you know. Fast ladies and slow horses. The estates went to the block,
I'm afraid." Victims themselves of the grinding injustices of the
British class system, mother and father had devoted themselves to
lifting their only son beyond that invisible barrier that divides the
middle from the upper classes.
"Of course, I was at Eton and he was mostly on foreign service.
Wish I'd got to know the old devil better. He must have been a
wonderful character-" Entrance to the school had been assisted by the
Commissioner of Police, himself an old Etonian. The mother's small
inheritance and the greater part of the father's salary went into the
costly business of turning the son into a gentleman.
"Killed in a duel, would you believe it. Pistols at dawn.
He was a romantic, too much fire in his veins." When the cholera took
the mother, the father's salary was insufficient to meet the bills that
a young man casually ran up when he mixed sociably with the sons of
dukes. In India, bribery was a convention, a way of living but the
colonel was found out. It was indeed pistols at dawn. The colonel
rode out into the dark Indian forest with his Webley service pistol,
and his bay mare trotted back to the stables an hour later with an
empty saddle and the reins trailing.
"Had to leave Eton, naturally." Under considerable duress.
It was coincidence that Gareth's friendship with the house master's
daughter took place at the same time as the colonel's last ride, but at
least it allowed Gareth to leave in a blaze of glory, as
Lij Mikhael remarked, rather than as a nobody whose fees had not been
met.
He went out into the world with the speech, the manners and the tastes
of a gentleman but without the means to support them.
"Luckily they were having this war at the time " and even a regiment
like the Duke's were not enquiring too deeply into the private means of
their new officers. Eton was sufficient recommendation, and,
with the help of the German machine guns, promotion was swift.
However, after the armistice, things were back to normal and it
required three thousand a year for an officer to support himself in the
style the regiment expected. Gareth moved on, and had kept moving ever
since.
Vicky Camberwell listened to him, fascinated despite herself She knew
that this was the cobra dance before the chicken, she knew herself well
enough to realize that part of the attraction he held for her was the
very devilry and roguishness she had so readily recognized.
There had been others like this one. Her job took her to the trouble
spots of the world, and men of this breed were attracted to the same
hot spots. With these men there was always the excitement and danger,
the thrill and the fun but inevitably there was also the sting and the
pain in the end.
She tried not to respond, wishing the ride would end, but Gareth's
sallies were too much for her and as the ricksha drew up in front of
the Royal Hotel entrance, she could not resist the almost suffocating
urge to laugh. She threw back her head, shaking her shining pale hair
in the wind as she let it ring out.
Gareth had learned also to use the calibre of a woman's laughter as a
yardstick. Vicky laughed with an unaffected gaiety, a straightforward
physical response that he found reassuring, and he took her arm
possessively as he helped her out of the ricksha.
He showed her through the royal suite with a proprietorial air.
"Only one suite in the place. Balcony looks out over the gardens, and
you get the sea breeze in the evening." And, "Only private loo in the
building, even one of those French jobs for sluicing the old
privates,
you know." And, "The bed is quite extraordinary, like sleeping on a
cloud and all that rot. Never experienced anything like it."
"Is this where I am to stay?" Vicky asked, with a small-girl
innocence.
"Well, I thought we could make some sort of arrangement, old girl." And
she was left with no doubts as to the type of arrangement Gareth Swales
had in mind.
"You are very kind, major," she murmured, and crossed to the handset of
the telephone.
"This is Miss Camberwell. Major Swales is vacating the royal suite for
me. Please have a servant move his clothes to alternative
accommodation."
"I say-" gasped Gareth, and she covered the mouthpiece and smiled at
him. "It's so sweet of you." Then she listened to the manager's
voice. "Oh dear," she said. "Well, if that's the only room you have
vacant, it will just have to do then, I am sure the major has
experienced more uncomfortable billets." When Gareth saw the room that
was now his, he tried honestly to remember humbler and less comfortable
billets.
The Chinese prison in Mukden had been cooler and not placed directly
over the boisterous uproar of the public bar, and the front line dugout
during the winter of 1917 at Arras had been more spacious and better
furnished.
The next three days Gareth Swales spent at the harbour, drinking tea
and whisky in the office of the harbour master, riding out with the
pilot to meet every new vessel as it crossed the bar, jogging in a
