There was unnatural venom in the old man’s words. His tightened hands stirred restlessly; his eyes, seen in the flare of a match as he lit a cigarette, were unquiet, alive with some torture of tension. Routledge gripped the vehement arm.
“You are oxidizing a bit too much tissue, old war-horse,” he said quietly. “You’ll want to go into the meadows for a while when you get back—but you won’t stay there. This stuff—the smell of it, as now in the dawn-dew, and the muttering formations presently”—Routledge waved his arm over the bivouac—“things like this won’t let you run long in the pasture. When the war-headings begin to grow on the front pages of the Witness, and the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand grows and blackens into a mailed fist gripping a dagger—why, you’ll be at the lane-fence nickering for harness.”
“Routledge, don’t go over all that rot again,” said the old man. “It isn’t that I’m out of strength, but I’m too full of hate to go on. I’ve always hated this smug English people, and I’m not mellowing with years. I feel it hotter and hotter—sometimes I feel it like a running incandescence inside. It leaves my brain charred and noxious—that’s the way it seems to me.... Yet, I have been one of England’s first aggrandizers. I have rejoiced in print at her victories. I have cheered with the low-browed mob, ‘God save the Queen!’ I have borne the brunt of her wars—the son of my father!”
Routledge was disturbed, but he chuckled softly. “One would think you were still a fire-brand of the Fenians, Jerry.”
“I know to whom I am talking,” was whispered queerly. “The Fenians are not dead yet—not all the Fenians.”
“When did you hear from Miss Noreen last?”
“Oh, it’s a fortnight. We ought to get mail at Madirabad.... I must write. My God, I must write!... Don’t mind me if I ramble a bit, Routledge. I drank rather plenty to welcome you back. Whiskey sizzles along my spine rather faster than once upon a time.... And you haven’t seen Noreen for——?”
“For over a year,” Routledge said.
“And you haven’t heard that they call her the most beautiful woman in London?”
“Yes, Jerry. I heard it from General Falconer at Bombay; from the Sewards in Simla; from Bleakley, who came back to Hong Kong after a year’s leave with a made-over liver and a child-wife. But then I knew it, Jerry—yes, I knew it.”