Anne couldn't say it was a nice face.
"It's awful to think of Colin being married to it. He's only twenty-one
now, and she's seven years older. If it had been anybody but Colin. If
it had been Eliot or Jerrold I shouldn't have minded so much. They can
look after themselves. He'll never stand up against that horrible girl."
"She does look terribly strong."
"And cruel, Anne, as if she might hurt him. I don't want him to be hurt.
I can't bear her taking him away from me. My little Col-Col....I did
hope, Anne, that if you wouldn't have Eliot--"
"I'd have Colin? But Auntie, I'm years older than he is. He's a baby."
"If he's a baby he'll want somebody older to look after him."
"Queenie's even better fitted than I am, then."
"Do you think, Anne, she proposed to Colin?"
"No. I shouldn't think it was necessary."
"I should say she was capable of anything. My only hope is they'll tire
each other out before they're married and break it off."
All afternoon on the tennis court below Queenie played against Colin.
She played vigorously, excitedly, savagely, to win. She couldn't hide
her annoyance when he beat her.
"What was I to do?" he said. "You don't like it when I beat you. But if
I was beaten you wouldn't like _me_."
But after a month of Queenie, Colin was more nervous and unfit than
ever.
"I can't think," said Adeline, "what that woman does to him. She'll wear
him out."
So Colin waited, trying to get fitter, and afraid to volunteer lest he
should be rejected.
Everybody around him was moving rapidly. Queenie had taken up motoring,
so that she could drive an ambulance car at the front. Anne had gone up
to London for her Red Cross training. Eliot had left his practice to his
partner at Penang and had come home and joined the Army Medical Corps.
Eliot, home on leave for three days before he went out, tried hard to
keep Colin back from the War. In Eliot's opinion Colin was not fit and
never would be fit to fight. He was just behaving as he always had
behaved, rushing forward, trying insanely to do the thing he never could
do.
"Do you mean to say they won't pass me?" he asked.
"Oh, they'll pass you all right," Eliot said. "They'll give you an
expensive training, and send you into the trenches, and in any time from
a day to a month you'll be in hospital with shell-shock. Then you'll be
discharged as unfit, having wasted everybody's time and made a damned
nuisance of yourself....I suppose I ought to say it's splendid of you to
want to go out. But it isn't splendid. It's idiotic. You'll be simply
butting in where you're not wanted, taking a better man's place, taking
a better man's commission, taking a better man's bed in a hospital. I
tell you we don't want men who are going to crumple up in their first
action."