Forty-eight hours is not a long time even as time is reckoned in a
world war, when the infinitely much can happen in a little space. Only
one-fourth of that term, a meager twelve hours, was permitted to Russia
by Germany in which to decide whether she should yield unconditionally
to an unheard of demand, on pain of provoking that conflict, the end
of which even some of the most penetrating minds in Blackhampton were
hardly able to predict with certainty. So much may happen in a little
while. Yet Private Hollis had just four times as long to re-establish
terms of conjugal felicity with his wife Melia. In that period he
kissed her twice.
Whether that Christian practice would have continued as a regular thing
is difficult to say. This was a special occasion and these were not
demonstrative natures. Even in the heyday of their romance, when Love
not being quite strong enough to turn the door handle, peered once or
twice through the keyhole, yet without ever proving quite bold enough
to come in and make himself at home on that childless hearth, they were
too practical to acquire a permanent taste for that particular kind of
nonsense.
Still, it hardly does to dogmatize in time of war. For as the
forty-eight hours went on, Melia seemed to grow more and more impressed
by Private Hollis, his martial bearing. Or it may have been the
uniform. Why is it that any kind of uniform has such a fatal attraction
for the ladies?
In this case, at any rate, it seemed to make a remarkable difference.
There is no doubt it suited Bill. He looked so much more a man in it;
his chest was bigger, his back was straighter, his hair was shorter,
his chin was cleaner and the ragged mustache that used to be all over
his face was now refined to the extreme point of military elegance.
Really he came much nearer to the ideal of manhood there had been in
Melia's mind when she had first married him. Besides he was so much
surer of himself, his voice was deeper, his bearing more authoritative,
his talk was salted with infinitely more knowledge and wisdom.
When the time came for Private Hollis to return to his regiment, the
boy who delivered the vegetables was left in charge of the shop,
while Melia in Sunday attire went to see her man off at the Central
Station. It was a compliment he had hardly looked for; all the same it
was appreciated. Somehow it made a difference. Other wives, mothers,
sisters, sweethearts were thick on the ground for a similar purpose,
but Private Hollis was of opinion that Melia with her serious face and
a figure you couldn't call stout and in a hat she had trimmed herself
with black and white wings was somehow able to hold her own with the
best of them.
Moreover they parted at the carriage door as if they meant something
to each other now. It was a public place but he kissed her solemnly
and she said, "You'll write me a bit oftener, Bill, won't you?" in the
manner of the long ago. Then the train began to move, he waved a hand
and she waved hers; and each trundled back alone to a hard life with
its many duties, yet somehow, in a subtle way, the stronger and the
happier for that brief interregnum.
Life had altered for them both in that short time. They saw each other
with new eyes or perhaps with old eyes reawakened. Sixteen years had
rubbed so much of the bloom off their romance that it was a miracle
almost that they were able to renew it. Yet the delicate process was
only just beginning. It was very odd, but the trite and difficult
business of existence was colored now continually with new thoughts
about each other. Neither had ever been a great hand at writing
letters, but Bill suddenly burgeoned forth into four closely written
pages weekly, and Melia, flattered but not to be outdone, burst out in
equal volume.
His letters were really very interesting indeed and so were hers,
although of course in an entirely different way. She was kept abreast
of the military situation and the latest Service gossip, with spicy
yarns of the Toffs with whom he rubbed shoulders as an equal in the
B.B., not omitting the details of an ever-ripening friendship with
Private Stanning, who, however, was soon to acquire the rank of a full
corporal. Melia, of course, had not the advantage of this range of
information or contiguity to high affairs, nor did her letters sparkle
with soldierly flashes of wit and audacity, but week by week they gave
a conscientious account of the state of the business, of sales and
purchases, of current prices and money outstanding, all in the manner
of a careful bookkeeper, who, now she had been put on her mettle, was
able and willing to show that the root of the matter was in her.
Bill, in consequence, had to own that the business in all its luckless
history had never been so flourishing. They didn't like admitting it,
but in their hearts they knew that this new prosperity was directly
due to "the damned interference" (military phrase) of the august
proprietor of the Duke of Wellington. Some men are hoo-doos, they are
born under the wrong set of planets; whatever they do or refrain from
doing turns out equally unwise. W. Hollis Fruiterer had always been one
of that kind. If he bought a barrel of Ribstone Pippins they went bad
before he could sell them, if he bought William pears they refused to
ripen, if he bought peas or runner beans he would have done better with
gooseberries or tomatoes; anything he stocked in profitable quantities
was bound to be left on his hands. But the lord of Strathfieldsaye was
another kind of man altogether. He simply couldn't do wrong when it
came to a question of barter. Up to a point a matter of judgment, no
doubt, but "judgment" does not altogether explain it. There is a subtle
something, over and beyond all mundane wisdom, that confers upon some
men the Midas touch. Everything they handle turns to gold. Josiah Munt
was notoriously one of that kind.
Certainly from the day he touched the moribund business of W. Hollis
Fruiterer with his magic wand, it took a remarkable turn for the
better. Mr. Munt's own explanation of the phenomenon was that for the
first time in its history it was run on sound business lines. That had
something to do with the mystery of course; not only was Josiah a man
of method and foresight, he was also a man of capital. Money makes
money all the world over; and of that fact Josiah's ever-growing store
was a shining proof.
Not until the middle of the summer did Bill get leave again. And then
there was a special reason for it. The Battalion had been ordered to
France. That was an epic Saturday evening in July when he came home
with full kit, brown as a bean, hard as a nail, in rare fighting trim.
Time was his own until the Thursday following, when he had to go to
Southampton to join the Chaps.
Martial his bearing at Christmas, but it was nothing to what it was
now. There seemed to be a consciousness of power about him. For one
thing he was wearing the stripe of a lance corporal. Then, too, he was
a small man, and, as biologists know, small men always have a knack of
looking bigger than they are really. Physically speaking, great men are
generally on the small side, perhaps for the reason that they have more
vitality. Certainly Corporal Hollis, on the eve of his Odyssey, looked
more important than the neighbors ever thought possible. Poor Melia
began to wonder if she would be able to live up to him.
Melia had never been to London and when Bill proposed that she should
accompany him to the metropolis and see him off from Waterloo the
suggestion came as quite a shock to a conservative nature. It meant
almost as much as a journey to the middle of Africa or the wilds of the
Caucasus to more traveled people. She was not easily fluttered; hers
was a mind of the slow-moving sort, but it was only after a night and a
day, fraught with grave questionings, that she finally consented to do
so.
For one thing the shop would have to close for twenty-four hours,
at least; besides, and a more vital matter, even her best dress was
nothing like fashionable enough for London, the capital city of the
empire. Both these objections were promptly overruled. An obliging
neighbor--during the last few months the neighbors had proved
wonderfully obliging--consented to take charge of the shop in Melia's
absence; while at the psychological moment a paragraph appeared in the
_Evening Star_ saying that as the Best people were making a point of
wearing old clothes, any attempt at fashion in war time was bad taste.
This interesting fact left so little for further discussion that at a
quarter past nine on the morning of an ever-memorable Wednesday they
steamed out of Blackhampton Central Station, London bound.
It was the beginning of a day such as Melia had never known. Looking
back upon it afterwards, and she was to look back upon it many times
in the days to follow, she felt it would have been impossible to
surpass it in sheer human interest. Even the journey to such a place as
London was thrilling to one whose travels by train had been confined
to half a dozen visits to Duckingfield, two to Matlock Bath and one to
Blackpool at the age of seven, nice places yet relatively unimportant
in comparison with the capital city of the British Empire.
As the train did not leave for Southampton until well on in the evening
they had about eight hours in which to see the sights. And so much
happened in those eight hours that they made a landmark in their lives.
Indeed they began with so signal an event that the muse of history
peremptorily demands a past chapter in which to relate it.