The attendant Genie had to be watchful indeed to prevent their going all round London en route from Euston to Waterloo, but it was so alive to its duties that they were only once baffled and then but temporarily. Thus in the end they found themselves on a seat on Platform Six with a full hour to wait for the Southampton train.
She left him at the carriage door, a few minutes before he was due out on his own grim journey, so that she might have plenty of time to catch the train for the north. Minute instructions had to be given to enable her to do this, for London is a bewildering maze to those not up to its ways. But the Corporal’s lady had a typical Blackhampton head, a thing cool, resolute, hardy in the presence of any severe demand upon it; and he was quite sure, and she was quite sure, that she would be able to catch the 8:55 from Euston, no matter what traps were laid for her.
It was a very simple good-by, but yet they were torn by it in a way they had hardly expected. She with her worn face and tired eyes was all there was to hold him to life—she and a terrible, impersonal sense of duty which seemed to frighten him almost. As he watched the drab figure disappear among the crowd on the long platform he couldn’t help wondering....
But it was no use wondering. He must set his teeth and get his head down and try to stick it no matter what the dark fates had in store.
XXVI
THE Corporal even at his best was not a great hand at writing letters. And the series he wrote from France did not flatter his powers. Really they told hardly anything and that which they did tell might have been far more vividly rendered. Still in the eyes of Melia they were precious; and they did something to soften months of loneliness and toil.
One other gleam there was in that sore time; a fitful one, no doubt, and the ray it cast upon her life so dubious, that, all things considered, it meant small comfort. Yet, perhaps, it may have been wrong not to accept this doubtful boon more gratefully.
One morning, about a fortnight after Bill’s departure for France, her father paid one of his periodical visits to Love Lane. Since W. Hollis Fruiterer had taken a turn for the better he was content with a monthly survey instead of a weekly one in order to assure himself that the enterprise was shipshape and its affairs in order.