“You are six and twenty now—a grown man, Mark, and speak like a man! I have not had a good look at your face yet. I wonder if it is the same face as that of my own honest-eyed boy?”
The answer would be prompt, if he so pleased, for the lean khitmaghar now staggered in under the weight of a large evil-smelling “argand” lamp (a pattern extinct everywhere save in remote parts of India).
Mark looked over eagerly at his father. His head was bent in his hands. Presently he raised it, and gazed at his son with a look of unmistakable apprehension. His son felt as if he were confronting an utter stranger; he would never have recognized this grey-haired cadaverous old man as the handsome stalwart sabreur he had parted with sixteen years previously. He looked seventy years of age. His features were sharpened as if by constant pain, his colour was ashen, his hands emaciated, his eyes sunken; he wore a camel’s-hair dressing-gown, and a pair of shabby slippers.
“You are just what I expected,” he exclaimed, after a long pause. “You have your mother’s eyes; but you are a Jervis. Of course you see a great change in me?”
“Well, yes—rather,” acquiesced his son, with reluctant truthfulness. “India ages people.”
“You think this a strange life that I lead, I am sure; miles away from my fellow-countrymen, buried alive, and long forgotten?”
“No, not forgotten, sir. Do you recollect Pelham Brande of the Civil Service? He was asking for you only the other day.”
“I think I remember him—a clever fellow, with a very pretty wife, who people said had been a servant. (How long these sort of things stick to people’s memories.) I’ve been out of the world for years.”
“But you will return to it. Come back to England with me. What is there to keep you in this country?”
“What, indeed!” with a jarring laugh. “No, my dear boy, I shall never leave the Pela Bungalow, as they call it, until I am carried out of it feet foremost.”