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.
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