He rose at once, and walked in a stumbling way across the room, while I followed. The room was empty where we stood.
“Aren’t you well?” I asked.
He laughed in a most tragic way.
“Did you see those two in the car, Pierrot and Columbine?”
I nodded.
“Columbine was my wife. Pierrot is now her husband. Funny, isn’t it?”
My memory went back to that night in Cologne, less than six months before, when Harding had asked me to use my influence to get him demobilised, and as an explanation of his motive opened his pocket-book and showed me the photograph of a pretty girl, and said, “That’s my wife;... she is hipped because I have been away so long.” I felt enormously sorry for him.
“Come and have a whisky in the smoke-room,” said Harding. “I’d like a yarn, and we shall be alone.”
I did not want him to tell me his tale. I was tired of tragic history. But I could not refuse. The boy wanted to unburden himself. I could see that, though for quite a time after we had sat on each side of the wood fire he hesitated in getting to the point and indulged in small talk about his favourite brand of cigars and my evil habit of smoking the worst kind of cigarettes.
Suddenly we plunged into what were the icy waters of his real thoughts.