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."
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 Stölle. 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—!
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."
He nodded. "I see. And yet there is this about Hilda. She does not deceive herself;—perhaps you do—and Jean."
"Perhaps it is Hilda who is deceived. All the people in the world are not unlovely—all of them are not mercenary and deceitful and selfish." Her cheeks were flushed.
"Nobody knows that better than a doctor, Emily. I am conscious that Hilda draws out the worst in me—yet there is something about her that makes me want to find things out, to explore life with her—"
He was smiling into the fire. Miss Emily girded herself and gave him a shock. "The trouble with you is that you want the admiration of every woman who comes your way. Most of your patients worship you—Jean puts you on a pedestal—even I tell you that you have a soul. But Hilda withholds the admiration you demand, and you want to conquer her—to see her succumb with the rest of us."
"The rest of you! Emily, you have never succumbed."
"Oh, yes, I have. I seem to be saying, 'He may have a few weaknesses, but back of it all he is big and fine.' But Hilda's attitude indicates, 'He is not fine at all.' And you hate that and want to show her."
He chuckled. "By Jove, I do, Emily. Perhaps it is just as well that I am getting away from her."
"I wouldn't admit it if I were you. I'd rather see you face a thing than run away."
"If Eve had run away from the snake in the apple tree, she would not have lost her Eden—poor Eve."
"Poor Adam—to follow her lead. He should have said, 'No, my dear, apples are not permitted by the Food Administrator; we must practice self-denial.'"
"I think I'd rather have him sinning than such a prig."
"It depends on the point of view."
He enjoyed immensely crossing swords with Emily. There was never any aftermath of unpleasantness. She soothed him even while she criticised.
They spoke presently of Jean and Derry.
"They want to get married."
"Well, why not?"
"She's too young, Emily. Too ignorant of what life means—and he may go to France any day. He is getting restless—and he may see things differently—that his duty to his country transcends any personal claim—and then what of Jean?—a little wife—alone."
"She could stay with me."
"But marriage,marriage, Emily—why in Heaven's name should they be in such a hurry?"
"Why should they wait, and miss the wonder of it all, as I have missed it—all the color and glow, the wine of life? Even if he should go to France, and die, she will bear his beloved name—she will have the right to weep."
He had never seen her like this—the red was deep in her cheeks, her voice was shaken, her bosom rose and fell with her agitation.
"Emily, my dear girl—"
"Let them marry, Bruce, can't you see? Can't you see. It is their day—there may be no tomorrow."
"But there are practical things, Emily. If she should have a child?"
"Why not? It will be his—to love. Only a woman with empty arms knows what that means, Bruce."
And this was Emily, this rose-red, wet-eyed creature was Emily, whom he had deemed unemotional, cold, self-contained!
"Men forget, Bruce. You wouldn't listen to reason when you wooed Jean's mother. You were a demanding, imperative lover—you wanted your own way, and you had it."
"But I had known Jean's mother all my life."
"Time has nothing to do with it."
"My dear girl—"
"It hasn't."
She was illogical, and he liked it. "If I let them marry, what then?"
"They will love you for it."
"They ought to love you instead."
"I shall be out of it. They will be married, and you will be in France, and I shall sell—toys—"
She tried to laugh, but it was a poor excuse. He glanced at her quickly. "Shall you miss me, Emily?"
Her hands went out in a little gesture of despair. "There you go, taking my tears to yourself."
He was a bit disconcerted. "Oh, I say—"
"But they are not for you. They are for my lost youth and romance, Bruce. My lost youth and romance."
Leaning back in his chair he studied her. Her eyes were dreamy—the rose-red was still in her cheeks. For the first time he realized the prettiness of Emily; it was as if in her plea for others she had brought to life something in herself which glowed and sparkled.
"Look here," he said. "I want you to write to me."
"I am a busy woman."
"But a letter now and then—"
"Well, now and then—"
He was forced to be content with that. She was really very charming, he decided as he got into his car. She was such a gentlewoman—she created an atmosphere which belonged to his home and hearth.
When he came in late she was not waiting up for him as Hilda had so often waited. There was a plate of sandwiches on his desk, coffee ready in the percolator to be made by the turning on of the electricity. But he ate his lunch alone.
Yet in spite of the loneliness, he was glad that Emily had not waited up for him. It was a thing which Hilda might do—Hilda, who made a world of her own. But Emily's world was the world of womanly graciousness and dignity—the world in which his daughter moved, the world which had been his wife's. For her to have eaten alone with him in his office in the middle of the night would have made her seem less than he wanted her to be.
Before he went to bed, he called up Hilda. "I forgot to tell you when you were here this afternoon that I asked young Drake about Bronson. He says that it isn't possible that the old man is giving the General anything against orders. You'd better watch the other servants and be sure of the day nurse—"
"I am sure of her and of the other servants—but I still have my doubts about Bronson."
"But Drake says—"
"I don't care what he says. Bronson served the General before he served young Drake—and he's not to be trusted."
"I should be sorry to think so; he impresses me as a faithful old soul."
"Well, my eyes are rather clear, you know."
"Yes, I know. Good-night, Hilda."
She hung up the receiver. She had talked to him at the telephone in the lower hall, which was enclosed, and where one might be confidential without feeing overheard.
She sat very still for a few moments in the little booth, thinking; then she rose and went upstairs.
The General was awake and eager.
"Shall I read to you?" Hilda asked.
"No, I'd rather talk."
She shaded the light and sat beside the little table. "Did you like your dinner?"
"Yes. Bronson said you made the broth. It was delicious."
"I like to cook—-when I like the people I cook for."
He basked in that.
"There are some patients—oh, I have wanted to salt their coffee and pepper their cereal. You have no idea of the temptations which come to a nurse."
"Are you fond of it—nursing?"
"Yes. It is nice in a place like this—and at Dr. McKenzie's. But there are some houses that are awful, with everybody quarrelling, the children squalling—. I hate that. I want to be comfortable. I like your thick carpets here, and the quiet, and the good service. And the good things to eat, and the little taste of wine that we take together." Her low laugh delighted him.
"The wine? You are going to drink another glass with me before I go to sleep."
"Yes. But it is our secret. Dr. McKenzie would kill me if he knew, and a nurse must obey orders."
"He need never know. And it won't hurt me."
"Of course not. But he has ideas on the subject."
"May I have it now?"
"Wait until Bronson goes to bed."
"Bronson has nothing to do with it. A servant has neither ears nor eyes."
"It might embarrass him if the Doctor asked him. And why should you make him lie?"
Bronson, pottering in, presently, was told that he would not be needed. "Mr. Derry telephoned that he would be having supper after the play at Miss Gray's. You can call him there if he is wanted."
"Thank you, Bronson. Good-night."
When the old man had left them, she said to the General, "Do you know that your son is falling in love?"
"In love?"
"Yes, desperately—at first sight?"
He laughed. "With whom?"
"Dr. McKenzie's daughter."
"What?" He raised himself on his elbow.
"Yes. Jean McKenzie. I am not sure that I ought to tell you, but somehow it doesn't seem right that you are not being told—"
He considered it gravely. "I don't want him to get married," he said at last. "I want him to go to war. I can't tell you, Miss Merritt, how bitter my disappointment has been that Derry won't fight."
"He may have to fight."
"Do you think I want him dragged to defend the honor of his country? I'd rather see him dead." He was struggling for composure.
"Oh, I shouldn't have told you," she said, solicitously.
"Why not? It is my right to know."
"Jean is a pretty little thing, and you may like her."
"I like McKenzie," thoughtfully.
She glanced at him. His old face had fallen into gentler lines. She gave a hard laugh. "Of course, a rich man like your son rather dazzles the eyes of a young girl like Jean."
"You think then it is his—money?"
"I shouldn't like to say that. But, of course, money adds to his charms."
"He won't have any money," grimly, "unless I choose that he shall. I can stop his allowance tomorrow. And what would the little lady do then?"
She shrugged. "I am sure I don't know. She'd probably take Ralph Witherspoon. He's in the race. She dropped him after she met your son."
The General's idea of women was somewhat exalted. He had an old-fashioned chivalry which made him blind to their faults, the champion of their virtues. He had always been, therefore, to a certain extent, at the mercy of the unscrupulous. He had loaned money and used his influence in behalf of certain wily and weeping females who had deserved at his hands much less than they got.
In his thoughts of a wife for Derry, he had pictured her as sweet and unsophisticated—a bit reserved, like Derry's mother—
The portrait which Hilda had subtly presented was of a mercenary little creature, lured by the glitter of gold—off with the old and on with the new, lacking fineness.
"I can stop his allowance," he wavered. "It would be a good test. But I love the boy. The war has brought the first misunderstandings between Derry and me. It would have hurt his mother."
Hilda was always restless when the name was introduced of the painted lady on the stairs. When the General spoke of his wife, his eyes grew kind—and inevitably his thoughts drifted away from Hilda to the days that he had spent with Derry's mother.
"She loved us both," he said.
Hilda rose and crossed the room. A low bookcase held the General's favorite volumes. There was a Globe edition of Dickens on the top shelf, little fat brown books, shabby with much handling. Hilda extracted one, and inserted her hand in the hollow space back of the row. She brought out a small flat bottle and put the book back.
"I always keep it behind 'Great Expectations,'" she said, as she approached the bed. "It seems rather appropriate, doesn't it?"
The old eyes, which had been soft with memories, glistened.
She filled two little glasses. "Let us drink to our—secret."
Then while the wine was firing his veins, she spoke again of Jean and Derry. "It really seems as if he should have told you."
"I won't have him getting married. He can't marry unless he has money."
"Please don't speak of it to him. I don't want to get into trouble. You wouldn't want to get me into trouble, would you?"
"No."
She filled his glass again. He drank. Bit by bit she fed the fire of his doubts of his son. When at last he fell asleep in his lacquered bed he had made up his mind to rather drastic action.
She sat beside him, her thoughts flying ahead into the years. She saw things as she wanted them to be—Derry at odds with his father; married to Jean; herself mistress of this great house, wearing the diamond crown and the pearl collar; her portrait in the place of the one of the painted lady on the stairs; looking down on little Jean who had judged her by youth's narrow standards—whose husband would have no fortune unless he chose to accept it at her hands.
Thus she weighed her influence over the sleeping sick man, thus she dreamed, calm as fate in her white uniform.
Drusilla Gray's little late suppers were rather famous. It was not that she spent so much money, but that she spent much thought.
Tonight she was giving Captain Hewes a sweet potato pie. "He has never eaten real American things," she said to Jean. "Nice homey-cooked things—"
"No one but Drusilla would ever think of pie at night," said Marion Gray, "but she has set her heart on it."
There were some very special hot oyster sandwiches which preceded the pie—peppery and savory with curls of bacon.
"I hope you are hungry," said Drusilla as her big black cook brought them in. "Aunt Chloe hates to have things go back to the kitchen."
Nothing went back. There was snow without, a white whirl in the air, piling up at street corners, a night for young appetites to be on edge.
"Jove," said the Captain, as he leaned back in his chair, "how I shall miss all this!"
Jean turned her face towards him, startled. "Miss it?"
"Yes. I am going back—got my orders today."
Drusilla was cutting the pie. "Isn't it glorious?"
Jean gazed at her with something like horror. Glorious! How could Drusilla go on, like Werther's Charlotte,calmly cutting bread and butter? Captain Hewes loved her, anybody with half an eye could see that—and whether she loved him or not, he was her friend—and she called his going "glorious!"
"I was afraid my wound might put me on the shelf," the Captain said.
"He is ordered straight to the front," Drusilla elucidated. "This is his farewell feast."
After that everything was to Jean funeral baked meats. The pie deep in its crust, rich with eggs and milk, defiant of conservation, was as sawdust to her palate.
Glorious!
Well, she couldn't understand Margaret. She couldn't understand Drusilla. She didn't want to understand them.
"Some day I shall go over," Drusilla was saying. "I shall drive something—it may be a truck and it may be an ambulance. But I can't sit here any longer doing nothing."
"I think you are doing a great deal," said Jean. "Look at the committees you are managing."
"Oh, things like that," said Drusilla contemptuously. "Women's work. I'm not made to knit and keep card indexes. I want a man's job."
There was something almost boyish about her as she said it. She had parted her hair on the side, which heightened the effect. "In the old days," she told Captain Hewes, "I should have worn doublet and hose and have gone as your page."
"Happy old days—."
"And I should have written a ballad about you," said Marion, "and have sung it to the accompaniment of my harp—and my pot-boilers would never have been. And we should all have worn trains and picturesque headdresses instead of shirtwaists and sports hats, and I should have called some man 'my Lord,' and have listened for his footsteps instead of ending my days in single blessedness with a type-writer as my closest companion."
Everybody laughed except Jean. She broke her cheese into small bits with her fork, and stared down at it as if cheese were the most interesting thing in the whole wide world.
It was only two weeks since they had had the news of Margaret's husband—only a month since he had died. And Winston had been Captain Hewes' dear friend; he had been Derry's. Would anybody laugh if Derry had been dead only fourteen days?
She tried, however, to swing herself in line with the others. "Shall you go before Christmas?" she asked the Captain.
"Yes. And Miss Gray had asked me to dine with her. You can see what I am missing—my first American Christmas."
"We are going to have a little tree," said Drusilla, "and ask all of you to come and hang presents on it."
Jean had always had a tree at Christmas time. From the earliest days of her remembrance, there had been set in the window of the little drawing room, a young pine brought from the Doctor's country-place far up in Maryland. On Christmas Eve it had been lighted and the doors thrown open. Jean could see her mother now, shining on one side of it, and herself coming in, in her nurse's arms.
There had been a star at the top, and snow powdered on the branches—and gold and silver balls—and her presents piled beneath—always a doll holding out its arms to her. There had been the first Rosie-Dolly, more beloved than any other; made of painted cloth, with painted yellow curls, and dressed in pink with a white apron. Rosie was a wreck of a doll now, her features blurred and her head bald with the years—but Jean still loved her, with something left over of the adoration of her little girl days. Then there was Maude, named in honor of the lovely lady who had played "Peter Pan," and the last doll that Jean's mother had given her. Maude had an outfit for every character in which Jean had seen her prototype—there were the rowan berries and shawl of "Babbie," the cap and jerkin of "Peter Pan," the feathers and spurs of "Chantecler"—such a trunkful, and her dearest mother had made them all—.
And Daddy! How Daddy had played Santa Claus, in red cloth and fur with a wide belt and big boots, every year, even last year when she was nineteen and ready to make her bow to society. And now he might never play Santa Claus again—for before Christmas had come he would be on the high seas, perhaps on the other side of the seas—at the edge of No Man's Land. And there would be no Star, no dolls, no gold and silver balls—for the nation which had given Santa Claus to the world, had robbed the world of peace and of goodwill. It had robbed the world of Christmas!
She came back to hear the Captain saying, "I want you to sing for me—Drusilla."
They rose and went into the other room.
"Tired, dearest?" Derry asked, as he found a chair for her and drew his own close to it.
"No, I am not tired," she told him, "but I hate to think that Captain Hewes must go."
"I'd give the world to be going with him."
Her hands were clasped tightly. "Would you give me up?"
"You? I should never have to give you up, thank God. You would never hold me back."
"Shouldn't I, Derry?"
"My precious, don't I know? Better than you know yourself."
Drusilla and the Captain were standing by the wide window which looked out over the city. The snow came down like a curtain, shutting out the sky.
"Do you think she loves him?" Jean asked.
"I hope so," heartily.
"But to send him away so—easily. Oh, Derry, she can't care."
"She is sending him not easily, but bravely. Margaret let her husband go like that."
"Would you want me to let you go like that, Derry?"
"Yes, dear."
"Wouldn't you want me to—cry?"
"Perhaps. Just a little tear. But I should want you to think beyond the tears. I should want you to know that for us there can be no real separation. You are mine to the end of all eternity, Jean."
He believed it. And she believed it. And perhaps, after all, it was true. There must be a very separate and special Heaven for those who love once, and never love again.
Drusilla came away from the window to sing for them—a popular song. But there was much in it to intrigue the imagination—a vision of the heroic Maid—a hint of the Marseillaise—and so the nations were singing it—.
"Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne d'Arc,Oh, soldats! entendez vous?'Allons, enfants de la patrie,'Jeanne d'Arc, la victoire est pour vous—"