The Tin Soldier Part 32

The lovely clubhouse as they came into it was gay with big-flowered curtains and warm with its roaring fires.

As they crossed the room together, they attracted much attention.

There was about them a fine air of exaltation--.

"Young blood, young blood," said an old gentleman in a corner. "Gad, I envy him. Look at her eyes--!"

But there was more than her eyes to look at. There were her cheeks, and her crinkled copper hair under the little hat, and the flower that she wore, and her white hands as she poured the tea.

They drank unlimited quant.i.ties of Orange Pekoe, and ate small mountains of toast. They were healthily happy and quite unexpectedly hungry, and the fact that they were sitting alone at the table gave the whole thing an enchanting atmosphere of domesticity.

"Ralph spoiled it the other day," Jean confided, "I had everything ready for you."

"How I hated him when I came in."

"Oh, did you?"

"Of course," and then they both laughed, and the old gentleman in the corner said to the woman who sat with him, "Let's get away. I can't stand it."

"I don't see why."

"You wouldn't see. But there was a time once when I loved a girl like that."

Drusilla and Captain Hewes coming in, after a canter through the Park, broke in upon the Paradise of the young pair.

Drusilla in riding togs still managed to preserve the picturesque quality of her beauty--a c.o.c.kade in her hat, a red flower in her lapel, a blue tie against her white s.h.i.+rt.

"And she does it so well," Derry said, as the two came towards them.

"In most women it would have an air of bad taste, but Drusilla never goes too far--"

Captain Hewes in tow showed himself a captured man. "I didn't know that American women could ride until Miss Gray showed me--today. It was rippin'."

Drusilla laughed. "It is worth more than the ride to have you say 'rippin" like that."

"She makes fun of me," the Captain complained; "some day I shall take her over to England and show her how our gentle maidens look up to me."

"Your gentle maidens," Drusilla stated, "are driving ambulances or making munitions. When the Tommies come marching home again they will find comrades, not clinging vines."

"And they'll jolly well like it," said the big Englishman; "a man wants a woman who understands--"

This was law and gospel to Derry. "Of course. Jean, dear, may I tell Drusilla?"

"As if you had to tell me," Drusilla scoffed; "it is written all over you."

"Is it?" Derry marvelled.

"It is. The whole room is lighted up with it. You are a lucky man, Derry,"--for a moment her bright eyes were shadowed--"and Jean is a lucky girl." She leaned down and kissed the woman that Derry loved.

"Oh, you Babes in the Wood--"

"By Jove," the Captain e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, much taken by the little scene, "do you mean that they are going to be married?"

"Rather," Drusilla mocked him. "But don't shout it from the housetops.

Derry is a public personage, and it might get in the papers."

"It is not to get in the papers yet," Derry said. "Dr. McKenzie won't let me tell Dad--he's too ill--but we told you because you are my good friend, Drusilla."

She might have been more than that, but he did not know it. When he went away with Jean, she looked after him wistfully.

"Good-bye, little Galahad," she said.

The Captain stared. "Oh, I say, do you call him that?"

She nodded.

"He's a knight in s.h.i.+ning armor--"

"I can't understand why he's not fightin'."

"n.o.body understands. There's something back of it, and meantime people are calling him a coward--"

"Doesn't look like a slacker."

"He isn't. I have sometimes thought," said wise Drusilla, "that it might be his father. He's a gay old bird, and Derry has to jack him up."

"Drink?"

"Yes. They say that Derry has followed him night after night--getting him home if he could; if not, staying with him."

"Hard lines--"

"And yet he is asking little Jean to marry him. I wonder if she will keep step with him."

"Why shouldn't she?"

"Because Derry is going to travel far and fast in the next few months,"

Drusilla prophesied.

Her face settled into tired lines. For the first time the Captain saw her divorced from her radiance. He set himself to cheer her.

"What is troubling you, dear woman?"

She was very frank, and she told him the truth. "I should have been glad to keep step with him myself."

He laid his hand over hers. "If you had, where would I be? From the moment I saw you, you filled my heart."

So, after all, she had been to him from the first, not a type but a woman. It had come to him like that, but not to her. "You're the bravest and best man I have ever met," she told him, "but I don't love you."

"I should be glad to wait," said the poor Captain, "until you could find something in me to like."

"I find a great deal to like," she said, "but it wouldn't be fair to give you anything less than love."