The Tin Soldier Part 76

"To go?"

"To have you."

"Please don't."

"Let me say this--that I acted like a cad; I'd like to feel that you've forgiven me."

"I have forgotten, which is better, isn't it?"

"How sweet you are--and all the sweetness is Derry's. Well, when I go over, will you pray for me, my dear?"

He was in dead earnest. "There are so few women--who pray--but I rather fancy that you must--"

All around them was surging talk. "How strange it seems," Jean said, "that we should be speaking of such things, here--"

"No," Ralph said, "it is not strange. I have a feeling that I shan't come back."

Alma Drew on the other side of him claimed his attention. "War is the great sensational opportunity. And there are people who like patriotism of the sound-the-trumpet-beat-the-drum variety--"

"You said that rather cleverly, Alma," Ralph told her, "but you mustn't forget that was the kind of patriotism our forefathers had, and it seemed rather effective."

"Men aren't machines," Jean said hotly. "They are flesh and blood, and so are women--a fife and drum or a bag-pipe means more to them than just crude music; the blood of their ancestors thrilled to the sound."

"As savages thrill to a tom-tom."

They stared at her.

"It is all savage," Alma said, crisply and coolly, "We are all murderers.

We are teaching our men to run Germans through with bayonets, and trying to make ourselves think that they aren't breaking the sixth commandment.

Yet in times of peace, when a man kills he goes to the electric chair--"

It was Derry who answered that. "If in times of peace I heard you scream and saw you set upon by thieves and murderers, and stood with my hands in my pockets while you were tortured and killed, would you call my non-interference laudable?"

"That's different."

"It is the same thing. The only difference lies in the fact that thousands of defenceless women and little children are calling. Would you have the nation stand with its hands in its pockets?"

Alma, cold as ice, challenged him: "Why should they call to us? We'll be sorry some day that we went into it."

Out of a dead silence, a man said: "Not long ago, I went into a sweet shop in England. A woman came in with two children. They were rosy children and round. They carried m.u.f.fs.

"She bought candy for them--and when she gave it to them, I saw that they had--no hands--"

A gasp went round the table.

"They were Belgian children."

That night Jean said to Derry with a sternness which set strangely upon her, "We must have friends in our House of Dreams. The latchstrings will always be out for people like Emily and Marion, and Drusilla, and Ulrich and Ralph--"

"Yes--"

"But not for Hilda and Alma."

THE NINTH DAY

It was on the ninth day that Derry waked his wife at dawn. "I've ordered the car. It rained in the night, and now--oh, there was never such a morning; there may never be such a morning for us again."

"What time is it, Derry?"

"Sunrise time--come and see."

Her window faced the east, and she saw all the pearl of it, and the faint rose and the amethyst and gold.

"We shall eat our breakfast ten miles from town," Derry said, as their car carried him out into the country, "and there's a lovesome garden--"

"With old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers and a fountain and a Cupid?"

"With all that--and more--"

The garden belonged to an old woman. For years and years she had planted flowers---tulips and hyacinths and poppies and lilies and gladiolus and larkspur and phlox and ladyslipper--there had always been a riot of color.

She had an old gardener, and she would stand over him, leaning on her silver-topped ebony cane, with a lace scarf covering her hair, and would point out the places to plant things.

But now in her garden she had strawberries and Swiss chard and sweet herbs, and rows and rows of peas and young onions and potatoes, with a place left for corn at the back, and tomatoes in every spare s.p.a.ce.

And there was lettuce, and an asparagus bed, and everything on this May morning was shouting to the sun.

"I had always thought," said the old lady to Derry, when he presented Jean, "that a vegetable garden was uninteresting. But it is a little world--with cla.s.s distinctions of its own, if you please. All the really useful vegetables we call common; it is the ones we can do without which are the aristocrats. The potatoes and cabbages and onions are really important, but I am proudest of my young peas and my peppers and cuc.u.mbers and tomatoes, and that's the way of the world, isn't it? If there was only an aristocracy things would stop, but the common folk could go on alone until the end of time."

She gave Jean a blue bowl to pick strawberries in; and Derry dug asparagus--the creamy shoots were tipped with pale purple and pink, deepening into green where they had stood too long in the sun.

"Aren't there any flowers?" Jean was anxious.

"Come and see." The old woman went ahead of them, her cane tap-tapping on the stone flags.

She opened a gate which was flanked by brick walls. "These," she said, whimsically, "are my jewels."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "These are my jewels."]

All the sweetness which had once spread over her domain was concentrated here, fragrance and flame--roses, iris, peonies--honeysuckle--ruby and emerald, amethyst and gold; a Cupid riding a swan, with water pouring from his quiver into a shallow marble basin.

"I should not have dared keep this, if it had not been for the other--"

the old woman told them. "I am very sure that in these days G.o.d walks in vegetable gardens--"

For breakfast they had strawberries and radishes, thin little corn cakes--and two fresh eggs from the chickens which most triumphantly occupied the conservatory.

"This is the only way I can do my bit," the old lady explained, "by helping with the world's food supply. My eyes are bad and I cannot sew, my fingers are twisted and I cannot knit, and Dennis is old--but we plan the garden and plant--"