She was the first of the party to arrive, and when Julian Sinclair hurried along the platform with the three foreign correspondents, there was no time left for conversation before they were locked in their compartment of the military train. They were the only civilians aboard.
She dropped into a corner seat with her newspaper. But her eyes and brain were busy with the scene outside. The train was crammed with troops, just as it had been on that other day when she stood outside on the platform, like those other women there, and said good-by to Brian. She was living it all over again, as she watched those farewells; but she felt nearer to him now, as if she were seeing things from his own side, almost as if she had broken through the barriers and taken some dream-train to the next world, in order to follow him.
There was a very young soldier leaning from the window of the next compartment. He was talking to a girl with a baby in her arms. Her wide eyes were fixed on his face with the same solemn expression as those of the child, dark innocent eyes with the haunted beauty of a Madonna. They were trying to say something to each other, but the moment had made them strangers, and they could not find the words.
"You'll write," she said faintly.
He nodded and smiled airily. A whistle blew. There was a banging of doors, and a roar of cheering. The little mother moved impulsively forward, climbed on to the footboard, threw her right arm around the neck of her soldier, and drew his face down to her own.
"Stand back there," bellowed the porters. But the girl's arm was locked round the lad's neck as if she were drowning, and they took no notice. The train began to move. A crippled soldier, in blue hospital uniform and red tie, hobbled forward on his crutch, and took hold of the girl.
"Break away," he said gruffly. "Break away, lass."
He pulled her back to the platform. Then he hobbled forward with the moving train and spoke to the young soldier.
"If you meet the blighter wot gave me this," he said, pointing to his amputated thigh, "you give 'im 'ell for me!"
It was a primitive appeal, but the boy pulled himself together immediately, as the veteran face, so deeply plowed with suffering, savagely confronted his own. And, as the train moved on, and the wounded man stood there, upright on his crutch, May Margaret saw that there were tears in those fierce eyes—eyes so much older than their years—and a tenderness in the coarse face that brought her heart into her throat.