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Page 62
"What you said 'to her,' corporal?" repeated Evelyn. "Can't you tell me
what it was? I would try so hard to help you. I might perhaps."
"Who knows?" smiled the corporal, "It is true that Americans work magic.
And the Sister is of a goodness! But yes. Yet the Sister may laugh at
me, for it is a thing entirely childish, my trouble."
"I will not laugh at you, Corporal," said Evelyn, gravely, and felt
something wring her heart.
"If--then--if the Sister will not think it foolish--I will tell." The
Sister's answer was to stroke his fingers. "It is my child, my little
girl," Duplessis began in his deep, weak tones. "It was to her I made
the promise."
"What promise?" prompted Evelyn softly, as he stopped.
"One sees," the deep voice began again, "that when I told them goodbye,
the mother and Marie my wife, and the _petite_, who has five years,
then I started away, and would not look back, because I could not well
bear it, Sister. And suddenly, as I strode to the street from our
cottage, down the brick walk, where there are roses and also other
flowers, on both sides--suddenly I heard a cry. And it was the voice of
little Jeanne, the _petite_. I turned at that sound, for I could not
help it, Sister, and between the flowers the little one came running,
and as I bent she threw her arms about my neck and held me so tight,
tight that I could not loosen the little hands, not without hurting her.
'I will not let you go--I will not let you go.' She cried that again and
again. Till my heart was broken. But all the same, one had to go. One
was due to join the comrades at the station, and the time was short. So
that, immediately, I had a thought. 'My most dear,' I spoke to her. 'If
thou wilt let me go, then I promise to send thee a great, beautiful
doll, all in white, as a bride, like the cousin Annette at her wedding
last week.' And then the clinging little hands loosened, and she said,
wondering--for she is but a baby--'Wilt thou promise, my father?' And I
said, 'Yes,' and kissed her quickly, and went away. So that now that I
am wounded and am to die, that promise which I cannot keep to my
_petite_, that promise hinders me to die."
The deep, sad voice stopped and the honest eyes of the peasant boy
looked up at Evelyn, burning with the pain of his body and of his soul.
And as Evelyn looked back, holding his hand and stroking it, it was as
if the furnace of the soldier's pain melted together all the things she
had ever cared to do. Yet it was a minute before she spoke.
"Corporal," she said, "your little girl shall have her doll, I will take
it to her and tell her that her father sent it. Will you lie very still
while I go and get the doll?"
The brown eyes looked up at her astounded, radiant, and the man caught
the hem of her white veil and kissed it. "But the Americans--they do
magic. You shall see, Sister, if I shall be still. I will not die before
the Sister returns. It is a joy unheard of."
The girl ran out of the hospital and away into Paris, and burst upon
Madame. Somehow she told the story in a few words, and Madame was crying
as she laid "La Marquise" in a box.
"It is Mademoiselle who is an angel of the good God," she whispered, and
kissed Evelyn unexpectedly on both cheeks.
Corporal Duplessis lay, waxen, starry-eyed, as the American Sister came
back into the ward. His look was on her as she entered the far-away
door, and he saw the box in her arms. The girl knelt and drew out the
gorgeous plaything and stood it by the side of the still, bandaged
figure. An expression as of amazed radiance came into the fast-dimming
eyes--into those large, brown, childlike eyes which had seen so little
of the gorgeousness of earth. His hand stirred a very little--enough,
for Evelyn quickly moved the gleaming satin train of the doll under the
groping fingers. The eyes lifted to Evelyn's face and the smile in them
was that of a prisoner who suddenly sees the gate of his prison opened
and the fields of home beyond. It mattered little, one may believe, to
the welcoming hosts of heaven that the angel at the gate of release for
the child-soul of Corporal Duplessis, the poilu, was only Robina's doll!
DUNDONALD'S DESTROYER
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