His comments on Francis, boiled down, would not have seemed particularly significant unless one happened to be recruiting for the profession. Francis was fairly well liked, but was not one of the most popular undergraduates; nothing of the Big Man on Campus about him. He seemed not to have much to do with girls, although he was not indifferent to them. On the other hand, his friendships with young men were not intense. Francis had made one or two attempts to appear in productions at the University Theatre, and was a wooden, disastrous actor, his black hair and green eyes making him look odd under theatre circumstances. Outside his studies he did not cut much of a figure, but he was a surprisingly useful member of the Union Pictures Committee; he could spot a good thing, and urge that it be bought, when the other undergraduates who worked with J.B. simply didn’t know their Picassos from a hole in the ground. Francis was already buying Canadian pictures for himself in the twenty-five to hundred-dollar range. Though he came of a rich family he didn’t have a lot of money to throw around, and once J.B. had asked him why he was wearing no overcoat on a sub-zero day, to be told that Francis had hocked his coat to buy a Lawren Harris that he couldn’t resist. He hoarded what money he had in order to buy pictures. Spent none of it on himself, and had the reputation of being “close” with money, which probably accounted for his lack of contact with girls, who are great eaters and drinkers. He drew a good deal, and had decided talent as a caricaturist, but for some reason didn’t choose to exploit it; nevertheless the caricaturist’s gleam was often seen in his green eye, when he thought nobody was looking. Did pretty well in his studies, and astonished everybody when at the end of his fourth year he took the Chancellor’s Prize in Classics, even though Classics wasn’t in vogue. This would give him a good push forward at Oxford, and J.B., who had drag at Oxford, would see that it did not go unheeded.
A candidate for the profession? Possibly. The Oxford days would tell, thought Colonel Copplestone. After all, the boy was still only twenty-three.
During the summer before his departure for Oxford, Francis paid a visit to Blairlogie. He might not have thought of doing so if his mother had not urged him to make the effort. The people there are getting old, she said; you see Grand-père now and then, but Grand’mère and Aunt have not seen you for—oh, more than ten years. It’s the least you can do, darling. So, in hot August weather, off he went.
The journey, once he had left the main line and taken the train which struck northward toward Blairlogie, seemed to be almost violent in its reversal of time. From the excellent modern train in which, because his parents had paid for his ticket, he travelled in the chair-car, which had radio earphones at every seat, he changed to a primitive affair in which an ancient, puffing engine pulled a baggage coach and one passenger coach at a stately twenty miles an hour through the hinterland. The passenger coach was old without being venerable; it had a great deal of fretwork ornamentation in wood that had once been glossy, but the green plush seats were mangy and slick, the floor was poorly swept, and it stank of coal-dust and long use. Because of the heat the windows that would still open were opened, and grit and smoke from the engine occasionally swept through the car. There were stops at tiny stations in the middle of nowhere, usually in order that some small piece of freight might be unloaded. There were other stops in order that the journal-boxes might cool; the train was prone to that plague of old running-stock, the hot-box.
At noon the train halted in the midst of rocky scrubland where there was not a roof in sight. “If any of yez haven’t brought yer lunch, yez can get dinner up on the hill at th’ old lady’s. Costs a quarter,” said the conductor, and himself led a small procession up the hill where, in the old lady’s kitchen, chunks of fat bacon and fried potatoes were ready on the back of the wood-stove; on top of each plate of meat was laid a slab of rhubarb pie. The etiquette, Francis saw, was to remove the pie delicately (so as not to break it) and lay it on the pine table beside the plate, until the latter had been cleared and wiped with a chunk of bread; then the pie was lifted back to the plate to be devoured with the well-sucked fork, and washed down with the old lady’s coffee, which was boiling hot, but not strong. Fifteen minutes were allowed for this repast, and when the conductor rose everybody rose, and put a quarter into the hand of the unsmiling, unspeaking old lady. The conductor, it seemed, did not pay; he led his pilgrims in single file down the hill to the waiting train. The engine-driver and the fireman (who doubled as brakeman) had eaten thriftily from lunch-boxes by the side of the line. They clambered back into the cab, belching enjoyably, and the train resumed its sleepy, stately course.
Late in the afternoon the conductor tramped importantly through the car, shouting, “Blairlogie! End of the line! Blairlogie!”, as if some passengers could possibly have been in doubt about the matter. Then the conductor hastened to be first off the train and was well away up the street toward his home before Francis could get his suitcase down from the overhead rack, and set foot once again in the place of his birth.
Blairlogie had changed, if the old train had not. Few horses were to be seen on the streets, and some of the streets themselves had been paved. Shops bore different names, and the Ladies’ Emporium, where Grand’mère had always bought her hats (because the Misses Sim, though Protestants, had undoubtedly the best taste, and the deftest hands with artificial cherries and roses, in town), had vanished altogether, and weeds grew where it had stood. There was a movie-house, too, which seemed to mean that a gaudy front had been stuck on a failed grocery-store. The McRory Opera House, farther up the street, was closed, and had an offended, snubbed look. Trees were taller but buildings were smaller. Donoghue’s blacksmith-shop was not to be seen and, most significant change of all, a motor truck laden with cut timber was making its way up the street, and the name on its side was not his grandfather’s name.
But when he got away from the business street and up the hill, St. Kilda looked as it always had looked, and when he rang the bell it was undoubtedly Anna Lemenchick, though broader and seemingly shorter, who answered. She said nothing—she never did say anything when she answered the door—but there was a scampering upstairs, and Aunt Mary-Ben came rattling down, rather dangerously on the polished hardwood, and threw herself at him. She was so tiny; had he really grown so much?
“Francis! Dear, dear boy! How big you are! Oh, and so handsome! Oh, Mother of God, isn’t this a happy day! Did you take the taxi? We’d have sent, only there’s nobody to send just now—Zadok in hospital and all. Oh, what will Grand’mère say when she sees you! Come, come right away and see her, Frankie, my own dear. It’ll do her more good than anything!”
Grand’mère was in bed, a mountain of flesh, but yellow and sour-smelling. Conversation with her was in French, because she found English an effort now. She was considerably younger than the Senator—who was, as usual, away in Ottawa, or in Montreal, or in Toronto, on some business or other—but chronology had nothing to do with what ailed her, and she might have been ten years older than her real age, which was sixty-eight.
“Dr. J.A. is reserved about dear Marie-Louise,” said Aunt Mary-Ben, as she and Francis ate the bad dinner that evening. “We fear what’s wrong, of course, but he won’t be plain about it. You remember how he always was. You can’t undo nearly seventy years of overeating, he says. But could hearty eating really bring on that? I pray for her, of course, but Dr. J.A. says the age of miracles is past. Oh, Frankie, Frankie, it’s a dreadful thing, but we must all go in the end, mustn’t we, and your dear Grand’mère has led such a good life—not a thing to reproach herself with—so though it’s hard for us, we must bow to His will.”