The Tin Soldier Part 54

Julia and the cook helping at loose ends and dinner late!

What did it all mean?

"It means," said the Doctor, "that you are going to be married, my dear, at ten o'clock in the morning."

"But why, Daddy--" fear showed in her eyes--

"Ask Emily."

"Is he--going away,--Emily?"

"Yes, dear."

"But he mustn't. Derry, do you hear? He is going to France--and he mustn't--"

Derry took her trembling hands in his firm clasp. "He must go, you know that, dearest." His touch steadied her.

He leaned down to her and sang:--

"Jeanne D'Arc, Jeanne D'Arc-- Jeanne D'Arc, la victoire est pour vous."

Her head went up. The color came back to her cheeks.

"Of course," she said, and put away childish things that she might measure up to the stature of her lover's faith in her.

And it was Jean, the Woman, who talked long that night with her father before he went to France.

CHAPTER XXI

DERRY'S WIFE

It snowed hard the next morning. The General, waking, found the day nurse in charge. Bronson came in to get him ready for his breakfast.

There was about the old man an air of suppressed excitement. He hurried a little in his preparations for the General's bath. But everything was done with exactness, and it was not until the General was shaved and sitting up in his gorgeous mandarin robe that Bronson said, "I'd like to go out for an hour or two this morning, if you can spare me, sir--"

"In this snow? I thought you hated snow. You've always been a perfect p.u.s.s.y cat about the cold, Bronson."

"Yes, sir, but this is very important, sir."

The General ran his eye over the spruce figure.

"And you are all dressed up. I hope you are not going to be married, Bronson."

It was an old joke between them. Bronson was a pre-destined bachelor, and the General knew it.

But he liked to tease him.

"No, sir. I'll be back in time to look after your lunch, sir."

The General had been growing stronger, so that he spent several hours each day in his chair. When Bronson had gone, he rose and moved restlessly about the room. The day nurse cautioned him. "The Doctor doesn't want you to exert yourself, General Drake."

He was always courteous, but none the less he meant to have his own way. "Don't worry, Miss Martin. I'll take the responsibility."

He shuffled out into the hall. When she would have followed, he waved her back. "I am perfectly able to go alone," he told her.

She stood on the threshold watching him. She was very young and she was a little afraid of him. Her eyes, as she looked upon him, saw an obstinate old man in a gay dressing gown. And the man in the gay dressing gown felt old until he faced suddenly his wife's picture on the stairs.

It had been weeks since he had seen it, and in those weeks much had happened. Her smiling presence came to him freshly, as the spring might come to one housed through a long winter, or the dawn after a dark night.

"Edith!"

He leaned upon the bal.u.s.trade. The nurse, coming out, warned him.

"Indeed, you'd better stay in your room."

"I'm all right. Please don't worry. You 'tend to your knitting, and I'll take care of myself."

She insisted, however, on bringing out a chair and a rug. "Perhaps it will be a change for you to sit in the hall," she conceded, and tucked him in, and he found himself trembling a little from weakness, and glad of the support which the chair gave him.

It seemed very pleasant to sit there with Edith smiling at him. For the first time in many weeks his mind was at rest. Ever since Hilda had come he had felt the pressure of an exciting presence. He felt this morning free from it, and glad to be free.

What a wife Edith had been! Holding him always to his highest and best, yet loving him even when he stumbled and fell. Bending above him in her beautiful charity and understanding, raising him up, fostering his self-respect in those moments of depression when he had despised himself.

What other woman would have done it? What other woman would have kept her love for him through it all? For she had loved him. It had never been his money with her. She would have clung to him in sickness and in poverty.

But Hilda loved his money. He knew it now as absolutely as if she had said it. For the first time in weeks he saw clearly. Last night his eyes had been opened.

He had been roused towards morning by those soft sounds in the second room, which he had heard more than once in the pa.s.sing weeks. In his feverish moments, it had not seemed unlikely that his wife might be there, coming back to haunt, with her gentle presence, the familiar rooms. There was, indeed, her light step, the rustle of her silken garments--.

Half-asleep he had listened, then had opened his eyes to find the night-lamp burning, Hilda's book under it and Hilda gone!

The minutes pa.s.sed as still his ears were strained. There was not a sound in the house but that silken rustle. He wondered if he sought Edith if she would speak to him. He rose and reached for his dressing gown.

Hilda had grown careless; there was no screen in front of the second door, and the crack was wide. The General standing in the dark saw her before his wife's mirror, wearing his wife's jewels, wrapped in the cloak which his wife had worn--triumphant--beautiful!

It was that air of triumph which repelled him. It was a discordant note in the Cophetua theme. He had liked her in her nurse's white. In the trappings which did not belong to her she showed herself a trifle vulgar--less than a lady.

He had crept back to bed, and wide-awake, he had worked it all out in his mind. It was his money which Hilda wanted, the things that he could give her; he meant to her pink parasols and satin slippers, and diamonds and pearls and ermines and sables, and a check-book, with unlimited credit everywhere.

And to get the things that she wanted, she had given him that which had stolen away his brains, which might indeed have done more than that--which might have killed his soul.

He had heard her come in, but he had simulated sleep. She had seated herself by the little table, and had gone on with her book. Between his half-closed eyes he had studied her--seeing her with new eyes--the hard line of her lips, the long white hands, the heaviness of her chin.

Then he had slept, and had waked to find the day nurse on duty. He felt that he should be glad never to see Hilda again. He dreaded the night when he must once more speak to her.

He was very tired sitting there in his chair. The rug had slipped from his knees. He tried to reach for it and failed. But he did not want to call the day nurse. He wanted some one with him who--cared. He raised his poor old eyes to the lady in the picture. He was cold and tired.