENDAR
IT'S queer what a way Doctor Wynne has of stepping abruptly into my lifeand out again. It's been so ever since I found his picture in thebarrel. A few days after Richard left he unexpectedly opened the frontgate and came up to the porch where Tippy and I sat knitting. I did notrecognize him at first in his captain's uniform, and no one could havebeen further from my thoughts. I supposed he had already sailed forFrance.
Some business with old Mr. Carver, who is giving an ambulance to the RedCross, brought him to Provincetown, and, happening to hear that MissSusan Triplett was at our house, he came up to say goodbye to her beforestarting to join the unit to which he's been assigned. He wasdisappointed when he found that Miss Susan had gone back to Wellfleet.He said she was one of the few people left who had known his familyintimately, and who remembered him as a child. It gave him a sense ofkinship to have her call him "Johnny" in a world where everyone elsesaid "Doctor."
That was enough for Tippy. In her opinion any man in khaki is entitledto all the "sugar and spice and everything nice" the world can give.When she found that he has no home ties now, she adopted him on thespot. He didn't know he was being adopted, but I did, just from thepositive tone of her voice. She told him her claim on him was about asold as Susan's. She'd known him when he was a bald-headed baby--held himin her arms in this very house, and sat under his father's preachingmany a time in Wellfleet. And indeed he'd stay to supper. He needn'tthink she'd let a son of Sister Wynne's leave the house without breakingbread with her, especially when he was starting off to a far countrywhere he was liable to get nothing but husks.
If what Tippy wanted was to give him a little slice of home to pack upand take away in his "old kit bag," she certainly succeeded. It will bemany a moon before he can forget the table she spread for him, theadvice she gave him and the sock she hurried to "toe off" in order thatthere might be a full half dozen in the package she thrust upon him atparting. An own aunt could not have been more solicitous for hiscomfort, and she did all but call him Johnny.
It's the first time I ever had any conversation with him more than asentence or two. Now as he "reminisced" with Tippy, and told experiencesof his boyhood on a Western farm and of his medical student days, I sawthat the real John Wynne was not the person I imagined him to be.
What a sentimental little goose I must have been at sixteen; truly"green in judgment" to have woven such a fabric of dreams around him.Miss Crewes' story started it, putting him on a sort of pedestal, andthe affair with Esther added to it, till I imagined him a romantic andknightly figure, "wrapped in the solitude" of a sad and patientmelancholy. The real John Wynne is a busy, matter-of-fact physician,absorbingly interested in the war and keen to be into it, also ready totalk about anything from "cabbages to kings." Yet I suppose if anyonehad told me then that I was mistaken in that early estimate of him Iwould have resented it. I _wanted_ him to fit the role I assigned him.It made him more interesting to my callow mind to imagine him like thatking in the poem when,--"The barque which held the prince went down henever smiled again."
He was so warmly interested in my account of finding his picture at thatauction and keeping it all these years, that I took him across the hallto look at it. The thought came to me that maybe he'd like to have it,but when I offered it to him he said no, he had a more recent one of hismother, one more like her as he remembered her. He stood looking at it along while and finally said it seemed so much at home there on the wallthat he hoped I'd keep it there. It would sort of anchor him to the oldCape to look back and know that it was hanging in the very room wherethey had once been together. Then he added almost wistfully:
"If _she_ were here to wish me Godspeed, I could go away betterequipped, perhaps, for what lies ahead."
Some sudden impulse prompted me to open the table drawer and take outthe little service flag with the one star which I had thrust in therewhen I put up the new one. As I hung it under the picture I wassurprised to hear myself saying, "See! She _does_ wish you Godspeed."
It was exactly as if someone else put the words into my mouth, for I hadnever thought of them before, and I'm sure I never quoted Scripture thatway before, outside of Sunday school. It gave me the queerest sensationto be doing it as if some force outside of myself were impelling me tospeak.
"Don't you suppose," I said slowly, "that if God so loved the world thatHe could give His only son to die for it, that he must know how _human_fathers and mothers feel when they do the same thing? Don't you believethat He'd let a mother, even up in heaven, have some way to comfort andhelp a son who was offering _his_ life to save the world? The men in thetrenches can't see the stars we hang out for them here at home, but theyfeel our spirit of helpfulness flowing out to them. How do we know thatthe windows of heaven are not hung with stars that mean the same thing?How do we know but what those who watch and wait for us up there are notaiding us in ways greater than we dream possible? Helping us as Israelwas helped, by the invisible hosts and chariots of fire, in the mountainround about Elisha?"
The tenderest smile lit up his face. "It's strange you should have hitupon that particular story," he said. "It was one of my mother'sfavorites. She began telling it to me when I was no bigger than thatlittle chap there, leaning against her shoulder."
Then he turned and held out his hand, saying, "You've given me more thanyou can ever know, Miss Huntingdon. Thank you for hanging that littleservice star there. She does say Godspeed, and its help will go with meoverseas."
A little while later he went away, and I've wondered a dozen times sincewhat made me say that to him.
* * * * *
The month of July in my 1917 calendar is a motley page, the first halfof it being marked with a perfect jumble of red rings and black crosses.They stand for all that happened between my home-coming afterCommencement and Richard's goodbye. When you consider that into one dayalone was crowded my birthday anniversary, Babe's wedding, AuntElspeth's death, and the greatest experience of my life, it's no wonderthat in looking back over it all July seems almost as long and eventfulas all the years which went before it.
There is a triple ring around the twenty-seventh. I couldn't make it redenough, for that is the joyful day that Richard's cablegram came, sayingthat he was safe in England. It was also the day that Babe came homefrom her honeymoon, alone, of course. Watson joined his ship two daysafter they left here, and she visited his people the rest of the time.I've not marked that event but I'll not forget it soon, because she wasso provoking when I ran in to tell her my news. Not that she wasn'tinterested in hearing of Richard's safety, or that she wasn'tenthusiastic about my engagement and my solitaire, but she had such asuperior married air, as if the mere fact of her being Mrs. WatsonTucker made all she said and felt important.
She gave me to understand that while it was natural that she shouldworry about Watson, and almost die of anxiety when the mails were late,I oughtn't to feel the separation as keenly as she, because I was merelyengaged.
"My _dear_, you can't realize the difference until you've had theexperience," she said patronizingly. I told her Richard had been a partof my life ever since I was a child, and it stood to reason that hefilled a larger place in it than Watson could in hers, having only comeinto it recently.
It's no use arguing with Babe. You never get anywhere. So I just lookeddown on my little ring of pirate gold and felt sorry for her. She has nolink like that to remind her of such buried treasure as Richard and Ishare--the memory of all those years when we were growing up together.
Early in August I had the joy of putting a big red capital L on mycalendar, to mark the day that Richard's first letter came. He was well,he had had a comfortable crossing, he had passed all his tests andbegun his special training for the coast patrol. It is almost worth theseparation to have a letter like that. Not only did he tell me right outin the dearest way how much he cares for me, regardless of the censor'spossible embarrassment, but every line showe
d his buoyant spirits overthe chance that has come to him at last. He has wanted it sodesperately, tried for it so gallantly and worked and waited sopatiently that I would be a selfish pig not to be glad too, and I _am_glad.
Judith asked how I had the heart to go into the tableaux that Mrs.Tupman is getting up for the Yarn fund. She was sure she couldn't if shewere in my place. She'd be thinking all the time of the danger he is in.She wondered if I realized that the elements themselves conspire againstan aviator--fire, earth and even water, if he's in the naval force, tosay nothing of the risk of the enemy's guns.
She couldn't understand it when I said I wasn't going to make myselfmiserable thinking of such things. And I'm not. He's having his heart'sdesire at last, and I'm so happy for him that I won't let myself besorry for me.
His next letter was written five thousand feet up in the air. He went totwenty thousand feet that trip, but couldn't write at such a height,because his hand got so cold he had to put his glove on. Of course itwas only a short scribbled note, but it thrilled me to the core to haveone written under such circumstances.
In the postscript, added after landing, he said, "I never go up withoutwishing you could share with me the amazing sensations of such a flight.You would love the diving and twirling and swooping. You were alwayssuch a good little sport I don't like to have you left out of the game.Never mind, we'll have a flier of our own when I come back, and we'll goup every day. We had an exciting chase after some enemy planes the otherday. We sent down one raiding Boche and came near getting wingedourselves. I wish I might tell you the important particulars, but thethings which would interest you most are the very ones we are not atliberty to write about. All I can say is that life over here now is oneperpetual thrill, and it's a source of constant thanksgiving to me thatFate landed me in this branch of the service instead of the one I washeaded for when I skipped off to Canada."
Even Richard's reference to the enemy planes which came near wingingthem did not fill me with uneasiness, because all his life he's gonethrough accidents unscathed. Once when he was only half-grown he broughthis sailboat safely into port through a squall which crippled it, andold Captain Ames declared if it had been any other boy alongshore he'dhave been drowned. That for level head and steady nerve he'd never seenhis beat. Even back in the days when his crazy stunts in bicycle ridingmade the town's hair stand on end, he never had a bad fall. So I didn'tworry when two weeks went by without bringing further word from him. Butwhen three passed and then a whole month, I began to get anxious. Nowthat it's beginning on the second month, I'm awfully worried.