Both the Colonels tried to tell her; but it was the younger one with the moustache (the one who had said that Jimmy was "impayable") who satisfied her.
It was true, every bit of it. Jevons, it seemed, had been in the thick of the bombardment of Alost and in the fighting for the bridge at Termonde. His practice was to leave Kendal and the motor-car behind him in some place of shelter while he walked into the fire. Sometimes he took his Belgian stretcher-bearers with him, sometimes, when they didn't like the look of it, he went by himself. He didn't care, the Colonel said, where he went or how. If it was through rifle-fire or mitrailleuse he went on his hands and knees—he wriggled on his stomach. If it was shrapnel he took his chance. He had saved one of his three officers by carrying him straight out of his own battery, when the German guns had found its range; and he had driven his car, by himself, across a five-mile-long field, under a hailstorm of shrapnel, to get the other two.
"You see," the Colonel expounded, "your husband has chosen the most dangerous of all field ambulance work. Those high-speed scouting cars, running low on the ground, can go where a big ambulance cannot. It is magnificent what he has done."
When Jevons came back they could still hardly keep their eyes off him; they could hardly tear themselves away. It was "À demain, Monsieur," and "À demain, Colonel" as if they had arranged another deadly tryst.
"Well," said Jimmy, "how do you like them?"
"Oh—they're dears," said Viola, "especially the one with the moustache. Do you know, they've told me everything except what's the matter with leg."
"My leg?" said Jimmy. "A bit of shell barked it. I'm jolly glad it's my leg and not my hand."
I was a little frightened when Viola left us alone after dinner. I thought he would pitch into me for bringing her. But he only said sadly, "You oughtn't to have brought her, Furny. But I suppose you couldn't stop her."
I said, No, I couldn't stop her. But I hadn't brought her. She had brought me.
We sat on till the lounge was open to the guests of the hotel. And when the war-correspondents began to drop in I saw that Jevons was uneasy.