Book: The Good Comrade

U >> Una L. Silberrad >> The Good Comrade




It was dinner time before they had finished. Julia came to the doorway
of the bulb shed uneasy and perplexed. "It is clear he is not here,"
she said, and turned to fasten the door. A gust of wind tore it from
her hand, flinging it back noisily. She caught it again and secured
it. "It is dinner time," she said; "come along indoors, there is no
reason why you should go hungry because father chooses to."

Johnny followed her to the house. When they were indoors he said, "Do
you think--you don't think he has had an attack?--that he is lying
unconscious somewhere?" That was precisely what Julia was beginning to
think; there seemed no other possible explanation. Johnny read her
mind in her face and was overwhelmed with the sense of his own
shortcomings and their possible consequences.

"It is not your fault," Julia assured him; "you might as well say it
is father's for being so foolish and obstinate about his whisky--a
great deal better and more truly say it is mine for leaving you, and
for driving him into this corner, for not having managed the whole
thing better."

Johnny, though a little relieved that she did not think him to blame,
was not comforted. "Let us go and find him," he said; "we must find
him; never mind about dinner--we must go and look for him--though I
don't know where."

"We must look beyond the garden," Julia said; "he must have got
further than we first thought--but I don't see how he can be far in
this weather. Cut some cheese and bread; we can eat it as we go
along."

In a little while they set out together, Julia taking restoratives
with her, though she was also careful to leave some on the
kitchen-table in case Captain Polkington should make his way back and
feel in need of them in her absence. Outside the garden wall one felt
the force of the wind more fully, and realised how impossible it was
that the Captain should have gone far. Julia stood a moment by the
gate. Before her lay the road to Halgrave; her father might have gone
down it a little way; but if he had he must have turned off and sought
concealment somewhere for she had seen no sign of any one when she
came home. To the left stretched the heath-land, brown and bare, to
the belt of wildly tossing pines; it was hard to imagine her father
choosing that way. To the right lay the sandhills, a place of unsteady
outline, earth and sky alike pale and blurred as the north-west wind
fled seawards, lifting and whirling the fine particles till the air
seemed full of them; it was impossible to think of any one choosing
that way.

"We will go down the road to begin with," Julia said, and started.

All through the early part of the afternoon they searched; sometimes
stopped for a moment by a gust of wind; Julia caught and whirled,
Johnny brought to a panting standstill. But on again directly,
struggling down the road, looking in ditches and behind scant bushes,
leaving the track first on the right hand then on the left, searching
in likely and unlikely places. But always with the same result, there
was no sign of the missing man. At last, when they had reached a
greater distance than it was possible to imagine the Captain could
have gone, they turned towards the house across the heath. It was
difficult to think of the Captain going that way, seeing he would have
been walking in the teeth of the wind, but it almost seemed he must
have done it.

The short day was already beginning to close in when they reached the
belt of pines. It had grown much colder; one could almost believe
there would be frost in the air by and by. The wind was lulling a
little; it still roared with strange rushings and half-demented
tearings at the tree-tops, almost like some great spirit prisoned
there, but it had spent its first strength. The rain clouds were
going, too; already in places the sky was swept clear so that a pale
light gleamed behind the trees.

Julia stood in the vibrant shelter of the pines, pushing back her
hair; she was bareheaded; a hat had been an impossible superfluity
when she started out.

"Johnny," she said, "we have come too far; father could not have got
to the trees in such weather as it was when he started; we must go
back. I expect he is somewhere nearer home; we have not half searched
the possible radius yet."

Johnny said "Yes." He was dog-tired, so tired that his anxiety was now
little more than dull despair animated by an unquestioning
determination to continue the search.

He would have done so somehow, and with his flagging energies been
more hindrance than help, had not Julia prevented him; as they neared
the house, now almost merged in the dusk, she said--

"I am going to fetch a lantern; the moon will be up soon, but until
then I shall want a light. I am just coming in to get it, then I shall
go out again; but you must stop at home; father may come back, and if
he found us both out after dark he would think something was wrong and
start to look for us; then we should be worse off than ever."

Johnny said "Yes"; but suggested, "I think we'd better look round
about the house once more. I think I'll take a light and look round
again."

Julia did not think it would be much use; however she consented,
though she had to go with Johnny; she did not trust him with a lantern
among the out-buildings. They looked round once more, in the sheds and
in the dark garden; afterwards they went out and looked beyond the
wall all round, on the side where the heather grew and also on the
side where the loose sand came close. It took time; Johnny was too
tired to move quickly or even to understand quickly what was said to
him. At last Julia stopped and spoke decisively.

"You had better go in now," she said; "it won't do for us both to be
out any longer; one of us must go in, and I think it had better be
you. Make a good fire, see that there is plenty of hot water and get
something to eat so as to be ready to do things when I come back."

Johnny acquiesced and Julia, having watched him into the house, took
up her lantern and set out in the direction of the sandhills.

It was her last resource; it did not seem to her likely that her
father could have gone there; at the best of times he disliked the
place, finding it very tiring. Still, with the wind behind him as it
would have been this morning, it is possible he would have found it
the easiest way--if he could have managed to forget what the coming
back would be. At all events she determined to try it, so she set out
for the waste.

By this time the moon was rising, and, in spite of the driving clouds
which had not all dispersed, at times it shone clear. Beneath it the
stretch of sand lay pale and desolate, a new-formed landscape of fresh
contours, loosely-piled hills and shallow scooped hollows shaped by
to-day's wind. An easy place for a man to miss his way with a gale
blowing and the sand dancing blinding reels. A hard place for a man to
travel far when he had to face the wind; a strong man would have found
it very tiring, a weak man might well have given it up, driven to
waiting for a lull in the weather. As for a man in the Captain's
health--when Julia thought of it she hurried on, although she knew if
her father had to-day, as he had all through his life, followed the
line of least resistance, the chances were that her help would be of
little avail to him now.

She carried her lantern low, looking carefully for footprints; soon,
however, she put it out; she would do better without in the increasing
moon-light. But she found no prints; after all, as she remembered, she
was hardly likely to; the wind and blowing sand would have obliterated
them. Over the first level of sand she went to the nearest rise
without seeing anything; up to that and down the following hollow,
looking in every curve and indentation, still without seeing anything.
Then she began to climb the next rise. The moon was struggling through
a long cloud, one moment eclipsed, the next shining with a half
radiance which made the landscape unevenly black and white. For a
second it looked out clear, and the sand showed like silver,
tear-spotted with ink in the hollows; then the cloud swept up and all
turned to a level grey. She had climbed to the top of a rise by now,
sinking deep and noiseless into the soft sand. It was too dark to see
what was below; all was shadow, black shadow--or was it a blackness
more substantial than shadow?

The cloud passed from off the moon's face, the light shone out once
more, turning the sand to silver. All the great empty space, where the
dying wind still throbbed, was white silver, except down in the hollow
where, black and still, lay the man who had followed the line of least
resistance.




CHAPTER XXIII

PAYMENT AND RECEIPT


On the day of Captain Polkington's funeral, a letter was brought to
White's Cottage. Julia herself took it in, and when she saw that it
was from Holland she asked the postman to wait a minute as she would
be glad if he would post a letter for her. He sat down, nothing loth;
the cottage was the last place on his round and he never minded a rest
there. He waited while Julia went up-stairs with her letter. She
opened it before she got to her room and barely read the contents;
there was enclosed a cheque for thirty pounds, the price of "The Good
Comrade."

It had come, then, at last, this money for which she had been waiting
two years--but too late. The man in whose name she would have paid the
debt lay dead. She had planned to clear him without his knowledge,
reinstate him in the good opinion of his debtor without letting her
hand be seen; and she could not, for he was dead, and there was no
hand but hers, and no name to clear. It was not a week too late, yet
so much, so bitterly much. Too late for her cherished plan, too late
for any of the things she had hoped, too late for triumph, or joy, or
satisfaction; too late to demonstrate the once hoped for equality; too
late for the fulfilling of anything but a dogged purpose. For a moment
she looked at the cheque, feeling the irony which had sent her the
means of paying his debt now that her father lay in his coffin,
indifferent to his good name and his honour; unable, alike, to clear
or be cleared, to wrong or be wronged; removed by kindly death from
the scope of earthly judgment, even the just thoughts of one who had
suffered on his account.

She put down the cheque and pencilled some hasty words--"In payment of
Captain Polkington's debt (to Mr. Rawson-Clew) discharged by Hubert
Farquhar Rawson-Clew on the--November 19--"

So she wrote, then she put the slip with the cheque in an envelope and
addressed it to the London club where the explosive had been sent.

"It will be posted before the funeral," she thought; "I'm glad--it
will all end together--poor father!"

She went down-stairs and gave the letter to the postman. Mrs.
Polkington came into the kitchen as she was doing so, for Mrs.
Polkington was at the cottage now.

There are some women who seem designed by nature for widows, just as
there are others designed for grandmothers and yet others for old
maids. Mrs. Polkington was of the first sort; she seemed specially
created to adorn the position of widow-hood; she certainly did adorn
it; she was a pattern to all widows and did not miss a single point of
the situation. Of course she came to the cottage as soon as possible
after receiving news of her husband's death. The journey was long and
expensive, the weather somewhat bad; that weighed for nothing with
her; she was there as soon as might be, feeling, saying and doing just
what a bereaved widow ought. The fact that she and her husband had
been obliged through the force of circumstances, to live separate the
past year did not alter her emotions, her real tears or her real
grief. Considering the practice and experience she had had it would
have been surprising if she had not succeeded in deceiving herself as
well as most of her world in these things. So acute were her feelings
that when she came into the kitchen and saw Julia dispatching the
letter, she felt quite a shock.

"What is it?" she asked; "What is the matter?"

"Only a letter that could not wait," Julia answered.

"Surely it could have waited till to-morrow," her mother said; "under
the circumstances surely one would be excused."

Julia thought differently but did not say so, and in silence set about
some necessary preparation.

The Reverend Richard Frazer came to the funeral; Violet was unable to
do so; he represented her and supported his mother-in-law too. The
banker, Mr. Ponsonby, also made the tedious journey to Halgrave; he
came out of respect for death in the abstract, and also because he
expected affairs would want looking to, and it would suit him better
to do it now than later. These two with Johnny, Julia and her mother,
were the only mourners at the funeral; a few village folk, moved by
curiosity, attended, but no one else; there was not even an empty
carriage, representative of a good family, following the humble
cortege. Mrs. Polkington observed this and felt it; an empty carriage
and good livery following would have given her satisfaction, without
in any way diminishing her sorrow and proper feeling. It is
conceivable she would have found satisfaction in being shipwrecked in
aristocratic company, without at the same time, suffering less than
she ought to suffer.

After the funeral they returned to the cottage and had a repast of
Julia's providing, eminently suitable to the occasion. Everything was
eminently suitable, every one's behaviour, every one's clothes; Mr.
Frazer's grave face, the banker's jerky manner--the manner of a man
concerned with the world's money market and ill at ease in the
intrusive presence of death. Mrs. Polkington's voice, face, feelings,
sayings, everything. Julia's own behaviour was perfect, though all the
time she saw how it looked as plainly as if she had been another and
disinterested person, and once or twice she had an hysterical desire
to applaud a good stroke of her mother's or prompt a backward speech
of her uncle's. Mr. Gillat, of course, did nothing suitable; he never
did. He kept up a preternaturally cheerful appearance during the meal,
stopping his mouth with large corks of bread, answering "Ah, yes, yes,
just so," indiscriminately whenever he was spoken to, and starting
three separate conversations on the weather on his own account. As
soon as the table was cleared, he fled into the back kitchen, shut
himself in with the dishes, and was seen no more. The others remained
in the sitting-room and talked things over, arranging plans for the
future and for the immediate present. And when the time came and the
conveyance was brought to the gate, they set out on the homeward
journey together. Johnny did not come out of the kitchen to say
good-bye; only Julia came to the gate.

Mr. Ponsonby was going back home; Mr. Frazer and Mrs. Polkington were
going with him to spend the night in town and go on westwards the next
morning. Mr. Frazer was anxious to get back to his parish, and Mrs.
Polkington to her daughter, who was expecting her first baby shortly.
It was this expected event which prevented the young rector from
asking Julia to stay with him and Violet until such time as she and
her mother could settle somewhere together. It was this same event
which prevented Mrs. Polkington from remaining at White's Cottage and
sharing Julia's solitude until their plans were settled. All this was
explained to Julia in the best Polkington manner and she seemed quite
satisfied with the explanation. Mr. Ponsonby had to be perforce; there
seemed no alternative; all the same he was not quite pleased. It was
all sensible enough, of course, only as he saw Julia standing at the
gate in the November afternoon, he did not quite like it.

"Look here," he said shortly, "you shut up this place here, send Mr.
Gillat to his friends, or his rooms, or wherever he came from, and
come to me. You can come and make your home with me, and welcome, till
things are settled; there's plenty of room."

This was a good deal for Mr. Ponsonby to say, considering what an
annoyance the Polkington family had been to him, how--not without
wisdom--he had set his face against letting them into his house for
more than twenty-four hours at a stretch, and how much this particular
member had thwarted and exasperated him at their last meeting. Julia
recognised this and recognised also the kindness of the brusque
suggestion. She thanked him warmly for the offer though she refused
it, assuring him that she and Johnny would be all right at the
cottage.

"We do not find it lonely," she said; "we are quite happy here,
happier than anywhere else, I think."

The banker grunted, not convinced; Mr. Frazer shook hands with Julia
and said he hoped it would not be long before he saw her; Mrs.
Polkington reiterated the remark, kissing her the while; then they
drove away and Julia went into the house. She went into the back
kitchen; Mr. Gillat was not there; the dishes were all put away and
the place was quite tidy. Julia went through to the front kitchen;
there she saw Johnny; he was kneeling by the Captain's old chair, his
arms thrown across the seat, his silly pink face buried in them, his
rounded shoulders shaking with sobs.

Johnny loved as a dog loves, without reason, without thought of
return; not for wisdom, worth or deserts, just because he did love
and, having once loved, loved always; forgiving everything, expecting
nothing--foolish, faithful, true. So he loved his friend, so he
mourned him now, be-blubbering the seat of the shabby chair which
spoke so eloquently to him of the irritable, exacting presence now
gone for ever.

"Johnny," Julia said softly; "Johnny dear."

She put a hand on the round shoulders and somehow slipped herself into
the shabby chair.

"Johnny," she said, "let us sit by the fire awhile and not talk of
anything at all."

So they sat together till twilight fell.

The next day there came another to Julia, one who knew nothing of what
had befallen in these last days. It was almost twilight when he came;
Johnny had gone out to collect fir-cones; Julia sent him, partly
because their stock was low and partly because she thought it would do
him good. She did not expect him back much before five o'clock; it
would be dark by then certainly, but not very dark for the day was
clear, with a touch of frost in the air; one of those days when the
last of the sunset burns low down in the sky long after the stars are
out. It was not much after four o'clock when Julia heard something
approaching, certainly not Johnny nor anything connected with him, for
it was the throb of a motor coming fast. Only once before since she
had been at the cottage had she heard that sound on the lonely road,
on the day when Rawson-Clew came. It could not be him now, she was
sure of that. He might have received the money this morning certainly,
but he would not come because of that, rather he would keep away;
there was no reason why he should come. She told herself it was
impossible, and then went to the door to see, puzzled in her own mind
what she should say if the impossible had happened and it was he.

The throbbing had ceased by now; there was the click of the gate even
as she opened the door, and he--it was he and no other--was coming up
the little brick path in the twilight. His face was curiously clear in
the light which lingered low down; and when she saw it and the look it
wore, all plans of what she should say fled, and the feeling came upon
her which was like that which came when she crouched behind the
chopping-block and he barred the way. It seemed as if he had been
pursuing and she escaping and eluding for a long time, but now--he was
coming up the path and she was standing in the doorway with the pale
light strong on her face and nowhere to fly to and no way of escape.

"Why did you not tell me before?" he said without any greeting at all,
and he spoke as if he had right and authority. "Why did you let this
thing weigh on you for two years and never say a word of it to me?"

"I was ashamed," she answered with truth. Then the spirit which still
inhabits some women, making them willing to be won by capture,
prompted her to struggle against the capitulation she was ready to
make. "There was nothing to speak of to you or any one else," she
said, with an effort at her old assurance, and she led the way in as
she spoke. "I never meant to speak of it at all, I meant just to pay
the debt as from father, and not myself appear in it. I did not do it
that way, I know; I could not; I did not get the money till yesterday
and--and"--the assurance faded away pathetically--"that was too late."

Rawson-Clew looked down, and for the first time noticed her mourning
dress, and realising what it meant, remembered that convention
demanded that a man, whose claim depends on another's death, should
not push it as soon as the funeral is over. However he did not go
away, the pathos of Julia's voice kept him.

"Late or early would have made little difference," he said; "it is
just the same now as if it had been early. Do you think I should not
have known who sent the money at whatever time and in whatever
circumstances it was paid? Do you think I know two people who would
pay a debt, which can hardly be said to exist, in such a way?"

But Julia was not comforted. "It is too late," she re-repeated; "too
late for any satisfaction. I thought I would prove that we were honest
and honourable by paying it; I wanted to show father--that I--that our
standard was the same as yours, and I have not."

"No," he answered, "you have not and you never will; your standard is
not the same as mine; mine is the honour of an accepted convention,
and yours is the honour of a personal truth, a personal experience,
the honour of the soul."

But she shook her head. "It is not really," she said; "and father--"

"As to your father," he interrupted gently, "do you not think that
sometimes the potter's thumb slips in the making of a vessel?"

She looked up with a feeling of gratitude. "Yes," she said; "yes, that
is it, if only we could realise it--poor father. It was partly our
fault, too, mother's, all of ours--and he is dead now."

"I know. Let him rest in peace; we are concerned no more with his
doings or misdoings; our concern, yours and mine is with the living."

She did not answer; a piece of wood had fallen from the fire and lay
blazing and spluttering on the hearth; she stooped to pick it up and
he watched her.

"I know I have no business here now," he said. "Had I known of his
death before, I would not have come to-day; I would have waited, but
since I have come--Julia--"

She was standing straight now, the wood safely back in the fire; he
put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to him. "Julia, you and
I have always dealt openly, without regarding appearances, let us deal
so now--since I have come. Won't you let me give you a receipt?"

* * * * *

Julia said afterwards that receipts for the payment of such debts were
unnecessary and never given; which was perhaps as well, for the one
she received in the dusk was not of a kind recognised at law. Could it
afterwards have been produced it would not have proved the payment of
money, though at the time it proved several things, principally the
fact that, though friendship and comradeship are fine and excellent
things, there are simple primitive passions which leap up through them
and transfigure them and forget them, and it is these which make man
man, and woman woman, and life worth living, and the world worth
winning and losing, too, and bring the kingdom of heaven to earth
again.

It also proved how exceedingly firmly a man who is in the habit of
wearing a single eyeglass must screw it into his eye, for, as Julia
remarked with some surprise, the one which interested her did not fall
out.

* * * * *

Mr. Gillat came home with his fir-cones at a quarter to five. And when
he came he saw that, to him, most fascinating sight--a motor-car,
standing empty and quiet by the gate. He looked at it with keen
interest, then he looked round the empty landscape for its owner, and
not seeing him, wondered if he was in the house. He put away the cones
and came to the conclusion that the owner was not there and the car
was an abandoned derelict. For which, perhaps, he may be forgiven, for
there was no light at the parlour window and no sound of voices that
he could hear from the kitchen; even when he opened the door and
walked in he did not in the firelight see any one besides Julia at
first.

"Julia," he said, bringing in the astonishing news, "there is a
motor-car outside!"

"Yes," Julia answered composedly; "but it is going away soon."

"Not very soon," another voice spoke out of the gloom of the chimney
corner, and Johnny jumped as he recognised it.

"Dear me!" he said; "dear me! Mr. Rawson-Clew! How do you do? I am
pleased to see you."

The motor did not go away very soon; it stayed quite as long, rather
longer, in fact, than Mr. Gillat expected. And when it did go, he did
not have the pleasure of seeing it start; he somehow got shut in the
kitchen while Julia went out to the gate.

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