Linforth was silent for a little while. Then he said slowly:

"I see. I am to go in pursuit?"

"Yes!"

It seemed that Linforth's animosity against Shere Ali had died out.

Ralston watched him keenly from the bed. Something had blunted the edge of the tool just when the time had come to use it. He threw an extra earnestness into his voice.

"You have got to do more than go in pursuit of him. You have got to find him. You have got to bring him back as your prisoner."

Linforth nodded his head.

"He has gone north, you say?"

"Yes. Somewhere in Central Asia you will find him," and as Linforth looked up startled, Ralston continued calmly, "Yes, it's a large order, I know, but it's not quite so large as it looks. The trade-routes, the only possible roads, are not so very many. No man can keep his comings and goings secret for very long in that country. You will soon get wind of him, and when you do you must never let him shake you off."

"Very well," said Linforth, listlessly. "When do I start?"

Ralston plunged into the details of the expedition and told him the number of men he was to take with him.

"You had better go first into Chinese Turkestan," he said. "There are a number of Hindu merchants settled there--we will give you letters to them. Some of them will be able to put you on the track of Shere Ali. You will have to round him up into a corner, I expect. And whatever you do, head him off Russian territory. For we want him. We want him brought back into Kohara. It will have a great effect on this country. It will show them that the Sirkar can even pick a man out of the bazaars of Central Asia if he is rash enough to stand up against it in revolt."

"That will be rather humiliating for Shere Ali," said Linforth, after a short pause; and Ralston sat up on the bed. What in the world, he wondered, could Linforth have read in his letter, so to change him? He was actually sympathising with Shere Ali--he who had been hottest in his anger.

"Shere Ali should have thought of that before," Ralston said sharply, and he rose to his feet. "I rely upon you, Linforth. It may take you a year. It may take you only a few months. But I rely upon you to bring Shere Ali back. And when you do," he added, with a smile, "there's the road waiting for you."

But for once even that promise failed to stir d.i.c.k Linforth into enthusiasm.

"I will do my best," he said quietly; and with that Ralston left him.

Linforth sat down in his chair and once more took out the crumpled letter. He had walked with the G.o.ds of late, like one immune from earthly troubles. But his bad hour had been awaiting him. The letter was signed Violet. He read it through again, and this was what he read:

"This is the most difficult letter I have ever written. For I don't feel that I can make you understand at all just how things are. But somehow or other I do feel that this is going to hurt you frightfully, and, oh, d.i.c.k, do forgive me. But if it will console or help at all, know this,"

and the words were underlined--as indeed were many words in Violet Oliver's letters--"that I never was good enough for you and you are well rid of me. I told you what I was, didn't I, d.i.c.k?--a foolish lover of beautiful things. I tried to tell you the whole truth that last evening in the garden at Peshawur, but you wouldn't let me, d.i.c.k. And I must tell you now. I never sent the pearl necklace back, d.i.c.k, although I told you that I did. I meant to send it back the night when I parted from the Prince. I packed it up and put it ready. But--oh, d.i.c.k, how can I tell you?--I had had an imitation one made just like it for safety, and in the night I got up and changed them. I couldn't part with it--I sent back the false one. Now you know me, d.i.c.k! But even now perhaps you don't. You remember the night in Peshawur, the terrible night? Mr. Ralston wondered why, after complaining that my window was unbolted, I unbolted it myself.

Let me tell you, d.i.c.k! Mr. Ralston said that 'theft' was the explanation.

Well, after I tried to tell you in the garden and you would not listen, I thought of what he had said. I thought it would be such an easy way out of it, if the thief should come in when I was asleep and steal the necklace and go away again before I woke up. I don't know how I brought myself to do it. It was you, d.i.c.k! I had just left you, I was full of thoughts of you. So I slipped back the bolt myself. But you see, d.i.c.k, what I am. Although I wanted to send that necklace back, I couldn't, I _simply couldn't_, and it's the same with other things. I would be very, very glad to know that I could be happy with you, dear, and live your life. But I know that I couldn't, that it wouldn't last, that I should be longing for other things, foolish things and vanities. Again, d.i.c.k, you are well rid of a silly vain woman, and I wish you all happiness in that riddance. I never would have made you a good wife. Nor will I make any man a good wife. I have not the sense of a dog. I know it, too! That's the sad part of it all, d.i.c.k. Forgive me, and thanks, a thousand thanks, for the honour you ever did me in wanting me at all." Then followed--it seemed to Linforth--a cry. "Won't you forgive me, dear, dear d.i.c.k!" and after these words her name, "Violet."

But even so the letter was not ended. A postscript was added:

"I shall always think of the little dreams we had together of our future, and regret that I couldn't know them. That will always be in my mind.

Remember that! Perhaps some day we will meet. Oh, d.i.c.k, good-bye!"

d.i.c.k sat with that letter before his eyes for a long while. Violet had told him that he could be hard, but he was not hard to her. He could read between the lines, he understood the struggle which she had had with herself, he recognised the suffering which the letter had caused her. He was touched to pity, to a greater humanity. He had shown it in his forecasts of the humiliation which would befall Shere Ali when he was brought back a prisoner to Kohara. Linforth, in a word, had shed what was left of his boyhood. He had come to recognise that life was never all black and all white. He tore up the letter into tiny fragments. It required no answer.

"Everything is just wrong," he said to himself, gently, as he thought over Shere Ali, Violet, himself. "Everything is just not what it might have been."

And a few days later he started northwards for Turkestan.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

"THE LITTLE LESS--"

Three years pa.s.sed before Linforth returned on leave to England. He landed at Ma.r.s.eilles towards the end of September, travelled to his home, and a fortnight later came up from Suss.e.x for a few days to London. It was the beginning of the autumn season. People were returning to town.

Theatres were re-opening with new plays; and a fellow-officer, who had a couple of stalls for the first production of a comedy about which public curiosity was whetted, meeting Linforth in the hall of his club, suggested that they should go together.

"I shall be glad," said Linforth. "I always go to the play with the keenest of pleasure. The tuning-up of the orchestra and the rising of the curtain are events to me. And, to be honest, I have never been to a first night before. Let us do the thing handsomely and dine together before we go. It will be my last excitement in London for another three or four years, I expect."

The two young men dined together accordingly at one of the great restaurants. Linforth, fresh from the deep valleys of Chiltistan, was elated by the lights, the neighbourhood of people delicately dressed, and the subdued throb of music from muted violins.

"I am the little boy at the bright shop window," he said with a laugh, while his eyes wandered round the room. "I look in through the gla.s.s from the pavement outside, and--"

His voice halted and stopped; and when he resumed he spoke without his former gaiety. Indeed, the change of note was more perceptible than the brief pause. His friend conjectured that the words which Linforth now used were not those which he had intended to speak a moment ago.

"--and," he said slowly, "I wonder what sort of fairyland it is actually to live and breathe in?"

While he spoke, his eyes were seeking an answer to his question, and seeking it in one particular quarter. A few tables away, and behind Linforth's friend and a little to his right, sat Violet Oliver. She was with a party of six or eight people, of whom Linforth took no note. He had eyes only for her. Bitterness had long since ceased to colour his thoughts of Violet Oliver. And though he had not forgotten, there was no longer any living pain in his memories. So much had intervened since he had walked with her in the rose-garden at Peshawur--so many new experiences, so much compulsion of hard endeavour. When his recollections went back to the rose-garden at Peshawur, as at rare times they would, he was only conscious at the worst that his life was rather dull when tested by the high aspirations of his youth. There was less music in it than he had thought to hear. Instead of swinging in a soldier's march to the sound of drums and bugles down the road, it walked sedately. To use his own phrase, everything was--_just not_. There was no more in it than that. And indeed at the first it was almost an effort for him to realise that between him and this woman whom he now actually saw, after three years, there had once existed a bond of pa.s.sion. But, as he continued to look, the memories took substance, and he began to wonder whether in her fairyland it was "just not," too. She had what she had wanted--that was clear. A collar of pearls, fastened with a diamond bow, encircled her throat. A great diamond flashed upon her bosom. Was she satisfied? Did no memory of the short week during which she had longed to tread the road of fire and stones, the road of high endeavour, trouble her content?

Linforth was curious. She was not paying much heed to the talk about the table. She took no part in it, but sat with her head a little raised, her eyes dreamily fixed upon nothing in particular. But Linforth remembered with a smile that there was no inference to be drawn from that not unusual att.i.tude of hers. It did not follow that she was bored or filled with discontent. She might simply be oblivious. A remark made about her by some forgotten person who had asked a question and received no answer came back to Linforth and called a smile to his face. "You might imagine that Violet Oliver is thinking of the angels. She is probably considering whether she should run upstairs and powder her nose."

Linforth began to look for other signs; and it seemed to him that the world had gone well with her. She had a kind of settled look, almost a sleekness, as though anxiety never came near to her pillow. She had married, surely, and married well. The jewels she wore were evidence, and Linforth began to speculate which of the party was her husband. They were young people who were gathered at the table. In her liking for young people about her she had not changed. Of the men no one was noticeable, but Violet Oliver, as he remembered, would hardly have chosen a noticeable man. She would have chosen someone with great wealth and no ambitions, one who was young enough to ask nothing more from the world than Violet Oliver, who would not, in a word, trouble her with a career.

She might have chosen anyone of her companions. And then her eyes travelled round the room and met his.

For a moment she gazed at him, not seeing him at all. In a moment or two consciousness came to her. Her brows went up in astonishment. Then she smiled and waved her hand to him across the room--gaily, without a trace of embarra.s.sment, without even the colour rising to her cheeks. Thus might one greet a casual friend of yesterday. Linforth bethought him, with a sudden sting of bitterness which surprised him by its sharpness, of the postscript in the last of the few letters she had written to him.

That letter was still vivid enough in his memories for him to be able to see the pages, to recognise the writing, and read the sentences.

"I shall always think of the little dreams we had together of our future, and regret that I couldn't know them. That will always be in my mind.

Remember that!"

How much of that postscript remained true, he wondered, after these three years. Very little, it seemed. Linforth fell to speculating, with an increasing interest, as to which of the men at her table she had mated with. Was it the tall youth with the commonplace good looks opposite to her? Linforth detected now a certain flashiness in his well grooming which he had not noticed before. Or was it the fat insignificant young man three seats away from her?

A rather gross young person, Linforth thought him--the offspring of some provincial tradesman who had retired with a fortune and made a gentleman of his son.

"Well, no doubt he has the dibs," Linforth found himself saying with an unexpected irritation, as he contemplated the possible husband. And his friend broke in upon his thoughts.

"If you are going to eat any dinner, Linforth, it might be as well to begin; we shall have to go very shortly."

Linforth fell to accordingly. His appet.i.te was not impaired, he was happy to notice, but, on the whole, he wished he had not seen Violet Oliver.

This was his last night in London. She might so easily have come to-morrow instead, when he would already have departed from the town. It was a pity.

He did not look towards her table any more, but the moment her party rose he was nevertheless aware of its movement. He was conscious that she pa.s.sed through the restaurant towards the lobby at no great distance from himself. He was aware, though he did not raise his head, that she was looking at him.

Five minutes afterwards the waiter brought to him a folded piece of paper. He opened it and read:

"d.i.c.k, won't you speak to me at all? I am waiting.--VIOLET."