"When do you expect to join your regiment in India, Mr. Graeme," she said, "soon, I suppose, now? How you must be looking forward to it."
Graeme’s face clouded. "Next September, I believe, that is, if I do go out. Don’t think I shall, though, I’ve more than half a mind to send in my papers and cut the whole show."
"Surely not, Mr. Graeme, at your age. What on earth would you do with yourself? You couldn’t idle for the rest of your life."
"Couldn’t I? I could idle very well, Miss Caldwell, besides, I should always find plenty to do with shooting, hunting, and golf. Those are my interests, and pretty good ones too, I think."
"But surely a mere life of sport wouldn’t content you. Don’t you want to get on in your profession? Really, Mr. Graeme, I cannot understand a man holding such views."
"Perhaps not, but it’s a fact all the same. I’ve no wish to get on, as you call it, indeed I loathe soldiering. What’s the good of it after all, what can it lead to? I’ve no doubt if I chose I could be as good a soldier as any of them, but I don’t choose. It’s a life of slavery, the army, it’s being at the beck and call of every silly fool who happens to have more gold lace on his hat than you have; and then the end—to become a general, a snuffy, purple-faced old ass, like——"
"Oh, like Grampus, my present lord at Canterbury, who, when he gives a luncheon party, has the lot of us strutting past him on foot parade to show his importance and amuse his lady friends."
"But all generals are not like that, Mr. Graeme."
"All I’ve met. It’s a natural consequence too, I suppose. When a man’s young and in full possession of his faculties he’s only a humble captain or major, but as he approaches imbecility he rises in rank, till in the height of senile decay he becomes a general."
"Mr. Graeme, you forget, I think, that my uncle’s a——"
"He, of course, is one of the exceptions you just mentioned," said Hector with a rather nasty chuckle.
"Mr. Graeme, you’re horrid; I don’t wonder people dislike you."
"More do I, though perhaps if you’d been brought up as I have you’d be horrid too."
Graeme hesitated for a moment, frowning, and then burst out, with a ring of passion in his voice:
"You’ve had a happy life. Miss Caldwell, parents who have been parents, I’ve not. My father, for some reason, would never look at me, while my mother alternately petted and neglected me. She was a queer being, my mother, mad on spiritualism and such like, and what’s more used to drag me into her experiments. She said I was clairvoyant."