Part 4 (1/2)
On Lenox's bare deck-lounge a bull terrier, of powerful build and uncompromising ugliness, slept soundly, nose to tail, and on one of the costly prayer-rugs his Pathan bearer slept also. The deep, even breathing of dog and man formed a murmurous duet in the twilight stillness.
All these things Max Richardson noted, with a twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt in his blue eyes. Every detail of the room spoke to him eloquently of the man he had not seen for a year. Since his departure on furlough the battery had changed stations, marching across sixty miles of sand desert from Bunnoo to Dera Ishmael Khan, familiarly known as ”Dera Dismal,” a straggling station a few miles beyond the Indus.
Richardson had arrived from Bombay late that evening, just in time to change and hurry across to the station mess. To his surprise Lenox had not put in an appearance at the mess table, and Richardson, antic.i.p.ating fever,--the curse of frontier life,--had left early, inquired the way to his Commandant's bungalow, and now stood on the threshold, scarcely able to believe the evidence of his senses.
Strange developments must have taken place during his absence, if Lenox--the woman-hater, the confirmed recluse--were actually dining out.
He approached the snoring Pathan and roused him, not ungently, with the toe of his boot. The native sprang up, fumbled at his disarranged turban, salaamed deeply, and finally stood upright, a splendid figure of a man, six feet of him, if his peaked turban were taken into account--hard, wiry, with aquiline features, grey beard, and eyes keen as a sword-thrust; a man without knowledge of fear, cunning and implacable in hatred, but staunchly devoted to the Englishman he served, who, in his eyes, was the first of living men.
”The Captain Sahib--where is he?” Richardson demanded in the vernacular.
”At Desmond Sahib's bungalow for dinner. By eleven o'clock he returneth. Your Honour will await his coming?”
”Decidedly.”
Zyarulla turned up the lamp, and proceeded to set whisky, soda-water, and a tumbler among his master's scattered papers. Brutus, at the sound of a remembered voice, tapped the cane chair vigorously with his stump of a tail, without offering to relinquish the one comfortable seat in the room. Richardson sat down beside him, caressed the strong ugly head, and lit a cigar.
The Pathan withdrew, leaving him alone with the dog and the whisky bottle, from which he helped himself liberally. Then, drawing one of the closely written sheets of paper towards him, he fell to reading it with interest and attention. It was a minute geographical record of a recent journey through tracts of mountain country hitherto unexplored, a journey which had gained Lenox the letters C.I.E. after his name.
Richardson, while failing to emulate the older man's zeal for wanderings that cut him off for months together from intercourse with his kind, was yet keenly interested in their practical outcome.
The stronger light in which he now sat revealed him as a big fair man, by no means ill-featured, his soldierly figure emphasised by the gunner mess-dress of those days, with its high scarlet waistcoat and profusion of round gilt b.u.t.tons, in each of which twin flames winked and sparkled. A suggestion of kindly, uncritical contentment with things in general pervaded his face and bearing. The blue eyes were rarely serious for long together; the mouth, under a neatly trimmed moustache, showed no harsh lines, no traces of past conflict. Had the great Overseer of men's destinies not seen fit to guide him to the Frontier, out of reach of demoralising influences, it is doubtful whether he would have escaped the trail of the petticoat, the snare of the gra.s.s-widow in determined search of amus.e.m.e.nt. As it was, he had pa.s.sed through the critical twenties with a clean defaulter sheet; had established himself as a good soldier and a good comrade, a ”friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul,” and the closest among these was the Commandant of his battery--a wholesome and pleasant state of things for both.
He was beginning to weary of geographical detail, when steps sounded in the verandah, and he was on his feet as Lenox came in.
”Hullo, d.i.c.k! Good man to wait for me! Thought I should have seen you before mess, though. What do you mean by not coming here straight?”
”None of my fault, old chap. We were delayed as usual crossing that blamed old Indus. Stuck on a sandbank for over an hour. Gives a fellow time to count up his sins and renounce the devil, eh? Expected to find you at mess, of course. I wasn't prepared for this sort of upheaval in the natural order of things!”
Lenox stooped to caress Brutus, who was urgently demanding attention.
”Upheavals belong to the natural order of things,” he said quietly.
”The world would come to a standstill without them. Light a fresh cheroot, and fill up.”
He indicated the chair vacated by Brutus, sat down by the writing-table, and picking up a pipe proceeded to clean it out with scrupulous care. Richardson watched him the while, his face grown suddenly thoughtful. Once he leaned forward, as though he had some urgent matter to communicate, but apparently changed his mind, and spoke conversationally between puffs at his cigar.
”Zyarulla said you were at the Desmonds. Is that the cavalry Desmond, the V.C. chap, whose wife was shot by a brute of a Ghazi four years ago?”
”Yes;--a hideous affair. Yet, in the face of his second marriage, one can hardly call it a misfortune. It was one of those evils that had far better happen to a man than not--that's a fact; and there are a good many such on this amazing planet.”
”Sounds a bit brutal, though, when the murder of a man's wife is in question.”
”Facts are apt to be brutal; even facts relating to the holy estate of matrimony!” Lenox's tone had an edge to it, and Richardson somewhat hastily s.h.i.+fted to another aspect of the subject.
”You are really intimate with these Desmonds,--both of them?”
”Yes. Both of them. I dine there about once a-week, just myself and Desmond's inseparable pal, Wyndham, who is over there most days. You must call at once. She is Colonel Meredith's sister, a magnificent woman in every way.”
”A miraculous one, I should say, to have dragged such an adjective out of you!”
Lenox smiled. ”No. Only one of the right sort. The sort that makes fine sons. She has one already; splendid little chap. The three of 'em are off to Dalhousie early in May, and they have just persuaded me to spend my two months there instead of beyond Kashmir. Mrs Desmond has a misguided notion that I am knocking myself to bits over my work in the interior.”