The Tin Soldier Part 51

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, Pere 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 Pere 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 pa.s.s."

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 G.o.d 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."