On the afternoon of the day before the Corporal returned to France he
went with Melia by bus to Sharrow Bridge and they walked thence to
Corfield Weir. Many hours had he spent with rod and tackle in this
hallowed spot. Those were the only hours in his drab life that he would
have desired to live over again. Many a good fish had he played in the
bend of the river below the famous Corfield Glade, much commemorated by
the local poets in whom the town and county were exceptionally rich. In
particular there was the legend of the fair Mary Corfield who in the
days of Queen Bess had cast herself for love of an honest yeoman into
the deep waters of the Sharrow. From Bill's favorite tree, where from
boyhood he had spun so many dreams that had come to naught, could be
seen the high chimneys of the Old Hall, the home of the ill-fated Mary,
about whose precincts her ghost still walked and was occasionally seen.
The day was perfect, a rare golden opulence of sky and earth with a
sheen of beauty on wood and field and flowing water. They came to
the little gnarled clump of alders, his old-time friends, whom the
swift-flowing Sharrow was always threatening to devour, and lay side
by side in the shade, on the dry grass, listening to the great rats
plopping into the cool water.
Both were very silent at first; it was as if nature spoke to them in a
new way. It was as if their eyes were bathed in a magical light. All
the things around them were clearer in outline, brighter, sharper, more
visible. Their ears, too, were attuned to a higher intensity. The swirl
of the water, the rustle of leaves, the cry of the birds, the little
voice of the wind, were more intimate, more harmonious, more audibly
full of meaning. The world itself had never seemed so richly amazing,
so gorgeously inexhaustible as at that moment.
At last the Corporal broke a very long silence. "Mother, it's something
to have lived."
Melia did not answer at once, but presently she sighed a little and
said, "I wonder, Bill."
He plucked a spear of grass. "It's a rum thing to say, but if it hadn't
been for this war I don't suppose I ever should have lived, really."
She didn't understand him, and her large round eyes, a little like
those of a cow, told him so.
"I've always been thinking too much about it, you see." His voice was
curiously gentle. "All my life, as you might say, I've always been
telling myself what a wonderful day it was going to be to-morrow. But
to-morrow never comes, you see. And you keep on thinking, thinking,
until you suddenly find that to-morrow was yesterday. That's how it was
with me. And if I hadn't had the guts to join up just when I did, my
belief is I should never have lived at all. Understand me?"
She shook a placid head at him, not understanding him in the least. But
this was the mood in which he had first captured her, in which he had
first impressed her with his intellectual quality, for which, as a raw
girl, who knew nothing about anything, she had had a sort of reverence.
But as she had come to see, it was this very power of mind, which she
had told herself was not shared by other, more common men, that had
been his undoing, that had brought them both to the verge of ruin. It
was fine and all that, but it didn't mean anything. It was just a kink
in the machine which prevented it from working properly.
The tears sprang to her eyes as she listened to him, and her youth and
his came back to her, but she turned her face to the river so that he
could not see it. Still it was not all pain to hear him talking. It was
the old, old way that she had loved once and had since despised, but
now lying there in the shade of those old trees, with the music of the
Weir and the glory of the earth and the sky all about her, she loved
again. Strange that it should be so! But the sad voice at her elbow
blended marvelously with all the things she could see and hear. And
what it said was quite true. By some miracle both were living now more
fully than ever before.
"I'll always have one regret, Mother." His voice had grown as deep as
the water itself. But it broke off in the middle suddenly.
A feeling came upon her that she ought to say something. "Don't let us
have no regrets, Bill." Those were the words she wanted to utter. "I'll
not have none." But they were not for her to speak. At that moment
she was not able to say anything. She waited tensely for him to go on
talking.
In the odd way he had, which was a part of his peculiar faculty, he
seemed to feel what was passing in her mind. "I'm not thinking of what
might have been. That's no good. The time's gone by. I'm thinking of my
friend, Stanning, R.A. You see we'd arranged that if we ever had the
chance we'd come here for a day's fishing. We had a bit one day when
we were up in the Line--in that canal--the Yser, I think they call it.
And he said, 'Auntie, I may be able to tell you a thing or two about
drawing, but when it comes to this game the boot's on the other leg.'
'Yes,' I said, 'that's because I've put my heart into it while you've
put your heart into something better.' 'Well, I don't know about that,'
he said--he was the broadest-minded, the best read, the wisest chap I
ever talked to--'nothing is but thinking makes it so, as Hamlet, that
old crackpot used to say. Whatever you happen to be doing, Auntie, the
only thing that matters is whether your heart is in it.' 'Yes,' I said,
'I daresay you are right there. But it's one thing to catch barbel.
It's another to paint Corfield Weir.'"
To Melia this seemed like philosophy. And she had no head for
philosophy, although inclined to be a little proud that Bill should be
able to swim in these deep waters in such distinguished company. But
one thing aroused her curiosity. Why was this man of hers called Auntie?
Bill laughed good humoredly when, a little scandalized, she came to put
the question. "They all call me that in C company." His frankness was
remarkable.
"But why?"
"They say I was born an old woman."
Melia thought it was like their impertinence and did not hesitate to
say so.
"Ah, you don't know the Chaps," Bill laughed heartily. "The Chaps is a
rum crowd. They call you anything."
"But to your face?" Melia couldn't help resenting it and spoke with
dignity. "You oughtn't to let them, Bill."
"Why not?"
"You're a Corporal."
"Well, Stanning was a sergeant, you see. And nobody means nothing by
it. It's a way they have in the army of being friendly and pleasant.
And I daresay it suits me. My fingers is all thumbs as you might say.
Fishing and a bit o' gardening are the only things I'm good for,
although Stanning told me that in time, if I stuck it, I might be able
to draw. And that was a lot for him to say."
Melia thought that it must be.
"I often wonder,"--the eyes of the Corporal were fixed on the
Sharrow--"what made Stanning take up with a chap like me. There was
lots of 'em in C company with far more education, but he told me once
that I was the same kind of fool that he was and I said that I wished
it was so. I suppose he meant that I liked to talk about this old river
and the lights on it and the look of it at different times of the year.
He knew every yard of the Sharrow between here and Dibley and so did I,
but he could see things that I couldn't, and he could remember 'em and
he'd a wonderful eye for nature. He wasn't the least bit of a soldier,
no more than myself, but he made a first-rate job of it--he was the
kind of chap who would make a first-rate job of anything. Our C.O.
wanted him to apply for a commission, but he said he couldn't face the
responsibility. That was queer, wasn't it, in a man of that sort?--for
he was a man, I give you my word." The Corporal plucked another spear
of grass and began to chew it pensively. "He had a cottage up at
Dibley, that largish white one on the left, standing back from the
road, you know the one I mean--the one with the iron gate, and that
funny sort of a tower at the end of the garden."
Melia said she did know, although she had half forgotten it, but she
hadn't been to Dibley since they were first married, and that was a
long time ago.
"It belonged to Torrington the artist. He lived and died there.
Stanning said he was the greatest painter of landscape that ever lived,
but nobody knew it while he was alive and he died in poverty. Not that
it mattered. Stanning said that money doesn't matter to an artist, but
he said that many an artist had been ruined by making it too easy."
This dictum of Stanning's sounded odd in the ear of Melia. No one could
be ruined by making money too easily, but she had not the heart to
contradict his disciple who was still chewing grass and looking up at
the sky.
"See what I mean, Mother?"
"Makes them take to drink and gambling, I suppose." After all, there
was that solution.
"Stanning meant that if an artist gets money too easy it'll take the
edge off his work. He was always afraid that was what was going to
happen to himself. In 1913 he made six thousand pounds--think on it,
Mother, six thousand pounds in one year painting pictures! He said
that was the writing on the wall for him; he said it was as much as
Torrington made in all his life and he lived beyond eighty. 'And I'm
not fit to tie Torrington's shoelace, Auntie.' I laughed at that, of
course, but he was not a man to want butter. 'I mean it, my dear.' If
he liked you he had a way of calling you 'my dear,' like one girl does
to another. 'Torrington was the only man that ever lived who could
handle sunlight. That's the test for a painter. If I touch sunlight I
burn holes in the canvas.' Of course, I laughed, but Stanning was a
very humble chap when he talked about his own paintings."
Suddenly the Corporal realized that he had let his tongue run away
with him, as it did sometimes. Melia was getting drowsy. He got up,
therefore, and stretched his legs on the soft turf and then he said,
"Let us go across to the Corfield Arms and see if we can get a cup of
tea. And then if you feel up to it we'll walk through the Glade as far
as Dibley and look at the house that Torrington lived in."