Part 32 (2/2)
”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.”
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