A CHARMED LIFE” 
By Richard Harding Davis 
Illustration by 
loved him so much that 
Len he went away to a 
tie war in which his 
rntry was interested she 
aid not understand, nor 
ite 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 
once 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 be¬ 
longed 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 ex¬ 
plained 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 frown¬ 
ing. 
“No! I’m not a bit like those girls,” 
she proclaimed. “I merely tell you you 
can't go! My gracious!” she cried, help¬ 
lessly. 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 unsel¬ 
fish, 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 
540 
F. Graham Cootes 
to him like swallows darting and flashing 
in the sunlight, clutched his sleeve. The 
fingers, that he would rather kiss than the 
lips of any other woman that ever lived, 
clung to his arm. Their clasp reminded 
him of that of a drowning child he had once 
lifted from the surf. 
“If you should die,” whispered Miss 
Armitage. “What would I do. What 
would I do!” 
“But my dearest,” cried the young man. 
“My dearest one! I’ve got to go. It’s 
our own war. Everybody else will go,” 
he pleaded. “Every man you know, and 
they’re going to fight, too. I am going only 
to look on. That’s bad enough, isn’t it, 
without sitting at home? You should be 
sorry I’m not going to fight.” 
“Sorry!” exclaimed the girl. “If you 
love me-” 
“ If I love you,” shouted the young man. 
His voice suggested that he was about to 
shake her. “How dare you?” 
She abandoned that position and at¬ 
tacked him from one more logical. 
“But why punish me?” she protested. 
“Do I want the war? Do I want to free 
Cuba? No! I want you, and if you go, 
you are the one who is sure to be killed. 
You are so big—and so brave, and you will 
be rushing in wherever the fighting is, and 
then—then you will die.” She raised her 
eyes and looked at him as though seeing 
him from a great distance. “And,” she 
added fatefully, “I will die too, or may be, 
I will have to live, to live without you for 
years, for many miserable years.” 
Fearfully, with great caution, as though 
in his joy in her he might crush her in his 
hands, the young man drew her to him and 
held her close. After a silence he whis¬ 
pered. “But, you know that nothing can 
happen to me. Not now, that God has let 
me love you. He could not be so cruel. He 
would not have given me such happiness 
to take it from me. A man who loves you, 
as I love you, cannot come to any harm. 
And the man you love is immortal, immune. 
He holds a charmed life. So long as you 
love him, he must live.” 
