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| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/fourdays00hemerich |
FOUR DAYS
THE STORY OF A WAR MARRIAGE
BY HETTY HEMENWAY
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY RICHARD CULTER
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1917,
Published, September, 1917
All rights reserved
"If you hear I'm missing, there is still a good chance."
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
FOUR DAYS
I
With savage pity Marjorie regarded a sobbing girl whose face wasdistorted, and whose palsied hands were trying to straighten her veiland push back stray wisps of hair. Marjorie thought: "What a fool she isto cry like that! Her nose is red; she's a sight. I can control myself.I can control myself."
An elderly man with an austere face, standing beside Marjorie, startedto light a cigarette. His hands trembled violently and the matchflickered and went out.
Marjorie's heart was beating so fast that it made her feel sick.
A locomotive shrieked, adding its voice to the roar of traffic atVictoria Station. There came the pounding hiss of escaping steam. Thecrowd pressed close to the rails and peered down the foggy platform. Atrain had stopped, and the engine was panting close to the gate-rail. Afew men in khaki were alighting from compartments. In a moment there wasa stamping of many feet, and above the roar and confusion in the stationrose the eager voices of multitudes of boys talking, shouting, callingto each other.
Marjorie saw Leonard before he saw her. He was walking with threemen—joking, laughing absent-mindedly, while his eyes searched for aface in the crowd. She waited a moment, hidden, suffocated withanticipation, her heart turning over and over, until he said anonchalant good-bye to his companions, who were pounced upon by eagerrelatives. Then she crept up behind and put both her hands about hiswrist.
"Hello, Len."
Joy leaped to his eyes.
"Marjie!"
Impossible to say another word. For seconds they became one of thespeechless couples, standing dumbly in the great dingy station,unnoticed and unnoticing.
"Where's the carriage?" said Leonard, looking blindly about him.
"Outside, of course, Len."
A crooked man in black livery, with a cockade in his hat, who had beenstanding reverently in the backgr