Four Days Part 4

"Oh, it was _so_ puppy!" cried Marjorie; "but of course it made the winter pa.s.s less drearily."

"How so--'of course'?"

"Because he would always happen to come down his steps when I came down mine. Or when I was in the garden walking on the frozen walk with huge German overshoes on, he would draw aside the curtain of his house and stand there pretending not to see me until I bowed, and then he would smile and pretend he had just noticed me. And then, when Christmas came, all the girls went home, and Frau Muller and I were asked over to his house to spend the day. Did you ever spend a Christmas in Germany, Len, dear?"

"No, but I hope to some day."

"It's so nice, it's like Christmas in a book. He used to come into the garden after that, and we'd play together. And we read German lesson-books in the summer-house. And then, sometimes, for no reason at all, we would run around the summer-house until we were all out of breath, and had messed up all the paths. One day he had to go away. It was time for him to go into the army to be made an officer, and I didn't see him for so long, and I forgot all about him, nearly. I would have if I hadn't been so lonely."

"Humph!" said Leonard; and Marjorie squeezed his fingers.

"Aren't you just a little bit jealous?" she pleaded.

"Jealous of a Hun?" answered Leonard, knocking the ashes from his pipe.

"No." But he squeezed her hand somewhat viciously in return. "Not a bit.

Stop wriggling! Not a bit. When did you see him again?"

"Not for a long time. One day I came home and on the hall table was a gold sword and a gold helmet with an eagle crest. Maybe I heard his voice in the parlor, maybe I didn't. Anyway, I put the helmet on my head and took the sword out of the scabbard. Oh, wasn't it s.h.i.+ny! I was admiring myself in the mirror when he came out.--Stop whistling, Leonard, or I won't go on.

"He was dressed all in blue and gold, and he wore a gray cape lined with red, and oh, he looked like a picture in a fairy book, I can tell you, and he just stood there and stared at me. And he said, in a very low voice, 'I didn't dare to kiss you under the mistletoe.' And I wanted to say something, but couldn't think of anything because he wouldn't take his eyes away; and then Frau Muller came out and said 'Good-bye' to him with great formality. And afterward she said it was very _unziemlich_ to talk to a young officer alone in the hall, and, oh, I don't know--a whole lot of things I didn't listen to."

"And of course that only fanned your ardor and you continued to meet?"

prompted Leonard.

He lighted a pipe and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and never took his smiling eyes off Marjorie's thin little face, all animated in the dusk.

"Of course we met, but only on the avenue, when we girls were walking in a long line, dressed alike, two by two, guarded by dragons of teachers.

But I'd lie awake every night and think of all kinds of things--his look, and the way his sword clanked against his boots. And twice I saw him at the opera, looking at me from one of the boxes filled with officers. You can't think how big I felt having him notice me--and you can't think how beautiful I thought he was. Little thrills ran up and down my spine every time I looked at him. Is that the way you felt when you looked at your silly actresses?"

"Maybe," said Leonard, grinning with the corner of his mouth unoccupied by the pipe, and staring out into the shadowy darkness. "Was that all?"

They were drawing near to London.

"Mostly," answered Marjorie, fingering the b.u.t.tons on Leonard's sleeve.

"Last time I saw him it was in the garden on the same bench in the sun.

He came over the fence, and he told me that his regiment had been ordered to Berlin the next day."

"You knew more German then?" asked Leonard.

"Yes, I suppose so; but I didn't need to understand. It was all in the sun, and the air was all warm from the cut clovers, and his eyes were, oh, so blue! And--I don't know. He took off his helmet and put it on my head, and he took his sword out of the scabbard and he put it in my hand, and he said, oh, all kinds of things in German that I couldn't understand very well."

"He was probably asking you how much your dowry was."

"Maybe, but his eyes didn't ask me that. And that was all. I never saw him again, and I don't ever expect to."

"Should rather think not."

"Would you mind?"

"Certainly," said Leonard.

"They're horrible tyrants, English husbands," said Marjie, kissing his arm.

"Not so bad as German ones," he replied, putting his head down to hers.

The cas.e.m.e.nts rattled. Into the little dark square of the compartment window peered a confusion of lights, the myriad eyes of a great city.

"Why, it's London!" cried Marjorie. "I'd lost all track of time. Hadn't you, Leonard?"

"No," he answered laconically, slamming down the lid of the tea-basket.

But Marjorie squeezed up against him and gave a little laugh. "Supposing it could be the same man, Leonard," she said.

"What man?" asked Leonard, snapping the lock.

"Why, the man of the Helmet--the Dying Gaul--and my man I've been telling you about."

Leonard looked at her, and for some reason his eyes flinched. "What difference would that make? He was German," was all he said.

It was a sultry evening. Flowers were being sold in profusion on street corners. Hurdy-gurdies played war tunes in the gutter. The streets were filled with soldiers in khaki and florid civilians in their summer clothes. Suddenly she remembered a pa.s.sage in the Bible that always seemed beautiful to her, but now it seemed to have been specially written for her:--

"Where thou goest, I will go, And where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, And thy G.o.d, my G.o.d."

She walked as close to Leonard as she dared: "Thy people shall be my people, And thy G.o.d, my G.o.d."

The pa.s.sers-by smiled at her and turned and stared after. "Awfully hard on a girl," they thought, touched by the rapt look on the young face.

"Oh, Len," she whispered, pulling at his arm, "I love all these people; I love England."

He smiled indulgently.

"They're all right," he a.s.sented; "I don't mind strangers, but I hate the thought of all the relatives we've got to face when we get back.

There'll be Aunt Hortense and Uncle Charles. Mater'll have all the uncles and the cousins and the aunts in to bid me a tender farewell.

Think of spending my last evening with you answering questions about how deep the mud is in the trenches, and what we get to eat, and what the names of all the officers in my mess are."

"And then they'll spend the rest of our precious time connecting them up to people of the same name in England," said Marjorie.

"Exactly," agreed Leonard. "Aren't grown-up relations beastly?"

"Horrible," said Marjorie, "but they've been awfully decent about letting me have you all of these four days."

To put off the evil moment of arrival they stopped at every shop-window and stared in, their faces pressed close to the gla.s.s.

All the way home, with eyes that neither saw nor cared where they were going, they talked to each other of their childhood. The most trivial incidents became magnified and significant when exchanged.

"That's just the way I used to feel, that's just the way I used to feel," they kept repeating, over and over again. The sweet, misty memories of their happy, happy lives, came gliding back into consciousness. The thoughts and yearnings, the smells, the sights and sounds, all the serenity of the immaculate, long childhood days. Walking side by side in the reverent dimness, intensely conscious of each other, they had that mysterious sensation of having done this before, of living a second time. The world was transfigured; they were aware of measureless rapture brooding close about them in the twilight of which they were a part--a rapture, a sense of enchantment, that people are only conscious of as children or when they are in love or in dreams.

Finally, deliciously weary, and full of the languor of the summer night, they retraced their steps and took the two-penny tube.