Chapter 3

And Marjorie, in the drawing-room, was wondering desperately if he knew how the time was flying as he sat there quietly smoking and holding forth endlessly about transports and supplies and appropriations, and all the things which meant nothing to her. More wily than Leonard, she had escaped from Aunt Hortense, who, in true English fashion, had not appeared to be aware of her presence until well on toward the middle of the evening, after the men had left; then she turned to Marjorie suddenly, raising her lorgnette.

"Leonard's letters must have been very interesting to your friends in America."

"Oh, yes," stammered Marjorie; "but he never said very much about the war." She blushed.

"Ah," said the older woman; "I observed he was very silent on the subject. It's a code or custom among his set in the army, you may be sure of that. So many young officers' letters have been published," she continued, turning to Mrs. Leeds. "Lady Alice Fryzel was telling me the other day that she was putting all her son's letters into book form."

Marjorie had an inward vision of Leonard's letters published in book form! She knew them by heart, written from the trenches in pencil on lined paper--"servant paper," Leonard called it. They came in open envelopes unstamped, except with the grim password "war zone." Long, tired letters; short, tired letters, corrected by the censor's red ink, and full of only "our own business," as Leonard said. Sometimes at the end there would be a postscript hastily inserted: "I was in my first real battle to-day. Can't say I enjoyed it." Or, "Ronald Lambert, who was my chum at Eton, never turned up to-night. I feel pretty sick about it." She remembered the postscript of his first letter from the front; not a word about the thunder of the distant cannonading or the long line of returning ambulances that greeted the incoming soldier. It gave the first realistic smack of the filthy business of war. "I've had my head shaved," Leonard wrote. "P.P.S. Caught One." Marjorie wondered how that would look to Aunt Hortense, published in book form.

"Aren't the men a long while?" said Mrs. Leeds, for the fifth time; and Marjorie could endure it no longer. She could not bear to sit there and look at Mrs. Leeds's face. The fierce resignation of the mother's eyes seemed dumbly to accuse Marjorie, whose whole youth and passionate being protested: "I won't let her have Leonard this evening--I won't--I can't--it's his last! Why don't old people, like Aunt Hortense, fight wars, if they're so crazy about it?"

She crept unnoticed to the dark alcove, and slipped through the curtains of the French window. But the older woman's shrewd glance followed her; and all the while she was listening with apparent composure and concern to Hortense, she was saying to herself, with bitter impatience,--

"Fool! Why did she have to come this evening!" And then, "O Leonard, is it possible that little young thing can love you as I do!" And, "O Leonard--O Leonard!"

Marjorie, in the garden, skirted the shrubs and stole between the flower-beds to the library window. Vividly she could see Leonard, stretched out in a chair, his cigarette in one hand, gesticulating, talking.

"He's happy; he's forgotten all about me," she thought; and swept by an absurd emotion of self-pity, she kissed her own arms in the darkness to comfort herself, till her eyes, which never left his face, saw him turn warily and desperately to the clock.

"Leonard," she whispered, pressing close to the glass.

Suddenly he saw her revealed in the pale halo of light cast by the window into the darkness. He looked at her for moments without moving. Then she saw him get up and say good night to his father, putting his hand awkwardly and self-consciously on his sleeve. Minutes passed, and she knew he had gone to say good night to his mother, and then she saw the light of his cigarette coming toward her across the lawn. She waited without moving for him to touch her. So many times she would feel him coming toward her in the moonlight, the outline of his dear form lost in the dusk, and when he put out his hand it would be only empty shadows.

"Marjorie, where are you?"

"Here, Len."

Some one came to the front door and called out,--

"Are you there, Leonard and Marjorie? Lock the door when you come in, Leonard."

From the darkness they saw his mother's form silhouetted against the light inside. She started as if to come toward them, and then suddenly shut the door and left them alone together in the white night.

V

A thick yellow fog lay over London; at five o'clock in the Victoria Station the dawn had not penetrated, and the great globes of electricity in the murky ceiling shed an uncertain light. Through the usual somber and preoccupied din of the early morning traffic, came the steady, rhythmic tread of marching feet. Lost in the smoke and fog, a band was playing "Rule Britannia."

Marjorie and Leonard were standing in the very centre of the vast dingy shed. Heavy-eyed, they looked about them with an unseeing, bewildered gaze, that kept reverting to each other. Marjorie had both her hands about one of Leonard's, and was holding it convulsively in the pocket of his great-coat. Many times she had pictured this last scene to herself, anticipating every detail. Even in these nightmares, she had always seen herself, with a sick heart, bearing up bravely for Leonard's sake, making it easier for him.

A hunchback, dodging under the elbows of the crowd, stared at her, and smiled queerly and whispered to himself. Marjie shivered, then forgot him as a spasmodic gasp ran through the crowd; a sound suddenly seemed to envelop her like a wave, breaking, gathering itself, then breaking again--just two words:--"Good-bye--Good-bye--Good-bye."

She looked into Leonard's face, and saw that the moment had arrived; he was going. She was gripped with a sense of suffocation and panic. It was the same feeling that she had experienced as a child when she had gone in wading and had slipped into the water over her head. She clung to Leonard now just as she had clung to her rescuer then.

"Don't go! Don't go! I can't bear it! O Leonard!"

His hand, disengaging itself from her fingers, increased her panic. He put his arm about her.

"Marjie," he said, in a steady voice, which yet sounded unreal, not like his own, "I'm going. Good-bye. I love you with my whole soul; I always will. I shan't be able to hear from you, but I'll write you as often as I can. Don't worry if there are long intervals between letters. And, Marjie, don't believe too easily that I'm dead. If you hear I'm missing, there is still a good chance; even if I'm on the lists, keep on hoping. I'm coming back. Good-bye." He kissed her, then paused, and put his dark head close to hers. "Marjie, if we should have one,--if it's a boy,--I want it brought up in England; and in case we should--promise me to take the best care of yourself--promise! That's right. Now stop trembling."

Marjorie nodded, with white lips, but continued to tremble. Leonard's face became equally white. He set his quivering mouth and turned away, but Marjorie clutched wildly at his sleeve.

"I'm coming with you as far as the boat, Leonard, just as far as the boat. See, those women are going. Oh, let me, Leonard!"

He hesitated, and in that empty moment a voice behind them said, "The average life of an officer in the Dardanelles is eleven days."

Leonard frowned; then glared at the hunchback, who was still peering at them.

"O Leonard, please, _please_!"

"You couldn't come back with them," he said painfully, averting his eyes from hers.

"Eleven days!" repeated an incredulous voice.

"I _will_ come--I _will_ come!" gasped Marjorie, trying to squeeze past Leonard through the gates.

He pushed her back peremptorily. His boyish face was pitiful in its determination.

"You go back," he said. He beckoned to a young officer who was standing in the crowd. "Stuart," he said, "will you see my wife to her carriage? She doesn't feel well. I'm going."

The soldier advanced. Marjorie glared at him with the eyes of an animal who sees her young taken away from her, and he drew back, his face full of pity. She threw one last despairing look at Leonard as he turned down the platform, and in that last glimpse of his strangely numb face she saw how he was suffering. She had a revulsion of feeling; a sense of desolate shame swept over her which, for a moment, surmounted her terror.

She had failed him! Behaved like a coward. Made it terrible for him at the very last. Oh, if he would only look at her again! The whole force of her despair went into that wish--and Leonard turned. A few yards farther down the platform he swung suddenly about, and finding her face among the crowd, he tilted his chin and flashed his white smile at her while his eyes lighted and his lips framed the word "Smile."

The band, which had been gathering impetus for the last moment, pealed forth "Rule Britannia." Marjorie smiled, smiled as she never had before, and kissed her hand. He waved his cap. It was among a forest of caps. The whistle shrieked. The guards slammed the doors. Through the fog the train was moving.

"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! Britons never shall be slaves."

The crowds cheered. There came an acrid rush of smoke, which swallowed up the moving train with its cargo of khaki-clad boys. Above the cheering the hunchback, still dodging under the elbows of the crowd, was calling loudly,

"I came that they might have Life--Life--Life!"

The people stared down at the little sardonic face.

"Crazy?" they muttered.

The cripple shouted with laughter.

"Life--Life--Life!" he said.

When the smoke had cleared again, the tracks were empty, stretching away into blackness.