"To take an interest in a beautiful young widow is right and proper," he said—"especially if you happen to be an eligible D.S.O. But not too premature an interest, please! Bethune is a gallant soldier; but fine feeling never was his forte." Suddenly the old man blazed up. "Good God! Has he realised that the poor child doesn't even know she is a widow?"
That Eric should be taking, or ever have taken, a more than fatherly interest in Marjorie was news to me. I am not very perceptive in these matters; but the possibility of such a thing explained a good deal to me—Eric's persistent dislike of Roy, for instance. Still, I had no desire to pursue the topic; and switched accordingly.
"I am afraid she will have to be told now," I said. "It's in the paper this morning. People will be writing to condole, and so on."
"I know," said Lord Eskerley. "I shall tell her myself—this afternoon." He shook his white head sorrowfully. "It will be pretty awful, though: a woman ought to do it really." He glanced up at the portrait of his long dead wife. "We will give her one more morning, poor little soul! Hark!"
The door into the hall stood open; so, apparently, did the door of Marjorie's room, on the first floor above us. As we stood, we could hear her voice uplifted in a somewhat exaggerated apostrophe to her own son; also that self-satisfied infant's gurgling reception of the same. Mother and son, by the way, had been in the house for more than three weeks, having been conveyed thither from a nursing home in Kensington, where, thanks to the timely warning of a flamboyant but attractive young person named Liss Lyle, we had been constrained to look for them. Miss Lyle was now our constant visitor, and had completely enmeshed the hitherto impregnable Meadows.
"Extraordinary gibberish, baby talk!" remarked Lord Eskerley. "Primeval, of course, and quite unaltered through the ages." Then, suddenly:
"Poor child, she's had a hard time! Three years of exhausting self-imposed drudgery—then maternity! And now she has to be told that she's a widow. My God, Alan, how I hate Wilhelm sometimes! And he once dined in this house!"
"What is the news, by the way?" I asked.
"Good, decidedly good! I think we have the Boche cold at last. Internally Germany is on her last legs. Only one thing could have braced her up—a spectacular success last March. As things turned out, that enterprise went off at half-cock—though it gave us a most salutary scare. Now our morale is returning: Foch has the situation well in hand. I fancy he will encourage the enemy to attack a little longer: then, when he has blown a few more swollen salients in our line, come right back at him and puncture them one by one. That and the arrival of the Americans—they are splendid troops, I hear, and are being rushed over at the rate of three hundred thousand a month now—should put the last nail into the Teutonic coffin." The old man paused, and sighed. "Not before it was time, though! Our casualties passed the three million mark the other day, Alan! Still, our tribulations of the past three months may have been worth while. They have taught us two things: firstly, that this blundering, flat-footed old country of ours retains its ancient staying-power; secondly, never to be too cocksure about winning until you have won! What time is he coming?"
"Eleven o'clock," I replied, concluding that this lightning reference was to Eric.