Book: The Tin Soldier

T >> Temple Bailey >> The Tin Soldier




"But--" her lip trembled.

"You are going to be my brave little girl."

"I'll try--" the tears were running down her cheeks.

"You wouldn't have me not go, would you?"

She shook her head and sobbed on his shoulder. He soothed her and
presently she sat up. Quite gallantly she agreed that she would stay
with Emily. If he thought she was too young to marry Derry now, she
would wait. If Derry went into it, it might be easier to let him go as
a lover than as a husband--she thought it might be easier. Yes, she
would try to sleep when she went upstairs--and she would remember that
her old Daddy loved her, loved her, and she was to ask God to bless
him--and keep him--when they were absent one from the other--.

She kissed him and clung to him and then went upstairs. She undressed
and said her prayers, put Polly-Ann on her cushion, turned off the
light, and got into bed.

Then she lay in the dark, facing it squarely.

The things she had said to her father were not true. She didn't want
him to go to France. She didn't want Derry to go. She was glad that
Derry's mother had made him promise. She didn't care who called him a
coward. She cared only to keep her own.

There wasn't any sense in it, anyhow. Why should Daddy and Derry be
blown to pieces--or made blind--or not come back at all? Just because
a barbarian had brought his hordes into Belgium? Well, let Belgium
take care of herself--and France.

She shuddered deeper down into the bed. She wasn't heroic. Hilda had
been right about that. She was willing to knit miles and miles of
wool, to go without meat, to go without wheat, to wear old clothes, to
let the furnace go out and sit shivering in one room by a wood fire,
she was willing to freeze and to starve, but she was not willing to
send her men to France.

She found herself shaking, sobbing--.

Hitherto war had seemed a glorious thing, an inspiring thing. She had
thrilled to think that she was living in a time which matched the days
of Caesar and Alexander and of Napoleon, of that first Richard of
England, of Charlemagne, of Nelson and of Francis Drake, of Grant and
Lee and Lincoln.

Even in fiction there had been Ivanhoe and--and Alan Breck--and even
poor Rawdon Crawley at Waterloo--fighters all, even the poorest of
them, exalted in her eyes by their courage and the clash of arms.

But there wasn't any glory, any romance in this war. It was machine
guns and bombs and dirt, and cold and mud; and base hospitals, and men
screaming with awful wounds--and gas, and horrors, and nerve-shock
and--frightfulness. She had read it all in the papers and in the
magazines. And it had not meant anything to her, it had been just
words and phrases, and now it was more than words and phrases--.

When the hordes of people had swept into Washington, changing it from
its gracious calm into a seething and unsettling center of activities,
she had been borne along on the wings of enthusiasm and of high
endeavor. She had scolded women who would not work, she had scorned
mothers and wives who had sighed and sobbed because their men must go.
She had talked of patriotism!

Well, she wasn't patriotic. Derry would probably hate her when she
told him. But she was going to tell him. She wouldn't have him blown
to pieces or made blind or not come back at all. And in the morning,
she would beg Daddy--she would beg and beg!

As she sat up in bed and looked wildly about her, it seemed as if all
the corners of the little room were haunted by specters. A long time
ago she had seen Maude Adams in "L'Aiglon." She remembered now those
wailing voices of the dead at Wagram. And in this war millions of men
had died. It seemed to her that their souls must be pressing against
the wall which divided them from the living--that their voices must
penetrate the stillness which had always shut them out. "How dare you
go on with it? Are men made only for this?"

She remembered now the thing that her father had said on the night
after "Cinderella."

"If I had my way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
For every man that they have tortured, we must torture one of theirs.
For every child mutilated, we must mutilate a child--for every woman--"

Her Daddy had said that. Her kind and tender Daddy. Was that what the
war made of men? Would Daddy and Derry, when they went over, do that?
Torture and mutilate? Would they, would they? And would they come
back after that and expect her to love them and live with them?

Well, she wouldn't. She would _not_. She would be afraid of them--of
both of them.

If they loved her, they would stay with her. They wouldn't go away and
leave her to be afraid--alone and crying in the dark, with all of those
dead voices.

* * * * * *

Emily tapped at the door. Came in. "My dear, my dear--. Oh, my poor
little Jean."

* * * * * *

After a long time her father was there, and he was giving her a white
tablet and a drink of water.

"It will quiet her nerves, Emily. I didn't dream that she would take
it like this."




CHAPTER XIV

SHINING SOULS

The next morning Jean was ill. Derry, having the news conveyed to him
over the telephone, rushed in to demand tragically of Dr. McKenzie,
"Was it my fault?"

"It was the fault of too much excitement. Seventh heaven with you for
hours, and then my news on top of it."

"What news?"

The Doctor explained. "It is going to tear me to pieces if she takes
it like this. She was half-delirious all night, and begged and
begged--"

"She doesn't want you to go?"

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, we've been a lot
to each other. But she's such a little sport--and patriotic--nobody
more so. She won't feel this way when she's herself again."

Derry stood drearily at the window looking out. "You think then she
won't be able to see me for several days? I had planned such a lot of
things."

The Doctor dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Life has a way of
spoiling our plans, hasn't it? I had hoped for old age with Jean's
mother."

That was something for youth to think of--of life spoiling things--of
lonely old age!

"I wish," Derry said, after a pause, "that you'd let me marry her
before you go."

"No, no," sharply, "she's too young, Drake. And you haven't known each
other long enough."

"Things move rapidly in these days, sir."

The Doctor agreed. "It is one of the significant developments. We had
become material. And now fire and flame. But all the more reason why
I should keep my head. Jean will be safe here with Emily. And you may
go any day."

"I wish I might think so. I'd be there now if I weren't bound."

"It won't hurt either of you to wait until I come back," was the
Doctor's ultimatum, and Derry, longing for sympathy, left him presently
and made his way to the Toy Shop.

"If we were to wait ten years do you think I'd love her any more than I
do now?" he demanded of Emily. "I should think he'd understand."

"Men never do understand," said Emily--"fathers. They think their own
romance was unique, or they forget that there was ever any romance."

"If you could put in a word for us," ventured Derry.

"I am not sure that it would do any good; Bruce is a Turk."

A customer came, and Derry lingered disconsolately while Emily served
her. More customers, among them a tall spare man with an upstanding
bush of gray hair. He had a potted plant in his arms, wrapped in
tissue paper. He set it on the counter and went away.

When Miss Emily discovered the plant, she asked Derry, "Who put it
there?"

Derry described the man. "You were busy. He didn't stop."

The plant was a cyclamen, blood-red and beautiful.

Miss Emily managed to remark casually that she had loaned his father an
elephant, perhaps he had felt that he ought to make some return--but he
needn't--.

"_An elephant_?"

"Not a real one. But the last of my plush beauties."

She set the cyclamen on a shelf, and wrapped up the parcel of toys
which Derry had bought the day before, "I may as well take them to
Margaret Morgan's kiddies," he told her. "I want to tell her about
Jean."

After Derry had gone, Miss Emily stood looking at the cyclamen on the
shelf. It was a lovely thing, with a dozen blooms. She wished that
her benefactor had stayed to let her thank him. She was not sure that
she even knew where to send a note.

She hunted him up in the telephone book, and found him--Ulrich Stoelle.
His hot-houses were on the old Military Road. She remembered now to
have seen them, and to have remarked the house, which was peaked up in
several gables, and had quaint brightly-colored iron figures set about
the garden--with pointed caps like the graybeards in Rip van Winkle, or
the dwarf in Rumpelstiltzkin.

When Derry's car slid up to Margaret's door, he saw the two children at
an upper window. They waved to him as he rang the bell. He waited
several moments and no one came to open the door. He turned the knob
and, finding it unlatched, let himself in.

As he went through the hall he was aware of a strange stillness. Not a
maid was in sight. Passing Margaret's room on the second floor he
heard voices.

The children were alone in the nursery. He was flooded with sunlight.
Margaret-Mary's pink wash frock, Teddy's white linen--yellow jonquils
in a blue bow--snowy lambs gambolling on a green frieze--Bo-peeps,
flying ribbons--it was a cheering and charming picture.

"How gay you are," said Derry.

"We are not gay in our hearts," Teddy told him.

"Why not?"

"Mother's crying--we heard her, and then Nurse went down and left us,
and we looked out of the window and you came."

Derry's heart seemed to stop beating. "Crying?"

Even as he spoke, Margaret stood on the threshold. There were no
tears, but it was worse than tears.

He started towards her, but with a gesture she stopped him.

"I am so glad you are--here," she said.

"My dear--what is it?"

She put her hand up to her head. "Teddy, dearest," she asked, "can you
take care of Margaret-Mary until Cousin Derry comes back? I want to
talk to him."

Teddy's grave eyes surveyed her. "You've been cryin'," he said, "I
told Cousin Derry--"

"Yes. I have had--bad news. But--I am not going to cry--any more.
And you'll take care of sister?"

"I tell you, old chap," said Derry resourcefully, "you and
Margaret-Mary can open my parcel, and when I come back we'll all play
together."

Outside with Margaret, with the door shut on the children, he put his
arm about her. "Is it Win--is he--hurt?"

"He is--oh, Derry, Derry, he is dead!"

Even then she did not cry. "The children mustn't know. Not till I get
a grip on myself. They mustn't think of it as--sad. They must think
of it as--glorious--that he went--that way--."

Held close in his arms, she shook with sobs, silent, hard. He carried
her down to her room. The maids were gathered there--Nurse utterly
useless in her grief. It came to Derry, as he bent over Margaret, that
he had always thought of Nurse as a heartless automaton, playing Chorus
to Teddy, yet here she was, a weeping woman with the rest of them.

He sent all of the servants away, except Nurse, and then Margaret told
him, "He was in one of the French towns which the Germans had vacated,
and he happened to pick up a toy--that some little child might have
dropped---and there was an explosive hidden in it--and that child's toy
killed him, Derry, killed him--"

"My God, Margaret--"

"They had put it there that it might kill a--child!"

"Derry, the children mustn't know how it happened. They mustn't think
of him as--hurt. They know that something is the matter. Can you tell
them, Derry? So that they will think of him as fine and splendid, and
going up to Heaven because God loves brave men--?"

It was a hard task that she had set him, and when at last he left her,
he went slowly up the stairs.

The children had strung the Midnight Camels across the room, the
purple, patient creatures that Jean had made.

"The round rug is an oasis," Teddy explained, "and the jonquil is a
palm--and we are going to save the dates and figs from our lunch."

"I want my lunch," Margaret-Mary complained.

Derry looked at his watch. It was after twelve. The servants were all
demoralized. "See here," he said, "you sit still for a moment, and
I'll go down for your tray."

He brought it up himself, presently, bread and milk and fruit.

They sat on the oasis and ate, with the patient purple camels grouped
in the shade of the jonquil palm.

Then Derry asked, "Shall I tell you the story of How the Purple Camels
Came to Paradise?"

"Yes," they said, and he gathered little Margaret-Mary into his arms,
and Teddy lay flat on the floor and looked up at him, while Derry made
his difficult way towards the thing he had to tell.

"You see, the purple camels belonged to the Three Wise Men, the ones
who journeyed, after the Star--do you remember? And found the little
baby who was the Christ? And because the purple camels had followed
the Star, the good Lord said to them, 'Some day you shall journey
towards Paradise, and there you shall see the shining souls that dwell
in happiness.'"

"Do their souls really shine?" Teddy asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because of the light in Paradise--the warm, sweet light, clearer than
the sunshine, Teddy, brighter than the moon and the stars--."

The children sighed rapturously. "Go on," Teddy urged.

"So the patient camels began their wonderful pilgrimage--they crossed
the desert and rounded a curve of the sea, and at last they came to
Paradise, and the gate was shut and they knelt in front of it, and they
heard singing, and the sound of silver trumpets, and at last the gate
swung back, and they saw--what do you think they saw?"

"The shining souls," said Teddy, solemnly.

"Yes, the shining souls in all that lovely light--there were the souls
of happy little children, and of good women, but best of all," his
voice wavered a little, "best of all, there were the souls of--brave
men."

"My father is a brave man."

_Was_, oh, little Teddy!

"And the purple camels said to the angels who guarded the gate, 'We
have come because we saw the little Christ in the manger.'

"And the angel said, 'It is those who see Him who enter Paradise,' So
the patient purple camels went in and the gates were shut behind them,
and there they will live in the warm, sweet light throughout the
deathless ages."

"What are de-yethless ages, Cousin Derry?"

"Forever and ever."

"Is that all?"

"It is all about the camels--but not all about the shining souls."

"Tell us the rest."

He knew that he was bungling it, but at last he brought them to the
thought of their father in Paradise, because the dear Lord loved to
have him there.

"But if he's there, he can't be here," said the practical Teddy.

"No."

"I want him here. Doesn't Mother want him here?"

"Well--yes."

"Is she glad to have him go to Paradise?"

"Not exactly--glad."

"Was that why she was crying?"

"Yes. Of course she will miss him, but it is a wonderful thing just
the same, Teddy, when you think of it--when you think of how your own
father went over to France because he was sorry for all the poor little
children who had been hurt, and for all the people who had suffered and
suffered until it seemed as if they must not suffer any more--and he
wanted to help them, and--and--"

But here he stumbled and stopped. "I tell you, Teddy," he said, as man
to man, "it is going to hurt awfully, not to see him. But you've got
to be careful not to be too sorry--because there's your Mother to think
of."

"Is she crying now?"

"Yes. Down there on her bed. Could you be very brave if you went
down, and told her not to be sorry?"

"Brave, like my Daddy?"

"Yes."

Margaret-Mary was too young to understand--she was easily comforted.
Derry sang a little song and her eyes drooped.

But downstairs the little son who was brave like his father, sat on the
edge of the bed, and held his mother's hand. "He's in Paradise with
the purple camels, Mother, and he's a shining soul--."

It was a week before Jean went with Derry to see Margaret. It had been
a week of strange happenings, of being made love to by Derry and of
getting Daddy ready to go away. She had reached heights and depths,
alternately. She had been feverishly radiant when with her lover. She
had resolved that she would not spoil the wonder of these days by
letting him know her state of mind.

The nights were the worst. None of them were as bad as the first
night, but her dreams were of battles and bloodshed, and she waked in
the mornings with great heaviness of spirit.

What Derry had told her of Margaret's loss seemed but a confirmation of
her fears. It was thus that men went away and never returned--. Oh,
how Hilda would have triumphed if she could have looked into Jean's
heart with its tremors and terrors!

She came, thus, into the room, where Margaret sat with her children.

"I want you two women to meet," Derry said, as he presented Jean,
"because you are my dearest--"

"He has told me so much about you,"--Margaret put her arm about Jean
and kissed her--"and he has used all the adjectives--yet none of them
was adequate."

Jean spoke tensely. "It doesn't seem right for us to bring our
happiness here."

"Why not? This has always been the place of happiness?" She caught
her breath, then went on quickly, "You mustn't think that I am
heartless. But if the women who have lost should let themselves
despair, it would react on the living. The wailing of women means the
weakness of men. I believe that so firmly that I am afraid to--cry."

"You are braver than I--" slowly.

"No. You'd feel the same way, dear child, about Derry."

"No. I should not. I shouldn't feel that way at all. I should
die--if I lost Derry--"

Light leaped in her lover's eyes. But he shook his head. "She'd bear
it like other brave women. She doesn't know herself, Margaret."

"None of us do. Do you suppose that the wives and mothers of France
ever dreamed that it would be their fortitude which would hold the
enemy back?"

"Do you think it did, really?" Jean asked her.

"I know it. It has been a barrier as tangible as a wall of rock."

"You put an awful responsibility upon the women."

"Why not? They are the mothers of men."

They sat down after that; and Jean listened frozenly while Margaret and
Derry talked. The children in front of the fire were looking at the
pictures in a book which Derry had brought.

Teddy, stretched at length on the rug in his favorite attitude, was
reading to Margaret-Mary. His mop of bright hair, his flushed cheeks,
his active gestures spoke of life quick in his young body--.

And his father was--dead--!

Oh, oh, Mothers of men--!




CHAPTER XV

HILDA BREAKS THE RULES

It was Dr. McKenzie who told Hilda of Jean's engagement to Derry Drake.

"I thought it best for them not to say anything to the General until he
is better. So you may consider it confidential, Hilda."

"Of course."

She had come to his office to help him with his books. The nurse who
somewhat inadequately supplied her place was having an afternoon off.
The Doctor had been glad to see her, and had told her so. "I am afraid
things are in an awful muddle."

"Not so bad that they can't be straightened out in an hour or two."

"I don't see why you insist upon staying on the General's case. I
shouldn't have sent you if I had thought you'd keep at it like this."

"I always keep at things when I begin them, don't I?"

He knew that she did. It was one of the qualities which made her
valuable. "I believe that you are staying away to let me see how hard
it is to get along without you."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea, but that's not the reason. I am staying
because I like the case." She shifted the topic away from herself.

"People will say that Jean has played her cards well."

He blazed, "What do you mean, Hilda?"

"He has a great deal of money."

"What has that to do with it?"

Her smile was irritating. "Oh, I know you are not mercenary. But a
million or two won't come amiss in any girl's future--and two country
houses, and a house in town."

"You seem to know all about it."

"The General talks a lot--and anyhow, all the world knows it. It's no
secret."

"I rather think that Jean doesn't know it. I haven't told her. She
realizes that he is rich, but it doesn't seem to have made much
impression on her."

"Most people will think she is lucky to have caught him."

"He is not a fish," with rising anger, "and as for Jean, she'd marry
him if he hadn't a penny, and you know it, Hilda."

Hilda considered that for a moment. Then she said, "Is it his money or
his father's?"

"Belongs to the old man. Derry's mother had nothing but an
irreproachable family tree."

Hilda's long hands were clasped on the desk, her eyes were upon them.
"If he shouldn't like his son's marriage, he might make things
uncomfortable."

"Why shouldn't he like my Jean?"

"He probably will. But there's always the chance that he may not. He
may be more ambitious."

Dr. McKenzie ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "She's good
enough for--a king."

"You think that, naturally, but he isn't the doting father of an only
daughter."

"If he thinks that my daughter isn't good enough for his son--"

"You needn't shout at me like that," calmly; "but he knows as well as
you do that Derry Drake's millions could get him any girl."

He had a flashing sense of the coarse fiber of Hilda's mental make-up.
"My Jean is a well-born and well-bred woman," he said, slowly. "It is
a thing that money can't buy."

"Money buys a very good counterfeit. Lots of the women who come here
aren't ladies, not in the sense that you mean it, but on the surface
you can't tell them apart."

He knew that it was true. No one knows better than a doctor what is
beneath the veneer of social convention and personal hypocrisy.

"And as for Jean," her quiet voice analyzed, "what do you know of her,
really? You've kept her shut away from the things that could hurt her,
but how do you know what will happen when you open the gate?"

Yet Emily had said--? His hand came down on top of the desk. "I think
we won't discuss Jean."

"Very well, but you brought it on yourself. And now please go away,
I've got to finish this and get back--"

He went reluctantly, and returned to say, "You'll come over again
before I sail, and straighten things out for me?"

"Of course."

"You don't act as if you cared whether I went or not."

"I care, of course. But don't expect me to cry. I am not the crying
kind." The little room was full of sunlight. She was very pink and
white and self-possessed. She smiled straight up into his face. "What
good would it do me to cry?"

After she had left him he was restless. She had been for so long a
part of his life, a very necessary and pleasant part of it. She never
touched his depths or rose to his heights. She seemed to beckon, yet
not to care when he came.

He spoke of her that night to Emily. "Hilda was here to-day and she
reminded me that people might think that my daughter is marrying Derry
Drake for his money."

"She would look at it like that."

"When Hilda talks to me"--he was rumpling his hair--"I have a feeling
that all the people in the world are unlovely--"

"There are plenty of unlovely people," said Emily, "but why should we
worry with what they think?"

She was knitting, and he found himself watching her hands. "You have
pretty hands," he told her, unexpectedly.

She held them out in front of her. "When I was a little girl my mother
told me that I had three points of beauty--my hands, my feet, and the
family nose," she smiled whimsically, "and she assured me that I would
therefore never be common-place. 'Any woman may be beautiful,' was her
theory, 'but only a woman with good blood in her veins can have hands
and feet and a nose like yours--.' I was dreadfully handicapped in the
beginning of my life by my mother's point of view. I am afraid that
even now if the dear lady looks down from Heaven and sees me working in
my Toy Shop she will feel the family disgraced by this one member who
is in trade. It was only in the later years that I found myself, that
I realized how I might reach out towards things which were broader and
bigger than the old ideals of aristocratic birth and inherited
possessions."

He thought of Hilda. "Yet it gave you something, Emily," he said,
slowly, "that not every woman has: good-breeding, and the ability to
look above the sordid. You are like Jean--all your world is
rose-colored."

She was thoughtful. "Not quite like Jean. I heard a dear old bishop
ask the other day why we should see only the ash cans and garbage cans
in our back yards when there was blue sky above? I know there are ash
cans and garbage cans, but I make myself look at the sky. Jean doesn't
know that the cans are there."

"The realists will tell you that you should keep your eyes on the cans."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Emily, stoutly; "more people are made
good by the contemplation of the fine and beautiful than by the
knowledge of evil. Eve knew that punishment would follow the eating of
the apple. But she ate it. If I had a son I should tell him of the
strength of men, not of their weaknesses."

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