At Christmas Private Hollis was granted forty-eight hours' leave. He
had been a member of the Blackhampton Battalion rather less than three
months, but this was a piece of luck for which he felt very grateful.
Those three months had been a grueling time. His age was forty-one,
and, in order to comply with the arbitrary limit of thirty-eight
imposed by Field Marshal Viscount Partington in the first days of
strife, it had been necessary to falsify his age. Many another had done
likewise. Questions were not asked, and if a man had physical soundness
and the standards of measurement demanded by the noble Viscount there
seemed no particular reason why they should be. All the same the sudden
and severe change from a soft life found some weak places in Private
Hollis.
How he stuck it he hardly knew. Many a time in those trying early weeks
he was sorely tempted to go sick with "a pain in his hair." But ever at
the back of his mind hovered the august shade of Troop Sergeant Major
William Hollis, the distinguished kinsman who had fought at Waterloo,
whose spurs and sword hung in the little back sitting room of Number
Five, Love Lane; and that old warrior simply would not countenance any
such proceeding. Therefore, Christmas week arrived without Private
Hollis having missed a single parade. Although not one of the bright
boys of the Battalion, he was not looked upon unfavorably, and on
Christmas Eve, about four o'clock, he returned to his home from the
neighboring town of Duckingfield.
His home in the course of the sixteen years he had lived in it had
brought him precious little in the way of happiness. More than once
he had wondered if ever he would be man enough to break its sinister
thrall; more than once he had wished to end the ever-growing aversion
of man and wife by doing something violent. He had really grown to hate
the place. And yet after an absence of less than three months he was
returning to it with a thankfulness that was surprising.
All the same he was not sure how Melia would receive him. When at last
he had made the great decision and had told her that he was going
to join up he had said she must either carry on the business in his
absence, or that it could be wound up and she must be content with the
separation allowance. Her answer had been a gibe. However, she proposed
to carry on in spite of the fact that W. Hollis Fruiterer as a means
of livelihood was likely to prove a stone about her neck. Still there
was a pretty strong vein of independence in her and if she could keep
afloat by her own exertions she meant to do so.
During his three months' absence in camp their correspondence had been
meager; it had also been formal, not to say cold. The estrangement into
which they had drifted was so wide that even the step he had recently
taken could not bridge it. He had told her on a picture postcard with
a view of Duckingfield Parish Church that he was quite well and he
hoped that she was and that things were going on all right; and with a
view of the Market Place she replied that she was glad to know that he
was quite well as it left her at present. However, he was careful to
supplement this marital politeness with a few words every Saturday when
he sent her five shillings, all he could spare of his pay. The money
was always acknowledged briefly and coldly. No clew was given to her
feelings, or to her affairs, but when he told her he was coming home at
Christmas for two days she wrote to say that she would be pleased to
see him.
As he stepped off the tram into the raw Blackhampton mirk which awaited
him at the end of Love Lane that formal phrase came rather oddly into
his mind. It gave him a sort of consolation to reflect that Melia was
one who said what she meant and meant what she said. But, whether or
not she would be pleased to see him at the present moment, he was
genuinely pleased to be seeing her.
It was strange that it should be so. But Melia with all her grim
humors stood for freedom, a life of physical ease and cushioned
independence, and this was what a slack fibered man of one and forty
simply longed for after three months' "grueling." For a man past his
physical best, of slothful habits and civilian softness, the hard
training had not been child's play. Besides, his home meant something.
It always had meant something. That was why in the face of many
difficulties he had struggled in his spasmodic way to keep it together.
It had seemed to give him no pleasure, it had seemed to bring nothing
into his life, but somehow he had felt that if once he let go of it, as
far as he was concerned it would mean the end of all things. He would
simply fall to pieces. He would sink into the gutter and he would never
be able to rise again.
Getting off the tram at the end of Love Lane he felt a sensation that
was almost pride to think that he had a place of his own to come home
to. After all it stood for sixteen years of life and struggle. And
at that moment he was particularly glad that he had sent that five
shillings a week regularly. Unless he had done so he would not now have
been able to go and face Melia.
There was not much light in the little street, but it was not yet quite
dark. And the first sight of his home gave him a shock. The outside
of the shop had changed completely. Not only was the signboard and
the rest of the woodwork resplendent with new paint, but the window
was more than twice the size it had been. Moreover it was brilliantly
lighted; there was a fine display of apples, oranges, prunes, nuts,
even boxes of candied fruits and bonbons; and in the center of this
amazing picture was a large Christmas tree, artfully decorated, in a
pot covered with pink paper.
William Hollis gave a gasp. And then a slow chill spread over him as
he realized the truth. Somebody had taken over the business, somebody
with capital, brains, business experience. But that being the case why
had Melia kept it all so dark? And why, if the business belonged to
somebody else, was his name still on the signboard? And why had it had
that new coat of paint?
The sheer unexpectedness struck him internally, as if a bucket of water
had been dashed in his face. It was the worst set-back he had ever had
in his life. Not until that moment did he realize how much the shop
meant to him. He was bitterly angry that such a trick had been played.
It showed, as hardly anything else could have done, the depth of
Melia's venom; it showed to what a point she was prepared to carry her
resentment.
It took him a minute to pull himself together, and then he walked into
the shop, not defiantly, not angrily, but with a sense of outrage.
There was nobody in it, but, as he cast round one indignant glance at
its new and guilty grandeur and then crossed heavily to the curtained
door, he held himself ready to meet the new proprietor.
Beyond that mysterious portal the small living room was very spick and
span. Almost to his surprise he found Melia there. She matched the
room in appearance and at the moment he came in she was putting a log
of wood on the fire. Great Uncle William's sword and accouterments,
hanging from the wall, were decorated with holly, the pictures also and
a new grocer's almanac, and a small bunch of mistletoe was suspended
from the gas bracket in the middle of the ceiling. Everything was far
more cheerful and homelike than he ever remembered to have seen it. The
note of Christmas was there, which in itself meant welcome and good
cheer.
He stood at the threshold of the curtained door, a neat soldierlike
figure with a chastened mustache, looking wonderfully trim and erect
in his uniform. She greeted him with a kind of half smile on her hard
sad face, but he didn't offer to kiss her. Not for long years had they
been on those terms; they were man and wife in hardly more than name.
And if in his absence, as there was reason to suspect, she had played
him a trick in revenge for her years of disappointment, he somehow felt
man enough at that moment to make an end of things altogether so far as
she was concerned. There were faults on both sides, no doubt. Perhaps
he hadn't quite played jannock; but if the business now belonged to
somebody else, he would simply walk straight out of the place and he
would never enter it again.
She stood looking at him, as if she expected him to speak first. But he
didn't know what to say to her, with that doubt in his mind. Braced by
the stern discipline which he felt already had made him so much more a
man than he had ever been in his life, he had come home fully prepared
to make a fresh start. In spite of her embittered temper, he had not
lost quite all his affection for her. He was the kind of man who craves
for affection; absence and hardship had made him realize that. He had
looked forward to this homecoming, not merely as a relief from the
grind of military routine, which galled him at times so that he could
hardly bear it, but as an assertion of the manhood, of the husbandhood,
that had long been overdue.
"Evenin', Melia," he said at last.
"Evenin', Bill," as she spoke she dropped her eyes.
"Happy Christmas to you." Somehow his voice sounded much deeper than
ever before.
"Same to you. Bill." There was almost a softness in the fall of the
words that took his mind a long way back.
"How goes it?" Her reception was thawing him a little in spite of
himself, but he hesitated about taking off his overcoat. If this fair
seeming was intended to mask a blow there was only one way to meet it.
There was a pause and then he took the plunge. "Business good?" He
held himself ready for the consequences.
"Pretty fair." The tone told nothing.
"Seems to be that," he said mordantly. "Had a coat o' paint, I see,
outside." He steeled himself again. "Had a new window put in an' all."
She nodded.
"How did you manage it?" Again the plunge.
"Got a new landlord."
Ha! they were coming to it now. He held himself tensely. "Old Whatmore
gone up the spout or something?" He remembered that some time back
there had been rumors of an impending bankruptcy on the part of
Whatmore the builder.
"No, Whatmore's all right, but he's sold this shop and the whole row
with it."
"Sold it, eh?" His excitement was so great that in spite of a cool
military air it was impossible to disguise it. All the same she waited
for him to ask the all-important question, but he was slow to do so.
"Who's bought it?" he said at last.
"Father's bought it." She did her best to speak quite casually, but she
didn't succeed.