Part 10

"I agree with you, Father." Mrs. Doctor had nothing of Gerty's finesse. "The Gables is so refined, a house for a gentleman."

"Don't know about that," Josiah frowned. "Never heard of a house being refined. Comes to that, this place is good enough for me, any time." If he went so far as to own that he might have been wrong it was clearly the duty of others to hasten to contradict him. "But The Gables is more compact. More comfort somehow, and less show."

"Stands in less ground, must have cost less," said Gerty softly. "Compared to Strathfieldsaye, The Gables to my mind is rather niggardly."

"That is so, Gert." He nodded approvingly. She was always there with the right word. "All the same I believe in that young Nixey. Started, you know, at the Council School. Won a scholarship at the University. Why, I remember his mother when she used to come to the Duke of Wellington and sew for Maria. Done everything for himself. And now he's a commissioned officer in the B.B. Give honor where honor's due, I say."

Gerty and Ethel agreed, perhaps a little reluctantly. Maria expressed a tacit approval. And then Melia made the discovery that her mind had wandered as far as France; and for a moment or so the world's pressure upon her felt a little less stifling.

"Wonderful, how that young man's got on!" There was reverence in the tone of Gerty whose religion was "getting on."

"It is." Josiah was emphatic. "You can't hold some people back. I give him another ten years to be the first architect in this town ... if he comes through This."

"It's a big 'if.'" Before the words were out of Gerty's mouth she remembered Amelia's husband and wished them unsaid. She had not had the courage to mention William Hollis with poor Amelia so rigidly on the defensive, but she had hoped that some one would introduce the subject so that a tribute might be paid him. But no one had done so, and now that Josiah was there the time seemed to have gone by. His views in regard to Amelia's husband were far too definite to be challenged lightly.

Interest in young Nixey, the architect, began to wane and then suddenly Ethel startled them all by the statement that she had just had a letter from Sally.

Josiah's geniality promptly received a coating of ice. His mouth closed like a trap. Sally had not been forgiven by her father and those who knew him best had the least hope that she would be. Her conduct had struck him in a very tender place, and Gerty could not help thinking that it was most imprudent of Ethel to mention Sally in his presence in any circumstances.

Ethel, however, had long ceased to fear her father. For one thing, in the eyes of the world her position was too secure. Besides, she was obtuse. Where angels, etc., Mrs. Doctor could always be trusted to walk with a certain measure of assurance, mainly because she didn't see things and feel things in the way that most people did. For that reason she was not at all disconcerted by the silence that followed her announcement. And she supplemented it with another which compelled Gerty, the adroit, to steal a veiled glance at the sphinx-like face of her brother-in-law.

"She writes from Serbia, giving a long and wonderful account of her doings with the Red Cross. I think I have her letter with me." Ethel opened a green morocco bag that was on the sofa beside her. "Yes ... here it is ... a long account. Care to read it, Father?" She offered the letter unconcernedly to Josiah.

He shook his head somberly. "I'll not read it now."

"Let me leave it with you. Well worth reading. But I'd like to have it back."

"No, take it with you, gel." The words were sharp. "Haven't much time for reading anything these days. Happen I'll lose it or something." It was lame and obvious, but Josiah had been taken too much by surprise to do anything better. Gerty was annoyed with Ethel. She had no right to be so tactless. None knew so well as Ethel the state of the case in regard to Sally. At the same time Gerty's respect for Josiah which amounted to genuine regard was a little wounded. He ought to have been big enough to have read the letter.

Ethel had contrived to banish the ease and the sunshine from the proceedings. The light of genial humor in the eyes of her father yielded to the truculence of that earlier epoch so familiar to Amelia. It was a great pity that it should be so; and after a tense moment the gallant Gerty did her best to pour oil on the vexed waters. "The other day in the _Tribune_ they were praising you finely, Josiah."

"Was they?" The King's English was not his strong point in moments of tension. But in any moment, as Gerty knew, he had his share of the legitimate vanity of the rising publicist. "What did they say?"

"The _Tribune_ said you deserved well, not only of your fellow townsmen, but of the country at large for the excellent work you had done in the last nine months for the national cause. They said your work on the Recruiting and Munitions Committees had been most valuable."

Josiah was visibly mollified by this piping. "Very decent of the _Tribune_."

"You'll make an excellent mayor, Josiah. Your turn next year, isn't it?"

Josiah nodded. The light came again into his eyes. "There's no saying what sort of a mayor I'll make. It's a stiff job when you come to tackle it. Big responsibility in times like these."

"You are not the man to shirk responsibility."

Josiah allowed that he was not, but the office of mayor in a place like Blackhampton in times like these was no sinecure for a man with a sense of civic duty. Once more he clouded. From what he heard things were looking pretty bad. If England was going to win the war she should have to find a better set of brains.

"But surely the Allies are quite as clever as the Germans?"

"They may be, but they haven't shown it so far. We are a scratch lot of amateurs against a team of trained professionals. The raw material is just as good, if not better, but it takes time to lick it in to shape. And we've got to learn to use it." His gloom deepened. "Still we shall never give in to the Hun ... not in a hundred years."

Ethel concurred in this robust sentiment. And then again she obtusely referred to Sally's letter. It was such a wonderful letter that her father really ought to read it. He was clearly annoyed by her tactless persistence. In order to cloak his feelings he called upon Melia in the old peremptory way to come and look at his tomatoes.

As they rose for that purpose, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn rose also. She must really be going; it was the cook's evening out. Gwenneth and Gwladys were bidden to say good-by to Grandpa. They did so shyly but rather prettily.

"Now let me see you shake hands with your Auntie Melia," said Josiah.

Gwenneth and Gwladys accomplished this task less successfully. They were half terrified by this shabby, gloomy, silent woman who had not a word to say.

XXVIII

Weeks went by and Melia settled down to a hard and lonely winter in Love Lane. She missed Bill sadly now he was no longer there. Absence had conferred all sorts of virtues upon him. She quite forgot that for many years and up till very recently she could hardly bear the sight of him about the place. Their relations as man and wife had entered upon a new and very remarkable phase.

About once a fortnight or so life was made a bit lighter for her by a penciled scrawl from somewhere in France. Bill's letters told surprisingly little, yet he maintained a kind of grim cheeriness and seemed more concerned for the life she might be leading than for anything that was happening to himself. He was very grateful for the small comforts she sent him from time to time, he was much interested in the continued prosperity of the business, and he mentioned with evident pleasure that her mother had sent him a pair of socks and a comforter she had knitted herself, also a "nice letter."

From his mother-in-law, whom Bill had always suspected of being a good sort at heart, "if the Old Un would give her a chance," he had an account of Melia's visit to Strathfieldsaye. Her mother said what pleasure it would give her father if she would go there every Sunday. The statement was incredible on the face of it; Bill frankly didn't know what to think, but there it was. No doubt the old girl meant kindly. Perhaps it was her idea of bucking him up.

In his letters to Melia he made no comment on the life he was leading, but in one he told her that they had moved up into the Line; in another that "the Boche had got it in the neck"; in another that "he had got the rheumatics so that he could hardly move," but that he meant to carry on as long as possible, adding, "We are very short of men."

Somehow the letters of that dark winter made her more proud than ever of this man of hers. There was a determined note of quiet cheerfulness that she had never known in him before. Instead of the eternal grumbling that had done so much to embitter her, there was a tone of whimsical humor which at a time made her laugh, although as a general rule few people found it harder than she did to laugh at anything. She had little imagination, still less of the penetration of mind that goes with it, but there was one phrase he used that was hard to forget. In one letter he was tempted to complain that the Boche had taken to raiding them in the middle of the night, but he added a postscript, "It's no use growsing here."

Somehow that phrase stuck in her mind. When she rose before daylight in the bitter mornings of midwinter to light the kitchen fire and prepare a meal she would have to eat alone, she would remember those words which he of all men had used, he who was a born growser if ever there was one. "It's no use growsing here." She tried to take in their meaning, but the task was not easy. He wrote so cheerfully that he could hardly mean what he said. And it was his nearest approach to complaint, he whose life in peace time had been one long complaint. Now and again she read in the _Tribune_ of things that made her shiver. Sometimes in the winter darkness she awoke with these things in her mind. Bill's letters, however, gave no details. If he spoke of "a scrap," he did so casually, without embroidery, yet she remembered that once when he had cut his thumb, not very badly, he fainted at the sight of blood.

Such letters were a puzzle; they told so little. She couldn't make them out. Reading between the lines, he seemed to be enjoying life more than he had ever done, he seemed to realize the humor of it more. It was very strange that it should be so, especially on the part of one who had always taken things so hard. In one letter he said that spring was coming and that the look of the sky made him think of the crocuses along Sharrow Lane, and then added as a brief postscript, "Stanning's gone."

Some weeks later he wrote from the Base to say that "he had had a whiff of gas, nothing to speak of," but that he was out of the Line for a bit. And then after a cheerful letter or two in the meantime, he wrote a month later to say that he had got leave for ten days and that he was coming home.

It was the middle of June when he turned up in Love Lane late one evening, without notice, laden like a beast of burden, looking very brown and well but terribly worn and shabby. So much had he changed in appearance that Melia felt it would have been easy to pass him in the street without recognizing him. He was thin and gray, even his features, and particularly his eyes, seemed to have altered. The tone of his voice was different; he spoke in a different way; the words and phrases he used were not those of the William Hollis she had always known.

He was glad to be back in his home, if only for a few days, and the sight of him with his heavy pack and his gas mask and his helmet laid on the new linoleum in the little sitting room behind the shop gave her a deeper pleasure than anything life had offered her so far. Strange as he was, new almost to the point of being somebody else, the mere sight of him thrilled her. She was thrilled to the verge of happiness. It was something beyond any previous emotion. Long ago she had given up believing that ever again he would appeal to her in the way of that brief time which had been once and had passed so soon.

He took off his heavy boots and lit his pipe and seemed childishly glad to be home again. But he didn't talk much. He sighed luxuriously and smiled at her in his odd new way, yet he was interested in the excellent supper she gave him presently and in the account she furnished of the business which was still on an ascending curve of prosperity. The old wound, still unhealed, would not allow her to praise her father, but there was more than one instance to offer of that tardy repentance; and it was hard to repress a note of pride when she announced that he was now Mayor of Blackhampton and by all accounts a good one.

She tried to get her husband to speak of France, but some instinct soon made it clear to her that he wanted to forget it. He could not be induced to speak of his experiences, made light of his "whiff of gas," but confessed it was hell all the time; he also said that the German was not a clean fighter. As he sat opposite to her, eating his supper, his reticence made it impossible for her to realize what he had been through. He did not seem to realize it himself, except that in a subtle way he was altogether changed.

He was eight days at home and they spent a lot of the time together. They had a new kind of intimacy; the world of men and affairs had altered for them both. Everything came to them at a fresh angle. They were dwellers in another atmosphere. The most commonplace actions meant much more; events once of comparatively large importance meant much less. She half suggested that they should go up on Sunday afternoon to Strathfieldsaye, but the idea evidently did not appeal to him and she did not press it. Still she threw out the hint, because it was an opportunity to let bygones be bygones and she was sure that he would meet with a good reception. A sense of justice impelled her to be grateful to her father, much as she disliked him; in his domineering way he had tried to make amends; all the same she was not sorry that Bill was determined to hold himself aloof. It was not exactly that he bore a grudge against her father; at the point he had reached men did not bear grudges, but he had some decided views on the matter and they gained in power by not being expressed.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, which was early closing day in Blackhampton, Bill insisted on taking Melia to the Art Gallery. It was in the historic low-roofed building in New Square--which dated from the Romans--known as the old Moot Hall. It was now the home of one of the finest collections of pictures in the country. Among ancient masterpieces and some modern ones were several characteristic examples of his friend, Stanning, R.A., whom he had carried dying into a dugout not four months ago.

Corporal Hollis had it from Sergeant Stanning's own lips that the best picture he had ever painted was hung in the middle room, and that it was not the Sharrow at Corfield Weir, which the Corporal himself admired so much, but the smaller, less ambitious piece called, "The Leaves of the Tree"--a picture of the woods up at Dibley in the sunlight of October, stripped by the winds of autumn, with the bent figure in the foreground of a very old man raking the dead leaves together.

They had no difficulty in finding it. "As the leaves of the trees are the lives of men." That legend on the gilt frame seemed to them both at that moment strangely, terribly prophetic. Bill did not tell Melia as they stood in front of the picture that he had risked his own life in a vain attempt to save the man who had painted it, nor did he tell her that the blood of the artist had dyed the sleeves of his tunic.

The large room was empty and they sat down solemnly on the settee in front of this canvas, looking at it in silence, yet as they did so holding the hand of each other like a pair of children. Once before had they sat there, in the early days of their marriage, when he had talked to her of those ambitions that were never to materialize. And now, again, with the spirit of peace upon him and stirred by old memories, he sighed to himself and spoke for a moment or two of what might have been. One of these days he had hoped to do something. He had always intended to do something but the time had slipped away.

They were still sitting there looking at the picture when two people came into the room. One was a commonplace elderly woman, the other a young man in khaki. Although they were totally unlike in the superficialities of outward bearing it was easy to tell that they were mother and son. His trained movements and upright carriage, his poise and alertness, were not able to conceal an odd resemblance to the wholly different person at his side.

William and Melia were concealed by the high-backed, wide-armed settee on which they sat; and as these two people came up the room and took up a position behind it, they did not seem to realize that they could be overheard.

"I want you, mother," said the young man in an eager voice, "to look at what to my mind is the picture of this collection. Stand here and you'll get it just right."

The Corporal and his lady on the high-backed settee offered a silent prayer that the young man had as much wisdom and taste as the owner of such a clear, confident voice ought to have. "As the leaves of the tree are the lives of men." The Corporal breathed more freely; the young man's voice had not belied him. "Homer's words." He reeled off pat a large-sounding foreign language. "I want you to catch the ghost of the sun glancing through these wind-torn branches. You'll get the light if you stand just here. Wonderful composition ... wonderful vision ... wonderful harmony ... wonderful everything. The big artists feel with their eyes." It was charming to hear the voice in its enthusiasm. "They look behind the curtain of appearances as you might say. The life of man is but the shadow of a shadow ... you remember that bit of Lucretius I read you last night? Look at the figure in the foreground gathering the leaves. Modern critics say symbolism is not art, but it depends on how it's done, doesn't it? The eyes of the mind ... imagination ... and that's the only key we have to the Riddle of the Sphinx." He ran on and on, laughing like a child. "Look at his color. And how spacious!--imagination there!--the harmony, the drawing! A marvelous draughtsman. If he'd lived he'd have been a second Torrington, although you hear people say that Torrington couldn't draw." He laughed like a schoolboy and then his voice fell. "I like to think that Jim Stanning was one of us, that he was born among us, and it's good to think that our old one-horse Art Committee has had the luck to buy his magnum opus without knowing it. They paid twice as much for Corfield Weir in the other room, which is not in the same class. However ... posterity...."

Prattling on and on the young man came round the corner of the settee, followed by the old lady.

And then his flow of words failed suddenly as he caught a glimpse of William and Melia, whose presence he had been far from suspecting. His little start of guilt betrayed a feeling that he had made rather an ass of himself, for he said half shamefacedly, "Come on, my dear, let's go and look at the Weir. We'll come back here later." The Corporal and his lady could only catch a glimpse of him as he led his mother abruptly into the next room; but Melia saw he was an officer with two pips on his sleeve and that his tunic was adorned with a tiny strip of white and purple ribbon with a star on it. In answer to her questions the Corporal was able to inform her that the young man was a Captain in the B.B. and that his decorations was the M.C. with Bar.

"And he looks so young!" said Melia.

"A very good soldier," said the Corporal with a professional air.

"Who is he, Bill? I seem to remember his mother."

"It's young Nixey, the architect."

Of course! But his uniform had altered him. He looked so handsome. And that was Emma Nixey--Emma Price that was. How proud she must be to have a boy like that!

"He's a good soldier." The deep voice of the Corporal broke in upon Melia's thoughts. "A good soldier--that young feller."

"Bill, you remember Emma Price that used to live at the bottom of Piper's Hill?" There was a note of envy in the tone of Melia.

"I remember old Price, the cobbler."

"Emma was his eldest girl--no, not the eldest. Polly who married Ford, the ironmonger, was the eldest. Emma was the second. Married Harry Nixey, whose mother kept the all-sorts shop in Curwood Street. A drunken fellow, but very clever at his trade. Bolted with another woman when this lad Harold was twelve months old. Emma never saw nor heard of him again. Went to Australia, people said at the time. But I'll say this for Emma, she was always a good plucked one."

There was a moment of silence and then the Corporal demanded weightily, "Has she any others?"

"He's the only one. But brought up very respectable ... she's managed to give him a rare good education. How she did it nobody knows. Tremendous worker, was Emma. But that boy does her credit, I must say."

"He does that." The Corporal stared hard at the picture in front of him. "Nothing like education." He sighed softly. "If only I'd had a bit of education I sometimes think I might have done something myself."

XXIX

On the afternoon of the day before the Corporal returned to France he went with Melia by bus to Sharrow Bridge and they walked thence to Corfield Weir. Many hours had he spent with rod and tackle in this hallowed spot. Those were the only hours in his drab life that he would have desired to live over again. Many a good fish had he played in the bend of the river below the famous Corfield Glade, much commemorated by the local poets in whom the town and county were exceptionally rich. In particular there was the legend of the fair Mary Corfield who in the days of Queen Bess had cast herself for love of an honest yeoman into the deep waters of the Sharrow. From Bill's favorite tree, where from boyhood he had spun so many dreams that had come to naught, could be seen the high chimneys of the Old Hall, the home of the ill-fated Mary, about whose precincts her ghost still walked and was occasionally seen.

The day was perfect, a rare golden opulence of sky and earth with a sheen of beauty on wood and field and flowing water. They came to the little gnarled clump of alders, his old-time friends, whom the swift-flowing Sharrow was always threatening to devour, and lay side by side in the shade, on the dry grass, listening to the great rats plopping into the cool water.

Both were very silent at first; it was as if nature spoke to them in a new way. It was as if their eyes were bathed in a magical light. All the things around them were clearer in outline, brighter, sharper, more visible. Their ears, too, were attuned to a higher intensity. The swirl of the water, the rustle of leaves, the cry of the birds, the little voice of the wind, were more intimate, more harmonious, more audibly full of meaning. The world itself had never seemed so richly amazing, so gorgeously inexhaustible as at that moment.

At last the Corporal broke a very long silence. "Mother, it's something to have lived."

Melia did not answer at once, but presently she sighed a little and said, "I wonder, Bill."

He plucked a spear of grass. "It's a rum thing to say, but if it hadn't been for this war I don't suppose I ever should have lived, really."

She didn't understand him, and her large round eyes, a little like those of a cow, told him so.