EXIT THE BLIGHTER
"Stupid not to remember what?" Severance still temporised, though he
knew the answer.
"Not to remember that man named Garth, in your regiment, who was
promoted from a private to be an officer, and won the V.C. I think it
was Mums who asked you about him one day, when she'd read something in
the _Daily Mail_, and you said he was a cad. Is this by any chance the
same Garth?"
"By evil chance, it is."
Marise was interested. She was dramatic, and liked coincidences. Mrs.
Sorel was interested too, with that part of her mind--the principal
part--which was not reading Wells's _Joan and Peter_. It was quite easy,
for two reasons, to unhook her attention from the book. One reason was
that as a chaperon she was reading by discretion, not inclination. The
other reason was, if she had to read at all, she would secretly have
preferred a "smart society" novel. But when she read in public she
always selected a book which could be talked about intellectually.
She knew how strong this feeling of Lord Severance against the
regimental hero had been, and she wished that Marise would show a little
tact, and not vex him. He had not proposed yet!
But Marise went on. "How quaint that your Major Garth should be on board
our ship!"
"For Heaven's sake, don't call him my Major Garth, dear girl! I loathe
the brute."
"But why, old thing? You might tell me why."
"I did, at the time your mother mentioned him."
"If you did, I've forgotten. Do tell me again. It sounds exciting."
Mary Sorel thought that intervention would now be more useful than
detachment.
"You two are talking so loudly, I can't read!" she sweetly reproved the
pair. "I caught the name of Garth, and the whole conversation we had
that day, about him, came back to me. We were lunching with Lord
Severance at the Carlton, and I showed him a paragraph I'd clipped from
the _Daily Mail_. I thought as it was about his regiment he might be
interested if he hadn't seen it. It was headed 'Romantic Career of a
Hero. British-born American Wins the Victoria Cross.' But he wasn't
interested, because he explained that the man was a blot on the Brigade;
very common, not a gentleman."
"Yes, it comes back to me, too," said Marise. "But if he was a hero----"
"That's all newspaper tosh!" cut in Severance. "They must have headings!
It's luck more than heroism that gets a chap the Victoria Cross.
Soldiers all know that. Otherwise----"
His lips said no more. Only his eyes were eloquent. The beautiful
lavender-grey overcoat hid no ribbon-symbols of decorations on his
breast. But how can a staff officer find the chance his soul yearns for,
to show his mettle--except the metal on his expensive "brass hat"?
"Of course!" Mrs. Sorel breathed sympathetically.
"Garth was all right as a private, I dare say," Severance grudged. "Even
as an officer he might have passed in some regiments. But not in the
Guards. He ought never to have been let come in. And he ought certainly
not to have stayed in, knowing how we felt. If he'd had any proper
pride, he wouldn't have stopped a day."
"Perhaps it was pride made him stick," suggested Marise, led on somehow
she hardly knew why--to defend the culprit.
"'Proper' pride was my word," Severance reminded her.
"Extraordinary that an American should be serving with the Guards, in
the first place!" Mary Sorel flung herself into the breach, hoping to
stop the argument. Arguments made her anxious. She thought that they led
to quarrels. And not for anything on earth would she have Marise quarrel
with Severance, the only earl who had ever shown symptoms of proposing.
It had been well enough for the girl to pique him when he was a handsome
young man about town, whose good position was counterbalanced by the
star's financial and face value. But since six weeks Severance had
become a great catch. Other girls were digging bait in case the fish
should wriggle, or be coaxed, off Marise Sorel's hook.
"The fellow's luck again!" growled Severance. "I don't know what his job
was in his own country. I don't interest myself in the private life of
the lower classes. All I know is, he wasn't a soldier; but he had some
bee in his bonnet about a future war, and a theory that there'd be
trench fighting on a big scale. He contrived to invent and patent a
motor entrenching tool, supposed to act fifty times quicker than
anything else ever seen. Then he proceeded to experiment on his
back-woods farm, or his wild west ranch, or whatever it was. Washington
wasn't 'taking any,' however (isn't that what you say in the States?),
so Garth decided to try it on the British bulldog. Where his big stroke
of luck came in was meeting our old C.O. on board ship crossing to
England. The Colonel had been in New York with his American wife. He
probably heard the blighter brag of his invention, and that would catch
him as toasted cheese in a trap catches a hungry rat. You see, the old
boy always had a craze of his own about trench warfare, and I believe he
used to bore the W.O. stiff, roaring for some such machine as this chap
Garth invented. Naturally, Pobbles (that's what we call the C.O. behind
his back)--Lord Pobblebrook, you know--took the man up. Not socially, of
course. Garth's about on a social level with Lady Pobblebrook's
foot-man, I should think. But he got the W.O. to look at the trench
tool, and--as if that wasn't luck enough for the bounder!--the war broke
out. The W.O. bought Garth's invention, as you saw in the _Mail_, and
paid about tuppence for it, I suppose. He had a fancy to enlist in the
British Army--feared the U.S.A. would be a bit late coming in, perhaps.
I never heard of any American dropping into the Guards before, even as a
Tommy, but it must have been easy enough with a push from Pobbles,
especially as the chap's people had been English, I believe. If it
hadn't been for Pobbles, Garth would certainly not have got a
commission. Anyhow not with us."
"Oh, you Guardsmen think you're gods!" the girl teased him.
"Not gallery gods, in any case," Severance caught her up. "That's why we
don't want that sort in our mess and clubs. Most regiments have had to
put up with a mixture of these 'temporary gentlemen,' but not Ours.
Besides, 'temporary' and 'permanent' are different words. The
'temporary' kind can't be permanent, don't you see? For their own sakes,
they ought to step down and out when they cease to be useful, because
they never can be ornamental. We of the Brigade have a good deal to live
up to, you must admit. I assure you, I'm not the only one who hasn't
exactly encouraged Garth to wear out his welcome."
"How about the Colonel?" Marise inquired.
"Oh, Pobbles. He doesn't count in this scrap. He's practically never in
the mess, so the bad manners and bad boots of a cad don't interfere with
his digestion. Besides, he was responsible for landing us with the
fellow. I don't suppose he ever dreamed for a moment that a man of that
type would dare--or wish--to stay on as an officer of the regiment after
the war. But there it is! To save his own face the C.O. could hardly
give Garth the cold shoulder. Pobbles whitewashed himself by extolling
the swine as a soldier, and quoting such stuff as 'hearts are more than
coronets,' and so on."
"Aren't they?" murmured Marise.
"Oh, of course, in the way you mean. But not in the mess of a Guards
regiment."
"I see," said the girl, with a blue twinkle beneath the admired lashes.
For some reason it amused her to wave a red flag, and play with the
lordly Severance as with a baited bull, under her mother's cautioning
glances. It was just a mood. Marise wasn't even sure that she did not
agree with Tony; and she was certain that Mums agreed. No lady possessed
of ancestral jewels, handed down from beheaded aristocrats, could afford
to hide the smallest coronet under the biggest bushel of hearts, in a
mess, or a drawing-room, or anywhere! Poor Mums, she was being baited,
too! But it was rather fun. And it could do no harm, since Marise
counted Tony her own forever.
"So all of you younger officers have been doing your best to squeeze my
poor countryman out?" she ventured on.
"Not because he's a countryman of yours. You must understand that!
Because he's impossible. And for the honour of the regiment. I'm sorry
to say, though, that we weren't unanimous in the matter. There have been
two or three--er--not rows, but something in that line, a few men
inclining to let Garth 'dree his own weird,' and learn for himself that
he's a square peg in a round hole. But Billy Ravenswood and Cecil de
Marchand and I took a firm stand."
"I can see you taking it!" giggled Marise. "You took the firm stand on
one foot only, and kicked with the other! When you got tired of the
exercise, and had to sit down, you sat on Major Garth, V.C.--sat hard!"
Severance laughed a little too, her giggle was so contagious. Besides,
at last, she did seem to be entering into the spirit of the game.
"Something of the sort," he admitted, not without pride in remembered
achievements. "The lot of an intruder among us isn't a happy one."
"I should think not, if the rest are like you," said Marise. "I've seen
you perfectly horrid to quite inoffensive people you didn't happen to
approve of."
"The person you force me to discuss, dear child, is the opposite of
inoffensive," amended Severance. "Can't we drop him?"
"You seem to have done so successfully already," said she. "As he's on
this ship, homeward bound, the regiment is rid of him, isn't it?"
"I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm not at all sure. He's in mufti,
certainly--to insult the good old word! But I understand he still
refuses to confess he's beaten, and is only on long leave."
"Oh, he's in mufti! But you'll point him out, if he comes on deck, won't
you, boy? After all this talk, I pine to see what he's like. If he
passes by----"
"Thank Heaven, he has passed by. He's gone inside, and we're rid of him
for the moment."
"Tony, you don't mean--you can't!"
"What?"
"Samson?"
"Why, yes. Didn't you realise that? Now perhaps you'll understand why we
don't want this particular Samson pulling down the pillars of our
temples."
"He may have heard what we said! He was walking back and forth part of
the time as we talked."
"Who cares if he did hear? It would do him good--be a douche to cool his
conceit."
At that instant the back of Severance's head was coldly douched.
Something popped: something spurted. A jet of water sprayed over him,
fizzing with such force that it blew his gold-laced Guards' cap over his
eyes.
Marise and her mother were petrified. They could only gasp.