They went to bed at a quarter to ten. For a time they talked and
then Bill fell asleep. And he slept as perhaps he had never slept in
that room in all the years of their married life. How good the old
four-poster seemed! It was a family heirloom in which he had been born
forty-one and a half years ago. Many a miserable, almost intolerable
night had he passed in it, but this Christmas Eve in the course of ten
minutes or so it was giving him one of the best sleeps he had ever
known.
He woke in pitch darkness. Melia was breathing placidly and regularly
by his side. He didn't venture to move lest he should disturb her, and
he lay motionless but strangely comfortable; somehow it had never given
him such exquisite pleasure to lie in that old bed.
Everything was very still; there was none of the intolerable fuss and
clatter of barrack life at all hours of the day and night. It was so
peaceful that he was just about to doze again when a distant clock
began to strike. It was the familiar clock of Saint George's Church,
along Mulcaster Road, a hundred yards or so away, and it told the hour
of seven.
Two or three minutes later bells began to ring. It was Christmas
morning; they were proclaiming peace on earth and good will towards
men. How rum they sounded! Yet as he lay motionless in that bed, with
a slow succession of deeply harmonious breaths near by, he wished harm
to no man, not even to the Boche. Peace on earth and good will towards
men ... yes, and women! Then it was, just in that pulse of time, the
inspiration came to him to make Christmas morning memorable.
The idea was very simple. He would steal out of bed without harm to
the slumbers of Melia, slip on his clothes in the dark, go downstairs,
light the kitchen fire, boil the kettle and presently bring her a cup
of tea. Never before had it occurred to him to pay her such a delicate
attention, but this morning he appeared to have a new mind and a new
heart; somehow, this morning he was seeing things with other eyes.
Without disturbing her he was able to carry out his plan. But twenty
minutes later when he returned to the room with a cup of tea on a small
tray, Melia was awake and wondering what the time was.
"Needn't get up yet," he said. "I've lit the fire. Happy Christmas to
you!" Then he handed her the tea.
She seemed much surprised and just for a moment a little embarrassed.
But she drank the tea gratefully, yet wondering all the time what had
made him bring it to her. Then she announced her intention of getting
up, but he bade her lie quiet as it was Christmas morning and he was
well able to cook the breakfast.
Quite a pretty passage of arms developed between them on the subject,
but in the end she prevailed in spite of his protests, and came
downstairs to deal in person with the vital matter of the bacon and
eggs.
Somehow their half playful contention made a good beginning to the day.
And, take it altogether, it was quite the best they had ever known in
that ill-starred house. There had been times when week had followed
week of such hostility that they had hardly exchanged a look or a
word, times in fact of soul-destroying antipathy in which they almost
loathed the sight of one another. But there was nothing of that now. So
much had happened in three short months of separation that there were
a hundred things to talk about; both of them seemed to be living in a
different world.
Their outlook on life had altered. Everything they did now had a
purpose, a meaning; it was not merely a question of getting through a
day that had neither reason nor rhyme. He was a soldier in a uniform,
he felt and looked a man in it, he stood for something. She was proud,
in a way she had never been proud, of having a husband in the army. It
was her duty and her privilege to keep his home together against his
return to civil life.
Soon after breakfast they were visited by a second inspiration, but
this time it came to Melia. Suppose they attended the eleven o'clock
service at Saint George's Church? In their early married life they had
gone there together once or twice, but for many years now when Melia
went there on Sunday evenings she had invariably been alone.
It may have been a desire to let the neighbors see how well his
khaki suited him, or life in the army had aroused an odd craving for
religion, or perhaps it was simply a wish to give pleasure to Melia; at
any rate Bill fell in with the idea. She had just time to arrange with
the lady next door, Mrs. Griggs by name, who had once been a cook in
good service, to give an eye to the turkey which was set cooking in the
oven, then to put on her best dress, not much of a best, it was true,
but to have gone to church in any other would have been unthinkable,
to put on her only decent hat and a sorely mended pair of black cotton
gloves, and to get there on the stroke of eleven, just as the bells
ceased and the choir were moving down to their stalls. Melia, at any
rate, had seldom enjoyed a service so much as this one, and her friend
the Reverend Mr. Bontine, who called to see her regularly once a
quarter, preached the finest sermon she had ever heard in the course of
long years of worship.
For all that, it was not certain that Private Hollis was not bored
a little by the Reverend Mr. Bontine. He could not help a yawn in
the middle of the homily, but this may have been a concession to his
length of days as a civilian when "he didn't hold with persons," but
as Melia was too much absorbed to notice him, her sense of a manly and
fruitful discourse was not marred; and she was able to enjoy the same
happy oblivion of martial restiveness during the long prayer. Taking
one consideration with another Private Hollis may be said to have borne
extremely well an ordeal to which he had not submitted for many years;
and at the end of the service as he came out of church he grew alive to
the fact that in the sight of the congregation he was a person of far
more consequence than he had ever been in his life.
More than one pair of eyes, once hostile or aloof, were upon him and
also upon Melia. People looked at him as if they would have been only
too proud to know him, substantial people like Wilmers, the insurance
agent, and Jenkinson the tailor; but the climax came as he stepped on
to the flags of Mulcaster Road and no less a man than Mr. Blades, the
druggist of Waterloo Square, took off his tall hat to Melia and said,
"Happy Christmas to you, Mr. Hollis."
A year ago that was an incident that simply could not have happened.
But after all it was just one among many. He was an equal now with the
best of his neighbors, no matter what their substance and standing.
He was a man who counted. In the Blackhampton Battalion he was merely
Private Hollis, and not much of a private at that, as many loud voiced
and authoritative people made a point of telling him, but in civilian
circles apparently the outlook was different.
When they turned into Love Lane they were met by further evidence of
the new status of W. Hollis Fruiterer. A flaming-haired youth in a
green baize apron had been knocking in vain on the shuttered door of
the shop. There was a parcel in his hand whose shape was familiar but
not on that account the less intriguing.
"Mester Munt's compliments--sir." It was against the tradition of
the green baize apron to indulge the general public with promiscuous
"sirs," but, in handing ceremoniously the parcel to Private Hollis,
democracy in its purest form deferred a little to his martial aspect.
Bill never felt less in need of his father-in-law's compliments than
at that moment, but the abrupt departure of George the Barman somehow
forced them upon him. All the same, as Private Hollis fitted the key
into the shop door he wondered what the Old Swine was up to now.
Divested of its trappings on the sitting room table the parcel turned
out to be a handsome bottle of port wine. It would not have been human
for William Hollis to remain impervious to this largesse from the
famous cellar of the Duke of Wellington. And he knew by the screen of
cobwebs that it was out of the sacred corner bin.
Bill was puzzled. What had come over the Old Pig! However.... With
the care of one who knew the worth of what he handled he put the royal
visitor in the cupboard, among plebeian bottles of stout and beer, and
then proceeded, chuckling rather grimly at certain thoughts, to help
Melia "set the dinner."
It was a modest feast, but when in the course of time he sat down to
carve a roast turkey, a plump and proper young bird, flanked with
sausages and chestnuts, he informed Melia "that he wouldn't give a
thank you to dine with the King of England." She could not help smiling
at this disloyal utterance, which so ill became his uniform, as she
freely ladled out bread sauce, that purely Anglo-Saxon dainty, for
which his affection amounted almost to a passion, and helped him hugely
to potatoes and Brussels sprouts, so that it should be no fault of
hers if he was unable to plead provocation for his lapse. Plum pudding
followed. It was of the regulation Blackhampton pattern and Melia, no
mean cook when she gave her mind to it, had given her mind to this one,
so that it expressed her genius and the festive genius of her native
city in a hearty time of cheer.
At the end of the meal, in spite of the fact that he was told rather
sternly "to set quiet," he insisted like a soldier and a sportsman
in helping to clear the table and in bearing a manly but subordinate
part in the washing up. And when the table had once more assumed the
impersonal red cloth of its hours of leisure, a couple of wine glasses
were produced, which, although polished twice a week, had not seen
active service for fifteen years, and then William drew the cork of the
cobwebbed bottle.
"Not a drop for me, Bill."
"You've got to have it, Mother."
"No, Bill."
"Yes. Fairation!" He gave one deep sniff at the glass he had measured
already with a care half reverent, half comic. "By Gum, it's prime." In
spite of protests he poured out another glass. "Fairation! Better drink
the health, eh, of the Old Un as it's Christmas Day."
They honored the Old Un discreetly, in a modest sip of a wine which of
itself could not have denied him a claim to honor, and then with equal
modesty they drank to each other.
Melia then had an inspiration, though not subject to them as a rule,
and due in this case, no doubt, to the juice of the grape. She procured
a plate full of walnuts from beyond the curtained door and they
entered on a further phase of discreet festivity. Bill insisted on
cracking three nuts and peeling them for her with his own delicately
accomplished fingers; and in the process he complimented her on the
Christmas fare and hoped piously that "the Chaps had had half as good."
Mention of the Chaps moved him for the first time to reminiscence. As
was to be expected, the Blackhampton Battalion was one of the wonders
of the world. To begin with, its members were nearly all gentlemen.
All the nobs of the town under forty were tommies in the B.B. It was
very remarkable that it should be so, but there the fact was. And it
made men of his sort who liked to think a bit when they had the time
to spare feel regular democratic when they saw real toffs like Lawyer
Mossop's nephew, Marling the barrister, carting manure, or the son of
Sir Reuben Jope on his knees scrubbing the floor of the sergeants' mess.
To mix in such company was a rare opportunity for a man who knew how
to use it. Melia had noted already that Bill had learned to express
himself better, that his conversation was at a higher level and that it
was full of new ideas. And these facts were never so palpable as when,
slowly and solemnly, a furtive light of humor in his blue eyes, he went
on to tell of his great Bloomer.
It seemed that the cubicle next to his was occupied by a man named
Stanning, and he had got to be rather pals with him. Stanning was a
serious sort of cove with hair turning gray at the temples, but Private
Hollis had been attracted to him because he was one of the right sort
and because it was clear from his talk that he had thought and seen a
bit. He was a good kind of man to talk to, a sympathetic sort of card,
one of those who made you feel that you had things in common.
Private Hollis gradually got so "thick" with Private Stanning that
they began to discuss things in an intellectual way, politics one
time, education another, so on and so on, until one evening they found
themselves talking of Art. As Melia knew, Private Hollis had a feeling
for Art. Many an hour had he spent in the City Museum, looking at its
collection of famous pictures; and he told Private Stanning of the
water color he had done of the Sharrow at Corfield Weir, inspired by
the great work on the same subject of his celebrated namesake Stanning,
R.A., which had been bought by the City Authorities for the fabulous
sum of a thousand guineas....
Over the walnuts and the wine Private Hollis began to chuckle hugely
as his great Bloomer came back to his mind in all its entrancing
details....
P.H. When I first see the price mentioned in the _Evening Star_ I says
to my Missus that's the way they chuck public money about. No picture
was never painted, not a Hangelo nor even a Lord Leighton that was ever
worth a thousand guineas. It's a fancy price.
P.S. 'Tis in a way. A matter of sentiment, I suppose.
P.H. Just what I said to the Missus. However, being a bit of a critic
I went to examine that picture for myself. And would you believe it,
Stanning--I'm not saying this to flatter you because the chap who done
it has the same name as yours--when I see that picture it fair knocked
me endways. You see I know every yard of Corfield Weir; in my time
I've had more than one good fish out of it; and as soon as I set eyes
on it, I said to myself, "Stanning R.A.'s a fisherman. He's chosen one
of them gray days that's good for barbel." I give you my word, he'd got
just the proper light coming out of the valley and stealing along the
Sharrow. Only an artist and a fisherman could have done it.
P.S. Did you ever get bream there?
P.H. I should say so. And I've had trout in my time.
P.S. Trout?
P.H. I'm talking of twenty years back. But to resume. I see at a glance
why the City Authorities had paid a thousand guineas for that picture.
It was not because Stanning, R.A., was a local man; it was pure merit
and I felt very glad it was so.
P.S. Glad you thought so.
P.H. You know, of course, that Stanning, R.A., is Blackhampton born?
P.S. So I've heard.
P.H. Born in that old house with the high-walled garden along Blue Bell
Hill that was pulled down to widen the road.
P.S. That so?
P.H. By the way, Stanning, is he a relation of yours? Of course, it's a
very common name in the City.
P.S. Ye--es, I suppose he is in a way.
P.H. That's something to be proud of. I'm not saying it to flatter you,
but at this minute I'd rather be Stanning, R.A., than any one else in
the wide world.
Private Stanning laughed like a good one.
P.H. Honest. I'm not talking out of the back of my neck. Stanning,
R.A., for me. You can have all my share of the Kitcheners and the
Joffres and the von Klucks. If I could be born again and born somebody
as mattered I'd like to be Stanning, R.A. Why, what the hell are you
grinning at?
P.S. That's rheumatism. And if you'll only take it over, old son, you
can have all the remainder of my interest in Stanning, R.A., as a going
concern.
P.H. What! do you mean to say----!
"I told you, Mother," concluded Private Hollis in his port-wine-inspired
narrative, "that he was going gray at the temples. And there he set
like a himage at the foot of his shakedown all twisted with rheumatics,
groaning like one o'clock. And then he began to laugh. Queer world,
ain't it, what?"
Melia, however, was one of those precise but rather immobile intellects
with which her tight little native island is full to overflowing. "You
don't mean to say, Bill, it was Stanning, R.A., himself?"
"You bet your life it was." Private Hollis handed a peeled walnut, his
masterpiece so far, across an expanse of red tablecloth. "One of the
youngest R.A.'s on record, but a bit long in the tooth for the Army.
And we're pals, I tell you. One of these days I'm going to take him
barbel fishing at Gawsey's Pool. And he's given me a couple of lessons
in drawing already. If only I'd begun sooner I think I might have done
something."
It was such an incredible story that Melia was fain to smile, but
Private William Hollis, inspired by port wine and enthusiasm, lingered
lovingly over his portrait of one who stood forth in his mind as the
greatest man the city of Blackhampton had yet produced.