After an excellent tea William and Melia went up the road to Dibley. It
was two miles on and they took a path of classic beauty, fringed by a
grove of elms in which the rooks were cawing, along a carpet of green
bracken through which the lovely river wound. Dibley stood high, at the
crest of a great clump of woodland, with the Sharrow silver-breasted
below surging through a glorious valley.
It was getting on for twenty years since Bill had last handed Melia
over the stile at the top of the glade, famous in song and story, and
they had debouched arm in arm past the vicarage, along the bridle
path, and had threaded their way through a nest of thatched cottages
to the village green. The sun had now waned a little and the air had
cooled on these shaded heights, the tea had been refreshing, and, for
a few golden moments, inexpressibly sweet yet tragically fleeting, the
courage of youth came back to them. Just beyond the parson's gate the
Corporal stopped suddenly, took Melia in his arms and kissed her.
It was a sloppy thing to do, unworthy of old married people, but the
guilt of the act was upon them, though neither knew exactly why it
should have come about. They crossed the paddock and went on through
the romantic village, so sweetly familiar in its changelessness. It
seemed but yesterday since they walked through it last.
"I've wondered sometimes," whispered the Corporal at the edge of the
green, "what made you marry me?"
"I believed in you, Bill; I always believed in you." It was a great
answer, yet somehow it was unexpected. In his heart he knew he was not
worthy of it and that seemed to make it greater still.
Facing the duck pond, at the far end of the green, was the white
cottage in which Torrington the artist had lived and died. It had
changed a bit since his time. Things had been added by his more opulent
successor. There were an iron gate, a considerable garden and a tall
tower with a glass roof which nobly commanded the steep wooded slopes
of the valley of the Sharrow.
With the new eyes a great painter had given him Bill saw at once that
this was a rare pitch for an artist. It was one of the most beautiful
spots in the land. The immense city of Blackhampton with its thousands
of chimneys and its roaring factories might have been a hundred miles
off instead of a bare four miles down the valley. There was not a
glimpse or a sound of it here in this peace-haunted woodland, in this
enchantment of stream and hill, bathed in a pomp of golden cloud and
magic beauty.
The simple cottage had been modernized and amplified, but with
rare tact and cunning, so that it was still "all of a piece," much
as Torrington had left. But the house itself was empty, with green
shutters across the windows. On the gate was a padlock, the reason for
which was given in a printed bill stuck on a board that had been raised
beside it.
By order of the executors of the late James Stanning, Esqre., A.R.A.,
to be sold by auction the valuable and historical property known as
Torrington Cottage Dibley, together with the following furniture and
effects.
A list followed of the furniture and effects, but across the face of
the bill was pasted a diagonal red-lettered slip,
This property has been sold by private treaty.
The Corporal tried to open the gate but found the padlock unyielding,
and then he gazed at the notice wistfully.
"Wonder who's bought it," he said.
Melia wondered too.
"Hope it's an artist," said the Corporal.
"So do I. But I expect it isn't. Artists is scarce."
"You're right, there." The Corporal sighed heavily. "Artists is
scarce." There was a strange look in his eyes and he turned them
suddenly upon the duck pond so that Melia shouldn't notice it.
Across the road, beside the duck pond, was a wooden bench, sacred to
the village elders, none of whom, however, was in occupation at this
moment. The Corporal pointed to it. "Let's go an' set there a minute,"
he said in a husky voice. As if she had been a child he took her by the
hand and led her to it.
They sat down and in a moment or two it was as if the spirit of the
place had descended upon them. The magic hush of evening crept into
their blood like a subtle wine. A strange soft rapture seemed to
pervade the air. The Unseen spoke to them as never before.
The Corporal took off his hat and wiped the dew from his forehead. And
then with a queer tightening of the throat and breast he scanned earth
and sky. They seemed marvelous indeed. He felt them speak to him, to
the infinite, submerged senses whose presence he had hardly suspected.
Never had he experienced such awe as now in the presence of this peace
that passed all understanding.
In a little while the silence of the Corporal began to trouble Melia. A
cold hand crept into his. "What is it, love?" she said softly.
Not daring to look at her, he kept his eyes fixed on the sky.
"What is it, love--tell me?" He hardly knew the voice for hers; not
until that moment had he heard her use it; but it had the power to ease
just a little the intolerable pressure of his thoughts.
"I was wondering," he said slowly, at last, "whether it would not have
been better never to have been born."
She shivered, not at his words, but at the gray look on his face.
"Stanning said the night before he went he thought that taking it
altogether it would have been better if there had never been a human
race at all. I'll never forget that last talk with him, not if I live
to be a hundred--which I shall not." The Corporal had begun to think
his thoughts aloud. "You see, he knew then that his number was up. I
can see him settin' there, Mother, just as you are now, lookin' at that
old sunset, his back to that old canal--the Yser, I think they call
it--an' stinkin' it was, fair cruel. 'Auntie,' he said suddenlike,
'tell me what brought you into this?' I said, 'No, boy'--just like a
child he was as he set there--'it's for me to ask _you_ that question.
You're a big gun, you know, a shining light; I'm a never-was-er.' That
seemed to make him laugh; he was one that could always raise a laugh,
even when he felt most solemn. 'I come of a long stock of high-nosed
old Methodists,' he said. 'Always made a thing they call Conscience
their watchword and fetish. There was a Stanning went to the stake for
it in the time of Bloody Mary; there was another helped Oliver Cromwell
to cut the head off King Charles. A poisonous, uncomfortable crowd, and
all my life they've seemed to come back and worry me just at the times
I should have been most pleased to do without them. People talk about
free will--but there isn't such a thing, my dear.'
"I allowed that there wasn't in my case. Then I told him about Troop
Sergeant Major Hollis, who fought at Waterloo. 'Yes,' he said, 'yours
is an old name in the city, older than mine, I dare say.' 'Well,' I
said, 'according to Bazeley's Annals there was a William Hollis who
was mayor of the borough in the year of the Spanish Armada.' 'Good for
you, Auntie,' he said, chaffing-like; he was a rare one for chaff. 'One
up to you. Then,' he said, 'there was William Hollis who was "some"
poet in the eighteenth century, who wrote the famous romantic poem,
"The Love Lorn Lady of Corfield." Still,' he said, 'these things don't
explain you dragging your old bones to rot out here.' 'They do in a
way, though,' I said. 'When we come up against a big thing it isn't us
that really matters, it's what's at the back of us. I used to set in
my old garden on The Rise,' I said, 'in those early days when those
dirty dogs opposite was just beginning to wipe their feet on Europe.
And I said to myself, Bill Hollis, how would _you_ like it if they
broke through the fence into your garden, trampling your young seeds
and goose-stepping all over your roses and your tulips. And I tell
you, Jim--we got to be very familiar those last few weeks--it used to
make me fair mad to read in the _Tribune_ what they'd done ... Louvain
one time ... Termondy another ... et cetera.... And I kept on settin'
there day after day, in my old garden on the top o' The Rise, saying to
myself, Hollis, it's no use, me lad, you're going into this. You've
failed in every bloody thing so far, and if you take on this you'll
not be man enough to stick it out. War isn't thinking, it's doing, and
you've never been a doer, you've not. Then I read in the _Tribune_ one
morning that they'd got Antwerp and I said to myself, I can't stand
this no more. And I went right away to the Duke of Wellington and had
a liquor up--but only a mild one, you know--and then round the corner
to the Recruiting Office and gave my age as thirty-six and here I am
admiring this bleeding sunset with the eye of an artist.'
"That made him laugh some more. 'Well, Auntie,' he said, 'I'm very
proud to have known you and I hope you'll do me the honor of accepting
this as a keepsake.' He unbuttoned his greatcoat and took this old
watch out of his tunic."
The Corporal paused an instant in his story to follow the example of
his friend. He produced an old-fashioned gold hunting watch, with J. T.
in monogram at the back, and handed it to Melia.
"It's a rare good one, Mother," the Corporal's voice was very low,
"solid gold." He opened the lid and showed her the inscription:
To John Torrington, Esquire, from a Humble Admirer of His
Genius, 1859.
"Stanning said, 'I had the luck to buy that in a pawnshop in
Blackhampton long after he was dead, and if I had had a boy of my own
I should like him to have kept it as an heirloom, but as I have not
I want you to take it, Auntie, because I know you'll appreciate it.'
Somehow, I could tell from the way he spoke that he was done. I hadn't
the heart to refuse it, although I hadn't a boy or a girl of my own
neither." A huskiness in the Corporal's throat made it hard to go on
for a moment. "'I'm only thirty-nine,' he said, 'and all the best is in
me. I don't fancy having my light put out like this in a wet bog, but
it's got to come, my dear. I hate to think that sometime to-morrow I
shall be as if I had never been.' 'Not you,' I said. 'You're sickening
for the fever.' But I couldn't move him. He'd got the hoo-doo. 'No use
talking about it,' he said, 'but you and I'll never have that day's
fishing in Corfield Weir. I should like you to have seen my cottage
up at Dibley. It's got the ghost of that old boy.' He put his hand
on the watch, Mother, just like this. 'If there is a heaven for dead
painters, and I doubt it, I'd like to sit in John Torrington's corner
on his right hand. You see, I've learned all sorts of things, living
in his house. I was getting to know the lights on the Sharrow and the
feel of the clouds--in all the great Torringtons the clouds feel like
velvet--and he was going to show me the way to handle sunlight--I've
already been twice across to New York to see "An Afternoon in July in
the Valley of the Sharrow," the most wonderful thing of its kind in
existence. You get the view from my cottage--his cottage--at Dibley.
I should like you to have seen it, Auntie. And then I should like to
have taken you across to New York to show you what old John made of
it. Fancy having to go all the way to New York to look at it. So like
us to be caught on the hop, in the things that really matter.' I give
you my word, Mother, he raised a laugh even then, but of a sudden his
voice went all queer-like. 'However,' he said, 'there's a Mind in this
that knows more than we do.' Then the lad began to shiver just as if
he had the ague. And the next day, about the same time, or mayhap the
perishin' old sun had gone a bit more west, I had to go out across No
Man's Land to bring him in ... what there was left of him."
The Corporal ended his strange story as if after all it didn't much
matter. He was quite impersonal, but Melia sat beside him shivering
at the look in his eyes. Never before had the veil been torn aside in
this way. She was a dull soul, fettered heavily by her limitations,
but sitting there in the growing dusk it came on her almost with
horror that in all those long years it was the first peep she had had
behind the scenes of his mind. She hadn't realized the kind of man he
was. More than once she had cast it in his face that he was an idle
shack-about. Somehow, there had been nothing to give her the key to
him; and now, miraculously as it seemed, it had come to her, it was too
late.
She had the key to him now. But the sands were running out in fate's
hour glass. She couldn't bear to look at his thin gray face as the
light fell on it, nor at his strange eyes fixed on the padlocked gate
of the cottage opposite. Of a sudden the watch slipped from her shaking
hands, and fell lightly in a little brake of thistles by the end of the
bench on which they sat.
Cautiously and carefully he picked it out. "Take care on it, Mother,"
he said softly as he put it again in her hands. "I wish we'd a little
boy as could have had it. However, we've not. There was once a George
Hollis who was an artist; I showed you that picture of his, "The Glade
above Corfield," the other day; Jim said it was a good one. John
Torrington one time was his pupil. Don't suppose he was any relation
but it's the same name."
Melia put the watch in the pretty leather bag he had insisted on buying
for her. And then she said with a horrible clutch in her throat: "Bill,
promise! You'll come back ... won't you?"
His eyes didn't move.
"I'll be that lonely."
He sighed softly like a child who is very tired. "I'll do what I can,
Mother." The voice was gentleness itself. "I can't do more."
She didn't know ... she didn't realize ... what ... she ... was....