The Tin Soldier Part 68

"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 G.o.d 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, "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds 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 m.u.f.fin--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 n.o.body 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'?