Four Days | Page 6

I suppose?"
"That's telling," said the old man, whipping up the horses that were
covered with foam.

III
Four days is a long, long time, Marjorie had said, for the hours that are
breathlessly counted make long, long days; they are long as those of
summer-childhood in passing. But ever, when it comes May, and the
soft, chill breezes blow from the ocean across the sun-soaked sands,
and the clouds run dazzling races with the sea gulls, Marjorie will feel
herself running too, catching up breathless a few paces behind Leonard,
as on that second afternoon on a wind-swept beach of the Kentish coast.
Like mad things, their heads thrown back, hair flying, mouths open, the
spray smiting their open eyes, with all the ecstasy of their new-found
energy, they clambered over the slippery seaweed and leaped from rock
to rock, swept along with the winds, daring the waves, shouting down
the surf.
Marjorie, when those spring days come round again, will remember a
little cove, sheltered from the wind, warmed by the fitful spring
sunlight, where, panting, they threw themselves down on the sand,
bodies glowing, faces to the sun.
"Hello, sun!" cried Marjorie.
"Hello, clouds!" cried Leonard.
"Hello, old sea gulls!" cried Marjorie, beginning to sneeze.

"God, but I feel fit; I feel glorious! Don't you, Marjie?"
"Don't I, though! I feel glorious. O God!" cried Marjorie, who did not
know whether that was swearing or praying, and did not care.
Leonard ran his hands through the chill, warm sand, and watched a
huge black spider promenading with bustling importance up his arm.
"The female spider eats the male as soon as he fertilizes the eggs, but
he has to just the same," said Leonard, dreamily.
"Let's kill her," said Marjorie.
"No."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"She's a cannibal," said Marjorie.
"No, it's her instinct," said Leonard.
He opened an alleyway for the spider in the sand, and, with his head
down close, watched it hustling away. "It's the same with us; we know
we have every chance of being killed in this war, and we have to go,
and we're glad to. It's not courage or sacrifice; it's instinct."
"You think so, Leonard?"
"It's not nice to lie alongside of a man you've killed and watch him
die," said Leonard, inconsistently, eyes looking down into the sand,
head pillowed on his arm.
"Did you have to, Len?"
"I didn't exactly mean to kill him. He was wounded," murmured
Leonard, raising little white pools in the sand with his nostrils. "We had
a rotten day and had taken a small position which didn't amount to

anything when we got it. Wasn't I in a nasty sulk! Some of my green
men had funked just at the crucial moment, and I had all but shot one.
The ground was covered with wounded. Couldn't tell theirs from ours.
Awful mess. I was coming back across the field over dead bodies, and
cursing every one I stumbled across. I suppose I felt pretty sick. I saw a
helmet gleaming in some burnt shrubbery. It was a nice shiny one, with
an eagle crest. It occurred to me you'd written me to send you one,
'because all the girls had them'--remember?"
Leonard rolled over close beside her and his head went down into the
sand again.
"I went to pick it up, but it seems I got something else with it. A great
blonde fellow in gray, all powdered with dust and bleeding,--Jove! how
he was bleeding!--came up with it. It surprised me and he managed to
knife me, and over I went, on top of him. I had my pistol cocked, and I
let him have it right in the chest. I must have fainted, because when I
came to I was on my back and the moon was shining in my eyes. The
man in gray was there alongside of me, supporting himself on one arm
and looking at me.
"'I am dying,' he said in German.
"That didn't seem very interesting to me. So is everybody else, I
thought; and I didn't answer. Presently he said it again, in English: 'I'm
dying.'
"'Really?' said I.
"'Yes,' he answered.
"There was something impersonal in his tone, and he looked eery there
in the moonlight, I can tell you, leaning on one arm and bleeding.
Awfully good-looking chap. Built like a giant. He reminded me of a
statue called the Dying Gaul, or something."
"Oh, yes; I know that statue!"

"Well, he looked like that--with all the fight going out of him. Suddenly
he smiled at me.
"'Did you think you were playing your football when you came down
on top of me that way, eh?'
"I say, I was a bit surprised. Football doesn't seem a very congenial
subject for a dying man; but