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Yet, even now, writing in the light of full knowledge, I cannot admit that, when Boyce in that Town Hall faced the world for, in the deep tragic sense Wellingsford was his world anyone knowing as much as I did would have been justified in calling his demeanour criminal callousness. I say that he exhibited a glorious defiance. He defied the concrete Gedge.
A letter or two had been received by the Fenimores from Galloway, and letters they had written to Galloway had been acknowledged by Althea. She returned to Wellingsford in due course, with bonny cheeks and wind-swept eyes, and told us all funny little stories about Aunt Maria.
Her holidays, poor child, were somewhat dreary, for her father, an anti-social creature, had scarce a friend in the town. Save for here and there an invitation to tea from Betty or myself, she did not cross the threshold of a house in Wellingsford. But to my house, all through her schooldays and afterwards, Phyllis came, and on such occasions Mrs.
He put a detaining hand on Hosea's bridle and an evil flash came into his hard grey eyes. "I'll have it some other way, then," he said. "A way you've no idea of. A way that'll knock all you great people of Wellingsford off your high horses. If you drive me to it, you'll see. I'll bide my time and I don't care whether it breaks me." He stamped his foot and tugged at the bridle.
"At any rate, take my word for it if there's a man in the British Army who doesn't know what fear is, that man is Leonard Boyce." He nodded in his frank way and rejoined his old General. As I had had enough exciting information for one visit to town, I motored back to Wellingsford.
Now, nothing much would have happened, I suppose, if Phyllis, driven from the hospital by superior decree that she should take fresh air and exercise, had not been walking some days afterwards across the common by the canal. Bordering the latter, Wellingsford has an avenue of secular chestnuts of which it is inordinately proud.
In the morning I found her calm and sedate at the breakfast table. "You've been and gone and done for both of us, Majy dear," she remarked, pouring out tea. "What do you mean?" "Our reputations. What a scandal in Wellingsford!" She looked me clearly in the eyes and smiled, and her hand did not shake as she held my cup.
I ought to explain how I come to be writing this at all. Well, to fill in my time, I first started by a diary a sort of War Diary of Wellingsford, the little country town in question. Then things happened with which my diary was inadequate to cope. Everyone came and told me his or her side of the story.
As I say, I lack the universal sympathy of the saint. I can't like people I don't like. Some people I love very deeply; others, being of a kindly disposition, I tolerate; others again I simply detest. Now Wellingsford, like every little country town in England, is drab with elderly gentlewomen. As I am a funny old tabby myself, I have to mix with them.
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