The Tin Soldier Part 59

He stood staring at her, then flew upstairs to his mother. "Cook's cryin'."

"Teddy--"

"She is. Because her son is in Fwance."

After that when he went down to get things for m.u.f.fin and Polly Ann, he said how s'prised he was and how nice it was now that he knew, and wasn't she pr-roud? And he fancied that Hodgson was kinder and softer.

She told him the name of her son. It was Charley, and she and Teddy talked a great deal about Charley, and Teddy sent him some chocolate, and Hodgson told Margaret. "He's a lovely boy, Mrs. Morgan. May you never raise him to fight."

"I should want him to be as brave as his father, Hodgson."

"Yes. My boy's brave, but it was hard to let him go." Then, struck by the look on Margaret's face, she said, "Forgive me, ma'am; if mine is taken from me, I'd like to feel as you do. You ain't makin' other people unhappy over it."

"I think it is because my husband still lives for me, Hodgson."

Hodgson cried into her ap.r.o.n. "It ain't all of us that has your faith.

But if I loses him, I'll do my best."

And so the painted lady on the stairs saw all the sinister things that Hilda had brought into the big house swept out of it. She saw Hodgson the cook trying to be brave, and bringing up Margaret's tea in the afternoons for the sake of the moment when she might speak of her boy to one who would understand; she saw Emily, coming home dead tired after a hard day's work, but with her face illumined. She saw Margaret smiling, with tears in her heart, she saw Jean putting aside childish things to become one of the women that the world needed.

Brave women all of them, women with a vision, women raised to heroic heights by the need of the hour!

The men, too, were heroic. Indeed, the General, trying to control his appet.i.te, was almost pathetically heroic. He had given up sugar, although he hated his coffee without it, and he had a little boy's appet.i.te for pies and cakes.

"When the war is over," he told Teddy, "we will order a cake that's as high as a house, and we will eat it together."

Teddy giggled. "With frostin'?"

"Yes. I remember when Derry was a lad that we used to tell him the story of the people who baked a cake so big that they had to climb ladders to reach the top. Well, that's the kind of cake we'll have."

Yet while he made a joke of it, he confessed to Jean. "It is harder than fighting battles. I'd rather face a gun than deny myself the things that I like to eat and drink."

Bronson was contributing to the Red Cross and buying Liberty Bonds, and that was brave of Bronson. For Bronson was close, and the hardest thing that he had to do was to part with his money, or to take less interest than his rather canny investments had made possible.

And Teddy, the man of his family, came one morning to his mother.

"I've just got to do it," he said in a rather shaky voice.

"Do what, dear?"

"Send my books to the soldiers."

She let him do it, although she knew how it tore his heart. You see, there were the Jungle Books, which he knew the soldiers would like, and "Treasure Island," and "The Swiss Family Robinson," and "Huckleberry Finn." He brought his fairy books, too, and laid them on the altar of patriotism, and "Toby Tyler," which had been his father's, and "Under the Lilacs," which he adored because of little brown-faced Ben and his dog, Sancho.

He was rapturously content when his mother decided that the fairy books and Toby and brown-faced Ben might still be his companions. "You see the soldiers are men, dear, and they probably read these when they were little boys."

"But won't I wead them when I grow up, Mother?"

"You may want to read older books."

But Teddy was secretly resolved that age should not wither nor custom stale the charms of the beloved volumes. And that he should love them to the end. His mother thought that he might grow tired of them some day and told him so.

"I can wead them to my little boys," he said, hopefully, "and to their little boys after that," and having thus established a long line of prospective worshippers of his own special G.o.ds, he turned to other things.

General Drake, growing gradually better, went now and then in his warm closed car for a ride through the Park. Usually Jean was with him, or Bronson, and now and then Nurse with the children.

It was one morning when the children were with him that he said to Nurse: "Take them into the Lion House for a half hour, I'll drive around and come back for you."

Nurse demurred. "You are sure that you won't mind being left, sir?"

"Why not?" sharply. "I am perfectly able to take care of myself."

He watched them go in, then he gave orders to drive at once to the Connecticut Avenue entrance.

A woman stood by the gate, a tall woman in a long blue cloak and a close blue bonnet. In the clear cold, her coloring showed vivid pink and white. The General spoke through the tube; the chauffeur descended and opened the door.

"If you will get in," the General said to the woman, "you can tell me what you have to say--"

"Perhaps I should not have asked it," Hilda said, hesitating, "but I had seen you riding in the Park, and I thought of this way--I couldn't of course, come to the house."

"No." He had sunk down among his robes. "No."

"I felt that perhaps you had been led to--misunderstand." She came directly to the point. "I wanted to know--what I had done--what had made the difference. I couldn't believe that you had not meant what you said."

He stirred uneasily. "I have been very ill--"

Her long white hands were ungloved, the diamonds that he had given her sparkled as she drew the ring off slowly. "I felt that I ought to give you this--if it was all really over."

"It is all over. But keep it--please."

"I should like to keep it," she admitted frankly, "because, you see, I've never had a ring like this."

It was the Cophetua and Beggar Maid motif but it left him cold.

"Hilda," he said, "I saw you that night trying on my wife's jewels.

That was my reason."

She was plainly disconcerted. "But that was child's play. I had never had anything--it was like a child--dressing up."

"It was not like that to me. I think I had been a rather fatuous fool--thinking that there might be in me something that you might care for. But I knew then that without my money--you wouldn't care--"

"People's motives are always mixed," she told him. "You know that."

"Yes, I know."

"You liked me because I was young and made you feel young. I liked you because you could give me things."

"Yes. But now the glamour is gone. You make me feel a thousand years old, Hilda."

"Why?" in great surprise.

"Because I know that if I had no wealth to offer you, you would see me for what I am, an aged broken creature for whom you have no tenderness--"