The Tin Soldier Part 45

But Derry was conscious, as the night wore on, and Bronson left him, and he sat alone, of more than the physical evidences of Hilda's presence; he was aware of the spiritual effect of her sojourn among them. She had stolen from them all something that was fine and beautiful. From Derry his faith in his father. From the General his constancy to his lovely wife. The structure of ideals which Derry's mother had so carefully reared for the old house had been wrecked by one who had first climbed the stairs in the garb of a sister of mercy.

He saw his father's future. Hilda, cold as ice, setting his authority aside. He saw the big house, the painted lady smiling no more on the stairs. Hilda's strange friends filling the rooms, the General's men friends looking at them askance, his mother's friends staying away.

Poor old Dad, poor old Dad. All personal feeling was swept away in the thought of what might come to his father. Yet none the less his own path lay straight and clear before him. The time had come for him to go.

BOOK TWO

Through the Crack

"I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!" the Tin Soldier cried as loud as he could, and he threw himself from the shelf... .

What could have become of him? The old man looked, and the little boy looked. "I shall find him," the old man said, but he did not find him.

For the Tin Soldier had fallen through a crack in the floor, and there he lay as in an open grave.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BROAD HIGHWAY

The Doctor's house in Maryland was near Woodstock, and from the rise of the hill where it stood one could see the buildings of the old Jesuit College, and the river which came so soon to the Bay.

In his boyhood the priests had been great friends of Bruce McKenzie.

While of a different faith, he had listened eagerly to the things they had to tell him, these wise men, the pioneers of missionary work in many lands, teachers and scholars. His imagination had been fired by their tales of devotion, and he had many arguments with his Covenanter grandfather, to whom the gold cross on the top of the college had been the sign and symbol of papacy.

"But, grandfather, the things we believe aren't so very different, and I like to pray in their chapel."

"Why not pray in your own kirk?"

"It's so bare."

"There's nothing to distract your thoughts."

"And I like the singing, and the lights and the candles--"

"We need no candles; we have light enough in our souls."

But Bruce had loved the smell of the incense, and the purple and red of the robes, and, seeing it all through the golden haze of the lights, his sense of beauty had been satisfied, as it was not satisfied in his own plain house of wors.h.i.+p.

Yet it had been characteristic of the boy as it was of the man that neither kirk nor chapel held him, and he had gone through life liking each a little, but neither overmuch.

Something of this he tried to express to Jean as, arriving at Woodstock in the early afternoon, they pa.s.sed the College. "I might have been a priest," he said, "if I hadn't been too much of a Puritan or a Pagan.

I am not sure which held me back--"

Jean shuddered. "How can people shut themselves away from the world?"

"They have a world of their own, my dear," said the Doctor, thoughtfully, "and I'm not sure that it isn't as interesting as our own."

"But there isn't love in it," said Jean.

"There's love that carries them above self--and that's something."

"It is something, but it isn't much," said his small daughter, obstinately. "I don't want to love the world, Daddy. I want to love Derry--"

The Doctor groaned. "I thought I had escaped him, for a day."

"You will never escape him," was the merciless rejoinder, but she kissed him to make up for it.

In spite of the fact of her separation for the moment from her lover, she had enjoyed the ride. There had been much wind, and a little snow on the way. But now the air was clear, with a sort of silver clearness--the frozen river was gray-green between its banks, there were blue shadows flung by the bare trees. As they pa.s.sed the College, a few black-frocked fathers and scholastics paced the gardens.

Jean wished that Derry were there to see it all. It was to her a place of many memories. Most of the summers of her little girlhood had been spent there, with now and then a Christmas holiday.

The house did not boast a heating plant, but there were roaring open fires in all the rooms, except in the Connollys' sitting room, which was warmed by a great black stove.

The Connollys were the caretakers. They occupied the left wing of the house, and worked the farm. They were both good Catholics, and Mrs.

Connolly looked after the little church at the crossroads corner, where the good priests came from the College every week to say Ma.s.s. She was a faithful, hard-working, pious soul, with her mind just now very much on her two sons who had enlisted at the first call for men, and were now in France.

She talked much about them to Jean, who came into the kitchen to watch her get supper. The deep, dark, low-ceiled room was lighted by an oil lamp. The rocking chair in which Jean sat had a turkey-red cus.h.i.+on, and there was another turkey-red cus.h.i.+on in the rocking chair on the other side of the cookstove. They ate their meals on the table under the lamp. It was only when guests were in the house that the dining room was opened.

The Doctor and Jim Connolly were at the barn, where were kept two fat mules, a fat little horse, a fat little cow, and a pair of fat pigs.

There were also a fat house dog, and a brace of plump p.u.s.s.ies, for the Connollys were a plump and comfortable couple who wanted everything about them comfortable, and who had had little to worry them until the coming of the war.

Yet even the war could not shake Mrs. Connolly's faith in the rightness of things.

"I was glad to have our country get into it, and to have my sons go.

If they had stayed at home, I shouldn't have felt satisfied."

"Didn't it nearly break your heart?"

Mrs. Connolly, beating eggs for an omelette, shook her head. "Women's hearts don't break over brave men, Miss Jean. It is the sons who are weak and wayward who break their mothers' hearts--not the ones that go to war."

She poured the omelette into a pan. "When I have a bad time missing them, I remember how the Mother of G.o.d gave her blessed Son to the world. And He set the example, to give ourselves to save others. No, I don't want my boys back until the war is over."

Jean said nothing. She rocked back and forth and thought about what Mary Connolly had said. One of the fat p.u.s.s.ies jumped on her lap and purred. It was all very peaceful, all as it had been since some other cook made omelettes for the little aristocrat of an Irish grandmother who would not under any circ.u.mstances have sat in the kitchen on terms of familiarity with a dependent. The world had progressed much in democracy since those days. Those who had fought in this part of the country for liberty and equality had not really known it. They had seen the Vision, but it was to be given to their descendants to realize it.

Jean rocked and rocked. "I hate war," she said, suddenly. "I didn't until Daddy said he was going, and then it seemed to come--so near--all the time I am trying to push the thought of it away. I wouldn't tell him, of course. But I don't want him to go."

"No, I wouldn't tell him. We women may be scared to death, but it ain't the time to tell our men that we are scared."

"Are you scared to death, Mrs. Connolly?"

The steady eyes met hers. "Sometimes, in the night, when I think of the wet and cold, and the wounded groaning under the stars. But when the morning comes, I cook the breakfast and get Jim off, and he don't know but that I am as cheerful as one of our old hens, and then I go over to the church, and tell it all to the blessed Virgin, and I am ready to write to my boys of how proud I am, and how fine they are--and of every little tiny thing that has happened on the farm."

Thus the heroic Mary Connolly--type of a million of her kind in America--of more than a million of her kind throughout the world--hiding her fears deep in her heart that her men might go cheered to battle.