Book: The Tin Soldier

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"Yes--"

"But not for Hilda and Alma."


THE NINTH DAY

It was on the ninth day that Derry waked his wife at dawn. "I've ordered
the car. It rained in the night, and now--oh, there was never such a
morning; there may never be such a morning for us again."

"What time is it, Derry?"

"Sunrise time--come and see."

Her window faced the east, and she saw all the pearl of it, and the faint
rose and the amethyst and gold.

"We shall eat our breakfast ten miles from town," Derry said, as their
car carried him out into the country, "and there's a lovesome garden--"

"With old-fashioned flowers and a fountain and a Cupid?"

"With all that--and more--"

The garden belonged to an old woman. For years and years she had planted
flowers---tulips and hyacinths and poppies and lilies and gladiolus and
larkspur and phlox and ladyslipper--there had always been a riot of color.

She had an old gardener, and she would stand over him, leaning on her
silver-topped ebony cane, with a lace scarf covering her hair, and would
point out the places to plant things.

But now in her garden she had strawberries and Swiss chard and sweet
herbs, and rows and rows of peas and young onions and potatoes, with a
place left for corn at the back, and tomatoes in every spare space.

And there was lettuce, and an asparagus bed, and everything on this May
morning was shouting to the sun.

"I had always thought," said the old lady to Derry, when he presented
Jean, "that a vegetable garden was uninteresting. But it is a little
world--with class distinctions of its own, if you please. All the really
useful vegetables we call common; it is the ones we can do without which
are the aristocrats. The potatoes and cabbages and onions are really
important, but I am proudest of my young peas and my peppers and
cucumbers and tomatoes, and that's the way of the world, isn't it? If
there was only an aristocracy things would stop, but the common folk
could go on alone until the end of time."

She gave Jean a blue bowl to pick strawberries in; and Derry dug
asparagus--the creamy shoots were tipped with pale purple and pink,
deepening into green where they had stood too long in the sun.

"Aren't there any flowers?" Jean was anxious.

"Come and see." The old woman went ahead of them, her cane tap-tapping
on the stone flags.

She opened a gate which was flanked by brick walls. "These," she said,
whimsically, "are my jewels."

[Illustration: "These are my jewels."]

All the sweetness which had once spread over her domain was concentrated
here, fragrance and flame--roses, iris, peonies--honeysuckle--ruby and
emerald, amethyst and gold; a Cupid riding a swan, with water pouring
from his quiver into a shallow marble basin.

"I should not have dared keep this, if it had not been for the other--"
the old woman told them. "I am very sure that in these days God walks in
vegetable gardens--"

For breakfast they had strawberries and radishes, thin little corn
cakes--and two fresh eggs from the chickens which most triumphantly
occupied the conservatory.

"This is the only way I can do my bit," the old lady explained, "by
helping with the world's food supply. My eyes are bad and I cannot sew,
my fingers are twisted and I cannot knit, and Dennis is old--but we plan
the garden and plant--"

And that night Jean said to Derry, "I am glad there were flowers to make
it lovesome--and I am glad there were vegetables to make it right."

So he drew a waving field of corn back of the dream cottage, and tomatoes
and peas to the right and left--with onions in a stiff row along the
border, and potatoes storming the hillside. But the gate which led to
the Lovesome Garden was open wide, so that one might see the Cupid as he
rode his swan.


THE LAST DAY

It was on the tenth day that Derry said, "We have our house and the
furniture for it, and we have built an altar, and found our friends, and
we have planted a garden--what shall we do on the last day?"

And Jean said, rather unexpectedly, "We will go to the circus."

"To the circus?"

"Yes. And take the children--they are dying to go, and Margaret can't.
It is up to you and me, Derry."

Even Nurse was to stay behind. "We'll have them all to ourselves."

Derry was dubious, a little hurt. "It seems rather queer, doesn't it, on
our last day?"

"I--I think I should like it better than anything else, Derry."

And so they went.

It was warm with a hint of showers in the air, and both of the children
were in white. Jean was also in white. They rode in the General's
limousine to where the big tent with all its flags flying covered a vast
space.

"Cousin Derry, Mother said I might have some peanuts."

"All right, old man."

"And Margaret-Mary mustn't. But there are some crackers in a bag."

It was all most entrancing, the gilded wagons, the restless beasts behind
their bars, the spotted ponies, the swaying elephants, the bands playing,
the crowds streaming--.

Teddy held tight to Jean's hand. Margaret-Mary was carried high on
Derry's shoulder. All of her curls were bobbing, and her eyes were
shining. Now and then she dropped a light kiss on the silver blond hair
of her cavalier.

"Tousin Dee," she murmured, affectionately.

"She's an adorable kiddie," Derry told Jean as they found their seats.

"Cousin Derry," Teddy reminded him, "don't forget the peanuts."

And now the trumpets blared and the drums boomed, and the great parade
writhed like a glittering serpent around the huge circle, then broke up
into various groups as the performance began in the rings.

After that one needed all of one's eyes. Teddy sat spellbound for a
while, but found time at last to draw a long breath. "Cousin Derry, that
is the funniest clown--"

"The little one?"

"The big one; oh, well, the little one, too."

Silence again while the elephants did amazing things in one ring, with
Japanese tumblers in another, with piebald ponies beyond, and things
being done on trapezes everywhere.

Teddy slipped his hand into Derry's. "It's--it's almost like having
Daddy," he confided. "I know he's glad I'm here."

Derry's big hand closed over the small one. "I'm glad, too, old chap."

Margaret-Mary having gazed her fill, slept comfortably in Jean's arms.

"Let me hold her," Derry said.

Jean shook her head. "I love to have her here."

She had taken off her hat, and as she bent above the child her hair made
a halo of gold. In the midst of all the tawdriness she was a still and
sacred figure--a Madonna with a child.

Teddy, when he reached home, told the General all about it.

"It was be-yeutiful--but Cousin Jean cwied---"

"Cried?"

"I saw a tear rwunning down her cheek, and it splashed on Margaret-Mary's
nose--"

And that night Derry said, "My darling, what shall I draw in our book?"

"The thing that you want most to remember, Derry."

So he drew her all in white, bending over a child of dreams.

* * * * * *

The next morning, she told him "Good-bye." They had come along to the
Toy Shop for their farewell, so that there was only the old white
elephant to see her tears, and the Lovely Dreams to be sorry for her.

Yet her head was held high at the very last, and she was not sorry for
herself. "I am glad and proud to have you go, dearest. I am glad and
proud--"

And after he had gone, she worked until lunch time on the bandages and
wipes, and rode with the General in the afternoon, with her hand in his,
knowing that it comforted him.

But very late that night, when every one else is the big house was fast
asleep, she crept out into the hall in her lace robe and lace cap and
pink slippers and stood beneath the picture of the painted lady. "He
will come back," she said. "He must come back--and--oh, oh, Derry's
mother in Heaven--you must tell me how to live--without him--."




CHAPTER XXIX

"AND, AFTER ALL, HE CAME TO THE WARS!"

A perfect day, with men lying dead by thousands on the battlefield;
twilight, with a young moon; night and the stars--

Drusilla's throat was dry with singing--there had been so many hurt,
and she had found that it helped them to hear her, so when a moaning,
groaning, cursing ambulance load stopped a moment, she sang; when
walking wounded came through sagging with pain and dreadful weariness,
she sang; and when night fell, and an engine was stalled, and she took
in her own car a man who must be rushed to the first collecting
station, she found herself still singing--. And this time it was "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The man propped up beside her murmured, "My Captain liked that--he used
to sing it--"

"Yes?" She was listening with only half an ear. There were so many
Captains.

"He was engaged to an American."

She listened now. "Your Captain--?"

"Captain Hewes."

She guided the car steadily. "Dawson Hewes?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"I--I am the girl he is going to marry--"

He froze into silence. She bent towards him. "What made you
say--_was_--?"

"He's--gone West--"

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"When?" She still drove steadily through the dark.

"To-day."

She looked up at the stars. So--he would never come blowing in with
the sweet spring winds.

"I'd rather have been--shot--than to have told you that--" the man
beside her was saying, "but, you see, I didn't know you were the girl--"

"Of course you couldn't. You mustn't blame yourself."

She delivered her precious charge at the hospital and put up her car
for the night. Standing alone under the stars she wondered what she
should do next. There was no one to tell--the women who had worked
with her in the town which had since been recaptured by the Germans had
gone to other towns. But she had stayed as near the front as possible,
and she had never felt lonely because at any moment her lover might
come--there had always been the thought that he might come--.

And now he would never come!

She had a room in the house of an old woman, all of whose sons were in
the war. So far two of them had escaped death. But the old woman said
often, fatalistically, "They will not always escape--but it will be for
France."

The old woman had soup on the fire for Drusilla's supper. The room was
faintly lighted. "What is it?" she asked, as the girl dropped down on
the doorstep.

"My Captain is dead--"

The old woman rose and stood over her. "It comes to all."

"I know."

"Will you eat your soup? When the heart fails, the body must have
strength."

Drusilla covered her face with her bands. The room was very still.
The old woman went back to her chair by the fire and waited. At last
she rose and filled a small bowl with the soup--she broke into it a
small allowance of bread. Then she came and sat on the step beside the
girl.

"Eat, Mademoiselle," she said, with something like authority, and
Drusilla obeyed. And when she gave back the bowl, the old woman set it
on the floor, and drew the girl's head to her breast.

And Drusilla lay there, crying softly, a lonely American mothered by
this indomitable old woman of France.

Days passed, days in which men came and men went and Drusilla sang to
them. And now new faces were seen among the tired and war-worn ones.
Eager young Americans, pressing forward towards the front, found a
countrywoman in the little town; and they wrote home about her. "She's
a beauty, by jinks, and when she sings it pulls the heart out of you.
She's the kind you want to say your prayers to."

So her fame went forth and took on gradually something of the
supernatural--her tall, straight slenderness, her steady eyes, her halo
of red hair grew to have a sort of sacred significance, like that of
some militant young saint.

Then came a day when Derry's regiment marched through the town to the
trenches, spent an interval, and came back, awed by what it had seen,
but undaunted.

Drusilla, sitting on the doorstep of the stone house, saw a tall figure
striding down the street. He stopped to speak to an old woman and
doffed his hat, showing a clipped silver-blond head.

Drusilla went flying through the dusk. "Derry, Derry!"

He stared and stared again. "Is it you?" he asked. Nothing was vivid
now about Drusilla except her hair.

"Yes."

He took her hands in his. "My dear girl." It was hard for either of
them to speak.

"Did Bruce McKenzie tell you that my Captain has--gone West?"

"I had a letter. I haven't seen him. His hospital isn't far from
here, I understand."

"Just outside. He--he has been a great help--to me, Derry."

She took him back to her doorstep and they sat down.

"Tell me about Jean."

He tried to tell her, wavered a little and spoke the truth. "The
hardest thing was leaving her. I don't mind the fighting. I don't
mind anything but the fact that she's over there and I'm over here.
But it had to be--of course."

"Yes, everything had to be, Derry. I am believing that more and more.
When my Captain went--I found how much I cared. I hadn't always been
sure. But I am sure now, and I am sure, too, that he knows--"

"Love--in these times, Derry--isn't building a nest--and singing songs
in the tree tops on a May morning; it goes beyond just the man and the
woman; it even goes beyond the child. It goes as far as the future of
mankind. What the future of the world will be depends not so much on
how much you love Jean or she loves you, or on how much I loved and was
loved, but on how much that love will mean to the world. If we can't
give up our own for the sake of the world's ideal then love hasn't
meant what it should to you and to me, Derry--"

She rose as a group of men approached. "They want me to sing for them.
You won't mind?"

"My dear girl, I have heard of you everywhere. I believe that some of
the fellows say their prayers to you at night--"

She stood up and sang. Her hair caught the light from the room back of
her. She gave them a popular air or two, a hymn, "The Marseillaise--"

He missed nothing in her then. In spite of her paleness, the old fire
was there, the passion of patriotism--there was, too, a new note of
triumphant faith.

She needed no candles now, no red and white and blue for a
background--she did not even need her beauty, her voice was enough--

When she sat down and the men had gone she said to Derry, "Do you
remember when I last sang the 'Marseillaise' for you?"

"Yes."

He brought out from his pocket a tiny object and set it on the step, so
that the light from the open door shone on it.

"You gave it to me, Drusilla."

"Oh, my little tin soldier."

"And after all, he came to the wars--"

Very proudly the little soldier shouldered his musket.

He had indeed come to the wars, and the winds of France blew upon him,
the stars of France were over his head, the soil of France was beneath
his feet.

_Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt_--blew all the bugles of France, and
the little tin soldier was at last content!

Derry had, too, in his pocket a letter from Jean; he read to Drusilla
the part that belonged to her.

"Tell Drusilla that there's a chair in our dream house for her. I
often shut my eyes and see her in it, and I see Daddy and you, Derry,
all home safe from the war and the world at peace--"

"Safe and at home and the world at peace--. Will the time ever come,
Derry?"

"You know it will come. It must--"

It was three days later that Dr. McKenzie motored over for a late
supper with Drusilla and Derry. They were served by the old woman who
had mothered the lonely girl.

"To think," the Doctor said, as they sat at their frugal board, "to
think that we three should be here in the midst of all this; and yet a
year ago I was wondering what to do with the rest of my life, Drusilla
was running around telling people what kind of pictures to put on their
walls, and what kind of draperies to put at their windows, and Derry
was trying to pretend that he was not an elegant idler; and now--we are
seeing a world made over--"

"You are seeing the world of men made over," said Drusilla, "but the
most wonderful thing is seeing the women made over."

"I don't want to see the women made over," the Doctor groaned. "They
are nice enough as it is. I want my little Jean gay and smiling--and
Derry tells me that she is a nun in a white veil."

"She is more than that," Derry said, and a great light came into his
eyes. "I sometimes feel that she and Drusilla are holding hands across
the sea--two brave women in different spheres."

Drusilla, wise Drusilla pondered. "Perhaps the war will teach men like
Bruce that women aren't playthings--"

"Don't be too hard on me, Drusilla."

"I am not hard. I am telling the truth."

"I'll forgive you, because in these weeks you've taught me a lot--"
Bruce McKenzie's world would not have recognized in this tired and
serious gentleman its twinkling, teasing man of medicine. Weary feet
on the stones--

"I must go to them," Drusilla said.

She went out on the step. They saw the men cluster about her--French
and English, Scotch--a few Americans.

Her voice soared:

"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With the glory in his bosom which transfigures you and me.
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free--
While God is marching on--"


"Look," said the Doctor. "Do you see their faces, Derry?"

Gazing up at her as if they drank her in, the men listened. She was
the daughter of a nation of dreamers, the daughter of a nation _which
made its dreams come true_.

Tired and spent, they saw in her hope personified. They saw America
coming fresh and unworn to fight a winning battle to the end. So they
turned their faces towards Drusilla. She was more to them than a
singing woman. Behind her stood a steadfast people--and God was
marching on.

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