"Even when I've told you that I know there's a motive for Major Vandyke's wanting to injure him, ruin him in his career if he can?"
"You seem to think Vandyke's a regular sort of villain out of melodrama," said Tony, with an uncomfortable laugh. "I guess you don't know men very well yet, Peggy—except in novels and plays—when it comes down to bedrock. They're not much like that in real life, as far as I've ever seen. They never go round plotting to ruin other chaps' careers, even when they don't happen to get along very well with 'em."
"You're not so very old. You haven't had much more experience of life than I have," I taunted him.
Tony laughed. "Haven't I? That's all you know. You're a child, a little baby-child, compared to me. I may be young, but anyhow, I'm a man, and I've lived among men since I left West Point two years ago—even if you don't count cadets as men. Vandyke's no angel, and he and March have been doing a bit of the cat-and-dog act in a quiet way lately. But it's pretty far-fetched to accuse Vandyke of hatching up a plot to wipe March off the map, especially when it meant risking his own life and sacrificing his orderly, who was devoted to him—a fellow he valued a whole lot——"
"Ah!" I broke in. "So the orderly was 'devoted to him!' I wonder if the court-martial will remember that fact for what it's worth?"
"For what it's worth, yes. I guess it can be trusted to do just that. But what there is will be likely to tell in Vandyke's favour, I guess, not against him. Johnson had good reasons for being devoted to the major. The chap got consumption, and was in a bad way—would have had to say good-bye to an army life—if Vandyke hadn't paid for his cure in one of the best sanatoria in America, and used influence to keep his job open for him, too. Nothing very black in that record, eh?"
"Major Vandyke's the kind of person to pay high for anything he really wants himself," I said. "He must have badly wanted this Johnson man for something or other."
"Johnson was born a sort of gentleman, but hadn't the art of getting along in life, although he was pretty near being a genius at mathematics as well as mechanics, and could do stunts in several languages, like you. No shame to Vandyke to make use of the man's gifts. He must have been jolly useful—too useful to waste."
"It won't make me love you better, Tony," I remarked with deliberate injustice (for there are moods when any girl must feel a horrid satisfaction in being unjust), "if you go on praising Major Vandyke to the skies. Does it matter why the orderly was devoted to him, or he to the orderly? The thing of importance is the tie between them. The more devoted the man was, the more willing he would be to go to any lengths for Major Vandyke."
"Oh, if you want to put it that way," Tony hedged. "But it's a girl's notion, like the motive you attribute to Vandyke."