He bent down and kissed her. "You know I love you, mother," he said. "Now I'll go and talk to Granny. Come and see me when I go to bed--say in half an hour--as you used to."
That comforted her a little, and she went upstairs, while he went into the drawing-room where Lady Brent was still sitting where they had left her.
"Well, Granny dear," he said. "I thought we'd have a little talk. I've got things to tell you."
She laid down her work, and looked at him fondly, sitting in a low chair opposite to her, so young in appearance, as he sat there with his long legs stretched out, but, as she felt, so old in experience, and so different from the boy he had been.
"Please don't think, dear Harry," she said, "that you owe me any explanation of anything. I've had a long time to think it all out, you know. I think I understand most things. Don't you want it treated as if it was all over now, and begin again, much as it was before? If so, I want that too. We've got you at home now, and we want to be all happy together."
His face cleared as he spoke. "It's very good of you to put it like that," he said. "Yes, of course I want it to be as much as possible what it used to be as long as I can be here with you. There's a good deal I want to forget."
"I'm afraid you've been through a very hard time, Harry."
"Not harder than others, Granny. It's not a bad thing to learn what you have to learn in a hard school. Perhaps you learn it all the quicker."
There was a pause before she said: "It has troubled me a good deal--the thought of your going straight from the life you lived here into the ranks. It wasn't that that we'd tried to prepare you for."
"Oh, the ranks!" he said. "You needn't let that worry you, Granny. I'm glad I went into the ranks. I'd rather do it that way than any."
She showed some surprise at this. "I've thought it over and over," she said. "But I've never thought of it in that way. It was the roughness and coarseness I hated for you. Isn't that what you want to forget?"
He was silent for a time, looking down. Then he burst out: "It's learning what the beastliness of life is that I want to forget. That's what I'd never known. I never minded hard work--doing what others do. And I doubt whether I should have been let down so easily with people like myself--on the outside, I mean. No, I was nearer to the men who had lived simpler lives. I understood them better than I should have done the others. And they were good to me too. I don't think I should have wanted to get a commission if I hadn't felt I ought to. I should have been content to go on till the end of it. But now it's all got to begin again. Oh, don't let's talk of it. I've got a month here, where it's quiet and clean and beautiful. Let's forget what's past and what's coming. I never meant to talk of it. I only wanted to tell you what I was going to do, and to thank you for letting me go my own way."