Then, out of the darkness, came a shivering old voice, “Derry, are you there?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Come down—­and help me—­”

The General, alone in the darkness, had suffered a reaction.  He felt chilled and depressed.  He wanted warmth and light.

Mounting steadily with his son’s arm to sustain him, he argued garrulously for a sojourn at the nearest hostelry, or for a stop at Chevy Chase.  He would, he promised, go to bed at the Club, and thus be rid of Bronson.  Bronson didn’t know his place, he would have to be taught—­

Arriving at the top, he was led to Derry’s car.  He insisted on an understanding.  If he got in, they were to stop at the Club.

“No,” Derry said, “we won’t stop.  We are going home.”

Derry had never commanded a brigade.  But he had in him the blood of one who had.  He possessed also strength and determination backed at the moment by righteous indignation.  He lifted his father bodily, put him in the car, took his seat beside him, shut the door, and drove off.  He felt remarkably cheered as they whirled along at top speed.

The General, yielding gracefully to the inevitable, rolled himself up in the rugs, dropped his head against the padded cushions and, soothed by the warmth, fell asleep.

He waked to find himself being guided up his own stairway by Bronson and the butler.

“Put him into a hot bath, Bronson,” Derry directed from the threshold of his father’s room, and, the General, quite surprisingly, made no protest.  He had his bath, hot drinks to follow, and hot water bags in his bed.  When he drifted off finally, into uneasy dreams, he was watched over by Bronson as if he had been a baby.

Derry, looking at his watch, was amazed to find that the evening was yet early.  He had lived emotionally through a much longer period than that marked by the clocks.

He had no engagements.  He had found himself of late shrinking a little from his kind.  The clubs and the hotels were crowded with officers.  Private houses, hung with service flags, paid homage to men in uniform.  He was aware that he was, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but it was not pleasant to meet the inquiring glance, the guarded question.  He was welcomed outwardly as of old.  But, then, he had a great deal of money.  People did not like to offend his father’s son.  But if he had not been his father’s son?  What then?

He dined alone and in state in the great dining room.  The portraits of his ancestors looked down on him.  There was his mother’s grandfather, who had the same fair hair and strongly marked brows.  He had been an officer in the English army, and wore the picturesque uniform of the period.  There were other men in uniform—­ancestors—.

But of what earthly use was an ancestor in uniform to the present situation?  It would have been better to have inherited Quaker blood.  Derry smiled whimsically as he thought how different he might have felt if there had been benignant men in gray with broad-brimmed hats, staring down.