'Then they 'ave them in 'ell too,' groaned a cockney driver, who was sure he would die of his wounds before the morning. The rattle ceased behind the shattered cottages. A pause interminable to Archie ensued. He stood fingering his revolver. Had the Austrians got round behind them? Were they preparing the rush which would end all? Two figures visible against the crumbling white walls detached themselves from the dark. He wondered whether to challenge them or trust to the cover of darkness. They loomed closer, picking their way slowly over the battle-torn ground. Archie waited till they were at arm's length, before he pressed the button of his torch.
The white circle of light framed a young girl's face: yellow mud was smeared on her cheek, and she shook a tumble of curls out of her eyes."
CHAPTER III
At first she can hardly have seemed credible to Archie, momentarily expecting the end. In the middle of death and destruction, suddenly this vivid beauty. And not an academic, ideal beauty demanding worship of brain or senses, but a practical travel-stained young woman holding rescue in her hands. His feelings can't have been very clear. When hope of life suddenly dawns, men don't bother much with the outlying emotions. Moreover, Archie was busy getting his wounded men, as gently as the ground would allow, into the box-car. But he must have been conscious of a great wonder, wonder at this eleventh hour salvation, wonder at her beauty and courage.
It was not till afterwards, in his bunk at the dressing station, when his broken ribs had been strapped, that he settled into the steady devotion which was to be his guide and his torment in days to come. From the start he was a humble lover, asking little, diffident of his fortune. Whether the fortune was good or ill, no outsider can say: but on that night of battle, at first sight, Archie was loved by Norah. It was the old story of Ares and Aphrodite entangled in the net, but a net spread by artificers, more cunning even than Hephæstus—Romance and Pity.
Archie, seeing the fight out, and standing by his men wounded and dead, his clothes torn by the explosion, his face discoloured with dust, smoke and blood, his eyes ravaged with sleeplessness and pain, seemed to Norah a figure heroically proportioned in its tenacity, devotion and isolation. And while her spirit paid tribute to the hero, her heart ached to mother the poor, tired boy.
Archie's broken rib and some hitch in clearing the wounded from the dressing station to the base, gave scope to this aspiration and the sick-bed completed what the battlefield had begun. To such purpose, that, as soon as Archie's bones and Norah's duties allowed, they were married.
Every marriage is said to be pre-ordained by the female, and baited for the male with the illusion of choice. Whether this is always true, I have no doubt that here Norah took the lead. Of course Archie would have sold his soul for her, but where would he find the decision to tell her so? She must have helped him out, her love translating his silences into mute eloquence, his caution into noble modesty, his reticence into silent strength. She was young enough to demand perfection in the object of her affections, and deep enough in love to find it. Obstacles and conventions only acted as spurs to her hot blood. Her natural bent was to put all her money on one horse and that for a win, never a place. In this the war lent her reason, urging her to pluck the day ere night fell, to take and give what life offered before death laid his claim. It needs, I think, an old head and a cold heart to condemn these war marriages.
Archie, whose Scottish nature appreciated the unfavourable side of everything, no doubt saw each of the hundred reasons against the marriage. He may have realised their difference of temper, foreseen the parental disapproval of the solid Scots lawyer and the impecunious English peer, calculated money difficulties, guessed that Norah was in love with an aspect of him, which peace time—should he survive the war—would never call into being.