“Pity you’re so sensitive,” retorted the Chaplain cuttingly. “A little of Nugent’s stolidity might do you good.... Lewin was his friend, too!”
Such a thought was in Bristow Nugent’s mind all through that dusty gallop up the tangled green road, while the sweat poured down his brown face, and his heart beat thickly with his errand. Memories of Ally—old Ally Sloper!—at Sandhurst with him, when they both came perilously near being “chucked” because of a certain escapade connected with a frying-pan and the senior captain’s banjo;—that night too, when Forrester of the Duke’s (Forrester always did lay it on so thick!) borrowed his man’s uniform and went out with Ally as his “girl,” Ally in a hat and feathers after the style of a London flower-seller! Lucky thing they were not spotted that time. And his own special breed of fox-terriers from which Ally had that bitch he was so fond of—what was her name? Kiddy—yes, of course, after some girl on whom he was awfully gone. Kiddy went to India with Ally, and he confessed that he cried like a fool when she died from a karait’s bite. He could understand that too—a fellow got as fond of a dog as of a child. He thought inconsistently of his own boy in England, and wondered how he should feel if his unopened letters contained bad news. Then his thoughts harked back to Sandhurst—poor old Ally!... Such stupid, lovable times!... Men make tenderer friendships in their young manhood than they care to express.
He was covered with dust—caked with it—and streaked with the heat as he dismounted in the stable yard of the bungalow. Not the state in which to go into a lady’s drawing-room, he thought ruefully, pulling the handkerchief out of his sleeve to wipe his shining face! The hair clung to his damp forehead as he slipped off his helmet and dropped it with a little clang of the chain, on to the table in the hall. Mrs. Lewin was in the further room, Abdallah said—oh, yes, she was at home to visitors. Brissy tried instinctively to muffle his spurs as he walked across the bare boards, through the hanging curtains, and into her white presence.
She was sitting by the window, looking out through an open door to the hot riot of the hillside, where the wind sang in the grasses and came back laden with sweetness from the flowering trees, but she turned her head sharply at the sound of his ringing step (why did those spurs jar so?) and rose and met him. The instant he got close to her he saw that she knew, though how he did not stop to puzzle out, and with the tears running down his scorched face he took her hands in his and tried to speak.
“This is kind of you, Brissy,” she said in a quick, low voice, looking up into the eyes she had called soulless. The first thing she had realised was that he had made the simple self-sacrifice from which other men had flinched, and come to tell her as he best could, with less self-consciousness than they, but suffering far more from a personal feeling. Another of her theories fell from her while he stood there holding her hands, and with a bewildered humiliation she felt that she would never judge any one again. For this man of all the Station she had always held a little in contempt.
“I had a letter by the mail,” she said, quite quietly and collectedly, but as if a little weary. “He sent it by a runner, just before—he.... And the man got through in time to deliver it and catch the mail—almost before any one knew. Mustn’t it have been a wonderful journey? All down through the German territory, and by Lake Nyassa into Rhodesia, I suppose. But he was a Malagasy—Ally’s own servant, Longa—and they are marvellous runners. You know Longa means friend in the vernacular—strange, isn’t it?”
She paused, as if she were thinking, and put her hand up to her hair as if a little uncertain that it lay in its usual correct masses. He only said brokenly, “Poor old Ally!—he backed out,”—that seemed to trouble Brissy!—“I wish I had been there.”
“You would never have done it,”—she shook her head with a flash of intuition. “You were stronger than he.” She thought a moment, and then went on in the same curious fashion. “Yes, Longa (and that means a friend!) brought the letter to Capetown, and sent it on to me by the mail. Here it is—oh yes! do look at it!”
She nearly thrust it into his hands, which trembled as they held it. He almost felt that he ought not to look, as his blurred eyes travelled over the blotted sheets.
Poor Ally! Poor, handsome, unreliable Ally—proved incompetent, and such a failure!