“Well, there you are.”
It was crystal-clear to Sir Joseph, and faintly perceptible to Basil, that the Lieutenant-Colonel did not take this well.
“Seal was for a time Conservative candidate down in the West,” said Sir Joseph, anxious to remove one possible source of prejudice.
“Some pretty funny people have been calling themselves Conservatives in the last year or two. Cause of half the trouble if you ask me.” Then, feeling he might have been impolite, he added graciously: “No offence to you. Daresay you were all right. Don’t know anything about you.”
Basil’s political candidature was not an episode to be enlarged upon. Sir Joseph turned the conversation. “Of course the French will have to make some concessions to bring Italy in. Give up Djibouti or something like that.”
“Why the devil should they?” asked the Lieutenant-Colonel petulantly. “Who wants Italy in?”
“To counterbalance Russia.”
“How? Why? Where? I don’t see it at all.”
“Nor do I,” said Basil.
Threatened with support from so unwelcome a quarter, the Lieutenant-Colonel immediately abandoned his position. “Oh, don’t you?” he said. “Well, I’ve no doubt Mainwaring knows best. His job is to know these things.”
Warmed by these words Sir Joseph proceeded for the rest of luncheon to suggest some of the concessions which he thought France might reasonably make to Italy ? Tunisia, French Somaliland, the Suez Canal. “Corsica, Nice, Savoy?” asked Basil. Sir Joseph thought not.
Rather than ally himself with Basil the Lieutenant-Colonel listened to these proposals to dismember an ally in silence and fury. He had not wanted to come out to luncheon. It would be absurd to say that he was busy, but he was busier than he had ever been in his life before and he looked on the two hours or so which he allowed himself in the middle of the day as a time for general recuperation. He liked to spend them among people to whom he could relate all that he had done in the morning; to people who would appreciate the importance and rarity of such work; either that, or with a handsome woman. He left the Travellers’ as early as he decently could and returned to his mess. His mind was painfully agitated by all he had heard and particularly by the presence of that seedy-looking young radical whose name he had not caught. That at least, he thought, he might have hoped to be spared at Sir Joseph’s table.
“Well, Jo, is everything arranged?”
“Nothing is exactly arranged yet, Cynthia, but I’ve set the ball rolling.”
“I hope Basil made a good impression.”
“I hope he did, too. I’m afraid he said some rather unfortunate things.”
“Oh dear. Well, what is the next step?”
Sir Joseph would have liked to say that there was no next step in that direction; that the best Basil could hope for was oblivion; perhaps in a month or so, when the luncheon was forgotten… “It’s up to Basil now, Cynthia. I have introduced him. He must follow it up himself if he really wants to get into that regiment. But I have been wondering, since you first mentioned the matter, do you really think it is quite suitable…”
“I’m told he could not do better,” said Lady Seal proudly.
“No, that is so. In one way he could not do better.”
“Then he shall follow up the introduction,” said that unimaginative mother.
The Lieutenant-Colonel was simmering quietly in his office; an officer ? not a young officer but a mature reservist ? had just been to see him without gloves, wearing suede shoes; the consequent outburst had been a great relief; the simmering was an expression of content, a kind of mental purr; it was a mood which his subordinates recognized as a good mood. He was feeling that as long as there was someone like himself at the head of the regiment, nothing much could go wrong with it (a feeling which, oddly enough, was shared by the delinquent officer). To the Lieutenant-Colonel, in this mood, it was announced that a civilian gentleman, Mr. Seal, wanted to see him. The name was unfamiliar; so, for the moment, was Basil’s appearance, for Angela had been at pains and expense to fit him up suitably for the interview. His hair was newly cut, he wore a stiff white collar, a bowler hat, a thin gold watch-chain and other marks of respectability, and he carried a new umbrella. Angela had also schooled him in the first words of his interview. “I know you are very busy, Colonel, but I hoped you would spare me a few minutes to ask your advice…”
All this went fairly well. “Want to go into the Army?” said the Lieutenant-Colonel. “Well I suppose we must expect a lot of people coming in from outside nowadays. Lot of new battalions being formed, even in the Brigade. I presume you’ll join the infantry. No point in going into the cavalry nowadays. All these machines. Might just as well be an engine driver and have done with it. There’s a lot of damn fool talk about this being a mechanized war and an air war and a commercial war. All wars are infantry wars. Always have been.”
“Yes, it was infantry I was thinking of.”
“Quite right. I hear some of the line regiments are very short of officers. I don’t imagine you want to go through the ranks, ha! ha! There’s been a lot of nonsense about that lately. Not that it would do any harm to some of the young gentlemen I’ve seen about the place. But for a fellow of your age the thing to do is to join the Supplementary Reserve, put down the regiment you want to join ? there are a number of line regiments who do very useful work in their way ? and get the commanding officer to apply for you.”
“Exactly, sir, that’s what I came to see you about. I was hoping that you ?”
“That I…?” Slowly to that slow mind there came the realization that Basil, this dissolute-looking young man who had so grossly upset his lunch interval the day before, this radical who had impugned the efficiency of the officer-type, was actually proposing to join the Bombardier Guards.
“I’ve always felt,” said Basil, “that if I had to join the foot guards, I’d soonest join yours. You aren’t as stuffy as the Grenadiers and you haven’t got any of those bogus regional connections like the Scots and Irish and Welsh.”
Had there been no other cause of offence; had Basil come to him with the most prepossessing appearance, the most glittering sporting record, a manner in which deference to age was most perfectly allied with social equality,
