The Toy Shop Part 2

"But listen," said his wife, as she seated herself by him, with joy that there was something to tell that he would be glad to hear. "I have something to tell you. This morning, on my way to market, everywhere there were soldiers--dirty, lean as from hunger, faces black with powder stains. At first I was afraid--"

"But, my wife," said Joseph, indulgently, "what was there to be feared?"

"I will tell you. A crowd of soldiers came swaggering into Schmidt's.

They ordered him to wait on them, and when he asked for money for the food, they shook their fists at him with ugly words, and called for all to come and take what they would. Two officers hurried up and ordered them to return to their ranks, but they laughed at the officers."

"Mutiny!" whispered Napoleon's soldier, his face pale with excitement.

"They swore oaths and said that they would fight no more battles for men who were old women and stayed at home while they sweated and bled and were starving."

"Without doubt their officers ordered them into arrest?" demanded Joseph, fiercely.

"Who was there to arrest them? The officers looked white, and I was trembling. More soldiers came into the square, until everywhere there were angry faces and bodies swaying this way and that, while the men were thinking what evil they should do. At that moment a carriage drove up at full speed. There was one man in it. He stood up; he was a tall man. A hesitating sort of shout went up from the soldiers. Then there was a great muttering, and every one rushed toward him, and some were shaking their fists.

"The man stood still. He said no word. But little by little the muttering stopped and there was silence. Then the crowd began backing away from him. There was a break in the ma.s.s, and through it I saw his face. He was smiling with--well, the way fathers look at their children that have hurt themselves because they were naughty and are yet not very bad. Still there was silence."

"He held them so?" broke in Joseph. "But then he was a great man. But who?"

"Wait. He began talking to them. I couldn't hear what he said, for all the men began crowding up around him. But one moment they laughed, and the next they were wiping their eyes with the back of their hands."

Joseph was listening with shining eyes.

"When he had driven off again the soldiers went back to their camp. Some of them looked downcast and ashamed, but most of them were just boyish and good-natured, as if they had forgotten how they felt before. One boy laughed as he pa.s.sed me:

"'Say, that was a good one about the tin soldier. I felt like a toy soldier myself when he turned those eyes of his on me!'"

"Who was it?" asked Joseph Schotz, eagerly. "Have they such a man? Was it the new general? I have thought he might be such a man--to win such victories. And yet"--his face fell--"that one is a short man, and this, you said, was very tall."

"The general? No!" said Mrs. Schotz, contemptuously. "It was not the general. As he drove off, some boys shouted, 'Hurrah for the President!'"

"The President!" Joseph echoed.

"The President. And, Joseph, when I saw his face I knew him." She paused to make sure of the effect upon her petted invalid of what she had to say. "It was he who came to us to buy toy soldiers!"

She fell back triumphantly when she had fired this bolt of wonder. But Joseph was looking at her with eyes in which there was no wonder--only comprehension.

"So," he said, slowly--"so--that was the President. So Napoleon would have done."

The doctor had told Joseph that he must go to his bed. The old soldier winced. A man may be brave before bullets and yet quail before the doctor. The bed was brought down into the little kitchen back of the shop. Joseph insisted on it.

"It is that I may be able to help you tend the shop," he said. But the real reason was that he might not be banished from the children's domain. He could still see Minna and Rosa and Bennie come for their toys.

Thus it happened that one morning Joseph sat propped up in his narrow wooden bed. Mrs. Schotz bustled, with much demonstration of activity, about her work. Joseph almost wished that she would go up-stairs. He was forced to keep up an appearance of much cheerfulness--if he screwed up his face when the pain came, she wept.

"I wonder if the President will come to-day," he thought. "He said he would as soon as he got back. I want to see how he looks since the surrender. Strange that it should have been on Palm Sunday." His eyes strayed to the mantel-piece, where a spray of palm waved from a gilt vase. The wife had had it in her hand when she came in from the street with the news the day before.

"If he would come, it would be easier," thought Joseph. "He would take my hand and look deep into my eyes--it would be as if he took some of the pain away from me--into his own heart." And then, because some childishness is permitted to the sick, he moved peevishly in his bed and thumped his pillow.

Suddenly the door opened. It was the President. Still, a different President--almost a new one. His shoulders were straight and held well back. He walked with a sort of joyous impatience, as though he brushed aside palms of victory. His eyes glowed. He spoke as he entered, and his voice broke into a boyish laugh. When he looked into the room and saw Joseph, the full meaning of the change struck him and his face fell. For a moment he looked almost abashed. Then, shaking his head with decision, he strode through the shop to where the sick man lay. He took Joseph's hand with resolute happiness and held it, looking full into the other man's eyes. There was no need of words between them. A heartening and a tonic influence went from one man to the other.

"It is over, friend Schotz," he said, buoyantly. "The nightmare is over; we are awake." He paused and added, under his breath, with humble, halting reverence, "Thank G.o.d!"

"They have surrendered." Joseph Schotz raised himself on his elbows.

"It was the meeting of two great men," said the President. "Mine and the other. He's a general after our own hearts--eh, Schotz--the modest man you helped me to choose!"

The sick man's face was every minute taking on the lines of hope and manly force. The other man watched him with tender eyes, in which the pity was carefully veiled.

"Yes, we chose him well, my President," said Joseph, with almost a swagger.

"You will never know how great is my grat.i.tude, Schotz," suggested the President, "because you can never know from what you saved me--you and the toy-shop. The day when first I came here I had fallen into a pit digged by my own nature. You showed me the way out." His eyes were on the sick man, and he chose the words that would hearten most. "It was a great service you did me--and, through me, this great land of ours."

There was a light in Joseph's eyes that had been absent for many days.

"And now it is over." The President drew a breath so great that his gaunt frame expanded. He settled into a chair near the bed with a sigh of restfulness. "The boys will come home. Their mothers will meet them.

Their fathers will grip their hands. No, I will not think of those who will be missing--the time for that has pa.s.sed. The children will hang about their father's neck. And they will be together." The light grew in the President's eyes, until it seemed they blazed with a love which was that of child and father in one and contained the pa.s.sion and tenderness of the universal lover.

Then the President rose, shaking himself like a great spaniel and laughing from delight in living.

"There are things to be done--oh, the fight is not over. Perhaps it is only begun. But to-day is my perfect moment--the first perfect moment of my life, G.o.d knows." He paused and raised himself to his full stature--challenging his fate. "It is enough to have lived for. I am content!"

He turned to Schotz again, and his face was radiant with steadfast brightness.

"There will be a future, my friend. We are ready for it, are we not? I know the path will be clear. I have begun--the first thing to be done is to heal. Beyond that"--he paused, and his forehead contracted slightly as if from doubt--"all is in the shadow." A veil made vague the joyousness of his eyes. It seemed to Joseph that his great friend was looking upon something that he himself could not see. The face brightened--the eyes opened wide--became luminous.... The President took up his words in an altered tone. "Beyond that--I cannot see," he ended, happily.

Joseph watched him for a moment. Then, uneasy, he put out his hand and touched him timidly on the sleeve. The President smiled at him again.

There seemed to be no transition, and yet--they were back again in the world where things were to be done and--borne.

"And now, friend Joseph" (the President took up again the task he had set himself in the shadowed toy-shop), "when we were in the conquered city I found a toy--" He interrupted himself to laugh. "It was the only loot I permitted myself."

Joseph stared at him with puzzled expectation.

"For, after all, toys are the only things that are worth the consideration of wise folks like you and me." He was busily extricating a package from his pocket. It was done up in many wrappings. He watched while the sick man pulled off the papers, one after another. Joseph became angry with them--they seemed endless. Then the President chuckled gleefully, for he saw the color coming into Joseph's face. At last the toy stood in Joseph's hand revealed--a little tin soldier. Joseph looked at it in wonder.

"But what--?" he began. Then, "Why, it is the old uniform--he carries the tricolor. Where did you find Napoleon's soldier, my President?"

The President watched him tenderly.

"That is my secret, friend Joseph. Does he look to you like the little color-bearer, my friend, that marched gayly out, in the sparkling sunshine? But see--he is no child--his hair is gray." He bent forward.

He saw a spasm of pain contract the worn face. He saw the involuntary movement of muscles when tortured nerves cry out. He saw the stark will of the man who sternly commanded his anguish to be decent and to make no moan.

"He is a soldier, my Joseph, one of my soldiers, and in the evening he is doing the greatest deed of all." The President's voice had sunk into a cadence which was melodious with all the pain the world has known--and all the joy. He held with his own the sufferer's eyes so that he could not fail to understand.

"He is a hero--!"

The President sat with the sick man in a pregnant silence, while the color came back into the face of the man on the bed. At last there came a smile. When he was satisfied that his work was done, the President rose. For a moment his hand touched Joseph's brow as the sculptor does his clay, with that touch which is a caress.