Book: The Tin Soldier

T >> Temple Bailey >> The Tin Soldier




"Oh, it was wonderful--as she stood there like a white-veiled
prophetess, praying.

"Yet a year ago she would have died rather than pray in public. She is
a conservative, aristocratic woman, the kind that doesn't wear rings or
try to be picturesque--and she has always kept her feelings to herself,
and said her prayers to herself--or in church, but never in all her
life has she been so fine as she was the other day praying in the Toy
Shop.

"Yet in a way I am sorry for myself. Not for me as I am to-day, but
for the Jean of Yesterday, who thought that patriotism was remembering
Bunker Hill!

"Of course in a way it is that--for Bunker Hill and Lexington and
Valley Forge are a part of us because our grandfathers were there, and
what they felt and did is a part of our feeling and doing.

"I have always thought of those old days as a sort of picture--the
embattled farmers in their shirt-sleeves and with their hair blowing,
and the Midnight Ride, and the lantern in the old North Church--and the
Spirit of '76. And it was the same with the Civil War; there was
always the vision of cavalry sweeping up and down slopes as they do in
the movies, and of the bugles calling, and bands playing 'Marching
through Georgia' or 'Dixie' as the case might be--and flags
flying--isn't it glorious to think that the men in gray are singing
to-day, 'The Star Spangled Banner' with the rest of us?

"But my thoughts never had anything to do with money, though I suppose
people gave it then, as they are giving now. But you can't paint
pictures of men and women making out checks, and children putting
thrift stamps in little books, so I suppose that in future the heroes
and heroines of the emptied pocket-books will go down unsung--.

"It isn't a bit picturesque to give until it hurts, but it helps a lot.
I saw Sarah Bernhardt the other day in a wonderful little play where
she's a French boy, who dies in the end--and she dies, exquisitely,
with the flag of France in her arms--the faded, lovely flag--I shall
never forget. The tears ran down my cheeks so that I couldn't see, but
her voice, so faint and clear, still rings in my ears--

"If she had died clutching a Liberty Bond or wearing a Red Cross
button, it would have seemed like burlesque. Yet there are men and
women who are going without bread and butter to buy Liberty Bonds, and
who are buying them not as a safe investment, as rich men buy, but
because the boys need the money. And there ought to be poems written
and statues erected to commemorate some of the sacrifices for the sake
of the Red Cross.

"Yet I think that, in a way, we have not emphasized enough the
picturesque quality of this war, not on this side. They do it in
France--they worship their great flyers, their great generals, their
crack regiments, everything has a personality, they are tender with
their shattered cathedrals as if something human had been hurt, and the
result is a quickening on the part of every individual, a flaming
patriotism which as yet we have not felt. We don't worship anything,
we don't all of us know the words of 'The Star Spangled Banner'; fancy
a Frenchman not knowing the words of the 'Marseillaise' or an
Englishman forgetting 'God Save the King.' We don't shout and sing
enough, we don't cry enough, we don't feel enough--and that's all there
is to it. If we were hot for the triumph of democracy, there would be
no chance of victory for the Hun. Perhaps as the war comes nearer, we
shall feel more, and every day it is coming nearer--"

It was very near, indeed. Thousands of those gray sheep were lying
dead on the plains of Picardy--the Allies fought with their backs to
the wall--Americans who had swaggered, secure in the prowess of Uncle
Sam, swaggered no longer, and pondered on the parable of the Wise and
Foolish Virgins.

Slowly the nation waked to what was before it. In America now lay the
hope of the world. The Wolf must be trapped, the sheep saved in spite
of themselves, those poor sheep, driven blindly to slaughter.

The General was not quite sure that they were sheep, or that they were
being driven. He held, rather, that they knew what they were
about--and were not to be pitied.

Teddy, considering this gravely, went back to previous meditations, and
asked if he prayed for his enemies.

"Bless my soul," said the old gentleman, "why should I?"

"Well, Mother says we must, and then some day they'll stop and say they
are sorry--"

The General chuckled, "Your mother is optimistic."

"What's 'nopt'mistic?"

"It means always believing that nice things will happen."

"Don't you believe that nice things will happen?"

"Sometimes--"

"Don't you believe that the war will stop?"

"Not until we've thrown the full force of our fighting men into it--at
what a sacrifice."

"Can't God make it stop?"

"He can, but He won't, not if He's a God of justice," said this staunch
old patriot, "until America has brought them to their knees--"

"Will they say they are sorry then?"

"It won't make very much difference what they say--"

But Teddy, having been brought up to understand the things which belong
to an officer and a gentleman, had his own ideas on the subject.
"Well, I should think they'd ought to say they were sorry--."




CHAPTER XXVII

MARCHING FEET

The end of April brought much rain; torrents swept down the smooth
streets, and the beauty of the carefully kept flower beds in the parks
was blurred by the wet.

The General, limping from window to window, chafed. He wanted to get
out, to go over the hills and far away; with the coming of the spring
the wander-hunger gripped him, and with this restless mood upon him he
stormed at Bronson.

"It's a dog's life."

"Yes, sir," said Bronson, dutifully.

"It is dead lonesome, Bronson, and I can't keep Jean tied here all of
the time. She is looking pale, don't you think she is looking pale?"

"Yes, sir. I think she misses Mr. Derry."

"Well, she'll miss him a lot more before she gets him back," grimly.
"He'll be going over soon--"

"Yes, sir."

"I wish I were going," the old man was wistful. "Think of it, Bronson,
to be over there--in the thick of it, playing the game, instead of
rotting here--"

It was, of course, the soldier's point of view. Bronson, being
hopelessly civilian, did his best to rise to what was expected of him.
"You like it then, sir?"

"Like it? It is the only life. We've lost something since men took up
the game of business in place of the game of fighting."

"But you see, sir, there's no blood--in business." Bronson tried to
put it delicately.

"Isn't there? Why, more men are killed in accidents in factories than
are killed in war--murdered by money-greedy employers."

"Oh, sir, not quite that."

"Yes, quite," was the irascible response. "You don't know what you are
talking about, Bronson. Read statistics and find out."

"Yes, sir. Will you have your lunch up now, sir?"

"I'll get it over and then you can order the car for me."

"But the rain--?"

"I like rain. I'm not sugar or salt."

Bronson, much perturbed, called up Jean. "The General's going out."

"Oh, but he mustn't, Bronson."

"I can't say 'mustn't' to him, Miss," Bronson reported dismally.
"You'd better see what you can do--"

But when Jean arrived, the General was gone!

"We'll drive out through the country," the old man had told his
chauffeur, and had settled back among his cushions, his cane by his
side, his foot up on the opposite seat to relieve him of the weight.

And it was as he rode that he began to have a strange feeling about
that foot which no longer walked or bore him lightly.

How he had marched in those bygone days! He remembered the first time
he had tried to keep step with his fellows. The tune had been Yankee
Doodle--with a fife and drum--and he was a raw young recruit in his
queer blue uniform and visored cap--.

And how eager his feet had been, how strongly they had borne him,
spurning the dust of the road--as they would bear him no more--.

There were men who envied him as he swept past them in the rain, men
who felt that he had more than his share of wealth and ease, yet he
would have made a glad exchange for the feet which took them where they
willed.

He came at last to one of his old haunts, a small stone house on the
edge of the Canal. From its wide porch he had often watched the slow
boats go by, with men and women and children living in worlds bounded
by weather-beaten decks. To-day in the rain there was a blur of lilac
bushes along the tow path, but no boats were in sight; the Canal was a
ruffled gray sheet in the April wind.

Lounging in the low-ceiled front room of the stone house were men of
the type with whom he had once foregathered--men not of his class or
kind, but interesting because of their very differences--human
derelicts who had welcomed him.

But now, for the first time he was not one of them. They eyed his
elegances with suspicion--his fur coat, his gloves, his hat--the man
whose limousine stood in front of the door was not one of them; they
might beg of him, but they would never call him "Brother."

So, because his feet no longer carried him, and he must ride, he found
himself cast out, as it were, by outcasts.

He ordered meat and drink for them, gave them money, made a joke or two
as he limped among them, yet felt an alien. He watched them wistfully,
seeing for the first time their sordidness, seeing what he himself had
been, more sordid than any, because of his greater opportunities.

Sitting apart, he judged them, judged himself. If all the world were
like these men, what kind of world would it be?

"Why aren't you fellows fighting?" he asked suddenly.

They stared at him. Grumbled. Why should they fight? One of them
wept over it, called himself too old--.

But there were young men among them. "For God's sake get out of
this--let me help you get out." The General stood up, leaned on his
cane. "Look here, I've done a lot of things in my time--things like
this--" his arm swept out towards the table, "and now I've only one
good foot--the other will never be alive again. But you young chaps,
you've got two good feet--to march. Do you know what that means, to
march? Left, right, left, right and step out bravely--. Yankee Doodle
and your heads up, flags flying? And you sit here like this?"

Two of the men had risen, young and strong. The General's cane
pounded--he had their eyes! "Left, right, left, right--all over the
world men are marching, and you sit here--"

The years seemed to have dropped from him. His voice rang with a fire
that had once drawn men after him. He had led a charge at Gettysburg,
and his men had followed!

And these two men would follow him. He saw the dawn of their resolve
in their faces. "There's fine stuff in both of you," he said, "and the
country needs you. Isn't it better to fight than to sit here? Get
into my car and I'll take you down."

"Aw, what's eatin' you," one of the older men growled. "What game's
this? Recruitin'?"

But the young men asked no questions. They came--glad to come. Roused
out of a lethargy which had bound them. Waked by a ringing old voice.

The General was rather quiet when he reached home. Jean and Bronson,
who had suffered torments, watched him with concerned eyes. And, as if
he divined it, he laid his hand over Jean's. "I did a good day's work,
my dear. I got two men for the Army, and I'm going to get more--"

And he did get more. He went not only in the rain, but in the warmth
of the sun, when the old fruit trees bloomed along the tow path, and
the backs of the mules were shining black, and the women came out on
deck with their washing.

And always he spoke to the men of marching feet--. Now and then he
sang for them in that thin old voice whose thinness was so overlaid by
the passion of his patriotism that those who listened found no flaw in
it.

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that has never called retreat,
He is sifting forth the hearts of men before his Judgment seat,
O be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet,
Our God is marching on--"


There was no faltering now, no fumbled words. With head up,
singing--"Be jubilant, my feet--"

Sometimes he took Jean with him, but not always. "There are places
that I don't like to have you go, my dear, but those are where I get my
men."

At other times when he came out to where she sat in the car there would
flash before his eyes the vision of his wife's face, as she, too, had
once sat there, waiting--

Sometimes he took the children, and rode with them on a slow-moving
barge from one lock to another, with the limousine meeting them at the
end.

So he travelled the old paths, innocently, as he might have travelled
them throughout the years.

Yet if he thought of those difficult years, he said never a word. He
felt, perhaps, that there was nothing to say. He took to himself no
credit for the things he was doing. If age and infirmity had brought
to him a realization of all that he had missed, he was surely not to be
praised for doing that which was, obviously, his duty.

Yet it gave him a new zest for life, and left Jean freer than she had
been before. It left her, too, without the fear of him, which had
robbed their relationship of all sense of security.

"You see, I never knew," she wrote in her memory book, "what might
happen. I had visions of myself going after him in the night as Derry
had gone and his mother. I used to dream about it, and dread it."

Yet she had said nothing of her dread to Derry in her smiling letters,
and as men think of women, he had thought of her in the sick room as a
guardian angel, shining and serene.

* * * * * *

And now, faint and far came to the men in the cantonments the sound of
battles across the sea. The bugles calling them each morning seemed to
say, "Soon, soon, you will go, you will go, you will go--"

To Derry, listening, it seemed the echo of the fairy trumpets,
"_Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt, you will go, you will go, you will
go--_"

It was strange how the thought of it drew him, drew him as even the
thoughts of Jean his bride did not draw--. He remembered that years
ago he had smiled with a tinge of tolerant sophistication over the old
lines:

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more--"


Yet here it was, a truth in his own life. A woman meaning more to him
than she could ever have meant in times of peace, because he could go
forth to fight for her, his life at stake, for her. It was for her,
and for other women that his sword was unsheathed.

"If only they could understand it," he wrote to Jean. "You haven't any
idea what rotten letters some of the women write. Blaming the men for
going over seas. Blaming them for going into it at all. Taking it as
a personal offense that their lovers have left them. 'If you had loved
me, you couldn't have left me,' was the way one woman put it, and I
found a poor fellow mooning over it and asked him what was the matter.
'It isn't a question of what we want to do, it is a question of what
we've got to do, if we call ourselves men,' he said. But she couldn't
see that, she was measuring her emotions by an inch rule.

"But, thank God, most of the women are the real thing--true as steel
and brave. And it is those women that the men worship. It is a
masculine trait to want to be a sort of hero in the eyes of the woman
you love. When she doesn't look at it that way, your plumes droop!"

And now the bugles rang with a clearer note--not, "You will go, you
will go--" but, "Do not wait, do not wait, do not wait."

The cry from abroad was Macedonian. "Come over and help us!" It was
to America that the ghosts of those fighting hordes appealed.

"Take up our quarrel with the foe,
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch--be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' field--"


Gradually there had grown up in the hearts of simple men a flaming
response to that sacred charge. Men whose dreams had never reached
beyond a day's frivolity, found springing up in their souls a desire to
do some deed to match that of the other fellow who slept "in Flanders
field."

"To you from falling hands we throw the torch--be yours to hold it
high--," the little man who had measured cloth behind a counter, the
boy who had sold papers on the streets, the bank clerk who had bent
over his books, the stenographer who had been bound to the wheel of
everlasting dictation, were lighted by the radiance of that vision, "to
hold it high--."

"Gee, I never used to think," said Tommy Tracy, "that I might have a
chance to do a stunt like that."

"Like what?" Derry asked.

Tommy found it a thing rather hard to express. "Well, when you've been
just a common sort of chap, to die--for the other fellow--"

So men's bodies grew and their muscles hardened. But their souls grew,
too, expanding to the breadth and height of the things which were
waiting for them to do across the sea.

And one morning Derry was granted a furlough, and started home. He
sent no word ahead of him. He wanted to come upon them unawares. To
catch the light that would be on Jean's face when she looked up and saw
him.

There was rain and more rain when at last he arrived in Washington.
The trees as his taxi traversed the wide avenues showed clear green,
melting into vistas of amethyst and gray. The parks as he passed were
starred with the bright yellow and pinks of flowering shrubs.
Washington, in spite of the rain, was as lovely as a woman whose color
blooms behind a veil.

He came into the great house unannounced, having his key with him. The
General was out for a ride, the children with him, Margaret and Emily
and Jean away, the servants in the back of the house.

Derry, going up the stairs, two steps at a time, stopped on the landing
with head uncovered to greet his mother.

Oh, lovely painted lady, is this the little white-faced lad you loved,
the big bronzed man, fresh from hardships, strong in the sense of the
thing he has to do?

No promise made to you could hold him now. He has weighed your small
demands is the balance with the world's great need.

He did not tarry long. Straight as an eagle to its mate, he swept
through the hall and knocked at the door of Jean's room. There was no
response. He knocked again, turned the handle, entered, and found the
room empty. The tin soldier on the shelf shouted, "Welcome,
welcome--comrade," but Derry had no ears to hear. Everywhere were
signs of Jean; her fat memory book open on her desk, the ivory and gold
appointments of her dressing table, her pink slippers, her prayer
book--his own picture with flowers in front of it as before a shrine.

"My dear, my darling," his heart said when he saw that. What, after
all, was he that she should worship him?

Impatient, he rang for Bronson, and the old man came--bewildered,
hurried, joyful. "It's a great surprise, sir, but it's good to see
you."

"It's good to see you, Bronson. Where's Miss Jean?"

"At Miss Emily's shop, sir."

"As late as this?"

"Sometimes later. She tries to get home in time for dinner."

"Where's Dad?"

"Driving with the children, and the ladies are out on war work."

A year ago women had played bridge at this hour in the afternoon, but
there was no playing now.

"Don't tell Dad that I am here. I'll come back presently with Mrs.
Drake."

And now down the hall came an old gray dog, wild with delight,
outracing Polly Ann, who thought it was a play and leaped after
him--Muffin had found his master!

But Derry left Muffin, left Bronson, left Polly Ana, a wistful trio at
the front door. He must find Jean!

The day was darkening, and a light burned far back on the Toy Shop.
Derry, standing outside, saw a room which was the very wraith of the
gay little shop as he had left it--with its white tables, its long
counters piled high with finished dressings; the white elephants in a
spectral row behind glass doors on the top shelf the only reminder of
what it once had been.

He saw, too, a small nun-like figure behind the counter, a figure all
in white, with a white veil banded about her forehead and flowing down
behind.

All of her bright hair was hidden, her eyes were on the compresses that
she was counting. It seemed to him that there was a sharpened look on
the little face.

He had not expected this. He had felt that he would find her glowing
as she had been on that first night when he had followed his father
through the rain--his dream had been of crinkled copper hair, of silver
and rose, of youth and laughter and lightness--.

Her letters had been like that--gay, sparkling--there had been times
when they had seemed almost too exuberant, times when he had wondered
if she had really waked to the seriousness of the great struggle, and
the part he was to play in it.

Yet now he saw signs of suffering. He opened the door. "Jean," he
cried.

With the blood all drained from her face, she stared at him as if she
saw a specter--"Derry," she whispered.

With his strong arms, he lifted her over the counter. "Jean-Joan,
Jean-Joan--"

When at last she released herself, it was to laugh through her tears.
"Derry, pull down the shades; what will people think?"

He cared little what people would think. And, anyway, very few people
were passing at that late hour in the rain. But he pulled them down,
and when he came back, he held her off at arm's length. "What have you
been doing to yourself, dearest? You are a feather-weight."

"Well, I've been working."

"How does it happen that you are here alone?"

"Emily had to go down to order supplies, and Margaret went to a Liberty
Loan meeting. I often stay like this to count and tie."

"Don't you get dreadfully tired?"

"Yes. But I think I like to get tired. It keeps me from thinking too
much."

He drew her to him. "Take off your veil," he said, almost roughly. "I
want to see your hair."

Divested of her headcovering, she was more like herself, but even then
he was not content. He loosed a hairpin here and there and ran his
fingers through the crinkled gold. "If you knew how I've dreamed of
it, Jean-Joan."

But he had not dreamed of the dearness of the little face. "My
darling, you have been pining, and I didn't know it."

"Well, didn't you like my smiling letters?"

"So that was it? You've been trying to cheer me up, and letting
yourself get like this."

"I didn't want to worry you."

"Didn't you know that I'd want to be worried with anything that
pertained to you? What's a husband for, dearest, if you can't tell him
your troubles?"

"Yes, but a soldier-husband, Derry, is different. You've got to keep
smiling--"

Her lips trembled and she clung to him. "It is so good to have you
here, Derry."

She admitted, later, that she had confided her troubles to her memory
book. "There weren't any big things, really--just missing you and all
that--"

He was jealous of the memory book. "I shall read every word of it."

"Not until you come back from the war--and then we can laugh at it
together."

They fell into silence after that. With his arms about her he thought
that he might not come back, and she clinging to him had the same
thought. But neither told the other.

"Do you know," she said at last, sitting up and sticking the hairpins
into her crinkled knot. "Do you know that it's almost time for dinner,
and that the General will wonder where I am?"

"I told Bronson not to tell him."

"Oh, really, Derry? Let's make it a great surprise."

Providentially the General was late. He and the children came home to
find the house quite remarkably illumined, and Margaret flushed and
excited, and in white.

"Is it a party, Mother?" Teddy asked, lending his shoulder manfully to
the General's hand, as, with the chauffeur on the other side, they
helped the old man up the stairs.

"No, but on such a rainy night Bronson and I thought we'd have a little
feast. Don't you think that would be fun?"

The General was tired. "I had planned not to come down again--"

"Please do," she begged,

Bronson, knowing his master's moods, was on tip-toe with anxiety.
"I've your things all laid out, sir."

"Well, well, I'll see."

Teddy, somewhat out of breath as they reached the top landing was
inspired to remark, "We'll be 'spointed if you don't come down--"

"You want me, eh?"

"Yes, I do. There isn't any other man--"

The General chuckled. "Well, that's reason enough--. You can count on
me, Ted, for masculine support."

The table was laid for six. Teddy appearing presently in the dining
room pointed out the fact to Bronson, who was taking a last look.

"Is Margaret-Mary coming down?"

"She may later, for the sweets."

"Those aren't her spoons and forks."

"Well, well," said Bronson, "so they aren't"; but he did not have them
changed.

The General in his dinner coat, perfectly groomed, immaculate, found
Jean in rose and silver waiting for him.

"How gay we are," he said, and pinched her cheek.

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