“He doesn’t want to be safe, bless you! That’s just what gets him on the raw!” Terence said grinning. “He wants to be a fire-and-thunder swashbuckler, out on the pathless wilds.”
“What is a swashbuckler?” asked Delia, and Val laughed, and said:
“The very opposite to a director in a black coat and tall hat, Delia. Think it out for yourself! I only wish I had the chance.”
Delia looked thoughtful. She was apportioning fifteen hundred pounds on the upkeep of her future home. She decided on a small flat and a runabout car, and rather thought that the drawing-room should be pink. Mrs Gordon said seriously:
“Dear Val, you must get the better of these foolish ideas! They are spoiling your life. You have so much that other men want, that it seems really wicked to be discontented because you have not—trouble! Oh, my dear boy, it will come soon enough! You ought to be thankful!”
“But it’s not trouble, Mrs Gordon! I want trouble no more than any other man. It’s danger that fascinates me—adventure—the thrill of the unknown. It was born in me, I suppose. My ancestors were a race of explorers. If I had been able to have a fling in my youth, I might have been able to settle down, but I went straight from Oxford to the City, and a longing that is bottled up doesn’t diminish, it goes on growing all the time. When Mr Baron told me the news to-day, I felt—you’ll be horrified at my ingratitude!—as if a halter had been slipped round my neck.”
Mr Gordon shook his head.
“It’s a thousand pities that you could not take that trip! If you’d been my son I’d have packed you off with five pounds in your pocket, to work your own way round the world. You’d have had enough excitement to last you for the rest of your life—and danger into the bargain. You’d be thankful then to settle down to your present life.”
“Oh, I’m thankful enough now. It’s quite a good life as things go, but just a bit boring.”
Terence kicked his slipper once more.