"I have come back for good."
"You are going to live here?" cried Shere Ali.
"Not here, exactly. In Cashmere. I go up to Cashmere in a week's time. I shall live there and die there."
Colonel Dewes spoke without any note of anticipation, and without any regret. It was difficult for Shere Ali to understand how deeply he felt. Yet the feeling must be deep. He had cut himself off from his own people, from his own country. Shere Ali was stirred to yet more questions. He was anxious to understand thoroughly all that had moved this commonplace matter-of-fact man at his side.
"You found life in England so dull?" he asked.
"Well, one felt a stranger," said Dewes. "One had lost one's associations. I know there are men who throw themselves into public life and the rest of it. But I couldn't. I hadn't the heart for it even if I had the ability. There was Lawrence, of course. He governed India and then he went on the School Board," and Dewes thumped his fist upon the rail in front of him. "How he was able to do it beats me altogether. I read his life with amazement. He was just as keen about the School Board as he had been about India when he was Viceroy here. He threw himself into it with just as much vigour. That beats me. He was a big man, of course, and I am not. I suppose that's the explanation. Anyway, the School Board was not for me. I put in my winters for some years at Corfu shooting woodcock. And in the summer I met a man or two back on leave at my club. But on the whole it was pretty dull. Yes," and he nodded his head, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice. "Yes, on the whole it was pretty dull. It will be better in Cashmere."
"It would have been still better if you had never seen India at all," said Shere Ali.
"No; I don't say that. I had my good time in India—twenty-five years of it, the prime of my life. No; I have nothing to complain of," said Dewes.
Here was another difference brought to Shere Ali's eyes. He himself was still young; the prime years were before him, not behind. He looked down, even as Dewes had done, over that wide space gay with colours as a garden of flowers; but in the one man's eyes there was a light of satisfaction, in the other's a gleam almost of hatred.
"You are not sorry you came out to India," he said. "Well, for my part," and his voice suddenly shook with passion, "I wish to heaven I had never seen England."