When Dr. McKenzie and Jim Connolly arrived, Derry said apologetically as he shook hands with the Doctor, "You see, you can't get rid of me—but I have such a lot of things to talk over with you."
It was after Jean had gone to bed, however, that they had their talk, and before that Derry and Jean had walked in the moonlight and had listened to the chimes.
There had, perhaps, never been such a moon. It hung in a sky that shimmered from horizon to horizon. Against this shimmering background the college buildings were etched in black—there was a glint of gold as the light caught the icicles and made candles of them.
In the months to come that same moon was to sail over the cantonment where Derry slept heavily after hard days. It was to sail over the trenches of France, where, perhaps, he slept not at all, or slept uneasily in the midst of mud and vermin. But always when he looked up at it, he was to see the Cross on the top of the College, and to hear the chimes.
They talked that night of the things that were deep in their hearts. She wanted him to go—yes, she wanted him to go, but she was afraid.
"If something should happen to you, Derry."
"Sometimes I wonder," he said, in his grave, young voice, "why we are so—afraid. I think we have the wrong focus. We want life, even if it brings unhappiness, even if it brings suffering, even if it brings disgrace. Anything seems better than to—die—"
"But to have things stop, Derry." She shuddered. "When there's so much ahead."
"Perhaps they don't stop, dear."
"If I could only believe that—"
"Why not? Do you remember 'Sherwood,' where Blondin rides through the forest singing:
'"Death, what is death?" he cried,"I must ride on—"'"
His face was lifted to the golden sky. She was never to forget the look upon it. And with a great ache and throb of passionate renunciation, she told herself that it was for this that the men of her generation had been born, that they might fight against the powers of darkness for the things of the spirit.
She lay awake a long time that night, thinking it out. Of how she had laughed at other women, scolded, said awful things to them of how their cowardice was holding the world back. She had thought she understood, but she had not understood. It was giving your own—your own, which was the test.Oh, let those who had none of their own to give keep silent.
With her breath almost stopping she thought of those glorious young souls riding on and on through infinite space, the banner of victory floating above them. No matter what might come to the world of defeat or of disaster, these souls would never know it, they had given themselves in the cause of humanity—for them there would always be the sound of silver trumpets, the clash of cymbals, the song of triumph!
Downstairs, Dr. McKenzie was listening with a frowning face to what Derry had to tell him.
"Do you mean to say that Hilda was giving him—wine?"
"Yes. Bronson told me. But he didn't want you to depend upon his unsupported testimony. So we fixed up a scheme, and I stayed outside until he flashed a light for me; and then I went in and caught her."
"It is incredible. Why should she do such a thing? She has always been a perfect nurse—a perfect nurse, Drake." He rose and walked the floor. "But deliberately to disobey my orders—what could have been her object?"
Derry hesitated.
"I haven't told you the worst."
Doctor McKenzie stopped in front of him. "The worst?"
"Dad is going to marry her."
"What?"
Derry repeated what he had said.
The Doctor dropped into a chair. "Who told you?"
"Dad."
"And she admitted that it was—true?"
"Yes."
Derry gave the facts. "He wasn't himself, of course, but that doesn't change things for me."
The Doctor in the practice of his profession had learned to conceal his emotions. He concealed now what he was feeling, but a close observer might have seen in the fading of the color in his cheeks, the beating of his clenched fist on the arm of his chair, something of that which was stirring within him.
"And this has been going on ever since she went there. She has had it in mind to wear your mother's jewels—" Derry had graphically described Bronson's watch on the stairs—"to get your father's money. I knew she was cold-blooded, but I had always thought it a rather admirable quality in a woman of her attractive type."
Before his eye came the vision of Hilda's attractiveness by his fireside, at his table. And now she would sit by the General's fire, at his table.
"She didn't say a word," Derry's young voice went on, "when he told me that I was no longer—his son. I can't tell you how I felt about her. I've never felt that way about anyone before. I've always liked people—but it was as if some evil thing had swooped down on the old house."
The lad saw straight! That was the thought which suddenly illumined Dr. McKenzie's troubled mind. Hilda was not beautiful. So beauty of body could offset the ugliness of her distorted soul.
"And so I am poor," Derry was saying, heavily, "and I must wait to marry Jean."
The red surged up in the Doctor's face. He jerked himself forward in his chair. "You shall not wait. After this you are my son, if you are not your father's."
He laid his hand on Derry's shoulder. "I've money enough, God knows. And I shan't need it. It isn't a fortune, but it is enough to make all of us comfortable for the rest of our days—and I want Jean to be happy. Do you think I am going to let Hilda Merritt stand between my child and happiness?"
"It's awfully good of you, sir," Derry's voice was husky with feeling, "but—"
"There are no 'buts.' You must let me have my own way; I shall consider it a patriotic privilege to support one soldier and his little wife."
He was riding above the situation splendidly. He even had visions of straightening things out. "When I go back I shall tell Hilda what I think of her, I shall tell her that it is preposterous—that her professional reputation is at stake."
"What will she care for her professional reputation when she is my father's wife?"
The thought of Hilda with the world, in a sense, at her feet was maddening. The Doctor paced the floor roaring like an angry lion. "It may not do any good, but I've got to tell her what I think of her."
Derry had a whimsical sense of the meeting of the white cat and this leonine gentleman—would she purr or scratch?
"The sooner you and Jean are married the better. If Hilda thinks she is going to keep you and Jean apart she is mistaken."
"Oh—did she know of the engagement?"
"Yes," the Doctor confessed. "I told her the other day when she came to fix the books."
"Then that accounts for it."
"For what?"
"Dad's attitude. I thought it was queer he should fly up all in a moment. She wanted to make trouble, Doctor, and she has made it."
Long after Derry had gone to bed, the Doctor sat there pondering on Hilda's treachery. He was in some ways a simple man—swayed by the impulse of the moment. The thought of deliberate plotting was abhorrent. In his light way he had taken her lightly. He had laughed at her. He had teased Jean, he had teased Emily, calling their intuition jealousy. Yet they had known better than he. And why should not women know women better than men know them? Just as men know men in a way that women could never know. Sex erected barriers—there was always the instinct to charm, to don one's gayest plumage; even Hilda's frankness had been used as a lure; she knew he liked it. Would she have been so frank if she had not felt its stimulus to a man of his type? And, after all, had she really been frank?
Such a woman was like a poisonous weed; and he had thought she might bloom in the same garden with Jean—until Emily had told him.
He turned to the thought of Emily with relief. Thank God he could leave Jean in her care. If Derry went, there would still be Emily with her sweet sanity, and her wise counsels.
He felt very old as he went upstairs. He stood for a long time in front of his wife's picture. How sweet she had been in her forget-me-not gown—how little and tender! Their love had burned in a white flame—there would never be anything like that for him again.
He waked in the morning, however, ready for all that was before him. He was a man who dwelt little on the past. There was always the day's work, and the work of the day after.
His appetite for the work of the coming day was, it must be confessed, whetted somewhat by the thought of what he would say to Hilda.
They had an early breakfast, with Jean between her father and Derry and eating nothing for very happiness.
There was the start in the opal light of the early morning, with a faint rose sky making a background for the cross on the College, and the chimes saying "Seven o'clock."
Jim and Mary Connolly came out in the biting air to see them off. Then Mary went over to the church to pray for Jean and Derry. But first of all she prayed for her sons.
The Doctor, arriving at his office, at once called up Hilda.
"I must see you as soon as possible."
"What has Derry Drake been telling you?"
"How do you know that he has told me anything?"
"By your voice. And you needn't think that you are going to scold me."
"I shall scold you for disobeying orders. I thought you were to be trusted, Hilda."
"I am not a saint. You know that. And I am not sure that I want you to come. I shall send you away if you scold."
She hung up the receiver and left him fuming. Her high-handed indifference to his authority sent him storming to Derry, "I've half a mind to stay away."
"I think I would. It won't do any good to go—"
But the Doctor went. He still hoped, optimistically, that Hilda might be induced to see the error of her ways.
She received him in the blue room, where the General's precious porcelain was set forth in cabinets. It was a choice little room which had been used by Mrs. Drake for the reception of special guests. Hilda was in her uniform, but without her cap. It was as if in doffing her cap, she struck her first note of independence against the Doctor's rule.
He began professionally. "Doctor Bryer telephoned this morning that his attendance of the case had been only during my absence. That he did not care to keep it unless I definitely intended to withdraw. I told him to go ahead. I told him also that you were a good nurse. I had to whitewash my conscience a bit to say it, Hilda—"
Her head went up. "I am a good nurse. But I am more than a nurse, I am a woman. Oh, I know you are blaming me for what you think I have done. But if you stood under a tree and a great ripe peach hung just out of your reach, could you be blamed for shaking the tree? Well, I shook the tree."
She was very handsome as she gave her defense with flashing eyes.
"The General asked me to marry him, and that's more than you would ever have done. You liked to think that I was half in love with you. You liked to pretend that you were half in love with me. But would you ever have offered me ease and rest from hard work? Would you ever have thought that I might some day be your daughter's equal in your home? Oh, I have wanted good times. I used to sit night after night alone in the office while you and Jean went out and did the things I was dying to do. I wanted to go to dances and to the theater and to supper with a gay crowd. But you never seemed to think of it. I am young and I want pretty clothes—yet you thought I was satisfied to have you come home and say a few careless pleasant words, and to tease me a little. That was all you ever did for me—all you ever wanted.
"But the General wants more than that. He wants me here in the big house, to be his wife, and to meet his friends. He had a man come up the other day with a lot of rings, and he bought me this." She showed the great diamonds flashing on her third finger. "I have always wanted a ring like this, and now I can have as many as I want. Do you blame me for shaking the tree?"
He sat, listening, spellbound to her sophistry. But was it sophistry? Wasn't some of it true? He saw her for the first time as a woman wanting things like other women.
She swept out her hand to include the contents of the little room. "I have always longed for a place like this. I don't know a thing about china. But I know that all that stuff in the cabinet cost a fortune. And it's a pretty room, and some day when I am the General's wife, I'll ask you here to take tea with me, and I'll wear a silver gown like your daughter wears, and I think you'll be surprised to see that I can do it well."
He flung up his hand. "I can't argue it, Hilda. I can't analyze it. But it is all wrong. In all the years that you worked for me, while I laughed at you, I respected you. But I don't respect you now."
She shrugged. "Do you think I care? And a man's respect after all is rather a cold thing, isn't it? But I am sorry you feel as you do about it. I should have been glad to have you wish me happiness."
"Happiness—" His anger seemed to die suddenly. "You won't find happiness, Hilda, if you separate a son from his father."
"Did he tell you that? I had nothing to do with it. His father was angry at his—interference."
He stood up. "We won't discuss it. But you may tell him this. That I am glad his son is poor, for my daughter will marry now the man and not his money."
"Then he will marry her?"
"Yes. On Christmas Day."
She wished that she might tell him the date of her own wedding, but she did not know it. The General seemed in no hurry. He had carefully observed the conventions; had hired a housekeeper and a maid, and there was, of course, the day nurse. Having thus surrounded his betrothed with a sort of feminine bodyguard, he spoke of the wedding as happening in the spring. And he was hard to move. As has been said, the General had once commanded a brigade. He was immensely entertained and fascinated by the lady who was to be his wife. But he was not to be managed by her. She found herself, as he grew stronger, quite strangely deferring to his wishes. She found herself, indeed, rather unexpectedly dominated.
She came back to the Doctor. "Aren't you going to wish me happiness?"
"No. How can I, Hilda?"
After he had left her, she stood very still in the middle of the room. She could still see him as he had towered above her—his crinkled hair waving back from his handsome head. She had always liked the youth of him and his laughter and his boyish fun.
The rich man upstairs was—old—.
And now the Tin Soldier was to go to the wars!
Derry, swinging downtown, found himself gazing squarely into the eyes of the khaki-clad men whom he met. He was one of them at last!
He was on his way to meet Jean. The day before they had gone to church together. They had heard burning words from a fearless pulpit. The old man who had preached had set no limits on his patriotism. The cause of the Allies was the cause of humanity, the cause of humanity was the cause of Christ. He would have had the marching hymn of the Americans "Onward, Christian Soldiers." His Master was not a shrinking idealist, but a prophet unafraid. "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!… It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of Judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto Heaven, shall be brought down to hell …"
"I am too old to go myself," the old man had said, "but I have sent my sons. In the face of the world's need, no man has a right to hold another back. Personal considerations which might once have seemed sufficient must now be set aside. Things are at stake which involve not only the honor of a nation but the honor of the individual. To call a man a coward in the old days was to challenge his physical courage. To know him as a slacker in these modern times is to doubt the quality of his mind and spirit. 'I pray thee have me excused' is the word of one lost to the high meanings of justice—of love and loyalty and liberty—"
Stirring words. The lovers had thrilled to them. Derry's hand had gone out to Jean and her own hand clasped it. Together they saw the vision of his going forth, a shining knight, girded for the battle by a beloved woman—saw it through the glamour of high hopes and youthful ardor!
A troop of cavalry on the Avenue! Jackies in saucer caps, infantry, artillery, aviation! Blue and red and green cords about wide-brimmed hats. Husky young Westerners, slim young Southerners, square-chinned young Northerners—a great brotherhood, their faces set one way—and he was to share their hardships, to be cold and hungry with the best of them, wet and dirty with the worst. It would be a sort of glorified penance for his delay in doing the thing which too long he had left undone.
He was to have lunch with Jean in the House restaurant—he was a little early, and as he loitered through the Capitol grounds, in his ears there was the echo of fairy trumpets—"trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt—"
The old Capitol had always been for Derry a place of dreams. He loved every inch of it. The sunset view of the city from the west front; the bronze doors on the east, the labyrinthine maze of the corridors; the tesselated floors, the mottled marble of the balustrades; the hushed approach to the Supreme Court; the precipitous descent into the galleries of House and Senate, the rap of the Speaker's gavel—the rattle of argument as political foes contended in the legislative arena; the more subdued squabbles on the Senate floor; the savory smell of food rising from the restaurants in the lower regions; the climb to the dome, the look of the sky when one came out at the top; Statuary Hall and its awesome echoes; the Rotunda with its fringe of tired tourists, its frescoed frieze—Columbus, Cortez, Penn, Pizarro—; the mammoth paintings—Pocahontas, and the Pilgrims, De Soto, and the Surrender of Cornwallis, the Signing of the Declaration, and Washington's Resignation as Commander-in-Chief—Indian and Quaker, Puritan and Cavalier—these were some of the things which had ravished the eyes of the boy Derry in the days when his father had come to the Capitol to hobnob with old cronies, and his son had been allowed to roam at will.
But above and beyond everything else, there were the great mural paintings on the west wall of the House side, above the grand marble staircase.
"Westward the Course of Empire takes its way—!"
Oh, those pioneers with their faces turned towards the Golden West! The tired women and the bronzed men! Not one of them without that eager look of hope, of a dream realized as the land of Promise looms ahead!
Derry had often talked that picture over with his mother. "It was such men, Derry, who made our country—men unafraid—North, South, East and West, it was these who helped to shape the Nation's destiny, as we must help to shape it for those who come after us."
It was in front of this picture that he was to meet Jean. He had wanted to share with her the inspiration of it.
She was late, and he waited, leaning on the marble rail which overlooked the stairway. People were going up and down passing the picture, but not seeing it, their pulses calm, their blood cold. The doors of the elevators opened and shut, women came and went in velvet and fur, laughing. Men followed them, laughing, and the picture was not for them.
Derry wondered if it were symbolic, this indifference of the crowd. Was the world's pageant of horrors and of heroism thus unseen by the eyes of the unthinking?
And now Jean ascended, the top of her hat first—a blur of gray, then the red of the rose that he had sent her, a wave of her gray muff as she saw him. He went down to meet her, and stood with her on the landing. Beneath the painting, on one side, ran the inscription, "No pent up Utica confines our powers, but the boundless Continent is ours," on the other side, "The Spirit moves in its allotted space; the mind is narrow in a narrow sphere."
Thousands of men and women came and went and never read those words. But boys read them, sitting on the stairs or leaning over the rail—and their minds were carried on and on. Old men, coming back after years to read them again, could testify what the words had meant to them in the field of high endeavor.
Jean had seen the painting many times, but now, standing on the upper gallery floor with Derry, it took on new meanings. She saw a girl with hope in her eyes, a young mother with a babe at her breast; homely middle-aged women redeemed from the commonplace by that long gaze ahead of them; old women straining towards that sunset glow. She saw, indeed, the Vision of Brave Women. "If it could only be like that for me, Derry. Do you see—they go with their husbands, those women, and I must stay behind."
"You will go with me, beloved, in spirit—"
They fell into silence before the limitless vista.
And now more people were coming up the stairs, a drawling, familiar voice—Alma Drew on the landing below. With her a tall young man. She was turning on him all her batteries of charm.
Alma passed the picture and did not look at it, she passed the lovers and did not see them. And she was saying as she passed, "I don't know why any man should be expected to fight. I shouldn't if I were a man."
Jean drew a long breath. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Jean McKenzie."
Derry laughed. "You were never like that. Not for the least minute. You were afraid for the man you loved. It isn't fear with Alma."
But the thought of Alma did not trouble them long. There was too much else in their world today. As they walked through the historic halls, they had with them all the romance of the past—and so Robert Fulton with his boats, Père Marquette with his cross and beads, Frances Willard in her strange old-fashioned dress spoke to them of the dreams which certain inspired men and women have translated into action.
They talked of these things while they ate their lunch. The black waiter, who knew Derry, hovered about them. His freedom, too, had been the culmination of a dream.
"Men laugh at the dreamers," Derry said, "then honor them after they are dead."
"That's the cruelty, the sadness of it, isn't it?"
"Not to the dreamer. Do you think that Père Marquette cared for what smaller minds might think, or Frances Willard? They had their vision backed by a great faith in the rightness of things, and so Marquette followed the river and planted the cross, and Frances Willard blazed the way for the thing which has come to pass."
After lunch they motored to Drusilla's. They used one of Dr. McKenzie's cars. Derry had ceased to draw upon his father's establishment for anything. He lived at the club, and met his expenses with the small balance which remained to his credit in the bank.
"You can give Jean whatever you think best," he told the Doctor, "but I shall try to live on what I have until I go, and then on my pay."
"Your pay, my dear boy, will just about equal what you now spend in tips."
"I think I shall like it. It's an adventure for rich men when they have to be poor. That's why a lot of fellows have gone into it. They are tired of being the last word in civilization. They want to get down to primitive things."
"Mrs. Witherspoon can't imagine Derry Drake without two baths a day."
"Can't she? Well, Mrs. Witherspoon may find that Derry Drake is about like the rest of the fellows. No better and no worse. There is no disgrace in liking to be clean. The disgrace comes when one kicks against a thing that can't be helped."
In the Doctor's car, therefore, they arrived at Drusilla's.
"We have come to tell you that we are going to be married."
"You Babes in the Wood!"
"Will you come to the wedding?
"Of course I'll come. Marion, do you hear? They are going to be married."
"And after that, Drusilla,"—he smiled as he phrased it—"your Tin Soldier will go to the wars."
Jean glanced from one to the other. "Is that what she called you—a Tin Soldier?"
"It is what I called myself."
Marion having come forward to say the proper thing, added, "Drusilla's going, too."
"Drusilla?"
"Yes, with my college unit—to run errands in a flivver."
The next day, encountering Derry on the street, Drusilla opened her knitting bag and brought out a tiny parcel. "It's my wedding gift to you. I found it in Emily's toy shop."
It was a gay little French tin soldier. "For a mascot;" she told him, seriously. "Derry, dear, I shall not try to tell you how I feel about your marriage to Jean. About your going. If I could sing it, you'd know. But I haven't any words. It—it seems so—perfect that the Tin Soldier should go—to the wars—and that the girl he leaves behind him should be a little white maid like—Jean."
Thus Drusilla, with a shake in her voice, renouncing a—dream.
Derry, who was on his way to Margaret's showed the tin soldier to Teddy and his little sister. "He is going to the wars."
"With you?"
"Yes."
"When are you going?"
"As soon as I can—"
"I should think you wouldn't like to leave us."
"Well, I don't. But I am coming back."
"Daddy didn't come back."
"But some men do."
"Perhaps God doesn't love you as much as He did Daddy, and He won't want to keep you."
"Perhaps not—"
The things which the child had spoken stayed with Derry all that day. His feeling about death had always been that of a man who has long years before him. He had rather jauntily conceded that some men die young, but that the chances in his case were for a green old age. He might indeed have fifty years before him, and in fifty years one could—get ready—age had to do with serious things, people were peaceful and prepared.
But to get ready now. To face the thing squarely, saying, "I may not come back—there are, indeed, a thousand chances that I shall not come." Lacking those fifty years in which to grow towards the thought of dissolution, what ought one to do? Should a man make himself fit in some special fashion?
There was, too, the thought of those whom he might leave behind. Of Jean—his wife—whom he would leave. She would break her heart—at first. And then—? Would she remember? Would she forget? Would he and those millions of others who had gone down in battle become dim memories—pale shadows against the vivid background of the hurrying world?
He felt that he could not, must not speak of these things to Jean. So he talked of them to Emily.
"If anything should happen to me," he said, "I couldn't, of course, expect that Jean would go on—caring—. And if there should ever be anyone else—I—I should want her to be happy."
"Don't try to be magnanimous," Miss Emily advised. "You are human, and it isn't in the heart of man to want the woman he loves ever to turn to another. Let the years take care of that. But you can be very sure of one thing—that no one will ever take your place with Jean."
"But she may marry."
"Why should you torture yourself with that? You have given her something that no one else can ever give—the wonder and rapture of first love. And the heroes of a war like this will be in a very special manner set apart! 'A glorious company, the flower of men, to serve as models for the mighty world!'"
She laid her hand on his shoulder. "You must think now only of love and life and of coming back to Jean."
He reached up his hand and caught hers in a warm clasp. "Do you know you are the nearest, thing to a mother that I've known since I lost mine?"
He spoke, too, rather awkwardly, of the feeling about—getting ready.
"I have always thought that if I tried to live straight—I've thought, too, that it wouldn't come until I was old—that I should have plenty of time—and that by then, I should be more—spiritual."
"You will never be more spiritual than you are at this moment. Youth is nearer Heaven than age. I have always thought that. As we grow old—we are stricken by—fear—of poverty, of disease—of death. It is youth which has faith and hope."
Before he left her, he gave her a sacred charge. "If anything happens, I know what you'll be to—Jean—and I can't tell you what a help you've been this morning."
She was thrilled by that. And after he left her she thought much about him. Of what it would have meant to her to have a son like that.
Women had said to her, "You should be glad that you have no boy to send—." But she was not glad. Were they mad, these mothers, to want to hold their boys back? Had the days of peace held no dangers that they should be so afraid for them now?
For peace had dangers—men and women had been worshipping false gods. They had set up a Golden Calf and had bowed before it—and their children, lured by luxury, emasculated by ease of living, had wanted more ease, more luxury, more time in which to—play!
And now life had become suddenly a vivid Crusade, with everybody marching in one direction, and the young men were manly in the old ways of strength and heroism, and the young women were womanly in the old way of sending their lovers forth, and in a new way, when, like Drusilla, they went forth themselves to the front line of battle.
To have children in these days, meant to have something to give. One need not stand before suffering humanity empty-handed!
War was a monstrous thing, a murderous thing—but surely this war was a righteous one—a fire which would cleanse the world. Men and women, because of it, were finding in themselves something which could suffer for others, something in themselves which could sacrifice, something which went beyond body and mind, something which reached up and touched their souls.
So, in the midst of darkness, Miss Emily had a vision of Light. After the war was over, things could never be as they had been before. The spirit which had sent men forth in this Crusade, which had sent women, would survive, please God, and show itself in a greater sense of fellowship—of brotherhood. Might not men, even in peace, go on praying as they were praying it now in war, the prayer of Cromwell's men, "Oh, Lord, it's a hard battle, but it's for the rights of the common people—" Might not the rich young men who were learning to be the brothers of the poor, and the poor young men who were learning in a large sense of the brotherhood of the rich—might these not still clasp hands in a sacred cause?
Yes, she was sorry that she had no son. Slim and gray-haired, a little worn by life's struggle, her blood quickened at the thought of a son like Derry. The warmth of his handclasp, the glimpse of that inner self which he had given her, these were things to hold close to her heart. She had known on that first night that he was—different. She had not dreamed that she should hold him—close.
Rather pensively she arranged her window. It was snowing hard, and in spite of the fact that Christmas was only three days away, customers were scarce.
The window display was made effective by the use of Jean's purple camels—a sandy desert, a star overhead, blazing with all the realism of a tiny electric bulb behind it, the Wise Men, the Inn where the Babe lay, and in a far corner a group of shepherds watching a woolly flock—
Her cyclamen was dead. A window had been left open, and when she arrived one morning she had found it frozen.
She had thanked Ulrich Stölle for it, in a pleasantly worded note. She had not dared express her full appreciation, lest she seem fulsome. Few men in her experience had sent her flowers. Never in all the years of her good friendship with Bruce McKenzie had he bestowed upon her a single bloom.
Several days had passed, and there had been no answer to the note. She had not really expected an answer, but she had thought he might come in.
He came in now, with a great parcel in his arms. He was a picturesque figure in an enveloping cape and a soft hat pulled down over his gray hair, and with white flakes powdered over his shoulders.
"Good morning, Miss Bridges," he said; "did you think I was never coming?"
His manner of assuming that she had expected him quite took Emily's breath away. "I am glad you came," she said, simply. "It is rather dreary, with the snow, and this morning I found my cyclamen frozen on the shelf."
He glanced up at it. "We have other flowers," he said, and, with a sure sense of the dramatic effect, untied the string of his parcel.
Then there was revealed to Miss Emily's astonished eyes not the flowers that she had expected, but four small plush elephants, duplicates in everything but size of the one she had loaned to Ulrich, and each elephant carried on his back a fragrant load of violets cunningly kept fresh by a glass tube hidden in his trappings.
"There," said Ulrich Stölle, "my father sent them. It is his taste, not mine—but I knew that you would understand."
"But," Miss Emily gasped, "did he make them?"
"Most certainly. With his clever old fingers—and he will make as many more as you wish."
Thus came white elephants back to Miss Emily's shelves. "It seems almost too good to be true," she said, sniffing the violets and smiling at him.
"Nothing is too good to be true," he told her, "and now I have something to ask. That you will come and see my father."
"With pleasure."
He glanced around the empty shop. "Why not now? There are no customers—and the gray light makes things dreary—. And it is spring in my hothouses—there are a thousand cyclamens for the one you have lost, a thousand violets for every one on the backs of these little elephants—narcissus and daffodils—. Why not?"
Why not, indeed? Why not, when Adventure beckoned, go to meet it? She had tied herself for so many years to the commonplace and the practical.
And so Miss Emily closed her shop, and went in Ulrich's car, leaving a card tucked in the shop door, "Will reopen at three."
It was at one o'clock that Dr. McKenzie came and found that door shut against him. He shook the knob with some impatience, and stamped his foot impotently when no one answered. His orders had come and he must leave for France tomorrow. He had not told Jean, he had come to Emily to ask her to break the news—.
He stood there in the snow feeling quite unexpectedly forlorn. Heretofore he had always been able to put his finger on Emily when he had wanted her. He had needed only to beckon and she had followed.
And how could he know that she was at that very moment following other beckonings? That she had responded to a call that was not the call of selfish need, but of a subtle understanding of her rare charm. Bruce McKenzie had, perhaps, subconsciously felt that Emily would be fortunate to have a place by his fireside, to bask in his presence—Ulrich Stölle leading Emily through the moist fragrance of his hot-houses counted himself blessed by the gods to have her there. "You see," he said, "that here it is spring."
It was indeed spring, with birds singing, not in cages, but free to fly as they pleased; with the sound of water, as a little artificial stream wound its way over moss-covered rocks set where it might splash and fall over them—with ferns bending down to it and tiny flashing fish following it.
"My father did that," Ulrich explained, "when he was younger and stronger. But now he sits in his chair and works at his toys."
The workshop of Franz Stölle was entered through the door of the last hothouse; he had thus always a vista of splashing color—red and purples and yellows—great stretches, and always with the green to rest his eyes; with the door opened between there came to him the fragrance, and the singing of birds, and the sound of the little stream.
He sat in a big chair, bent a little, plump and ruddy-faced, with a fringe of white hair. He wore horn spectacles—and a velvet coat. He rose when Emily entered, elegant of manner, in spite of his rotundity.
"So it is the lady of the elephants, Ulrich? When you telephoned I thought it was too good to be true."
"Your son says that nothing is too good to be true," Emily told him, sitting down in the chair that Ulrich placed for her, "but I have a feeling that this will all vanish in a moment like Aladdin's palace—" She waved her hands towards the shelves that went around the room. "I never expected to see such toys again."
For there they were—the toys of Germany. The quaint Noah's arks, the woolly dogs and the mewing cats—the moon-faced dolls.
"I don't see how you have made them all."
"Many of them were made years ago, Fräulein, and I have kept them for remembrance, but many of them are new. When my son told me that it was hard for you to get toys, I gathered around me a few old friends who learned their trade in Nuremberg. We have done much in a few days. We will do more. We are all patriotic. We will show the Prussians that the children of America do not lack for toys. What does the Prussian know of play? He knows only killing and killing and killing."
The old man beat his fist upon the table, "Killing!"
"You see," Ulrich said to Emily, "there are many of us who feel that way. Yet unthinking people cannot see that we are loyal, that our hearts beat with the hearts of those who have English blood and French blood and Italian blood and Dutch blood in their veins, and who have but one country—America."
The old man had recovered himself. "We are not here to talk of killing, but of what I and my friends shall make for you. And you are to have lunch with us? I have planned it, and I won't take 'no,' Fräulein. You and I have so much to say to each other."
Emily wondered if it were really her middle-aged and prosaic self who sat later at the table, being waited on by a very competent butler, and deferred to by the two men as if she were a queen.
It was she and the old man who did most of the talking, but always she was conscious of Ulrich's attentive eyes, of the weight of the quiet words which he interjected now and then in the midst of his father's volubility.
"Germany, my mother, is dead," wailed the old man. "I have wept over her grave; those who wage this war against humanity are bastards, the real sons and daughters of that sweet old Germany are here in America—they have come to their foster-mother, and they love her.
"If I had been younger," he went on, "I should have fought. My son would have fought. But as it is we can make toys—and we shall say to the Prussians across the sea, 'You have killed our mother—your people are no longer our people, nor your God our God.'"
Ulrich took Emily home. She carried with her a Noah's Ark, and a precious pot of cyclamen. She had chosen the cyclamen out of all the rest. "It is such a cheerful thing blooming in my shop."
"There are other cheerful things in your shop," he told her.
As she met his smiling eyes, she smiled back, "Do you mean that I am a cheerful thing?"
"A rose, mein Fräulein, when your cheeks are red, like this."
Emily, alone at last in the Toy Shop, took off her hat in front of the mirror and saw her red cheeks. She set the cyclamen safely in a warm corner. The four elephants with their fragrant freight of violets made an exotic and incongruous addition to the Christmas scene in the window.
Bruce McKenzie, coming in, asked, "Where did you get them?"
"The elephants? Ulrich Stölle brought them. Do you know him?"
"Yes. But I didn't know that you did."
"His father makes toys. I lent him my white elephant, and he made these—"
She spoke without self-consciousness, and McKenzie's mind was on his own matters, so they swept away from the subject of Ulrich Stölle. "Emily," Bruce said, "I have my orders. Tomorrow at twelve I must leave for France."
She gazed at him stupidly. "Tomorrow—?"
"Yes."
"But—Jean—?"
"I haven't told her. I don't know how to tell her."
"You won't be here for the wedding—?"
"No."
"It will break her heart."
"You needn't tell me that. Don't I know it?" His voice was sharp with the tension of suppressed emotion.
He dropped into a chair, then jumped up and placed one for her. "Sit down, sit down," he said, "and don't make me forget my manners. Somehow this thing gets me as nothing has ever gotten me before. It isn't that I mind going—I mind hurting—Jean—"
"You have always hated to hurt people," Emily said. "In some ways it's a sign of weakness."
"Don't scold," he begged. "I know I'm not much of a fellow, but you'll be sorry for me a little, won't you, Emily?"
She did not melt as he had expected to the appeal in his voice. "The thing we have to think of now," she said, "is not being sorry for you, but how we can get Jean married before twelve o'clock tomorrow—"
"Oh, of course we can't."
"Of course we can—if we make up our minds to it, and it's the only thing to do."
"But nothing is ready."
"Things can be made ready. They can stand up in the rose drawing-room at ten, and you can give her away."
He looked at her admiringly. "I didn't know that you had so much initiative."
She might have told him that it was a quality on which she rather prided herself, but that hitherto it had not seemed to attract him. "There are several things as yet undiscovered by you," she remarked casually, as she locked up her toys.
Watching her, he wondered idly if there were really worlds to discover in Emily. It might be interesting to—find out—.
"Shall you miss me?" he asked.
"Of course. And now if you'll see that the back shutters are barred, we'll be ready to go."
Thus she checked his small attempt at sentiment, and on the way home they talked about Jean. "If Derry goes, you and she must live together in my house. Let that be understood. I'd rather have her with you than with anyone else in the whole wide world."
Thus again the sacred charge, but this time not as a favor, but in lordly fashion, as one who claims a right.
Jean and Derry were having tea at the club, but could not be reached by phone. "They had probably motored out into the country," Emily decided. "We'll have to do things before they come."
The things that she did were stupendous.
She had a florist up in two hours—and the rose-colored drawing room was rosier than ever, and as fragrant as a garden.
She telephoned the clergyman—"At ten o'clock tomorrow."
She telephoned the caterer—"A wedding breakfast—"
She telephoned the dressmaker—"Miss McKenzie's gown—"
She telephoned Margaret and Marion Gray—.
"Is there anyone else?" she asked the Doctor. "I suppose we really ought to tell the General."
"Certainly not."
"But Bronson—? Derry will want him."
"If he can keep a secret—yes."
Jean and Derry, arriving after dark, were swept into a scene of excitement.
Florists on the stairs!
A frenzied dressmaker waiting with Jean's wedding gown!
Maids with mops and men with vacuums!
Julia and the cook helping at loose ends and dinner late!
What did it all mean?
"It means," said the Doctor, "that you are going to be married, my dear, at ten o'clock in the morning."
"But why, Daddy—" fear showed in her eyes—
"Ask Emily."
"Is he—going away,—Emily?"
"Yes, dear."
"But he mustn't. Derry, do you hear? He is going to France—and he mustn't—"
Derry took her trembling hands in his firm clasp. "He must go, you know that, dearest." His touch steadied her.
He leaned down to her and sang:—
"Jeanne D'Arc, Jeanne D'Arc—Jeanne D'Arc, la victoire est pour vous."
Her head went up. The color came back to her cheeks.
"Of course," she said, and put away childish things that she might measure up to the stature of her lover's faith in her.
And it was Jean, the Woman, who talked long that night with her father before he went to France.