"Hullo!" cried the new-comer, "It is you ... couldn't see after having the sun in my eyes." And he strode over, spurs clanking, to hug the squire in an old-fashioned Polish embrace with a warmth that belonged, in the old days, to Roman, never to his brother.
Ian was forced to admit that war had changed his cousin. He was handsome as ever; but less a prig, more a man. Rubbing shoulders with the primitive aspects of life and death had done him good, widened his sympathies, rubbed off the crust of self-complacency which Ian has always hated in him, even before love came between them.
"I just wired to you," he said, releasing himself. "No idea you were so near."
"Near! The general's headquarters are in a railway truck at Kosczielna. I've got a week's leave. Has Vanda come?"
"No. Mother is packing to go to Warsaw."
"Anything wrong?" he asked in alarm. "Out with it, tell me the worst."
"Nothing wrong. Only...." He pointed towards the devastated garden, the gap where the tower had once been, and the rusty entanglements. "We can't have a wedding here."
Joseph laughed, not from lack of sympathy, but for relief that Vanda was not ill?
"My God! There are weddings on rubbish heaps nowadays. I call Ruvno a quiet spot for a honeymoon. I've no time to go to Warsaw. Vanda wanted it there, too, but it'll take too long. We're going to make an advance soon, and goodness knows when I'll get another chance like this. A week's leave! Not to be despised, I can tell you. I've got all the papers and things. We can get married the moment Vanda comes. Hard work getting them, but they've made things easier in war-time. I saw that old Canon of yours. Dragged him out of bed at six o'clock this morning. I say, anything to drink? I've the thirst of the devil on me!"
"Of course." He led the way to the dining-room, noted Joseph's long pull at the beer set before him--he was in too much of a hurry to wait for a bottle of wine to be fetched and opened--watched, listened and wondered. And this was Joseph, the fastidious, pomaded, manicured, supercilious fop of six months ago. His face reddened by snow, sun and wind; his chin unshaven, his right hand disfigured by the scar of the wound he got in the Carpathians, his nails broken and begrimed with dirt that no washing would remove, his fair hair, once so sleek and trim, tousled from his high fur cap, which he pulled off and flung on to a chair. He looked the picture of robust health, happiness and sincerity, but never like Joseph Skarbek. Soldiering with men whose education and upbringing was ruder than his had rubbed the artificiality off him, leaving the old type of virile, keen, sincere Skarbeks who had fought their way through the country's history. Ian began almost to like him.