The Love of an Unknown Soldier Found in a Dug-Out | Page 2

and you, all the time you would have been lonely. All the time you would have been worrying about my safety. If I were wounded again, you would think me dead. Though I were badly wounded, you would not be able to come to me, for you, too, have your duty up there behind the Front at J , you and the other American girls who take care of the French babies. And then I might have been maimed. With the French a man's wounds are like decorations, they are tokens of the new religion of sacrifice. With us they are still horrible. I would not have you held to your bargain with a maimed man, for I might have to live to see you shudder. And, then, I may die in this war who can tell? If I had married you, I should have stolen your happiness and left you deserted. No, I am glad I did not speak of love.
But why talk? If I had, you would probably have looked offended and have refused me refused me as 1 deserved. You would have acted rightly, for I don't believe in these war-engagements and warmarriages. Still the heart cries out; it is difficult to say " No " to self when one is young. I will not think of these things; they make me distracted.
And yet there is still time to tell you. I have only to unhook the receiver and to telephone to you. If I did, what would you say? A queer way to receive a proposal! At past midnight to be roused from sleep to hear a spectral voice saying, " Is that Miss - -? This is the man who's been with you all the evening almost every evening, in fact, of his leave in Paris. I called you up to ask if you'd marry me? "
I won't think of might-have-beens, but only of the memories. They'll be good memories to run over when one's cold and wet and cheerless in some caved -in trench. I shall tell myself the fairy story then of how I met you, how I pledged myself to meet you again, and by accident kept my word.
Do you remember that night, some months ago, when I had been wounded, and had been sent to America on the British Mission? It was soon after America had become our Ally, and I was speaking on the splendour of men's souls in the trenches. At the close, when the hall was emptying, some one brought you up and introduced us. They said that you were sailing for France with a unit that was going to take care of little children in the devastated districts. I looked into your eyes. What did I see there? Something haunting that I never shall forget. There you stood a tall, slim girl, like a rosebud on a stem with its petals unfolding. I know devastated districts I have helped to do the devastating. There are dead men mouldering in every shell-hole. I couldn't see you in that picture, you with your delicate fashionable sweetness. I don't know what I said. Can't remember. Something inadequately trivial about French children being dirty. We shook hands perfunctorily and parted. I sat up most of that night thinking. Next day I telephoned you to wish you luck, but really to hear your voice. You had already sailed. It was then that I pledged myself somehow to find you when I returned to France. How that was to be done I could not guess. I told myself it must happen and it has.
Was it fate? Up there in the mud I was offered a leave to Paris long before my turn, chiefly because the other officers preferred to wait for Blighty leave and a good many of those who were ahead of me were dead. I came to Paris thinking, " There's just a chance that 1 may see her." I went to call on the only girl I knew and found you staying with her. Perhaps it was fate; I prefer to think that it was something else.
That first day I did not see you, but the next you called me up. I took it as an omen of good fortune that you should have gone to that trouble; it seemed to prove to me that to you also that hurried introduction had been more than an incident; that you, too, had been intrigued and made a trifle curious. My vanity, perhaps! But it was more than vanity. A man lives long dreams at the Front all the best of the past and the tenderest of the insecure future; it is his way of compensating himself for the brevity of the life that he has. It was a Sunday that we