I6

MARY FROM OUR TOW

Proves

F you mad long enough in one_of the world's great railway terrnm1~ 1mmknacmmmCme—*W3W you will sooner or later meet RHY

one of your friends Y0“ ‘my d,5"'°,"° see, and maybe 59'“! Y0“ dlm I m not sure about the truth of this, but it is cerhinly a fact that you may 5?? same strange reunions under the stohd clock: of such places: reumems that run the whole gamut of 6111051031 {Wm hysteriml, oapering delight to blunkat tragedy. Reunions full of humour. 01' sorrow gallantly masked. of hate. Of love—nim.Ltenths of the chemical 1'9 actiom that condition life for us poor humans may be observed in full SWIDE: if you will only spend half 8 dfly watching the long trains PU“ "3 to “'9 platforms.

1 came back the day before YEW!’- day from a week-end with Mary and Bill Trail], and the above somewhat Iugubrioas reflections are the result of it. It must be sheer contrariety, I imagine, for I'll defy anyone to paste six hours in the company of that P811’ and not be uplifted with a sense of the beauty of human marriage and the excellence of people in the world. But I remember very well the day, four ymrs ago, when Mary Camliiflll Went down to the station—it was Charing Cros, as it happens—to meet B111, and the strange serio—comic little scene by the panting boat train.

They live now in a cottage by the sea. within sound of the Channel’s light surf, and with the babble of a brook at the foot of the garden to make the night: vocal with melody. The place is full of noiaa—they bought it for that: rippling water, and the song of birds in the apple tiers, and the Wind's about over the down. Twenty yards along the road there is such a {annyard as only England can show, and Bill and I spent half a sunny afternoon laming over the gate listening to its mult-itudinous small outcriea. Bill's hearing has grown u sharp as a razor.

Up in the holnre, Mary moved about her kitchen, a strong and gracious figure with her crown of graying hair, She is forty-one this month, and there will never be children in the orchard or the low comfortable rooms. Mary, with her devastating honaty, grimacee about it and tells you that she has quite enough to look after as it is, thank you; but that evening, as I came back from trying-—with Mary’: light rod——l’or a trout in the brook, I caught the pair of them sitting hand in hand in the twilight, and lied without noise. There is some thing about those two people that makes our trivial shame and pretence: look mighty pitiful.

AND yet—I remembered it in thetrain coming home —there was a time when things could very well have been diflerent. When Mary . . . but I've begun the tale at the wrong end, and must go back to the roots 0 it.

Mary Campion was the daughter of an old Dean, 1: very Deanish Dean, in a cathedral town. You can imagine him for your-self——ancient, mellow, fluty, selfish, and given, I fancy, to delusions of aaintllams. He had a way of tottering across the cathedral close, peering dimly about him, that was itnell an afiront to high heaven. Mary’! mother had died when she was three, and the Dan and n flinty old housekeeper with I strong hdl-fire_oomph-.1 had brought her up. The result may be ed, more readily when it is added that Mary

TI'll¢

CANADIAN HOMF l°U"N'”“

to Herself and to Her

. . . Half-my Into town Bill met I figure slipping along through the darkness. II was Mary Carnplon.

By

R. GERY

VI

was one of those women whose looks only materialize after they ore thirty or so. I remember her as a girl, cycling earnatly about the town, coltish and stringy and desperately ecrious—aome cynic christened her once “Faith and Works" and as "Faith and Works" she was known for years.

Well, in course of time the old Dean departed this life and left Mary somewhere about two hundred and fifty pounds u year to live on, and a circle of acquaint- anceship that included every old woman in town, irrespective of sex, and no one else. The girls treated her with the particular kind of amused disdain that must have been most galling to Mary's sensltiveness; and as for the men, stalwart curate: atampcdcd in droves at her approach. Mary will tell you all about those years now, with a twinkle of comic reminiscence; but thoy cannot have been funny for her at the time.

Thus it went, then, till Mary was twenty-nine. She was brown——brow'n tweods, brown shoes, brown skin, brown try, and I imagine a brownish taste in her

.ll ,

Love

Great

soul as well. And then mm, and with it, in 1917, the lug ,.. three miles away, T)“. \,,‘‘V_ crazy, of course, over um u ‘, doubIe—breasted R.F.(‘. r£..,., Mary held aloof, 21 faint mnllrw at the corners of her xnmm choose to believe that 11. \.\‘;,., aloofness and the l'nint,~n1il\»‘ Bill Traill by the throat, and K. town material for aStf)l’ll‘«l1('(l ;» weeks and months 2.lll.€l'\V2ll‘ll

For Bill in those days \\.«,~ of thing that women viauulm most secret dreams. Tull, ll"\H shoulder, slim, with the ‘. that seems to be the gift. of .. picked athletes; (lurk, mugnm eyed; with a. most lY1tE‘l‘f'sl‘lI1l,' slash from cheekhone to hmr, ‘ of a jagged chunk of [ll"lll*.lll" over Bruges. On his glOV1-ill‘ he wore a single ribbon, ilw ll. white of the Military (‘rm >, squadron in France cum, length that it was the wm-sl \l during the war, and Hill? l’ deserved a V.C. u (ln/.<-n l u Among other stnrim of ‘w said that Bill Trail] unrl li had had a twenty minim gun to gun, and that he und‘ i German had ultimately rm‘ waves of mutual r-st:-mn .:l ammunition hells.

At any rate, to our tmv out of further mmlmlnm tench ambitious u.s'[)lrm1I>: lw ‘ the grosscr forms rlftmuhlv \ —completely,irrevocably,hm" ' guns—lor the gmvky l7l'H\\.ll A nine-and-twenty who l~lllrll' trusively about lhv rvnlllllz 4: and nursed sick people zmrl illll neither danced nor llirturl nor notion of the tnr-ticul [)llI:[)tr:~v'« rouge or powder. Wlr_wli"- essential gumptinn of Bill‘ I In

And Mnry rofuswrl_ him him down flat, but gently und with :1 qurr-1 rlnz‘ to a skilled observer, would have told llH ,~v~‘\ then, I'm pretty sure, she went homo Lu hvr habitation and put her brown head in the urn u and howled as she'd not howled since kill‘ all‘ She'd deny it, of course, if anyone was nlmt 411 enquire—but I'm sure of it, all the same. Amvll " had to be, for the time, content. Mary “'”‘" able kind. ,

The war ended with matters tliu:-1, and "H H‘ Nllhty Bill Trnill took a look round llw rI“;" grinned understnndingly, and went out. I'M‘ 4' “H From the town came u confused murmur of a w fireworks and other similar dcmonstrziiiom. lm the civilian population was celebrntinl: V'ff"‘ VI ‘h, own refined and gentlcmnnly mnnncr. lrml H “ and swung along the road. I've no doubt lH' empty.

i\l‘\LF—WAY into town hemct u Iit'U”' mmm

through the darkness. It was Mary (iilmllm.

Jill‘

u decrepit und uiling spaniel on u lvnralr. ) seemed, had found something missing In tl“_‘ H und swuahbucklcry of the Valiant l)lll"i»ih“;|"_.,, come out for a walk to get away from It: Khl" H and the pair of them stood uwkwnrrlly 1" H , light, strangely tongue-tied, crnotionally " silence except for a low word now and Lln-n W Finally Bill Trnill pulled hlmselftogntlu-r I “Mfll'¥." he sold lamoly. "Tlicrc’H U1“ ""

in

fi

humou

“Br It . . "Tl myself,

Tl1( party i combai and dr midnig on the up unc into th

Ni

ii nutomc fur con :1 brool from w went tr Bill \Vl “Cc Bill Julius,’ "Br Americ “B1

us ayov Sir Jul: hilities. "I 2 |my‘s' ‘ Denertt and F] lll(‘ll‘ in Air Mil in bed.

I Ilm

CAL

Sir Juliu down Ih Allour I