Graeme rode back alone, no one showing any inclination to accompany him. He was down now, and the strong man or animal down is a being whom all smaller creatures shun; for such is the penalty those who claim pre-eminence over their fellows have to pay if but for a moment they fail to support their claim. For though to all living creatures a lord is essential, nevertheless they hate that lord and the dominion he imposes, and, once fallen, are on him like wolves on a disabled leader. Only in the case of hereditary kingship is it different—then it is the place and not the individual to which they bow.
This came home to Graeme as he rode homewards. Yesterday—this morning even—his brother officers, though disliking and perhaps fearing him, would nevertheless have followed his lead and accepted without question his dictum on military matters; but now, thanks to a mere field day disaster, or, rather, to the utterance of a Bumps, all this had changed, and his former unbroken sequence of successes had been obliterated from their minds.
While he was thus reflecting, the clatter of hoofs sounded on the track behind him, and Wicklow rode up, stopping for a moment as he passed.
"Hullo, Graeme," he said; "rotten job they gave you this morning, no man living could have done it. Funny, though, at one time I thought you were going to pull it off, but I think my reserves might have got there in time. They hadn't started for the passes when you headed for my centre. There was only a picket of six men on top, but of course I knew you wouldn't do an unsound thing like that; besides your horses couldn't have got over."
"Supposing I'd dismounted and swarmed up, then moved along the ridge and come down on you from above?"
"Glad you didn't, it's I who'd have had the damning then—not you. Bye-bye, I'm off to lunch," and Wicklow rode on, leaving Graeme the bitterer at the knowledge of what ought to have been and had not.
A feeling of despondency came over him, a sense of futility, one of those black moods to which the self-reliant, and consequently solitary, are at times prone. What was the good of it all, he asked himself, this laborious building up of a name, which the slightest mistake of a subordinate or momentary ill-luck could destroy in a moment. Even worse, perhaps, was the crass stupidity of those by whom he was surrounded; their total inability to see matters that to his eyes were as clear as daylight. He knew there was not one of those officers present at to-day's operations who had an inkling of the motives that had prompted him to act as he had done. To them his plan had been a wild gamble, which with luck might come off, but only with luck; whilst he had known—even without the confirmation of Wicklow's words—the success of that plan had been certain, based as it was on his knowledge of human nature, which never changes and never can change.
Oh, to get away from it all, abandon this thankless profession, and leave the army to the ruin it courted by the retention in high places of such as Bumps! Then there suddenly flashed upon him the remembrance of the telegram that had been despatched in the morning, and till now forgotten; for in the concentration of purpose usual with him there was only room for one thought in his mind at a time.
A sigh of relief burst from his lips.
"Thank heaven," he muttered, "I did it; fool that I was to wait so long." And thereupon, suddenly exhilarated at the thought of speedy release, he struck spurs to his horse and rode on, until he reached his quarters, before which a soldier in uniform was standing, awaiting him.