Part 52 (1/2)

”You will never be more spiritual than you are at this moment. Youth is nearer Heaven than age. I have always thought that. As we grow old--we are stricken by--fear--of poverty, of disease--of death. It is youth which has faith and hope.”

Before he left her, he gave her a sacred charge. ”If anything happens, I know what you'll be to--Jean--and I can't tell you what a help you've been this morning.”

She was thrilled by that. And after he left her she thought much about him. Of what it would have meant to her to have a son like that.

Women had said to her, ”You should be glad that you have no boy to send--.” But she was not glad. Were they mad, these mothers, to want to hold their boys back? Had the days of peace held no dangers that they should be so afraid for them now?

For peace had dangers--men and women had been wors.h.i.+pping false G.o.ds.

They had set up a Golden Calf and had bowed before it--and their children, lured by luxury, emasculated by ease of living, had wanted more ease, more luxury, more time in which to--play!

And now life had become suddenly a vivid Crusade, with everybody marching in one direction, and the young men were manly in the old ways of strength and heroism, and the young women were womanly in the old way of sending their lovers forth, and in a new way, when, like Drusilla, they went forth themselves to the front line of battle.

To have children in these days, meant to have something to give. One need not stand before suffering humanity empty-handed!

War was a monstrous thing, a murderous thing--but surely this war was a righteous one--a fire which would cleanse the world. Men and women, because of it, were finding in themselves something which could suffer for others, something in themselves which could sacrifice, something which went beyond body and mind, something which reached up and touched their souls.

So, in the midst of darkness, Miss Emily had a vision of Light. After the war was over, things could never be as they had been before. The spirit which had sent men forth in this Crusade, which had sent women, would survive, please G.o.d, and show itself in a greater sense of fellows.h.i.+p--of brotherhood. Might not men, even in peace, go on praying as they were praying it now in war, the prayer of Cromwell's men, ”Oh, Lord, it's a hard battle, but it's for the rights of the common people--” Might not the rich young men who were learning to be the brothers of the poor, and the poor young men who were learning in a large sense of the brotherhood of the rich--might these not still clasp hands in a sacred cause?

Yes, she was sorry that she had no son. Slim and gray-haired, a little worn by life's struggle, her blood quickened at the thought of a son like Derry. The warmth of his handclasp, the glimpse of that inner self which he had given her, these were things to hold close to her heart. She had known on that first night that he was--different. She had not dreamed that she should hold him--close.

Rather pensively she arranged her window. It was snowing hard, and in spite of the fact that Christmas was only three days away, customers were scarce.

The window display was made effective by the use of Jean's purple camels--a sandy desert, a star overhead, blazing with all the realism of a tiny electric bulb behind it, the Wise Men, the Inn where the Babe lay, and in a far corner a group of shepherds watching a woolly flock--

Her cyclamen was dead. A window had been left open, and when she arrived one morning she had found it frozen.

She had thanked Ulrich Stolle for it, in a pleasantly worded note. She had not dared express her full appreciation, lest she seem fulsome.

Few men in her experience had sent her flowers. Never in all the years of her good friends.h.i.+p with Bruce McKenzie had he bestowed upon her a single bloom.

Several days had pa.s.sed, and there had been no answer to the note. She had not really expected an answer, but she had thought he might come in.

He came in now, with a great parcel in his arms. He was a picturesque figure in an enveloping cape and a soft hat pulled down over his gray hair, and with white flakes powdered over his shoulders.

”Good morning, Miss Bridges,” he said; ”did you think I was never coming?”

His manner of a.s.suming that she had expected him quite took Emily's breath away. ”I am glad you came,” she said, simply. ”It is rather dreary, with the snow, and this morning I found my cyclamen frozen on the shelf.”

He glanced up at it. ”We have other flowers,” he said, and, with a sure sense of the dramatic effect, untied the string of his parcel.

Then there was revealed to Miss Emily's astonished eyes not the flowers that she had expected, but four small plush elephants, duplicates in everything but size of the one she had loaned to Ulrich, and each elephant carried on his back a fragrant load of violets cunningly kept fresh by a gla.s.s tube hidden in his trappings.

”There,” said Ulrich Stolle, ”my father sent them. It is his taste, not mine--but I knew that you would understand.”

”But,” Miss Emily gasped, ”did he make them?”

”Most certainly. With his clever old fingers--and he will make as many more as you wish.”

Thus came white elephants back to Miss Emily's shelves. ”It seems almost too good to be true,” she said, sniffing the violets and smiling at him.

”Nothing is too good to be true,” he told her, ”and now I have something to ask. That you will come and see my father.”