Chapter 3 No.3

The girl-soldier at the wheel relieved the situation. Since leaving the station she had been running slower and slower, glancing back across her shoulder and trying to catch their attention. Just short of the great cross-roads at Hyde Park Corner she brought the car to a halt.

"What's the matter, Prentys?" Terry asked. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, miss; but you've not told me where to go."

The girl spoke so reproachfully that Terry laughed. "Awfully sorry, Prentys. It's Lord Taborley's fault. He didn't tell either of us. What are your plans, Tabs? Where do you want to go?"

"To go?"

He caught at her question and examined it. To go-where did he want to go? He had been so certain when he had boarded the train to London early that morning. Ever since he had said good-by to her, nearly five years ago, he had known quite definitely. Each time that he had had a glimpse of her on those brief leaves from the Front, he had been more and more sure of the desired direction. Her letters coming up to him under shell-fire had made him even more certain-those letters compassionate with unashamed sincerity, written with a girl's admiration for a man who was jeopardizing his all that she might live in safety.

And now, when he was free at last to go where he chose and she herself asked him, he could find no answer to her question. Why couldn't he? He looked at her thoughtfully with the frown of his problem in his eyes. What change had come over her? Or was it he who was altered? She had seemed so absolutely his while the terror of battle had kept them apart. She had written and acted as though she was his right up to-- Yes, right up to the point when he had been in a position to claim her.

Between him and Terry there had been no engagement-only a wealth of interchanged affection; interchanged for the most part on paper. Once and only once had marriage been mentioned-on the night that he had set out for the first time for the Front. "You won't ask me, Tabs; I know that. You're too honorable. So I've got to say it. When you come back I'm going to marry you."

"If I come back, little Terry," he had corrected.

"But you will-you must," she had pleaded, "for my sake."

"I'll try. I'll try so hard," he had promised. "But I won't marry you till I'm out of khaki or the war is ended."

"And I'll meet you at the train the moment you're free and we'll be married that very day."

All this five years ago on a murky station in the tragedy of parting, while Belgium was being trampled and the troop-train waited. She had eluded the vigilance of her parents and had met him outside the barracks, without forewarning. Through the gloom of streets and the blur of the accompanying crowd, he had seen her face loom up. Her arm had slipped through his; she had marched beside him like any Tommy's sweetheart. She had been seventeen at the time; to-day she was two-and-twenty. In the years that had followed he had taken no step to make that girlish promise binding, yet increasingly its fulfillment had been the goal towards which he had struggled.

After she had joined Lady Dawn's Nursing Unit and had gone to France he had missed her on his leaves; by some fatality they had been always missing. She had existed for him only in their correspondence and in his vivid imagination. And now, after so much hoping, she had become again a reality. He had been prepared for strangeness, but not for-- Was it her youth, which was to have flung wide all doors, that formed the barricade? Her youth which, if shared, would have put back the hands on the face of Time! Her relentless, flaunting youth! Youth which is forever hostile to age!

Her growing and puzzled expression of impatience forced him to narrow his answer to the requirements of the moment. "What are my plans, you asked? I haven't any. I'm a man at a loose end and at a beginning-like all the world, as you yourself just stated."

"Yes, but--"

"I know what you're going to say-that every one has to live somewhere. I have a place all right-my old place."

"Shall I tell Prentys to drive you there?"

He shook his head and thrust out his long legs, throwing his weight more heavily against the cushions. "Not unless you didn't read my letter."

Her habitual sunniness clouded. "Tabs, you're trying to be beastly. If I hadn't read it, I shouldn't have known to have met you, or when, or where."

"Then you remember that it reminded you of--"

She cut him short, glancing furtively at the girl at the wheel to see whether she had been listening. "I don't forget easily. Where do you want to go? Would a run into the country suit you?"

"Excellently."

"In what direction?"

"Makes no difference."

She whispered something to the girl; the car semi-circled and gathered speed, shooting through the traffic which was lumbering towards the Fulham Road and Surrey.

Now that he had gained his point, he didn't seem inclined for conversation. He lolled back with his eyes half-shut; she sat bolt upright, ignoring his presence.

He recalled to-day as he had pictured it. Terry was to have been still the girl-woman who had wanted him so badly that she had been brave enough to ask for him. She was to have been precisely and in every detail the girl from whom he had parted. She was to have been on the platform waiting for him, and he....

Pshaw! What a sentimentalist and how easily disappointed! The old fight was still on in another form. It was never ended. Life was a fight from start to finish, calling for new and yet newer courage. He refused to be defeated. He would not be embittered. He would win his kingdom round the corner, even though it proved to be a different kingdom from the one he had expected. Terry couldn't have stayed seventeen always, which was the miracle he had demanded. She was a woman. He would have to teach her to love him afresh. There was no time to be lost. For all he knew there might be a rival-perhaps the mysterious some one at the War Office who had lent her this car. He leant forward good-humoredly, touching her hand to attract her attention, "Terry."