The thing that Derry Drake had on his mind the next morning was a tea-cup. There were other things on his mind—things so heavy that he turned with relief to the contemplation of cups.
Stuck all over the great house were cabinets of china—his father had collected and his mother had prized. Derry, himself, had not cared for any of it until this morning, but when Bronson, the old man who served him and had served his father for years, came in with his breakfast, Derry showed him a broken bit which he had brought home with him two nights before. "Have we a cup like this anywhere in the house, Bronson?"
"There's a lot of them, sir, in the blue room, in the wall cupboard."
"I thought so, let me have one of them. If Dad ever asks for it, send him to me. He broke the other, so it's a fair exchange."
He had it carefully wrapped and carried it downtown with him. The morning was clear, and the sun sparkled on the snow. As he passed through Dupont Circle he found that a few children and their nurses had braved the cold. One small boy in a red coat ran to Derry.
"Where are you going, Cousin Derry?"
"Down town."
"To-day is Margaret-Mary's birf-day. I am going to give her a wabbit—."
"Rabbit, Buster. You'd better say it quick. Nurse is on the way."
"Rab-yit. What are you going to give her?"
"Oh, must I give her something?"
"Of course. Mother said you'd forget it. I wanted to telephone, and she wouldn't let me."
"Would a doll do?"
"I shouldn't like a doll. But she is littler. And you mustn't spend much money. Mother said I spent too much for my rab-yit. That I ought to save it for Our Men. And you mustn't eat what you yike—we've got a card in the window, and there wasn't any bacon for bref-fus."
"Breakfast."
"Yes. An' we had puffed rice and prunes—"
Nurse, coming up, was immediately on the job. "You are getting mud on Mr. Derry's spats, Teddy. Stand up like a little gentleman."
"He is always that, Nurse, isn't he? And I should not have on spats at this hour in the morning."
Derry smiled to himself as he left them. He knew that Nurse did not approve of him. He had a way as it were of aiding and abetting Teddy.
But as he went on the smile faded. There were many soldiers on the street, many uniforms, flags of many nations draping doorways where were housed the men from across the sea who were working shoulder to shoulder with America for the winning of the war—. Washington had taken on a new aspect. It had a waked-up look, as if its lazy days were over, and there were real things to do.
The big church at the triangle showed a Red Cross banner. Within women were making bandages, knitting sweaters and socks, sewing up the long seams of shirts and pajamas. A few years ago they had worshipped a Christ among the lilies. They saw him now on the battlefield, crucified again in the cause of humanity.
It seemed to Derry that even the civilians walked with something of a martial stride. Men, who for years had felt their strength sapped by the monotony of Government service, were revived by the winds of patriotism which swept from the four corners of the earth. Women who had lost youth and looks in the treadmill of Departmental life held up their heads as if their eyes beheld a new vision.
Street cars were crowded, things were at sixes and sevens; red tape was loose where it should have been tight and tight where it should have been loose. Little men with the rank of officer sat in swivel chairs and tried to direct big things; big men, without rank, were tied to the trivial. Many, many things were wrong, and many, many things were right, as it is always when war comes upon a people unprepared.
And in the midst of all this clash and crash and movement and achievement, Derry was walking to a toy shop to carry a tea-cup!
He found Miss Emily alone in the big front room.
She did not at once recognize him.
"You remember I was in here the other night—and you wouldn't sell—tin soldiers—."
She flushed a little. "Oh, with your father?"
"Yes. He's a dear old chap—."
It was the best apology he could make, and she loved him for it.
He brought out the cup and set it on the counter. "It is like yours?"
"Yes." But she did not want to take it.
"Please. I brought it on purpose. We have a dozen."
"Of these?"
"Yes."
"But it will break your set."
"We have oodles of sets. Dad collects—you know— There are dishes enough in the house to start a crockery shop."
She glanced at him curiously. It was hard to reconcile this slim young man of fashion with the shabby boy of the other night. But there were the lad's eyes, smiling into hers!
"I should like, too, if you don't mind, to find a toy for a very little girl. It is her birthday, and I had forgotten."
"It is dreadful to forget," Miss Emily told him, "children care so much."
"I have never forgotten before, but I had so much on my mind."
She brought forth the Lovely Dreams—"They have been a great success."
He chose at once a rose-colored cat and a yellow owl. The cat was carved impressionistically in a series of circles. She was altogether celestial and comfortable. The owl might have been lighted by the moon.
"But why?" Derry asked, "a rose-colored cat?"
"Isn't a white cat pink and puffy in the firelight? And a child sees her pink and puffy. If we don't it is because we are blind."
"But why the green ducks and the amethyst cows?"
"The cows are coming tinkling home in the twilight—the green ducks swim under the willows. And they are longer and broader because of the lights and shadows. That's the way you saw them when you were six."
"By Jove," he said, staring, "I believe I did."
"So there's nothing queer about them to the children—you ought to see them listen when Jean tells them."
Jean—!
"She—she tells the children?"
"Yes. Charming stories. I am having them put in a little pamphlet to go with the toys."
"She's Dr. McKenzie's daughter, isn't she? I saw her last night at the play."
"Yes. Such a dear child. She is usually here in the afternoon."
He had hoped until then that Jean might be hidden in that rear room, locked up with the dolls in a drawer, tucked away in a box—he had a blank feeling of the futility of his tea-cup—
Then, suddenly, the gods being in a gay mood, Jean arrived!
At once his errand justified itself. She wore a gray squirrel jacket and a hat to match—and her crinkled copper-colored hair came out from under the hat and over her ears. She carried a little muff. Her eyes—the color of her cheeks! A man might walk to the world's end for less than this—!
He was buying, he told her, pink pussy cats and yellow owls. Had she liked the play last night? He was glad that she adored Maude Adams. He adored—Maude Adams. Did she remember "Peter Pan"? Yes, he had gone to everything—glorified matinées—glorified everything! Wasn't it remarkable that his father knew her father? And she was Jean McKenzie, and he was Derry Drake!
At last there was no excuse for him to linger. "I shall come back for more—Lovely Dreams," he told Miss Emily, and got away.
Alone in the shop the two women looked at each other. Then Emily said, "Jean, darling, how dreadful it must be for him."
"Dreadful—."
"With such a father—."
"Oh, you mean—the other night."
"Yes. He isn't happy, Jean."
"How do you know?"
"He has lonesome eyes."
"Oh, Emily."
"Well, he has, and it must be dreadful."
How dreadful it was neither of them could really know. Derry, having lunched with a rather important committee, went to Drusilla Gray's in the afternoon for a cup of tea. He was called almost at once to the telephone. Bronson was at the other end. "I am sorry, Mr. Derry, but I thought you ought to know—"
Derry, with the sick feeling which always came over him with the knowledge of what was ahead, said steadily, "That's all right, Bronson—which way did he go?"
"He took the Cabin John car, sir. I tried to get on, but he saw me, and sent me back, and I didn't like to make a scene. Shall I follow in a taxi?"
"Yes; I'll get away as soon as I can and call you up out there."
He went back to Drusilla. "Sing for me," he said. Drusilla Gray lived with her Aunt Marion in an apartment winch overlooked Rock Creek. Marion Gray occupied herself with the writing of books. Drusilla had varying occupations. Just now she was interested in interior decoration and in the war.
She was also interested in trying to flirt with Derry Drake. "He won't play the game," she told her aunt, "and that's why I like it—the game, I mean."
"You like him because he hasn't surrendered."
"No. He is a rather perfect thing of his kind, like a bit of jewelled Sèvres orSang de boeuf. And he doesn't know it. And that's another thing in his favor—his modesty. He makes me think of a little Austrian prince I once met at Palm Beach; who wore a white satin shirt with a high collar of gold embroidery, and white kid boots, and wonderful rings—and his nails long like a Chinaman's. At first we laughed at him—called him effeminate—. But after we knew him we didn't laugh. There was the blood in him of kings and rulers—and presently he had us on our knees. And Derry's like that. When you first meet him you look over his head; then you find yourself looking up—"
Marion smiled. "You've got it bad, Drusilla."
"If you think I am in love with him, I'm not. I'd like to be, but it wouldn't be of any use. He's a Galahad—a pocket-edition Galahad. If he ever falls in love, there'll be more of romance in it than I can give him."
It was to this Drusilla that Derry had come. He liked her immensely. And they had in common a great love of music.
She had tea for him, and some rather strange little spiced cakes on a red lacquer tray. There was much dark blue and vivid red in the room, with white woodwork. Drusilla herself was in unrelieved red. The effect was startling but stimulating.
"I am not sure that I like it," she said, "the red and white and blue, but I wanted to see whether I could do it. And Aunt Marion doesn't care. The red things can all be taken out, and the rest toned down. But I have a feeling that a man couldn't sit in this room and be a slacker."
"No, he couldn't," Derry agreed. "You'd better hang out a recruiting sign, Drusilla."
"I should if they would let me. The best I can do is ask them to tea and sing for them."
It was right here that Bronson's message had broken in, and Derry, coming back from the telephone, had said, "Sing for me."
Drusilla lighted two red candles on the piano in the alcove. She began with a medley of patriotic songs. With her voice never soaring above a repressed note, she managed to give the effect of culminating emotion, so that when she reached a climax in the Marseillaise, Derry rose, thrilled, to his feet.
She whirled around and faced him. "They all do that," she said, with a glowing air Of triumph. "It's when I get them."
"Why did you give the Marseillaise last?"
"It has the tramp in it of marching men—I love it."
"But why not the 'Star Spangled Banner'?"
"That's for sacred moments. I hate to make it common—but I'll sing it—now—"
Still standing, he listened. Drusilla held her voice to that low note, but there was the crash of battle in the music that she made, the hush of dawn, the cry of victory—
"Dear girl, you are a genius."
"No, I am not. But I can feel things—and I can make others feel—"
She rose and went to the window. "There's a new moon," she said, "come and see—"
The curtains were not drawn, and the apartment was high up, so that they looked out beyond the hills to a sky in which the daylight blue had faded to a faint green, and saw the little moon and one star.
"Derry," Drusilla said, softly. "Derry, why aren't you fighting?"
It was the question he had dreaded. He had seen it often in her eyes, but never before had she voiced it.
"I can't tell you, Drusilla, but there's a reason—a good one. God knows I would go if I could."
The passion in his voice convinced her.
"Don't you know I'd be in it if I had my way. But I've got to stay on the shelf like the tin soldier in the fairy tale. Do you remember, Drusilla? And people keep asking me—why?"
"I shouldn't have asked it, Derry?"
"You couldn't know. And you had a right to ask—everybody has a right—and I can't answer."
She laid her hand on his shoulder. "When I was a little girl," she said, softly, "I used to cry—because I was so sorry for the—tin soldier—"
"Are you sorry for me, Drusilla?"
"Dreffly sorry."
They stood in silence among the shadows, with only the red candles burning. Then Derry said, heartily, "You are the best friend that a fellow ever had, Drusilla."
And that was as far as he would play the game!
Whatever else might be said of General Drake, his Bacchanalian adventures were those of a gentleman. Not for him were the sinister streets and the sordid taverns of the town. When his wild moods came upon him, he struck out straight for open country. Up hill and down dale he trudged, a knight of the road, finding shelter and refreshment at wayside inns, or perchance at some friendly farm.
The danger lay in the lawless folk whom he might meet on the way. Unshaven and unshorn he met them, travelling endlessly along the railroad tracks, by highways, through woodland paths. They slept by day and journeyed by night. By reversing this program, the General as a rule avoided them. But not always, and when the little lad Derry had followed his strange quests, he had come now and then upon his father, telling stories to an unsavory circle, lord for the moment of them all.
"Come, Dad," Derry would say, and when the men had growled a threat, he had flung defiance at them. "My mother's motor is up the road with two men in it. If I don't get back in five minutes they will follow me."
The General had always been tractable in the hands of his son. He adored him. It was only of late that he had found anything to criticise.
Derry, driving along the old Conduit road in the crisp darkness, wondered how long that restless spirit would endure in that ageing body. He shuddered as he thought of the two men who were his father—one a polished gentleman ruling his world, by the power of his keen mind and of his money, the other a self-made vagabond—pursuing an aimless course.
The stars were sharp in a sable sky, the river was a thin line of silver, the bills were blotted out.
Bronson was waiting by the big bridge. "He is singing down there," he said, "on the bank. Can you hear him?"
Leaning over the parapet, Derry listened. The quavering voice came up to him.
"_He has sounded forth the—trumpet—that shall never call—retreat—He is sifting out the—hearts of men—before his judgment—Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! Be jubilant, my feet—'_"
Poor old soldier, beating time to the triumphant tune, stumbling over the words—held pathetically to the memory of those days when he had marched in the glory of his youth, strength and spirit given to a mighty cause!
The pity of it wrung Derry's heart. "Couldn't you do anything with him, Bronson?"
"No, sir, I tried, but he sent me home. Told me I was discharged."
They might have laughed over that, but it was not the moment for laughter. In the last twenty years, the General had discharged Bronson more than once, always without the least idea of being taken at his word. To have lost this faithful servant would have broken his heart.
"I see. It won't do for you to show yourself just now. You'd better go home, and have his hot bath ready."
"Are you sure you can bring him, Mr. Derry?"
"Sure, Bronson, thank you."
Bronson walked a few steps and came back. "It is freezing cold, sir, you'd better take the rug from the car."
Laden thus, Derry made his way down. His flashlight revealed the General, a humped-up figure on the bank of a little frozen stream.
"Go home, Derry," he said, as he recognized his son. "I want to sit by myself."
His tone was truculent.
Derry attempted lightness. "You'll be a lump of ice in the morning, Dad. We'd have to chip you off in chunks."
"You go home with Bronson, son, He is up there. Go home—"
He had once commanded a brigade. There were moments when he was hard pushed that he remembered it.
"Go home, Derry."
"Not till you come with me."
"I'm not coming."
Derry spread his rug on the icy ground. "Sit on this and wrap up your legs—you'll freeze out here."
His father did not move. "I am puf-feckly comfa'ble."
The General rarely got his syllables tangled. Things at times happened to his legs, but he usually controlled his tongue.
"I am puf-feckly comfa'ble—go home, Derry."
"I can't leave you, Dad."
"I want to be left."
He had never been quite like this. There had been moods of rebellion, but usually he had yielded himself to his son's guidance.
"Dad, be reasonable."
"I'd rather sit here and freeze—than go home with a—coward."
It was out at last. It struck Derry like a whiplash. He sprang to his feet. "You don't mean that, Dad. You can't mean it."
"I do mean it."
"I am not a coward, and you know it."
"Then why don't you go and fight?"
Silence! The only sound the chuckle of living waters beneath the ice of the little stream.
"Why don't you go and fight like other men?"
The emphasis was insulting. Derry had only one idea—to escape from that taunting voice. "You'll be sorry for this, Dad," he flung out at white heat, and scrambled up the bank.
When he reached the bridge, he paused. He couldn't leave that old man down there to die of the cold—the wind was rising and rattled in the bare trees.
But Derry's blood was boiling. He sat down on the parapet, thick blackness all about him. Whatever had been his father's shortcomings, they had always clung together—and now they were separated by words which had cut like a knife. It was useless to tell himself that his father was not responsible. Out of the heart the mouth had spoken.
And there were other people who felt as his father did—there had been Drusilla's questions, the questions of others—there had been, too, averted faces. He saw the little figure in the cloak of heavenly blue as she had been the other night,—in her gray furs as she had been this morning—; would her face, too, be turned from him?
Words formed themselves in his mind. He yearned to toss back at his father the taunt that was on his lips. To fling it over the parapet, to shout it to the world—!
He had never before felt the care of his father a sacrifice. There had been humiliating moments, hard moments, but always he had been sustained by a sense of the rightness of the thing that he was doing and of its necessity.
Then, out of the darkness, came a shivering old voice, "Derry, are you there?"
"Yes, Dad."
"Come down—and help me—"
The General, alone in the darkness, had suffered a reaction. He felt chilled and depressed. He wanted warmth and light.
Mounting steadily with his son's arm to sustain him, he argued garrulously for a sojourn at the nearest hostelry, or for a stop at Chevy Chase. He would, he promised, go to bed at the Club, and thus be rid of Bronson. Bronson didn't know his place, he would have to be taught—
Arriving at the top, he was led to Derry's car. He insisted on an understanding. If he got in, they were to stop at the Club.
"No," Derry said, "we won't stop. We are going home."
Derry had never commanded a brigade. But he had in him the blood of one who had. He possessed also strength and determination backed at the moment by righteous indignation. He lifted his father bodily, put him in the car, took his seat beside him, shut the door, and drove off. He felt remarkably cheered as they whirled along at top speed.
The General, yielding gracefully to the inevitable, rolled himself up in the rugs, dropped his head against the padded cushions and, soothed by the warmth, fell asleep.
He waked to find himself being guided up his own stairway by Bronson and the butler.
"Put him into a hot bath, Bronson," Derry directed from the threshold of his father's room, and, the General, quite surprisingly, made no protest. He had his bath, hot drinks to follow, and hot water bags in his bed. When he drifted off finally, into uneasy dreams, he was watched over by Bronson as if he had been a baby.
Derry, looking at his watch, was amazed to find that the evening was yet early. He had lived emotionally through a much longer period than that marked by the clocks.
He had no engagements. He had found himself of late shrinking a little from his kind. The clubs and the hotels were crowded with officers. Private houses, hung with service flags, paid homage to men in uniform. He was aware that he was, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but it was not pleasant to meet the inquiring glance, the guarded question. He was welcomed outwardly as of old. But, then, he had a great deal of money. People did not like to offend his father's son. But if he had not been his father's son? What then?
He dined alone and in state in the great dining room. The portraits of his ancestors looked down on him. There was his mother's grandfather, who had the same fair hair and strongly marked brows. He had been an officer in the English army, and wore the picturesque uniform of the period. There were other men in uniform—ancestors—.
But of what earthly use was an ancestor in uniform to the present situation? It would have been better to have inherited Quaker blood. Derry smiled whimsically as he thought how different he might have felt if there had been benignant men in gray with broad-brimmed hats, staring down.
But to grant a man an inheritance of fighting blood, and then deny him the opportunity to exercise his birthright, was a sort of grim joke which he could not appreciate.
For dessert a great dish of fruit was set before him. He chose a peach!
Peaches in November! The men in the trenches had no peaches, no squabs, no mushrooms, no avacados—for them bully beef and soup cubes, a handful of dates, or by good luck a bit of chocolate.
He left the peach untasted—he had a feeling that he might thus, vicariously, atone for the hardships of those others who fought.
After dinner he walked downtown. Passing Dr. McKenzie's house he was constrained to loiter. There were lights upstairs and down. Was Jean McKenzie's room behind the two golden windows above the balcony? Was she there, or in the room below, where shaded lamps shone softly among the shadows?
He yearned to go in—to speak with her—to learn her thoughts—to read her heart and mind. As yet he knew only the message of her beauty. He fancied her as having exquisite sensibility, sweetness, gentleness, perceptions as vivid as her youth and bloom.
The front door opened, and Jean and her father came out. Derry's heart leaped as he heard her laugh. Then her clear voice, "Isn't it a wonderful night to walk, Daddy?" and her father's response, "Oh, you with your ecstasies!"
They went briskly down the other side of the street. Derry found himself following, found himself straining his ear for that light laugh, found himself wishing that it were he who walked beside her, that her hand was tucked into his arm as it was tucked into her father's.
Their destination was a brilliantly illumined palace on F Street, once a choice little playhouse, now given over to screen productions. The house was packed, and Jean and her father, following the flashlight of the usher, found harbor finally in a box to the left of the stage. Derry settled himself behind them. He was an eavesdropper and he knew it, but he was loath to get out of the range of that lovely laughter.
Yet observing the closeness of their companionship he felt himself lonely—they seemed so satisfied to be together—so sufficient without any other. Once Dr. McKenzie got up and went out. When he came back he brought a box of candy. Derry heard Jean's "Oh, you darling—" and thrilled with a touch of jealousy.
He wondered a little that he should care—his experiences with women had heretofore formed gay incidents in his life rather than serious epochs. He had carried in his heart a vision, and the girl in the Toy Shop had seemed to make that vision suddenly real.
The play which was thrown on the screen had to do with France; with Joan of Arc and the lover who failed her, with the reincarnation of the lover and his opportunity, after long years, to redeem himself from the blot of cowardice.
In the stillness, Derry heard the quick-drawn breath of the girl in front of him. "Daddy, I should hate a man like that."
"But, my dear—"
"I should hate him, Daddy."
The play was over.
The lights went up, and Jean stood revealed. She was pinning on her hat. She saw Derry and smiled at him. "Daddy," she said, "it is Mr. Drake—you know him."
Dr. McKenzie held out his hand. "How do you do? So you young people have met, eh?"
"In Emily's shop, Daddy. He—he came to buy my Lovely Dreams."
The two men laughed. "As if any man could buy your dreams, Jeanie," her father said, "it would take the wealth of the world."
"Or no wealth at all," said Derry quickly.
They walked out together. As they passed the portal of the gilded door, Derry felt that the moment of parting had come.
"Oh, look here, Doctor," he said, desperately, "won't you and your daughter take pity on me—and join me at supper? There's dancing at the Willard and all that—Miss McKenzie might enjoy it, and it would be a life-saver for me."
Light leaped into Jean's eyes. "Oh, Daddy—"
"Would you like it, dear?"
"You know I should. So would you. And you haven't any stupid patients, have you?"
"My patients are always stupid, Drake, when they take me away from her. Otherwise she is sorry for them." He looked at his watch. "When I get to the hotel I'll telephone to Hilda, and she'll know where to find us."
It was the Doctor who talked as they went along—the two young people were quite ecstatically silent. Jean was between her father and Derry. As he kept step with her, it seemed to him that no woman had ever walked so lightly; she laughed a little now and then. There was no need for words.
While her father telephoned, they sat together for a moment in the corridor. She unfastened her coat, and he saw her white dress and pearls. "Am I fine enough for an evening like this?" she asked him; "you see it is just the dress I wear at home."
"It seems to me quite a superlative frock—and I am glad that your hat is lined with blue."
"Why?"
"Your cloak last night was heavenly, and now this—it matches your eyes—"
"Oh." She sat very still.
"Shouldn't I have said that? I didn't think—"
"I am glad you didn't think—"
"Oh, are you?"
"Yes. I hate people who weigh their words—" The color came up finely into her cheeks.
When Dr. McKenzie returned, Derry found a table, and gave his order.
Jean refused to consider anything but an ice. "She doesn't eat at such moments," Doctor McKenzie told his young host. "She lives on star-dust, and she wants me to live on star-dust. It is our only quarrel. She'll think me sordid because I am going to have broiled lobster."
Derry laughed, yet felt that it was after all a serious matter. His appetite, too, was gone. He too wanted only an ice! The Doctor's order was, however, sufficiently substantial to establish a balance.
"May I dance with her?" Derry asked, as the music brought the couples to their feet.
"I don't usually let her. Not in a place like this. But her eyes are begging—and I spoil her, Drake."
Curious glances followed the progress of the young millionaire and his pretty partner. But Derry saw nothing but Jean. She was like thistledown in his arms, she was saying tremendously interesting things to him, in her lovely voice.
"I cried all through the scene where Cinderella sits on the door-step. Yet it really wasn't so very sad—was it?"
"I think it was sad. She was such a little starved thing—starved for love."
"Yes. It must be dreadful to be starved for love."
He glanced down at her. "You have never felt it?"
"No, except after my mother died—I wanted her—"
"My mother is dead, too."
The Doctor sat alone at the head of the table and ate his lobster; he ate war bread and a green salad, and drank a pot of black coffee, and was at peace with the world. Star-dust was all very well for those young things out there. He laughed as they came back to him. "Each to his own joys—the lobster was very good, Drake."
They hardly heard him. Jean had a rosy parfait with a strawberry on top. Derry had another.
They talked of the screen play, and the man who had failed. If he had really loved her he would not have failed, Jean said.
"I think he loved her," was Derry's opinion; "the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak."
Jean shrugged. "Well, Fate was kind to him—to give him another chance. Oh, Daddy, tell him the story the little French woman told at the meeting of the Medical Association."
"You should have heard her tell it—but I'll do my best. Her eloquence brought us to our feet. It was when she was in Paris—just after the American forces arrived. She stopped at the curb one morning to buy violets of an ancient dame. She found the old flower vendor inattentive and, looking for the cause, she saw across the street a young American trooper loitering at a corner. Suddenly the old woman snatched up a bunch of lilies, ran across the street, thrust them into the hands of the astonished soldier. 'Take them, American,' she said. 'Take the lilies of France and plant them in Berlin.'"
"Isn't that wonderful?" Jean breathed.
"Everything is wonderful to her," the Doctor told Derry, "she lives on the heights."
"But the lilies of France, Daddy—! Can't you see our men and the lilies of France?"
Derry saw them, indeed,—a glorious company—!
"Oh, if I were a man," Jean said, and stopped. She stole a timid glance at him. The question that he had dreaded was in her eyes.
They fell into silence. Jean finished her parfait. Derry's was untouched.
Then the music brought them again to their feet, and they danced. The Doctor smoked alone. Back of him somebody murmured, "It is Derry Drake."
"Confounded slacker," said a masculine voice. Then came a warning "Hush," as Derry and Jean returned.
"It is snowing," Derry told the Doctor. "I have ordered my car."
Late that night when the Doctor rode forth again alone in his own car on an errand of mercy, he thought of the thing which he had heard. Then came the inevitable question: why wasn't Derry Drake fighting?
It was at the Witherspoon dinner that Jean McKenzie first heard the things that were being said about Derry.
"I can't understand," someone had remarked, "why Derry Drake is staying out of it."
"I fancy he'll be getting in," Ralph Witherspoon had said. "Derry's no slacker."
Ralph could afford to be generous. He was in the Naval Flying Corps. He looked extremely well in his Ensign's uniform, and he knew it; he was hoping, in the spring, for active service on the other side.
"I don't see why Derry should fight. I don't see why any man should. I never did believe in getting into other people's fusses."
It was Alma Drew who said that. Nobody took Alma very seriously. She was too pretty with her shining hair and her sea-green eyes, and her way of claiming admiration.
Jean had recognised her when she first came in as the girl she had seen descending from her motor car with Derry Drake on the night of the Secretary's dinner. Alma again wore the diamond-encrusted comb. She was in sea-green, which matched her eyes.
"If I were a man," Alma pursued, "I should run away."
There was a rustle of uneasiness about the table. In the morning papers had been news of Italy—disturbing news; news from Russia—Kerensky had fled to Moscow—there had been pictures of our men in gas masks! It wasn't a thing to joke about. Even Alma might go too far.
Ralph relieved the situation. "Oh, no, you wouldn't run away," he said; "you don't do yourself justice, Alma. Before you know it you will be driving a car over there, and picking me up when I fall from the skies."
"Well, that would be—compensation—." Alma's lashes flashed up and fluttered down.
But she turned her batteries on Ralph in vain. Jean McKenzie was on the other side of him. It would never be quite clear to him why he loved Jean. She was neither very beautiful nor very brilliant. But there was a dearness about her. He hardly dared think of it. It had gone very deep with him.
He turned to her. Her eyes were blazing. "Oh," she said, under her breath, "how can she say things like that? If I knew a man who would run away, I'd never speak to him."
"Of course. That's why I fell in love with you—because you had red blood in your veins."
It was the literal truth. The first time that Ralph had seen Jean McKenzie, he had been riding in Rock Creek Park. She, too, was on horseback. It was in April. War had just been declared, and there was great excitement. Jean, taking the bridle path over the hills, had come upon a band of workers. A long-haired and seditious orator was talking to them. Jean had stopped her horse to listen, and before she knew it she was answering the arguments of the speaker. Rising a little in her stirrups, her riding-crop uplifted to emphasize her burning words, her cheeks on fire, her eyes shining, her hair blowing under her three-cornered hat, she had clearly and crisply challenged the patriotism of the speaker, and she had presented to Ralph's appreciative eyes a picture which he was never to forget.
She had not been in the least embarrassed by his arrival, and his uniform had made him seem at once her ally. "I am sure this gentleman will be glad to talk to you," she had said to her little audience. "I'll leave the field to him," and with a nod and a smile she had ridden off, the applause of the men following her.
Ralph, having put the long-haired one to rout, had asked the men if they knew the young lady who had talked to them. They had, it seemed, seen her riding with Dr. McKenzie. They thought she was his daughter. It had been easy enough after that to find Jean on his mother's visiting list. Mrs. Witherspoon and Mrs. McKenzie had exchanged calls during the life-time of the latter, but they had lived in different circles. Mrs. Witherspoon had aspired to smartness and to the friendship of the new people who brought an air of sophistication to the staid and sedate old capital. Mrs. McKenzie had held to old associations and to old ideals.
Mrs. Witherspoon was a widow and charming. Dr. McKenzie was a widower and an addition to any dinner table. In a few weeks the old acquaintance had been renewed. Ralph had wooed Jean ardently during the short furloughs which had been granted him, and from long distance had written a bit cocksurely. He had sent flowers, candy, books and then, quite daringly; a silver trench ring.
Jean had sent the ring back. "It was dear of you to give it to me, but I can't keep it."
"Why not?" he had asked when he next saw her.
"Because—"
"Because is no reason."
She had blushed, but stood firm. She was very shy—totally unawakened—a little dreaming girl—with all of real life ahead of her—with her innocence a white flower, her patriotism a red one. If only he might wear that white and red above his heart.
As a matter of fact, Jean resented, sub-consciously, his air of possession, the certainty with which he seemed to see the end of his wooing.
"You can't escape me," he had told her.
"As if I were a rabbit," she had complained afterwards to her father. "When I marry a man I don't want to be caught—I want to run to him, with my arms wide open."
"Don't," her father advised; "not many men would be able to stand it. Let them worship you, Jeanie, don't worship."
Jean stuck her nose in the air. "Falling in love doesn't come the way you want it. You have to take it as the good Lord sends it."
"Who told you that?"
"Emily—"
"What does Emily know of love?"
He had laughed and patted her hand. He was cynical generally about romance. He felt that his own perfect love affair with his wife had been the exception. He looked upon Emily as a sentimental spinster who knew practically nothing of men and women.
He did not realize that Emily knew a great deal about dolls that laughed and cried when you pulled a string. And that the world in Emily's Toy Shop was not so very different from his own.
Alma, having turned a cold shoulder to Ralph, was still proclaiming her opinion of Derry Drake to the rest of the table. "He is rich and young and he doesn't want to die—"
"There are plenty of rich young men dying, Alma," said Mrs. Witherspoon, "and it is probably as easy for them as for the poor ones—"
"The poor ones won't mind being muddy and dirty in the trenches," said Alma, "but I can't fancy Derry Drake without two baths a day—"
"I can't quite fancy him a slacker." There was a hint of satisfaction in Mrs. Witherspoon's voice. Her son and Derry Drake had gone to school together and to college. Derry had outdistanced Ralph in every way; but now it was Ralph who was leaving Derry far behind.
Jean wished that they would stop talking. She felt as she might had she seen a soldier stripped of sword and stripes and shamed in the eyes of his fellows.
"Wasn't he in the draft?" she asked Ralph.
"Too old. He doesn't look it, does he? It's a bit hard for the rest of us fellows to understand why he keeps out—"
"Doesn't he ever try to—explain?"
Ralph shook his head. "Not a word. And he's beginning to stay away from things. You see, he knows that people are asking questions, and you hear what they are calling him?"
"Yes," said Jean, "a coward."
"Well, not exactly that—"
"There isn't much difference, is there?"
And now Alma's cool voice summed up the situation. "A man with as much money as that doesn't have to be brave. What does he care about public opinion? After the war everybody will forgive and forget."
Coolly she challenged them to contradict her. "You all know it. How many of you would dare cut the fellow who will inherit his father's millions?"
Mrs. Witherspoon tried to laugh it off; but it was true, and Alma was right. They might talk about Derry Drake behind his back, but they'd never omit sending a card to him.
Jean ate her duckling in flaming silence, ate her salad, ate her ice, drank her coffee, and was glad when the meal ended.
The war from the beginning had been for her a sacred cause. She had yearned to be a man that she might stand in the forefront of battle. She had envied the women of Russia who had formed a Battalion of Death. Her father had laughed at her. "You'd be like a white kitten in a dog fight."
It seemed intolerable that tongues should be busy with this talk of young Drake's cowardice. He had seemed something so much more than that. And he was a man—with a man's right to leadership. What was the matter with him?
The night before she had slept little—Derry's voice—Derry's eyes! She had gone over every word that he had said. She had risen early in the morning to write in her memory book, and she had drawn a most entrancing border about the page, with melting strawberry ice, lilies of France, Cinderella slippers, and red-ink lobsters, rather nightmarishly intermingled!
He had seemed so fine—so—she fell back on her much overworked wordwonderful—her heart had run to meet him, and now—it would have to run back again. How silly she had been not to see.
After dinner they danced in the Long Room, which was rather famous from a decorative point of view. It was medieval in effect, with a balcony and tapestries, and some precious bits of armor. There was a lion-skin flung over the great chair where Mrs. Witherspoon was enthroned.
Between dances, Jean and Ralph sat on the balcony steps, and talked of many things which brought the red to Jean's cheeks, and a troubled light into her eyes.
And it was from the balcony-steps that, as the evening waned, she saw Derry Drake standing in the great arched doorway.
There was a black velvet curtain behind him which accentuated his fairness. He did not look nineteen. Jean had a fleeting vision of a certain steel engraving of the "Princes in the Tower" which had hung in her grandmother's house. Derry was not in the least like those lovely imprisoned boys, yet she had an overwhelming sense of his kinship to them.
As young Drake's eyes swept the room, he was aware of Jean on the balcony steps. She was in white and silver, with a touch of that heavenly blue which seemed to belong to her. Her crinkled hair was combed quaintly over her ears and back from her forehead. He smiled at her, but she apparently did not see him.
He made his way to Mrs. Witherspoon. "I was so sorry to get here late. But my other engagements kept me. If I could have dined at two places, you should have had at least a half of me."
"We wanted the whole. You know Dr. McKenzie, Derry?"
The two men shook hands. "May I dance with your daughter?" Derry said, smiling.
"Of course. She is up there on the stairs."
Jean saw him coming. Ever since Derry had stood in the door she had been trying to make up her mind how she would treat him when he came. Somebody ought to show him that his millions didn't count. She hadn't thought of his millions last night. If he had been just the shabby boy of the Toy Shop, she would have liked his eyes just as much, and his voice!
But a slacker was a slacker! A coward was a coward! All the money in the world couldn't take away the stain. A man who wouldn't fight at this moment for the freedom of the world was a renegade! She would have none of him.
He came on smiling. "Hello, Ralph. Miss McKenzie, your father says you may dance with me—I hope you have something left?"
The blood sang in her ears, her cheeks burned.
"I haven't anything left—for you—" The emphasis was unmistakable.