Apparently soft stones were forthcoming: for one by one the men rolled themselves up in their blankets and sheep-skins, and slept soundly on two hundred feet of ice under a freezing sky; leaving Lenox alone with his pipe and his thoughts, and the silence that dwelt like a presence in the eerie place.

As a rule a hard day on the glaciers left him so over-powered with sleep that he could scarcely finish his smoke: but to-night his brain was alert and active; stimulated by the knowledge that two more days of climbing ought to bring him at last to the Pa.s.s of his dreams:--the Pa.s.s that must be found and crossed in the teeth of all that Nature might do to hinder him!

That discovery would close the first phase of his journey: and to-night, looking back over it, from the day of his departure for Simla, he saw that it had been good.

Sir Henry Forsyth, Foreign Secretary, and an old school friend of his brother's, had instructed him to work his way up to Hunza, a small independent state north of Kashmir, hidden among lofty mountains and impenetrable valleys, whence robber bands--secure from retaliation--had for long amused and enriched themselves by flying descents upon neighbouring tribes, and upon caravans pa.s.sing from Asia to India. And now, after an unusually daring raid, the peace-loving Kirghiz of the district had appealed to the Indian Government for protection and help.

Lenox, with his little escort of six Gurkhas and one Pathan, was to enter this stronghold of brigands; reason with their chief, and bind him down to good behaviour for the future. In addition, Sir Henry suggested that instead of going to Hunza direct, he should strike out eastward from Kashmir, working his way round through the great Mustagh Mountains, and exploring as he went, also that he should finally push on northward, and penetrate as far into the Pamirs as the approach of winter would permit.

"There will be no difficulty with the authorities. I have arranged all that; and you need not be back at Dera till October or November," the great man had concluded, in a tone half question, half command.

"No, sir. I may as well do all I can while I'm up there."

Whereat Sir Henry had eyed him thoughtfully from between narrowed lids.

For all his great brain, he was a man of one idea: and that idea--"The North safeguarded." Mere men, himself included, were for him no more than p.a.w.ns in the great game to be played out between two Empires, on the chess-board of Central Asia. But . . there are p.a.w.ns, and p.a.w.ns: and Sir Henry had had his eye on Lenox for some years; recognising in him a p.a.w.n of high value; a man to be sent to the front on the first opportunity, and kept there as long as might be. The news of his marriage had been a shock to the Foreign Secretary: and it is conceivable that he had wished to test Lenox by asking him to undertake such a mission within a year of the fatal event. He was speculating now, as he watched him, how far the 'woman complication' was likely to count with this impenetrable Scot. With Sir Henry, after the first year or two, the woman had not counted at all; and, unhappily for her, she knew it.

The pause lasted so long that Lenox shifted his position: but Sir Henry only said, "I was relieved when I got your wire."

"Surely I could not have answered otherwise?"

"I am glad you think so. But frankly, when I heard of your marriage, I was half afraid I had lost one of my ablest men."

Lenox smiled. "Not quite as bad as that, sir, I hope."

"Well then . . what about Gilgit?"

Sir Henry spoke carelessly; but his eyes were on Lenox's face, and he saw him flinch.

"Is that likely to be an immediate contingency?" Lenox asked quietly.

"Next, year, I should say, as things are going now."

"Well, I hope it may be possible. But . . one would have to think it over."

"_Talk_ it over, you mean . . eh?"

Something in the tone angered Lenox.

"Yes, sir . . talk it over. That is what I meant," he had answered, looking straightly at the other: and they had returned somewhat abruptly to the matter in hand.

But Lenox had dined with the Foreign Secretary that night, and they had parted good friends, as ever: Sir Henry begging the younger man to ask him for anything that might serve to lessen the hardships and dangers ahead of him, adding, as they shook hands: "I a.s.sure you, my dear fellow, we who sit in Simla fully realise how much the country owes to men of your sort; and grudge no money spent in making the way smoother for you."

But Lenox, knowing well that hardships and perils loom larger in an easy-chair than on the slope of a glacier, had asked for little, beyond permission to depart, and that speedily.

A few days at Pindi had sufficed for the collecting of stores and equipment. Then he had pushed northward in earnest, picking up his escort of Gurkhas from their station in the foot-hills: and so on through Kashmir, where spring had already flung her bridal veil over the orchards, and retreating snow-wreaths had left the hills carpeted with a mosaic of colour,--primula, iris, orchid, and groundlings innumerable: over the Zoji-la Pa.s.s, into the shadeless, fantastic desolation of Ladak; and on, across stark desert and soundless snow-fields, to Leh, the terminus of all caravans from India and Central Asia. Here Lenox had spent two days with one Captain Burrow of the Bengal Cavalry, who, with a handful of half-starved Kashmiri soldiers, upheld the interests of the British Raj on this uttermost edge of Empire. Here also he found a letter from Quita; read and re-read it, and stowed it away in his breast-pocket, trying not to be aware of a haunting ache deep down in him, which must perforce be ignored. The old charm of the Road, the 'glory of going on,' that works like madness in the blood, was strong upon him as ever. But whereas, in former journeyings, he had been one man, he was now two.

The whole-hearted ecstasy of travel would never again be his. He had given a part of himself into a woman's keeping; and let him put the earth's diameter between them, she would hold him still. Every week, every day that drew him farther from her did but bring home to him more forcibly the mysterious, compelling power of marriage, its large reserves of loyalty, its sacred and intimate revelations, its inexorable grip on life and character.

But meanwhile, there was the Road before him; a rough road, full of vicissitudes and anxieties, of interests and antic.i.p.ations that left him small leisure for the communings of his heart.

Before leaving Leh, hill camels and ponies had been added unto him; besides twenty-one decrepit Kashmir soldiers,--a type extinct since they have been handled by British officers. These were to be deposited by Lenox at his so-called 'base of operations,' by way of guarding the trade route so grievously troubled by the brigand state.

Followed two more weeks of marching,--rougher marching this time,--through the core of the lofty mountains that divide India from Central Asia; across the terrible Depsang Plains, seventeen thousand feet up; and over four pa.s.ses choked with snow; till they came upon a deserted fort, set in the midst of stark s.p.a.ce, and knew that here, indeed, was the limit of human habitation. Next day the work of exploration had begun in earnest. Week after week, with unwearying persistence, they had pushed on, upward, always upward, through regions sacred to the eagles and the clouds; working along streams that cut their way through hillsides steep as houses, or along tracks that ran to polished ledges of rock and dropped sheer to unimaginable depths; clambering over formidable ranges by any chance opening that could be dignified by the name of a pa.s.s; the eternally cheery Gurkhas solacing themselves with rum; the Pathans with opium; the Scot with rare nips of brandy, on the bitterest nights. Still more rarely,--at wider and wider intervals of time,--he drew from his breast-pocket a pill-box, like the one still locked in his writing-table drawer at home. Its contents were running very low by now; and, once gone, they would never again be replenished. That he knew; with a knowledge born not of arrogance, but of faith that somehow, somewhen the right must prevail.

And to-night,--as he sat alone by the fire, watching the greyness of death quench spark after spark of living light, while a late moon sailed leisurely into view, overlaying the steely hardness of ice and snow with a veil of shimmering silver,--he took out the box, and opened it. He knew it held two pellets; no more. Why not take them at once, and so break the last link of the devil's chain? He turned them into his palm, . . and paused, while the enemy within whispered words of seduction hard to be withstood. But now a second voice spoke in him also: a voice of mingled authority and pleading. Why not fling away both box and pellets, foregoing the final degradation, the final rapture, that every nerve in him clamoured for more imperatively than he dared admit even to himself.

For some reason the suggestion brought Desmond vividly to his mind:--Desmond, with his characteristic a.s.sertion: "Of course you will succeed. You have won His great talisman." Yes. He was right!--'the great talisman.' Surely if marriage were worth anything, if it meant more to a man than mere domesticity, and material satisfaction, it ought by rights to act as a talisman to protect him from the evils of his baser self.

While thinking, he had mechanically returned the pellets to the box, closing it firmly, crushing it between his hands; and now, with a wide sweep of his arm, he flung it far from him, into the blue-black mystery of a ravine that swooped past the camping-ground to the valley below.

"Thank G.o.d _that's_ done with!" he muttered; though as yet the pain rather than the elation of conquest prevailed. Then, lifting Brutus in his arms, as though he had been a child, he slipped, dog and all, into his sheep-skin bag, and slept without dreams.

An hour later, a sudden gust from the north swept down the ravine.

Battalions of cloud blotted out the stars; and a host of snow-flakes whirled above the sleeping camp, like spirits of fairies, incapable of doing harm.

The chill discomfort of snow melting on their faces woke the men, one by one, at an unearthly hour, to find their whole world shrouded in white, and a mist of snow-dust still falling. But Lenox, undismayed, ordered tea and biscuits, and lost no time in setting out.

A stiff climb up the ravine into which he had flung his pill-box lay ahead of them; but since the side nearest the camp was unbroken glacier, it seemed wisest to hack their way across it before attempting the ascent.

It was freezing hard: earth and sky were m.u.f.fled in fine white powder, and scudding clouds constantly hid the moon. An ice-slope overlaid with snow is not pleasant going at the best of times; and on this one there were ugly rents, into which men and animals slipped, to their sore discomfort. But the way of life is by courage and persistence: and in time the thing was done.

The farther side proved less formidable: and while they halted to recoup their energies, a report like thunder, followed by an unmistakable rushing sound, made every man of them catch his breath.

It was an avalanche: and its appalling crescendo was coming straight down the hill on which they stood.

The two Pathans remained rigid, impa.s.sive,--the greater the danger the cooler do these men become: but the Kirghiz--a creature without self-respect--shook so violently that he dropped the bridles of his ponies.

"Run, Sahib . . run!" he stammered. "Or we be all dead men."

But there was nowhere to run to, even had running on an ice-slope been possible; which it was not. Neither was it possible to guess the exact direction of the invisible annihilation that was racing down upon them through a mist of snow. There was nothing for it but to stand steady--till that happened which must happen. So they stood steady, without speech or movement, like men turned to stone.

It may have been a matter of minutes. To Lenox it seemed a matter of years. Because, in that short breathing s.p.a.ce, fear--overmastering fear--gripped him as it never yet had done. A year or two ago, for all his human love of life, he would have accepted a mountaineer's death with something of the same pride and stoicism as a soldier accepts death in battle. But now . . now . . life meant so infinitely more to him, that every throbbing artery and nerve rebelled against the loss of it. For it is happiness, more than conscience, that 'makes cowards of us all.'

Nearer and louder grew the appalling sound. Then a great cloud of snow-dust burst in their faces, half blinding them: and, with the roar of an express train, the avalanche sped down the ravine; burying the ice-slope they had just crossed; and obliterating their footsteps as man's work is obliterated by the soundless avalanche of the years.

All five men let out their breath in an audible murmur.

"_Burra tamasha_,[2] Hazur," Yusuf Ali remarked gravely. "Never before have I seen the like."

But for the moment Lenox had lost his voice. Ten minutes' delay in starting, and they had been swept out of life, without a struggle or a cry. It is this significance of trifles in determining large issues that at times staggers faith and reason.

"The Sahib still goes forward?" the Pathan added presently, as one who merely asks for orders: and the Sahib nodded.

But this was too much for the Kirghiz. Emboldened by terror, he flung himself on the ground.

"I who speak am as dust beneath the feet of the Heaven-born. But consider, Hazur, there will be many more such before the pa.s.s can be reached."

"It is possible," Lenox answered unmoved. "It is also possible that, like this one, they will keep out of our path. Make no more fool's talk. Go back to the ponies."

The Kirghiz was not mistaken. There were 'many more such' during the next few days. But Lenox was not mistaken either: for none of them came their way. Only the m.u.f.fled thunder of their descent broke the stillness of a world whose mystery and grandeur surpa.s.sed anything Lenox himself had ever seen.