"You are splendidly fitted for just the thing that you are doing. Men come and go and you care for their wounds. But we have to care here for more than men's bodies, we care for their minds and souls—we piece them together, as it were. And we need women who believe that God's in his Heaven. And you don't believe it, Hilda. I fancy that you see in every man his particular devil, and like to lure it out for him to look at—"
He stopped there. He could see her reading what he had written. She would laugh a little, and write back:
"Are you any better than I? If I am too black to herd with the white sheep, what of you; aren't you tarred with the same brush—?"
He tore up the letter and sent a brief note. Why explain what he was feeling to Hilda? She was of those who would never know nor understand.
And he felt the need tonight of understanding—of sympathy.
And so he wrote to Emily.
Bruce McKenzie's letter arriving in due time at the Toy Shop, found Emily very busy. There were many women to be instructed how to do things with gauze and muslin and cotton, so she tucked the letter in her apron pocket. But all day her mind went to it, as a feast to be deferred until the time came to enjoy it.
In the afternoon Ulrich Stölle arrived, bearing the inevitable tissue paper parcel.
"Do you know what day it is?" he asked.
"Thursday."
"There are always Thursdays. But this is a special Thursday."
"Is it?"
"And you ask me like that? It is a Thursday for valentines."
"Of course. But how could you expect me to remember? Nobody ever sends me valentines."
"My father has sent you one." It was a heart-shaped basket of pink roses; "but mine I couldn't bring. You must come and see it. Will you dine with us tonight?"
"Oh, I am so busy."
"You are not too busy for that. Let your little Jean take charge."
Jean, all in white with her white veil and red crosses was more than ever like a little nun. She was remote, too, like a nun, wrapped not in the contemplation of her religion, but of her love.
She still made toys, and the proceeds of the sale of Lovely Dreams had been contributed by herself and Emily for Red Cross purposes. There were rows and rows of the fantastic creatures behind glass doors on the shelves, and for Valentine's Day Jean had carved and painted pale doves which carried in their beaks rosy hearts and golden arrows and whose wings were outspread—.
There were also on the shelves the white plush elephants which Franz Stölle and his friends had made, and which were, too, being sold to swell the Red Cross fund.
Thus had the Toy Shop come into its own. "I have enough to live on," Emily had said, "at least for a while, and I am taking no more chances for future living, than the men who give up everything to fight."
So enlisted in this cause of mercy as men had enlisted in the cause of war, Miss Emily led where others followed, and the old patriarch of all the white elephants, who had been born in a country of blood and iron, looked down on women working to heal the wounds which his country had made.
"Let your little Jean look after things," Ulrich repeated.
"Do you mind, my dear?"
"Mind what, Emily—?"
"If I go with Mr. Stölle—to see his father about the—toys."
"Darling—no;" Jean kissed her. "I don't mind in the least, and the ride will do you good."
"But you are not going to see my father about toys," Ulrich told her, twinkling, as he followed her to the back of the shop.
"Do you think I was going to tell her that?"
She put on her coat and hat and off she went with Ulrich, leaving still unread in the pocket of the big apron the letter which Bruce McKenzie had written her.
All the way out Ulrich was rather silent. It was not, however, the silence of moodiness or dullness, it was rather as if he wanted to hear her speak. It was, indeed, a responsive, stimulating silence, and she glowed under his glance.
It seemed to her, as she talked, that these adventures with Ulrich Stölle were in every way the most splendid thing that had happened to her. They were always unexpected, and they were packed to the brim with pleasure of a rare quality.
When they reached their destination, Ulrich took her at once to the hothouses. As they passed down the fragrant aisles, she found that all the men and gone, their day's work over; only she and Ulrich were under the great glass roof.
"Anton comes back later," Ulrich explained, "but at this hour the houses are empty, and dinner will not be ready for as hour. We have it all to ourselves, Emily."
Her name, spoken with so much ease, without a sign of self-consciousness, startled her. Her inquiring glance showed her that he was utterly unaware that he had spoken it. Her breath came quickly.
The birds sang and the stream sang, and suddenly her heart began to sing.
You see it had been so many years since Emily had known romance;—indeed, she had never known it—there had always been, in her mother's time, her sense of the proper thing, and her sense of duty, and her sense of making the best of things—and now for the first time in her life there was no make-believe. This was a world of realities, with Ulrich leading the way, his hands gathering flowers for her.
He stopped at last at the entrance of a sort of grotto where great ferns towered—at their feet was a bed of white violets.
"You see," he said, "I could not bring it. I came here this morning to pick the violets—for you—to let them say, 'I love you'—"
Even the birds seemed silent, and the little stream!
"And suddenly they spoke to me, 'Let her see us here, where you have so often thought of her. Tell her here that you love her—'
"How much I love you," and now she found her hands in his, "I cannot tell you. It seems to me that the thought of you as my wife is so exquisite that I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. And I have so little to offer you. Even my name is hated because it is a German name, and my old house is German, and my father—
"But my heart's blood is for America. You know that, and so I have dared to ask it, not that you will love me now, but that you may come to think of loving me, so that some day you will care a little."
The birds were singing madly, the streams were shouting—Emily was trembling. Nobody had ever wanted her like this—nobody had ever made her feel so young and lovely and—wanted—. She had had a proposal or two, but there had been always the sense that she had been chosen for certain staid and sensible qualities; there had been nothing in it of red blood and rapture.
"If you should come to us, to me and my father, you would be a queen on a throne. If you could love me just a little in return—"
She could not answer, she just stood looking up at him, and suddenly his arms went around her. "Tell me, beloved."
An hour later they went in to his father, and after that Emily was lifted up on the wings of an enthusiasm which left her breathless, but beatified. "I knew when I first saw you what we desired," said the old man, "and my son knew. All that I have is yours both now and afterwards—"
Dinner was a candle-lighted feast, with heart-shaped ices at the end.
"How sure you were," Emily told her lover, smiling.
"I was not sure. But I set the stage for success. It was only thus that I kept up my courage. There were so many chances that the curtain might drop on darkness—," his hand went over hers. "If it had been that way, I should have let the ices melt and the violets die—."
After dinner they went over the house. "Why should we wait," Ulrich had said, "you and I? There is nothing to wait for. Tell me what you want changed in this old house, and then come to it, and to my heart."
It was, she found, such a funny old place. It had been furnished by men, and by German men at that. There was heaviness and stuffiness, and all the bric-a-brac was fat and puffy, and all the pictures were highly-colored, with the women in them blonde and buxom, and the men blond and bold—.
But Ulrich's room was not stuffy or heavy. The windows were wide open, and the walls were white, and the cover on the canopy bed was white, and there were two pictures, one of Lincoln and one of Washington, and that was all.
"And when I have your picture, it will be perfect," he told her. "Where I can see you when I wake, and pray to you before I go to sleep."
"But why," she probed daringly, "do you want my picture?"
"Because you are so—beautiful—"
It was not to be wondered that such worship went to Miss Emily's head. She slipped out of the dried sheath of the years which had saddened and aged her, and emerged lovely as a flower over which the winter has passed and which blooms again.
"I don't want to change anything," Emily told her lover as they went downstairs, "at least not very much. I shall keep all of the lovely old carved things—with the fat cupids."
As she lay awake that night, reviewing it all, she thought suddenly of Bruce McKenzie's letter in her apron pocket. The apron was in the Toy Shop, and it was not therefore until the next morning that she read the letter.
In it Dr. McKenzie asked her to marry him.
"I should like to think that when I come back, you will be waiting for me, Emily. I am a very lonely man. I want someone who will sympathize and understand. I want someone who will love Jean, and who will hold me to the best that is in me, and you can do that, Emily; you have always done it."
It was a rather touching letter, and she felt its appeal strongly. Indeed, so stern was her sense of self-sacrifice, that she had an almost guilty feeling when she thought of Ulrich. If he had not come into her life at the psychological moment, she might have given herself to Bruce McKenzie.
But the letter had come too late. Oh, how glad she was that she had left it in her apron pocket!
She answered it that night.
"I am going to be very frank with you, Bruce, because in being frank with you I shall be frank with myself. If Ulrich Stölle had not come into my life, I should probably have thought I cared for you. Even now when I am saying 'no,' I realize that your charm has always held me, and that the prospect of a future by your pleasant fireside holds many attractions. But since you left Washington, something has happened which I never expected, and all of my preconceived ideas of myself have been overturned. Bruce, I am no longer the Emily you have known—a little staid, gray-haired, with pretty hands, but with nothing else very pretty about her; a lady who would, perhaps, fill gracefully, a position for which her aristocratic nose fits her. I am no longer the Emily of the Toy Shop, wearing spectacles on a black ribbon, eating her lunches wherever she can get them. No, I am an Emily who is young and beautiful, a sort of fairy-tale Princess, an Emily who, if she wishes, shall sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, but who doesn't wish it because she hates to sew, and would much rather work in her silver-bell-and-cockle shell garden—oh, such a wonderful garden as it is!
"And I am all this, Bruce, I am young and beautiful and all the rest, because I am seeing myself through the eyes of my lover.
"He is Ulrich Stölle, as I have said, and you mustn't think because his name is German that he is to be cast into outer darkness. He is as American as you with your Scotch blood, or as I with my English blood. And he is as loyal as any of us. He is too old to be accepted for service, but he is giving time and money to the cause.
"And he loves me rapturously, radiantly, romantically. He doesn't want me as a cushion for his tired head, he doesn't want me because he thinks it would be an act of altruism to provide a haven for me in my old age, he wants me because he thinks I am the most remarkable woman in the whole wide world, and that he is the most fortunate man to have won me.
"And you don't feel that way about it, Bruce. You know that I am not beautiful, there is no glamour in your love for me. You know that I am not wonderful, or a fairy Princess—. And you are right and he is wrong. But it is his wrongness which makes me love him. Because every woman wants to be beautiful to her lover, and to feel that she is much desired.
"You will ask why I am telling you all this. Well, there was one sentence in your letter which called it forth. You say that you want me because I will hold you to the best that is in you.
"Oh, Bruce, what would you gain if I held you? Wouldn't there be moments when in spite of me you would swing back to women like Hilda? You are big and fine, but you are spoiled by feminine worship—it is a temptation which assails clergymen and doctors—who have, as it were, many women at their feet.
"Does that sound harsh? I don't mean it that way. I only want you to come into your own. And if you ever marry I want you to find some woman you can love as you loved your wife, someone who will touch your imagination, set you on fire with dreams, and I could never do it.
"Yet even as I finish this letter, I am tempted to tear it up and tell you only of my real appreciation of the honor you have conferred upon me in asking me to be your wife. I know that you are offering me more in many ways than Ulrich Stölle. I don't like his name, because something rises up in me against Teuton blood and Teuton nomenclature. But he loves me, and you do not, and because of his love for me and mine for him, everything else seems too small to consider.
"Oh, you'd laugh at his house, Bruce, but I love even the fat angels that are carved on everything from the mahogany chests to the soup tureens. It is all like some old fairy-tale. I shall make few changes; it seems such a perfect setting for Ulrich and his busy old gnome of a father.
"When you get this, pray for my happiness. Oh, I do want to be happy. I have made the best of things, but there has been much more of gray than rose-color, and now as I turn my face to the setting sun, I am seeing—-loveliness and light—"
She read it over and sealed it and sent it away. It was several weeks before it reached Doctor McKenzie. He was very busy, for the spring drive of the Germans had begun, and shattered men were coming to him faster than he could handle them. But he found time at last to read it, and when he laid it down he sat quite still from the shock of it.
And the next time he saw Drusilla he said to her, "Emily Bridges is going to be married, and she is not going to marry me."
"I am glad of it," Drusilla told him.
"My dear girl, why?"
"Because you don't love her, and you never did."
The great spring drive of the Germans brought headlines to the papers which men and women in America read with dread, and scoffed at when they talked it over.
"They'll never get to Paris," were the words on their lips, but in their hearts they were asking, "Will they—?"
Easter came at the end of March, and Good Friday found Jean working very early in the morning on fawn-colored rabbits with yellow ears. She worked in her bedroom because it was warmed by a feeble wood fire, and Teddy came up to watch her.
"The yellow in their ears is the sun shining through," Jean told him. "We used to see them in the country on the path in front of the house, and the light from the west made their ears look like tiny electric bulbs."
Margaret-Mary entranced by one small bunny with a splash of white for a cotton tail, sang, "Pitty sing, pitty sing."
"They don't weally lay eggs, do they?" Teddy ventured.
"I wouldn't ask such questions if I were you, Teddy."
"Why not?"
"Because you might find out that they didn't lay eggs, and then you'd feel terribly disappointed."
"Well, isn't it better to know?"
Jean shook her head. "I'm not sure—it's nice to think that they do lay eggs—blue ones and red ones and those lovely purple ones, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And if they don't lay them, who does?"
"Hens," said Teddy, rather unexpectedly, "and the rab-yits steal them."
"Who told you that?"
"Hodgson. And she says that she ties them up in rags and the colors come off on the eggs."
"Well, I wouldn't listen to Hodgson."
"Why not? I like to listen."
"Because she hasn't any imagination."
"What's 'magination?"
They were getting in very deep. Jean gave it up. "Ask your mother, Teddy."
So Teddy sought his unfailing source of information. "What's 'magination, Mother."
"It is seeing things, Teddy, with your mind instead of your eyes. When I tell you about the poor little children in France who haven't any food or any clothes except what the Red Cross gives them, you don't really see them with your eyes, but your mind sees them, and their cold little hands, and their sad little faces—"
"Yes." He considered that for a while, then swept on to the things over which his childish brain puzzled.
"Mother, if the Germans get to Paris what will happen?"
He saw the horror in her face.
"Do you hate the Germans, Mother?"
"My darling, don't ask me."
After he had gone downstairs, Margaret got out her prayer-book, and read the prayers for the day.
"Oh, merciful God, who hast made all men and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor desirest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live, have mercy on all Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of Thy word, and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved—"
She shut the book. No, she could not go on. She did not love her enemies. She was not in the least sure that she wanted the Germans to be saved!
On Easter morning, however, Teddy was instructed to pray for his enemies. "We mustn't have hate in our hearts."
"Why mustn't we, Mother?"
"Well, Father wouldn't want it. We hate the evil they do, but we must pray that they will be shown their wickedness and repent."
"If they re-pyent will they stop fighting?"
"My dearest, yes."
"How would they stop?"
Jean, who was ready for church and waiting, warned, "You'd better not try to give an answer to that, Margaret, there isn't any."
Teddy ignored her. "How would they stop, Mother?"
"Well, they'd just stop, dear—"
"Would they say they were sorry?"
Would William of Prussia ever be sorry?
"Can God stop it, Mother?"
Margaret wrenched her mind away from the picture which his words had painted for her, the Kaiser on his knees!Miserere mei, Deus—
With quick breath, "Yes, dear."
"Then why doesn't He stop it, Mother?"
Why? Why? Why? Older voices were asking that question in agony.
"He will do it in His own good time, dearest. Perhaps the world has a lesson to learn."
With Teddy walking ahead with nurse, Jean proclaimed to Margaret, "I shan't pray for them."
"I know how you feel."
"Shall you?"
"Yes," desperately, "I must."
"Why must you?"
"Because of—Win," Margaret said simply. In her widow's black, with her veil giving her height and dignity, she had never been more beautiful. "Because of Win, I must. There are wives in Germany who suffer as I suffer—who are not to blame. There are children, like my children, asking the same questions—. This drive has seemed to me like the slaughter of sheep, with a great Wolf behind them, a Wolf without mercy, sending them down to destruction, to—death—"
"And the Wolf—?"
Margaret raised her hand and let it drop, "God knows."
And now soldiers were being rushed overseas. Trains swept across the land loaded with men who gazed wistfully at the peaceful towns as they passed through, or chafed impotently when, imprisoned in day coaches, they were side-tracked outside of great cities.
And on the battle line those droves and droves of gray sheep were driven down and down—to death—by the Wolf.
The war was coming closer to America. A look of care settled on the faces of men and women who had, hitherto, taken things lightly. Fathers, who had been very sure that the war would end before their sons should go to France, faced the fact that the end was not in sight, and that the war would take its toll of the youth of America. Mothers, who had not been sure of anything, but had hidden their fears in their hearts, stopped reading the daily papers. Wives, who had looked upon the camp experiences of their husbands as a rather great adventure, knew now that there might be a greater adventure with a Dark Angel. The tram-sheds in great cities were crowded with anxious relatives who watched the troops go through, clutching at the hope of a last glimpse of a beloved face, a few precious moments in which to say farewell.
Yes, the war was coming near!
Derry wrote that he might go at any moment, but hoped for a short furlough. It was on this hope that Jean lived. She worked tirelessly, making the much-needed surgical dressings. When Emily tried to get her to rest, Jean would shake her head.
"Darling, I must. They are bringing the wounded over."
"But you mustn't get too tired."
"I want to be tired. So that I can sleep."
She was finding it hard to sleep. Often she rose and wrote in her memory book, which was becoming in a sense a diary because she confided to its pages the things she dared not say to Derry. Some day, perhaps, she might show him what she had written. But that would be when the war was over, and Derry had come back safe and sound. Until then she would have to smile in her letters, and she did not always feel like smiling!
But that was what Derry called them, "Smiling letters!"
"They smile up at me every morning, Jean."
So she wrote to him bravely, cheerfully, of her busy days, of how she missed him, of her love and longing, but not a word did she say of her world as it really was.
But there was no laughter in the things she said to the old memory book.
"I don't like big houses—not houses like this, with grinning porcelain Chinese gods at every turn of the hall, and gold dragons on the bed-posts. There are six of us here besides the servants, yet we are like dwarfs in a giant palace. Perhaps if we had the usual fires it wouldn't seem quite so forlorn. But the china in the cabinets is so cold—and the ceilings are so high—and the marble floors—.
"Perhaps if everyone were happy it would be different. But only Emily is happy. And I don't see how she can be. She is going to marry a Hun! Of course, he isn't really, and he'd be a darling dear if it weren't for his German name, and his German blood, and the German things he has in his house. But Emily says she loves his house, that it speaks to her of a different Germany—of the sweet old gay Germany that waltzed and sang and loved simple things. It seems so funny to think of Emily in love—she's so much older than people are usually when they are engaged and married.
"But Emily is the only happy one, except the children, and I sometimes think that even they have the shadow on them of the dreadful things that are happening. Margaret-Mary tries to knit, and tires her stubby little fingers with the big needles, and Teddy, poor chap, seems to feel that he must be the man of the family and take his father's place, and he is pathetically careful of his mother.
"I wonder if Margaret feels as I do about it all? She is so sweet and smiling—and yet I know how her heart weeps, and I know how she longs for her own house and her own hearth and her own husband—
"Oh, when my Derry comes back safe and sound—and he will come back safe, I shall say it over and over to myself until I make it true—when Derry comes back, we'll build a cottage, with windows that look out on trees and a garden—and there'll be cozy little rooms, and we'll take Polly Ann and Muffin—and live happy ever after—.
"I wonder how father stands it to be always with people who are sick? I never knew what it meant until now. The General is an old dear—but sometimes when I sit in that queer room of his with its lacquer and gold and see him in his gorgeous dressing gown, I feel afraid. It is rather dreadful to think that he was once young and strong like Derry, and that he will never be young and strong again.
"Oh, I want the war to end—I want Derry, and sunshine and well people. It seems a hundred years since I did anything just for the fun of doing it. It seems a million years since Daddy and I drove downtown together and drank chocolate sodas—
"But then nobody is drinking chocolate sodas—at least no one is doing it light-heartedly. You can't be light-hearted when the person you love best in the world is going to war. You can be brave, and you can make your lips laugh, but you can't make your heart laugh—you can't—you can't—.
"I talk a great deal to the women who come to Emily's Toy Shop. And I am finding out that some of those that seem fluffy-minded are really very much in earnest. There is one little blonde, who always wears white silk and chiffon, she looks as if she had just stepped from the stage. And at first I simply scorned her. I felt that she would be the kind to leave ravellings in her wipes, and things like that. But she doesn't leave a ravelling. She works slowly, but she does her work well—. But now and then her hands tremble and the tears fall; and the other day I went and sat down beside her and I found out that her husband is flying in France, and that her two brothers are at the front—. And one of them is among the missing; he may be a prisoner and he may be dead—. And she is trying to do her bit and be brave. And now I don't care if she does wear her earlocks outside of her veil and load her hands with diamonds—she's a dear—-and a darling. But she's scared just as I am—and as Mary Connolly is, and as all the women are, though they don't show it—. I wonder if Joan of Arc was afraid—in her heart as the rest of us are? Perhaps she wasn't, because she was in the thick of it herself, and we aren't. Perhaps if we were where we could see it and have the excitement of it all, we should lose our fear.
"But when women tell me that the women have the worst of it—that they must sit at home and weep and wait, I don't believe it. We suffer—of course, and there's the thought of it all like a bad dream, and when we love our loved ones—it is heartbreak. But the men suffer, daily, in all the little things. The thirst and the vermin, and the cold and wet—and the noise—and the frightfulness. And they grow tired and hungry and homesick,—and death is on every side of them, and horror—. Some of the women who come to the shop sentimentalize a lot. One woman recited, 'Break, break, break—, the other day, and the rest of them cried into the gauze,cried for themselves, if you please; 'For men must work and women must weep.' And then my little blonde told them what she thought of them. Her name is 'Maisie,' wouldn't you know a girl like that would be called 'Maisie'?
"'If you think,' she said, 'that you suffer—what in God's name will you think before the war is over? It hasn't touched you. You won't know what suffering means until your men begin to come home. You talk about hardships; not one of you has gone hungry yet—and the men over there may be cut off at any moment from food supplies, and they are always at the mercy of the camp cooks, who may or may not give them things that they can eat. And they lie out under the stars with their wounds, and if any of you has a finger ache, you go to bed with hot water bottles and are coddled and cared for. But our boys,—there isn't anyone to coddle them—they have to stick it out. And we've got to stick it out—and not be sorry for ourselves. Oh, why should we be sorry for ourselves!' The tears were streaming down her cheeks when she finished, and a gray-haired woman who had wept with the others got up and came over to her. 'My dear,' she said, 'I shall never pity myself again. My two sons are over there, and I've been thinking how much I have given. But they have given their young lives, their futures—their bodies, to be broken—' And then standing right in the middle of the Toy Shop that mother prayed for her sons, and for the sons of other women, and for the husbands and lovers, and that the women might be brave.
"Oh, it was wonderful—as she stood there like a white-veiled prophetess, praying.
"Yet a year ago she would have died rather than pray in public. She is a conservative, aristocratic woman, the kind that doesn't wear rings or try to be picturesque—and she has always kept her feelings to herself, and said her prayers to herself—or in church, but never in all her life has she been so fine as she was the other day praying in the Toy Shop.
"Yet in a way I am sorry for myself. Not for me as I am to-day, but for the Jean of Yesterday, who thought that patriotism was remembering Bunker Hill!
"Of course in a way it is that—for Bunker Hill and Lexington and Valley Forge are a part of us because our grandfathers were there, and what they felt and did is a part of our feeling and doing.
"I have always thought of those old days as a sort of picture—the embattled farmers in their shirt-sleeves and with their hair blowing, and the Midnight Ride, and the lantern in the old North Church—and the Spirit of '76. And it was the same with the Civil War; there was always the vision of cavalry sweeping up and down slopes as they do in the movies, and of the bugles calling, and bands playing 'Marching through Georgia' or 'Dixie' as the case might be—and flags flying—isn't it glorious to think that the men in gray are singing to-day, 'The Star Spangled Banner' with the rest of us?
"But my thoughts never had anything to do with money, though I suppose people gave it then, as they are giving now. But you can't paint pictures of men and women making out checks, and children putting thrift stamps in little books, so I suppose that in future the heroes and heroines of the emptied pocket-books will go down unsung—.
"It isn't a bit picturesque to give until it hurts, but it helps a lot. I saw Sarah Bernhardt the other day in a wonderful little play where she's a French boy, who dies in the end—and she dies, exquisitely, with the flag of France in her arms—the faded, lovely flag—I shall never forget. The tears ran down my cheeks so that I couldn't see, but her voice, so faint and clear, still rings in my ears—
"If she had died clutching a Liberty Bond or wearing a Red Cross button, it would have seemed like burlesque. Yet there are men and women who are going without bread and butter to buy Liberty Bonds, and who are buying them not as a safe investment, as rich men buy, but because the boys need the money. And there ought to be poems written and statues erected to commemorate some of the sacrifices for the sake of the Red Cross.
"Yet I think that, in a way, we have not emphasized enough the picturesque quality of this war, not on this side. They do it in France—they worship their great flyers, their great generals, their crack regiments, everything has a personality, they are tender with their shattered cathedrals as if something human had been hurt, and the result is a quickening on the part of every individual, a flaming patriotism which as yet we have not felt. We don't worship anything, we don't all of us know the words of 'The Star Spangled Banner'; fancy a Frenchman not knowing the words of the 'Marseillaise' or an Englishman forgetting 'God Save the King.' We don't shout and sing enough, we don't cry enough, we don't feel enough—and that's all there is to it. If we were hot for the triumph of democracy, there would be no chance of victory for the Hun. Perhaps as the war comes nearer, we shall feel more, and every day it is coming nearer—"
It was very near, indeed. Thousands of those gray sheep were lying dead on the plains of Picardy—the Allies fought with their backs to the wall—Americans who had swaggered, secure in the prowess of Uncle Sam, swaggered no longer, and pondered on the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.
Slowly the nation waked to what was before it. In America now lay the hope of the world. The Wolf must be trapped, the sheep saved in spite of themselves, those poor sheep, driven blindly to slaughter.
The General was not quite sure that they were sheep, or that they were being driven. He held, rather, that they knew what they were about—and were not to be pitied.
Teddy, considering this gravely, went back to previous meditations, and asked if he prayed for his enemies.
"Bless my soul," said the old gentleman, "why should I?"
"Well, Mother says we must, and then some day they'll stop and say they are sorry—"
The General chuckled, "Your mother is optimistic."
"What's 'nopt'mistic?"
"It means always believing that nice things will happen."
"Don't you believe that nice things will happen?"
"Sometimes—"
"Don't you believe that the war will stop?"
"Not until we've thrown the full force of our fighting men into it—at what a sacrifice."
"Can't God make it stop?"
"He can, but He won't, not if He's a God of justice," said this staunch old patriot, "until America has brought them to their knees—"
"Will they say they are sorry then?"
"It won't make very much difference what they say—"
But Teddy, having been brought up to understand the things which belong to an officer and a gentleman, had his own ideas on the subject. "Well, I should think they'd ought to say they were sorry—."
The end of April brought much rain; torrents swept down the smooth streets, and the beauty of the carefully kept flower beds in the parks was blurred by the wet.
The General, limping from window to window, chafed. He wanted to get out, to go over the hills and far away; with the coming of the spring the wander-hunger gripped him, and with this restless mood upon him he stormed at Bronson.
"It's a dog's life."
"Yes, sir," said Bronson, dutifully.
"It is dead lonesome, Bronson, and I can't keep Jean tied here all of the time. She is looking pale, don't you think she is looking pale?"
"Yes, sir. I think she misses Mr. Derry."
"Well, she'll miss him a lot more before she gets him back," grimly. "He'll be going over soon—"
"Yes, sir."
"I wish I were going," the old man was wistful. "Think of it, Bronson, to be over there—in the thick of it, playing the game, instead of rotting here—"
It was, of course, the soldier's point of view. Bronson, being hopelessly civilian, did his best to rise to what was expected of him. "You like it then, sir?"
"Like it? It is the only life. We've lost something since men took up the game of business in place of the game of fighting."
"But you see, sir, there's no blood—in business." Bronson tried to put it delicately.
"Isn't there? Why, more men are killed in accidents in factories than are killed in war—murdered by money-greedy employers."
"Oh, sir, not quite that."
"Yes, quite," was the irascible response. "You don't know what you are talking about, Bronson. Read statistics and find out."
"Yes, sir. Will you have your lunch up now, sir?"
"I'll get it over and then you can order the car for me."
"But the rain—?"
"I like rain. I'm not sugar or salt."
Bronson, much perturbed, called up Jean. "The General's going out."
"Oh, but he mustn't, Bronson."
"I can't say 'mustn't' to him, Miss," Bronson reported dismally. "You'd better see what you can do—"
But when Jean arrived, the General was gone!
"We'll drive out through the country," the old man had told his chauffeur, and had settled back among his cushions, his cane by his side, his foot up on the opposite seat to relieve him of the weight.
And it was as he rode that he began to have a strange feeling about that foot which no longer walked or bore him lightly.
How he had marched in those bygone days! He remembered the first time he had tried to keep step with his fellows. The tune had been Yankee Doodle—with a fife and drum—and he was a raw young recruit in his queer blue uniform and visored cap—.
And how eager his feet had been, how strongly they had borne him, spurning the dust of the road—as they would bear him no more—.
There were men who envied him as he swept past them in the rain, men who felt that he had more than his share of wealth and ease, yet he would have made a glad exchange for the feet which took them where they willed.
He came at last to one of his old haunts, a small stone house on the edge of the Canal. From its wide porch he had often watched the slow boats go by, with men and women and children living in worlds bounded by weather-beaten decks. To-day in the rain there was a blur of lilac bushes along the tow path, but no boats were in sight; the Canal was a ruffled gray sheet in the April wind.
Lounging in the low-ceiled front room of the stone house were men of the type with whom he had once foregathered—men not of his class or kind, but interesting because of their very differences—human derelicts who had welcomed him.
But now, for the first time he was not one of them. They eyed his elegances with suspicion—his fur coat, his gloves, his hat—the man whose limousine stood in front of the door was not one of them; they might beg of him, but they would never call him "Brother."
So, because his feet no longer carried him, and he must ride, he found himself cast out, as it were, by outcasts.
He ordered meat and drink for them, gave them money, made a joke or two as he limped among them, yet felt an alien. He watched them wistfully, seeing for the first time their sordidness, seeing what he himself had been, more sordid than any, because of his greater opportunities.
Sitting apart, he judged them, judged himself. If all the world were like these men, what kind of world would it be?
"Why aren't you fellows fighting?" he asked suddenly.
They stared at him. Grumbled. Why should they fight? One of them wept over it, called himself too old—.
But there were young men among them. "For God's sake get out of this—let me help you get out." The General stood up, leaned on his cane. "Look here, I've done a lot of things in my time—things like this—" his arm swept out towards the table, "and now I've only one good foot—the other will never be alive again. But you young chaps, you've got two good feet—to march. Do you know what that means, to march? Left, right, left, right and step out bravely—. Yankee Doodle and your heads up, flags flying? And you sit here like this?"
Two of the men had risen, young and strong. The General's cane pounded—he had their eyes! "Left, right, left, right—all over the world men are marching, and you sit here—"
The years seemed to have dropped from him. His voice rang with a fire that had once drawn men after him. He had led a charge at Gettysburg, and his men had followed!
And these two men would follow him. He saw the dawn of their resolve in their faces. "There's fine stuff in both of you," he said, "and the country needs you. Isn't it better to fight than to sit here? Get into my car and I'll take you down."
"Aw, what's eatin' you," one of the older men growled. "What game's this? Recruitin'?"
But the young men asked no questions. They came—glad to come. Roused out of a lethargy which had bound them. Waked by a ringing old voice.
The General was rather quiet when he reached home. Jean and Bronson, who had suffered torments, watched him with concerned eyes. And, as if he divined it, he laid his hand over Jean's. "I did a good day's work, my dear. I got two men for the Army, and I'm going to get more—"
And he did get more. He went not only in the rain, but in the warmth of the sun, when the old fruit trees bloomed along the tow path, and the backs of the mules were shining black, and the women came out on deck with their washing.
And always he spoke to the men of marching feet—. Now and then he sang for them in that thin old voice whose thinness was so overlaid by the passion of his patriotism that those who listened found no flaw in it.
"He has sounded forth the trumpet that has never called retreat,He is sifting forth the hearts of men before his Judgment seat,O be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet,Our God is marching on—"