Lance Desmond listened with a grave smile, and a sharp contraction of heart, to the absurdities of this first-best friend, who for three years had shared with him the high and horrible and ludicrous vicissitudes of war. He knew only too well that trick of talking at random to drown some inner stress. With every word of nonsense he uttered, Roy was implicitly confessing how acutely he felt the blow; and to parade his own bitter disappointment seemed an egotistical superfluity. So he merely remarked with due gravity: "I admit you've made out an overwhelming case for 'said pegs'!" And he shouted his orders accordingly.

They filled their tumblers in silence, avoiding each other's eyes. Every moment emphasised increasingly all that the detested verdict implied. No more polo together. No more sharing of books and jokes and enthusiasms and violent antipathies, to which both were p.r.o.ne. No more 'shoots' in the Hills beyond Kashmir.

From the first of these they had lately returned--sick leave, in Roy's case; and the programme was to be repeated next April, if they could 'w.a.n.gle' first leave. Each knew the other was thinking of these things.

But they seemed entirely occupied in quenching their thirst, and their disappointment, in deep draughts of sizzling ice-cool whisky-and-soda.

Moreover--ignominious, but true--when the tumblers were emptied, things did begin to look a shade less blue. It became more possible to discuss plans. And Desmond was feeling distinctly anxious on that score.

"You won't be shunted instanter," he remarked; and Roy smiled at the relief in his tone.

"Next month, I suppose. We must make the most of these few weeks, old man."

"And then--what?... Home?"

Roy did not answer at once. He was lying back again, staring out at the respectable imitation of a lawn, at rose beds, carpeted with over-blown mignonette, and a lone untidy tamarisk that flung a spiky shadow on the gra.s.s. And the eye of his mind was picturing the loveliest lawn of his acquaintance, with its n.o.ble twin beeches and a hammock slung between--an empty casket; the jewel gone. It was picturing the drawing-room; the restful simplicity of its cream and gold: but no dear and lovely figure, in gold-flecked sari, lost in the great arm-chair.

Her window-seat in the studio--empty. No one in a 'mother-o'-pearl mood'

to come and tuck him up and exchange confidences, the last thing. His father, also invalided out; his left coat sleeve half empty, where the forearm had been removed.

"N--no," he said at last, still staring at the unblinking sunshine. "Not Home. Not yet--anyway."

Then, having confessed, he turned and looked straight into the eyes of his friend--the hazel-grey eyes he had so admired, as a small boy, because of the way they darkened with anger or strong feeling. And he admired them still. "A coward--am I? It's not a flattering conclusion.

But I suppose it's the cold truth."

"It hasn't struck _me_ that way." Desmond frankly returned his look.

"That's a mercy. But--if one's name happened to be Lance Desmond, one would go--anyhow."

"I doubt it. The place must be simply alive--with memories. We Anglo-Indians, jogged from pillar to post, know precious little about homes like yours. A man--can't judge----"

"You're a generous soul, Lance!" Roy broke out with sudden warmth.

"Anyway--coward or no--I simply _can't_ face--the ordeal, yet awhile. I believe my father will understand. After all--here I am in India, as planned, before the Great Interruption. So--given the chance, I might as well take it. The dear old place is mostly empty, these days--with Tiny married and Dad's Air Force job pinning him to Town. _So_--as I remarked before----!"

"You'll hang on out here for the present? Thank G.o.d for that much."

Desmond's pious grat.i.tude was so fervent that they both burst out laughing; and their laughter cleared the air of ghosts.

"Jaipur it is, I suppose, as planned. Thea will be overjoyed. Whether Jaipur's precisely a health resort----?"

"I'm not after health resorts. I'm after knowledge--and a few other things. Not Jaipur first, anyway. The moment I get the official order of the boot--I'm for Chitor."

"Chitor?" Faint incredulity lurked in Desmond's tone.

"Yes--the casket that enshrines the soul of a race; buried in the wilds of Rajasthan. Ever heard tell of it, you arrant Punjabi? Or does nothing exist for _you_ south of Delhi?"

"Just a thing or two--not to mention Thea!"

"Of course--I beg her pardon! _She_ would appreciate Chitor."

"Rather. They went there--and Udaipur, last year. She's death on getting Vincent transferred. And the Burra Sahibs are as wax in her hands. If they happen to be musical, and she applies the fiddle, they haven't an earthly----!"

Roy's eyes took on their far-away look.

"It'll be truly uplifting to see her--and hear her fiddle once more, if she's game for an indefinite dose of my society. Anyway, there's my grandfather----"

"Quite superfluous," Desmond interposed a shade too promptly. "If I know Thea, she'll hang on to you for the cold weather; and ensure you a _pied a terre_ if you want to prowl round Rajputana and give the bee in your bonnet an airing! You'll be in clover. The Residency's a sort of palace.

Not precisely Thea's ideal of bliss. She's a Piffer at heart; and her social talents don't get much scope down there. Only half a dozen whites; and old Vinx buried fathoms deep in ethnology, writing a book.

But, being Thea, she has pitched herself head foremost, into it all. Got very keen on Indian women. She's mixed up in some sort of a romance now.

A girl who's been educated at home. It seems an unfailing prescription for trouble. I rather fancy she's a cousin of yours."

Roy started. "What--Aruna?"

"She didn't mention the name. Only ructions--and Thea to the rescue!"

"Poor Aruna!--She stayed in England a goodish time, because of the War--and Dyan. I've not heard of Dyan for an age; and I don't believe they have either. He was knocked out in 1915. Lost his left arm. Said he was going to study art in Calcutta.--I wonder----?" Desmond--who had chiefly been talking to divert the current of his thoughts--noted, with satisfaction, how his simple tactics had taken effect.

"We'll write to-morrow--eh?" said he. "Better still--happy thought!--I'll bear down on Jaipur myself, for Christmas leave. Rare fine pig-sticking in those parts."

The happy thought proved a masterstroke. In the discussion of plans and projects Roy became almost his radiant self again: forgot, for one merciful hour, that he was dead, d.a.m.ned, and done for--the wraith of a 'Might-Have-Been.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Punjab Irregular Frontier Force.]

CHAPTER II.

"Oh, not more subtly silence strays Amongst the winds, between the voices...

Than thou art present in my days.

My silence, life returns to thee In all the pauses of her breath.

And thou, wake ever, wake for me!"

--ALICE MEYNELL.

Some five weeks later, Roy sat alone--very completely and desolately alone--in a whitewashed, unhomely room that everywhere bore the stamp of dak bungalow; from the wobbly teapoy[4] at his elbow to the board of printed rules that adorned the empty mantelpiece. The only cheering thing in the room was the log fire that made companionable noises and danced shadow-dances on the dingy white walls. But the optimism of the fire was discounted by the pessimism of the lamp that seemed specially constructed to produce a minimum of light with a maximum of smell--and rank kerosene at that.

Dak bungalows had seemed good fun in the days of his leave, when he and Lance made merry over their well-worn failings. But it was quite another affair to smoke the pipe of compulsory solitude, on the outskirts of Chitor, hundreds of miles away from Kohat and the Regiment; to feel oneself the only living being in a succession of empty rooms--for the servants were housed in their own little colony apart. Solitude, in the right mood and the right place, was bread and wine to his soul; but acute loneliness of the dak bungalow order was not in the bond. For four years he had felt himself part of a huge incarnate purpose; intimately part of his regiment--a closely-knit brotherhood of action. Now, the mere fact of being an unattached human fragment oddly intensified his feeling of isolation. With all his individuality, he was no egoist; and very much a lover of his kind. Imbued with the spirit of the quest, yet averse by temperament to ploughing the lonely furrow.

It had been his own choice--if you could call it so,--starting this way, instead of in the friendly atmosphere of the Jaipur Residency. But was there really such a thing as choice? The fact was, he had simply obeyed an irresistible impulse,--and to-morrow he would be glad of it.

To-night, after that interminable journey, his head ached atrociously.

He felt limp as a wet dish-clout; his nerves all out of gear ... Perhaps those confounded doctors were not such fools as they seemed. He cursed himself for a spineless ineffectual--messing about with nerves when he had been lucky enough to come through four years of war with his full complement of limbs and faculties unimpaired. Two slight wounds, a pa.s.sing collapse, from utter fatigue and misery, soon after his mother's death; a spell of chronic dysentery, during which he had somehow managed to keep more or less fit for duty;--that was his record of physical damage, in a War that had broken its tens of thousands for life.

But there are wounds of the mind; and the healing of them is a slow, complex affair. Roy, with his fastidious sense of beauty, his almost morbid shrinking from inflicted pain, had suffered acutely, where more robust natures scarcely suffered at all. Yet it was the robust that went to pieces--which was one of the many surprises of a War that shattered convictions wholesale, and challenged modern man to the fiercest trial of faith at a moment when Science had almost stripped him bare of belief in anything outside himself.

Roy, happily for him, had not been stripped of belief; and his receptive mind, had been ceaselessly occupied registering impressions, to be flung off, later, in prose and verse, that _She_ might share them to the full.

A slim volume--published, at her wish, in 1916--had attracted no small attention in the critical world. At the time, he had deprecated premature rushings into print; but afterwards it was a blessed thing to remember the joy he had given her that last Christmas--the very last....