Dedication
To the memory of H.E. in abiding friendship
Windrush Hill
June 1940
I
Reunion
The train was nearing its destination and the three men lighted cigarettes and fixed their eyes on the swiftly passing fields, expectant of the first glimpse of the town. The expressions on their faces were remarkably different. Their very attitudes showed something of the contrast of their feelings. For two, it was a return; for one, the introduction to a new country. All three were in khaki. One wore the uniform of a captain, one of a sergeant, one of a private. The last sat by himself and, even though he stared through the window, his ears were alert for anything the others might say. He sat, tense and neat-looking, in spite of the clumsy cut of his uniform. He had mouse-coloured hair, pale eyes with fine lines about them, an inquisitive nose, an impudent mouth, and a jutting, obstinate chin. His name was John Wragge.
The sergeant, Maurice Vaughan, was thirty-four and heavy for his age. His brows were dawn together by a deep line above his fine grey eyes. His mouth wore a look of somewhat sullen endurance but had lighted boyishly when he smiled as he was now doing. He had had an officers’ training course before leaving Canada but, in England, had reverted in order to get to the front. He had risen to the rank of sergeant, been twice wounded and brought back with him, as souvenir of the War, a crippled hand which wore a leather bandage, and which he was just beginning to use again, clumsily and not without pain.
The third member of the party was Renny Whiteoak, lifelong friend of Vaughan and two years his junior, being just past thirty. He had been educated in a military college and, at the outbreak of the war, joined the Buffs, a regiment with which his family had long been associated. He had been awarded the DSO for an act of distinguished bravery. The officer’s uniform well suited his lean body of which the flesh seemed rather a weathered and durable sheath for the active muscles beneath, than the evidence of good nourishment. His strong, aquiline profile, his close-cut dark-red hair, his vivid brown eyes added to the impression of nervous vitality. He was saying:
“I’ll bet that the first person to meet me, inside the house, will be the old lady. When the door opens there she’ll be, with both arms stretched out to hug me.”
Maurice Vaughan smiled. “I can just see her. What a fine woman she is for her age! As a matter of fact, for any age. I wonder if she’s failed much while you’ve been away. Four years is a long time for a person of ninety. She is that, isn’t she?”
“She’ll be ninety-four next September. But I don’t think she’s failed. The last letter I had from her was full of news about the family. And it was perfectly legible, except toward the end. She said how glad she was spring had come. She never sets foot outdoors till the snow has gone.”
“It must be nice,” said Maurice, “to know that such a welcome is waiting for you. Relations of all ages — right down to the kid you’ve never seen.”
He instantly wished he had not said that. It would bring to Renny’s mind the loss of his father and his stepmother while he was away. His father had died before he had been absent a year. His stepmother had survived the birth of her last child for only a few weeks. Renny Whiteoak, however, answered composedly:
“Yes, it is nice.” His face softened and he added — “I’m keen to see the youngster. Wakefield they named him. His mother’s maiden name.”
“I might as well,” said Maurice, “have been killed for all the rejoicing there will be over my homecoming.”
His friend drew down his mobile brows and bit his lip in embarrassment. He could think of nothing to say for a moment, then he got out:
“I’m mighty glad you’re here.”
Still embarrassed he turned to Wragge. “What do you think of this country?”
Wragge had, before the War, been a cellarman in a London wholesale wine merchant’s establishment. He answered with a grin:
“Well, sir, I used to spend my days underground before I went to France. After that I lived in the trenches. I’m not much of a judge of landscapes but those rail fences do look funny after ’edges and walls.”
“They look good to me.”
“I expect they do, sir. It’s all wot you’re used to. That’s a pretty bit of woodland there. It’s a nice colour.”
“Those are young maples, just coming into leaf. The tips are red. Look, Maurice.”
“Yes, I was just admiring them. And the blue of the sky.”
After a pause Renny said — “There’s young Pheasant. She’ll be glad to see you.”
“I don’t think so. Why should she? We have been separated for four years, and she’s only twelve now.”
“But you’ve written, haven’t you?”
“I’ve sent her a few picture postcards.”
“Christmas presents?”
“I wasn’t where I could buy anything suitable. I didn’t think of it and that’s the truth.”
“Well — I’ll say you’re the world’s worst father! If I had a kid — ” He saw that Wragge was straining to hear what was said and broke off with a frown.
“I know — I know,” said Maurice. He nervously fingered the leather bandage on his maimed hand and his mind turned back, in self-condemnation not untouched by self-pity, to the time of his early manhood when he had been engaged to Renny’s sister, Meg. Meg and he had been perfectly suited to each other, he was sure of that. Both families had been delighted by the prospective union. He had wrecked it, made a fool of himself, by getting entangled in a momentary passion for the niece of the village dressmaker.
It was an experience he had thought to leave behind undiscovered, except as it had affected his own maturity. But a child had been born of those few meetings in a summer wood. The girl had taken the child to his parents’ house. Maurice had confessed his fatherhood. The engagement had been broken off by Meg who ever since had been inaccessible to him as if she lived in a foreign country and knew no word nor wanted to know a word of the language he spoke.
That Maurice could continue to love Meg after twelve years in such a situation was a miracle to Renny, and not an edifying one. Maurice should have broken down her resentment by a more flamboyant constancy or simply found someone else to love, someone who would be a mother to his child. Still, Renny cherished Maurice’s fidelity as something unique, the proof of Meg’s desirability, even a tribute to the Whiteoak family.
He leaned toward his friend and said in an undertone — “Perhaps it will be different with you and Meg now — the War and all that … your being wounded … Well, I think you ought to fix it up somehow.”
“God, I should like to!” said Maurice, “but I have no hope at all.”
A movement was going through the passengers, a tentative reaching out toward their belongings, a searching of the narrowing fields for the first ugly intrusion of suburbs.
A few minutes more and they were indeed arriving. The three men in uniform stood up, put on their caps with characteristic gestures; Wragge, the Cockney, slapping on his jauntily, as though with it on one side of his head he was prepared for anything; Maurice Vaughan, deliberately, as if he assumed with it the burden of what lay ahead; Renny Whiteoak, with a decisive movement in which his hair seemed to join, clinging against the rim of the cap as though to clamp it the more closely to the sharply sculptured outline of his head.
He was the first of the three to stride through the railway station, eager to see who was there