One night, at the very height of his illness, when he was lying in a kind of stupor, the doctor came in on his way from mess and felt his pulse and temperature. Standing at the foot of the camp-bed, he eyed his patient dubiously for some moments.
“This will never do,” he said, after an ominous silence. “If he goes on like this he will slip through our fingers. His pulse and temperature are past counting. I am afraid he is in a bad way, poor fellow! Some of you had better write to his friends this mail and prepare them. He may pull through, but the chances are very much the other way. I’ll look in again in the course of an hour or two.” So saying, without waiting for a reply of any kind, he turned on his heel and departed.
Captain Vaughan and Mr. Harvey declared over and over to each other that they did not agree with the doctor, but each made a mental reservation to himself: “Their patient was certainly not mending.” As they glanced anxiously towards him, they were more than ever struck by his worn and sunken features, his hurried, laboured breathing, and the startling contrast between his dark hair and the ghastly paleness of his face. “Wali,” Sir Reginald’s Afghan dog, a great shaggy monster, something like a collie, with dark-gray coat and pointed ears, sat on his haunches, with his nose resting on the bed, surveying his master with grave inquiring eyes. To judge from his solemn sorrowful face, he thought as badly of the patient as did his human friends. The two officers had not forgotten the doctor’s injunction, and proceeded to search over the tent for keys, desk, letters, and addresses. They found a small and most unpresuming little leather desk, which they turned out and ransacked. It contained paper and envelopes, some letters, and a cheque-book, but not one of the letters was in a lady’s hand, or bore the signature of Fairfax. After some discussion they agreed to write to the Honorable Mark Mayhew, who seemed a frequent correspondent. As they were tumbling out the contents of the desk they came upon a cabinet photograph, a half-length likeness of a slender girl in a white dress, with a smile in her eyes, and a fox-terrier in her arms.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Mr. Harvey, stooping to pick up the carte from where it had fallen on the floor, face upwards. “I say, who is this?” regarding the treasure-trove with wide-open eyes.
“That is his wife!” replied Captain Vaughan, looking over his comrade’s shoulder. “Is she not lovely?”
“Lovely indeed!” replied Mr. Harvey, refusing to let the photo out of his hand, and gazing at it with the eyes of a connoisseur. “I don’t wonder now that Fairfax turned up his nose at the pale-faced beauties at Camelabad! Now I can understand his contempt for our taste, and the commiseration with which he regarded us when we talked of beauty.”
“If anything does happen to him, poor fellow,” said Captain Vaughan, nodding towards the patient, “I suppose it will be an awful blow to her; but I must confess I can’t make head or tail of his domestic affairs. You may be sure there is something queer about her, or he would never stay out here alone; and he never alludes to his wife any more than if she was dead. There is a screw loose somewhere, believe me.”
“You saw her on board the trooper, Vaughan; is she really as pretty as this?” murmured Mr. Harvey, still wholly absorbed in the photograph.
“Much prettier,” returned his companion briefly. “Here! you can’t go on staring at that all night! We must set to work and write this letter; the mails go down to-morrow morning. I don’t half like the job, I can tell you; and if anything does happen to Fairfax”—here he winked away an unusual moisture in his bold blue eyes—“I shall be frightfully cut up myself.”
The two officers having at length put their heads together, concocted the following letter to Mr. Mayhew: