“No, Bill.”
“Yes. Fairation!” He gave one deep sniff at the glass he had measured already with a care half reverent, half comic. “By Gum, it’s prime.” In spite of protests he poured out another glass. “Fairation! Better drink the health, eh, of the Old Un as it’s Christmas Day.”
They honored the Old Un discreetly, in a modest sip of a wine which of itself could not have denied him a claim to honor, and then with equal modesty they drank to each other.
Melia then had an inspiration, though not subject to them as a rule, and due in this case, no doubt, to the juice of the grape. She procured a plate full of walnuts from beyond the curtained door and they entered on a further phase of discreet festivity. Bill insisted on cracking three nuts and peeling them for her with his own delicately accomplished fingers; and in the process he complimented her on the Christmas fare and hoped piously that “the Chaps had had half as good.”
Mention of the Chaps moved him for the first time to reminiscence. As was to be expected, the Blackhampton Battalion was one of the wonders of the world. To begin with, its members were nearly all gentlemen. All the nobs of the town under forty were tommies in the B.B. It was very remarkable that it should be so, but there the fact was. And it made men of his sort who liked to think a bit when they had the time to spare feel regular democratic when they saw real toffs like Lawyer Mossop’s nephew, Marling the barrister, carting manure, or the son of Sir Reuben Jope on his knees scrubbing the floor of the sergeants’ mess.
To mix in such company was a rare opportunity for a man who knew how to use it. Melia had noted already that Bill had learned to express himself better, that his conversation was at a higher level and that it was full of new ideas. And these facts were never so palpable as when, slowly and solemnly, a furtive light of humor in his blue eyes, he went on to tell of his great Bloomer.
It seemed that the cubicle next to his was occupied by a man named Stanning, and he had got to be rather pals with him. Stanning was a serious sort of cove with hair turning gray at the temples, but Private Hollis had been attracted to him because he was one of the right sort and because it was clear from his talk that he had thought and seen a bit. He was a good kind of man to talk to, a sympathetic sort of card, one of those who made you feel that you had things in common.
Private Hollis gradually got so “thick” with Private Stanning that they began to discuss things in an intellectual way, politics one time, education another, so on and so on, until one evening they found themselves talking of Art. As Melia knew, Private Hollis had a feeling for Art. Many an hour had he spent in the City Museum, looking at its collection of famous pictures; and he told Private Stanning of the water color he had done of the Sharrow at Corfield Weir, inspired by the great work on the same subject of his celebrated namesake Stanning, R.A., which had been bought by the City Authorities for the fabulous sum of a thousand guineas....
Over the walnuts and the wine Private Hollis began to chuckle hugely as his great Bloomer came back to his mind in all its entrancing details....
P.H. When I first see the price mentioned in the Evening Star I says to my Missus that’s the way they chuck public money about. No picture was never painted, not a Hangelo nor even a Lord Leighton that was ever worth a thousand guineas. It’s a fancy price.