“If you remain mooning about here, hovering along like a moth in the sunshine, brooding over things which are past and beyond remedy, I give you a year. If you buckle to, make yourself new interests in life, start on a new career, and get new air into your lungs and new thoughts into your brain, I give you any time from ten years to five-and-twenty.”
George instinctively drew himself up into a more martial attitude.
“And my wife?” he asked with fresh interest and eagerness.
“I give her as long as she has a strong heart and a brave arm to take care of her.”
The young man turned his eyes away with a new light burning in them. At last he said with a tremor in his voice:
“You would not deceive us about this, of course, just to keep us lingering on a little longer?”
“Not a bit of it. You are both suffering from severe shock to the nervous system, and because each of you thought you were going to lose the other, neither has had the energy or the desire to pull round. You besides have a weak lung, and I tell you frankly you would not make her majesty such a smart young officer again. But a man of your intelligence must have other resources.”
George saw by the foregoing speech that very little of his history during the past year was unknown to the doctor. On the whole, this knowledge made him feel easier.
“I think I could write,” said he reflectively. “I have already given myself some sort of training for it, and if only all my ideas did not seem to be locked up somewhere out of my reach, I think I could express them at least intelligibly.”
“Good,” said Dr. Bannerman. “Then all we have to do is to find the key. I think I know a friend of yours whom we can consult about that. You shall hear the result of our conference very shortly. In the meanwhile, keep up your spirits and keep out of draughts, and English literature may yet thank your wife for taking you out of the army.”