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Mac and Smoky availed themselves of the first opportune moment, when all who mattered were engaged in calculations and scraps of paper, to disappear in the direction of a small buffet whence came a tempting rattle of crockery and an aroma of tea. Here, even at this early hour, the good English ladies of Alexandria were dispensing refreshing tea and cakes to the soldiers.
It mattered little to the Solar Guard captain whether the project was a success or failure. His thoughts were of the three cadets in his unit, who were, first and foremost, his responsibility. With double guards around the hangar area and even tighter security restrictions than before, the unknown saboteur was unable to attack the precious ship again. But he struck elsewhere.
He had played lightly with a woman's honor and his own, and had not come out of the matter unsoiled. Now nothing mattered much and if Tollman claimed the reward of his faithfulness and her father would died happier for it why should she refuse to consider them?
What mattered the debauchery, the perversion arising from excess of wealth and power, the luxuriousness and dissoluteness of life, since it seemed a proven fact that the capitals that had been queens of the world had never reigned without extreme civilisation, a cult of beauty and of pleasure!
That had made it seem, from a military standpoint, uninteresting. But here was the real life over in what the women of the quarter vaguely called "the shops," and dismissed as disposed of by the term. Suddenly she wondered what all those men thought about God. Whether either the hard blighting religion of Ann's father, or the aesthetic comfortable religion of her uncle "mattered" much to them?
What mattered was the enormous whimsicality of the Bombardier at the piano, and the outrageous comicality of a tousle-haired soldier with a red nose, who described how he had run away from Mons "with the rest of you," and the light heartedness of a performance which could have gone straight to a London music-hall and brought down the house with jokes and songs made up in dugouts and front line trenches.
But one day he did find his way to the gridiron during practice, and he and Blair sat side by side, or raced down the field, even with a runner, and received much consolation in the sort of company that misery loves, and, deep in discussion of the faults and virtues of the players, forgot their troubles. "Why, it wouldn't have mattered if you were playing, March," said Blair.
It mattered not that the masterful woodcraft of the dusky friend had saved the life of Otto Relstaub; all that the German remembered was that the valuable horse was lost, and he blamed this Indian for it, as he censured Jack Carleton for the same misfortune. The man, however, said nothing for a few minutes.
'Good heavens! how could she do him any harm? 'Well, there's Mannering. As if that mattered! said the girl scornfully. 'And then Beryl's too dreadfully humble! 'Humble! About what? No girl ought to be humble ever! Pamela's eyes recovered their natural brilliance under his peremptory look.
The slave who could write, and who was sick and dying from the pick-handle beating, said he would carry Tom Dixon's arm; also, he said he must die anyway, and that it mattered nothing if he died a little sooner. So five slaves stole from the slave pen that night after the guards had made their last rounds. One of the slaves was the man who could write.
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