It was time for him to be getting back to the Lion House. They stopped again at the gate. "If you will keep the ring," he said, "I shall be glad to think that you have it. Jean gays Derry gave you a check. If it is not enough to buy pink parasols, will you let me give you another?" He was speaking with the ease of his accustomed manner.
"No; I am not an--adventuress, though you seem to think that I am, and to condemn me for it."
"I condemn you only for one thing--for that flat bottle behind the books."
"But you wanted it."
"For that reason you should have kept it away. You should have obeyed orders."
"You asked me to doff my cap, so I--doffed my discipline." She was standing on the ground, holding the door open as she talked; again he was aware of the charm of her pink and white.
"Good-bye, Hilda." He reached out his hand to her.
She took it. "I am going to France."
"When?"
"As soon as I can." She stepped back and the door was shut between them. As the car turned, Hilda waved her hand, and the General had a sense of sudden keen regret as the tall cloaked figure with its look of youth and resoluteness faded into the distance.
When he reached the Lion House the children were waiting. "Did you hear him roar?" Teddy asked as he climbed in.
"No."
"Well, he did, and we came out "cause it fwightened Peggy."
"Frightened--" from Nurse.
"Fr-ightened. But I liked the leopards best."
"Why?"
"Because they"re pre-itty."
"You can"t always trust--pretty things."
"Can"t you tre-ust--leopards--General Drake?"
The General was not sure, and presently he fell into silence. His mind was on a pretty woman whom he could not trust.
That night he said to Jean, "Hilda is going to France."
"Oh--how do you know?"
"I met her in the Park."
He was sitting, very tired, in his big chair. Jean"s little hand was in his.
"Poor Hilda," he said at last, looking into the fire, as if he saw there the vision of his lost dreams.
"Oh, no--" Jean protested.
"Yes, my dear, there is so much that is good in the worst of us, and so much that is bad in the best--and perhaps she struggles with temptations which never a.s.sail you."
Jean"s lips were set in an obstinate line. "Daddy was always saying things like that about Hilda."
"Well, we men are apt to be charitable--to beauty in distress." The General was keenly and humorously aware that if Hilda had been ugly, he might not have been so anxious about the pink parasol. He might not, indeed, have pitied her at all!
And now in Jean"s heart grew up a sharply defined fear of Hilda. In the old days there had been cordial dislike, jealousy, perhaps, but never anything like this. The question persisted in the back of her mind. If Hilda went to France, would she see Daddy and weave her wicked spells. To find the General melting into pity, in spite of the chaos which Hilda"s treachery had created, was to wonder if Daddy, too, might melt.
She wrote to Derry about it.
"I would try and see her if I knew what to say, but when I even think of it I am scared. I never liked her, and I feel now as if I should be glad to pin together the pages of my memory of her, as I pinned together the pages of one of my story books when I was a little girl.
There was a shark under water in the picture and two men were trying to get away from him. I hated that picture and shivered every time I looked at it, so I stuck in a pin and shut out the sight of it.
"Your father has had two letters from her since the day when he saw her in the Park. Bronson always brings the mail to me, and you know what a distinctive hand Hilda writes, there is no mistaking it. Your father dropped the letters into the fire, but she ought not to write to him, Derry, and I should like to tell her so.
"But if I told her, she would laugh at me, and that would be the end of it. For you can"t rage and tear and rant at a thing that is as cold as stone. Oh, my dearest, I need you so much to tell me what to do, and yet I would not have you here--
"I met Alma Drew the other day, and she said, as lightly as you please, "Do you know, I can"t quite fancy Derry Drake in the trenches."
"I looked at her for a minute before I could answer, and then I said, "I can fancy him with his back to the wall, fighting a thousand Huns--!"
"She shrugged her shoulders, "You"re terribly in love."
""I am," I said, and I hope I said it calmly, "but there"s more than love in a woman"s belief in her husband"s bravery--there"s respect.
And it"s something rather--sacred, Alma." And then I choked up and couldn"t say another word, and she looked at me in a rather stunned fashion for a moment, and then she said, "Gracious Peter, do you love him like that?" and I said, "I do," and she laughed in a funny little way, and said, "I thought it was his millions."
"I was perfectly furious. But you can"t argue with such people. I know I was as white as a sheet. "If anything should happen to Derry,"
I said, "do you think that all the money in the world would comfort me?"
"She stopped smiling. "It would comfort me," then suddenly she held out her hand. "But I fancy you"re different, and Derry is a lucky fellow." which was rather nice and human of her, wasn"t it?
"Life is growing more complicated than ever here in Washington. The crowds pour in as if the Administration were a sort of Pied Piper and had played a time, and the people who have lived here all their lives are waking to something like activity. Great buildings are going up as if some Aladdin had rubbed a lamp--. None of us are doing the things we used to do. We don"t even talk about the things we used to talk about, and we go around in blue gingham and caps, and white linen and veils, and we hand out sandwiches to the soldiers and sailors, and drive perfectly strange men in our cars on Government errands, and make Liberty Bond Speeches from many platforms, and all the old theories of what women should do are forgotten in the rush of the things which must be done by women. It is as if we had all been bewitched and turned into somebody else.
"Well, I wish that Hilda could be turned into somebody else. Into somebody as nice as--Emily--. But she won"t be. She hasn"t been changed the least bit by the war, and everybody else has, even Alma, or she wouldn"t have said that about your being lucky to have me. Are you lucky, Derry?
"And when Hilda sets her mind on a thing--. Oh, I can"t seem to talk of anything but Hilda--when she sets her mind on anything, she gets it in one way or another--and that"s why I am afraid of her."
Derry wrote back.
"Don"t be afraid of anything, Jean-Joan. And it won"t do any good to talk to Hilda. I don"t want you to talk to her. You are too much of a white angel to contend against the powers of darkness.
"As for my luck in having you, it is something which transcends luck--it just hits the stars, dearest.
"I wonder what the fellows do who haven"t any wives to anchor themselves to in a time like this? Through, all the day I have this hour in mind when I can write to you--and I think there are lots of other fellows like that--for I can see them all about me here in the Hut, bending over their letters with a look on their faces which isn"t there at any other time.