Jem Agar had never been a clever boy. He was not a clever man. But—and mark ye this—he knew it. The result of this knowledge was that he did what he could in the present with the present, and did not indefinitely postpone astonishing the universe, as most of us do, until some future date.
At this time he was banished, as some would take it. Banished to the top of a pass which was nought else than a footway between two empires. Forty miles from men of his own race, this man was one of those who either have no thoughts or no wish to impart them; for this racial solitude, which is an emotion fully explored by many in India, in no way affected his nerves. Some say that they get jumpy, others aver that they begin to lose their national characteristics and develop barbarous proclivities, while one Woods-and-Forests man known to some of us resigned because he had a buzzing in the head during the long solitary, silent evenings.
Major Agar made no statements on this point, though he listened with sympathy to the assertions of others. If the sympathy were subtly mingled with non-comprehensive wonder, the seeker after a purer form of commiseration attributed the alloy to natural density, and turned elsewhere.
Accompanied by a handful of Goorkhas, Major J. E. M. Agar had occupied the key to this narrow pass for more than a week, vaguely admiring the scenery, illustrating upon living “running deer” in turbans his views upon quick firing to his diminutive soldiers, who worshipped him as second only to the gods, and possessing his soul with that trustful patience which is rapidly becoming old-fashioned and effete.
During that same week the newspapers at home had been very busy with his name. Some had gone so far as to lay before a greedy public a short and succinct account of his life, compiled from the Army List and a journalistic imagination, finishing the record on the Monday, six days previously, with the usual three-line regret that England should in future be compelled to limp along the path to glory without the assistance of so brilliant a young officer.
Such a word as brilliant had never been coupled with the name of Jem even by his best friend in earnest or his worst enemy in irony. Such sarcasm were too shallow to be worth sounding even in disparagement. But we never know what an obituary notice may bring. Not only had he been endowed with many virtues, manly qualities, and the record of noble deeds, but more substantial honours had been heaped upon his fallen crest or pinned upon his breathless bosom. To some of his distant countrymen he was the proud possessor of the Victoria Cross, awarded him post-mortem in the heat of obituary enthusiasm by more than one local paper. To others he was held up by what is called a Representative Press as a second Crichton. And all this because he was dead. Such is glory.
All unconscious of these honours, honest Jem Agar sat in his little tent, nibbling the end of his penholder—the gift, by the way, of his father—and wishing that he had bought a Letts's diary with six days in a page instead of three.