The Crusader
By Mary Jane Hammett
BERT PIRTLE fidgeted impatiently with his newspaper until the last loose thread had been severed by his wife’s little sharp teeth, and with a gesture of finality she had taken off her thimble; then he bore the robe off to the bedroom.
Drawing it down over his head and shoulders before the bureau glass, he perceived that a miracle had taken place: suddenly, as the folds of the garment had settled, Bert Pirtle had been whisked away, was gone from this room wherein every night for seven years he had slept with his wife. In the place where he had been stood a stranger, though perhaps not a strange man, for the newcomer seemed rather a spirit, a symbol, than a thing of frail bone and flesh. The figure within the white robe—if figure it really was—loomed larger and taller than the vanished Bert Pirtle had ever been, and was for all its shapelessness more pronouncedly existent. Out of twin holes—neatly finished with button-hole stitching—in the peaked hood eyes burned with an almost ineffable glow of holy purpose. It was not a man that stood before the mirror now, but a spirit: the spirit of a nation, even a race.
As he stood there, not moving, Bert Pirtle saw a vision. In one of his old school-books had been a picture of a Crusader, a white surcoat bearing a large cross worn over his armor. He remembered the picture now, not only remembered it but faced it across the oak top of the bureau. For the first time he visualized that Crusader, realized the wonderful pageantry of the Crusades, really saw the flower of Christendom
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