“David is your friend. And as he happens to be at home—— Your father and I will be going after lunch. Or you can call by yourself this morning if you prefer it.”
“Call!” he grumbled. “As if David wanted people mooching about and saying they were sorry.”
“Saying? Aren’t you sorry?”
... Funny, how aunts were apt to say silly platitudes in a silly, ready-made voice, just when one was paying them the compliment of treating them like humans. It showed how careful you ought to be, Richard reflected glumly, on his way to Hampstead.
How on earth did one “condole?” He knew right enough just how David had cared about Con, and what a swollen sensation attacked his own throat to think of anyone so cheery and keen on his job and altogether decent as his late school-captain, part of a heap of flung-together mixed-up limbs and mud and stained khaki, here and there twitching still....
But all this was well set apart from official condolence. All this led to silence, not to speech. Richard, deliberately taking the longest way round to Fairwarne Gardens, became ever more acutely uncomfortable over his mission. Besides——
“You ought to have had it out with Mr Gryce.”
The phrase spoke itself so clearly in his mind, and with such detached emphasis, that he started, and almost glanced over his shoulder for the speaker.
It was quite true; his father had made a mistake in hushing him: himself had made a mistake in surrender. Mr Gryce had had the best of the encounter; and probably never again would Richard be whipped to such a stinging fury of indignation. An ingredient of fear might well creep in ... fear such as had twanged deep down in his consciousness when Aunt Stella said: “You especially....” The owner of those light-blue bulging eyes would not hesitate to use the advantage of an adversary’s birthplace.