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.
But can any man, even a Scot, let this weigh when he is fast in love with an incredible apparition, who has saved his life and lets him see that his love is not unacceptable? To my mind, Archie deserves neither blame nor pity—beauty and guts mayn't be a pass into the Kingdom of Heaven, but they carry a girl a long way towards Holy Matrimony.
Judge it as you may, the marriage took place not many weeks after their meeting in that Carpathian valley, as soon in fact as Norah had got home and Archie had been released from his London hospital.
In spite of the quietness of the wedding, our modern Argus got hold of the story and billed them as 'Red Cross Romance: Peer's Daughter Rescues Artillery Lieutenant.'
The Peer let it be felt that he regretted the rescue; while the father of the lieutenant indicated that if he went his own way, he must pay it.
This lack of enthusiasm emphasised the romantic nature of the union, and the happiness of the young couple was only interrupted by the end of Archie's sick leave, and his return to Flanders.
From then life began to thrust them apart, as surely as a tree-root forces asunder two stones in a wall. Not that these two stones can ever have been very truly laid. Archie's reserved devotion can never have satisfied Norah's capacity for passion. She asked for the wine of life and got its breakfast food. But while that Carpathian picture was not effaced, she would see no flaws in her hero. Nor, during his long absences at the front, and his short visits on leave, did she perceive the difference between the man and the picture. She longed passionately for his return and loved him dearly when he came. But apart from his brief periods of leave, the first hours of which were always wasted in a sort of strangerhood, they had no life in common to buttress up Romance and to let picture tone into fact.
Norah did not lack humour, and had war allowed, daily companionship would have built up affection for the man to supplement and in time supplant adoration of the hero. The daily letters which passed between the flat in Baker Street and the dug-out in Flanders—Archie's rather formal chronicles and Norah's passionate little notes—could not take the place of the personal intercourse which war denied them.
I know it is the thought of meeting the object of their passion daily at breakfast that heads off many a Benedict and Beatrice. But it is only by submitting to the humanising influence of small daily contacts that love will provide a working basis for marriage. Without this humanising, love does not develop but starves."
"I didn't know you were married, Ross," I interrupted.
"I'm not," he replied, and went on with his story.
"Norah's environment did not help her to keep in touch with her husband. In his absence she was absorbed into the circle of her family, by none of whom was Archie known or appreciated. A different atmosphere was created in which Archie drew no breath. New points of view and standards of life presented themselves to her young eyes. This was her first taste of London, and a strange world lay at her feet. No wonder her head was a little dizzied. She drove an ambulance by day, and by night she danced. Her beauty, vivacity and birth made her acceptable to that set which won the war by going to charity matinées. She did not like it, but found its glitter stimulating. At the houses of her relations she met celebrated, handsome, and amusing men. And, in truth, though the comparison never presented itself, they were a good deal better company than poor, silent Archie.
After three years of this the war ended, and Archie came home. He was far too devoted to Norah to ask her to alter her way of life, and while his gratuity lasted, he took her to dinners, theatres, races, dances, night clubs; all that hostesses, restaurateurs and impresarios pass off on us for 'pleasure.'
I don't suppose Archie showed at his best in these surroundings. He had scant small talk, and probably an indifferent tailor.
During these weeks, disillusionment first reared its head. For both their sakes I hope the process was gradual, but I think passion would desert Norah's quick heart as capriciously as it visited it.
Archie must have looked forward to the time when his gratuity would be exhausted and the two-pences for the merry-go-round would no longer be forthcoming. Then they would have to retire to Edinburgh and live on their small income, while Archie made his way at the Scottish Bar, like his fathers before him. Unfortunately, his nature was to keep his views to himself. He did not disclose them until one evening at supper at Giro's. The disclosure was disastrous.
They had dined, a trifle noisily, at the mansion of a South African Jew, whose acquaintance Norah had made during the war when only aliens could procure luxuries. I had known their host before he became respectable—too well, indeed, to be dropped—and had also been invited.
The war had left me lame, and Norah, in whom modish hardness hid a compassionate heart, insisted on picking me up in her taxi. She was looking, I thought, very adorable. Her frock was made of some sort of shot silk, very bright. It fitted her straight little figure closely down to her waist, spreading out below in scalloped flounces. The suggestion was a fin-de-siècle shepherdess, strayed from Arcady to Park Lane.
Over her shoulders hung a cloak lined with green brocade. Its upright collar of monkey fur framed with spikes the piquancy of her face. Her high cheekbones were rouged, her wide mouth drooped a little at the corners.
Archie made a good background. He was slight and dark. Typically, he wore a dinner jacket instead of the tail-coat that the rest of the party would sport. His hair was close-cropped and grew high on his forehead. His face was clean shaven and rather weather-beaten, with a well formed nose and an obstinate chin. His supra-orbital sinus, as the anatomists call the bar of the eyebrows, was pronounced and his grey eyes seemed sunken beneath it. He looked uncommonly wiry, giving an impression of 'no waste'—no spare flesh, no spare words, no spare emotions. Condemning emotion he substituted Reason, thereby coming more of a mucker than the ordinary irrational man. His anxiety to be reasonable gave him an irresolute air. He was still balancing questions which years before ordinary men had settled by instinct, prejudice or indifference.
After dinner we went to the last act of the last revue, though why the discomfort of a box should be sought for conversation that could perfectly well be held at home, I never know. When the theatre was over, and the party had broken up, I heard Norah tell Archie she was too tired to go home and wanted supper.
Apparently the supper was not a success. Archie ordered champagne. Norah tasted it, and made a face.
'My dear,' she said, 'the stuff's undrinkable. Do order something a little less like what they give you in church!'
Archie, in whose opinion wine began and ended with port, said nothing, and beckoned the wine waiter.
Unfortunately, he betrayed his thoughts by a slight shrug. Norah, who was tired and nervy, saw it.
'All right, I won't have it then. I suppose you think we can't afford it.' Archie shook his head. Much of his conversation was by sign. When you asked him a question, he paused before answering. A stranger would think he had not heard, and would repeat his question; but Archie was only thinking over his reply—a habit which may make valuable contribution to thought, but does not help small talk. Sometimes it would be your penultimate remark which he answered, having duly considered the question during the intermediate talk. No, Archie was not a conversationalist. But now Norah felt the need of opening her heart.
'I wish you'd drink a bit more fizz, Archie. It might binge you up a bit. You sat all through dinner looking as bored as sin, and you didn't smile once at the play or even at Tony Moorhouse.'
That gilded youth, after a conscientious patronage of the magnate's cellar, had subjected the revue artistes to a flow of not very witty interruption. The party had shrieked with laughter, and Archie had flattered himself that he, too, had gone through the motions of being amused.
'I'm sorry,' he protested, 'I was thinking——'
'My poor boy, you don't go to the play to think. What on earth were you thinking about?'
Now, one of Archie's habits which more than any other unfitted him for polite society was his tendency to tell the truth. So now he blurted out, 'I was thinking you'd miss all this in Edinburgh.'
Norah's delicate eyebrows rose, and her lips tightened.
'What's that about Edinburgh, Archie?'
'Well, some day we must settle down to work.'
'But, my poor friend, why Edinburgh? what's wrong with East Ham?'
'You know. Family connection, and all that. Solicitors. I wouldn't have a chance at the London Bar; now, at Edinburgh, in five years——'
'Yes, darling, go on——'
'In five or six years I ought to be clearing at least five hundred a year.'
'Say it again slowly, Archie.... You don't seriously mean to shut me up for five or six years in Edinburgh to earn five hundred a year! Why, I'd sooner be bricked into a convent wall!'
'Edinburgh's not a bad place; we'd know lots of people there.'
'The same applies to hell, dear.' And so the argument went on, Archie more and more obstinate, and Norah more outrageous. Archie was determined that his only safe prospect was the Bar and the Scottish Bar at that. The Bar might be slow, but, for him, it was sure, and success was only a question of time. Norah urged him to chance his arm at something quicker, more lucrative, and in London. She quoted the successful among her friends whom post-war poverty had driven to work.
'Look at Bobby Anstruther. His garage is making three thousand a year, hiring out defunct Daimlers. You have to book one days ahead.'
'He'll be bust in a year when every one's spent their money.'
Well, look at young Peter Carey, making thousands on the Stock Exchange. And what about that Rhodesian man we met at dinner to-night? He said there were pots of money to be made in mealies in Africa. He said any fool could grow them.'
'Not in London?'
'No, darling. But if I can't be in London, I'd rather be in Jericho or Tierra del Fuego than in a blasted provincial town. Listen, Archie,' and she went on to repeat what the South African had told her, how the Chartered Company were giving tracts of 3000 acres in Northern Rhodesia to approved ex-officers, free for the asking, provided they occupied and worked them.
Archie shook his head. 'I might be able to make farming pay,' he said, 'I was brought up on a farm. But it's a hard life, and, in spite of your friend, it's slow money. You'd like it worse than Edinburgh and the Bar.'
'If you mention Edinburgh or the Bar again, I'll tell the head waiter that I don't know who you are, and you've accosted me.'
Then with one of her sudden changes of moods:
'Archie, I'm sorry. I'm being a beast to you to-night. I don't mean to be, dear, but I'm tired, and Edinburgh ... say you forgive me, darling, and I won't say another word about it.'
But Norah had got her toes in and her husband's opposition to the African plan only made her dig them in deeper. Though Archie was as obstinate as they make them, his will was weakened by his anxiety to please his wife. Like most men, he was attracted by the idea of an outdoor life; but that northern pre-vision of the disadvantages of any agreeable course, held him back, and by birth and breeding he was mistrustful of anything new and unproven. Moreover, he did not believe that Norah would like the life.
She herself had no doubts. Her restless, adventurous hands grasped at anything fresh and strange. Of all the siren lands that had lured her girlhood, Africa's voice had rung the clearest. Women and the lower animals do not reason. Pictures present themselves before their minds, and they choose as the pictures entice or repel.
So as she re-read the travels of the great adventurers, she saw a sunlit vision of palms and orchids, savages as noble as princes, and as faithful as dogs, wild beasts to be hunted at pleasure, lands of mystery to be explored at will, fortunes to be won in the intervals as a diver gathers pearls. And at the end a triumphant return to the luxury of home with spoils that would lay London at her feet.
Her final storming of Archie's opposition was characteristic. She had driven him to his last line of defence—a plea of insufficient capital. Had Archie ever understood women, he would have known the danger of setting up one concrete objection. She put on her furs and an hour later returned with a handful of banknotes.
'Where did this come from?' he asked.
'My pearls,' was the reply.
"That is the way they always defeat us," said Ross.