When the regiment’s tour of duty in India was over and they were expecting to return home, orders came that they were to proceed to Egypt, which caused much disappointment and discontent. The general rule was that regiments spent three years in Egypt, followed by five in India, and when, owing to political complications, the regiment had been ordered direct to India, they had innocently supposed that they had escaped the first part of their exile. The War Office may overlook but it does not forget, nor was there any reason why one regiment should have more favourable treatment than others, so in the normal course of trooping the regiment went to Egypt, and spent three years there, following upon the five they had spent in India.
Willie remembered very little of what happened during his time in Egypt. He knew that he enjoyed it much less than he had enjoyed India. There was plenty of polo and plenty of racing, but both were of a more professional character. In India, or the parts of it that he had visited, the Army had seemed the centre of life, but here in Egypt it was only an adjunct. In India the subject of politics was never mentioned in the mess. Everybody knew that there was a steady move towards the diminution of British power and prestige, and everybody regretted it. But there was little to be said and nothing to be done about it. These things were controlled by politicians, who, it appeared, were all determined to destroy the British Empire and to ruin the Army. But here in Egypt politics were a common subject of conversation, and everybody seemed to know something about them. It appeared also that Lord Allenby, who was a great soldier, had been weak and had given in to the natives, whereas Lord Lloyd, who was a politician, had been strong and refused to give in. All this was very puzzling to Willie. In India he had been able to feel separated by time as well as by space from the modern world. In Egypt he was in the heart of it, and he could not feel at home there.
He thought once or twice of returning to England on leave, but always some more attractive alternative presented itself. He visited the Sudan and went on hunting trips into Kenya and Abyssinia. These he enjoyed, but he disliked Cairo and Alexandria.
It was while he was in Egypt that he completed his thirtieth year, and was promoted to the rank of captain. Neither event gave him much satisfaction. To him thirty meant middle age, and although he was pleased to be promoted, he knew that in other regiments there were still to be found subalterns who had taken part in the fighting. There were also thousands of civilians – he had often met them – who had splendid war records, and had even temporarily commanded battalions, and who now had abandoned their Army rank altogether. In the presence of such people he felt needlessly ashamed, as though he were assuming a rank to which he was not entitled.
When the time came for him to return to England he had an exaggerated idea in his own mind of the length of time he had been away. He felt that he had left as a boy and that he was coming back as an old man. He even wondered whether his friends would recognise him. It was therefore a great surprise when, on the morning after his arrival, the hall porter gave him a familiar nod when he walked into his club, and he had been there only a few minutes before an acquaintance greeted him casually with ‘Hallo, Willie! Haven’t seen you about for quite a while. Been abroad or something?’
A club provides a wonderful home for the lonely, and an equally convenient escape from home for those who occasionally feel the need of it. There are the faithful old servants, who are always pleased to see members and who, unlike the servants at home, have neither complaints of their conditions, nor quarrels between themselves; or, if they have, the ordinary members never hear of them. There are all the daily newspapers, and the weekly ones, which are hardly worth purchase but merit a glance. The chairs are comfortable, there is never a crowd, and refreshment is easily and instantly obtainable. But above all there is the ease of intercourse – the conversation lightly begun and as lightly broken off the moment it becomes a burden, or even threatens to become one, to either party. Nor are subjects of conversation ever lacking. The news provides them, and, for such as Willie, the racing news, above all. They are varied by those very funny stories, which spring from an inexhaustible anonymous source, and which, for some mysterious reason, are very much funnier when told in the club than anywhere else.
Willie was happy in the society of men, especially men of his own sort, and he had been in the club hardly half an hour before he felt that he had never left it. After lunching there he spent much of the afternoon trying to discover at what theatre Horry was acting and, with the help of the hallporter, he was at last successful. He bought a ticket and went there alone. The play proved to be an excellent comedy, and Willie, who had seen nothing of the sort for so long, thoroughly enjoyed it. It seemed to him that Horry, who had a good part, acted wonderfully well, and also that he had become younger and taller than Willie remembered him; but when they met afterwards he proved to have altered very little.
Willie had sent him a message saying that he would await him at the stage-door and inviting him to supper. Horry, as gay and enthusiastic as ever, threw his arms round Willie when they met, and was obviously delighted to see him.
‘It couldn’t be more fortunate,’ he exclaimed. ‘I promised to meet Felicity after the show; we shall find her at Rules, and you’ll be able to swallow the majority of the family at one gulp. It’s a pity Garnet’s not here. He was home last year on leave, but he’s gone back to the Far East, and I don’t know when we shall see him again. Rules is quite close – we can walk there.’
As they walked to the restaurant Willie talked of the play and was able, in all sincerity, to say how very much he had enjoyed it and how impressed he had been by Horry’s performance. Horry was very pleased. All actors, indeed all artists, are made happy by praise, and Willie’s praise was so genuine and so unqualified that it would have given pleasure to one much older and more hardened than Horry.
They were therefore both happy and smiling when they arrived. A tall, dark girl got up from a corner table and came towards them. She looked from Horry to his companion at first with curiosity and then with almost instant recognition. ‘It’s Willie,’ she said, and taking his hand kissed him on the cheek, so gracefully and so naturally that he felt no embarrassment, but a thrill of happiness.
‘How clever of you to recognise me,’ he said.
‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she answered.
‘Well, you certainly have,’ he told her. ‘You were a little girl with a pigtail when I saw you last. And then you were always away at school. I don’t think I saw you at all during the last five or six years I was in England.’
There followed, while they gave their orders, a discussion as to when exactly he had seen her last and how old she was at the time, and whether she had ever had a pigtail. Like all historical facts, these were curiously hard to establish, and Horry entered into the argument, holding strongly a view which differed from those of both the others.
‘Anyhow,’ said Felicity, getting bored with the discussion, ‘all that matters is that I was a little child then and now I’m a grown-up woman – and you were a young man then and you’re a young man still.’
‘How long does one remain a young man?’ asked Willie.
‘Until about sixty in my profession,’ said Horry, ‘and then they’re middle-aged for an indefinite period until they suddenly turn into grand old men.’
Felicity laughed. ‘I wish the girls could do the same.’
‘They damned well try to,’ said Horry, and then an argument started about the ages of actresses, into which Willie could not have entered even if he had known who the people were about whom they were talking, which he could not do, as all the ladies were referred to by their christian or more intimate names. It gave him an opportunity to look at Felicity. He had felt dazzled at first. He remembered suddenly that Daisy Summers had said she was beautiful, and yet, for some reason, he had not been prepared for her to be so. He had simply not thought about it. She seemed to him more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen. Her large dark eyes, her short curling hair, the grace of her gestures, the animation of her conversation, and the simplicity of her manner, the complete lack of any coquetry or apparent eagerness to please – all that she was made an impression upon him that he found difficult to understand. He felt for a moment that he wanted to laugh out loud, and then that he wanted to go away with Horry and drink a bottle of champagne, and then again all that he desired was to remain forever where he was, watching and listening and not having to talk. For a moment he wondered whether he was drunk. It was not till afterwards, when he was alone, that he knew he had fallen in love for the first time in his life.
One cause of his happiness that evening was the way in which they both treated him as one of the family. They were plainly pleased to see him, but showed him none of the consideration that is shown to a stranger. They talked without restraint about matters of which he was ignorant and people whom he didn’t know. They felt no obligation to draw him into the conversation. This gave Willie a sensation that was new to him – the sensation of being at home.
He liked Rules. It was bohemian, but there was nothing modern about it. From there they took him on to a place in Covent Garden called the Late Joys or the Players Club. Here they drank beer and ate hot sausages and watched a variety entertainment. Most of the actors and the audience seemed acquainted with one another, and everybody joined in the choruses. The songs came from the music-halls of the last century, and to Willie, who had never seen anything of the kind before, everything seemed perfect. It was late when the brother and sister dropped him at Jermyn Street, where he had luckily found vacant the flat he had lived in before. They were both bound towards Chelsea.
‘How about lunch to-morrow?’ he asked Felicity.
‘I can’t to-morrow, Willie dear.’
‘May I ring you up in the morning?’
‘There’s no telephone where I’m staying, but we’ll meet soon.’
‘And you, Horry?’
‘I’ve got a matinée to-morrow, but you’ve got my telephone number. Give me a ring whenever you like and we’ll fix up something. Good night, old Willie.’
‘Good night.’
Willie felt a little sad that nothing had been arranged for the next day, but it was such a small regret that it could not cast a shadow over the great happiness in which he fell asleep that night.