The Trumpet—Rabindranath Tagore.

CONTENTS

PART I
PAGE
Reward of Battle[1]
PART II
Thank-Offering[69]
PART III
The Temple[119]
PART IV
The Trumpet[165]

PART I
REWARD OF BATTLE

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Clapham got up on that fine September morning like some king of the East going forth to Bethlehem. She awoke with a heady sense of excitement and power, not wearily, and with a dulled brain, as she so often did now that she was beginning to grow old, but with vivid perceptions and a throbbing heart. First of all, opening her eyes on the sunny square of her little window, she was conscious of actual enrichment, as if the sunshine itself were a tangible personal gift. To the pleasure of this was added the happy anticipation of something not yet quite within reach, thrilling her nerves as they had not been thrilled for years. Then, as the thought of what the day might possibly bring flashed upon her in full force, she warmed from head to foot in a passion of exultation, wonder and grateful joy.

She started up presently to peer at the little clock by the bedside, and then remembered that she had no engagement, and sank back happily. Had not the Vicar’s wife called, only the evening before, to inform her that she would not want her to-day? Mrs. Clapham chuckled as she lay in bed, telling herself that if Mrs. Wrench did not have her to-day, in all probability she would never have her again at all.

Mrs. Wrench, she remembered now, had been called to London to her daughter’s wedding, one of those nowadays weddings which could only be called catching a bird on the wing—snapping up a sailor when he was a few days in port, or a soldier when the War Office happened to take its eye off him for a couple of minutes. The actual war was over, of course, but the war weddings still continued. In Mrs. Clapham’s young days weddings were things which took years to come to their full conclusion, slowly ripening to their end like mellowing cheeses or maturing port. The weddings of these days seemed to her like hastily-tossed pancakes by comparison; half-cooked efforts which had only a poor choice at the best between the frying-pan and the fire.

She was pleased for Miss Marigold, however, that she had succeeded in catching her bird at last. It was just as well not to waste any time, seeing how long she had been about it. Why, she was the same age as Mrs. Clapham’s daughter Tibbie, who had been married these last eight years, and a widow for going on two! Mrs. Clapham experienced the conscious superiority of the mother whose daughter has long since been disposed of in no matter what unfortunate circumstances. She had always been perfectly convinced that the Vicar’s wife was jealous because Tibbie had got off first, and had even rallied her about it in her jolly, good-tempered fashion. Now, however, Miss Marigold had suddenly seen her way towards making things even, and Mrs. Wrench had rushed off in a fluster to see her do it.

Looking in, the evening before, in order to deliver her message, she had been so full of the impending change in Miss Marigold’s life that she had quite forgotten the impending change in Mrs. Clapham’s. Seated in the armchair that had been made by the long-departed Jonty Clapham, she had talked excitedly of her daughter in the Government office, who would be snatched out of it, pen in hand, so to speak, to be married to a bridegroom who, metaphorically, would still have one foot on his ship. She had also wept a little in the way that women and mothers have, and Mrs. Clapham, whose own tears over a daughter’s bridal had been shed so many superior years before, had consoled her with words of sympathy and wisdom, and her well-known kindly laugh. Presently Mrs. Wrench had dried her tears and begun to tell her about her daughter’s frocks, and Mrs. Clapham, whose Tibbie happened to be a dressmaker by profession, was able to shine a second time as a qualified judge. But never once during the conversation had she as much as hinted at her own bright hope which was so near its wonderful fulfilment. She had just allowed Mrs. Wrench to babble happily on, and kept her own thoughts hugged to herself where they lay so snug and warm.