Brandon of the Engineers

This was the line Dick had expected him to take. It was his father's

pride he had wounded and not his heart. He did not know what to say and,

turning his head, he looked moodily out of the open window. The lawn

outside was beautifully kept and the flower-borders were a blaze of

tastefully assorted colors, but there was something artificial and

conventional about the garden that was as marked in the house. Somehow

Dick had never really thought of the place as home.

"I mean to go away," he said awkwardly.

"The puzzling thing is that you should deny having drunk too much,"

Brandon resumed.

"But I hadn't done so! You look at it as the others did. Why should it

make matters better if I'd owned to being drunk?"

"Drunkenness," his father answered, "is now an offense against good

taste, but not long ago it was thought a rather gentlemanly vice, and a

certain toleration is still extended to the man who does wrong in liquor.

Perhaps this isn't logical, but you must take the world as you find it. I

had expected you to learn more in the army than you seem to have picked

up. Did you imagine that your promotion depended altogether upon your

planning trenches and gun-pits well?"

"That kind of thing is going to count in the new armies," Dick replied.

"Being popular on guest-night at the mess won't help a man to hold his

trench or work his gun under heavy fire."

Brandon frowned.

"You won't have an opportunity for showing what you can do. I don't know

where you got your utilitarian, radical views; but we'll keep to the

point. Where do you think of going?"

"To New York, to begin with."

"Why not Montreal or Cape Town?"

"Well," Dick said awkwardly, "after what has happened, I'd rather not

live on British soil."

"Then why not try Hamburg?"

Dick flushed.

"You might have spared me that, sir! I lost the plans; I didn't sell

them."

"Very well. This interview is naturally painful to us both and we'll cut

it short, but I have something to say. It will not be forgotten that you

were turned out of the army, and if you succeeded me, the ugly story

would be whispered when you took any public post. I cannot have our name

tainted and will therefore leave the house and part of my property to

your cousin. Whether you inherit the rest or not will depend upon

yourself. In the meantime, I am prepared to make you an allowance, on the

understanding that you stay abroad until you are sent for."

Dick faced his father, standing very straight, with knitted brows.

"Thank you, sir, but I will take nothing."

"May I ask why?"