The Magpie

Chapter I.

One

On an evening in the last week of July, 1919, The Magpie wrote in his book:

“To-morrow I shall be thirty years old. I wonder if there ever was a time in the history of the world when it meant so much to be thirty… Yesterday I picked up young Dick Nason and drove him home. Dick is just twenty. I confess I felt a little uncomfortable with Dick. I always do. Dick doesn’t know there has been a war. He insists that life is pretty rotten and that nothing really counts. Dickie says that we need a few Oscar Wildes and a few Shelleys to bring the world back to form. He thinks the world ought to be psychoanalyzed. He is just finishing his second reading of the memoirs of someone he calls by the name of Casanova. He says I ought to read them now that I have gained a reading knowledge of French. Dickie talks a great deal about—mostly about talk… Old Dad Robinson, the janitor, thinks the world is lost and that civilization is crumbling. At least he says the world is shaking. The war was a blight and peace, he says, is a disease. He looks for an act of God to restore the world to its happy condition of five years ago. I think Dad’s chief concern is the fact that he hasn’t been able to buy a couple of favourite varieties of tulip that he used to get from England. When he can get the tulips he will be in a fair way to admit that God’s in His heaven again and the world set right… For my part I think I like old Dad’s view-point pretty well. Dad’s past fifty—perhaps that’s why I like him. A man of fifty may be wrong in what he thinks about the world, but he’s probably right in what he feels. There’s something wrong in the way Dickie feels, though perhaps he thinks a little more clearly on some things than I did when I was twenty. And yet—I can’t tell. I can understand Dad. I can talk with him and feel no irritation. When I talk with Dick I seem to lose my sense of humour… Sometimes I feel I am too old for the world I have come back to. Other times I feel I am too young… But I hold that somehow, somewhere, there is a Power in the world that works for good and that in the end the sacrifice will not have been made in vain. We are in a fog just now, a great fog that covers the western world and hides the sun from our eyes. But the light will break through—somewhere—somehow—and the new life will have begun. There are some who are already talking of getting back to normalcy, but those who have seen the light shining against the darkness that hung for four years over the fields of Flanders know that we cannot return to normalcy. We cannot return to the days when the people and even the parliaments knew nothing of what was going on behind their backs until they were asked to give their lives to vindicate the bad bargains of the diplomats. All that is past… I am sure of it. If it were not for that faith…”

The telephone ringing from the hall startled him. He got up from his table and went to answer the call.

“Yes?” he said in a voice that was heavily resonant, almost raucous.

It was Mrs. Nason, mother of young Dickie Nason. Her daughter, Marion, had told her that to-morrow was a day of more than ordinary significance in his life—she wanted to have an opportunity to offer her congratulations and good wishes—they had come in from their summer cottage at Minaki to meet Mr. Nason whom they expected back from England where he had gone on a business trip—he would be back to-night—she was having a few friends in to dinner with a little music afterwards and a little chat or a game of bridge—anyhow, would he join them at dinner to-morrow evening about seven—no dinner party was complete nowadays without its war hero—she would promise that he would not be asked one question during the evening, about his experiences at the front—and Marion would be there to tease him—and, well, would he come?

The Magpie listened until the flood of Mrs. Nason’s chatter had ceased, then drew a deep breath and coughed slightly to clear his voice.

“Nothing could keep me away,” he said. “I don’t think I have had a real dinner since I sat at your table the last time, to say nothing of the other things you promised. I’ll be there, Mrs. Nason.”

“Quite informal, you understand.”

“That makes it better still.”

“Then we’ll look for you at seven.”

“Righto, and thank you for remembering me. Give my regards to Miss Nason.”

A moment later he hung up the receiver thoughtfully and went back to his table. Mrs. Nason’s garrulity always swept him off his feet. Her verbal assaults left him breathless.

Presently he drew himself forward and lifted his pen as he leaned above the book in which he had been writing.

“If it were not for that faith…” he read and then slowly put his pen to the paper. “…I could not live,” he finished the sentence.

He closed the book quietly and laid it away in the upper right-hand drawer of his table.