A Sheaf of Corn Part 14

"And just the right length for a walk!"

"Exactly a mile and a quarter."

"Really?"

"Exactly! We always called it a mile; but the last time he was home on leave Freddy measured it with his new cyclometer. 'Now, mother,' he said, 'please to remember it's a mile and a quarter, and, don't let's have any dispute about it in future?'"

"It's so nice to know--to an inch or two!"

"Well, Freddy has a very accurate mind. He can't bear anything slipshod in the way of a statement. Now, you are sure, after your walk, you do not feel the fire too much? Then move into this chair. You have really taken the least comfortable in the room. Now, isn't that better?"

Mrs Macmichel said that it was delightfully cosy. She was inwardly s.h.i.+vering; the tips of her fingers felt like ice. She pulled off her loose gloves, and held a pair of white hands blazing with jewels to the flame. She must force herself to talk, and to keep the poor woman off the topic of her son; but she, who was considered ready-tongued and ready-witted, sat dumb, she had not a word to say.

"There is so much difference in chairs," she said, at length.

The ba.n.a.lity did not affect Mrs Jones to laughter, as the speaker had a fear it might have done. She seized eagerly on the remark.

"Isn't there? Some are straight in the back, and some slope too much for comfort; some are too high in the seat for short legs, and some quite ridiculously low."

"But this is perfect."

"I am so glad you find it so! It is Freddy's. It was one he bought when he was in barracks. But he sent it to me. It was much too comfortable to be anywhere but in his own home, he said. Isn't it delightful that young men are so much attached to their homes, nowadays?"

It was indeed delightful, Mrs Macmichel answered; and added with an effort the original remark that home was a delightful place.

She supposed it was, the other lady agreed. "I never go away from mine, my health does not allow me," she said; "and so, perhaps, I can hardly judge."

She looked round the rather dismal, rather shabby room with a something critical in her gaze. Perhaps the presence of the fas.h.i.+onably-dressed woman seated there--a person so evidently out of harmony with her surroundings--helped her to see the familiar dowdiness with other eyes.

She gave a quick sigh as she looked, then turned to her visitor with her nervous smile--

"It is a mercy Freddy does not see the old fas.h.i.+on, the shabbiness. He only sees--home," she said.

Always Freddy! Poor Freddy, who would never see home again!

Searching wildly in her, at this crisis, stagnant mind for anything to turn the poor woman from her subject, Mrs Macmichel remembered the Parish Room. Here should be a mine of conversational wealth. She would work it for all it was worth.

"My husband is so--interested in the scheme," she said, and gulped a little at the lie. "Tell me over again, please, all those details you gave me before. He would like to know how much you have in hand; what you want to complete the room; what the bazaar brought in, and how much you expect from the concert."

Mrs Jones rose easily to the bait. She rose, too, talking all the time, to fetch from her writing-case the type-written circular where the parish's need for such a room was stated, and the paper, in her husband's handwriting, on which the sums already collected, and their source, were set forth. A hundred and thirty pounds were still wanted.

What was a sum like that to this millionaire at the Court? And what a lot of begging, writing, giving of jumble sales, supposing they were moved to give that sum, would be saved to the Joneses!

Mrs Macmichel took the papers, glanced at them, laid them on her lap, tried to say yes and no in the right places to the information now eagerly poured forth to her; tried to keep her eyes from that letter which the clergyman's wife had been interrupted in writing. It had fluttered to the floor as she had looked through her writing-case, and now lay, unheeded by her, at the visitor's feet.

"My own darling boy," it began.

"Such a poor parish." "So much indifference." "So disheartening," fell on Flora Macmichel's unreceptive ear.

"My own darling boy."

Something other than curiosity, stronger than her will, glued her eyes to the page.

"Your last dear letter reached me----"

Last! Yes, last indeed!

"Only five s.h.i.+llings and twopence in the bag; and of that, two s.h.i.+llings were contributed by Mr Jones and myself. Discouraging, is it not?"

"--This subject we will discuss more fully when you come home again,"

in spite of herself she read the words.

Come home again! Come home again! When the sea gives up its dead!

The servant came in, bringing tea; picked up the letter, returned it to the table.

"If you please, ma'am, Mrs Pyman have called, and wish to speak with you."

"Ask her to wait," the mistress said; then glanced at her visitor to deprecate the antic.i.p.ated polite protest on her part. "Anne Pyman will like very much to sit down in the kitchen for a while," she said. But as the maid withdrew she apparently altered her mind. "This good woman is the biggest gossip in the village," she explained. "She is always running up here to tell me this or that which she picks up. I think, after all, if you would excuse me for one minute----?"

"Of course!" the visitor said, mechanically; then awoke to the remembrance that she had undertaken to keep Mrs Jones from all outside intercourse. She turned an anxious look upon her hostess--"I think if we could have tea----?" she said.

Then she strangled a laugh in her throat--a laugh, sitting in Freddy's chair! What--what must Freddy's mother think of her!

"Oh, certainly!" Mrs Jones concurred. The large dark eyes, the only handsome feature she possessed, scanned with a fleeting gaze of inquiry the other woman's face. "I daresay, after your walk----"

"If you don't mind. Yes. Quite so. Tea is so very refres.h.i.+ng, don't you think?"

The temptation to say it was the cup which cheered but did not inebriate crossed her mind, but was combated.

The bread-and-b.u.t.ter handed to her with her tea was thick, the tea had not been creamed; but if food and drink had been fit for the entertainment of the G.o.ds, she did not think she could have swallowed.

She lifted the bread-and-b.u.t.ter to her lips, then laid it, untasted, down again, she stirred her tea, and glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece. For how long must she sit and talk inanities with this mother whose only child was lying fathoms deep beneath the sea? She had been there barely a quarter of an hour. For an hour and three-quarters, at least, she must sit there still, whatever the other woman thought of her, however she tried to rid herself of her company.

"You, too, have a son, I believe?" Mrs Jones was saying.

"Yes." She had an only son. His name was Connell. He was six years old.

"And very dear to you, I know!" The eyes of the woman whose only son was drowned shone with sympathy. They were speaking eyes, really beautiful with that light in them.

"Very dear to me," responded the woman in Freddy's chair. To her eyes came a sudden, unexpected rush of tears. Of her own child she felt she could not speak to this unconsciously bereaved mother.

"And six years old? Ah! Now I must show you what my dear boy was like at six."

She got up, and fetched from the mantelpiece a photograph of a tiny boy in a sailor's dress; a plain-featured, ordinary-looking little boy, with dark eyes too solemn for his age.

"Now, is your boy as big, do you think? We considered Freddy a fine boy. And whom do you think he takes after?"

"He is like you--about the eyes," Mrs Macmichel said. She gave the photograph hurriedly back. She could not endure to look upon the eyes closed now upon their "first dark day of nothingness."

Mrs Jones put the portrait tenderly in its place. "That big photograph standing above the clock was taken only the other day," she said. "When he was appointed to the _Doughty_, I wished so much to have him in his uniform. But the trouble I had to get him to have it taken! For no inducement in the world but to please me would he appear in uniform when not on duty, he said."