"ARE WE DOWNHEARTED? NO!"
I
There are certain people who will never understand this story,people who live their lives by rule of thumb. Little lives they are,too, measured by the letter and not the spirit. Quite simple too.Right is right and wrong is wrong.
That shadowy No Man's Land between the trenches of virtue and sin,where most of us fight our battles and are wounded, and even die,does not exist for them.
The boy in this story belonged to that class. Even if he reads it hemay not recognise it. But he will not read it or have it read tohim. He will even be somewhat fretful if it comes his way.
"If that's one of those problem things," he will say, "I don't wantto hear it. I don't see why nobody writes adventure any more."
Right is right and wrong is wrong. Seven words for a creed, and allof life to live!
This is not a war story. But it deals, as must anything thatrepresents life in this year of our Lord of Peace, with war. Withwar in its human relations. Not with guns and trenches, but withmen and women, with a boy and a girl.
For only in the mass is war vast. To the man in the trench itreduces itself to the man on his right, the man on his left, the manacross, beyond the barbed wire, and a woman.
The boy was a Canadian. He was twenty-two and not very tall. Hisname in this story is Cecil Hamilton. He had won two medals forlife-saving, each in a leather case. He had saved people fromdrowning. When he went abroad to fight he took the medals along. Notto show. But he felt that the time might come when he would not besure of himself. A good many men on the way to war have felt thatway. The body has a way of turning craven, in spite of highresolves. It would be rather comforting, he felt, to have thosemedals somewhere about him at that time. He never looked at themwithout a proud little intake of breath and a certain swelling ofthe heart.
On the steamer he found that a medal for running had slipped intoone of the cases. He rather chuckled over that. He had a sense ofhumour, in spite of his seven-word creed. And a bit of superstition,for that night, at dusk, he went out on to the darkened deck andflung it overboard.
The steamer had picked him up at Halifax--a cold dawn, with a fewpinched faces looking over the rail. Forgive him if he swaggered upthe gangway. He was twenty-two, he was a lieutenant, and he was afighting man.
The girl in the story saw him then. She was up and about, in a shortsport suit, with a white tam-o'-shanter on her head and a whitewoolen scarf tucked round her neck. Under her belted coat she wore amiddy blouse, and when she saw Lieutenant Cecil Hamilton, withhis eager eyes--not unlike her own, his eyes were young andinquiring--she reached into a pocket of the blouse and dabbed herlips with a small stick of cold cream.
Cold air has a way of drying lips.
He caught her at it, and she smiled. It was all over for him then,poor lad!
Afterward, when he was in the trenches, he wondered about that. Hecalled it "Kismet" to himself. It was really a compound, that firstday or two, of homesickness and a little furtive stirring of anxietyand the thrill of new adventure that was in his blood.
On the second afternoon out they had tea together, she in hersteamer chair and he calmly settled next to her, in a chairbelonging to an irritated English lawyer. Afterward he went down tohis cabin, hung round with his new equipment, and put away thephotograph of a very nice Toronto girl, which had been propped upback of his hairbrushes.
They got rather well acquainted that first day.
"You know," he said, with his cup in one hand and a rather stalecake in the other, "it's awfully bully of you to be so nice to me."
She let that go. She was looking, as a matter of fact, after a tallman with heavily fringed eyes and English clothes, who had just goneby.
"You know," he confided--he frequently prefaced his speeches withthat--"I was horribly lonely when I came up the gangway. Then I sawyou, and you were smiling. It did me a lot of good."
"I suppose I really should not have smiled." She came back to himwith rather an effort. "But you caught me, you know. It wasn'trouge. It was cold cream. I'll show you."
She unbuttoned her jacket, against his protest, and held out thelittle stick. He took it and looked at it.
"You don't need even this," he said rather severely. He disapprovedof cosmetics. "You have a lovely mouth."
"It's rather large. Don't you think so?"
"It's exactly right."
He was young, and as yet more interested in himself than in anythingin the world. So he sat there and told her who he was, and what hehoped to do and, rather to his own astonishment, about the medals.
"How very brave you are!" she said.
That made him anxious. He hoped she did not think he was swanking.It was only that he did not make friends easily, and when he didmeet somebody he liked he was apt to forget and talk too much abouthimself. He was so afraid that he gulped down his tepid tea in ahurry and muttered something about letters to write, and got himselfaway. The girl stared after him with a pucker between her eyebrows.And the tall man came and took the place he vacated.
Things were worrying the girl--whose name, by the way, was Edith. Onprograms it was spelled "Edythe," but that was not her fault. Yes,on programs--Edythe O'Hara. The business manager had suggesteddeHara, but she had refused. Not that it mattered much. She had beenin the chorus. She had a little bit of a voice, rather sweet, andshe was divinely young and graceful.
In the chorus she would have remained, too, but for one of thosequeer shifts that alter lives. A girl who did a song and aneccentric dance had wrenched her knee, and Edith had gone on in herplace. Something of her tomboy youth remained in her, and for a fewminutes, as she frolicked over the stage, she was a youngster,dancing to her shadow.
She had not brought down the house, but a man with heavily fringedeyes, who watched her from the wings, made a note of her name. Hewas in America for music-hall material for England, and he wasshrewd after the manner of his kind. Here was a girl who frolickedon the stage. The English, accustomed to either sensuous or sedatedancing, would fall hard for her, he decided. Either that, or shewould go "bla." She was a hit or nothing.
And that, in so many words, he told her that afternoon.
"Feeling all right?" he asked her.
"Better than this morning. The wind's gone down, hasn't it?"
He did not answer her. He sat on the side of the chair and lookedher over.
"You want to keep well," he warned her. "The whole key to your doinganything is vitality. That's the word--Life."
She smiled. It seemed so easy. Life? She was full-fed with the joyof it. Even as she sat, her active feet in their high-heeled shoeswere aching to be astir.
"Working in the gymnasium?" he demanded.
"Two hours a day, morning and evening. Feel."
She held out her arm to him, and he felt its small, rounded muscle,with a smile. But his heavily fringed eyes were on her face, and hekept his hold until she shook it off.
"Who's the soldier boy?" he asked suddenly.
"Lieutenant Hamilton. He's rather nice. Don't you think so?"
"He'll do to play with on the trip. You'll soon lose him in London."
The winter darkness closed down round them. Stewards were busyclosing ports and windows with fitted cardboards. Through the nightthe ship would travel over the dangerous lanes of the sea with onlyher small port and starboard lights. A sense of exhilarationpossessed Edith. This hurling forward over black water, this senseof danger, visualised by precautions, this going to something newand strange, set every nerve to jumping. She threw back her rug, andgetting up went to the rail. Lethway, the manager, followed her.
"Nervous, aren't you?"
"Not frightened, anyhow."
It was then that he told her how he had sized the situation up. Shewas a hit or nothing.
"If you go all right," he said, "you can have the town. London's foryou or against you, especially if you're an American. If you goflat----"
"Then what?"
She had not though
t of that. What would she do then? Her salary wasnot to begin until the performances started. Her fare and expensesacross were paid, but how about getting back? Even at the best hersalary was small. That had been one of her attractions to Lethway.
"I'll have to go home, of course," she said. "If they don't like me,and decide in a hurry, I--I may have to borrow money from you to getback."
"Don't worry about that." He put a hand over hers as it lay on therail, and when she made no effort to release it he bent down andkissed her warm fingers. "Don't you worry about that," he repeated.
She did worry, however. Down in her cabin, not so tidy as theboy's--littered with her curiously anomalous belongings, a greatbunch of violets in the wash bowl, a cheap toilet set, elaboratehigh-heeled shoes, and a plain muslin nightgown hanging to thedoor--down there she opened her trunk and got out her contract.There was nothing in it about getting back home.
For a few minutes she was panicky. Her hands shook as she put thedocument away. She knew life with all the lack of illusion of twoyears in the chorus. Even Lethway--not that she minded his casualcaress on the deck. She had seen a lot of that. It meant nothing.Stage directors either bawled you out or petted you. That was partof the business.
But to-night, all day indeed, there had been something in Lethway'sface that worried her. And there were other things.
The women on the boat replied coldly to her friendly advances. Shehad spoken to a nice girl, her own age or thereabouts, and thegirl's mother or aunt or chaperon, whoever it was, had taken heraway. It had puzzled her at the time. Now she knew. The crowd thathad seen her off, from the Pretty Coquette Company--that had queeredher, she decided. That and Lethway.
None of the girls had thought it odd that she should cross the oceanwith Lethway. They had been envious, as a matter of fact. They hadbrought her gifts, the queer little sachets and fruit and boxes ofcandy that littered the room. In that half hour before sailing theyhad chattered about her, chorus unmistakably, from their smart,cheap little hats to their short skirts and fancy shoes. Herroommate, Mabel, had been the only one she had hated to leave. AndMabel had queered her, too, with her short-bobbed yellow hair.
She did a reckless thing that night, out of pure defiance. It was awinter voyage in wartime. The night before the women had gone down,sedately dressed, to dinner. The girl she had tried to speak to hadworn a sweater. So Edith dressed for dinner.
She whitened her neck and arms with liquid powder, and slicked upher brown hair daringly smooth and flat. Then she put on her oneevening dress, a black net, and pinned on her violets. She rougedher lips a bit too.
The boy, meeting her on the companionway, gasped.
That night he asked permission to move over to her table, and afterthat the three of them ate together, Lethway watching and sayinglittle, the other two chattering. They were very gay. They gambledto the extent of a quarter each, on the number of fronds, orwhatever they are, in the top of a pineapple that Cecil ordered in,and she won. It was delightful to gamble, she declared, and put thefifty cents into a smoking-room pool.
The boy was clearly infatuated. She looked like a debutante, and,knowing it, acted the part. It was not acting really. Life had onlytouched her so far, and had left no mark. When Lethway lounged awayto an evening's bridge Cecil fetched his military cape and they wenton deck.
"I'm afraid it's rather lonely for you," he said. "It's always likethis the first day or two. Then the women warm up and get friendly."
"I don't want to know them. They are a stupid-looking lot. Did youever see such clothes?"
"You are the only person who looks like a lady to-night," heobserved. "You look lovely. I hope you don't mind my saying it?"
She was a downright young person, after all. And there was somethingabout the boy that compelled candour. So, although she gatheredafter a time that he did not approve of chorus girls, was evenrather skeptical about them and believed that the stage should be anuplifting influence, she told him about herself that night.
It was a blow. He rallied gallantly, but she could see himstraggling to gain this new point of view.
"Anyhow," he said at last, "you're not like the others." Thenhastily: "I don't mean to offend you when I say that, you know. Onlyone can tell, to look at you, that you are different." He thoughtthat sounded rather boyish, and remembered that he was going to thewar, and was, or would soon be, a fighting man. "I've known a lot ofgirls," he added rather loftily. "All sorts of girls."
It was the next night that Lethway kissed her. He had left her alonemost of the day, and by sheer gravitation of loneliness she and theboy drifted together. All day long they ranged the ship, watched aboxing match in the steerage, fed bread to the hovering gulls fromthe stern. They told each other many things. There had been a man inthe company who had wanted to marry her, but she intended to have acareer. Anyhow, she would not marry unless she loved a person verymuch.
He eyed her wistfully when she said that.
At dusk he told her about the girl in Toronto.
"It wasn't an engagement, you understand. But we've been awfullygood friends. She came to see me off. It was rather awful. Shecried. She had some sort of silly idea that I'll get hurt."
It was her turn to look wistful. Oh, they were getting on! When hewent to ask the steward to bring tea to the corner they had found,she looked after him. She had been so busy with her own worries thatshe had not thought much of the significance of his neatly beltedkhaki. Suddenly it hurt her. He was going to war.
She knew little about the war, except from the pictures inillustrated magazines. Once or twice she had tried to talk about itwith Mabel, but Mabel had only said, "It's fierce!" and changed thesubject.
The uniforms scattered over the ship and the precautions taken atnight, however, were bringing this thing called war very close toher. It was just beyond that horizon toward which they were heading.And even then it was brought nearer to her.
Under cover of the dusk the girl she had tried to approach came upand stood beside her. Edith was very distant with her.
"The nights make me nervous," the girl said. "In the daylight it isnot so bad. But these darkened windows bring it all home to me--thewar, you know."
"I guess it's pretty bad."
"It's bad enough. My brother has been wounded. I am going to him."
Even above the sound of the water Edith caught the thrill in hervoice. It was a new tone to her, the exaltation of sacrifice.
"I'm sorry," she said. And some subconscious memory of Mabel madeher say: "It's fierce!"
The girl looked at her.
"That young officer you're with, he's going, of course. He seemsvery young. My brother was older. Thirty."
"He's twenty-two."
"He has such nice eyes," said the girl. "I wish----"
But he was coming back, and she slipped away.
During tea Cecil caught her eyes on him more than once. He had takenoff his stiff-crowned cap, and the wind blew his dark hair round.
"I wish you were not going to the war," she said unexpectedly. Ithad come home to her, all at once, the potentialities of that trimuniform. It made her a little sick.
"It's nice of you to say that."
There was a new mood on her, of confession, almost of consecration.He asked her if he might smoke. No one in her brief life had everbefore asked her permission to smoke.
"I'll have to smoke all I can," he said. "The fellows say cigarettesare scarce in the trenches. I'm taking a lot over."
He knew a girl who smoked cigarettes, he said. She was a nice girltoo. He couldn't understand it. The way he felt about it, maybea cigarette for a girl wasn't a crime. But it led to otherthings--drinking, you know, and all that.
"The fellows don't respect a girl that smokes," he said. "That's theplain truth. I've talked to her a lot about it."
"It wasn't your friend in Toronto, was it?"
"Good heavens, no!" He repudiated the idea with horror.
It was the girl who had to readjust her ideas of life
that day. Shehad been born and raised in that neutral ground between the lines ofright and wrong, and now suddenly her position was attacked and shemust choose sides. She chose.
"I've smoked a cigarette now and then. If you think it is wrong I'llnot do it any more."
He was almost overcome, both at the confession and at herrenunciation. To tell the truth, among the older Canadian officershe had felt rather a boy. Her promise reinstated him in his ownesteem. He was a man, and a girl was offering to give something upif he wished it. It helped a lot.
That evening he laid out his entire equipment in his small cabin,and invited her to see it. He put his mother's picture behind hisbrushes, where the other one had been, and when all was ready herang for a stewardess.
"I am going to show a young lady some of my stuff," he explained."And as she is alone I wish you'd stay round, will you? I want herto feel perfectly comfortable."
The stewardess agreed, and as she was an elderly woman, with a sonat the front, a boy like Cecil, she went back to her close littleroom over the engines and cried a little, very quietly.
It was unfortunate that he did not explain the presence of thestewardess to the girl. For when it was all over, and she had stoodrather awed before his mother's picture, and rather to his surprisehad smoothed her hair with one of his brushes, she turned to himoutside the door.
"That stewardess has a lot of nerve," she said. "The idea ofstanding in the doorway, rubbering!"
"I asked her," he explained. "I thought you'd prefer having some onethere."
She stared at him.
II
Lethway had won the ship's pool that day. In the evening he playedbridge, and won again. He had been drinking a little. Not much, butenough to make him reckless.
For the last rubber or two the thought of Edith had obsessed him,her hand on the rail as he had kissed it, her cool eyes that were atonce so wise and so ignorant, her lithe body in the short skirt andmiddy blouse. He found her more alluring, so attired, than she hadbeen in the scant costume of what to him was always "the show."
He pondered on that during all of a dummy hand, sitting low in hischair with his feet thrust far under the table. The show businesswas going to the bad. Why? Because nobody connected with it knewanything about human nature. He formulated a plan, compounded ofliquor and real business acumen, of dressing a chorus, of suggestingthe feminine form instead of showing it, of veiling it in chiffonsof soft colours and sending a draft of air from electric fans in thewings to set the chiffons in motion.
"Like the Aurora," he said to himself. "Only not so beefy. Ought tobe a hit. Pretty? It will be the real thing!"
The thought of Edith in such a costume, playing like a dryad overthe stage, stayed with him when the dummy hand had been played andhe had been recalled to the game by a thump on the shoulder. Edithin soft, pastel-coloured chiffons, dancing in bare feet to lightstring music. A forest setting, of course. Pan. A goat or two. Allthat sort of thing.
On his way down to his cabin he passed her door. He went on,hesitated, came back and knocked.
Now Edith had not been able to sleep. Her thrifty soul, trainedagainst waste, had urged her not to fling her cigarettes overboard,but to smoke them.
"And then never again," she said solemnly.
The result was that she could not get to sleep. Blanketed to thechin she lay in her bunk, reading. The book had been Mabel'sfarewell offering, a thing of perverted ideals, or none, of cheapsentiment, of erotic thought overlaid with words. The immediateresult of it, when she yawned at last and turned out the light overher bed, was a new light on the boy.
"Little prig!" she said to herself, and stretched her round armsluxuriously above her head.
Then Lethway rapped. She sat up and listened. Then, grumbling, shegot out and opened the door an inch or two. The lights were lowoutside and her own cabin dark. But she knew him.
"Are we chased?" she demanded. In the back of her mind, fear ofpursuit by a German submarine was dogging her across the Atlantic.
"Sure we are!" he said. "What are you so stingy about the door for?"
She recognised his condition out of a not inconsiderable experienceand did her best to force the door shut, but he put his foot overthe sill and smiled.
"Please go away, Mr. Lethway."
"I'll go if you'll kiss me good night."
She calculated the situation, and surrendered. There was nothingelse to do. But when she upturned her face he slipped past her andinto the room. Just inside the door, swinging open and shut withevery roll of the ship, he took her in his arms and kissed her, notonce but many times.
She did not lose her head. She had an arm free and she rang thebell. Then she jerked herself loose.
"I have rung for the stewardess," she said furiously. "If you arehere when she comes I'll ask for help."
"You young devil!" was all he said, and went, slamming the doorbehind him. His rage grew as he reached his own cabin. Damn thegirl, anyhow! He had not meant anything. Here he was, spending moneyhe might never get back to give her a chance, and she called thestewardess because he kissed her!
As for the girl, she went back to bed. For a few moments sheer ragekept her awake. Then youth and fatigue triumphed and she fellasleep. Her last thought was of the boy, after all. "He wouldn't doa thing like that," she reflected. "He's a gentleman. He's the realthing. He's----"
Her eyes closed.
Lethway apologised the next day, apologised with an excess of mannerthat somehow made the apology as much of an insult as the act. Butshe matched him at that game--took her cue from him, even went himone better as to manner. When he left her he had begun to feel thatshe was no unworthy antagonist. The game would be interesting. Andshe had the advantage, if she only knew it. Back of his desire toget back at her, back of his mocking smile and half-closed eyes, hewas just a trifle mad about her since the night before.
That is the way things stood when they reached the Mersey. Cecil wasin love with the girl. Very earnestly in love. He did not sleep atnight for thinking about her. He remembered certain semi-harmlessescapades of his college days, and called himself unworthy andvarious other things. He scourged himself by leaving her alone inher steamer chair and walking by at stated intervals. Once, in awhite sweater over a running shirt, he went to the gymnasium andfound her there. She had on a "gym" suit of baggy bloomers and theusual blouse. He backed away from the door hastily.
At first he was jealous of Lethway. Then that passed. She confidedto him that she did not like the manager. After that he was sorryfor him. He was sorry for any one she did not like. He botheredLethway by walking the deck with him and looking at him with whatLethway refused to think was compassion.
But because, contrary to the boy's belief, none of us is quite goodor quite evil, he was kind to the boy. The khaki stood for somethingwhich no Englishman could ignore.
"Poor little devil!" he said on the last day in the smoking room,"he's going to a bad time, all right. I was in Africa for eightyears. Boer war and the rest of it. Got run through the thigh in anative uprising, and they won't have me now. But Africa was cheeryto this war."
He asked the boy into the smoking room, which he had hithertoavoided. He had some queer idea that he did not care to take hisuniform in there. Absurd, of course. It made him rather lonely inthe hours Edith spent in her cabin, preparing variations of costumefor the evening out of her small trunk. But he was all man, and heliked the society of men; so he went at last, with Lethway, andordered vichy!
He had not allowed himself to think much beyond the end of thevoyage. As the ship advanced, war seemed to slip beyond the edge ofhis horizon. Even at night, as he lay and tossed, his thoughts wereeither of the next day, when he would see Edith again, or of thatindefinite future when he would return, covered with honors, and goto her, wherever she was.
He never doubted the honors now. He had something to fight for. Themedals in their cases looked paltry to him, compared with what wascoming. In his sleep he dreamed of the V.C., dreams he was too
modest to put into thoughts in waking hours.
Then they reached the Mersey. On the last evening of the voyage heand Edith stood on the upper deck. It was a zone of danger. Fromeach side of the narrowing river flashlights skimmed the surface ofthe water, playing round but never on the darkened ship. Red andgreen lights blinked signals. Their progress was a devious onethrough the mine-strewn channel. There was a heavy sea even there,and the small lights on the mast on the pilot boat, as it came to astop, described great arcs that seemed, first to starboard, then toport, to touch the very tips of the waves.
"I'm not crazy about this," the girl said, as the wind tugged at herskirts. "It frightens me. Brings the war pretty close, doesn't it?"
Emotion swelled his heart and made him husky--love and patriotism,pride and hope, and a hot burst of courage.
"What if we strike a mine?" she asked.
"I wouldn't care so much. It would give me a chance to save you."
Overhead they were signalling the shore with a white light. Alongwith the new emotions that were choking him came an unaccustomedimpulse of boastfulness.
"I can read that," he said when she ignored his offer to save her."Of course it's code, but I can spell it out."
He made a move to step forward and watch the signaler, but she puther hand on his arm.
"Don't go. I'm nervous, Cecil," she said.
She had called him by his first name. It shook him profoundly, thatand the touch of her hand on his arm.
"Oh, I love you, love you!" he said hoarsely. But he did not try totake her in his arms, or attempt to caress the hand that still clungto him. He stood very erect, looking at the shadowy outline of her.Then, her long scarf blowing toward him, he took the end of it andkissed that very gravely.
"I would die for you," he said.
Then Lethway joined them.
III
London was not kind to him. He had felt, like many Canadians, thatin going to England he was going home. But England was cold.
Not the people on the streets. They liked the Canadians and theycheered them when their own regiments went by unhailed. It appealedto their rampant patriotism that these men had come from across thesea to join hands with them against common foe. But in the clubs,where his letters admitted the boy, there was a differentatmosphere. Young British officers were either cool or, much worse,patronising. They were inclined to suspect that his quiet confidencewas swanking. One day at luncheon he drank a glass of wine, notbecause he wanted it but because he did not like to refuse. Theresult was unfortunate. It loosened his tongue a bit, and hementioned the medals.
Not noisily, of course. In an offhand manner, to his next neighbor.It went round the table, and a sort of icy silence, after that,greeted his small sallies. He never knew what the trouble was, buthis heart was heavy in him.
And it rained.
It was always raining. He had very little money beyond his pay, andthe constant hiring of taxicabs worried him. Now and then he sawsome one he knew, down from Salisbury for a holiday, but they hadbeen over long enough to know their way about. They had engagements,things to buy. He fairly ate his heart out in sheer loneliness.
There were two hours in the day that redeemed the others. One wasthe hour late in the afternoon when, rehearsal over, he took EdithO'Hara to tea. The other was just before he went to bed, when hewrote her the small note that reached her every morning with herbreakfast.
In the seven days before he joined his regiment at Salisbury hewrote her seven notes. They were candid, boyish scrawls, not loveletters at all. This was one of them:
_Dear Edith_: I have put in a rotten evening and am just going to bed. I am rather worried because you looked so tired to-day. Please don't work too hard.
I am only writing to say how I look forward each night to seeing you the next day. I am sending with this a small bunch of lilies of the valley. They remind me of you. CECIL.
The girl saved those letters. She was not in love with him, but hegave her something no one else had ever offered: a chivalrousrespect that pleased as well as puzzled her.
Once in a tea shop he voiced his creed, as it pertained to her, overa plate of muffins.
"When we are both back home, Edith," he said, "I am going to ask yousomething."
"Why not now?"
"Because it wouldn't be quite fair to you. I--I may be killed, orsomething. That's one thing. Then, it's because of your people."
That rather stunned her. She had no people. She was going to tellhim that, but she decided not to. She felt quite sure that heconsidered "people" essential, and though she felt that, for anylong period of time, these queer ideas and scruples of his would bedifficult to live up to, she intended to do it for that one week.
"Oh, all right," she said, meekly enough.
She felt very tender toward him after that, and her new gentlenessmade it all hard for him. She caught him looking at her wistfully attimes, and it seemed to her that he was not looking well. His eyeswere hollow, his face thin. She put her hand over his as it lay onthe table.
"Look here," she said, "you look half sick, or worried, orsomething. Stop telling me to take care of myself, and look afteryourself a little better."
"I'm all right," he replied. Then soon after: "Everything's strange.That's the trouble," he confessed. "It's only in little things thatdon't matter, but a fellow feels such a duffer."
On the last night he took her to dinner--a small French restaurantin a back street in Soho. He had heard about it somewhere. Edithclassed it as soon as she entered. It was too retiring, too demure.Its very location was clandestine.
But he never knew. He was divided that night between joy at gettingto his regiment and grief at leaving her. Rather self-engrossed, shethought.
They had a table by an open grate fire, with a screen "to shut offthe draft," the waiter said. It gave the modest meal a delightfullyhomey air, their isolation and the bright coal fire. For the firsttime they learned the joys of mussels boiled in milk, of French_souffle_ and other things.
At the end of the evening he took her back to her cheap hotel in ataxicab. She expected him to kiss her. Her experience of taxicabshad been like that. But he did not. He said very little on the wayhome, but sat well back and eyed her wistful eyes. She chattered tocover his silence--of rehearsals, of--with reservations--of Lethway,of the anticipated London opening. She felt very sad herself. He hadbeen a tie to America, and he had been much more than that. Thoughshe did not realise it, he had had a profound effect on her. Intrying to seem what he thought her she was becoming what he thoughther. Her old reckless attitude toward life was gone, or was going.
The day before she had refused an invitation to a night club, andcalled herself a fool for doing it. But she had refused.
Not that he had performed miracles with her. She was still frankly adweller on the neutral ground. But to that instinct that had kepther up to that time what she would have called "straight" had beenadded a new refinement. She was no longer the reckless and rompinggirl whose abandon had caught Lethway's eye.
She had gained a soul, perhaps, and lost a livelihood.
When they reached the hotel he got out and went in with her. Thehall porter was watching and she held out her hand. But he shook hishead.
"If I touched your hand," he said, "I would have to take you in myarms. Good-bye, dear."
"Good-bye," she said. There were tears in her eyes. It was through amist that she saw him, as the elevator went up, standing at salute,his eyes following her until she disappeared from sight.
IV
Things were going wrong with Lethway. The management was ragginghim, for one thing.
"Give the girl time," he said almost viciously, at the end of aparticularly bad rehearsal. "She's had a long voyage and she'stired. Besides," he added, "these acts never do go at rehearsal.Give me a good house at the opening and she'll show you what she cando."
But in his soul he was worried. There w
as a change in Edith O'Hara.Even her voice had altered. It was not only her manner to him. Thatwas marked enough, but he only shrugged his shoulders over it. Timeenough for that when the production was on.
He had engaged a hoyden, and she was by way of becoming a lady.During the first week or so he had hoped that it was only thestrangeness of her surroundings. He had been shrewd enough to laysome of it, however, to Cecil's influence.
"When your soldier boy gets out of the way," he sneered one day inthe wings, "perhaps you'll get down to earth and put some life inyour work."
But to his dismay she grew steadily worse. Her dancing was delicate,accurate, even graceful, but the thing the British public likes tothink typically American, a sort of breezy swagger, was gone. Tobill her in her present state as the Madcap American would be sheerfolly.
Ten days before the opening he cabled for another girl to take herplace.
He did not tell her. Better to let her work on, he decided. A Germansubmarine might sink the ship on which the other girl was coming,and then where would they be?
Up to the last, however, he had hopes of Edith. Not that he cared tosave her. But he hated to acknowledge a failure. He disliked todisavow his own judgment.
He made a final effort with her, took her one day to luncheon atSimpson's, and in one of the pewlike compartments, over mutton andcaper sauce, he tried to "talk a little life into her."
"What the devil has come over you?" he demanded savagely. "You werelarky enough over in New York. There are any number of girls inLondon who can do what you are doing now, and do it better."
"I'm doing just what I did in New York."
"The hell you are! I could do what you're doing with a jointed dolland some wires. Now see here, Edith," he said, "either you put somego into the thing, or you go. That's flat."
Her eyes filled.
"I--maybe I'm worried," she said. "Ever since I found out that I'vesigned up, with no arrangement about sending me back, it's been onmy mind."
"Don't you worry about that."
"But if they put some one on in my place?"
"You needn't worry about that either. I'll look after you. You knowthat. If I hadn't been crazy about you I'd have let you go a weekago. You know that too."
She knew the tone, knew instantly where she stood. Knew, too, thatshe would not play the first night in London. She went rather white,but she faced him coolly.
"Don't look like that," he said. "I'm only telling you that if youneed a friend I'll be there."
It was two days before the opening, however, when the blow fell. Shehad not been sleeping, partly from anxiety about herself, partlyabout the boy. Every paper she picked up was full of the horrors ofwar. There were columns filled with the names of those who hadfallen. Somehow even his uniform had never closely connected the boywith death in her mind. He seemed so young.
She had had a feeling that his very youth would keep him fromdanger. War to her was a faintly conceived struggle between men, andhe was a boy.
But here were boys who had died, boys at nineteen. And the lists ofmissing startled her. One morning she read in the personal column aquery, asking if any one could give the details of the death of ayoung subaltern. She cried over that. In all her care-free lifenever before had she wept over the griefs of others.
Cecil had sent her his photograph taken in his uniform. Because hehad had it taken to give her he had gazed directly into the eye ofthe camera. When she looked at it it returned her glance. She tookto looking at it a great deal.
Two days before the opening she turned from a dispirited rehearsalto see Mabel standing in the wings. Then she knew. The end had come.
Mabel was jaunty, but rather uneasy.
"You poor dear!" she said, when Edith went to her. "What on earth'shappened? The cable only said--honest, dearie, I feel like a dog!"
"They don't like me. That's all," she replied wearily, and pickedup her hat and jacket from a chair. But Mabel was curious.Uncomfortable, too, as she had said. She slipped an arm roundEdith's waist.
"Say the word and I'll throw them down," she cried. "It looks likedirty work to me. And you're thin. Honest, dearie, I mean it."
Her loyalty soothed the girl's sore spirit.
"I don't know what's come over me," she said. "I've tried hardenough. But I'm always tired. I--I think it's being so close to thewar."
Mabel stared at her. There was a war. She knew that. The theatricalnews was being crowded to a back page to make space for disagreeablediagrams and strange, throaty names.
"I know. It's fierce, isn't it?" she said.
Edith took her home, and they talked far into the night. She hadslipped Cecil's picture into the wardrobe before she turned on thelight. Then she explained the situation.
"It's pep they want, is it?" said Mabel at last. "Well, believe me,honey, I'll give it to them. And as long as I've got a cent it'syours."
They slept together in Edith's narrow bed, two slim young figuresdelicately flushed with sleep. As pathetic, had they known it, asthose other sleepers in their untidy billets across the channel.Almost as hopeless too. Dwellers in the neutral ground.
V
Now war, after all, is to each fighting man an affair of smallnumbers, an affair of the men to his right and his left, of theA.M.S.C. in the rear and of a handful of men across. On his days ofrest the horizon is somewhat expanded. It becomes then a thing ofcrowded and muddy village streets, of food and drink and tobacco anda place to sleep.
Always, of course, it is a thing of noises.
This is not a narrative of war. It matters very little, forinstance, how Cecil's regiment left Salisbury and went to Soissons,in France. What really matters is that at last the Canadian-mademotor lorries moved up their equipment, and that, after diggingpractice trenches in the yellow clay of old battlefields, they weremoved up to the front.
Once there, there seemed to be a great deal of time. It was the lullbefore Neuve Chapelle. Cecil's spirit grew heavy with waiting. Once,back on rest at his billet, he took a long walk over the half-frozenside roads and came without warning on a main artery. Three tractionengines were taking to the front the first of the great Britishguns, so long awaited. He took the news back to his mess. Thegeneral verdict was that there would be something doing now.
Cecil wrote a letter to Edith that day. He had written before, ofcourse, but this was different. He wrote first to his mother, justin case anything happened, a long, boyish letter with a misspelledword here and there. He said he was very happy and very comfortable,and that if he did get his he wanted her to know that it was allperfectly cheerful and not anything like the war correspondents saidit was. He'd had a bully time all his life, thanks to her. He hadn'tlet her know often enough how he felt about her, and she knew he wasa dub at writing. There were a great many things worse than "goingout" in a good fight. "It isn't at all as if you could see theblooming thing coming," he wrote. "You never know it's after youuntil you've got it, and then you don't."
The letter was not to be sent unless he was killed. So he put in afew anecdotes to let her know exactly how happy and contented hewas. Then he dropped the whole thing in the ten inches of mud andwater he was standing in, and had to copy it all over.
To Edith he wrote a different sort of letter. He told her that heloved her. "It's almost more adoration than love," he wrote, whiletwo men next to him were roaring over a filthy story. "I mean bythat, that I feel every hour of every day how far above me you are.It's like one of these _fusees_ the Germans are always throwing upover us at night. It's perfectly dark, and then something bright andclear and like a star, only nearer, is overhead. Everything looksdifferent while it floats there. And so, my dear, my dear,everything has been different to me since I knew you."
Rather boyish, all of it, but terribly earnest. He said he hadwanted to ask her to marry him, but that the way he felt about it, afellow had no right to ask a girl such a thing when he was going toa war. If he came back he would ask her. And he would love her allhis life.
&
nbsp; The next day, at dawn, he went out with eighty men to an outpostthat had been an abandoned farm. It was rather a forlorn hope. Theyhad one machine gun. At nine o'clock the enemy opened fire on themand followed it by an attack. The major in charge went down early.At two Cecil was standing in the loft of the farmhouse, firing witha revolver on men who beneath him, outside, were placing dynamiteunder a corner of the building.
To add to the general hopelessness, their own artillery, believingthem all dead, opened fire on the building. They moved their woundedto the cellar and kept on fighting.
At eight o'clock that night Cecil's right arm was hanging helpless,and the building was burning merrily. There were five of them left.They fixed bayonets and charged the open door.
* * * * *
When the boy opened his eyes he was lying in six inches of manure ina box car. One of his men was standing over him, keeping him frombeing trampled on. There was no air and no water. The ammonia fumesfrom the manure were stifling.
The car lurched and jolted along. Cecil opened his eyes now andthen, and at first he begged for water. When he found there was nonehe lay still. The men hammered on the door and called for air. Theymade frantic, useless rushes at the closed and barred door. ExceptCecil, all were standing. They were herded like cattle, and therewas no room to lie or sit.
He lay there, drugged by weakness. He felt quite sure that he wasdying, and death was not so bad. He voiced this feebly to the manwho stood over him.
"It's not so bad," he said.
"The hell it's not!" said the man.
For the time Edith was effaced from his mind. He remembered thewounded men left in the cellar with the building burning over them.That, and days at home, long before the war.
Once he said "Mother." The soldier who was now standing astride ofhim, the better to keep off the crowding men, thought he was askingfor water again.
Thirty hours of that, and then air and a little water. Not enoughwater. Not all the water in all the cool streams of the earth wouldhave slaked the thirst of his wound.
The boy was impassive. He was living in the past. One day he recitedat great length the story of his medals. No one listened.
And all the time his right arm lay or hung, as he was prone orerect, a strange right arm that did not belong to him. It did noteven swell. When he touched it the fingers were cold and bluish. Itfelt like a dead hand.
Then, at the end of it all, was a bed, and a woman's voice, andquiet.
The woman was large and elderly, and her eyes were very kind. Shestirred something in the boy that had been dead of pain.
"Edith!" he said.
VI
Mabel had made a hit. Unconscious imitator that she was, she stoleEdith's former recklessness, and added to it something of her owndash and verve. Lethway, standing in the wings, knew she was not andnever would be Edith. She was not fine enough. Edith at her besthad frolicked. Mabel romped, was almost wanton. He cut out thestring music at the final rehearsal. It did not fit.
On the opening night the brass notes of the orchestra blared andshrieked. Mabel's bare feet flew, her loose hair, cut to her earsand held only by a band over her forehead, kept time in ecstaticlittle jerks. When at last she pulled off the fillet and bowed tothe applause, her thick short hair fell over her face as she jerkedher head forward. They liked that. It savoured of the abandoned. Sheshook it back, and danced the encore without the fillet. With herscant chiffons whirling about her knees, her loose hair, her girlishbody, she was the embodiment of young love, of its passion, itsfire.
Edith had been spring, palpitant with gladness.
Lethway, looking with tired eyes from the wings, knew that he hadmade a commercial success. But back of his sordid methods there wassomething of the soul of an artist. And this rebelled.
But he made a note to try flame-coloured chiffon for Mabel. Edithwas to have danced in the pale greens of a water nymph.
On the night of her triumph Mabel returned late to Edith's room,where she was still quartered. She was moving the next day to asmall apartment. With the generosity of her class she had urgedEdith to join her, and Edith had perforce consented.
"How did it go?" Edith asked from the bed.
"Pretty well," said Mabel. "Nothing unusual."
She turned up the light, and from her radiant reflection in themirror Edith got the truth. She lay back with a dull, sickeningweight round her heart. Not that Mabel had won, but that she herselfhad failed.
"You're awfully late."
"I went to supper. Wish you'd been along, dearie. Terribly swellclub of some sort." Then her good resolution forgotten: "I made themsit up and take notice, all right. Two invitations for supperto-morrow night and more on the way. And when I saw I'd got thehouse going to-night, and remembered what I was being paid for it,it made me sick."
"It's better than nothing."
"Why don't you ask Lethway to take you on in the chorus? It would dountil you get something else."
"I have asked him. He won't do it."
Mabel was still standing in front of the mirror. She threw her headforward so her short hair covered her face, and watched the effectcarefully. Then she came over and sat on the bed.
"He's a dirty dog," she said.
The two girls looked at each other. They knew every move in the gameof life, and Lethway's methods were familiar ones.
"What are you going to do about it?" Mabel demanded at last."Believe me, old dear, he's got a bad eye. Now listen here," shesaid with impulsive generosity. "I've got a scheme. I'll draw enoughahead to send you back. I'll do it to-morrow, while the drawing'sgood."
"And queer yourself at the start?" said Edith scornfully. "Talksense, Mabel, I'm up against it, but don't you worry. I'll getsomething."
But she did not get anything. She was reduced in the next week toentire dependence on the other girl. And, even with such miracles ofmanagement as they had both learned, it was increasingly difficultto get along.
There was a new element too. Edith was incredulous at first, but atlast she faced it. There was a change in Mabel. She was not lesshospitable nor less generous. It was a matter of a point of view.Success was going to her head. Her indignation at certain phases oflife was changing to tolerance. She found Edith's rampant virtue atrifle wearing. She took to staying out very late, and coming inready to meet Edith's protest with defiant gaiety. She boughtclothes too.
"You'll have to pay for them sometime," Edith reminded her.
"I should worry. I've got to look like something if I'm going to goout at all."
Edith, who had never thought things out before, had long hours tothink now. And the one thing that seemed clear and undeniable wasthat she must not drive Mabel into debt. Debt was the curse of mostof the girls she knew. As long as they were on their own they couldmanage. It was the burden of unpaid bills, lightly contracted, thatdrove so many of them wrong.
That night, while Mabel was asleep, she got up and cautiouslylighted the gas. Then she took the boy's photograph out of itshiding place and propped it on top of her trunk. For a long time shesat there, her chin in her hands, and looked at it.
It was the next day that she saw his name among the missing.
She did not cry, not at first. The time came when it seemed to hershe did nothing else. But at first she only stared. She was tooyoung and too strong to faint, but things went gray for her.
And gray they remained--through long spring days and eternalnights--days when Mabel slept all morning, rehearsed or played inthe afternoons, was away all evening and far into the night. She didnot eat or sleep. She spent money that was meant for food on papersand journals and searched for news. She made a frantic butineffectual effort to get into the War Office.
She had received his letter two days after she had seen his nameamong the missing. She had hardly dared to open it, but having readit, for days she went round with a strange air of consecration thatleft Mabel uneasy.
"I wish you wouldn't look like that!" she said one
morning. "You geton my nerves."
But as time went on the feeling that he was dead overcame everythingelse. She despaired, rather than grieved. And following despair camerecklessness. He was dead. Nothing else mattered. Lethway, meetingher one day in Oxford Circus, almost passed her before he knew her.He stopped her then.
"Haven't been sick, have you?"
"Me? No."
"There's something wrong."
She did not deny it and he fell into step beside her.
"Doing anything?" he asked.
She shook her head. With all the power that was in her she washating his tall figure, his heavy-lashed eyes, even the familiarulster he wore.
"I wish you were a sensible young person," he said. But something inthe glance she gave him forbade his going on. It was not an uglyglance. Rather it was cold, appraising--even, if he had known it,despairing.
Lethway had been busy. She had been in the back of his mind ratheroften, but other things had crowded her out. This new glimpse of herfired him again, however. And she had a new quality that thrilledeven through the callus of his soul. The very thing that hadforedoomed her to failure in the theatre appealed to him strongly--arefinement, a something he did not analyse.
When she was about to leave him he detained her with a hand on herarm.
"You know you can always count on me, don't you?" he said.
"I know I can't," she flashed back at him with a return of her oldspirit.
"I'm crazy about you."
"Old stuff!" she said coolly, and walked off. But there was a tug offear at her heart. She told Mabel, but it was typical of the changethat Mabel only shrugged her shoulders.
It was Lethway's shrewdness that led to his next move. He had triedbullying, and failed. He had tried fear, with the same lack ofeffect. Now he tried kindness.
She distrusted him at first, but her starved heart was crying outfor the very thing he offered her. As the weeks went on, with nonews of Cecil, she accepted his death stoically at last. Somethingof her had died. But in a curious way the boy had put his mark onher. And as she grew more like the thing he had thought her to bethe gulf between Mabel and herself widened. They had, at last, onlyin common their room, their struggle, the contacts of their dailylife.
And Lethway was now always in the background. He took her for quietmeals and brought her home early. He promised her that sometime hewould see that she got back home.
"But not just yet," he added as her colour rose. "I'm selfish,Edith. Give me a little time to be happy."
That was a new angle. It had been a part of the boy's quiet creed tomake others happy.
"Why don't you give me something to do, since you're so crazy tohave me hanging about?"
"Can't do it. I'm not the management. And they're sore at you. Theythink you threw them down." He liked to air his American slang.
Edith cupped her chin in her hand and looked at him. There was nomystery about the situation, no shyness in the eyes with which sheappraised him. She was beginning to like him too.
That night when she got back to Mabel's apartment her mood wasreckless. She went to the window and stood looking at the crookedand chimney-potted skyline that was London.
"Oh, what's the use?" she said savagely, and gave up the fight.
When Mabel came home she told her.
"I'm going to get out," she said without preamble.
She caught the relief in Mabel's face, followed by a purelyconventional protest.
"Although," she hedged cautiously, "I don't know, dearie. Peoplelook at things sensibly these days. You've got to live, haven't you?They're mighty quick to jail a girl who tries to jump in the riverwhen she's desperate."
"I'll probably end there. And I don't much care."
Mabel gave her a good talking to about that. Her early training hadbeen in a church which regarded self-destruction as a cardinal sin.Then business acumen asserted itself:
"He'll probably put you on somewhere. He's crazy about you, Ede."
But Edith was not listening. She was standing in front of her openedtrunk tearing into small pieces something that had been lying in thetray.
VII
Now the boy had tried very hard to die, and failed. The thing thathad happened to him was an unbelievable thing. When he began to usehis tired faculties again, when the ward became not a shadow landbut a room, and the nurse not a presence but a woman, he triedfeebly to move his right arm.
But it was gone.
At first he refused to believe it. He could feel it lying therebeside him. It ached and throbbed. The fingers were cramped. Butwhen he looked it was not there.
There was not one shock of discovery, but many. For each time heroused from sleep he had forgotten, and must learn the thing again.
The elderly German woman stayed close. She was wise, and war hadtaught her many things. So when he opened his eyes she was alwaysthere. She talked to him very often of his mother, and he listenedwith his eyes on her face--eyes like those of a sick child.
In that manner they got by the first few days.
"It won't make any difference to her," he said once. "She'd take meback if I was only a fragment." Then bitterly: "That's all I am--afragment! A part of a man!"
After a time she knew that there was a some one else, some one hewas definitely relinquishing. She dared not speak to him about it.His young dignity was militant. But one night, as she dozed besidehim in the chair, he reached the limit of his repression and toldher.
"An actress!" she cried, sitting bolt upright. "_Du lieber_--anactress!"
"Not an actress," he corrected her gravely. "A--a dancer. But good.She's a very good girl. Even when I was--was whole"--ragingbitterness there--"I was not good enough for her."
"No actress is good. And dancers!"
"You don't know what you are talking about," he said roughly, andturned his back to her. It was almost insulting to have her assisthim to his attitude of contempt, and to prop him in it with pillowsbehind his back. Lying there he tried hard to remember that thiswoman belonged to his hereditary foes. He was succeeding in hatingher when he felt her heavy hand on his head.
"Poor boy! Poor little one!" she said. And her voice was husky.
When at last he was moved from the hospital to the prison camp shepinned the sleeve of his ragged uniform across his chest and kissedhim, to his great discomfiture. Then she went to the curtainedcorner that was her quarters and wept long and silently.
The prison camp was overcrowded. Early morning and late eveningprisoners were lined up to be counted. There was a medley oflanguages--French, English, Arabic, Russian. The barracks were builtround a muddy inclosure in which the men took what exercise theycould.
One night a boy with a beautiful tenor voice sang Auld Lang Syneunder the boy's window. He stood with his hand on the cuff of hisempty sleeves and listened. And suddenly a great shame filled him,that with so many gone forever, with men dying every minute ofevery hour, back at the lines, he had been so obsessed with himself.He was still bitter, but the bitterness was that he could not goback again and fight.
When he had been in the camp a month he helped two British officersto escape. One of them had snubbed him in London months before. Heapologised before he left.
"You're a man, Hamilton," he said. "All you Canadians are men. I'vesome things to tell when I get home."
The boy could not go with them. There would be canals to swimacross, and there was his empty sleeve and weakness. He would neverswim again, he thought. That night, as he looked at the empty bedsof the men who had gone, he remembered his medals and smiled grimly.
He was learning to use his left hand. He wrote letters home with itfor soldiers who could not write. He went into the prison hospitaland wrote letters for those who would never go home. But he did notwrite to the girl.
* * * * *
He went back at last, when the hopelessly wounded were exchanged. Tobe branded "hopelessly wounded" was to him a stain, a stigma. It puthim among the clutt
erers of the earth. It stranded him on the shoreof life. Hopelessly wounded!
For, except what would never be whole, he was well again. True,confinement and poor food had kept him weak and white. His legs hada way of going shaky at nightfall. But once he knocked down aninsolent Russian with his left hand, and began to feel his own managain. That the Russian was weak from starvation did not matter. Thepoint to the boy was that he had made the attempt.
Providence has a curious way of letting two lives run along, eachapparently independent of the other. Parallel lines they seem,hopeless of meeting. Converging lines really, destined, through longages, by every deed that has been done to meet at a certain pointand there fuse.
Edith had left Mabel, but not to go to Lethway. When nothing elseremained that way was open. She no longer felt any horror--only agreat distaste. But two weeks found her at her limit. She, who hadrarely had more than just enough, now had nothing.
And no glory of sacrifice upheld her. She no longer believed that byremoving the burden of her support she could save Mabel. It wasclear that Mabel would not be saved. To go back and live on her,under the circumstances, was but a degree removed from the otherthing that confronted her.
There is just a chance that, had she not known the boy, she wouldhave killed herself. But again the curious change he had worked inher manifested itself. He thought suicide a wicked thing.
"I take it like this," he had said in his eager way: "life's a thingthat's given us for some purpose. Maybe the purpose getsclouded--I'm afraid I'm an awful duffer at saying what I mean. Butwe've got to work it out, do you see? Or--or the whole scheme isupset."
It had seemed very clear then.
Then, on a day when the rare sun made even the rusty silk hats ofclerks on tops of omnibuses to gleam, when the traffic glittered onthe streets and the windows of silversmiths' shops shone painful tothe eye, she met Lethway again.
The sun had made her reckless. Since the boy was gone life waswretchedness, but she clung to it. She had given up all hope ofCecil's return, and what she became mattered to no one else.
Perhaps, more than anything else, she craved companionship. Inall her crowded young life she had never before been alone.Companionship and kindness. She would have followed to heel, likea dog, for a kind word.
Then she met Lethway. They walked through the park. When he left herher once clear, careless glance had a suggestion of furtiveness init.
That afternoon she packed her trunk and sent it to an address hehad given her. In her packing she came across the stick of coldcream, still in the pocket of the middy blouse. She flung it, ashard as she could, across the room.
She paid her bill with money Lethway had given her. She had exactlya sixpence of her own. She found herself in Trafalgar Square late inthe afternoon. The great enlisting posters there caught her eye,filled her with bitterness.
"Your king and your country need you," she read. She had needed theboy, too, but this vast and impersonal thing, his mother country,had taken him from her--taken him and lost him. She wanted to standby the poster and cry to the passing women to hold their men back.As she now knew she hated Lethway, she hated England.
She wandered on. Near Charing Cross she spent the sixpence for abunch of lilies of the valley, because he had said once that she waslike them. Then she was for throwing them in the street, rememberingthe thing she would soon be.
"For the wounded soldiers," said the flower girl. When shecomprehended that, she made her way into the station. There was agreat crowd, but something in her face made the crowd draw back andlet her through. They nudged each other as she passed.
"Looking for some one, poor child!" said a girl and, following her,thrust the flowers she too carried into Edith's hand. She put themwith the others, rather dazed.
* * * * *
To Cecil the journey had been a series of tragedies. Not his own.There were two hundred of them, officers and men, on the boat acrossthe Channel. Blind, maimed, paralysed, in motley garments, they werehilariously happy. Every throb of the turbine engines was a thrusttoward home. They sang, they cheered.
Now and then some one would shout: "Are we downhearted?" Andcrutches and canes would come down on the deck to the unanimousshout: "No!"
Folkestone had been trying, with its parade of cheerfulness, withkindly women on the platform serving tea and buns. In the railwaycoach to London, where the officers sat, a talking machine playedsteadily, and there were masses of flowers, violets and lilies ofthe valley. At Charing Cross was a great mass of people, and as theyslowly disembarked he saw that many were crying. He was rathersurprised. He had known London as a cold and unemotional place. Ithad treated him as an alien, had snubbed and ignored him.
He had been prepared to ask nothing of London, and it lay at hisfeet in tears.
Then he saw Edith.
Perhaps, when in the fullness of years the boy goes over to thelife he so firmly believes awaits him, the one thing he will carrywith him through the open door will be the look in her eyes when shesaw him. Too precious a thing to lose, surely, even then. Suchthings make heaven.
"What did I tell you?" cried the girl who had given Edith herflowers. "She has found him. See, he has lost his arm. Lookout--catch him!"
But he did not faint. He went even whiter, and looking at Edith hetouched his empty sleeve.
"As if that would make any difference to her!" said the girl, whowas in black. "Look at her face! She's got him."
Neither Edith nor the boy could speak. He was afraid of unmanlytears. His dignity was very dear to him. And the tragedy of hisempty sleeve had her by the throat. So they went out together andthe crowd opened to let them by.
* * * * *
At nine o'clock that night Lethway stormed through the stageentrance of the theatre and knocked viciously at the door of Mabel'sdressing room. Receiving no attention, he opened the door and wentin.
The room was full of flowers, and Mabel, ready to go on, was havingher pink toes rouged for her barefoot dance.
"You've got a nerve!" she said coolly.
"Where's Edith?"
"I don't know and I don't care. She ran away, when I was stintingmyself to keep her. I'm done. Now you go out and close that door,and when you want to enter a lady's dressing room, knock."
He looked at her with blazing hatred.
"Right-o!" was all he said. And he turned and left her to herflowers.
At exactly the same time Edith was entering the elevator of a small,very respectable hotel in Kensington. The boy, smiling, watched herin.
He did not kiss her, greatly to the disappointment of the hallporter. As the elevator rose the boy stood at salute, the fingers ofhis left hand to the brim of his shabby cap. In his eyes, as theyfollowed her, was all that there is of love--love and a newunderstanding.
She had told him, and now he knew. His creed was still the same.Right was right and wrong was wrong. But he had learned of thatshadowy No Man's Land between the lines, where many there were whofought their battles and were wounded, and even died.
As he turned and went out two men on crutches were passing along thequiet street. They recognised him in the light of the doorway, andstopped in front of him. Their voices rang out in cheerful unison:
"Are we downhearted? No!"
Their crutches struck the pavement with a resounding thump.
Love Stories Page 6
