"I don't think that's peculiar to the Army," replied Mrs. Lewknor. "The attitude's characteristic of our race."
Mr. Royal was not in fact popular among his brother officers. His superiors complained that his manner was slightly insolent, his juniors that it was so damn superior. The men liked him for his efficiency, and some women admired him—too much it was whispered.
Mrs. Lewknor followed Ernie's military career with quiet interest. Not that there was very much to follow: for Ernie, apart from the cricket-field, had no career.
He did not seek promotion, and was not in fact offered it. As Mr. Royal very truly said,—"He can't come it enough to make an N.C.O." The habit of authority indeed sat ill on his shoulders; but he was liked by officers and men; and his cricket gave him a place in the regimental team.
But there was little in Army life to do for Ernie the one thing essential self demands—encourage growth; and not a little to repress it.
When the first newness had worn off, Ernie was spiritually unsatisfied and solitary.
The grosser vices of the men never appealed to him, and the men themselves were not his sort. To get away from them he sometimes wandered far a-field, poking and prying into the temples of the various sects, and not seldom found himself in the crowded streets of the native city, a lonely khaki figure in a sun-helmet, regarding the many-coloured crowd, and asking himself, in the philosophical way he inherited from his father,
"What's the meaning of it all?"
It was on one of these rambles that the solitary incident of his career in India occurred to him.
He was standing at the foot of the hill in the native city of Lahore, watching the traffic in the narrow streets, when he saw a mem-sahib driving a tum-tum slowly through the heavy ox-traffic.