Book: The Tin Soldier

T >> Temple Bailey >> The Tin Soldier




"What will she care for her professional reputation when she is my
father's wife?"

The thought of Hilda with the world, in a sense, at her feet was
maddening. The Doctor paced the floor roaring like an angry lion. "It
may not do any good, but I've got to tell her what I think of her."

Derry had a whimsical sense of the meeting of the white cat and this
leonine gentleman--would she purr or scratch?

"The sooner you and Jean are married the better. If Hilda thinks she
is going to keep you and Jean apart she is mistaken."

"Oh--did she know of the engagement?"

"Yes," the Doctor confessed. "I told her the other day when she came
to fix the books."

"Then that accounts for it."

"For what?"

"Dad's attitude. I thought it was queer he should fly up all in a
moment. She wanted to make trouble, Doctor, and she has made it."

Long after Derry had gone to bed, the Doctor sat there pondering on
Hilda's treachery. He was in some ways a simple man--swayed by the
impulse of the moment. The thought of deliberate plotting was
abhorrent. In his light way he had taken her lightly. He had laughed
at her. He had teased Jean, he had teased Emily, calling their
intuition jealousy. Yet they had known better than he. And why should
not women know women better than men know them? Just as men know men
in a way that women could never know. Sex erected barriers--there was
always the instinct to charm, to don one's gayest plumage; even Hilda's
frankness had been used as a lure; she knew he liked it. Would she
have been so frank if she had not felt its stimulus to a man of his
type? And, after all, had she really been frank?

Such a woman was like a poisonous weed; and he had thought she might
bloom in the same garden with Jean--until Emily had told him.

He turned to the thought of Emily with relief. Thank God he could
leave Jean in her care. If Derry went, there would still be Emily with
her sweet sanity, and her wise counsels.

He felt very old as he went upstairs. He stood for a long time in
front of his wife's picture. How sweet she had been in her
forget-me-not gown--how little and tender! Their love had burned in a
white flame--there would never be anything like that for him again.

He waked in the morning, however, ready for all that was before him.
He was a man who dwelt little on the past. There was always the day's
work, and the work of the day after.

His appetite for the work of the coming day was, it must be confessed,
whetted somewhat by the thought of what he would say to Hilda.

They had an early breakfast, with Jean between her father and Derry and
eating nothing for very happiness.

There was the start in the opal light of the early morning, with a
faint rose sky making a background for the cross on the College, and
the chimes saying "Seven o'clock."

Jim and Mary Connolly came out in the biting air to see them off. Then
Mary went over to the church to pray for Jean and Derry. But first of
all she prayed for her sons.

The Doctor, arriving at his office, at once called up Hilda.

"I must see you as soon as possible."

"What has Derry Drake been telling you?"

"How do you know that he has told me anything?"

"By your voice. And you needn't think that you are going to scold me."

"I shall scold you for disobeying orders. I thought you were to be
trusted, Hilda."

"I am not a saint. You know that. And I am not sure that I want you
to come. I shall send you away if you scold."

She hung up the receiver and left him fuming. Her high-handed
indifference to his authority sent him storming to Derry, "I've half a
mind to stay away."

"I think I would. It won't do any good to go--"

But the Doctor went. He still hoped, optimistically, that Hilda might
be induced to see the error of her ways.

She received him in the blue room, where the General's precious
porcelain was set forth in cabinets. It was a choice little room which
had been used by Mrs. Drake for the reception of special guests. Hilda
was in her uniform, but without her cap. It was as if in doffing her
cap, she struck her first note of independence against the Doctor's
rule.

He began professionally. "Doctor Bryer telephoned this morning that
his attendance of the case had been only during my absence. That he
did not care to keep it unless I definitely intended to withdraw. I
told him to go ahead. I told him also that you were a good nurse. I
had to whitewash my conscience a bit to say it, Hilda--"

Her head went up. "I am a good nurse. But I am more than a nurse, I
am a woman. Oh, I know you are blaming me for what you think I have
done. But if you stood under a tree and a great ripe peach hung just
out of your reach, could you be blamed for shaking the tree? Well, I
shook the tree."

She was very handsome as she gave her defense with flashing eyes.

"The General asked me to marry him, and that's more than you would ever
have done. You liked to think that I was half in love with you. You
liked to pretend that you were half in love with me. But would you
ever have offered me ease and rest from hard work? Would you ever have
thought that I might some day be your daughter's equal in your home?
Oh, I have wanted good times. I used to sit night after night alone in
the office while you and Jean went out and did the things I was dying
to do. I wanted to go to dances and to the theater and to supper with
a gay crowd. But you never seemed to think of it. I am young and I
want pretty clothes--yet you thought I was satisfied to have you come
home and say a few careless pleasant words, and to tease me a little.
That was all you ever did for me--all you ever wanted.

"But the General wants more than that. He wants me here in the big
house, to be his wife, and to meet his friends. He had a man come up
the other day with a lot of rings, and he bought me this." She showed
the great diamonds flashing on her third finger. "I have always wanted
a ring like this, and now I can have as many as I want. Do you blame
me for shaking the tree?"

He sat, listening, spellbound to her sophistry. But was it sophistry?
Wasn't some of it true? He saw her for the first time as a woman
wanting things like other women.

She swept out her hand to include the contents of the little room. "I
have always longed for a place like this. I don't know a thing about
china. But I know that all that stuff in the cabinet cost a fortune.
And it's a pretty room, and some day when I am the General's wife, I'll
ask you here to take tea with me, and I'll wear a silver gown like your
daughter wears, and I think you'll be surprised to see that I can do it
well."

He flung up his hand. "I can't argue it, Hilda. I can't analyze it.
But it is all wrong. In all the years that you worked for me, while I
laughed at you, I respected you. But I don't respect you now."

She shrugged. "Do you think I care? And a man's respect after all is
rather a cold thing, isn't it? But I am sorry you feel as you do about
it. I should have been glad to have you wish me happiness."

"Happiness--" His anger seemed to die suddenly. "You won't find
happiness, Hilda, if you separate a son from his father."

"Did he tell you that? I had nothing to do with it. His father was
angry at his--interference."

He stood up. "We won't discuss it. But you may tell him this. That I
am glad his son is poor, for my daughter will marry now the man and not
his money."

"Then he will marry her?"

"Yes. On Christmas Day."

She wished that she might tell him the date of her own wedding, but she
did not know it. The General seemed in no hurry. He had carefully
observed the conventions; had hired a housekeeper and a maid, and there
was, of course, the day nurse. Having thus surrounded his betrothed
with a sort of feminine bodyguard, he spoke of the wedding as happening
in the spring. And he was hard to move. As has been said, the General
had once commanded a brigade. He was immensely entertained and
fascinated by the lady who was to be his wife. But he was not to be
managed by her. She found herself, as he grew stronger, quite
strangely deferring to his wishes. She found herself, indeed, rather
unexpectedly dominated.

She came back to the Doctor. "Aren't you going to wish me happiness?"

"No. How can I, Hilda?"

After he had left her, she stood very still in the middle of the room.
She could still see him as he had towered above her--his crinkled hair
waving back from his handsome head. She had always liked the youth of
him and his laughter and his boyish fun.

The rich man upstairs was--old--.




CHAPTER XX

THE VISION OF BRAVE WOMEN

And now the Tin Soldier was to go to the wars!

Derry, swinging downtown, found himself gazing squarely into the eyes
of the khaki-clad men whom he met. He was one of them at last!

He was on his way to meet Jean. The day before they had gone to church
together. They had heard burning words from a fearless pulpit. The
old man who had preached had set no limits on his patriotism. The
cause of the Allies was the cause of humanity, the cause of humanity
was the cause of Christ. He would have had the marching hymn of the
Americans "Onward, Christian Soldiers." His Master was not a shrinking
idealist, but a prophet unafraid. "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto
thee, Bethsaida! . . . It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon
in the day of Judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art
exalted unto Heaven, shall be brought down to hell . . ."

"I am too old to go myself," the old man had said, "but I have sent my
sons. In the face of the world's need, no man has a right to hold
another back. Personal considerations which might once have seemed
sufficient must now be set aside. Things are at stake which involve
not only the honor of a nation but the honor of the individual. To
call a man a coward in the old days was to challenge his physical
courage. To know him as a slacker in these modern times is to doubt
the quality of his mind and spirit. 'I pray thee have me excused' is
the word of one lost to the high meanings of justice--of love and
loyalty and liberty--"

Stirring words. The lovers had thrilled to them. Derry's hand had
gone out to Jean and her own hand clasped it. Together they saw the
vision of his going forth, a shining knight, girded for the battle by a
beloved woman--saw it through the glamour of high hopes and youthful
ardor!

A troop of cavalry on the Avenue! Jackies in saucer caps, infantry,
artillery, aviation! Blue and red and green cords about wide-brimmed
hats. Husky young Westerners, slim young Southerners, square-chinned
young Northerners--a great brotherhood, their faces set one way--and he
was to share their hardships, to be cold and hungry with the best of
them, wet and dirty with the worst. It would be a sort of glorified
penance for his delay in doing the thing which too long he had left
undone.

He was to have lunch with Jean in the House restaurant--he was a little
early, and as he loitered through the Capitol grounds, in his ears
there was the echo of fairy trumpets--"_trutter-a-trutt,
trutter-a-trutt--_"

The old Capitol had always been for Derry a place of dreams. He loved
every inch of it. The sunset view of the city from the west front; the
bronze doors on the east, the labyrinthine maze of the corridors; the
tesselated floors, the mottled marble of the balustrades; the hushed
approach to the Supreme Court; the precipitous descent into the
galleries of House and Senate, the rap of the Speaker's gavel--the
rattle of argument as political foes contended in the legislative
arena; the more subdued squabbles on the Senate floor; the savory smell
of food rising from the restaurants in the lower regions; the climb to
the dome, the look of the sky when one came out at the top; Statuary
Hall and its awesome echoes; the Rotunda with its fringe of tired
tourists, its frescoed frieze--Columbus, Cortez, Penn, Pizarro--; the
mammoth paintings--Pocahontas, and the Pilgrims, De Soto, and the
Surrender of Cornwallis, the Signing of the Declaration, and
Washington's Resignation as Commander-in-Chief--Indian and Quaker,
Puritan and Cavalier--these were some of the things which had ravished
the eyes of the boy Derry in the days when his father had come to the
Capitol to hobnob with old cronies, and his son had been allowed to
roam at will.

But above and beyond everything else, there were the great mural
paintings on the west wall of the House side, above the grand marble
staircase.

"_Westward the Course of Empire takes its way--!_"

Oh, those pioneers with their faces turned towards the Golden West!
The tired women and the bronzed men! Not one of them without that
eager look of hope, of a dream realized as the land of Promise looms
ahead!

Derry had often talked that picture over with his mother. "It was such
men, Derry, who made our country--men unafraid--North, South, East and
West, it was these who helped to shape the Nation's destiny, as we must
help to shape it for those who come after us."

It was in front of this picture that he was to meet Jean. He had
wanted to share with her the inspiration of it.

She was late, and he waited, leaning on the marble rail which
overlooked the stairway. People were going up and down passing the
picture, but not seeing it, their pulses calm, their blood cold. The
doors of the elevators opened and shut, women came and went in velvet
and fur, laughing. Men followed them, laughing, and the picture was
not for them.

Derry wondered if it were symbolic, this indifference of the crowd.
Was the world's pageant of horrors and of heroism thus unseen by the
eyes of the unthinking?

And now Jean ascended, the top of her hat first--a blur of gray, then
the red of the rose that he had sent her, a wave of her gray muff as
she saw him. He went down to meet her, and stood with her on the
landing. Beneath the painting, on one side, ran the inscription, "No
pent up Utica confines our powers, but the boundless Continent is
ours," on the other side, "The Spirit moves in its allotted space; the
mind is narrow in a narrow sphere."

Thousands of men and women came and went and never read those words.
But boys read them, sitting on the stairs or leaning over the rail--and
their minds were carried on and on. Old men, coming back after years
to read them again, could testify what the words had meant to them in
the field of high endeavor.

Jean had seen the painting many times, but now, standing on the upper
gallery floor with Derry, it took on new meanings. She saw a girl with
hope in her eyes, a young mother with a babe at her breast; homely
middle-aged women redeemed from the commonplace by that long gaze ahead
of them; old women straining towards that sunset glow. She saw,
indeed, the Vision of Brave Women. "If it could only be like that for
me, Derry. Do you see--they go with their husbands, those women, and I
must stay behind."

"You will go with me, beloved, in spirit--"

They fell into silence before the limitless vista.

And now more people were coming up the stairs, a drawling, familiar
voice--Alma Drew on the landing below. With her a tall young man. She
was turning on him all her batteries of charm.

Alma passed the picture and did not look at it, she passed the lovers
and did not see them. And she was saying as she passed, "I don't know
why any man should be expected to fight. I shouldn't if I were a man."

Jean drew a long breath. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Jean
McKenzie."

Derry laughed. "You were never like that. Not for the least minute.
You were afraid for the man you loved. It isn't fear with Alma."

But the thought of Alma did not trouble them long. There was too much
else in their world today. As they walked through the historic halls,
they had with them all the romance of the past--and so Robert Fulton
with his boats, Pere Marquette with his cross and beads, Frances
Willard in her strange old-fashioned dress spoke to them of the dreams
which certain inspired men and women have translated into action.

They talked of these things while they ate their lunch. The black
waiter, who knew Derry, hovered about them. His freedom, too, had been
the culmination of a dream.

"Men laugh at the dreamers," Derry said, "then honor them after they
are dead."

"That's the cruelty, the sadness of it, isn't it?"

"Not to the dreamer. Do you think that Pere Marquette cared for what
smaller minds might think, or Frances Willard? They had their vision
backed by a great faith in the rightness of things, and so Marquette
followed the river and planted the cross, and Frances Willard blazed
the way for the thing which has come to pass."

After lunch they motored to Drusilla's. They used one of Dr.
McKenzie's cars. Derry had ceased to draw upon his father's
establishment for anything. He lived at the club, and met his expenses
with the small balance which remained to his credit in the bank.

"You can give Jean whatever you think best," he told the Doctor, "but I
shall try to live on what I have until I go, and then on my pay."

"Your pay, my dear boy, will just about equal what you now spend in
tips."

"I think I shall like it. It's an adventure for rich men when they
have to be poor. That's why a lot of fellows have gone into it. They
are tired of being the last word in civilization. They want to get
down to primitive things."

"Mrs. Witherspoon can't imagine Derry Drake without two baths a day."

"Can't she? Well, Mrs. Witherspoon may find that Derry Drake is about
like the rest of the fellows. No better and no worse. There is no
disgrace in liking to be clean. The disgrace comes when one kicks
against a thing that can't be helped."

In the Doctor's car, therefore, they arrived at Drusilla's.

"We have come to tell you that we are going to be married."

"You Babes in the Wood!"

"Will you come to the wedding?

"Of course I'll come. Marion, do you hear? They are going to be
married."

"And after that, Drusilla,"--he smiled as he phrased it--"your Tin
Soldier will go to the wars."

Jean glanced from one to the other. "Is that what she called you--a
Tin Soldier?"

"It is what I called myself."

Marion having come forward to say the proper thing, added, "Drusilla's
going, too."

"Drusilla?"

"Yes, with my college unit--to run errands in a flivver."

The next day, encountering Derry on the street, Drusilla opened her
knitting bag and brought out a tiny parcel. "It's my wedding gift to
you. I found it in Emily's toy shop."

It was a gay little French tin soldier. "For a mascot;" she told him,
seriously. "Derry, dear, I shall not try to tell you how I feel about
your marriage to Jean. About your going. If I could sing it, you'd
know. But I haven't any words. It--it seems so--perfect that the Tin
Soldier should go--to the wars--and that the girl he leaves behind him
should be a little white maid like--Jean."

Thus Drusilla, with a shake in her voice, renouncing a--dream.

Derry, who was on his way to Margaret's showed the tin soldier to Teddy
and his little sister. "He is going to the wars."

"With you?"

"Yes."

"When are you going?"

"As soon as I can--"

"I should think you wouldn't like to leave us."

"Well, I don't. But I am coming back."

"Daddy didn't come back."

"But some men do."

"Perhaps God doesn't love you as much as He did Daddy, and He won't
want to keep you."

"Perhaps not--"

The things which the child had spoken stayed with Derry all that day.
His feeling about death had always been that of a man who has long
years before him. He had rather jauntily conceded that some men die
young, but that the chances in his case were for a green old age. He
might indeed have fifty years before him, and in fifty years one
could--get ready--age had to do with serious things, people were
peaceful and prepared.

But to get ready now. To face the thing squarely, saying, "I may not
come back--there are, indeed, a thousand chances that I shall not
come." Lacking those fifty years in which to grow towards the thought
of dissolution, what ought one to do? Should a man make himself fit in
some special fashion?

There was, too, the thought of those whom he might leave behind. Of
Jean--his wife--whom he would leave. She would break her heart--at
first. And then--? Would she remember? Would she forget? Would he
and those millions of others who had gone down in battle become dim
memories--pale shadows against the vivid background of the hurrying
world?

He felt that he could not, must not speak of these things to Jean. So
he talked of them to Emily.

"If anything should happen to me," he said, "I couldn't, of course,
expect that Jean would go on--caring--. And if there should ever be
anyone else--I--I should want her to be happy."

"Don't try to be magnanimous," Miss Emily advised. "You are human, and
it isn't in the heart of man to want the woman he loves ever to turn to
another. Let the years take care of that. But you can be very sure of
one thing--that no one will ever take your place with Jean."

"But she may marry."

"Why should you torture yourself with that? You have given her
something that no one else can ever give--the wonder and rapture of
first love. And the heroes of a war like this will be in a very
special manner set apart! 'A glorious company, the flower of men, to
serve as models for the mighty world!'"

She laid her hand on his shoulder. "You must think now only of love
and life and of coming back to Jean."

He reached up his hand and caught hers in a warm clasp. "Do you know
you are the nearest, thing to a mother that I've known since I lost
mine?"

He spoke, too, rather awkwardly, of the feeling about--getting ready.

"I have always thought that if I tried to live straight--I've thought,
too, that it wouldn't come until I was old--that I should have plenty
of time--and that by then, I should be more--spiritual."

"You will never be more spiritual than you are at this moment. Youth
is nearer Heaven than age. I have always thought that. As we grow
old--we are stricken by--fear--of poverty, of disease--of death. It is
youth which has faith and hope."

Before he left her, he gave her a sacred charge. "If anything happens,
I know what you'll be to--Jean--and I can't tell you what a help you've
been this morning."

She was thrilled by that. And after he left her she thought much about
him. Of what it would have meant to her to have a son like that.

Women had said to her, "You should be glad that you have no boy to
send--." But she was not glad. Were they mad, these mothers, to want
to hold their boys back? Had the days of peace held no dangers that
they should be so afraid for them now?

For peace had dangers--men and women had been worshipping false gods.
They had set up a Golden Calf and had bowed before it--and their
children, lured by luxury, emasculated by ease of living, had wanted
more ease, more luxury, more time in which to--play!

And now life had become suddenly a vivid Crusade, with everybody
marching in one direction, and the young men were manly in the old ways
of strength and heroism, and the young women were womanly in the old
way of sending their lovers forth, and in a new way, when, like
Drusilla, they went forth themselves to the front line of battle.

To have children in these days, meant to have something to give. One
need not stand before suffering humanity empty-handed!

War was a monstrous thing, a murderous thing--but surely this war was a
righteous one--a fire which would cleanse the world. Men and women,
because of it, were finding in themselves something which could suffer
for others, something in themselves which could sacrifice, something
which went beyond body and mind, something which reached up and touched
their souls.

So, in the midst of darkness, Miss Emily had a vision of Light. After
the war was over, things could never be as they had been before. The
spirit which had sent men forth in this Crusade, which had sent women,
would survive, please God, and show itself in a greater sense of
fellowship--of brotherhood. Might not men, even in peace, go on
praying as they were praying it now in war, the prayer of Cromwell's
men, "Oh, Lord, it's a hard battle, but it's for the rights of the
common people--" Might not the rich young men who were learning to be
the brothers of the poor, and the poor young men who were learning in a
large sense of the brotherhood of the rich--might these not still clasp
hands in a sacred cause?

Yes, she was sorry that she had no son. Slim and gray-haired, a little
worn by life's struggle, her blood quickened at the thought of a son
like Derry. The warmth of his handclasp, the glimpse of that inner
self which he had given her, these were things to hold close to her
heart. She had known on that first night that he was--different. She
had not dreamed that she should hold him--close.

Rather pensively she arranged her window. It was snowing hard, and in
spite of the fact that Christmas was only three days away, customers
were scarce.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.