"I shall be a proud man when I can boast of two Colonels—and if that scamp George'll stick to work, he ought to give me a third before many years are over. There's no finer billet in the world than the command of a regiment—no position in which you can do more good, in my opinion, or serve the King to better purpose. And a good wife can help you, as I said—help you a lot."
He pressed his son's arm and added, "Only you mustn't let her interfere with your work. The regiment must still come first in everything, Bertie—aye, even before your wife! That's the rule of the Service."
CHAPTER XX
AN HEROIC OFFER
Bob Purnett spent nearly two months in Ireland; it was much longer than he had intended, but he liked the hunting there, and, when that was over, found excellent quarters and amusing society at the house of a squire whom his prowess in the field had won to friendship and who maintained the national tradition in the matter of good claret. Bob had no cause for hurry; his year's work was done. A holiday on the Riviera was the next item in his annual programme.
He arrived in London two days before the expedition to Madeira was to start. Of it he knew nothing. He had written a couple of friendly breezy letters to Winnie (under the idea that she might be down-hearted), and the answer to the first—she had not answered the second—told him where she was and conveyed the impression that she still found life bearable. Where she was possessed a certain significance in his eyes; he nodded his head over it. It was a factor—precisely how important he could not say—in answering the question he had been, not with oppressive frequency yet from time to time, asking himself in the intervals of hunting and of drinking his host's good claret. "Why shouldn't she?" was the form the question assumed in his thoughts. If she had with Godfrey Ledstone—not much of a chap after all!—why shouldn't she with somebody else? True, Winnie had always puzzled him. But there was the line of division—a fixed line surely, if anything was fixed? She had crossed it once. He could not see why, with the proper courtesies observed, she should not make another transit. Yet, because she had always puzzled him, he was, as he told himself, stupidly nervous about making the proposition. People who do things, and yet do not seem to be the sort of people who generally do them, occasion these doubts and hesitations, confusing psychology and perplexing experience. Yet, finally, he was minded to 'chance it'—and, let it be said, not without such a sense of responsibility as it lay in his nature to feel. She had crossed the line, but he knew that she did not regard herself as a denizen of the other side. He was ready to concede that, to allow for it, to be very much on his good behaviour. Above all, no hint of the mercantile! He had the perception to see not only how fatal, but how rude and unjustifiable such a thing would be. He was (in a sentence) prepared to combine a charming companionship with an elevating influence. Permanently? Ah, well! If bygones are to be bygones, futurities may, by a parity of treatment, be left to the future.
He called at the flat in Knightsbridge on Friday afternoon. In the drawing-room neighbourhood no signs of the impending expedition were visible; invaluable Emily restricted the ravages of packing to the bedrooms and their immediate vicinity. Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie were together, drinking tea. Winnie received him with glad cordiality; in the hostess he felt vaguely a hint of reserve. Mrs. Lenoir, full of her new project, did not see why Bob Purnett should come. She had nothing against him, but he was irrelevant; if her scheme succeeded, he would naturally drop out. She was distantly gracious—the 'grand manner' made its appearance—and, after giving him a cup of tea, went back to her packing, concerning which neither she nor Winnie had said a word—Winnie waiting for a lead from her friend, and her friend not being minded to give it.
Winnie had not thought of Bob for weeks, but her heart warmed to him. "He saved my life that first night," was her inward utterance of gratitude. She lounged back on the sofa, and let him talk. But he did not talk idly for long; Bob Purnett took his fences; after all, he had made a thorough inspection of this particular 'teaser' before he mounted his horse.
"I've been thinking a lot about you, since I've been away."