“Thanks a lot. Truth is, it was a narrow squeak, and I couldn’t help admiring the way Leila played up. She was in a fury with Hayley; but she got herself in hand in no time, and behaved very decently. She told me privately he was often like that—flaring out all of a sudden like a madman. You wouldn’t imagine it, would you, with that quiet way of his? She says she thinks it’s his old wound.”
“What old wound?”
“Didn’t you know he was wounded—where was it? Bull Run, I believe. In the head—”
No, I hadn’t known; hadn’t even heard, or remembered, that Delane had been in the Civil War. I stood and stared in my astonishment.
“Hayley Delane? In the war?”
“Why, of course. All through it.”
“But Bull Run—Bull Run was at the very beginning.” I broke off to go through a rapid mental calculation. “Look here, Jack, it can’t be; he’s not over fifty-five. You told me so yourself. If he was in it from the beginning he must have gone into it as a schoolboy.”
“Well, that’s just what he did: ran away from school to volunteer. His family didn’t know what had become of him till he was wounded. I remember hearing my people talk about it. Great old sport, Hayley. I’d have given a lot not to have this thing happen; not at my place anyhow; but it has, and there’s no help for it. Look here, you swear you won’t make a sign, will you? I’ve got all the others into line, and if you’ll back us up we’ll have a regular Happy Family Evening. Jump into your clothes—it’s nearly nine.”
III
THIS is not a story-teller’s story; it is not even the kind of episode capable of being shaped into one. Had it been, I should have reached my climax, or at any rate its first stage, in the incident at the Polo Club, and what I have left to tell would be the effect of that incident on the lives of the three persons concerned.