The Tin Soldier Part 31

"Shut up in a box, doing nothing--"

As the lovers drove away, Emily stood at the window looking after them.

There was one customer in the shop, but Miss Emily had a feeling that he would keep himself amused until she was ready to wait on him. She had intuitions about the people who came to buy, and this tall spare man with the slight droop of his shoulders, his upstanding bush of gray hair, his sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses on a black ribbon was, she was aware, having the time of his life. No little boy could have spent more time over the toys. He fingered them lovingly as he peered through his big horn gla.s.ses.

He saw Miss Emily looking at him and smiling. "It was the white elephant that brought me in. He was made in Germany?"

"Yes."

"It is not easy to get them any more?"

"No. You see I have a little card on him 'Not for sale.'"

He nodded. "I should like to buy him--"

She shook her head. "I have refused many offers."

"I can understand that. Yet, perhaps if I should tell you?"

There was a slight trace of foreign accent in his speech. She stiffened. She felt that he was capable of calling her "Fraulein."

There was not the least doubt in her mind as to the Teutonic extraction of this gentleman who was shamelessly trying to induce her to sell her elephant.

"I can't imagine any reason that would make me change my mind."

"My father is German; he makes toys."

She showed her surprise. "Makes toys?"

"Yes. He is an old man--eighty-five. He was born in Nuremberg. Until he was twenty-five he made elephants like the one in your window. Now do you see?"

She was not sure that she did see. "Well?"

"I want him for my father's Christmas present."

"Impossible," coldly; "he is not for sale."

He was still patient. "He will make you another--many others."

He had her attention now. "Make--elephants?"

"Yes. He needs only a pattern. There are certain things he has forgotten. I should like to make him happy."

Miss Emily, hostilely convinced that it was not her business to contribute to the happiness of any octogenarian Hun, shook her head, "I'm sorry."

"Then you won't sell him?"

"Certainly not."

He still lingered. "You love your toys--I have been here before, and I have watched you. They are not just sawdust and wood and cloth and paint to you--they are real--"

"Yes."

"My father is like that. They are real to him. There's an old wax doll that was my mother's. He loves her and talks to her--. Because she was made in that Germany which is dead--"

The fierceness in his voice, the flash of his eye; the thrust of his hand as if it held a rapier!

"Dead?"

"The Germany he knew died when Prussia throttled her. Her poetry died, her music--there is no echo now from the Rhine but that of--guns."

"You feel--that way--?"

"Yes."

"Then sit down and tell me--tell me--" She was eager.

"Tell you what?"

"About your father, about the toys, about the Germany that is--dead."

He was glad to tell her. It poured forth, with now and then an offending phrase, "Gott in Himmel, do they think we have forgotten? My father came to America because he loved freedom--he fought in the Civil War for freedom--he loves freedom still; and over there they are fighting for slavery. The slavery of the little nations, the slavery of those who love democracy. They want Prussia, and more Prussia, and more Prussia--" He struck his hand on the counter so that all the dolls danced.

"They are fighting to get the whole world under an iron heel--to crush--to grind--to destroy. My father reads it and weeps. He is an old man, Fraulein, and his mind goes back to the Germany which sang and told fairy tales, and made toys; do you see?

"Yet there are people here who do not understand, who point their fingers at him, at me. Who think because I am Ulrich Stolle that I am not--American. Yet what am I but that?"

He got up and walked around the room restlessly. "I am an American.

If I was not born here, can I help that? But my heart has been moulded here. For me there is no other country. Germany I love--yes, but as one loves a woman who has been led away--because one thinks of the things she might have been, not of the thing she is."

He came back to her. "Will you sell me your elephant, Fraulein?"

She held out her hand to him. Her eyes were wet. "I will lend him to your father. Indeed, I cannot sell him."

He took her hand in a strong grasp. "I knew you were kind. If you could only see my father."

"Bring him here some day."

"He is too old to be brought. He sticks close to his chair. But if you would come and see him? You and perhaps the young lady who waited on me when I came before, and who was here to-day with the young man whose heart is singing."

"Oh, you saw that?"

"It was there for the whole world to see, was it not? A man in love hides nothing. You will bring them then? We have flowers even in December in our hothouses; you will like that, and you shall see my father. I think you will love my father, Fraulein."

After he had gone she wondered at herself. She had trusted her precious elephant to a perfect stranger. He might be anything, a spy, a thief, with his "Gotts in Himmel" and his "Frauleins"--how Jean would laugh at her for her softheartedness!

Oh, but he wasn't a thief, he wasn't a spy. He was a poet and a gentleman. She made very few mistakes in her estimates of the people who came to her shop. She had made, she was sure, no mistake in trusting Ulrich Stolle.

Jean and Derry motoring to Chevy Chase were far away from the world of the Toy Shop. As they whirled along the country roads the bare trees seemed to bud and bloom for them, the sky was gold.