There was a King in Egypt Part 77

"A what?" he said, laughingly. "You're a darling!"'

"I wash up tea-cups and saucers which Tommies drink from, and lay out trays with tea-cups and saucers all day long." She paused. "That's as near as I've got to the war."

"With your brains, Meg--is that all they could find for you to do?"

His encircling arm hugged her closely. Each moment she was becoming more desirable and beautiful in his eyes; each moment life in the trenches seemed further and further away.

"Freddy was sniped," Margaret said, "before he even killed a German.

Washing up dirty cups makes me mind it less."

"You dear darling," Michael said. "I understand and Freddy knows."

"I'll tell the man where to drive to," Margaret said bravely. "Then we can be together until I have to begin work." She raised the speaking-tube to her lips and told the driver where to go, explaining the most direct way to the secluded square, When she dropped the tube and sank back into her seat Michael's arm was round her; she had felt his eyes and their pa.s.sion, gazing at her while she instructed the driver.

"Will you marry me the day after to-morrow?" he said. "I'll get a special licence. Let's start this little time of perfect happiness at once, Meg--it may never come again."

Meg laughed nervously, but there was gladness in the sound of her voice. "But, Mike, it's so sudden--the day after to-morrow!"

"So was our love, darling--don't you remember?" He paused. "Am I asking too much? You might be my wife for less than two weeks, beloved, remember that."

They looked into each other's eyes. Meg knew the meaning of his words; he was a Tommy on leave.

"I can't go on having hairbreadth escapes to the end of the war," he said. "Up to now I'm the mascot amongst the boys; I've had prodigious luck."

Meg remained silent. Her heart was beating. His hair-breadth escapes--what were they due to? She saw her vision of him in her London bedroom, surrounded by the rays of Aton. She nursed the knowledge of it in her heart--she dared not tell him.

"Over and over again, Meg, the most extraordinary things have happened.

I can't tell you them all now--they would sound like exaggerations, but I'm almost beginning to agree with the boys that I've a charmed life."

Meg longed to confide her secret to him, but something held her back; something said to her that he was not meant to know it, that if he knew he might be tempted to do still more foolhardy deeds, he would feel compelled to put her mystical message to the test. She remained silent; her mind was working too quickly for speech. She had forgotten that Michael wanted her answer. Her heart had given it so willingly that words were scarcely needed, but he pressed her for her consent.

There are some words which lovers like to hear spoken by beautiful lips.

"You are the mistress of my happiness," he urged. "And if our happiness in this world is to be condensed into twelve days, surely it would be worth while seizing it and being thankful for it? In this world of agony and death, twelve days of life at its fullest is of more account than a long lifetime of unrecognized benefits and indefinite happiness."

Meg agreed that the war had taught people to be thankful for what seemed to her pitifully small mercies; people married for ten days or for a fortnight at the longest, knowing that for that little time of forgetfulness their husbands were among the quick; at the end of it they might be among the dead.

"Then, if I can get a special licence to-morrow, will you marry me the day after? If I may go back to the Front as your husband, Meg, I think I can win the war. My life will be more charmed than ever." He laughed gaily. "What will the boys say? I'm the only one in the trench who doesn't write to about six girls every day, telling each one that she is the only girl he loves."

Margaret's answer was in her laugh, which was all love, and in the lips she held up to meet Michael's kiss. "And it's proud I'll be to be Mrs.

Amory!" she said. "And ye can tell the boys that, if you like." She broke off suddenly from her mock Irish tones, and said more gravely, "Isn't it wonderful? Only an hour ago I was alone in London, so lonely that the very flowers hurt me! I hated the spring in the year--it laughed at my dull room and humdrum existence. And now----"

"And now," he said, "you are going to be a soldier's wife, you are going to marry a verminous Tommy in two days' time, you darling!"

Meg looked at her own dark uniform. "I don't see even one," she said, "but I'll have to be careful. I'll change when I go in. Are you really as bad as that?"

"I tried to clean myself up a bit," he said. "But I have been awful.

That's the thing I hate most about the whole business. I've got used to all the other discomforts long ago, and to everything else."

"Even to the killing of human beings, Mike?"

"Yes," he said. "Even to the killing of brave men. I know what you're saying to yourself--I thought that too, I thought it would send me mad, I longed to kill myself to get out of it. But, in an attack, when you've seen your own jolly pals, who have lived in the trenches with you, bleeding and tattered, spatchc.o.c.ked against barbed wire, and had to leave them sticking to it, their eyes haunt you, your blood gets up, you long for a hundred hands to shoot with, instead of only two. When you've seen the result of Prussian militarism on decent German soldiers, you know that it's your duty to destroy it, to give the German people, as well as the rest of the world, their freedom and rights."

"If only we could get at the Prussian military power, and spare the wretched soldiers--they are all sons and husbands, and somebody's darlings," Meg said pathetically.

"But we can't. It's their punishment, perhaps, poor devils, for having submitted to such an arrogant, absolute monarchy. To get at the rulers we have to slaughter the innocent. It sounds all wrong, but I know it's the only way."

"I suppose so," Margaret said. "But it does seem hard, just because they have been law-abiding, industrious, obedient subjects, they are to be slaughtered like sheep and made to do all sorts of cruel acts which will brand them for ever as barbarians in the eyes of the world. There must be thousands and thousands of them who are decent men."

"There is a saying that every country has the Government it deserves.

They have got theirs. A German Liberal has written these words to-day, or something like them. He says, 'Peace and war are, after all, not so much the result of foreign policy (strange though it may appear) as the inevitable consequences of the inward const.i.tution of the State.

"International anarchy" is not a thing apart, but only the natural consequence of feudal military inst.i.tutions. Hence away with these inst.i.tutions.'"

"But will they ever away with them in Germany?"

"Not unless we, the Allies, crush the feudal military const.i.tution; not until the people realize that their submission has brought this war upon themselves."

"But surely up to now we have admired law-abiding, uncomplaining peoples?"

"I haven't," Michael laughed. "You know I haven't."

"Oh no, you haven't! But then you're a firebrand, always 'agin the Government.'"

"I always walked on my head." He hugged her as he spoke. "I'm doing it to-day, darling."

"Poor old Freddy!" Margaret said. "If he could only hear us now, he'd think I was anti-war, and you were pro-war." She sighed. "If he could only see you in a Tommy's uniform, defending the morality of taking human lives!"

"_Qui sait_, Meg? He probably sees far more of it than you or I do.

Don't you make any mistake about that. He knows that I'm fighting in the war because I'm anti-war, with a vengeance. If this war isn't won by the Allies, Meg, there will be no end to war. It will never cease; it will burst out at intervals until the Kaiser's Alexandrian and Napoleonic dream is accomplished. If he wins this war, he'll turn his eyes in other directions, for new worlds to conquer. With Europe subdued, there is Egypt, India, America. Lamartine said, 'It is not the country, but liberty, that is most imperilled by war.'"

"What did he mean?" Margaret asked.

"'That every victorious war means for the victorious nation a loss of political liberty, whilst for the vanquished it is a foundation of inspiration and democratic progress.'" [1]

"Oh, Mike, and if we win? I mean, when we win?"

"As our cause is the cause of right over might, ours is not a war of aggression or annexation. He was speaking of an aggressive war."

"Who was speaking?"

"Well, I was voicing Hermann Fernau, the brave Liberal who is exiled from the Fatherland. I can't give you his exact words, but he says something like this in his wonderful book, _Germany and Democracy_: 'For what would happen if we Germans emerged victorious from this war?

Our victory would only mean a strengthening of the dynastic principle of arbitrary power all along the line. Those of us who bewail the political backwardness of our Fatherland must realize that a German victory would prolong this backward condition for centuries. And not only Germany, but the whole of Europe, would have to suffer the consequences.'"

"Fancy a German saying that!"

"There are some sane Germans left, darling. Fernau belongs to the small band of German Liberals who have been driven from their country."

The taxi had reached the garden-square. They got out and Michael prodigally overpaid the driver. The man took the money.

"I'd have driven you for nothing, sir," he said delightedly, "if the car was my own. I was young once, and so was the missus." He saluted respectfully.