Georgina's Service Stars

by Annie F. Johnston

We stayed so long looking at the flags that we didn't have time to go through the chapel before lunch, but we did take time to watch the boys a few moments as the signal sounded for formation and they came marching in every direction to form in front of Bancroft Hall. We sat down on some benches under the trees to watch them, and they did look so fine, marching along with their precise military swing that we girls were wildly enthusiastic about them. I couldn't understand why Mrs. Locke's eyes filled with tears, till Mrs. Waldon said reminiscently:

"It seems only yesterday that my girls and I sat here, watching Oliver and Roy in that same line, and now one is on a submarine and the other on a destroyer."

And then I remembered that out from this peaceful spot where the April flowers were springing up everywhere and robins hopping across the green grass, these boys might have to go right off after "June week" into a storm of shot and shell. A storm far worse than any that ever rained around those tattered old flags we had just been looking at, because now there is the added frightfulness of mines and U-boats, and aircraft overhead, dropping death from the very skies. And yet (it's shocking to confess) last night, while we were dancing in the very place where the boys are being made strong and fit for such fighting, I actually forgot that war is going on.

I forgot it again when the boys came over after lunch to take us back to the Academy to finish our sight-seeing. There were five of them, one apiece on the way over. But after we got inside the grounds Mrs. Locke said she was too tired to climb any more stairs, and she'd seen everything several times before, anyhow. So she and Mrs. Waldon found a bench 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 the boathouse.

Presently I noticed that no matter how we shifted positions as we went up steps or paused to look out of windows, three of the boys always came drifting back to me: Duff and Bob Mayfield and Bailey. And I wasn't doing a single thing to keep them with me, only laughing at their bright remarks and trying to be agreeable in a general way, for naturally I wanted them all to like me.

But all of a sudden I realized that I was having the same effect on them that Esther had on the boys at home. They were falling all over themselves to make me like them. It was the queerest sensation, that feeling of power that came over me. And, although I didn't care for one a bit more than for the others, I was curious to see what would happen if I were to exert that mysterious influence that I seemed to have over each of them. I began to feel that maybe I had not been fair to Esther in judging her so harshly. Maybe she had felt that same way, and drifted into those different affairs without thinking of consequences.

Pretty soon I could see that Duffield was maneuvering to get the other boys out of the way, and finally he succeeded after talking in an aside with his sister a moment. She immediately developed a great interest in an old wooden Indian which sits out on the campus on a pedestal. It was once a figurehead on the prow of a ship, and is supposed to be a likeness of the old war-chief Tecumpseh. The boys count it as their mascot. They decorate it with their colors before a football game and run around it for luck before exams, and all that sort of thing.

Before I realized how it happened, Duff and I were walking off towards the chapel alone, and all the others were going down to watch Babe and Lillian run around old Tecumpseh for luck. It was nearly an hour before they joined us. We strolled around inside the chapel and read the tablets put up in memory of the heroes who had once been merely boyish midshipmen like the one beside me. One had lost his life in some Asiatic expedition among savages. It was awfully interesting to me, seeing it for the first time, but Duffield kept interrupting my thrills to talk about personal matters.

By this time I felt as if I had known him all my life, for Lillian's daily reminiscences of him had done more to make me acquainted with him than years of occasional meetings could have done. So it didn't seem as startling as it would have been otherwise when he suddenly became very personal. We were sitting in one of the seats back under the gallery. The few tourists wandering about were up near the chancel, whispering together and looking up at the memorial windows. We talked almost in whispers, too, of course, being in this shrine of heroes as well as a place of worship, and that in itself gave a more intimate tone to our conversation.

Duffield told me that he liked me better than any girl he ever met in his life. That he felt he had known me for years, for Lillian quoted me so often both in her letters and visits. And he wanted me to promise to correspond with him, and to give him my picture to put in the back of his watch, so's he'll have it with him when he goes off on his long cruise this summer. Of course I wouldn't promise. I told him I didn't know him well enough, but he wouldn't give up, and we kept on arguing about it for a long time, in a half-joking, half-serious way, till I was almost tempted to say I would, just to see what would happen.