Alma passed the picture and did not look at it, she passed the lovers
and did not see them. And she was saying as she passed, "I don't know
why any man should be expected to fight. I shouldn't if I were a man."
Jean drew a long breath. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Jean
McKenzie."
Derry laughed. "You were never like that. Not for the least minute.
You were afraid for the man you loved. It isn't fear with Alma."
But the thought of Alma did not trouble them long. There was too much
else in their world today. As they walked through the historic halls,
they had with them all the romance of the past--and so Robert Fulton
with his boats, Pere Marquette with his cross and beads, Frances
Willard in her strange old-fashioned dress spoke to them of the dreams
which certain inspired men and women have translated into action.
They talked of these things while they ate their lunch. The black
waiter, who knew Derry, hovered about them. His freedom, too, had been
the culmination of a dream.
"Men laugh at the dreamers," Derry said, "then honor them after they
are dead."
"That's the cruelty, the sadness of it, isn't it?"
"Not to the dreamer. Do you think that Pere Marquette cared for what
smaller minds might think, or Frances Willard? They had their vision
backed by a great faith in the rightness of things, and so Marquette
followed the river and planted the cross, and Frances Willard blazed
the way for the thing which has come to pass."
After lunch they motored to Drusilla's. They used one of Dr.
McKenzie's cars. Derry had ceased to draw upon his father's
establishment for anything. He lived at the club, and met his expenses
with the small balance which remained to his credit in the bank.
"You can give Jean whatever you think best," he told the Doctor, "but I
shall try to live on what I have until I go, and then on my pay."
"Your pay, my dear boy, will just about equal what you now spend in
tips."
"I think I shall like it. It's an adventure for rich men when they
have to be poor. That's why a lot of fellows have gone into it. They
are tired of being the last word in civilization. They want to get
down to primitive things."
"Mrs. Witherspoon can't imagine Derry Drake without two baths a day."
"Can't she? Well, Mrs. Witherspoon may find that Derry Drake is about
like the rest of the fellows. No better and no worse. There is no
disgrace in liking to be clean. The disgrace comes when one kicks
against a thing that can't be helped."
In the Doctor's car, therefore, they arrived at Drusilla's.
"We have come to tell you that we are going to be married."
"You Babes in the Wood!"
"Will you come to the wedding?
"Of course I'll come. Marion, do you hear? They are going to be
married."
"And after that, Drusilla,"--he smiled as he phrased it--"your Tin
Soldier will go to the wars."
Jean glanced from one to the other. "Is that what she called you--a
Tin Soldier?"
"It is what I called myself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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