The Good Comrade Part 28

"Booze," Julia concluded for him. "Johnny, you are always a wonder to me; how you have contrived to live so long and yet to keep your belief in man unspotted from the world beats me."

Johnny looked uncomfortable and a little puzzled. "Well, but your father--" he began.

"My father is a man," Julia interrupted, "and I would not undertake to say a man would not do anything--on occasions--or a woman either, for the matter of that. There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in lots, and a sn.o.b, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet.

There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong.

Of course, at father's age, possibilities are getting over; one or two things have come top and stay there."

Mr. Gillat opened the cottage door and, not answering these distressing generalities, fell back on his one fact. "Look," he said, pointing to an empty peg, "he must have gone after fir-cones; you see the basket has gone; he took it with him; I am sure he would not have taken it to the 'Dog.'"

"I believe their whisky is very bad," Julia said, and seemed to think more of that than the argument of the basket. "I'll give him another hour before I set out to look for him."

She gave him the hour and then, in spite of Mr. Gillat's entreaties to be allowed to go in her place, set out for Halgrave. But she did not have to go all the way, for she met her father coming back. And she early discovered that, if he had not been to the "Dog and Pheasant,"

he had been somewhere else where he could get whisky. They walked home together, and she made neither comments nor inquiries; she did not consider that evening a suitable time. The Captain was only a little muddled and, as has been before said, a very little alcohol was sufficient to do that; he was quite clear enough to be a good deal relieved by his daughter's behaviour, and even thought that she noticed nothing amiss. Indeed, by the morning, he had himself almost come to think there was nothing to notice.

But alas, for the Captain! He had never learnt to beware of those deceptive people who bide their time and bring into domestic life the diplomatic policy of speaking on suitable occasions only. He came down-stairs that morning very well pleased with himself; he felt that he had vindicated the rights of man yesterday; this conclusion was arrived at by a rather circuitous route, but it was gratifying; it was also gratifying to think that he had been able to enjoy himself without being found out. But Julia soon set him right on this last point; she did not reproach him or, as Mrs. Polkington would have done, point out the disgrace he would bring upon them; she only told him that it must not occur again. She also explained that, while he lived in her house, she had a right to dictate in these matters and, what was more, she was going to do so.

At this the Captain was really hurt; his feeling for dignity was very sensitive, though given to manifesting itself in unusual ways. "Am I to be dependent for the rest of my days?" he asked.

Julia did not answer; she thought it highly probable.

"Am I to be dictated to at every turn?" he went on.

Julia did answer. "No," she said; "I don't think there will be any need for that."

Captain Polkington paid no attention to the answer; he was standing before the kitchen fire, apostrophising things in general rather than asking questions.

"Are my goings out and comings in to be limited by my daughter? Am I to ask her permission before I accept hospitality or make friends?"

"Friends?" said Julia. "Then it was not 'The Dog and Pheasant' you went to, yesterday? I thought not."

"Then you thought wrong," her father retorted incautiously; "I did go there."

"To begin with," Julia suggested; "but you came across some one, and went on--is that it?"

The Captain denied it, but he had not his wife's and daughters' gifts; his lies were always of the cowardly and uninspired kind that seldom serve any purpose. Julia did not believe him, and set to work cross questioning him so that soon she knew what she wanted. It seemed that her surmise was correct; he had met some one at the "Dog and Pheasant"; a veterinary surgeon who had come there to doctor a horse.

They had struck up an acquaintance--the Captain had the family gift for that--and the surgeon had asked him to come to his house on the other side of Halgrave.

When the information reached this point Julia said suavely, but with meaning: "Perhaps you had better not go there again."

"I shall certainly go when I choose," Captain Polkington retorted; "I should like to know what is to prevent me and why I should not?"

Julia remembered his dignity. "Shall we say because it is too far?"

she suggested.

After that she dismissed the subject; she did not see any need to pursue it further; her father knew her wishes--commands, perhaps, he called them--all that was left for her to do was to see that he could not help fulfilling them, and that was not to be done by much talking any more than by little. So she made no further comments on his doings and, to change the subject, told him she had bought some whisky in the town yesterday and he had better open the bottle at dinner time.

The Captain stared for a moment, but quickly recovered from his astonishment, though not because he recognised that a little whisky at home was part of a judicious system. He merely thought that his daughter was going to treat him properly after all, and in spite of what had been lately said. This idea was a little modified when he found that, though he drank the whisky, Julia kept the bottle under lock and key.

It also seemed that she found a way of enforcing her wishes, or at least preventing frequent transgressions of them, although, of course, she was prepared for occasional mishaps. There really was nothing at the "Dog and Pheasant" that the Captain could put up with even if he had not been always very short of money--absurdly short even of coppers--and Julia saw that he was short. There remained nothing for him but the hospitality of acquaintances, and they did not abound in Halgrave, the only place within reach; also, as he declared, they were a stingy lot. The next time he called upon his new friend, the veterinary surgeon, he was at a loss to understand this; it was unlike his previous experience of the man and most disagreeably surprising; he could not think why it should happen. But then he had not seen Julia set out for Halgrave on the afternoon of the same day that she explained things to him. She had on all her best clothes, even her best boots, in spite of the bad roads. She looked trim and dainty as a Frenchwoman, but there was something about her which suggested business.

There are, no doubt, advantages attached to the simple life. It is decidedly easier to deal with your drawback when you do not have to pretend it has no existence. You can enlist help from outside if you can go boldly to veterinary surgeons and others, and say that whisky is your father's weakness, and would they please oblige and gratify you by not offering him any.

CHAPTER XVII

NARCISSUS TRIANDRUS STRIATUM, THE GOOD COMRADE

The winter wore away; a very long winter, and a very cold one to those at the cottage who were used to the mild west country. But at last spring came; late and with bitter winds and showers of sleet, but none the less wonderful, especially as one had to look to see the tentative signs of its coming. March in Marbridge used to mean violets and daffodils, tender green shoots and balmy middays. March here means days of pale clean light and great sweeping wind which chased grey clouds across a steely sky, and stirred the l.u.s.t for fight and freedom in men's minds and set them longing to be up and away and at battle with the world or the elements. This restlessness, which those who have lost it call divine, took possession of Julia that springtime, and a dissatisfaction with the simple life and its narrow limits beset her. Surely, she found herself asking, this was not the end of all things--this cottage to be the limit of her life and ambitions; her work to grow cabbages and eat them, to keep her father in the paths of temperance and sobriety, and to make Johnny's closing days happy? The March winds spoke vaguely of other things; they whispered of the life she had put from her; the big, wide, moving, thinking, feeling life which would have been living indeed. Worse, they whispered of the man who had offered it to her, the man whom her heart told her she would have made friend and comrade if only circ.u.mstances had allowed him to make her wife. But she thrust these thoughts from her; she had no choice, she never had a choice; now less if possible than before, there was no heart-aching decision to make. The work she had taken up could not be put down; she must go on even if voices stronger and more real than these wind ones called her out.

One day the crocuses which Mijnheer had sent came into flower; Julia thought she had never seen anything so beautiful as the little purple and golden cups, partly because they had been sent in kindness of heart, partly, no doubt, because she had grown them herself, and she had never grown a flower which had its root in the inarticulate joy of all things at the first flowering of dead brown earth and monotonous lifeless days. The next event in her calendar, and Johnny's, was the blooming of the fruit trees. She had seen hillside orchards in the west country break into a foam of flower--a sight perhaps as beautiful as any England has to show. But, to her mind, it did not compare with the spa.r.s.e white bloom which lay like a first h.o.a.r frost on her crooked trees and showed cold and delicate against the pale blue sky.

After that, nearly every day, there was something fresh and interesting for Mr. Gillat and Julia, so that the March wind was forgotten, except in the ill-effect on Captain Polkington with whom it had disagreed a good deal, both in health and temper.

That spring, as indeed every spring, there was a flower show in London at the Temple Gardens. The things exhibited were princ.i.p.ally bulb flowers, ixias, iris, narcissus and the like; the event was interesting to growers, both professional and amateur. Joost Van Heigen came over from Holland to attend; he was sent by his father in a purely business capacity, but of course he was expected, and himself expected, to enjoy it, too; there would be many novelties exhibited and many beautiful flowers in which he would feel the sober appreciative pleasure of the connoisseur. He came to England some days before the show; he had, besides attending that, to see some important customers on business, also one or two English growers.

Now, certain districts of Norfolk are very well suited to the cultivation of bulbs, so it is not surprising that Joost's business took him there. And, seeing that he had a Bradshaw and a good map, and had, moreover, six months ago addressed Julia's box of bulbs to her nearest railway town, it is not surprising that he found the whereabouts of the town of Halgrave. It was on Sat.u.r.day night when he found it on the map; he was sitting in the coffee-room of a temperance hotel at the time. He had done business for the day, and, seeing that the English do not care about working on Sundays, he would probably have to-morrow as well as to-night free. Julia's town was close--a short railway journey, then a walk to Halgrave, and then one would be at her home--it would be a pleasant way of spending the morning of a spring Sunday. He thought about it a little; he had no invitation to go and see Julia, and he did not like going anywhere without an invitation or an express reason. She might not want to see him, or it might put out her domestic arrangements if he came; he knew domestic arrangements were subject to such disturbances. He hesitated some time, though it must be admitted that the fact that he had asked her to marry him and been refused did not come much into his consideration. He had not altered his mind about that proposal, and he did not imagine she had altered hers; his devotion and her indifference were definite settled facts which would remain as long as either of them remained, but there was nothing embarra.s.sing in them to him. At last he decided that he would go, and it was the blue daffodil which decided him.

He had never heard what Julia had done with the bulb he had given her.

It was only reasonable to think she had sold it, seeing it was for the sake of money she had wanted it, but no whisper of any such thing had reached him or his father. He longed to know about it, to hear the name of the man who had his treasure; for whom, in all probability, it was blooming now. It was some connoisseur he was nearly certain; Julia would not have sold it to another grower. He had not lain any such condition on her, but she would not have done that; she knew too well what it meant to him; he never doubted her in that matter, his faith was of too simple a kind. Still he determined to go and see her, partly that he might hear the name of the man who bought the blue daffodil, partly because he wanted to and remembered that Julia, in the old days, did not seem of the kind to be upset by unexpected visitors and similar small domestic accidents.

It was a hot-dinner Sunday at the cottage. These occurred alternately; on the in between Sundays Julia, supported by Johnny and the Captain, went to church. On those sacred to hot dinners she stayed at home and did the cooking, the Captain staying with her. Mr. Gillat used to also in the winter, but lately, during the spring, he had been induced to teach in the Sunday school, and now went every Sunday to the village, first to teach and afterwards to conduct his cla.s.s to church.

It was Mr. Stevens, the Rector of Halgrave, who had made this surprising suggestion to Mr. Gillat. He, good man, had in the course of time been to see his paris.h.i.+oners at the remote cottage, grinding along the deep sandy road on his heavy old tricycle; but it was not during the visit that he thought of Johnny as a teacher; it was when he made further acquaintance with him at Halgrave. Johnny was the member of the party who went most often to the village shop; he liked the expedition, it gave him a feeling of importance; he also liked gossiping with the woman who kept the shop, and he dearly loved meeting the village children. On one of these occasions, when Johnny was engaged in making peace between two little girls--little girls were his specialty--the rector met him and it was then it occurred to him that Mr. Gillat might help in the school. It was not much of an honour, the school was in rather a bad way just now, and boasted no other teachers than the rector and a raspy-tempered girl of sixteen, but Johnny was much flattered. He thought he ought to refuse; he was quite sure he could not teach; the idea of his doing so was certainly new and strange; he was also sure he was not virtuous enough. But in the end he was persuaded to try; Julia told him that he might hear the catechism with an open book, choose the Bible tales he was surest of, to read and explain, and have his cla.s.s of little girls to tea very often. So it came about that Mr. Gillat set out Sunday after Sunday to school, and if his reading and expounding of the Scriptures was less in accord with modern light than the traditions that held in the childhood of the nation, no one minded; the children at Halgrave were not painfully sharp, and they soon got to love Mr. Gillat with a friendly lemon-droppish love which was not critical.

Captain Polkington did not approve of the Sunday-school teaching, especially on those days when he had to clean the knives. The Sunday when Joost Van Heigen came was one of these. The Captain watched Mr.

Gillat's preparations with a disgusted face; at last he remarked, "I wonder if you think you do any good by this nonsense?"

Johnny, who had got as far as the doorstep, stopped and considered rather as if the idea had just occurred to him.

"There must be teachers," he said at length, looking round at the open landscape; "and there aren't many about."

"You are a fine teacher!" the Captain sneered.

Mr. Gillat rubbed his finger along the edge of the Bible he carried.

"I was wild," he confessed; "yes, I was, I don't think--but then the rector said--and Julia--"

His meaning was rather obscure, but possibly the Captain followed it although he did cut him short by saying, "I should never have expected it of you; if any one had told me that you, one of us, would take to this sort of thing, I would not have believed it. I mean, if they had told me in the old days, before things were changed and broken up, when we were still alive and things moved at a pace--when a man knew if he were alive or dead and whether it was night or morning."

"Yes, yes," Johnny said, but not altogether as if he regretted the pa.s.sing of those golden days; "things were different then; we didn't think of it then."

"Teaching in the Sunday school?" the Captain asked. "Not quite! And if we had, we shouldn't have thought of coming to it even when we had got old and foolish."

Johnny looked uncomfortable and unhappy; then a bright idea occurred to him. "There wasn't a Sunday school there," he said. "You remember the hill station?"

Just then Julia called from the house, "Father, I believe we might have a dish of turnip tops if you would get them. Johnny, you will be late if you don't start soon."

Johnny promptly started, and the Captain, less promptly, sauntered away to find a basket for the turnip tops, muttering the while something about people whose religion took the form of going out and leaving others to do the work.