4 Books by Coningsby Dawson. Coningsby Dawson

which mists were slowly rising; the faint flush of greenness which was gathering in hedges; the shy pageant of spring unfolding, with the promised certainty of new summers which are never ending. The world looked young. As the train dashed by, new-born lambs, unused to such disturbances, tottered, bleating, after their mothers. Buds were bursting. Sap was rising. The chapped scars of winter were vanishing. Things which had seemed dead were being convulsed with life. He watched it all gladly and yet impatiently; it was for the end of the journey that he was waiting.

      On nearing London the train slowed down as though reluctant to leave the country. Twice it halted and he consulted his wrist-watch with a frown. Then it crept through Battersea, wound snake-like across the gleaming Thames, and came to rest in Victoria Station. Despite his lameness, he was the first passenger to alight. He had no luggage to attend to, save the newly-purchased bag which he carried. He lost no time in hurrying down the platform; when he hurried his limp became more pronounced. As he passed through the barrier he slackened his pace. By reason of his greater height he could glance above the heads of the crowd; his eyes went questing in all directions. They failed to find what they sought. He delayed until nearly all the people from the incoming trains had scuttled into the holes of the Underground; then, masking his disappointment, he wandered out into the station-yard to hail a taxi. An Army Staff car was drawn up against the curb. A thrill of hostility shot through him. How often, in the old days, when marching up to an attack, had he and his comrades huddled to the side of the road like sheep that these khaki-colored collies of the shepherds, who had driven them up to die, might splash arrogantly past them! He eyed it casually and was passing on, when a girl in the back seat stood up frantically waving. She was dressed in the latest whim of fashion; but it was her that he saw rather than her appointments. Her gold bobbed hair was like a Botticelli angel's. Her eyes were clear and deep as violets. She was exquisitely vibrant and alive--scarcely beautiful; her nose turned up and was too short for that. One sought for the right words to express her attraction. Perhaps it was due to her light-hearted health and girlish freshness.

      As he came up eagerly, limping with the effort, she reached out her hand. "Tabs, fancy you not knowing me! I don't need to call you Lord Taborley, do I? Between us it's still Tabs."

      "Terry dear! My dear Terry, at last!" He spoke queerly as though he had been running. Then, seeing how his intensity startled her, he let go her hand and laughed. "You can't blame me for not having spotted you. Where's all your beautiful hair that was so blowy?"

      She glanced up through her lashes at the tall man. "'I'm growing such a big girl now'--you remember the refrain from the song at the Gaiety? That's why. When you were a young man, girls put their hair up to show they were of age; nowadays they bob it."

      "So that's the explanation!" He climbed in and took his seat beside her. "That's another thing that disguised you. How was I to guess that you'd wangle a Staff car to meet an ex-lieutenant?"

      "It belongs to a friend at the War Office." She nodded her permission to the trim girl-soldier at the wheel to start. "He lent it to me when he heard that I was to meet you this morning. Taxis are so scarce, and I didn't know how well you could walk, so----" She turned from the subject abruptly. "You're so changed. I scarcely recognized you at first. I was expecting that you'd still be in uniform."

      "I was demobbed yesterday. So you find me changed! For better or for worse? Confess, Terry."

      She was aware that beneath his assumption of gayety he was hiding something--something that pained. He had been hurt too much already. With impulsive sympathy she laid her hand on his arm. "It isn't a case of better or worse. Between people like ourselves appearances don't matter. I think to me you were handsomest of all as a Tommy. How proud I was of you, Tabs, when you first joined up! Do you remember how I used to strut along beside you---- And that last night, when you went for the first time to the Front?"

      He remembered, and waited with boyish expectancy. She had stopped suddenly and glanced away from him. For the second time his intensity had frightened her. He said nothing--did nothing to help her. She mustered her courage to turn back with a smile. "It's long ago, isn't it. Tabs? I've grown such a big girl now."

      He brushed aside her attempt to divert him. "But you find a difference in me?"

      "A difference! You mean the difference between a man in uniform and in mufti? Why, yes. A uniform made you look younger. It did that for most men."

      "But more for me than for most." He was pitiless towards himself now that he had forced her to answer. "I've aged more than the five years since you slipped your arm into mine as we marched through the darkness to the troop-train. You never shed a tear, Terry. You kept your promise. Often and often when I was afraid in the trenches I remembered you, a white and gold slip of a girl with dry eyes, waving and waving. And then, somehow, because you'd kept your promise not to cry----"

      "Don't," she whispered. "Please don't. It's all ended. Everything's new and beginning afresh."

      "Beginning with you," he questioned, "where it left off?"

      If she heard him, she ignored the interrogation in his voice.

      III

      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.