Charms -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was
for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off
with old Ross. He said, 'What the something do _you_ want to
come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know,
you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go
too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'd
_got_ to leave you, girl."
She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all
eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the
lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers.
He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back
one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was
the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see.
"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go
up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was
going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in
sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked.
Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's
wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.'
"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little
dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that
it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard
about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I
said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.'
'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker
Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to
do. It began to come to me then, d'you see?
"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet.
You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was.
Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd
got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we
did it in less....
"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next
morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could
only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was,
waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was
I----and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because it
_was_ that night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I
thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It's
_her_ I'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them'
meant----(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell
anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've
told you the end of this.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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