The Undefeated

by J. C. Snaith

About once a fortnight or so life was made a bit lighter for her by a penciled scrawl from somewhere in France. Bill’s letters told surprisingly little, yet he maintained a kind of grim cheeriness and seemed more concerned for the life she might be leading than for anything that was happening to himself. He was very grateful for the small comforts she sent him from time to time, he was much interested in the continued prosperity of the business, and he mentioned with evident pleasure that her mother had sent him a pair of socks and a comforter she had knitted herself, also a “nice letter.”

From his mother-in-law, whom Bill had always suspected of being a good sort at heart, “if the Old Un would give her a chance,” he had an account of Melia’s visit to Strathfieldsaye. Her mother said what pleasure it would give her father if she would go there every Sunday. The statement was incredible on the face of it; Bill frankly didn’t know what to think, but there it was. No doubt the old girl meant kindly. Perhaps it was her idea of bucking him up.

In his letters to Melia he made no comment on the life he was leading, but in one he told her that they had moved up into the Line; in another that “the Boche had got it in the neck”; in another that “he had got the rheumatics so that he could hardly move,” but that he meant to carry on as long as possible, adding, “We are very short of men.”

Somehow the letters of that dark winter made her more proud than ever of this man of hers. There was a determined note of quiet cheerfulness that she had never known in him before. Instead of the eternal grumbling that had done so much to embitter her, there was a tone of whimsical humor which at a time made her laugh, although as a general rule few people found it harder than she did to laugh at anything. She had little imagination, still less of the penetration of mind that goes with it, but there was one phrase he used that was hard to forget. In one letter he was tempted to complain that the Boche had taken to raiding them in the middle of the night, but he added a postscript, “It’s no use growsing here.”

Somehow that phrase stuck in her mind. When she rose before daylight in the bitter mornings of midwinter to light the kitchen fire and prepare a meal she would have to eat alone, she would remember those words which he of all men had used, he who was a born growser if ever there was one. “It’s no use growsing here.” She tried to take in their meaning, but the task was not easy. He wrote so cheerfully that he could hardly mean what he said. And it was his nearest approach to complaint, he whose life in peace time had been one long complaint. Now and again she read in the Tribune of things that made her shiver. Sometimes in the winter darkness she awoke with these things in her mind. Bill’s letters, however, gave no details. If he spoke of “a scrap,” he did so casually, without embroidery, yet she remembered that once when he had cut his thumb, not very badly, he fainted at the sight of blood.

Such letters were a puzzle; they told so little. She couldn’t make them out. Reading between the lines, he seemed to be enjoying life more than he had ever done, he seemed to realize the humor of it more. It was very strange that it should be so, especially on the part of one who had always taken things so hard. In one letter he said that spring was coming and that the look of the sky made him think of the crocuses along Sharrow Lane, and then added as a brief postscript, “Stanning’s gone.”

Some weeks later he wrote from the Base to say that “he had had a whiff of gas, nothing to speak of,” but that he was out of the Line for a bit. And then after a cheerful letter or two in the meantime, he wrote a month later to say that he had got leave for ten days and that he was coming home.

It was the middle of June when he turned up in Love Lane late one evening, without notice, laden like a beast of burden, looking very brown and well but terribly worn and shabby. So much had he changed in appearance that Melia felt it would have been easy to pass him in the street without recognizing him. He was thin and gray, even his features, and particularly his eyes, seemed to have altered. The tone of his voice was different; he spoke in a different way; the words and phrases he used were not those of the William Hollis she had always known.

He was glad to be back in his home, if only for a few days, and the sight of him with his heavy pack and his gas mask and his helmet laid on the new linoleum in the little sitting room behind the shop gave her a deeper pleasure than anything life had offered her so far. Strange as he was, new almost to the point of being somebody else, the mere sight of him thrilled her. She was thrilled to the verge of happiness. It was something beyond any previous emotion. Long ago she had given up believing that ever again he would appeal to her in the way of that brief time which had been once and had passed so soon.

He took off his heavy boots and lit his pipe and seemed childishly glad to be home again. But he didn’t talk much. He sighed luxuriously and smiled at her in his odd new way, yet he was interested in the excellent supper she gave him presently and in the account she furnished of the business which was still on an ascending curve of prosperity. The old wound, still unhealed, would not allow her to praise her father, but there was more than one instance to offer of that tardy repentance; and it was hard to repress a note of pride when she announced that he was now Mayor of Blackhampton and by all accounts a good one.