The Tin Soldier Part 9

"Not till you come with me."

"I'm not coming."

Derry spread his rug on the icy ground. "Sit on this and wrap up your legs--you'll freeze out here."

His father did not move. "I am puf-f.e.c.kly comfa'ble."

The General rarely got his syllables tangled. Things at times happened to his legs, but he usually controlled his tongue.

"I am puf-f.e.c.kly comfa'ble--go home, Derry."

"I can't leave you, Dad."

"I want to be left."

He had never been quite like this. There had been moods of rebellion, but usually he had yielded himself to his son's guidance.

"Dad, be reasonable."

"I'd rather sit here and freeze--than go home with a--coward."

It was out at last. It struck Derry like a whiplash. He sprang to his feet. "You don't mean that, Dad. You can't mean it."

"I do mean it."

"I am not a coward, and you know it."

"Then why don't you go and fight?"

Silence! The only sound the chuckle of living waters beneath the ice of the little stream.

"Why don't you go and fight like other men?"

The emphasis was insulting. Derry had only one idea--to escape from that taunting voice. "You'll be sorry for this, Dad," he flung out at white heat, and scrambled up the bank.

When he reached the bridge, he paused. He couldn't leave that old man down there to die of the cold--the wind was rising and rattled in the bare trees.

But Derry's blood was boiling. He sat down on the parapet, thick blackness all about him. Whatever had been his father's shortcomings, they had always clung together--and now they were separated by words which had cut like a knife. It was useless to tell himself that his father was not responsible. Out of the heart the mouth had spoken.

And there were other people who felt as his father did--there had been Drusilla's questions, the questions of others--there had been, too, averted faces. He saw the little figure in the cloak of heavenly blue as she had been the other night,--in her gray furs as she had been this morning--; would her face, too, be turned from him?

Words formed themselves in his mind. He yearned to toss back at his father the taunt that was on his lips. To fling it over the parapet, to shout it to the world--!

He had never before felt the care of his father a sacrifice. There had been humiliating moments, hard moments, but always he had been sustained by a sense of the rightness of the thing that he was doing and of its necessity.

Then, out of the darkness, came a shivering old voice, "Derry, are you there?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Come down--and help me--"

The General, alone in the darkness, had suffered a reaction. He felt chilled and depressed. He wanted warmth and light.

Mounting steadily with his son's arm to sustain him, he argued garrulously for a sojourn at the nearest hostelry, or for a stop at Chevy Chase. He would, he promised, go to bed at the Club, and thus be rid of Bronson. Bronson didn't know his place, he would have to be taught--

Arriving at the top, he was led to Derry's car. He insisted on an understanding. If he got in, they were to stop at the Club.

"No," Derry said, "we won't stop. We are going home."

Derry had never commanded a brigade. But he had in him the blood of one who had. He possessed also strength and determination backed at the moment by righteous indignation. He lifted his father bodily, put him in the car, took his seat beside him, shut the door, and drove off.

He felt remarkably cheered as they whirled along at top speed.

The General, yielding gracefully to the inevitable, rolled himself up in the rugs, dropped his head against the padded cushions and, soothed by the warmth, fell asleep.

He waked to find himself being guided up his own stairway by Bronson and the butler.

"Put him into a hot bath, Bronson," Derry directed from the threshold of his father's room, and, the General, quite surprisingly, made no protest. He had his bath, hot drinks to follow, and hot water bags in his bed. When he drifted off finally, into uneasy dreams, he was watched over by Bronson as if he had been a baby.

Derry, looking at his watch, was amazed to find that the evening was yet early. He had lived emotionally through a much longer period than that marked by the clocks.

He had no engagements. He had found himself of late shrinking a little from his kind. The clubs and the hotels were crowded with officers.

Private houses, hung with service flags, paid homage to men in uniform.

He was aware that he was, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but it was not pleasant to meet the inquiring glance, the guarded question. He was welcomed outwardly as of old. But, then, he had a great deal of money.

People did not like to offend his father's son. But if he had not been his father's son? What then?

He dined alone and in state in the great dining room. The portraits of his ancestors looked down on him. There was his mother's grandfather, who had the same fair hair and strongly marked brows. He had been an officer in the English army, and wore the picturesque uniform of the period. There were other men in uniform--ancestors--.

But of what earthly use was an ancestor in uniform to the present situation? It would have been better to have inherited Quaker blood.

Derry smiled whimsically as he thought how different he might have felt if there had been benignant men in gray with broad-brimmed hats, staring down.

But to grant a man an inheritance of fighting blood, and then deny him the opportunity to exercise his birthright, was a sort of grim joke which he could not appreciate.

For dessert a great dish of fruit was set before him. He chose a peach!

Peaches in November! The men in the trenches had no peaches, no squabs, no mushrooms, no avacados--for them bully beef and soup cubes, a handful of dates, or by good luck a bit of chocolate.

He left the peach untasted--he had a feeling that he might thus, vicariously, atone for the hardships of those others who fought.

After dinner he walked downtown. Pa.s.sing Dr. McKenzie's house he was constrained to loiter. There were lights upstairs and down. Was Jean McKenzie's room behind the two golden windows above the balcony? Was she there, or in the room below, where shaded lamps shone softly among the shadows?

He yearned to go in--to speak with her--to learn her thoughts--to read her heart and mind. As yet he knew only the message of her beauty. He fancied her as having exquisite sensibility, sweetness, gentleness, perceptions as vivid as her youth and bloom.

The front door opened, and Jean and her father came out. Derry's heart leaped as he heard her laugh. Then her clear voice, "Isn't it a wonderful night to walk, Daddy?" and her father's response, "Oh, you with your ecstasies!"

They went briskly down the other side of the street. Derry found himself following, found himself straining his ear for that light laugh, found himself wishing that it were he who walked beside her, that her hand was tucked into his arm as it was tucked into her father's.

Their destination was a brilliantly illumined palace on F Street, once a choice little playhouse, now given over to screen productions. The house was packed, and Jean and her father, following the flashlight of the usher, found harbor finally in a box to the left of the stage.

Derry settled himself behind them. He was an eavesdropper and he knew it, but he was loath to get out of the range of that lovely laughter.