The Corporal's leg was a long time getting well.
First it came on a bit, then it went back a bit; but the process of
recovery was a painful and a tardy business. Still it was much softened
by the judicious help of others. By the interest of the Mayor of the
city, whose model hospital on The Rise and its last word in equipment
meant access to more than one influential ear, Corporal Hollis in the
later stages of a long convalescence had the privileges of an out
patient.
These privileges, moreover, were enjoyed in ideal conditions. Early in
April, Melia was installed at Torrington Cottage, Dibley. To the secret
gratification of her family, the business in Love Lane was given up,
and Melia's checkered life entered upon a new phase amid surroundings
wholly different from any it had known before.
At first the change seemed almost too great to be enjoyed. After the
gloom, the semi-squalor, the hard toil of Love Lane, it was like an
entrance into paradise. And when, at the end of that enchanted month
of April, the Corporal joined her in the new abode, Melia's cup of
happiness seemed quite perilously full.
That was a summer of magic days. For weeks on end they lived in a dream
that had come true. To Melia the well appointed house, the beautiful
surroundings, the bounty of her father were sources of perpetual
amazement; to the Corporal the extensive garden, so gloriously stocked
with flowers, fruit and vegetables, was a thing of delight; above all,
the tower at the end of it, commanding on every hand his lovely native
county, was a sacred thing, a temple of august memories.
The Corporal sunning himself and smoking his pipe by the south
wall, where the peaches grew, could never have believed it to be
possible. Melia, tending the flowerbeds and the grass, at the end of a
not-too-strenuous summer's day, felt somehow that this was fairyland.
Yes, their dreams of the long ago had more than come true. And,
crowning consummation, in the eyes of each other, they were honored
husband and cherished wife.
The Corporal was a long time getting well, but in that he was obeying
instructions. Those most competent to speak of his case had told him
not to be in a hurry; otherwise he might be permanently lame. And he
was entitled to take his time. He had done his bit. Moreover, as his
father-in-law assured him, it was the turn of younger men to "carry
on." He had been through more than a year and a half in the trenches
amid some of the cruelest fighting of the war; he was entitled to wear
two stripes of gold braid on his sleeve. If any man could nurse a
painful injury with a good conscience that man was Corporal Hollis.
In spite of searing memories, in spite of the whole nation's anxieties,
in a measure made less, yet not wholly dispelled by the entrance into
the war of a great Ally, the Corporal was allowed a taste of those
half-forbidden fruits, Poetry and Romance. At such a time, perhaps,
with the issue still undecided and the trials of the people growing
more severe every week, the gilt on life's gingerbread should have
been denied him altogether. And yet by dogged pluck he had earned that
guerdon, and Melia by her simple faith was worthy to share it with him.
The famous erection at the end of the garden, a weathercock at its
apex, a course of bricks and twelve stone steps at its base, was
haunted continually by an unseen presence. And it was a presence with
whom the Corporal long communed. Many an odd hour between sunrise and
sunset, a humble disciple of the Highest, pencil or brush in hand,
strove with hardly more than infantile art to surprise some of the
secrets of woodland, stream and hill.
No wonder that at that particular corner, where mile upon lovely
mile of England rolled back to the frontiers of three counties, two
of her greatest painters had gloried in Beauty and drunk deep. The
lights tossed from the sky to the silver-breasted river gleaming a
thousand feet below and then cast back again were so many heralds and
sconce-bearers for those who had eyes to see.
When the Corporal was not being wheeled round his enchanted garden,
or was not smoking his pipe in the sun, he was sitting with his back
to the weather, drawing and painting and dwelling in spirit with the
genius of place and, through it, with one immortal friend.
Autumn came and the Corporal still needed a crutch. But he could get
about the garden now and even pluck the weeds, although not yet able
to dig. And he was so happy that he didn't chafe against the slow
recovery. He needed rest and he had earned it; of that there could be
no question.
Meanwhile the months passed and events moved quickly. The war, to which
no glimpse of an end was yet in sight, continued to press ever more
severely upon all sections of the population. There was a shortage
of everything now except the spirit of grim determination. It was a
people's war, as no war had ever been, and the people, come what might,
were set on winning it.
In November the signal compliment was paid Josiah of electing him to
office a third consecutive year. If anything, his second term had
enhanced his prestige; his authority in the city of Blackhampton
was greater than ever. More and more did he seem to be the man such
abnormal times required. And the Mayoress, although under the constant
threat of dissolution throughout a strenuous year, was still in the
land of the living. Looking back on what she had suffered, the fact
appeared miraculous; and yet as the end of the second term drew near,
had she been quite honest with herself, she might have been tempted
to own that she was none the worse for her experience. In some ways,
although the admission would have called for wild horses, she might
almost be said to be the better for it. Gertrude Preston, at any rate,
openly said so.
Such being the case, Josiah did not hesitate to accept office for a
third term. By now he realized that he was the best man in the city, at
all events for that particular job. Everybody said so, from the Town
Clerk down; and it was no mere figure of speech. Indeed, Josiah felt
that Blackhampton could hardly "carry on" without him.
He was an autocrat, it was true, his temper was despotic, but that was
the kind of man the times called for. It was no use having a divided
mind, it was no use having a mealy-mouth. With the political instinct
of a hardheaded race he had contrived to find a formula of government.
He could talk to Labor in the language it understood; and the employers
of Labor allowed him to talk to them, perhaps mainly for the reason
that he was not himself an employer, but a disinterested and, if
anything, slightly too honest, private citizen.
Therefore, no great surprise was caused at the beginning of the New
Year when it was announced that the dignity of a Knight of the British
Empire had been conferred upon the Mayor of Blackhampton. Sir Josiah
Munt, K.B.E., took it as "all in the day's work." A democrat pur sang,
yet he didn't doubt "that he'd make as good a knight as some of 'em."
But the hapless Maria showed less stoicism. According to credible
witnesses, when the news came to her that Lady Munt was her future
style and degree, she fainted right off, and when at last the assiduous
Alice had brought her to, she put herself to bed for three days.
Be that as it may, old issues were revived in that tormented breast.
Horace, Doctor Cockburn, had immensely strengthened his position in
the triumphant course of the preceding year, but the new situation
cried aloud for Doctor Tremlett. However, the Mayor telephoned to his
sister-in-law "to come at once and set her ladyship to rights," the
call was promptly obeyed by the dauntless Gerty, and the crisis passed.