“Yes,” he was saying to the waiter, “I have been spending the week-end on the Clyde in a yacht. I joined the train at Ardlui this morning, and I can tell you——”
I didn’t wait to hear any more. Rather by instinct than as a result of any definite train of thought, I led Myra quickly behind a Japanese screen to a small table by a side window. After all, it was no business of mine if Hilderman wished to say he had joined the train at Ardlui. He probably had his own reasons. Possibly Dennis was right, and the man was a detective. But I had seen him at King’s Cross and again at Edinburgh before we reached Ardlui, so I thought it might embarrass him if I walked in on the top of his assertion that he had just come from the Clyde. However, Myra was with me, which was much more important, and I dismissed Hilderman and his little fib from my mind.
“Ronnie,” said Myra, in the middle of lunch, “you haven’t said anything about the war.”
“No, dear,” I answered clumsily. “It——” It was an astonishingly difficult thing to say when it came to saying it.
“And yet that was what you came to see me about?”
“Yes, darling. You see, I——”
“I know, dear. You’ve come to tell me that you’re going to enlist. I’m glad, Ronnie, very glad—and very, very proud.”
Myra turned away and looked out of the window.
“I hate people who talk a lot about their duty,” I said; “but it obviously is my duty, and I know that’s what you would want me to do.”
“Of course, dear, I wouldn’t have you do anything else.” And she turned and smiled at me, though there were tears in her dear eyes. “And I shall try to be brave, very brave, Ronnie. I’m getting a big girl now,” she added pluckily, attempting a little laugh. And though, of course, we afterwards discussed the regiment I was to join, and how the uniform would suit me, and how you kept your buttons clean, and a thousand other things, that was the last that was said about it from that point of view. There are some people who never need to say certain things—or at any rate there are some things that never need be said between certain people.