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."