Part 57 (2/2)

”You?”

”Yes. Why not, Derry?”

”I won't have you sacrificed.”

”But you want me to be brave.”

”Yes. But not burdened. I won't have it, my dear.”

”But--you promised your mother. I am sure she would be glad to let me keep your promise.”

She was brave now. Braver than he knew.

”I can't see it,” he said, fiercely. ”I can see myself leaving you with Emily, in your own house--to live your own life. But not to sit in Dad's room, day after day, sacrificing your youth as I sacrificed my childhood and boyhood--my manhood--. I am over thirty, Jean, and I have always been treated like a boy. It isn't right, Jean; our lives are our own, not his.”

”It is right. n.o.body's life seems to be his own in these days. And you must go--and I can't leave him. He is so old, and helpless, Derry, like the poor p.u.s.s.y-cat over there in France. His eyes are like that--hungry, and they beg--. And oh, Derry, I mustn't be like Polly Ann, on a pink cus.h.i.+on--.”

She tried to laugh and broke down. He caught her up in his arms.

Light as thistledown, young and lovely!

She sobbed on his heart, but she held to her high resolve. He must go--and she would stay. And at last he gave in.

He had loved her dearly, but he had not looked for this, that she would give herself to hardness for the sake of another. For the first time he saw in his little wife something of the heroic quality which had seemed to set his mother apart and above, as it were, all other women.

BOOK THREE

The Bugle Calls

The wooden trumpeters that were carved on the door blew with all their might, so that their cheeks were much larger than before. Yes, they blew ”Trutter-a-trutt--trutter-a-trutt--” ...

CHAPTER XXIII

THE EMPTY HOUSE

Jean's world was no longer wonderful--not in the sense that it had once been, with all the glamour of girlish dreams and of youthful visions.

She had never thought of life as a thing like this in the days when she had danced down to the confectioner's, intent on good times.

But now, with her father away, with Derry away, with the city frozen and white, and with not enough coal to go around, with many of the rooms in the house shut that fuel might be conserved, with Margaret and the children and Nurse installed as guests at the General's until the weather grew warmer, with Emily transforming her Toy Shop into a surgical dressings station, and with her father-in-law turning over to her incredible amounts of money for the Red Cross and Liberty Bonds and War Stamps, life began to take on new aspects of responsibility and seriousness.

She could never have kept her balance in the midst of it all, if Derry had not written every day. Her father wrote every day, also, but there were long intervals between his letters, and then they were apt to arrive all at once, a great packet of them, to be read and re-read and pa.s.sed around.

But Derry's letters, brought to her room every morning by Bronson, contained the elixir which sent her to her day's work with s.h.i.+ning eyes and flushed cheeks. Sometimes she read bits of them to Bronson.

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