"Isn"t that wonderful?" Jean breathed.
"Everything is wonderful to her," the Doctor told Derry, "she lives on the heights."
"But the lilies of France, Daddy--! Can"t you see our men and the lilies of France?"
Derry saw them, indeed,--a glorious company--!
"Oh, if I were a man," Jean said, and stopped. She stole a timid glance at him. The question that he had dreaded was in her eyes.
They fell into silence. Jean finished her parfait. Derry"s was untouched.
Then the music brought them again to their feet, and they danced. The Doctor smoked alone. Back of him somebody murmured, "It is Derry Drake."
"Confounded slacker," said a masculine voice. Then came a warning "Hush," as Derry and Jean returned.
"It is snowing," Derry told the Doctor. "I have ordered my car."
Late that night when the Doctor rode forth again alone in his own car on an errand of mercy, he thought of the thing which he had heard.
Then came the inevitable question: why wasn"t Derry Drake fighting?
CHAPTER V
THE SLACKER
It was at the Witherspoon dinner that Jean McKenzie first heard the things that were being said about Derry.
"I can"t understand," someone had remarked, "why Derry Drake is staying out of it."
"I fancy he"ll be getting in," Ralph Witherspoon had said. "Derry"s no slacker."
Ralph could afford to be generous. He was in the Naval Flying Corps.
He looked extremely well in his Ensign"s uniform, and he knew it; he was hoping, in the spring, for active service on the other side.
"I don"t see why Derry should fight. I don"t see why any man should.
I never did believe in getting into other people"s fusses."
It was Alma Drew who said that. n.o.body took Alma very seriously. She was too pretty with her shining hair and her sea-green eyes, and her way of claiming admiration.
Jean had recognised her when she first came in as the girl she had seen descending from her motor car with Derry Drake on the night of the Secretary"s dinner. Alma again wore the diamond-encrusted comb. She was in sea-green, which matched her eyes.
"If I were a man," Alma pursued, "I should run away."
There was a rustle of uneasiness about the table. In the morning papers had been news of Italy--disturbing news; news from Russia--Kerensky had fled to Moscow--there had been pictures of our men in gas masks! It wasn"t a thing to joke about. Even Alma might go too far.
Ralph relieved the situation. "Oh, no, you wouldn"t run away," he said; "you don"t do yourself justice, Alma. Before you know it you will be driving a car over there, and picking me up when I fall from the skies."
"Well, that would be--compensation--." Alma"s lashes flashed up and fluttered down.
But she turned her batteries on Ralph in vain. Jean McKenzie was on the other side of him. It would never be quite clear to him why he loved Jean. She was neither very beautiful nor very brilliant. But there was a dearness about her. He hardly dared think of it. It had gone very deep with him.
He turned to her. Her eyes were blazing. "Oh," she said, under her breath, "how can she say things like that? If I knew a man who would run away, I"d never speak to him."
"Of course. That"s why I fell in love with you--because you had red blood in your veins."
It was the literal truth. The first time that Ralph had seen Jean McKenzie, he had been riding in Rock Creek Park. She, too, was on horseback. It was in April. War had just been declared, and there was great excitement. Jean, taking the bridle path over the hills, had come upon a band of workers. A long-haired and seditious orator was talking to them. Jean had stopped her horse to listen, and before she knew it she was answering the arguments of the speaker. Rising a little in her stirrups, her riding-crop uplifted to emphasize her burning words, her cheeks on fire, her eyes shining, her hair blowing under her three-cornered hat, she had clearly and crisply challenged the patriotism of the speaker, and she had presented to Ralph"s appreciative eyes a picture which he was never to forget.
She had not been in the least embarra.s.sed by his arrival, and his uniform had made him seem at once her ally. "I am sure this gentleman will be glad to talk to you," she had said to her little audience.
"I"ll leave the field to him," and with a nod and a smile she had ridden off, the applause of the men following her.
Ralph, having put the long-haired one to rout, had asked the men if they knew the young lady who had talked to them. They had, it seemed, seen her riding with Dr. McKenzie. They thought she was his daughter.
It had been easy enough after that to find Jean on his mother"s visiting list. Mrs. Witherspoon and Mrs. McKenzie had exchanged calls during the life-time of the latter, but they had lived in different circles. Mrs. Witherspoon had aspired to smartness and to the friendship of the new people who brought an air of sophistication to the staid and sedate old capital. Mrs. McKenzie had held to old a.s.sociations and to old ideals.
Mrs. Witherspoon was a widow and charming. Dr. McKenzie was a widower and an addition to any dinner table. In a few weeks the old acquaintance had been renewed. Ralph had wooed Jean ardently during the short furloughs which had been granted him, and from long distance had written a bit c.o.c.ksurely. He had sent flowers, candy, books and then, quite daringly; a silver trench ring.
Jean had sent the ring back. "It was dear of you to give it to me, but I can"t keep it."
"Why not?" he had asked when he next saw her.
"Because--"
"Because is no reason."
She had blushed, but stood firm. She was very shy--totally unawakened--a little dreaming girl--with all of real life ahead of her--with her innocence a white flower, her patriotism a red one. If only he might wear that white and red above his heart.
As a matter of fact, Jean resented, sub-consciously, his air of possession, the certainty with which he seemed to see the end of his wooing.
"You can"t escape me," he had told her.
"As if I were a rabbit," she had complained afterwards to her father.
"When I marry a man I don"t want to be caught--I want to run to him, with my arms wide open."
"Don"t," her father advised; "not many men would be able to stand it.
Let them worship you, Jeanie, don"t worship."
Jean stuck her nose in the air. "Falling in love doesn"t come the way you want it. You have to take it as the good Lord sends it."
"Who told you that?"
"Emily--"
"What does Emily know of love?"
He had laughed and patted her hand. He was cynical generally about romance. He felt that his own perfect love affair with his wife had been the exception. He looked upon Emily as a sentimental spinster who knew practically nothing of men and women.
He did not realize that Emily knew a great deal about dolls that laughed and cried when you pulled a string. And that the world in Emily"s Toy Shop was not so very different from his own.