Poor old girl! Of course she would be lonely. It made him sigh a little when he thought how lonely she would be. He looked at her with a rather queer softness in his eyes. Their marriage seemed to have brought them no luck in anything. A time there had been, a time less than a year ago, when he had felt very thankful that there had been no children to hasten their steady, hopeless drift downhill. Now, however, it was a different story. Poor Melia! Her hand responded to the pressure of his fingers; and a large tear crept slowly into eyes that had known them perhaps too seldom.
"Never mind, Mother," he said softly. "I mean to come back."
"Yes, Bill." The words had a curious intensity. "I mean you to. I've set my mind on it. And if you really set your mind on a thing happening----"
He loved the spirit in her, even if he felt obliged to touch wood as a concession to the manes of wisdom. It didn't do to boast in times like these.
Presently they noticed that the heat was less. Bill looked again at his watch and then they realized that the hour of parting had drawn much nearer. Reluctantly they got up and left the gardens, so putting an end to an hour of life they would never forget. Then arm in arm they walked to Euston which was not far off, where the Corporal retrieved his kit from the Canteen and exchanged a valedictory smile with a R.S.P., although he didn't feel like smiling. Thence by Tube to Waterloo. It was their first experience of this medium of travel. Even in Blackhampton, in so many ways the home of modernity, Tubes were unknown; they seemed exclusively, rather bewilderingly, metropolitan.
The attendant Genie had to be watchful indeed to prevent their going all round London en route from Euston to Waterloo, but it was so alive to its duties that they were only once baffled and then but temporarily. Thus in the end they found themselves on a seat on Platform Six with a full hour to wait for the Southampton train.
She left him at the carriage door, a few minutes before he was due out on his own grim journey, so that she might have plenty of time to catch the train for the north. Minute instructions had to be given to enable her to do this, for London is a bewildering maze to those not up to its ways. But the Corporal's lady had a typical Blackhampton head, a thing cool, resolute, hardy in the presence of any severe demand upon it; and he was quite sure, and she was quite sure, that she would be able to catch the 8:55 from Euston, no matter what traps were laid for her.