Part 19 (2/2)

”I hear that Tom's going to have the V.C. or D.C.M. or summat o' that sort,” remarked a neighbour; ”dost 'a know what that means?”

”Nay, I know nowt about it, but I hope as he will get a bit o' bra.s.s wi' it, onyhow.”

”Will he come home, dost 'a' think?”

”Nay, I don't know. Why should he leave his job for a thing like that?

I expect if he wur to come home they'd stop his pay, and I hope Tom is noan such a fool as to lose his pay, but there, there's no tellin'.”

In spite of all this, however, Mrs. Pollard was in no slight degree elated. She knew that Tom was the talk of Brunford, and that special articles were devoted to him in the Brunford newspapers.

”He will be sure to come home,” said Ezekiel Pollard to her one night after supper; ”when a lad's done a job like that, he's sure to have a bit of a holiday.”

”Maybe, and I suppose tha'll be showing him around as though he wur a prize turkey. Ay, but I am glad about this drinking order.”

”Why?”

”Because else all th' lads in the town 'ud be wanting to treat our Tom; they 'd be proud to be seen wi' him, and they'd make him drunk afore he know'd where he wur. Our Tom never could sup much beer wi'out it goin'

to his head.”

”Our Tom has give up that sort o' thing,” replied Ezekiel.

”How dost tha' know?”

”I do know, and that's enough,” replied Ezekiel, thinking of Tom's last letter, which, by the way, he had never shown to his wife.

I am not going to try to describe Tom's feelings when he was told that he had been recommended for the D.C.M.

”Thank you, sir, but I've done nowt to deserve it,” cried the lad, lapsing for the moment into the Lancas.h.i.+re dialect.

Colonel Blount laughed. Ever since Waterman's death he had felt as though a burden had been lifted from him. He felt sure now that his plans would not be frustrated.

”We are the best judges of that, my lad,” he said. ”You can tell your father and mother that, as a Lancas.h.i.+re man, I'm proud of you.”

It was on a Sat.u.r.day in December when Tom arrived in Brunford on leave of absence. He had spent Friday in London, and caught the ten o'clock train at King's Cross Station. There was no prouder lad in England that day, although, truth to tell, he was not quite happy. Naturally he had read what had been written about him in the newspapers, and reflected upon what the people in Brunford would be saying about him.

He imagined meeting people whom he knew, in the Brunford streets, and the greeting they would give him. He knew it would be a great home-coming, and yet he had a heavy heart.

It was several months now since he had left Brunford, and he could not help reflecting on the change that had taken place in him. He still wore a private's uniform, and carried the mud of the trenches on his clothes. But the Tom Pollard who had enlisted at the Mechanics'

Inst.i.tute was not the same lad who now made his way to his Lancas.h.i.+re home. Since then he had been through strange scenes, and had realised wonderful experiences. New facts and new forces had come into his life; day by day he had been face to face with death, and this had led him to touch the very core of life. Thoughts which were unknown to him a year before now possessed his being; powers of which he had never dreamed had been called into life.

Tom could not put these things into words, he didn't even clearly realise them, but he knew that he was different. The very thought that he had looked into the face of death made him realise the wondrousness of life. Tom did not feel that he had been a hero, and yet he knew that the life he had been living, and the work he had been doing, especially during the last few months, had called qualities, which lay latent in his being, into life and action. The war had not made him a different man, it had only aroused dormant qualities within him. The fires through which he had pa.s.sed had cleansed him, and he knew that life would never be the same again. But more than all that, he, like thousands of others, had learnt the great secret of life, and realised that it was only by opening his life to the Eternal Life that the highest manhood could be known.

And yet he was strangely dissatisfied. He had read his mother's letter telling him that Alice Lister was engaged to Harry Briarfield, and his heart was very sore at the thought of it. Never before had he realised the meaning of the choice he had made, when more than a year before he had left Alice to walk out with Polly Powell. ”And yet I loved Alice all the time,” he reflected, as the train rushed northward. ”I never knew how I did love her till now. I must have been mad and worse than mad!”

For a long time he had ceased to care for Polly Powell; when he was in Surrey his mother's letter had opened his eyes to the kind of girl she really was. He saw her, coa.r.s.e, loud-talking, and vulgar; a girl who had appealed only to what was coa.r.s.e in his own nature. And he had yielded to her blandishments; he had left a pure, refined girl for her, and he had lost Alice for ever.

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