第18章 CHAPTER VIII(1)

In a way, their meeting the next morning was fortuitous enough, yet it had also its significance for both of them. Geraldine's greeting was almost studiously formal.

"You are not going to scold me for my memory, are you?" Captain Granet asked, looking down at her with a faintly humorous uplifting of the eyebrows. "Imust have exercise, you know."

"I don't even remember telling you that I came into the Park in the mornings,"Geraldine replied.

"You didn't--that is to say you didn't mention the Park particularly," he admitted. "You told me you always took these five dogs out for a walk directly after breakfast, and for the rest I used my intelligence.""I might have gone into Regent's Park or St. James' Park," she reminded him.

"In which case," he observed, "I should have walked up and down until I had had enough of it, and then gone away in a bad temper.""Don't be foolish," she laughed. "I decline absolutely to believe that you had a single thought of me when you turned in here. Do you mind if I say that I prefer not to believe it?"He accepted the reproof gracefully.

"Well, since we do happen to have met," he suggested, "might I walk with you a little way? You see," he went on, "it's rather dull hobbling along here all alone.""Of course you may, if you like," she assented, glancing sympathetically at his stick. "How is your leg getting on?""It's better--getting on finely. So far as my leg is concerned, I believe Ishall be fit to go out again within ten days. It's my arm that bothers me a little. One of the nerves, the doctor said, must be wrong. I can only just lift it. You've no idea," he went on, "how a game leg and a trussed-up arm interfere with the little round of one's daily life. I can't ride, can't play golf or billiards, and for an unintelligent chap like me," he wound up with a sigh, "there aren't a great many other ways of passing the time.""Why do you call yourself unintelligent?" she protested. "You couldn't have got through your soldiering so well if you had been.""Oh! I know all the soldier stuff," he admitted, "know my job, that is to say, all right, and of course I am moderately good at languages, but that finishes me. I haven't any brains like your friend Thomson, for instance.""Major Thomson is very clever, I believe," she said a little coldly.

"And a little censorious, I am afraid," Granet added with a slight grimace.

"I suppose he thinks I am a garrulous sort of ass but I really can't see why he needed to go for your brother last night just because he was gratifying a very reasonable curiosity on my part. It isn't as though I wasn't in the Service. The Army and the Navy are the same thing, any way, and we are always glad to give a Navy man a hint as to how we are getting on.""I really couldn't quite understand Major Thomson myself," she agreed.

"May I ask--do you mind?" he began,--"have you been engaged to him long?"She looked away for a moment. Her tone, when she replied, was meant to convey some slight annoyance at the question.

"About three months."

Captain Granet kicked a pebble away from the path in front of him with his sound foot.

"I should think he must be a very good surgeon," he remarked in a measured tone. "Looks as though he had lots of nerve, and that sort of thing. To tell you the truth, though, he rather frightens me. I don't think that he has much sympathy with my type."She became a little more indulgent and smiled faintly as she looked at him.

"I wonder what your type is?" she asked reflectively.

"Fairly obvious, I am afraid," he confessed, with a sigh. "I love my soldiering, of course, and I am ashamed to think how keen I have been on games, and should be still if I had the chance. Outside that I don't read much, I am not musical, and I am very much predisposed to let the future look after itself. There are thousands just like me," he continued thoughtfully.