It was Braithwaite who showed amazement. "You! Last night!"
"Yes, I, last night."
Braithwaite set down his knife and fork. The bleak look came into his eyes that had given him the nickname at the Front of "Steely Jack." He was silent for a full five seconds; then he said, "Lord Taborley, you're a man of your word, but I find it difficult to believe that."
Tabs' voice was both quiet and kindly when he replied, "You'll find it difficult to believe a good many things before I've ended. Evidently Terry never told you that for over four years she and I had had an understanding that, when peace came, if I survived, we would be married. Last night, while you were proposing to her, I was asking her father's
consent. While I was gaining his consent, you were being accepted."
The blank look of astonishment which had overspread the General's face, quickly gave way to one of generous compassion. "On my word of honor, Lord Taborley, I never knew that. I thought—please forgive me—that you were interfering merely out of snobbishness. I ought to have known better. All my dealings with you should have—— I begin to understand."
Tabs' old sense of friendship for the man—his man—was coming back. "You begin," he said, "but you don't fully understand. You and I have to come down to earth. Not unnaturally up till now you've chosen to treat me as an enemy. Perhaps I was when I sent you those two letters yesterday. But I'm not now. I, too, am learning. There was a coster who let me off arrest. Did I tell you about him? I forget. The reason he gave taught me a lot, 'You and me was pals out there.' And you and I were pals out there, Braithwaite—not master and man or junior and senior officer. It would be a burning shame if, now that the war's ended, we should fall to squabbling among ourselves."
"And yet the fact remains," said Braithwaite, "that I, who used to be your servant, have cut you out of Terry. How are we going to remain pals in a case like that?"
Tabs flinched at the bluntness of the words, "cut you out of Terry." For a moment he felt inclined to say right out, "You're mistaken. She's sent me to get her promise back." Instead he said, "How
are we going to remain pals! That's what I'm here to talk about. I've made up my mind how I'm going to act. It's about you that I'm concerned. I'm jealous for you, Braithwaite. I'm proud of the fact that, whatever you are to-day, you were once my man—my man in the old clan sense. I want to see you carry yourself as bravely in your new fight as you did in the one that's ended. I think of the two this peace fight will be the more difficult test, especially for men like yourself. I lost caste during the war, while for you it proved a social opportunity. Now that we're back at peace, the process is likely to be reversed. The qualities which gave you high rank in a world at war won't fetch the same market value. You'll have to fight afresh—only this time it'll be against the temptation to sink below your own high standards through bitterness. In a General's uniform you could go anywhere. It was your passport. No one made enquiries. Once you're demobilized, the world asks for other credentials—credentials as to your profession, bank-account, friends, birth. What I'm trying to say is this: there's nothing dishonorable in your past save your own assumption that it was dishonorable. And I want to assure you that it isn't my purpose to drag you down. I couldn't. There's only one man who can do that—yourself. But you can drag yourself below anything that you were if you go on refusing to play fair."