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

in return, what would have resulted?
Only suffering until the war is ended, we could never have been
together 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