“But I can’t go home,” I replied, “I’ve cut myself adrift from Torrington. They said if I remained in India they would drop me altogether, so you see I’ve burned my boats! Even if I were to humble myself, they would never, never receive me.”
“Falkland will receive you,” declared my brother, “you have not sent him one of your fiery letters?”
“I have never sent him any letter at all.”
“How’s that? You have done one mad thing in pitching your tent at Bangalore, although I know it has been for my sake. You will be still madder if you break off with Falkland, who honestly is a rattling good fellow. If only I’d taken his hints and pulled up a bit I wouldn’t be here now, a disgrace to myself and to you.”
“Never mind me,” I protested, “but tell me how you are getting on?”
“How can I get on until I get out?” he replied with a touch of his former manner. “I still have to serve one year eight months and two days. I must say the superintendent is a white man, although his colour is a bit dusky. He keeps me as much apart from the rabble as he can, and now I’ve promotion I am a sort of official myself. When I first came here, Sis, if I’d seen any means of committing suicide I’d have taken my own life. I was so hopelessly, abjectly miserable; the more I thought, the worse I felt; but do you know, one day, when I was in the very deepest depths of black despair in the labour yard, I distinctly heard your voice calling me, and that gave me a wonderful ‘buck up,’ and reminded me that I wasn’t altogether alone in the world.”
I debated in my own mind whether I would tell him that he had really heard me or not, and I decided against it. Somehow I instinctively felt that he would hate to know that I had witnessed him doing hard labour in company with thieves and murderers.
“Did you find my little notes in the books?” I asked. “Writing in that way was, I know, deceitful, but I hoped you would come across some of my scribbling.”
“Yes, I did, rather—and that cheered me no end. Knowing that you were in the station, and that I would see you, raised me out of the Slough of Despond.”
“There,” I exclaimed, “so I was right to come after all!”