"I know a great deal of you," she replied, smiling softly. "Dick has told me a lot,--about the brevet,--and the intelligence-work--and the Afghan sepoy--"
"And the men in buckram too, I suppose? I'm afraid Dick is not to be trusted. Did he tell you how the man escaped next day, and I got a wigging?"
"No!" cried Belle indignantly. "Did he?--Did you, I mean?--what a shame!"
"On the contrary, it was quite right. I'll tell you about it some day, if I may. Meanwhile, good-bye, and don't starve; it really doesn't do any good!"
She watched him jingle down the steps, thinking how like an overgrown school-boy he looked in his mess-jacket. So life was not a tragedy after all, but a serio-comedy in which only the monologues were depressing and dull. She went in and played the piano till it was time to go to bed. Yet nothing had really changed, and Fate marched on relentlessly as before. We make our own feelings, and then sit down to weep or smile over them.
The very next afternoon Colonel Stuart was brooding silently over nothing at all in his private office-room, passing the time, as it were, out of mischief, till he went to dine with John Raby. For the latter, with a sort of contemptuous kindness, put the drag of an occasional game of écarté on to the Colonel's potations. Sitting in the dusk his face looked wan and haggard, and, despite his profound stillness, every nerve was wearied and yet awake with excitement; as might be seen from his unrestrained start when Shunker Dâs came into the room unannounced; for the office-hours being over the chuprassie had departed.
"Well, what is it now?" he cried sharply. "I saw you this morning. Haven't you got enough for one day? Am I never to have any peace?"
An angry tone generally reduced his native visitors to submission, but the Lâlâ was evidently in no mood for silence. He had taken up a small contract that morning, the earnest-money of which lay for the time in Colonel Stuart's safe. Since then he had heard casually that a long-expected source of profit over which he had often talked with the Colonel, and for which he had even made preparations, had slipped through his fingers. In other words, that all the mule-transport was to be bought by a special officer. "I've come, sahib," he blurted out, sitting down unasked, "to know if it is true that Mardsen sahib has the purchase of mules."
"And if he has, what the devil is it to you, or to me?" The man's arrogance was becoming unbearable, and Colonel Stuart was a great stickler for etiquette.
"Only this; that if you are not going to deal fairly by me, you mustn't count on my silence; that's all!"