The Summons | Page 2

answered this?" he asked.
"No. But I must send an answer to-night."
"You are in doubt?"
"Yes. I was quite sure when I cabled to Cairo on the second day of the
games. I was quite sure, whilst I waited for the reply. Now that the
reply has come--I don't know."
"Let me hear," said the older man. "The launch must wait, the table at
the Hasselbacken restaurant must be assigned, if need be, to other
customers." Hardiman had not swamped all his kindliness in good

living. Luttrell was face to face with one of the few grave decisions
which each man has in the course of his life to make; and Hardiman
understood his need better than he understood it himself. His need was
to formulate aloud the case for and against, to another person, not so
much that he might receive advice as, that he might see for himself
with truer eyes.
"The one side is clear enough," said Luttrell with a trace of bitterness.
"There was a Major I once heard of at Dover. He trained his company
in night-marches by daylight. The men held a rope to guide them and
were ordered to shut their eyes. The Major, you see, hated stirring out
at night. He liked his bridge and his bottle of port. Well, give me
another year and that's the kind of soldier I shall become--the worst
kind--the slovenly soldier. I mean slovenly in mind, in intention. Even
now I come, already bored, to the barrack square and watch the time to
see if I can't catch an earlier train from Gravesend to London."
"And when you do?" asked Hardiman.
Luttrell nodded.
"When I do," he agreed, "I get no thrill out of my escape, I assure you. I
hate myself a little more--that's all."
"Yes," said Hardiman. He was too wise a man to ask questions. He just
sat and waited, inviting Luttrell to spread out his troubles by his very
quietude.
"Then there are these games," Luttrell cried in a swift exasperation,
"--these damned games! From the first day when the Finns marched out
with their national flag and the Russians threatened to withdraw if they
did it again----" he broke off suddenly. "Of course you know soldiers
have believed that trouble's coming. I used to doubt, but by God I am
sure of it now. Just a froth of fine words at the opening and
afterwards--honest rivalry and let the best man win? Not a bit of it!
Team-running--a vile business--the nations parked together in different
sections of the Stadium like enemies--and ill-will running here and
there like an infection! Oh, there's trouble coming, and if I don't go I

shan't be fit for it. There, that's the truth."
"The whole truth and nothing but the truth?" Hardiman asked with a
smile. He leaned across the table and drew towards him a case of
telegraph forms. But whilst he was drawing them towards him, Luttrell
spoke again.
"Nothing but the truth--yes," he said. He was speaking shyly,
uncomfortably, and he stopped abruptly.
"The whole truth--no." Hardiman added slowly, and gently. He wanted
the complete story from preface to conclusion, but he was not to get it.
He received no answer of any kind for a considerable number of
moments and Luttrell only broke the silence in the end, to declare
definitely,
"That, at all events, is all I have to say."
Sir Charles nodded and drew the case of forms close to him. There was
something more then. There always is something more, which isn't told,
he reflected, and the worst of it is, the something more which isn't told
is always the real reason. Men go to the confessional with a reservation;
the secret chamber where they keep their sacred vessels, their real
truths and inspirations, as also their most scarlet sins--that shall be
opened to no one after early youth is past unless it be--rarely--to one
woman. There was another reason at work in Harry Luttrell, but Sir
Charles Hardiman was never to know it. With a shrug of his shoulders
he took a pencil from his pocket, filled up one of the forms and handed
it to Luttrell.
"That's what I should reply."
He had written:
"_I am travelling to London to-morrow to apply for
transfer._--LUTTRELL."
Luttrell read the telegram with surprise. It was not the answer which he

had expected from the victim of the flesh-pots in front of him.
"You advise that?" he exclaimed.
"Yes. My dear Luttrell, as you know, you are a guest very welcome to
me. But you don't belong. We--Maud Carstairs, Tony Marsh and the
rest of us--even Mario Escobar--we are the Come-to-nothings. We are
the people of the stage door, we grow fat in restaurants. From three to
seven, you may find us in