CHAPTER XXXVI
ONE Sunday in early October, about five o'clock in the afternoon, there was an automobile drawn up to the side door of the Jerome house. It was David's automobile. He had bought it second hand, two years ago. It was a small car but very clean and very shining—not a scratch anywhere. David himself was seated behind the wheel. He was waiting to take Reba's "young man" to the station. He had been waiting for nearly ten minutes now. Twice he had taken out his big gold watch and looked at it. Why didn't he come? David didn't like to hurry his car. Again he took out his watch and looked at it, then slowly, clumsily crawled out from behind the wheel and walked up the steps to the front door. He went in.
He found the women hovering around the foot of the front stairs, all of them, but Augusta, and he caught a glimpse of her, too, in a moment. She was standing in the dining-room staring out of the window. David cleared his throat, and twitched his head toward the upper story.
"Why don't they come?" he asked.
"Why don't you go up and ask them?" snapped Eunice.
"Well, he'll miss his train," David grunted. He sat down on the edge of the hat-tree box, and looked at his watch again.
Suddenly a door was heard opening above and closing again gently. It was Reba's door that had opened and closed like that. A second later a firm step crossed the hall, and the nervous group at the foot of the stairs, staring up, saw first Nathan's army-shod feet, and in a flash his whole uniformed figure coming quickly down the stairs. He was alone. Reba, then, had remained in her room. That was well, thought David. The young man had only to pick up his army overcoat, there on a chair (his suitcase was already stowed away in the back of the automobile), and they could be off.
David would be glad of that. All the fuss and feathers women-folks do make over a uniform! Even gray-haired women, like Augusta and Emma and Syringa! Had the curtains up in the best parlor ever since Reba had brought home her young husband a week ago! Been using the best china too! And such extravagant cooking! It was unpatriotic in the face of Hoover's instructions. Big juicy rump steaks for supper! There had been a whole week of it, quite enough for David, when orders had come, two days ago, for this Nathan (David found it difficult to use his son-in-law's Christian name) to report at Hoboken. It meant France, of course. Reba had turned suddenly into a dumb, stone sort of creature at the orders. Even David noticed it. Seemed queer to him she should take it so hard—her husband going to France, when she had been so cheerful all those years when he was wandering around among the dangerous, cannibal-inhabited islands, where they send missionaries.
'Twasn't the only thing that seemed queer to David about Reba's marriage either. She had gone forth to meet this Nathan of hers, a calm, composed, sensible young woman. She had come back with him, anything but that! David couldn't make her out—she seemed so sort of "jumpy," coloring up, eyes getting full of tears, and land knows what, right at the table, before people, if the young fellow as much as spoke to her. She had acquired, too, in her six weeks' absence with him, outlandish notions about following him around to training-camps, inconsistent with her former serene attitude toward him when he was at sea. The first letter she wrote home after she went to meet him in Boston, mailed some ten days or two weeks after her departure, bore the postmark of the town near the camp where he was in training. She was hanging around in a lodging-house, doing absolutely nothing, it appeared, but picking up odd scraps of half-days, or half-hours, or half-minutes, as the case might be, with this Nathan fellow of hers. It seemed to David that she acted kind of "cracked" about him, writing out in plain English how fine she thought he was, and repeating the flattering remarks of his superior officers. Unbecoming of a young woman married as long as she had been, David thought. She went so far as to say in the letter she wrote home, announcing that she and this man were to pay a visit to 89 Chestnut Street (he was to be transferred to another camp, she said, and a week's leave had been granted), she went so far as to say in that letter that if every captain in the United States Army was as adored by his men (yes, used the word "adored") as Nathan was, they would be ready to follow him blindfolded into the very jaws of death, as she herself was ready to follow him blindfolded to the ends of the earth. That was the way she wrote. Why, it was embarrassing. Such things ought not be said on paper, if, in fact, they ought to be said at all. There used to be such a thing as reserve in women, but David guessed it had gone out of style.
The fellow himself seemed sensible enough. David had dreaded his arrival horribly; supposed he would turn out to be the usual whippersnapper type of young man, the kind Mr. Horween was always digging up from the city and putting in charge of various departments at the factory—glib, smart-talking young fellows—gas-bags, David called them. But Reba's young man hadn't proved to be a gas-bag. Seemed, on the other hand, a modest, quiet-spoken young fellow. David's chief objection to him was his uniform. "Don't see why he has to dress up in all his fine feathers 'round here for," he had complained secretly to Syringa.
As Nathan came down the stairs now, David called up to him briefly, "Hurry up. We haven't got any more than time to make it," and then went out to start his engine.
Nathan had been a member of the Jerome household only a little over a week. But he had walked straight into the hearts of every woman in it. Nathan, with his instinctive tenderness toward all women, had a way of walking into their hearts. He had been as gentle, as chivalrous in speech and manner, to the various women in this austere New England family as to the warm-hearted little Mrs. Barton. Now, swinging his overcoat over his arm first, he turned to say good-by to the members of Rebecca's family, one by one, giving them each some little special word or caress, that made their cold blood run a little warmer.
Augusta was still standing at the dining-room window when Nathan came down the stairs, her back uncompromisingly toward the hall. It was all so like another good-by (only his uniform had been blue) that she could not trust herself to turn around. But Nathan approached her undaunted.
"Good-by, Rebecca's Aunt Augusta," he murmured, and put his hand upon her shoulder.
She drew in her breath suddenly at that. It made an unexpected noise in her throat. The hand on her shoulder patted her gently, twice. Think of it! An old woman like her! Augusta's hands went up to her mouth quick in an attempt to hide her jerking jaw. She might have broken down before them all if it hadn't been for the interruption.
"Nathan! Nathan!" a voice suddenly called from the hall.
It was Rebecca. She was standing half-way down the stairs. She had stolen out of her room, after Nathan had left her, to get one more glimpse of him if possible. And it had flashed across her suddenly, as she leaned there at the top of the stairs, that one more clasp of his arms about her was possible, if she acted quickly. Besides—besides, she ought to be the last one in this house whom he touched before he went away! They had decided to say good-by to each other upstairs behind closed doors. But she didn't care who saw her. Oh, she didn't care! A hundred people could look on for all she cared now!
Nathan ran up the stairs to her. "Rebecca!" he exclaimed softly.
"Say good-by to me again!" Reba whispered.
He flung down his coat, gathered her into his arms, held her close a second.
"It's quarter past five," David's gruff voice called from the front door.
Nathan very tenderly unclasped Rebecca's hands, pushed her away from him, whispered "Good-by, good-by," picked up his coat, ran down the stairs. Reba saw the door close behind him, heard it slam. He was gone. Gone!
The parlor! One more glimpse of him still was possible from the parlor. Down the stairs she sped, across the hall. Helping hands pulled open the heavy sliding-doors for her. She ran to the window, pushed back the laces.
There he was! Seated in the car beside her father going down the hill. And he was waving—just on the chance she might be watching. The very last bit Rebecca saw of Nathan as he sank out of sight over the hill was his steadily waving arm.
"Come, Reba," Aunt Augusta said to her a half-hour later, when she found her there in the parlor, still staring out of the window. "You mustn't stay in here alone."
"No, I suppose not," she replied dully.
Augusta Morgan put her hand shyly on Reba's arm. "I understand. I know," she murmured. Then, "Come, child," she said. "Don't stay here alone. Come out into the kitchen and help us put away the best china."
"Don't put it away yet!" Reba exclaimed. "Please don't put away the things we had out for him—yet."
"All right. We won't then. We won't put it away at all, if you'd kind of like to use it, Reba."
"And," Aunt Augusta directed Syringa, "don't you go to pulling down the parlor-shades to-morrow either, like a fool. If Reba wants things the way they were for him, then let her have 'em that way. 'Tisn't much comfort, but it may be a little, and if she cares for him the way we saw she did there on the stairs—well, I guess she needs all the kindness we can give her."
To David she said, "Don't you say a single cross word to Reba, David Jerome, if you have to bite your tongue out stopping yourself. You hear?"
"Who wants to say a cross word to her," David retorted. "You better mind your own business, Augusta."
One day Reba, coming home as usual at noon, after her morning in the town-hall, saw something unfamiliar hanging in the parlor window. It was a small red flag with a single blue star on a white field in the center of it. It was hanging in the very window where she had watched Nathan waving to her as he went down the hill, three weeks ago. Reba had never seen a service-flag before. In October, 1917, there were not many of them to be seen.
"I got it down in Union," Aunt Augusta explained to Reba in the hall. "Down there you'll see a flag like that hanging up in the front windows of lots of the houses. Sometimes there's more than one star, though, for each star stands for a boy who's gone to the war. I thought we ought to hang up a star in our front window for the one who has gone to war from here."
Reba's eyes suddenly filled with tears. A blue star hung up in the front windows of 89 Chestnut Street for Nathan! A blue star hung up by Aunt Augusta for the man whom Reba loved! She reached for the older woman's hand and pressed it hard.
"And all you in there," she murmured, nodding toward her mother's room, "knitting for him besides, sewing for him, planning little surprises for him, to put in the box we're going to send. Oh, Aunt Augusta, it's like a miracle!"
Coming home that night she saw a light shining in the parlor windows of 89 Chestnut Street, softly illuminating the red, white and blue of Nathan's flag.
"It wouldn't show evenings unless we did keep a light burning at night," Aunt Augusta briefly explained at the supper table when David had grumbled at the innovation, "so stop your fussing about it. It won't do a mite of good. One extra gas-jet burning evenings for as long as the war lasts, isn't going to put you into the poor-house, I guess, David Jerome."
After supper, Reba stole into the parlor all alone. From the parlor window, just as from her own upstairs, she could see the lights of lower-Ridgefield—the souls of the little houses, she used to make believe—softly shining in the valley. She could see, too, the stars in the sky, softly shining, out there beyond the star in the window. The souls of the little worlds below, and of the big worlds above, were gathered together as usual on this clear October evening in silent assembly. Only to-night there was a new star, there was a new soul, pricking the dark!
Later Reba wrote to her soldier: "I never glance up, night or day, as I turn in the driveway of 89 Chestnut Street, but that I see your star shining out at me from the window in the parlor, where the curtains used to be drawn down tight. The blind old house has had its closed eyes opened, Nathan, and has been given sight."
THE END