The Tin Soldier Part 34

"Then you'll miss me, dearest?"

"You know I will, Daddy."

"But you will have your Derry." His jealousy forced that.

"As if it makes any difference about--you."

She hid her face against his coat. She felt suddenly that the war was a.s.suming a new and very personal aspect. Of course men had to go. But she and her father had never been separated--not for more than a day or week, or a month when she was at the sh.o.r.e.

"How long, Daddy?"

"G.o.d knows, dearest. Until I am not needed."

"But--" her lip trembled.

"You are going to be my brave little girl."

"I'll try--" the tears were running down her cheeks.

"You wouldn't have me not go, would you?"

She shook her head and sobbed on his shoulder. He soothed her and presently she sat up. Quite gallantly she agreed that she would stay with Emily. If he thought she was too young to marry Derry now, she would wait. If Derry went into it, it might be easier to let him go as a lover than as a husband--she thought it might be easier. Yes, she would try to sleep when she went upstairs--and she would remember that her old Daddy loved her, loved her, and she was to ask G.o.d to bless him--and keep him--when they were absent one from the other--.

She kissed him and clung to him and then went upstairs. She undressed and said her prayers, put Polly-Ann on her cus.h.i.+on, turned off the light, and got into bed.

Then she lay in the dark, facing it squarely.

The things she had said to her father were not true. She didn't want him to go to France. She didn't want Derry to go. She was glad that Derry's mother had made him promise. She didn't care who called him a coward. She cared only to keep her own.

There wasn't any sense in it, anyhow. Why should Daddy and Derry be blown to pieces--or made blind--or not come back at all? Just because a barbarian had brought his hordes into Belgium? Well, let Belgium take care of herself--and France.

She shuddered deeper down into the bed. She wasn't heroic. Hilda had been right about that. She was willing to knit miles and miles of wool, to go without meat, to go without wheat, to wear old clothes, to let the furnace go out and sit s.h.i.+vering in one room by a wood fire, she was willing to freeze and to starve, but she was not willing to send her men to France.

She found herself shaking, sobbing--.

Hitherto war had seemed a glorious thing, an inspiring thing. She had thrilled to think that she was living in a time which matched the days of Caesar and Alexander and of Napoleon, of that first Richard of England, of Charlemagne, of Nelson and of Francis Drake, of Grant and Lee and Lincoln.

Even in fiction there had been Ivanhoe and--and Alan Breck--and even poor Rawdon Crawley at Waterloo--fighters all, even the poorest of them, exalted in her eyes by their courage and the clash of arms.

But there wasn't any glory, any romance in this war. It was machine guns and bombs and dirt, and cold and mud; and base hospitals, and men screaming with awful wounds--and gas, and horrors, and nerve-shock and--frightfulness. She had read it all in the papers and in the magazines. And it had not meant anything to her, it had been just words and phrases, and now it was more than words and phrases--.

When the hordes of people had swept into Was.h.i.+ngton, changing it from its gracious calm into a seething and unsettling center of activities, she had been borne along on the wings of enthusiasm and of high endeavor. She had scolded women who would not work, she had scorned mothers and wives who had sighed and sobbed because their men must go.

She had talked of patriotism!

Well, she wasn't patriotic. Derry would probably hate her when she told him. But she was going to tell him. She wouldn't have him blown to pieces or made blind or not come back at all. And in the morning, she would beg Daddy--she would beg and beg!

As she sat up in bed and looked wildly about her, it seemed as if all the corners of the little room were haunted by specters. A long time ago she had seen Maude Adams in "L'Aiglon." She remembered now those wailing voices of the dead at Wagram. And in this war millions of men had died. It seemed to her that their souls must be pressing against the wall which divided them from the living--that their voices must penetrate the stillness which had always shut them out. "How dare you go on with it? Are men made only for this?"

She remembered now the thing that her father had said on the night after "Cinderella."

"If I had my way, it should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

For every man that they have tortured, we must torture one of theirs.

For every child mutilated, we must mutilate a child--for every woman--"

Her Daddy had said that. Her kind and tender Daddy. Was that what the war made of men? Would Daddy and Derry, when they went over, do that?

Torture and mutilate? Would they, would they? And would they come back after that and expect her to love them and live with them?

Well, she wouldn't. She would _not_. She would be afraid of them--of both of them.

If they loved her, they would stay with her. They wouldn't go away and leave her to be afraid--alone and crying in the dark, with all of those dead voices.

Emily tapped at the door. Came in. "My dear, my dear--. Oh, my poor little Jean."

After a long time her father was there, and he was giving her a white tablet and a drink of water.

"It will quiet her nerves, Emily. I didn't dream that she would take it like this."

CHAPTER XIV

s.h.i.+NING SOULS

The next morning Jean was ill. Derry, having the news conveyed to him over the telephone, rushed in to demand tragically of Dr. McKenzie, "Was it my fault?"

"It was the fault of too much excitement. Seventh heaven with you for hours, and then my news on top of it."

"What news?"

The Doctor explained. "It is going to tear me to pieces if she takes it like this. She was half-delirious all night, and begged and begged--"

"She doesn't want you to go?"

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, we've been a lot to each other. But she's such a little sport--and patriotic--n.o.body more so. She won't feel this way when she's herself again."

Derry stood drearily at the window looking out. "You think then she won't be able to see me for several days? I had planned such a lot of things."

The Doctor dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Life has a way of spoiling our plans, hasn't it? I had hoped for old age with Jean's mother."

That was something for youth to think of--of life spoiling things--of lonely old age!

"I wish," Derry said, after a pause, "that you'd let me marry her before you go."