Locke, William John, 1863-1930 / 2008-09-15 00:00:00

At dinner on Saturday evening, he had sat between his
hostess and Lady Auriol Dayne. To the former he had talked of the things
she most loved to hear, the manifold virtues of her son. There were
fallings away from the strict standards of military excellence, of course;
but he touched upon them with his wide, charming smile, condoned them with
the indulgence of the man prematurely mellowed who has kept his hold on
youth, so that Lady Verity-Stewart felt herself in full sympathy with
Charles's chief, and bored the good man considerably with accounts of the
boy's earlier escapades. To Lady Auriol he talked mainly about the war, of
which she appeared to have more complete information than he himself.
"I suppose you think," she said at last with a swift side glance, "that I'm
laying down the law about things I'm quite ignorant of."
He said: "Not at all. You're in a position to judge much better than I.
You people outside the wood can see it, in its entirety. We who are in the
middle of the horrid thing can't see it for the trees."
It was this little speech so simple, so courteous and yet not lacking a
touch of irony, that first made Lady Auriol, in the words which she used
when telling me of it afterwards, sit up and take notice.
Bridge, the monomania which tainted Sir Julius Verity-Stewart's courtly
soul, pinned Lady Auriol down to the green-covered table for the rest of
the evening. But the next day she set herself to satisfy her entirely
unreprehensible curiosity concerning Colonel Lackaday.
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