Part 77 (1/2)
”A what?” he said, laughingly. ”You're a darling!”'
”I wash up tea-cups and saucers which Tommies drink from, and lay out trays with tea-cups and saucers all day long.” She paused. ”That's as near as I've got to the war.”
”With your brains, Meg--is that all they could find for you to do?”
His encircling arm hugged her closely. Each moment she was becoming more desirable and beautiful in his eyes; each moment life in the trenches seemed further and further away.
”Freddy was sniped,” Margaret said, ”before he even killed a German.
Was.h.i.+ng up dirty cups makes me mind it less.”
”You dear darling,” Michael said. ”I understand and Freddy knows.”
”I'll tell the man where to drive to,” Margaret said bravely. ”Then we can be together until I have to begin work.” She raised the speaking-tube to her lips and told the driver where to go, explaining the most direct way to the secluded square, When she dropped the tube and sank back into her seat Michael's arm was round her; she had felt his eyes and their pa.s.sion, gazing at her while she instructed the driver.
”Will you marry me the day after to-morrow?” he said. ”I'll get a special licence. Let's start this little time of perfect happiness at once, Meg--it may never come again.”
Meg laughed nervously, but there was gladness in the sound of her voice. ”But, Mike, it's so sudden--the day after to-morrow!”
”So was our love, darling--don't you remember?” He paused. ”Am I asking too much? You might be my wife for less than two weeks, beloved, remember that.”
They looked into each other's eyes. Meg knew the meaning of his words; he was a Tommy on leave.
”I can't go on having hairbreadth escapes to the end of the war,” he said. ”Up to now I'm the mascot amongst the boys; I've had prodigious luck.”
Meg remained silent. Her heart was beating. His hair-breadth escapes--what were they due to? She saw her vision of him in her London bedroom, surrounded by the rays of Aton. She nursed the knowledge of it in her heart--she dared not tell him.
”Over and over again, Meg, the most extraordinary things have happened.
I can't tell you them all now--they would sound like exaggerations, but I'm almost beginning to agree with the boys that I've a charmed life.”
Meg longed to confide her secret to him, but something held her back; something said to her that he was not meant to know it, that if he knew he might be tempted to do still more foolhardy deeds, he would feel compelled to put her mystical message to the test. She remained silent; her mind was working too quickly for speech. She had forgotten that Michael wanted her answer. Her heart had given it so willingly that words were scarcely needed, but he pressed her for her consent.
There are some words which lovers like to hear spoken by beautiful lips.
”You are the mistress of my happiness,” he urged. ”And if our happiness in this world is to be condensed into twelve days, surely it would be worth while seizing it and being thankful for it? In this world of agony and death, twelve days of life at its fullest is of more account than a long lifetime of unrecognized benefits and indefinite happiness.”
Meg agreed that the war had taught people to be thankful for what seemed to her pitifully small mercies; people married for ten days or for a fortnight at the longest, knowing that for that little time of forgetfulness their husbands were among the quick; at the end of it they might be among the dead.
”Then, if I can get a special licence to-morrow, will you marry me the day after? If I may go back to the Front as your husband, Meg, I think I can win the war. My life will be more charmed than ever.” He laughed gaily. ”What will the boys say? I'm the only one in the trench who doesn't write to about six girls every day, telling each one that she is the only girl he loves.”
Margaret's answer was in her laugh, which was all love, and in the lips she held up to meet Michael's kiss. ”And it's proud I'll be to be Mrs.
Amory!” she said. ”And ye can tell the boys that, if you like.” She broke off suddenly from her mock Irish tones, and said more gravely, ”Isn't it wonderful? Only an hour ago I was alone in London, so lonely that the very flowers hurt me! I hated the spring in the year--it laughed at my dull room and humdrum existence. And now----”
”And now,” he said, ”you are going to be a soldier's wife, you are going to marry a verminous Tommy in two days' time, you darling!”
Meg looked at her own dark uniform. ”I don't see even one,” she said, ”but I'll have to be careful. I'll change when I go in. Are you really as bad as that?”
”I tried to clean myself up a bit,” he said. ”But I have been awful.
That's the thing I hate most about the whole business. I've got used to all the other discomforts long ago, and to everything else.”
”Even to the killing of human beings, Mike?”