Book: The Tin Soldier

T >> Temple Bailey >> The Tin Soldier




He nodded. "I see. And yet there is this about Hilda. She does not
deceive herself;--perhaps you do--and Jean."

"Perhaps it is Hilda who is deceived. All the people in the world are
not unlovely--all of them are not mercenary and deceitful and selfish."
Her cheeks were flushed.

"Nobody knows that better than a doctor, Emily. I am conscious that
Hilda draws out the worst in me--yet there is something about her that
makes me want to find things out, to explore life with her--"

He was smiling into the fire. Miss Emily girded herself and gave him a
shock. "The trouble with you is that you want the admiration of every
woman who comes your way. Most of your patients worship you--Jean puts
you on a pedestal--even I tell you that you have a soul. But Hilda
withholds the admiration you demand, and you want to conquer her--to
see her succumb with the rest of us."

"The rest of you! Emily, you have never succumbed."

"Oh, yes, I have. I seem to be saying, 'He may have a few weaknesses,
but back of it all he is big and fine.' But Hilda's attitude
indicates, 'He is not fine at all.' And you hate that and want to show
her."

He chuckled. "By Jove, I do, Emily. Perhaps it is just as well that I
am getting away from her."

"I wouldn't admit it if I were you. I'd rather see you face a thing
than run away."

"If Eve had run away from the snake in the apple tree, she would not
have lost her Eden--poor Eve."

"Poor Adam--to follow her lead. He should have said, 'No, my dear,
apples are not permitted by the Food Administrator; we must practice
self-denial.'"

"I think I'd rather have him sinning than such a prig."

"It depends on the point of view."

He enjoyed immensely crossing swords with Emily. There was never any
aftermath of unpleasantness. She soothed him even while she criticised.

They spoke presently of Jean and Derry.

"They want to get married."

"Well, why not?"

"She's too young, Emily. Too ignorant of what life means--and he may
go to France any day. He is getting restless--and he may see things
differently--that his duty to his country transcends any personal
claim--and then what of Jean?--a little wife--alone."

"She could stay with me."

"But marriage, _marriage_, Emily--why in Heaven's name should they be
in such a hurry?"

"Why should they wait, and miss the wonder of it all, as I have missed
it--all the color and glow, the wine of life? Even if he should go to
France, and die, she will bear his beloved name--she will have the
right to weep."

He had never seen her like this--the red was deep in her cheeks, her
voice was shaken, her bosom rose and fell with her agitation.

"Emily, my dear girl--"

"Let them marry, Bruce, can't you see? Can't you see. It is their
day--there may be no tomorrow."

"But there are practical things, Emily. If she should have a child?"

"Why not? It will be his--to love. Only a woman with empty arms knows
what that means, Bruce."

And this was Emily, this rose-red, wet-eyed creature was Emily, whom he
had deemed unemotional, cold, self-contained!

"Men forget, Bruce. You wouldn't listen to reason when you wooed
Jean's mother. You were a demanding, imperative lover--you wanted your
own way, and you had it."

"But I had known Jean's mother all my life."

"Time has nothing to do with it."

"My dear girl--"

"It hasn't."

She was illogical, and he liked it. "If I let them marry, what then?"

"They will love you for it."

"They ought to love you instead."

"I shall be out of it. They will be married, and you will be in
France, and I shall sell--toys--"

She tried to laugh, but it was a poor excuse. He glanced at her
quickly. "Shall you miss me, Emily?"

Her hands went out in a little gesture of despair. "There you go,
taking my tears to yourself."

He was a bit disconcerted. "Oh, I say--"

"But they are not for you. They are for my lost youth and romance,
Bruce. My lost youth and romance."

Leaning back in his chair he studied her. Her eyes were dreamy--the
rose-red was still in her cheeks. For the first time he realized the
prettiness of Emily; it was as if in her plea for others she had
brought to life something in herself which glowed and sparkled.

"Look here," he said. "I want you to write to me."

"I am a busy woman."

"But a letter now and then--"

"Well, now and then--"

He was forced to be content with that. She was really very charming,
he decided as he got into his car. She was such a gentlewoman--she
created an atmosphere which belonged to his home and hearth.

When he came in late she was not waiting up for him as Hilda had so
often waited. There was a plate of sandwiches on his desk, coffee
ready in the percolator to be made by the turning on of the
electricity. But he ate his lunch alone.

Yet in spite of the loneliness, he was glad that Emily had not waited
up for him. It was a thing which Hilda might do--Hilda, who made a
world of her own. But Emily's world was the world of womanly
graciousness and dignity--the world in which his daughter moved, the
world which had been his wife's. For her to have eaten alone with him
in his office in the middle of the night would have made her seem less
than he wanted her to be.

Before he went to bed, he called up Hilda. "I forgot to tell you when
you were here this afternoon that I asked young Drake about Bronson.
He says that it isn't possible that the old man is giving the General
anything against orders. You'd better watch the other servants and be
sure of the day nurse--"

"I am sure of her and of the other servants--but I still have my doubts
about Bronson."

"But Drake says--"

"I don't care what he says. Bronson served the General before he
served young Drake--and he's not to be trusted."

"I should be sorry to think so; he impresses me as a faithful old soul."

"Well, my eyes are rather clear, you know."

"Yes, I know. Good-night, Hilda."

She hung up the receiver. She had talked to him at the telephone in
the lower hall, which was enclosed, and where one might be confidential
without feeing overheard.

She sat very still for a few moments in the little booth, thinking;
then she rose and went upstairs.

The General was awake and eager.

"Shall I read to you?" Hilda asked.

"No, I'd rather talk."

She shaded the light and sat beside the little table. "Did you like
your dinner?"

"Yes. Bronson said you made the broth. It was delicious."

"I like to cook---when I like the people I cook for."

He basked in that.

"There are some patients--oh, I have wanted to salt their coffee and
pepper their cereal. You have no idea of the temptations which come to
a nurse."

"Are you fond of it--nursing?"

"Yes. It is nice in a place like this--and at Dr. McKenzie's. But
there are some houses that are awful, with everybody quarrelling, the
children squalling--. I hate that. I want to be comfortable. I like
your thick carpets here, and the quiet, and the good service. And the
good things to eat, and the little taste of wine that we take
together." Her low laugh delighted him.

"The wine? You are going to drink another glass with me before I go to
sleep."

"Yes. But it is our secret. Dr. McKenzie would kill me if he knew,
and a nurse must obey orders."

"He need never know. And it won't hurt me."

"Of course not. But he has ideas on the subject."

"May I have it now?"

"Wait until Bronson goes to bed."

"Bronson has nothing to do with it. A servant has neither ears nor
eyes."

"It might embarrass him if the Doctor asked him. And why should you
make him lie?"

Bronson, pottering in, presently, was told that he would not be needed.
"Mr. Derry telephoned that he would be having supper after the play at
Miss Gray's. You can call him there if he is wanted."

"Thank you, Bronson. Good-night."

When the old man had left them, she said to the General, "Do you know
that your son is falling in love?"

"In love?"

"Yes, desperately--at first sight?"

He laughed. "With whom?"

"Dr. McKenzie's daughter."

"What?" He raised himself on his elbow.

"Yes. Jean McKenzie. I am not sure that I ought to tell you, but
somehow it doesn't seem right that you are not being told--"

He considered it gravely. "I don't want him to get married," he said
at last. "I want him to go to war. I can't tell you, Miss Merritt,
how bitter my disappointment has been that Derry won't fight."

"He may have to fight."

"Do you think I want him dragged to defend the honor of his country?
I'd rather see him dead." He was struggling for composure.

"Oh, I shouldn't have told you," she said, solicitously.

"Why not? It is my right to know."

"Jean is a pretty little thing, and you may like her."

"I like McKenzie," thoughtfully.

She glanced at him. His old face had fallen into gentler lines. She
gave a hard laugh. "Of course, a rich man like your son rather dazzles
the eyes of a young girl like Jean."

"You think then it is his--money?"

"I shouldn't like to say that. But, of course, money adds to his
charms."

"He won't have any money," grimly, "unless I choose that he shall. I
can stop his allowance tomorrow. And what would the little lady do
then?"

She shrugged. "I am sure I don't know. She'd probably take Ralph
Witherspoon. He's in the race. She dropped him after she met your
son."

The General's idea of women was somewhat exalted. He had an
old-fashioned chivalry which made him blind to their faults, the
champion of their virtues. He had always been, therefore, to a certain
extent, at the mercy of the unscrupulous. He had loaned money and used
his influence in behalf of certain wily and weeping females who had
deserved at his hands much less than they got.

In his thoughts of a wife for Derry, he had pictured her as sweet and
unsophisticated--a bit reserved, like Derry's mother--

The portrait which Hilda had subtly presented was of a mercenary little
creature, lured by the glitter of gold--off with the old and on with
the new, lacking fineness.

"I can stop his allowance," he wavered. "It would be a good test. But
I love the boy. The war has brought the first misunderstandings
between Derry and me. It would have hurt his mother."

Hilda was always restless when the name was introduced of the painted
lady on the stairs. When the General spoke of his wife, his eyes grew
kind--and inevitably his thoughts drifted away from Hilda to the days
that he had spent with Derry's mother.

"She loved us both," he said.

Hilda rose and crossed the room. A low bookcase held the General's
favorite volumes. There was a Globe edition of Dickens on the top
shelf, little fat brown books, shabby with much handling. Hilda
extracted one, and inserted her hand in the hollow space back of the
row. She brought out a small flat bottle and put the book back.

"I always keep it behind 'Great Expectations,'" she said, as she
approached the bed. "It seems rather appropriate, doesn't it?"

The old eyes, which had been soft with memories, glistened.

She filled two little glasses. "Let us drink to our--secret."

Then while the wine was firing his veins, she spoke again of Jean and
Derry. "It really seems as if he should have told you."

"I won't have him getting married. He can't marry unless he has money."

"Please don't speak of it to him. I don't want to get into trouble.
You wouldn't want to get me into trouble, would you?"

"No."

She filled his glass again. He drank. Bit by bit she fed the fire of
his doubts of his son. When at last he fell asleep in his lacquered
bed he had made up his mind to rather drastic action.

She sat beside him, her thoughts flying ahead into the years. She saw
things as she wanted them to be--Derry at odds with his father; married
to Jean; herself mistress of this great house, wearing the diamond
crown and the pearl collar; her portrait in the place of the one of the
painted lady on the stairs; looking down on little Jean who had judged
her by youth's narrow standards--whose husband would have no fortune
unless he chose to accept it at her hands.

Thus she weighed her influence over the sleeping sick man, thus she
dreamed, calm as fate in her white uniform.




CHAPTER XVI

JEAN-JOAN

Drusilla Gray's little late suppers were rather famous. It was not
that she spent so much money, but that she spent much thought.

Tonight she was giving Captain Hewes a sweet potato pie. "He has never
eaten real American things," she said to Jean. "Nice homey-cooked
things--"

"No one but Drusilla would ever think of pie at night," said Marion
Gray, "but she has set her heart on it."

There were some very special hot oyster sandwiches which preceded the
pie--peppery and savory with curls of bacon.

"I hope you are hungry," said Drusilla as her big black cook brought
them in. "Aunt Chloe hates to have things go back to the kitchen."

Nothing went back. There was snow without, a white whirl in the air,
piling up at street corners, a night for young appetites to be on edge.

"Jove," said the Captain, as he leaned back in his chair, "how I shall
miss all this!"

Jean turned her face towards him, startled. "Miss it?"

"Yes. I am going back--got my orders today."

Drusilla was cutting the pie. "Isn't it glorious?"

Jean gazed at her with something like horror. Glorious! How could
Drusilla go on, like Werther's Charlotte, _calmly cutting bread and
butter_? Captain Hewes loved her, anybody with half an eye could see
that--and whether she loved him or not, he was her friend--and she
called his going "glorious!"

"I was afraid my wound might put me on the shelf," the Captain said.

"He is ordered straight to the front," Drusilla elucidated. "This is
his farewell feast."

After that everything was to Jean funeral baked meats. The pie deep in
its crust, rich with eggs and milk, defiant of conservation, was as
sawdust to her palate.

Glorious!

Well, she couldn't understand Margaret. She couldn't understand
Drusilla. She didn't want to understand them.

"Some day I shall go over," Drusilla was saying. "I shall drive
something--it may be a truck and it may be an ambulance. But I can't
sit here any longer doing nothing."

"I think you are doing a great deal," said Jean. "Look at the
committees you are managing."

"Oh, things like that," said Drusilla contemptuously. "Women's work.
I'm not made to knit and keep card indexes. I want a man's job."

There was something almost boyish about her as she said it. She had
parted her hair on the side, which heightened the effect. "In the old
days," she told Captain Hewes, "I should have worn doublet and hose and
have gone as your page."

"Happy old days--."

"And I should have written a ballad about you," said Marion, "and have
sung it to the accompaniment of my harp--and my pot-boilers would never
have been. And we should all have worn trains and picturesque
headdresses instead of shirtwaists and sports hats, and I should have
called some man 'my Lord,' and have listened for his footsteps instead
of ending my days in single blessedness with a type-writer as my
closest companion."

Everybody laughed except Jean. She broke her cheese into small bits
with her fork, and stared down at it as if cheese were the most
interesting thing in the whole wide world.

It was only two weeks since they had had the news of Margaret's
husband--only a month since he had died. And Winston had been Captain
Hewes' dear friend; he had been Derry's. Would anybody laugh if Derry
had been dead only fourteen days?

She tried, however, to swing herself in line with the others. "Shall
you go before Christmas?" she asked the Captain.

"Yes. And Miss Gray had asked me to dine with her. You can see what I
am missing--my first American Christmas."

"We are going to have a little tree," said Drusilla, "and ask all of
you to come and hang presents on it."

Jean had always had a tree at Christmas time. From the earliest days
of her remembrance, there had been set in the window of the little
drawing room, a young pine brought from the Doctor's country-place far
up in Maryland. On Christmas Eve it had been lighted and the doors
thrown open. Jean could see her mother now, shining on one side of it,
and herself coming in, in her nurse's arms.

There had been a star at the top, and snow powdered on the
branches--and gold and silver balls--and her presents piled
beneath--always a doll holding out its arms to her. There had been the
first Rosie-Dolly, more beloved than any other; made of painted cloth,
with painted yellow curls, and dressed in pink with a white apron.
Rosie was a wreck of a doll now, her features blurred and her head bald
with the years--but Jean still loved her, with something left over of
the adoration of her little girl days. Then there was Maude, named in
honor of the lovely lady who had played "Peter Pan," and the last doll
that Jean's mother had given her. Maude had an outfit for every
character in which Jean had seen her prototype--there were the rowan
berries and shawl of "Babbie," the cap and jerkin of "Peter Pan," the
feathers and spurs of "Chantecler"--such a trunkful, and her dearest
mother had made them all--.

And Daddy! How Daddy had played Santa Claus, in red cloth and fur with
a wide belt and big boots, every year, even last year when she was
nineteen and ready to make her bow to society. And now he might never
play Santa Claus again--for before Christmas had come he would be on
the high seas, perhaps on the other side of the seas--at the edge of No
Man's Land. And there would be no Star, no dolls, no gold and silver
balls--for the nation which had given Santa Claus to the world, had
robbed the world of peace and of goodwill. It had robbed the world of
Christmas!

She came back to hear the Captain saying, "I want you to sing for
me--Drusilla."

They rose and went into the other room.

"Tired, dearest?" Derry asked, as he found a chair for her and drew his
own close to it.

"No, I am not tired," she told him, "but I hate to think that Captain
Hewes must go."

"I'd give the world to be going with him."

Her hands were clasped tightly. "Would you give me up?"

"You? I should never have to give you up, thank God. You would never
hold me back."

"Shouldn't I, Derry?"

"My precious, don't I know? Better than you know yourself."

Drusilla and the Captain were standing by the wide window which looked
out over the city. The snow came down like a curtain, shutting out the
sky.

"Do you think she loves him?" Jean asked.

"I hope so," heartily.

"But to send him away so--easily. Oh, Derry, she can't care."

"She is sending him not easily, but bravely. Margaret let her husband
go like that."

"Would you want me to let you go like that, Derry?"

"Yes, dear."

"Wouldn't you want me to--cry?"

"Perhaps. Just a little tear. But I should want you to think beyond
the tears. I should want you to know that for us there can be no real
separation. You are mine to the end of all eternity, Jean."

He believed it. And she believed it. And perhaps, after all, it was
true. There must be a very separate and special Heaven for those who
love once, and never love again.

Drusilla came away from the window to sing for them--a popular song.
But there was much in it to intrigue the imagination--a vision of the
heroic Maid--a hint of the Marseillaise--and so the nations were
singing it--.

"Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne d'Arc,
Oh, soldats! entendez vous?
'Allons, enfants de la patrie,'
Jeanne d'Arc, la victoire est pour vous--"


There was a new note in Drusilla's voice. A note of tears as well as
of triumph--and at the last word she broke down and covered her face
with her hands.

In the sudden stillness, the Captain strode across the room and took
her hands away from her face.

"Drusilla," he said before them all, "do you care as much as that?"

She told him the truth in her fine, frank fashion.

"Yes," she said, "I do care, Captain, but I want you to go."

"And oh, Derry, I am so glad she cried," Jean said, when they were
driving home through the snow-storm. "It made her seem so--human."

Derry drew her close. "Such a thing couldn't have happened," he said,
"at any other time. Do you suppose that a few years ago any of us
would have been keyed up to a point where a self-contained Englishman
could have asked a girl, in the face of three other people, if she
loved him, and have had her answer like that? It was beautiful,
beautiful, Jean-Joan--"

She held her breath. "Why do you call me that?"

"She lived for France. You shall live for France--and me."

The snow shut them in. There was the warmth of the car, of the fur
rugs and Derry's fur coat, Jean's own velvet wrap of heavenly blue, the
fragrance of her violets. Somewhere far away men were fighting--there
was the mud and cold of the trenches--somewhere men were suffering.

She tried not to think of them. Her cheek was against Derry's. She
was safe--safe.

* * * * * *

Captain Hewes went away that night Drusilla's accepted lover. He put a
ring on her finger and kissed her "good-bye," and with his head high
faced the months that he must be separated from her.

"I will come back, dear woman."

"I shall see you before that," she told him. "I am coming over."

"I shall hate to have you in it all. But it will be Heaven to see you."

When he had gone, Drusilla went into Marion Gray's study.

Marion looked up from her work. She was correcting manuscript, pages
and pages of it. "Well, do you want me to congratulate you, Drusilla?"

Drusilla sat down. "I don't know, Marion. He is the biggest and
finest man I have ever met, but--"

"But what?"

"I wanted love to come to me differently, as it has come to Jean and
Derry--without any doubts. I wanted to be sure. And I am not sure. I
only know that I couldn't let him go without making him happy."

"Then is it--pity?"

"No. He means more to me than that. But I gave way to an impulse--the
music, and his sad eyes. And then I cried, and he came up to me--fancy
a man coming up before you all like that--"

"It was quite the most dramatic moment," said the lady who wrote.
"Quite unbelievable in real life. One finds those things occasionally
in fiction."

"It was as if there were just two of us alone in the world," Drusilla
confessed, "and I said what I did because I simply couldn't help it.
And it was true at the moment; I think it is always going to be true.
If I marry him I shall care a great deal. But it has not come to me
just as I had--dreamed."

"Nothing is like our dreams," said Marion, and dropped her pen.
"That's why I write. I can give my heroine all the bliss for which she
yearns."

Drusilla stood up. "You mustn't misunderstand me, Marion. I am very
happy in the thought of my good friend, of my great lover. It is only
that it hasn't quite measured up to what I expected."

"Nothing measures up to what we expect."

"And now Jean belongs to Derry, and I belong to my gallant and good
Captain. I shall thank God before I sleep tonight, Marion."

"And he'll thank God--."

They kissed each other, and Drusilla went to bed, and the next morning
she wrote a letter to her Captain, which he carried next to his heart
and kissed when he got a chance.




CHAPTER XVII

THE WHITE CAT

Derry, going quietly to his room that night, did not stop at the
General's door. He did not want to speak to Hilda, he did not want to
speak to anyone, he wanted to be alone with his thoughts of Jean and
that perfect ride with her through the snow.

He was, therefore, a little impatient to find Bronson waiting up for
him.

"I thought I told you to go to bed, Bronson."

"You did, sir, but--but I have something to tell you."

"Can't it wait until morning?"

"I should like to say it now, Mr. Derry." The old man's eyes were
anxious. "It's about your father--"

"Father?"

"Yes. I told you I didn't like the nurse."

"Miss Merritt? Well?"

"Perhaps I'd better get you to bed, sir. It's a rather long story, and
you'd be more comfortable."

"You'd be more comfortable, you mean, Bronson." The impatient note had
gone out of Derry's voice. Temporarily he pigeon-holed his thoughts of
Jean, and gave his attention to this servant who was more than a
servant, more even than a friend. To Derry, Bronson wore a sort of
halo, like a good old saint in an ancient woodcut.

Propped up at last among his pillows, pink from his bath and in pale
blue pajamas, Derry listened to what the old man had to say to him.

Bronson sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair with Muffin at his
knees. "From the first day I had a feeling that she wasn't
just--straight. I don't know why, but I felt it. She had one way with
the General and another with us servants. But I didn't mind that, not
much, until she went into your mother's room."

"My mother's room?" sharply. "What was she doing there, Bronson?"

"That's what I am going to tell you, sir. You know that place on the
third floor landing, where I sits and looks through at your father when
he ain't quite himself, and won't let me come in his room? Well, there
was one night that I was there and watched her--"

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