Part 9

Poor old girl! Of course she would be lonely. It made him sigh a little when he thought how lonely she would be. He looked at her with a rather queer softness in his eyes. Their marriage seemed to have brought them no luck in anything. A time there had been, a time less than a year ago, when he had felt very thankful that there had been no children to hasten their steady, hopeless drift downhill. Now, however, it was a different story. Poor Melia! Her hand responded to the pressure of his fingers; and a large tear crept slowly into eyes that had known them perhaps too seldom.

"Never mind, Mother," he said softly. "I mean to come back."

"Yes, Bill." The words had a curious intensity. "I mean you to. I've set my mind on it. And if you really set your mind on a thing happening----"

He loved the spirit in her, even if he felt obliged to touch wood as a concession to the manes of wisdom. It didn't do to boast in times like these.

Presently they noticed that the heat was less. Bill looked again at his watch and then they realized that the hour of parting had drawn much nearer. Reluctantly they got up and left the gardens, so putting an end to an hour of life they would never forget. Then arm in arm they walked to Euston which was not far off, where the Corporal retrieved his kit from the Canteen and exchanged a valedictory smile with a R.S.P., although he didn't feel like smiling. Thence by Tube to Waterloo. It was their first experience of this medium of travel. Even in Blackhampton, in so many ways the home of modernity, Tubes were unknown; they seemed exclusively, rather bewilderingly, metropolitan.

The attendant Genie had to be watchful indeed to prevent their going all round London en route from Euston to Waterloo, but it was so alive to its duties that they were only once baffled and then but temporarily. Thus in the end they found themselves on a seat on Platform Six with a full hour to wait for the Southampton train.

She left him at the carriage door, a few minutes before he was due out on his own grim journey, so that she might have plenty of time to catch the train for the north. Minute instructions had to be given to enable her to do this, for London is a bewildering maze to those not up to its ways. But the Corporal's lady had a typical Blackhampton head, a thing cool, resolute, hardy in the presence of any severe demand upon it; and he was quite sure, and she was quite sure, that she would be able to catch the 8:55 from Euston, no matter what traps were laid for her.

It was a very simple good-by, but yet they were torn by it in a way they had hardly expected. She with her worn face and tired eyes was all there was to hold him to life--she and a terrible, impersonal sense of duty which seemed to frighten him almost. As he watched the drab figure disappear among the crowd on the long platform he couldn't help wondering....

But it was no use wondering. He must set his teeth and get his head down and try to stick it no matter what the dark fates had in store.

XXVI

The Corporal even at his best was not a great hand at writing letters. And the series he wrote from France did not flatter his powers. Really they told hardly anything and that which they did tell might have been far more vividly rendered. Still in the eyes of Melia they were precious; and they did something to soften months of loneliness and toil.

One other gleam there was in that sore time; a fitful one, no doubt, and the ray it cast upon her life so dubious, that, all things considered, it meant small comfort. Yet, perhaps, it may have been wrong not to accept this doubtful boon more gratefully.

One morning, about a fortnight after Bill's departure for France, her father paid one of his periodical visits to Love Lane. Since W. Hollis Fruiterer had taken a turn for the better he was content with a monthly survey instead of a weekly one in order to assure himself that the enterprise was shipshape and its affairs in order.

Melia's reception of her father was invariably cool. She had a proud, unyielding nature, and Josiah's tardy concession to the sternness of the times even if it had thawed the ice a little had not really melted it. Neither was quite at ease in the presence of the other; in both was a smoldering resentment and the spirit of unforgiveness.

The books, on inspection, proved to be in very fair order. They were carefully and neatly kept and, in comparison with the state of affairs before a business man came on the scene to direct them, they showed a refreshing change for the better. The accounts had been made up to the half year. And as a result of eight months trading under new conditions there was a clear profit of forty-five pounds after a full allowance for expenses.

Josiah expressed himself well satisfied. In common with the great majority of his race, material success was the shrine at which he worshiped. Success in this case, moreover, was doubly gratifying; it lent point to his own foresight and judgment and it exhibited a latent capacity in his eldest daughter. Time alone would be able to disperse the bitterness he cherished against her in his heart, but it did him good to feel that she was not wholly a fool and that in some quite important particulars she was a chip of the old block.

He congratulated her solemnly in the manner of a Chairman of Directors addressing a General Manager and hoped she would go on as she had begun. Resentful as she still was, she was secretly flattered by the compliment; and she hastened to offer to repay the sum he had advanced for the satisfaction of the former creditors.

"Let it stand over," he said, "until your position's a bit firmer."

She insisted, but he was not to be shaken; and then, as was his way when at a loss for an argument, he gave the contest of wills a new, unexpected turn. "Doing anything particular Sunday afternoon?"

No, she was not doing a thing particular.

"Better come up home and have a cup of tea with us." Then in a tone less impersonal: "Your mother would like to see you."

The blood rushed over Melia's face. At first she feigned not to hear, but that did not help her. Dignity had many demands to make, but the brusque insistence of this father of hers seemed to cut away the ground on which it stood.

"Say what time and I'll send the car for you."

The tone was so final that anything she could raise in the way of protest seemed weakly ridiculous. But the car for _her_! She didn't want the car and she mustered force enough to say so.

"Might as well have it. Doing nothing Sunday. Save you a climb up the hill this hot weather."

Of one thing, however, she was quite sure. She didn't want the car. This recent and remarkable expression of her father's wealth and ever-growing social importance had taken the form of a superb motor and a smart lady chauffeur in the neatest of green liveries which already she had happened to see on two occasions in Waterloo Square. No, such a vehicle was not for her; and she contrived to say so with the bluntness demanded by the circumstances, yet tempered a little by a certain regard for anything her father might be able to muster in the way of feelings.

"Might as well make use of it," he said. "Eating its head off Sunday afternoon."

But she remained quite firm. The car was not for her.

"Well, it's there for you if you want it." His air was majestic. "Better pay that money into the bank. And I shall tell your mother to expect you Sunday tea time."

It was left at that. He had gained both his points. The third was subsidiary; it didn't matter. All the same it was like Josiah to raise it as a cover for those that did.

XXVII

Melia was frankly annoyed with herself for not having put up a better resistance. The sight of her father strutting down the street with the honors of war upon him was a little too much for her. He had been guilty of sixteen years of tyrannical cruelty and she was unable to forgive. In those sixteen years she had suffered bitterly and her stubborn nature had great powers of resentment.

Who was he that he should walk down Love Lane not merely as if he owned it--in sober truth he now owned half--but also the souls of the people who lived there? She could not help resenting that invincible flare, that overweening success, particularly when she compared it with the fecklessness of the man she had so imprudently married. After all, she was the first-born of this vain image and she knew his shortcomings better than he knew them himself. He had had more than his share of luck. No matter what the world might think of him, however fortune might treat him, he was not worthy of the position he had come to occupy.

As soon as the ponderous broadcloth back had turned the corner of Love Lane and was lost in that strong-moving stream, Mulcaster Road, she made up her mind that she would not go up to tea on Sunday afternoon. It was not that he really cared whether she went or not; had he done so he would have asked her sooner. Maybe his conscience was pricking him a bit, but he was not one to be much troubled in that way. In any case let it hurt him--so much the better if it did. This was a matter in which she would like him to be hurt as he had never been hurt before.

Here again, however, her father had an unfair advantage. If she stayed away on Sunday she might punish him a little--and even that was doubtful--but she would certainly punish her mother far more. And she had not the slightest wish to do that. She was sorry for her mother, whose sins of omission sprang from weakness of character. Nature had placed her in a very different category. She had fought this tyrant as hard as it was in her to fight any one, but she was one of nature's underlings whose lot was always to be trampled on.

Alas, if Melia didn't turn up on Sunday it was her mother who would suffer. And it was a matter in which she had suffered too much already. Melia had no particular affection now remaining for her mother; she even despised her for being so poor a creature, but at least her only crime was weakness and it was hardly fair that she should endure more than was necessary. Melia's was rather a masculine nature in some ways; at any rate her father and she had one trait in common. They had a sense of justice. Hence she was now on the horns of a dilemma.

It was not until Sunday itself, after morning service at Saint George's, that the decision was finally made. And then fortified by Mr. Bontine, a clergyman for whom Melia had a regard, she decided much against her inclination to go up to The Rise in the afternoon. It was a reluctant decision, made in soreness of heart; the only satisfaction to be got out of it would arise from the dubious process which the reverend gentleman described as "conquest of self."

She set out rather later than she meant to, in a decidedly heavy mood. And it was not made lighter by the fact that the afternoon was sultry with the promise of thunder, and that the long and tedious climb to The Rise had to be made without the help of the tram on which she had counted. Long before the trams from the Market Place had reached the end of Love Lane they were full to overflowing, as she ought to have known they would be on a fine Sunday afternoon in the middle of the summer. In the process of painfully mounting the stuffy length of mean streets to achieve the space and grandeur of The Rise she grew vexed and hot. When at last she reached the famous eminence she was far indeed from the frame of mind proper to the paying of a call in its exclusive society. But it served her right. She should have stayed at home, or at least have allowed the motor to be sent for her.

As it was, it was nearly five o'clock when, limp and fagged, she came at last in view of the many-windowed, much-gabled elevation of Strathfieldsaye. In spite of herself the sight of it made her feel nervous. It was the home of her father and mother, but its note of grandeur gave her a cruel sense of her own inadequacy. At the brilliantly painted gate she lingered a moment. Courage was called for to walk up the broad gravel path as far as the porch with its fine oak door studded with brass nails.

At last, however, she went up and rang the bell. An extremely grand parlor maid received her almost scornfully, and led her across a slippery but superb entrance hall which was disconcertingly magnificent. It was hard to grasp at that moment that such an interior was the creation of her commonplace parents, harder still to believe that this servant whose clothes and manners were superior to her own was at their beck and call.

However, she would go through the ordeal now she had got so far. But this afternoon luck was heavily against her. The ordeal proved to be more severe than even her gloomiest moments had foreshadowed. She was ushered just as she was, in her shabby hat and much mended gloves, straight into the drawing-room into the midst of company. And the company was of the kind she would have given much to avoid.

She had hoped that she might find her mother alone, or at the worst, drinking tea with her father. Instead, the first person she saw was the insufferable Gertrude Preston, that mass of airs and graces which always enabled their wearer to stand out in Melia's mind as all that a woman ought not to be. And as if the sight of Gertrude was not sufficiently chilling and embarrassing, the second person she realized as being present was her own stuck-up sister Ethel, invariably known in the family as Mrs. Doctor Cockburn. She was accompanied, however, by her two children, little peacocks of six and seven, spoiled fluffy masses of pink ribbons and conceit.

Last of all was her mother. She was always last in any assembly. Somehow she never seemed to count. In the old days even in her own home she could always be talked down, or put out of countenance or elbowed to the wall; and now, after the flight of years, in these grand surroundings, she had not altered in the least. She still had the eyes of a rabbit and a fat hand that wobbled; and on Melia's entrance into the room Gerty and Ethel at once took the lead of her in the way they had always taken it.

"Why, I do declare!" Gerty rose at once with cleverly simulated surprise tempered by a certain stock brand of archness, kept always on tap, and unfailingly effective in moments of sudden crisis or emotional tension. "How are you, Amelia?" She would have liked to offer her cheek, but the look in Amelia's eyes forbade her risking it. Therefore, a hand had to suffice, an elegant hand, but a wary one which met with scant ceremony.

Ethel, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, also rose, but not immediately. "Glad to see you, Amelia."

Melia knew it was a lie on Ethel's part, and had she had a little more self-possession might have been moved to say so.

The three daughters of Mr. Josiah Munt marked three stages in his meteoric career. Melia, the eldest, was the child of the primitive era. Compared with her sisters she was almost a savage. Between her and Ethel had been a boy, Josiah, whose birth had nearly killed Maria and who had died untimely in his babyhood. She was not allowed in consequence to bear any more children for ten years, and Ethel was the natural fruit of the interregnum. Ethel was generally allowed to be the masterpiece of the family. Five years after her had come Sally who perhaps in point of time and opportunity should have put out the light even of Ethel; but in her case it seemed the blessed word progress had moved a little too fast. Sally, as the world knew only too well, was over-educated; from the uplands of high intellectual development Sally had slipped over the precipice into a mental and moral abyss.

From the social and even the physical standpoint Ethel was indubitably the pick of Mr. Josiah Munt's three daughters. And Mrs. Doctor's rather frigid reception of her eldest sister showed a nice perception of the fact. Amelia had thrown her back to a prehistoric phase. She had something of the air and manner of a charwoman. When she entered the room, little shivers had crept down Ethel's sensitive spine. She could hardly bear to look at her.

Melia also felt very uncomfortable. She couldn't find a word to say and the children stared at her. But she sat on the edge of a chair that Gerty provided; tea, bread and butter and cake were given her; she began to eat and drink mechanically, but still she felt strangely hostile and unhappy. She resented the bright plumage, the amazing prosperity of those among whom she had been born; above all, she resented Ethel's superciliousness and Gerty's patronage. Ethel, of course, had a right to be supercilious, and that fact was an added barb. Her light shone. SHE was the only one who had shed any luster on the family; her marriage with a doctor rising to eminence in the town was a model of judicious ambition. Ethel "had done very well for herself," and even the set of her hat, black tulle and white feathers and the opulent lines of her spotted muslin dress, seemed to proclaim it. Her bearing completed the picture. She had not been in the same room with Amelia for many years, although she had passed her once or twice in the street without speaking; and at the moment her judicious mind was fully engaged with the problem as to whether Gwenneth and Gwladys could or could not call her "Auntie." Finally, but not at once, the answer was in the negative.

Amelia, without a word to say for herself, and suffering acutely from a social awkwardness which a lonely life in sordid circumstances had made much worse, was altogether out of it. Ethel and Gerty had charm and elegance; they spoke a different language; they might have belonged to a different race. Amelia's natural ally should have been her mother. They had much in common but that depressed and inefficient woman was nearly as tongue-tied as her eldest daughter. Ethel and Gerty were almost as far beyond the range of Maria as they were beyond the range of Amelia; their expensive clothes and their correct talk of This and That and These and Those, with clear, high-pitched intonation filled her with dismay. Maria, even in her own drawing-room, was in such awe of them that she could make no overtures to Amelia, although she simply longed to point to the vacant sofa beside her and to say, "Come and sit over here, my dear."

The eldest daughter of the house bitterly regretted the folly that had brought her among them again after so many years of outlawry. But in a few minutes her father came in and then she got on better. He was the real cause of her present sufferings, but his own freedom from self-consciousness or the least tendency to pose amid surroundings which seemed to crave that form of weakness was exactly what the situation called for.

"Hulloa, Melia," he said heartily. "Pleased to see you, gel." His lips saluted her cheek with a loud smack. There was not a suspicion of false shame about him. He was master in his own house at any rate. And when he made up his mind to do a thing he did it thoroughly. "What do you think on 'em?" He pointed to his grandchildren rather proudly. "That's Gwennie. And that's Gladdie. This is your Auntie Melia."

The ears of Mrs. Doctor Cockburn began to burn a little as the eyes of Gwennie and Gladdie grew rounder and rounder.

"Gladdie favors her ma. Don't you think so, eh? And they've both got a look of Grandma--what?"

"I see a look of you, you know, Josiah," said Auntie Gerty with an air of immense discretion.

"Um. Maybe. Have they had any strawberries, Grandma?"

Their mother thought they ought not to have strawberries, but their grandfather was convinced that a few would not hurt them and chose half a dozen himself from a blue dish on the tea table and presented them personally.

"There, Gwenneth, what do you say?" Mrs. Doctor Cockburn's own mouth was full of prunes and prisms. "Thank you what--thank you, Grandpa."

"That's a good little gel." There was a geniality, an indulgence, in the tone of Josiah that he had never thought of extending to his own children in their nursery days. "And I tell you what, Ma--if they get a pain under their pinnies they must blame their old grand-dad."

Altogether, a pleasant episode, and to everybody, Gwenneth and Gwladys included, a welcome diversion.

"Have some more tea, Melia." Her father took her cup from her in spite of the protest her tongue was unable to utter and handed it to the inefficient lady in charge of the teapot. "And you must have a few strawberries. Fresh picked out of the garden. Ethel, touch that bell."

Mrs. Doctor, with an air of resolute fineladyism, pressed the electric button at her elbow. The grand parlor maid entered with a smile of imperfectly concealed cynicism.

"Alice, more cream!"

Melia wondered how even her father was able to address Alice in that way; but his coolness ministered to the reluctant respect he was arousing in her by his manly attitude to his own grandeur.

The cream appeared. Gwenneth and Gwladys were forbidden to have any--their lives so far had been a series of negations and inhibitions--but Melia had some, although she didn't want it, but the will of her father was greater than her powers of resistance. And then he said to her, "When you've had your tea, I'll show you the greenus."

"Conservatory, Josiah," said Aunt Gerty with an arch preen of features and a show of plumage. "Much too big for a mere greenhouse."

"Greenus is more homelike, Gert. What do you say, Mother?" He laughed almost gayly at Maria. The eldest daughter was amazed at the change that seemed to be coming over her father. In the dismal days of drudgery and gloomy terrorism at the public house in Waterloo Square which now seemed so far away in the past, there was not a trace of this large and rich geniality. Prosperity, power, worldly success must have mellowed her father as well as enlarged him. He seemed so much bigger now, so much riper, he seemed to care more for others.

Ethel and Gertrude were quite put into the shade by the force and the heartiness of Josiah, but Mrs. Doctor was not one lightly to play second fiddle to any member of her own family. "I hear," she said, pitching her voice upon an almost perilous note of fashion--there was even a suspicion of a drawl which brought an involuntary curl to Melia's lip--"that young Nixey, the architect, has been recommended for the M.C."

"Has he so?" Josiah's eye lighted up over his suspended teacup. "I've always said there was something in that young Nixey. And I'm not often mistaken. He designed that row of cottages I built down Bush Lane."

"A row of cottages in Bush Lane, have you, Josiah?" said Aunt Gerty with an air of statesmanlike interest. "You seem to be what they call going into bricks and mortar."

"You bet I am--for some time now. And bricks and mortar are not going to get less in value if this war keeps on, take it from me."

"I suppose not," said Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, a judge of values.

"I've one regret." It was not like Josiah to harbor regrets of any kind, and Aunt Gerty visibly adjusted her mind to hear something memorable. "That young Nixey's as smart as paint. I nearly let him have the contract for this house. In some ways he might have suited us better."

"But this house is splendid," said Gerty with flagrant optimism. She knew in her heart that the house was too splendid.

"Young Nixey's idea was something neater, more in the Mossop style. I didn't see at the time, so I got Rawlins to do it to my own design. Of course, what I didn't like about Nixey was that he would have it that he knew better than I did, and I'm not sure----" Josiah hovered on the brink of a very remarkable admission.

"I don't agree, Josiah. This house is almost perfect." The specious Gertrude was amazed that he of all men should be so near a confession that he might have been wrong. Dark influences were at work in him evidently.