In this case, at any rate, it seemed to make a remarkable difference. There is no doubt it suited Bill. He looked so much more a man in it; his chest was bigger, his back was straighter, his hair was shorter, his chin was cleaner and the ragged mustache that used to be all over his face was now refined to the extreme point of military elegance. Really he came much nearer to the ideal of manhood there had been in Melia’s mind when she had first married him. Besides he was so much surer of himself, his voice was deeper, his bearing more authoritative, his talk was salted with infinitely more knowledge and wisdom.
When the time came for Private Hollis to return to his regiment, the boy who delivered the vegetables was left in charge of the shop, while Melia in Sunday attire went to see her man off at the Central Station. It was a compliment he had hardly looked for; all the same it was appreciated. Somehow it made a difference. Other wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts were thick on the ground for a similar purpose, but Private Hollis was of opinion that Melia with her serious face and a figure you couldn’t call stout and in a hat she had trimmed herself with black and white wings was somehow able to hold her own with the best of them.
Moreover they parted at the carriage door as if they meant something to each other now. It was a public place but he kissed her solemnly and she said, “You’ll write me a bit oftener, Bill, won’t you?” in the manner of the long ago. Then the train began to move, he waved a hand and she waved hers; and each trundled back alone to a hard life with its many duties, yet somehow, in a subtle way, the stronger and the happier for that brief interregnum.
Life had altered for them both in that short time. They saw each other with new eyes or perhaps with old eyes reawakened. Sixteen years had rubbed so much of the bloom off their romance that it was a miracle almost that they were able to renew it. Yet the delicate process was only just beginning. It was very odd, but the trite and difficult business of existence was colored now continually with new thoughts about each other. Neither had ever been a great hand at writing letters, but Bill suddenly burgeoned forth into four closely written pages weekly, and Melia, flattered but not to be outdone, burst out in equal volume.
His letters were really very interesting indeed and so were hers, although of course in an entirely different way. She was kept abreast of the military situation and the latest Service gossip, with spicy yarns of the Toffs with whom he rubbed shoulders as an equal in the B.B., not omitting the details of an ever-ripening friendship with Private Stanning, who, however, was soon to acquire the rank of a full corporal. Melia, of course, had not the advantage of this range of information or contiguity to high affairs, nor did her letters sparkle with soldierly flashes of wit and audacity, but week by week they gave a conscientious account of the state of the business, of sales and purchases, of current prices and money outstanding, all in the manner of a careful bookkeeper, who, now she had been put on her mettle, was able and willing to show that the root of the matter was in her.
Bill, in consequence, had to own that the business in all its luckless history had never been so flourishing. They didn’t like admitting it, but in their hearts they knew that this new prosperity was directly due to “the damned interference” (military phrase) of the august proprietor of the Duke of Wellington. Some men are hoo-doos, they are born under the wrong set of planets; whatever they do or refrain from doing turns out equally unwise. W. Hollis Fruiterer had always been one of that kind. If he bought a barrel of Ribstone Pippins they went bad before he could sell them, if he bought William pears they refused to ripen, if he bought peas or runner beans he would have done better with gooseberries or tomatoes; anything he stocked in profitable quantities was bound to be left on his hands. But the lord of Strathfieldsaye was another kind of man altogether. He simply couldn’t do wrong when it came to a question of barter. Up to a point a matter of judgment, no doubt, but “judgment” does not altogether explain it. There is a subtle something, over and beyond all mundane wisdom, that confers upon some men the Midas touch. Everything they handle turns to gold. Josiah Munt was notoriously one of that kind.
Certainly from the day he touched the moribund business of W. Hollis Fruiterer with his magic wand, it took a remarkable turn for the better. Mr. Munt’s own explanation of the phenomenon was that for the first time in its history it was run on sound business lines. That had something to do with the mystery of course; not only was Josiah a man of method and foresight, he was also a man of capital. Money makes money all the world over; and of that fact Josiah’s ever-growing store was a shining proof.
Not until the middle of the summer did Bill get leave again. And then there was a special reason for it. The Battalion had been ordered to France. That was an epic Saturday evening in July when he came home with full kit, brown as a bean, hard as a nail, in rare fighting trim. Time was his own until the Thursday following, when he had to go to Southampton to join the Chaps.
Martial his bearing at Christmas, but it was nothing to what it was now. There seemed to be a consciousness of power about him. For one thing he was wearing the stripe of a lance corporal. Then, too, he was a small man, and, as biologists know, small men always have a knack of looking bigger than they are really. Physically speaking, great men are generally on the small side, perhaps for the reason that they have more vitality. Certainly Corporal Hollis, on the eve of his Odyssey, looked more important than the neighbors ever thought possible. Poor Melia began to wonder if she would be able to live up to him.
Melia had never been to London and when Bill proposed that she should accompany him to the metropolis and see him off from Waterloo the suggestion came as quite a shock to a conservative nature. It meant almost as much as a journey to the middle of Africa or the wilds of the Caucasus to more traveled people. She was not easily fluttered; hers was a mind of the slow-moving sort, but it was only after a night and a day, fraught with grave questionings, that she finally consented to do so.