‘Vendetta?’ said De Blacquaire. ‘You can hardly have a vendetta with a man who has saved your life, even though the beggar did it for no other reason than to show how much he despised you. I was wrong about the lad, General; he’s a very fine fellow.’
‘I could have told you that much long ago,’ said the General. He reached out a lean brown hand and rang a bell which stood upon the stateroom table. ‘You’ll take a glass of wine, Major? It’s against my rule, but I feel like breaking rules today.’
‘And so do I, sir,’ said De Blacquaire.
So the wine was brought, and the glasses were filled, and the two men drank to each other. The General lit a cheroot, and sat in a deck chair; but the younger man fidgeted and was obviously ill at ease.
‘There is one thing on my mind, General Boswell,’ he said at last, ‘and I should like to get it over. I had two or three months at Scutari and I was nursed by an angel all the while.’
‘Don’t go on, my lad,’ said the General, reaching a hand towards him. ‘If I understand you, it’s useless to talk of that.’
‘Very well, sir,’ said De Blacquaire, sipping gloomily at his wine; and nothing more was said for a minute or two, but the younger man gradually brightened, and it could be plainly seen that he was squaring his mental shoulders for the reception of a burden which he meant to cany.
‘The Sergeant is a lucky dog, sir.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said the General, ‘he has deserved to be a lucky dog. It is one of the ordinances of this life that a fellow can’t choose his own father. If the lad had had a choice and had exercised it, I should have had no great respect for him. And yet I had a sort of liking for old Jervase. He was a bounder always, but I thought he was an honest bounder.’
‘They tell me,’ said De Blacquaire, ‘that the Sergeant’s to have his V.C. for that business in front of the first parallel.’