She tried to get her husband to speak of France, but some instinct soon made it clear to her that he wanted to forget it. He could not be induced to speak of his experiences, made light of his “whiff of gas,” but confessed it was hell all the time; he also said that the German was not a clean fighter. As he sat opposite to her, eating his supper, his reticence made it impossible for her to realize what he had been through. He did not seem to realize it himself, except that in a subtle way he was altogether changed.
He was eight days at home and they spent a lot of the time together. They had a new kind of intimacy; the world of men and affairs had altered for them both. Everything came to them at a fresh angle. They were dwellers in another atmosphere. The most commonplace actions meant much more; events once of comparatively large importance meant much less. She half suggested that they should go up on Sunday afternoon to Strathfieldsaye, but the idea evidently did not appeal to him and she did not press it. Still she threw out the hint, because it was an opportunity to let bygones be bygones and she was sure that he would meet with a good reception. A sense of justice impelled her to be grateful to her father, much as she disliked him; in his domineering way he had tried to make amends; all the same she was not sorry that Bill was determined to hold himself aloof. It was not exactly that he bore a grudge against her father; at the point he had reached men did not bear grudges, but he had some decided views on the matter and they gained in power by not being expressed.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, which was early closing day in Blackhampton, Bill insisted on taking Melia to the Art Gallery. It was in the historic low-roofed building in New Square—which dated from the Romans—known as the old Moot Hall. It was now the home of one of the finest collections of pictures in the country. Among ancient masterpieces and some modern ones were several characteristic examples of his friend, Stanning, R.A., whom he had carried dying into a dugout not four months ago.
Corporal Hollis had it from Sergeant Stanning’s own lips that the best picture he had ever painted was hung in the middle room, and that it was not the Sharrow at Corfield Weir, which the Corporal himself admired so much, but the smaller, less ambitious piece called, “The Leaves of the Tree”—a picture of the woods up at Dibley in the sunlight of October, stripped by the winds of autumn, with the bent figure in the foreground of a very old man raking the dead leaves together.
They had no difficulty in finding it. “As the leaves of the trees are the lives of men.” That legend on the gilt frame seemed to them both at that moment strangely, terribly prophetic. Bill did not tell Melia as they stood in front of the picture that he had risked his own life in a vain attempt to save the man who had painted it, nor did he tell her that the blood of the artist had dyed the sleeves of his tunic.
The large room was empty and they sat down solemnly on the settee in front of this canvas, looking at it in silence, yet as they did so holding the hand of each other like a pair of children. Once before had they sat there, in the early days of their marriage, when he had talked to her of those ambitions that were never to materialize. And now, again, with the spirit of peace upon him and stirred by old memories, he sighed to himself and spoke for a moment or two of what might have been. One of these days he had hoped to do something. He had always intended to do something but the time had slipped away.
They were still sitting there looking at the picture when two people came into the room. One was a commonplace elderly woman, the other a young man in khaki. Although they were totally unlike in the superficialities of outward bearing it was easy to tell that they were mother and son. His trained movements and upright carriage, his poise and alertness, were not able to conceal an odd resemblance to the wholly different person at his side.
William and Melia were concealed by the high-backed, wide-armed settee on which they sat; and as these two people came up the room and took up a position behind it, they did not seem to realize that they could be overheard.
“I want you, mother,” said the young man in an eager voice, “to look at what to my mind is the picture of this collection. Stand here and you’ll get it just right.”
The Corporal and his lady on the high-backed settee offered a silent prayer that the young man had as much wisdom and taste as the owner of such a clear, confident voice ought to have. “As the leaves of the tree are the lives of men.” The Corporal breathed more freely; the young man’s voice had not belied him. “Homer’s words.” He reeled off pat a large-sounding foreign language. “I want you to catch the ghost of the sun glancing through these wind-torn branches. You’ll get the light if you stand just here. Wonderful composition ... wonderful vision ... wonderful harmony ... wonderful everything. The big artists feel with their eyes.” It was charming to hear the voice in its enthusiasm. “They look behind the curtain of appearances as you might say. The life of man is but the shadow of a shadow ... you remember that bit of Lucretius I read you last night? Look at the figure in the foreground gathering the leaves. Modern critics say symbolism is not art, but it depends on how it’s done, doesn’t it? The eyes of the mind ... imagination ... and that’s the only key we have to the Riddle of the Sphinx.” He ran on and on, laughing like a child. “Look at his color. And how spacious!—imagination there!—the harmony, the drawing! A marvelous draughtsman. If he’d lived he’d have been a second Torrington, although you hear people say that Torrington couldn’t draw.” He laughed like a schoolboy and then his voice fell. “I like to think that Jim Stanning was one of us, that he was born among us, and it’s good to think that our old one-horse Art Committee has had the luck to buy his magnum opus without knowing it. They paid twice as much for Corfield Weir in the other room, which is not in the same class. However ... posterity....”