In this bad, small world of ours,
one knows so little of the life of the next man--which, after all, is
entirely his own concern--that one is not surprised when a crash comes.
Anything might turn up any day for anyone. Perhaps the Senior Subaltern
had been trapped in his youth. Men are crippled that way occasionally. We
didn't know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains' wives were as anxious as
we. If he _had_ been trapped, he was to be excused; for the woman from
nowhere, in the dusty shoes and gray traveling dress, was very lovely,
with black hair and great eyes full of tears. She was tall, with a fine
figure, and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as
the Senior Subaltern stood up, she threw her arms round his neck, and
called him "my darling" and said she could not bear waiting alone in
England, and his letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the
end of the world, and would he forgive her? This did not sound quite like
a lady's way of speaking. It was too demonstrative.
Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains' wives peered under their
eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel's face set like the Day
of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.
Next the Colonel said, very shortly: "Well, sir?" and the woman sobbed
afresh. The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms round his neck,
but he gasped out: "It's a d----d lie! I never had a wife in my life!"
"Don't swear," said the Colonel.
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