"I haven't anything left for you."[Illustration: "I haven't anything left for you."]
"I haven't anything left for you."[Illustration: "I haven't anything left for you."]
Even then he did not grasp what had happened to him. "Ralph will let me have one of his—be a good sport, Ralph."
"Well, I like that," Ralph began. Then Jean's crisp voice stopped him. "I am not going to dance any more—my head aches. I—I shall ask Daddy to take me—home—"
It was all very young and obvious. Derry gave her a puzzled stare. Ralph protested. "Oh, look here, Jean. If you think you aren't going to dance any more with me."
"Well, I'm not. I am going home. Please take me down to Daddy."
It seemed a long time before the blurred good-byes were said, and Jean was alone with her father in the cozy comfort of the closed car.
"Do you love me, Daddy?"
"My darling, yes."
"May I live with you always—to the end of my days?"
He chuckled. "So that was it? Poor Ralph!"
"You know you are not sorry for him, Daddy. Don't be a hypocrite."
He drew her close to him. "I should be sorry for myself if he took you from me."
She clung to him. "He is not going to take me away."
"Was that what you were telling him on the balcony stairs?"
"Yes. And he said I was too young to know my own mind. That I was a sleeping Princess—and some day he would wake me—up—"
"Oh."
"And he is not the Prince, Daddy. There isn't any Prince."
She had shut resolutely away from her the vision of Derry Drake as she had seen him on the night of Cinderella. She would have no white-feathered knight! Princes were brave and rode to battle!
It was Alma who gave Derry Drake the key to Jean's conduct.
"Did your ears burn?" she asked, as they danced together after Jean and her father had gone.
"When?"
"We were talking about you at dinner."
"I hope you said nice things."
"I did, of course." Her lashes flashed up and fluttered down as they had flashed and fluttered for Ralph. Every man was for Alma a possible conquest. Derry was big game, and as yet her little darts had not pierced him. She still hoped, however. "I did, but the rest didn't."
He shrank from the things which she might tell him. "What did they say?" His voice caught.
"I shan't tell you. But it was about the war, and your not fighting. As if it made any difference. You are as brave as any of them."
He glanced down at her with somber eyes. Quite unreasonably he hated her for her defense of him. If all women defended men who wouldn't fight, what kind of a world would it be? Women who were worth anything girded their men for battle.
He knew now the reason for Jean's high head and burning cheeks, and in spite of his sense of agonizing humiliation, he was glad to think of that high-held head.
For such women, for such women men died!
But not for women like Alma Drew!
He got away from her as soon as possible. He got away from them all. He had a morbid sense of whispering voices and of averted glances. He fancied that Mrs. Witherspoon touched his hand coldly as he bade her "good-night."
Well, he would not come again until he could meet their eyes.
It was a perfectly clear night, and he walked home. With his face turned up to the stars, he told himself that the situation was intolerable—tomorrow morning, he would go to his father.
When he reached home, his father was asleep. Derry looked in on him and found Bronson sitting erect and wide-eyed beside a night lamp which threw the rest of the room into a sort of golden darkness. The General was in a great lacquered bed which he had brought with him years ago from China. Gilded dragons guarded it and princes had slept in it. Heavy breathing came from the bed.
"I think he has caught cold, sir," Bronson whispered. "I'm a bit afraid of bronchitis."
Derry's voice lacked sympathy. "I shouldn't worry, Bronson. He usually comes around all right."
"Yes, sir. I hope so, sir," and Bronson's spare figure rose to a portentous shadow, as he preceded Derry to the door.
On the threshold he said, "Dr. Richards has gone to the front. Shall I call Dr. McKenzie if we need someone—?"
"Has he been left in charge?"
"Yes, sir."
Derry stood for a moment undecided. "I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't call McKenzie. Do as you think best, Bronson."
On his way to his own room, Derry paused for a moment at the head of the great stairway. His mother's picture hung on the landing. The dress in which she was painted had been worn to a dinner at the White House during the first Cleveland Administration. It was of white brocade, with its ostrich feather trimming making it a rather regal robe. It had tight sleeves, and the neck was square. Around her throat was a wide collar of pearls with diamond slides. Her fair hair was combed back in the low pompadour of the period, and there were round flat curls on her temples. The picture was old-fashioned, but the painted woman was exquisite, as she had always been, as she would always be in Derry's dreams.
The great house had given to the General's wife her proper setting. She had trailed her satins and silks up and down the marble stairway. Her slender hands, heavy with their rings, had rested on its balustrade, its mirrors had reflected the diamond tiara with which the General had crowned her. In the vast drawing room, the gold and jade and ivory treasures in the cabinets had seemed none too fine for this greatest treasure of them all. In the dining room the priceless porcelains had been cheapened by her greater worth. The General had travelled far and wide, and he had brought the wealth of the world to lay at the feet of his young wife. He adored her and he adored her son.
"It is just you and me, Derry," the old man had said in the first moment of bereavement; "we've got to stick it out together—"
And they had stuck it out until the war had come, and patriotism had flared, and the staunch old soldier had spurned this—changeling.
It seemed to Derry that if his mother could only step down from the picture she might make things right for him. But she would not step down. She would go on smiling her gentle painted smile as if nothing really mattered in the whole wide world.
Thus, with his father asleep in the lacquered bed, and his mother smiling in her gilded frame, the son stood alone in the great shell of a house which had in it no beating heart, no throbbing soul to answer his need.
Derry's rooms were furnished in a lower key than those in which his father's taste had been followed. There were gray rugs and gray walls, some old mahogany, the snuff-box picture of Napoleon over his desk, a dog-basket of brown wicker in a corner.
Muffin, Derry's Airedale, stood at attention as his master came in. He knew that the length of his sojourn depended on his manners.
A bright fire was burning, a long chair slanted across the hearthrug. Derry got into a gray dressing gown and threw himself into the chair. Muffin, with a solicitous sigh, sat tentatively on his haunches. His master had had no word for him. Things were very bad indeed, when Derry had no word for his dog.
At last it came. "Muffin—it's a rotten old world."
Muffin's tail beat the rug. His eager eyes asked for more.
It came—"Rotten."
Derry made room among the pillows, and Muffin curled up beside him in rapturous silence. The fire snapped and flared, flickered and died. Bronson tiptoed in to ask if Derry wanted him. Young Martin, who valeted Derry when Bronson would let him, followed with more proffers of assistance.
Derry sent them both away. "I am going to bed."
But he did not go to bed. He read a letter which his mother had written before she died. He had never broken the seal until now. For on the outside of the envelope were these words in fine feminine script: "Not to be opened until the time comes when my boy Derry is tempted to break his promise."
It began, "Boy dear—"
"I wonder if I shall make you understand what it is so necessary that you should understand? It has been so hard all of these years when your clear little lad's eyes have looked into mine to feel that some day you might blame—me. Youth is so uncompromising, Derry, dear—and so logical—so demanding of—justice. And life isn't logical—or just—not with the sharp-edged justice which gives cakes to the good little boys and switches to the bad ones. And you have always insisted on the cakes and switches, Derry, and that's why I am afraid of you.
"Even when you were only ten and I hugged you close in the night—those nights when we were alone, Derry, and your father was out on some wild road under the moonlight, or perhaps with the snow shutting out the moon, you used to whisper, 'But he oughtn't to do it, Mother—' And I knew that he ought not, but, oh, Derry, I loved him, and do you remember, I used to say, 'But he's so good to us, Laddie,—and perhaps we can love him enough to make him stop.'
"But you are a man now, Derry. I am sure you will be a man before you read this, for my little boy will obey me until he comes to man's estate, and then he may say 'She was only a foolish loving woman, and why should I be bound?'
"I know when that moment comes that all your father's money will not hold you. You will not sell your soul's honor for your inheritance. Haven't I known it all along? Haven't I seen you a little shining knight ready to do battle for your ideals? And haven't I seen the clash of those ideals with the reality of your father's fault?
"Well, there's this to think of now, Derry, now that you are a man—that life isn't white and black, it isn't sheep and goats—it isn't just good people and bad people with a great wall between. Life is gray and amethyst, it is a touch of dinginess on the fleece of the whole flock, and the men and women whom you meet will be those whose great faults are balanced by great virtues and whose little meannesses are contradicted by unexpected generosities.
"I am putting it this way because I want you to realize that except for the one fault which has shadowed your father's life, there is no flaw in him. Other men have gone through the world apparently untouched by any temptation, but their families could tell you the story of a thousand tyrannies, their clerks could tell you of selfishness and hardness, their churches and benevolent societies could tell you of their lack of charity. Oh, there are plenty of good men in the world, Derry, strong and fine and big, I want you to believe that always, but I want you to believe, too, that there are men who struggle continually with temptation and seem to fail, but they fight with an enemy so formidable that I, who have seen the struggle, have shut my eyes—afraid to look—.
"And now I shall go back to the very beginning, and tell you how it all happened. Your father was only a boy when the Civil War broke out. He came down from Massachusetts with a regiment which had in it the blood of the farmers who fired the shot heard round the world—. He felt that he was fighting for Freedom—he had all of your ideals, Derry; plus, perhaps, a few of his own.
"You know how the war dragged, four years of it—and much of the time that Massachusetts regiment was in swamp and field, on the edge of fever-breeding streams, never very well fed, cold in winter, hot in summer.
"They were given for medicine quinine and—whiskey. It kept them alive. Sometimes it kept them warm, sometimes it lifted them above reality and granted them a moment's reckless happiness.
"It was all wrong, of course. I am making no plea for its rightness; and it unchained wild beasts in some of the men. Your father for many years kept his chained, but the beasts were there.
"He was almost fifty when I married him, and he was not a General. That title was given to him during the Spanish War. I was twenty when I came here a bride. There was no deception on your father's part. He told me of the dragon he fought—he told me that he hoped with God's help and mine to conquer. And I hoped, too, Derry. I did more than that. I was so sure of him—my King could do no wrong.
"But the day came when he went on one of those desolate pilgrimages where you and I so often followed in later years. I am not going to try to tell you how we fought together, Derry; how I learned with such agony of soul that a man's will is like wax in the fire of temptation—oh, Derry, Derry—.
"I am telling you this for more reasons than one. What your father has been you might be. With all your ideals there may be in you some heritage of weakness, of appetite. Wild beasts can conquer you, too, if you let them in. And that's why I have preached and prayed. That's why I've kept you from that which overcame your father. You are no better, no stronger, than he was in the glory of his youth. But I have barred the doors against the flaming dragon.
"I have no words eloquent enough to tell you of his care of me, his consideration, his devotion. Yet nothing of all this helped in those strange moods that came upon him. Then you were forgotten, I was forgotten, the world was forgotten, and he let everything go—.
"I have kept what I have suffered to some extent from the world. If people have pitied they have had the grace at least not to let me see. The tragedy has been that you should have been sacrificed to it, your youth shadowed. But what could I do? I felt that you must know, must see, and I felt, too, that the salvation of the father might be accomplished through the son.
"And so I let you go out into the night after him, I let you know that which should, perhaps, have been hidden from you. But I loved him, Derry—I loved you—I did the best I could for both of you.
"And now because of the past, I plead for the future. I want you to stay with him, Derry. No matter what happens I beg that you will stay—for the sake of the boy who was once like you, for the sake of the man who held your mother always close to his heart, for the sake of the mother who in Heaven holds you to your promise."
The great old house was very still. Somewhere in a shadowed room an old man slept heavily with his servant sitting stiff and straight beside him, at the head of the stairway a painted bride smiled in the darkness, the dog Muffin stirred and whined.
Derry's head was buried deep in the cushion. His hands clutched the letter which had cut the knot of his desperate decision.
No—one could not break a promise to a mother in Heaven.…
He waked heavily in the morning. Bronson was beside his bed. "I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but Dr. McKenzie would like to speak to you."
"McKenzie?"
"Yes, sir. I had to call him last night. Your father was worse."
"Bring him right in here, Bronson, and have some coffee for us."
When Dr. McKenzie was ushered into Derry's sitting room, he found a rather pale and languid young man in the long chair.
"I hated to wake you, Drake. But it was rather necessary that I should talk your father's case over with you."
"Is he very ill?"
"It isn't that—there are complications that I don't care to discuss with servants."
"You mean he has been drinking?"
"Yes. Heavily. You realize that's a rather serious thing for a man of his age."
"I know it. But there's nothing to be done."
"What makes you say that?"
"We've tried specialists—cures. I've been half around the world with him."
The Doctor nodded. "It's hard to pull up at that age."
"My mother's life was spent in trying to help him. He's a dear old chap, really."
"There is, of course, the possibility that he may get a grip on himself."
Derry's languor left him. "Do you think there's the least hope of it? Frankly? No platitudes?"
"We are making some rather interesting experiments—psycho-analysis—things like that—"
He stood up. He was big and breezy. "What's the matter with you this morning? You ought to be up and out."
Derry flushed. "Nothing—much."
The Doctor sat down again. "I'd tell most men to take a cold shower and a two hours' tramp, but it's more than that with you—."
"It's a ease of suspended activity. I want to get into the war—"
"Why don't you?"
"I can't leave Dad. Surely you can see that."
"I don't see it. He must reap, every man must."
"But there's more than that. My mother tied me by a promise. And people are calling me a coward—even Dad thinks I am a slacker, and I can't say to him, 'If you were more than the half of a man I might be a whole one.'"
"Your mother couldn't have foreseen this war."
"It would have made no difference. Her world was centered in him. You know, of course, Doctor, that I wouldn't have spoken of this to anyone else—"
"My dear fellow, I am father confessor to half of my patients." The Doctor's eyes were kind. "My lips will be sealed. But if you want my advice I should throw the old man overboard. Let him sink or swim. Your life is your own."
"It has never been my own." He went to a desk and took out an envelope. "It's a rather sacred letter, but I want you to read it—I read it for the first time last night."
When at last the Doctor laid the letter down, Derry said very low, "Do you blame me?"
"My dear fellow; she had no right to ask it."
"But having asked—?"
"It is a moving letter, and you loved her—but I still contend she had no right to ask."
"I gave my sacred word."
"I question whether any promise should stand between a man and his country's need of him."
They faced each other. "I wonder—" Derry said, "I—I must think it over, Doctor."
"Give yourself a chance if you do. We can go too far in our sacrifice for others—." He resumed his brisk professional manner. "In the meantime you've a rather sick old gentleman on your hands. You'd better get a nurse."
The argument came up at breakfast two days before Thanksgiving. It was a hot argument. Jean beat her little hands upon the table. Hilda's hands were still, but it was an irritating stillness.
"What do you think, Daddy?"
"Hilda is right. There is no reason why we should go to extremes."
"But a turkey—."
"Nobody has said that we shouldn't have a turkey on Thanksgiving—not even Hoover." Hilda's voice was as irritating as her hands.
"Well, we have consciences, Hilda. And a turkey would choke me."
"You make so much of little things."
"Is it a little thing to sacrifice our appetites?"
"I don't think it is a very big thing." The office bell rang, and Hilda rose. "If I felt as you do I should sacrifice something more than things to eat. I'd go over there and nurse the wounded. I could be of real service. But you couldn't. With all your big ideas of patriotism you couldn't do one single practical thing."
It was true, and Jean knew that it was true, but she fired one more shot. "Then why don't you go?" she demanded fiercely.
"I may," Hilda said slowly. "I have been thinking about it. I haven't made up my mind."
Dr. McKenzie glanced at her in surprise. "I didn't dream you felt that way."
"I don't think I do mean it in the way you mean. I should go because there was something worth doing—not as a grandstand play."
She went out of the room. Jean stared after her.
The Doctor laughed. "She got you there, girlie."
"Yes, she did. Do you really think she intends to go, Daddy?"
"It is news to me."
"Good news?"
He shook his head. "She is a very valuable nurse. I should hate to lose her." He sat for a moment in silence, then stood up. "I shouldn't hold out for a turkeyless Thanksgiving if I were you. It isn't necessary."
"Are you taking Hilda's part, Daddy?"
"No, my dear, of course not." He came over and kissed her. "Will you ride with me this morning?"
"Oh, yes—how soon?"
"In ten minutes. After I see this patient."
In less time than that she was ready and waiting for him in her squirrel coat and hat and her little muff.
Her father surveyed her. "Such a lovely lady."
"Do you like me, Daddy?"
"What a question—I love you."
Safe in the car, with the glass screen shutting away the chauffeur, Jean returned to the point of attack.
"Hilda makes me furious, Daddy. I came to talk about her."
"I thought you came because you wanted to ride with me."
"Well, I did. But for this, too."
Over her muff, her stormy eyes surveyed him. "You think I am unreasonable about meatless and wheatless days. But you don't know. Hilda ignores them, Daddy—you should see the breadbox. And the other day she ordered a steak for dinner, one of those big thick ones—and it was Tuesday, and I happened to go down to the kitchen and saw it—and I told the cook that we wouldn't have it, and when I came up I told Hilda, and she laughed and said that I was silly.
"And I said that if she had that steak cooked I would not eat it, and I should ask you not to eat it, and she just stood with her hands flat on your desk, you know the way she does—I hate her hands—and she said that of course if I was going to make a fuss about it she wouldn't have the steak, but that it was simply a thing she couldn't understand. The steak was there, why not eat it? And I said it was because of the psychological effect on other people. And she said we were having too much psychology and not enough common sense in this war!
"Well, after that, I went to my Red Cross meeting at the church. I expected to have lunch there, but I changed my mind and came home. Hilda was at the table alone, and, Daddy, she was eating the steak, the whole of it—." She paused to note the effect of her revelation.
"Well?"
"She was eating it when all the world needs food! She made me think of those dreadful creatures in the fairy books. She's—she's a ghoul—"
"My dear."
"A ghoul. You should have seen her, with great chunks of bread and butter."
"Hilda has a healthy appetite."
"Of course you defend her."
"My dear child—"
"Oh you do, Daddy, always, against me—and I'm your daughter—"
She wept a tear or two into her muff, then raised her eyes to find him regarding her quizzically. "Are you going to spoil my ride?"
"You are spoiling mine."
"We won't quarrel about it. And we'll stop at Small's. Shall it be roses or violets, to-day, my dear?"
She chose violets, as more in accord with her pensive mood, lighting the bunch, however, with one red rose. The question of Hilda was not settled, but she yielded as many an older woman has yielded—to the sweetness of tribute—to man's impulse to make things right not by justice but by the bestowal of his bounty.
From the florist's, they went to Huyler's old shop on F Street, where the same girl had served Jean with ice-cream sodas and hot chocolate for fifteen years. Administrations might come and administrations go, but these pleasant clerks had been cup-bearers to them all—Presidents' daughters and diplomats' sons—the sturdy children of plain Congressmen, the scions of noble families across the seas.
It was while Jean sat on a high stool beside her father, the sunshine shining on her through the wide window, that Derry Drake, coming down Twelfth, saw her!
Well, he wanted a lemonade. And the fact that she was there in a gray squirrel coat and bunch of violets with her copper-colored hair shining over her ears wasn't going to leave him thirsty!
He went in. He bowed to the Doctor and received a smile in return. Jean's eyes were cold above her chocolate. Derry bought his check, went to a little table on the raised platform at the back of the room, drank his lemonade and hurried out.
"A nice fellow," said the Doctor, watching him through the window. "I wonder why he didn't stop and speak to us?"
"I'm glad he didn't."
"My dear, why?"
"I've found out things—"
"What things?"
"That he's a—coward," with tense earnestness. "He won't fight."
"Who told you that?"
"Everybody's saying it."
"Everybody is dead wrong."
"What do you mean, Daddy?"
"What I have just said. Everybody is dead wrong."
"How do you know?"
"A doctor knows a great many things which he is not permitted to tell. I am rather bound not to tell in this case."
"Oh, but you could tell me."
"Hardly—it was given in confidence."
"Did he? Oh, Daddy, did he tell you?"
"Yes."
"And he isn't a slacker?"
"No."
"I knew it—."
"You didn't. You thought he was a coward."
"Well, I ought to have known better. He looks brave, doesn't he?"
"I shouldn't call him exactly a heroic figure."
"Shouldn't you?"
She finished her chocolate in silence, and followed him in silence to his car. They sped up F Street, gay with its morning crowd.
Then at last it came. "Isn't it a wonderful day, Daddy?"
He smiled down at her. "There you go."
"Well, it is wonderful." She fell again into silence, then again bestowed upon him her raptures. "Wouldn't it be dreadful if we had loveless days, Daddy, as well as meatless ones and wheatless?"
That night, after Jean had gone to bed, the Doctor, having dismissed his last patient, came out of his inner office. Hilda, in her white nurse's costume, was busy with the books. He stood beside her desk. His eyes were dancing. "Jean told me about the steak."
"I knew she would—I suppose it was an awful thing to do. But I was hungry, and I hate fish—" She smiled at him lazily, then laughed.
He laughed back. He felt that it would be unbearable for Hilda to go hungry, to spoil her red and white with abstinence.
"My dear girl," he said, "what did you mean when you spoke of going away?"
"Haven't you been thinking of going?"
The color came up in his cheeks. "Yes, but how did you know it?"
"Well, a woman knows. Why don't you make up your mind?"
"There's Jean to think of."
"Emily Bridges could take care of her. And you ought to go. Men are seeing things over there that they'll never see again. And women are."
"If my country needs me—"
Hilda was cold. "I shouldn't go for that. As I told Jean, I am not making any grand stand plays. I should go for all that I get out of it, the experience, the adventure—."
He looked at her with some curiosity. Jean's words of the afternoon recurred to him. "She's a ghoul—"
Yet there was something almost fascinating in her frankness. She tore aside ruthlessly the curtain of self-deception, revealing her motives, as if she challenged him to call them less worthy than his own.
"If I go, it will be because I want to become a better nurse. I like it here, but your practice is necessarily limited. I should get a wider view of things. So would you. There would be new worlds of disease, men in all conditions of nervous shock."
"I know. But I'd hate to think I was going merely for selfish ends."
She shrugged. "Why not that as well as any other?"
He had a smouldering sense of irritation.
"When I am with Jean she makes me feel rather big and fine; when I am with you—" He paused.
"I make you see yourself as you are, a man. She thinks you are more than that."
All his laughter left ham. "It is something to be a hero to one's daughter. Perhaps some day I shall be a little better for her thinking so."
She saw that she had gone too far. "You mustn't take the things I say too seriously."
The bell of the telephone at her elbow whirred. She put the receiver to her ear. "It is General Drake's man; he thinks you'd better come over before you go to bed."
"I was afraid I might have to go. He is in rather bad shape, Hilda."
She packed his bag for him competently, and telephoned for his car. "I'll have a cup of coffee ready for you when you get back," she said, as she stood in the door. "It is going to be a dreadful night."
The streets were icy and the sleet falling. "You'd better have your overshoes," Hilda decided, and went for them.
As he put them on, she stood under the hall light, smiling. "Have you forgiven me?" she asked as he straightened up.
"For telling me the truth? Of course. You take such good care of me, Hilda."
Upstairs in her own room Jean was writing a letter. It was a very pretty room, very fresh and frilly with white dimity and with much pink and pale lavender. The night-light which shone through the rose taffeta petticoats of a porcelain lady was supplemented at the moment by a bed-side lamp which flung a ring of gold beyond Jean's blotter to the edge of the lace spread. For Jean was writing in bed. All day her mind had been revolving around this letter, but she had had no time to write. She had spent the afternoon in the Toy Shop with Emily, and in the evening there had been a Red Cross sale. She had gone to the sale with Ralph Witherspoon and his mother. She had not been able to get out of going. All the time she had talked to Ralph she had thought of Derry. She had rather hoped that he might be there, but he wasn't.
The letter required much thought. She tore up, extravagantly, several sheets of note-paper with tiny embossed thistles at the top. Doctor McKenzie was intensely Scotch, and he was entitled to a crest, but he was also intensely American, and would have none of it. He had designed Jean's note-paper, and it was lovely. But it was also expensive, and it was a shame to waste so much of it on Derry Drake.
The note when it was finished seemed very simple. Just one page in Jean's firm, clear script:
"Dear Mr. Drake:—
"Could you spare me one little minute tomorrow? I shall be at home at four. It is very important—to me at least. Perhaps when you hear what I have to say, it will seem important to you. I hope it may.
"Very sincerely yours,"JEAN MCKENZIE."
She read it over several times. It seemed very stiff and inadequate. She sealed it and stamped it, then in a panic tore it open for a re-reading. She was oppressed by doubts. Did nice girls ask men to come and see them? Didn't they wait and weary like Mariana of the Moated Grange—? "He cometh not, she said?"
New times! New manners! She had branded a man as a coward. She had condemned him unheard. She had slighted him, she had listened while others slandered—why should she care what other women had done? Would do? Her way was clear. She owed an apology to Derry Drake, and she would make it.
So with a new envelope, a new stamp, the note was again sealed.
It had to be posted that night. She felt that under no circumstance could she stand the suspense of another day.
She had heard her father go out. Hilda was coming up, the maids were asleep. She waited until Hilda's door was shut, then she slipped out of bed, tucked her toes into a pair of sandals, threw a furry motor coat around her, and sped silently down the stairs. She shrank back as she opened the front door. The sleet rattled on the steps, the pavements were covered with white.
The mail-box was in front of the house. She made a rush for it, dropped in the precious letter, and gained once more the haven of the warm hall.
She was glad to get back to her room. As she settled down among her pillows, she had a great sense of adventure, as if she had travelled far in a few moments.
As a matter of fact, she had made her first real excursion into the land of romance. She found her thoughts galloping.
At the foot of the bed her silver Persian, Polly Ann, lay curled on her own gray blanket.
"Polly Ann," Jean said, "if he doesn't come, I shall hate myself for writing that note."
Polly Ann surveyed her sleepily.
"But it would serve me right if he didn't, Polly Ann."
She turned off the light and tried to sleep. Downstairs the telephone rang. It rang, too, in Hilda's room. Hilda's door opened and shut. She came across the hall and tapped on Jean's door. "May I come in?"
"Yes."
"Your father has just telephoned," Hilda said from the threshold, "that General Drake's nurse is not well, and will have to be taken off the case. I shall have to go in her place. There is a great shortage at the hospital. Will you be afraid to stay alone, or shall I wake up Ellen and have her sleep on the couch in your dressing room?"
"Of course I am not afraid, Hilda. Nothing can happen until father comes back."
As Hilda went away, Jean had a delicious feeling of detachment. She would be alone in the house with her thoughts of Derry.
She got out of bed to say her prayers. With something of a thrill she prayed for Derry's father. She was not conscious as she made her petitions of any ulterior motive. Yet a placated Providence would, she felt sure, see that the General's sickness should not frustrate the plans which she had quite daringly made for his son.
Derry had dined that night with his cousin, Margaret Morgan. Margaret's husband was somewhere in France with Pershing's divisions. Margaret was to have news of him this evening, brought by a young English officer, Dawson Hewes, who had been wounded at Ypres, and who had come on a recruiting mission, among his countrymen in America.
The only other guest was to be Drusilla Gray.
Derry had gone over early to have the twilight hour with Margaret's children. There was Theodore, the boy, and Margaret-Mary, on the edge of three. They had their supper at five in the nursery, and after that there was always the story hour, with nurse safely downstairs for her dinner, their mother, lovely in a low-necked gown, and father coming in at the end. For several months their father had not come, and the best they could do was to kiss his picture in the frame with the eagle on it, to put flowers in front of it, and to say their little prayers for the safety of men in battle.
It was Cousin Derry who dropped in now at the evening hour. He was a famous story-teller, and they always welcomed him uproariously.
Margaret Morgan, perhaps better than any other, knew in those days what was in Derry's heart. She knew the things against which he had struggled, and she had rebelled hotly, "Why should he be sacrificed?" she had asked her husband more than once during the three years which had preceded America's entrance into the war. "He wants to be over there driving an ambulance—doing his bit. Aunt Edith always idealized the General, and Derry is paying the price."
"Most women idealize the men they love, honey-girl." Winston Morgan was from the South, and he drew upon its store of picturesque endearments to express his joy and pride in his own Peggy. "And if they didn't where should we be?"
She had leaned her head against him. "I don't need to idealize you," she had said, comfortably, "but the General is different. Aunt Edith made Derry live his father's life, not his own, and it has moulded him into something less than he might have been if he had been allowed more initiative."
Winston had shaken his head. "Discipline is a mighty good thing in the Army, Peggy, and it's a mighty good thing in life. Derry Drake is as hard as steel, and as finely tempered. If he ever does break loose, he'll be all the more dynamic for having held himself back."
Margaret, conceding all that, was yet constrained to pour out upon Derry the wealth of her womanly sympathy. It was perhaps the knowledge of this as well as his devotion to her children which brought him often to her door.
Tonight she was sitting on a low-backed seat in front of the fire with a child on each side of her. She was in white, her dark hair in a simple shining knot, a little pearl heart which had been Captain Morgan's parting gift, her only ornament.
"Go on with your story," he said, as he came in. "I just want to listen and do nothing."
She glanced up at him. He looked tired, unlike himself, depressed.
"Anything the matter?"
"Father isn't well. Dr. McKenzie has taken the case. Richards has gone to the front. Bronson will call me if there are any unfavorable developments."
Margaret-Mary, curled up like a kitten in the curve of Cousin Derry's arm, was exploring his vest pocket. She found two very small squares of Washington taffy wrapped in wax paper, one for herself and one for Teddy. It was Derry's war-time offering. No other candies were permitted by Margaret's patriotism. Her children ate molasses on their bread, maple sugar on their cereal. Her soldier was in France, and there were other soldiers, not one of whom should suffer because of the wanton waste of food by the people who stayed softly at home.
"You tell us a story, Uncle Derry," Teddy pleaded as he ate his taffy.
"I'd rather listen to your mother."
"They are tired of me," Margaret told him.
"We are not ti-yard," her small son enunciated carefully, "but you said you had to fix the f'owers."
"Well, I have. May I turn them over to you, Derry?"
"For a minute. But you must come back."
She came back presently, to find the lights out and only the glow of the fire to illumine faintly the three figures on the sofa. She stood unseen in the door and listened.
"And so the Tin Soldier stood on the shelf where the little boy had put him, and nothing happened in the old, old house. There was just an old, old man, and walls covered with old, old portraits, and knights in armor, and wooden trumpeters carved on the door who blew with all their might, 'Trutter-a-trutt, Trutter-a-trutt'—. But the old man and the portraits and the wooden trumpeters had no thought for the Tin Soldier who stood there on the shelf, alone and longing to go to the war. And at last the Tin Soldier cried out, 'I can't stand it. I want to go to the wars—I want to go to the wars!' But nobody listened or cared."
"Poor 'itte sing," Margaret-Mary crooned.
"If I had been there," Teddy proclaimed, "I'd have put him on the floor and told him to run and run and run!"
"But there was nobody to put him on the floor," said Derry, "so at last the Tin Soldier could stand it no longer. 'I will go to the wars, I will go to the wars,' he cried, and he threw himself down from the shelf."
The story stopped suddenly. "Go on, go on," urged the little voices in the dark.
"Perhaps you think that was the end of it, and that the Tin Soldier ran away to the wars, to help his country and save the world from ruin. But Fate wasn't as kind to him as that. For when the little boy came again to the old house, he looked for the Tin Soldier. But he wasn't on the shelf. And he looked and looked and, the old man looked, and the wooden trumpeters blew out their cheeks, 'Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt—where is the Tin Soldier?—trutter-a-trutt—.'
"But they did not find him, for the Tin Soldier had fallen through a crack in the floor, and there he lay as in an open grave."
Drusilla's voice was heard in the lower hall, and the deeper voice of Captain Hewes. Margaret sped down to meet them, leaving the story, reluctantly, in that moment of heart-breaking climax.
When later Derry followed her, she had a chance to say, "I hope you gave it a happy ending."
"Oh, did you hear? Yes. They found him in time to send him away to war. But Hans Andersen didn't end it that way. He knew life."
She stared at him in amazement. Was this the Derry whose supply of cheerfulness had seemed inexhaustible? Whose persistent optimism had been at times exasperating to his friends?
Throughout the evening she was aware of his depression. She was aware, too, of the mistake which she had made in bringing Derry and Captain Hewes together.
The Captain had red hair and a big nose. But he was a gentleman in the fine old English sense; he was a soldier with but one idea, that every physically able man should fight. Every sentence that he spoke was charged with this belief, and every sentence carried a sting for Derry.
More than once Peggy found it necessary to change the subject frantically. Drusilla supplemented her efforts.
But gradually the Captain's manner froze. With a sort of military sixth sense, he felt that he had been asked to break bread and eat salt with a slacker, and he resented it.
After dinner Drusilla sang for them. Sensitive always to atmosphere, she soothed the Captain with old and familiar songs, "Flow gently, sweet Afton," and "Believe me if all those endearing young charms."
Then straight from these to "I'm going to marry 'Arry on the Fifth of January."
"Oh, I say—Harry Lauder," was Captain Hewes' eager comment. "I heard him singing to the chaps in the trenches just before I sailed—a little stocky man in a red kilt. He'd laugh, and you'd want to cry."
Drusilla gave them "Wee Hoose among the Heather," with the touch of pathos which the little man in the red kilt had imparted to it as he had sung it in October in New York before an audience which had wept as it had welcomed him.
"Queer thing," Captain Hewes mused, "what the war has done to him, set him preaching and all that."
"Oh, it isn't queer," Margaret was eager. "That is one of the things the war is doing, bringing men back to—God—" A sob caught in her throat.
Drusilla's hands strayed upon the keys, and into the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
"I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps,They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps,I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,His day is marching on—"