Georgina's Service Stars

by Annie F. Johnston

The thing that worried him was the discovery that he no longer wanted to hurry off to the front. He was still as eager as ever to do his part. It wasn't that. It was me. He told me down at Uncle Darcy's next morning. I was staying there until time for the funeral, doing the little things that Barby would have done had she been here. Belle had gone home, worn out, and Tippy was over there with her, getting dinner for some of the out-of-town relatives who were expected on the noon train. It seemed as if everybody on the Cape must have sent flowers. The little house overflowed with them. Richard helped me find places for them and carry out the empty boxes.

Uncle Darcy was so wonderful. He went about just as usual, talking in cautious half-whispers as he always did when Aunt Elspeth was asleep, tiptoeing into the darkened room now and then, to lean over and look at her. Sometimes he touched her hair caressingly, and sometimes smoothed down the long, soft folds of her white robe. Once when I took in a great basket full of ferns and roses to put on the table beside her he looked up with a smile.

"That's right," he said. "Fix it all nice and pretty for her, Georgina. Mother likes to have things pretty."

He was so calm, and seemingly so oblivious to the fact that she was no longer conscious of his presence, that we were awed by his wonderful composure. So when we were out by the pump, giving some of the floral designs a fresh sprinkling, it did not seem out of place for Richard to ask me if I had told Uncle Darcy—about us. It might have seemed strange at any other house of mourning for us to put our own affairs in the foreground, but not here.

I said no, I couldn't tell anybody until Barby knew. She must be the very first. He said all right, if I felt that way, but we'd have to send a telegram, because he couldn't go away till he'd claimed me before the footlights as well as behind the scenes. I didn't see how we could put such a thing in a telegram, but he was so determined that finally I consented to try. Together we composed one that we thought would enlighten Barby, and at the same time mystify the telegraph operator, who happened to be one of the old High School boys.

When the noon whistle blew Uncle Darcy's composure suddenly left him. He looked around, startled by the familiar sound as if its shrill summons pierced him with a realization of the truth. It was the signal for him to wheel Aunt Elspeth to the table; to uncover the tray Belle always sent in, to urge her appetite with the same old joke that never lost its flavor to her. It seemed to come over him in a terrifying wave of realization that all that was ended. He could never do it again, could never do anything for her. He looked at the clock and then turned stricken eyes on me, asking when they would take her away. When I told him his distress was pitiful. It is awful to hear an old man sob.

It sent me hurrying from the room, fumbling for my handkerchief. Richard followed me and put his arms about me. The cheek pressed against mine was wet too.

"Dearest," he whispered, "that's the way I care for you. That's what I want to do—stay with you to the end—be to you all he's been to her. I can't go and leave you with so many chances of never getting back to you. I'm clinging to the few hours still left to us as desperately as he is."

At the funeral that afternoon, as we stood together on the old burying-ground on the hill, listening to the brief service at the grave, such a comforting thought came to me. It was about the mantle of Elijah falling on Elisha as the chariot of fire bore him heavenward. He dropped it in token that a double portion of his spirit should rest on the younger prophet. I felt that Richard and I, in keeping vigil as the soul of Aunt Elspeth took its flight, had witnessed the earthly ending of the most beautiful devotion we had ever known. And its mantle had fallen on us. We would go down to old age as they had done. And we surely needed a double portion of their spirit, for we faced a long, uncertain separation, beset by danger and death. They had gone all the way hand in hand.