If those years brought unprecedented misery to the human family, they had their compensating moments—especially for those most deeply concerned. Lovers, for instance—true lovers. When two people really love one another, and are limited by inexorable circumstances to rare and brief periods of companionship, each one of which may be the very last—and each succeeding day of those four years saw some six hundred British soldiers of all ranks go back from Leave never to return—their love is lifted to heights, and breathes an atmosphere, of which ordinary workaday lovers can know nothing. Poor peace-time lovers—sitting holding hands in a conservatory, or spooning on a golf course—what do they know? Faced by a future all their own (and the enervating consciousness that there will probably be a good deal of it), what do they know? What do they know of the blind rapture of Six Days' Leave?
Roy's telegram preceded him by exactly one hour, so Marjorie had little time to get excited. She merely embraced Liss, changed her frock, embraced Liss again, changed her frock again, and dashed off to Victoria. After that her recollection of events went out of focus a little. She had watched the arrival of the Leave-train so often merely as a benevolent spectator, that sudden and personal participation in that function disarranged her perspectives.
She caught sight of Roy almost at once—singling out his glengarry from among the flat caps and steel helmets. He was politely resisting the importunity of an elderly gentleman in a grey uniform and a red brassard, bent on luring him to a free ride upon the Underground Railway. Next moment, Marjorie had slipped her arm through his. After that, neither of them remembered anything much until they found themselves sitting hand in hand in a taxi, gliding stealthily through the darkened streets of London, both feeling a little constrained and embarrassed. Re-united lovers, especially of our nation, do not always spark immediately on contact. We are a highly-insulated race.
"They keep this old place pretty dark," said Roy, peering out of the cab window. "Zeppelins, I suppose?"
"Yes. We had some last week."
"Have you ever seen one?"
"Rather!"
Roy laughed, constrainedly.
"It's funny you should have seen something in this war that I haven't," he said. "Where are we going?"
"To my flat."
Roy turned and surveyed Marjorie's profile in the dim light of the cab.
"I shall be able to see you properly then," he announced with satisfaction. "It's as dark as the inside of a cow here. Have you changed at all, I wonder?"
"You will find I am quite a big girl now," replied Marjorie, laughing constrainedly.
Roy laughed too, and his face came closer to hers. Her hair brushed his lips. Next moment their arms were about one another.
Five minutes later, they groped their way mechanically upstairs to Marjorie's landing, while a slightly incredulous taxi-driver, with one of the newly-invented pound notes in his oily palm, drove hurriedly away before somebody came out of the chloroform.
"You are thinner, dear, and older—much older," was Marjorie's verdict when they found themselves under the lamp by the sofa. "You look more like thirty than twenty. I expect things have been pretty awful sometimes, haven't they?"
Roy nodded. "Yes, sometimes," he said. "I'll tell you about it one day." Then, suddenly and boyishly: "Dearest, you look wonderful!"
It was no more than the truth. Marjorie had felt tired enough a couple of hours ago; but now her cheeks were pink, and her eyes glowed. Her hair had suddenly recovered its lustre. For the first time in six months she looked what she was—twenty. But she realised that the old Roy could never come back to her. Her smooth-cheeked schoolboy was gone, and in his place she had a man—thin as a lath, healthily bronzed, and curiously grave. The Western Front lost no time in making a man in those days—or breaking him.
They kissed again, with absolute lack of shyness this time. Suddenly a thought struck Marjorie.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "What time is it?"
"Seven o'clock. Why?"
"My dear—the theatre! I'd forgotten all about it. I am an honest working girl, and the curtain goes up at eight-thirty!"
"By gum!" said Roy, who of course knew all about "Too Many Girls." "Absent from parade when warned for duty, eh? That will never do. What about it? Can't you get a night off?"
"I might," said Marjorie doubtfully. "Most of the girls send a doctor's certificate. But I don't think it's the game. They overdo it so."
"Quite right!" said that young disciplinarian, Lieutenant Birnie. "But it's a bit rough, all the same."
A key rattled loudly and tactfully in the outer door, which then opened with mature deliberation, and Liss appeared.
"I hadn't meant to butt in," she explained, after introductions, "but I just want to say that I have seen Lancaster, and he says you can have the night off. I told him about you," she explained to Roy, "and he said you could have her this evening if you promised faithfully to send her back for to-morrow's show."
"I will bring her back myself," replied Roy, "and buy the whole front row to watch her from!"
"Righto! Good-bye, children! Enjoy yourselves!" said Liss, and vanished, like a diplomatic little wraith.
After that, Roy and Marjorie sat down to make plans.
"First of all," began Roy, "I must hop off to the club and order a bed and have a hot bath—a real hot bath! Sah vah song dearie, as we say at the Quai D'Orsay. My last one was in a little house somewhere behind Albert, in a sort of zinc coffin in front of the kitchen stove, with the family sitting tactfully in the scullery. But I am digressing: let us resume! After that, we will go and dine somewhere. By the way, I suppose there is still plenty of food to be had in these days?"
"There is a shortage of potatoes at present, I am sorry to say," replied Marjorie in her best canteen manner. "But—"
"We can worry along without potatoes," said Roy. "What I chiefly want is to dine off a table covered with a white cloth instead of a newspaper; and drink out of a glass instead of a tin cup. I think the Carlton will meet the case. Oh, my dear, my dear! I can't believe it all yet! Are you really here?" ...
At this rate of progress it was nine o'clock before they sat down to the feast, which was served to them by an obsequious neutral in a corner of the big restaurant. It was a luxurious dinner for war time, though bully beef and stewed tea would have served equally well. Reunited lovers are not, as a rule, fastidious.
They talked steadily now, unfolding reminiscence after reminiscence. Roy had most to tell; for Marjorie's adventures had been faithfully recorded in her daily letters, while Roy, as previously noted, had usually confined himself to breezy irrelevance.
"Uncle Alan is in command now," he said. "I suppose you heard that the Colonel had been knocked out?"
"Colonel Bethune? Yes, I saw it in the paper." To her own annoyance, Marjorie felt her colour rising. But Roy noticed nothing.
"Yes, he stopped a five-point-nine with his left arm on the second day of the Somme show, and went home without it. We were in a pretty tight place at the time, and it was a bit of a job getting him away. But I hear he's all right again now, though short of a fin. Have you seen him by any chance?"
"Not since April," said Marjorie. "He was in London then, on leave." She was feeling thoroughly self-conscious, and despised herself for it.
"They gave him a bar to his D.S.O.," continued Roy. "He deserved it too, for what he did."
"What did he do?" asked Marjorie jealously. She was a little critical of a system which gave a decoration to a man for getting wounded and coming home, and nothing to those who had to remain and carry on.
"We were right up in the air," explained Roy, "uncovered on both flanks. We did not know where we were; Brigade Headquarters didn't know where we were, so couldn't reinforce us; and the gunners didn't know where we were, so couldn't fire for fear of hitting us. The only person who really knew where we were was the Boche—a well-informed little fellow, the Boche!—and he gave it to us good and hard. But the Colonel was wonderful. We had no cover in particular, beyond a kneeling-trench which we had scooped out for ourselves. There was no room for any officer to pass up and down, so we all stayed where we found ourselves, as ordered, and controlled our fire as well as possible. But the Colonel came walking to us across the open from Battalion Headquarters—an old mine-crater about a hundred yards in rear of us—and strolled right along our whole front from end to end, with Boche snipers taking pot-shots at him all the time; looking as if he had just come out of his tailor's—he had gloves on!—stopping here and there to talk to the men, and telling them that no battalion of the Covenanters had ever been known to go back, and that reinforcements were coming up, and how pleased he was to see us so steady. (We weren't feeling a bit steady, really.) The trenches were full of wounded men whom we couldn't get away. He stopped and spoke to them all—by name!—and gave them cigarettes. The result was that when the Boche attacked, our fellows fought like tigers. It was after the attack got round our undefended flanks that the hard time began. Finally, their gunners got our range, and simply blew us out of the trench. Even then the C.O. wouldn't give in. He stood on the parapet, giving fire orders as cool as you please, and telling us how well we were doing. Finally he was hit. They carried him away on a blanket, insensible, and Uncle Alan took command. By this time we were surrounded on three sides—enfiladed, and everything. Uncle Alan passed word along that we were to fall back slowly to our proper place in the line."
"Your proper place?"
"Yes. I forgot to tell you about that. We had overrun our objective, it seemed. Everybody else in the brigade was snugly dug in about half a mile behind us, on a continuous line, except for a gap that we ought to have been filling. We got there at last, but it was a pretty awful walk. We got all our wounded away, though."
"Were there many?"
"A good lot. It was bad luck getting into that position at all. However, we got a tremendous pat on the back from the Divisional Commander afterwards. Apparently there had been some misunderstanding about orders. Now let us talk about something else."
And that was as much as was ever told of the story of how Eric Bethune's lofty contempt for the "book of the words" led a fine battalion into a skilfully baited death-trap.
After that they talked, as lovers will, of the present. They even spoke of the future—a subject upon which, in those days, few young people cared to hazard conjecture in cold blood. But to-night their blood ran hot and high. The world was theirs—for six days.
"To-morrow morning," continued Roy, with an air of immense authority, "I shall take you out and buy you an engagement ring. It is perfectly scandalous your going about with me in this way without one! (Still, I suppose you will have to wear it round your neck on a string, anyway!) After that, a little shopping! I suppose there will be no harm if I buy you some things—long gloves, and high-heel shoes, and silk stockings, and things like that? We'll throw in a nice sensible umbrella, as a chaperon! Then in the evening we will dine early, so as to give you plenty of time to get to your show."
Marjorie laid her slim fingers upon Roy's brown paw.
"Darling," she said firmly, "to-morrow morning I am going to take you to a railway station, and you are going to take the train to Scotland, to see your father!"
Roy's face fell ludicrously. Then the smile he had inherited from his mother came suddenly back. He was all contrition.
"Good Heavens! You had me there, dear. I own up! For the last twenty-four hours my noble parent has entirely escaped my memory. As soon as they told me that I could go on leave I simply grabbed my haversack, asked the Buzzers to send a wire, and then sprinted for the railhead. Poor old dad! Of course you're right. I haven't had a line from him for six weeks, by the way. I'll send a telegram to Baronrigg at once, and start to-morrow." Then he added anxiously:
"How long must I stay?"
Marjorie considered.
"Your father doesn't know anything about me, of course?" she said.
"No; nobody knows. It's our secret—ours, and no one else's!" The impulsive pair squeezed hands upon the secret, instantly revealing it to the obsequious neutral aforementioned. "Still, perhaps it would be as well if I told him, eh? Then he couldn't object to my coming back here pretty quick."
"Supposing he doesn't approve?" said Marjorie doubtfully. "He doesn't know me—nor my people, so far as I am aware. Or perhaps he does, which might be worse!"
"My old dad's a white man," said Roy stoutly. "He'd understand. He knows what it is for a fellow to have to go without. He once had to endure seeing his girl—my mother—engaged to another man for several months. He'll understand, all right!"
"I never knew that," said Marjorie. "Who was the other man?"
"Colonel Bethune. Of course he was only a subaltern then."
"Who?" Marjorie was fairly startled out of herself this time.
"Eric Bethune, our C.O. I thought that would surprise you! I never knew myself until a few months ago. Uncle Alan told me. The Colonel has always been rather heavily down on me—I never knew why—and one day when I was more than usually fed up with things in general, having just been informed by my commanding officer that I was not fit to hold the King's Commission, old Uncle Alan told me all about it. He explained that the Colonel didn't really think me a dud soldier; he was only peeved at not being my father. Fancy disliking a fellow for that! It's a queer world!"
Queer indeed! Marjorie, better informed than Roy, mused upon the diabolical trick of fate which had caused a man to be baulked of the only thing that really matters by two successive generations—first by the father, then by the son. For the first time she felt a genuine pang of pity for Eric Bethune. But it passed, in a flash. Eric was "heavily down on" Roy—her Roy! All her generous soul revolted at the pettiness of such a revenge.
"I often wondered," continued Roy, "why my mother broke it off. I don't believe Uncle Alan knew. Why was it, do you think?"
"I don't know," said Marjorie. But she did.
Five minutes later they arrived at the theatre where the musical comedy—or musical tragedy: you never know—of their choice was in progress. The vestibule was deserted, but Roy held open the swing door and ushered Marjorie into the darkened auditorium. A blast of hot air and a concerted feminine screech greeted them.
"The curtain's up," said Roy. "Come along! Our seats are in the back row, on the gangway. Rotten, but convenient!"
They slipped unostentatiously into their places. The company were massed upon the stage; the orchestra was in full cry; the young persons of the Chorus were in a state of unwonted animation. In the centre, a lady of ravishing beauty was melting into the arms of a distinguished-looking individual just over military age. Humourists supported either flank.
"This is going to be some show!" announced Roy, groping for Marjorie's hand, and surveying the chorus with all the appreciation of a Robinson Crusoe of six months' standing. "I shouldn't mind being Adjutant of that battalion! Not that any of them could walk down the same street with you! Hallo, hallo! What's all this? The interval! We must have come in late."
The curtain fell, and the audience, with one accord, rose to their feet and made for the doors. The band offered a hurried tribute to the Crown. Roy looked at his watch, and turned to Marjorie with a comical grimace.
"Eleven o'clock!" he announced. "We must have sat over dinner a bit longer than we thought. The show's over! Does it matter?"
"Nothing in the world matters—this week!" said Marjorie, taking his arm.