Part 75 (1/2)

But Minna was flus.h.i.+ng as she spoke. The flush dissipated and she drew up her chin when Stransky, looking around, recognized her with a merry, confident wave of his hand.

”See, he's a captain and he wears an iron cross!” said Marta as Stransky hastened toward them.

”He acts like it!” a.s.sented Minna grudgingly.

Eager, leviathan, his cap doffed with a sweeping gesture as he made a low bow, Stransky was the very spirit of retributive victory returning to claim the ground that he had lost.

”Well, this is like getting home again!” he cried.

”So I see!” said Minna equivocally.

Stransky drew his eyes together, sighting them on the bridge of his nose thoughtfully at this dubious reception.

”I came back for the chance to kiss a good woman's hand,” he observed with a profound awkwardness and looking at Minna's hand. ”Your hand!” he added, the cast in his eyes straightening as he looked directly at her appealingly.

She extended her finger-tips and he pressed his lips to them. Then she drew back a step, a trifle pale, her eyes sad and questioning, more than ever Madonna-like, and curled her arm around little Clarissa Eileen, who had stolen to her mother's side.

”What is that?” asked Clarissa Eileen, pointing to the cross on Stransky's breast.

”That,” observed Stransky deliberately, ”is a little piece of metal that I got for an inspiration of manhood. It doesn't cost the price of a day's rations, but it's one of the things which money can't buy--not yet--in this commercial age. One of those inst.i.tutions of barbarism that we anarchists call government gave it to me, and I'll never part with it!”

”Because he was a brave soldier, Clarissa,” explained Marta in simpler terms. ”Because he was ready to die for his country.”

”And for your mother!” put in Stransky, seizing Clarissa in his great hands and lifting her lightly to the level of his face. ”Oh, I've got stories,” he said to her, ”a soldier-man's stories, to tell you, young lady, one of these days--and such stories!”

He crossed his eyes over his big nose in a fas.h.i.+on that made Clarissa clap her hands and burst into a peal of laughter.

”You're an awfully funny man!” she declared as Stransky set her down.

”So your mother thinks,” said Stransky, blinking at Minna, who had indulged in a smile which his remark promptly ironed out.

This irrepressible soldier, given so much as an inch, would be demanding a province. But erasing a smile is not destroying the fact of it.

Stransky took heart for the charge on seeing a breach in the enemy's lines.

”Yes, I was fighting for you!” he burst out to Minna. ”When the other fellows were reading letters from their sweethearts I was imagining letters from you. I even wrote out some and posted them from one pocket to another, in place of the regular mails.”

”What did you say in those letters?” asked Marta.

”Why, you're big and awkward and cross-eyed, Stransky, but you've a way with you, and maybe--”

”Humph!” sniffed Minna.

”I kept seeing the way you looked when you belted me one in the face,”

he went on unabashed to Minna, ”and knocked any anarchism out of me that was left after the sh.e.l.l burst. I kept seeing your face in my last glimpse when the Grays made me run for it from your kitchen door before I had half a chance for the oration crying for voice. You were in my dreams! You were in battle with me!”

”This sounds like a disordered mind,” observed Minna. ”I've heard men talk that way before.”

”Oh, I have talked that way to other women myself!” said Stransky.

”Yes,” said Minna bitterly. His candor was rather unexpected.