Four Days | Page 4

said, "once known as Leonard, presents his compliments to Mrs. Bridget O'Garrity, n��e Flannagan, and wishes her to request Mr. Jakes, in the culinary regions, to draw his bath and lay out his things and generally make himself a nuisance. He will not permit Mrs. O'Garrity to dress him."
"Oh, now, Captain Leeds--well then, Leonard dearie, you bad boy," wailed the old woman reproachfully. "Mr. Jakes has gone to the war, as has likewise all the men in the house, and a good riddance it is, too. There was a time when you weren't too grand to let your poor old Nannie wait on you. Why, Miss Marjorie, I remember the time when he couldn't--"
"No reminiscences!" broke in Leonard, eyeing Nannie suspiciously. "You have had so much experience with men you ought to know how they hate it. Why, Marjorie, do you realize that Nannie has had five husbands?"
"Oh, Master Leonard, indade, it is only three!" cried Nannie, horrified.
"Seven," Leonard insisted; "it's a compliment. It only shows how fascinating you are with the polygamous sex. It was seven, only two never showed up after the wedding. I was to be the eighth, Marjie, only you came in between us."
"Master Leonard, I could smack you for talking like that! Don't listen to 'im, Miss Marjorie."
"Cheer up, old Nannie," continued Leonard; "there's still Kitchener. He's a bachelor and a woman-hater, but then, he's never met you, and he's even a greater hero than I am."
Nannie, aghast but delighted, advanced toward Leonard, shaking her gray curls. "H'm, h'm. Woman-haters, you say. I never met one, indade." Then, very coaxingly, "Didn't you bring your old Nannie a souvenir from the war?"
"Rather," said Leonard, indicating with his chin the rent on his shoulder. "How about this?"
"How about that?" said Nannie, her old eyes in their deep furrows gleaming with malice.
From behind her broad back she drew forth a round metal object that flashed in the firelight.
"It's a German helmet!" cried Marjorie.
"I want it!" shouted Herbert, stretching up his arms for the flashing plaything.
"It's mine," coaxed Marjorie, trying to wrest it from Nannie.
Leonard put out a swift hand, and held it aloft by the spike.
"Let me try it on," wheedled Marjorie, coaxing down his arm.
"You look like a baby Valkyrie," said Leonard, placing the helmet on her head; but he frowned.
Marjorie regarded herself in the mirror.
"This belonged to an officer of the Prussian guard," she said.
"It did. How did you know?"
Marjorie continued to stare at herself in the mirror as if she saw something there behind her own reflection. "The very first man who was ever in love with me wore a helmet like this," she said, suddenly, lifting enigmatic and mischievous eyes to Leonard.
"How many have there been since?" Leonard smiled, lazily.
"I can remember only the first and the last," said Marjorie.
Leonard laughed, but he could not see Marjorie's face. She was standing looking down at the gold eagle-crest, holding the helmet in both hands, carefully, timidly, as if it were a loaded weapon that might go off.
"Where did you get it, Len?" she asked, gravely.
"There's a crop of them coming up in France this summer," said Leonard.
"But seriously, Len?"
"Seriously, Marjorie." He took the helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. "Lord knows, I'm not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly packed it in my kit."
Marjorie drew a deep breath. "Oh, Len," she whispered, staring at the helmet. "How does it feel to kill a man?"
Leonard, smiling, shifted his position and answered, "No different from killing your first rabbit, if you don't sit down on the bank and watch it kick, and write poetry. Besides, you always have the pleasure of thinking it's a German rabbit."
"Oh, Len!"
"You're just one in a great big machine called England. It isn't your job to think," Leonard said. "For God's sake, lamb, don't cherish any fool Yankee pacifist notions. We are going to beat the Germans till every man Fritz of them is either dead or can't crawl off the field." His black fingers closed over Marjorie's. "Remember, after to-night you're an Englishwoman. You can't be a little American mongrel any more; not until I'm dead, anyway. Now I've got you, I'll never let you go!" He showed his teeth in a fierce, defiant smile, in which there was pathos. He knew what a life in the Dardanelles was worth. He put his cropped head close to Marjorie's. "Do you hate me for that, Marjie?"
Marjorie, pressing against him, felt the strength of his gaunt shoulder through his coat. A sense of delicious fear stole over her, and the savage which lies close to the surface in every woman leaped within her.
"I love you for it!"