III.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday passed, each with a separate, hurrying pace that quickened towards bed-time.
Mark's last night. She had left her door open so that she could hear him come upstairs. He came and sat on her bed as he used to do years ago when she was afraid of the ghost in the passage.
"I shan't be away for ever, Minky. Only five years."
"Yes, but you'll be twenty-six then, and I shall be nineteen. We shan't be ourselves."
"I shall be my self. Five years isn't really long."
"You—you'll like it, Mark. There'll be jungles with bisons and tigers."
"Yes. Jungles."
"And polo."
"Shan't be able to go in for polo."
"Why not?"
"Ponies. Too expensive."
They sat silent.
"What I don't like," Mark said in a sleepy voice, "is leaving Papa."
"Papa?"
He really meant it. "Wish I'd been decenter to him," he said.
And then: "Minky—you'll be kind to little Mamma."
"Oh, Mark—aren't I?"
"Not always. Not when you say funny things about the Bible."
"You say funny things yourself."
"Yes; but she thinks I don't mean them, so it doesn't matter."
"She thinks I don't mean them, either."
"Well—let her go on thinking it. Do what she wants—even when it's beastly."
"It's all very well for you. She doesn't want you to learn the
Thirty-Nine Articles. What would you do if she did?"
"Learn them, of course. Lie about them, if that would please her."
She thought: "Mamma didn't want him to be a soldier."
As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, "She doesn't really mind my going into the Army. I knew she wouldn't. Besides, I had to."
"Yes."
"I'll make it up to her," he said. "I won't do any other thing she wouldn't like. I won't marry. I won't play polo. I'll live on my pay and give poor Victor back his money. And there's one good thing about it. Papa'll be happier when I'm not here."