“What’s his father doing?”
“He’s away in Paris,” Val said, staring at the very queer expression on his uncle’s face, like—like that of a snarling dog.
“Artists!” said James. The word coming from the very bottom of his soul, broke up the dinner.
Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-fruits of heroism, like medlars over-ripe.
She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor’s at once and have his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they gave him. But he could feel that she was very much upset. It was on his lips to console her with the spoken thought that he would be out of the way of that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen, and the knowledge that his mother would not be out of the way, restrained him. He felt aggrieved that she did not seem more proud of him. When Imogen had gone to bed, he risked the emotional.
“I’m awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother.”
“Well, I must make the best of it. We must try and get you a commission as soon as we can; then you won’t have to rough it so. Do you know any drill, Val?”
“Not a scrap.”
“I hope they won’t worry you much. I must take you about to get the things to-morrow. Good-night; kiss me.”
With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, “I hope they won’t worry you much,” in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette, before a dying fire. The heat was out of him—the glow of cutting a dash. It was all a damned heart-aching bore. “I’ll be even with that chap Jolly,” he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.