Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Providence has a curious way of letting two lives run along, each apparently independent of the other. Parallel lines they seem, hopeless of meeting. Converging lines really, destined, through long ages, by every deed that has been done to meet at a certain point and there fuse.
Edith had left Mabel, but not to go to Lethway. ”

“ Edith, who had never thought things out before, had long hours to think now. And the one thing that seemed clear and undeniable was that she must not drive Mabel into debt. Debt was the curse of most of the girls she knew. As long as they were on their own they could manage. It was the burden of unpaid bills, lightly contracted, that drove so many of them wrong.
That night, while Mabel was asleep, she got up and cautiously lighted the gas. Then she took the boy's photograph out of its hiding place and propped it on top of her trunk. ”

“ It was clear that Mabel would not be saved. To go back and live on her, under the circumstances, was but a degree removed from the other thing that confronted her.
There is just a chance that, had she not known the boy, she would have killed herself. But again the curious change he had worked in her manifested itself. He thought suicide a wicked thing.
"I take it like this," he had said in his eager way: "life's a thing that's given us for some purpose. Maybe the purpose gets clouded—I'm afraid I'm an awful duffer at saying what I mean. ”

“ Only one can tell, to look at you, that you are different." He thought that sounded rather boyish, and remembered that he was going to the war, and was, or would soon be, a fighting man. "I've known a lot of girls," he added rather loftily. "All sorts of girls."
It was the next night that Lethway kissed her. He had left her alone most of the day, and by sheer gravitation of loneliness she and the boy drifted together. All day long they ranged the ship, watched a boxing match in the steerage, fed bread to the hovering gulls from the stern. ”

“ That night when she got back to Mabel's apartment her mood was reckless. She went to the window and stood looking at the crooked and chimney-potted skyline that was London.
"Oh, what's the use?" she said savagely, and gave up the fight.
When Mabel came home she told her.
"I'm going to get out," she said without preamble.
She caught the relief in Mabel's face, followed by a purely conventional protest.
"Although," she hedged cautiously, "I don't know, dearie. People look at things sensibly these days. You've got to live, haven't you? ”

“ Then he dropped the whole thing in the ten inches of mud and water he was standing in, and had to copy it all over.
To Edith he wrote a different sort of letter. He told her that he loved her. "It's almost more adoration than love," he wrote, while two men next to him were roaring over a filthy story. "I mean by that, that I feel every hour of every day how far above me you are. It's like one of these fusées the Germans are always throwing up over us at night. It's perfectly dark, and then something bright and clear and like a star, only nearer, is overhead. ”

“ But it deals, as must anything that represents life in this year of our Lord of Peace, with war. With war in its human relations. Not with guns and trenches, but with men and women, with a boy and a girl.
For only in the mass is war vast. To the man in the trench it reduces itself to the man on his right, the man on his left, the man across, beyond the barbed wire, and a woman.
The boy was a Canadian. He was twenty-two and not very tall. His name in this story is Cecil Hamilton. He had won two medals for life-saving, each in a leather case. He had saved people from drowning. ”

“ After a time she knew that there was a some one else, some one he was definitely relinquishing. She dared not speak to him about it. His young dignity was militant. But one night, as she dozed beside him in the chair, he reached the limit of his repression and told her.
"An actress!" she cried, sitting bolt upright. "Du lieber—an actress!"
"Not an actress," he corrected her gravely. "A—a dancer. But good. She's a very good girl. Even when I was—was whole"—raging bitterness there—"I was not good enough for her."
"No actress is good. And dancers!" ”

“ Cecil.
The girl saved those letters. She was not in love with him, but he gave her something no one else had ever offered: a chivalrous respect that pleased as well as puzzled her.
Once in a tea shop he voiced his creed, as it pertained to her, over a plate of muffins.
"When we are both back home, Edith," he said, "I am going to ask you something."
"Why not now?"
"Because it wouldn't be quite fair to you. I—I may be killed, or something. That's one thing. Then, it's because of your people."
That rather stunned her. She had no people. She was going to tell him that, but she decided not to. ”

“ When he had been in the camp a month he helped two British officers to escape. One of them had snubbed him in London months before. He apologised before he left.
"You're a man, Hamilton," he said. "All you Canadians are men. I've some things to tell when I get home."
The boy could not go with them. There would be canals to swim across, and there was his empty sleeve and weakness. He would never swim again, he thought. That night, as he looked at the empty beds of the men who had gone, he remembered his medals and smiled grimly. ”

“ That shadowy No Man's Land between the trenches of virtue and sin, where most of us fight our battles and are wounded, and even die, does not exist for them.
The boy in this story belonged to that class. Even if he reads it he may not recognise it. But he will not read it or have it read to him. He will even be somewhat fretful if it comes his way.
"If that's one of those problem things," he will say, "I don't want to hear it. I don't see why nobody writes adventure any more."
Right is right and wrong is wrong. Seven words for a creed, and all of life to live! ”

“ Life had only touched her so far, and had left no mark. When Lethway lounged away to an evening's bridge Cecil fetched his military cape and they went on deck.
"I'm afraid it's rather lonely for you," he said. "It's always like this the first day or two. Then the women warm up and get friendly."
"I don't want to know them. They are a stupid-looking lot. Did you ever see such clothes?"
"You are the only person who looks like a lady to-night," he observed. "You look lovely. ”

“ Then soon after: "Everything's strange. That's the trouble," he confessed. "It's only in little things that don't matter, but a fellow feels such a duffer."
On the last night he took her to dinner—a small French restaurant in a back street in Soho. He had heard about it somewhere. Edith classed it as soon as she entered. It was too retiring, too demure. Its very location was clandestine.
But he never knew. He was divided that night between joy at getting to his regiment and grief at leaving her. Rather self-engrossed, she thought. ”

“ Afterward, when he was in the trenches, he wondered about that. He called it "Kismet" to himself. It was really a compound, that first day or two, of homesickness and a little furtive stirring of anxiety and the thrill of new adventure that was in his blood. ”

“ Better to let her work on, he decided. A German submarine might sink the ship on which the other girl was coming, and then where would they be?
Up to the last, however, he had hopes of Edith. Not that he cared to save her. But he hated to acknowledge a failure. He disliked to disavow his own judgment.
He made a final effort with her, took her one day to luncheon at Simpson's, and in one of the pewlike compartments, over mutton and caper sauce, he tried to "talk a little life into her."
"What the devil has come over you?" he demanded savagely. "You were larky enough over in New York. ”

“ He had some queer idea that he did not care to take his uniform in there. Absurd, of course. It made him rather lonely in the hours Edith spent in her cabin, preparing variations of costume for the evening out of her small trunk. But he was all man, and he liked the society of men; so he went at last, with Lethway, and ordered vichy! ”

“ I THERE are certain people who will never understand this story, people who live their lives by rule of thumb. Little lives they are, too, measured by the letter and not the spirit. Quite simple too. Right is right and wrong is wrong. ”

“ No one in her brief life had ever before asked her permission to smoke.
"I'll have to smoke all I can," he said. "The fellows say cigarettes are scarce in the trenches. I'm taking a lot over."
He knew a girl who smoked cigarettes, he said. She was a nice girl too. He couldn't understand it. The way he felt about it, maybe a cigarette for a girl wasn't a crime. But it led to other things—drinking, you know, and all that.
"The fellows don't respect a girl that smokes," he said. "That's the plain truth. ”

“ It was always raining. He had very little money beyond his pay, and the constant hiring of taxicabs worried him. Now and then he saw some one he knew, down from Salisbury for a holiday, but they had been over long enough to know their way about. They had engagements, things to buy. He fairly ate his heart out in sheer loneliness.
There were two hours in the day that redeemed the others. One was the hour late in the afternoon when, rehearsal over, he took Edith O'Hara to tea. ”

“ She did not lose her head. She had an arm free and she rang the bell. Then she jerked herself loose.
"I have rung for the stewardess," she said furiously. "If you are here when she comes I'll ask for help."
"You young devil!" was all he said, and went, slamming the door behind him. His rage grew as he reached his own cabin. Damn the girl, anyhow! He had not meant anything. Here he was, spending money he might never get back to give her a chance, and she called the stewardess because he kissed her!
As for the girl, she went back to bed. For a few moments sheer rage kept her awake. ”

“ Always, of course, it is a thing of noises.
This is not a narrative of war. It matters very little, for instance, how Cecil's regiment left Salisbury and went to Soissons, in France. What really matters is that at last the Canadian-made motor lorries moved up their equipment, and that, after digging practice trenches in the yellow clay of old battlefields, they were moved up to the front. ”

“ At the end of the evening he took her back to her cheap hotel in a taxicab. She expected him to kiss her. Her experience of taxicabs had been like that. But he did not. He said very little on the way home, but sat well back and eyed her wistful eyes. ”

“ Once or twice she had tried to talk about it with Mabel, but Mabel had only said, "It's fierce!" and changed the subject.
The uniforms scattered over the ship and the precautions taken at night, however, were bringing this thing called war very close to her. It was just beyond that horizon toward which they were heading. And even then it was brought nearer to her.
Under cover of the dusk the girl she had tried to approach came up and stood beside her. Edith was very distant with her.
"The nights make me nervous," the girl said. "In the daylight it is not so bad. ”