The Tin Soldier Part 73

They had been playing at cross purposes, and writing letters that merely skimmed the surface of their emotions. It had taken those moments in the Toy Shop to teach them their mistake.

Teddy, feeling that the occasion called for a relaxing of the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard rule, asked questions.

"How long can you stay?"

"Ten days."

"Are you going to Fwance?"

"I hope so."

"Mother says I've got to pray for the Germans."

"Teddy," Margaret admonished.

"Well, I rather think I would," Derry told him. "They need it."

This was a new angle. "Shall you hate to kill them?"

There was a stir about the table. The old man and the women seemed to hang on Derry's answer.

"Yes, I shall hate it. I hate all killing, but it's got to be done."

He spoke presently, at length, of what many men thought of war.

"We are red-blooded enough, we Americans, but I think we hate killing the other man rather more than we fear being killed. It's sickening--bayonet practice. Killing at long range is different. The children of my generation were trained to tender-heartedness. We looked after the birds and rescued kittens, and were told that wars were impossible--long wars. But war is not impossible, and it has come upon us, and we are finding that men must be brave not merely in the face of losing their own lives, but in the face of taking the lives of--others. I sometimes wonder what it must have seemed to those Germans who went first into Belgium. Some of them must have been kind--some of them must have asked to be shot rather than be set at the work of butchery.

"I sometimes think," he pursued, "that if we could give moving pictures of the war just as it is--in all its horror and hideousness--show the pictures in every little town in every country in the world, that war would stop at once. If the Germans could see themselves in those towns in Belgium--if the world could see them. If we could see men mowed down--wounded, close up, as our soldiers see them. If our people should be forced to look at those pictures, as the people of war-ridden countries have been forced to gaze upon realities, money would be provided and men provided in such amounts and numbers that those who began the war would be forced to end it on the terms the world would set for them.

"The fact that men are going into this war in spite of their aversion to killing shows the stuff of which they are made. It is like drowning kittens," he smiled a little. "It has to be done or the world would be overrun by cats."

Teddy, wide-eyed, was listening. "Do people drown kittens?" he asked.

"Oh, I didn't think they would." It was a sad commentary on the conditions of war that he was more heavily oppressed by the thought of drowned little cats than by the murder of men.

"My dear fellow," Derry said, "we won't talk about such things. I must beg your pardon for mentioning it."

The talk flowed on then in lighter vein. "Ralph Witherspoon is in town," Jean vouchsafed. "He had a bad fall and was sent home to get over it. Mrs. Witherspoon has asked me there to dine. I shall take you with me."

"I didn't know that people were dining out in these times."

"Mrs. Witherspoon prides herself on her conservation menus. She says that she serves war things, that she gives us nothing to eat that the men need, and she likes her friends about her."

"We shall miss Drusilla," Derry said. "I've been worried about her since the Huns recaptured those towns in France."

"Daddy wrote that she is not far from his hospital, doing splendid work, and that the men adore her."

"They would," said Derry. "She is a great-hearted creature. I can fancy her singing to them over there. You know what a wonder she was at that sort of thing--"

After dinner the General was eager to have his son to himself. "The women will excuse us while we smoke and talk."

Derry's eyes wandered to Jean. "All right," he said with an effort.

The General's heart tightened. His son was his son. The little girl in silver and rose was in a sense an outsider. She had not known Derry throughout the years, as his father had known him. How could she care as much?

Yet she did care. He realized how Derry's coming had changed her. He heard her laugh as she had not laughed in all the weeks of loneliness.

She came up and stood beside Derry, and linked her arm in his and looked up at him with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

"Isn't he--wonderful?" she asked, with a catch of her breath.

"Oh, take her away," the old gentleman said. "Go and talk to her somewhere."

Derry's face brightened. "You don't mind?"

"Of course not," stoutly. "Bronson says that the rain has stopped.

There's probably a moon somewhere, if you'll look for it."

Margaret went up to put the children to bed. Emily, promising to come back, withdrew to write a letter. The old man sat alone.

He limped into the blue room, and gazed indifferently around on its treasures. Once he had cared for these plates and cups--his quest for rare porcelains had been eager.

And now he did not care. The lovely glazed things were for the eye, not for the heart. He would have given them all for the touch of a loving hand, for a voice that grew tender--.

There was the patter of little feet on the polished floor.

Margaret-Mary in a diminutive blue dressing gown and infinitesimal slippers, with her curls brushed tidily up from the back of her neck and skewered with a hairpin, came over and laid her hand on his knee.

"Dus a 'itte 'tory?" she asked ingratiatingly. She adored stories.

He picked her up, and she curled herself into the corner of his arm.

Her mother found her there. "Mother's naughty little girl," she said, "to run away--"

"Let her stay," the General begged. "Somehow my heart needs her tonight."

CHAPTER XXVIII

SIX DAYS

Four days of Derry's furlough had pa.s.sed, four palpitating days, and now the hours that the lovers spent together began to take on the poignant quality of coming separation. Every moment counted, nothing must be lost, nothing must be left unsaid, nothing must be left undone which should emphasize their oneness of thought and purpose.

They read together, they walked together, they rode together, they went to church together. If they included the General in their plans it was because they felt his need of them, not theirs of him. They lived in a world created to survive for ten days and then to collapse like a p.r.i.c.ked bubble--

And it was because of the dread of collapse that Jean began to plan a structure of remembrance which should endure after Derry's departure.

"Darling," she said, "there are only six days--What shall we do with them?"

THE FIFTH DAY