The Tin Soldier Part 21

"I got my orders in the nick of time. We are to go to Key West. I am to join the others on the way down."

"How soon?"

He sat at the other end of the davenport. "In three days, and anything can happen in three days."

He moved closer. She had a sense of panic. Was he going to propose to her again, in this room which she had set aside so sacredly for Derry Drake?

"Won't you have some tea?" she asked, desperately. "I'll have Julia bring it in."

"I'd rather talk."

But she had it brought, and Julia, wheeling in the tea-cart, offered a moment's reprieve. And Ralph ate the Lady-bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and the little pound cakes with the nuts and white frosting which had been meant for Derry, and then he walked around the tea-cart and took her hand, and for the seventh time since he had met her he asked her to marry him.

"But I don't love you." She was almost in tears.

"You don't know what love is--I'll teach you."

"I don't want to be taught."

"You don't know what it means to be taught--"

Jean had a stifling sense as of some great green tree bending down to crush her. She put out her hand to push it away.

In the silence a bell whirred--.

Derry Drake, ushered in by Julia, saw the room in the rosy glow of the lamp. He saw Ralph Witherspoon towering insolently in his aviator's green. He saw Jean, blushing and perturbed. The scene struck cold against the heat of his antic.i.p.ation.

He sat down in one of the rose-colored chairs, and Julia brought more tea for him, more Lady-bread-and-b.u.t.ter, more pound cakes with nuts and frosting.

Ralph was frankly curious. He was also frankly jealous. He was aware that Derry had met Jean for the first time at his mother's dinner dance. And Derry's millions were formidable. It did not occur to Ralph that Derry, without his millions, was formidable. Ralph's idea of a man's attractiveness for women was founded on his belief in their admiration of good looks, and their liking for the possession of, as he would himself have expressed it, "plenty of pep" and "go." From Ralph's point of view Derry Drake was not handsome, and he was utterly unaware that back of Derry's silver-blond slenderness and apparent languidness were banked fires which could more than match his own.

And there was this, too, of which he was unconscious, that Derry's millions meant nothing to Jean. Had he remained the shabby son of the shabby old man in the Toy Shop, her heart would still have followed him.

So, fatuously hopeful, Ralph stayed. He stayed until five, until half-past five. Until a quarter of six.

And he talked of the glories of war!

Derry grew restless. As he sat in the rose-colored chair, he fingered a ta.s.sel which caught back one of the curtains of the wide window. It was a silk ta.s.sel, and he pulled at one strand of it until it was flossy and frayed. He was unconscious of his work of destruction, unconscious that Jean's eyes, lifted now and then from her knitting, noted his fingers weaving in and out of the rosy strands.

Ralph talked on. With seeming modesty he spoke of the feats of other men, yet none the less it was Ralph they saw, poised like a bird at incredible heights, looping the loop, fearless, splendid--beating the air with strong wings.

Six o'clock, and at last Ralph rose. Even then he hesitated and hung back, as if he expected that Derry might go with him. But Derry, stiff and straight beside the rose-colored chair, bade him farewell!

And now Derry was alone with Jean!

They found themselves standing close together in front of the fire.

The garment of coldness and of languor which had seemed to enshroud Derry had dropped from him. The smile which he gave Jean was like warm wine in her veins.

"Well--?"

"I asked you to come--to say--that I am,--sorry--," her voice breaking.

"Daddy told me that he knew why--you couldn't fight--"

"I didn't intend that he should tell."

"He didn't," eagerly, "not your reasons. He said it was a--confidence, and he couldn't break his word. But he knew that you were brave. That the things the world is saying are all wrong. Oh, I ought to go down on my knees."

Her face was white, her eyes deep wells of tears.

"It is I," he said, very low, "who should be on my knees--do you know what it means to me to have you tell me this?"

"I wasn't sure that I ought to write. To some men I couldn't have written--"

His face lighted. "When your note came--I can't tell you what it meant to me. I shouldn't like to think of what this day would have been for me if you had not written. Everybody is calling me--a coward. You know that. You heard Witherspoon just now pitying me, not in words, but his manner."

"Oh, Ralph," how easily she disposed of him. "Ralph crows, like a--rooster."

They looked at each other and tried to laugh. But they were not laughing in their hearts.

He lifted her hand and kissed it--then he stood well away from her, anchoring himself again to the silken ta.s.sel. "Now that you know a part," he said, from that safe distance, "I'd like to tell you all of it, if I may."

As he talked her fingers were busy with her knitting, but there came moments when she laid it down and looked up at him with eyes that mirrored his own earnestness.

"It--it hasn't been easy," he said in conclusion, "but--but if you will be my friend, nothing will be hard."

She tried to speak--was shaken as if by a strong wind, and her knitting went up as a shield.

"My dear, you are crying," he said, and was on his knees beside her.

And now they were caught in the tide of that mighty wave which was sweeping the world!

When at last she steadied herself, he was again anch.o.r.ed to the rose-colored ta.s.sel.

"You--you must forgive me--but--it has been so good to talk it out--to some one--who cared. I had never dreamed until that night in the Toy Shop of anybody--like you. Of anybody so--adorable. When your note came this morning, I couldn't believe it. But now I know it is true.

And that night of Cinderella you were so--heavenly."

It was a good thing that Miss Emily came in at that moment--for his eloquence was a burning flood, and Jean was swept up and on with it.

The entrance of Emily, strictly tailored and practical, gave them pause.

"You remember Mr. Drake, don't you, Emily?"

Emily did, of course. But she had not expected to see him here. She held out her hand. "I remember that he was coming back for more of your Lovely Dreams."

"I want all of her dreams," said Derry, and something in the way that he said it took Miss Emily's breath away. "Please don't sell them to anyone else. You have a wholesale order from me."

Miss Emily looked from one to the other. She was conscious of something which touched the stars--something which all her life she had missed, something which belongs to youth and ecstasy.

"Wholesale orders are not in my line," she said. "You can settle that with Jean."