Part 18

"I've had Experience." The Corporal sighed and sat down heavily in his cushioned chair. He fixed his eyes again on the fire.

The Mayor applied a lighted spill to his cigar and then in silence offered it to the Corporal. But the Corporal's cigar was not yet ready for smoking.

"If I do go"--the voice of the Corporal was soft and thick and rather husky--"you'll ... you'll...."

His father-in-law nodded. "Don't you worry about that. I'll see _her_ all right."

Josiah took out his handkerchief and blew his nose violently.

XLIX

That evening, about nine o'clock, when Melia and the Corporal returned to Torrington Cottage, they found a cosy fire awaiting them in the charming sitting room, an act of grace on the part of Fanny, a handmaiden from the village, for the evenings were chilly. They sat a few minutes together and then Melia retired for the night after having drawn a promise from the Corporal that he would not be long in following her example.

Alas, the Corporal did not feel in the least like going to bed. There was a decision to be made. In fact he had half made it already. But the good wife upstairs and the very chair in which he sat had cast their spells upon him. Gazing into the heart of the fire he realized that he was deliciously and solidly comfortable. All his days he had been a catlike lover of the comfortable. In the first instance it had been that as much as anything that had so nearly undone him. Conflicting voices were urging him, as somehow they always did, at critical moments in his life.

This beautiful room with its old furniture, its china, its bric-a-brac, its soft carpet, its one rare landscape upon the wall was an enchanted palace. Even now, after all these months of occupation, it seemed like sacrilege to be sitting in it. But it was a symptom of a changed condition. This lovely place with its poetry and its elegance was a dream come true. And the honor and the affection with which a world formerly so hard and so supercilious surrounded him now made life so much sweeter than ever before.

Sitting there in front of a delicious fire he felt that the peace and the beauty all about him had entered his soul. He had a right to these languors; he had purchased them with many unspeakable months of torture and pain. No one would blame him, no one could blame him if he left the dance to younger men. Suddenly he heard a little wind steal along the valley and he shivered at the image that was born upon its whisper. Just beyond these cosy, lamplit walls was Night, Chaos, Panic. Outside the tiny harbor he had won at such a price was all hell let loose.

He heard the awful Crumps, he could taste the icy mud they flung over him, he was plunged again in endless, hideous hours, he could see and feel the muck, the senseless muck, the boredom, the excruciating misery. The wind in the valley grew a little louder and he shuddered in the depths of his spirit.

The crocuses were out in the fields by the river. Next week would be April, the time of cloud, of glowing brake and flowering thorn, of daffodils and miraculous lights along the Sharrow. The little picture over the chimneypiece, which he had copied three times in his long convalescence, showed what April meant along the Sharrow. Friendship had taught him something, had given him eyes. He had been initiated into the higher mysteries. Beauty for the sake of Beauty--the world religion of the future--had been revealed to him. The sense of it seemed to fill him with passion as he gazed into the fire.

"Auntie!" Surely there was a voice in the room. Or was it the little wind outside softly trying the shutters? "Auntie!" It was there again. He got up unsteadily, but in a kind of ecstasy, half entrancement, half pain, and crossed to the French window. Very gently he slipped back the bolts and flung open the door. The darkness hit him, but there was nothing there. He knew there was nothing there, yet in his old carpet slippers he stepped out gingerly on to the wet lawn. The air was moist and mild and friendly, and as his eyes grew used to the mirk the rosebushes and the fruit trees took shape on either hand.

The shafts of light from the room he had left guided him across the grass as far as the path which led to the tower at the end of the garden. As soon as his feet were on the gravel he thought he heard the voice again. Of course it couldn't be so. It was only the wind along the valley. And yet ... no ... if the wind wasn't calling....

The gaunt line of the many-windowed tower loomed ahead. Less by calculation than by instinct he suddenly found the lowest of the twelve stone steps which led to its high door--in that darkness he couldn't see it, and if he had seen it there was not the slightest reason for ascending, but just now he was possessed. Step after step shaped itself with a kind of intelligence to his old waterlogged slippers, the damp knob of the door came into his hand.

The door was locked. Silly fool he was! Must be cracked anyway! But the starched cuff of his best Sunday shirt had got entangled with something. The key, of course. It had been left in the lock. Careless to leave it like that.

Of a sudden the door came open. The ghostly abyss within smelt very damp and cheerless. Ought to have had an occasional fire there during the winter months. He felt his way cautiously in and his eyes adjusted themselves to the grimmer texture of the darkness. The chill made his teeth chatter. He felt in his pockets for a match, but he hadn't got one; he moved gingerly forward, past a wooden table and a wicker chair; the spectral outline of an unshuttered window confronted him.

Outside was nothing but the wind in the valley. He couldn't see a yard beyond the glass. The chill of the musty place was settling into his bones. What a fool not to be in his comfortable bed! But ... a voice was still whispering. There _was_ something ... somewhere....

The wind was just like the little wind along that damned Canal. No wonder his teeth chattered. And then right out in the void he saw a star. It was so faint, so far beyond the valley and the wind's voice that he was not sure it was a star. But as he stood looking at it the voice seemed to come quite close.

"Auntie ... Auntie...."

"That you, Jim ... here I am, boy...."

... Only a fool would stand with chattering teeth, in carpet slippers, at a goodish bit past midnight, talking to something that wasn't there....

Somewhere in the darkness there was a presence. Perhaps it was outside the window. He felt his way back to the open door, as far as the veiled peril of the twelve stone steps. It was so dark that he couldn't even see the topmost; there was not even a railing for such an emergency; a single false step and he would break his neck.

Queerly excited he stood poised on the threshold, feeling into space with one foot. The wind was in the garden below him. And then oddly, at a fresh angle, over by his left hand, he caught a glimpse of the star. He swayed forward into the void but the lamp of faith had been lit in his eyes. His taut nerves awoke to the fact that he was really descending the unseen steps one by one and that he was counting them. If he didn't take extraordinary care he was very likely to kill himself, but the care he was taking seemed by no means extraordinary.

His old carpet slippers were shuffling along the gravel at last. He could make out a line of currant bushes by which ran the path to the house. As he moved forward the wind died away in the valley and he lost sight of the star. But he knew his way now. Pent up forces flowed from him through the wall of living darkness. "I'm coming, Jim!" he muttered. The wind seemed to answer him. And then he came to the end of the row of bushes and there beyond a patch of wet grass was the door of the cosy room still open with a subdued glow of lamp and fire shining beyond.

When he came in he took off his soaked slippers that they might not soil the beautiful carpet of which Melia was so proud. As he barred the door and drew the curtains across the window, the pretty old-fashioned clock on the chimneypiece chided him by melodiously striking one o'clock. He must be a fool--he had to be up at seven; but the enchanted room that was like a dream embodied cast one last spell upon him.

He had no need ... the Chaps wouldn't expect it ... he was forty-five....

The voice was in the valley. It was a quarter past one. He raked out the last faint embers of the fire, then he put out the lamp and carried his wet slippers into the hall. After his recent adventure it was but a simple matter to find his way up the richly carpeted stairs without a light and creep into the room where his wife slept.

She was sleeping now. So cunningly he crept into the room that she did not stir. He listened to the gentle rise and fall of her soft breath. Good woman! brave woman! He tiptoed past the bed to where the window was and managed to draw up the clever new-fangled blinds without making a sound. Yes, there was the star. That was all he wanted to see. Faint it was, so faint that faith was needed to believe that it was a star. But there was nothing else it could be.

The little sobbing voice, now no more than a whisper, that, too, was out there. Jim's voice ... cracked he must be ... such sloppy notions ... the wind along that damned canal....

Suddenly he turned from the star. At the beck of a queer impulse he knelt by the bed, burying his eyes in the soft counterpane. He prayed for the Chaps. He prayed for Melia. He prayed for the life that lay with her, the life coming to them so miraculously they knew not whence, after all those years.

Could it be that Jim was coming back to complete his great beginnings? Coming back to witch the world with beauty? Just a fancy. But everything was just a fancy. Jim had said so once, looking at the sunset on the bank of that canal.

And he was one who....

L

The months went by. In the meantime, upon the fields of France, was being decided the fate of the world for generations to come. Day followed day whose story will echo down the ages, but in the cottage with the green shutters at the head of the valley there was little to indicate that it was a time of destiny.

The Corporal was allowed to return to his old regiment. Experience had made him doubly valuable and its ranks had been grievously thinned. After three months at the Depôt he was sent to France.

When at the end of July he came home on draft leave to bid Melia good-by, her time was drawing near. And in spite of the burdens life had laid upon them, the feeling now uppermost was a subtle sense of triumph. In the final bitterness of conflict the dark Fates had given them courage to bear their heads high.

A strange reward was coming to them, bringing with it new obligations, new responsibilities. But they were not afraid. Somewhere, a Friend was helping them. It must be so, or else the dire perils to which they had been exposed would not have allowed their happiness to bear so late a flower. Besides, they had been given a specific token that in the sum of things they mattered.

As the Corporal held his wife in a last embrace it came to him all at once that he was never to see the young life that was to bear his name. "If we can put the job through to a finish," he whispered huskily, "I'd like it to be a boy. If we can't, a girl'd be better."

She asked why a girl would be better. As usual she was not very quick in the uptake.

"The world'll not be a place for boys--unless we can do the job clean."

"But you will do it, Bill." The almost cowlike eyes expressed a divine instinct. "God won't let the Germans win."

Somehow the words shamed him, yet not for the reason that turned her own heart to fire. It was treason to the Chaps to talk of girls.

"O' course we'll make a clean job on it." He pressed a final caress upon her. "You can set there, my dear, in that nice chair all covered with wild flowers, and the door open just as it is, so that you can get a glimpse o' that old river with the sun on it and when your eyes get tired-like, my dear, you can fix 'em on that little picture over the chimneypiece opposite. See what I mean, like? There's the sun in that, too. John Torrington painted it. Look at it sometimes. We are going to win--it isn't right to think otherwise. That means a boy. And if a boy it is, I'd like him to be called Jim."

LI

Civilization was ringing with great news at the very hour that a son was born to the Corporal. But at that time he was a Corporal no longer. A letter had already reached Melia to say that "he was promoted Color Sergeant." The fighting was awful, but the Chaps had got their tails up, and the time was coming "when Fritz would be bound to throw in his hand."

It was very well, therefore, that the half comic, rather pathetic, somewhat crumpled but perfectly healthy creature snuggling up against its mother in a lovely chintz-clad bedroom looking southwest, proved to be a small but perfectly formed specimen of the human male. The delighted grandmother herself took the incredible news to Strathfieldsaye.

Josiah, who for several days past had been hard set to conceal a growing excitement, rubbed his hands with glee. "One in the eye for Park Crescent--what? Fancy ... Melia!"

Lady Munt agreed that wonders are never likely to cease in this world.

"Mother," she never remembered to have seen Josiah so excited, "this means a bottle o' champagne." He pressed the bell and gave comprehensive orders to Alice. "Seems to me that Victory's in the air." Secretly he had always had a grudge against Fate, that, with all his worldly success, his family could not muster one solitary male among them. "Funny thing, y' know, how you can be deceived in people. I always said that chap Hollis was a good-for-nothing. Well, I was wrong."

Her ladyship sniffed a little and wiped tearful eyes. She was in perversely low spirits, but good soup, in spite of the food crisis and good wine, which she was simply forced to drink, did something to restore her.

"Yes, you can be deceived in people." The cool trickle down Josiah's throat generated a desire for conversation. "Take the Germans. Everybody thought they were a white race. Well, they aren't. Then take the Americans. Everybody said they were too proud to fight. And, when finally they came in, people said they'd not be much use anyway. But it shows how easy it is to be wrong." Again the Mayor took up his glass. "For I tell you, Mother, those Yankees have made a difference. Since that mix-up back in March they've done wonders. The Yankees have turned the scale."

Maria had a head for domestic affairs only; she did not pretend to be wise in international matters. She sighed gently and thought of a certain chintz-clad room up at Dibley.

"Get on with it!" Her lord pointed at her glass peremptorily. "Pol Roger '04'll hurt nobody." Strong in that faith, he lifted his own glass and bowed and beamed over the top of it. "Grandma, here's now!"

At the toast Maria hoisted a blush which brought Josiah to the verge of catastrophe. Tears, her one form of emotional luxury, came into her honest eyes.

"In a year or two, Grandma, we'll have to be thinking of your golden wedding--touching wood!" He laid a ritualistic finger upon the mahogany. "You little thought, did you now, when we started out together in that funny little box up Parker's Entry that one day you'd be My Lady? Funny world--what? I remember going to fetch the Doctor the night that gel was born. Bitter cold it was." Suddenly Josiah stopped and again took up his glass. "Wind had an edge like a knife round the corner by Waterloo Square." Then came an odd change of voice. "Did I understand you to say the gel would like me to be godfather?"

Maria understood that Melia understood that Bill would like it.

A sigh escaped Josiah. He laid down his knife and fork. "Well, well, I never made such a mistake in my life as over that chap." His voice grew humbler than Maria had ever heard it. "Shows how you can be deceived. Something big about that feller. Never made a greater mistake in my life. We'll hope he'll come through. Better write him a line, Mother. Don't suppose it's any use tryin' to send a wire."

LII

Some weeks later, on a cold Sunday morning in November, Sir Josiah and Lady Munt drove over to Torrington Cottage. They were accompanied by Sally, on short leave from France, and by Gertrude Preston. Before the party walked across the village green to the little parish church, where a service of National Thanksgiving was to be held, it found that a matter of great importance claimed attention.

The matter was Jim. The rector of the parish had arranged to christen him that afternoon at three o'clock. Near a good log fire in the sunny embrasure of the charming little drawing-room his grand cradle had been set; and here the wonderful infant was duly inspected by his godparents.

Jim was a picture. His grandfather said he was. There was no other word. Yet even in the presence of this phenomenal youth there was but a chastened joy. He was sleeping for one thing, calmly, sweetly and superbly; and his pale, fine-drawn, yet strangely proud-looking mother was clad in the livery of widowhood.

Said Josiah in a low voice, so as not to wake the baby, "What's happened to the picture that used to be there?" He pointed to the wall above the chimneypiece.

"It fell down, Dad." The voice of Melia was calm.

"When?"

"One night last week--the night before the news came."

"You don't say!" Josiah was not superstitious, still it was queer.

"No one was in the room when it happened. No one heard it fall. Didn't break the frame or the glass or anything. Just the snapping of the cord."

"War cord, I expect." Josiah's voice was grim. "Need a cord of a better quality to hang a certain party. Better have it put up again. Young Nixey tells me that picture may be worth a sight o' money."

Melia promised that it should be put up again. _He_ always set such great store by it.

Of a sudden, Sally, who had been wholly absorbed in the contemplation of James, said, "Tell me, Father, when did you last see young Nixey?"

"Thursday--Friday. Happened to look in Friday morning as I was passing."

"How was he?"

"Wonderfully cheerful considerin'. Tries to gammon his old mother, but I guess the old lady knows...."

"... he'll never...."

"No, poor fellow. Wonderful pluck. Tells me he's plannin' a cathedral ... a cathedral, mark you ... and stone blind."

Sally sighed a little and turned again to look at Jim. Aunt Gerty laid a white-gloved hand gently on the Mayor's sleeve. "Ten minutes to eleven, Josiah. Won't do to be late--_you_ of all people. Will it Maria?"

LIII

Maria and Aunt Gerty, carrying respectability to the verge of fashion, led the way by the path across the green to the village church. Josiah, walking with his daughters, followed ten paces behind. Wearing the tall hat of public life he looked imposing, but four and a quarter years of war had chastened him. The roll and the swagger were not what they were; four and a quarter years of incessant but fruitful labor for the common weal had molded his mind, had modified an aggressive personality.

The church, although in excess of the local requirements as a rule, was very full this morning in November. It was an hour of Thanksgiving. The goal had been reached. Victory, complete and final, had come almost like a thief in the night. And its coming had revealed, in a manner transcending even the awful dramas of old, the omnipotence of the moral law. Yet again the God of Righteousness had declared Himself in Sovereign power.

Grim perils had been surmounted by the devotion of the sons and daughters of the race, but very much remained to do. Behind the humble gratitude to the Giver of Victory, behind the sense of exultation so rightly uppermost this Sabbath morning, was in every heart a desolating sense of the cost in human lives and a deep anxiety for the future.

The Vicar of the parish, by name the Reverend Corfield Stanning, was a white-haired man who had given soul and kin freely to the Cause. He was a son of the soil, a type of the almost extinct squarson who survives here and there in England, half landowner, half patriarch, less a scholar than a sportsman and a man of the world. For that reason, perhaps, he had the practical wisdom that books do not give. He had the instinct for affairs which men of his type seldom lack.

Victory was with the arms of Right. The people did well to rejoice. But also it was a time for prayer, for steadfast dedication to the gigantic tasks ahead. The man-eating tiger was in the net. It now remained to repair the havoc he had wrought, and to provide security for generations unborn against his kind.

Having humbly thanked the Giver, the old man prayed for his country and for those noble races of which it was the foster-mother. He prayed for all her wide-flung peoples to whom the Keys had been given; he prayed that the Pioneers of sacred liberties so long in peril, those one in name and in blood over all the wide seas, who hold Milton's faith, who speak Shakespeare's tongue may ever stand as now, shoulder to shoulder in the gate.

He prayed for all those children of men grown old and weak in bondage, whose chains had at last been cast off. He besought the Divine grace to guide them.

Finally, he prayed for the Co-trustees of the future and that the Divine wisdom encompass them in their reckoning with a cruel and unworthy foe. He asked that mercy be extended to those who had denied it to others, not that it was in his heart to pity them in their eclipse or to spare them aught of their desert, but that the name of the Master be served, in whom lay the ultimate hope of the world, might be honored in mankind's supreme yet most terrible hour.

When the old man came to his brief and simple sermon the words of his text pierced every heart. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

It began with commemoration of a humble hero, known to many in that church, who had given all he had to give without stint or question. And he read a letter written from the sacred and recovered soil of France by the officer commanding that Band of Brothers raised in their midst to the wife of one Sergeant William Hollis, who had died a soldier and a gentleman that his faith and his friends might live.

THE END

Transcriber's Notes:

Words and phrases that were typeset as italic in the printed version of this book have been shown with an underscore (_) at the beginning and end of the word or phrase.

Minor changes have been made to correct obvious typesetters' errors and to regularize hyphenation; variant spellings have been retained.

In chapter XXIV, the sentence that was typeset as "By the time William and Melia turned down Saint James his street," has been changed to "By the time William and Melia turned down Saint James's street," to make sense grammatically.

In several places, Josiah Munt refers to himself or others as "prattical" in conversation. In chapter XXXVI, he is musing about education for women as not being "prattical"; the Transcriber has chosen to retain this spelling as fitting the author's style and intent.

In four instances in the book, the author refers to a "pickelet", and in one place to a "pikelet". Because of the frequency of pickelet, the Transcriber has chosen to retain the variant spelling.