"Love--in these times, Derry--isn't building a nest--and singing songs
in the tree tops on a May morning; it goes beyond just the man and the
woman; it even goes beyond the child. It goes as far as the future of
mankind. What the future of the world will be depends not so much on
how much you love Jean or she loves you, or on how much I loved and was
loved, but on how much that love will mean to the world. If we can't
give up our own for the sake of the world's ideal then love hasn't
meant what it should to you and to me, Derry--"
She rose as a group of men approached. "They want me to sing for them.
You won't mind?"
"My dear girl, I have heard of you everywhere. I believe that some of
the fellows say their prayers to you at night--"
She stood up and sang. Her hair caught the light from the room back of
her. She gave them a popular air or two, a hymn, "The Marseillaise--"
He missed nothing in her then. In spite of her paleness, the old fire
was there, the passion of patriotism--there was, too, a new note of
triumphant faith.
She needed no candles now, no red and white and blue for a
background--she did not even need her beauty, her voice was enough--
When she sat down and the men had gone she said to Derry, "Do you
remember when I last sang the 'Marseillaise' for you?"
"Yes."
He brought out from his pocket a tiny object and set it on the step, so
that the light from the open door shone on it.
"You gave it to me, Drusilla."
"Oh, my little tin soldier."
"And after all, he came to the wars--"
Very proudly the little soldier shouldered his musket.
He had indeed come to the wars, and the winds of France blew upon him,
the stars of France were over his head, the soil of France was beneath
his feet.
_Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt_--blew all the bugles of France, and
the little tin soldier was at last content!
Derry had, too, in his pocket a letter from Jean; he read to Drusilla
the part that belonged to her.
"Tell Drusilla that there's a chair in our dream house for her. I
often shut my eyes and see her in it, and I see Daddy and you, Derry,
all home safe from the war and the world at peace--"
"Safe and at home and the world at peace--. Will the time ever come,
Derry?"
"You know it will come. It must--"
It was three days later that Dr. McKenzie motored over for a late
supper with Drusilla and Derry. They were served by the old woman who
had mothered the lonely girl.
"To think," the Doctor said, as they sat at their frugal board, "to
think that we three should be here in the midst of all this; and yet a
year ago I was wondering what to do with the rest of my life, Drusilla
was running around telling people what kind of pictures to put on their
walls, and what kind of draperies to put at their windows, and Derry
was trying to pretend that he was not an elegant idler; and now--we are
seeing a world made over--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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