Echoes of the War by Sir James Matthew Barrie (hardest books to read txt) 📖

them good-night and goes. She likes Mr. Don, she strokes his hand when he holds it out to her, but she can't help saying, 'Oh, Mr. Don, how could you?'

ROGERS. 'I think we must all want to be alone after such an evening. I shall say good-night, Mrs. Don.'

MAJOR. 'Same here. I go your way, Rogers, but you will find me a silent companion. One doesn't want to talk ordinary things to-night. Rather not. Thanks, awfully.'

ROGERS. 'Good-night, Don. It's a pity, you know; a bit hard on your wife.'

MR. DON. 'Good-night, Rogers. Good-night, Major.'

The husband and wife, left together, have not much to say to each other. He is depressed because he has spoilt things for her. She is not angry. She knows that he can't help being as he is, and that there are fine spaces in her mind where his thoughts can never walk with her. But she would forgive him seventy times seven because he is her husband. She is standing looking at a case of fishing-rods against the wall. There is a Jock Scott still sticking in one of them. Mr. Don says, as if somehow they were evidence against him:

'Dick's fishing-rods.'

She says forgivingly, 'I hope you don't mind my keeping them in the studio, Robert. They are sacred things to _me_.'

'That's all right, Grace.'

'I think I shall go to Laura now.'

'Yes,' in his inexpressive way.

'Poor child!'

'I'm afraid I hurt her.'

'Dick wouldn't have liked it--but Dick's gone.' She looks a little wonderingly at him. After all these years, she can sometimes wonder a little still. 'I suppose you will resume your evening paper!'

He answers quietly, but with the noble doggedness which is the reason why we write this chapter in his life. 'Why not, Grace?'

She considers, for she is so sure that she must know the answer better than he. 'I suppose it is just that a son is so much more to a mother than to a father.'

'I daresay.'

A little gust of passion shakes her. 'How you can read about the war nowadays!'

He says firmly to her--he has had to say it a good many times to himself, 'I'm not going to give in.' But he adds, 'I am so sorry I was in the way, Grace. I wasn't scouting you, or anything of that sort. It's just that I can't believe in it.'

'Ah, Robert, you would believe if Dick had been to you what he was to me.'

'I don't know.'

'In a sense you may be glad that you don't miss him in the way I do.'

'Yes, perhaps.'

'Good-night, Robert.'

'Good-night, dear.'

He is alone now. He stands fingering the fishing-rods tenderly, then wanders back into the ingle-nook. In the room we could scarcely see him, for it has gone slowly dark there, a grey darkness, as if the lamp, though still burning, was becoming unable to shed light. Through the greyness we see him very well beyond it in the glow of the fire. He sits on the settle and tries to read his paper. He breaks down. He is a pitiful lonely man.

In the silence something happens. A well-remembered voice says, 'Father.' Mr. Don looks into the greyness from which this voice comes, and he sees his son. We see no one, but we are to understand that, to Mr. Don, Dick is standing there in his habit as he lived. He goes to his boy.

'Dick!'

'I have come to sit with you for a bit, father.'

It is the gay, young, careless voice.

'It's you, Dick; it's you!'

'It's me all right, father. I say, don't be startled, or anything of that kind. We don't like that.'

'My boy!'

Evidently Dick is the taller, for Mr. Don has to look up to him. He puts his hands on the boy's shoulders.

'How am I looking, father?'

'You haven't altered, Dick.'

'Rather not. It's jolly to see the old studio again!' In a cajoling voice, 'I say, father, don't fuss. Let us be our ordinary selves, won't you?'

'I'll try, I'll try. You didn't say you had come to sit with _me_, Dick? Not with _me_!'

'Rather!'

'But your mother----'

'It's you I want.'

'Me?'

'We can only come to one, you see.'

'Then why me?'

'That's the reason.' He is evidently moving about, looking curiously at old acquaintances. 'Hello, here's your old jacket, greasier than ever!'

'Me? But, Dick, it is as if you had forgotten. It was your mother who was everything to you. It can't be you if you have forgotten that. I used to feel so out of it; but, of course, you didn't know.'

'I didn't know it till lately, father; but heaps of things that I didn't know once are clear to me now. I didn't know that you were the one who would miss me most; but I know now.'

Though the voice is as boyish as ever, there is a new note in it of which his father is aware. Dick may not have grown much wiser, but whatever he does know now he seems to know for certain.

'_Me_ miss you most? Dick, I try to paint just as before. I go to the club. Dick, I have been to a dinner-party. I said I wouldn't give in.'

'We like that.'

'But, my boy----'

Mr. Don's arms have gone out to him again. Dick evidently wriggles away from them. He speaks coaxingly.

'I say, father, let's get away from that sort of thing.'

'That is so like you, Dick! I'll do anything you ask.'

'Then keep a bright face.'

'I've tried to.'

'Good man! I say, put on your old greasy; you are looking so beastly clean.'

The old greasy is the jacket, and Mr. Don obediently gets into it.

'Anything you like. No, that's the wrong sleeve. Thanks, Dick.'

They are in the ingle-nook now, and the mischievous boy catches his father by the shoulders.

'Here, let me shove you into your old seat.'

Mr. Don is propelled on to the settle.

'How's that, umpire!'

'Dick,' smiling, 'that's just how you used to butt me into it long ago!'

Dick is probably standing with his back to the fire, chuckling.

'When I was a kid.'

'With the palette in my hand.'

'Or sticking to your trousers.'

'The mess we made of ourselves, Dick.'

'I sneaked behind the settle and climbed up it.'

'Till you fell off.'

'On top of you and the palette.'

It is good fun for a father and son; and the crafty boy has succeeded in making the father laugh. But soon,

'Ah, Dick.'

The son frowns. He is not going to stand any nonsense.

'Now then, behave! What did I say about that face?'

Mr. Don smiles at once, obediently.

'That's better. I'll sit here.'

We see from his father's face which is smiling with difficulty that Dick has plopped into the big chair on the other side of the ingle-nook. His legs are probably dangling over one of its arms.

Rather sharply, 'Got your pipe?'

'I don't--I don't seem to care to smoke nowadays, Dick.'

'Rot! Just because I am dead! You that pretend to be plucky! I won't have it, you know. You get your pipe, and look slippy about it.'

'Yes, Dick,' the old man says obediently. He fills his pipe from a jar on the mantelshelf. We may be sure that Dick is watching closely to see that he lights it properly.

'Now, then, burn your thumb with the match--you always did, you know. That's the style. You've forgotten to cock your head to the side. Not so bad. That's you. Like it?'

'It's rather nice, Dick. Dick, you and me by the fire!'

'Yes, but sit still. How often we might have been like this, father, and weren't.'

'Ah!'

'Face. How is Fido?'

'Never a dog missed her master more.'

'Oh,' frowning. 'She doesn't want to go and sit on my grave, or any of that tosh, does she? As if I were there!'

'No, no,' hastily; 'she goes ratting, Dick.'

'Good old Fido!'

'Dick, here's a good one. We oughtn't to keep a dog at all because we are on rations now; but what do you think Fido ate yesterday?'

'Let me guess. The joint?'

'Almost worse than that. She ate all the cook's meat tickets.'

They laugh, together, but when Dick says light-heartedly, 'That dog will be the death of me.' his father shivers. Dick does not notice this; his eyes have drawn him to the fishing-rods.

'Hullo!'

'Yes, those are your old fishing-rods.'

'Here's the little hickory! Do you remember, father, how I got the seven-pounder on a burn-trout cast? No, you weren't there. That was a day. It was really only six and three-quarters. I put a stone in its mouth the second time we weighed it!'

'You loved fishing, Dick.'

'Didn't I? Why weren't you oftener with me? I'll tell you a funny thing, When I went a soldiering I used to pray--just standing up, you know--that I shouldn't lose my right arm, because it would be so awkward for casting.' He cogitates as he returns to the ingle-nook. 'Somehow I never thought I should be killed. Lots of fellows thought that about themselves, but I never did. It was quite a surprise to me.'

'Oh, Dick!'

'What's the matter? Oh, I forgot. Face!' He is apparently looking down at his father wonderingly. 'Haven't you got over it yet, father? I got over it so long ago. I wish you people would understand what a little thing it is.'

'Tell me,' very humbly; 'tell me, Dick.'

'All right.' He is in the chair again.

'Mind, I can't tell you where I was killed; it's against the regulations.'

'I know where.'

Curiously, 'You got a wire, I suppose?'

'Yes.'

'There's always a wire for officers, even for 2nd Lieutenants. It's jolly decent of them.'

'Tell me, Dick, about the--the veil. I mean the veil that is drawn between the living and the----.'

'The dead? Funny how you jib at that word.'

'I suppose the veil is like a mist?'

'The veil's a rummy thing, father. Yes, like a mist. But when one has been at the Front for a bit, you can't think how thin the veil seems to get; just one layer of it. I suppose it seems thin to you out there because one step takes you through it. We sometimes mix up those who have gone through with those who haven't. I daresay if I were to go back to my old battalion the living chaps would just nod to me.'

'Dick!'

'Where's that pipe? Death? Well, to me, before my day came, it was like some part of the line I had heard a lot about but never been in. I mean, never been in to stay, because, of course, one often popped in and out.'

'Dick, the day that you----'

'My day? I don't remember being hit, you know. I don't remember anything till the quietness came. When you have been killed it suddenly becomes very quiet; quieter even than you have ever known it at home. Sunday used to be a pretty quiet