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. Nobody 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 embarrassed 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
associations 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 cocksurely. 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.
Alma, having turned a cold shoulder to Ralph, was still proclaiming her
opinion of Derry Drake to the rest of the table. "He is rich and young
and he doesn't want to die--"
"There are plenty of rich young men dying, Alma," said Mrs.
Witherspoon, "and it is probably as easy for them as for the poor
ones--"
"The poor ones won't mind being muddy and dirty in the trenches," said
Alma, "but I can't fancy Derry Drake without two baths a day--"
"I can't quite fancy him a slacker." There was a hint of satisfaction
in Mrs. Witherspoon's voice. Her son and Derry Drake had gone to
school together and to college. Derry had outdistanced Ralph in every
way; but now it was Ralph who was leaving Derry far behind.
Jean wished that they would stop talking. She felt as she might had
she seen a soldier stripped of sword and stripes and shamed in the eyes
of his fellows.
"Wasn't he in the draft?" she asked Ralph.
"Too old. He doesn't look it, does he? It's a bit hard for the rest
of us fellows to understand why he keeps out--"
"Doesn't he ever try to--explain?"
Ralph shook his head. "Not a word. And he's beginning to stay away
from things. You see, he knows that people are asking questions, and
you hear what they are calling him?"
"Yes," said Jean, "a coward."
"Well, not exactly that--"
"There isn't much difference, is there?"
And now Alma's cool voice summed up the situation. "A man with as much
money as that doesn't have to be brave. What does he care about public
opinion? After the war everybody will forgive and forget."
Coolly she challenged them to contradict her. "You all know it. How
many of you would dare cut the fellow who will inherit his father's
millions?"
Mrs. Witherspoon tried to laugh it off; but it was true, and Alma was
right. They might talk about Derry Drake behind his back, but they'd
never omit sending a card to him.
Jean ate her duckling in flaming silence, ate her salad, ate her ice,
drank her coffee, and was glad when the meal ended.
The war from the beginning had been for her a sacred cause. She had
yearned to be a man that she might stand in the forefront of battle.
She had envied the women of Russia who had formed a Battalion of Death.
Her father had laughed at her. "You'd be like a white kitten in a dog
fight."
It seemed intolerable that tongues should be busy with this talk of
young Drake's cowardice. He had seemed something so much more than
that. And he was a man--with a man's right to leadership. What was
the matter with him?
The night before she had slept little--Derry's voice--Derry's eyes!
She had gone over every word that he had said. She had risen early in
the morning to write in her memory book, and she had drawn a most
entrancing border about the page, with melting strawberry ice, lilies
of France, Cinderella slippers, and red-ink lobsters, rather
nightmarishly intermingled!
He had seemed so fine--so--she fell back on her much overworked word
_wonderful_--her heart had run to meet him, and now--it would have to
run back again. How silly she had been not to see.
After dinner they danced in the Long Room, which was rather famous from
a decorative point of view. It was medieval in effect, with a balcony
and tapestries, and some precious bits of armor. There was a lion-skin
flung over the great chair where Mrs. Witherspoon was enthroned.
Between dances, Jean and Ralph sat on the balcony steps, and talked of
many things which brought the red to Jean's cheeks, and a troubled
light into her eyes.
And it was from the balcony-steps that, as the evening waned, she saw
Derry Drake standing in the great arched doorway.
There was a black velvet curtain behind him which accentuated his
fairness. He did not look nineteen. Jean had a fleeting vision of a
certain steel engraving of the "Princes in the Tower" which had hung in
her grandmother's house. Derry was not in the least like those lovely
imprisoned boys, yet she had an overwhelming sense of his kinship to
them.
As young Drake's eyes swept the room, he was aware of Jean on the
balcony steps. She was in white and silver, with a touch of that
heavenly blue which seemed to belong to her. Her crinkled hair was
combed quaintly over her ears and back from her forehead. He smiled at
her, but she apparently did not see him.
He made his way to Mrs. Witherspoon. "I was so sorry to get here late.
But my other engagements kept me. If I could have dined at two places,
you should have had at least a half of me."
"We wanted the whole. You know Dr. McKenzie, Derry?"
The two men shook hands. "May I dance with your daughter?" Derry said,
smiling.
"Of course. She is up there on the stairs."
Jean saw him coming. Ever since Derry had stood in the door she had
been trying to make up her mind how she would treat him when he came.
Somebody ought to show him that his millions didn't count. She hadn't
thought of his millions last night. If he had been just the shabby boy
of the Toy Shop, she would have liked his eyes just as much, and his
voice!
But a slacker was a slacker! A coward was a coward! All the money in
the world couldn't take away the stain. A man who wouldn't fight at
this moment for the freedom of the world was a renegade! She would
have none of him.
He came on smiling. "Hello, Ralph. Miss McKenzie, your father says
you may dance with me--I hope you have something left?"
The blood sang in her ears, her cheeks burned.
"I haven't anything left--for you--" The emphasis was unmistakable.
[Illustration: "I haven't anything left for you."]
Even then he did not grasp what had happened to him. "Ralph will let
me have one of his--be a good sport, Ralph."
"Well, I like that," Ralph began. Then Jean's crisp voice stopped him.
"I am not going to dance any more--my head aches. I--I shall ask Daddy
to take me--home--"
It was all very young and obvious. Derry gave her a puzzled stare.
Ralph protested. "Oh, look here, Jean. If you think you aren't going
to dance any more with me."
"Well, I'm not. I am going home. Please take me down to Daddy."
It seemed a long time before the blurred good-byes were said, and Jean
was alone with her father in the cozy comfort of the closed car.
"Do you love me, Daddy?"
"My darling, yes."
"May I live with you always--to the end of my days?"
He chuckled. "So that was it? Poor Ralph!"
"You know you are not sorry for him, Daddy. Don't be a hypocrite."
He drew her close to him. "I should be sorry for myself if he took you
from me."
She clung to him. "He is not going to take me away."
"Was that what you were telling him on the balcony stairs?"
"Yes. And he said I was too young to know my own mind. That I was a
sleeping Princess--and some day he would wake me--up--"
"Oh."
"And he is not the Prince, Daddy. There isn't any Prince."
She had shut resolutely away from her the vision of Derry Drake as she
had seen him on the night of Cinderella. She would have no
white-feathered knight! Princes were brave and rode to battle!