“There were chances,” he would reply to these querists, “to be had out there,” waving his hand vaguely in the direction of South Africa, “and I saw one of them and took it—that’s all.”
Others might pump him more successfully to the effect that he—Galahad Ranking—was a poor devil of a militiaman attached to the Royal Deershires; that a small detachment of that well-known territorial regiment, garrisoned in a beastly small tin-pot fort on the Springbok River, Eastern Transvaal, were by Boers besieged; that relief was urgently necessary; and that “one of the fellows went and brought up Kitchener.” Said fellow admitted upon further cross-examination to have been himself. But for such details as that the bringing up involved a six-mile run in scorching sun over tangled bush veldt, crossing the enemy’s lines, being sniped at by Boer sharpshooters and chased by Boer pickets, the curious must refer to despatches. Stampeding Army mules would not trample the truth out of the man.
He wrung half-hearted leave of absence from the powers that were, and his orderly packed the battered tin suit-case and the Gladstone bag that had spent three days at the bottom of a water-hole, and, having had its numerous labels soaked off, bore a painfully leprous appearance.
He found Laura’s omnibus automobile, with its luggage tender, waiting at Cholsford Junction, and smiled his dry little smile, mentally comparing the dimensions of the vehicle with the size of the guest. The suit-case and the Gladstone bag made a poor show; but there were other things to come: huge packages from the Stores, and a sea-weedy hamper from Great Fishby, and some cases of champagne with the label of a first-class Regent Street firm. “Poor Kingdom’s wine-merchants!” Ranking said to himself, and he blinked in a bewildered way at a bandbox of mammoth proportions and three dressmakers’ boxes of stout cardboard with tin corners, their covers bearing the flourishing signature of Babin et Cie. Because, you know, Laura’s bereavement was so very recent, and bachelors of Galahad’s type have a somewhat exaggerated notion of the extent to which conjugal mourners are expected to bewail themselves. However, even a widow requires clothes. This handsome concession to feminine idiosyncrasy made, Galahad ousted Laura’s chauffeur from the driving-seat, and, assuming the steering-wheel, was reaching for the starting-lever when the chauffeur stopped him with—
“Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a gentleman to fetch.”
“A visitor to The Rodelands?” Galahad asked, with furrows of surprise forming below his hat-brim.
The mechanic, a gloomy young man in a gold-banded cap, with a weakness for wearing waterproofs in the driest weather, replied, without a groom’s alertness or a groom’s civility:
“It’s a gentleman staying at Eyot Cottage....” Adding, as Galahad faintly recalled the creeper-covered cot in question, modestly perched on the edge of a marshy lawn running down to the river, and usually let by the landlord of the local hotel to honeymooning couples: “And we usually give him a lift.”
As the chauffeur spoke, the gentleman emerged from the dim, echoing archway through which the down platform disgorged. The stranger was young—Galahad, who was middle-aged, saw that at a glance—and fair, while Galahad was sandy. He wore a suit of gray tweeds too short in the sleeves and trouser-legs, and his cherubically pink countenance, adorned with large, round, china-blue eyes and a little flaxen mustache, was carried at an altitude which would have been disconcerting to a Lifeguardsman of six feet high, and was simply maddening to Galahad, who could only be categorized as small. We are all human, and Galahad was secretly gratified to observe that the young giant’s shoulders boasted a graceful droop, and that his chest was somewhat narrow.
“Hullo, Watson!” observed the tall young gentleman, condescendingly; and Watson smiled faintly and actually touched his cap as the new-comer favored Galahad with a long and round-eyed stare.