“Good-bye, Mrs. Murchison; good-bye, old man; wish you could have stayed
with us. Shake hands, sonny, now you’re off.”
A barrow-load of belated luggage went clattering by as the shrill pipe
of the guard’s whistle sounded the departure. On the opposite platform a
couple of porters were banging empty milk-cans on to a truck. Yet from
the noise and turmoil of it all, John Tugler’s red face shone out with a
redeeming exuberance of good-will.
“Good-bye.”
Murchison was leaning from the window, and the two men shook hands.
“Good luck to you.”
“Thanks. You have been very good to us. We shall not forget it.”
“Bosh, man, bosh!” and John Tugler gave Catherine a final flourish of
his hat.
The train was on the move, but Murchison still leaned from the window,
to the exclusion of his excited and irrepressible son. We grow fond of
people who have stood by us in trouble, and John Tugler, bumptious and
money-making mortal that he was, carried many generous impulses under
his gorgeous waistcoat. The gift of sympathy covers a multitude of
imperfections, for the heart craves bread and wine from others, and not
the philosopher’s stone.
Interminable barriers of brick, back yards, sour, rubbish-ridden gardens
were gliding by. Factories with their tall chimneys, the minarets of
labor, stood out above the crowded grayness of the monotonous streets.
Hardly a tree, and not an acre of green grass, in Wilton. It was as
though nature had cursed the place, and left it no symbol of the season,
no passing pageantry of summer, autumn, or of spring.
Catherine had kept Jack by her side, and the boy was kneeling on the
seat and looking out of the window. She felt that her husband was in no
mood for the child’s chattering. In leaving Wilton he was leaving a
poignant part of reality behind, to enter upon a life that should try
the strength of his manhood as a bowman tries a bow.
An old lady and a consumptive clerk were their only fellow-travellers.
Murchison had chosen a corner whose window looked towards the west, and
an intense and determined face it was that stared out over the ugliness
of Wilton town. Houses had given place to market-gardens, acres of
cabbages, flat, dismal, and dotted with zinc-roofed sheds. Beyond came
the slow, sad heave of the Wilton hills, and, seen dimly—white specks
upon the hill-side—the crowded head-stones where the dead slept.
The eyes of husband and wife met for a moment. They smiled at each other
with the wistful cheerfulness of two people who have determined to be
brave, a pathetic pretence hardly created to deceive. Moroseness need
not testify deep feeling. The gleam from between the clouds turns even
the wet clouds to gold.
Jack Murchison was watching a couple of colts cantering across a field
beside the line.
“Mother, look at the old horses.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Silly old things. They’re making that old cow run. The brown one’s like
Wellington, the horse we had before dad bought the car.”
“So it is, dear.”
“P’r’aps it is Wellington?”
“No, dear, Wellington must be dead by now.”
The old lady in the opposing corner was looking at Jack over her
spectacles, and the boy took to returning the stare with the inimitable
composure of youth. Catherine had turned again towards the other window,
but the white head-stones no longer checkered the hill-side. Instead,
she saw her husband’s profile, stern and determined, yet infinitely sad.
Life has been described as a series of sensations; and though some days
are dull and passionless, others vibrate with a thousand waves of
feeling. To Murchison the day had been crowded with sensation since the
break of dawn. It was a day of disruption, a plucking up of routine from
the soil, a change of attitude that concerned the soul even more than
the body. He yearned towards Wilton, and yet fled from it with
gratitude; his old home called to him, and yet he dreaded it as a
disgraced man might fear the shocked faces of familiar friends. It was a
day of unrest, self-judgment, and great forethought for him. The
physical atoms seemed to tremble and vibrate, till the manhood in him
might have been likened to a tremulous vapor. He could eat nothing, fix
his mind on nothing. Even the sagging wires, coming and going as the
train swept from pole to pole, were not unsymbolical of his thoughts.
Two hundred miles, with an hour’s wait in London, and the monotonous
Midlands gave place to the more mysterious and dreamy south.
Pine-crowned hills, great oaks and beeches purpling the villages, the
blue distance of a more magical horizon. In orchards and meadows the
infinite glamour of a golden spring. Quiet rivers curling through the
mists of green. In many a park the stately spruce built sombre, windless
thickets; larches glimmered with Scotch firs red-throated towards the
west. Trees in whispering and triumphant multitudes. Quiet, dreamy
meadows where the willows waved. Mysterious Isles of Avalon imaginable
towards the setting sun.
Murchison, leaning back in his corner, watched for the pine woods about
Roxton town with a deep commingling of yearning and of dread. It was to
be a home-coming, and yet what a home-coming! The return of a prodigal,
but no cringing prodigal; the return of a man, stiff-necked and
square-jawed, ready to fight but not to conciliate. There was something
of the tense expectancy of the hour before the bugles blow the assault.
Every nerve in Murchison’s body tingled.
The boy Jack was jumping from foot to foot at the other window.
“Look, mother, look, there’s old Mr. Tomkin’s farm! And there’s the
river. Look—and the kingcups are out! Gwen used to call ’em—”
He stopped suddenly, for his mother had drawn him to her and smothered
the words with her mouth.
“You take care of the rugs and umbrellas, dear.”
“Yes. Shall I get ’em down?”
“In a minute. Sit still, dear, and don’t worry.”
She looked across quickly at her husband. Their eyes met. He was pale,
but he smiled at her.
“Here we are, at last.”
“At last.”
Both felt that the ordeal had begun.
They let the boy lean out of the open window as the train ran in and
slowed up beside the platform. Porteus Carmagee and his sister were
waiting by the door of the booking-office. Jack sighted them and waved a
salute, their coach running far beyond the office, for they were in the
forepart of the train.
Murchison was the first out of the carriage. He lifted the boy down, and
stood waiting to help his wife with some of her parcels.
“Luggage, sir?”
Murchison turned, and stared straight into the face of one of his old
patients. The man looked at him blankly for a moment before recognition
dawned upon his face.
“Good-day, doctor. Didn’t know you, sir, at first,” and he touched his
cap.
Murchison’s upper lip was stiff. He looked like one who had come to
judge rather than to be judged.
“Get my luggage out, Johnson. Three trunks, a Gladstone, hat-box, and
two wooden cases.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man was polite, though ready to be inquisitive.
“Glad to see you again in Roxton, sir.”
“Thanks.”
“Cab, sir? There’s Timmins’s fly.”
“Yes, that will do.”
Murchison turned abruptly from the porter to find Miss Carmagee and
Catherine kissing, and Jack tugging at his godfather’s hands. It was
Porteus in a new Panama hat, whose whiteness made his face look brown as
an Asiatic’s.
“Ah, my dear Murchison, ten minutes late; beast of a line this.”
“It was good of you to come.”
“Eh, what?—not a bit of it. Where’s your luggage? I abhor stations;
can’t talk in comfort. This imp of darkness can come along with us.”
An unprejudiced observer would have imagined the little man in the most
peppery of tempers. He tweaked Jack by the ear, frowned hard at
Catherine, and bit his mustache as though possessed by some
uncontrollable spirit of impatience.
His sister was straightening her bonnet-strings.
“You can drive straight home, dear; everything is ready.”
“You don’t know how much I feel all this.”
“There, you must be tired. We are going to take the boy to-night.”
Miss Carmagee’s stout figure seemed to stand like a breakwater between
Catherine and the world, and there was an all-sufficing courage on her
face.
People were staring; Murchison became aware of it as they moved towards
the booking-office. Several familiar faces seemed to start up vividly
out of the past. He noticed two porters grinning and talking together
beside a pile of luggage near the bridge, and his sensitive pride
concluded that they were making him their mark. The ticket collector was
a thin, gray-headed man whom Murchison had known for years. He found
himself conjecturing, as one conjectures over trifles at such a pass,
whether the man would remember him or not. The official received the
tickets without vouchsafing a glimmer of recognition. But he stared
after Murchison when he had passed, with that curious, peering insolence
typical of the breed.
Outside the station a very throaty individual in a very big cap, Harris
tweed suit, white stock, and mulberry red waistcoat, was giving
instructions to a porter with regard to a barrow-load of luggage. A trim
dog-cart stood by the curb, with a sleek little woman in a tailor-made
costume perched on the seat, and looking down on everybody with
something of the keenness of a hawk.
It so happened that this exquisite piece of “breeding,” this Colonel
Larter of county fame, stepped back against Murchison in turning towards
his dog-cart.
“Beg pardon.”
The words were reinforced by a surprised and rather impertinent stare.
“What!”
“Don’t trouble to mention it, sir.”
“How d’you do? Had heard you were knocking about down our way. Wife
well?”
Colonel Larter’s glance had passed the figure in black, and had fixed
itself on the Carmagees and Catherine. There is always some charm about
a handsome woman that can command courtesy, and Colonel Larter walked
round Murchison with the _sang-froid_ of a superior person, and ignored
the husband in appearing impressive to the wife.
“How d’you do, Mrs. Murchison? Back in Roxton? Miss Carmagee has been
keeping secrets from us. Quite a crime, I’m sure.”
Catherine had seen the slighting of her husband.
“We are back again, Colonel Larter.”
“That’s good. To stay?” and he nodded affably to the lawyer.
“Yes, to stay.”
“And the piccaninnies? Hallo, here’s one of them! And where’s my little
flirt? What! Left her behind?”
Colonel Larter had one of those high-pitched, patronizing voices that
carry a goodly distance and allow casual listeners to benefit by their
remarks. Yet even his obtuse conceit was struck by Catherine Murchison’s
manner. A sudden sense of distance and discomfort obtruded itself upon
the gentleman’s consciousness. He caught Porteus Carmagee’s brown,
birdlike eye, and the glint thereof was curiously disconcerting.
“Expect you’re busy. My wife’s waiting for me; mustn’t delay,” and he
withdrew with a jerk of his peaked cap, repassing Murchison with an
oblivious serenity, and rejoining his wife, who had acknowledged the
presence of acquaintances by a single inclination of the head.
“Insufferable ass! Where’s that luggage? Ah, here we are,” and Porteus
opened the cab-door with emphasis.
“Get in, Kate, you’ll find everything shipshape at home.”
“You will come across later?”
“If I’m wanted.”
“Then we shall expect you both. We have not thanked you yet.”
“Oh, if I’m to be thanked, I sha’n’t come.”
“Don’t say that,” and Murchison’s hand rested for a moment on Porteus
Carmagee’s shoulder.
Lombard Street again, broad, tranquil Lombard Street, warm with its
red-walled houses, shaded by its cypresses, its budding elms and limes,
St. Antonia’s steeple clear against the blue. The old house itself,
white-sashed and sun-steeped, curtains at the windows, the steps white
and fresh as snow.
A head disappeared from the hall window as the cab drove up; the front
door opened; they were welcomed by a homely and familiar face.
“Mary!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is like home.”
“I’m glad, ma’am, I’m glad—”
Catherine kissed her. They were both good women, and heart met heart in
that home-coming, so full of memories of mingled joy and pain.
“It is good to see you here, Mary,” and Murchison held out a hand.
“Oh, sir, it was good to come.”
“You will only have one to worry you now.”
“It wasn’t a worry, sir.”
And she retreated because her weakness was a woman’s weakness and showed
itself in tears.
A man was helping the cabman with the luggage. He came in carrying one
end of a heavy trunk, cap in hand, gaiters on legs, a smart figure that
seemed a little faded and out of fortune, to judge by the threadbare
cleanliness of its clothes.
“What, you here, Gage?”
The man colored up like a boy.
“Glad to see you, sir, and you, ma’am. The old house begins to look
itself again.”
“You are right, Gage. Old faces make a welcome surer. We shall want you
if you are free.”
“Only too happy, sir. Family man now, sir.”
“What, married!”
“A year last Easter, sir,” and he disappeared up the stairs, carrying
the lower end of the trunk.
An hour had passed. Husband and wife had wandered over the whole house
together, and found many an old familiar friend that had been saved from
the wreck of that disastrous year. The sympathetic touch showed
everywhere, a reverent and sensitive spirit had schemed and plotted to
retain the past. The coloring of each room was the same as of old; much
of the furniture had been rebought; the very pictures were as so many
memories. It was home, and yet not the home they had known of yore.
“Does it feel strange to you?”
“Strange?”
“Yes, it is all so real, and yet there is something we shall always
miss.”
They were standing together at the study window, looking out into the
garden that was lit with flowers. Polyanthuses were as so many gems
scattered on the brown earth of the beds. An almond-tree was still in
bloom, a blush of pink against the sky. Tulips, red, white, and yellow,
lifted their cups to the falling dew.
“It can never be the same, dear.”
“No.”
“Gwen?”
“Yes, our little one. And yet—in death—”
“In death?”
“My child has given me victory over myself. As I trust God, dear, I
believe that curse is dead.”
“Yes, it is dead.”
“The house is cleansed; we have come home together. I am ready now to
face my fellow-men.”