CHAPTER VIII
DISILLUSIONED
MANY times since making that promise to Miss Crewes I have wished Icould take it back. I'd give a fortune to tell just one person in thisworld what Dr. Wynne did, but Barby says no. Miss Crewes has sailed andI can't reach her for weeks to get her permission, and under thecircumstances I'd not be justified in breaking my promise. I must keepmy word. But I almost know it would right a great wrong if I could tell,and it almost breaks my heart not to be able to do it. The way of it isthis.
The French Relief entertainment took place last Saturday night, afterbeing postponed four times, and I did the Spanish dance in my lovelygreen and gold costume. Esther got back Saturday morning, just in timefor it. I was too busy to go over to see her, but she telephoned thatshe would be at the entertainment, and that I must look my prettiest.Some of her Yarmouth friends were coming. The posters had attractedpeople from all over the Cape.
My heart sang for joy all the rest of the day. Everybody says that I amat my best in that Spanish dance and look my best in that costume, andnaturally if one is to do any shining one wants one's best beloved thereto see it.
Babe Nolan was behind the scenes with me before the performance began.Jim and Viola were both on the program, and she was there to help themmake up and prompt them if they forgot. It was the first chance I had tomention those letters of Esther to her, and I took advantage of it a fewminutes before the curtain went up.
Of course I didn't tell her it was Richard whom I saw with the sixletters written in the seven days of Esther's absence. I just mentionedthe fact that I had seen them and added, "So, of course, she couldn't beengaged to that doctor she danced with in Barnstable."
Babe was standing with one eye glued to a peep-hole in the curtain,trying to see who was in the audience. She never turned her head butjust kept on looking with one eye, and said in that flat, cocksure wayof hers, "Well, that doesn't prove anything."
It made me so mad I didn't know what to do. It wasn't what she said somuch as the way she said it that was so odious. There have been a fewtimes in my life when I've been sorry that I was born a Huntingdon withthe family manners to live up to, and this was one of them. Before Icould think of an answer she added in that calm,I'll-prove-it-to-you-voice:
"She's down there with him right now, in the third row, next to themiddle aisle, on the left."
Then she stepped aside for me to put my eye to the peep-hole, and forone giddy instant I thought I was going to faint. The shock of thesurprise was so great. There sat Esther looking like a dream and the manwith her was Doctor John Wynne. So _she_ was the "loveliest girl inChristendom" whom he was working and waiting for, and whom he'd have togo on working and waiting for no telling how long, because he had actedthe part of a true knight, helping an unfortunate stranger who had noclaim on him whatsoever. When Babe talked about the doctor who wasattentive to Esther, I took it for granted he was a Barnstable man. Itnever occurred to me that he had gone from Yarmouth to see her.
My head was in such a whirl that I was thankful the orchestra struck upjust then, and we had to scurry to seats in the wing before the curtainwent up. My dance didn't come till near the last, so I had plenty oftime to think it all over. My first and greatest feeling after thetremendous surprise was one of gladness for both of them. It seemed toogood to be true that my ideal girl and my ideal man should have foundeach other--should belong to each other. It is exactly what I could havewished for each of them. But a little doubt kept raising its head like atiny snake in a rose-bower. If she were really engaged to him how couldshe be writing daily to Richard, those long fat letters, and carrying onwith him in that fascinating, flirtatious, little way of hers that keepshim simply out of his head about her?
My mind went round and round in that same circle of questions like asquirrel in a cage, never getting anywhere, till all of a sudden my namewas called. It was my time to go on the stage and I had forgotten mysteps--forgotten everything. For a second I was as cold as ice. But atthe first notes of the fandango my castanets seemed to click of theirown accord, and I glided on to the stage feeling as light as a bubbleand as live as a flash of fire. I was dancing for those two down therein the third row, next to the middle aisle. I would do my best, and nota doubt should cloud my belief in my beautiful Star.
After the performance they were among the first to come up andcongratulate me. This time I could meet his gaze fearlessly, and I sawhis eyes were just like the little boy's in the picture. They hadn'tchanged a bit, but looked out on the world as if they trusted everybodyin it and everybody could trust him. When he put Esther's scarf aroundher shoulders he did it in such a masterful, taking-care-of-her sort ofway, and she looked up at him so understandingly that I realized BabeNolan was right about their caring for each other.
I could hardly go to sleep that night for thinking about them. I felt asif I had stepped into a real live story where I actually knew and lovedboth hero and heroine, and was personally interested in everything thathappened to them. I didn't think of Richard's part in it.
And now--oh how can I tell what followed, or how it began? I scarcelyknow how the change came about, or how it started--that
"little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening, slowly silence all."
Maybe Barby's suggestion that I was seeing Esther through a prismstarted me to looking at her more critically. And Babe Nolan'sstatements dropped with such calm precision every time we met, stuck inmy memory like barbed arrows with poison on them. I had been mistaken inone thing, why not in others?
At first I made excuses for everything. When Esther counted the pile ofphotographs given her by the different boys who have rushed her thissummer, and said she would have plenty of scalps to show when she wentback home, I thought it was just as Judith had said. It wasn't becauseshe was a born flirt that she made each boy think his picture was theonly one she cared for. They all did that way back in her home town. Shewas brought up to think that was part of the game.
But if she were really engaged to Doctor Wynne, as Judith admitted whenI asked her, then she had no business to treat Richard as she did. Itwasn't fair to him to lead him on so far and to accept so much from him,and it wasn't fair to Dr. Wynne.
But Judith said, "For the land sakes, Esther wasn't ready to settle downto any one person yet. Besides, Richard was too young for her to takehim seriously, and John Wynne was too deadly in earnest for a girl likeEsther. He was too intense. He couldn't understand a little butterflylike her whose only thought was to have a good time. She'd be utterlymiserable tied for life to a man like him, who put duty ahead of her andher pleasure. It would probably end in her marrying one of the men backhome that she'd been engaged to off and on ever since she was fifteen.
She said of course it would make things dreadfully uncomfortable when itcame to breaking her engagement with John Wynne, because he was sohorribly in earnest that he considered her actually his. It was amistake to let the affair go so far. When I asked how about Richard,Judith just shrugged her shoulders and said it wasn't to be wondered atthat Esther should have a little summer affair with him, such agood-looking boy and so entertaining, with that lovely car at hisdisposal.
Just then Esther came downstairs in a soft white dress, beaded incrystal, looking like such an angel with the lamplight falling on heramber hair and sweet upturned face, that all my old faith in her cameback in a rush. "The loveliest girl in Christendom." No wonder he calledher that.
It was then that I first thought, oh, if I could only tell her the storythat Miss Crewes told us, of that knightly deed her John Wynne didwithout any hope of guerdon, she wouldn't want to break tryst with him.But I couldn't tell then. I had given my promise.
The next week-end he came up to Provincetown again. He was to stay allnight at the hotel and take Esther down to Chatham next day to ahouse-party. Some old school friends of hers were giving it. But he wentback without her. When she found he had come for her in the same shabbylittl
e old automobile that he had last Spring when she was inBarnstable, she refused to go with him. Said she'd be ashamed to havethe girls know he drove such an old rattletrap, and that he'd promisedher last Spring--at least halfway promised her--that he'd get a new onein time for this house-party, so that he could join them sometimes andtake them on picnics.
He explained to her that he had fully intended to do so, but thatsomething came up lately which made it impossible. He wouldn't tell herwhat, although she coaxed and pouted. He just stuck to it doggedly thatit was something he couldn't talk about. Somebody needed his help and hefelt forced to give it. Then he grew stern and told her that she mustbelieve him when he said the sacrifice was necessary, and forgive him ifhe couldn't humor her wishes.
It was Judith who told me about it. She said that Esther has alwaysqueened it over everybody, and is so used to being considered first ineverything that she wouldn't stand for his putting some old charitypatient ahead of her wishes and her comfort. She just gave him his ringback and he went home that night.
I wanted to cry out that I knew the reason. That I could tell hersomething that should make her proud to be seen in that shabby oldmachine, because of the gallant sacrifice it stood for. But my lips weresealed by my promise.
Only once before in my whole life have I ever had such a gone-to-piecesfeeling. That was when our old gardener, Jeremy Clapp sneezed his teethinto the fire. I was so little then I didn't know that teeth could befalse, and when I saw all of his fly out of his mouth I thought he wascoming apart right before my eyes. The shock was so awful I screamedmyself almost into spasms. My faith in everything seemed crumbling. Ifelt the same way this time.
I had been so sure of Esther, so absolutely sure of her high standardsof honor, that the slightest flaw in her was harder to forgive than acrime in a less shining soul. And now to think that she had cruelly hurtand disappointed the man who, to me, was the knightliest of all men, wasmore than I could bear. I felt I could never take another person ontrust as long as I lived. I wished I could have died before I found outthat she wasn't all I believed her to be.
Barby had guests when I reached home. I could hear their voices as Ipaused an instant on the front door-step. I knew that if I tried to slipup the stairs she'd see me and call me to come in, so I tip-toed acrossthe hall into the big downstairs guest chamber, and threw myself on thecouch by the open window. I was too miserable to face anybody. Toomiserable even for tears.
But the tears came presently when I looked up and caught sight of thepicture that I had rescued at the auction, "little John Wynne," leaningagainst his mother's shoulder, looking out on the world so trustinglyfrom that safe refuge. As I looked at the curl her fingers had brushedso carefully into shape, and the curve of the baby lips that had neverknown anything but truth, I just couldn't bear to think of him growingup to be deceived and disappointed. I had to admit that Esther wasn'tworthy of him, but I recalled the way he looked at her as he put herscarf around her that night, and I felt that if he still wanted her asmuch as he did then, I wanted him to have her. It didn't seem fair forher not to be told about his Sir Gareth sacrifice. I believe I criedmore for his disappointment than for my own, as I pictured his blightedfuture, although mine seemed empty enough, goodness knows. I wished Iwas old enough to be a trained nurse and go to Flanders right away.
It was almost dark when the guests left. I had cried myself into ablinding headache. I hadn't intended to tell Barby, but she happened toglance in as she passed the door, and, seeing me face downward on thecouch, came in with an exclamation of surprise, and before I knew it thewhole miserable story was out. Then I was glad I told, for she was sosweet and comforting as she sat and stroked my forehead with her coolfingers. Some of the ache went away as she talked. It helped a lot toknow that she had gone through the same kind of an experience. Everyonedoes, she said, "in their salad days." One can't expect to be an expertat reading character then.
But she insisted that I mustn't tell Esther about the typhoid feverpatient. She said it wouldn't help matters. That John Wynne had beenlooking through a prism too. He saw her pretty, fascinating, graciousways and imagined her perfect as I had done. He hadn't seen what ashallow little creature she really is, vain and selfish. It was betterfor his disillusionment to come now than later.
"But how is one ever to be sure?" I wailed. "There was Richard andDoctor Wynne and me, all three of us mistaken. She was like a star toeach of us. I called her 'Star.' It seemed the most beautiful name inthe world and I thought it fitted her perfectly."
"Don't be too hard on her," Barby said. "It was your mistake in takingher measure, and giving her a misfit name. Remember how many mistakesthe prince made before he found a perfect fit for Cinderella's slipper.But cheer up! You'll find some one worthy of the name some day."
I didn't want to cheer up, so I just closed my eyes, and Barby, seeingthat I didn't wish to talk, went on rubbing the headache away insilence. When I opened them again it was twilight, so I must have dozedoff for a while. Barby was sitting across the room in the window-seat,her elbow on the sill. Her dress glimmered white. Beyond her, throughthe open casement, glowed the steady harbor lights and the winking redeye of the Wood End lighthouse. I went over to her and leaned out intothe sweet-smelling summer dusk. It made me feel better just to sniffthat delightful mingling of sea salt and garden fragrances.
"Look up," said Barby. "Did you ever see the stars so bright? I've beensitting here taking a world of comfort out of them. It's good to feelthat no matter what else goes wrong they keep right on, absolutely trueto their orbits and their service of shining; so unfailingly true thatthe mariner can always steer his course by them. And Georgina--you don'tbelieve it possible now, but I want you to take my word for it--_thereare people in the world like that--there are friendships likethat--there is love like that--just as dependable as the stars_!"
She said it in a way I can never forget. It brought back the old feelingTippy used to give me when she traced my name on my silver christeningcup, the feeling that it was up to me to keep it shining. I've thoughtabout it quite a lot since, but I am all mixed up as to which is thebest way to do it. Maybe after all it would be more star-like of me torenounce my dream of becoming a famous author, and go in for duty alone,like Miss Crewes.