CHAPTER XXIX

There were many men in Wilton who had looked at their children’s graves, little banks of green turf ranged on the hill-side where the winds wailed in winter like the mythical spirits of the damned. A gaunt, graceless place, this cemetery, a place where the insignificant dead lived only in the few notches of a mason’s chisel upon stone. A high yellow brick wall encompassed its many acres. Immediately within the iron gates stood a tin chapel, a building that might have stood for the Temple of Ugliness, the deity of commercialized towns. On either side of the main walk a row of sickly aspens lifted their slender branches against a hueless sky.

To the man and the woman who stood in one corner of this burial-ground, looking down upon a grave that had been but lately banked with turf, there was an infinite and sordid sadness in the scene. Two graves, not ten yards away, had been filled in but the day before, and the grass was caked and stained with yellow clay. Near them stood the black wooden shelter used by the officiating priest in dirty weather. A few wreaths, sodden, rain-drenched, the flowers already turning brown, seemed to mock the hands that had placed them there.

White headstones everywhere; a few obelisks; a few plain wooden crosses; rank mounds where no name lingered after death. Ever and again the thin clink of the hopeless chapel bell. A gray sky merging into a wet, gray landscape. In the valley—Wilton, prostrate under mist and smoke.

James Murchison, standing bareheaded before Gwen’s grave, gazed at the wet turf with the eyes of a man who saw more beneath it than mere lifeless clay. There was nothing of rebellion in the pose of the tall figure—rather, the slight stoop of one poring over some rare book with the reverence of him who reads to learn.

For Catherine there was no consciousness of penance as she stood beside him, silent and distant-eyed. Her hands were clasped together under her cloak. She stood as one waiting, heart heavy, yet ready to awake to the new life that opens even for those who grieve.

There were not a few such groups scattered about this upland burial-ground, colorless, subdued figures seen dimly through the drizzling mist of rain. Quite near to Murchison a working-man was arranging a few flowers in a large white jam-pot; the grave, by the name on the headstone, was the grave of his wife. A few children, who had wandered up to see some funeral, were playing “touch wood” between the aspens of the main walk. There was an irresponsible callousness in their shrill, slum-hardened voices. To them this place of Death was but a field to play in.

Murchison had turned from Gwen’s grave, and was looking at his wife. There seemed some bond more sacred between them now that they had shared both life and death in the body of their child.

“You are cold, dear.”

He touched her cheek with his hand as he turned up the collar of her cloak. Her hair was wet and a-glisten with the rain, her face cold like the face of one fresh from the breath of an autumn sea.

“Only my skin.”

“The wind is keen, though. It is time we turned back home.”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye, my child.”

He spoke the words in a whisper as they moved away from the corner.

Before them, seen dimly through a haze of rain, lay the colliery town, a vague splash of darkness in the valley. Here and there a tall chimney stood trailing smoke, or the faint glow of a fire gave a thin opalescence to the shell of mist. Sounds, faint and far, yet full of the significance of labor, drifted up the bleak slopes of the hillside, like the sounds from ships sailing a foggy sea. The rattle of a train, the shriek of a steam-whistle, the slow strokes of some great clock striking the hour.

James Murchison’s eyes were fixed upon this town beside the pit mouths, this pool of poverty and toil, where the eddies of effort never ceased upon the surface. It was strange to him, this colliery town, and yet familiar. Always would his manhood yearn towards it because of the dear dead, even though its memories were hateful to him, full of the bitterness of ignominy and pain.

Gwen’s death had come to Murchison as a sudden silence, a strange void in the hurrying entities of life. It was as though the passing of this child had changed the phenomena of existence for him, and given a new rhythm to the pulse of Time. He had become aware of a new setting to life, even as a man who has walked the same road day by day discovers on some winter dawn a fresh and unearthly beauty in the scene. He felt an unsolved newness in his being, a solemnity such as those who have looked upon the dead must feel. And no strong nature can pass through such a phase without creating inward energy and power. Sorrow, like winter, may be but a season of repose, troubled and drear perhaps, but moving towards the miracle of spring.

Wilton cemetery, with its zinc-roofed chapel, its yellow walls and iron gates, lay behind them, while the dim horizon ran in a gray blur along the hills. Husband and wife walked for a time in silence, for each had a burden of deep thought to bear.

It was the man who spoke first, quietly, and with restraint, and yet with something of the fierce spirit of an outcast Cain visible upon his face.

“I have been thinking of what I said to you last night.”

She was looking at him with a brave clearness of the eyes.

“I suppose sensible people would call such a venture—mad.”

“We are often strongest, dear, when we are most mad.”

He swung on beside her, his eyes at gaze.

“The madness of a forlorn hope. No, it is not that. I have not any of the impudence of the adventurer. It is something more solemn, more grim, more for a final end.”

“Beloved, I understand.”

“Are you not afraid for me?”

“No, no.”

She put her hand under his arm.

“God give us both courage, dear,” she said.

They had reached the outskirts of Wilton, and the ugliness of the place was less visible in these outworks of the town. The streets had something of the quaintness of antiquity about them, for this was a part of the real Wilton, an old English townlet that had been gripped and strangled by the decapod of the pits.

“About your mother’s money, Kate.”

The rumble of a passing van compelled silence for a moment.

“You must retain the whole control.”

“I?”

“Yes.”

He heard a woman’s unwillingness in her voice.

“It is my wish, dear. I shall need a certain sum to start with, but my life-insurance can be made a security for that.”

“James!”

Her face reproached him.

“Are we so little married that what is mine is not yours also?”

“It is because you are my wife, Kate, that I consider these things. Your mother was wise, though her instructions do not flatter me. Legally, I cannot touch a single penny.”

She looked troubled, and a little impatient.

“I shall hate the money—if—no, I don’t mean that. But, dear,” and she drew very close to him in the twilight of the streets, “it will make no difference. You will not feel—?”

“Feel, Kate?”

“That it is mine, and not yours. You know, dear, what I mean. I don’t want to think—to think that you will feel as though you had to ask.”

They looked, man and wife, into each other’s eyes.

“I shall ask, Kate, because—”

“Because?”

“You are what you are. It will not hurt me to remember that the stuff is yours.”

Now, quite an hour ago a battered and moth-eaten cab had deposited a stout lady on the doorstep of Clovelly. The stout lady had a round white face that beamed sympathetically from under the arch of a rather grotesque bonnet. A girl, hired for the month, and dressed in a makeshift black frock, had opened the door three inches to Miss Carmagee. There had been a confidential discussion between these two, the girl letting the gap between door and door-post increase before the lady in the grotesque bonnet. The doctor and the “missus” were out, and Master Jack having tea at a friend’s house in the next street. So much Miss Carmagee had learned before she had been admitted to the little front room.

It was quite dusk when Catherine and her husband turned in at the garden gate. The blinds were down, the gas lit. Murchison opened the front door with his key, remembering, as he ever remembered, the golden head that would shine no more for him in that diminutive, dreary house.

He was hanging his coat on a peg in the passage, when he heard a sharp cry from Catherine, who had entered the front room. There was the rustling of skirts, the sound of an inarticulate greeting between two eager friends.

No one could have doubted Miss Carmagee’s solid identity. She was resting her hands on Catherine’s shoulders. They had kissed each other like mother and child.

“Why, when did you come? We had no letter. James, James—”

Murchison found them holding hands. There were tears in Miss Carmagee’s mild blue eyes. Warned of her coming, he might have shirked the meeting with the pride of a man too sensitive towards the past. But Miss Carmagee in the flesh, motherly and very gentle, with Catherine’s kisses warm upon her face, stood for nothing that was critical, or chilling to the heart.

He met her with open hands.

“You have taken us by surprise.”

Miss Phyllis’s eyes were on the sad, memory-shadowed face.

“I had to come,” and her voice failed her a little. “I sha’n’t worry you; we are old friends.”

She put up her benign and ugly face, as though the privilege of a mother belonged to her by nature.

“I have felt it all so much.”

A flash of infinite yearning leaped up and passed in the man’s eyes.

“You must be tired,” he said, clinging to commonplaces. “Have they sent your luggage up?”

Miss Carmagee sank into a chair.

“I left it at the hotel. I’m not going to be a worry.”

“Worry!”

“Of course not, child.”

“Oh—but we must have you here. James—”

“My dear,” and the substantial nature of the old lady’s person seemed to become evident, “I insist on sleeping there to-night. Now, humor me, or I shall feel myself a nuisance.”

Miss Carmagee’s solidity of will made her contention impregnable. Moreover, the common-sense view she took of the matter boasted a large element of discretion. People who live in a small house on one hundred and sixty pounds a year cannot be expected to be prepared for social emergencies. Even a philosopher is limited by the contents of his larder, and Miss Carmagee was one of those excellent women whose philosophy takes note of the trivial things of life—pots, pans, and linen, the cold end of mutton, a rice-pudding to supply three. It is truly regrettable that a man’s Promethean spirit should be bound down by such contemptible trifles. Yet a tactful refusal to share a suet-pudding may be worth more than the wittiest epigram ever made.

Miss Carmagee and Catherine spent an hour alone together that evening, for Murchison had patients waiting for him at Dr. Tugler’s surgery in Wilton High Street. Master Jack had returned from his tea-party, to be hugged, presented with a box of soldiers, a clasp-knife, and a prayer-book, and then hurried off to bed. The soldiers and the knife shared the sheets with him; the prayer-book (amiable aunts forgive!) was left derelict under an arm-chair.

But the great event that night for these two women, such contrasts and yet so alike in the deeper things of the soul, came with that communing together before the fire, the lights turned low, the room in shadow. It was somewhile before Miss Carmagee approached the purpose that had brought her across England with bag and baggage. She was a woman of tact, and it is not easy to be a partisan at times without wounding those whom we wish to help.

The elder woman had hardly broached the subject, before Catherine, sitting on a cushion beside Miss Carmagee’s chair, turned from the fire-light with an eager lifting of the head.

“Why, it was only yesterday that James spoke to me of such a plan.”

“To return to us?”

“Yes, and win back what he lost.”

Miss Carmagee saw her way more clearly.

“You know, child, you have many friends.”

“I?”

“Yes, and your husband also. Porteus and I discussed the matter. You must not think us busybodies, dear.”

A kiss was the surest answer.

“I was afraid when James first spoke of it.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes,” and she colored; “it was cowardly of me, but I remembered how we left the place. It will be an ordeal. We shall have to walk through fire together. But still—”

“Well, child,” and Miss Carmagee let her have her say.

“Still, there is a greatness in the plan that takes my heart. We women love our husbands to be brave. I know what it will mean to James. He says that many people will think him mad.”

Miss Carmagee sat stroking one of Catherine’s hands.

“It is the right kind of madness,” she said, softly.

“To rise above public opinion?”

“Yes, when we are in the right.”

They sat for a while in silence, looking into the fire, Catherine’s head against Miss Carmagee’s shoulder. Above, in the nursery, Jack Murchison was trying his new knife on the rail of a bedroom chair. He had crept out of bed, rummaged up some matches, and lit the gas. The boy had no eyes for the empty cot in the far corner of the room. He had not yet grasped what the loss of a life in the home meant.

“I want you to promise me something, dear.”

Miss Carmagee’s hand touched the mother’s hair.

“Yes?”

“I want you to tell me frankly—about the money.”

Catherine looked up into the benign, white face.

“You mean—?”

“I mean, dear, that there is a lot of dusting and polishing to be done before the lawyers allow people to step into their own shoes. I have a pair that I could lend you for a year or so.”

Catherine smiled at the simile, despite the occasion. Miss Carmagee’s shoes were as large and generous as her heart.

“It is too good of you. They tell me I have inherited property that will bring in an income of seven to eight hundred a year. I don’t think—”

“Well?”

“That we could let you be so generous.”

Miss Carmagee leaned forward in her chair.

“Generous? It is not generous, dear; a mere matter of convenience.”

“You call it merely ‘convenience’?”

“No, child, I ought to call it a blessing to me, a true blessing. Don’t you understand that it would make me very happy?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“That’s right.”

“How good and kind you are.”

“Nonsense, dear, nonsense.”