George shook his head, and muttering something about “Sorry, an engagement—awful hurry,” was gone.
Left thus abruptly to himself, General Pendyce summoned a page, slowly pencilled something on his card, and with his back to the only persons in the hall, waited, his hands folded on the handle of his cane. And while he waited he tried as far as possible to think of nothing. Having served his country, his time now was nearly all devoted to waiting, and to think fatigued and made him feel discontented, for he had had sunstroke once, and fever several times. In the perfect precision of his collar, his boots, his dress, his figure; in the way from time to time he cleared his throat, in the strange yellow driedness of his face between his carefully brushed whiskers, in the immobility of his white hands on his cane, he gave the impression of a man sucked dry by a system. Only his eyes, restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential Pendyce that was behind.
He went up to the ladies' drawing-room, clutching that telegram. It worried him. There was something odd about it, and he was not accustomed to pay calls in the morning. He found his sister-in-law seated at an open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather defiantly bright. She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was not the man to discern what was not put under his nose. Fortunately for him, that had never been his practice.
“How are you, Margery?” he said. “Glad to see you in town. How's Horace? Look here what he's sent me!” He offered her the telegram, with the air of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise, as though he had just thought of it: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry for the sender.
“Nothing, thanks, dear Charles,” she said slowly. “I'm all right. Horace gets so nervous!”
General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then, since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond his philosophy, he accepted her statement.
“He shouldn't go sending telegrams like this,” he said. “You might have been ill for all I could tell. It spoiled my breakfast!” For though, as a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied that he felt hungry. “When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow who never sent anything but telegrams. Telegraph Jo they called him. He commanded the old Bluebottles. You know the old Bluebottles? If Horace is going to take to this sort of thing he'd better see a specialist; it's almost certain to mean a breakdown. You're up about dresses, I see. When do you come to town? The season's getting on.”
Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband's brother, for though punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was hardly a man to inspire awe in his social equals. It was, therefore, not through fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an instinct for avoiding all unnecessary suffering too strong for her, and because the truth was really untellable. Even to herself it seemed slightly ridiculous, and she knew the poor General would take it so dreadfully to heart.
“I don't know about coming up this season. The garden is looking so beautiful, and there's Bee's engagement. The dear child is so happy!”