Chapter 4 No.4

She turned slowly, almost reluctantly. What new and disturbing question was he going to ask? She hadn't been prepared for this altered man with his limp and his gauntness and his strained intensity. She couldn't bring herself to believe that this grave, spent, unlaughing person at her side was Tabs, the gallant, care-free comrade she had asked to marry her. She was shocked both at him and at herself. And she had wanted to be so glad-to make him feel that every one was so happy at having him back--

"Terry."

At the sound of her name, spoken like that, a little thrill of his old-time power stirred her; it traveled up to her eyes, so that she had to press back the tears before she turned.

"Terry, it was sentimental blackmail. I'm sorry."

"What was? I don't understand."

"That last letter. I oughtn't to have reminded you. What one promises at seventeen doesn't hold good. It was sporting of you to keep the promise by meeting me this morning, but-- What I'm trying to say is this; I'm forgetting everything that you would like me to forget."

"But I'm not sure that I want you to forget anything." She widened her lips into a smile from which the trouble was only half dispelled. "It sounds horrid and unfriendly, this talk of forgetting, as though-- It sounds so much worse when it's put into words, as though we had something of which to be ashamed."

"No, it's not like that. May I be terrifically honest-just as we used?"

She eyed him doubtfully. It was evident that she was still timid of the truth. Then she nodded.

"Well, you know how it was between us before I went away. You were of an age when most people still thought of you as a child. You were outwardly, but inside you were almost a woman. The little girl did things and promised things that the woman wouldn't approve to-day. And then take my side of it. I went out to a place where life seemed at an end and where, because of that, one became selfish in the demands he made on the people whom he had left behind-especially on the women. It was impossible to be normal; probably I'm not quite normal now. But the point is this: every man in khaki thought intensely of some one girl. It didn't matter whether he had the right to think of her; he just thought of her, and wrote to her, and carried her photo with him up to an attack, as if he had the right. He wasn't even much disturbed as to whether, in allowing him to love her, she loved him in return or was merely being patriotic; he didn't expect to live to put things to a test. All he wanted was the belief that one woman loved him. You understand, she was very often only a makeshift-a symbol for the woman he would have married if death hadn't been in such a hurry. Well, for some of us Death has had time to spare and we've come back-come back starved, emotional, tyrannic-passionate to possess all the things for which our hearts have hungered and of which they have been deprived so long. It was easy to strip ourselves of everything when we thought we were going to die. But now that we know we're going to live we're tempted to recover some of our lost years by violence. You must be patient with us, Terry; we're sick children, querulous, eager to take offense and over-exacting. I was like that when I blackmailed you into meeting me this morning. It was unworthy of me to have treated that child's promise as binding."

"But I was seventeen; I wasn't a child. And I wanted to meet you-I did truly."

"Letting me down lightly?" he smiled.

"No, an honest fact."

When he gazed at her with kindly incredulity, she edged herself closer and bent forward in a generous effort to persuade him.

"Don't you see that what you've said of yourself was true of me as well?"

"I wasn't talking in particular of myself," he parried; "I was including all the other men."

"Yes, but especially of yourself. It was of yourself that you were talking. What you've said of yourself is true of me and-oh, of almost all women. We saw you men march away; you seemed lost to us forever. Everything seemed at an end. So we did what you did-chose one man who would embody all our dreams and become especially ours. We wrote to him, shopped for him, placed his portrait on our dressing-tables, were anxious for him and, oh, so proud of him. We didn't stop to ask whether he was the man with whom we could live for always. There wasn't any always. It didn't look as though there was ever again going to be any always. And then the horror stopped and we found ourselves with a man on our hands-a man who, though we had known him so well, would come back to us different. We hadn't meant to cheat him when we made all those promises; but now that he's really ours, we're not sure that we-- All the ecstasies and tears that we wrote to him on paper--" She made a helpless gesture with her hands. "They don't seem real. It's not our fault. They belonged to the part of nurses and soldiers that we were acting. And now we've slipped out by the stage-door and we've become ourselves. Don't you see, Tabs, we men and girls have got to find out afresh who we are? We've almost forgotten."

She seemed to have made an end, when something else occurred to her. She recommenced hurriedly, "We women have been spendthrifts, too; we've given away more than was wise-little bits of ourselves, not always to the one man-sometimes in the wrong directions. But which is the right direction? When people who were risking so much for us begged for a little of our affection, we never thought of that. We simply gave recklessly-little bits of ourselves. Now that we've regained a future, with room for remorse and things like that, we've become suddenly cautious. The swing of the pendulum--" She turned to him, as though proffering a smile for his forgiveness, "It's our sudden caution that makes us seem mean and ungracious. But I was tremendously interested about meeting you."

"Interested! Not glad or ecstatic. It's a long road from dreams to facts."

"Yes."

She said it humbly. He tried to catch the expression in her eyes, but all he saw was the flickering gold of her hair as the wind tossed it against the rounded whiteness of her neck. His brain kept muttering, "Little bits of herself! What did she mean by that?"

A barrel-organ was grinding out a tune; children danced in the sunshine on the pavement. As they flashed down the street the music followed them. She twisted to look back and he caught her eyes. "Tabs, do you know what it's playing?"

"Can't say I do."

"It's out of the Elsie Janis revue at The Palace. I think it was written especially for this moment." She listened till the air reached the refrain and then sang the words, "Après la guerre, there'll be a good time everywhere."

His stern face relaxed at her childishness. "Will there, Terry? I hope so. Musical chaps aren't reliable authorities. They're--"

"You must know so," she interrupted valiantly. Then, forgetting her caution, she slipped her small gloved fingers into the palm of his big brown hand. "You must. Even though I disappoint you ever so badly, you must know so, dear Tabs. You must seize your own good time at whatever cost. One girl isn't all the world."