Part 19 (1/2)

”He would,” answered d.i.c.k calmly. ”What did I say to you a minute ago?

He's advanced, you know.”

”Advanced!” sneered Mr. Chubble, and then d.i.c.k Hazlewood stopped and contemplated his companion with a thoughtful eye.

”I really don't think you understand my father, Mr. Chubble,” said d.i.c.k with a gentle remonstrance in his voice which Mr. Chubble was at a loss whether to take seriously or no.

”Can you give me the key to him?” he cried.

”I can.”

”Then out with it, my lad.”

Mr. Chubble disposed himself to listen but with so bristling an expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. d.i.c.k, however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an obtuse cla.s.s of scholars.

”My father was born predestined to believe that all the people whom he knows are invariably wrong, and all the people he doesn't know are invariably right. And when I feel inclined to deplore his abuse of his own country I console myself with the reflection that he would be the staunchest friend of England that England ever had--if only he had been born in Germany.”

Mr. Chubble grunted and turned the speech suspiciously over in his mind.

Was d.i.c.k poking fun at him or at his father?

”That's bookish,” he said.

”I am afraid it is,” d.i.c.k Hazlewood agreed humbly. ”The fact is I am now an Instructor at the Staff College and much is expected of me.”

They had reached the gate of Little Beeding House. It was summer time.

A yellow drive of gravel ran straight between long broad flower-beds to the door.

”Won't you come in and see my father?” d.i.c.k asked innocently.

”He's at home.”

”No, my lad, no.” Mr. Chubble hastened to add: ”I haven't the time. But I am very glad to have met you. You are here for long?”

”No. Only just for luncheon,” said d.i.c.k, and he walked along the drive into the house. He was met in the hall by Hubbard the butler, an old colourless man of genteel movements which seemed slow and were astonis.h.i.+ngly quick. He spoke in gentle purring tones and was the very butler for Mr. Harold Hazlewood.

”Your father has been asking for you, sir,” said Hubbard. ”He seems a little anxious. He is in the big room.”

”Very well,” said d.i.c.k, and he crossed the hall and the drawing-room, wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called, but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial occasions. It was a big room; half of it held a billiard table, the other half had writing-tables, lounges, comfortable chairs and a table for bridge. The carpet was laid over a parquet floor so that young people, when they stayed there, rolled it up and danced. There were windows upon two sides of the room. Here a row of them looked down the slope of the lawn to the cedar-trees and the river, the other, a great bay which opened to the ground, gave a view of a corner of the high churchyard wall and of a meadow and a thatched cottage beyond. In this bay Mr. Hazlewood was standing when d.i.c.k entered the room.

”I got your telegram, father, and here I am.”

Mr. Hazlewood turned back from the window with a smile upon his face.

”It is good of you, Richard. I wanted you to-day.”

A very genuine affection existed between these two, dissimilar as they were in physique and mind. d.i.c.k Hazlewood was at this time thirty-four years old, an officer of hard work and distinction, one of the younger men to whom the generals look to provide the brains in the next great war. He had the religion of his type. To keep physically fit for the hardest campaigning and mentally fit for the highest problems of modern strategy and to boast about neither the one qualification nor the other--these were the articles of his creed. In appearance he was a little younger than his years, lithe, long in the leg, with a thin brown face and grey eyes which twinkled with humour. Harold Hazlewood was intensely proud of him, though he professed to detest his profession. And no doubt he found at times that the mere healthful, well-groomed look of his son was irritatingly conventional. What was quite wholesome could never be quite right in the older man's philosophy. To d.i.c.k, on the other hand, his father was an intense enjoyment. Here was a lovable innocent with the most delightful illusion that he understood the world. d.i.c.k would draw out his father by the hour, but, as he put it, he wouldn't let the old boy down. He stopped his chaff before it could begin to hurt.

”Well, I am here,” he said. ”What sc.r.a.pe have you got into now?”

”I am in no sc.r.a.pe, Richard. I don't get into sc.r.a.pes,” replied his father. He s.h.i.+fted from one foot to the other uneasily. ”I was wondering, Richard--you have been away all this last year, haven't you?--I was wondering whether you could give me any of your summer.”

d.i.c.k looked at his father. What in the world was the old boy up to now?