“Friend.” Bromley, a little above his usual grave self, had gone clean back to South African days. The amenities of home service were, for the moment, completely in eclipse.
“Oh, it’s you, Bromley, is it? What’s all this skylarking?” blustered Locksley.
The situation was curtly explained to him; and he turned for advice—as weak men will in a crisis—to the stronger character.
“What do you think I ought to do?”
“Do!” said Bromley contemptuously. “Do? Well, if I were you, I should go to bed. This is a man’s job.”
“He’ll never forgive you for that,” said Peter, snuggling gratefully between his Jaeger blankets.
“My part!” chuckled Bromley across the darkness of the tent.
PART EIGHT
DISSENSION
§ 1
A man and his wife can occasionally (if they are very circumspect) conceal matrimonial disturbances from their servants: but, in a Regiment, the slightest tension between officers is known to the lower ranks almost at the moment of its occurrence. Mess-waiters gossip; batmen gossip; the Sergeant’s Mess gossips: between a parade and a parade, twelve hundred men are taking sides in the quarrel of two. And the Chalkshires were no ordinary peace-time regiment: volunteers to a man; of different social gradings but almost every one a Londoner; intensely curious about their new profession; it did not take them long to discover—“B” Company especially—how matters stood between 2nd Lieutenant Harold Bromley and Captain and Adjutant Locksley-Jones.