"And so fate has brought you to a wealthy master," said he, tauntingly; "and you think that this scribbling business will prove worth your while. 'Tis certainly an odd job for a Pathan! ... I trust well paid?"
"I sought the post, sir," said Muhammed. "My master, since he is to be called my master," a sudden fire leaped and died in his eyes, "will no doubt pay me what he owes me. When I come into my own country again, it may be I shall have found it worth my while."
To this the officer made no reply. After a second's pause, Muhammed lifted his hand to his brow once more and moved away on the noiseless turf. Bethune turned to watch the swing of the strange figure through the trees.
"Greed for money, and wily determination to get to lucrative posts in life—ambition to play the European—or—what?" No motive that his sober common sense could accept as a plausible alternative. Yes, his previous impression had been correct; nothing but a desire for self-advancement—nothing but greed and an Eastern cleverness to seek opportunities—animated that splendid bronze, after all! A disappointing specimen to one who loved the warrior race; a specimen of the westernised Eastern—degenerate leopard, with the spirit eliminated and the wiliness twice developed, according to the law of nature that so often strengthens one attribute by the elimination of another.
CHAPTER XII
The old tin box again and the breath of terrible India in this quiet English room. Siege, struggle, treachery, bloodshed, hunger, thirst, and fever, the extremes of heat and cold, the death agony of the young comrade—this was the story it held. The story of the difficult grave dug in the rock; of the inexorable exigency of the moment, the narrow strait for England's honour which could allow no lingering thought for him that was become useless; of the drawing together of the ranks to hide the gap and keep up the long fight. The story of every conceivable distress of the flesh, every sordid misery of the body, every anxiety of the mind; of hopeless outlook, lingering torture. But, above all, the record of the indomitable purpose; of the white and red crossed flag floating high—of the spirit unconquerable, even to death.
Rosamond sat down on the slanting floor, lifted and took into her lap—as a mother may lift her dead child from the cradle—the old leather case that contained in such small compass so great a story; Captain English's papers of the siege. The parcel had been delivered to her even as he had prepared it for her. To the elastic band that clasped it a scrap of paper was still pinned: "For my wife."
And she had never opened it!
All these years his voice had been waiting to speak to her; his own words for her had been there, the last cry of his soul to hers; nay—how did she know?—the message that should have shaped her future. Something of himself that could not die, he had left her, something of himself to go with her through the desolation! But she, the wife so tenderly loved and thought of to the last—she had, as it were, denied herself to his death-bed. She had closed her ears to his dying speech. She had thrust his dear ghost from her. How was it possible for any woman to have been so cruel, so cowardly? How was it possible ... yet it had been!
"It is we who make our dead dead," had said the mourning mother. Rosamond, the wife, had done worse: she had buried what was not yet dead. She had heaped earth upon the lips that still spoke, that she might not feel the sorrow of their last utterance!