The Honours of War

(1911)

A hooded motor had followed mine from the Guildford Road up the drive to
The Infant's ancestral hall, and had turned off to the stables.

'We're having a quiet evening together. Stalky's upstairs changing.
Dinner's at 7.15 sharp, because we're hungry. His room's next to yours,'
said The Infant, nursing a cobwebbed bottle of Burgundy.

Then I found Lieutenant-Colonel A.L. Corkran, I.A., who borrowed a
collar-stud and told me about the East and his Sikh regiment.

'And are your subalterns as good as ever?' I asked.

'Amazin'--simply amazin'! All I've got to do is to find 'em jobs. They
keep touchin' their caps to me and askin' for more work. 'Come at me
with their tongues hangin' out. _I_ used to run the other way at
their age.'

'And when they err?' said I. 'I suppose they do sometimes?'

'Then they run to me again to weep with remorse over their virgin
peccadilloes. I never cuddled my Colonel when I was in trouble.
Lambs--positive lambs!'

'And what do you say to 'em?'

'Talk to 'em like a papa. Tell 'em how I can't understand it, an' how
shocked I am, and how grieved their parents'll be; and throw in a
little about the Army Regulations and the Ten Commandments. 'Makes one
feel rather a sweep when one thinks of what one used to do at their age.
D'you remember--'

We remembered together till close on seven o'clock. As we went out into
the gallery that runs round the big hall, we saw The Infant, below,
talking to two deferential well-set-up lads whom I had known, on and
off, in the holidays, any time for the last ten years. One of them had a
bruised cheek, and the other a weeping left eye.

'Yes, that's the style,' said Stalky below his breath. 'They're brought
up on lemon-squash and mobilisation text-books. I say, the girls we knew
must have been much better than they pretended they were; for I'll swear
it isn't the fathers.'

'But why on earth did you do it?' The Infant was shouting. 'You know
what it means nowadays.'

'Well, sir,' said Bobby Trivett, the taller of the two, 'Wontner talks
too much, for one thing. He didn't join till he was twenty-three, and,
besides that, he used to lecture on tactics in the ante-room. He said
Clausewitz was the only tactician, and he illustrated his theories with
cigar-ends. He was that sort of chap, sir.'

'And he didn't much care whose cigar-ends they were,' said Eames, who
was shorter and pinker.

'And then he _would_ talk about the 'Varsity,' said Bobby. 'He got a
degree there. And he told us we weren't intellectual. He told the
Adjutant so, sir. He was just that kind of chap, sir, if you
understand.'

Stalky and I backed behind a tall Japanese jar of chrysanthemums and