The Summons | Page 2

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 the card-rooms of our clubs--we are jolly fine fellows--and no good. You don't belong, and should get out while you can."
Luttrell moved uncomfortably in his chair.
"That's all very well. But there's another side to the question," he said, and from the deck above a woman's voice called clearly down the stairway.
"Aren't you two coming?"
Both men looked towards the door.
"That side," said Hardiman.
"Yes."
Hardiman nodded his head.
"Stella Croyle doesn't belong either," he said. "But she kicked over the traces. She flung out of the rank and file. Oh, I