Buddy Wants to Know

Elizabeth had been to tea with the Farradays. The big, closed-in porch, which was practically their summer living room, gay with chintzes and strewn with all the appurtenances of luxurious modern existence, always gave her a little feeling of homesickness for the life to which she was used in town. The trim maid, quietly manipulating the tea wagon laden with the delicacies of the usual teatime meal, took on an almost pathetic glamour to the little exile.

Mr. Chambers was in possession of the wicker chaise-longue. Ruth had poured tea with deft and dainty fingers, though she was unusually silent, even for her. Mrs. Farraday, who was as unlike Elizabeth's mother as it was possible for her to be, had yet, in a gown of blue linen, with rose-coloured net cuffs and neck piece, managed to suggest her vividly.

Peggy had behaved abominably. In intervals of passing cakes she had managed to get out of the line of vision and stand grimacing and contorting her face at Elizabeth. Usage demanded that Elizabeth return these impudent salutations in kind, and twice Peggy nearly made her do so.

"I should have been mortified," she thought, "if Mr. Piggy Chambers had caught me making faces, especially since I would naturally make that kind of faces about him, if it happened so. I guess Ruth would never speak to me again."

"I can't help it," Peggy whispered, "these tea fights on the veranda, with Piggy—I mean Hoggy—Chambers and Mother knitting as if she had just eaten the canary, and Ruthie saying nothing and sawing wood, and the other self-sufficient member of our little circle sitting there and owning the universe—they just make me wild. I feel as if I would like to get an Indian tomahawk and scalp 'em all."

"I—I like tea on your veranda, though," Elizabeth couldn't help admitting. "Grandmother would think afternoon tea was ridiculous, and I am used to it in my own home. I'm used to having my own mother around, too."

"If your own mother were aiding and abetting the slaughter of your innocent sister," Peggy said, "you might not feel so excruciatingly fond of her. I didn't make that remark all up. Father said it first. Our family is just completely mixed up over the whole affair. There's one ray of light. Ruthie isn't mushy about any of it. Only she makes me nervous."

"I don't see how you can bear it at all," Elizabeth said. "I can't, hardly."

"Can hardly, Miss Swift," Peggy mocked. "You are more sensitive to things than I am, I guess. I throw 'em off after I've howled for a while. My idea would be to fill Piggy's bed with flour and hair-brushes, or to stick a hair-pin in his tires. You'd just give him mental treatment and take it awfully to heart."

"I guess that's why we get on so well together. Opposites attract opposites."

"If I were a man I think I should want to marry you, Elizabeth, but if I were a girl, I don't think I should want to be just like you."

"That's not very flattering, because you are a girl already, and you couldn't be a man if you wanted to."

"I mean for myself I would like to be like you. You take things harder than I do. I can always go out and punch something."

"There never seems to be anything I can punch," said poor Elizabeth.

Peggy had walked with her as far as her own gate, and then she had gone in to get her belated morning mail. She had been so sure that there was no one to write to her until she had answered the letters with which her portfolio was stuffed that she had neglected to go to the post office as usual. She found, however, a long letter from her brother and one from her mother. Buddy wrote:

Dear Little Sister:

I am going to take you into my confidence in an important matter because, well, there is nobody else that I can ask any help of. You needn't get peeved at this way of putting it, because it stands to reason that if you weren't a pretty reliable little sport I wouldn't trust you. I don't have to. I only do.—Hope to die, and cross your heart?—Thank you.

Well, the thing is, I want to know something about Ruth Farraday. For reasons of my own I haven't been writing to her. Now, I might like to write to her once or twice, a friendly little note, you understand. A fellow gets so doggone lonesome. They won't let me go until they're satisfied I'm fixed up. How you are going to fix up a fellow who has got some of the things I've got the matter with me, I don't know. They think it's shell shock, among other things. Well, among other things, it isn't shell shock, it's——Oh, well, it isn't shell shock. It's darned old discouragement, and homesickness for the things that never were on land or sea. That's poetry, my darling sister. I have some of that in my system, too.

Well, I've been here alone so long that I want to know everything—everything about the people I care about. Ruth Farraday is one that I do care something about. She was mighty nice to me before I went to be a soldier. I think she would have been nicer if I had worked it around to get a commission instead of just plain enlisting, but this is only just conjecture. She is a beautiful girl, and her heart is in the right place wherever it is, but Sister, that's what I want to know. You're fooling around with the Farradays so much, you ought to get some line on this. I don't want to be idiot enough to start the poor, sick old friend stuff, if she's got her mind all off me or anybody that looks like me, and on somebody that doesn't. Does she wear a ring, and is she reported to be free or cinched, or what?

I can't stand not knowing any longer. That's the point. I may have been a darn fool in the way I've warned you against talking to her about me. I've just had all these notions one after another, kind of feverishly. I'm going to write to her if you advise me to. Don't go making up anything. Tell me the truth. I've got to know it, Kid. I'm just all in—that's all.

Buddy.

She opened her Mothers letter with eyes so full of tears she could scarcely distinguish its import.

Elizabeth Dear.

It is getting harder and harder to be away from you, especially since there is no immediate hope of Buddy's release. The poor boy doesn't get better. It is difficult to understand all the intricacies of the doctor's diagnosis. New conditions of warfare and of life breed new conditions of disease, physical and mental, he says, as well as new kinds of wounds and injuries, to be patiently handled by the new medicine and surgery. To a mother's eye, Buddy seems to be suffering from an old-fashioned set of causes and effects. But I don't know. All I know is that Buddy is not getting better, and that he has to be handled more carefully than ever. Elizabeth, dear, let me warn you again to be careful what you write him. He looks forward to your letters with the greatest interest, and yet when they come, to be perfectly frank, they often seem to fret him or to make him irritable. Perhaps you had best not mention your friends the Farradays. He used to know Ruth Farraday quite well, and sometimes the mention of these boys and girls that he used to have so many gay times with seems to make him morose. At other times he likes to look back at things he used to do. He is only a little boy, after all. Twenty-three doesn't seem much more to me than fourteen does, in spite of that stern look he has that all the men who have done any real fighting seem to come back with.

My darling, take care of your health. Don't go out in all weathers without being suitably attired for cold or wet, as the case may be. Your letters are a great comfort to me. You are good to help Grandmother so much. She appreciates it, and so does

Mother.

P. S. I wish I might have tasted that cake you made.

"Oh, Mother," Elizabeth cried. "Oh, you can't help me the least little bit in this, can you? What is the best thing for me to do for my Buddy?"

She tried to talk with her grandmother, very carefully, for fear of betraying Buddy's confidence, but for once her grandmother did not help her.

"It isn't a very good idea for little girls to think too much about such things," she said. "Love is a mystery. One heart kinder gets clinging to another heart, and nobody knows how it all come about, or how to stop it. When your time comes it is about like your time coming to die or be born, and you can only pray that it ain't going to be too hard, with anybody concerned in it."

"But, Grandmother, if you loved anybody and you were a man, and—and didn't tell her so because you were poor or anything, and she was all mixed up with somebody else, and——"

"Well, I ain't going to be called on to be a man just at present," Grandmother said, "and I guess that's just as well, for anybody that's got to make blueberry cake and biscuits for supper. Your grandfather is going to Hyannis to get a watermelon, perhaps you'd like to go with him for the ride."

"I would, only I've got to write a letter to Buddy. He—he wants me to write him right away about something."

"Well, give him Grandma's love and tell him to come down to the old place and get well."

"I'm going to write Buddy just the way I would want to be written to if I was in love with Ruth Farraday," Elizabeth decided, "only I am going to remember that he is sick. Supposing I was sick and supposing I was in trouble about something that was making me sicker, how would I want to be written to? Oh, dear Lord," she said, closing her eyes, suddenly, "help me to write that kind of a letter and to get it right."

She climbed the stairs slowly and opened the desk in her little room. The sisters Faith, Hope, and Charity smiled benignly down at her, as she began to write:

Dear Buddy:

Cross my heart and hope to die. I am quite a lot more grown up than I was when you knew me, and I understand the sacredness of confidences as I didn't at that time. You don't need to worry about trusting me. I love Ruth Farraday very much, and I should think anybody might.

Well, she is not a happy girl. There is a man called Mr. Piggy Chambers—that is what Peggy calls him, anyway—who is in love with her and asked her to marry him. I heard him that day that I went to Provincetown with him in his car. I did not tell you that I went to Provincetown with him, because I do not like him anyway, and I did not want you to think I would go motoring with a man like that. The fact was that I went to chaperone him and her. Well, she told him that he could not teach her love because she would be an icicle to him, and she said she did not know much about love anyway, but he insisted, to no purpose. I ought to have stuffed my ears, and so had Peggy, but some way we didn't.

The only drawback is that he is around the place all the time, and does not seem to be discouraged in any way. Peggy is furious at him. Whenever I see him on their porch eating, in that wicker chaise-longue they have, I cannot tell you how I despise him, in spite of his being really very nice, if you like that kind. He doesn't seem to have any neck, to speak of, and his collars look as if they would choke him. His eyes are small, though bright and animated looking.

Ruth Farraday comes here a great deal, and she asks for you sometimes, too. She loves Grandmother more than anybody does outside of the family. Their eyes look lovingly at each other even when they are not speaking, you know, like cousins or something. She is very kind to me, and never neglects a chance to do nice things for me. I told you how Granddaddy kissed her. She is sweet. She is just sweet. If I loved her, Buddy—(you told me not to talk this way to you once, but I am going to)—I would tell her I did, in some way. She is awfully little, for a girl as old as she is, and people protect her. Peggy protects her in a great many ways, and I know she is not happy.

I guess there is one thing that I ought to repeat. Yesterday she said, "How is your brother?" and I said, "He is about the same," and she said, "I've just discovered how ill he has been. I wish I had known it before," and I said, "Well, he might get discharged soon," because I didn't know what else to say. She said, "I should have written him, if I had thought he cared." Well, what could I say? I didn't say anything, because you have warned me so against blabbing. Then she said, "I can't write him now very well. I can't."

Well, so this is about all I know. I wish it were something helpful, but it seems like nothing at all. I am only trying to write as I would be written by. (See the Golden Rule.) If I have not made you sicker, and you love me into the bargain, please tell me so. When you are fourteen, responsibility frightens you a good deal. At fifteen or sixteen, you throw it off better. If you tell me anything to say to Ruth Farraday, I will say it. She is certainly sweet, and I certainly love her, and she is certainly not a happy girl.

Your sister Elizabeth.

P. S. That day we went to Provincetown, when I was walking alone with her, she said you were probably devoted to dozens of girls, and I said positively that you weren't. She said she would tell me a secret, and that was, that she thought you were very nice. It doesn't sound much to write it, but I think she meant it, in spite of laughing at it when she said it. She is certainly sweet. I would write to her, if it was me.

She made a special trip to the post office to mail this letter, and as she dropped it into the slot, she had a moment of dizziness, as if the floor of the post office had suddenly shaken itself under her feet. Even the blueberry cake did not tempt her to eat very heartily at supper.

"Elizabeth is growing up too fast," her grandmother complained, "watermelon and blueberry cake don't interest her."

"I been trying to interest her with the account of the young red-head that rode with me to Hyannis when she wouldn't go along. He's a pretty likely young chap, mad about electricity, he says, and going to study to be an electrical engineer, but Elizabeth is too old for such light talk. Can't we think o' something solid that'll kind o' get her attention?"

"She don't feel very well to-night, I guess. Leave her alone, Father."

"I don't feel sick," said Elizabeth, "but I feel about ninety years old. I'll just go and sit in Granddaddy's lap after supper and braid his beard, so there won't be any hard feeling." She liked nowadays to make her grandfather the kind of answer that would please him.

She crept away to bed as early as she could, and lay with throbbing temples against the cool white pillows in Great-grandmother's guest-chamber bed, wondering if she had written wisely to her sick brother and praying that she might have helped, not hindered, his recovery.

It was two days later that Peggy came to her with a troubled face.

"We've been having ructions over at our house," she said, "and I'm frightened. Mother and Ruth have had an awful row. I don't know how it's coming out. Mother is trying to egg Ruthie on to take Piggy for her lawful wedded. Anyhow, she claims Ruth ought to take him or leave him, with an accent on the take. Mother doesn't believe much in this soft stuff, you know. She wants everybody comfortable, without any rowing over expenses. She likes people to settle down and have large families, and large limousines, and large dinner parties, and so on. Her cry is that the country is going to the dogs, and our young men are all lame, halt, and blind from the late war, so why not pick a soft spot and let yourself down in it? She would. She wants Ruth to."

"Oh, Peggy, would you?"

"I don't know what I should do," Peggy said. "I like the people I like awfully. I'd rather be with them than be bothered. I don't see much use in being married, anyway."

"Sometimes," Elizabeth said, "I've thought it might be rather nice to be just married."

"Well, Ruth, she's a puzzle to me. Something's eating her—'scuse my elegance—I don't know whether it's wanting to be married, or not wanting to be. She told Mother that she'd rather be the wife of a poor man that she was keen on, than to have a million. Mother said that Piggy Chambers had four million. Ruth said that made about two, or one and one half, since the purchasing power of a dollar was so reduced. I didn't know Ruthie had it in her to talk back that way. Mother said that the purchasing power of a dollar was reduced for our family as well as anybody's, did she ever think of that? And that girls were an expensive luxury nowadays. Whereupon Ruthie said that she hadn't thought of that, but she would, if that was the way Mother looked at it. Mother said it wasn't, but that was the way somebody a little more practical than Ruthie might have looked at it for themselves. Then she said that Ruth had been playing with Piggy, or nobody would have had any reason to think of the matter at all. It was all pretty raw, you know. I wouldn't tell any other soul on earth, but someway you are different."

"A lot of people tell me things," Elizabeth said, "and I love Ruth."

"Your family is different," Peggy sighed. "If Ruthie and I lived all alone, we'd be different. I wish you'd come on over to the house with me, Elizabeth. I'm honestly almost afraid to go home. The atmosphere is so thick, you couldn't cut it with a knife unless it had just been sharpened."

"All right, I will," said Elizabeth. "I was coming over there anyway. Grandma thought it would cheer me up. I've been sort of mopey, myself."

"Well, it's about as cheerful in the cottage as if it was a nice, cozy morgue, but perhaps we can amuse ourselves with croquet and raspberry shrub. Truth compels me to state that Cook has just completed a mocha-frosted cake with an icing about six feet high. Do we get any of that? The answer is, probably not, but while there is life there is hope."

"Do you know that you have an awfully funny mind, Peggy? Amusing, I mean, and brilliant."

"That's a pretty embarrassing way for you to talk to an old friend," Peggy said, but she blushed in spite of her light laugh.

"Hello! Daddy's come," she cried, as they approached the Farraday porch. "That makes it even more exciting, doesn't it?"

Mr. and Mrs. Farraday were engaged in earnest conversation as the two girls opened the screen door and stepped into the dainty space within.

"Hello, Daddy, dearest," Peggy cried, flying to kiss him, "this is a darling, unexpected pleasure."

Mr. Farraday had a nice smile. He looked very much like his younger daughter.

"Ruth phoned me to come down," he said. "How's my son?"

"She's feeling a lot better, dear, since she knows you're in the house," Peggy flashed back. "I'm the only son he's got, you know."

"Your father and I were talking, dear," Mrs. Farraday's smooth tones intervened.

"Elizabeth and I only looked in to see Cook, in re a large cake she's been making."

Mrs. Farraday looked up. "Here comes Ruth and Mr. Chambers, so you may as well stay here. I've told Cook to serve that cake with our tea to-day."

"You have your good points, Mother," Peggy said, saucily.

Ruth threw up her small head as she came out of the house. She was very pale, Elizabeth noticed, and Mr. Chambers was very red. He was smiling, but Ruth's face was entirely grave.

"I am glad you are here, Father," she said, "for I have an announcement to make to you."

"Shall I go?" Elizabeth asked.

"No, dear, I want you to stay. It's not a secret. It is merely that Mr. Chambers has asked me to marry him, and I have said that I would."

"Oh, Lord!" Peggy cried.

"Don't you want me for a brother-in-law, Miss Peggy?" Mr. Chambers asked. "You don't sound very much pleased at our news."

"I don't want any brother-in-law very much," Peggy said, "but I do want my sister to do what she wants to, and—and to be happy," she finished, lamely.

"I don't know what to say," Mr. Farraday said. "I feel just about the way Peggy does. If—if you're both sure, you have my blessing."

"What nonsense!" Mrs. Farraday cried. "Of course they are both sure, and of course they have our blessing."

"How about you, little Miss Elizabeth?" Piggy Chambers smiled at her and held out his hand.

"I—I congratulate you," Elizabeth said.

"And me?" asked Ruth.

"And you," Elizabeth said, not quite able to keep her voice steady, "if you want to be congratulated by me."

"Kiss me, dear." Mrs. Farraday slipped an arm around her daughter's shoulders.

"No," said Ruth, sharply, "no."

"I don't see why anybody should want to kiss anybody," Peggy said. "It's too exciting, anyway."

"It's rather usual," Mr. Farraday murmured, "or it used to be, before this modern generation."

"A telegram for Miss Ruth," the maid came in and crossed the porch to present it.

Ruth looked a little dully at the yellow envelope on the silver tray.

"Who can be telegraphing now?" she said.

"Shall I open it, Sister?" Peggy put out her hand protectingly.

"No."

Ruth tore the crackling paper slowly, her mouth set in pinched, tense lines which changed suddenly and quivered for an instant piteously. Then she regained her composure.

"It's just a telegram from your brother," she said to Elizabeth, "a few lines to inquire about me and wish me good luck. It's funny it should have come now—isn't it?"