Part 4

"That Hollis!" The President repeated the words calmly. For a moment it was not certain that human dignity could accept their implication. But there was a world of meaning in the nervous frown of Mr. Councilor Penney, in the tense furtiveness of Nurseryman Jennings.

Was it possible?... Was it possible that the little skunk had dared?... Had dared to compete at this show of all shows?... Had dared to win honestly that prize of all prizes?...

The story of Bill Hollis and Melia Munt was a commonplace with every member of the Committee. They were familiar with all the circumstances; and though there might be those among them who felt privately that their august President carried family pride rather far, even these could not help admiring the rigidity of his attitude. It meant enormous strength of character; and character in the shrine at which the true Briton worships. But now that the Committee was up against the problem Bill Hollis had raised they keenly regretted that they had not taken steps to disqualify him from the outset, or had not apprised the President beforehand of the state of the case.

The pause that followed was rather irksome for all parties. It was ended at last by Nurseryman Jennings. That practical expert, having enjoyed an afternoon of free whisky at the President's expense, was now able to clothe his judgment becomingly. "Don't suppose the little Snot grew it hisself!" said Jennings.

Half the Committee saw at once that a way out had been found for the President. But the President was not of the number. "Why don't you?" he said curtly.

The practical expert was hardly prepared with reasons. Why should he be? His doubts were inspired by the purest altruism. "Why don't you, Jennings?" repeated the President.

Really there is no helping some people!

"Because I don't!" It was rather lame, but Jennings was doing his best in extremely trying circumstances.

The longer, tenser pause that followed none was stout enough to break. Up to a hundred might have been counted before the President said, slowly and gruffly, as a large and shaggy bear endowed with a few limited human vocables might have done, "Have the goodness, Jennings, to mark Exhibit Sixteen for the President's Special."

XI

Thus it was, that among the successful competitors who lined up by the bandstand at six o'clock to receive awards of merit from the fair hands of Mrs. Alderman Munt, was her son-in-law Mr. William Hollis.

Wonders never cease to happen in a world of wonders. When in a moment of sheer bravado Bill Hollis had paid the necessary shilling and had entered the choicest bloom in his garden for the Annual Show he would have staked his davy that he stood about as much chance of walking off with the Special Prize as he did of going to heaven in a golden chariot. The Old Un himself would see to that.

Taken on its merits, this pure white rose that had come as the crown of many years of loving labor would be hard to beat. But, as Bill Hollis knew, things are not taken on their merits by the a priori school of criticism. He knew that its judgments are conditioned by many things and that intrinsic worth is apt to weigh least in the scale. He had shown his bloom in pride and defiance; he had not expected to get anything by it; and now that the despised Committee had acted better than itself he was inclined to regret that it had not lived up to its reputation.

The table containing the prizes had been carried out on to the grass. Beside it stood Mrs. Alderman Munt, white-gloved and anxious, her eyes not unlike those of a frightened rabbit. And yet lurking somewhere in the folds of a rather redundant frame was a certain dignity, as there is bound to be in one who has given four children to the state; in one, moreover, who has accompanied such a mate as Josiah step by step in his steady rise to wealth and power. Beside Mrs. Munt stood the secretary of the society, an important pince-nezed gentleman, with a scroll in his hand bearing the names of the prize winners; immediately behind these, on a row of chairs, were various notabilities, among whom Alderman Munt was conspicuously foremost; and then facing them, in a curious, rather impressed semicircle, were the members of that general public which not for worlds would miss anything in the nature of a giving of prizes by the wife of a real live alderman.

The proprietor of the Duke of Wellington sat glaring fiercely from under his white billycock hat, clutching a little convulsively the knob of his sun umbrella. A ruthless eye raked the distant corps of successful competitors, as one by one they came round the corner of the bandstand and converged upon the timid lady whose task it was publicly to reward their skill. All were awkward, some were abashed, some tried to hide their feelings by an ill-timed facetiousness.

There he was, the little dog! Josiah's grip tightened on the knob of the sun umbrella. If the little cur had "had a drop," as he most probably had, he was very likely to insult Maria--it was such a great, such a golden, opportunity. Josiah was not troubled as a rule by vain regrets, but as the Secretary in his far flung voice announced, "President's Special Prize for best Single Bloom, winner Mr. W. Hollis," and there came an expectant hush in which the meager form of Mr. W. Hollis emerged into the full glare of the public gaze, his father-in-law would have paid a substantial sum to be able to rescind his recent verdict. The little Stoat could not be expected to bear himself like a gentleman.

Aunt Gerty, standing prim and tense at the back of the invertebrate Maria, grew as white as if she had seen a ghost. But she drew in her thin lips sternly and, great warrior as she was, literally transfixed poor Melia's declassé husband with her tortoiseshell folders. How common he was! It was really very stupid of Josiah to let him have a prize in such circumstances. It was very stupid, indeed! He was just the kind of man who might be tempted to indulge in some form of cheap revenge.

As Melia's husband shuffled across the grass Josiah held himself ready to spring upon him. Public or no public he would certainly do so if the little beast made any sign of insulting Maria. But as Bill Hollis came slowly and doggedly into the picture he was visited by a reluctant grace. Half way across the grass, midway between the bandstand and the alderman's lady, he took his shabby hands from his shabby pockets; a little farther on several degrees of slouch passed from the unpleasing curve of his narrow shoulders. And finally, as the silver gilt goblet was bestowed upon him by a pair of trembling hands, he ducked solemnly, the best he could do in the way of a bow, and then retired modestly, silently, respectfully, the trophy under his arm.

Josiah and Aunt Gerty breathed again. Great was their relief. And so intensely had they been preoccupied with the bearing of Melia's husband, that, very luckily for Maria, they were not able to notice hers. It was well this was so. For the alderman's lady had disgraced herself on an important public occasion by allowing her eyes to fill with tears.

XII

Bill's first thought was to take the trophy straight home to his wife. But for various reasons he didn't obey it. Relations had grown very strained between Melia and himself. For months past she had been giving him such a bad time that there was little pleasure to be got out of his home.

He was a bit of an idealist in his way. Sixteen years ago, at any rate, he had begun married life by idealizing his home and Melia. But Melia was not an idealist. She was a decidedly practical person, and, like her father, endowed with much shrewd sense. In a perverse hour she had yielded against her better judgment to the quiet persistency of William Hollis; but almost before she married him she knew it wouldn't answer. In her heart she wanted somebody better. She felt that a daughter of Josiah Munt was entitled to somebody better. And in waiving all her rights as the eldest child of a tyrannical, overbearing father, the least she could ask of the man to whose star she had pinned her faith was that he should prove himself a forcible and successful citizen.

Unhappily Bill had proved to be neither. He was a wordster, a dreamer; there was nothing at the back of his rose-colored ideas. It was not that he was a vicious man. For such a nature as Melia's it had perhaps been better if he had been. She asked for the positive in man, even positive badness; anything rather than muddling mediocrity, ignoble envy of other men's prosperity and continual whinings against fate.

There were times when Melia was so bored with the inadequacy of this mate of hers that she half hoped to goad him into getting drunk enough to repay some of her insults with a good beating. At least it would have been an event, an excitement. But he was not even a thorough-going drinker; at the best, or the worst, he never drank enough beer to rise to the heroic, as a real man might have done; his deepest potations did not carry him beyond maudlin sentiment or vapid braggadocio, both very galling to a woman of spirit. And now, having realized that there was nothing to hope for, that they were going steadily down a hill at the bottom of which was the gutter--just as her clear-sighted father had predicted from the first--years of resentment had crystallized into a hard and fixed hostility. She had an ever-growing contempt for the spineless fool who was dragging her down in his own ruin.

Bill's instinct was to go home at once with the silver gilt goblet. In spite of all the bitterness the last few years had brought him he still had a wish to please Melia. In spite of a cat and dog existence they were man and wife. They had lived sixteen years together but he still wished to propitiate her. But hardly had he borne his prize through the throng by the bandstand and begun to steer for the main gate of Jubilee Park than there came a change of mind.

It was one of those sudden, causeless changes of mind that was always overtaking him. He never seemed able to do anything now for the reason that almost before he had decided upon one thing he was overpowered by a desire to do another. He had not reached the park gate before he felt the humiliation of accepting such a prize from such hands; and Melia would probably tell him that he ought to have had more self-respect than to take it--if she thought it worth while to express herself on the subject.

The President's Special Prize would bring no pleasure to Melia. True, there was no need to tell her whence it came. No ... there was no need! Suddenly the band broke into a hearty strain. Beyond a doubt the atmosphere of Jubilee Park was far more genial than that of Number Five Love Lane. Perhaps he ought to have brought Melia to witness his triumph. One reason was that he had been far from expecting it; another, that he daren't invite her. For many months now she had been careful to keep herself to herself, declining always to be seen with him in public.

There was a vacant seat by the gate, out of the sun and within sound of the gay music. This, after all, was far better than Number Five Love Lane. For a few brief moments "The Merry Widow" (selection) made him feel happier. It would have been nice for Melia--still it couldn't be helped. He ought to have refused the prize--still he had honestly won it. But only an oversight on the part of the blinking Committee had given it him; he could read that in Josiah's ugly mug and in the face of that stuck-up Gerty Preston--so it was one in the eye for them after all! And what price Ma! Her son-in-law broke into a guffaw of melancholy laughter. The old barrel-bodied image got up like one of the Toffs! And yet ... how her hands trembled! ... white gloves on 'em too! ... and that was a queer look she gave him. The old girl, after all, was the best of a rotten bunch.

"The Merry Widow" crashed to an abrupt finale, and a light went out suddenly, as it so often did, in the heart of Bill Hollis. Again the stern edge of reality pressed upon him from every side, but almost at once it was swept away by a new excitement. And yet the excitement was not so new as it seemed. All the afternoon it had been present, a chorus, a background, thrilling and momentous, to a series of formal proceedings to which it had nothing in common, to which it did not bear the slightest relation, and yet with a power truly sinister to cast a pall over them.

A youth with lungs of brass came through the gate crying the Blackhampton _Evening Star_.

Terrible Fighting in Belgium! Awful German Losses! Great Speech by Sir Edward Grey!

A sharp thrill ran through the veins of Bill Hollis. It was one more lively variation on a theme that had been kindling his senses at short intervals throughout the afternoon. War, a real big war, was coming, had come. Of course to him personally it wouldn't matter, except that it might make life more interesting. Yes, somehow it was bound to do that. Whether it would make it interesting enough for a man like himself to care to go on living, that was another question.

"Here y'are, boy."

The boy came across the grass, handed Bill an _Evening Star_ and firmly declined the halfpenny that was offered him.

"Penny, sir."

A penny for a _Star_ was unheard of. Even the result of the Derby, the result of the match with Yorkshire, the result of the Cup Final itself could not command a penny. Evidently this war, now that it had come at last, was going to be a Record.

Yes, a Record. All the same he was not going to pay a penny for it. One halfpenny was the legal price of the Blackhampton _Evening Star_, and he told the boy "that if he had any of his sauce he'd have the police of him."

XIII

William Hollis, having defeated the boy, turned his back to the sun and was assured by the Blackhampton _Star_ that he was living in a great moment of the world's history. Germany had, it seemed, until twelve o'clock that evening to decide whether she would take on England. She had taken on France, Russia and Belgium already; a few hours hence, if she wasn't careful, she would have to fight the British Empire.

Even to Bill Hollis, dizzied by the sheer magnitude of the headlines of his favorite journal which actually surpassed those of the Crippen trial, the sinking of the _Titanic_ and the late King Edward's visit to Blackhampton, that phrase "the British Empire" was full of magic. Lurking somewhere in a compound of half-baked inefficiencies was the vision of a poet, and at this moment it was queerly responsive to this symbol.

"It's all up with 'em if they take on Us." In strict order of priority that was the first message to flash through the sentient being of Mr. William Hollis to be duly recorded by the central office. Hard upon it came a second message. "They've got a Nerve--them Germans."

In the column for late news were blurred fragments of the speech of the Foreign Minister in the House of Commons. Intellectually William Hollis was not conspicuously bright, but, as he read the simple words, the nature of the terrible misprision against the human race came home to him and he could only gasp.

He got up presently and moved away from the band. As always the band was very nice, but for some reason or other he didn't want to hear it just now. For a short time he walked about on the brown grass, the President's cup under his arm, wrapped in the _Evening Star_. But he wasn't thinking now of the President, of the cup, of Melia, of the injustice of Fate to a private citizen. His thoughts were centered on a Thing that made all these other things, painfully intimate as they were, of no moment at all. These were but trivial matters, and he was now in the presence of the inconceivable, the stupendous.

Coming back to the throng, perhaps for the latent solace these clusters of fellow beings afforded him, he saw from their blank eyes, their set faces, that his own terrible thoughts were shared more or less by them all. The boy had sold his papers already. Other boys had sold theirs. The whole place was alive with fluttering news sheets, gleaming white and spectral in the sun. Already these people, these stout females in farcical clothes, for the most part trundling queer abortions on the end of a string, and these hard-faced, grasping men who were always overreaching one in trade, were living in a different world. They were not thinking now of flowers and vegetables, of bands or dancing, although the first couples of juniors had just begun to sway rhythmically to the strains of "Hitchy Koo." Something else had come into their lives.

Passing the tent sacred to the President and Committee, it gave him one more thrill to mark the bearing of the grandees. The famous white hat no longer adorned the head of the President. The great man nursed it upon his fat loud-checked knees. All the reluctant geniality a public function had inspired had passed from his ugly face. Yet in the purview of his son-in-law it looked a little less ugly at that moment than he ever remembered to have seen it. Those fierce eyes were not occupied now with the narrow round of their own affairs, nor with a swelling vision of self-importance. The world was on fire. He was simply a man among his fellow men; and like them he was wondering what ought to be done.

At seven o'clock a vaguely excited but profoundly depressed William Hollis made his way out of Jubilee Park. He turned down Short Hill in the direction of his home. But by the time he had reached the foot of that brief declivity, and was involved in an airless maze of bricks and mortar, the thought of his home grew suddenly intolerable. He needed freedom and space, he needed an atmosphere more congenial. Melia would not understand. Or if she did understand she would be dumb and just now he simply longed for a little human intercourse.

At the end of Love Lane, a mean and crooked little street debouching from the Mulcaster Road which wound a somber trail to the very heart of the city, he stood a moment gazing at the dingy sign a few doors up on the left, W. Hollis, Fruiterer. The obvious course was to go and deposit the prize he had won on the dresser in the back sitting room, or still better, give it into the personal care of Melia. But instead, he wrapped up the trophy a little more carefully, resettled it under his arm, and then allowed himself to drift slowly with the throng in the direction of the Market Place.

As was usual with him now, his actions were aimless and uncertain. There was no particular reason why he should be going to the Market Place beyond the fact that other people seemed to be going there, as somehow they always did seem to be going there at great moments in the national life. The factories and warehouses who happened to be working that day had disgorged their human cargoes and these under the stimulus of hourly editions of the _Evening Star_ were moving slowly and solemnly towards the nodal point.

What the Market Place is to the city as a whole, Waterloo Square is to the teeming, close-packed population of its southeastern area. And at the busiest corner of Waterloo Square, at its confluence with Mulcaster Road, that main artery which leads directly to the center of all things, is the Duke of Wellington public house. William Hollis, drifting with the tide, felt a sudden, uncontrollable desire to "have one" at this famous landmark of the local life.

The Duke of Wellington was a "free" house and Mr. Josiah Munt had been able to maintain in its integrity the declining art of brewing Blackhampton Old Ale. This had a bite and a sting in it, with which the more diluted beverages of "tied" houses could not compare. At the Duke of Wellington you paid for the best and you got it; therefore it was patronized by all in the neighborhood who knew what was what; it had, moreover, peculiar advantages of tradition and geography which gave it a cachet of its own.

"To have one" at the Duke of Wellington, in the eyes of those who lived near by, was almost on a par with "looking in" at Brooks's or the Carlton. It conferred a kind of diploma of local worth and responsibility. At the same time no form of politics was barred, but the proprietor himself was a staunch conservative and it was very difficult to find a welcome in the bar parlor without sharing that faith.

It could not be said that William Hollis had ever aspired to the good graces of the house. There were obvious reasons why this was the case. For sixteen years he had not passed through its doors; in that long period he had not even entered the humbler part of the premises known as "the vaults," sacred to Tom, Dick and Harry, where the more substantial patrons of the establishment disdained to set foot.

To-night, however, new and strange forces were at work in Bill. Borne along a tide of cosmic events as far as those fascinating doors he was suddenly and quite irrationally mastered by a desire to go in.

Partly it may have been bravado; certainly it was a daring act to cross that threshold. But Josiah himself, for whose personal prowess his son-in-law had a wholesome respect, was safe at the Show; besides, the proprietor was too great a man these days to visit the house very often. Years ago he had ceased to reside there with his family; and in his steady social ascent he was careful not to emphasize a dubious but extremely lucrative connection with that which regarded in perspective was but a common public house.

The chances were that Bill Hollis would be spared this evening an encounter with his father-in-law and former master. But why he should decide so suddenly to take the risk was hard to say, unless it was the half fantastic reaction of an exceedingly impressionable mind to a crisis almost without a precedent in human experience. By nature a sociable fellow, he had now an intense desire to exchange ideas with responsible, knowledgeable people, with those possessing more light than himself. The Duke of Wellington was the headquarters of such in that part of the city; it was the haunt of the quidnuncs and the well informed; and it may have been for that reason that Bill dived suddenly through the swing doors, an act he had not performed for sixteen years, and crossed the dark, cool passage with its highly spiced but not unattractive odors.

It may have been the magnitude of the situation in Europe which had suddenly rendered all private matters ridiculous, or it may have been the talisman under his arm which inspired him with an unwonted hardihood, but instead of turning into the taproom, the first on the left, which would have satisfied the claims of honor and wisdom, he pushed boldly on past the glass-surrounded cubicle of the celebrated but haughty Miss Searson, into the Mecca of the just and the good, sublimely guarded by that peri.

In a kind of dull excitement he entered the famous Bar Parlor. To his surprise, and rather perversely, to his relief, it was empty, except that, behind a counter in a strategical angle that commanded the room as well as the passage, Miss Searson was overwhelmingly present, but absorbed apparently at that moment in crocheting a two-inch lace border to an article of female attire sacred to the pages of the realists.

Nothing seemed to have altered in sixteen years, even to the fly-blown advertisement of Muirhead's Pale Brandy facing the door, and surrounding Miss Searson the double row of brass taps, it had once been a part of his duties to keep clean. And that lady herself, sixteen years had altered her surprisingly little, if at all. She was what is known technically as a chemical blonde, a high-bosomed, high-voiced, large-featured, large-earringed lady, with remarkable teeth and an aloofness of manner which might almost be said to enforce respect at the point of the bayonet.