The Major shuffled feverishly into the room.
"It's horribly absurd," he said. "Something must have got started in me
that I never knew before. But upon my soul I feel the most desperate
desire to know the end of it all."
"The end of it all?"
"Yes," said the Major. "`Jackals', and the title-deeds, and `Death to
Major Brown'."
The agent's face grew grave, but his eyes were amused.
"I am terribly sorry, Major," said he, "but what you ask is impossible. I
don't know any one I would sooner oblige than you; but the rules of the
agency are strict. The Adventures are confidential; you are an outsider; I
am not allowed to let you know an inch more than I can help. I do hope
you understand--"
"There is no one," said Brown, "who understands discipline better than
I do. Thank you very much. Good night."
And the little man withdrew for the last time.
He married Miss Jameson, the lady with the red hair and the green
garments. She was an actress, employed (with many others) by the
Romance Agency; and her marriage with the prim old veteran caused
some stir in her languid and intellectualized set. She always replied very
quietly that she had met scores of men who acted splendidly in the
charades provided for them by Northover, but that she had only met one
man who went down into a coal-cellar when he really thought it contained
a murderer.
The Major and she are living as happily as birds, in an absurd villa,
and the former has taken to smoking. Otherwise he is unchanged--except,
perhaps, there are moments when, alert and full of feminine unselfishness
as the Major is by nature, he falls into a trance of abstraction. Then his
wife recognizes with a concealed smile, by the blind look in his blue eyes,
that he is wondering what were the title-deeds, and why he was not
allowed to mention jackals. But, like so many old soldiers, Brown is
religious, and believes that he will realize the rest of those purple
adventures in a better world. |
