The same trouble was in the old man’s eyes as he listened. “It is true,” he said, under his breath, almost to himself. “You are an older man than I am.” A long pause followed. Jeremy was the first to return from abstraction, and he was able, while the Speaker mused, to study that aged, powerful face, to read again a determination in the eyes and jaw, that might have been fanaticism had it not been corrected by the evidence of long and subduing experience in the lines round the mouth and eyes.
At last the Speaker broke the silence. “And in that life,” he said, “you were a scientist?” He pronounced the word with a sort of lingering reverence, as though it had meant, perhaps, magician or oracle.
Jeremy tried to explain what his learning was, and what his position had been.
“But do you know how to make things?”
“I know how to make some things,” Jeremy replied cautiously. Indeed, during the social disorders of his earlier existence he had considered whether there was not any useful trade to which he might turn his hand, and he had decided that he might without difficulty qualify as a plumber. The art of fixing washers on taps was no mystery to him; and he judged that in a week or two he might learn how to wipe a joint.
The Speaker regarded him with a growing interest, tempered by a caution like his own. It seemed as though it took him some time to decide upon his next remark. At last he said in a low and careful voice:
“Do you know anything about guns?”
Jeremy started and answered loudly and cheerfully: “Guns? Why, I was in the artillery!”
The effect of this reply on the Speaker was remarkable. For a moment it straightened his back, smoothed the wrinkles from his face, and threw an even more vivid light into his eyes. When he spoke again, he had recovered his self-possession.
“You were in the artillery?” he asked. “Do you mean in the great war against the Germans?”