"Hullo, old thing!" said Herbert gloomily; "lots of Congrats. Lucky devil,
you," and he sighed unobtrusively.
I had forgotten that once upon a time Adela had refused to walk out with
Herbert because of his puttees, which she said were so original that they
distracted her attention from the way he proposed.
Remembering this now, I offered my cousin a sympathetic cigarette, which
he, shaking himself free from care, accepted; after which he began to
borrow ten pounds--an achievement which, I am proud to say, cost him nearly
twenty minutes' hard labour.
Not so very long afterwards Adela and I had a honeymoon, followed by a
picture-postcard from Herbert. He said he was sorry he hadn't been there to
throw boots at us, but he was convalescing on the Cornish Riviera, the
exact spot being marked with a cross; also one could not send money by
postcard, but I was not to think he was forgetting about that fiver he had
borrowed.
The first part of this document caused Adela to wonder vaguely if wounded
officers ought to convalesce in chimney-pots, but the last words gave me
some twinges of a more sincere alarm. Was Herbert's delusion a permanency,
or merely a slip of the pen?
"Adela," I decided, "let's ask Herbert to dinner as soon as ever he leaves
the roofs of the British Riviera."
Then one day, when I was writing letters in the Mess, he strolled in.
"Hullo!" he said, "where's the C.O.? What?... Oh, thanks awfully, and ...
Oh, I say, good Lord! I owe you three quid, don't I?" and he drifted out
abstractedly.
"Three!" I echoed dizzily, as the door banged. I staggered home for the
week-end.
I found Adela having an excited conversation with the telephone in the
hall.
"Ooo!" she said, hanging up the receiver, "Herbert's a hero. He's just been
telling me. And he's coming to dinner to-night."
"I also," I responded with emotion, "have a tale to unfold," and I unfolded
it.
When at last Herbert, moving modestly under the burden of a newly acquired
D.S.O., arrived at the flat, hospitality and an unaccustomed awe withheld
me from referring to so sordid a matter as the inconsiderable decrease in
my lately-invested capital. Herbert, however, deprecated heroics, and, as
he was saying good-night, came of his own accord to the subject of debts.
He was always a conscientious fellow.
"You know, old chap," he said with charming candour, as I saw him off from
the doorstep, "you _must_ remind me to pay up that two quid some time. I
keep forgetting, and when I do remember, like now, I haven't any money to
do it with. Cheero!" The door clicked and I swooned.
It was very difficult; I could not even make up my mind whether my best
policy was to stalk Herbert with vigilance or to avoid him as persistently
as discipline allowed. On the one hand he wasn't the cheque-book kind of
man and he wouldn't pay me unless he saw me. Contrariwise, he wouldn't even
if he did, and whenever he saw me my original loan of ten gold sovereigns
might continue its rapid decline. Finally I decided to abstain from his
society.
Shortly after this momentous decision the War Office sent him off to some
remote part of the country, and for many months our financial relations
remained unaltered--at any rate in my own estimation. He was still far away
when Adela II arrived, so we did our best to hush her up; we thought that
if we could smuggle her to, say, the age of ten and send her to school
Herbert couldn't possibly come and congratulate us about her. That only
shows how much we didn't know; for Herbert procured some leave three weeks
later and was excitedly mounting our stairs within a few hours.
"P'r'aps," whispered Adela bravely as he was being announced, "he'll forget
about money--p'r'aps he'll even put it up a bit."
I smiled cynically, and was justified ten minutes later, when Herbert's
conscience, troubled and apologetic, reminded him about that guinea he owed
me.
At the christening it fell to half-a-quid, and, according to Herbert's
latest allegation, it is only his rotten memory for postal-orders that
prevents him from sending me that dollar at once.
And so, precariously, the matter rested till to-day, when the final blow
fell from the War Office. Herbert and I are to proceed to France together
next Monday. On that day, if I am ingenious and agile enough not to meet
him before, we ought to be about all square; after that, as far as I can
see, there will be an inevitable moment when Herbert will turn to me with,
"I say, old fellow, you can't let me have that ten bob you touched me for
the other day, can you? Hate to ask you, but I haven't got a sou ..." But I
won't--no, I won't. I will let my imaginary debt mount up, I will let it
increase even at the rate at which Herbert's has decreased, but I will not
pay it. Herbert, of course, will always be kind to me about it, for he is a
generous creature; and every time we go into action he will probably wring
my hand and beg me not to worry about it any more.
"Old man," he will be saying on the twenty-ninth occasion, "if I got done
in, promise you won't bother about that thousand pounds you owe
me--remember you're to think of it as paid."