Masterman and Son Part 38

XXIV

THE NEW WORLD

Against the main-line platform of Waterloo Station the special boat-train was drawn up. It was half-past eight in the morning.

Almost momently suburban trains arrived, discharging their crowds of workers, who pa.s.sed in long files toward the portals of the station, and were swallowed up, like so many tiny streams, in the great sea of London. Some of them turned their eyes curiously, perhaps a little yearningly, toward the boat-train; but for the most part these arriving throngs pa.s.sed on with sedate, indifferent faces. The boat-train represented liberty--it was the symbol of things free and large; but their thoughts did not go so far as that. For them, life offered no release; there was no discharge in their warfare; to the end of their days they would tread the city streets, push their humble fortunes as they best could amid its clangour, and sink into rest at last beneath its gray skies.

Yet this morning the skies were not gray. The magic of June lay upon the city. The toil-worn metropolis had dressed itself in s.h.i.+ning raiment, as if it would fain remind its departing sons that it also could be fair; as if it meant that this last vision of its fairness should be for them a rebuke and a torturing memory through all the years of absence.

A man and a woman crossed the platform, closely observing the labels on the windows of the carriages.

"Ah! here it is! 'Masterman and party,'" said Bundy.

"They should be here by this time, shouldn't they?" said Mrs. Bundy.

"No, there's plenty of time--nearly half an hour."

They stood beside the train, talking in eager tones.

"You ordered flowers for their cabin, didn't you?"

"Yes; and I've done something else. I've got a suite of rooms for them. But they won't know that till they get aboard."

"Ah! I'm glad of that! I suppose it's the last thing we can do for them."

"Pray don't be melancholy," said Bundy, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "They're going to be very happy. Let us see them off with smiles."

"Ah! it's very well to talk. But these partings make me miserable. I couldn't have loved Arthur more if he'd been my own son. But he won't want me any more now. He'll have Elizabeth."

"Well, aren't you glad of it?"

"Oh yes, I'm glad. It was a beautiful wedding. And she is a sweet girl. But there's nothing makes you feel so old as weddings, somehow.

They make you realise how much of life lies behind you."

This intimate talk was interrupted by the increasing crowd that thronged the platform.

"Well, cheer up! Here they come!" said Bundy.

And Mrs. Bundy, instantly superior to grievous meditations, ran to meet the little group, with smiles and tenderness. She made no scruple of kissing Arthur openly, embraced Elizabeth with fervour, wrung Vickars's hand, to the last moment bought them books, papers, and magazines, and whispered various occult directions for the attainment of health and happiness into Arthur's ear, much as she had done years before when he went to school for the first time. And then came the crowded sensations of the moment when the shrill whistle sounded, the wheels moved, and the train sped into the s.p.a.cious suns.h.i.+ne.

For Arthur, newly married, was leaving the city of so many tragic memories for ever; Vickars also had decided to accompany Arthur and Elizabeth to Kootenay. Each felt that with the death of Masterman the last tie to England was snapped.

As the train flashed on past trim suburban villas, into the greenness of the open country, they talked in hushed tones of the life that lay behind them.

"One feels a little like a recreant at leaving it all," said Vickars.

"It is such a big thing, this London. And, when all's said and done, there's far more heroism packed into those struggling, drudging London lives than is found in a thousand battlefields."

"You've done your part, father. You, at least, need have no compunctions," said Elizabeth.

"I've done a little--how little! You didn't think, when I was speaking of heroism, that I meant myself, did you, my child?"

"I only meant what I said, father. You have done your part."

"Ah! an easy part," he said meditatively. "I have sat apart, aloof and sheltered, writing books. That is but an easy and little thing."

He was silent for some moments, watching the green unfolding of the country, the quiet farms and cottages, the ancient churches lifting gray towers above their guardian elms, the bright water-courses, the level roads and sun-washed fields.

"It comes to me," he said presently, "that there's another kind of life which I have never fully understood. A man comes to London, young, strong, eager, and is speedily infected with a pa.s.sion for success. He is exposed daily to a hundred gross temptations. If he had some original fineness of nature, it is soon blunted by the conditions of his life. He fights for standing-room because that is the first law of his existence. He then fights for conquest, and he conquers. At last he receives a fatal wound. But his courage does not fail him. He stands lonely and weak, fighting to the last. In the hour of his adversity he is wholly unconquered. That is real heroism. The final virtue of life is courage. He has this courage, and it is so great that it eclipses the memory of his faults."

"You are thinking of my father?" said Arthur, in a low voice.

"Yes. I who sat apart, criticising the world, am the sham hero. He who endured the crucifixion of the world is the real hero. Suffering does not necessarily enn.o.ble men; but to suffer bravely is always n.o.ble. Ah, Arthur! when I think of that lonely grave which lies behind us, I say, not 'what bitterness is hidden there!' but 'what fort.i.tude!'

With all its faults, the life hidden in that grave may teach us all a lesson."

And that was the epitaph of Archibold Masterman.

The train sped on. The ancient towers of Winchester rose and sank; and were not they also the memorial of a Life not alone pure and gentle, but of a divine courage? ... And in that Life, as in mult.i.tudes of soiled and human lives, was not the final efficiency found in the fort.i.tude that endures?

"That is the real heroism," said Vickars. "At least it is clear that without this fort.i.tude no kind of heroism is possible."

Through the trees the gray hospice of St. Cross was visible for a transient moment. The high chalk downs succeeded, the green marshland, the broad estuary with its tossing boats and wide glimmering waters.

An hour later a great s.h.i.+p loosed her moorings, and turned her bows toward the wider waters and the New World.

THE END