The next morning, owing to some delay over breakfast, I was a little late at the station and failed to get my usual seat among my usual set. I managed just to scramble into a carriage and subsided into the far corner with my paper well before my face because I did not want to be sociable in that company. One has to be careful. Just as the train started, in dashed Barrington and took the only seat left—in fact there was not really room for him. He did not see me.
The train had not left the station before one of the men remarked upon the heroism of young Wargrave; when to my astonishment and annoyance Barrington at once took him up.
"Ah! yes," he said. "Such a fine young fellow; I always knew he would do something like that."
"Then you know him?" he was asked.
"Well, I don't say that I exactly know him," he said, "but I used to hear a lot about him from one of the most intimate friends of the family."
And one by one he told all my little anecdotes—trivial enough when in the mouth of a stranger, but, coming from one who knew, interesting and important. Will you believe it, Wargrave lasted Barrington and his idiotic listeners all the way to London—my Wargrave, mind, not his at all! And the way they listened! I personally sat hidden, and fumed but said nothing. How could I suddenly claim Wargrave as my own without being ridiculous? Nor would they have believed me. Besides, to put myself in competition with Barrington....
I managed to elude Barrington's eye at the terminus, and sought my office in a state of fury and contempt. At lunch I was again baulked, for none of my regular companions were there. It was beginning to be ridiculous. I might as well have not known the Wargraves at all.
That evening I was very carefully early for my train, determined that I would score then. My own set should now know first-hand what my association with the young hero was. After all, what did those others matter? But here again I had been forestalled.
"I met that man Barrington at lunch," said one of my neighbours, "and he was most interesting about this young Wargrave. Knew lots of things about his boyhood. Often stayed there. A ripping boy it seems he was. Really, Barrington's not such a bad chap when you get to know him. I think we must have him in our carriage now and then. He was most modest about it."
"Did Barrington say that Lieut. Wargrave was a friend of his?" I asked.