“ ‘The man’s a cad,’ said the colonel, but even then I couldn’t stop laughing, so they put me under arrest and called a court-martial.
“I must say I felt pretty low next day. A major came over from another battalion to try my case. He came to see me first, and bless me if it wasn’t a cove I’d known at school!
“ ‘God bless my soul,’ he said, ‘if it isn’t Grimes of Podger’s! What’s all this nonsense about a court-martial?’ So I told him. ‘H’m,’ he said, ‘pretty bad. Still it’s out of the question to shoot an old Harrovian. I’ll see what I can do about it.’ And next day I was sent to Ireland on a pretty cushy job connected with postal service. That saw me out as far as the war was concerned. You can’t get into the soup in Ireland, do what you like. I don’t know if all this bores you?”
“Not at all,” said Paul. “I think it’s most encouraging.”
“I’ve been in the soup pretty often since then, but never quite so badly. Someone always turns up and says, ‘I can’t see a public-school man down and out. Let me put you on your feet again.’ I should think,” said Grimes, “I’ve been put on my feet more often than any living man.”
Philbrick came across the bar parlour towards them.
“Feeling lonely?” he said. “I’ve been talking to the stationmaster here, and if either of you ever wants an introduction to a young lady—”
“Certainly not,” said Paul.
“Oh, all right,” said Philbrick, making off.
“Women are an enigma,” said Grimes, “as far as Grimes is concerned.”
IV
Mr. Prendergast
Paul was awakened next morning by a loud bang on his door, and Beste-Chetwynde looked in. He was wearing a very expensive-looking Charvet dressing-gown.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. “I thought I’d come and tell you, as you wouldn’t know: there’s only one bathroom for the masters. If you want to get there before Mr. Prendergast, you ought to go now. Captain Grimes doesn’t wash much,” he added, and then disappeared.
Paul went to the bath and was rewarded some minutes later by hearing the shuffling of slippers down the passage and the door furiously rattled.
As he was dressing Philbrick appeared.
“Oh, I forgot to call you. Breakfast is in ten minutes.”
After breakfast Paul went up to the Common Room. Mr. Prendergast was there polishing his pipes, one by one, with a chamois leather. He looked reproachfully at Paul.
“We must come to some arrangement about the bathroom,” he said. “Grimes very rarely has a bath. I have one before breakfast.”
“So do I,” said Paul defiantly.
“Then I suppose I shall have to find some other time,” said Mr. Prendergast, and he gave a deep sigh as he returned his attention to his pipes. “After ten years, too,” he added, “but everything’s like that. I might have known you’d want the bath. It was so easy when there was only Grimes and that other young man. He was never down in time for breakfast. Oh dear! oh dear! I can see that things are going to be very difficult.”
“But surely we could both have one?”
“No, no, that’s out of the question. It’s all part of the same thing. Everything has been like this since I left the ministry.”
Paul made no answer, and Mr. Prendergast went on breathing and rubbing.
“I expect you wonder how I came to be here?”
“No, no,” said Paul soothingly. “I think it’s very natural.”
“It’s not natural at all; it’s most unnatural. If things had happened a little differently I should be a rector with my own house and bathroom. I might even have been a rural dean, only”—and Mr. Prendergast dropped his voice to a whisper—“only I had Doubts.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; nobody else knows. I somehow feel you’ll understand.
“Ten years ago I was a clergyman of the Church of England. I had just been presented to a living in Worthing. It was such an attractive church, not old, but very beautifully decorated, six candles on the altar, Reservation in the Lady Chapel, and an excellent heating apparatus which burned coke in a little shed by the sacristy door; no graveyard, just a hedge of golden privet between the church and the rectory.
“As soon as I moved in my mother came to keep house for me. She bought some chintz, out of her own money, for the drawing-room curtains. She used to be ‘at home’ once a week to the ladies of the congregation. One of them, the dentist’s wife, gave me a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for my study. It was all very pleasant until my Doubts began.”
“Were they as bad as all that?” asked Paul.
“They were insuperable,” said Mr. Prendergast; “that is why I am here now. But I expect I am boring you?”
“No, do go on. That’s to say, unless you find it painful to think about.”
“I think about it all the time. It happened like this, quite suddenly. We had been there about three months, and my mother had made great friends with some people called Bundle—rather a curious name. I think he was an insurance agent until he retired. Mrs. Bundle used very kindly to ask us in to supper on Sundays after Evensong. They were pleasant, informal gatherings, and I used quite to look forward to them. I can see them now as they sat there on this particular evening; there was my mother and
