Book: The Good Comrade

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




When she came back she shut the door carefully, then turned to him,
and he noticed how her eyes were shining. "Johnny," she said, "I am a
selfish beast; I am going to leave you. Not yet, oh, not yet, but one
day."

Johnny stared a moment, then said, "Of course, oh, of course, to be
sure--to live with your mother, she'll want you. A wonderful woman."

"Not to live with my mother," Julia said emphatically. "Sit down and I
will tell you all about it."

And she told, slowly and suitably, fearing that he would hardly
understand the wonderful goodness of fate to her. But she need not
have been afraid; he took her meaning at once, far quicker than she
expected, for he saw no wonder in it, only a very great goodness for
the man who had won her, and a great and radiant happiness for himself
in the happiness that had come to her. As for his loneliness, he never
thought of that, why should he? Of course she would leave him, it was
the right and proper thing to do; she would leave him anyhow.

"You couldn't go on living with me here," he said; "I mean, I couldn't
go on living with you; it wouldn't be the thing, you know; you must
think of that."

Julia caught her breath between tears and laughter, but he went on
stoutly: "I shall go back to town, to Mrs. Horn; I shall like it--at
least when I get used to it. It is quite time I went back to town; a
man ought not to stay too long in the country; he gets rusty."

"You won't go back to town," Julia said; "you will never do that. You
will stay here in the cottage, and Mrs. Gray from next door to the
shop will come and live here as your housekeeper; I am going to
arrange it with her. She will come and she will bring her little
grand-daughter and you will keep on living here always."

For a moment Johnny's face beamed; the prospect was exquisite; but he
sternly put it from him. "No," he said, "I shouldn't like that; it's
kind of you, but--"

"Johnny," Julia interrupted, "you should always speak the truth--you
do anything else so badly! I don't mind if you like my plan or not,
you will have to put up with it to help me; some one must take care of
the cottage."

"But you will want to come yourself," Mr. Gillat protested.

"Never, unless you are here."

In the end Julia had her way. Johnny lived at the cottage, and Mrs.
Gray and her grandchild came to keep house. And Billy, Mrs. Gray's
nephew, came to help in the garden and take care of the donkey; in the
spring there was a donkey added to the establishment, and a little
tub-cart which held four children easily, besides Mr. Gillat. And it
is doubtful if, in all the country round, there was a happier man than
he who tended Julia's plants in Julia's garden, and drove parties of
chattering children along the quiet lanes, and sat on warm summer
evenings beside his old friend's grave in Halgrave churchyard. He had
forgotten many things, old slights and old pains, and old losses;
forgotten, perhaps, most things except love. Foolish Johnny, God's
fool, basking in God's sunshine.

And Julia and Rawson-Clew were married, very quietly, without any pomp
or ostentation at all. And if, on the honeymoon, he did not show her
all the places he had thought of on the day when he travelled north
with the girl with the carnations, it was because he had not several
years at his disposal just then. Afterwards he made up for it as work
allowed and time could be found. In the record of their lives there
are many days noted down as holidays, even such holidays as that first
one spent on the Dunes. In the springtime, when the bulb flowers were
in bloom, they went once more to the Dunes and to the little old town
where the Van Heigens lived. They were received with much ceremony by
Mijnheer and his wife, and entertained at a dinner which lasted from
four till half-past six. It is true that afterwards state had to be
lain aside, for Julia insisted on helping to wash the priceless
Nankeen china while her husband smoked long cigars with Mijnheer on
the veranda, but that was all her own fault. Denah came to tea
drinking, she and her lately-wed husband, the bashful son of a
well-to-do shipowner. She was very smiling and all bustling and
greatly pleased with herself and all things, and if she thought poorly
of Julia for washing the plates, she thought very well of the
glittering rings she had left on the veranda-table and well, too, of
her husband, who she recognised as the mysterious "man of good family"
they had seen on the day they drove to the wood. And afterwards when
the tea drinking was done and the dew was falling, Julia walked with
Joost among his flowers, and heard him speak of his hopes and
ambitions, and knew that in his work he had found all the satisfaction
that a man may reasonably hope for here.

Later, Julia and her husband walked through the tidy streets of the
town, looking in at lighted windows, listening to the patois of the
peasants and recalling past times. It was then that he told her how he
had that day tried to buy back the streaked daffodil.

"And Mijnheer would not sell it?" she asked.

"No," he answered; "not at any price, so I am afraid that you will
have to do without 'The Good Comrade' after all."

"I?" she said; "I can do quite well. Thank you for trying to get it;
all the same I am not sure I want it back."

"Do you not? Then I am quite sure that I do not, indeed, I rather
fancy I already have the real 'Good Comrade.'"

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