The girls, Cora and Tess and the rest, laughed and joked among themselves and assured one another, with a toss of the head, that they could have a good time without the fellas. They didn’t need boys around.
They gave parties, and they were not a success. There was one of the type known as a stag. “Some hen party!” they all said. They danced, and sang “Over There.” They had ice cream and chocolate layer cake and went home in great hilarity, with their hands on each other’s shoulders, still singing.
But the thing was a failure, and they knew it. Next day, at the lunch hour and in the washroom, there was a little desultory talk about the stag. But the meat of such an aftergathering is contained in phrases such as “I says to him”—and “He says to me.” They wasted little conversation on the stag. It was much more exciting to exhibit letters on blue-lined paper with the red emblem at the top. Chuck’s last letter had contained the news of his sergeancy.
Angie Hatton, home from the East, was writing letters, too. Everyone in Chippewa knew that. She wrote on that new art paper with the gnawed-looking edges and stiff as a newly laundered cuff. But the letters which she awaited so eagerly were written on the same sort of paper as were those Tessie had from Chuck—blue-lined, cheap in quality. A New York fellow, Chippewa learned; an aviator. They knew, too, that young Hatton was an infantry lieutenant somewhere in the East. These letters were not from him.
Ever since her home-coming, Angie had been sewing at the Red Cross shop on Grand Avenue. Chippewa boasted two Red Cross shops. The Grand Avenue shop was the society shop. The East End crowd sewed there, capped, veiled, aproned—and unapproachable. Were your fingers ever so deft, your knowledge of seams and basting mathematical, your skill with that complicated garment known as a pneumonia jacket uncanny, if you did not belong to the East End set, you did not sew at the Grand Avenue shop. No matter how grossly red the blood which the Grand Avenue bandages and pads were ultimately to stanch, the liquid in the fingers that rolled and folded them was pure cerulean.
Tessie and her crowd had never thought of giving any such service to their country. They spoke of the Grand Avenue workers as “that stinkin’ bunch.” Yet each one of the girls was capable of starting a blouse in an emergency on Saturday night and finishing it in time for a Sunday picnic, buttonholes and all. Their help might have been invaluable. It never was asked.
Without warning, Chuck came home on three days’ furlough. It meant that he was bound for France right enough this time. But Tessie didn’t care.
“I don’t care where you’re goin’,” she said exultantly, her eyes lingering on the stocky, straight, powerful figure in its rather ill-fitting khaki. “You’re here now. That’s enough. Ain’t you tickled to be home, Chuck? Gee!” `
`I’ll say,” responded Chuck. But even he seemed to detect some lack in his tone and words. He elaborated somewhat shamefacedly:
“Sure. It’s swell to be home. But I don’t know. After you’ve traveled around, and come back, things look so kind of little to you. I don’t know—kind of–-” He floundered about, at a loss for expression. Then tried again: “Now, take Hatton’s place, for example. I always used to think it was a regular palace, but, gosh, you ought to see places where I was asked to in San Francisco and around there. Why, they was—were—enough to make the Hatton house look like a shack. Swimmin’ pools of white marble, and acres of yard like a park, and the help always bringing you something to eat or drink. And the folks themselves—why, say! Here we are scraping and bowing to Hattons and that bunch. They’re pikers to what some people are that invited me to their houses in New York and Berkeley, and treated me and the other guys like kings or something. Take Megan’s store, too”—he was warming to his subject, so that he failed to notice the darkening of Tessie’s face—“it’s a joke compared to New York and San Francisco stores. Reg’lar hick joint.”
Tessie stiffened. Her teeth were set, her eyes sparkled. She tossed her head. “Well, I’m sure, Mr. Mory, it’s good enough for me. Too bad you had to come home at all now you’re so elegant and swell, and everything. You better go call on Angie Hatton instead of wasting time on me. She’d probably be tickled to see you.”
He stumbled to his feet, then, awkwardly. “Aw, say, Tessie, I didn’t mean—why, say—you don’t suppose—why, believe me, I pretty near busted out cryin’ when I saw the Junction eatin’ house when my train came in. And I been thinking of you every minute. There wasn’t a day–-“
“Tell that to your swell New York friends. I may be a hick but I ain’t a fool.” She was near to tears.
“Why, say, Tess, listen! Listen! If you knew—if you knew—A guy’s got to—he’s got no right to–-“
And presently Tessie was mollified, but only on the surface. She smiled and glanced and teased and sparkled. And beneath was terror. He talked differently. He walked differently. It wasn’t his clothes or the army. It was something else—an ease of manner, a new leisureliness of glance, an air. Once Tessie had gone to Milwaukee over Labor Day. It was the extent of her experience as a traveler. She remembered how superior she had felt for at least two days after. But Chuck! California! New York! It wasn’t the distance that terrified her. It was his new knowledge, the broadening of his vision, though she did not know it and certainly could not have put it into words.
They went walking down by the river to Oneida Springs, and drank some of the sulphur water that tasted like rotten eggs. Tessie drank it with little shrieks and shudders and puckered her face up into an expression indicative of extreme disgust.
“It’s good for you,” Chuck said, and drank three cups of it, manfully. “That taste is the mineral qualities the water contains—sulphur and iron and so forth.”
“I don’t care,” snapped Tessie irritably. “I hate it!” They had often walked along the river and tasted of the spring water, but Chuck had never before waxed scientific. They took a boat at Baumann’s boathouse and drifted down the lovely Fox River.
“Want to row?” Chuck asked. “I’ll get an extra pair of oars if you do.”
“I don’t know how. Besides, it’s too much work. I guess I’ll let you do it.”
Chuck was fitting his oars in the oarlocks. She stood on the landing looking down at him. His hat was off. His hair seemed blonder than ever against the rich tan of his face. His neck muscles swelled a little as he bent. Tessie felt a great longing to bury her face in the warm red skin. He straightened with a sigh and smiled at her. “I’ll be ready in a minute.” He took off his coat and turned his khaki shirt in at the throat, so that you saw the white line of his untanned chest in strange contrast to his sunburned throat. A feeling of giddy faintness surged over Tessie. She stepped blindly into the boat and would have fallen if Chuck’s hard, firm grip had not steadied her. “Whoa, there! Don’t you know how to step into a boat? There. Walk along the middle.”
She sat down and smiled up at him. “I don’t know how I come to do that. I never did before.”
Chuck braced his feet, rolled up his sleeves, and took an oar in each brown hand, bending rhythmically to his task. He looked about him, then at the girl, and drew a deep breath, feathering his oars. “I guess I must have dreamed about this more’n a million times.”