She smiled to show her really beautiful teeth.
"I should like to kiss you, James. May I, Mrs. Parsons?"
"Certainly," replied Jamie's mother, who didn't approve of Mrs. Clibborn at all.
She turned her cheek to James, and assumed a seraphic expression while he lightly touched it with his lips.
"I'm only an old woman," she murmured to the company in general.
She seldom made more than one remark at a time, and at the end of each assumed an appropriate attitude--coy, Madonna-like, resigned, as the circumstances might require. Mr. Jackson came forward to shake hands, and she turned her languishing glance on him.
"Oh, Mr. Jackson, how beautiful your sermon was!"
* * *
They sat down to dinner, and ate their ox-tail soup. It is terrible to think of the subtlety with which the Evil One can insinuate himself among the most pious; for soup at middle-day is one of his most dangerous wiles, and it is precisely with the simple-minded inhabitants of the country and of the suburbs that this vice is most prevalent.
James was sitting next to Mrs. Clibborn, and presently she looked at him with the melancholy smile which had always seemed to her so effective.
"We want you to tell us how you won your Victoria Cross, Jamie."
The others, eager to hear the story from the hero's lips, had been, notwithstanding, too tactful to ask; but they were willing to take advantage of Mrs. Clibborn's lack of that quality.
"We've all been looking forward to it," said the Vicar.
"I don't think there's anything to tell," replied James.
His father and mother were looking at him with happy eyes, and the Colonel nodded to Mary.
"Please, Jamie, tell us," she said. "We only saw the shortest account in the papers, and you said nothing about it in your letters."
"D'you think it's very good form of me to tell you about it?" asked James, smiling gravely.
"We're all friends here," said the Vicar.
And Colonel Clibborn added, making sheep's eyes at his wife:
"You can't refuse a lady!"
"I'm an old woman," sighed Mrs. Clibborn, with a doleful glance. "I can't expect him to do it for me."
The only clever thing Mrs. Clibborn had done in her life was to acknowledge to old age at thirty, and then she did not mean it. It had been one of her methods in flirtation, covering all excesses under a maternal aspect. She must have told hundreds of young officers that she was old enough to be their mother; and she always said it looking plaintively at the ceiling, when they squeezed her hand.
"It wasn't a very wonderful thing I did," said James, at last, "and it was completely useless."
"No fine deed is useless," said the Vicar, sententiously.
James looked at him a moment, but proceeded with his story.
"It was only that I tried to save the life of a sub who'd just joined--and didn't."
"Would you pass me the salt?" said Mrs. Clibborn.
"Mamma!" cried Mary, with a look as near irritation as her gentle nature permitted.
"Go on, Jamie, there's a good boy," said Mrs. Parsons.
And James, seeing his father's charming, pathetic look of pride, told the story to him alone. The others did not care how much they hurt him so long as they could gape in admiration, but in his father he saw the most touching sympathy.
"It was a chap called Larcher, a boy of eighteen, with fair hair and blue eyes, who looked quite absurdly young. His people live somewhere round here, near Ashford."
"Larcher, did you say?" asked Mrs. Clibborn, "I've never heard the name. It's not a county family."
"Go on, Jamie," said Mary, with some impatience.
"Well, he'd only been with us three or four weeks; but I knew him rather well. Oddly enough, he'd taken a sort of fancy to me. He was such a nice, bright boy, so enthusiastic and simple. I used to tell him that he ought to have been at school, rather than roughing it at the Cape."
Mrs. Clibborn sat with an idiotic smile on her lips, and a fixed expression of girlish innocence.
"Well, we knew we should be fighting in a day or so; and the evening before the battle young Larcher was talking to me. 'How d'you feel?' I said. He didn't answer quite so quickly as usual. 'D'you know,' he said, 'I'm so awfully afraid that I shall funk it.' 'You needn't mind that,' I said, and I laughed. 'The first time we most of us do funk it. For five minutes or so you just have to cling on to your eyelashes to prevent yourself from running away, and then you feel all right, and you think it's rather sport.' 'I've got a sort of presentiment that I shall be killed,' he said. 'Don't be an ass,' I answered. 'We've all got a presentiment that we shall be killed the first time we're under fire. If all the people were killed who had presentiments, half the army would have gone to kingdom come long ago.'"
"You should have told him to lay his trust in the hands of Him who has power to turn the bullet and to break the sword," said Mrs. Jackson.
"He wasn't that sort," replied James, drily, "I laughed at him, thinking it the better way.... Well, next day we did really fight. We were sent to take an unoccupied hill. Our maxim was that a hill is always unoccupied unless the enemy are actually firing from it. Of course, the place was chock full of Boers; they waited till we had come within easy range for a toy-pistol, and then fired murderously. We did all we could. We tried to storm the place, but we hadn't a chance. Men tumbled down like nine-pins. I've never seen anything like it. The order was given to fire, and there was nothing to fire at but the naked rocks. We had to retire--we couldn't do anything else; and presently I found that poor Larcher had been wounded. Well, I thought he couldn't be left where he was, so I went back for him. I asked him if he could move. 'No,' he said, 'I think I'm hurt in the leg.' I knelt down and bandaged him up as well as I could. He was simply bleeding like a pig; and meanwhile brother Boer potted at us for all he was worth. 'How d'you feel?' I asked. 'Bit dicky; but comfortable. I didn't funk it, did I?' 'No, of course not, you juggins!' I said. 'Can you walk, d'you think?' 'I'll try.' I lifted him up and put my arm round him, and we got along for a bit; then he became awfully white and groaned, 'I do feel so bad, Parsons,' and then he fainted. So I had to carry him; and we went a bit farther, and then--and then I was hit in the arm. 'I say, I can't carry you now,' I said; 'for God's sake, buck up.' He opened his eyes, and I prevented him from falling. 'I think I can stand,' he said, and as he spoke a bullet got him in the neck, and his blood splashed over my face. He gave a gasp and died."
James finished, and his mother and Mary wiped the tears from their eyes. Mrs. Clibborn turned to her husband.
"Reggie, I'm sure the Larchers are not a county family."
"There was a sapper of that name whom we met at Simla once, my dear," replied the Colonel.
"I thought I'd heard it before," said Mrs. Clibborn, with an air of triumph, as though she'd found out a very difficult puzzle. "Had he a red moustache?"
"Have you heard from the young man's people, Captain Parsons?" asked Mrs. Jackson.
"I had a letter from Mrs. Larcher, the boy's mother, asking me to go over and see her."
"She must be very grateful to you, Jamie."
"Why? She has no reason to be."
"You did all you could to save him."
"It