The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Charmed Life, by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: A Charmed Life

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Release Date: May 12, 2006 [EBook #1821]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMED LIFE ***

Produced by Don Lainson

A CHARMED LIFE

by Richard Harding Davis

She loved him so, that when he went away to a little war in which his
country was interested she could not understand, nor quite forgive.

As the correspondent of a newspaper, Chesterton had looked on at other
wars; when the yellow races met, when the infidel Turk spanked the
Christian Greek; and one he had watched from inside a British square,
where he was greatly alarmed lest he should be trampled upon by
terrified camels. This had happened before he and she had met. After
they met, she told him that what chances he had chosen to take before
he came into her life fell outside of her jurisdiction. But now that
his life belonged to her, this talk of his standing up to be shot at was
wicked. It was worse than wicked; it was absurd.

When the Maine sank in Havana harbor and the word "war" was appearing
hourly in hysterical extras, Miss Armitage explained her position.

"You mustn't think," she said, "that I am one of those silly girls who
would beg you not to go to war."

At the moment of speaking her cheek happened to be resting against his,
and his arm was about her, so he humbly bent his head and kissed her,
and whispered very proudly and softly, "No, dearest."

At which she withdrew from him frowning.

"No! I'm not a bit like those girls," she proclaimed. "I merely tell you
YOU CAN'T GO! My gracious!" she cried, helplessly. She knew the words
fell short of expressing her distress, but her education had not
supplied her with exclamations of greater violence.

"My goodness!" she cried. "How can you frighten me so? It's not like
you," she reproached him. "You are so unselfish, so noble. You are
always thinking of other people. How can you talk of going to war--to be
killed--to me? And now, now that you have made me love you so?"

The hands, that when she talked seemed to him like swallows d